Why does nobody talk about how much setup sheets changed the job

Was talking to a young guy running a Haas next to me and he pulls up his feeds and speeds on his phone, doesn't even glance at the paper sheet taped to his machine. I started on a Bridgeport clone back in 2004 where the setup guy handed you a laminated card with every offset written in grease pencil, and if you lost it you were basically dead in the water. Do any of you still keep paper setup sheets or has everyone gone full digital at this point?

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jennifersmith6d ago

We still run paper sheets on the older machines and I keep a laminated one in my box for the mill I run most. The trick that saved me more than once is writing the offsets in pencil and then covering the sheet with clear packing tape, because grease pencil smears the second coolant hits it. Young guys on the newer controls pull everything from the program or a tablet and that works fine until the network goes down or the file gets overwritten. Best setup I have seen is doing both, keep the paper as backup but load the numbers into the control so you are not retyping them every job. Losing that card back in the day meant remeasuring every tool by hand and praying you got it right, so I get why nobody misses it. Just do not trust the digital copy alone, I have watched a guy wipe a program offset and spend two hours chasing his tail. Paper costs nothing and never crashes.

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