Dear John, on 2003-09-03 13.06, John S. Ward at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> On Tuesday 02 September 2003 04:40, Pat Naughtin wrote: >> Be fair to the machinists. Have they got things like metric lathes and >> metric machining mills. > > I have great respect for a good machinist. Yes, you are right that without > the right equipment, penciling in inches is the way to go. However, a large > fraction of machines have digital read-outs that can display either inches or > millimeters, and all the computerized "NC" machines speak both English and > Metric. So I think the time is ripe to start setting up machinists with > complete sets of metric tooling so they can truly start machining metric. Or you could disable the inches facility on the current machines. I am reminded of the reaction I got when I first brought home a set of metric�only kitchen scales as my wife's imperial scales had died. Wendy was not impressed, 'All my recipes are in pounds' she informed me, loudly and often. However, she mentioned this to me this morning together with the remark, 'If you hadn't bought the metric only scales, I would still be struggling with the old measurements because I would have continued to use the pound scale for pound recipes'. I am also reminded of the Australian conversion of road signs; for three months all road signs were replaced with new metric road signs and then covered with hessian sacking. On one day, a Sunday I think, the sacking was removed; by Monday, or Tuesday, we had all got used to metric road signs and there were no more accidents than usual. (We know that there were no more accidents because the nay-sayers insisted on accurate records to support their case against metric � yet another failure for them.) > More importantly, however, I'm trying to point out that since 1975, there has > been enough new equipment purchased anyway and beginner machinists hired that > NASA really should have been setting up and training metric-only machinists > to work with metric-only drawings. How would NASA's culture have changed had NASA management decided on metric�only machines in 1975? In asking this question, I am not seeking to find fault and to apportion blame � I am seeking to find understanding and to find pathways to the future. <snip> > Most folks say that it should. Most people say it should be gotten over with > relatively sooner rather than later. But most folks have a lot of fear based > mostly on lack of good information. They think that from one day to the next > they won't know how hot it is, how fast to drive, how far it is to the > supermarket. They will feel lost! They don't realize that a well-planned > conversion would be relatively painless for most people, and that after all, > a tank of gas still costs the same whether it is priced by the gallon or by > the liter. The Australian approach to this issue was to have M-Days � lots of them. For example, there was the M-Day for the road signs. We all adapted within a day or two and then got on with our lives. Then there was another M-Day for temperatures that was associated with a media campaign, that told us that 20 was fine, that 30 was hot etc; after a while we adjusted and, again, got on with our lives. On yet another M-Day the petrol pumps were changed to litres. The M-Days were planned so that they were far enough apart that we had time to adjust to each one. Each industry had its own M-Days that occurred most often as a series of planned M�Days. Cheers, Pat Naughtin LCAMS Geelong, Australia Pat Naughtin is the editor of the free online newsletter, 'Metrication matters'. You can subscribe by sending an email containing the words subscribe Metrication matters to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --
