Industrial Press Inc.,U.S. CNC Programming Handbook

Book has lots of information and will take me quit some time to get thru, but has already helped provide clarity in the programming language and process

This is the book I have been looking for. It is not cheap but it is worth its price.

No serious list of CNC books can be complete without this corner stone book, and for good reason. Put simply, it is THE book by which all CNC programming books are compared to. For the obvious reason that it is perhaps the most authorative, practical, and in-depth work on the subject, but maybe because it's all three combined.Being a 3rd edition, Peter Smid has obviously updated this book twice over the years, clearly uses and tracks new developments, and his other industry-grade CNC books are "generally useful" in many ways as well. In short, Peter is a serious CNC operating and authoring force to be reckoned with.... and I've read a LOT of CNC related books... mostly because it's my hobby and I've been working with them in various maker spaces for years now.Yes there are other CNC programming books, but this has been incredibly helpful in my self study. While many CNC users don't necessarily need to program all your CNC projects from scratch, there's a lot of benefit in knowing how to use G-Code effectively.GENERAL IMPRESSIONS OF THE BOOK:Like many of my fellow CNC hobbyists out there, I too used a slicer app (if I'm using a 3D printer) or CAM software (CAMBAM initially, then Fusion360 later) app to do most of my gcode generation. It makes sense to do things this way for complex CNC tasks, as it takes thousands of lines of code to do detailed, non-linear work. Typing all that out is just impractical.However, many machinists and fabricators know that the majority of projects are dominated by making a number of simpler components, and the complexity lies in combining many such parts. Personally, my experience agrees with this view.If you make a lot of simpler projects (say a few drilled holes, and some straight line carving) then let me ask you this...Is it quite so efficient if you run your CAD app, go to the trouble of drawing your model, processing it in CAM software, then transferring it to your CNC machine?Don't get me wrong, it'll work... but you can write the entire (albeit simple) program from scratch in under 2 minutes if you know some gcode.Now this is a book even nut jobs like me struggle to read from cover to cover. That's ok, because it's a reference book. It's closer to a dictionary than novel. That said, I find it quite easy to grab, look up a particular G-code action, and quickly get "the gist".The structure of each entry has a rather comprehensive structure: -the blurb/description, -several varieties of the example code, -the convenient image(s) depicting the resulting real-world action(s).Peter has then gone even beyond that by: -adding tips and tricks, -certain short cuts, -how to approach the same action using different strategies and reference points, -outline each techniques pros, their cons.... and of course -some of the quirks professional machines have.If you want to take your actual G-Code skills to a pro level, then this book should absolutely be in your library. But let's be realistic about expectations on this book.THE DRAWBACKS OF THIS BOOK:There are limitations because this book is so fundamentally specialised to programming. It's certainly not an introductory book.... There's no general machine operations like how to do work holding, zeroing, no bit types, or trouble shooting. This is pure theory without machine-based context... more like a foreign language dictionary where you know what you want to say/do, but have to look up the corresponding G-code.Just because you know the correct code, doesn't mean it will work on your machine!In fact, there's no consideration for whether any specific code is appropriate for the machine you're using. (For instance, if you run a 5 axis machine built with a robotic arm as opposed to a DIY machine using standard 3 axis gantry, and a rotating/tilting base/saddle mount doing the remaining 2 axes. In this case, the way a particular machine is built, will need profoundly different G-code to do the same thing).Is this book good value? Conclusion:At anywhere between $112-to nearly $300 (Australian), this is no small investment.That said.. for the right people, it might well be under priced... if there's a better book on the subject, as clearly written, and with every conceivable way to convey the information, pretty graphs depicting machine movement, code exerpts, and lots of additional advice... please let me know!I've gotten a lot of benefit in making simple programs, and looking things up when certain quirky behaviours pop up mid-simulation. This alone has saved me THOUSANDS of dollars in time and materials.So if you're at a stage where coding and assessing other people's code is a benefit (or planning to get there) then I highly recommend this book.

Only book on the market that I know of, that is suitable for cnc programmers and machinists. Covers a wide array of gcodes, still like the machinery handbook the book should be revised to make it suitable to new standards and new codes. Covers basic cartesian mapping to help you understand how to localise you parts with zero set. Macro programming is also covered great (sub programming). I wish that book would have been mandatory during my 3 years studies to become a machinist. Price is a bit steep from my point of view since it's almost a dying trade. We are a rare breed of birds. That book makes us honnor.I strongly recommend it to lost teachers... students with lost teachers... apprentices that had lost teachers. Even long time machinists that are working in the field of CNC always working on the same parts since your brain tends to forget over time, the book is great for referal use in case you're not sure wich canned cycle to use.Cheers to all my machinists brother around the world.

I got the book in just 10 days very fast considering it was dispatched from USA. Very good book for learning CNC programming