Jack Ubersax
Aluminum
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2005
- Location
- Wilbraham, MA
One of the most challenging, yet rewarding, assignments a Special Apprentice would have during his almost two year training program was the time spent on the Sales Demonstration Floor.
At the time your truly had this experience, the Demo Floor was on the second floor. The west elevator door opened directly onto this floor, to make things easy for the visitors.
For all practical purposes, this assignment presented the trainees with their first real opportunity to stand face to face with customers and to operate and explain the benefits of the wondeful W/S line of turning machines. At the time some of us were there in the early 50's (!) there were even Tapping and Threading Machines present on that floor. The fun machines included the 16" Electrocycle for brass work, the #4 Ram with Preselector Head, the metal hogging 4-A with Cross Sliding Turret (those chips flew)
the Multi-Spindle Bar Machine and other machines which packed the well arranged and neat floor.
This was ofen the final assignment of the trainee, just prior to his being assigned to the field. The Demo Floor was under the supervision of Bill (Whitey) DeKnipp at the time our class was going through, and at least one of the guys about to be sprung to the field was at the side of the greener trainee when he was being broken in on the Demo Floor procedures.
In the later eras, of course, this floor would come to hold the AC, AB, NC and CNC machines as their time came. Many will recall the time when W/S had two planes at its disposal, which provided transportation for customers to Cleveland to see machines on this Floor and being built in our shop. Also, some trips were arranged for taking customers out to such places as Cat in Peoria, where they could see certain of our machines being properly employed.
A footnote here: as I wrote this I recalled that there were actually over twenty special apprentices who started on our class! Hard to believe, eh!
I hope that I haven't bored you with this look back into the dim past. Forgive me if that is the case.
At the time your truly had this experience, the Demo Floor was on the second floor. The west elevator door opened directly onto this floor, to make things easy for the visitors.
For all practical purposes, this assignment presented the trainees with their first real opportunity to stand face to face with customers and to operate and explain the benefits of the wondeful W/S line of turning machines. At the time some of us were there in the early 50's (!) there were even Tapping and Threading Machines present on that floor. The fun machines included the 16" Electrocycle for brass work, the #4 Ram with Preselector Head, the metal hogging 4-A with Cross Sliding Turret (those chips flew)
the Multi-Spindle Bar Machine and other machines which packed the well arranged and neat floor.
This was ofen the final assignment of the trainee, just prior to his being assigned to the field. The Demo Floor was under the supervision of Bill (Whitey) DeKnipp at the time our class was going through, and at least one of the guys about to be sprung to the field was at the side of the greener trainee when he was being broken in on the Demo Floor procedures.
In the later eras, of course, this floor would come to hold the AC, AB, NC and CNC machines as their time came. Many will recall the time when W/S had two planes at its disposal, which provided transportation for customers to Cleveland to see machines on this Floor and being built in our shop. Also, some trips were arranged for taking customers out to such places as Cat in Peoria, where they could see certain of our machines being properly employed.
A footnote here: as I wrote this I recalled that there were actually over twenty special apprentices who started on our class! Hard to believe, eh!
I hope that I haven't bored you with this look back into the dim past. Forgive me if that is the case.
