Reply To: Thee Mill Debate Continues

[david pierce]

Daryn,
In those days CNC machines were just introduced into the smaller shops. Large manufacturing companies like Lockheed had them and used a mainframe timeshare program called APT to program them. The smaller shops did not have access to the APT system so it gave me an opportunity to advance in the company. The more senior employees and the shop owners came from the old “by gosh and by golly” machining process. If the part had a shiny finish and it worked, in their world it was a properly made precision part. As customers became more knowledgable and sophiscated this system was no longer acceptable. The new system involved building a mathematical model of the part and then putting this into a machine program format. Holding you mouth right and putting a nice finish on the part no longer worked. Years later computers became more powerful and computer aided manufacturing programs became available but this was not the case in the early days.
david