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Had a guy in Phoenix show me why he runs all his parts dry before measuring
Met this old school machinist at a shop in Phoenix about 6 months back. He was running a Haas VF-2 and said he always lets the part sit on the table for a full 5 minutes after the coolant stops before he touches it with a mic. Claimed it cools more evenly that way and he gets way fewer rejects. I always just pulled parts off right away and measured. Tried his way on a batch of 2024 aluminum parts and my tolerance spread went from around .002 to under .0008. Anyone else do something similar or is this just an old guy habit?
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felix4786h ago
Man that makes total sense. I had a similar experience years ago with stainless steel parts where I was fighting all kinds of warpage issues and could not figure out why my measurements kept changing after the part sat for a bit. Finally had an old timer at a shop in Tucson show me the same trick letting them cool on the table before measuring and it cut my scrap rate by like 60 percent. Aluminum is especially tricky because it expands so fast with heat so that little extra time to stabilize makes a huge difference. Took me a while to get used to the slower pace but once I saw the numbers I never went back.
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perez.cole1h ago
Did you ever try pre-heating the stock before machining too?
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