TOP 5 WAYS to EARN $100,000 as a CNC MACHINIST | DN Solutions

The top five ways to make $100,000 salary as a CNC machinist. Number five, learn and work at a job shop or a production facility that has a wide range of parts. In a job shop, you are a contractor, you are a machinist for hire. Your shop is a vendor for a company and you make many different parts. So when you can get into a company that actually makes plastic parts and aluminum parts and steel parts and Inconel parts and titanium parts, and then on top of that, you machine a wide variety of parts out of all of those materials from simple parts to very complex parts, you gain valuable experience. And just like in life, as we walk through the levels, when you're a CNC machinist, you also walk through the levels. And when the shop owner looks at you, you will be judged based on your productivity and your ability to make parts efficiently. And in my opinion, there is no better way than to learn through repetition by making many parts out of different materials and different complexities. Boom, let's go to number four. Number four, teach yourself CNC programming. As a machinist, we need to understand and we have to perfect the process of how to make a part. And at no time in history has it been so easy to learn CNC programming. You can go to our YouTube channel, you can go to our free academy, links down below, and you can literally teach yourself programming in a matter of a few hours. And then it's all about repetition and consistency to program part after part after part, and then walk up those levels so you can program very extreme, complicated parts. And just because you can program a part in aluminum does not mean that you can do it in steel. So we have to look at the tools and we gotta figure out how to actually make the adjustments to cut steel efficiently, and then titanium, and then Inconel, and we need to master the entire craft. And when a machinist learns programming and how to program a part from raw stock to finished part, their skill level goes up. Then it's about consistency and repetition and going from part to part to part while increasing in complexity. Boom. All right, let's go to number three. Number three, master the art of advanced fixturing and workholding. Now, number three involves advanced fixturing and workholding. And that is where a machinist can truly set himself or herself apart from the rest. Because when a programmer looks at a part and they have to visualize how to machine it, most will look at a simple way to get it done, like taking the material and putting it in a standard vise, locking it down, and getting after it. But when it comes to advanced fixturing, another programmer will come and say, you know what, let's skip the vises. Let's go to a sub plate and a pallet, and let's use MightyBike clamps to actually run 20 parts at a time so we can close the door and walk away and let the machine run on automatic, which is another way. Somebody else might look at it and say, you know what, let's put it on a five axis so we can do five sides at a time, flip it over, deck it, and be done. And then that person is looking at that part as a singular part on a five axis, where another programmer who has the experience can come in and create a pyramid style fixture and do many parts at the same time. So when you look at all machinists, none are exactly the same. Based on their experiences, their knowledge, and what they can comprehend and how they put it together, each one will come up with a different solution to complete that part. And time is money, so when you look at each programmer, there is a cost associated to the production of those parts and the one that can make the most parts as quick as possible to print and get them out the door because of their advanced fixturing techniques, that person is worth his or hers weight in gold. Oh man, we're down to number two. Number two is increase your MRR on all tools in all materials. Ah, and number two is all about pushing all tools to their maximum performance in all materials. Now when you look at our YouTube channel, when you look at our academy, you look at our aerospaceacademy.com, little plug right there, you can see that we are constantly pushing the limits and that is very important because as I said, time is money. Now MRR, metal removal rate, is everything. If you had 10,000 parts and you had one programmer, one machinist, and they used their intellect and their experience to rough off all the excess material and it took 20 minutes and then you had another programmer and another one took 10 minutes, then you just cut the time in half and this happens all the time because most programmers, they learn how to rough material and they never advance that technique. They see this surface foot, this chip load, that's law, they move on, they never come back to increase it. They're not looking at advanced tooling, they're not looking at putting more flutes in the cut and then as time goes on, it wears on the company because the company is bidding on work based on those production times. While other machinists are coming in, they're figuring out how to utilize advanced tools, how to increase their MRR, how to make money, how to keep advancing and they're students in the game. They create advanced fixturing to run many parts, they figure out how to rough material out in a hurry and then they come with a finishing tool that has seven, eight, nine flutes on it and they finish faster than most can even comprehend and they make the company money, boom. Number one, have the talent to put it all together and solve real problems on the production floor. If you don't have good communication, then everything else that we discuss is wasted because to earn $100,000 salary, you need to be able to take everything that we talked about and more variables and you need to put it together in a way that people understand it. You have to be able to sell yourself, sell your company, you need to be able to lift up operators and set up people and through it all, because of your presence and your decision making skills, the entire floor rises up, the culture rises up, the productivity rises up and the company makes money and therefore, you deserve money, boom. And that's the top five ways to make $100,000 as a CNC machinist. And I will throw in a little bonus right here. Can you make $200,000? Most people will say no, but if you go on to a successful floor that makes 50 million and because of your skills, the entire production raises 10, 20, 30% and you're an amazing individual, you're an inspiring individual, people like you, you can pretty much write your own check. You want $200,000, you can make it, but you gotta solve real problems, you gotta make people money, boom and that's what the name of the game is. I love you guys, love this trade, I'm out, boom. Thank you.