I feel like I have come along way with CAM since the start of the year. The most important aspects of my learning journey are;
- I have Gotten over my initial fear of the machines and realised that they are not so scary after all.
- Realised that the difficulty of using the machines is in the preparation and setting up, once you press 'START' its up to the machine to do the hard work.
- Always allow time for error and be prepared for some problem solving.
- Do small test pieces of bigger designs! Some processes can be quite lengthy and it is incredibly annoying waiting an hour for a machine to finish only to find out its come out wrong!
- Small test pieces also mean that you do not ruin larger 'good' pieces of material.
- There are a lot of similarities in the set up of the machines, one you have mastered one then the rest should be pretty easy.
- The abilities of the CAM machines allow you to do things that could not achieve by hand
- Contributions ED503 gave to my understanding of CNC
- Have a go of the 3D Printer
- Use the CNC Lathe. i watched another student use this machine and felt I would be more confident using this compared to the manual lathe due to it being encased (which completely terrifies me, even though ive used it)