Warning: That "free" tool change advice nearly cost me a grand

An old timer at a shop in Cincinnati told me to just eyeball my offsets instead of using a height setter. Figured I'd try it for a few parts and ended up crashing an endmill into a $900 fixture because I was off by 0.003. Has anyone else gotten bad quick tips from experienced guys that ended up costing more than it saved?

2 comments

2 Comments

wendy_park7610d ago

Dropping the height setter for "feel" is a trap I fell into once too. Started using a simple paper trick instead: set your Z with a piece of standard printer paper folded once, then add your actual tool offset from there in the control. Barely takes an extra 30 seconds but saved me from cratering a $500 custom step fixture last month. Old timers mean well but their methods often assume you got their decades of muscle memory. Stick with the repeatable system even if it feels slower.

smith.ray9d ago

Paper trick works because it removes all the guesswork.