What happened to all the machine repair guys?

[10 fingers]

You want to see change??? Vote with your wallet.

Let me guess, you don't own a business nor work in the machine tool building industry?
Unable to recruit a talented individual to train for hand scraping I'm forced to pay a local person more per hour than my dentist. Others that contribute heavily are discreetly paid quite well.

Those bitching about pay in the trade are usually short on talent. Proof being, if so damn good, the demand is so high they could step out and have there own gig.

The company has a reasonability to its employees to remain profitable. The company can only bleed so much investing tens of thousands to get an unproductive, unskilled hire up to speed. Pay must be accordingly.

I live in a community with a very high Fentanyl overdose rate, and here's why. About 30% of high school students drop out. Then enter seasonal employment with local ski resorts. Make fair money free of drug testing. Proud to be rad, snowboarder. Routinely get laid off every March. Can collect unemployment until the next ski season. In summer most work landscaping or painting houses for under the table cash. At about 40 years old they look in mirror coming to terms with, this is as good as it gets. No savings. No home. Rotten teeth. No health insurance. A drinking/drug addiction. Too late to excel at a trade.

As I explain in an interview, if willing to compromise you future for a mindless, dead end job, you wont be happy here.

Want to see a future, invest in yourself.

 

[boosted]

Let me guess, you don't own a business nor work in the machine tool building industry?

I've owned my own job shop for about 8 years now. Have several employees.

Been in the trade long enough to see wages go from "good" to "okay", and now "sad". Manufacturing is not the only industry affected by globalization, but it is one of the worst. The price of domestically manufactured products has not indexed with the rising cost of business at all. Less money for everybody means wages have really stagnated.

There is no labor shortage in skilled trades that pay well at the entry level as well as the top. It's awfully rare to hear a power utility or fire department complain about a lack of new recruits.

Getting real tired of other business owners who rant and rave about how the schools are failing them. It's like they think it's the government's responsibility to train an army of workers ready to occupy positions that don't pay a living wage. Those same business owners tend to be the ones who will sell out their ethics in a second if it will save a buck.

 

[jim rozen]

"At least locally, school vocational programs are a dumping ground for academic misfits..."

Hold up here a moment: Voc Tech programs have ALWAYS been inhabited by academic misfits. It's not a bug, it's a feature. That's where the gearheads and motorheads have always gone. I've made more money from the drafting classes in high school than from my academics.

 

[Richard King]

The local rebuilders here in MN are charging $125.00 per hour door to door and they are swamped. My friend in Berkeley CA does a lot of service calls charges $125.00 for the first 15 minutes, Then $75.00 per additional 15 minutes, He specializes in bandsaws. He said he can usually repair a machine in an hour.

 

[draganm]

I had to pull the input shaft on my 15” colchester of the same design due to a clutch issue. I thought oh sh….! Not really, I did not have to remove any of the other shafts to remove the input shaft and replace the clutch assembly. There was a thread somewhere on this forum that I found that was helpful as it delt with the input shaft removal. If I remember the op had a similar issue with the pulley and the shaft being messed up.

i did a search for Colchester shaft replace and found a guy with same problem. Interesting discussion about repairing the shaft using a tapered QD bushing, but nothing about disassembly / re-assembly

Pulley loose on shaft - what option is best

Fixing one thing with my Clausing Colchester has shown up a ton more problems. If I'd have found them all in advance I'd have just scrapped it and been richer, but I'm already in, have bought new parts, and this final issue shouldn't be that hard to fix... I'd really appreciate your all input on...

www.practicalmachinist.com

if anyone remembers a thread where someone takes these clutches out on a turnmaster or Colchester triumph with pics, please link

Hmmmm flights are cheap to Denver and it would give me an excuse to head down to Trinidad Co and visit my brother. If I can get someone to watch the kids, dogs actually, maybe I’d be coaxed into helping you out.

if your really confident you tackle this after looking at the drawing i posted, and the 40 different elements on this shaft, then i would consider flying you out . It would be on my dime,
let me see what Lagun says tomorrow about their remote tech support

What has happened to the machine repair guys, you ask. We got old and broken down. Speaking of charging $50.00 an hour, I have had customers that would almost keel over with a heart attack. Then they want you to guarantee it for ever.

JC

JC that's how i feel, old and broken, after a 9 hour day my knees hurt bad it's hard to get out of the car. I don't know when you retired, but today $50. and hour to have a millwright show up on site would be an insult. going rate is probably closer to $200.
The building i'm in has millions of dollars of custom instruments, some of the microscopes are half a million dollars. To service those, it's $4k paid up front just have a tech show up Monday morning. Then parts & hourly labor on top of that.
My operation is self funded, so my budget is tiny, but I still respect skilled laborers enough to not insult them with lowball offers.

 

[draganm]

The local rebuilders here in MN are charging $125.00 per hour door to door and they are swamped. My friend in Berkeley CA does a lot of service calls charges $125.00 for the first 15 minutes, Then $75.00 per additional 15 minutes, He specializes in bandsaws. He said he can usually repair a machine in an hour.

$125. door to door is a Fing bargain to get someone who really knows what they're doing IMO.
$300./hour i guess probably normal for California. Here in Colorado we are somewhere in between, but good luck finding someone at any price

 

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

It years since I last had that particular line out of a “ Colchester “ lathe but I recall it not being particularly difficult. From memory I started at 8.00 am and I had it out and on the bench by about 10-30 to 11-00 am. Either the shaft has a tapped hole in the end or I drilled and tapped one. Once I had the pulley off and the end cap out of the way I used my slide hammer to withdraw the shaft. Of course you need to look out for any circlips ( Snap rings in the US ? ), grub screws etc. Remember - the machine may have been altered by a previous owner and it may not be exactly like the drawing. “ Matrix “ clutches are well made and simple to operate. They must have made them by the million. Lots of UK machine tool makers used them.

As we say over here - “ Who Dares Wins.”

Regards Tyrone.

 

[hanermo]

$125. door to door is a Fing bargain to get someone who really knows what they're doing IMO.
$300./hour i guess probably normal for California. Here in Colorado we are somewhere in between, but good luck finding someone at any price

I don´t get it.
All the Haas service techs we employed were really good.
Any one of them could do anything You require.

Any haas shop will send techs out at about 100$ per hour.
In my extensive experience with 30+haas shops the owners are all smart, nice, and really want to help anyone-if you bring in a bit of money.
They hope to sell machines in the future.

 

[Richard King]

I was speaking of service techs who do Mechanical repair and scraping on conventional machines and CNC , not CNC control techs. I have no clue what they chaarge.

 

[draganm]

I don´t get it.
All the Haas service techs we employed were really good.

I don't get it either, called their service department 2 or 3 times in the last couple of years to come out and do a general welfare check on my 10 year old VF2 VMC. No reply to my messages. The company was owned by a guy everyone knew for decades, and then recently sold to some multi-state business interest, then most of the original people left.
You can still buy parts easily (thank goodness, i fixed my own ruptured coolant hose) but if i can't get them to come out and look over their own product, what do you think my chances are of getting them to work on a 36 year old lathe that they didn't build or own the rights to?

It years since I last had that particular line out of a “ Colchester “ lathe but I recall it not being particularly difficult. From memory I started at 8.00 am and I had it out and on the bench by about 10-30 to 11-00 am. Either the shaft has a tapped hole in the end or I drilled and tapped one. Once I had the pulley off and the end cap out of the way I used my slide hammer to withdraw the shaft. Of course you need to look out for any circlips ( Snap rings in the US ? ), grub screws etc. Remember - the machine may have been altered by a previous owner and it may not be exactly like the drawing. “ Matrix “ clutches are well made and simple to operate. They must have made them by the million. Lots of UK machine tool makers used them.

As we say over here - “ Who Dares Wins.”

Regards Tyrone.

I am 99% sure this machine has never been altered or even serviced by anyone except me. at this point i don't want to pull the shaft unless i have to. I want to get those clutches centered on the clutch fork, which is attached to the headstock casting so i don't know you would slide the clutches out without unbolting the fork.
I also don't know what locates the clutch-pack on the shaft. in this pic, bearing 51 sits in the inner casting wall (Yellow), you can just see this bearing by looking down from the top
to the left of that you have these parts, that are not visible from any angle
65- spacer?
66- snap ring ?
72- inner bearing race?
68-69- grub screws ?
This pic was sent to me by the distributor, it is not in my 1987 manual. I think my next step will be to buy this current manual for $100. so i at least have an accurate parts list.

 

[Cole2534]

If you'd started pulling parts instead of typing on the internet you'd probably be done.

More is lost to indecision than wrong decision.

 

[plumberpieco]

if your really confident you tackle this after looking at the drawing i posted, and the 40 different elements on this shaft, then i would consider flying you out . It would be on my dime,
let me see what Lagun says tomorrow about their remote tech

Well flights are as cheap as $50 round trip from Cleveland depending on timing. If you aren’t in a hurry I could probably do it once I slow down. It’s boiler season for me at the moment so time is scarse. I’ve tried to find some pics of when I had my hands in the headstock but could only find a few. Nothing exciting just a shot of a broken ear that retains a small roller on part of a clutch hub, worn thrust bushings and the worn clutch fork. The clutch didn’t work when I got the lathe and it was going to get scrapped as the company that had it didn’t want to put $4500 into it. That was what they were quoted to fix it which was probably 6 years ago maybe.

 

[plumberpieco]

The pic of the clutch adjustment hub and roller is actually good at that spot so I’ll add the broken pic. It’s kind of hard doing this on the phone. A few of the fork fix too which was silver brazed together.

 

[hvnlymachining]

Just had to work on a Colchester mastiff 1400, shifted suddenly from forward to reverse then smoked the brakes. Inside I found broken detents, but I fear there's more, the customer is contemplating replacing the whole lathe. New parts are available but pricey.

 

[draganm]

Just had to work on a Colchester mastiff 1400, shifted suddenly from forward to reverse then smoked the brakes. Inside I found broken detents, but I fear there's more, the customer is contemplating replacing the whole lathe. New parts are available but pricey.

Sorry to hear that, a bad day for anyone, even if you have money to burn, which most shops don't. I think most manufacturers are dropping the clutch assemblies like hot potatoes, variable drive is the new standard.
I did want to update this thread as i got this dam thing running again. The Lagun people in CA were very nice and as helpful as is possible over the phone, but in the end I wound up fuddling thru it myself.

After sleeving the input shaft for the repair, i had a problem with the re-assembly and reverse clutch dragging, I thought it was the shift fork, which wasn't centered between the clutches, and found the clutches can't be shifted without complete disassembly.

So, I had a water jet shop cut me a new clutch detente pawl (right name?), and everything looked great. I moved the pivot point 4mm to the right on the new one and it centered the fork nicely.

new one on top, old one (flame cut?), on the bottom.



so put the new pulley on, tighten the 8mm pulley retention screw, reverse clutch dragging again. This drove me nuts. I thought it was the end cap bearing, i tried shimming it out, huge waste of time. I also had to make a small 8mm slide hammer and free up the clutch every time it started dragging by tapping the shaft outwards.
Final solution, i cleaned the shaft threads with acetone, found the longest 8mm cap screw i could get in there, a split locking washer, and Red loctite, and tightened the pulley-bolt to the point maybe not as much as i would like, but it's fairly tight and the clutch is free.
A final clutch adjustment, and Machine seems to be working normally.
Now, getting Four A75 belts that are actually all the same size seems unlikely as well, but i just can't mess with this thing any longer, so

 

[ratbldr427]

You can probably still buy a matched set of belts. Do you have a Motion Industries or Applied Industrial local ? Used to be able to buy belts that were actually matched by batch no and tested on a tennsioning device from Goodyear and Dayco I believe. I think you can get same batch nos and can get banded belts , don't know about A75's. Call Goodyear, they will tell you what is avail or go on line for their catalogs most have a tech section that will tell you what is available.

 

[john.k]

Most suppliers say belts are so accurately made,match is no longer supplied

 

[boslab]

From my experience most of the machine repair guys I’ve said goodbye to at the cemetery and the crematorium, sad but I suppose we’re all going to get half a day at the undertaker’s ( as Fred dibnah said at the local steam railway )
You start learning a trade in school and at home I reckon, I started sitting on my dads knee being told stories of trains and mill engines, it gets into kids heads long before leaving school, that has turned into a political indoctrination centres, they don’t know what a woman is now, even if they popped out of one let alone a back gear, or any gear for that matter, US is the same,
Mark

 

[draganm]

Thanks for the belt advice. The belts on there were / are Jason Unimatch. I ordered 1 new belt from mcmaster and the Dayco they sent was huge, which is funny if you expect that the old belts would have stretched after 15 years.
So i found another Unimatch on ebay, better than Dayco but still larger than 3 i had on there.

Do you have a Motion Industries or Applied Industrial local ?

thanks, we do have a motion and I've contacted them. If that fails,I might just order 3 more Jasons from ebay and then pick the 4 closest in size from the 7 I'll have on hand.

 

[Mike Henry]

Bos Machine, near Geneseo, IL, does machine repair work, though they may focus on larger machine tools.

BOS Machine Tool Services Since 1984 - Machine Repair, Rebuild, Retrofit

BOS Machine provides machine repair and rebuilding services for CNC, turning machines, presses & press brakes. Home of Kemco Portable Machining services.

www.bosmachine.com