I tried gently pointing it out to the new guy. He halfway deburred the job that quality would reject and went back to leaving his parts untouched for the next guy (me) when we changed jobs.

We just got this monster.

I'm sure I'm gonna catch flak for my homemade clamps as well, lol.

Today was the first day using my Atlas 618 lathe. I watched some safety videos and some how to tutorials but my cut still look trash the cross slide handle was pretty loose and it would tend to move around when it was cutting so I would try to hold it with my hands while I manually moved the carriage. I also noticed that the carriage tends to move left and right pretty easily. I was cutting a pretty large piece of aluminum so the stick out was pretty bad. As you can see, I did have a steady rest, but it was kind of weird using that because there's no wheels and it's kind of just metal on metal. I also noticed that the tool would kind of move the aluminum bar towards the opposite direction when it touched the bar. I just feel so lost right now kind of discouraging not gonna lie. Any tips.

Has anyone used this surface plate before? I would like to buy one for layouts and some testing. But I dont want to break the bank. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated

I took a 4 month course back in March - July to learn the basics of machining. This course was funded by the state for the demand of younger workers in the trade, so it was completely free for me. I graduate from this course as the top student because I wanted a better life and career. I put my all into this course, when I was in high school I took welding at a trade school that lead me to nowhere. It was basically a second shot at trade school for me. Turns out I should have taken machining instead of welding in high school.

Since graduating, I landed myself a great position at an aerospace company. Right now I’m an entry level machinist. I am learning machines that do deep hole drilling. I’ve gotten feedback from my coworkers that I’m doing great, 100% better than the last few people they had hired for this position.

Eventually this company will send me to a CNC school. Which is awesome. I already know basic G code stuff from the program I was in. I studied like crazy. I was also told that some of the guys that work there make up to $70 an hour, which is crazy to me. I’m making $26 an hour already which is more money than I have ever made.

I’m just happy I found a job I enjoy and that pays really well. My life is starting to get better every day at this place.

I'm new but the experts at the shop I work at are always talking about how "Clarence is Clarance". They have a shrine for this guy and they say he got us to the moon. I can't find anything about this guy online, so let me know. He is definitely a legend in our community and apparently very famous.

I machined the full internal keyway using 4‑axis simultaneous motion. If I need an even smaller corner radius, I can use a smaller end‑mill to clean up the fillets. Realistically, that radius can get extremely close to zero. I’m sharing my programming workflow so everyone can check out this really neat technique.
（Addendum: Truth is, I spent half an hour fixing the issue for the boss. You know how that scene went? The boss walked into the shop with the client, asking if anyone could sort out the problem. I stepped up and bet I could pull it off. Not only did we put our idle machine to good use, I also got to demonstrate my skills. So what’s wrong with me wanting to share this technique with others?

For context, that inner fillet was added at the client’s request. They were worried sharp‑angled corners would get clogged up with dirt during use. On top of that, we didn’t have a long‑enough R0.5 flat‑end cutter. The nearest tool suppliers and wire‑EDM shops were dozens of kilometers away. Wasn’t this the most practical solution available?）

Hi everyone. I’ve seen headsets with three different types of volume controls: +/− buttons, an up/down rocker switch, and a large rotary dial.

Which one works best in practice? I’m looking for something that’s easy to operate while wearing gloves, quick to adjust, and difficult to activate accidentally.

Received my cards yesterday. Not sure if I should open them up.

So we recently had a loss of generational knowledge and I'm desperately trying to find any manual or just general knowledge about this beast of a machine we have in the shop. It works like a dream and we generally use it to hog out holes in 3/4 bar stock.

If this is the wrong sub chastise me relentlessly I kinda deserve it.

A couple of months ago I got a small watch makers lathe and I've already grown out of it.

Soo..

I did what any sane machining addict would do.

I went on Facebook Marketplace,

And I got this beautiful lathe, that I think is roughly 120 years old. (From the info I got from a museum)

It's an old Danish lathe from the company Nielsen & Winther. They made planes, but I couldn't find anything about it online, so I asked around and got a contact to a guy in a museum that specialises in the industrial History, he thinks it might be a lathe designed for the workers in the factory to buy for themselves. Whether i believe that or not is not important, but isn't she gorgeous?

Now there has been a couple problems like gears being mangled in the facing auto feed.

But I got replacements, and found the reason why the gears failed, there was a missing bushing.

But at this point I've had it for 2 weeks working on it, ( I have moved it into a dry workshop, it's not outside like in the picture)

and it works and has no play in the spindle. ( Surprisingly)

I got a crate full of extra bits and pieces, well worth over what I paid.

The Grand total I paid for it all was 1000 dkk or about 150 usd.

Anyone here with experience on Harrison’s Alpha system? I am trying to turn a 3mm radius on the inside of a ring and the radius I am coming out with is closer to 1.5mm. We have done the same cycle on 2 different machines with different results.

I’m having a strange issue with a Victor V-Turn 26HD (Fanuc control).
I set up a part and get it exactly on size. For example, the finishing tool offset is at 0.1mm and the part comes out correct.
However, when I run the exact same program for the second part, the finishing tool suddenly cuts significantly deeper, despite nothing being changed in the setup or program.
The strange thing is that if I change the finishing tool offset from 0.1 to 1.0, run the finishing pass, then change it back to 0.1 and run it again, the tool then cuts correctly.
This has happened multiple times and I’m trying to work out what could cause it if anyone has any idea, thankyou

I’ve heard good things and bad things about each cam software. Which one would you go with for these machines and why?

I recently reset my life and moved to the desert and got a big girl job as a machinist. I've worked with an old Bridgeport, desktop cnc mills, and hobbyist cnc lathes (think tormach), plenty of my friends are machinists, and my father worked in QC, so I figured it might be fun to try an actual job running big machines.

Fun is... not the term I would use.

The shop I've ended up at is decidedly old school, running cnc machines from the 90s as well as manual machines. Nothing is written down, everything is tribal knowledge. Everyone is specialised, so mill people run mills only, lathe people run lathes only, etc., and each person has exactly one machine they use. No one really talks, and I am the only woman there, and definitely the only person with colourful hair lol

Today in particular wasn't fun because I had just finished both operations of a batch of parts, and polished each one, only to be told they're all scrap because one feature was exactly 0.010" off. Turns out the drawing is incorrect, both in where you're meant to measure from and the tolerance of said feature, neither of which was communicated or checked. In trying to fix it, I also learned the program is wrong, making the feature wider than it should be. Bear in mind, from how I interpreted the drawing and thus how I was measuring, it was within tolerance, hence making a whole batch without question. Now I'm being told I need to remake all of them, which I guess is fair enough and better than being fired.

In this whole situation, I learned there are no standard operating procedures, they just use ISO as the standard and use whatever works to meet said standard. I also learned the programs are freely edited by anyone without telling anyone else, so it's up to me to check programs (for machines I've never used) to make sure it's correct. I was also told to edit said program myself, which I can barely do and especially not effectively. There's no formal QC inspection process, not even a signature or a checklist. Setups are done entirely by reading the program, no formal setup sheets or travellers or anything else i was told by friends I'd be working with.

Is this normal? This feels like chaos...

Luckely it only needed a shallow hole with M16.