For those who work in CNC machining industries, it’s normal that you’ll encounter some problems at first but this isn’t the case usually. For those who are still beginners, you have a difficult understanding of everything at first as you would want to know everything within a limited space of time.
Knowing about the common myths and misconceptions will go a long way in helping you navigate the murky waters that are CNC machining. In this post, we are going to talk about briefly the common misconceptions associated with CNC machining.
It’s a simple and easy job
Well, this is usually 50/50; for some people, it might be simple but, for others, this might not be the case. The concept behind this thinking is that the machining parts make everything accurate, easy, and faster.
Well, it’s not that straightforward; its rather a bit complicated than that. As the process goes along, you’ll get to know more about the process such as setting your work area, factoring in some adjustments for improvements and evaluation as well as programming.
The benefits of doing this are improved quality products and improved rates of production.
CNC machining services, *Picture from businessfirstfamily.com
Anybody can control the CNC machine
The entire set-up of the machining process has been designed in such a way that a person with less experience can operate or run the CNC machines. The truth of the matter is, the operator must have the technical skill and expertise to perform a wide variety of tasks.
The normal tasks of the operator include unloading and loading, dull-tool recognition, workpiece measurement, dull-tool replacement, cycle activation, sizing adjustments,acceptability evaluation, and cycle monitoring just to mention a few.
For some firms, they will expect their machining operators to do more which requires some specialized skills thus debunking the myth that anybody can do it. With the right training and some experience, you should be able to comfortably handle the machine.
It’s easy to predict the completion of production
In the production of CNC machining, operators and engineers can predict when the production cycle will end. A machine with a 5-minute cycle time can take up to 30 seconds to load and unload, producing more than 200 parts takes just 18 hours to complete.
While this can be theoretically true, there is also a myriad of factor which influence the completion of the production process. The cutting tools may vary as they have different times depending on the material being worked on.
The replacement of dull tools can take only a few minutes but others can also take a while; predicting accurately when the job is going to end is quite difficult as there is a wide variety of factors that come into play in the entirety of the production process.
G-Code programming is no longer used
A lot of managers nowadays believe that a large percentage of CNC machines solely use the CAM system. This is quite true that most companies use it but want most people to forget is that the output of the CAM system is G-Code, the operators use this code manually.
The G-code run these machines when the G-Code runs into a hitch; the program can be easily changing at the computer than letting an engineer or coder change at the CAM system
CNC machining is a simple and easy process, if you have the right knowledge and techniques it will be a walk in the park.