cnctoolman-
Glad to hear that there's still some satisfaction in it for you despite being paired off with Murphy sometimes (he visits everybody). My best freind was a moldmaker and both of us cautioned his son NOT to enter the machine tool trades, we'd all like our children to have better (they should know what their father worked so hard at).
In the 60's & 70's when the Asians (no slam intended here) sent people out into the world to see how it should be done they were allowed into factories with cameras and notebooks. The Westerners had such egos about them that they showcased what they did, allowing copious notebooks to be filled and rolls of film to be taken inside the factories. This allowed them to fill in the missing knowledge that reverse engineering couldn't fill in. It absolutely astounded them that we Westerners could have been so careless as to allow a potential competitor to glimpse the inner workings of a manufacturing process. It happened with everything that was once made in Europe and America.
So when somebody asks for information/ideas I always ask myself what I'm getting in return. Is my idea going to be credited to me? Is it going to put money in the pocket of someone else? Am I, one day, going to be competing against my very own ideas/knowledge in the hands of an offshore company? I have nothing against anybody not from this country, why should I? They're trying to earn a living too. But we're long past the day when there was plenty for everybody. We were sold out by middle men and now there's NOT enough for everybody. This is my country, this was my trade. It belongs to each of us that put in the hours to learn/earn it, it shouldn't be given away just because they asked.  |