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Rant: Everyone loves those fancy 5-axis machines but I swear they're overrated for most jobs
I visited a small job shop in Cleveland last month where they were running a 20 year old manual Bridgeport and getting better surface finishes than I see from guys with $200k DMG machines. The operator told me 'the machine is only as good as the person touching the handles' and honestly that stuck with me. Anybody else think we lean too hard on automation and forget the basics?
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evaperez10d ago
Oh man, you hit on something real there. I had a similar situation back when I was learning - spent months trying to dial in a brand new CNC mill and getting frustrated, then my mentor had me run a part on an old manual machine he had. Watching him just feel the cut and adjust the handles by ear showed me there's a whole level of skill that automation can't replace. The young guys I see now can program circles around me, but put them on a manual machine to fix a simple part and they're lost (myself included sometimes, honestly). It's like we skipped the part where you learn to trust your hands and ears, and jumped straight to pressing buttons.
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