Not even a begginer, how start?

[mattc1]

Now you see I’d buy only manual gear. You’ll save a fortune. And actually learn how to do the job, as you went.

id still rather have @vapesmarter gear, built manually. Than a version, however high quality, made by a cnc unit. The former, to me, is worth £500. the other £200 max.

I'm no technophobe, don’t get me wrong.

But vapesmarter uses G~code? not everything is manual!. Not all mods are the same!. Maybe not all the time, but having the CNC to fall back on is a get out of jail card!.

 

[mattc1]

You don't make too many mistakes, or you get sacked. When you've done it for years the G and M codes become second nature, and you can type a programme pretty quickly. I've worked on exotic alloys for the oil industry that cost around £1 or 2 K for the raw blank before any machining was done, and your only talking about a block not much bigger than a shoe box. Sorry boss, i've fucked that blank, you'll need to order another one. You don't last long if you do that too often. You started off on easy stuff like aluminium and only worked up to the harder stuff if you were competent enough. Some folk got too nervous and couldn't do it. You might work on a prototype for a couple of weeks and have hundreds of hours into it. A mistake then wasn't worth thinking about.

I have made a few with my Router and with the Laser at work. If you not making mistakes you are not trying hard enough!. Its a thing of you are always learning, and I have been running lasers for 8 years, and still every day is a school day!. ( do a full sheet of 316L s/s in 10mm) with a big part on and I have had a few of them wrong in my time . Not the whole pack tho!.

 

[DMAN]

I have made a few with my Router and with the Laser at work. If you not making mistakes you are not trying hard enough!. Its a thing of you are always learning, and I have been running lasers for 8 years, and still every day is a school day!. ( do a full sheet of 316L s/s in 10mm) with a big part on and I have had a few of them wrong in my time . Not the whole pack tho!.

I ran CNC machining centres for 40 years, right from the beginning with storing programmes on ticker tape, then cassette tape, up to 'modern' times.
In industry, if you made many mistakes you were sacked, and tolerances could be down to +/- 0.001". Seriously. In sub-contract shops profit margins were pretty low, as it was very cut-throat.

 

[vapesmarter]

But vapesmarter uses G~code? not everything is manual!. Not all mods are the same!. Maybe not all the time, but having the CNC to fall back on is a get out of jail card!.

i did try g code and some things like doors I can but for all the mods its manual work it's quicker for me by hand all the mods I do vary because of the layout, style, board, tube, even the material so for me it's faster to make them on the miller using a dro

 

[RAPTOREX]

You don't make too many mistakes, or you get sacked. When you've done it for years the G and M codes become second nature, and you can type a programme pretty quickly. I've worked on exotic alloys for the oil industry that cost around £1 or 2 K for the raw blank before any machining was done, and your only talking about a block not much bigger than a shoe box. Sorry boss, i've fucked that blank, you'll need to order another one. You don't last long if you do that too often. You started off on easy stuff like aluminium and only worked up to the harder stuff if you were competent enough. Some folk got too nervous and couldn't do it. You might work on a prototype for a couple of weeks and have hundreds of hours into it. A mistake then wasn't worth thinking about.

In another life, I ran a big Panasonic welding robot. Err oops.
“ hey boss, remember that jig we built for that new job? Well I’ve just welded it to that job”. (Duck)
Technically it wasn’t me, of course. After all a robot did the welding.
I was told it was a 2 grand loss for the job + tool building x2. And that was 15 years ago.

But vapesmarter uses G~code? not everything is manual!. Not all mods are the same!. Maybe not all the time, but having the CNC to fall back on is a get out of jail card!.

If you can use them. You’ll save a fortune buying manual gear. Also save a fortune if it goes pop too. Was my point.
If you end up good enough for people to buy your gear. That’s when you spring for 30 grands worth of gear.

a well looked after ww2 lathe/mill/drill will still be running in 2145.

 

[mattc1]

I ran CNC machining centres for 40 years, right from the beginning with storing programmes on ticker tape, then cassette tape, up to 'modern' times.
In industry, if you made many mistakes you were sacked, and tolerances could be down to +/- 0.001". Seriously. In sub-contract shops profit margins were pretty low, as it was very cut-throat.

Things have changed a lot since then. With a modern CnC Laser or like the tolerances are bang on, once set up right, the only thing when something goes wrong is user error!.

 

[DMAN]

Things have changed a lot since then. With a modern CnC Laser or like the tolerances are bang on, once set up right, the only thing when something goes wrong is user error!.

I only stopped working a few years ago!
Lasers can only do profiles, unless they have changed recently? A profile is a piece of pish to program, G41 or G42 depending on 'normal' or 'climb' milling.
A machining centre can work on 5 axis, so you need really good spacial awareness, and knowledge of feeds and speeds depending on the materiel.

 

[mattc1]

Well we have 4 different lazers, and the one is 5 axis. Also I built a Cnc Router from scratch, have a look at thread in this section mate.

 

[DMAN]

Well we have 4 different lazers, and the one is 5 axis. Also I built a Cnc Router from scratch, have a look at thread in this section mate.

Well done on building the router. Nice one.
I was glad to leave work behind, as i hated it towards the end. No chance of me ever doing it again, even as a hobby!

 

[GoWo]

You don't need to know gcode to run a cnc machine , cad/cam does it all for you these days .