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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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…

Boss says we have to do it this way, its how we have always done it.

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 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

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 understand the difference between SFM and RPM, that’s not what I need explained. I was taught by old school guys who make perfect parts using straight RPM, and I’ve never had an issue. One of the guys a little older than me but still young ONLY uses SFM and thinks it’s the Messiah. I’m making 3–4” titanium pucks with .001” flatness and parallelism callouts. My flatness measures around .0008”, but QC says it’s worse and parallelism is .002”. My boss (Who isn’t a machinist by trade) is convinced it’s because I’m using RPM instead of SFM. QC says the part looks slightly dished, so I think chuck pressure might be warping it after removing .200” from the back. I cut the jaws and use a dead blow to seat the part flat. Is SFM really the issue or is it more likely clamping pressure and material releasing stress? I always thought SFM was more about tool life and consistent cutting conditions than holding tight tolerances on medium (Medium for me I don’t do much bigger than that) sized part. I feel like I have better control over my program when I use RPM and that’s just what I was taught. Would loved to hear y’alls opinions I’ll take any constructive criticism!

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.

Mastercam posted a suicide move on my boring bar. I should have caught it. Got in a hurry to get it done. Now I’m paying the price.

Learn from my mistake and check that fucking code no matter how bad they “need it now.”

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.

I got a job at a shop by doing what y’all told me. I walked in, asked for a job, told them I wanted to learn and work hard, and now I’m starting in 2 weeks. Did NOT think that’d work.