His name was Frank, and he had been running deep hole drilling machines since before I was born. Frank retired in 2018 after forty-two years in the trade. He had started on manual machines in the 70s, drilling oil field components, and had seen the transition to CNC, to BTA systems, to everything we use today. When he walked away from the trade, he took forty-two years of knowledge with him. ...
I volunteered for the night shift about five years ago and never looked back. Most guys hate it – the weird sleep schedule, the social isolation, not seeing your family for dinner. But for running a deep hole drilling machine, night shift is the best time to work, and I will die on that hill. The day shift at our shop starts at 6 AM and by 7:30 the place is a zoo. The material handling guy is dropping off pallets of blanks. The quality engineer is walking around with a stack of inspection reports, asking questions about every job. The production manager is running around putting out fires. There are safety meetings, toolbox talks, lunch orders, visitors from the front office walking through with hard hats. ...
When I started in deep hole drilling, I didn’t understand why the experienced operators spent so much time looking at the chips coming out of the hole. They’d pick up a chip, look at it, and then adjust a parameter. It seemed like magic. My mentor explained: “The chips tell you everything. Short and broken means you’re cutting. Long and stringy means you’re rubbing. Fine powder means you’re forcing it.” ...