In order to make our content more accessible, we’re including a transcript for videos from our YouTube page. Find the full transcript below for this audio described video featuring Journeyman Machinist, Dan Porter as he demonstrates how he uses a large computer-numerically-controlled (CNC) machine at his job at The Lighthouse for the Blind, Inc.
Audio Description:
The Lighthouse for the Blind, Inc. logo. Dan Porter stands in front of a CNC machine and speaks.
Dan Porter:
My name is Dan Porter, and I’m a journeyman machinist at The Lighthouse for the Blind, Inc.
I’ve been working at the Lighthouse for about 13 years.
The machines I typically run here are CNC vertical mills, CNC lathes, and CNC routers.
This machine is designed to make round parts.
Each tool can be outfitted to become a live tool in x and z.
It’s got touch setters for setting the tools – that helps me with my low vision.
We also have a bar feeder over here, for long-running jobs, for high production jobs, that we can feed the material through at a more efficient rate.
I already have a job set up on this machine. They’re called body tubes for the entrenching tool that we make for the GSA side of our company and its simple machining – turn thread, chamfer ID, cut to length – and we make about 3,000 of these at a time, and by having the bar feeder, it makes it more efficient.
So, I’m going to show you guys how it runs.
Audio Description:
Dan closes the door and the machine begins threading the part. Fluid can be seen splashing against the window.
Dan Porter:
So that’s a threading operation that’s going on right now, that you’re hearing. Right now, now it’s pushing the bar forward, and then it’s going to come in with the part off tool and cut it off. When it pushes a part forward, the bar feeder to my left advances the bar through the machine. The part’s going to fall into this basket right here. And I can just stand here, and in one side set the machine up, and then run production, edge breaking the ID.
Audio Description:
Dan smiles as he continues working on the parts.
Dan Porter:
Before I came to the Lighthouse, I worked in the fast food industry and discovered that there was no future in that field. And I heard about The Lighthouse for the Blind, Inc. from a family friend, and came up here from Portland, Oregon — that’s where I’m originally from — and toured, and I liked what I saw.
And I never would have thought I would have been involved in manufacturing at all. But the Lighthouse opened doors for me to become a journeyman-level machinist. They put me through school. And if it wasn’t for The Lighthouse for the Blind, Inc. giving me a hand up, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today.
