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Controversial Idea - The machinist IS an Engineer

Writer's picture: AZ-TEK AdminAZ-TEK Admin

Mistake: A machinist is just the human programming the part


🐔 🥚 Forget the chicken and the egg…What actually came first - The Machinist or the Engineer?


There is no mistake about it, a machinist can problem solve, build, and create just about anything. Did you know the original engineers were also well-versed machinists? They had to be. Who else was going to make a giant wheel powered by a waterfall, spinning wooden rods that made butter and other things? For all these little things to come together, the original engineers had to be tool makers of all kinds.


So, why is this?


It turns out that engineering new things requires a multitude of mistakes. Through the story knitted together by mistakes, a top-level understanding of reality, how things work and dare we say physics emerges in the mind of the maker. Tool makers were well suited for this because they possessed a high proclivity to taking risks at a young age in the pursuit of solving problems (used to be called fun and adventure 😉). This skill set allowed them to build and test an idea until it actually worked! This process produced a sense of the physical world around them and how things can be manipulated. By the time a tool maker was of mature age, they could pretty much make anything.


So how does this make modern machinists engineers? As usual, it’s all in how you define it. Here are four areas that seem to define what an engineer is.


1) What the public thinks

2) What Academia thinks

3) What the engineer wants

4) What Industry asks of them


Some common public conceptions of an Engineer

◼ Good at math (You mean mathematicians?)

◼ Those people in the funny hat operating trains (*Facepalm…ugh…English!)

◼ In a lab designing, building, and testing engines (So a really good mechanic?)

◼ Lab coats and white boards (Also called Scientist?)

◼ Perform complex physics calculations all day (Steven Hawking?)

◼ NASA, probably (LOL! Nailed it buddy)

◼ Make a lot of money (You would think so)

◼ Army Corps of Engineers (Would never disagree with that)


Academia’s vision for engineers

◼ Math, Math, Math (How else are you gonna know how things work?)

◼ Anything but how to machine a part (We don’t need to actually do stuff, do we?)

◼ Everything but how to design a part (My math prowess will inform me on design if ever I need to)

◼ Not hirable until you get a master’s Degree in engineering (Not sure what the Bachelor’s degree was for)

◼ Not promotable until you get an MBA (My Master’s degree in engineering was just the application process)

◼ Not respected until you get a PhD (PhD’s are Gods!)


What Engineers actually want

◼ Design cool stuff (You mean that’s not what I’ll be doing?)


What Industry asks of them

◼ Don’t do math (because you will have to explain it and make people feel bad)

◼ Go to lots of meetings (makes management feel better)

◼ Plan processes and schedules (Because the company only hired 1 project manager for the whole company)

◼ Use MS Excel as a calculator, word processor, presentation tool and everything really (because the company won’t spend money on engineering specific software’s, you get to use what marketing and accounting use)

◼ Team build and be influential (because the company outsourced that to you)

◼ Figure out how to do your job without us telling you (because the company knows they need engineers but not sure what it is they do exactly)

◼ When you have extra time, design parts, produce drawings and launch products (because these activities keep you from the other ones listed)


Turns out, a machinist is pretty well understood and defined across the board. Let’s look at what machinists do.

◼ Problem solve (have to in order to get a lunch break and be home on time for dinner)

◼ Think creatively (how else am I gonna machine the inside of a ball bearing?)

◼ Create complex geometry (Swarfing is child’s play)

◼ Daily use of trig tables, calculation of press tolerances and integrate for surface area (this doesn’t feel like math, it feels like fun!)

◼ Design parts (get the models from the engineers and fix them so they actually work)

◼ Produce and interpret drawings (teach the engineer how to really make a drawing)

◼ Think in 3-dimensionally (can sleep until I get that toolpath right)

◼ Execute, Execute, Execute (cant stay in business if I don’t deliver)

◼ Apply physics to making components for multiple industry’s (I’ll figure it out for you NASA!)

◼ Programming (the CNC machine isn’t gonna program itself)

◼ Maintenance of mechanical and electrical machines (Chips aren’t just for the Brit’s fish dinners)

◼ Have daily practical experience with: tolerances, surfaces finishes, strength of materials. (parts got to work in ways the “engineer” wasn’t considering)

◼ Physical knowledge of forces, reactions, failures, power, federate, rpm, surface speed, material removal rate, chip load, etc. (The real technical talk!)


So, the list goes on and on. Do all these technical things apply to engineers as well? Of course! But the key difference here is that most conceptual areas do not list many of these technical functions in engineering. This is bolstered by the fact that industry does not really expect these things of the so-called “engineer”.


If new things need to be innovated, designed and built, (and they do) then machinists are the last real engineer of the age, and really always have been.


Here is an old video that was shown to young people looking for a career in machining. Most of it still applies to today. Notice the technical things talked about and how they apply to engineering topics.


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