Can we talk about switching from manual offsets to tool probes

I spent 2 years doing all my offsets by hand with a piece of paper and a calculator, but after getting a Renishaw probe last month I can set up a job in under 2 minutes instead of 15, so has anyone else made the jump and regretted the cost or was it worth it for you?

2 comments

2 Comments

jake_martin165d ago

Under 2 minutes instead of 15" - man, that's a difference of 13 minutes. You really saving that much time every single job? I get it if you're running 10 setups a day, but for a normal shop that's like... one extra coffee break. I've seen guys drop 3 grand on a probe then spend half a day fighting with macros and wonky touchoffs. Paper and a calculator never has a software crash. Never needs calibration. Not saying probes are bad. They're great for production runs. But for one-off custom work I still grab feeler gauges half the time. Faster than walking to the probe drawer. The real question is how often you actually change jobs. Once a week? Not worth it. Twice a shift? Different story.

the_richard4d ago

Paper never crashed on me either... but I've also lost count of how many times I've dropped a feeler gauge and spent five minutes crawling under the machine for it.