Listen, dude! CNC, or Computer Numeric Control, can be utterly intimidating. Heck, machining overall, can be intimidating. You hear all these gurus out there talking about tenths of a thousandth and one thing is clear: Are these guys from another planet?
I started machining stuff in 1996 when I took a Machine Shop night class on a local college. I have been machining ever since. It’s been almost 20 years and I am still at the Hobby level. I know a few things. Compare these few things to the ones I don’t know, and the ones I do know become either transparent or invisible. They are squashed by the sheer volume of ignorance!
The point is I am not an Expert. Let it be said, accepted and repeated. I am not an expert by any means!
You know what I am an expert of? Eating! I am really good at it, damn it! But when it comes to machining…
So I am not an expert, but you know what? I can CNC! I am not telling you that I can CNC good or I can CNC well. I think it is not even that important. Because at the end what truly matters is that I can CNC. The machine does the hard part!
And if I can CNC, so can you!
CNC requires a learning curve like anything else. This is just how things are! But it is truly my honest opinion that anybody can do it!
Check out videos, learn how to draw in 2D and 3D. Learn about machining processes. Get a good machinist calculator. Read books and blogs. But most importantly, set yourself to practice and fail. CNC is about failing until you get it right. There is not a single CNCer out there who just turned ON their CNC machine for the first time and jewels came out from the other side. It is a continuous evolution in which we are trying to correct mistakes. By eliminating them one by one, we reach perfection!
There are so many software tools out there, the cost of CNCing is not a problem either. There are supremely expensive tools, and there are also free ones. There is no budget on this planet, as paltry as it may be, for which a CNC solution cannot be assigned to.
So stop thinking about it and start CNCing!