Mill Training

[rlowe61]

I'm working on a class to train Student on the proper use of a Bridgeport style mill for the school districts' teams. I have a good start on it and I am looking for material utilized by other teams to train students.
I've search the www and have found some (limited) materials used by industry, but most are for a particular brand or a CNC which wouldn't relate to what I'm trying to accomplish.

I'm attempting to make a classroom portion followed by a hands-on portion.
I will be covering mill specific (make and model) operations, but want to cover different type of jobs and functions performed by FRC teams.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated

Roger

[teslalab2]

In my machining class in college they give us a huge packet of dimensions and we have all semester to make the parts, you could sorta run with that sorta thing, idk

[techhelpbb]

Assuming you want to avoid material selection and operations like grinding...

I suppose you'd want to cover:

Tooling
Speed and feeds
Tool loading
Fixturing: machine vises, tool plates, tombstones, parallels
Machine specific functions: knees, power feeds, coolant, DRO
Touching off
Squaring stock
Conventional versus climb milling
Pocketing
Tapping (tap head)
Broaching
Indexing//4th axis

At NextFAB in Philadelphia your first project is to take a piece of scrap and make dice.
We have some notes from County College of Morris that basically are the only training material.

Rlowe61 I would love to see a website setup with a Wiki or Wordpress for this and showing each specific machine and work pieces.

[Eric Scheuing]

EDIT: Misunderstood question. Am an idiot.

[RoboChair]

I have a good number of resources that I use when preparing our students for Mill and Lathe training.

My personal favorite machining introduction is the educational series by Smithy Industries on YouTube. Playlist below.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...88EC2A1583EED2
Do keep in mind that I have great dislike for 3-in-1 machines and feel that you money is better spent on bigger more cost effective machines. However they do a fantastic job of explaining the common machine features shared by all lathes and mills, as well as the basics of operating them. Yes, it's not a Bridgeport walk-through and tutorial, but most of the features should easily carry over to the hands on stuff.

If you want some very in depth machining and shop walk-through's check out THATLAZYMACHINIST's channel on YouTube, he does a great if long winded job of thoroughly covering various topics.

Some others that should be useful to you are Toms Techniques and mrpete222. Also useful is Clickspring, the work he does is informative, highly detailed, and artfully awe inspiring. The things he creates makes the stuff I do look shameful in comparison.

Outside of what you can find in there, just use some pictures and go over what the various parts of the BP are called and what they do/used for. The machine is easy, using it effectively and efficiently will always take practice. Does it/they have DRO's, belt head or variable speed, what features are you going to teach them to use?

[asid61]

We usually have the kids make a rectangular block with a rectangular pocket, 2 blind tapped holes, 2 clearance holes that are counterbored for #10, and a 0.547" hole in the center (bored out with a boring head). That usually teaches the kids the basics of running the BP.
IMO the best way to teach apart from that is to have them make actual robot parts, maybe for an offseason project.
I'll see if I can find the curriculum we used for the community college machining course I took a couple years back... that one was fast paced and covered everything.

EDIT: Clickspring is great if your students are really into art or aesthetics, I love his channel. Tom's Techniques is great for when you want to look up specific processes. Apart from those he mentioned I also use "This Old Tony" as his videos have a lot of humor in them while remaining useful. He also speaks faster than some of the other machinists on Youtube, which is nice for students.

DOUBLEEDIT: Found the curriculum used in the course: https://www.deanza.edu/manufacturing.../MCNC%2071.pdf

[sanddrag]

This How to Use a Milling Machine article is really good.

There is also MIT's Tech TV which goes pretty in depth.

I've put these links and many more, on the Clark Magnet Engineering Useful Links page.

[frcguy]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

This How to Use a Milling Machine article is really good.

There is also MIT's Tech TV which goes pretty in depth.

I've put these links and many more, on the Clark Magnet Engineering Useful Links page.

Thank you so much for linking in your site! I'm definitely going to have our students look at it and watch some of your resources!