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Worst shift I had in 15 years was last Wednesday on a Haas VF-2
Ran a job for a local aerospace shop, 316 stainless steel parts with a tight +0.0002 tolerance on the bore. Tool 4 snapped at 2:15 PM, took out the part and the vise jaw. Spent 4 hours chasing a new setup and had to reprogram the roughing pass on the fly. Has anyone else had a single tool failure ruin an entire day like that?
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wendy_henderson214d ago
Disagree that one tool failure should wreck your whole day like that. 15 years in and you didn't have a backup plan for a common stainless job? I keep spare ground inserts and a second set of offsets in the control for tight tolerance bores like that. Maybe put a tool life counter on the roughing pass and swap it halfway through. A broken tap or drill that's one thing, but a snapped tool on a bore with a .0002 tolerance sounds like you were pushing it too hard from the start.
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ward.anna4d ago
That 0.0002 tolerance bore, was it on a critical feature like a valve seat or a bearing pocket where the print actually called for that, or was it just a CYA dimension from the engineer? Because I've seen shops chase a tenth on stuff that really only needs a half thou and it just amplifies the risk on a job that's already tight. Honestly, were you running that tool at 80% of its rated feed or were you trying to squeeze cycle time and maxing it out? Cause that's usually where I see guys snap boring bars on stainless, you push it just a hair too hard on the finish pass and the insert gives out.
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