Today I finished up the second batch of larger pieces and got those packaged up. Since these are such small parts, Wayne had me put them in old plastic endmill boxes with a little bit of toilet paper to keep them from getting damaged. I think the issue with the weird height differences for the smaller parts was due to the slight radius in the bottom of the softjaw pockets, which allowed them to be moved around every so slightly, and so getting different measurements if the clamp position was changed. For the larger parts, the tolerance was within 0.0005" of the design, which isn't too bad at all!
The rest of the day, I spent working on the next set of parts using 101 Copper. I am just about finished with the programming for it and cut the soft jaws to hold it in place. I also got to use an edge finder for the first time, which I used to find the back wall of the vice to use as the origin in the CAM setup. The copper will be cut to width when putting it in the vice, so making sure it's perfectly aligned for repeating the process.
I'm starting to get into a groove at the shop and feeling pretty comfortable with all the Haas mills! I know where all the tools are, how to program and set up one and two operation parts and get them ready to be shipped out! I'm still not as careful as I should be with freshly cut parts and accidentally brushed against the side of the soft jaws when taking them out.
