The CNC machines were very complex, powerful tools of industry that provided excellent "repeatability" of manufactured parts.  Man-made parts might have been better in quality but they have never been consistent in quality.  As part of the maintenance team for the facility, Dr. Braley supervised 4 very well trained technicians. 

He was recruited away from that position to work for a Machine Tool Manufacturer named Kearney and Trecker Corporation and began supervising the installation, maintenance and repair of CNC machines across the southern part of the United States.  The job paid really well. 

Computerized Numerically Controlled Machine Tools consist of a computer, electric axis drive controllers, air conditioners, a power distribution system, a pneumatic and hydraulic set of systems (we call those two Fluid Power because we cannot cut them with a pair of scissors---fluids have no shear strength), and a mechanical system. The fun part of working on CNC's is the complexity of the multiple layers of technology applied to the single focus of making parts from raw material.  When the CNC machine breaks, the company's cost of making parts begins to rise.  Eventually, the cost of the parts breaks the upper cost barrier and the company can no longer compete with a competitor for retail pricing.  Neat huh? 

Where a machining center removes metal at a precise level with excellent repeatability over the life of a production run, the robot moves material with great repeatability and, recently, with sufficient sensors and programs to detect blockage in its path and respond to that blockage.  Robots are categorized into three areas: pick-and-place, point-to-point and continuous motion.

Wrist watch manufacturers use pneumatic (air driven) pick-and-place robots to pick up the gears from a gear bin and place the gear into the watch.  Since there are hundreds of parts in a watch the little pneumatic robots continuously move as the watches move down an assembly line.  You can hear the air as it whooshes out of the cylinders when the robot must return to a starting position.  Think of the hundreds of robots, all making whooshing sounds, and you will be inside a watch manufacturers assembly line. 

Point-to-point robots are usually not pneumatic.  They are either mechanical or hydraulic and lift much heavier loads than do the pneumatic robots.  They can do that because oil (hydraulic) and mechanical systems do not compress as does air (pneumatic).  Point-to-point robots pick up heavy raw material and load it into a machining center for it to be shaped into a useful product.

Continuous motion robots are very special to manufacturing.  They do not have straight line movements like the point-to-point or the pick-and-place robots.  Instead, they are programmed by using sensors on each axis motor that "feeds back" movement into a memory bank in the machine's computer.  Whenever you want the continuous motion robot to do exactly what the person who programmed it to do a job actually did, you enter the code for that job into the computer and push "cycle start."  Robots that paint cars (and washing machines and other items) are continuous motion robots.  They capture the talent of your best production painter on his best day of work.  Then he gets fired.  Well, not all the time.  But it remains that the painter who was used to "teach" a robot how to move the paint sprayer is no longer needed on the line.  In many companies where five or six painters were employed (or twenty or fifty) now there is only one or two.  The rest went the way of the leather harness and hitching rail. 

What remains are the technologists and technicians who repair the machinery, electronics, electricity, hydraulics, pneumatics and mechanical systems of the machines.  They will always have a job because no matter what else happens, the machine still has a tough time repairing itself. 

So, the technologists and technicians who are assigned the repair tasks are very important people.  Technologists have a bachelors degree and technicians have an associates degree.  The related studies in the associate's degree are expanded in the bachelors degree so that the BS graduate has more mathematics, science and other general education courses along with amplified or more profound technology courses.