Smash that cycle start button!

When in school earlier this year, the first few months were all book learning – math and terminologies, etc. Finally though, it was time to head out to the shop and fire up the machines. We studied lathes first and we were all fairly timid and apprehensive to actually run the machines, afraid we would “crash” and potentially break a part, a tool or even the lathe itself. By the time we got to the mills we were still a little wary (lathes and mills are pretty different) but a little more confident as we had gotten used to the kind of power these machines can bring. By the end of the session on mills most of us were feeling good and running parts everyday. Then, toward the end of class we had to come up with a class project, unique to us. Well, we designed a metal credit card holding wallet, gave the design to our instructor and he created the program for it. On the day we loaded the program into the machines my team had finished setting up all of the tools we needed first and were ready to go while the second team was having some technical problems with the program itself. As we waited I asked the team “Well, now what?” and someone called out “Run it!”
Can it be? Is it time to run this program? I had the tools loaded into the machine, they had all been “touched off” and the program was just sitting there, so why not?

I smashed that Cycle Start button.

It was a kind of “all of my training has led me to this moment” moment. The spindle began to spin at high speed, turning a razor sharp endmill into a steel chewing blur of carbide, the table holding the part in a vice moved to the beginning position, right beneath the center point of the tool.

Then my instructor ran over and smashed the Emergency Stop button and asked quite emphatically “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?”

I had made the wrong choice. The program was unproven & had never been run. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t going to be reckless with it as there is a way to walk-in a program being very careful but I was still too green for this brand new program. Our instructor did the walking in and even as such the program still crashed and broke a tool. Had it been me the damage might have been worse.

So what’s the point in all of this? Do we smash that cycle start button or not? Well, the point of the story is not recklessness, but the confidence to make a decision. I’m not an aggressive personality but after all of the classes I felt confident enough to give it a go and that’s something that I’ve tried to adopt in everyday life. If I wait until I have all of the right answers then I may never make a mistake but I may never get anything done, and I’ll miss so many opportunities.

What about you? What are you waiting for? Get out there and stretch your boundaries, forget “thinking outside the box” – act outside the box and go smash that cycle start button!