[alnwlsn]

Any time I see a guide like this, everyone will go on and on about the types of cutters, toolpaths, speeds & feeds, etc. but will always gloss over work holding. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Without reaction forces, the best cutter in the world is useless. A sizeable chunk of your tooling will just be clamps and indexing tools needed to align and secure the thing you're CNCing, while also trying to keep them out of the work area. 80% of the end mills I've ever broken have been by crashing them into a clamp or vice by accident. This is another thing you tend not to see in 3D printing or laser cutting, or plasma cutting for that matter.

[syntaxing]

I didn’t know soft jaws were a thing until I started working. Even in college, they just teach you to hold the part up with spacer plates and crank the vise. One of the vendors I worked with was explaining why 4-5 pieces cost the same as 1 piece. The time and effort to make multiple jaws for each operation is the time consuming and expensive part.

[WillAdams]

There are entire books on workholding:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53168863-jigs-and-fixtur...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5042096-jig-and-fixture-...

[dekhn]

I've switched from clamps to painters-tape-and-superglue and it's been great. Only for holding, not for indexing.