It’s fairly common to find machines that have multiple spindle options available. I don’t mean that you can specify multiple options, but that there are actual multiple options delivered with the machine.A very simple example would be multiple pulley ratios. More exotic would be sub-spindles, for example a high-speed auxiliary spindle or speeder on a mill.

Let’s be honest with each other, we all love getting new tools. Getting your hands on a new saw or cutting tool or even an altimeter drives excitement and you instantly find yourself looking for anything that needs to be trimmed, cut, or measured. When you get an end mill that you’ve never used, before you lose yourself in tooling euphoria, do these three things to make your machining experience all that is can be.

These are things I hear over and over again talking to CNC’ers. There are some better ways and some better answers that can really improve your feeds and speeds practices, if you’re open to them. Fixing your feeds and speeds is one of the easiest productivity hacks you’ll ever make.

Your G-code program has ended and all looks well with the part. What’s your next move? For most, the next move is to pull the part out of the machine and chuck up another blank to start machining the next part. But, depending on how well debugged your manufacturing process is, and it isn’t very debugged if this is a one-off part you’re making for the first time, you may want to avoid pulling the part out just yet. Why? Because the easiest time to rework the part, assuming it needs any rework, is while it is still in the original setup where the original work was done.