Word: metallize
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Many big manufacturing firms have been counting on so-called cad/cam systems (computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing) to ease the skills squeeze. These computer-controlled machines do everything from preparing a three-dimensional blueprint to selecting the proper drill bit to bore a metal part. Unfortunately, the nation lacks enough skilled workers to boost cad/cam output to a level anywhere nearly high enough to satisfy the surge in demand...
Guidance counsellors themselves are often largely unaware of careers in the skilled trades. The result is a shocking lack of knowledge about such basic tasks as making metal-stamping dies. Says Don Fifer, the director of skilled training for General Motors: "Incredible as it may seem, we get apprenticeship applicants who say they want to go into diemaking because they are interested in working with colors...
Just as Goth stonecutters who chiseled ornate facades for Europe's grand Gothic cathedrals were master craftsmen of the Middle Ages, tool-and diemakers are premier artisans of the industrial era. Instead of granite or limestone, their medium hard metal. They create the tools that can cut metal into precise patterns and the dies to mold it into complex shapes...
...trade flourished most dramatically in America. In the early 1800s, Eli Whitney helped to pioneer mass production, using standardized, interchangeable parts at his Connecticut musket factory. By the early 1900s, the toolmaker's skills enabled machines to engrave the Lord's Prayer on a sliver of metal less than one-hundredth of an inch wide...
Today's artisans can trim metal to within one ten-thousandth of an inch, using mechanical cuts more precise than the strokes of the finest brain surgeon. During a grueling four-year apprenticeship in vocational classrooms and on the shop floor, the toolmaker absorbs the principles of solid geometry and learns to think in three dimensions. He is expected to read labyrinthine blueprints as well as be aware of the exact levels of heat and pressure that will cause various metals to buckle and break...