For many years, I was under the impression that CNC wasn't really model engineering, having been introduced to it in the mid 80's in a hard drive production model shop on a CNC controlled Bridgeport. Only one chap in the whole factory of hundreds knew how to use it.
Eventually, the prices started to come down to a stage where you could actually make one yourself, and then it struck me that it really is just an extension of what we are doing by manual means. Imagine our little world without DRO's and power feeds, without those, I would have had to give up my hobby a few years ago.
I am a little long in the tooth now for such things and with the number of brain cells fast being depleted I have decided if it is to be done by me, it has to be done in the next year or so.
I have almost got the CAM software under my belt by playing about with other peoples CAD designs, plus I have to pick up some more G-code instructions as well.
I tried to learn Solidworks a few years ago by being taught by a friend, but was unable at the time to retain the instruction, it was when I had trouble counting the number of fingers and toes I had, so it looks like I will have to start on a more simple package.
I am lucky in that I can use wallet engineering to achieve whatever, within reason, I want, but I am amazed at the machines some people have come up with from just basic bits costing very little. I just don't have the time any more to go down that route, if I did, I would.
So OK, it is a bit alienated from what us old 'uns are used to, but if you don't keep up with it, in a few years you will be left behind.
Imagine no more plans downloads, just download the digital files that someone else has done, clamp your material to the table and rather than a months work doing it by hand, done and dusted in a matter of hours.
Someone above mentioned that they use the same tooling that we manually use now. That is a bit far from the truth.
All you are basically doing is using is a digitally controlled machine to guide a cutter around a piece of material to SIMULATE what we manual workers are doing with rotary tables, boring heads, tilting vices & tables etc. A lot of our manual tools will become redundant, unless of course you still want to make something the old way.
Of course, there are some people that will never be able to either afford or have the education or learning power to do such things, and they will be the old timers of the future who will get rave reviews because they managed to do it all by hand.
John
