Spent 4 hours chasing a 0.002 inch offset on a Haas VF-2

I was dialing in a new part for a job last Tuesday and the boss kept telling me the bore was off. After 4 hours of messing with the work offset, I finally figured out I left a chip under the clamp. Has anyone else wasted a whole shift on something that dumb?

3 comments

3 Comments

sarahhart4d ago

Hold on though, that's not really a work offset problem. You were chasing a chip under the clamp, which is a different issue altogether. The work offset just tells the machine where the part is, but if the part itself moved because of a chip, that's a fixturing or cleanliness problem. You probably burned those 4 hours because you kept adjusting the offset instead of checking the actual part setup. Next time, just reset Z and touch off the part again before you start messing with offsets. A single chip can throw your whole setup and make you feel crazy. Live and learn, right?

mason7983d ago

Yo have you ever had a chip wedge itself under a clamp somehow even when you swear you blew everything off? That happened to me once on an old Fadal and I wasted damn near 3 hours adjusting offsets and even re-probing the part before I gave up and pulled the whole setup apart. Found a tiny little sliver of aluminum that musta shot out from the last operation. Stuff like that makes you feel like a total idiot but it happens to the best of us man. At least you figured it out and didn't scrap the part right?

sammurray4d ago

Oh man, I gotta push back on that a little... If the chip was under the clamp and it moved the part, then adjusting the work offset is actually the right call in a weird way. You're telling the machine the part is somewhere it isn't, so zeroing off the new position with the offset would technically save the part if you caught it fast enough. Not saying it's the smartest approach, but sometimes you chase numbers because your gut says "it's gotta be perfect where it was" instead of just trusting what the probe or indicator says right now. Chip under clamp or not, the machine's only gonna cut where you tell it.