What this hobby needs: A place to start.

Hello Group!
This is my first post, so hopfully it won't get moderated.
I'm new to the group but not super-new to CNC. Over the last 4 years one of my many hobbies has been a stepper driven conversion of a Harbor Freight MicroMill. It seemed like a good place to start at the time as I was living in a townhome with a 1 car garage, so space was at a premium. I've since far exceeded the machine's capabilities, got tired of having to fight the machine, and finally have some elbow room (60'x40' shop!). I have moved on to a Bridgeport Boss with servo drive conversion that's now in-process. I learned a LOT on my first machine that will be invaluable in my latest endeavor. I don't consider myself a guru, but I think I've eeked past novice at this point, if only just barely so.

At any rate, a local group of model engine builders I've come in contact with sent out an email with some extremely valuable information that I thought would fit right in with the recent topic of bringing new machinists-to-be up to speed on some fundamental skills. It is MIT's intro to machining video series for their robotics lab.
The videos can be found here: http://techtv.mit.edu/search?q=machine+shop&x=41&y=10

These are an extremely good primer to the machine shop, the tools you might find there, and their basic usage. Best of all, they are free.
I hope they help someone else as much as they did me... I will be rewatching them a number of times to make certain it all sinks in. Also, note that there are links in the right side of the page to allow you to download the videos to your local machine. If you choose the wmv format, they will save with an .avi extension. Change the filename from *.avi to *.wmv or they will upset windows media player and not play.





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]