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My old boss in Dayton swore by manual tool touch offs, I called him crazy
Three years ago at that shop, we had a Haas VF-2 that would drift on the tool offsets after a few hours of run time. He'd spend 20 minutes a day with a paper shim and a dial indicator, manually checking every tool. Last week at my new place, our new machine's probe failed mid-job on a batch of 304 stainless parts. Guess whose old school method saved a $1500 block of material from getting scrapped. Anyone still running manual checks as a backup, or is that just wasted time now?
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charles_baker281mo ago
Had a probe go down on a Doosan last year. Grabbed the old height gauge from the back and checked the roughing tools (the ones that would have wrecked the vise). Took ten minutes and saved the job.
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phoenix_singh251mo ago
Man, I used to be right there with the "probes never lie" crowd. Then a bad touch-off on a finish pass scrapped a part that had six hours of machine time already in it. Now I do a quick manual check on the first part, every time. That ten minutes with a height gauge feels a lot better than explaining why we need more material.
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erickelly1mo ago
Manual checks are just wasted time in a modern shop. That Haas drifting was a machine problem, not a probe problem. Should have fixed the machine. Probes are reliable now. Spending twenty minutes a day with a shim is crazy when you could be making parts. Your new place just had a bad probe, that's a maintenance issue.
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