/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>1434063
Hand skills
>Grinding - making lathe bits out of blanks, sharpening drills, etc
>Filing - making consistent and completely deburred edges
>Traditional layouts with a scriber and some dykem for use on milling machines and especially drill presses
>Measuring components with Mics/Calipers accurately. Knowing when they are accurate and how to properly calibrate them.
>Manual machining on a Bridgeport/vert mill with a threaded drawbar and .000-.199 dials
>Tapping by hand with clamps and a tap block

Blueprints
>Know the basic symbols for countersinks, counterbores, drill depth/THRU, tapping
>Know coordination. Does the print have your "zero" at an edge? Is it from center?
>Learn GD&T. Revisit it, slowly digest it. It is a weird language with a lot of specifics. The more machining you do, the more it makes sense. They work like building blocks. Primary Datums are the basis and reference point for every other datum.
>Machine simple projects as specified on blueprints. Ensure they are within their needed tolerances.
>Pay attention to every single detail on the print. Every single one. If the print wants you to drill a .500 hole +.001/-.000, don't just go in there with a 1/2" drill. Go down a 1/64 at the very least and ream it at a low speed or your part will be out of tolerance and worthless.

When you are getting ready to machine something off a print, you should get in the habit of premeditating your steps from cutting stock with a bandsaw to indicating your workholding fixture (vise, block, etc) to squaring up the block and tooling priority in an orderly fashion.

This all parlays well into CNC Machining and Programming. Take as much manual training as you can.