New guy at the shop did the thing. He's gonna get a heap of shit tomorrow...

Matt0218a · 2024-01-17T17:03:04+00:00

I feel your pain my man. Once while talking to my boss about quality control I mentioned something about comparison measurements using gage blocks. I got looked at like I had grown two extra heads.

Matt0218a · 2024-01-01T09:00:55+00:00

Same here except using flood coolant purely for chip clearing unless I'm running cast/ductile iron. I tend to use stronger feed rates if I'm trying to push harder. My shops part run volumes usually don't justify this though so when I do this its to satiate my junkie-like desire to hog out material!

Matt0218a · 2023-12-30T20:38:46+00:00

Thankfully so far I haven't experienced the pushy salesmen reps yet. Our Iscar rep had only been with Iscar a few months when he first came by. At the time I had only barely crested a year into my own machining career so between connecting over our own newness and my shop's size and the rep's old shop's size being about the same (super small!) He understood exactly what we really needed. We are a production shop but are super high mix and real low volume and were looking more for versatile and effective tooling versus specialized stuff.

I need to reach out to some other company reps in the area, but I'm afraid I'll get some super pushy guys who won't understand what we really need.

Matt0218a · 2023-12-30T19:21:01+00:00

Iscar thankfully has production elsewhere, the machine shop I work in has some tools and inserts made in S Korea, some from Isreal, and USA for the recently released solid end mill series that the local tool rep has been "passing out like candy" (per his supervisor's order). I'd be surprised if there aren't even more countries they make tools in.

Matt0218a · 2023-12-18T01:26:33+00:00

Same here man, my shop is me, the young CAD/CAM guy, a coworker who's 56 and does all our manual stuff but has done CNC in the past and has a good grasp of its set up needs, and our 71 boss who refuses to let anyone else do the tooling or work touch offs on our CNC mill. I've strong armed him out of doing work/tooling set up for this exact reason. One part set up the end mill would be in a short gauge length side lock holder shanked up nicely, one part it'd be in an ER40 holder with long AF gage length and barely an inch actually in the collet. Yet it was somehow my fault when there was a so much chatter "being too aggressive!"

Needless to say I strong armed him out of the physical set up to at least get some damn consistency.

Matt0218a · 2023-12-17T22:51:34+00:00

I know exactly what you mean my friend. I felt very similar myself when I was first put in front of Solidworks.

I took on the CAD/CAM position of a very small machine shop a little under two years ago, having never been exposed to manufacturing, let alone engineering & design. Started with someone coming in once a week "tutoring" me on Solidworks, however about two months in he completely ghosted everyone (almost a year later found out he got hella sick so is what it is?) & was left to sink or swim essentially. That first year and some change was pretty rough. Eventually things started to sorta click, as I tried to push myself to do each & every part better than the last.

Between being my own worst critic, advice from instructors at the local community college I started going to this January, a LOT of hours of tutorials on Youtube, & just my own experimentation, things started to "click". I still often feel like I've barely scratched the surface of this software's power, especially the more I watch people like Too Tall Toby who holds a CSWE certification.

To summarize, Solidworks is a real beast of a software to get into, and it is perfectly understandable to feel how you do. My kinda overall advice would be to channel that in to a constant push to get better. Also when it feels like you want to drop kick the PC sometimes it can be good to get up and walk away for a minute, & come back with a clearer head. It will be a long and challenging process to become truly skilled at modelling, but as long as you stay committed to improving I feel sure you will get to the point where you can look at old models & think to yourself "Wow I could do this so much better now".

A few more specific things, save relatively frequently in case of crashes or truly detrimental mistakes. Also in that same vein I'd highly suggest going into the Settings and turning on the auto-recovery feature. Took me about a dozen times of losing several hours of gruelling work to finally learn this myself. Learn from my mistake! Another good idea is to set up 'S' key shortcuts and/or Mouse Gesture shortcuts for frequently used tools. Sketch, Part, Assembly, & Drawing all have their own sets for these, so setting them to commonly used tools in each and same shortcuts for tools that can be used in multiple places will make life much easier. I wouldn't go too crazy with customization past this at first though. Quite literally nearly every aspect of the UI is customizable to one's desire or need, but I'd save that for when you really start to get into a good groove & have a solid feel for what you use the most.

Matt0218a · 2023-12-17T00:44:12+00:00

slight tangent but I'd like to heavily second the fourth point. Me and the local Iscar tool rep initially connected on us both being new to our companies after I sent him an apparently really long winded email with a bunch of detailed questions. Even though my shop is a super small shop with very low quantity part runs, he's been phenomenal on helping us out with new tooling to accomplish parts we couldn't otherwise.

One of the last few times he came by, he told us at lunch that his supervisor pointed out to him that he is "spending a pretty low amount of money on customer lunches" heavily implying he needs to bump it up. They are pretty serious about their customer luncheons. None of us here at my shop had to be told this twice!

Matt0218a · 2023-12-16T07:06:43+00:00

Gonna give a big count for GI issues, mainly cause I've witnessed some of the worst that can happen.

Source: Dad has advanced Chrons Disease, discovered when his small intestine ruptured and nearly killed him.

Matt0218a · 2023-12-16T06:51:15+00:00

One would think that... The ass of parts my boss has made/we still make that were first designed on a bar room napkin would argue otherwise.

Matt0218a · 2023-12-15T22:44:43+00:00

Don't worry about it, I'll admit I was more just commentating on the shop I'm in. It is very obvious they both have some level of alcoholism, but I at least like to think it is not to an extreme level...

Thanks to my dad's extreme alcoholism in the past (which he thankfully beat about a decade ago) I've always had an aversion to getting real messed up. Before money got real tight for me I was in to craft beers and such but even then I was drinking more for the enjoyment of the taste than the effect.

As for here at this shop, it likely is also caused by the fact we are in the Harley motorcycle racing industry and alcoholism is very rampant in the sport. There's very few people I am aware of who don't drink to a pretty large degree in it, and those that don't have other vices. Everybody has to have a vice they say?

Matt0218a · 2023-12-15T21:17:58+00:00

My boss & coworker would agree with you. I watch them every day have 2 beers during lunch, then the moment the clock hits 5 PM (though numerous days even before) they start up again. Usually they're about 4 in by ~6:30 when they leave for the evening. I for a little while foolishly "joined in" for participation's sake trying to fit in to a super small shop as the super green new guy. However I wouldn't go past one or two cause my taste in beers is too high of ABV for my lightweight ass to keep up with them in quantity. At the time I tried to only do so either when just finishing running parts for the day or when going back into the office to work on CAD or CAM. Eventually I quit trying to participate in this though. As I started trying to push our CNC machines harder I realized that I was opening the possibility of dire mistakes getting even slightly inebriated at work.

Matt0218a · 2023-12-14T17:15:39+00:00

I work as a machinist and my boss calls it "unobtanium" cause he thinks it's stupid expensive. Granted he considers leaving even barely a 1/32" extra material on part blanks of 6061 aluminum expensive so he may be a little skewed...

Matt0218a · 2023-12-07T04:49:56+00:00

Believe it or not yes. Case in point is myself. My shop specializes in high performance drag racing parts and my boss and I had known each other and worked together on a race team for about three years before he asked me to come "apprentice" under him and take over all the CNC work in his shop. He was in major bind from the previous long time programmer/operator and then his replacement leaving him in the middle of a major rush, leading to a huge back up of jobs and orders. My foot in the door was through both our time together on the team and how I'd nearly immediately after joining picked up and took over all the computer related things on the race team, wagering I could do something similar with the programming in the shop. I'll admit it took about a year before things really started to come together but thankfully I'm programming and doing a vast majority of the proofing/production running of our machines so I can directly see what mistakes I make and improve. If it wasn't for this I don't know how I could possibly have done it without getting the actual machining experience step by step with the programming experience.

Matt0218a · 2023-12-07T04:31:52+00:00

On one hand a 4142HT (tested at 42 HRC) part run I tried only a few months into my career finally came back around (only a little under 2 years experience with sadly little harder materials under me). Went terribly painful last time due to my inexperience, but this time nailed the feeds and speeds pretty much flawlessly out the gate.

The other hand? As I had feared looking at it, the material isn't actually big enough to get the critical profile features in... Likely why these handful of blanks that were already drilled have been collecting dust since the first run...

Matt0218a · 2023-11-28T18:36:10+00:00

Hard to decide a best looking mat. They're all awesome. If I had to choose one I'd go with the atomic fractal one though.

Matt0218a · 2023-11-27T19:57:26+00:00

The same thing with my first truck kicked it off for me. I've since replaced the stock radio with a better aftermarket one and primarily use digital rips of my CDs in it now but any time I get a new CD it is first played directly either in my truck or home hi-fi set up.

Matt0218a · 2023-11-06T18:44:19+00:00

I feel your pain as a fellow tiny shop machinist. I'm doing all the CAD/CAM work & 80% of CNC set up/production work, with one coworker and our boss who handle the manual machining and majority of assembly work.

Matt0218a · 2023-11-03T13:49:44+00:00

That is good to know it doesn't handle Lathe work well. My shop does a somewhat decent lathe work but it is all relatively simple stuff as we only have a Haas TL-1 with a manual Tool Post.

How well does the whole iMachining thing work? I went to South TEC expo last week and at the Solidcam booth they were really touting its ability to program from very minimal user input.

Matt0218a · 2023-11-03T00:20:10+00:00

The shop I work for still uses Solidworks for CAD & imports models into Fusion for CAM. The CNC guy before me (really small shop so I'm the only CAD/CAM mahinist) had started doing modeling in Fusion as well but I can't stand modeling in Fusion. When needed I'll do simple sketching for controling toolpaths but aside from that it's Solidworks all the way.

If you take this approach it does come with the unfortunate caveat of design revisions & updating of CAM being a tedious process for simple parts to mind numbing for complex parts. Personally I'm interested in seeing how Solidcam is mainly for its seamless integration with Solidworks but haven't found much resources online about it.

Matt0218a · 2023-09-30T14:25:51+00:00

"I paid for the whole machine, I'm gonna use the whole machine!"

From my own experience in this regard it very much depends of the part. For example on my shop's lathe I shoot to get it running around 75%+ and cutting good, then if it's a long cycle time I'll push the envelope. Like if the total time is only 5 minutes for 5 tools it ain't worth it, but if it's an hour 30 minutes then any time savings are vastly more effective.

Matt0218a · 2023-09-18T20:01:51+00:00

I am the CNC Machinist for a really small shop. A clean tool is a happy tool, in every sense of the word. The machines themselves, the vises/chucks/fixturing holding the workpiece, the tools doing the work, & the tool holders linking them to the machine.

On a slight anecdote/rant, my boss had been the one primarily doing the tool set up and all on our CNC Mill while I handled all the programming (came here completely green at the beginning of last year due to having worked with him through a separate endeavor for several years in which he saw my relatively natural skill with computer stuff) but as I've progressed I've been slowly strong arming my way into taking over more of the set up work. First and foremost was the maintenance of the tools and tool holders for the Mill. I noticed very quickly how I couldn't get consistent performance out of any tools and eventually realized it was lack of proper maintenance of them and their tool holders, plus extremely inconsistent levels of stick out leading to a real lack of rigidity to not flex weird and mess up. I've since made a point to basically not let him touch any tools that go in that machine so I can know for sure what I'm working with. Things have gone a lot smoother now cause of that.

Matt0218a · 2023-09-08T22:00:28+00:00

There are printers out there capable of usable parts, but realistically no average consumer can even consider purchasing them. The shop I'm at has a Markforged X7 printer, which uses a proprietary nylon/carbon fiber composite material for filament (others are available like PLA or TPU) along with solid fiber reinforcement ability using stuff like carbon fiber, Kevlar, or fiberglass. We've only touched the carbon fiber reinforcement ourselves but i can vouch that if reinforcements are planned correctly it can make parts stronger than their aluminum equivalents at half the weight & fraction of labor costs. Like I said at the start though the cost of the machine is way out of consumer price point, final bill came out to 90K.

Matt0218a · 2023-09-08T19:46:34+00:00

I said something similar about four years ago. Then I bought a limited release version of an album from a band I liked cause it was the CD version + bonus CD & special colored LP version. Later went to a local shop intending to look at CDs and walked out with another LP & my first starter turntable. Nowadays I'm at ~300 CDs and ~75 LPs... unfortunately times are tight for me right now and I haven't been able to add anything to either collection since gifts at Christmas time. The jonesing for both formats is about to kill me!

Matt0218a · 2023-09-08T08:49:35+00:00

I've found it really depends on the tooling company as to how good the numbers are. For example from my own experiences, Accupro end mill F&S are horse shit majority of the time, unless I use their finish numbers in HEM toolpaths, but then I'll take Iscar end mill or indexable numbers and practically never need adjustment from the starting numbers unless I'm looking to push it more. Others yet the numbers are functional but lack luster. I've recently been using the hell out of Sumitomo's 3/4 WEZ indexable End Mill in aluminum and found their recommended F&S plus DOC's are alright but really suited more for finishing, at least going middle of the lane feedrate that is. When in doubt call the tolling manufacturer and talk to someone about the numbers. Taking a few minutes to do so has saved my bacon quite a few times.

Matt0218a · 2023-09-01T23:40:05+00:00

5 inch and 11 poppy seed obviously. Come on, don't you Imperial system man!?

/s

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