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Where I spent the night for 16 years
I
started working with this machine after being with the company for over ten years. I had just transfered to the Midnight shift
and my new assignment was this beast. I had heard that few people liked it because of the size of the material that was generally
run on it. Fortunately, the department acquired some appropriate lifting and hoisting devices due to efforts from our Department
focus & improvement group (at that time called the High Performance Work Organization - HPWO). This made handling the large
material a lot more managable, and my new position tollerable.
As the years went by, improvements were made to the machine
- particularlly noteworthy was when the console was linked to a computer on the shop floor that enabled me to edit and improve
existing programs. This led to an ability to write original programs of my own. New parts could be programmed and in work
in a matter of hours instead of some number of weeks that it usually took to get a request through the programming department.
This kind of knowledge of course led to me writing a couple of programs that were quite outside of my authorized duties. One
in particular is the Harley Davidson logo at the bottom of the page. I used this program to convince management that both
the machine and I were capable of anything from a delicate design milled with an 1/8" cutter to the 3000 lb forged plates
that were being prepped on it. The machine is now long gone, but I remember it well......
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