Machining Textbook

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...