Machining Textbook

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6PakBee

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It's time to start using my vertical mill and I need some formal guidance. What book(s) would anyone recommend for a novice just starting out to be able to use a mill without destroying it or something else? I am old school and books are better for me than videos (usually).
 
Machining for dummies looks good and cheap.

Most important thing is learning your materials and their cutting speeds and how to calculate your cutter speeds.

Machinist ready reference is a good book.
Machinery’s hand book goes in deep but new it is expensive.

The best thing to do is take a few night classes at your local community college or tech school.
 
I have a copy of Machinery's Handbook (23rd edition, I believe?) that you can have for the price of postage, but as mentioned, it's quite involved.
 
The machinist ready reference is good for quick answer on stuff including speeds and feeds.
 
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This is the ready reference. These babies are getting expensive, I’d try to find one used.


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This looks good also and is cheap.
 
6PakBee said:
It's time to start using my vertical mill and I need some formal guidance. What book(s) would anyone recommend for a novice just starting out to be able to use a mill without destroying it or something else? I am old school and books are better for me than videos (usually).
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Adjust that to read without destroying anything to expensive... Your gonna destroy a few end mills and carbide inserts... There's definitely a learning curve... Long as you don't crash anything to serious it's normal... My first year I probably killed a couple hundred bucks worth of tooling... But never hurt the mill table, mill vise or any part of the head.... These days I'm much better but last week I broke two endmills... Of course when you get down to using 3/32" endmills they break really easy...

Learn to tram the head, tram the vise, if your mill isn't square it's a challenge to do anything resembling accurate work... Learn use an edge finder & set the left corner of the fixed jaw of the vise as your zero reference... You can do accurate work without it but having a DRO including a readout on the quill makes precision work much easier...

There's a lot of learning curve but it's worth the effort to learn it...
 
6PakBee said:
Great minds travel in the same gutters!! I bought both of them.
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I’m just speaking from hindsight of a 45 year career as a tool and die/mold maker. I seldom use a ready reference anymore and I don’t own the other book. If there is something that stumps me, I use machinery’s hand book.

I first turned handcranks on a Bridgeport at 8 years old in my dads pattern shop.
 
Righty Tighty said:
I have a copy of Machinery's Handbook (23rd edition, I believe?) that you can have for the price of postage, but as mentioned, it's quite involved.
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I have to thank Righty Tighty for the book. I've already used it a couple of times and I've only had it a week!
 
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