Anyone here have experience with NT Tools Slim Hydro chucks? They hold up ok?

Was going to use a carbide drill, but I've had pretty good luck lately with Nachi powdered metal. The vendor I was going to use for grinding doesn't like working in anything other than carbide though. It can, but the hole is only about .400" away from a 5"+ tall wall. Smallest ER16 extension or holder I could find was over 1" diameter.

Have a job that was two ops, I'm trying to get it down to one, but that requires using a 5" extension with a diameter of no more than 3/4". I had initially programmed it for a 9/32" tool, but our CNC lead says we need to use a 7.3mm drill... only problem is I can't find an ER11 collet that will hold the 8mm shank. I'm thinking I can probably get away with having the shank ground down to 9/32 from 8mm. Just poking a few holes in inconel, will be spot drilled. Anyone think this will fail catastrophically? I think it'll be fine if I back up my feed/speed a little, but I've never tried this before.

No laser drilling, unless the parts get drilled under-size and reamed after to remove heat affected edge, which kinda defeats the purpose of getting rid of the burr at the machine. Particular part I'm looking at is .025" inconel sheet that has been formed in a coining die. Tried some MA ford carbide circuit board drills with a 170 deg tip and they worked ok... for about 20 parts then the burr got pretty horrible. That was just something to try because the drills were dirt cheap (for carbide anyway). Now trying a powdered metal HSS/CO Nachi brand drill, TiCN coated. Only feeding at 3ipm, but looking promising. Got about 600 holes with the first one we tried before the burr got nasty. Tip geometry on those is just about perfect for inconel. Not too worried about speed on the drills at the moment, that's only about a minute of the 8 minute cycle even at 3ipm. Next I need to figure out how to get the profile cutting time down, but looking like I just need to make a better fixture. Inconel flapping around during machining is no bueno.

Any suggestions for drills that won't push a huge burr out on breakthrough? I know that's somewhat unavoidable in this material, but not all drills are equal.

Can't use option 1, need pictures. Our machinists have wildly varying levels of skill. A lot can go without setup images, but many can't. Lowest common denominator and all that. Do you know if Jim offers training on it setting up activereports? I think he worked for my local reseller. I'd rather learn to do it myself than have someone else do it for me.

At my last shop, I never used them since all tools were dedicated, offsets were hard coded, and I was the one to prove out any new programs I wrote. Here, I hand off setup sheets and new programs to someone else 90% of the time. Currently using activereports and a template made by a previous employee. Works OK, but I need to tweak the format a little, and wondering if learning to write template files is worth it or if there are any other plug-ins that work well. Comment what you use, if not on the list.

Might be, but it's just as easy to xform the avoidance geometry.

There is a section in the post where you can define B axis limits. But as JParis said, there's probably a good reason why it posts that way. Depending on where the post came from, there's a good chance it's in the binned section anyway.

True. I can see that being a problem for sure. I'm still getting out of the rock bit mentality. Production runs where you're running 100+ parts at a time, every second counts so I got into what are probably bad habits for other shops. Across a hundred parts, 30 seconds per part is almost an hour of run time... and I also had a pretty good setup guy on the machine I set up for mixed output. Only ever scrapped one due to the mixed a output.

Or... if you have an old machine that uses clamp/unclamp codes with long dwells to build up pressure, as was the case at my last shop. It may only be 4 seconds per clamp and 4 per unclamp, but if you program it in a way that leaves off with the A axis at the start point of the next op, and you have 3 tool changes, you're talking about 20-25 seconds of wasted time in a program if it's calling the clamp/unclamp postblock with every A move. On a 5 minute part, that's a pretty large chunk of wasted time.

One option (I've never actually convinced a shop to try this level of control by the programmer, but I've always wanted to)... just lock them out of the control, and use a probe to do in process checks and offset adjustments. Depending on how deep you're willing to go and experience with custom macro, you can do all sorts of crazy stuff with a spindle probe and writing directly to your offsets. Just make sure you prove everything out very thoroughly. At my first job as a programmer, I had problems with operators mis-loading parts then telling the foreman the program was bad. So I added some checks to the probe cycle results and a few additional measurements to be 100% sure the part was loaded correctly. If the part was not loaded exactly where it was supposed to be, the program would jump to the end and display a user alarm telling the operator what was wrong. Also, (not sure what machine you're running) DMG Mori has remote monitoring software that will tell you what state the machine is in, a history of idle/run time, alarm history, and what lines of code are currently being executed. Combine that with keystroke history and you can keep a much closer eye on it. You can even set it up to send email or text alerts under certain conditions (idle for x minutes, specific alarms, etc.).

Yeah. what he said. Even with a flat for the screw, you'll have better rigidity with an arbor. Beyond that, arbor mounted facemills tend to have less runout which saves on insert life.

That's what I've been doing here, but was hoping there was a better way, possibly a script that loads/imports a specific template when you select a machine definition. I have a template file with pre-named levels, a wire model of the pallet, tombstone, chuck, jaws, travel limits, and every stop I could possibly use along with a machine origin point for setting work offsets with a manual entry toolpath. 99% of the time, my programs come out clean and the operator doesn't have to do anything except check tool condition and occasionally adjust LOC.

I looked into doing this at one point to try to get everyone using the same level naming convention to make working on other people's files easier, but I could never get it to work (this was back with x4). Is there an easy way to get MCAM to pre-name a set of levels? (ex 1-50 is various first op stuff, solid/rough wire/finish wire, user generated surfaces, stock, fixture, hardware, etc.) The shop I'm moving to, they want emphasis on standardization of all files going forward, and will probably want me at some point to go back and clean up/update old files. I didn't find anything with a search, but I could have sworn I saw a topic on this at one point.

Also, make sure you're not doing what I frequently do and miss the forest through the trees. Are you sure the next path has coolant off, and not set to ignore?

Depends on the post, and the control. On a lot of machines with newer Fanuc controls, if the tool currently in the spindle is called with an M6, it just returns to home, calls all modal commands again, then continues along. For older controls you could add a logic check in the post that omits the M6 if current tool is same as tool being called.

Pretty sure the "Force toolchange" checkbox does the same thing.

I've had to do that before.

I know this is kind of an obvious question, but did you check the box for "post as code"?

Insert selection is just as important as cutter selection. Use the wrong insert for the material, and it will blow up in no time. I may know that from first hand experience...

If you want any pointers on making your own custom vacuum plates, PM. I've made several sets for oddball jobs in the past. How big are the parts?

Yes and no. That same operator constantly screwed with the programs up front, and every time he scrapped a part, it was a program issue. Yep, sure was, but he never actually ran my code without screwing with it. Place was a cluster f anyway. Took a week off with FMLA for my kids birth shortly before I was laid off, and got several dozen calls while in the hospital asking when I was coming back, then an attendance write up when I came back to work the following week. Wouldn't work there for triple what I was being paid after that bs.

I was in the same boat as ghuns... I was not the supervisor, and the operator had been with the company 10 years longer than I had been. So, even though I went and printed out my original code, saved back his edits, highlighted the differences, and brought it up at the floor meeting when he tried to throw me under the bus, all I got were blank stares from the supervisors. Then I just stopped getting invited to the production meetings after that.

I tried out using pitch because metric taps the feeds are screwy, and using a multiple of pitch as spindle speed is limiting... First time it went out, I went and explained to the operator just what was going on. He nodded, and smiled, then as soon as I walked away changed the feed rate to "something that made more sense". Promptly broke several taps (not just one) then went crying to the foreman about how my program was effed up.