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.