Workshop Woes

I spend my time in Bangalore at the Indian Institute of Science, designing a micro air vehicle. A large part of the design is complete, and I'm getting a prototype fabricated at the workshop under the Aerospace Department.

It's a miserable experience, a real pain up the rear end. Now the workshop has a foreman and under him machinists. The foreman, Mr. Govindraj, is tied up with other items to be fabricated, so I have to settle for one of the machinists. They aren't half as good.

The guy is about to make a drill hole using a lathe*. He puts the job* in the chuck*, and the drill bit in the chuck fitted in the tailpost*, and is about to drill. So I remind him " Centre hole?" And then he removes the drill bit and replaces it with a centre drill, so that the spot to be drilled is marked before drilling. The centre ( a cone shaped depression) created serves to guide the point of the drill to the correct spot to be drilled. It was terrible.

I mean, that's the most obvious thing to do before drilling. I feel helpless. This guy is almost as old as my Dad, and has been a machinist for as long as I have lived, and he acts like this. I don't feel I have the right to yell at him, so I don't. He rushes through everything, fumbling occasionally because of that.

The drill bit is vibrating. That means I will get a slightly larger hole than the drill bit is meant to produce. The best part is out of one of the four times he drilled a hole, he could get it to not vibrate.

I felt miserable... he had no love for what he was doing, no understanding of why he was doing it. It was just a job. He was to make parts that the Aersopace Department needed, and would do whatever it takes to finish the part. Accuracy, function, tolerances, finish could all go out the window. I wanted this and this process, he'll do it superficially and it doesn't matter that he gives me a freely sliding fit when I wanted a tight fit.

I wonder, why on earth does he have this work ethic? What is it with these people? Is it apathy due to experience? Boredom? His expression showed he hated doing his job. It's not like he has to repetitively make the same parts. It's always a specially ordered part. Machining is an art. Yet he hates it.

I guess that a lot of people feel that way... it was kind of depressing. Maybe you don't get to do the job of your choice in life, but every job has something that's interesting.

Lathe - a machine that spins an object at high speed, so that it can be easily cut by cutting tool.
job - the article to be machined.
Machining - removing material from an object.
Drill chuck - used to hold a drill bit
tailpost - used to hold the end of the job not in the chuck, or a tool.