what mode switch position allows you to send the machine to its reference (home) position?

It can be a difficult concept to grasp, but consider a tire rolling down the street. If that hunk of rubber rolls one-quarter mile in 60 seconds, its equivalent "cutting speed" would be 1,320 feet per minute (equal to 15 mph), which is a fairly normal clip if this were a carbide tool machining aluminum. Now imagine your car's axle is a machining center spindle, with a Michelin-sized end mill mounted to the tire. Jack it up so the wheels are in the air, hop in, and apply the gas until the speedometer hits 15 mph. Voilà! The outside of the end mill/tire will be zipping past the surface below at 1,320 SFM (surface feet per minute).

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Spindle speed for machining centers is always specified inqui

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when coordinates going into a program arespecifiedrelative to the program zero point, itiscalled

Kip Hanson finished school in 1979 and got a job at a small machine shop in Minneapolis. Over the next thirty years, he worked his way up and eventually moved into manufacturing consulting and freelance writing. Today he has nearly 600 published articles across dozens of magazines and websites, covering everything from machinery and tooling to metrology and 3D printing.

You're about to venture into CNC programming territory. Sorry about that, but because of the way machining centers and lathes operate (and cutting tools cut), some prerequisite knowledge of G-codes is needed to make sense of the following feed and speed discussion.

The button that will actually turn off the power to the machine toolis

Okay, but how fast is the thing actually rotating, or its rpm (revolutions per minute)? Since machining centers don't have gas pedals (nor gages that announce the current cutting speed), spindle rpm is the value we have to plug into the CNC program. To determine this (you might need to break out the calculator), simply multiply the recommended cutting speed by the value 3.82 (round up to 4), and then divide by the tool diameter. For example, the ridiculously priced All Season 235/55R19 tires are a smidge over 29 inches in diameter, so that would mean (3.82 x 1320 SFM)/29.2 = 173 rpm.

Hi everyone, I was redirected here from r/woodworking, was told you folks were a good source for this. I'm a small-time woodworker/hobbyist in a small shop (read: my third bay in the garage) and I'm looking to invest in a decent CNC machine I can use to start creating personalized items. Ideally I'd like something with at least a 24"x24" surface, no need to cut anything other than wood. Price is always a factor, I'm just hoping to strike a good balance been affordability and reliability. Any recommendations I should look at? Which specs are most important? Really I have no idea where to start so any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Cutting speeds are specified in feet per minute (imperial measure), or meters per minute (for metric). On a rotary tool such as a drill or end mill, this is a measure of how fast its periphery spins relative to the workpiece clamped to the table. It's essentially the same with the tools used on lathes, except that their cutting speeds are measured by how fast the spinning material moves past the edge of the (stationary) turning tool.