The following was written by Mike Mattera who produces high quality video training. It was posted to the Mastercam Forum at CNC “Advertising” Zone in a thread called “2 Sided Part”:
“I’m just not a fan of written documentation. I would rather someone just show me how it’s done. It’s quicker. It’s also better for review at a future date. “
“The problem with written documentation is that they tell you what to pick, but not always “Why” you’re picking it. You need to know “why” so when you do your parts it makes more sense about the process. In my Video Training I tell you why you’re picking something. Big difference.”
Mike Mattera is dead nuts on!
I will be devoting a page on this blog to offering up suggestions on how to better write books or create videos that teach CAM. It’s a huge untapped market and sadly its not getting filled with the quality or quantity of material that’s really needed. This is just what CAM companies and their VAR’s want because you have no choice but to take very expensive training from them or their VAR’s. If you work for a small job shop or have to pay for this training yourself you’re usually shit out of luck because it’s so expensive. It’s long past time to do something about this problem which has existed for far too long.
I Teach CAM at a community college, but can not find a text book that is not half filled with drafting exercises. I don’t care about creating geometry or surfaces that is what CAD software is for, in my class we spend the first two weeks using the drafting tools to create geometry. The next 14 weeks are spent importing CAD files & adding machining operations to the geometry. The text book authors should delete all the drafting fluff from the books and either reduce the price or add advanced topics to the text.
Robert Tosch
CNC CAD/CAM Instructor
Alpena Community College
Comment by toschr — June 11, 2008 @ 6:44 pm