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 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.