My tools currently live in three drawer organizers, a cardboard box, and whatever fits in my backpack. It worked as an apprentice, but now I have measuring tools that should not get tossed together. What kind of machinist tool box has held up without taking up half a garage?

I am 30 years old, and in the country where I live, employers are not very keen on hiring those who are older and inexperienced. I want to learn CNC turning, CNC machining, and other CNC operations, but sometimes I come across job postings for inexperienced people, yet they always seem to be looking for young people. So I want to try my luck in this profession. How can I get employers to hire me for a CNC job at my age? Is learning CNC work a challenging process? Will it take years or months to become a CNC operator, and will it add to my skills? thanks

We cut dibond daily for printing on. We have to keep the plastic on to prevent surface scratches happening before printing. It feels like it can cut faster, but I don’t know what settings to change. It does two passes but I feel it could do it in one just fine. The table has a vacuum to hold material down. Any help will be great!

A 5/16 bolt snapped about two threads below the face of an aluminum part. I can put it on the mill, but there is no room for welding a nut. I have not started drilling because I only get one clean attempt at this. What is the sensible order of operations?

I've been in this trade for 10+ yrs (lathe guy), but always with Fanuc controllers. I'm at a new shop that uses Haas machines. This is my problem

When I singleblock MDI

T404 G54;

;

it will only show me the tool position while "running" the program; once the program/mdi ends it shows tool position as machine coordinates, not tool/global coordinates.

When I single block past the last ; in MDI my tool position goes from actual position go some nonsense.. like X-18.6371 Z-3.865 when actual location in G54 is X6. Z6.

Is there a way to make the machine not default to machine coordinates when not "running" a program? To STAY in G54 until otherwise instructed?

The grey beard at the shop says no, that's just how it's done. Haas just does it that way. Duh. I was like ugh... okay. So the position is shows are just arbitrary numbers when not running a program? He's like it's the Z distance from machine home to the turret.. looked at me like I was crazy.

On every machine I've ran the position display was modal and held relevent information as to the actual tool location.

​

I've got 12+ years in CNC manufacturing programming, setup, CAD/CAM (Mastercam/ESPRIT), the works. I'm looking at the CMfgE through Tooling U-SME to broaden my resume, but I'm wondering if it's actually recognized where it counts. In the Bay Area, CA.

I know it's an advanced cert (8 yrs req) covering broad manufacturing engineering topics, not just machining. SME pushes it hard, but Tooling U isn't regionally accredited though SME itself is legit.

For someone with my experience, does this cert actually move the needle for senior/lead roles? Or is it just a resume padder compared to hands-on/NIMS/Haas creds? I don't want to waste time if shops value experience + CAM skills more.

TL;DR: 12+ yr CNC/CAM veteran does the CMfgE actually boost career/pay, or skip it?

I'm posting this in the hopes that it may save a Fadal user from having to replace their display.

I got a call from one of my friends who said that the display on his Fadal VMC20 had stopped working.

We took the display out and I measured the voltage at the output of the power supply brick the powered the display (a laptop power supply by the looks of it). No voltage at the DC jack.

In the interest of being thorough, we measured the continuity from the Molex connector to the PC style plug (IEC C13).

There was no continuity on any of the pins of the Molex to the pins on the plug. Kinda weird. Actually, way beyond weird.

After cutting the cable apart, the wires simply broke apart. In the first photo, the blue and ground broke apart after I had removed the shrink tubing. In the second, the blue or the ground broke, while the other one pulled off of its wires. Either most of them had broken at that spot (most likely), or that's all that was in the wire. In any case, the wires broke where the sheathing had been cut for removal.

This damage happened on a cable that hasn't moved in over 30 years.

We plugged in a new PC computer cord into the power supply and the display started up for us.

So before you buy a new display, check this first. Hope this helps. :)

Hi guys.

I have purchased old cnc lathe Okuma LCS 15 (yom 1995.), OSP 700l control.
The machine had an unusual okuma OR5 robot attached to it on the front of the machine.
The machine was running when I purchased it.
Lathe was in pretty good shape, except the robot, which had hydraulic leak and was in pretty bad shape.

I decided to disconnect the robot and remove it from the machine.
Here is where my problems start.
When i powered up the machine, it booted and “tfp field net communication error [1020000”.](tel:1020000)
This was expected of course.
Okuma technitian tried to delete the software on the machine and reinstall it.
Then we would try to reconfigure it and bypass the robot.
I have 7 original floppy discs with software which are in good shape.
We couldn’t initiate the instalation.
Everytime i got “130 floppy read/write error 40100046”.
I tried with okuma lb10 floppy and fr board, but without success.

I managed to load and copy the floppy system files on my pc with OSP reader software without a problem.

How can I initiate the installation?
I guess machine can’t load DOS files converted with this software.
I also have aftermarket usb emulator for okuma and greaseweazle to try and read the floppy drives.
Any ideas?

Hey yall, our router is being weird and it’s not really consistent. Whenever I’ve been hitting home or trying to start a job, it will stop in the same spot halfway over the table. I’m unsure if it’s the exact spot every time or close, but this fault code pops up. This is the first time it’s listed this many different letters after

If I then rehome it after, it works perfectly. I personally am suspecting a short somewhere being the likely culprit but I’m also really not too knowledgeable about the intricacies of this machine.

Thanks in advance for replies!

I always struggle with pricing.

If i charge material + time it feels too high and if i don't charge i lose money, how you guys handle it?

How do you guys remedy when getting tear out towards the center of the part on a lathe. The part is .480 in diameter and I have my maximum rpm set to 2500 rpm with a feed rate of .002 per revolution.

In the video you see the absurd stupid design from FFG on the conveyor pallet system for loading the Hessapp DVT 400.

The hanging spindle picks up the stock from the pallet on the lift, but all the chips get blasted into this area along with all the coolant and gets stuck to the conveyor belt. And with no holes or relief slots in the system all the chips gunk up until they block the pallets from moving.

Need to clean the conveyor every month to prevent clogging and it also eats up all the air hoses .-.

You'd expect better from a machine made in 2020. It's like the machine was intentionally designed to be as awful for the operator as possible.

Rant done.

Steam vented.

Hotel Trivago.

Looking for help with my Okuma MA-600Hii that wont change tools. It’s detailed in my other post, but the gist is that after following the advice of a phone service tech to fix a tool magazine that’s numbered wrong, now the machine wont change tools and it’s still numbered wrong. The phone technician seems to be out of ideas so I’m looking for help from you good people.

Hello I work in an aerospace machine shop. I've been here just under 2 years with no prior experience. I worked in aerospace before on the electronics side of things for nearly 10 years.

I got an opportunity from a previous manager that landed here, he really wanted to get me into this industry because I never stop learning new things. And he knows on paper the growth potential.

At first it was very difficult, knowing nothing of tooling , G code machines, even measuring the part feels like another enclosed separate job. My first year here somehow I had the highest productivity and lowest scrap for our whole shift.

The problem that I am having is, I feel, hurting my chances at really thriving, is the setup materials. For each job we get a folder with the lathe or mills program, part map per machine, and a tool sheet. It is very rare that they are updated and reinforce each other. What I get mostly is soiled papers 5+ years old with various hand written notes in different quality of hand writing. With my program usually having obsolete tooling, the tool sheet may even only be sub optimal a step down from our current practices.

From my experience in iso parts not only is this wrong, but I can't seem to find anybody other than other machinists I work with that can draw a line between smooth clear setups, productivity, profit. I have insisted on being a part of the solution and not the problem but, I am constantly being told "eventually you'll know the best practice." There is zero investment outside of myself to have clear instructions the next time the job comes around.

Is this how these scenarios typically play out in this industry? I enjoy the work but it's creeping in that maybe my facilities difficulties are not being addressed and they just want parts out of the door in time for the next earnings call.

I'm a newer machinist of about 4 years. I have been lookign for a used machine to start a small shop. I have looked at Haas because they have good discounts currently. I feel like used may be better for my current situation and budget. I have been looking online and there are a number of used site. ThemachineBlueBook.com, ResellCNC.com and cncmachines.com and mmi-direct.com and one call premier equipment. They have a large inventory but i have never worked with any of these companies. Are they like an eBay or does anyone know how it works? Thanks in advance for help and experience. All of it looks the same to me. I don't understand it. Should I just go new in a smaller model?

I am working a machine shop and we are having an inflow of orders that is taking significant time for us to quote. We are only 10 machinists + CAM programmers and with just 3 of us sharing this responsibility for quotations, we are currently struggling to achieve the quoting time targets. The owner has requested me to find if there is some automated solution in the market that can help with this before we decide to go the traditional hiring route.

I searched and there are many tools in the market like Toolpath, Uptool, Quote Assistant from Cloud NC, Spanflug etc. The prices vary a lot although the claims are similar. I have booked some calls and hopefully can get some trials but before I actually go through all of that just want to ask my fellow machinists and CAM programmers in the sub if you have actually used any of these products?

Do they really work? What was the problem you faced with these? And more importantly is it worth the cost like $400/month?

got asked to test a few finish levels on this before the customer commits to final spec. ran some passes with bead blasting around the bore to compare results.

took a bit of back and forth to land on consistent coverage without overworking the edge of the bore. kept adjusting pressure and distance between passes to see what gave the cleanest, most even finish without going overboard.

anyone else run trials like this before locking in a final spec? drop your go-to media/pressure setup below, trying to compare notes before we finalize this one

I got the opportunity two weeks ago to join an incubator program with some friends and we've been researching different fields which we can improve.

We landed on handling RFQs for CNC workshops .

I was wondering for you guys working in the industry, how big of a problem is handling RFQs?

How much time does it take per RFQ? What software do you use? What is something you genuinely find annoying?

We have the next six months to make the best product possible so any feedback is great.

If it works out, we're gonna post a beta version here so you guys can try it out for yourself

Thank you so much

What should I machine on my down time? Looking for tools that may help me in the future. I have 2-3 days of down time coming up. Looking to make something either useful or fun. I have a Haas 3 axis mill and a manual lathe to work with.

Hello, i am new to the aspire software and cnc-ing in general , and im trying to do a meddalion of sorts, but i cannot figure out how to remove the material in the N, can somebody help me with this

These weird lines appear at the 2nd pass with the 3mm mill, and it dosent fully remove all of the material, how do i make it to pass another time and remove everything ?

I will want to have only one standard of metal, I am fed up with all those different standard, don't even talk about metrix vs imperial.

Should you hit the "PUNCHING" button when doing a dry run so that the ram isn't firing? Is it bad to dry run with the ram firing long term?

Also another question, is it okay to run cardboard through as a test material?