I admit it. I’m a challenge junkie. Anything that requires a steep learning curve, I’m there. I’d be bored to death working in a factory assembly line connecting widget A with widget B day after day. Hence, I’m self-employed and can turn my attention to where ever my interest lies.

My latest interest is in machining. I’ve been interested in it for years but never took the time to explore beyond what I need to be able to replace a tenon or graphite band on a clarinet, etc. Now I’ve got a bit of a motivation boost. I just purchased a CNC lathe and mill at an auction a couple weeks ago.

CNC Mill CNC Lathe

Last evening, I made my first…uh…thing…from some brass round stock. It’s a completely useless thing but it was a real leap of progress – from repairing the emergency cut off switch to figuring out how to change the presets in the code to allow the tool to get close enough to the chuck to learning to home the machine, set the tool offsets, create a program to tell the cutting tool where to move to, how much to cut, etc. Simply awesome stuff!

Now to create something useful. :-)