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.