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I got in to machining at the start of the pandemic, I suppose just short of two years ago. Absolutely brilliant hobby. I remember a comment here a while ago ab

I got in to machining at the start of the pandemic, I suppose just short of two years ago. Absolutely brilliant hobby. I remember a comment here a while ago about a lad who was interested broadly in systems and diagnostics, and had initially aimed to be a doctor. They then discovered they wanted to work on systems designed by logical first principles, and pivoted to comp sci and programming - only to find they'd discovered a whole new kind of almost random organic system. I think machining is about as close as it gets, in terms of the physical. The depth to the subject is off th charts. It all logically follows from first principles ;everything is rubber ;D It has an incredibly satisfying balance between the theoretical and the applied. Physical mechanics is a truly beautiful thing. Doing it yourself is equally fascinating and fun. Can't recommend it enough.

diego898 5y ago
Awesome! Can you recommend some intro resources to help someone get started? What worked for you? What didn’t?
- rfrey 5y ago
  The youtube channel "blondiehacks" is excellent for the machining-curious.
  - aj7 5y ago
    Yes that’s where to start.
  - emmelaich 5y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/c/Blondihacks https://www.youtube.com/c/Blondihacks
- theelous3 5y ago
  For learning to love it in an approachable way, this old tony https://youtube.com/c/ThisOldTony https://youtube.com/c/ThisOldTony For more practical stuff, joe pie https://youtube.com/channel/UCpp6lgdc_XO_FZYJppaFa5w https://youtube.com/channel/UCpp6lgdc_XO_FZYJppaFa5w For the very precise, robrenz. https://youtube.com/c/ROBRENZ https://youtube.com/c/ROBRENZ But my favorite - stefan gottswinter https://youtube.com/c/StefanGotteswinter https://youtube.com/c/StefanGotteswinter Take a shop tour with stefan and nycnc: https://youtu.be/H-Sf7Nvkwzg https://youtu.be/H-Sf7Nvkwzg
  - gaze 5y ago
    Robrenz is the favorite machinist of all the YouTube machinists. He might be one of the best in the US.
rfrey 5y ago
The other appealing (to me) thing about machining is that one simultaneously: (1) is forced to realize that perfection is completely illusory: everything is made of rubber, there's no such thing as an exact dimension (2) gets as close as any human endeavor to actual perfection. An amateur can, with care, skill and some money, work to microns.
- falcolas 5y ago
  > An amateur can, with care, skill and some money, work to microns. I love how you can start with really rough tools (like wood and stone tools), and iteratively create more and more accurate tools, to the point of rivaling commercial tools.
  - edoceo 5y ago
    I mean, that's how we got here. In the grand scheme the time from using rocks to make fire (flint) to putting electricity into thinking rocks (silicon) to throwing refined carbon into space was very short. Amateurs stacked on amateurs from only 1600 mothers ago!
    - robbedpeter 5y ago
      It's only been 340-ish years since we started on the electricity tech tree in any rigorous sense. That's 16 or 17 moms ago, at most. If you had a durable, stable culture 200,000 years ago and dropped a series of carefully selected experiments in their laps, they'd have been able to create with electricity with as much brain power as we have today. Still, we had thousands of years of cultural experiments to survive to eventually arrive at a confluence of social structures that allowed for us to explore science and rational natural philosophies. From the Greek mathematics and Sumerian city states to Roman empire building and onward, we carry pieces of those things that perform best at giving us life less full of struggle and suffering. A smartphone, seen from Kurzweil's view of human progress as a function of structured information, you get a sense of being present for something vast and terrifying and beautiful. Stacked amateurs all the way back to the brave little rodents thriving after the dinosaurs died.
mmaunder 5y ago
Agreed. I got into cnc. I use a Shapeoko 3 and 4. Both are xxl. Started on wood and then transitioned to non-ferrous metals. First aluminum and now copper alloys like bronze. Metal is a big step because you really learn about feeds and speeds. I use Fusion 360 which costs but it’s the best IMO. Amazing intersection of engineering and art.
robomartin 5y ago
> everything is rubber I've been saying this for years. I go one step further, I call it "resonant rubber" --a mythical material that actively conspires to evade everything you are trying to do to it and has a mind of its own.
- theelous3 5y ago
  Ha! Yes, even more accurate. I just motorized my quill feed, and today's plan is to find the speed it resonates at, and program it to skip that speed band.
  - robomartin 5y ago
    While we own a full machine shop at our company I still have a very, well, unique, garage. At the moment I have my old manual Bridgeport knee mill and a Haas VF2 right next to it (along with a prototype-scale SMT line and other goodies). I've been going back and forth with the idea of turning the Bridgeport into a CNC/manual hybrid. I like the idea very much, but I also love full-manual machining. I've used such a hybrid in the past, with both a motorized knee and quill. You could still disengage the quill and simply grab handles and machine manually. The control they used was the Acu-Rite Milpwr G2: https://acu-rite.com/controls-readouts/millpwr-g2/ https://acu-rite.com/controls-readouts/millpwr-g2/ It's really nice, but fairly expensive (I think about $25K by the time you are done). One of the arguments I read against converting a manual mill this way is that the ball screws create a situation where manual machining can be more difficult due to the low friction and back-drivability. A machine builder told me it would be a better idea to trade it for a Bridgeport Boss, which is actually designed as a CNC machine. Having the VF2 next to it I don't generally feel the need to make lots of parts on the knee mill. Like it or not, it makes a mess. That's why I keep thinking that the right level of automation might be to only motorize the x and y axis for quick and accurate hole location and simple machining operations and leave the quill and knee fully manual.

diego898 5y ago

Awesome! Can you recommend some intro resources to help someone get started? What worked for you? What didn’t?

rfrey 5y ago
The youtube channel "blondiehacks" is excellent for the machining-curious.
- aj7 5y ago
  Yes that’s where to start.
- emmelaich 5y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/c/Blondihacks https://www.youtube.com/c/Blondihacks
theelous3 5y ago
For learning to love it in an approachable way, this old tony https://youtube.com/c/ThisOldTony https://youtube.com/c/ThisOldTony For more practical stuff, joe pie https://youtube.com/channel/UCpp6lgdc_XO_FZYJppaFa5w https://youtube.com/channel/UCpp6lgdc_XO_FZYJppaFa5w For the very precise, robrenz. https://youtube.com/c/ROBRENZ https://youtube.com/c/ROBRENZ But my favorite - stefan gottswinter https://youtube.com/c/StefanGotteswinter https://youtube.com/c/StefanGotteswinter Take a shop tour with stefan and nycnc: https://youtu.be/H-Sf7Nvkwzg https://youtu.be/H-Sf7Nvkwzg
- gaze 5y ago
  Robrenz is the favorite machinist of all the YouTube machinists. He might be one of the best in the US.

rfrey 5y ago

The other appealing (to me) thing about machining is that one simultaneously: (1) is forced to realize that perfection is completely illusory: everything is made of rubber, there's no such thing as an exact dimension (2) gets as close as any human endeavor to actual perfection. An amateur can, with care, skill and some money, work to microns.

falcolas 5y ago
> An amateur can, with care, skill and some money, work to microns. I love how you can start with really rough tools (like wood and stone tools), and iteratively create more and more accurate tools, to the point of rivaling commercial tools.
- edoceo 5y ago
  I mean, that's how we got here. In the grand scheme the time from using rocks to make fire (flint) to putting electricity into thinking rocks (silicon) to throwing refined carbon into space was very short. Amateurs stacked on amateurs from only 1600 mothers ago!
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    It's only been 340-ish years since we started on the electricity tech tree in any rigorous sense. That's 16 or 17 moms ago, at most. If you had a durable, stable culture 200,000 years ago and dropped a series of carefully selected experiments in their laps, they'd have been able to create with electricity with as much brain power as we have today. Still, we had thousands of years of cultural experiments to survive to eventually arrive at a confluence of social structures that allowed for us to explore science and rational natural philosophies. From the Greek mathematics and Sumerian city states to Roman empire building and onward, we carry pieces of those things that perform best at giving us life less full of struggle and suffering. A smartphone, seen from Kurzweil's view of human progress as a function of structured information, you get a sense of being present for something vast and terrifying and beautiful. Stacked amateurs all the way back to the brave little rodents thriving after the dinosaurs died.

mmaunder 5y ago

Agreed. I got into cnc. I use a Shapeoko 3 and 4. Both are xxl. Started on wood and then transitioned to non-ferrous metals. First aluminum and now copper alloys like bronze. Metal is a big step because you really learn about feeds and speeds. I use Fusion 360 which costs but it’s the best IMO. Amazing intersection of engineering and art.

robomartin 5y ago

> everything is rubber I've been saying this for years. I go one step further, I call it "resonant rubber" --a mythical material that actively conspires to evade everything you are trying to do to it and has a mind of its own.

theelous3 5y ago
Ha! Yes, even more accurate. I just motorized my quill feed, and today's plan is to find the speed it resonates at, and program it to skip that speed band.
- robomartin 5y ago
  While we own a full machine shop at our company I still have a very, well, unique, garage. At the moment I have my old manual Bridgeport knee mill and a Haas VF2 right next to it (along with a prototype-scale SMT line and other goodies). I've been going back and forth with the idea of turning the Bridgeport into a CNC/manual hybrid. I like the idea very much, but I also love full-manual machining. I've used such a hybrid in the past, with both a motorized knee and quill. You could still disengage the quill and simply grab handles and machine manually. The control they used was the Acu-Rite Milpwr G2: https://acu-rite.com/controls-readouts/millpwr-g2/ https://acu-rite.com/controls-readouts/millpwr-g2/ It's really nice, but fairly expensive (I think about $25K by the time you are done). One of the arguments I read against converting a manual mill this way is that the ball screws create a situation where manual machining can be more difficult due to the low friction and back-drivability. A machine builder told me it would be a better idea to trade it for a Bridgeport Boss, which is actually designed as a CNC machine. Having the VF2 next to it I don't generally feel the need to make lots of parts on the knee mill. Like it or not, it makes a mess. That's why I keep thinking that the right level of automation might be to only motorize the x and y axis for quick and accurate hole location and simple machining operations and leave the quill and knee fully manual.