[Gray Adams]

The majority of parts I end up making on our CNC could easily be made on a manual machine...if you were aiming only for functionality and didn't care about making fancy parts. We machined at least 50 unique parts on our CNC this year from week 1 to week 6, but the vast majority were nice looking parts that could have been cut on a bandsaw and sanded to fit, or made on a manual machine. It's a huge drain on time and resources to make parts like this, and it's not like its impossible to hold a tolerance on a manual mill.

CNCs aren't magic. Your parts aren't going to be made to spec if you don't know what you're doing on the machine and it takes a fair amount of time for every unique piece. This may or may no seem obvious, but it seems like a lot of people are under the impression that a CNC is going to solve all your problems.

If you do have a CNC, chances are you're not doing too badly. But that's not because of the machine.