Hello everyone. I’m in a predicament. I’m a married man w/ a 7 month old son and a full-time job as a CNC Machinist in the Aerospace & Defense Industry. My employer has a Tuition Payback program and after a year of employment, I plan on taking advantage of this. The issue is that my wife and I have no one to turn to for childcare for our son so the way our schedule and income is laid out, I have neither the time, nor the funds, to hire a childcare provider for him or am able to take college courses on-site. I’m in search of a great online program I can get my Bachelor’s Degree to further my education in programming and become certified to open new doors that lead to opportunities that will give my family the life they deserve. Any thoughts/advice/comments?
Have you started the Academy building blocks?
@Rumpelstiltskin yes sir I have. I’ve completed most of the CAD and CAM segments. Granted, I did a lot of jumping around out, and currently can’t complete any of the actual machining, due to the lack of access to my own machines. My employer also will not let me use any of the mills I run at work currently. I LOVE the Academy, but, as you know, without full access to machines to complete the machining part of the Academy, I can’t get the Academy Certification.
@JamieNewton my recommendation would be to do the academy parts repetitively over and over again until you can do them smoothly without even thinking about what you’re doing. You can get the design and cam portion down pat. Maybe someday bring your laptop to your current employer. Show them what you can do you can cam some of the stuff real quick you might get a new opportunity.
Have you checked to see if the college has a child care program on-site?
@Rumpelstiltskin gotcha. I took your advice and am on my 3rd run thru excluding my previous exp with the Academy and the only one im having a hard time completing off just using the Print is Titan-10M so ive sat down with Billys video and doing it again. @BobDiaz I havent consider that as a factor in my search so i thank you for that. I am still curious of anyones exp with any online college programs though.
I admire your dedication, your perseverance will pay off. It might be fun for you to design your own part and cam it also fabulous learning.
Swewh. Finally finished TITAN-10M CAD successfully. The ISO Grid was giving me some trouble but I got it. @Rumpelstiltskin Thank you Travis. It feels great to be admired by a teacher/machinist such as yourself. It gives me the determination to run thru the CAM portion like I did with the CAD. Im glad I took your advice. Im gonna make sure im prepares when I take my work to my employer and, fingers crossed, they’ll let me cut the building blocks. It would feel so good to hold the physical representation of my hard work in my hands.
I have no research on this you might ask in the Facebook group or if you are in any other machinist Facebook groups.
I use ToolingU for my theory instruction. ToolingU offers online theory related instruction that are aligned with existing industrial standards such as MSSC, NIMS, ASM. Those entities offer credentials or certificates of competence, not ToolingU. I use them to fill in some of the theory knowledge in addition matching them up to projects they students are doing. The image following are classes for students that are preparing for the NIMS CNC Milling Operator and CNC Milling, Programming Setup and Operations credentials. In addition to passing a test showing basic knowledge about the subject matter, my students will also complete projects such as the TITAN Building Blocks. 
That was just one page of assignments, there were 3 total pages for this credential of ToolingU. In addition my students would be completing the Precision Manufacturing Technology textbook assignments for CNC Milling.
Hello - just found this group
Hello and welcome @EdDoherty1 Enjoy your stay!!
Hello me and some of my co workers are interested in this program what kind of system requirements do we need out of our PC to do the cad/cam portion of the curriculum?
@MatthewMays
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-support/fusion-360-system-requirements/td-p/7377880
back to this subject Steven.
I really like the Cengage book but Mindtap online I do not like - I was building some of my own LMS inside of Immerse2learn - that we use for online like tooling u but its weak on manual machining.
I also built my own content with CNC setup using existing youtube videos and redirect to the LMS. But I think I am going with tooling u to fill in the missing stuff and use the PMT book as reading and reference.