Appreciation post: My mentor's strict no-CAM rule shaped my skills

Manual G-code builds deeper understanding, but CAM is faster. What's your take?

4 comments

4 Comments

owens.blair1mo agoProlific Poster

Yeah it's a trade-off for sure. I hand-coded my first hundred parts and it made troubleshooting so much easier later. Now I use CAM for complex stuff but still write simple programs by hand, keeps the skill fresh. That foundation lets you fix CAM output when it does weird things too.

casey8181mo ago

Watching coworkers fight with CAM software always makes me glad I learned the basics first. They get stuck on simple stuff that manual coding would have taught them. Makes you wonder why more shops don't start people on the manual machines, right?

angelam801mo ago

Never seen a shop that wants to pay for that training time though.

laura4861mo ago

Exactly. That training time is an investment they don't want to make. Short term, it costs them money to have someone learning instead of making parts. Long term, they end up with button-pushers who can't fix a bad program. Creates a real skills gap in the shop. They'd rather just hire someone who already knows the CAM software. Saves them a few weeks of pay but hurts everyone later.