Machinist School - Graduate Nate Langford says:

This is what we're making at work right now. It's the slide for a Wilson .45 pistol; we're doing the standard size and compact. There's a lot of operations involved, but that just makes it more interesting .
We're just making the slides and frames for the standard size and the compact version of the .45 and 9mm 1911. I'm not sure which long slides you're talking about. After seeing what kind of tolerances we keep on these parts, I can see why they're expensive. Our wire EDM machine is cutting out the profiles for the firing selectors on AR-15's. Fun stuff :D http://wilsoncombat.com/new/handgun-classic.asp

Machinist School - The Duck and the Owl

Here it is at last, the duck and the owl here at the Machinist School.
We make owls with the MakerBot.
Just remember:
If people spent more time thinking about ducks,
They'd spend less time thinking about other things.
                         - Rod's Duck Farm motto

Machinist School - Radial Arm Drill

This is a good picture of a Radial Arm Drill. Perhaps you notice the duck in the lower right corner of the picture ..... it has a red bill. Some people just call it a squirt bottle. Whatever it is, you get an idea of size. The top of the machine says "American Hole Wizard".
Radial Arm Drill Presses use polar instead of cartesian coordinates. Some people say they aare cool machines ..... because they are polar?

Machinist School - Dovetail Attachment

Here's a nice type of double jointed attachment for an undicator with dovetail connections.
The Moore company made this particular style. There's a scew that goes through the center hole to tighten the indicator to the dovetail.

Machinist School - Here's a Large Mill

Here you see Angle Plates bolted to the floor and Cassandra rides the head of the Giddings mill. You can work on some very large parts with this machine. Strangely enough, you can achieve very high accuracy because you can run a dial indicator along a 10 foot edge. A thousandth of an inch over 10 feet is only a ten-thousandth per foot or about 8 millionth's per inch!