Finishing high School - want to learn CNC machining - Page 2


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Thread: Finishing high School - want to learn CNC machining

  1. #21
    Registered ImanCarrot's Avatar
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    All good suggestions for an aspiring engineer!

    One thing I would add- make some parts and when you go for an interview stick them on the desk in front of you and say "I made that". You would not beleive the good impression this can make- much better than a CV/ Resume, even something simple like a turner's cube provides real concrete evidence that you know what you're doing.

    Oh, if you are going for an apprenticeship learn everything you can off the old chaps- they will be more than willing to teach you if you show enthusiasm, but when you're time served you will be regarded as competition! so learn early

    I love deadlines- I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.


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    Quote Originally Posted by springlakecnc View Post
    Michigan, USA =

    1995,
    Truck driver, 3 months CDL, pay $12 per hour, easy to get a job
    Tool maker, cnc programmer, 2-4 years for Journeyman’s card, $20 per hour, work anywhere you want.

    2008,
    Truck driver, $15-$20 per hour, some jobs listed every week
    Tool Maker, cnc , $10-$15 per hour, NO OPENINGS, SORRY!
    LOL... This makes me think of the Master Card moments. The industry is not what it used to be. Specially not in Michigan, I should know growing up in Chicago. Trust me no Cnc programer makes 10-15 an hr or least I would like to think so. All the same like in any industry, you will have people that have not desire to better them selfs and you will have go getters and those I know, are not making 15 bucks an hr.



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    Quote Originally Posted by Micro_CNC View Post
    I live in Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada, And would like to know what kind of "Institution" I should look for to learn machining / CNC machining (leaning towards the later). I have looked around at my local college and University of Alberta and neither of them seem to know where i should look. My local college said to find a person to teach me, but i cant imagine that would look good on a resume, and the U of A simply said "No, We do not have any related courses available currently"

    Any help or direction would be greatly appreciated.

    Regards,
    Matt Runhart.
    out here in phoenix, some ofthe CC's offer CNC related courses,
    if you can find any manual machine work, the experience you'll gain, will be helpfull when you do find a way to acquire CNC knowledge.



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    Registered ImanCarrot's Avatar
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    You could try Single Point Diamond Machining- very specialised and you'll easily make 15 bucks an hour. I make more than double that. Downside is that we're so few and far between that I haven't been able to have a holiday in over 3 years... busy, busy, busy.

    Here's a brief overview from Wiki

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_turning

    It ain't easy, but I guess that's why they pay you a lot for doing it

    I love deadlines- I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.


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    Before I give you and advise on learning CNC machining, let me tell you a little about how I learned. I started out 31 years ago in a local machine shop working the night shift, it was 12 hours a day 5 days a days a week. Do you have any idea how long 12 hours is? Think about it. I stayed at that shop for three years loading parts changing tools and pushing cycle start until I was doing it in my sleep. At that time I had learned all I was going to about CNC machining I could learn from that employer because there were no openings for me to advance. All I knew was how to operate the various machines the shop owned. I had learned nothing about theory so I left there and found a job on a manual machine so I could get the metal cutting experience I needed. Over the years I worked in several different machine shops and all of them were either 5/12's or 5/10's and 6 or 8 on Saturday. Always plenty of work to be done except for a couple of slow years in the early 80's there has always been a job for anyone that wanted to be a machinist. THAT HAS ALL CHANGED!!! The abundance of work no longer exists most of the machine work came from the auto industry which has now mostly gone overseas. The Unites States and Canada are getting ready to go through the worst economic times that you will probably ever experience in your life and a selecting a career in machining could be the biggest mistake you could ever make. Now for the advise. Get a phonebook out and look up a Dermatologist any Dermatologist call them and make an appointment if you are a new patient they will probably tell you they can't get you in for at least three to six months. Go to College become a Dermatologist and have a long happy busy wealthy fun life. If you still insist on becoming a machinist then listen to the advise the guys are telling you, the most important thing is that you understand machining theory not CNC. CNC is little more than knowing how to tell the machine to crank the handles for you. What you need to know is how fast to turn the handle, or how fast to run the spindle relative to the material you are cutting, the material the cutting tool is made of and the diameter of the tool. You need to know how to clamp a part without twisting it. You need to understand what it means to climb or conventional cut and why and when to use each. I could go on and on and on about what you need to know, but what I think you need to know most is how to make the right career choice. good luck.
    I would be happy to answer any machining question you have that I can should you choose a career in machining nstaley@comcast.net



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    Micro_CNC,

    There have been a lot of good posts on this thread, a bit of drivel as well!

    I am a mechanical Engineer by education. I own a machine shop because I like it...I grew up in a machine shop. You will have to pay your dues one way or another if you want to get into manufacturing! The trades are not kind to the young...It's a man's world in the machine shop! The machines are capable of ripping you to shreds if you do something stupid! That's why most shop owners will bring in a kid to do menial work, such as sweeping the floor...It's all a matter of acclimation. Shop owners, myself included want to know that you have "the right stuff" to be there without getting hurt.

    I know CNC programming sounds "fun", but you must have a basic knowledge of materials and how to machine them before you can make a part on a CNC. Speeds and feeds are critical to production. There's Stainless, tool steels, 4140 steel, Vega, Waspalloy, Aeromet100, Aluminum 6061-T6 and 3000 dead soft, 1018 low carbon steel,...etc. etc.

    I use my computer eveyday to program the machines and do design work. In the shop the computer is just another tool, like a Bridgeport mill.

    Jim



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    nstaley is absolutely right!

    Spare yourself the grief young man and look for a different career!

    Jim



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    Our shop is in Michigan, hend you know the angle from which I will come when it comes to this thread.

    As you can see by the goings on in Washington, the people who rule us have more concern for those who shower BEFORE they go to work as opposed to those who shower AFTER they come home.

    Yes, our economic situation is/will be dire. some of the trades that will be affected by the shake out of the auto and supporting industries WILL put a damper on CNC tradespersons for quite some time to come. WIll the need for the service/career come to an end? No. WIll it prosper? It depends on where you sit in the industry.

    The GOOD CNC people will retain their jobs thru the shake out. THey will also be the ones who'll get hired back first once all the politicing and horsetrading and fleecing of the economy shake out. Sadly, there will be a lot of cannon fodder who's lives will be decimaed by the shake out/blood baths to come.

    I'm approaching the end of my career. Kidney failure made sure that this would be the ultimate challenge that I"d have to face. Fortunately, my shop has a blend of CNC, knowledge of CNC plus plehty of analog equipment that we get by on. WE hope to be a/the low cost supplier in our racket, prototype cams. This was done by taking hardly capable CNC ewuuipment and making it capable of ultra precision equipment that does the same thing. WE succeeded and are now able to make our masters in house for a fraction of what we had to pay for them in the past.

    It also made us capable of doing with a $50K machine what others folks need a $1.5 million machine to do. Imagine the cost of my break even point as compared to that of the guy with the 1.5 million dollar machine.

    The comment about dermtology and CNC offers tome interesting possibilities albeit in slightly different venues.

    CNC is coming to the joint replacement industry. Doctors who do hip and joint work HAVE to use common drills and hammers and stuff to carve out the bone to glue in theri "new joint". I have a friend who is working on precise joint modeling that will require CNC stuff of tomorrow to be able to place and support the joint properly. He has not YET had an orthopoedic surgeon refuse to watch his sales pitches. AND some of the best surgeons in the country are knocking at his door for the software. ONce he models the joint, you're going to HAVE to buy his machining software and the software capable machine to run it. I see the potential, I wish I was capable and young enought to get involved with it.

    You probably won't find a guy in the auto industry who'll be interested in running a CNC in an operating room environment. but bet on it, they will be doing so once Haas, GandL and Hardinge find out that there is money to be made in small hosptical room sized CNC's than in the huge hulking machines they've had the preference to make up until now.

    Thre ALWAYS will be a place for CNC technicians. It may just NOT be in a "machine shop" anymore..Does anyone know the speeds and feeds for bone and what is the best cutter type to use?

    They may export car sourcing to off shore, they may even do heart valve surgery in INdia at a fractin of hte coast of what it costs here - this too is being done offshore anymore - If you get in on the potential for bone CNC'ing ofr joint surgery, it may be quite some time before your job gets outsourced to some third world countlry.

    CNCing won't be ended, it just may end up in some new technology that hasn't bee thought of or fully developed yet.

    Sorry if this is some old wrinkles, I didn't take the time to read the whole thread. I was afraid of finding stuff that would only make me even more depressed than I alrady am.



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    Default You may have missed my point

    Quote Originally Posted by NC Cams View Post
    Our shop is in Michigan, .
    Sure there will always be a need for good programmers, but that need won't be filled by beginners, and it will be many years before a new guy will have much chance to beat an old-timer to a skilled position. My advise was to go for the sure thing, that can't be shipped to China. Not to mention the long hours that have been traditional trade marks of a job in machining. The point is right now there is no future for machining, and like it or not the best decision is not to gamble on whether or not there ever will be again.



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    DOn't think for a MINUTE that any job can't be outsourced.

    This whole financial crisis is a way to level the playing field and decidely break unions among other things (hodpiysld, doctor fees, you name it).

    Fact. high buck operations that would normally be done in fine hospitals are ALREADY being outsourced to India. ONe health care org will fly you there plus some members of your family, put you up in what is essentially a luxury hotel for the week/month needed to do the operation, PLUS provide you a living allowance and they STILL get it done cheaper than by doing it in the US or canada.

    WHen the money gets big enough, for someone someplace to undercut the prevailing wage, someone will come in under market rate to do the work cheaper. THis is called the "umbrella effect" and it is well documented in college business books. Out on the street where degrees are laughed at, the same identical thing occurs when some SOB across the street undercuts your price to "steal work from you".

    AT some level, I don't think some folks are afraid of what's happening with the economy. Very good, well trained people will soon work for pennies just to have an income. Some pretty well equipped shops will be on the market for pennies likewise because the market will be flooded with surplus machines from bankrupt businesses. Programmers will likewise be beaten down to the level of 3rd world wages simply because the whole frigging deal will collapse.

    If, as so many say we are, the creators of technological innovations, we might be in good stead to come out of the growing calamity well positioned to do OK.

    WELL managed shops, hospitals and everything else will be able to survive. Well positioned (low debt to equity) companies will also be able to survive the coming purges, blood baths actually. IT is going to literally be survival of the fittest, smartest, best funded. People who live from paycheck to paycheck or recievable check to machine payment, will have their nightmares. But people with skills SHOULD be able to muddle thru.

    The only way that there won't be a future to machiningg will be if the Taliban or some other primitiave society over runs us and take us back to the stone age. Possible but not likely, Why? we've been to and seen the city and many of us sure as hell won't go back to the out country way of life. At some point, even the most pacifistic person will put their foot down and rise against too much of such tyrany. SOme people want to live civilized lives, those who don'[t simply can't and wont prosper in civilization.

    No matter what you say, people in civilized societies need food, shelter, clothing, transportation, power, fuel, and other such fixations of civilization. By saying that CNC is no longer relevant, is like sayin that none of this stuff is relevant anymore. CNC is the camel in the tent - once it is in, you can't won't get it out.

    People will want more, they will want it faster, they will want it made quicker, cheaper and more accurately. Once you're spoiled, you're hooked. IT is just a matter of time before this all turns around.

    The ney sayers say that this is the worst of whatever singe 1994 or 1974 or 1983 or whatever, I was there then and things were tough but we survived via the use of our heads, our wits and our knowledge. Yes, there wasn't as much CNC then - it didn't exist or was WAY too expensive. but we survived. How, with machine shops full of mills and lathes that guys worked on/at to make stuff. Maybe this CNC thing helped by eliminating a lot of high school grade jobs. IT ain't like foks were not warned. Warnings were made, not heeded and things are going to hell.

    Do what you want. Learn what you want. Become a machinist if you want. Anytime stuff is being made or will be made, there will be a time/place for machinists. My shop surviveld some pretty horrid downshifts in business. WE survived by keeping debt low and overhead likewise. We can barely survive on numbers that guys need daily in revenue. WHen they go under due to crippling overhead and low revenure, we' should still be here doing our little cottage industry. Are we worried, Yes, but not to a fever pitch. WE simply are much less likely to suffer the big losses that some of our competitors face.

    The song goes something like this, "freedom is when you have nothing left to lose".I had to lose my business via a restructuring so as to protect the business capability/viability when I had kidney failure. I have some folks working for me who want to learn and continue the process - they are damn good and we need/deserve/support each other. WE have a similar style towards business, as in we work hard, we work harder when we have to and we don't intend to kill ourselves working. WE make enought to get by on/with and we do so more often than when we don't. Most of all, we like doing what we do - it is fun to go to work. things are different but they still haven't changed.

    Learn CNC, make your mistakes, go off into some dead end careers. That is the American way. The world aint gonna end but if it does try, thre will be a whole bunch of stuf that will need fixing if we don't succeed. Broken stuff here can't be fixed by plants that are closed or by outsourced factories either. Times are gonna get tough. The tough will survive. And may be even in hospital surgery rooms running CNC's of the future.



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    Again you've missed the point. An intelligent person doesn't plan their future on speculation, they plan it on fact, and the fact is not only is the machine trade in the toilet right now, but it was in the same sad shape in the early 80's so this is not the first time in the length of my own career, and as it's said screw me once shame on you screw me twice shame on me! and the reason for this discussion was to inform a young person that at the moment a career choice in the machining trade may not be the best path to follow. Whether or not the trade makes a comeback, and if it does will it be in a short enough time to do them any good. It's not just that but,they should also consider their future from the standpoint that when they get to be our age do they want to be working the 12 hour shifts or do you think they might want to spend time with their family, provided they had the time or the energy after working those ridicules hours to even start a family. And what if they have health problems as they get older that might affect their ability to keep such long hours then what? Oh and let me know when I can get a flight to China have a boil lanced and fly back to the USA for the same price or less as having it done here and I will plan my vacation around it.



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    Quote Originally Posted by nstaley View Post
    Again you've missed the point. An intelligent person doesn't plan their future on speculation, they plan it on fact,....
    Nonsense, an intelligent person plans their future almost entirely on speculation; neither you nor I have any idea precisely what the future holds. Did you predict the current worldwide economic chaos a year or so ago? Twenty years ago did you predict how manufacturing would decline in the U.S.?

    Your approach is to stick your head where the sun don't shine wailing woe is me the sky has fallen. I suppose this attitude does give you some sort of security; if you never try you can never fail. Did you really read and understand what NC Cams wrote. He is not a Pollyanna singing all is well. He, like many business owners, knows that sometimes **** happens, but he doesn't let it beat him down. I think I would much rather adopt his attitude; at least I would know then that I tried, I didn't just give up.

    An open mind is a virtue...so long as all the common sense has not leaked out.


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    When did say not to try? I only said try the thing that has the best chance of success. OK let me rephrase that statement I agree we do speculate but we use the facts that we know to do that speculation. The reason I made that statement was in response to statement that the machining trade was going to turn around but the statement was not supported by anything that showed that it was in the process of turning around now or anytime soon. Did I predict this down turn 20 years ago the answer is no. Did I predict it 10 years ago the answer is YES, and I started looking for another way to earn an income. The shop that I worked in at that time had around 30 employee's when I left it to start my own business 7 years ago, today all that are left there are the owner his brother and his son. For the first couple of years after starting my business I worked part time in a large machine shop in Livonia, I stopped in there for a visit last July to say hi and the only people there were the owner and his brother. Why don't you go ask them what a good career move would be? What is it about a career in the medical field that you call "not trying"? So then do you think that this young person asking for information doesn't need to know all the pros and cons so that he can make an intelligent decision? If your already deep into the trade and or a business owner in the trade what choice do you have but dig in and hope everything works out. But that's not what we were talking about. I take it if you were caught in quicksand instead of asking for help getting out you would say come on in the waters fine, misery loves company. What a selfish attitude I on the other hand prefer to give both sides of the story and let the other person decide for themselves. Please don't respond back and say I only gave one side of the story I already know that, I just gave the side no one else was going to give.



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    Registered ImanCarrot's Avatar
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    NC Cams you cheered me up with that comment

    the people who rule us have more concern for those who shower BEFORE they go to work as opposed to those who shower AFTER they come home
    Made me think of a very apt comment someone else said on these boards a while back:

    "You know you're an engineer when... You wash your hands before you go to the loo"

    Stainless Steel chips in your underpants are not good lol.

    [Edit]Oh, and bye the way... what recession? I'm stacked out with so much work I'm gonna have to work over xmas[/edit]

    I love deadlines- I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.


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    consider yourself fortunate; you are busy now, but how busy will you be 6 months from now ? It is possible that failing businesses might even leave some of your invoices unpaid. Don't crow; these are troubled times ahead and it has affected and will certainly affect many people with extreme financial hardship.



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    Registered mc-motorsports's Avatar
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    Depending on what line of work he's in, some shops can do well during recession, not me!



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    but how busy will you be 6 months from now
    I'll still be as busy

    I got a very narrow niche market, there's only about 4 places in the UK that do what I do and I'm rather better than the competition.

    We just got an order from our main competitor for some items cos they can't make them, which was rather nice.

    I love deadlines- I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.


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    Quote Originally Posted by mc-motorsports View Post
    Depending on what line of work he's in, some shops can do well during recession, not me!
    yeah ? what kind ? who does business when business is bad ?



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    Quote Originally Posted by laszlozoltan View Post
    yeah ? what kind ? who does business when business is bad ?
    Other than Wal-Mart (joke), at the moment, Defense, Medical Equiptment and snow plow parts.

    Defense is obvious, anything from balistic panels to pieces parts which probably end up in missles. Endoscopy equiptment manufacture is getting busier and another medical equiptment manufacture can't find enough people to run swiss lathes. A company that I know of that makes hard faced snow plow parts claims to be recession proof... They have patents on thier designs and they save city, county and states money, they are planning a 30,000 sq/ft addition right now. A friend of mine is working at a shop as a laser operator making snow plow parts for another big company, they are pushing him into 12 hour days 7 days a week.

    Not everyone is in the toilet at the moment, just 99% of us.

    The truck shop next to me is busy... Granted nobody wants to pay anything, they are doing what they can to keep thier trucks and trailers on the road because they either can't or don't want to invest in new vehicles and or equiptment. I get a little bit of work out of that, but not much.

    So like I said, depending on what line of work he's in, some shops can do well even during a recession.



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    Quote Originally Posted by laszlozoltan View Post
    yeah ? what kind ? who does business when business is bad ?
    Bankruptcy trustees.

    As mc-motorsports mention medical equipment is one; we are a bit related making stuff for people with a disability. Things probably will slow down but it takes months for us to see much effect. The flip side is it also takes a long time for us to recover and we never do much better in the boom times.

    An open mind is a virtue...so long as all the common sense has not leaked out.


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