Blurring the Edges: Buying, assembling, and teaching myself to use a 770MX Tormach® CNC milling machine - Softcover

Dunthorne, Steve

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1914933303 ISBN 13: 9781914933301

Publisher: i2i Publishing, 2022

Synopsis

Steve Dunthorne is a somewhat frustrated ‘weekend engineer’ with a small lathe and an old manual milling machine in his garage, whose day job doesn’t reflect his passion for making mechanical things. A chance discussion with a colleague culminated in him ordering a brand-new CNC (Computerised Numerical Control) mill from the USA. The machine is a Tormach® 770MX, a model aimed unashamedly at the high end of the hobbyist market, and certainly attracting the attention of small independent manufacturing start-ups, particularly in the United States.

This book records Steve's journey of getting to grips with assembling all the components and learning how to operate the machine. It is purposely not an instruction manual – the manufacturer has already seen to that need. It is more a chronological log of all processes undertaken by the author, from choosing the right machine through to getting it to make parts. Taking the not insignificant leap from manual machining to CNC manufacturing in the domestic environment has a steep learning curve and this book is intended to assist others going through the experience, with many top tips (having been gleaned from learning the hard way) shared throughout.

Although other books may cover technical and theoretical elements relating to the machine, the author was not able to find any material from a more practical hands-on viewpoint – and therefore chose to write this book in order to help other hobbyists on a similar journey.

About this title

About the Author

Steve lives with his wife in a small village in Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom and has worked in the airline industry for over thirty years. His interests, when not at work, are for all things engineering. He acknowledges how lucky he was to have gone to high school in the seventies when they permitted ‘playing around’ with Colchester lathes in the lunch break, and he is passionate that modern-day schoolchildren should have access to real machines, not just the theory. He is an enthusiastic fan of Titan Gilroy in the United States, whose message is unequivocally that the Western world should be training its young people to manufacture the stuff we currently choose to purchase from the East. He hopes his book will encourage more people to ‘learn’ CNC, and bear witness to many more installations of machines, such as the Tormach CNC mills, particularly in educational establishments this side of the Atlantic.

Edition details

• Publisher: i2i Publishing
• Publication date: 2022
• ISBN 10: 1914933303
• ISBN 13: 9781914933301
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 296