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I know technology is generally the responsibility of the Adeptus Mechanicus, but surely the repair and maintaining of a regiment's tanks isn't just the job of a Enginseer and his servitors?

Departmento Munitorum field workshops making modifications to vehicles have been mentioned as well as mechanically inclined civilians becoming lay-brothers of the AdMech in one of the BL books, so I'm assuming that there are mechanics other than Cogboys in His Divine Majesty's fighting forces. An armoured unit would require a large number of support personnel and yet there only seems to be a handful of Tech Priests around, so I guess it's reasonable to suspect that maybe Guardsmen who show the skills end up becoming AdMech lay-brothers in order to work on vehicles maybe?

There are IG grease monkeys, yes. An enginseer would supervise them to ensure no tech heresies are committed, though.

An armoured unit would require a large number of support personnel and yet there only seems to be a handful of Tech Priests around, so I guess it's reasonable to suspect that maybe Guardsmen who show the skills end up becoming AdMech lay-brothers in order to work on vehicles maybe?

They're called Technomats, and they learn the Rites of Maintenance and Repair by rote memorization. They are not taught how technology actually functions, they are simply instructed that if the machine is doing A, you perform Rite B to correct the problem.

 Psienesis wrote:

An armoured unit would require a large number of support personnel and yet there only seems to be a handful of Tech Priests around, so I guess it's reasonable to suspect that maybe Guardsmen who show the skills end up becoming AdMech lay-brothers in order to work on vehicles maybe?

They're called Technomats, and they learn the Rites of Maintenance and Repair by rote memorization. They are not taught how technology actually functions, they are simply instructed that if the machine is doing A, you perform Rite B to correct the problem.

similarly there are a large number of people who can maintain their cars relatively well who dont have a very good understanding of how they actually work.


hmm this part is broken, replace that part

Yep, exactly that. They might not know what role a "power steering pump flow assembly" plays in making the vehicle steer, but they can figure out how to replace that part with a new part out of a box.

Technomats are basically those kinds of people. They have no idea how the vehicle works (as in how all of its parts go together to form a cohesive, functional whole, or even the basics of combustion engines) but they understand that if that part there breaks, this part stops working, so replace that part to make this part work.

I get the impression that low-level technology is something that the Ad-mech consider largely beneath their notice. If it does not need electronics and is not particularly large or complex, it's the preview of locally trained mechanics.

Plus; Hive worlds produce large amounts of relatively advanced tech (Las weapons and Chimeras) in massive numbers in huge factories where Ad Mech presence is likely minimal. In such cases the Ad Mech is probably more like a regulatory body, external maintenance contractors, and techno-inquisition rolled into one. For instance; House Orloc may own the factory, and the management and workers are not associated with the Ad-mech, but a Tech priest checks up on them periodically, and they need Ad-mech expertise to fix badly broken machines, and changes to the process or design of the product absolutely needs to be sanctioned by Ad-Mech (such approvals are rare, and can take several decades, if you are lucky).

Ofcourse there is also places where the Ad-mech does not go (for whatever reason) where technological heresy could flourish. I remember the old Necromunda source book implying that all sorts of technology was produced in the underhive, and that there were plenty of people who could fix what was not producible.

I expect that means that on most reasonably technological worlds there are enough people floating around with the right skills and understanding to fix basic issues without resorting to the Ad-mech, or requiring Ad-mech sanction most of the time. This would be different in official Imperial operations (Such as the IG) which would likley work much closer with the Ad-mech than 'civilian' operations.

Yes, but in the case of House Orloc's forge, though, all those people churning out lasguns are basically assembly line workers, thousands upon thousands of them, endlessly inserting Tab A into Slot B.

The workers, themselves, have no idea how a lasgun functions. They could operate one, certainly, for the Imperium is a militant society... but they could not explain to you the principles of how depressing the trigger causes a measure of power from the cell to pass through the focusing array and pass down the barrel through the lenses to create a deadly bolt of light.

Same thing on the more backwater worlds, as illustrated in the story Seventeen Hours. The people of the Agri-World knew the basic Rites of Maintenance, but if the Rite failed to fix the problem, they had to get a Tech-Priest.

In addition to technomats and various similar, some sources (like the Cain novels) mention a 'laity' which seem to have some basic understanding of stuff that enables them to do all the grunt work beneath even an Enginseer. WE might attribute these to being the grease monkeys, armourers, artisan/artifcers, and the like who aren't strictly techpriests but seem to have some level of technical knowhow.

I think Fantasy Flight Games covered this in "Only War".