6 ms·

I've actually worked at Google and been certified to use all of the shops including welding and metalworking. And the industrial grade heavy duty plasma cutter.

by kaib 15y ago

I've actually worked at Google and been certified to use all of the shops including welding and metalworking. And the industrial grade heavy duty plasma cutter. The shops are really cool and they serve a slightly different purpose than for example TechShop. At TechShop a lot of the tinkering is more social, the Google shops are definitely less crowded. We run a similar much smaller shop at Tinkercad and I hope to expand that one in the future as well. The only gripe I have is that the campus is large enough that the Pi shops are a short distance away so you might not drop down there as often as you would like. That said the EE shop was pretty close to core campus. As for the certification and elitism. The cert process was very straightforward and relevant. People easily forget that metalworking and some woodworking machines don't let you learn by experimenting. These machines kill in seconds, sometimes for mistakes that are very unintuitive. Like wearing gloves has killed several people. Which is unintuitive when you are handling razor sharp pieces of metal. Or the recent fatal accident at Yale where student was pulled in by her hair. As for the particulars of Ihab. He is a very smart and diligent guy but he had very little practical machine shop experience. He recognized it himself and took classes to compensate. These standards aren't high just due to Rod, but because most Googlers are smart enough to be critical of their own skills when faced with lethal equipment. Re-posted from this earlier thread on the same subject: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2487979 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2487979 Edit: s/MIT/Yale/ for the lathe accident. Thanks.

yan 15y ago
(A small note, that lathe incident was in Yale) edit: s/Columbia/Yale/
- kunjaan 15y ago
  It was actually at Yale. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/nyregion/yale-student-dies-in-machine-shop-accident.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/nyregion/yale-student-dies...
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - mechanical_fish 15y ago
    That is an awful story. It is, however, one that will be cited at every machine shop and woodworking class from now on. This could easily have been any of my peers in graduate school. Lots of us did work late at night, and there are lots and lots of ways to injure or kill yourself with shop equipment. You have to take the work very seriously, be sure you are alert, and whenever possible do your work when other people are around. Meanwhile: You really, really want the supervisor of your machine shop to be a merciless drill instructor [1] who takes no crap. And you want the people who can't pass boot camp to be sent home without a key to the shop. Why? A) You, yourself, need more training than you think. B) Even if you are an expert, you want to be very sure that the person working next to you is trained. You may not be the person who makes the mistake, but you could still be the person who gets electrocuted, or struck by flying parts from a nearby spinning lathe, or crippled when you slip on the spilled oil and drop the hundred-pound vise on your foot [2], or injured by the broken machine that wasn't properly taken offline, labeled, and locked. C) It's not just the fatal mistakes that will drive you crazy. I've worked in a lot of shared shops. They will waste your time. Waste it by the month and by the year. Because the equipment gets dented, or stripped, or burned out, or rusted, or dirty. It only takes one incompetent or un-conscientious person to ruin something. Entropy is annoying that way. There's a reason why, e.g., every machinist has their own little box of tool bits and chisels and favorite screwdrivers, and why chefs never let other chefs use their knives. --- [1] The similarities between good infantrymen or sailors and good machinists (or contractors or modern farmers, for that matter) have been remarked upon before. In all these cases, you're constantly putting your life in the hands of the equipment that's being maintained by your peers. [2] When your shop instructor gives you the lecture about the steel-toed boots for god's sake get some steel-toed boots and wear them.
mdwrigh2 15y ago
I'll actually be at Google this summer for an internship and would love access to the EE shop. Do you know if there are restrictions for interns? Also, most of my work has been tinkering by myself rather than formal training. Is there anything you'd recommend looking at before trying to gain access? Or even a class or something I could take? If you'd rather discuss this off HN, my e-mail is in my comments.
- kaib 15y ago
  I can't remember if there was an intern limitation, but I don't recall there was one. That said, I no longer work there so I'm not clear on the current requirements. I remember that access to the EE shop is pretty easy to come by. Ask your mentor and/or google the internal page to figure out how things work. Edit: If you want to get more info mail me at kai tinkercad.com.
- thequux 15y ago
  The electronics shop is fairly easy; it was the only one I had access to. Like you, I learned by tinkering. The only thing in the electronics lab that will hurt you is the soldering iron, so as long as you know which end of that is hot, you should be good. That said, I have some memory of the shops being fulltime-only. Once you get to Google, go to http://goto/workshops http://goto/workshops; full details are there.
phlux 15y ago
Thank you for this reply, I redact my indignant post :)
starpilot 15y ago
It's pretty common for machinists in most industries (including aerospace) to lack college degrees. Studying engineering in college typically has little relevance to operating a bandsaw. A safety knowledge test before having access to the shop is standard and common sense, not elitist.
- yardie 15y ago
  They do have degrees, just not the one you'll get from a 4-year university. The time of getting a job at the factory right after high school is long past. The machine tools these days are quite complex and very expensive. Like 6 axis CNCs with incredibly flexibly degrees of freedom. Also, a lot of modern machinists have, even, a basic understanding of materiel science. They might not have taken all the courses to graduate with an engineering degree but they aren't that far off.
patio11 15y ago
An except from the spiel at a company I am not at liberty to name: There is no machine in this facility which is incapable of killing you. Study your checklists. They will protect you, your colleagues, and the company. Never violate one of the rules, not ever, not even once. See these yellow lines on the floor? To cross them is to die. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but some day when you're tired at the end of a long shift thinking about your girlfriend you won't see $A_PARTICULAR_MACHINE in time, it will hit you in the head, and I will have to explain to her why I did not keep you alive. I will keep you alive. Checklists. Yellow lines. Do not forget.
- kaib 15y ago
  I've done some amount of aviation, both civilian and military, and our training officers were always fond of reminding us that the history of most aviation guidelines could be traced back to a death or two. I think it's easy to forget, coming from a profession that is inherently experimental and forgiving, that some mistakes can only be made once.
phlux 15y ago
BTW - Thank you for Tinkercad! I was at Noisebridge last night and talking about best ways to create STL files for the makerbots there. Currently, it only supports adding and subtracting geometry - will you be able to pull/push edges/points? There is no sphere (convex/concave tools), will that be added?
- kaib 15y ago
  Cool. I'm happy you guys find it useful! Feel free to ping me at kai at tinkercad.com if you guys have any specific issues. We are thinking about all of those things but some of them might take a bit of time. The internal representation of Tinkercad is a true volumetric format, even simple models would take gigabytes uncompressed, which is why we store them in a cluster. The upside is that our boolean operations are rock solid and the STL:s well defined. The downside is that doing a push pull operation literally means moving the equivalent of digital dirt around.. :-)
  - phlux 15y ago
    Would it then be possible to have the ability to adjust the reference plane at a specific angle. Have a dial and text box for saying the reference plane should be "45 degrees to the Z axis" This would allow one to use the existing tools a bit more precisely.
    - kaib 15y ago
      This is an excellent suggestion. It's good enough that I used the company time machine to port it back to our iteration planning two weeks ago. Sadly our UI engineer is picky and he hasn't been satisfied with any of the five prototypes he wrote during last week. So, that makes it two of us who are eagerly waiting for the ability to rotate work planes.. :-)
    - kaib 15y ago
      This is now live, you can activate it using the workplane tool and selecting "Adjust". The UI will change a bit, give us feedback through the app if you have input.
jordanb 15y ago
> Like wearing gloves has killed several people. This is interesting. How/when are gloves dangerous? I've been TIG welding for about a year now, I self-studied my way through a welding textbook[1] and have friends who are professional welders (union pipe-fitters, etc) and have never heard anything about gloves being dangerous. In fact according to the pipe-fitters, gloves are in the category of eye and head protection of "must be worn on a union jobsite." [1] http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Welding-William-Bowditch/dp/1566379873 http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Welding-William-Bowditch/dp/156...
- wewyor 15y ago
  As someone with light machine shop experience (building things in my ME schooling) gloves are dangerous on machines like mills (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milling_machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milling_machine) where they are spinning so fast when they catch the glove you will not be able to brake and you most likely will not have parts or all of your hand.
  - jordanb 15y ago
    Yeah I suppose that makes sense with milling machines. When I read the OP's comment I was thinking he was referring to grinding machines. I always wear my TIG gloves when operating grinders and was glad I do a while back when my hand made contact with the wheel: what would have been a nasty and painful gash ended up being a scuff mark on my glove. But that raises another question: Why on earth would your hand be anywhere near the head of an operating milling machine? EDIT: Thinking about this more, we might have different concepts of "glove." TIG gloves are thin, tight-fitting, and leather. They also have a "gauntlet type" cut that extends up your forearms and over your sleeves. I don't think they'd be any more likely to catch a machine part than your skin would, and I think they'd actually reduce the chance that a sleeve gets caught. OTOH, it makes sense that the thick, heavy fabric gloves that are used for MIG or stick would make your hands more clumsy and prone to getting caught in machines. I agree that those are probably pretty dangerous.
    - wewyor 15y ago
unshift 15y ago
I worked at a machine shop as a teenager and the machinist there always said, "you computer guys have it easy. You make a mistake, you just press backspace. If I make a mistake with one of these machines it's either going to cost a couple grand or I'll need a new hand."

by kaib 15y ago

yan 15y ago

(A small note, that lathe incident was in Yale) edit: s/Columbia/Yale/

kunjaan 15y ago
It was actually at Yale. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/nyregion/yale-student-dies-in-machine-shop-accident.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/nyregion/yale-student-dies...
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- mechanical_fish 15y ago
  That is an awful story. It is, however, one that will be cited at every machine shop and woodworking class from now on. This could easily have been any of my peers in graduate school. Lots of us did work late at night, and there are lots and lots of ways to injure or kill yourself with shop equipment. You have to take the work very seriously, be sure you are alert, and whenever possible do your work when other people are around. Meanwhile: You really, really want the supervisor of your machine shop to be a merciless drill instructor [1] who takes no crap. And you want the people who can't pass boot camp to be sent home without a key to the shop. Why? A) You, yourself, need more training than you think. B) Even if you are an expert, you want to be very sure that the person working next to you is trained. You may not be the person who makes the mistake, but you could still be the person who gets electrocuted, or struck by flying parts from a nearby spinning lathe, or crippled when you slip on the spilled oil and drop the hundred-pound vise on your foot [2], or injured by the broken machine that wasn't properly taken offline, labeled, and locked. C) It's not just the fatal mistakes that will drive you crazy. I've worked in a lot of shared shops. They will waste your time. Waste it by the month and by the year. Because the equipment gets dented, or stripped, or burned out, or rusted, or dirty. It only takes one incompetent or un-conscientious person to ruin something. Entropy is annoying that way. There's a reason why, e.g., every machinist has their own little box of tool bits and chisels and favorite screwdrivers, and why chefs never let other chefs use their knives. --- [1] The similarities between good infantrymen or sailors and good machinists (or contractors or modern farmers, for that matter) have been remarked upon before. In all these cases, you're constantly putting your life in the hands of the equipment that's being maintained by your peers. [2] When your shop instructor gives you the lecture about the steel-toed boots for god's sake get some steel-toed boots and wear them.

mdwrigh2 15y ago

I'll actually be at Google this summer for an internship and would love access to the EE shop. Do you know if there are restrictions for interns? Also, most of my work has been tinkering by myself rather than formal training. Is there anything you'd recommend looking at before trying to gain access? Or even a class or something I could take? If you'd rather discuss this off HN, my e-mail is in my comments.

kaib 15y ago
I can't remember if there was an intern limitation, but I don't recall there was one. That said, I no longer work there so I'm not clear on the current requirements. I remember that access to the EE shop is pretty easy to come by. Ask your mentor and/or google the internal page to figure out how things work. Edit: If you want to get more info mail me at kai tinkercad.com.
thequux 15y ago
The electronics shop is fairly easy; it was the only one I had access to. Like you, I learned by tinkering. The only thing in the electronics lab that will hurt you is the soldering iron, so as long as you know which end of that is hot, you should be good. That said, I have some memory of the shops being fulltime-only. Once you get to Google, go to http://goto/workshops http://goto/workshops; full details are there.

phlux 15y ago

Thank you for this reply, I redact my indignant post :)

starpilot 15y ago

It's pretty common for machinists in most industries (including aerospace) to lack college degrees. Studying engineering in college typically has little relevance to operating a bandsaw. A safety knowledge test before having access to the shop is standard and common sense, not elitist.

yardie 15y ago
They do have degrees, just not the one you'll get from a 4-year university. The time of getting a job at the factory right after high school is long past. The machine tools these days are quite complex and very expensive. Like 6 axis CNCs with incredibly flexibly degrees of freedom. Also, a lot of modern machinists have, even, a basic understanding of materiel science. They might not have taken all the courses to graduate with an engineering degree but they aren't that far off.

patio11 15y ago

An except from the spiel at a company I am not at liberty to name: There is no machine in this facility which is incapable of killing you. Study your checklists. They will protect you, your colleagues, and the company. Never violate one of the rules, not ever, not even once. See these yellow lines on the floor? To cross them is to die. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but some day when you're tired at the end of a long shift thinking about your girlfriend you won't see $A_PARTICULAR_MACHINE in time, it will hit you in the head, and I will have to explain to her why I did not keep you alive. I will keep you alive. Checklists. Yellow lines. Do not forget.

kaib 15y ago
I've done some amount of aviation, both civilian and military, and our training officers were always fond of reminding us that the history of most aviation guidelines could be traced back to a death or two. I think it's easy to forget, coming from a profession that is inherently experimental and forgiving, that some mistakes can only be made once.

phlux 15y ago

BTW - Thank you for Tinkercad! I was at Noisebridge last night and talking about best ways to create STL files for the makerbots there. Currently, it only supports adding and subtracting geometry - will you be able to pull/push edges/points? There is no sphere (convex/concave tools), will that be added?

kaib 15y ago
Cool. I'm happy you guys find it useful! Feel free to ping me at kai at tinkercad.com if you guys have any specific issues. We are thinking about all of those things but some of them might take a bit of time. The internal representation of Tinkercad is a true volumetric format, even simple models would take gigabytes uncompressed, which is why we store them in a cluster. The upside is that our boolean operations are rock solid and the STL:s well defined. The downside is that doing a push pull operation literally means moving the equivalent of digital dirt around.. :-)
- phlux 15y ago
  Would it then be possible to have the ability to adjust the reference plane at a specific angle. Have a dial and text box for saying the reference plane should be "45 degrees to the Z axis" This would allow one to use the existing tools a bit more precisely.
  - kaib 15y ago
    This is an excellent suggestion. It's good enough that I used the company time machine to port it back to our iteration planning two weeks ago. Sadly our UI engineer is picky and he hasn't been satisfied with any of the five prototypes he wrote during last week. So, that makes it two of us who are eagerly waiting for the ability to rotate work planes.. :-)
  - kaib 15y ago
    This is now live, you can activate it using the workplane tool and selecting "Adjust". The UI will change a bit, give us feedback through the app if you have input.

jordanb 15y ago

> Like wearing gloves has killed several people. This is interesting. How/when are gloves dangerous? I've been TIG welding for about a year now, I self-studied my way through a welding textbook[1] and have friends who are professional welders (union pipe-fitters, etc) and have never heard anything about gloves being dangerous. In fact according to the pipe-fitters, gloves are in the category of eye and head protection of "must be worn on a union jobsite." [1] http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Welding-William-Bowditch/dp/1566379873 http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Welding-William-Bowditch/dp/156...

wewyor 15y ago
As someone with light machine shop experience (building things in my ME schooling) gloves are dangerous on machines like mills (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milling_machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milling_machine) where they are spinning so fast when they catch the glove you will not be able to brake and you most likely will not have parts or all of your hand.
- jordanb 15y ago
  Yeah I suppose that makes sense with milling machines. When I read the OP's comment I was thinking he was referring to grinding machines. I always wear my TIG gloves when operating grinders and was glad I do a while back when my hand made contact with the wheel: what would have been a nasty and painful gash ended up being a scuff mark on my glove. But that raises another question: Why on earth would your hand be anywhere near the head of an operating milling machine? EDIT: Thinking about this more, we might have different concepts of "glove." TIG gloves are thin, tight-fitting, and leather. They also have a "gauntlet type" cut that extends up your forearms and over your sleeves. I don't think they'd be any more likely to catch a machine part than your skin would, and I think they'd actually reduce the chance that a sleeve gets caught. OTOH, it makes sense that the thick, heavy fabric gloves that are used for MIG or stick would make your hands more clumsy and prone to getting caught in machines. I agree that those are probably pretty dangerous.
  - wewyor 15y ago

unshift 15y ago

I worked at a machine shop as a teenager and the machinist there always said, "you computer guys have it easy. You make a mistake, you just press backspace. If I make a mistake with one of these machines it's either going to cost a couple grand or I'll need a new hand."