Operators responsible broken for tooling?

[J Coulston]

1.

3flute aluminum cutting em 3"OAL sticking out 2.6" clamping on .400" in an ER40 collet in a mill/turn machine. Is it a good idea? I know the answer. Grenaded the em and collet.

 

2.

MC a simple aluminum plate. same operator programed, post and ran it in machine. Drills two nice 1/4 holes about 18" away from where the part is, one in the Kurt vise movable jaw , one in a hard Snap Jaw. Didnt check the WCS and output a second offset and I guess was not watching because there should have been plenty to time to hit feed hold. At least this one offered to pay for the jaws.

 

I really need to start charging employees when they carelessly tear up tooling, would you?

 

Any stories of shops charging for tooling. I understand stuff happens but it has been happening far far to frequently.

 

Now I feel better, not really but the stories to follow will surely cheer me up.

 

 

Question have you ever charged/been charged for lack of common sense when tearing tooling up? My guys have gone thru more hard jaws, holders collets and tooling in the last 6 months than I have in the last 10 years. I guess I am just to nice.

[Leigh @ Kodiak]

If your operators are doing the programming, it is indeed their fault. Letting guys keep the responsibility of programming after they continuously make mistakes, well that's your fault.

[Bruce Caulley]

Mistakes happen and unfortunately the company needs to wear it. If it reaches a point where you think otherwise, then it is time for that employee to be shown the door, not given an invoice.

 

Bruce

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

Perhaps a little math lesson is in order.

 

"I charge my customer $X for the part. In that I assume I will use/wear out/break X number of tools in order to make X% profit which I need to pay you. You have added an extra $X/ part, so essentially there is no profit in the job now and we're in the red now on this job and the last X number of jobs you have run/programmed..."

 

Something along those lines may help the cause, if not... like Bruce says, show him the door.

[mchin-pilot]

Who hired him? is at fault first.

 

Tolerate mistakes but not negligence.

[Justin Beebe at Folsom Tool]

Where I work I program and run the milling department. I have six operators/setup guys who work for me. I have invested a lot of time with each one of them teaching them how to setup and prove programs. The key is getting people with the right attitude and raising them to a higher level in there profession. Everyone knows what is expected of them but they have the freedom to make mistakes. Very rarely do these guys make mistakes but when they do I can tell how bad they feel about it. I try to give them the credit when things go good and take the blame when things go bad. We have had careless operators in the past that we have had to let go because they did not have the desire to do a good job. I look at it like this, everyone who works for me is a reflection of me and if they are not good at their job then I am not doing my job well either. I know in my career I have made some costly mistakes and I'm glad I never got charged for them. So in summary if you have put an honest effort into training people and they are unwilling to do a good job then get rid of them and find people who are willing to do a good job.

[Guffie]

In our company we have an "unofficial" policy, that if you make a production wrong, and you haven't followed the system of control etc, so it's clearly your mistake, the company pays material and employee make new parts for free..

 

About smashing tools/machine etc., it can from my point of view only be paid by the company.. You hire a person for a job.. Are you not satisfied, show him the door!

 

As Justin write, to educate people to work with focus on safety and responsibility about their work is what works for me.. We only have people without education for this work and we have had very few crashes/mistakes in those almost 5 years with now 11 machines..

People with little experience who are not 100% sure what they are doing have to run whole program with i.e. Z+100 offset and check that each tool has correct length and toolpath looks correct..

 

Mistakes are inevitable in the long run, but the right attitude about the work compensate for that!

[htm01]

if operators had to pay for tooling nothing would get done because everything would take 3 times as long to produce.they would dry run everything,run @ 50%, rapid @ 25%. not pratical.

[moeh]

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employee make new parts for free..

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I would be careful with this - proly not legal

[htm01]

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I would be careful with this - proly not legal

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From: Far away..... In Europe...

[jeff]

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Drills two nice 1/4 holes about 18" away from where the part is, one in the Kurt vise movable jaw , one in a hard Snap Jaw.

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That's what single block is for.

if it were me, I would fire him on the spot.

[Jim at Gentex]

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Tolerate mistakes but not negligence.

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That sums it up nicely.

 

I had an old boss who used to like to say:

"If you don't give a $4!+ about your job, then neither do I."

(That was usually the last thing someone heard as they were being shown the door. )

[Guffie]

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I would be careful with this - proly not legal

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If people agree on this and when the day is over, they sign out and continue work I can't see how this can be illegal in any way... It's not like forcing anyone to do it, but if people feel responsible about their work and want to "contribute" to the company it's for me a good way to say sorry!!

 

The other option is to take the bonus or in the long run show the door, and I think nobody wants that!

[gcode]

Depends on local labor law. This is definitely illegal in California. It's illegal to be in the building if you're not on the clock..

I'm sure charging employees for tools is illegal too. Out here we've got packs of lawyers trolling for business.

A guy goes to the doctor for a couple of stiches

in his finger, comes back with a bad back, blown knees, no hearing and a stress disability

[jeff]

My boss never charged us, but believe me he has threatened to do that on occasion when I was green and just starting out in this field 20+ yrs ago.

[Dave.L]

As James and others said, educating the person on the cost of there mistake can be very valuable if the person actually cares. In your example with the two holes 18 inches apart, a part of that story sounds like this guy is very careless and that’s a hard trait to change. Many years ago I had a guy who kept blowing up insert cutters and he was not careless at all, just not as sharpe as he should have been (no pun intended).

 

If a person is working to the best of there ability and they have been trained well and these incidents continue, well then maybe it’s up to you to find a place within your organization that would be better suited for them and the company. If not, as others said, maybe they should be looking for another career. This all reminds me of a statement from a friend’s father’s shop:

 

An employee came to the owner and said “I would like to receive profit sharing”, the owner replied “Sure, But just realize that when you participate in the profit sharing program you are also required to participate in the loss sharing program” What do you think happened?

[htm01]

we had a new kid bring me a probe in pieces, i think the 4th axis blocked the signal so it crashed. you should have seen his face when i asked if he wanted that taken out of his check weekly or all at once!

[Eric S.]

I would think you would be greatly limiting your hiring pool with a policy like that.

[MACHINEMASTERG]

i think you would be better off paying more for better employees then paying over and over for tooling on jobs

[LaszloK]

It is not something I would have them pay for, but it is something that comes up during performance reviews.

[Jim at Gentex]

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If people agree on this and when the day is over, they sign out and continue work I can't see how this can be illegal in any way...

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And what happens if the guy 'off-the-clock' cuts off a finger, or worse?

 

Do you think the company's insurance will pay on a claim like that?

 

Not in a million years.

 

Even if it is not specifically illegal in your state, it's still a VERY risky practice that could end with some terrible, unforeseen consequences.

[KMartin]

Have one person in charge of the programing .

 

MasterCam X4 MU3

Mill Level 3/Solids

Intel 5150 2.66GHz, 2.0 GB RAM

Windows XP Pro SP3

NVIDIA Quadro FX 3450

[pip]

How many good jobs has he made for the company, is he just having a bad week, or does he always do this.

I worked for a company in England for 3 years without breaking a single tool or scrapping a job, then one week I broke 2 tools, and was threatened with the sack. The next week I had left and started a new job. I still talk to my old boss, and he still ask's me why I left.

Just my take.

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

Working for a custom bike shop in TX a number of years ago I was doing a run of hubs on a CNC lathe. When setting up I told the boss I wasn't getting good finish with the boring bar I was using and could really use a thicker stiffer one. I showed him a sample part and he told me to run them.

 

After I worked 70 hours in one week to get the run done on his schedule he decided he didn't like the parts and tried to charge me $2000 for the stock.

 

I came back to MN without that 70hr paycheck.

[Del.]

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I came back to MN without that 70hr paycheck.

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i would have left him a dotted eye.