- Joined
- Sep 4, 2013
- Messages
- 99
I, too, am an autodidact, and after 30 years I can now make pretty much make anything I want to with my imagination, a tooled up lathe and mill. My machine tools have been a fun hobby and on occasion, profitable, too. But, you will never reach perfection no matter how hard you try. Perfection is an ideal and hence, unattainable.
Perfection and precision are not the same thing. A perfect project is one that has no flaws. I can quite honestly say I’ve never achieved perfection on any project. Others, not machinists, may say it looks perfect, but I can see the slight mark in an out of sight spot and know that the polish is not quite what I really wanted. To the customer it is perfect, but I know that if I ever do this again, I can make it a little different and it will be better. A really good way to redefine perfection is to say does it do the job for which it is intended? If the answer is “yes”, then it is perfect, or at least close enough to perfection to pass muster.
Precision, on the other (machinist’s) hand is being able to reach a specified dimension with the required accuracy-whether it is 0.1 inch or 0.0001 inch. I have found that with my equipment and experience, I can reliably do about 0.002 inches. But I will always try for that dead nuts reading every time. And I’ve done it a few times, too.
Skill comes with experience and experience comes from making chips. So just keep making chips and you will get experience. I must admit that some of the things I’ve learned from experience I really didn’t want to know. Sometimes the lesson and the test come at the same time! There is no such thing as a stupid mistake. There are, however, a great many learning experiences.
My experience has been that 90% of the time is taken up with design and set up, with no more than 10% of the time actually making chips. The more time I spend on design, and set up, the fewer mistakes I make.
The most important thing is for you to have fun. Enjoy what you are doing. For me, when my lathe is humming and a gleaming spiral of aluminum is spinning off a nicely finished surface, life is good.
Perfection and precision are not the same thing. A perfect project is one that has no flaws. I can quite honestly say I’ve never achieved perfection on any project. Others, not machinists, may say it looks perfect, but I can see the slight mark in an out of sight spot and know that the polish is not quite what I really wanted. To the customer it is perfect, but I know that if I ever do this again, I can make it a little different and it will be better. A really good way to redefine perfection is to say does it do the job for which it is intended? If the answer is “yes”, then it is perfect, or at least close enough to perfection to pass muster.
Precision, on the other (machinist’s) hand is being able to reach a specified dimension with the required accuracy-whether it is 0.1 inch or 0.0001 inch. I have found that with my equipment and experience, I can reliably do about 0.002 inches. But I will always try for that dead nuts reading every time. And I’ve done it a few times, too.
Skill comes with experience and experience comes from making chips. So just keep making chips and you will get experience. I must admit that some of the things I’ve learned from experience I really didn’t want to know. Sometimes the lesson and the test come at the same time! There is no such thing as a stupid mistake. There are, however, a great many learning experiences.
My experience has been that 90% of the time is taken up with design and set up, with no more than 10% of the time actually making chips. The more time I spend on design, and set up, the fewer mistakes I make.
The most important thing is for you to have fun. Enjoy what you are doing. For me, when my lathe is humming and a gleaming spiral of aluminum is spinning off a nicely finished surface, life is good.