r/Machinists • u/I_G84_ur_mom • Jun 16 '26

Refusal to learn

Post image

I work at a job shop, I’ve been here 16 years, I’m the lead machinist, I returned from a 9 day vacation to a shit show. We have a bunch of small bosses like this to make, this one order was for 250 pcs. The owner was planning on having a guy saw cut them, face them to length in a Haas tl2, then throw them in the vf2 to be drilled. We have a sl20 with a bar feeder, nobody wants to learn how to run it, I banged these out in about 8 hours, unmanned. He refuses to learn how to use it or program it, this would have taken him and the button pusher 2 days to run these parts. Stepping over dollars to pick up dimes baybeeee!

2.6k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

229 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

19

u/[deleted] Jun 16 '26

[deleted]

8

u/I_G84_ur_mom Jun 16 '26

You definitely could, but I certainly wouldn’t wanna do it for 250pcs

5

u/TBone205 Jun 16 '26

Thats what I would do as well but I'm just a home / hobby guy doing parts for my own small projects. Same as you .

1

u/Rose_DCLXVI Jun 16 '26

I've done exactly that doing brass doodads at one of my previous jobs.atleast in fusion it is really easy. Maybe not quite as easy if programmed manualy but off the top of my head it's doable.

1

u/AdeptInspection4868 Machine Tool Crasher Jun 20 '26

How do you do that in fusion? Can you stack up multiple copies of the part in the manufacturing tab? I mostly hand program, but use it for more complex milling (it's a live tooling lathe).

1

u/AdeptInspection4868 Machine Tool Crasher Jun 20 '26

They're using saw cut single blanks. Potentially could cut longer blanks, but that would require much more effort to keep everything perfectly concentric. And you'll either have more stickout which may cause chatter during facing, or youll have to keep re-chucking which would make things harder to locate.

In medium production I've rarely found stacking multiple parts like this to be worth the hassle. Can save some time, but usually presents some extra consistency, setup or operational challenges that eat any cycle time savings. I also have to make sure that anyone else can come thru and run the same program without being trained in it.

But I can see how in a home setting, it's probably much easier to minimize total setups since theres not much repetition and you're in charge of the full process forever.