Today is National Manufacturing Day. There are quite a few activities planned around the country. Indiana has a few planned, one of which will be groups of high schoolers touring the college. Even though the thought of bus loads of high school kids showing up gives me the heebie-jeebies, I'm taking one for the team today and acting as a tour guide in the Welding Lab. Let's face it, without welding there wouldn't be much manufacturing and since the trade is facing a shortage of talent, need to plant the seed in the upcoming generation. Not asking too much for me to give them a half day I suppose. I can always double down on the blood pressure medicine after they leave.
In related manufacturing news, Surly knocked out a couple of drawings for the exhaust collars on the 900. You'll have to take my word for the fact the drawings look good since I can't figure out how to upload a pdf file here. One of these days I'll make up a fixture and rough cut my parts. I'll see about getting them machined at the instructor's convenience or in class (see below).
I checked into signing up for a CAD class the first eight weeks of the Spring semester and a CNC machining class the second eight weeks. Those, along with my teaching schedule, will have me staying pretty busy but other than getting out of the house and a paycheck, the one real perk of the job is free tuition. After all the classes I've paid for over the years, seems kind of a shame to retire off this job without taking any free ones. I don't have any pressing need to update my CAD skills and I don't have a CNC mill at the house, so there's no real need to take these but if you're a maker of things - any things - I'm sure you understand. As long as I can wade through the labyrinth of paperwork required to get signed up, I'll be a student once again. My boss in the Weld Shop walked me around to the proper people the other day to get me started, so that was a big help. I told him as long as I'm interested in taking classes I'll keep working. I think he already had that figured out, however. He was pretty eager to help out.
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