Hit my 500th part today and it was a total SURPRISE

I was just running a batch of aluminum brackets on my Haas this morning and the counter ticked over to 500 parts without me even noticing. That number hit different because when I started two years ago I could barely get through 10 parts without crashing something. Has anyone else had a milestone that snuck up on you like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_nina1d ago

Wait why is 500 parts even something to brag about? If you're still running the same job after two years that just means you're stuck in production hell and haven't learned anything new. Real machinists are out there pushing limits every day not counting how many brackets they can churn out. Plus if you crashed that much starting out maybe the problem wasn't the learning curve but how you set up your workholding or checked your speeds and feeds.

michaelw261d ago

oh man, i had a buddy who spent like a year and a half on this one single aerospace bracket job. he could run that thing in his sleep. but when his shop tried to move him to a new 5-axis part, he cratered the spindle on day two because he forgot to zero out his tool offsets right. so yeah, i get what you're saying about getting stuck in that production loop. it's not really bragging if you're just running the same code over and over without learning anything new.