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Do machinists now only machine or do they finish the parts they machine?

kustomizer

Diamond
Joined
Aug 17, 2007
Location
North Fork Idaho
This is only a curiosity, I have a friend I "came up with" that manages a shop nearby, the machinists in that shop only run machines, deburring, countersinking, etc is all up to someone else. I like to take raw stock to finished part and put it in a box ready to ship.
 
This is only a curiosity, I have a friend I "came up with" that manages a shop nearby, the machinists in that shop only run machines, deburring, countersinking, etc is all up to someone else. I like to take raw stock to finished part and put it in a box ready to ship.

I finish all my parts. I leave extended deburring to someone else if it slows down production.
 
correctness is supposed to be one of the things we can do, preciously and expediently, isn't it?

I keep getting these "online seminars" on how to make millenniums, useful. by not telling them they didn't do it right.
 
Lol. Animals. All depends on the pay grade and type of shop your in. You get what you pay for in most cases. So plan your shop according.

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.....Deburr in-machine.

This ^.

I marvel at the logic some shops use when they run a separate deburr group or department. Take your parts when they are often at, or near, the point of highest value and hand them off to a group that in many cases are the least skilled and lowest paid employees in the shop and expect good things?
 
Lol. Animals. All depends on the pay grade and type of shop your in. You get what you pay for in most cases. So plan your shop according.

The US is rapidly approaching a point where your bottom of the barrel all-inclusive labor rate is hitting $20 an hour for someone who has trouble showing up on time and sober enough to pour piss out of a boot with pictogram instructions embossed on the sole. That's $3200 a month.

So ask yourself - would you rather spend an extra 20 minutes programming some deburring and throwing 1-3 tools in the changer during setup, or have to work with the kind of people who can't add enough value to be worth a penny more then the legally lowest wage you can possibly pay them? Oh, and the chair moistener from Sector 7G still costs more per minute deburring your part than your machine does, and that's before he scraps 5% of them when the DTs hit from the hangover he's nursing and he drives the tip of the Noga tool into the Ra32 spec surface the customer demands on that part?
 
depends on parts. some parts small can hold in one hand and might take considerable time to get into small areas.
.
other parts weigh tons and you might take more time moving and flipping than the actual deburring. some deburring you just rub 80 grit sand paper on so no sharp edges for the next guy to get cut on. literally take less than a minute. more important to blow chips out of holes before they rust solid in holes. usually better to inspect part as you debur seeing how its in front of you.
.
usually anything that might get a heavy bur is programmed with a chamfer op. sand paper to remove bur on chamfer usually only takes a few seconds as chamfer not suppose to leave a bur
.
big parts weighing tons takes skill to pick parts and flip. obviously swinging part can easily push 200 lb man off his feet breaking his legs and only slow down swinging speed maybe 2% , i believe they call it inertia
 
What tool do you use to cut aluminum with? Notice I haven't given enough information to answer that question. Same with finishing operations. There is no pat answer as to what and how. One may be polishing or wire wheel. It may be a file. It may be a burr that can be eliminated by chamfering. It may also be the type of environment as in volume vs individual parts.

As to the term "machinist", the way I was taught was operator, setup and operate, machinist, tool maker, mold maker, model maker, instrument maker. Whether machinist is broken down finer, I do not know.

Tom
 
This ^.

I marvel at the logic some shops use when they run a separate deburr group or department. Take your parts when they are often at, or near, the point of highest value and hand them off to a group that in many cases are the least skilled and lowest paid employees in the shop and expect good things?

Priceless comment Vance!

Seriously? Lowest skilled group?
Cos' in my experience sure, they might not know and endmill from a drill, but some of the work they produce is not only astounding, but absolutely and completely impossible
to do any other way.
Had they chosen a different line of work, a good number of them could be well renown artists.

But please, by all means program every one of your parts with full deburr if you want to, and send me your now useless buffing wheels, tumblers and polishing equipment.
I don't want them, but will hand them down to my deburr house as a bonus Thank You.
 
This ^.

I marvel at the logic some shops use when they run a separate deburr group or department. Take your parts when they are often at, or near, the point of highest value and hand them off to a group that in many cases are the least skilled and lowest paid employees in the shop and expect good things?

I was in a local shop years ago that just de-burred parts.
Yup, crates of parts came in, got de-burred & wwashed, sent back out,
all over the country.

Rows of wood benches with people with files, glass bead cabinets,
a surf tran machine, and a parts washing tank line.

All done to print, to price.
 
Entry level positions are in the deburr category. That means an experienced machinist is supposed to know how to do it. Big deal, work is work.
 
What are we, animals?

Deburr in-machine.

This ^.

I marvel at the logic some shops use when they run a separate deburr group or department. Take your parts when they are often at, or near, the point of highest value and hand them off to a group that in many cases are the least skilled and lowest paid employees in the shop and expect good things?

If the extent of the deburring on your part is running a chamfer mill around some edges then of course.

Unfortunately, a blanket policy of "Deburr in-machine Period" is unworkable beyond that, unless you're doing large qty production and can afford/plan to have specialised duburring and finishing tools permanently loaded in the machine.
 
If the extent of the deburring on your part is running a chamfer mill around some edges then of course.

Unfortunately, a blanket policy of "Deburr in-machine Period" is unworkable beyond that, unless you're doing large qty production and can afford/plan to have specialised duburring and finishing tools permanently loaded in the machine.

Yupp, all that right there.

In fact, the chamfered edge needs to be deburred on 80% of the parts I make.
 
Priceless comment Vance!

Seriously? Lowest skilled group?
Cos' in my experience sure, they might not know and endmill from a drill, but some of the work they produce is not only astounding, but absolutely and completely impossible
to do any other way.
Had they chosen a different line of work, a good number of them could be well renown artists.

Note that I did say "some shops". I did not say it can't work or that folks in the deburr shop are all bad.

I too have seen some folks do outstanding work. I've also seen countless parts need to be reworked, scrapped or caused to be submitted to a customer on a DMR because of an error by a deburr worker. It's a human process that has far higher probability of error than a CNC process.

Most shops treat the deburr area as an entry level opportunity with entry level compensation. While some workers there will make it and demonstrate necessary skills, many do not. The ones with skills and ambition often aspire to, and attain, opportunities in the shop as machine operators and trainee machinists. This makes the deburr department a bit of a revolving door as far as retaining experience and skill.
 
Most shops treat the deburr area as an entry level opportunity with entry level compensation. While some workers there will make it and demonstrate necessary skills, many do not. The ones with skills and ambition often aspire to, and attain, opportunities in the shop as machine operators and trainee machinists. This makes the deburr department a bit of a revolving door as far as retaining experience and skill.

Unfortunately, that is a common practice, specially for smaller shops where deburring operations do not warrant a full time position, therefore they will not offer a top notch salary for them.

And, then there are the ones where some manager sees the poor schmuck hunched over a buffing wheel or a dremel tool ( Heaven Forbid using a $1K+ NSK or Gesswein rotary unit ) wearing a face mask
and decides that anyone can do that job, therefore bottom shelf pay.

In both cases you WILL get what you pay for.

Fortunately though, for us small shops there are still plenty of business that are EXPLICITLY in the business of edge finishing, whatever that may entails.

I for one will program a part to dimensioned features, and may ( or may not ) program a simple 2D operation to knock off some heavy burrs.
I will program around and sort toolpaths so the heavy edges are machined to be manageable.
Otherwise, edge finishing is done by hand using whatever equipment is required by either internal people ( myself included ) or is outsourced to a professional house and then marvel at their work.
 
At the production shop I work all the machinists debur all the parts they make. We try to chamfer all the features on one side when possible but we stack multiple parts on top of each other a fair bit so we can’t chamfer all those holes. Majority of the time we have air drills or air grinders or pedestal drills on most machines to debur while the machines run
 
We chamfer or radius anywhere we can, often we have additional operations that can be done as the machine runs such as vibratory polishing, buffing wheel polishing, graining etc. If possible I like to put finished parts in a box ready to ship. This place I was talking about the "machinist" loads the machine then sits on a stool reading a newspaper or whatever until it is time to load it again.
 
We chamfer or radius anywhere we can, often we have additional operations that can be done as the machine runs such as vibratory polishing, buffing wheel polishing, graining etc. If possible I like to put finished parts in a box ready to ship. This place I was talking about the "machinist" loads the machine then sits on a stool reading a newspaper or whatever until it is time to load it again.

That's an operator, not machinist.

Tom
 








 
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