Change and be good, bad or something in between, but in the second decade of the 21st century, it’s certainly inevitable. Changes come quickly in technology, economics and even at century-old trade publications like Canadian metalworking. CM, along with a large portfolio of Rogers Publishing trade magazines, has been bought by Toronto-based Business Information Group making BIG by far the largest and most powerful trade publication company in the country. That’s great for the future of Canadian metalworking, but it does mean a few changes. I replac Mary Scianna as Editor, and former Sales Manager Steve Devonport takes the helm as Publisher, taking over from Larry Bonikowski. Jill Nelson came over too, ensuring continuity as Art Director and Rob Swan joins as Account Executive to round out the team. Rob and I are new to CM, but Steve has been with Canadian metalworking for a remarkable quarter-of-a-century, so you’ll definitely see familiar faces. I’m looking forward to meeting many of you at trade shows, in your offices and best of all, on your shop floor because that’s wher the action is…..and it’s wher I started.

Can you remember your first day in the industry? I can. It was thirty years ago and I was a rookie setup man working on a Brown and Boggs 70-ton C-frame press running a simple progressive die. The press was built in the ‘Fifties: full revolution by mechanical dogs engaging what seemed like the biggest flywheel on Planet Earth. My idea was to jog the press by blipping the start switch, tripping the pedal and carefully adjusting down from bottom dead centre. “Why waste all that time?,” I thought, as there were index marks scratched conveniently on the collar and labeled with a Magic Marker. So I wound down the ram, locked it up smartly with a quick spin of the wrench and fired up the motor. It took five minutes to get that big flywheel up to speed and the second it smoothed out at running RPM I hit the pedal and watched the test strip. The die bottomed instantly, breaking off a fistful of .250 round punches and sending them laterally in every direction out of the unguarded shoe. One flew between my legs, ripping the seam of my Levis at the upper thigh and blew a neat bullet hole through a 12-gauge sheet metal partition behind me. An inch higher and I’d end up editor of Ladies Home Journal instead of Canadian metalworking, but I got lucky. The die set was destroyed and the press was jammed at the bottom of its stroke, the frame “sprung” tightly. It took most of the rest of my shift packed in dry ice before it released with a loud bang. Amazingly, I kept my job. I also learned to check everything at least twice and to keep a meticulous book on each tool and setup. In retrospect, it may have been the most useful lesson I ever learned on a shop floor, along with the Ukrainian swear words I picked up from the toolroom, wher they would fix my expensive mistake.

Now, thirty years on I’m impressed by how much the industry has changed. I started in dark, oil-soaked and noisy press rooms wher pull-backs were considered the ultimate in safety and operators could be expected to squirt oil from a pump can into a tool with every slow stroke. SPC was the operator yelling “It’s doing it again!” over the din and if your hands weren’t cut and bleeding, you just weren’t working. Today it’s a science as well as an industry and despite the impact of China, I predict that our side of the manufacturing industry will grow in sophistication and prosper.

Jim Anderton, Editor

Do you agree? Let me know, and feel free to dro me a line at the e-mail address below, or buttonhole me at a show or event. I’d love to hear
from you!  janderton@canadianmetalworking.com