NEW MEMBER: Hello everybody new member from Brighton

Hi from the snowy South Coast of England. I am an ex cnc setter and programmer, having been out of the industry for about 10 years now I am missing those addictive sounds and smells that come with cutting metal! So a home workshop is in the offing, shed arrives in a few weeks when the weather and also my finances threaten to improve.

I am planning to build a cnc lathe from scratch using an old surface plate as the axis bed with a used or home made headstock arrangement. The axes will run on hi-win style 20mm rails.

I have a 9 year son who, unlike his peers, does not seek easy fame and x factor recognition, but wants to be a famous engineer like Brunel or Stephenson. If there were more like him around then we may start to make things again in this country! So I am setting up a small workshop to teach him metal turning and milling for the 21st century.

I started on a colchester triumph lathe and learned to cut metal at one of the old skill centres back in the 1980's.

My CNC experience was mainly in the automotive industry making parts for power steering on Nakamura Tome twin spindle with powered tooling and 4th axis, I also worked on larger scale ship transmission components on a massive Yang CNC lathe. I have also made body piercings on an EMCO turning centre. I have also worked on gun drills, cnc and non cnc milling machines both vertical and horizontal making hydraulic parts.