Old hand at the shop told me to stop fighting the machine and let it do the work

I was running a Haas VF-2 last week on a job in Cleveland, making some aluminum brackets, and this guy Dick who's been running machines since before I was born walked over. He just watched me for a minute while I was fiddling with the feed rate, trying to get the finish right. He said, 'You keep bumping it down but the chatter ain't coming from speed, listen to the spindle load.' I felt stupid because he was right, I was overthinking it and causing tool deflection. I backed off the depth of cut by 0.02 inches and let the machine eat at a steady 150 IPM, and the surface came out glassy. Now I check load meters before I touch any override, it's saved me a bunch of scrapped parts. Has anyone else had an old timer point out something obvious you were missing?

3 comments

3 Comments

drew_bennett2425d ago

Hold up, is it really that big of a deal though? I mean yeah, the old timer probably saved you a few minutes of trial and error, but acting like it's some huge revelation that you should look at the load meter before you mess with everything else? That's just basic troubleshooting, man. Half the time these guys just want to feel important by passing down some simple tip they learned thirty years ago. If you're making good parts at the end of the day, who cares if you bumped the feed rate down a few times before figuring it out? You still got there.

uma_martinez25d ago

Man, you sound like the guy who bugs IT for wiping your cache. lol

robinson.hannah19d ago

Ha! I mean, come on, is it really that deep? Like, you're out here writing a whole essay about some guy who offered a tip. Who hurt you, dude? It's just a forum post, not a TED talk on machining ethics. Some of y'all take this stuff way too personally.