Do you feel like your unfamiliarity with CNC programming is holding you back?
Without a solid grasp of G-code, it can be difficult to troubleshoot and optimize programs. You’ll be looking at a screen of numbers and letters and not know what any of it means.
The challenge is that to learn this type of programming, you’ll usually need to spend a lot of time and money on evening courses or try to find a knowledgeable guy that’s willing to teach you.
This is why online, self-paced learning is such a practical option.
The program that I highly recommend is G-Code Tutor. It’s got excellent lessons for learning good habits in programming and gives you the knowledge you need to stand out.
This is really well suited for the crowd that already has a grasp of machining principles and just needs to learn how to tell the machine what to do. If you’re an operator or setup guy, and want to upgrade, this’ll get you where you want to be. It’s also practical for hobbyists that want to better understand what they’re doing.
Beyond that, though, there’s an extremely useful tool: A G-code simulator. This means that you can try writing your own code and running it without crashing an expensive machine. This is the kind of stuff that you normally only get with trade school.
If you enroll for this training, you’ll be able to handle more than just manual programming of mills and lathes. There’s also training for CAM with Fusion 360, and an entire course of macros (which are insanely powerful once you know what to do with them).
With these courses, you’ll be getting in-depth video lessons with examples and diagrams so that you can easily follow along. There are several free videos that give you a sample of what the course is like so you can decide if this style of learning is right for you.
Marc (the instructor) regularly updates his courses to make sure that you’re getting the best teaching possible. This is the stuff that lets you dominate the shop floor.
Here’s an example of how expertise with G-code really helped me overcome obstacles:
At one shop I worked at, an older lathe sat mostly unused for about 10 years. When I asked the guys why they didn’t use the machine, they said that it was buggy.
For context, the guys I worked with were CNC machinists. They were great with Mastercam and they did terrific work.
But they didn’t know a thing about manual programming.
It turns out that the machine just used a slightly modified G-code language. Within 3 days, I put together a postprocessor that output the code in the format that the machine needed. Bugs gone.
If you want to be able to handle issues like these, as well as fine-tune and debug programs by actually understanding what you’re doing, I’d really recommend that you consider self-paced online learning with G-code Tutor. Stop letting knowledge gaps hold you back from the career you want.