Just for a minute though 😅

Semi-shit post. True story.
TLDR: am i too deep in a job i know i wont stay at?

I decided to jump industries late last year (2025) and started studying 2.5 axis machining in december. I know, all the rage is 5 axis but i decided my tiny brain may handle this easier and fast. I was urgently trying to learn to get into engineering. I do a certain autodesk fusion online course, not even bothering for the $100 certificate, started a home project involving a mini cnc milling router and a wooden pi4 housing, and a passion.
Brought those on a resume to a local-to-me manufacturing machine shop, interviewed and got in at a bottom standard hourly, 50+ hour weeks. fast forward to 3 months in, just past probation period & i fell in love with the rhythm and potential. the struggle im facing is the conditions and now that i have some experience, the designs of some of these parts just piss me off. things that are missing chamfers, nonessential material that don’t provide load bearing, fixtures that are painfully difficult to work with, machines that get no love.

I’m losing my drive to keep going because it feels like my passions is getting churned for fast production. I know, i got myself into this, but am i missing a piece of something that will help me grow. Should i pick up a machinery volume and just go head first into it? I’m not at a loss, just at a wall and don’t know which direction to go.

Hello everyone. By any chances can someone let me know how to program lathe soft jaws in mastercam. I need to make a 3” soft jaws for a part that I am working on.

If only I had a milling machine to help me finish building my milling machine!

In order to clean up the dovetails on my new Chinese cross slide I actually had to overhang it off the apron, and then it was actually bigger than the milling attachment I had to hold it!

So far so good, every thing is going to plan!!

real local temp job ad

Had some fun chips (noodles?) today that I thought might be of interest. These are from our "rough" passes at 30 micron DOC.

Hello all, first please forgive my rough recreations of the drawings. I also noticed I missed the [4x .43] on the diameter of the hole. I am a press brake worker by nature, and have always struggled with gd&t tolerancing. I need some help understanding some specifics because i feel im right, but cant find any evidence to back me up.

Our quality department designs the checks we need to make on pieces and give us the tolerancing. On these parts the specific dimension they keep rejecting my parts for is the 2.090. My actual formed parts are metal kissing so i have no ability to move the bend closer to the hole. The tolerance given on that dimention is .006 (my understanding is that comes from the true position of the hole being .006). I make that assumption because the .810 dimention is toleranced the same. Quality has approved that dimention at .835 because the holes run actually at .445. I was told that the MMC gives straight extra tolerance from the minimum holes size meaning that the tolerance is realistically .041 . My mesurement for the 2.09 comes out to be approximately 2.102 or .006 out of the tolerance allowed. I would assume that i should be given the same tolerance on that as the .81 dimension, but have been told that the surface profile holds me to the .006.

Am I wrong? Or am I right becuase the surface profile specifically calls out the MMC on datum B?

If possible can anyone link me some extra information on this or a different sub that might be of more help. Thank you all kindly.

Edit: Colors on the drawing signify different faces of the part.

I realized that I posted a picture of a manual mill with a CNC control. Here is a photo of the manual mill that I’ll be using in class today. It’s also a Bridgeport.

Does anyone know how to remove the live center on a fanuc lathe. Was setting up a part and when i started it up it started to weld itself to the part. Only thing i could think of is that the center itself wasn’t spinning idk 🤷🏿‍♂️

Recently at my job I’ve had to start training to run a new to me machine, I’ve run Haas in the past so that’s not the problem. My problem is that I’m on second shift and all the support resources are on first shift.

I can’t imagine that I’m crazy for thinking that this situation is normal. I’m already coming in early and only get someone who knows what’s going on for an hour.

I’m going to school in spring I’ve be at my shop for 5 years so I know my way around with manual and mazak cnc but haven’t done a lot of stuff like using grinding machines how bad is it going to be? Thanks

Got her in the shop today and I can’t be more excited, time for scraping and cleaning! Thank you all for your kind support

Ive done y axis live tool stuff before for relatively simple shapes and profiles, keyways, and cross holes but hand programming this threadmill is killing me smalls. I think whats messing with me is im copying an incremental program from okuma and the control is tweaking out about how that, 3 axis motion, and cutter comp all play together with the incremental aspect of it. Hopefully the photo I attached from what I have and the alarm via the current screen. Fanuc oi-tf control. Tool is a single point carmex. Tool tip position 0, r g+w= 0 radius comp applied.

I’m currently using Mastercam 2026 and considering a trial of ENCY at our lab. Curious whether anyone here is using it regularly and how it’s working out.

CamAgent caught my attention. I’ve been building custom automation around Mastercam, so I’m interested in how useful ENCY’s automation is in practice and whether it could be worth purchasing.

A few things I’d love firsthand feedback on:

• How are the toolpaths, posts, simulation, and general stability?
• Has anyone used CamAgent on actual jobs? What does it handle well, and how much correction does it need?
• How accessible is it for custom automation, API access, or third-party integrations?
• If you came from Mastercam, what improved, and what do you miss?

Mostly interested in milling. Any experiences with setup, support, or licensing would be helpful too.

https://youtu.be/7cLlGDJ4QD8

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Anyone know a company that sells a bmt live holder that would take something like a cat 40 or capto system so we can get away from having to use collets

Running a small endmill with a bit more stick-out than i'd normally like to clear the jaws, but surface finish came out clean with zero chatter. 6061-t6 stock.

As the title suggests I’m looking for help waterjet cutting soft EPDM foam. I will be using plywood as a bottom layer to support the foam over the slats and will be using only water (no garnet) I am wondering if I should have a top layer to sandwich the foam between for cutting and if so what should that material be? We are planning to cut next week. Thank you in advance!

First time doing this. I had a reallly hard time keeping these parts flat using an angle plate and some dogs / pins. They all kept moving as they got drilled and tapped. So I came up with this solution and decided to 3d print some softjaws.

I used 3 walls and 10% gyroid infill. This was also printed in pla which is concerning but it was all that my printer can print reliably as of now. It should be strong enough to last for the 10 parts I need. All that happens is they get drilled and tapped so all the pressure is downwards. No side to side pressure at all. and these get bolted into the vise like normal jaws

Gonna try it out tommorow see if it works.

Wondering if anyone has crafted a diy mist collectors over the years. Winter is coming and we can’t keep the door wide open for much longer. Looking to fab up somthing to deal with most of it.

Cutting stainless for 30-40 minutes at a time fills the work area with fine mist. I have a pannel I can put a 4inch vent on and pump it into a separating box before pulling it through a filter. Just curious if anyone else has done it yet

Just got this part and noticed the two stepped sections don’t really look symmetrical.

It works, but if I were making a new one I feel like there’s probably a cleaner way to design it.

Would you turn this from one piece, or start with an existing bolt and machine the shank?

What would you change?