Sometimes I hear folks complain about the cost of attending a meeting in person, either a section meeting or the annual symposium. It’s true these things cost money and time to attend. So why would you want to hand over hard earned dollars and hop in your car for a few hours or spend a day in airports traveling? Here’s what happened to me last Sat at the recent Midwest Section meeting:
There was a last minute add to the demos for the day, someone who flew in from California. They demoed tooling a hose barb. I’m always happy to watch and learn something. The tooling demo was great but he interesting thing was the forming tool they used. It had rollers instead of fixed jaws.
As it turns out I’ve got a potential job request right now which requires me to tool a fitting onto a finished soft glass object, and I need to do it on the lathe because of it’s size. I hand made a set of graphite jaws to fit into conventional tooling pliers but was having trouble with the glass dragging and wrinkles forming because of rotating only in one direction. Those roller jaws seemed ideal, little to no drag and no chance of hooking the soft glass on the edge of the tool.
I asked where did you get them from, I need a pair right now.The answer was they were in the shop when I took over, they’re no longer made. Someone else watching the demo said they might be old school Herbert Arnold tooling pliers and agreed they had not been made in decades.
Darn so close and yet so far, no solution. On the way home from the meeting, while I was thinking about how I might try to make a pair myself, I got a text from another meeting attendee.It included a screen grab from someone’s IG account showing exactly this style of tooling pliers made new and for sale. I felt like they’d just handed me a winning lottery ticket. After a quick DM I found out they make custom profiles as well as stock stuff. After approval from my customer the order for the miracle tool is going in. This switched my project from a maybe that wasn’t paying anything to a multi thousand dollar order, because I asked questions and happened to be at a section meeting in person. Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know.
Stories like this this is what the society is about, sharing knowledge, and in this case sharing resources. So take the time, spend a few $, attend a meeting. Who knows what winning Lottery ticket you’ll go home with.
Erich Moraine President Elect
