What Year Were You First Exposed To Numerical Control?

[npalen]

September of 1966. You said "exposed". This did not include operating or programming the machine. The company I worked for said it was the first NC machine in the state of Indiana. It was an Onsrud vertical mill and the table was about was about 12 feet long and 3 feet wide. It had two heads, a large milling head and a drilling head. The tape reader was later changed to disc reader that used 3" disc's. I think it is still running. The mill was installed in 1965.
Sarge41

On Edit: Originally it used paper tapes that were about 2.5 inches wide that were programmed by GE. It was soon converted to a reader that used 1" wide Mylar tapes that was eventually written on site. The only display it had was a display that used Pixie tubes. That display was still running forty years later. The electricians were having a hard time getting the pixie tubes.

I thought they were called nixie tubes but, anyhow, remember seeing a video several years ago of a guy custom making them at that time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixie_tube

[npalen]

1978. Running a LeBlond 19" Tape-Turn Regal. Had a GE 550T control. Read a paper tape continually as it ran. Learned to manually program. Then go an office job there and learned APT.

A few years later I worked at the same shop, wrote my own program in C to profile cams on a Bridgeport Series 2 CNC Mill.

I vaguely remember the APT acronym. Was it "Automatic Programmed Tools"? Did it have something to do with a code on the tool that the machine read?

[skunkworks]

Lol wow. I went to that school too. all be it - in the 90's Got an associate's degree in electronics.

sam

It was 1976 in Lacrosse Wisconsin. I was attending Western Wisconsin Technical College enrolled in the Electrical Power Program. The program had several computer courses so the class would go to the room that housed the main frame core memory. That was quite the sight, I'm sure some of you guys remember and have probably seen a room full core memory cabinets. Anyway, along with the core memory side trips we spent some time in the machine shop studying and trying our hand at punch tape numerical control. I never got the hang of it, nor could I program my out of a paper bag with any of the other programming languages. Thanks for the trip back to 1976.

[olf20]

Somewhere around 1995. I got the chance to purchase a Atlas mill from a
friend that did not like the mill because it was too tall. It had been used very
little and was about 5 years old.
I messed with is for about two years. Had to build a phase converter to
make it run.
Next got interested in Mach3 and it's been running ever since.
It went thru a fire in 2011, had the head / motor rebuilt.
I use it almost everyday for something.
Needless to say I still have lots to learn!!
If it was not for Vectric software I would have never
got as much use from the mill.
olf20 / Bob

[metalmagpie]

1962 Seattle World's Fair. In the Science Center there was a CNC paper tape mill in a Boeing exhibit. There was a part on the mill table with 2 holes. A drill was mounted and turning. The machine moved to one hole, lowered the drill into the hole (no chips, the drill was clearly in the center of the hole) then lifted and moved to the other hole and repeated. Over and over for 3 months. Heady stuff for a curious 9 year old boy.

[darryl]

Does working on a church bell control system count? In the early 70's I worked on a paper tape reader that had various songs punched into the tape. You would push a reader head into position across the tape to choose the song that would play out on the bells. For a different set of songs you would change the paper on the rolls. I always wanted to install the paper backwards- the mischievious side of me coming out I forget what it was called- a carrilon perhaps?

[Noitoen]

Does working on a church bell control system count? In the early 70's I worked on a paper tape reader that had various songs punched into the tape. You would push a reader head into position across the tape to choose the song that would play out on the bells. For a different set of songs you would change the paper on the rolls. I always wanted to install the paper backwards- the mischievious side of me coming out I forget what it was called- a carrilon perhaps?

Next comes the automatic Saloon piano

[Glug]

Glug, i'll bet he didn't get to three that often did he?

No, not unless it was one of those fast counts.

[darryl]

The automatic saloon piano- I missed my chance to pick up a player piano a couple years ago. I don't know what I would have done with it, or where to keep it, but it would have made an interesting mechanism to have around.

[sarge41]

I thought they were called nixie tubes but, anyhow, remember seeing a video several years ago of a guy custom making them at that time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixie_tube

Yeah, you are right. Nixie tubes. Fascinating little buggers, When you watched one of them, you were looking thru the entire stack of ten digits, you only saw the one illuminated. Thanks for setting me straight. Its been almost thirty years since I have seen them. I'm sure you are right, but upon reflection, I do think some of the electricians referred to them as Pixie tubes.
Sarge41

[Richard P Wilson]

When I had summer jobs in local machine shops in the 1960s, it was all manual capstan lathes (Ward 2A) or a complicated cam operated machine making valve stem guides for Vauxhall cars. No numeric control at all.

Then I went to University, and was introduced to paper tape input/output for primitive computers, around 1969/1970. Then when I started work in 1971, it was punched card stuff for a huge IBM mainframe living in its own air conditoned room. Probably had less power than my hand held calculator does these days.

[JRouche]

When I had summer jobs in local machine shops in the 1960s, it was all manual capstan lathes (Ward 2A) or a complicated cam operated machine making valve stem guides for Vauxhall cars. No numeric control at all..

I would like to have a Ward. Very nice machines, JR

[Richard P Wilson]

With manual collet open/close control, you rapidly developed strong muscles in the left arm. Also, they were prone to leaking oil from the headstock, which kept your shoes nice and shiny.

They were a workhorse, and every backstreet machine shop in those days, had at least one