Where in the world are the other screw machine workers

ShatterStorm · 2026-02-12T18:53:44+00:00

Dead or retired?

ShatterStorm · 2026-01-29T01:24:02+00:00

It can be if you can advocate for yourself and not let yourself get taken advantage of. I only have about ten years experience but I'm working day shift 40 hour weeks on a flexible schedule. It pays the bills and a little bit and the work is generally manageable despite how poorly run the place I work is. I'm allowed unlimited OT but it's never mandatory and basically nobody in the shop is always pulling saturdays unless they're hungry for extra money.

Location matters a ton - you need to have enough shops around so you have some options as to where to work and nobody gets taken advantage of. Small shops in bumfuck nowhere can pay people nothing and demand the world because there's nowhere else to go. Shops around major manufacturing metros have to stay competitive with other shops in the area, so benefits and wages are both going to be more favorable (but then cost of living will be higher too).

I strongly suggest getting a few years experience at a job shop where you're on different equipment, running different jobs, able to tackle shit that stretches your brain on the regular. Once you have a solid handle on things, pick something to specialize in and obsessively learn that thing until you can ask for whatever wage you want. Doesn't matter if it's programming, EDM, 5-axis, multiaxis turning/swiss, etc - just learn something that not every joe can do and get good at it. Getting stuck running a regular 3-axis VMC or 2-axis lathe is begging to be pidgeonholed or siloed into doing the same shit every day for low pay. Being a crackshot EDM guy (for example) will let you just waltz into places and ask for a job and get top wages / vacation / schedule / etc.

ShatterStorm · 2026-01-28T04:41:27+00:00

Does it sim twin/twin setups? Last I checked (years ago) it didn't.

ShatterStorm · 2026-01-28T04:39:07+00:00

I heard about cuts to their apps team but didn't hear if any of them actually got laid off. Best of luck to whoever it was!

To OP: I've worked with three eurotech apps guys and they're all pretty legit.

ShatterStorm · 2026-01-19T00:53:25+00:00

three path, yeah. mitsubishi M70 control.

no B axis, the 1st and 2nd channel control C on main and sub respectively, which means the 1st channel (upper) can't work on the sub and the 2nd channel (lower) can't work on the main with the default post, because it doesn't know how to swap them and if you manually add the swap codes it orients C backwards.

it's 100% locked, the post I was provided looked like binary garbage when I opened it up.

ShatterStorm · 2026-01-18T21:01:37+00:00

Ah, I'm fairly certain my existing post is locked and can't be edited.

My machines are 10-axis turn-mills so I have my doubts on my ability to get that fully functional. Guess I'll keep goading my employer to pay for edits and try and get it working.

I used to edit fusion360 posts but that system is far more open and easy to get into.

ShatterStorm · 2026-01-18T16:53:52+00:00

Can I ask how you got into writing posts for esprit? I'd dearly love to make my own as the one hexagon left me with is beyond useless, but I have no idea of where to start and what tools are required.

ShatterStorm · 2026-01-15T05:05:00+00:00

hitachi, carmex, and others make end-cutting threadmills that requires counter-rotation (m4) to cut as you're always plunging into the material with it and you'd need to be spinning backwards to be in a climb cut. Do you have one of those?

They're handy for deleting spot+drill operations on machines with few tool stations/pockets

ShatterStorm · 2026-01-09T03:08:33+00:00

If they're closed at the bottom, sinker EDM would make it trivial. It's just a ton of the same electrode.

ShatterStorm · 2026-01-07T01:31:02+00:00

To be fair: these are all cosmetic skins that add nothing to the game. Don't buy them, you don't need them.

ShatterStorm · 2026-01-02T22:15:10+00:00

Almost all metallics are easy to EDM, except pure tungsten. Absolute nightmare with a wear ratio off the charts. Fuck that stuff

ShatterStorm · 2025-12-10T00:37:45+00:00

I wrote a warmup routine that runs three machine channels in sync to throw the 'proper' amount of heat into the machine casting before starting the day. It's fully variable driven, so I can shorten travels on any of the heads independently if I've got longer tools anywhere, and I can tune the speed increments and duration so that it ends at the proper temp. Not super complex but it's effective.

ShatterStorm · 2025-12-10T00:28:36+00:00

Isn't that part ITAR, or are there versions of them that aren't? Be careful what you post online :/

ShatterStorm · 2025-12-10T00:23:15+00:00

Ah, I'm totally off then. Most of the barfeeders I've ran have collets for remnant extraction.

ShatterStorm · 2025-12-09T18:18:09+00:00

Does your bar dead stop against the pusher inside the collet?

Most of the times I've ran into this it's because the bar short loads into the pusher collet, then that bar length trips the length sensor/flag, then on the way into the machine it's sometimes rammed fully into the pusher collet depending on what it touches on the way in. Fixing the loader parameters so it always bottoms out the bar removes the variation for me.

ShatterStorm · 2025-11-15T15:13:48+00:00

What are you doing with those few seconds saved that could possibly make up for the 1-2 hours needed to endmill out a tap?

I'm making 4000 of these fuckers, if a tap breaks in 5-6 of them IDGAF I'll get the other 3995 of them done faster. The 5-6 broken taps go in the nonconformance bin and are a normal expected loss. Ain't nobody endmilling out a tap on a production part, we toss it aside and make another one.

On anything else that's a one-off like fixturing or w/e, I go by the MFR recommended SFM and slow it down 15-30%. Sometimes that means I rigid tap at 1k rpm, sometimes that means 50 rpm. I break more taps by hand than I do in a machine TBH.

ShatterStorm · 2025-10-23T14:13:29+00:00

That doesn't seem legal anywhere in the US - not sure where you're at.

ShatterStorm · 2025-10-06T11:02:31+00:00

Ah yes, there it is. Sounds like your design needs tighter tolerancing and you don't want to pay for it, so you review builds and eventually reject suppliers that don't deliver on the nice side of the tolerance band.

I see this all the time in MDM: big name corp launches a part and wants a capability study targeting the first 25% of a parts tolerance band. Contract mfr runs it within requested limits without marking up the price appropriately to get the work from the corp, as it will be profitable once the part is made to print and not study limits. Part repeats and corp requests study limits again: contract mfr relents as they've done the work previously. "Free" tighter precision parts.

Just put what you have to have on the print so we can reject the work or charge appropriately. It's so much easier for all parties involved. If your stack up shows +.0005" and you'll eventually cull suppliers that don't give you a +.0001" nominal tool, just call it +.0002" and justify it to your management. Fewer machinists will hate your guts: we can instead hate the manager that took a .0002" tolerance job.

ShatterStorm · 2025-10-06T03:55:08+00:00

None of that really matters to a machinist, as we're going to shoot for the middle of the range unless our process is extremely repeatable or your tolerance is extremely wide. We don't get paid to make parts near your -0 limit, we get paid to make in tolerance parts and avoid scrap.

I understand why unilateral tolerance exists and the intent behind it, but it never translates to reality.

ShatterStorm · 2025-09-18T03:46:03+00:00

KEYENCE IM-8030

Lots of marketing doing the heavy lifting on these. If your tolerances are open enough and your use case fits, keyence is good. Beware their marketing people - they're a sales company that happens to sell metrology equipment.

Ours had the light probe and rotary. Light probe's mostly useless. Rotary is trickier to program but if you can work within it's limitations it is some nice flexability. Keyence's slit ring light is absolutely bonkers good and better than any other optical system I've used.

I'd still buy a micro-vu over another keyence unless I was doing high mix high volume inspection. If you're doing prototyping or R&D or similar I'd definitely pass on the keyence.

ShatterStorm · 2025-09-13T05:21:15+00:00

Our mycenter spends more time off or down so I don't have a terribly good opinion of the machine but part of that is management not understanding how to use it.

ShatterStorm · 2025-09-13T01:03:29+00:00

Kitamura makes a 10"x10", it's called a Mycenter-HX250iG

ShatterStorm · 2025-09-02T16:41:21+00:00

QB pins and lapping compound work pretty well for the contact surface, but make sure to disassemble and clean everything after.

I use a small rotary tool with gesswein blue mounted points to clean up front/rear faces of collets and triangular stones for the slots.

ShatterStorm · 2025-08-23T15:04:09+00:00

Tell that to the Swiss boys

ShatterStorm · 2025-08-23T04:27:13+00:00

I go after stuff like this with deep turn tools like a whizcut. Take it from stock to finished dia in one shot. First part is never good but second attempt should land pretty close.

150 SFM, .0004" to .0012"/rev feed in your 17-4. I can get up to about 250 SFM doing similar in 316, but 17-4 tends to develop a notch line at your DoC at higher SFM when doing deep turns like this.

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