Had a talk with an old timer at the shop that made me rethink my tool offsets

So I was running a job on our Haas VF-2 last week, trying to dial in a tight tolerance on some aluminum parts. This guy Bob, been doing this since the 80s, comes over and watches me mess with my tool offsets for like 10 minutes. He just says 'you're overthinking it, set your Z zero off the part face not the vise jaw'. Tbh I always did it off the vise because that's how I learned at tech school. He showed me his method and I cut my setup time in half on that run. Ngl it hit different because he didn't tell me I was wrong, he just showed me a simpler way. Has anyone else had a random tip from a veteran totally change how you approach setups?

2 comments

2 Comments

miles7981mo ago

Flip it around on Bob and ask him what the worst crash he ever saw from someone doing it the wrong way was... I bet he's got a story about a guy who forgot to account for the part thickness and sent an endmill straight through the workholding. That kind of stuff sticks with you way more than any tip you get from a book.

park.tara1mo ago

Yeah, had a guy send a 1/2 endmill through a subplate once. Never forgot it.