Machining For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

This book gets into the nitty-gritty of CNC machining. It was written by a successful machining industry professional. It covers milling and turning operations so that anyone, and I mean Anyone can understand them. I would rate this above a high school shop class foundation book. If you are thinking of getting into this field or operating a machine shop, it will give you some very useful information when it comes to making decisions upon metrology tools for insuring that your parts are dead on, machining accessories that will allow you to offer more services to your customers thereby making more money. You will also learn about tooling to use for cutting materials on your machines and how best to pick and choose. Gee, what are those coatings for anyway? I cannot recommend this book enough for someone looking to learn more than just the basics about tool & die.

Lots of good information. Recommend this book.

‘For dummies’ books are always good. My book arrived readable but it looks like whoever packaged it should have been told that they can’t play with the box cutter anymore.

This is not a great book for hobbyist like myself but I found it quite educational anyway. The author knows a lot about the industry and provides an entertaining overview of current metal cutting technology. There is little expectation that anyone would still be using a plain old lathe so don't expect a detailed description of screw cutting and such. It has a good bit of jargon for a 'Dummies' book but is an easy read otherwise.

Even if you have basic knowledge of machining and can operate a lathe or mill as I could this book can help you go a step further. Learning to do tapered threads and just helping on some of the things that you weren't doing quite right but didn't realize it.

The "For Dummies" series are frequently excellent books that cut to the chase of essential information for novices. "Machining for Dummies" attempts to be the same for industrial volume machining, providing a broad introduction to the tools and techniques of modern multi-axis, computer-controlled machining. If someone is considering a career in machining but knows nothing about it, then this may be the book for you.However, if you are looking for an introduction to hobbyist/craftsman machining on a small, one-off basis in your home shop, look elsewhere. The book talks about manual, hand-driven lathes, milling machines, etc. as "has-beens" and devotes no space to describing them, let alone providing instruction on setup or use. In fact, the book is almost totally descriptive, not instructive, of even its intended focus of machining techniques. Again, if you are looking for a resource on how to operate machining tools, this book is scarce on useful information.The book, even for its chosen focus, has a major flaw, and that is a lack of adequate illustrations to help the reader understand unfamiliar concepts and terms. Lengthy text like "There are two types of X the machinist needs to know about, and here is a description..." would have been greatly enhanced with an illustration or photograph. Many of the photos that are included are overall images of large commercial machines or proprietary tools that provide very little detail about the actual function of various features. In addition, the explanation of G-Code is haphazard and confusing. A disappointing purchase.

This book caters to those using CNC and very modern equipment. Most of us are using machines that were winning the war in 1945! It’s highly useful for the basics and learning your way around milling and lathe though the CNC technology changes to quickly they will need annual revisions to keep up.

As others have said, this 300 page book would probably be 250 pages if you removed all of the jokes and sarcasm. Adding insult to injury, the really isnt much useful data in here. This is basically a 300 page Wikipedia-like article on machining without much actionable data. If you're sitting in front of your new hobby lathe or mill and looking to get started, this is not your book.