- Joined
- Jan 20, 2018
- Messages
- 5,675
No, this is not about drug or alcohol addiction.
In another thread, BGHansen commented "I was told by a retired tool and die maker that the sign of a good machinist is how well they can hide their mistakes."
This is absolutely true! Even better ones can turn a mistake into a design improvement.
My most memorable recovery occurred shortly after Jim and I opened our shop. There were just the two of us and we had lots of extra space. We were approached by another machinist (Bill) who had a CNC lathe and needed somewhere to operate until he could find shop space of his own. We rented him some space and he moved in his machine. Shortly thereafter we got a job for a large quantity (for us) of high strength 304 studs. We subbed the job to Bill, (when in doubt, sub it out.) The material cost $3-4k, a very large expenditure for us at that time. Bill ran the parts over a weekend when we weren't there. On Monday, we discovered that the threads were all too small, they would screw into the no-go gage that the customer had provided. Jim and I were in absolute panic. Bill, not so much, said that he could fix them. Extremely skeptical, but with nothing to lose, we told him to go ahead. Using the collet on his CNC, he turned up the hydraulic pressure and squeezed the OD of the threads. This caused a very slight swelling of the flanks of the thread. I'm sure the thread profile was imperfect, but they screwed into the go gage but not into the no-go gage, and that was all that mattered.
So, tell us your Tales of Recovery.
In another thread, BGHansen commented "I was told by a retired tool and die maker that the sign of a good machinist is how well they can hide their mistakes."
This is absolutely true! Even better ones can turn a mistake into a design improvement.
My most memorable recovery occurred shortly after Jim and I opened our shop. There were just the two of us and we had lots of extra space. We were approached by another machinist (Bill) who had a CNC lathe and needed somewhere to operate until he could find shop space of his own. We rented him some space and he moved in his machine. Shortly thereafter we got a job for a large quantity (for us) of high strength 304 studs. We subbed the job to Bill, (when in doubt, sub it out.) The material cost $3-4k, a very large expenditure for us at that time. Bill ran the parts over a weekend when we weren't there. On Monday, we discovered that the threads were all too small, they would screw into the no-go gage that the customer had provided. Jim and I were in absolute panic. Bill, not so much, said that he could fix them. Extremely skeptical, but with nothing to lose, we told him to go ahead. Using the collet on his CNC, he turned up the hydraulic pressure and squeezed the OD of the threads. This caused a very slight swelling of the flanks of the thread. I'm sure the thread profile was imperfect, but they screwed into the go gage but not into the no-go gage, and that was all that mattered.
So, tell us your Tales of Recovery.
