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Training guide · 8 steps · 1 h 37 min

CNC Path for workshops

Eight steps to get a new operator to the machine able to read a program. Free, no sign-up and nothing to install. It does not replace accredited training or health-and-safety training.

This path puts in order what is scattered almost everywhere else: what a machinist does, what sets a lathe apart from a milling machine, the vocabulary of the shop, and then the part that is almost never explained in plain language — what a CNC program is, what the codes that appear in all of them mean, how to read a whole program and which mistakes break the part or the tool.

It is a little over an hour and a half of reading spread across eight steps. They are meant to be taken half an hour at a time, not in one sitting. At the end there is a fifteen-question quiz to check what has stuck.

What it is and what it is not. This is support material for the workshop: it gets someone to the machine with the vocabulary and with the program understood. It is not an accredited course, it awards no qualification, and it replaces neither formal vocational training nor the mandatory health-and-safety training, which comes before anything here.

The eight steps

1
What a machinist does
The trade from the inside: what the job involves day to day, the types of machining, and how it differs from a turner or a fitter.
10 min
2
Lathe and mill: what sets them apart
The two base machines, what each one does and why a part goes to one or the other.
15 min
3
The minimum shop vocabulary
128 terms from the trade with a search box. No need to read it through: you look things up.
20 min
4
What a CNC program isNew
What a block is, what the G and M codes mean, where the program comes from and what the operator does before cycle start.
8 min
5
The ten codes that always turn upNew
Each code with what it does, an example line and the typical mistake that goes with it.
12 min
6
Reading a real program end to endNew
A complete program annotated line by line: header, tools, compensation, passes and the end.
12 min
7
Mistakes that break the part or the toolNew
The failures that repeat most, how they are spotted and how they are avoided.
10 min
8
Check what you have learnt
CNC Challenge: 15 questions from the trade with a score. It tests what you have read; it does not teach.
10 min

The two-week plan, as a PDF

If you are taking someone new into the shop, this plan tells you what they do and what you do each day over ten working days: half an hour of reading and the rest on the floor, as always. It includes a one-page tracking sheet to print and pin up. Two pages, no sign-up. The PDF is in Spanish.

Download the plan (PDF, Spanish) ↓

Who it is for

For the shop foreman or production manager who has to bring someone up to speed and does not want to send them on an expensive external course for the basics. And for the apprentice or operator already on the floor who wants to understand what is on the control screen instead of pressing buttons from memory.

No prior knowledge is needed. If you already program, steps 1 to 3 are spare: start at 4.

Why it is free

mecanizador.com is an independent project about the trade. We do not sell courses or machines, we do not broker work and we do not charge for a listing in the workshop directory. The material is open because what we are building is the directory, and a directory is worth exactly what the people using it are worth.

If you spot an error or want something added, write to us: the best corrections have come from people on the shop floor.