taiwanluthiers
Cast Iron
- Joined
- Dec 6, 2016
- Location
- Xinjhuan District, New Taipei City
I just got a huge reprimand.
So when the machine is doing a tool change, a chip somehow made its way into the spindle, and of course this caused the tool to stick out ever so slightly. Problem is, my boss does his engraving with a center cutting chamfer tool. It requires very minute precision, meaning if the tool stuck out even more than .005" the engraving will be ruined resulting in a scrapped part.
Problem is as I was changing part I failed to notice that a chip has somehow made its way into the spindle and caused the tool to stick out .005" more than it should be, and so now the engraving looks terrible. Between so many things you have to notice, having to work fast, etc. there are just so many ways stuff can go wrong in ways you don't even know could go wrong.
So about 8 pieces got ruined simply because I didn't know a chip was inside the spindle bore when it did a tool change.
Boss is someone who strives for perfection and even a 1% failure rate (10 defect out of 1000 parts) is unacceptable for him. But at the same time he requires things to be done very quickly with little to no time to inspect thousands of parts that you see every day. The machine is old and require lots of attention to details you never knew existed or else something could creep up on you (such as the machine has very poor chip handling facilities meaning if you didn't pay attention you could have a pile of chips clogging the machine).
So I guess how can I prevent this from ever happening again?
So when the machine is doing a tool change, a chip somehow made its way into the spindle, and of course this caused the tool to stick out ever so slightly. Problem is, my boss does his engraving with a center cutting chamfer tool. It requires very minute precision, meaning if the tool stuck out even more than .005" the engraving will be ruined resulting in a scrapped part.
Problem is as I was changing part I failed to notice that a chip has somehow made its way into the spindle and caused the tool to stick out .005" more than it should be, and so now the engraving looks terrible. Between so many things you have to notice, having to work fast, etc. there are just so many ways stuff can go wrong in ways you don't even know could go wrong.
So about 8 pieces got ruined simply because I didn't know a chip was inside the spindle bore when it did a tool change.
Boss is someone who strives for perfection and even a 1% failure rate (10 defect out of 1000 parts) is unacceptable for him. But at the same time he requires things to be done very quickly with little to no time to inspect thousands of parts that you see every day. The machine is old and require lots of attention to details you never knew existed or else something could creep up on you (such as the machine has very poor chip handling facilities meaning if you didn't pay attention you could have a pile of chips clogging the machine).
So I guess how can I prevent this from ever happening again?