The biggest little bridge built by a awesome guy named Dave

I wrote this a while back and put it in my drafts to publish some day, for some reason it just felt like a good time to post something I wrote maybe a year or two ago....  I really wrote it about a special guy Dave who works at the museum, because he is one of the cornerstones of hands on science museums and its been amazing calling him a mentor of mine. - JT

------------------

Teaching....
Learning...
Fun....

The things that make the world go round, I think....

Its the reasons I wake up every day and do what I do, I love to use my talents to share with others and open their mind to use their talents and explore farther.

What better place to work and combine all my loves then at the Exploratorium Science Center located in San Francisco... A dream job.... even sweeping the floors at that place is a pleasure... because you can't go a day working there without a smile and a laugh.

We get to build amazing exhibits for people to enjoy and learn about science.

I always tell people " I know I won't get to walk on Mars in my lifetime... but I know that something that I will do in my lifetime will help the person or persons that will do it... I feel like the person that will be part of that landing is a little kid knee high right now, walking around the museum laughing having fun and something that I had a part in will trigger their young minds to love science and when they grow up their love for science will help unlock questions we all wonder and push the envelope of understanding."

I think that if you don't think like that and have some sort of dream or pride of what your doing and how your helping in the overall scheme of things you will never feel the true worth in your work and have the drive to create things that will push the limits... Its to easy to look at the majority and say disheartening things about where we as a human race are headed... but remember their is one in a millions out there... young Elon Musks and young Henry Fords ready to take on the world and change it for the better... dreaming of them learning from your passion will give you a satisfaction you can't describe.

One person that has some sort of a understanding and drive to make the future bright is a guy not many people get to see because hes got his head down and hes working hard to make it happen...

That dude at the Exploratorium I am talking about has almost been there since day one.... that's late 1960s and his name is Dave Fleming the San Francisco legendary exhibit builder and mastermind.
Dave has these goals of building amazing projects and exhibits that not only teach but display and interact in ways of having fun with science that keep kids and adults spending hours and days at science centers across the world...

I don't really know how many exhibits worldwide Dave has made in his lifetime ( but I want to guess 300+) since he started in his late teens at the Exploratorium while still in college working under Frank Oppenheimer . The concept of doing hands on science center for all ages was not even thought of in the 1960s.... as some know this early group of builders get the credit of saying they really build the model of " hands on, interactive science exhibits in a museum environment".

If the Exploratorium would have not planted the science museum seed in the 1960s for the whole world, its makes me wonder what would be different??... This museum was and still is a building block of the San Francisco tech industry that we know around the world today... I think that's a good example to think about. What if there was no young minds learning about relays and magnets at the museum... would we have Iphones today.... would we have Silicon Valleys famous wafers that brought us in to a crazy era of computing.... something to think about.....

The crew like Dave can still be found working around the clock, with his awesome drive and passion for teaching science... Its amazing, I only hope when I have worked 25+ years in a career I have an overwhelming drive like this crew still has for their passion.

This is a normal view of Dave working in the shop around the clock...

From machining to wiring to designing, hes flying around the shop some times power walking because hes so excited to get to the next thing...

One of the cool projects for the new location of the Exploratorium that I got to team up with Dave on was a really neat Bay Bridge model to teach about how the bridge moves. As you can see up above that's Dave and I standing next to the bridge concepts in the movie below.

Dave's concept was to build a small 1/500 sized scale of the bay bridge and it was to be designed to be outside in the salty air on the end of the museum's pier running parallel to the real bay bridge so people could look and shake the model and compare it to the real thing only a mile away to get a better understanding how it moves in the wind and how it moves with load on it. 

Here is a video showing the concepts based on the Golden Gate bridge to understand how to build the bridge and some info about the real bridge, you will get a good idea of the crew of minds behind this project. 

From day one I was pushing for Dave to design some really neat laser cut 316 stainless pieces with lots of details in them, so he did and thanks to Ryan at Seaport stainless it was totally a possibility to make complex little part to look like the real bridge.

The next project was to bend up all the little pieces on my press brake and run them thru the tumbler to make sure everything was kid safe and no sharp parts.

My little DiAcro press brake bending up the laser cut bridge decks.. 

it was a good Saturday afternoon of bending all the decks at my shop.

Once they were all bent up it was time to work on the other parts...

One of Dave's major ideas on the mini Bay Bridge was to show how important the center cement anchorage support is on the bridge so he decided to build a interactive piece to show with and without the support.

THIS IS THE BEST PART !!!

Open ( without support )

Closed ( with support as the bridge is in real life )

At the time I had so many exhibits being built in my shop...

But enjoying every second of it...

As you can see, it creates a great picture with the real bridge in the background.

Here is a quick fly by to see all the mini decks once we had it all together

I would defiantly recommend anyone visiting San Francisco to make a stop by the Exploratorium Museum and really see the 400+ interactive exhibits you can play with, truly a awesome a worthwhile experience and trip for all ages.

JT 

Learning from the big kids....

If you have followed the blog for a while you have got to see Gabe learn all kinds of stuff over the 2 years he has been with me, pretty rad to think this kid that wondered in to the shop 2 years ago was some punk with no drivers license or GED...

Amazing what a little swift boot in the ass can do for a kid and how just trusting and believing can make someone push themselves to get all the things needed to keep them wheels amoving... Now hes becoming a good fabricator with a GED and a drivers license and going to school to become a machinist so then I can retire and do nothing but write blog post so I can quit getting emails from people about how little I blog because what they don't know is that I am doing secret projects for companies that would strangle me to death if they found out I was talking about their project...

 Ok back to Gabe ha ha because this post is about him and his skills so he can look back and use the blog like myself, to see how silly he was and how much he has grown over the years.

One of the biggest challenges when becoming a prototype fabricator is just understanding things in 3D and what it take to make something work.... Its not always you get to work on flat things that just land perfect 90 degs to each other and a tape measure just hooks too perfectly... I wish, and I am guessing he and every other fabricator out there do to.

But like most of the time, the twisting tubes and odd corners make it more of a brain and eye measurement and truly test your brains understanding of whats missing or whats not straight.

Teaching Gabe is fun, if I didn't enjoy teaching him these skills I wouldn't be making this post. I can't say its been quick either teaching him to think in this Dot to Dot idea, but hes getting it and I am slowly letting him take the wheel on these projects.

Training is one of the biggest things that makes anyone the best ( no news to you, I am hoping), training in the metal working industry basically sounds like a fancy word for WORK but really when it comes down to it, its important in 2 ways the way I look at it....

1. That when you build a lot of stuff and do it start to finish you generate a very rapid thinking and processing and that leads to getting it done quick for when it really matters, for example. -  a customer walks in to your shop with a rush project that you know he has been quoted high on but because you have built a lot of stuff like it, you know the tricks to do it fast and very well which means a returning customer and a good profit margin.

This also helps a lot with quoting which is one of the biggest problems with fabrication and where people fail, if you have built it then you sure as hell know that it takes you X amount of time to do it... Plus tacking on a few extra because you know your buddy is going to swing thru and bug you and that will slow you down plus other factors but for the most part you are very close in the ball park.

2. Just being good at what you do gets Chicks !  I don't think I need to go in to details about that....

Over the last 2 years I have had Gabe making frames out of steel tubing, doing sheet metal, welding, machining and just being an all around fabricator/machinist and builder. I don't know if he will stay around forever but thats not really the reason I teach, I teach so I can learn and be a better teacher of my craft.

The other day we did a warm up set of frames to see what he could think up on his own and kick out to really fancy stuff for the shop. The idea was thrown out there about doing tool box holders and making them based off some designs I had seen at Boeing in their fab shop, but it was his idea and his thinking so I just let him roll on the project.

Heres what we got in about 2 days.

The frames were sent off to powdercoating right away... 

Mostly because the tool boxes were everywhere and unmovable.

Pretty well done !

Boxes are in ! 

Mine are the green ones and his is the orange one. 

One is machining and one for fabrication. 

This is my machining one custom built for tool holder shelves

I can't wait to finish it and get it running!

My favorite color is Kermit the Frog Green 

I made him remove the Jegs sticker if he was to put this stencil on the bottom

As according to proper Boeing style - AEROSPACE DIV. stencil is painted on

This was the warm up for the next project which would test his skills a bit harder...

The project is to build a crazy dirt bike stand for a company ( no name given yet ) that will be for Virtual Reality Dirt Bike Racing and the real bike will be bolted to the stand with a computer inside the stand to run the VR equipment.

I will talk more about this soon when we get more in to the project for right now its just a concept.

I think we did about 50/50 on the work for this beast...

I did most of the layout and design and he did all the tubing bending, nothing and fit up.

Hes pretty stoked...

He did the steel Tig root pass and then I went over it with a single pass with bronze

This is the Aluminum door to access the computer inside. 

There is a lock on it to prevent anyone from messing with it inside.

Not too bad for some wild tubing fabrication

Its only going to keep getting better.....

Hes landed a really rad new job as a fab kid at a famous Hot Rod shop in the Bay Area.... Not going to blow it up yet and talk about it until he at least has a few months in and feeling good... So far things are looking really good !

Enjoy the fruits of learning....

The $700 dollar bracket

As my love for my craft grows everyday, I ask myself whats the next level?

With my love for welding being my passion and having really locked it down and all its processes I start to look for new doors that haven't been opened in the metal fabrication world.

Machining is one of my newest sparked passions but one of the things I have been doing the longest, the quest to be one of the best all around prototypers pushes me to know how to be faster and more accurate then the average joe machinist/fabricator.

Thats what sets me apart from them, my speed, quick thinking, design and precision - all of these come with a lot of training and studying.

I watch Gabe work in the shop and it really shows me what I have learned the last 10 years of being a fabricator/machinist, when I turned 16 I got my first job running New Britain Screw Machines and CNCs at Mico in Mankato, MN.

These machines really paved the way and Gene and Matt in the Mico shop really were the dudes that seen a dorky kid with big black framed glasses begging to get on those machines. At age 17 I had already scored one of the dream job for most of the shop crew by being able to float from dept. to dept. running everything from parts for UPS trucks to John Deer tractor brake parts to brake calipers for Caterpillar's largest mining rigs.

The trust these dudes put in me and the machines they let me run now blows my mind, I sure as hell would have been nervous about letting a kid run every machine in that shop, I was practically hated by about 50% of the shop because of my love for making stuff on the machines.

Anyone that has worked at Mico knows the worst jobs are Pins, every foot pedal on every tractor, bulldozer,mining dump truck, and so on has them. Its Mico's baby they love to make, the pedals are Cast and there is a stainless pin that goes thur them.

 Somehow my love for being in the shop and running stuff always led me to making pins ( think it was because they wanted to see if I would quit).... Well the average was about 300 pins a day and that was pushing it for most of the crew, well I loved running these machines and some how I ran around 550 pins in a day making everyone look bad that was in the system for running pins. My hatred of employees grew to well over 75%, I can't say 100% because management had NO problem with me making an extra 250 pins in a day...

Either way, I have been dragging these Mico pedals around for 10 years now to remember what made me who I am and my love for just making stuff.

Plus the parts I made at Mico are used on the most badass things in the world, hell yeah I want to brag about that... I was 16 and having fun...

Somedays I find myself back in that mindset while making repetitive parts and I think " the best chefs in the world wash dishes, its a humbling experience and brings you back to square one, no one is too good to not have to do it"

Now when I look at what I am doing and where my brain is at I see myself moving so fast sometimes I can't keep up with my brain. I love it, but when I get that little bit of down time when you would expect to relax and sit around and watch tv, I find myself reading and practicing my skill. Who knows why, but it feels right.

My espresso machine has become one of those tests of my skills and there is a hidden reason I am building it not money related, mostly a test to myself and to others that have been watching me with doubt about my skills. Its a test to see how far I can push my design, fabrication and just skills to build something like this.

Its kind of like writing an essay about what you love to do.

 There is other people out there that really push for me to finish it and see its true value in what I am learning on it, people like Tom of Ox Tools Blog who has pushed for me to keep learning and progressing as an all around metal crafter. The crew at Autodesk like CEO Carl, Anthony and Al of HSMwork/Autodesk who provided me with the software to be at that next level of prototyping, design and fabrication.

These people will be the first people to get a cup of coffee from the machine ( I didn't say good coffee, who knows what it will taste like)

Heres a test of my skills to see what I can kick out, lets call it a quiz.

Mission - Build a cool bracket to copper weld to the side of the espresso machine

A big block of 110 copper

12" x 6" x .5 thick = $140 = not eating for a week

I started my tool paths with the pockets and the working around the outside.

Maybe not the quickest but I was worried about gumming up the cutter so I took small bites

My buddy Rodney at Roland Sands Design made me this MLS badge

I have wanted to use it for something... This is perfect

What happened here is I forgot to put the radius in the copper so the badge could sit in the pocket.

Using the handy Starrett radius gauges I was able to find it was a 7/32 (.220 roughly because of the casting) These little radius gauges are cheap and a really saver sometimes when your reverse engineering a project on the fly and need a perfect match up.

Without moving the part I adjusted the model for the radius and then did a new tool path on HSMworks 

Took me under 5 minutes to adjust it, repost the G code and load it on the machine.

Talk about fast, thats why HSMworks is perfect for prototyping stuff.

It didn't cut anything but the radius in the corners that I adjusted.

Perfect

Next was the flip over to side two and doing all the windows and match up.

If you look you will see a 1/4 hole in the middle of the plate, that was my Zero Zero Origin point.

That way when I flipped it all I had to do was put a 1/4 pin in the drill chuck and zero it off that point. Not the ideal way to do a high precision part but for what I am doing its totally OK, I know that there will be a need for clean up on the belt sander. 

So one of the great parts of having a CNC Knee mill and doing parts like this is I can slowly walk it around the part and raise and lower the knee leaving little web connections so the part doesn't just drop out, as you can see I left like 5 connections on the part, those I would just band saw out and drop the part from the copper plate. With the price of copper so high, I try to not waste any chunks of this 140 dollar piece of copper. 

I trimmed it out on the band saw and had to get a picture!

Over all it took me about 4 hours from design to finished cut out part, not bad.

Rodneys little badge looks great on there. 

Had to do a quick hold up on the boiler to see the fit up.

Should be fun to weld on this week!

I have way more plans for this bracket then just looking cool but right now I can't explain because I have to run out front of my shop and cheer on someone in a high speed car chase as they rip by my shop in Oakland ! 

I love Oakland !