Every machinist starting the trade is faced with the question of purchasing mechanical or digital measuring tools. Faced with the sheer amount of measuring tools available is already a daunting task for any newcomer; some decisions should be easy. Let’s take a closer look at the differences and break down what it means.  The older […]

Should you use cutter compensation for wear adjustments or use cutter comp for tool diameter has probably been the longest running debate since the advent of CNCs. Over the years of programming, I have been on both sides of the fence debating cutter comp. Sometimes I do not even program cutter comp as an option;

What is tool reading and why is it important? It is a skill which seems to be all but forgotten about, but it was an important part of my training towards the machinist I am today.  Reading a tool is the ability to look at any cutting tool and see the small wear patterns and

Here are some messages I have sent to my boss over the years. Hope you enjoy them. We shall be taking on a quest. This quest shall require the exodus from company property during the coming time of lunch. On this particular adventure, we shall seek nourishment for our bodies in the form of animal

Many companies have a mentality to keep everything in-house: buy more equipment, hire more employees, find a larger building. They think they are mining gold when they could be digging their graves.  Every company I have worked for had this push to try and tackle every job themselves and then turn around and outsource companies

The same as our company name, and I see a lot of misrepresentation or confusion towards what is Adaptive Machining. Using a CAM “adaptive cutting” path option is not adaptive machining; it is only an adaptive cutting path. Adaptive Machining is much more than a prepackaged cutting path. Adaptive Machining is the machine’s ability to react

I have been seeing questions asking why the CNC spindle is stalling during cuts. They claim the machines have plenty of horsepower [HP]. People have a tendency to simplify things, and HP is not immune.      With the famous bell curve we all learnt in school, the HP rating of a CNC is bound

Even with our advances in fixturing, automatic probing, and repetitive machine positioning, there are still moments when using an indicator to find center of a part feature are needed. Sometimes I need to indicate, by hand, fixturing which was developed “pre-probe”, and sometimes a part is removed and needs to be remachined. Other times, a

When someone mentions tapping a hole, we all envision cut tapping. Cut tapping has been around since the beginning of machining, and it is still the standard in which threads are made, but it is not the only way, and it may not be the best way. The idea behind cut tapping is easily grasped;

There has always been a preference amongst companies to use either of these two choices, but which is better? To clear the air and clarify a little, ASCII and EIA code is from programming punch cards, and later tape eventually pushing into electronic transfer. Older programmers still toss around those words when referring to CNC