Quote:
Originally Posted by sanddrag
That's somewhat antiquated and borderline bad advise. I understand the point you were attempting to make, but it comes across in an unfavorable way.
Many (if not most) schools require a classical progression of skills, from manual machining, up to CNC, and many older experienced machinists argue that any education that differs from this path is wrong and will never make a successful machinist.
However, we're beginning to see a shift in which manual machines are becoming increasingly irrelevant as most industrial processes are now automated, and to see something like a manual mill used in a production environment today is a rare sight, an a profit-losing one at that. I've even visited small job shops and R&D labs with plenty of CNCs, but not a single manual machine. Since we started on CNC, the only thing we use the manual mill for by choice is for awkward objects that just won't fit decently into the CNC.
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For what we do in FRC, it is totally possible to teach students starting on CNC. Everything we do is aluminum, easy to fixture, and uses pretty basic milling operations with end mills that range from .125" to .5" diameter and the occasional fly cutter for face milling.
However, I don't agree with what you're saying about manual mills only being used in profit-losing situations. There are still plenty of machine shops effectively using manual mills to make parts.