Leveling Up Your Manufacturing Skills: A Deep Dive into Subtractive Manufacturing

JOSH READER: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the first session of your AU experience. Thank you for joining us.

Today we'll take a quick deep dive into subtractive manufacturing with the aim of upscaling many of you in understanding what subtractive manufacturing is about. In my previous experience at AU, I noticed a lack of manufacturing expertise among attendees. Although Autodesk is a majority in the construction business, it is still important to raise awareness on the manufacturing side. With this quick session, I want to ensure that if any of you ever visit a factory or speak with manufacturing engineers, you have a better grasp on what's happening.

The day's aim of the session is to obtain a base understanding of subtractive manufacturing processes, gain an appreciation of component setup and programming techniques, and understand the importance of design and manufacturing intent.

So before we proceed, I'd like to mention a crucial disclaimer and give some time to read the safe harbor statement. In case, I mention any dates, or you see anything on my PC that is pre-release, please refrain from making any purchasing decisions based on that information.

Now that we've addressed that, let's take a look at our agenda. First, I believe it's essential to introduce ourselves, sharing our backgrounds and experiences. Afterward, we'll delve into the industries that CNC serves, the variety of machine types and tooling, machine methods and techniques, how a machine is set up, and we'll leave ample time at the end for Q&A.

So allow me to introduce myself. My name is Josh, and I work out of the Birmingham Technology Center in the UK, one of Autodesk's high-tech workshops. Our primary focus is ensuring that our manufacturing software is thoroughly tested and reliable before our customers use it. We aim to prevent machine crashes and guarantee high quality end products.

I've been involved in this work for five years covering machining projects across various industries, including medical, automotive, aerospace, and a substantial amount of prototyping. Alongside my work at Autodesk, I'm also studying for a degree in mechanical engineering.

And with that, I'll hand over to our co-host, Seth.

SETH MADORE: Hello. So to introduce myself, my name is Seth, and I've been in the machining industry all my adult life. I've worked in small manual shops up to multinational aerospace and defense contractors. My experience lies mainly in 3- and 4-axis milling, as well as lathes and mill/turns, all of which are going to be speaking on today.

Growing tired of commuting each day roughly 10 to 12 hours a week, seven years ago I started my own shop working out of my garage. I needed a CAD CAM solution to drive my machines, and I knew I found the solution when I stumbled upon Fusion 360. Over the years, and countless interactions with the developers, product managers, and the Fusion community in general, Autodesk offered me a position in the customer engagement organization of Fusion 360. I now work for Autodesk full time, and my main responsibilities are to engage with and represent the needs and interests of our customers, back to the software folks, and contribute to continuous improving the software, which has enabled thousands of creators to realize their dreams and goals.

JOSH READER: So you now know who we are and what we're about. Let's get into it.

So let's begin by discussing where CNC fits in. CNC machines encompass a wide range of equipment, such as milling machines, lathes, and more. So now we're going to take a look at what industries use CNC machining.

First of all, we have the aerospace industry. CNC machines can offer sub-micron accuracy, which is less than 0.001 of a millimeter. This is the kind of accuracy that is required in the aerospace industry. Everything in this industry has to be of the highest standard due to the dangers and implications that can come of it.

In the top left-hand side, we have a blisk. Everything in an aircraft, from blisks, the landing gear, and everything down to every screw on an aircraft, will be CNC-machined to extremely high precision. As I said, in the top left-hand side, a blisk is part of the engine on an airplane. And it's one of the most complex parts of the machine. They all have to be symmetrical, they have to be balanced, and have to have a perfect surface finish. This kind of part requires a lot of programming experience and care due to the 5-axis nature of the component.

Moving on to the photo in the bottom left is an air intake pipe. This follows the same need of accuracy to the blisk, and need for 5-axis machining. But something as simple as the toolpath direction can affect the performance of this component. So using a CAM package such as Fusion 360 ensures that you can select the exact toolpath direction to adhere to the customer demands.

And small components on the right-hand side, which is a hydraulic aerospace connector, must be of extremely high accuracy due to the pressure involved with the hydraulic systems, and we must ensure that the part in real life reflects the calculations of the test engineers who design the component.

Then we have the mold and die industry. It's huge, yet not known by the majority. Many everyday items you possess have components that are produced using injection molding, items like tools, packaging, car panels, wheelie bins, kayaks, many other household items are also injection molded. In this industry, precision and surface finishes are of utmost importance, as any imperfections on the mold surfaces will be reflected on the final plastic product.

So let's think about how many parts they're making per day. Some of these companies are making 100, 1,000, 10,000. Who knows how many they're making? But they will all have imperfections if that mold tool's not right.

As well as this, inaccuracies can lead to issues like the escape of hot plastic down the sides. And this adds something called flash. And to remove these bits costs more money and more time. And no one wants that for their business.

So in the images above, we can see in the image in the top left, we can see that there is a mold which creates a toy, which is the exact mold which is used to create the car bodies at the F1 in schools stand here at AU. So if you're interested in seeing what a mold produces, head down to there at some point this week. You get to design, make, and race a car.

And then, on the right-hand side, we've also got the back part of a speaker mold. So it really shows you the range of applications of mold tools.

Moving on to the automotive industry, the automotive industry is heavily influenced by subtracting manufacturing. But I've already talked about a few traditional component making. But clay modeling, which you can see in the bottom left-hand corner, is slightly different, and it's an extremely important part of the design process for car manufacturers. It allows the manufacturers to have a real-like model of the car in the future.

They start off small with multiple parts. But toward the end of the design, they're full-size cars that we can add panels and other parts of the car to bring it to life without building the internals of the car. They can add new clay to remachine new shapes. And you can't do that with any other materials. So just being able to add on parts and remachine it to get the perfect surface you want.

There's also many videos online which show clay modeling and how it works. You can really see how this brings the design to life. So manufacturers show off their clay models in museums, which are fascinating. You get to see the old types and prototypes of the cars.

Other processes I haven't mentioned is that many parts that are CNC-machined actually come from castings, and more recently, 3D printing. This is so that their near net shape, but this is where it lacks precision. And in the required areas, what we can do is add extra material on, then be put on a milling machine secondary.

An example of this is the wheeled hub upright on the right-hand side of the presentation. This part is a generative design part, which is really difficult to fully machine. So printing the part is more suitable, and then as having a secondary process for CNC milling.

And we can see that there's the-- where the parts join other parts, we can see that there's flat areas rather than the generically designed shapes that we can see in the photo. And that's where it's been milled.

And then the medical industry is another area where CNC is crucial. A lot of implants, like bone plates, hip joints, screws, and more, are all CNC machine because they have to be a perfect fit to one another. Shape, size, weight, and accuracy are all super important in the medical industry as well-- and sterilization, which is super difficult when it comes to machining.

The medical industry usually uses smaller tooling as well. So some components, especially in the dental industry, can use tools as small as 0.2 millimeters, which you can imagine, when machining titanium, they break a lot.

Bone screws as well, which are turned on a lathe, super fine, sharp threads that attach to the bone, which is another area which has to require super fine accuracy. And before making these kind of things, I didn't know that bone screws were that long.

SETH MADORE: Now that we've had a good look at a variety of machine components, let's take a quick look at the sorts of machines that are involved in this demanding industry. Let's dive right in to the different types of machines that are common in this industry. We're going to start by presenting a brief overview of what are called milling machines. These machines have between 3 and 5 axes of motion, and can be small enough to fit through an office door or as large as a small house. For example, my two milling machines weigh 6 and 7 tons each-- not light at all.

These machines can be extremely accurate, and expensive, but there are options that span the whole range of budget and intended use. At the top left, we start off with a Datron Neo. This is a high-speed 3-axis machine that works really well for softer materials and sheet-type work. Equipped with a powerful and intuitive machine control, don't let its size fool you either in price or capability. It is an expensive machine.

Up in the center top, we have one of many examples of your standard VMC. Which stands for Vertical Machining Center. And it's called vertical because the spindle is oriented in a vertical fashion. These machines are typically 3-axis in configuration, having just an x, y, and a z, although they can also be fitted with a rotary axis, called a fourth axis, which grants you access to three sides of the part, as well as cylindrical-type work. These machines are extremely common, as they typically provide the best value when entering into the machining arena. Walk into any shop that does machining, and they're going to have at least one or more VMCs.

On the top right, we see an example of what's known as a 5-axis mill, or universal machining center. Where our prior examples were limited to a moving table, and possibly a rotary axis, these machines are different in that the entire machine table can rotate around two axes, and the machine spindle contains the x, y, z motion. These machines also offer exceptional value, as they are often capable of reducing the amount of setups required, which translates into less handling of material and chance of human error. Machine setups are something we will be discussing later on in the talk, so it's OK if you're not familiar with that term.

In addition, these machines can be fitted with pallet systems that provide immense value by way of allowing for an extreme amount of unattended or lights-out machining. Typically, a machine has an operator that's parked in front of it, and what they do all day is they load the part, they take it out, they load the part, hit the button, and the cycle repeats. They'll inspect some features.

With pallet systems, you can have many different stations set up at the same time, and the machine will automatically change to the next one and the next one. So if you have large quantity production to do, and you need to run it through the weekend and through the night, the pallet system is the way to go.

Lastly, we have the Horizontal Machining Center, or HMC for short. These machines are very similar to the VMC, except you just turn the VMC on its side. So the spindle now becomes horizontal. This sort of machine is really geared towards high-production manufacturing, where many parts can be machined in one cycle. In VMCs or UMCs, it is typical to have one or maybe a few parts loaded in the machine at a time, due to the use of vises and other workholding methods.

However, an HMC utilizes a tombstone system that allows for eight or more components to be held for machining. Like the UMC, this machine is also often fitted with a pallet system, which again allows for serious unattended machine time.

And lastly, we'll take a look at the image in the bottom center. And we see a digital twin of the HMC to its left. Seeing this machine infusion, along with all of our fixturing, and our models, and the parts we're making, and the tools gives us the power to verify what we're doing to maximize our throughput and to optimize the machine to its fullest extent.

Just a few minutes ago, we were showing you some samples of parts that are made in the machining world. Anyone with a bit of mechanical insight would rightly assume that it took many different kinds of tools to accomplish those tasks. While tooling is something we'll be discussing later, I thought it appropriate to describe how the machines we just discussed manage all the tools we need.

In the image above are a couple of examples of what's known as the tool magazine. On VMCs, vertical machining centers, capacity is typically between 16 and 32 tools, whereas HMCs and UMCs can hold between 40 and 250 unique tools. And so we have one tool is loaded in the spindle, and it's doing its function. When it gets to the end of its function, a whole nice mechanism swaps out with the next tool in line, and then the machine continues on running. Off to you, Josh.

JOSH READER: Oh. So now that Seth has shown you a bit about machines, let's take a look at what these machines do in action. So here we have a solid end mill cutting aluminum in an adaptive high speed milling manner. We can see that it's only cutting in three axes. It's dropped down in z and only moving in x and y. And these are the cutting moves.

Again, if you hear us mention the word swarf, this is the material you can see flying away from the tool, which are just small pieces of aluminum in this case. Don't put your hands near them. They're really sharp.

Now let's delve into 3 plus 2. This is very similar to the previous 3-axis toolpath. However, we can move to further axis. And then we have our milling machine lock them. And then the machine in a 3-axis state. Obviously, this video is sped up, but hopefully you can see the state of the machine changes, and then it machines in a 3-axis motion.

Another thing we have to do here is check all the collisions that can go on inside the machine. As you can see, how close the head gets to the table, the tool gets to the vise. There's multiple things we need to look at when we're machining. And that's where our digital twin comes into play.

So I've mentioned 3-axis and 3 plus 2. So 3 plus 2 is specifically moving the axis, then machining in a 3-axis motion. But 5-axis is slightly different.

So here's some beautiful 5-axis machining. 5-axis is great to [INAUDIBLE], and helps make you make amazing components. But the key is, don't use it when you don't need to. It adds many variables into your machining projects which can affect the quality of your component. This is also dependent on the quality of the machine tool you have.

This 5-axis toolpath may also look very complicated. However, its programmed in Fusion 360. We have an option called automatic collision avoidance. And all this does is it looks for the collision in place and tilts the tool away a specific amount that you input. So it's really nice quick and easy 5-axis machining.

SETH MADORE: So our previous few slides focused on the milling side of manufacturing. One other type of machine that's quite common in its usage is the humble CNC lathe. While milling involves a rotating tool, a somewhat stationary workpiece, and prismatic or feature-rich parts, turning is roughly the inverse of that, with the part rotating, utilizing primarily static tooling, which again we'll discuss later in this talk, and typically cylindrical-shaped components, with notable exceptions. So let's jump right in, shall we?

At the top left, we have our standard 2-axis lathe. In the smaller sizes, this is often the most affordable and common lathe arrangement, as there are fewer moving parts, and the machine is rather simplistic in nature, having only a z and an x. The downside to this machine is that you are limited in efficiency, as there's only one spindle, one turret, and one tool in use at any time.

That said, these machines do excel at their intended usage. So don't let that dissuade you. These machines can be small compact machines, suitable for a small corner of the shop, or several meters long and quite large, requiring careful placement in a large shop.

One such example that I've encountered in my career was for turbine shaft machining. So these are power generation shafts. And the material starts out as 2 to 3 meters in diameter and 12 to 14 meters long. The machine is so large that the operator actually sits on a carriage and rides down the part very slowly with the cutting tool. It's pretty wild to see it.

So in the top middle, and top right, we have the next-level version of a 2-axis lathe, the turn/mill lathe. This machine took the principles of a 2-axis lathe and decided, you know what? Why don't we add another couple axes and a couple extra spindles and see what we come up with? The result of this experiment yielded a machine that often has two chucks, one of which is on a sliding headstock, granting the ability to transfer parts from one chuck to the other, as well as a y-axis and a c axis-- c, for added motion and driven tools to allow simple milling operations to be done in the same setup.

In the bottom left corner, we have the latest evolution of the notion turn/mill. This machine took all the concepts of milling and turning, and crammed them all into one gorgeous and very large machine. Like the prior turn/mill example, these machines also have additional axes, and often two chucks, but also dispense with the single turret in place of a milling head that includes b-axis motion.

Instead of a couple dozen tools that are fixed in the turret, this sort of machine has a tool carousel quite similar to machining centers. Additionally, these machines can also be supplied with a traditional lathe turret in the lower section to allow for both chucks to be machined at the same time. Watch out for those clearances, though.

Before moving on to our discussion about tooling, I also wanted to highlight the differences in tool management for the various types of lathes we've been reviewing. On the left, you'll see what's referred to as the turret of a standard 2-axis lathe. There's really nothing fancy about it. It holds static tools and can index to each one as needed.

In the center we have a fully loaded turret for a turnmill. And you'll notice a mix of static tools, like the prior turret, as well as rotating tools, and mills and drills in this example. And then, lastly, we have one example of how a true turn/mill machine can manage its tools, an external magazine that operates quite similar to a milling machine.

And so here we have a quick example of how a lathe functions, with some bonus turn/mill action. So we have a roughing tool that came in, hauled off some material. We had a grooving tool came in to rough out the undercut area. We drilled it. We're going to bore it. And then, lastly, we're going to use a live tool, and we're going to mill a hex around the outside of the part.

Earlier on in the talk, Josh showed you a whole plethora of components that are made on the milling side of things. Here is an opportunity to get an idea of what lathe parts consist of.

So one very common theme among almost all of them is they're cylindrical in nature. They may have features in them, and so all of these are representative, of course, of a mill/turn. But they all contain lathe features as well. They look simple to make, and it seems like it would be a simple idea.

When the rubber hits the road, and you actually have to start making things, you realize that lathe work is actually quite challenging, especially when you have a part that's 6, 8 inches long, and you have to hold a very tight tolerance on it. You have to get really creative in what you do. On to you, Josh.

JOSH READER: So we've looked at parts. But now let's look at how material is actually cut on a milling machine. So here are some of the most common tooling used in industry. So drills. I hope everyone in the room knows what a drill does. It's as simple as hole making.

But there are many different types of drills and functions that these drills have. There are spot drills. And these just have a small hole in the surface to guide another drill in, to stop longer drills from wandering off on the top of a surface.

To improve some of the drills, they have holes which go all the way through the drill. And this is for through-spindle coolant, so that there's always coolant at the cutting surface of the drill, which also lubricates and evacuate swarf. And to mention a few, there are countersinks, counterbores for specific features.

Moving on to the most common tool used in milling, the flat end mill. They use for machining flat sidewalls, flat floors, and roughing 3D shapes. You'll notice that end mills have different numbers of floats, and this is down to what material they're machining. Flat end mills can also comb with a tip radius, which is known as a bull nose. That's B-U-L-L. This allows for fillets to be added on the surfaces [INAUDIBLE] 3D form to be machined, and also known to last longer due to not having a sharp edge which can easily break.

Now on to ball noses. So that's B-A-L-L. Not to be confused with bull noses. I know. Who came up with that name? Ball nose end mills most commonly finished 3D form with a small step over and a small step down to create a clean surface, which you can also see above in the ball noses.

And then insert cutters. They are also a heavily used piece of kit in industry. They come in all shapes and sizes. But the key point is here, that they are as large as 80 millimeters, if not bigger.

And it would be a waste for this to be solid carbide. If that whole tool was solid carbide, and that tiny little tip at the end broke, you've got to scrap the whole tool. That's going to waste you a lot of money. So using small inserts on a steel tool allows you to save money, and be more cost effective.

And here's a few more pieces for you. The chamfer mill is always added to add a small break edge on a model to avoid burrs, which are sharp edges on materials. As you can see, it also adds on chamfers on either side of the component. So we can have a 3-axis machine that also can get to the bottom. So what we can see is the tool that goes straight down the middle of that hole, it's using a back chamfer tool to chamfer the bottom of the hole. So we don't have to turn that over and do another setup just to get to that hole.

And how are threads added in? Using a thread mill or a tap. A thread mill interpolates down a hole, or up, machining out a specific thread, whereas a tap plunges into the stock, creating the form.

And finally, reamers. Reamers is a tool that's used after drilling to create a precision hole with a super-tight tolerance. The most common reamer works to a H7 tolerance, which is 0 to plus 35 microns, which is a very small tolerance.

And finally-- I mean, there's many more tools around in milling. But finally, we're going to talk on form and custom tooling. So custom tooling is what it says. A specific person will go to a tooling vendor and ask for these tools to be made. And that's because it optimizes the tooling space in your tool carousel, if you've only got a few. It reduces the number of operations, which therefore decreases cycle time, which means more money. Who doesn't want more money?

For example, the three form tools above replace nine separate tools that were needed. So we've now got six more pockets available to put more tools in.

And then, Seth's now going to talk to you about lathe tooling.

SETH MADORE: Thank you, Josh. So now that you folks have had a decent overview of milling tooling, hopefully a couple things stand out to you. One, they're all rotating tools of some nature. And two, they're also primarily solid carbide in construction, with some exceptions, such as drills and reamers.

Things are a bit different in the lathe world, as turning employs static holders with small carbide inserts that are held in place with a screw or a clamp. As I suggested earlier, turning involves rotating the workpiece, and then the machine will feed the lathe tool into the part, methodically peeling away the layers of material, similar to an onion. The chips or swarf produced from this action can often be quite stringy. But with proper application of speeds and feeds, how fast you're spinning, how fast you're feeding, as well as insert selection, one can often end up with quite manageable swarf.

Some examples of turning tools shown above. Outside Diameter, or OD, roughing and finishing tools. The difference between a roughing and a finishing tool in the lathe world is rather small but significant.

Chip breaker design. And that's how the tool-- is how the material will impact the insert, and then fold and break the chip. Chip breaker. Very clever. Insert nose radius and insert toting are the main differences between a rough and a finished style holder.

OD grooving and part-off blades, these as their name suggests, are responsible for machining narrow grooves that will be in the diameter or the face of a part. Part-off tools, finally are used for separating the finished part from the parent stock, which would either be held in the subspindle or caught in a parts catcher.

Much like the OD turning tool shown in the last slide, ID, or Inside Diameter tools work in very much the same manner. One notable exception is that the holders themselves are typically cylindrical in design, as this provides a balance of strength and clearance for swarf. And of course, very much like the milling world, turning tools can become very, very small. I've never had to touch anything as small as what Josh has mentioned, but you can get down into the 1 or 2 millimeter size, and I'm sure someone out there has done something much smaller. On to you.

JOSH READER: Now that we know a little bit about tooling, we're going to dive into the stages of machining, and gloss over what CAM is and how it works.

CAM stands for Computer-Aided Manufacturing, and it's in a version of offline programming, where the software generates specific toolpaths around a shape. And as we can see, the lines represent cutting moves. So the cutting moves on the part, which we can see in front. The blue lines represent the cutting moves. And then we have the green and the yellow lines, which represent moving.

This is then posted using a post-processor. And then the machine can read that in its own language. So every machine has a different controller, and every controller takes a certain posted code.

So this is sort of a four-stage process which programmers and machinists go through. There's the roughing, the semi-finishing/picking out, the finishing, and the deburring. And all these CAM packages available offer specific areas for these.

So adaptive clearing, or pocket clearing, both roughing strategies for 3D surfaces. Adaptive clearing is specific for end mills. So you're using as much of the flute length as possible and removing it in a high-feed milling way.

And then we've also got the pocket clearing, which is specifically for the insert cutters and things like that. So the pocket clearing steps down the part, and adaptive takes the biggest step down possible.

We've also got toolpaths like steep and shallow, which automatically identify the steep walls and the shallow walls and machine them. Specifically this can be used as a finishing toolpath or a semi-finishing toolpath.

Corner automatically identifies certain parts of the model that hasn't been machined, because you've used the larger tool. Automatically finds that in machines, by the way.

And then, as I mentioned earlier, some customers may require a specific toolpath direction. That's where toolpaths like geodesic come in. And we can select the drive curves and where they blend in. Tools like inclined flats machine the flat bottoms of any 2D shape. Or you can use the profile selection, which machines the sidewalls.

And then we've got three just quick mentions of the circular toolpath, the ball toolpath, and drilling. That can be at any point in the roughing or the finishing. And then deburring. So we're removing those sharp edges of the component. So deburr or chamfer can do that job too.

So we're going to take a quick look at a component and walk through the stages. So roughing. So this is the first stage where we're trying to remove as much material as possible as fast as we can. And surface finish, we are not bothered about it at this point, because we're going to leave a certain amount of material on. Most commonly, I leave 1 to 2 millimeters on at this stage, because I want to make sure that I can remove it and not worry about potential gouges in the component.

And then it's usually done with a much larger tool. So this is where the next stage comes in. And this is what we call rest roughing, So rest roughing is just removing those extra little bits [INAUDIBLE] the larger tool from the roughing left in. So you can see on the model, we can now see through, almost like a window frame. And before that, we couldn't. But that's because we use such a large tool, and it couldn't get through those gaps. So we can then step down [INAUDIBLE], and we can select a rest roughing in Fusion. And it will automatically identify where they stopped [INAUDIBLE] using the stock model.

This can also be done in multiple stages. So the multiple stages can be stepping down in tools. So I could go from a 32-millimeter tool to a 16-millimeter tool to an 8 to a 3. It doesn't really matter. But you're stepping down in those tools, making sure you can pick out every area possible.

Then we move on to our semi-finished stage. So this is where we come to our nominal size-- well, close to the nominal size. And we can check for surface finish. We can check the accuracy and the aesthetics of the component. This is a really important part, because one of the first things you're taught as a machinist is measure twice, cut once. Make sure that you don't scrap that part. So we're always measuring at this point just to make sure that we're at the right stock on the component, because if I milled it to plus a millimeter all the way around, and I probe it, and it's a 2.5 millimeter, I know something's gone wrong.

It also reduces the amount of material needed to be machined. This minimizes push off. Push off is literally just the amount the tool can deflect off the component, because there's always going to be a certain amount of force on that tool. And then the pressure that's on the tool is going to be less if there's less material to cut off. So you're going to end up with a better surface finish when you semi-finish first.

Finishing is where you're achieving your drawing specific surface finish, your dimensional tolerances. But one of the key features here, is this can take the longest period. It could take 40 minutes to rough out. But on this example, just those curves on that surface took about nine hours to finish that first side. So you can really see how long it takes.

And another thing to mention here is I mentioned a window frame. This is what we call window frame machining. And this saves us time on making loads of different setups. We can attack it with a horizontal machining center. We're attacking it from two different sides instead of having to flip it over on two different setups. So we're saving time.

And what we have to do then is we've got the small tabs all the way around the component, which we have to break away, and then we can machine them or remove them by hand.

You may have thought you did see this earlier in the presentation, but here's another photo of the finished part. We've had to remove the tabs, and it sat on a Land Cruiser V8. If you want to check out this story, it's on Retropower's website, and it's their Land Cruiser.

And then deburring. The deburring, something that I have mentioned. And deburring is just taking off that small edge.

And this is some 5-axis deburring. But what we can also see on the right-hand side is the output NC code. We can see how many different lines of code that machine needs to read to perform what it needs to do. So it's reading hundreds of lines of code at a time and making sure that it's running perfect.

As you can also can see, we've got our digital twins in there. So we've got the machine, which is a DMU 60 eVo, and we've also got it in the Fusion project. And we can see it's moving the exact same way as it is on the machine, as it is on the simulation.

And you can really see how close that gets the device, how close it gets the other pieces of material. We need to make sure that that's perfect. Over to you, Seth.

SETH MADORE: Thank you, Josh. So turning toolpaths. So Josh went through a whole bunch of stuff, and he showed you all these different toolpaths, and the roughings, and the finishings, and the semi-finishing. It's all really cool.

Going back to one of my earlier comments, turning is rather simplistic in nature. The toolpaths do need to work, but you certainly don't need 30 different toolpath options to accomplish your task.

You essentially have a rough turning OD, which roughs out the material on the outside or the inside. You have a finish turning for the ID or the OD. You have a threading toolpath. You have a rough groove. You have a finished groove. And then, for any edge breaks you need to install, you have a chamfer toolpath. And that essentially covers the bulk of your turning. Thank you.

Now we're going to take a look at machine setup. What is machine setup? Well, we showed you the tooling. We showed you the parts we can make. We showed you the machines. How do you bring that all together and get it into your machine to make a part?

Introducing workholding. The very first thing you need to decide is how am I going to hold this? Sometimes, the answer is pretty straightforward, as in the example in the middle. What we have in the middle are your standard machine vices. Every shop has them. They are not the most elegant. They are bulky, but they work. And so if you're doing a lot of high mix, low volume stuff, today you're doing this, tomorrow you're doing that, it's really hard to beat the flexibility that they offer you.

On the left side, we have what's called high-density workholding. What these are are pallets that are removable from the machine. And with those pallets, you can design all these little neat fixture clamps and hold several dozens, or even hundreds of parts on these removable pallets. And so what we have is a vacuum-operated pallet system, where you just lift a lever, boom, pallet comes off. You take your next one, you slap it on, lock it down, and then your machine can run for hours on end.

On the right-hand side, we have what's called a dovetail clamp. So what the dovetail clamp offers is-- notice the size comparison. We have the vise in the middle. It's a very large thing. It weighs 75 pounds. So we have a dovetail clamp. But it's very small. You can probably wrap your hands around it.

What that does, though, is it offers a dovetail that you're clamping onto. And because of its size, you can now access multiple sides of the part in a 5-axis machine or a 4-axis machine.

And then lastly, I wanted to touch on the idea of a tombstone. That's in wide use on the HMCs-- Horizontal Machining Centers. As you can see, there's at least eight stations that can be utilized per pallet, and each machine has two pallets. It's easy to see why the HMC is ubiquitous with the notion of production.

And lastly, ending on a bit of a whimper, is lathe workholding. All of our material for lathes is cylindrical in nature. So we don't need these fancy vises. We don't need dovetails. We don't need pallet systems. We just need a three-jaw chuck or some form of collet system that is capable of holding a round cylindrical part.

So we've talked about the tooling. We've talked about the workholding. Now we need to give the machine some instructions.

So the machine has no idea where the part is located. You can put a vise on the table. You can put a part in the vise. But the machine needs to know, OK, I'm here. You want me to go where? And so we have to teach the machine.

And you can see these numbers on the right-hand image. We have what's called work offsets. And so these are the positions from its machine home to where we've told Fusion, our software, the part's going to be. And so we use either an analog or a digital probe to verify where the sides, the center, and the top of the part are. And then we put those values off into the offset. To you, Josh.

JOSH READER: Yeah. So now that Seth's spoken a bit on datum sitting, so here's a quick video demonstration of a machine and its digital twin. What we're doing here is we're taking two points-- so, one on either side of the component, on each side, and then we're also taking the top. But the ones that are probing on either side, what they're doing is they're offsetting those, and putting a point in the middle. And that's what's the point is going to be in our work offset table.

Datum setting here is so important, because if you get it wrong, you can break the machine, the tools will break, or the part will be incorrect. So it's not a great way to start the day. So datum setting in your CAM should be exact same as it is on your machine. It's one of those things you need to double check, otherwise things can go badly wrong.

And finally, we're going to take a look at what affects the cost and time of manufacturing the most, with concentration on the design to manufacture materials and manufacturing methods. Design to manufacturing is imperative for CNC machining for efficiency and cost-effective manufacturing. Many of the manufacturing methods have a lot of attention on design to manufacture, one of these being additive. Additive has one of the most commonly known limitations for printing. For example, overhangs. These cannot be done. They have to be printed, support, et cetera. There's a heavy influence on design for 3D printing, but not as much focus when it comes to milling. Now I'm going to hand over to Seth, and he's going to talk through some of the design to manufacture methods.

SETH MADORE: So as I mentioned early at the beginning of the talk, I've been a machinist my entire life. And there's always been a-- and you can talk to any machinist or any mechanical engineer. There's always been this struggle between the machinist and the engineer.

The engineer says, we need this, and the machinist says, eh, it's too difficult. And so the engineer says, ah, the machinist is lazy. And the machinist says, ah, the engineer's an idiot. There's a bit of truth to all of that.

So consider what tooling is available when you're designing a part. You can design something that's 2 meters long, and you've got this M1 tapped hole in the bottom. But bear in mind that everything you do to the design jacks up the price. So the impossible feature--

So in this image, there's two quick examples. Square corners. Well, a end mill is cylindrical. So at some point, you're going to have a radius. There are other methods of removing materials, such as electrical discharge machining. But again, you can turn a $50 component into a $1,000 component just by a few mistakes and missteps in how you've designed it.

I mean, I've lost track of the number of times that this hole is 5/10. Does it need to be 5/10? Oh, no, it's just getting bolted on. And it's like, well, because you put that tolerance there, I have to process the job in a certain way.

My message to the aspiring engineers, talk to the machinists you work with. Ask them, how did that job go? Is there anything about the design that you really struggled with? Was it the material? Do we have some flexibility there? Is it the tolerances? Get feedback from them in a good spirited manner, and think you're going to find them quite receptive to that. Thank you.

JOSH READER: OK. So another point that affects cost massively is material choice. So how does material hardness affect it? It affects the feed rate you can run it. It affects the step over and step down-- so how big of a cut you can make. And it increases your cycle time or decreases your cycle time.