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I had a bit of a reality check this morning. I was working on some parts and looked up around the shop and realized the first time I worked on the same parts was before four of my current employees were even born. I have been with the same company 28 years, first three years was part time so...

We are looking to automate our soldering process, currently we use oxygen/acetylene and manually apply silver solder to the joints. I am interested in an induction machine as the heat source but do to the variety of shapes of our assemblies it's not going to be a one coil fits all program. So...

We have been considering selling the business for the last year, it was initially brought up by one of our vendors wanting to buy us but that deal fell apart, but once the wheels got rolling we decided to keep looking for a buyer. The thing is we don't want any of our customers or competitors...

I have done some research on change managers and am wondering if anyone has any experience in hiring one and what the outcome was. I am the minority owner of a business and frankly over the last few years our business has evolved into something I don't like. I feel like the "boy who screamed...

Many years ago when I was promoted to a shop foreman position the business owners sent me to management classes, one program was an adult education program taught at a career center and some were one and two day seminar type things. I found the training valuable and still practice some of the...

I saw this set of jaws advertised that has a series of 6mm holes in the jaws that allows you to put the pins in specific locations so you can hold your part at an angle....as opposed to using a sine bar or angle blocks. Has anyone used one? The literature points out basic angles but I can't...

One of my best employees has decided to move to Louisville, Colorado. He also happens to be my 23 year old son! Mixed emotions for me, I will miss him and he's a great worker that I hate to lose, but as a dad I am happy to see him pursue his dream which has been to live in Colorado. He has a...

The attached picture shows some examples of a family of parts we run. Most are made out of 12' brass bar stock, a few are copper. Diameters range from .875 to 1.125, over all length varies from 1.250 to 4.000 (most are in the 3.000 range). Quantities are fifty to several thousand. There are...

Our probe started intermittently failing, we have already installed a new one. After going thru the wires and the probe itself I can only find one break in continuity. I don't get continuity between the blue wire and the contact and the opposite side of the board. Between the blue wire...

Has anyone here sold your business but kept working for the new owners? That's the scenario I may have in front of me and I'm wondering what it will be like. My main concern is how I go from feeling responsible for everything to just doing my job, it's been many years since I was an employee...

One of my sales guys sent me an email about a part needing to pass KAISAN, what the heck is that? I tried to Google it and got no results. The part is a welding product for a Japanese manufacture. I'm not sure if the sales guy is trying to pull my leg or what. I asked him to explain but...

I have been developing a new product line and a M13 x 1.25 thread suits the assembly components perfectly. I easily found some taps but had trouble finding a threading die to use to build my protos. One of my tooling vendors told me the M13 x 1.25 thread was obsolete, is that true? Or is it...

My company is thinking about getting uniforms and I have a couple questions for those who work somewhere that uniforms are supplied. 1) What is the company changing policy? Are you allowed to change at work on company time or do you dress at home or get to work early to change? 2) Is it...

Has any one here intentionally down sized your business and then focused on holding a certain sales level? I am at the end of my rope dealing with employee's and customers, I will spare you all the details. Over the last year I just keep thinking how nice it was when I had a couple of key...

I have wood windows in my house and for a bunch of reason I don't want to buy new windows but would like to upgrade my current windows with todays technology and maybe triple pane glass. I would just rework my present sash'es and have new glass panels made but some of the windows are not in...

We have a 2006 VF3 that has a floppy drive in the control box for loading or saving programs. We want to convert the floppy drive to a USB port so we can just use a memory stick, has anyone every done that conversion? I spoke briefly with Haas service and it sounds like having them do it is an...

We have a 2006 VF3 and keep getting a 147 alarm or Z 0 limit switch alarm. Sometimes it happens after the machine has sat idle for a bit while under power but lately it is also happening during a machining cycle. If anyone has any experience with this I am wondering if mabe the spindle proxy...

Hoping someone more intelligent than I can shed some light on this issue. We have an old EMI-Mec machine that the turret is driven by a SEM DC servo motor, the turret wasn't positioning correctly so just as something to check we pulled the servo brushes and seen they were very worn and went...

We have a 2006 VF3 and I keep getting the "maintenance due" warning, honestly I don't know fully what kind of maintenance is due, the guy that was running this machine since we purchased it quit at the end of 2012 and I have inherited it. The manual instructs about coolant filter cleaning...

Our VF3 has a 40 tool carousel that lost position after an emergency stop. I have did the recovery steps as the control instructions directed me but it still seems the machine doesn't know which tool is in which pocket. When I go to MDI and do a tool change it brings up the wrong tool so at...