After my stint on the lathe assembly floor, it was decided that I should be placed in the environment I was hired for. The engineering department was set up basically along the product line mode. There were separate departments for the manual lathe product ( Fays and Tracer Lathes), the NC product (the early NCTL lathe), and the grinder product (form and thread grinders). These departments were where the design and layout functions took place. After the final designs were approved, the layouts were sent over to the Drafting Pool. These were the folks who took the layouts and detailed all the parts so that the mechanism could be built. We are talking here about pencil drawings, as this was before any CAD (Computer Aided Drafting)  existed. Some of these “layouts” could measure three feet wide by eight feet long. All in pencil. And the mechanism might contain fifty or a hundred separate parts.

The drafting pool  was my first stop in the engineering department. There were perhaps ten or twelve of us, some had been in the pool for a few years. Some were happy just being a detailer, and did not wish to climb the ladder any further. It was a lot of fun, deciphering  the layouts and coming up with a drawing that could be used to manufacture a part. Some parts were simple, some required quite a lot of creative thinking.

So it was the detailer who extracted and drew up every part. And dimensioned it. And quite often there were problems that the designer did not foresee, so there was a constant back-and-forth review as each detail was made. It was here where the detailer really starts to learn his craft, an actual working drawing, that is easy to read, manufacturable, and as economical as possible. It is here that he becomes involved with the Methods Department, the folks who have the knowledge concerning the limitations of the various machines that will be used to make each part. Every job the detailer does adds to this knowledge, so his future details will be more correct and require less changes. One thing a detailer does not like to see are his drawings all marked up in red!! If he does his job correctly, and pays attention to past suggestions, his drawings will become less “colorful”…….

Which brings me to the department all detailers dread, the Engineering Checkers. After the detailing is done, all the drawings and the original layout would be sent to The Checkers. We had maybe six checkers at J&L, of different temperments. And it was Pot Luck who got your job; so it might sail thru with little change, or you might get the guy who we called SUPER-REDESIGN. Even the basic layout and design were fair game to him. Now remember this was back in the days of pencil and eraser. A lot of eraser. A half inch thick on the floor. Burning rubber. Drawings with thin spots (or holes). A learning experience……………