Hey, newbie here. I haven't gotten to interact with many others in this field. I've lurked around the forum for a while though.
I was just supposed to cross train a bit during a slow period when work was backed up and there was nothing for me to do. At least that's what they told me on day one, the liars. Instead I ended up staying, taking the official training course that was conveniently scheduled for less than two weeks after I started in CMM.
Despite not planning to go this way, half a year later it turns out I really enjoy what I do. Has anybody else gotten here by total accident? Or did most folks apply on purpose?
I started out in a similar way. I was being trained to run programs the CMM programmer at the time had written and help out with basic stuff. I was sent to Hexagon for the intro courses. About a month into all this, the programmer got diagnosed with late stage cancer. He took a leave of absence and I became the CMM programmer. I literally came into work on a Monday and was told that he was not coming back and that I was the CMM guy moving forward.
It was a slow day, I was exiting the building and a lead hand asked what I was doing. When I said I ran out of work for O/T, he offered me some hours running a few CMM's to work down their backlog. 3 weeks later I was transferred to the department full-time, another month later I was sent to training. I've looked back a few times, but very happy to be programming which is something I wanted and was giving up on back in high school. I went from eyes on 'dime-a-dozen' positions to being a unique element in a manufacturing plant.
I'm grateful to all the programmers I've worked with, every one of them has taught me something.
I was a machinist/toolmaker in the late nineties. Things started to get slow at our shop and I was driving delivery trucks and other odd jobs since I was the junior employee and work was light. Our sister plant needed help in the inspection department and as a toolmaker I had experience inspecting my own work, so I gladly went over. I learned to use the manual CMM with QC5000 and started making inspection routines on it but it was still manual. One day the PC-DMIS programmer just didn't show up for work and his toolbox had been taken home the previous day, AKA he quit. I was shown how to run the existing programs with PC-DMIS. While it ran, I was reading the help files and looking at the existing programs. Soon I was writing my own programs. We had Hexagon come in for a day for hands on training and I haven't' looked back since.