All,
Wanted to get your thoughts on training graduate students on the use of a CNC lathe and mill for use in a lab course. The current problem is every semester (4 months) a group of graduate students is assigned to a lab course in which they are required to guide students through machining a part. Most of the graduate students are foreign and have never used a manual mill or lathe let alone a CNC machine and there is usually a limited time to train them, one week before labs start while classes are going on. The current training system involves a senior grad student walking the group of new TA's through the machines operation and the CAM software. Most of the time the training is not extended to each new TA cutting there own part under supervision due to time constraints. Furthermore, only two of the existing TA's have been trained by me personally the remainder of the new TA's have been trained by a senior grad student. The primary issue with this system is the number of crashes we are seeing with the machines (usually 1-2 per semester), secondary issues include not being able to explain to students why certain settings or parameters are required and hunting for the correct buttons on the controller. I have written the operator manual for the CNC lathe we use to be fairly cookbook since students design the tool path around the same CAD file every lab however someone usually omits a step, inputs a incorrect parameter, or tries something outside the scope of the manual causing a crash. We have considered a video as a means of supplementing the training but I am not sure how well this will work. Maybe there should be two TA's per lab to limit screw ups but I don't think scheduling would permit this. Finally the machines are a Hardinge Talent 6/45 lathe with a fanuc controller and a Haas TM1. General thoughts and advice are appreciated.