Letting students take control of the CNC machine for the first time each semester can be terrifying enough if they were paying attention to your wise words of caution, but we all know some of them weren’t taking studious notes. An easy way to save your machine and nerves is to give your students forgiving workpieces, like machinist wax, wood, or plastic, but that’s not always the best solution.

Years ago, when I was starting out as a DIY machinist, my limiting factor was always the ease and convenience of rough cutting stock.

Wood is a great material to cut when you first start learning to machine – it’s fast and cheap. But, machining in wood has a darker side as well.

Some people think of face mills as large diameter tools with lots of inserts. These kinds of face mills need big spindles to push them efficiently, but a fly cutter provides an effective way to face on low horsepower spindles and can deliver superior surface finishes - here's why:

We’ve all been there – that moment of panic when the machine makes an awkward noise or the spindle seems like it’s making a rapid move just a bit too close to the vise. When you learn to trust the machine and your programming, things become so much easier, but there are still a few mistakes that folks worry about making that really shouldn’t be a concern.

We recently had a customer ask about the PCNC 770 and its cutting capabilities. After some conversation about the machine’s ability to cut anything that you can put under the spindle – it all just depends on feeds, speeds, and how long it takes to cut – the customer cut to the chase: “Can it mill Tantalum?”