Coming later to the party

Coming to CNC machining at this point in time is interesting, and mirrors the challenge in coming to computing or any high technology now.

CNC is, arguably, one of the technologies still accessible to ordinary mortals, while much of the computing-related technology in other fields is barely accessible at the detailed level.

Take word processing, for example.

The origins of computing are not that far distant, and the first word processors are appeared within living memory, for older folks.

Computing was, at that stage, a novel technology, and those in their 60s and 70s can remember the first faltering steps of machines which were very large and not very powerful. I can recall the first of the so-called mini-computers, started up in the morning by using a series of switches on the front panel to provide the initial sequence of instructions, entered using hexadecimal codes, to help it bootstrap itself into life. The Sinclair ZX80 and Spectrum, the first IBM personal computers, and those PET, ATARI, Apple II and BBC computers hold fond memories for many.

When word processing first appeared, users needed to know quite a bit about the machine and how it operated, and often fell into programming as something every user should know a bit about.

Those days have gone.

The computer has taken the same developmental path as almost all technologies. As the computer became a consumer product, it evolved  away from its explicitly technical roots, and assumed the more saleable veneer of a desirable toy any normal person could use with little knowledge. That’s an illusion to some extent, but we are getting there. In fact it has been such a successful transformation that governments have begun voicing concerns that the youth of today know little of the low level operation of these devices. In the UK, for example, we have recently seen the big push to teach more programming in schools, and the publicity surrounding the launch of the Raspberry Pi single board computer.

Having once taught computing in schools, as it emerged in the beginning, I have an opinion on this, but will keep it to myself.

But the body of knowledge collectively assembled by those who developed popular computing from its beginnings some 30 years ago is vast; truly vast. And it is deeply technical. If you were one of those who trod this path, I salute you. Those were heady days when deep technical understanding and both breadth and depth of knowledge was truly valued.

So a member of the public who visits a high street computing store today, and exits with the latest Gizmoid mark 22 laptop, to enjoy computing as a consumer, starting from next to no knowledge is in roughly the same position as the man who buys Arithmetic for absolute beginners - a very far way away from an understanding of the state of the art. In computing, there is a world of difference between using and operating system and understanding the fine detail of what the operating system is doing, or creating program code to patch that system. That makes it unlikely that most members of the public will ever be able to access computing at that detailed level.

CNC machining is at a slightly different stage. It has never been a consumer sport. It’s getting there, though, and we are in the closing stages of the same transformation during its journey to becoming a consumer product. Take the example of 3D printing, where Amazon are currently introducing a range of 3D printers engineered for the knowledgeable public. Machines which will sit on a desk at home and be used to print objects without the consumer requiring any real depth of knowledge of what is going on “under the hood”. if it wasn’t for the fact that CNC machining involves much more aggressive, noisy and oily operations, we might already have shrink wrapped CNC mills on Amazon, ready to turn out replica door knobs and house name plates at the touch of a button (“No programming required, Sir”)

Fortunately, we are at a more useful intermediate stage, where the development work has mostly been done, and individuals can choose to join the game from a computing background, learning enough about machining to be able to produce good finished work; or from a machinist’s background, learning enough about how to use the software packages to be able to control the movements of a machine with which they are otherwise quite familiar.

The development of Mach3 and LinuxCNC and similar software control packages allows the very considerable low level computing of controlling a machine to be dealt with by those packages, leaving users free to focus on the G code programming within the “safety” of the control packages. That makes CNC machining accessible to most interested but informed users, without removing the essential aspects of both programming and machining. The results can be spectacular, as users bring their own creative ideas to their CNC systems.

For some, the interest is in constructing CNC machines, and for others it is the low level computing which is making possible CNC control systems based around the cheap single board computers like the Raspberry Pi, Arduino and BeagleBone. 

So this is a field where the engineers and engineers-at-heart, can exercise software skills and understanding of mechanics to push the frontier ever further forward.

This is still the territory of the adventurous, the inventive, the inquisitive and the determined.

It’s a pure joy.