CNC PROGRAMMING HANDBOOK Hardcover – 15 November 2007

I got the book in just 10 days very fast considering it was dispatched from USA. Very good book for learning CNC programming

I started and interesting.

This is the book I have been looking for. It is not cheap but it is worth its price.

I bought this text mainly for its treatment of cnc lathes. My training was only in cnc machining centers (mills), we used the Lynch text. I'll give you a simple calculation to engage you a little. The z coordinate moves along the axis of rotation of the shaft or workpiece with the x coordinate being the radial distance (signed) of the cutter from the axis of rotation. Say you'd like to cut a helix or screw threads on this rod or shaft, uniformly spaced of course. With one revolution of the shaft your screw would advance one thread and be at the beginning of the next one.You want t threads per inch (TPI). The distance advanced in one revolution is then (1/t) inches per thread or revolution.The rate the cutter must travel along the z direction is then (1/t)xRPM where RPM is the rotation rate of the shaft in revolutions per minute. This RPM will depend on the material of the shaft-cutting speed which you look up in the machinery handbook.This rate or feedrate you see then is in inches per minute. By the way x can be given a feedrate also for a taper say.This little blurb is just to give you some idea and get you thinking mechanically. Next for the review:You're assumed to know how to read prints and mainly how to picture in your mind or sketch the object from a standard 3 view orthographic projection drawing (front view, right side view, and top view). The front view actually gives y and z coordinates of the points of your object, right side view gives x and z, top gives x and y. This is why given two views you can draw the third using a miter line (inclined 45 degrees with respect to the y axis anywhere in the y-z plane). This is as bad as it gets and this of course pertains to a machining center. For a lathe a 2 view or even single view will suffice. The coordinate assignment which you can get right off the print as soon as you choose a convenient origin (called program zero) as explained above will be the coordinates used in your program. G codes give cutting tool movements with or without a feedrate from point to point. M codes give machine state like spindle rotates clockwise or counter clockwise or spindle stops and returns home. Enough-Send Cash! The author uses Fanuc control codes which is nearly standard as other controls may have some slight differences if any-you'll have to check the manuals. Tool movement codes are illustrated and clearly explained. Whole examples are given from print to program-quite good. A nice feature is the CD with the free 2 week trial of NCPlot software which allows you to enter your program on your pc and see the result when you run it. I would use this toward the end though if you don't plan on buying it. If you followed along so far mostly you could learn it self-study from this text. In truth there's software that reads print details from a SolidWorks file for instance and writes a good deal of the program for you. Still it's a good skill to learn, you'll need it to interpret what the CAM software is doing and to know where your input is required.

Only book on the market that I know of, that is suitable for cnc programmers and machinists. Covers a wide array of gcodes, still like the machinery handbook the book should be revised to make it suitable to new standards and new codes. Covers basic cartesian mapping to help you understand how to localise you parts with zero set. Macro programming is also covered great (sub programming). I wish that book would have been mandatory during my 3 years studies to become a machinist. Price is a bit steep from my point of view since it's almost a dying trade. We are a rare breed of birds. That book makes us honnor.I strongly recommend it to lost teachers... students with lost teachers... apprentices that had lost teachers. Even long time machinists that are working in the field of CNC always working on the same parts since your brain tends to forget over time, the book is great for referal use in case you're not sure wich canned cycle to use.Cheers to all my machinists brother around the world.

Good shape, cd still in it

I know some people are being critical about this book because it was written by a non-native English speaker and you can sometimes tell. Big deal! As a CNC programming book i think this as good as it gets. I bought a CNC mill a few months ago and started learning to program it by actually making parts for a staircase out of aluminum. I needed cutting, drilling, countersinking, slotting, tapping etc. This book has everything i needed and more. Whatever i needed to know, it is there, with much detail, real example G-Code ready to be used. I took this project step by step, completing a part as far as i could then tackling the next challenge. Always went back to this book and found what i needed. Never once did i not find anything of thought this could have been explained in more detail. I think this book is absolutely brilliant and i highly recommend it.