The Home Machinist!

Dial indicators are better at measuring actual motion. If you want to move .050", you use a dial indicator. Dial test indicators are comparative devices - if you want to compare the height, position, et cetera of two things. DTIs generally have a lighter spring pressure than a dial indicator, a...

Toastydeath, Where did you serve your time? There aren't many good apprenticeships left anymore. Most programs are in Mom and Pop shops set up for tax incentives. There isn't usually the variety of equipment to required to produce a well rounded machinist. Good to see there is one in the N.J. area....

We do not have any 5 axis mills, no need. We have trunnion tables for our mills, but rarely use them. I, being fairly new to the industry, probably would not be the one programming the mill when the need arises. =)

Several times?

I am employed as a machinist. I've never had cause to use a dividing head, but rotary tables, spin indexers, et cetera. I do both manual and CNC work.

Jose, some of the instruments and techniques I'm talking about may very well have been under development and unavailable, or just recently put into production at the same time you were working on what I can only assume are diffraction gratings. May I ask what years you were working at Berkley? The m...

Haha, you guessed it. I'm a 21 year old college student and career machinist. I'm studying mechanical and precision engineering, trying to go into precision machining engineering in the long term. My employer is quite generous, and provides plenty of resources and opportunities to pursue (and work o...

Bill: No sweat. A quick preface. In a machining sense, nothing is going to top a microsine table, dividing head, or rotary table. So, if your interest is, "What's the best way to machine angular relationships?", than any of those items can be had to about the same accuracy. The rotary tabl...

I would like to argue that rotary tables used for indexing are much, much more accurate than it would appear. Using one example, a Moore rotary table is accurate to +/- 2 arcseconds at any point in the rotation. They're a bit pricier than other tables, however. I am not aware of any model of dividin...