I am working on the part I've been setting up the 4th axis for today and ran into some interesting issues.

The part consists of a round shaft at one end and a triangle shape to hold mirror parts. It's one part of a larger component and had a unique shape. I programmed the part up no problem and was about to copy and paste the toolpaths over manually to the other side when I remembered the pattern tool in Fusion360, which allows you to mirror the same setup to different geometry. I used the rotational path and selected the center of rotation where it would rotate in the a-axis.

I ran through the whole program for the first side and noticed the finish inside one of the grooves left a mark where the endmill left the cavity. The part required it to have an excellent finish in that area, so I had to reprogram that toolpath to have a slow ramp out rather than a direct vertical climb. I specifically made sure only to select the one finishing toolpath for the first operation and not the whole pattern. However, when I ran the machine, it did the first toolpath no problem, but then it rotated the part and started doing the finishing operation on the sides I hadn't yet machined, thus causing a crash. For a few moments, I was baffled as to what happened, but then I reviewed the CAM file in Fusion and found that when I only selected the one toolpath, it read it with the pattern and translated it to the other sides. The concerning thing is that it didn't show me that it would only show my selection of the one side and not all three like it was in the g-code. I thought the pattern toolpaths would only be activated when you selected the pattern itself, and posting individual toolpaths would be independent of that. 

Not a whole lot of exciting work today, mostly getting things ready for upcoming jobs and finishing up last week's contract. 

Got the Land Rover parts up and running again this morning and ended up adding a chamfer toolpath to clean up the burrs on the top edges of the vent grooves. Since I had the program all run through, I was able to set up the new piece of stock and hit cycle start and take it out two hours later. 

I also got to put a chuck on the 4th axis in the Haas minimill; the chuck is a larger version of the collet where you can hold more significant stock in the vice. The downside to using it on the 4th axis is that the runout is quite bad and requires tuning to get it appropriately aligned using four set screws. 

My boss also got me my own Mitutoyo dial indicator for general use around the shop! He is also thinking about getting an injection molding machine to expand the services the shop offers and even get into small production runs with it.

Kind of in an interesting situation where I feel like I can be doing much more and am a little frustrated that I am not farther ahead than I am. In many ways, I have learned and gained much more experience than I could have wanted to, but in others, I feel stuck or just going through the motions. Many people say I am farther ahead than most people my age, and don't worry so much about going forward faster, but I feel like I can and enjoy the challenges it brings up. I've attempted to do more learning on my own with the Pocket NC, but even that doesn't bring as much enjoyment as it once did, and feels like I could be doing something different that would help me go further. I'm not unhappy with the work I am doing at the shop and have and am learning a lot from each day working there; I feel like there is something I need to be doing differently than I am now. 

Today I worked on a Land Rover Dust Cover Plate for one of the local high-end auto shops. I can show this part because it's a stock feature on some of the older Land Rover models that were discontinued and difficult to find. 

For this part, I had to set up two vices in the Haas VF2 and 12" soft jaws in both to hold the 24" aluminum bar. The first op consisted of tracing the part out, cutting all the vent grooves, then finishing the curved faces with a ball endmill. Then I'll make a fixture plate with one the spare bars of aluminum using location pins and bolts to hold it in place and finish the rest of the features from the other side and cut it out. 

The vent cutouts were relatively easy to cut out, I used a slightly smaller endmill than the size of the cutouts ramping down past the bottom, then used a contour toolpath to come in and clean up the walls removing the few thou I left behind. I started from the center and moved my way out so each cut would have the most rigidity and leave a more excellent finish. 

For the contour of the whole part, I only went down a few thou past the bottom of the curved features; this allows me to have enough stock around the base to get removed in the second op. I then went to a 1/8" square end mill and roughed out the curved sections of the part, leaving eight thou for the ball endmill to clean up. In the final finishing toolpath, I used a 1/8" ball with a four thou stepover, which left an excellent surface finish. Unfortunately, I had some difficulties trying to get the scallop toolpath to work due to some of the features on the part itself. 

For some reason, the manufacturing addition was available to me for a week or two a while back but now is restricted again, my boss didn't upgrade so I'm not sure why I was able to use some of the features before. I did end up using a few of the credits that you start with to get it for the day and used the trim feature to avoid certain areas in the model. 

I also had to clean the surface of the part after the rest of the operations were finished due to a mistake on my part. Unfortuantely this pushed burrs down inside each of the grooves of the vent slots and so will probably come in again and re-contour the inside faces to remove those instead of trying to do it by hand.

Short day today, waiting on a new motor for the pump on the Haas VF3 before I can start working on the next part.

Going through some of the drawers and cleaning out old junk and organizing the tools inside. The one pictured above is the collet and Allen wrench drawer, put together sets of Allen keys and placed one at each machine, then organized the rest in size order.

Working on a work setup design for tool organization, primarily endmills and tool holders, that will set on top off several moving tool drawers. It's going to sit on top of the endmill drawers I organized a few weeks ago as the first stage in the process.

It's going to be a tool setup and breakdown station with everything you need to get the machines prepped for each job; this will make everything consolidated into one section of the shop and will make putting things away much more effortless. The goal is it have each machine broken down at any given time except when it's running or in a job.

I was also thinking about having preset tools for the most used endmills, like square 1/2", 1/8", and 1/16" endmills for steel and aluminum parts ready to go.

Having all the tool holders out of the machines also makes it easier to have the same style holders in the same machine and not to have to miss match different styles.

I am also getting a key to the shop pretty soon, so I'll be able to open everything up if my boss isn't there. Or if I need to grab something during the day, I'll have access!

I finished up these parts today and was able to get them shipped out!

For the final op, I used a 1/16" ball endmill with a two thou stepover (0.002") and came out from the center to clean that whole face and curves off. Took a little over an hour per part which isn't ideal but if I tried using a flat endmill to finish that face-off, I would have had a more challenging time trying to get the two tools perfectly aligned (manually have to set the tool height) that it would have ended up being the same run time.

I used soft jaws to hold the part in place and set all the tools off the top of them for my g54 (work zero), so I wouldn't have to change anything when I loaded up the part. I did notice that the piece did move slightly and so the finish wasn't perfectly aligned, I was able to fix it manually with a small file and scotch bright. The only thing I can think of that would change it so much is when I had to contour the inside of the soft jaws out - 0.002" to allow the part to fit in there and may have shifted to the side. I cut the extra two thou even though it technically fitted inside the soft-jaws, but it was very tight and so I gave it a bit more room.

I made some more progress on the aluminum showpiece I'm working on and got the somewhat difficult areas complete. 

I was able to flip the bar of parts over and faced it all down till each of the parts where separated, I released the vice a little and tapped each one down to ensure everything was perfectly flat to the bed of the minimill. From there I was able to set up a mini hard stop that attached to the top of the hard-jaws and placed a parallel down to raise the part from the bottom and used an edge finder to find the back right corner of the 2" square block and used that as my work zero for each of the sides. 

I ended up using a piece of ABS plastic to clamp against the domed face (see the previous post) to prevent the steel hard-jaws from ruining the finish. 

For the actual side milling operations, I ran into an issue where the blending of the finish from the first operation wouldn't quite match up and so I had to shave it down to blend it all in manually with a small file. All the marks will be cleaned up and hidden after they get tumbled. I was using a twenty thou ball endmill (0.02") with a one thou stepover to finish all the small features. I had to use such a small endmill to get as much of the detail on the part as I could due to the way it was designed. 

Working on another part today that requires a gorgeous finish, this time as a showpiece in aluminum, so the dimensional accuracy isn't as critical. 

The part has features on five sides, and all the finishes need to flow perfectly from one to another. It took me a while to understand how to program it after my boss explained, due to the unique shape that couldn't be held on the end that well. The basic idea on how to do it is to mill out the first side in a piece of bar stock, cutting each about half the depth of the part, leaving a small square block toward the bottom that you would use to reference off of when holding it upright. Since I would be holding it in steel hard-jaws, I couldn't cut it out, so I would have to cut it most of the way, then flip it over and remove the back material. 

On that same first operation, you would finish that side but leave stock on each of the walls to clean up on the final op. The area I took longest getting my head around was holding the part upright in the vice. On the front face of the piece has a dome shape and I thought it would get ruined by the clamping force of the soft-jaws; what I didn't take into account was how little pressure would be applied from each of the milling operations and so wouldn't require as much to hold them in place. 

Using the square base of the part from the first operation, you can set the work zero at the same corner and set each tool off the top face, giving you the same reference when rotating it 90 degrees.

I was able to finish up the first operation and programmed most of the rest of the part before I left. I'm not entirely pleased with the surface finish as it left a square-shaped mark where the bed of the minimill moved at a sharp angle instead of flowing from the center (see image) 

Forgot to post for last Friday, so catching up on it today.

The part I'm working on requires an excellent finish for a reflection dome as apart of a flashlight. I used a spiral toolpath with a 1/8" ball endmill and two thou stepover to finish the surface, took an hour per part (approx an inch square), and came out quite lovely! One of the features of the piece I was a little nervous about was where the dome shape met the opposite face of the part at a sharp angle. I wasn't sure what exactly would happen when it cut past that area and was afraid it would either push the material out of the way or leave an imperfect finish. For this reason, I started from the center and moved my way out. Cutting it like this would push the material inward and force it to be cut rather than just moved. 

I was also able to cut that small pocket I mentioned in my previous post by using a paralel toolpath with small stepovers, it wasn't the best finish (see picture above) but worked for it's purpose. 

Another aspect of this part that I found interesting was the material removal, in the center of the part there is a large hole which would take forever to bore out with a 1/2" endmill (anything bigger would create too much heat). My boss recommended just drilling the center, and only part way from the first op, then flip it over and face the top down to its final height.

I also got this part to make before working on the stainless project—nothing too special about it, basic one and a half operation part.

The unique part about it was that there was a circular channel near the center of the piece that would hold an o-ring and required an excellent finish to get a proper seal. The size of the hole was approx 0.095" (not actual size) and didn't have any cutters that would fit it all that well, so I had to use a 1/16" endmill (0.062") and used the slot toolpath for the first time. The idea was to slot out a groove in the center of the channel, then use a contour toolpath and ramp that down at a pretty steep angle on either side, widening it to a few thou under its final width. And finally, take another contour starting from the bottom face instead of ramping to finish it off. It worked surprisingly well and got an excellent surface finish on it, the only area I'm not very pleased with is the lead-out/in of the cutter where it dwelt for a fraction of a second, just enough to leave a mark. 

I'm continually finding these dwelling marks from the tool to be quite annoying and leave some indecent surface finishes, I need to do some more research, but I believe there is some setting I can play around with to allow a smooth arc raise off the surface. 

Since there were only features on one side of the part, I was able to flip it over in the hard-jaws and cut off the base plate manually (thus 1.5 operations). From start to finish with programming, the whole part took about two hours, then tossed in the tumbler to remove any burrs. 

Going to try out a slightly different style of post to make things a bit more interesting, I'll be focusing more on the new or different aspects of what I'm working on rather than by the project since I'm not able to share as much information. 

I got another stainless steel project of a couple of lighting parts, each about two inches square. The parts are small enough that I'm able to set them all in a piece of bar stock, getting them all done in one shot. Since it's stainless I'm using the flip flop technique my boss showed me where you face one side of the bar stock, flip it over, and face it again; this allows for the stress built up in the material to get released, and you don't have to worry about the material warping. 

With the set of parts sitting side by side in the 2" stainless, I'm able to run around the outside with a 1/2" endmill removing the bulk of the material then finishing it with a contour toolpath. I'm then able to take a five flute 1/8" and trace the line in between each of the parts taking ten thou stepdowns at each pass. I'm leaving a bunch of material below the piece to have a secure workholding while in the first operation, then flipping it over and removing it on the other side. For the part location, there is a hole in the design, so I'm able to boar that out, then take the dial indicator and sweep the inside edge, thus finding my work zero. Using this method, I don't even need to use soft jaws unless I'm doing multiple runs of the same part. 

I'm running into a slight issue while trying to program the finishing toolpath on a small pocket feature with radius corners, but the radius isn't the size on each of the corners. I was initially attempting to use the trace toolpath to follow along the bottom edge of the radius, but since there are two different sizes, I'm not able to have it blend very well. The other alternative I'm looking at is a parallel toolpath along the face of the wall and having it cross naturally into the groove. Thankfully this portion isn't critical, and so I can be pretty liberal with size.