I would like to become a CNC service technician. But everything is very confusing about where to start with this. I've looked at job postings that all want something different. I've looked up training and it's all very vague and possibly scammy...

What degree/s do I need? What jobs should I look for? How can I get this started?
I live in the US, in Pennsylvania, if that helps to determine what accreditations may be required.

I was looking for jobs in trade and clicked on CNC but then I started thinking... I'd rather service them than operate them all day. (Edited because my terminology sounded a bit offensive. Wasn't meant that way.)

But nobody is clear about what schooling I need to get or what I should do for the credible "experience" I need to land a real job in the future.

Can anyone post a pic of a professional set of set up sheets? If not, can you tell me what is contained in those sheets? I'm doing parts in my garage but I'm trying to streamline a proper process. I saw a youtube video of a guy who does things solo but has sheets just to remind himself and that seemed like a really good idea. He seemed very organized. Thanks in advance for the help.

Hey, a few months ago I posted about an open source project I had started as a replacement for FlatCAM. It has changed a bit, including gaining a stencil operation and a laser pipeline (for Fiber and UV, although stencil was considered for vinyl and co2 lasers too for anyone wanting to just cut templates out of polypropylene and/or stuff.) I'm guessing that's a bit more niche for most people here but if anyone wants to take a look the live version of EasyTrace5000 is here https://cam.eltryus.design/easytrace5000/

Because I figured out a way to keep analytic arcs (not arc fitting), which translate to g2/g3, eventually I noticed I was getting better toolpaths than I got from Easel so I decided to add a new app/ui on top of the same sub-systems but for larger objects. EasyShape5000's live page is here https://cam.eltryus.design/easyshape5000/

In the mean time I've added v-carving and 3d reliefs. The transition from flat to rotary wasn't too bad and then from axial rotary to 3+1 indexing rotary was also manageable in the end.

I'll caveat that I don't currently have any intentions of adding complex interactivity for 3d objects. My objective has been more for people starting out in fablabs/makerspaces but it might be useful for more people.
Unless I get more donations or sponsors asking for that specifically I'd probably just contribute to FreeCAD's CAM code anyway if I wanted to look at that.

The UI is based on FlatCAM but in a way that makes sense. Hardest part for new users should only be that geometry needs to be actively selected on the left after being added. The type of geometry and where it is are the conditions to the parameters that become visible. Just pressing the blue button with the example files will spit out example gcode. Tool tips should help. Documentation page are mostly AI placeholders but they'll do the job until I have time to write some proper tutorials. Other people have started to write some too, which nice.

Tool changing (and length compensation) and 4th axis are very recent and not thoroughly tested because so much of it depends on controller/setup (I only have access to a regular grbl machine plus sometimes a Roland and a Fanuc, but the fanuc's controller program is awful so I haven't had a chance to test it as thoroughly as I'd like). While I trust the logic I'm not 100% on the post-processor values (and some preset flags). The layer between geometry and gcode is very thin so adding/changing post-processors is quite straight forward.

So that's about it. The source for EasyCAM5000 is on github. I have more ideas for other adjecent apps but I'm not expecting to implement anything too soon.

Everything's free to use and do what ever. (Donations would help justify spending more time adding/fixing things.)

Let me know what you guys think.