I am. You are right about making chips being a lot of fun. I started machining because I have aspirations of becomming an ATM. But I am not a good machinist (I'm a software hack. This buisness of pushing around physical matter without inheritance, backups or a backspace-key drives me crazy.) I also have a lot less time than I expected to machine. Machining anything also turned out to take a lot more time than I thought.
While you are right about buying a mill/drill and a lathe for not a lot of money (4-6K for Taiwaneese stuff). But buying all the tooling is another story. (vises, drill bits, end mills, endmill holders, shellmills, arbors, dial indicators, digital calipers, rotary tables, clamping sets, indicator holders, tool bits, face mills, parting tools, rotary indexers, feeler guages, countersinking tools, drill chucks, drill chuck arbors, table power feeds, files, marking guage, hight guages, boring tools, boring tool holders, taps and dies, marking fluid, cutting fluids, setup blocks, center punches, squares, t-nuts, grinders, angle plates, reamers, boring heads, chamfering tools, deburring tools, hole guages, centering guages and collets.) Basic tooling could easily cost the same as the outlay for the mill and lathe. But I'm not really sure. I never have enough tooling and I'm too scared to add up what I have spent so far.
I dont think ATMs should start machining to save time or money. I would recommend machining because its fun. But it also takes time away from pushing glass.
Attilla Danko danko@bnr.ca