A working CNC and manual machine shop built for training machinists — 32 machines from Bridgeport knee mills to 5-axis machining centers, backed by a live shop-floor tracker and a library of the best training material on the internet.
Tracker clock-in, machine status, and tool crib checkout live at shop.shopfloortrack.org
Students train across the full range — from indicating a vise on a Bridgeport to programming simultaneous 5-axis toolpaths in Mastercam. Every machine on the floor is tracked by serial number in the shop tracker.
The workhorse of the CNC side. Where students learn work offsets, tool offsets, fixturing, and their first real production programs out of Mastercam.
Integrated dual-axis trunnion — B-axis tilt with a C-axis rotary table on top — for full simultaneous 5-axis work. Students learn TCPC/DWO, tool vectors, MRZP calibration, and multiaxis programming.
The bridge from manual to CNC. Same Haas control as the VF-2, but simple enough to run conversationally — ideal for a student's first program.
Compact high-performance lathe. Turning, facing, grooving, threading, and drilling — plus tool nose radius compensation and canned turning cycles.
Live tooling with C-axis and Y-axis travel — mill flats, drill off-center holes, and cut cross-features without ever leaving the lathe. Done-in-one work.
Cuts hardened tool steel and carbide to tenths with no cutting force. Punches, dies, sharp internal corners, and profiles no endmill can reach.
Burns blind cavities, keyways, and square internal corners with a shaped graphite or copper electrode. Also the shop's answer to a broken tap.
Where every machinist starts. Tramming the head, indicating a vise, edge finding, boring heads, rotary tables, and reading a drawing before a control ever helps you.
Turning between centers, four-jaw indicating, single-point threading, taper attachments, and knurling — the fundamentals CNC turning is built on.
Layout work, spot drilling, tapping, countersinking, and deburring — plus a lesson in why speeds and feeds matter even on the simplest machine in the shop.
Bridge-type CMM running Calypso. Students learn stylus qualification, alignment strategy, feature construction, and true-position GD&T evaluation.
Micrometers, calipers, height gages, gage blocks, indicators, pin gages, and surface plates — because a part is only good if you can prove it.
A lightweight, purpose-built shop-floor system — no bloated ERP. Students clock onto a machine by name, the instructor sees the floor at a glance, and tool crib checkouts stop walking out the door.
See which student is on which machine, by serial number, in real time.
Track where every student stands in the curriculum without a clipboard.
Bin barcode scan, per-tool quantities, partial returns, and overdue flagging across 250+ tool types.
Cloud-hosted, so it syncs from the shop floor tablet to the office PC to a phone.
72 hand-picked video training series that play right on this site — no hunting around YouTube. Official Haas, Mastercam and SolidWorks training plus the best independent teachers in the trade. All of it free.
Sketching, part modeling, assemblies, detailing, and inspection.
Toolpath strategy, Dynamic Motion, probing, lathe, and posting.
Tip of the Day, offsets, probing, and running the machines you'll be on.
Workholding, fixturing, speeds and feeds, 5-axis, and turning.
Bridgeport and engine lathe technique from the best teachers online.
Mics, indicators, gage blocks, datums, true position, and CMM basics.
Track the floor in real time, or dig into the training library. Pick your lane.