That Tuesday when the bar puller saved my whole second shift

So we were running 800 small 6061 aluminum standoffs on the Haas lathe and my bar feeder kept jamming every 15 parts, which put me 3 hours behind by lunch. I finally pulled the bar out, cleaned the collet with a scotch brite pad, and found a tiny burr on the feed tube that was grabbing every push, and after that it ran clean the rest of the night. Do you guys check the feed tube when stuff jams, or do you just blame the bar stock like I did for way too long?

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martin.jamie20d ago

The scotch brite on the collet is a good call, but I would also check the feed tube bushing while you have it apart. On our older bar feeder the bushing wore a groove about .010 deep after maybe 50k parts and it did the exact same thing, jammed every 10 or 15 pushes and drove me nuts for a week. Chased the bar stock, the collet, even swapped the hydraulic pump before I found it. Now I keep a spare bushing on the shelf and swap it every time I do a deep clean on the tube, takes ten minutes and saves a whole shift. A tiny burr or groove will grab the bar way before you ever see a real problem.

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