The Reliable, Trusty Lathes of the Factory
The multispindle machines at the woodworking factory were in nearly constant operation. It was necessary to keep up with production demands. Table legs and other rounded furniture parts were always needed, but the company also made other ornamental products that required an automatic lathe to produce efficiently. Being in suburban Michigan was nice, and the workers would go from the automated, technological factory, to the elements of nature almost as soon as they went outside the building. It was interesting, even though the raw materials didn’t come from here; the same types of trees existed here to supply the wood materials they processed.
At this factory, there were three dozen turning machines, not to mention the ones that had exceeded their life expectancy and had been sold as used screw machines to smaller factories. The seasoned workers agreed that they were hardy machines. They could turn out thousands of parts and still keep on running constantly. If a new part was ordered, the workers could just change the attachments and CNC settings and the machine would be ready to go once again. Last month, when the longest staying employee retired, he said that he would miss each and every machine dearly.
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I once read this Michael Cunningham book called specimen days, one of the stories was about workers relationships with machines. Over the years the workers had spent so much time with certain machines they grew an emotional attachment to them. In the same vein this blog reminds me of how humans can get attached to machines, especially if they earn their livelihood from them. As a self employed worker I’m painfully attached to my lap top!