Ready to learn, need inspirations and ideas

After years and years of buying (all the way from bare land, to tractor, to building my house and then shop) I'm ready to learn the basics of machining and I believe I have all the right tools and machines to start out doing serious learning on my hobby setup. My goal is to learn, incrementally (by making mistakes and improving one by one) each and every aspects of manual non-cnc machining and I need help, direction, information, inspiration to reach these goals.

Tools/machines I have: (you can see a common theme here, bottom of the barrel cheap hobby stuff that I can afford then later one day buy the real things)
Lathe - 7x14 Harbor Freight (3" chuck -missing outside chuck, but have faceplate) [don't laugh I have to start somewhere], ~$200 basic tooling
Milling Machine - Little Machine Shop Hi Torque Mini lathe 3990, 12" X axis .0004", extra tools, heavy duty vice, R8, most tooling
Waste Oil burner, smelter, crucible, basic ingot and simple mold creation, home made from scrap (siphon design)
Plasma Cutter (CUT-50), MIG ( Harbor Freight 90 amp, crappy AC, Fluxcore), $200 Amazon Prime 160 amp DC stick welder (works amazingly well). No TIG welder yet.
Angle grinders, carbide saw, bench grinders, cut off tools, bunch of Arduino and CNC boards, stepper motors, RPi's

Loads of scrap aluminium, and a barrel of scrap steel, standard shop stuff, calipers, blue dye. I do not have a surface plate , I could use a piece of glass. I do not have a machinist carbide chisels ($200???), I could buy a carbide blade and weld it to something with a handle.

So basically, I can infinitely melt down my failed aluminium projects and start again on any project, be it will be made of soft aluminium. My goal is to one day have a real setup with a Bridgeport, modified for CNC, and a nice heavy duty iron lathe, all the $2000+ welders/plasma cutters. I would also like to be able to cast iron. but for right now, I think I have basically everything I need to learn at a hobby level -- nothing should be stopping me except my imagination and motivation. This is a huge accomplishment getting all these things together with my income and took years (yes I know this is the cheapest stuff, I'm a small farmer which means I'm always broke). Of course I won't be making a living with the tools I currently have now but my occupation is farming and it is the winter time right now. Money is really tight and one thing I wish I had right now was a copy of the Machinist Handbook to put next to my bible in my bedroom (haha just kidding), but the books are very expensive. I sometimes old ones on ebay for cheap, and the really old original is on PDF somewhere on my hard drive.

So, what should I do?

Where can I start learning all the techniques I need to know to one day be an expert machinist?

If you were to go back and tell yourself what you know today that you wish you had known when you started, about learning the basics and each technique, what would you tell that person?

oregondave said:

Where can I start learning all the techniques I need to know to one day be an expert machinist?

Click to expand...

Well, reading the PM Forum from the beginning is a good first step. The second one would be tackling simple projects. All complexities are made up from simple elements. Man with computer will find most books on something called torrents.

Please don't take this wrong way. It sounds like you have good intentions of learning but this site is dedicated to mostly professional machinist doing this for a living and use the site as a tool.
Also, all the machine you have listed are not even allowed to be talked about on this forum. There are good reason 's for the above as hard as that might be for you to understand.

Where your at right now this not the right form for you. I think you would be much better served on the Home shop machinist forum. There is a great group of guys there that will have much more patients to help guys in your shoe's then 99% of the guys.

If your thread gets deleted unexpectedly don't get too bent out of shape. It just the rules.

What part of Oregon are you in? I am in Beaverton.

See if your library has any machine shop textbooks and back issues of Home Shop Machinist and Machinist Workshop.
Lot of projects and technics to learn from.
Any Tech schools near you with classes?

Dave

This question has been asked before.

If you want to learn how to shape metal properly, don't start with machining. That is like a pilot who learns a power plane, without learning how to fly a glider first.

First learn how to forge metal. Once you can make a decent chisel, your next step should be to make a file using the chisel. When you can make a good file, then you can start making precise shapes.

The first problem you will encounter is how to make a cutoff. To make any part, there are three steps: cut off the blank from a bar, forge the blank, then file it to shape. But how do you cut off the blank if all you have is hammers and files?

If you can answer that question correctly, you will have learned something.

Don't be one of those fucking douchebag hobby guys that always claims to be in the market for "real" machines, but never has any money, time, balls, freedom from wife, etc.

Start by learning how to properly sharpen a drill bit. Then learn to sharpen HSS cutters for your lathe. These two seemingly simple processes are the bread and butter of machining. Especially for those who can't afford to spend the money on carbide insert tooling.

Where to start? Just make some chips. Pick a project and go at it. Pick something simple at first. One of the first things I made, many years ago and with smaller machines than you have was an accessory for my camera tripod. It was designed to hold a 35mm camera. My tripod did not allow me to tilt the camera for vertical shots so I made a tilt mount. I still use it today so it may have been simple but it was very useful. I made it all from aluminum bar (1" x 1/4") from the hardware store.



My point is pick a simple project and make it. Then pick another one and just keep it up. Pretty soon you will be an "expert".

Welcome aboard, Dave!

I think you'll find that the mini mill is not well suited to actually milling. It doesn't have the rigidity to give a good finish, even in aluminum. I found that the head would not stay in position no matter how tight I got the lock.

At least there are people out there that will buy it.

Hi thanks everyone. I understand this isn't the appropriate forum. I can understand you guys get a lot of my types. I'll make sure I find the right forum next time, but I will stick around.

Right now I'm still trying to find the information to give me the "ahha" moment for basic things such as finding the height of the tool and making precision cuts, and embarrassingly enough, dealing with backlash. For whatever reason I fail to put into practice the concept of calculating backlash in my cuts. Basically I need to lock the door and not come out until I have figured this out. Is there a book that covers the basic basics? I have downloaded several books.

I have almost pulled the trigger on a something like a Monarch lathe and definitely a Bridgeport, the only problem is unloading them and loading them and the shop space. I have the shop built, but no walls or floors. I'm literally months away from finishing the shop and getting a backhoe working, both will help out towards the goal in getting the right machines and then making them CNC-able. I plan on getting into this as a career I can do later on in life as retirement (being you can be a machinist into your golden years but no a laborer your entire life). I plan on building parts for guns, tractor restoration, and other high value parts. Thanks for all your information, I will be back in a year or so when I have the big boy toys.

If you want to go the self taught route, the US Army manuals can provide a leg up. US Army courses | Open Source Machine . There are also project books like this that can step you through the basics, http://lepton.com/metal/sb39b.html or this, Making Small Workshop Tools (Workshop Practice): Stan Bray: 978852428863: Amazon.com: Books .