CNC Programming Handbook, Third Edition (Volume 1) 3rd Edition

I bought this text mainly for its treatment of cnc lathes. My training was only in cnc machining centers (mills), we used the Lynch text. I'll give you a simple calculation to engage you a little. The z coordinate moves along the axis of rotation of the shaft or workpiece with the x coordinate being the radial distance (signed) of the cutter from the axis of rotation. Say you'd like to cut a helix or screw threads on this rod or shaft, uniformly spaced of course. With one revolution of the shaft your screw would advance one thread and be at the beginning of the next one.You want t threads per inch (TPI). The distance advanced in one revolution is then (1/t) inches per thread or revolution.The rate the cutter must travel along the z direction is then (1/t)xRPM where RPM is the rotation rate of the shaft in revolutions per minute. This RPM will depend on the material of the shaft-cutting speed which you look up in the machinery handbook.This rate or feedrate you see then is in inches per minute. By the way x can be given a feedrate also for a taper say.This little blurb is just to give you some idea and get you thinking mechanically. Next for the review:You're assumed to know how to read prints and mainly how to picture in your mind or sketch the object from a standard 3 view orthographic projection drawing (front view, right side view, and top view). The front view actually gives y and z coordinates of the points of your object, right side view gives x and z, top gives x and y. This is why given two views you can draw the third using a miter line (inclined 45 degrees with respect to the y axis anywhere in the y-z plane). This is as bad as it gets and this of course pertains to a machining center. For a lathe a 2 view or even single view will suffice. The coordinate assignment which you can get right off the print as soon as you choose a convenient origin (called program zero) as explained above will be the coordinates used in your program. G codes give cutting tool movements with or without a feedrate from point to point. M codes give machine state like spindle rotates clockwise or counter clockwise or spindle stops and returns home. Enough-Send Cash! The author uses Fanuc control codes which is nearly standard as other controls may have some slight differences if any-you'll have to check the manuals. Tool movement codes are illustrated and clearly explained. Whole examples are given from print to program-quite good. A nice feature is the CD with the free 2 week trial of NCPlot software which allows you to enter your program on your pc and see the result when you run it. I would use this toward the end though if you don't plan on buying it. If you followed along so far mostly you could learn it self-study from this text. In truth there's software that reads print details from a SolidWorks file for instance and writes a good deal of the program for you. Still it's a good skill to learn, you'll need it to interpret what the CAM software is doing and to know where your input is required.

Book has lots of information and will take me quit some time to get thru, but has already helped provide clarity in the programming language and process

I know some people are being critical about this book because it was written by a non-native English speaker and you can sometimes tell. Big deal! As a CNC programming book i think this as good as it gets. I bought a CNC mill a few months ago and started learning to program it by actually making parts for a staircase out of aluminum. I needed cutting, drilling, countersinking, slotting, tapping etc. This book has everything i needed and more. Whatever i needed to know, it is there, with much detail, real example G-Code ready to be used. I took this project step by step, completing a part as far as i could then tackling the next challenge. Always went back to this book and found what i needed. Never once did i not find anything of thought this could have been explained in more detail. I think this book is absolutely brilliant and i highly recommend it.

Update 10/1/16: I have received a couple of thoughtful comments suggesting that my review is unfair because the book is not intended to cover graphical CAD/CAM tools, and that the use of machine-level coding is still an important part of programming CAD/CAM systems. I think their points are well made and may be based on greater knowledge of current practices than mine. So I have revised my rating to four stars and clarifying my concerns in this note. I encourage you to read Mr. Bleier's comments on this review for further insights.---------------------This is highly detailed and comprehensive treatment of numerical control (NC) milling machines and lathes, but it is based on the premise that the reader is interested in manually coding the machine, and all the examples consist of dense lines of machine-level numeric code. The book reads like it was written twenty years ago, and it essentially ignores all the amazing progress of the last several decades of CAD/CAM software evolution. Of the 500+ pages of content, only the last 16 are devoted to the use of graphical systems to design and produce three-dimensional objects. The author introduces this final chapter by assuring the reader that the reading the book up to this point "has not been a waste of time" -- which strikes me as a pretty revealing comment -- then goes on to explain what a mouse is and how it can speed things up as compared to using a keyboard. This is clearly a highly regarded text in the CNC field, but I would recommend it only for those who will use these machines extensively and need to go deep into the details of how high-level designs are translated into low-level machine controls and tool paths. If this is what you need to know, this is the book for you. If you simply want to use a CAD/CAM system to design and produce a part, the book is unlikely to be of much value to you.

I purchased this in New Condition.Very Nice Quality and a Very Informative book.Required for a couple Manufacturing Classes I'm taking.Usually a "Cheap" College Textbook is paperback and seems slapped together.This is a Hardback copy and the overall quality is amazing for the price.The only thing that bothers me is, as an analytical reader I catch quite a few spelling errors and I'm not but 5 chapters in.A lot more errors than I would anticipate out of a published text.However it's not a major deal, and the simplest minded person can easily tell what is being said.As always, Amazon has the best price and availability.