Yes, It's Worth It

Usually we go through the workday, head down, noses to the grind stone trying to do our jobs with our best efforts. There are good days and not so good days.

 

Often, feedback is hard to come by because we’re doing our jobs and that should be sufficient. However, occasionally something happens that breaks that routine and results in a new burst of renewed dedication for the work we’ve chosen.

 

Earlier this month I had such an experience, and I wanted to share it with you. We who toil in mines of trade journalism experience a lot of time staring at a blank screen waiting for the muse of writing to speak into our ear. And as professionals getting our articles produced and distributed requires that we sometimes must goose the muse a bit to meet fixed deadlines.

 

When that article is written and sent out to the reader, we occasionally hear back something—sometimes it’s about a decimal point in the wrong place or a misspelled company name or incorrect phone number. The muse hates being goosed.

 

There are days, however, when the blood, sweat and tears writing about precision machined parts technology is rewarded with unexpected feedback and unexpected impact from the work, such as the letter here that I want to share with you. Please understand, I’m not trying to blow my horn here. Rather, I think the take away is that on occasion, doing our jobs as well as we know how may result in unforeseen and positive consequences beyond the expected.

I enjoyed reading your February Production Machining article about Highland Products. After reading it, I decided to send you this note which has been in my draft folder until tonight. My company actually got started in CNC Swiss machining because of the article you wrote back in September 1999.  Let me explain. 

My wife and I were convinced we wanted to be in manufacturing, so we formed a company with only a blank sheet of paper. I wasn’t even able to retain a 6-inch scale from my 20 years of work in the shop. The one thing I did retain was the years of experience. I didn’t want manual machines and the problem of trying to locate qualified machinists. In 1998, I went to IMTS for the first time to search for a technology around which to build my future business. IMTS was overwhelming, but I had narrowed my search to turning and milling to leverage my past experiences. A year later, I was reading the September 1999 Modern Machine Shop and happened onto page 70 about a company called Highland Products. I can tell you that your article hit me like a lighting bolt. I remembered seeing the Swiss lathes at IMTS, but they were way too expensive for my business plan. However, the article made me realize that the technology was a perfect fit for my skill set and I could automate production with a lights-out operation. The only problem was money and customers. I had neither. Nonetheless, I started to study the market and settled on Hardinge Swiss machines.

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