I can breath again

Company did a big management change. We are now part of the corporate division. Means, everyone gets reevaluated and reclassified. They started Monday. A few happy people, most not so happy. You could move up or down the pay scale. Been a long week waiting to see if it was good or bad. I finally got my review in the afternoon. I made top grade of the new scale :) Got a raise and a pep talk of how if I want to go up higher, I can talk about management possibilities. I have about zero interest in a management position. I love what I do. I program and run CNC grinders. I get to work on them, train people. I really enjoy solving problems, figuring out ways to improve machining.  I really have no interest in meetings or having to deal with people. It is still nice to be thought of for further advancement. He did say they are still looking into buying a brand new grinder. Will keep me in mind for it as well. Most of the new container molds are square. The new grinder has the capabilities of grinding non-round components accurately. It costs a whopping 1.4 million bucks, but it would have laser measurement capabilities and is amazing to watch run. It can grind square, oval, round, and off center parts. I have seen videos on youtube of what they can do. I run a couple Kel-varia grinders at present, but they are older and don't do the non-rounds. They do still hold amazingly close tolerances. Everything I grind has to hold a .0002 of an inch tolerance. It is checked on either a height gage , or a CMM and verified. A couple customers tear the molds down when we send them and they will remeasure all critical dimensions, so they have to be right. This will be the second year we put in for money for it. We usually buy new high speed mills and NT's with the allotment though. More machines for less money with greater versatility.

 I did get a new to me CNC universal grinder to play with though. I have finished getting it cleaned up, repainted, and repaired the damaged components. They really should send someone that knows what they are looking at to see the machine before buying it. She had some really messed up components, fortunately, the ways are good and everything is solid.  I got it all fixed up and ready to run. One interesting thing they didn't notice. Machine controls are metric. For the life of me I cannot understand why some companies design a CNC machine in either metric OR standard, pick one. How hard could it possibly be to put a soft key in the programming that would allow user to simply switch between metric or standard mode. You have a simple 25.4 mathematic constant you can use in the controllers programming to convert back and forth. I contacted the company and am getting a price for some new EPROMs  with the correct settings and parameters to convert machine to standard. Hopefully, they don't require changing the scales as well, as they may also have decided to use metric scales on metric machines and standard scales on the nonmetric machines. Of course neither service nor the parts department are sure. They have to check with Switzerland to find out. Hopefully, the chips do it all. I can upload programs and use a G20 command to run programs I use on the other machine on this one for now, but the main control will display the moves in metric, which would confuse the people operating the machine. The manual also says that the parameters that I use for size adjustment will stay in metric mode, therefore, if you want to make a size change, you have to measure the part, convert error to metric and enter correction value. Total pain.

Got off work and hit one of the gun shows that are in town this weekend. The one at the armory landed on the same weekend one of the two 4H centers that throw gun shows is having theirs. The 4H one is suppose to have the local military show showing up there as well. Have to work tomorrow, but I will hit the 4H show up after work tomorrow. Democrats would hate my town. There is a gun show almost every month at one of three locations. Obama has been really great at driving up the sales. I am so relieved and wish I had the weekend off just to unwind and get my mind completely off work.