On the Brdigeport vertical milling machine

The following is excerpted from a draft of a report for grad school.  Much of it is drawn from barely-remembered snippets of shop lore I heard or saw somewhere along the way.  Any corrections would be welcomed wholeheartedly.

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The Bridgeport milling machine is an interesting case in the history of technology.  The design was settled upon in the late 1930s and hasn't changed a great deal since.  Virtually every vertical milling machine made since has been an interpretation of the Bridgeport design.  The term "Bridgeport" is often used to mean vertical milling machines generally, a la "Kleenex".  Other types of machine tools, e.g. lathes and drill presses, are significantly more diverse; there are larger differences between manufacturers and over time.  Welding machines are far more diverse.  But vertical milling machines are all, at heart, Bridgeports.

Though the Bridgeport design was popular in the 30s, its history is deeply intertwined with the World War II production effort.  Adaptable precision production of precision parts was needed, especially for aircraft manufacture.  Today, computer-controlled machining would have been an obvious choice, but automated manufacturing was barely in its infancy at the time.  The solution was to buy Bridgeport mills, one for each machining operation, such as milling a slot.  The part would be moved down the line from one machine to the next, one operation per machine.  When time came for a new run of parts, the machines could be set up anew in fairly short order.  This strategy worked well, but required the manufacture of thousands of machines.

After the war, these machines flooded the used market.  Many have been re-sold over and over.  Milling machines generally, and well-made examples especially, are highly durable.  Many of the milling machines I've used up and down the east coast have been WWII-era machines.  Some are in remarkably good condition, especially for industrial equipment older than my parents.

The Bridgeport mill is an appropriate technology, an essential tool for the small metal shop.  Yet these machines were created to make killing machines.  Such has been the case with machine tools since their earliest days.  As L.T.C. Rolt wrote in discussing machine tools of the 1700s, "It is precisely because armament production has always been so uninhibited that the industry has contributed so much to the general progress of technology.  Though we have not yet acquired the wisdom to convert one into the other, by producing better swords we certainly learn how to make better ploughshares."

References:

Rolt, L.T.C. (1965), A Short History of Machine Tools, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA: MIT Press

http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Bridgeport-Machines-Inc-Company-History.html

http://www.kanabco.com/vms/mill_machine/mill_machine_03.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milling_machine

"Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that much U.S. plant capacity to this day, and even some of the machine
tools in use, originated in this period [1941-5]."

Carlsson, Bo, The development and use of machine tools in historical perspective, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 5, Issue 1, March 1984, Pages 91-114

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V8F-45GSDTT-8&_user=634929&_coverDate=03%2F31%2F1984&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1260645813&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000033778&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=634929&md5=a79a3fbaed643da3ecdb44ff8f256db1

Bike Shop Etiquette

The first rule is, never go behind the service counter without an invitation.

The second rule is, never go behind the service counter without an invitation.

A 6-pack of half-decent beer on a slow afternoon goes a long way towards making connections at the shop, and in the community generally.  These people know the other bike people in this area, and they'll make introductions under the right circumstances.

Winter is the best time to get bike work done at a shop.  In February, yours might be the only bike all afternoon.  Come March, your bike is one of hundreds.

What else?

Linkdump, Snowpocalpyse Edition

- I'm sorry I missed this piece from the NYT back in June: Despite Recession, High Demand for Skilled Labor.  They profiled the welder pictured here:

Huh, can't afford real TIG gloves with your fancy new job?  Anyway, looks like multi-pass TIG on some serious pipe, maybe Schedule 80?

- "Is there anything left for America to manufacture?" asks this Grist article, "given that we have clearly lost our manufacturing mojo to places like Japan for innovation (compare Toyota’s Prius to GM’s Hummer) and China for cost (what product in Walmart is not made in China?)?"
The answer, asserts the author, is to manufacture cleantech.  He cites a couple examples of cleantech conversions--companies that refocused their efforts from making, say, boats, to, say, portable renewable powerplants.

- Matthew Yglesias responds to the Grist piece by pointing out: "[T]he image of an ailing US manufacturing sector stuck in long-term decline is just wrong. America’s industrial output has been on a steadily upward trajectory since 1970, just like it was before 1970"

My thoughts:
Innovation > price competition.  Other countries can beat the US on price any day of the week, and that's not changing anytime soon, especially with health care remaining a drain on labor costs.  Success for US businesses isn't about making more things; it's about making things better, and making better things, i.e. cleantech.
See also Yes, the U.S. Does Still Manufacture Things via the SF Chronicle

- Miller, whom you know for their bright blue welding machines, has an Industrial Welding blog.  The comments are more interesting than the posts themselves.  There's dozens of stories from the front lines of the welding shortage (or lack thereof, depending on whom you ask).  This helped solidify in my mind what might be the best explanation for the wildly diverse experiences with the availability of welding jobs: The welding shortage is a national phenomenon, but not a universal one.  As Tip O'Neill (didn't) put it, all job statistics is local.  Who cares about the national trends if my friends and I can't find work?
Earlier, I even saw a couple companies responding in the comments by practically begging welders to come work for them.  They're out there, but they're not everywhere.

- Fast Company says Pew says the "clean energy economy " stimulates job growth.  They include a Pew chart showing the hot states for clean energy:

Of note: Despite the huge increases in installed wind capacity in recent years in plains states like Texas, Iowa, and Illinois, none are front runners.