They created a night shift for our facility about 2 years ago, and ever since we technically haven’t had access to LOTO locks. When someone caught some overhead wires for a chain fall a year ago we realized not even our shift lead had the key to get in, I guess that never got around to it. Is only having a few people signed off normal for this stuff? We have about 30 technicians/inspectors split between two day shifts and a night.

We a quoting a new part that is out of my comfort zone. I’m pretty confident in 6061 (who isn’t?) and have dabbled with mild steel and stainless on some projects. The new project would be the first five axis part I have done and also the first inconel part I’ve done. The part is a smaller (under 5” diameter) blisk similiar to the one in the image. You don’t grow in your comfort zone but am I crazy for thinking i can pull this off? Any tips to attack this or should we stay away and leave it for the big dawgs. We would be specing a new machine for this project and able to purchase necessary tooling. First thought is to put it on a lathe and then move to 5 axis. Any input on machines, tooling or just advice in general would be greatly appreciated at this point.

I picked up three fully loaded Gerstners last weekend. 2/3 had reminders inside of why we work. 😆 This is not uncommon at all. I find lots of photos.. a few dirty poems.. the film was a first though.

robots and AI might take my job someday but they can not take my irresponsible use of comic sans

Seen a few posts about these and thought id give it a go, im almost exclusively CNC so was a nice little challenge to make manually.
304 stainless and brass.

Making some V Rollers. Acquired an older Doosan PUMA300MS (2008) from a machine auction. The main roller program is just written by Fusion360's cam software. Ended up using the basic lathe DNS lathe post. Ended up hand writing the bar pull program because the DN Solutions supplied mill turn+sub spindle post processor was not meant for the Fanuc 18i control. Thank God the machine came with over 40 different programs that I was able to export and reference to create the bar pull sub program. Still haven't figured out the parts catcher though. Overall a very solid machine and I love the tool presetter, first time ever getting to use one.

Today was productive, it was my first time running my vmc, first time, milling steel, first time tapping holes, and first time making a fixture. I've made some fancy aluminum parts on my other machine, but just got this new one up and running.

What is the best way to de bur this cross hole.
The hole is 10mm so hard to get my scraper in there?
The material is 316 stainless steel and I cannot mark on scratch the finish around the holes

While using my Hydraulic press I screwed up some of the opening to this hole. I tried to slowly scape it off but my threads are still screwed up and the bolt isn't going on. What does someone do in this situation?

Just wondering if anyone has input to achieve better results, I’ve got this part chucked up on the OD. Boring to 5.5” id and the best taper I’m able to achieve is .0025” over 21 inches tip to butt. Am I just being a hard ass trying to achieve sub .002” taper and chasing a ghost or is that plausible? The print doesn’t call for it to be exact or even closer than what it is, but I prefer to use jobs with more open tolerances to get better at harder tasks. Boring bar is 3” diameter. Material is 316ss. I think the metal is slightly warped because of the welding the pipe fittings on so I have slight out of round on the id and od towards the ends. I’m the only machinist where I work so slow and steady is the name of the game. I don’t want to reenact the Russian lathe incident…

Immensely pleased with how smoothly my second or third foray into micromachining went. These are some bushings made of (unhardened) A2 and the way it's designed there is a 60 degree point at the bottom, but with .005 land so technically there's a very shallow bore at the bottom instead of a sharp corner. I got them dialed in dead nuts on every dimension, but getting the underside chamfered without cutting into the angle and enlarging the thru hole took a bit of doing. There ended up being about a .0002 stock window where you were taking enough material off that there wasn't a burr sticking out the bottom, and if you took off any extra you'd open up the reamed thru hole.

Turned and cutoff blanks in the lathe and did the counter drill feature in the mill w a mill drill and and reamed the tiny thru bore, used a 3mm dovetail cutter to chamfer the underside of the thru bore. I was also very impressed with the Z-axis stability of our new DNM4500 4th, after running a bit of warmup it held it's true Z position within about +/-.0001 over 6 hours.

I have a very strange problem I'm getting with my syntec 4 axis controller. I made a program with all correct wcs orientation. When I run the program I set the correct parameters for machine wcs. When I run the program the machine reaches extreme depth reaching the negative limit. I checked the program correctly . I tried machining for a 20mm stock. When the program runs i notice that what z depth I set the Machine reaches for a z depth 0 i never set, which is way past the z depth 0 i set, it reaches just close to the table and throws this error.

The software I used was fusion 360 and it failed

I made a duplicate program but it generated through the artcam's post process and it worked fine?

What problem am I facing I mean ? I don't understand this can anybody explain

The post processor I used was fusion library's generic syntec post for milling.

I learnt something about syntec's proprietary function for 4 axis but I'm making 3 axis toolpaths, it should not crash that way ?

Idk wifey said I should post it somewhere lol. Basically had to grind the arbors down from 3.500” to 2.9998” because it was too big for our lathe…. Ended up making it close to perfect (no CNC)
First picture is the finished… the rest are just random throughout

Today I received my replacement bearings for my small lathe spindle. Supposedly a DB pair of 7208 B P5 bearings. Were packaged in a single box and even in a single sealed bag, but they look visually different on the outer race. Is that normal? On the first photo they're in the DB arrangement.

The customer experienced an overload on the C-axis, which triggered an alarm. When they rotated the spindle manually, it was stuck and barely moved. Conclusion: the bearing is broken. 😞

Being a keen amateur creator of swarf and profanity in the workshop I recently picked up a couple of good but old chucks at an autojumble. Both have some surface rust, one has clearly been used to hold something that's been spray painted - but the price was far too good to pass up.

I'm going to strip and clean them, but I'd also like to clean up the faces back to being something you can true a part against.

My best guess at a plan so far is mount a dremel in the toolpost and give them a tickle with a grinding stone.

Does that sound sensible or is there something better I can do to bring them back without taking too much off the face?

Hello folks,

I'm trying to acquire a manual for a Mori-Seki SL-3H CNC Lathe. The Control Panel attached to it appears to be made by Fanuc, but in not seeing any labels indicating that.

I don't have an image of it, but closest image that I could find that resembles it is here.

Is it possible that over the years that for such an older model the previous owner(s) installed a custom control panel using various parts? Is that even possible?

I did an AI search trying to find it, and this is some of the description

The start and stop button are square shaped on the bottom left and the emergency stop knob is above that. The key is on the top right. There is single block command line, optional stop, coolant and dry run buttons and the coolant on and off are square shaped too. The CNC is connected to a lathe from a different maker (Mori-Seki). The number buttons are on a separate panel next to the screen which appears to be similar to a tube TV and they have letters And numbers attached to them. There is also a manual knob with a handle, white color with the name Fanuc printed on it, and some options regarding the feed rate and turret rates of movement.

According to the result:

The closest lead is a FANUC Series 0-C mill control—often listed as FANUC 0-MC or 0-C, depending on the machine and how sellers label it. It fits the separate MDI keypad with letter/number keys, CRT-style screen, and mill-specific operator functions such as SINGL BLOCK and DRY RUN. But the square start/stop buttons and white handwheel may be part of the mill maker’s own panel, so they don’t identify the FANUC model by themselves.

Try image searches for:

FANUC 0-C mill CRT control panel

FANUC 0-MC CNC mill control panel

FANUC 0-C MDI keypad CRT

Add the mill’s make or model to those searches, if you know it.

The white handled knob is likely a manual pulse generator (MPG), or electronic handwheel. Its axis-selection and step-size controls are often machine-builder-specific rather than distinctive to a particular FANUC series. MRO Electric

If you can share a photo—or the text from the FANUC label, usually near the screen or inside the electrical cabinet—I can narrow it down much more reliably.

What do you guys think?

Let me know what are your thoughts in the comments.

EDIT: Another thing I would mention is that the screen appears to be an old tube TV style. And there are options on the top left side with PSI and something else.

Imagine ball milling over a cylinder. You want lowest speed/lowest feed at 9 o clock, then fastest speed/feed at 12, then back to lowest. I suppose it hasn't happened because the solution for industry is just to run these parts in a 5 axis and maintain the tool angle but there sure are a lot of 3 axis parts that it would be great to have this feature on...

I didn't have any blue or yellow on hand, but after looking around I realized I had MoS2 powder. So I did some quick Google fu and figured it was worth a shot on an aluminum plate um scraping in.

My god it's good, after the cadmium yellow I like for contrast showed up it got even better.

So couple points, first this stuff feels wildly different on the reference plate. Feels like the works is just about floating on it, it's weirdly different. Second this stuff is awesome for marking aluminum, since the MoS2 makes a high pressure lubricant, the aluminum can't gall or drag on the reference. Added bonus is that it feels like the scraper runs a hair smootherthrough it too.

Color contrast is damn good too with a lick of yellow applied to get it all to really pop.

Might be worth poking at if you need an alternative to the yellow and blue. If I could find something that UV fluoresces that would be even better.

Hey, so I’m 2 weeks into this field as a machine operator at a small ITAR shop. I’m working mostly with my boss, but have been fucking up a lot where I’m questioning my sanity and skills. I will say that there is some language barrier and tone shift because they are mostly Vietnamese and speak with an accent, and ifyk Vietnamese, their speaking tone kinda sounds angry most of the time and when I fuck up and get yelled at, it sounds much worse.

I know and understand that I’m the new guy and that idk shit and have a lot to learn, but the working environment and my boss’ teaching style isn’t really productive to me as it affects me the whole day….

My boss is the one who is training me, along with another guy, but mostly my boss, and I keep getting yelled at for the littlest things…like for example, I got yelled at by my boss because I asked a coworker how to clean the machines because he didn’t show me, and told me not to ask and bother them again. Today, fucked up a lot of parts bc of a burr…he saw me using a file to deburr the touching faces and he told me to stop bc they use locating pins and that only the holes had to be deburred. Said ok, and ran the part again for another OP…parts came out flat bc of burrs and yelled at me for not deburring…yesterday, he yelled at me bc I didn’t clean the machine to his standards…I was fine with cleaning it up and atp I already stayed an extra hour after I was supposed to leave, but just told me to follow directions and to stop thinking….got a talking with HR and signed a “training” form that basically says: clean up your machine area really well, follow boss EXACTLY instructions, don’t ask coworkers for help, and that I only have 3 more “fuckups” before i get fired….3/5 days last week i got yelled and and this week so far has been shit…really demoralized…

I really like the work and wanna learn and get better and IK that I have to crawl before I can run, but them telling me to stop thinking and just follow their EXACT instructions, while yelling isn’t really an environment I’d wanna stay….

Hey guys. I know I could probably google this but I wanna hear from you guys in this subreddit. I’m a rookie machinist with about a year and a half under my belt, run a big vertical lathe with a 9 foot table inside, I feel like I’ve came a long way in the shop since I’ve started. The thirst for knowledge doesn’t stop. Lol. But recently our shop just got a brand new mill in, and they had a small crew guys come in and set it up and work on it, and I’m thinking? That’s gotta be a good paying job right??? I mentioned my experience because I’m super curious how a person even gets into that field of expertise (of setting up machines) Do people usually work as machinists for a long time before hand? How does the opportunity even come up naturally? And is there like a school for setting up machines? Will my boss get a quest marker above his head after 10 years of experience? Genuinely curious, because it’s something I might look into and strive towards. Thanks in advance for any and all responses!