Totally agree lakey,
I was going to post a few days ago after seeing the guns and parts that had been made recently.
I was to mention for anyone undertaking this kind of work, that it could be in their interests, to obtain a small surface plate and height gauge for marking out.
The difference in the standard of accuracy marking out this way is worlds apart, and using an "optical center punch" is the difference between parts lining up and not, makers claim accuracy to within 0.001".
As to inexperienced senior members obtaining and using lathes and mills, well i say "take care" , anyone who has served an old school apprenticeship was first taught safety above all else and these people should know the hazards
that will present themselves to "green would be engineers".
Ive personally seen some nasty accidents with lathes, and they were experienced engineers who knew what they were doing, and who knew the dangers, all of them.
I never cease to be amazed at the cnc videos such as above, its marvellous what is achieved today, what you must not forget though is every time you see something like this, some clever person has either had to write the program to enable the machine to do this or at best input the figures in to a program to do the calculations, and someone else has had to set the machine tools to enable this to happen without crashes, it looks even better in real life as a lot of the time the videos are slowed for you to see clearly.
I like the five axis mills, never tire of watching them, the Japanese have been at the forefront of this game for many years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnIvhlKT7SY
Eric.