The CNC hobby machine fills the needs of the retired person who wants to make a hobby of machining. This is truly a hobby of the 21st century.

In fact, it was not until after World War II that machining began to move in a direction that would allow a then young generation to later entertain the thought of having machining as a hobby.

After World War II, almost fifty years before the appearance of the first CNC hobby machine, industry began to use punched tape for machine cutting. An IBM computer produced the punched tape, and that tape gave the machinery in a manufacturing facility the information for the needed procedure. The punched tape told a machine when and where to cut, drill or punch a material, although the machinery remained large and cumbersome.

The invention of the personal computer allowed machining to have access to directions from computer software. This led to reliance on computer numerical controls (CNC). The CNC machine can be used in a manufacturing setting. It can also be used for working on a smaller scale. This small-scale work, usually done in a home shop, requires a CNC hobby machine.

The CNC hobby machine pushes the operator to concentrate on subtractive processes. The operator of the CNC hobby machine commonly divides a single piece of material into parts in order to produce a new object. It is possible, however, for the operator of a CNC hobby machine to use an alternate building process.

The CNC hobby machine can be used to make smaller parts that are then fused into a new object. A third approach to creating that might be pursued by the operator of the CNC hobby machine involves shape changing. Here the hobbyist changes the shape of a material in order to create a new object.

While many of the CNC hobby machines sit in various home shops, more than one CNC hobby machine has found its way to a jewelry store. The ability of the CNC hobby machine to facilitate the cutting and engraving of metals has led most present-day jewelers to depend on the availability of such machines.

The CNC hobby machine has also found its way into schools and into high tech micro labs. Most of the micro labs using a CNC hobby machine have entered the new nanotech world. In order to appreciate the importance of CNC for the workers in the nanotech world, one needs to learn a bit about that setting.

The nanotech world is one in which everything is done on a smaller scale. For the high tech micro lab that means that, the culturing of viruses must be done in tiny plastic wells. Usually a technician works with a single plate that contains almost 100 such wells. The creation of such plates and the performance of operations on those plates can be facilitated by the availability of the CNC hobby machine. The CNC hobby machine certainly proves useful as well when it becomes necessary to label these multi-welled plates.