[SDA]

I have a Patriot VFD combo machine.

I bought the machine for personal/hobby use. I only use it 10-20 times per year. Making very simple parts, e.g. spacers, seal drivers, obsolete special tools for my motorcycles or old Land Rover. I have very little free time for my motorcycle and Land Rover interests.

My question: In my application, am I wasting my time trying to learn CNC? If I have to refer to written documentation every time I need to face a piece of Delrin, because I can't remember the G-code, will I be working more efficiently manually machining everything?

[metalmayhem]

As stated your making parts for things you have little time for . If the manual setup suits your needs then I'd say stick with manual .
Cnc comes with the need to learn and retain a lot of information which takes time . It's also a fair investment to leave sitting

[awerby]

G-code isn't that difficult, and it sounds like you're thinking of it as more of an obstacle than a help. The simple things you're making probably won't take more than a few G-code commands, like G01 with an S word, which tells the machine to go to a particular location at a certain speed. You can plot out your part on a piece of graph paper and cut it using just this command, with a M03 to start the spindle and a M05 to stop it. It's a lot less work than cranking, and less likely to overshoot the marks.

You can enter these commands into the Manual Data Input (MDI) function of your CNC control panel, but if that still seems difficult, there are CAM programs that will write all the G-code for you, if you just give it a CAD model or drawing. And drawing things with a CAD program is easier than doing the same thing with graph paper, once you've learned how. You might find yourself using the machine more, as it becomes possible to do more things, more quickly.

[vinod60kanda]

its very easy learning G code is the base of CNC machine programing. See videos on you tube you can better knowledge. More precise work in your CNC machine. Good luck............