How do you become a CNC machinist?

Category : Beginners

For On-site CNC Training
David: 07834 858 407

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How do you become a CNC Machinist ?

For On-site CNC Training Contact David: 0783 858 407

 

Every day at the CNC Training Centre we get calls from people wanting to get a job as a CNC Programmer or CNC Machinist .

We can’t get you a job but we can get you started on the path.

That’s why we put these courses together.

These courses are designed to get you started on CNC Machining.

If you are a beginner and want to do a hands on course that teaches you to become a setter operator then try these two courses. These are ideal if you think you can get a start on the ladder and don’t want to jump in at the deep end.

Setter Operator Beginners Turning

Setter Operator Beginners Milling

For absolute beginners with no experience at all. Looking to start a career in CNC Machining..

Beginners CNC Machining

If you work on a CNC machine already and you want to advance by learning some programming skills then look at these two courses.

Learn to Programme Basic Milling 

Learn to Programme Basic Turning

I’ve read enough just let me Apply Now

 

It’s important to realise that there is absolutely no guarantee that you will get a job at the end of this training.

Or a company car.

Read to the end of the article for the good news.

These are two day courses but it will take years to become a skilled machinist.

Beginners CNC Turning

CNC Machinist

Beginners CNC Milling

CNC Machinist

These courses are for people who have little or no experience and the idea is to get you on the first rung of the ladder.

Starting with moving the machine around in Manual Mode.

CNC Machinist

To creating simple programmes.

 

CNC Machinist

 

You’ll learn some basics about measuring equipment.

CNC MachinistCNC Machinist

And we’ll teach you about the common materials used in manufacturing.

Well maybe not gold but steel, brass, aluminium and stainless steel.

I served my time at Rolls Royce as an apprentice circa 1971 (do the maths I’m a real old git).

Well maybe not that old.

It took four years before you could even start as a proper engineer. Even then there was a kind of unwritten rule that you still needed a fair bit of time before you actually would be any good.

In them days there weren’t many people who could call themselves a CNC Machinist. That technology was in its infancy.

There were over 200 apprentices at Rolls Royce then. If you add to that all the other companies in Coventry alone. The pool was massive.

Manufacturing was destroyed in the UK in the 1980’s. Let’s not get political. But it isn’t any better now.

 

 

Before I put you off all together and you start looking into hairdressing let’s give you the good news.

The Good News

There is a huge demand for CNC Programmers, Machinists, Setters and Operators. That means it’s a good trade to be in.

Employers are inclined to take more of a risk as a result.

More Good News

There are no filters. Engineering is still old school if you can do it you’ll more than likely get the job.

In the smaller companies no-one cares too much about what qualifications you have if you can do the job.

Please don’t quote me on this it’s just an observation.

So that means if you’re a quick learner and you study hard you got a good chance.

Suggestion To Become a CNC Machinist

Do anything you can to get started in a small CNC Machine shop.

Cleaning up, making the tea anything. There is a good chance if you keep getting in the way, one day when they are really busy you’ll get a chance to run a CNC machine.

Mine is a single-shot-caramel-soya-latte in a Chevron Denby cup.

The number one criteria is to be reliable!!

Of course you need to keep reading the articles on this website.

Colleges are a good place to get the basic training as an engineer but you’re probably not in a position to go to full time college.

You may well have to take a drop in salary to get started but try not to think about the money.

That’s easy for me to say. What I mean by that is if you get any opportunity to learn then grab it. It may mean working over or coming in at the weekend but….

The learning is yours forever.

We offer onsite training and before I start working with my students I always talk to them about their own personal development.

The company they work for is spending a lot of cash to train them and will gain massively from the training. The student will be a lot more valuable as an employee.

That student may even get a pay rise.

The real gain

Knowledge is power.

Now I don’t mean you can go and invade some rich oil state or become a judge on the X Factor.

(Yes that is me) but I ‘m not trying to sell records today.

Your value on the job market is now much higher so every opportunity to learn you need to take. Don’t get me wrong a pay rise is lovely and not to be sniffed at but it’s only as good as it lasts. When you lose your job there is no guarantee you will get paid as much in your next position.

What I always say to students is that if they get made redundant they will gladly pay for college courses or training courses. They will in fact expect to pay.

So when offered any kind of training in the workplace keep this in mind. That is if you want to become a CNC Machinist.

When you get a chance to go onto a new machine or learn don’t hesitate. Yes you are helping the company but even if they don’t realise that think if your own personal development.

Remember knowledge is power.

Beginners CNC Turning

CNC Machinist

Beginners CNC Milling

CNC Machinist

So what you waiting for? Apply Now

Thanks for reading

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Siemens Sinumerik 840d 828 training

 


CNC Programmer How Do You Become a CNC Programmer

Category : Beginners

CNC Programmer

CNC Programmer Salary, what do they earn?

In 2025 it’s around £32,000 a year but it can be a lot more.

When I am training engineers to become CNC Programmers I always say programming is the easy bit. The programme is the tool that makes the CNC Machine do what you want it to do.

When the cutting tool starts chattering and squealing you will need to draw on experience to know why this is happening.

Tooling Knowledge

So you need a good knowledge of tooling.

CNC Programmer

In small companies you need to wear many hats

When a company asks us to programme parts for them these are the questions we ask.

  • Do you know what tools you want to use?
  • Do you have a machining method?
  • Do you have work holding?
  • Do you have feeds, speeds and depth of cut you want to use?
  • Do you have any tips for The Grand National?

More often than not the answers to the questions above are No No No No and “One For Arthur”

Anyway enough of Horse Racing.

Learn Now

Here are two courses that can get you on the right track.

Turning Learn to Programme

Milling Learn to Programme

It is all about experience and unfortunately I have come across quite a few programmers with none.

When you get there it’s not a bad job.

We would love you to come to us to learn to become a CNC Programmer but you will need a whole lot more skills before you will be able to produce good CNC Programs. Being able to program is just another tool and another skill.

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G76 Chamfer End of Thread

Tags :

Category : Fanuc Turn New Stuff

G76 Chamfer, this is another myth exploding article about the G76 threading cycle.

It’s so easy to use cycles like G76 day in day out and never really fully understand how they work.

I certainly did and then one day I thought “Fuck this I need to know more” 

That’s when I sorted out the number of passes thing. If you don’t know how to calculate the number of passes in a threading cycle then you should read the article above.

(G76 Chamfer) I want to talk about the P

G76 P011560 Q20 R.02
G76 X16.93 Z-25. P1534 Q485 F2.5

G76 Threading Cycle First Line
P01   One spring pass       15   Chamfer        60   Thread angle
Q       Minimum depth of cut
R       Finishing allowance

G76 Threading Cycle Second line

X         Core diameter of thread
Z         Thread end point
P         Depth of thread (as a radius no decimal point)
Q        Depth of first cut no decimal point.
F         Pitch of thread

Six Figure P Number Holy Shit

G76 P011560 Q20 R.02

First two digits are easy, spring cuts. No it’s not the latest haircut for April.

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Hitachi Seiki Made Some Brilliant Machines

Category : New Stuff

Hitachi Seiki made some amazing machines many of them are still around. Read about one that I recently trained on and the typos in the manual.

I have pondered for a while about writing this article because what triggered it was a miss print. Actually I don’t know what you call it. Maybe a translation error. If you read to the end you’ll see why.

This article is purely frivolous so if you are seeking CNC Programming knowledge there’s not much. (Except for the bit about the Hitachi Seiki machines)

Read one of my other articles which are crammed with useful programming tips and information.

CNC Programming

Are You a Self Taught at CNC Programming?

It is very common now a days to be self taught in CNC Programming. I don’t have a problem with this because really I fall into the same category.

The problem seems to be with some people is that once they get everything running enough to satisfy the boss they stop learning and look no further.

The thing with me is that while my contemporaries were reading the Daily Mail reinforcing their racist, sexist, homophobic, misogynistic views, I spent my time reading the boring shitty old manuals.

This in turn gave me knowledge that I could use in later life to charge people much inflated prices for CNC Training.

These manuals really were absolute dog shite in terms of the way they were written.

I mean they were full of mistakes and misspelt words and even the smallest thing took ages to understand. Fuck knows why I persevered and learnt, but I did.

Remember there was no YouTube no TicTok not even an Internet. Platform shoes were mandatory even the mullet hadn’t been invented yet.

I still do it to this day, read manuals that is.

“Read More”

G10 Using G10 on a Fanuc Type Control

G10

I am always amazed that so many companies still don’t use G10 in their CNC programs. If you know you know.

I must admit I fuckin hate a lot of the things that young people say like “can I get a Latte”. (Get behind this fuckin counter and make it yoursef if you want to “get it”).

Anyway I kind of like “If you know you know”

No G10… Is this you?

I am sure you have your reasons which I will accept. But if your reason is that you don’t understand it then that’s just not good enough.

So you make a part, it’s all setup and you need to break it down.

If you can fix the work holding in such a way that you can reload it in exactly the same place then you need G10.

Let me explain, watch this video to see how single point location works.

G10 No need to spend loads of money.

You could just bolt a sub plate to your machine table so that vices and chucks etc can have dowels to locate them.

But the main idea is that you can relocate your work holding in exactly the same place every time.

G10
Using G10 on a Fanuc Type Control

This is your work offset page on a Fanuc control.

G10

These figures are written in by hand or by automatic setting.

If you had written this line in your program.

G90 G10 L2 P1 X-440.500 Y-265.200 Z-443.00

They would have been written in automatically when you ran the program.

So the work offset page could have any values in G54 but as soon as you run your program this G10 command will replace them with its preset values.

Make Sure Your in Absolute

Try not to forget the G90 (Absolute) because you may accidentally be in G91 (Incremental). What would then happen is it would add these numbers to what is already in the work offset. Oh dear me.

In G90 it will always replace them.

You can write to G54 G55 G56 G57 G58 or G59 just by changing the P number.

G90 G10 L2 P1 X-140.600 Y-265.923 Z-400.00 (G54)

G90 G10 L2 P2 X-125.500 Y-236.865 Z-313.865 (G55)

G90 G10 L2 P3 X-800.500 Y-563.200 Z-125.00 (G56)

G90 G10 L2 P4 X-440.500 Y-265.200 Z-169.369 (G57)

G90 G10 L2 P5 X-440.500 Y-265.200 Z-123.568 (G58)

G90 G10 L2 P6 X-410.500 Y-235.200 Z-443.00 (G59)

The code above would setup all six work offsets.

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Call David: 07834 858 407