I started CNC machining in 2018 with zero experience. No trade school, no family in the trade, no idea what a G-code even looked like. I got the job because I was willing to work nights at a small job shop that couldn't keep operators.
Seven years later, I've documented 16 significant mistakes totaling roughly $12,000 in wasted material, broken tools, and redo time. Not counting the embarrassment. Most of those mistakes, I now realize, came from believing advice that was already outdated.
So here's my opinion, stated plainly: getting into CNC machining with no experience is easier today than it's ever been—but only if you ignore the "pay your dues" advice and learn the way the industry actually works now.
The conventional wisdom I wish I'd ignored
Everything I read back in 2018 said the same thing: "Start on manual machines. Learn to crank handles. Pay your dues." So I did. I spent eight months on a manual lathe before I ever touched a CNC control. I learned a lot, sure. I also learned things that were already obsolete.
The manual lathe taught me to respect chip flow and cutting sound. It didn't teach me anything about toolpath optimization, workholding design, or how to choose a carbide grade. In a shop running three VMCs, that's where the value was.
The real lesson hit me in my second year, when I ordered $1,200 worth of cheap inserts for a stainless job. Everything I'd read said premium tooling is overrated—that mid-tier tools are 80% of the performance at 40% of the price. In practice, for our specific operation—a 316L part with tight tolerances on an older VMC—the cheap inserts failed within 40 parts. The Sandvik Coromant inserts I tested on the same material ran the full order without a single insert change.
That was my experience-override moment: the conventional wisdom about buying tooling was written for a different era. The price gap between budget inserts and engineered ones has narrowed, and the data gap has widened. The Sandvik Coromant catalogue—or rather, their online product pages—shows you recommended feeds and speeds for your exact operation. The cheap inserts came with a chart that just said "for general use."
What was best practice in 2020 may not apply in 2025. The fundamentals haven't changed, but the execution has transformed.
I don't work for Sandvik Coromant, and I'm not sponsored. I run a mix of other brands too. The difference I'm pointing at is the depth of technical support, not the brand sticker.
No experience is not the problem. No guidance is.
The question "how to get into CNC machining with no experience" comes up constantly online. And most of the answers are terrible. If I remember correctly, the top-voted response in one thread literally said "go to trade school for two years and come back." That's not gatekeeping—it's just out of touch with how the industry works now.
Think about what changed in the last five years alone:
- Simulation software that catches your mistakes before you touch material.
- Tooling manufacturers publishing actual cutting data online, free, to anyone.
- YouTube—a lot of it repetitive, but the good channels are like a free apprenticeship.
None of this existed when the "pay your dues" advice was written. The skill ceiling hasn't lowered, but the entry barrier has been demolished.
Workholding was my second expensive lesson
After the insert disaster, I overcorrected. For one job, I specified VMC tungsten jigs for a series of small carbide preforms we were holding to ±0.0005".
Tungsten jigs—if you've never used them—are heavy, expensive, and exactly what you need when vibration is your enemy. The problem was that I ordered them for a job that didn't need that level of rigidity. The quote came back at $2,300, plus a three-week lead time. My supervisor looked at the number, looked at me, and asked if I'd checked the drawing tolerance.
I hadn't. It was ±0.002". A standard hardened steel fixture would've been fine at half the cost, and I'd have had it in a week. But I was so scared of repeating the insert mistake that I over-engineered the workholding. That's the less-discussed pattern: rookies often make their second mistake by overreacting to the first.
What I learned from that: workholding selection is about matching the fixture to the requirement. Not buying the heaviest, most expensive option. The best instruction I found later—on the Sandvik Coromant official website, actually—was a technical article about fixture stability and cutting force direction. It explained principles, not just a product pitch. That's rare. Most tooling websites just want you to order something.
Laser cutting taught me to stop being tribal
There's a laser cutting and machining shop in Bloomington that I've subcontracted work to for years. They taught me something unexpected: laser cutting and CNC machining are complementary, and my early assumption that "machining is better at everything" was purely tribal.
For thin sheet metal parts, their laser cuts faster and cheaper than anything we can mill. For thick plates or precision features, they send the work back to us. It's a healthy relationship where each shop does what it's actually good at. The industry evolution I'm describing isn't just about software and tooling—it's about accepting that the job shop of 2025 is a network, not an island.
That said, I'd still rather mill a critical surface than laser it on a bad day. Thermal distortion is real. But the point stands: the industry is evolving, and the old "that's not real machining" attitude is how you become obsolete.
But wait—what about mentorship?
I can hear the counter-argument already: "You can't replace a 30-year veteran's experience with YouTube videos and a website." And I agree. In fact, I'd argue mentorship matters more than ever—because experienced people have seen patterns you can't google.
My first mentor was 62 years old and had worked at the same shop for 28 years. He'd never opened a simulation tool in his life. But when I showed him a toolpath that looked perfect in CAM, he watched the chip evacuation for two minutes and said, "that's going to recut chips and weld to the insert." He was right. I'd have crashed the job at four times the cost if he hadn't been there.
So no, I'm not saying mentorship is obsolete. I'm saying the ratio has changed. Twenty years ago, your choices were: find a mentor or fail slowly. Today, you can learn the fundamentals on your own—using resources like the technical library on the Sandvik Coromant website or the good machining channels—and then spend your limited time with veterans asking the right questions. Before I had a baseline, I didn't even know what to ask.
What hasn't changed
I want to be careful not to swing too far the other way. Some things are still non-negotiable:
- Measuring tools—and trusting your measurements
- Understanding how coolant flow affects tool life
- Chip control, the thing that separates machinists from button-pushers
- Knowing when to walk away from a setup and rethink it
If you're trying to get into CNC machining with no experience, ignore nothing. But pay attention to where the industry is going, not just where it's been. Five years ago, 3D simulation of a full VMC program was a luxury. Today, it's expected. Tooling catalogs that used to be confusing PDFs are interactive databases.
My actual advice
If you want a straight answer on how to get into CNC machining with no experience, here it is, in order:
- Pick a specific process—milling or turning—and learn one CAM software deeply.
- Learn to read a cutting tool data sheet before you buy anything. The Sandvik Coromant website is a good starting point because it organizes tools by operation, not by brand ego.
- Find a shop that lets you prove yourself on setups before you run parts alone. That's the real apprenticeship.
- Make your mistakes small and documented. I started a mistake log after my $1,200 insert failure. Maintaining it—well, mainly writing down the expensive stuff—has caught, I want to say, 40 or 50 potential problems. Somewhere around there. I'd have to count.
Most of the Sandvik Coromant products we run are the boring stuff—standard turning inserts and milling cutters. But the boring stuff does 90% of the work. And the boring data sheets are what keep me from repeating expensive lessons.
The funny thing is, my costliest mistakes weren't about feeds and speeds. They were about assumptions. I assumed budget tooling saved money. I assumed heavier workholding meant better. I assumed my first answer was the only answer. The industry hasn't just changed the technology—it's exposed how dangerous assumptions are.
So my renewed opinion is this: the barrier to entry in CNC machining has never been lower, and the expected skill level has never been higher. The answer to "no experience" isn't more gatekeeping—it's better information. But you have to be willing to ask better questions.
The tools, the data, and the simulators are all out there. What the industry will always need is machinists who update their software, their tooling, and their opinions. I bought my first Sandvik Coromant insert in 2019 as a test, expecting to be disappointed by the price. Instead, I got schooled by the data sheet.
Some lessons are expensive. Some are just embarrassing. Most of mine were both.
