Introduction and Hello!

Community
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Good morning (well, morning here in Florida)

I was looking for an area that people leave a brief introduction. Maybe most people here have been in the community a long while or didn’t leave an introduction.
I’m Nathan, or Nate for short. I’m not new to woodworking and carving. It had been a passion of my dad, so I began at an early age. I’m from Central Florida, the Space Coast area. I could give more specifics if someone were very close by.
I don’t have any experience with CNC tools and all the software that goes along with it. I read through a lot of the categories and feeds on here, honestly I really don’t even know how to ask an intelligent question at this point. I see a lot of acromyms and such, I have no idea what some of them mean. I’ve been reading about GRBL, G-code, Fusion 360, Carbide Create, turning JPG’s into SVG’s, or drawings I’ve done and turning them into code for cutting and trying to learn what they mean. It’s little overwhelming, and I hope I didn’t bite off more than I can chew.
I need to stay plugged in, this is too powerful of a tool and cost too much to just set on the shelf.
Anyway, enough for now, I’m hoping to learn a lot, and hopefully I can ease my learning curve with gleaning tips and knowledge from you guys. Maybe I can turn this into a little money-making business as retirement is approaching.

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There was a thread here:

but it tends to scroll off — if you’d like, we can move your post to it (which will bump it).

For terminology, most things should be explained in the various assembly instructions:

https://docs.carbide3d.com/assembly/

and the community maintains a glossary which you may find of interest:

https://wiki.shapeoko.com/index.php/Glossary

Best place to start is w/ an end-to-end tutorial:

https://docs.carbide3d.com/tutorials/#shapeoko-tutorials

and note that we have a standing offer — if you get stuck on a file or project, send it in to support@carbide3d.com and we will either find a suitable one which matches, or do a custom tutorial.

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Welcome Nate.

Feel free to post any questions you have and be sure to post some picture of the projects you make.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, be sure to signup for a video chat with Nick to get you up to speed quickly. You can find the information on our contact page.

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Thank you Rob. I have such basic questions right now… when discussing feed rates of bits, what does DOC stand for? :nerd_face:
Damn, I’m such a newb! :flushed:

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DOC == Depth of Cut — it’s how much the machine will move down with each pass, so sometimes it’s “Depth per Pass”.

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These are all great helps Will, thank you so much!

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:man_facepalming:
Some of them I can figure out, I don’t know why that one was stumping me.

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Welcome! I am fairly new myself but the guide put together by @Julien which is mentioned in this post: Shapeoko e-book [V4 released] has helped me tremendously.

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Hey Nathan,

Welcome to the community!

As others noted feel free to ask any and all questions, even the most basic ones, we’ve all been there.
I wrote the (free) Shapeoko ebook with the help of this community precisely for folks like you (and former me) who dive head first into the wonderful world of CNC. Have fun!

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