Finally got the hang of that tricky 5-axis finish pass on the Haas at my shop

I was at a training day over in Springfield last week, and the instructor showed us a different way to set up the tool offset for ball nose end mills. I mean, I'd been fighting with a weird scallop pattern on curved surfaces for months. Tried it on a stainless part yesterday and the finish came out smooth, no more hand sanding needed. Has anyone else found a small setting change that fixed a big headache?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_alice10d ago

Our old Okuma had this weird thing where the finish would just fall apart on aluminum at anything above 12,000 rpm. Took me forever to figure out it was the coolant concentration. Was running it way too thin. Bumped it up to a solid 8% mix and the difference was night and day. Those little machine quirks will drive you crazy until you find the exact fix.

elliot_barnes10d ago

Oh man, that's always the best. It's like you've been trying to open a door by kicking it for a year, and then someone points out the handle. My version of that was messing with the stepover on a facing op for way too long. Changed one number and suddenly the chatter just... stopped. Felt like an idiot, but a happy idiot.