Found a CNC Intro Book Which is Easy to Understand

[SteveHGraham]

I found an interesting resource to help me understand CNC, and I thought I would pass it on and see if anyone has comments. It's a new book called CNC Milling in the Home Workshop, and the author is Dr. Marcus Bowman. It came out in April.

I just finished the chapter that explains the basic concepts of CNC. It defines things like "controlled point" and "absolute origin." It talks about the difficulties of orienting the tool in the workpiece's coordinate space.

I don't know what the rest of the book is like, but if the rest is this good, I should end up with a good foundation so I'll have some idea of what people are talking about when they discuss CNC.

I wish it were about lathes, but you can only ask so much.

http://www.amazon.com/Milling-Workshop- ... inw_strp_1

[ken572]

Steve

Thanks for sharing your GREAT FIND.

NOTE:This type of book is always a KEEPER.

Ken.

[SteveHGraham]

Did you check it out? I had to wade through about three tons of math and science texts while getting my physics education, and I can safely say that it's pretty rare for a technical book to be that readable.

[ken572]

Did you check it out? I had to wade through about three tons of math and science texts while getting my physics education, and I can safely say that it's pretty rare for a technical book to be that readable.

Steve,

The reason I like not all, but most Basic Books
are they do not keep secrets from the reader, so
they have to go buy three or four more books to
solve a problem.

I haven't checked it out as yet, but it is on my
GET THAT BOOK LIST, and when I find a
good deal on one, I will buy it, and put it in my
reference collection. Trust me it will be well used,
by my kids, and grand kids, and me.

I have all of my technical books that I purchased
for all of my classes I have taken in the past 46
year's.

Just about all of them have notes in them that are
now yellowed aged scrap's of paper on how I did
my project's, brain storms, and fumbles/mistakes.

IRREPLACEABLE.

Ken.

[Bruce_Mowbray]

My 2 cents.

It looks like this book assumes that the reader has a CAD/CAM program to generate the "machine readable info". I believe the absolute beginner should learn how to generate his/her own G code to make the mill/lathe move. There is a way to take a hande drawn sketch and translate the shape into G code without the use of a CAD/CAM program. Even complex shapes as those shown in the book preview are really not that hard once the machine programmer understands basic G code operation. Lots of times the output from a CAD/CAM program will not put out exactly what the operator wants. The simple way to alter this is to rewrite some of the G code to make the machine do what YOU want. Also, one can write G code with a simple text program like note pad and the usually is recognized by most machines. A basic connection between the computer and CNC machine is all that is needed for file transfer.

Perhaps I should write a book?

[ken572]

My 2 cents.
Perhaps I should write a book?

Good Morning Bruce

Start writing, You will sell many.

Also, I'm sure Discount's for The Home Machinist!

members would be appreciated.

I sure would buy one.

Ken.

[rrnut-2]

Thank you for the info Steve, I just bought it.

And I have most of the parts for my CNC milling machine.

Jim B

[SteveHGraham]

I hope it turns out to be a good reference for other people who are in my situation. I don't even care if's not a perfect fit for me. The simple explanations of the fundamentals of CNC are worth the ten bucks. I wasn't able to find that anywhere else.

[ken572]

I hope it turns out to be a good reference for other people who are in my situation. I don't even care if's not a perfect fit for me. The simple explanations of the fundamentals of CNC are worth the ten bucks. I wasn't able to find that anywhere else.

Good Morning Steve

Yup Very Well Said

Ken.

[magic9r]

I believe the absolute beginner should learn how to generate his/her own G code to make the mill/lathe move. There is a way to take a hande drawn sketch and translate the shape into G code without the use of a CAD/CAM program.

For a hobbyist with no desire to make parts with any complexity any time soon that's a great idea, it's the way I was starting based on advice in may forum posts across many sites.

If I'd known when I started what I know now I'd have realised that anyone with the intention of aquiring even basic CAD/CAM and/or making parts with any complexity should read a G-Code reference so they have an outline idea of what the codes mean and knows where to look them up -

http://linuxcnc.org/docs/html/gcode.html

then concentrate on learning the CAD/CAM of their choice, using a commenter now & then -

http://www.buildlog.net/cnc_laser/cnc/g ... mment.html

to see what the generated code is doing, just for interest.

Knowing that G-Code is there and how to look up what G-Code is doing is a great idea, it allows fault finding when there is an error in generated code (which will usually be the fault of the Post Processor) and helps with editing the Post Processor if required.

Knowing how to manually write G-Code is lovely but seeing the work produced by hobbyists without even an overview of what G-Code means shows that it's not key to using CNC, it's a great pastime if you have no parts to make though

[rrnut-2]

I bought the hard cover book and I am up to chapter 4. This book is written so even I can understand it. The author even gives the commands in both Mach 3 and LinuxCNC with the pieces of software in their own colored box. I my case, I have Mach3 so I can easily ignore the LinuxCNC as I am reading. His instructions are mostly for the small mills, but I am sure that the bigger mills that run either of these two software packages, it will be the same.

Jim B