Haas VF3
This week I got to train two people on a Haas VF3, and what a delight it was. This machine was old I mean 1996 but still a great functional machine tool.
I like to see myself in a similar way, really old but still functioning, well at least as I write.
It took me back to when I first set up my business of training people on CNC machines. My first two victims were at Armitage Shanks in good old Wolverhampton.
1996 was the year I started out on my own CNC Training and these were the first machines I trained on. I did so many I got pissed off with the sound of my own voice (which I rarely do).
Because all the machines were the same I was saying the same things and quoting the same tired old anecdotes day after day.
Fortunately, I went on to train on all the well-known CNC machines like Mazak, Mori Seiki, Matsuura, Bridgeport to name a few. Quite a lot of the not so well-known ones like Maho, seen below.
The machine above has a Phillips control and they were the absolute dogs’ bollocks. It even had rigid tapping. You could hit feed-hold while it was tapping and you got the option to reverse the tap out! Training people on these was an absolute delight.
Don’t forget we’re talking mid 80s here.
Shut up David this sounds like a big plug for the CNC Training Centre, or maybe it is.
CNC Training Centre (Home of the CNC Program)
There is pub by us and on the sign, it says “The Home of the Roast”.
You have to queue up to get your food and a young lad carves the meat in front of you. If he don’t like the look of you, which obviously with me he didn’t, you get two or three slices of turkey, so wafer thin, you can see the pattern on the fuckin plate underneath.
Now I don’t want to knock the people of Nuneaton, being as most of my family live there, but honestly there are some greedy bastards about.
After you get your meat and a few accoutrements you follow a long line of people adding cabbage and peas and all sorts of vegetables and potatoes to their plates. This bloke in front of me was scooping so much on to his plate it was flowing over. It was like a fuckin bowler hat as my late father would say, sans expletive.
In those days you didn’t swear in front of ladies, unless of course it was their turn.
I was just thinking “did you like not eat for a fuckin week?” You can imagine his kids at school saying to the teacher “oh, we’re not eating at our house this week miss”. The teacher then asks if this is some precursor to a religious festival or some such thing.
“Oh no miss, we’re booked in at the carvery for Sunday lunch” she gives them a knowing nod.
Anyway, I looked at this blokes plate with utter middle class disgust and vowed never to go there again.
My mate was about three people in front of this bloke and to my amazement my mate’s plate was so full of food, it made his look like he’d paid for the children’s menu.
