It’s that time of year where we reflect on all the things we’re thankful for! While we’re all thankful for our families and good health, as machinists, what are we thankful for? This list isn’t exhaustive, as I’m sure we’ve missed a few things, but here are nine things the machinists at Tormach are thankful for.

The Shear Hog is one of our favorite Tormach TTS tools for removing and roughing aluminum here at Saunders Machine Works. We use the Shear Hog on all of our Tormach machines, including our larger PCNC 1100 and the smaller PCNC 440.

 Whether you’re new to the world of turning or you’ve been using a lathe for years, it’s important to know your tools and the best way to use them. Lathe tooling designations are there to help, but they can be just as confusing as the tools themselves.

Walter Sorrells is a professional bladesmith and a YouTube knife maker. His channel focuses on teaching the processes of making knives and exposing the world to everything that is involved in the knife making process. Sorrells recently bought a PCNC 770 to help him produce and standardize his line of Tactix Armory knives.

This is one of the many topics that seems to engender religious fervor from one side versus the other. I personally went through several hundred online articles and correspondences I’ve had with our G-Wizard customers about this choice. For my upcoming Tormach CNC Lathe, I initially had ordered it set up for gang tooling based on my needs, but then hastily added a turret after several conversations with the turret aficionados, just so I could write about and compare the two more fully, and I’m glad I did.

We love making chips here at Tormach, and so do our customers - whether they're making production parts or machined art. Some customers even make unnecessary chips - when a part can be made other ways - just because they want to see some metal fly.