By sheer numbers alone, a company's CNC environment is populated most with operators and setup people. A company having ten CNCs may have but one programmer - but they'll likely have several setup people, and as many as fifteen to thirty operators (depending upon the number of shifts they run).

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For this reason, companies have the most trouble finding, hiring, and keeping people to setup and run their CNC machines.  If you're a person who's looking to get into the field of CNC, this course makes a great place to start.  If you're an employer who needs to quickly bring newcomers up to speed, this course will jump-start your in-plant training program.  Students will learn what is involved with setting up and running CNC machining centers. 

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Content and scope

In this course, we assume the student has very little or no previous experience in a manufacturing environment. Indeed, the first Key Concept is devoted to teaching basic machining practices, and gets the student ready to learn about CNC. Topics here include shop safety, shop math, blueprint reading, tolerance interpretation, measuring devices, and machining operations performed on machining centers.

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While these topics are often considered prerequisite to learning about CNC, more and more people are entering the field of CNC with little or no shop experience – so we include this very important prerequisite information.

We use a Key Concepts approach to teaching CNC. This proven tutorial method allows us to stress the reasons why things are done as importantly as how they’re done. It provides a building blocks approach to learning. And it limits the number of things the student must master in order to become proficient.

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The Key Concepts are further divided into lessons. Most lessons include quizzes and practice right in the text (answers provided close by) and every lesson ends with a test (answers provided at the end of the text). This combination of visual and audio presentation, tutorial text, explanatory illustrations, and lots of practice dramatically simplifies the task of learning how to setup and run a CNC machining center.  And it can be used over and over again - an important consideration for any employer.

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There are four Key Concepts divided into twelve lessons:

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• Key Concept number one: Get ready to learn about CNC machining centers

  • Lesson One: Basic machining practices required for machining centers

  • Lesson Two: What does a CNC machining center do?

• Key Concept number two: Know your machine from a setup person’s or operator’s viewpoint

  • Lesson Three: General flow of CNC process

  • Lesson Four: Machine configurations

  • Lesson Five: Understanding the control panels

  • Lesson Six: Important procedures needed to run the machine

• Key Concept number three: Know the three compensation types

  • Lesson Seven: Understanding compensation

  • Lesson Eight: Fixture offsets and assigning program zero

  • Lesson Nine: Tool length compensation 

  • Lesson Ten: Cutter radius compensation

• Key Concept number four: Master the tasks to run a CNC machining center

  • Lesson Eleven: Tasks related to making setups

  • Lesson Twelve: Tasks related to completing a production run

 

When finished with this course, students will have a firm understanding of what it takes to setup and run a CNC machining center. However, we must point out that there’s more to learning how to setup and run a CNC machining center than can read in a book or watched on a video. Students will need hands-on practice with an actual CNC machining center in order to fully master its use.  This means employers must still provide some on-the-job training in conjunction with this course.

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Even with this limitation, we do provide the classroom-type training and the theory that a student must understand before they can spend any meaningful time at a CNC machining center.