Rant: Ran an entire job with my tool offsets zeroed out by accident

Had been fighting with tight tolerances all day and finally noticed my roughing passes were cutting way deeper than programmed. Turns out I forgot to set my offsets after an emergency stop and wasted 3 hours and a whole block of aluminum before catching it. Anyone else have a moment where you realized you just completely skipped a step from the start?

3 comments

3 Comments

fiona_young20d ago

Oh man I did this exact same thing on a Haas VF-2 last month except it was my X axis that I zeroed out wrong on a 12 inch long part. Wasted four hours and a $600 piece of 6061 before I noticed my finish pass was three hundred thou off from where it should have been. I felt like such an idiot staring at the offsets page with everything reading zero.

the_patricia20d ago

Wait did you catch it before you ran the finish pass or was that the finish pass itself that tipped you off? I'm trying to picture how deep into the cut you were when you realized something was off.

nancy47519d ago

Gosh, you know what nobody's mentioned yet? That vibration you get when your toolpath is cutting air on one side but biting into the part on the other. It completely changes the sound of the machine. If you've run enough parts you can feel it through the floor, and I bet that's what tipped you off even if you didn't realize it at the time. Five hours into a setup and your gut knows before your eyes do, right? Your spindle load meter tells the whole story but only if you're looking at it, and most of us are watching the part, not the numbers.