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Kip Hanson
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Published:
November 6, 2017

Machining For Dummies

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Overview

Start a successful career in machining

Metalworking is an exciting field that's currently experiencing a shortage of qualified machinists—and there's no time like the present to capitalize on the recent surge in manufacturing and production opportunities. Covering everything from lathe operation to actual CNC programming, Machining For Dummies provides you with everything it takes to make a career for yourself as a skilled machinist.

Written by an expert offering real-world advice based on experience in the industry, this hands-on guide begins with basic topics like tools, work holding, and ancillary equipment, then goes into drilling, milling, turning, and other necessary metalworking processes. You'll also learn about robotics and new developments in machining technology that are driving the future of manufacturing and the machining market.

  • Be profitable in today's competitive manufacturing environment
  • Set up and operate a variety of computer-controlled and mechanically controlled machines
  • Produce precision metal parts, instruments, and tools
  • Become a part of an industry that's experiencing steady growth

Manufacturing is the backbone of America, and this no-nonsense guide will provide you with valuable information to help you get a foot in the door as a machinist.

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About The Author

Kip Hanson finished school in 1979 and got a job at a small machine shop in Minneapolis. Over the next thirty years, he worked his way up and eventually moved into manufacturing consulting and freelance writing. Today he has nearly 600 published articles across dozens of magazines and websites, covering everything from machinery and tooling to metrology and 3D printing.

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machining for dummies

CHEAT SHEET

Machining was the basis by which the first industrial revolution began, and is just as important a factor to the fourth industrial revolution currently underway. Without machined parts, there'd be no cars or airplanes for a quick trip to visit Aunt Mary. There'd be no cappuccino machines, no Large Hadron Collider, no late-night talk shows, no replacements for your tired knee and hip joints.
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To a machinist, unpredictability means loud noises and broken tools, and explaining to the procurement manager why she needs to order more material for the job you just scrapped out. It means late deliveries and no donuts on Thursday morning because the boss is still mad at you. It might mean no raise this fall, or having to look for a new job because the shop just lost a big customer.
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Trades, Tech, & Engineering Careers

A Cutting Tool Primer
A Cutting Tool Primer
A computer numerical control (CNC) machine tool is an exciting, highly complex device, capable of great speed and accuracy. But like a car without tires, it would be naught but a big expensive paperweight (albeit with flashy lights and an advanced computer) without cutting tools. The cutting tools used on CNC lathes are generally "stationary," meaning the tool holds still while the workpiece rotates beneath it.
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Trades, Tech, & Engineering Careers

Additive Manufacturing
Additive Manufacturing
Additive manufacturing is better known as three-dimensional printing. Some industry experts consider it the manufacturing boondoggle of the century. After all, this now 30-something-year-old technology hasn't become the dominant parts-making process as many early adopters prognosticated. The big promises have come to naught they say, and it's unlikely three-dimensional printing will have much of an impact on manufacturing within your lifetime, or in mine.
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Shop-floor automation goes beyond a ready-to-serve fleet of droids. There are also automated pallet changers and flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) that allow machining centers to run unattended for hours or even days at a time; on the turning side of the shop, magazine-style bar feeders perform a similar function.
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Good toolholders, workholding, and accessories are just as important as good machinery, but many shops invest heavily in their CNC machine tools only to skimp on the tooling. Doing so means losing out on the benefits of new technology and not taking full advantage of your machine potential. Setup time is a killer and quick-change tooling is one of the best ways to avoid it.
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Cloud computing is beginning to play a big role in manufacturing. One example is Machining Cloud, a company that has joined forces with leading cutting tool, toolholding, and workholding manufacturers to present electronic product data to its users. No more looking up dimensions in paper catalogs. No more redrawing and modeling tools in the CAD system.
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Shop life was once much simpler. Machine shops machined parts, and fabricating shops bent, formed, and welded them. But many original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and their Tier I and Tier II suppliers have become reluctant to push their virtual shopping carts all over the place. They want a single source (actually, a couple of single sources) from which to buy their parts.
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The success of books like Who Moved My Cheese or Our Iceberg Is Melting proves it: Most people don't like change. Isn't it ironic then that the most successful companies — machine shops included — are the ones that embrace change like a trusted friend.Unfortunately, all of us know people who respond, "Because that's the way we've always done it" when questioned over a business procedure or practice.
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As with many businesses, one of the most challenging aspects to launching a machine shop is finding enough work to stay afloat. Making your customers happy will keep them coming back, but it's important to maintain a disparate customer base to get you through the lean times and grow the company when times are good.
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Parts are getting smaller all the time. For instance, medical components such as arterial stents, hypotubes, catheter shafts and guidewires, miniature screws and pins — these are just a few of the micro parts made every day, many from tough-to-machine cobalt chrome and titanium, and usually on Swiss-style CNC screw machines.
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All cutting tools have a recommended cutting speed for any given material. Softer metals like aluminum and mild steel have higher cutting speeds than do nasty metals like titanium or Inconel. So, too, can carbide and ceramic cutting tools achieve higher speeds — regardless of the workpiece material — than do ones made of high-speed steel (HSS), which is positively turtlelike compared to its harder, more wear-resistant brethren.
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Some machine shops are pigsties. A fog of coolant mist or oily smoke hangs in the air. Metal chips and dirty oil socks line the bases of the machines, which haven't been wiped down in months. Stacks of tooling catalogs lean haphazardly on the shelves, hand tools and micrometers lay scattered on the bench, yesterday's half-drank cup of coffee sits cold on the surface plate (following is one example).
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It's important to remember that, just like any mechanical system, tooling must be maintained and used properly if it's to be effective. Consider a basic machinist's vise. If you are to use one, keep it clean, lightly lubricated, and properly adjusted. Get rid of the parallels (small strips of hardened steel used to lift parts to the required machining height) in favor of precision step jaws, or machinable soft jaws in the case of secondary operations.
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This one's a little easier to understand. While the milling cutter is spinning at its recommended cutting speed/rpm (or the workpiece rotating against a fixed lathe tool), each is also moving around, through, or into the workpiece at a commanded feed rate.Here again, machining centers win the simplicity award: Just tell them to move at however many inches or millimeters per minute you desire, and the machine will do its darnedest to achieve that feed rate, even when zipping through tight corners.
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Depth of cut (shortened to DOC) is the third leg of the cutting parameter stool. Think of it as "how big a bite" can the tool take. On a lathe, DOC is measured radially — a 0.125-inch roughing pass means you're taking 1/8 inch of material per side, determined entirely by the programmed toolpath (or, if using a G71 roughing cycle, by its D or U word).
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Trades, Tech, & Engineering Careers

Lean Manufacturing
Lean Manufacturing
Lean manufacturing is nothing new. Many say it was invented shortly after World War II, when Japanese industrial engineer Taiichi Ohno, together with coworker Shigeo Shingo, developed the Toyota Production System (TPS). Others say Taiichi simply took Henry Ford's assembly-line way of thinking to the next logical step.
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Setting aside beautiful forests and clean, breathable air, there are many reasons to go paperless. This is just as true for machine shops and manufacturers as it is for the fast food restaurant across the street. Paper, quite simply, is dumb (except for the For Dummies books, that is). Here's why: Revision control: Regardless of the manufacturing environment, product specifications often change.
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Trades, Tech, & Engineering Careers

Machine Basics
Machine Basics
Whether lathe or mill, computerized or manual control, all machine tools share some basic mechanical similarities. All have a rotating spindle and a motor to drive it. All have a table or carriage of some kind that moves in and out, side to side, and up and down (some do far more than that). These moving parts are called the machine axes (plural for axis, not the sharp thing used to cut firewood when camping).
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Ask any shop owner to describe his or her biggest obstacle to company growth and nine out of ten will say the same thing: finding qualified people. For whatever reason, machining has grown less popular as a career choice over the past few decades, despite the increasing demand, better technology, and higher wages.
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Machining was the basis by which the first industrial revolution began, and is just as important a factor to the fourth industrial revolution currently underway. Without machined parts, there'd be no cars or airplanes for a quick trip to visit Aunt Mary. There'd be no cappuccino machines, no Large Hadron Collider, no late-night talk shows, no replacements for your tired knee and hip joints.
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Lightweighting is a big piece of sustainability. Fuel costs have been fairly low the past couple of years, but everyone knows they're going to rebound at some point, probably with a vengeance. Add to that concerns over global warming, air pollution, and the environmental impacts of fracking and offshore drilling, and it means one thing: Planes, trains, and automobiles must become lighter and more fuel-efficient.
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Lathe operators during the early 1800s must have had have mighty strong forearms. That's because tool changes back then were made manually: Loosen the toolholder clamp, load a new hand-ground cutting tool, tighten it down, take a cut, repeat.Fortunately, an early turret lathe came along in 1861, produced by the Lamson Goodnow and Company (see the following figure), which at that time was operating in the old Robbins and Lawrence armory in Windsor, Vermont.
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Perhaps the best way to become a successful machinist is to attend vocational school. Working one's way up the ladder isn't the worst way to learn a trade, although doing so requires an inquisitive mind, an abundance of patience, and the ability to put up with the hooting and hollering from the guys in the milling department.
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Trades, Tech, & Engineering Careers

Safety Tips for Machining
Safety Tips for Machining
Machine tools can be dangerous. Anytime you have a spindle rotating at several thousand rpm, sharp cutting tools, and metal objects moving at great rates of speed, accidents are bound to happen. Metal shavings in your eye, cut fingers, smashed toes — these are just a few of the instances that have sent folks to the emergency room.
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Quick-change toolholders that reduce the time needed to change cutting tools from minutes to seconds. Quick-change workholding that lets shops slap on a new fixture or vise with the push of a button. Offline presetters, spindle probing systems, pallet changers — there's a wide variety of accessories out there that make shops more competitive and able to meet rapidly changing customer demands.
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Trades, Tech, & Engineering Careers

Spindles in Machining
Spindles in Machining
Potter's wheels. The mixer on the kitchen counter. The wheels on your Cadillac-clone golf cart. Each of these is equipped with one or more rotating spindles. So whether you're throwing your latest flowerpot design or preparing a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies, spindles perform work that would otherwise be quite laborious.
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What does the Internet of Things (IoT) have to do with machining? Simple. All these advanced technologies have an impact on the way you manufacture things, never mind the fact that smart cars, smartphones, smart refrigerators, and smart kiosks at the shopping mall place increasing demands on the folks who make these devices — that is, manufacturers.
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Everyone's concerned about the environment. After all, an ice cube the size of Delaware fell into the ocean, and the planet just had the hottest June on record — for the third year in a row. Whether you believe in global warming or not, few would argue that pollution and wastefulness are bad, and that lowering our collective carbon footprint is a worthy goal.
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If your cutting tool provider (or toolholder and workholding supplier) hasn't offered any application advice to accompany all the stuff you've purchased over the past year, it's probably time to look for a new one (or at least a new salesperson). Partnering with your suppliers is just one of the many ways to gain the upper hand over your competition, whether that's the shop down the street or the ones overseas.
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Such a wide variety of machine tool types and brands have existed over the past two centuries that it's impossible to name a Henry Ford equivalent, someone responsible for "inventing" the industry. (Of course, Henry Ford invented neither the assembly line nor the automobile, although it's unlikely the auto industry would be where it is today without him.
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It used to be that lathes turned, mills milled, printers printed, and that's all they did. But things began to change a couple decades ago when some clever machine-tool designers began adding milling attachments and sub-spindles to CNC lathes, followed by actual machining center–style spindles and milling axes.
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This one's still on the science fiction side of the fence, but just barely. What if machinists could use virtual reality VR headsets to peer into their machine tools? Maybe they could view work instructions and three-dimensional CAD models, check the status of a cutting tool, edit a program, or stop a process, all from a remote display worn on one's head and controlled with virtual gloves?
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Trades, Tech, & Engineering Careers

What is Machining?
What is Machining?
What is machining? And how does it differ from fabricating, welding, and all the other manufacturing processes in use today? Technically, machining is a subtractive metalworking process. It uses cutting tools — extremely hard bits of metal — to remove material from chunks of slightly less hard aluminum, steel, and superalloy.
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Whether it was Tinkertoys or mud pies, papier-mâché or a fort in the woods, all of us made things as kids. Somewhere along the way, most of us turned to less tangible pastimes and vocations, but think back wistfully now and then to the rocket you built with your brother, the triple-decker card house you and sis made over summer vacation.
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A machinist is defined as someone who operates a machine tool. Pretty simple, right? But just as in the medical profession, where there's a doctor for pretty much every part of your body, so too do machinists specialize in various aspects of their trade. These include tool and die machinists, moldmakers, and of course CNC machinists.
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