[How-To] Watching Pakastani You Tube Machining Videos

[benmychree]

Here, we call it the persuader.

 

[Bi11Hudson]

That concept has been around much longer than the internet. I have (had, he's relocated) a friend, a Puerto Rican, that referred to a file as a Puerto Rican Milling Machine. It seems that in his younger years, the folks in PR would do functional work with a minimum of "make do" tooling. Looking at their automotive work done without "machine tools", one wonders just how much knowledge has been lost to machine tool marketing gurus. True skill shows when functional, maybe not very pretty but functional, work is done with minimal tooling. To do the same work faster is the forte' of machine tools. Carlos and his like have been my guides for as long as I can remember.

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[benmychree]

That concept has been around much longer than the internet. I have (had, he's relocated) a friend, a Puerto Rican, that referred to a file as a Puerto Rican Milling Machine. It seems that in his younger years, the folks in PR would do functional work with a minimum of "make do" tooling. Looking at their automotive work done without "machine tools", one wonders just how much knowledge has been lost to machine tool marketing gurus. True skill shows when functional, maybe not very pretty but functional, work is done with minimal tooling. To do the same work faster is the forte' of machine tools. Carlos and his like have been my guides for as long as I can remember.

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In this part of the country, that would be a Mexican milling machine ---

 

[Bi11Hudson]

I first heard the expression used when I was stationed at Long Beach in the late 1960s, as a Mexican Milling Machine. At the time, aged 18, I was very young and inexperienced with machinery and thought the expression was just another derogatory expression about Mexican nationals. With intervening time and my expanding experiences with non-electrical machinery, I came to appreciate what was actually being said. On meeting at age 41, and working with Carlos, when he himself used the expression, I came to realize that it wasn't a derogatory remark, rather it was complimentory to those "backyard" machinists that do anything with nothing. Which is really what hobby machine work is all about.

In my shop (electrical), the comment was "Never have so few done so much for so many with so little for so long, we can now do anything with nothing forever." I came to realize the same concept applied to non-electrical persons as well. All just part of growing up, I suppose. When working with computers (Wang) through Micronesia in the 1980s, I carried a file and "vise grips" as part of my traveling tool kit for the same reason. That, in a pinch, an enormous amount of work can be accomplished with literally nothing. It wasn't "precision" work. But work that made the machine "go", and lasted until a replacement could be acquired, sometimes the next (week) flight, sometimes (back)ordered from the States, months later. For me, it was a fix that was "Rednecked", for Carlos it was the same fix that was a PR fix, for the Mexicans in Long Beach, it was a Mexican fix. We're the guys that make the machines "go" when we have nothing to work with but time.

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[talvare]

Their governments manage to keep them down!

This is the bottom line. Those countries have existed far longer than this one and yet they struggle with 150 year old technology. It's pretty sad, but I do admire what they are able to accomplish with what little they have.
Ted

 

[markba633csi]

Some of the manual skills I have seen these people display are astonishing to the point of disbelief, case in point the guy who rebuilds lead-acid storage batteries by hand. Casting new lead plates with a flick of the wrist as easily as buttering toast. I have fairly good hand/eye coordination but there is no way I could do that without months, maybe years of practice. Of course they don't even suspect how contaminated they are getting, or maybe they suspect but take only the simplest of precautions- they have to make a living after all. They are alive now, and the work needs to get done.
-M

 

[westerner]

Our family vacationed in San Carlos (Guaymas) Mexico, on the mainland side of the Sea of Cortez, several times in the 1980's. Fishing trips with my Old Man's boat, paying fishing guides from the local crowd. We met some very talented men.

Hanging around with that crowd showed this young aspiring mechanic that you DON'T need a Snap-On box with $10k worth of tools to fix stuff....

 

[erikmannie]

Let’s get some links!

Am I to search YouTube for “Pakistani machining videos”?

Edit: Found some. From the little that I have seen, these are so fun to watch!

E.g.

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCNTEU9ahXdo7tEQfkX3EsWw/videos?view=0&sort=p&flow=list

and

https://m.youtube.com/c/PakistaniTrucks/videos?view=0&sort=p&flow=list

 

[erikmannie]

If you’re going to try to stop the chuck with your hand, make sure you’re not wearing safety glasses!

2:04 in this video:

 

[Superburban]

Of all the stuff they do, the frame work does impress me. Of course if they would do something to stop the layers from rusting, I bet they would last longer, but then I guess that is their job security.