Overheard a guy at the trade show saying tool offsets are just suggestions

Was at the Midwest machining expo in Cleveland last Friday and this older guy, probably 25 years in, was telling a kid that he never trusts the offsets the previous shift leaves. He said he always runs a test cut and measures before he trusts anything over 0.0005. That got me thinking because I usually just load the program and go if the part looks good on the first op. Last month I had a run of 120 pieces where the bore was off by 0.002 because I didn't re-check after a tool change. Cost me about $300 in scrap and a whole afternoon re-cutting. Do you guys verify offsets every single setup or do you trust the machine readout until you see a problem? I'm starting to think that old timer had it right.

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nancycooper20d ago

Went through the exact same phase man. Used to think the readout was gospel until I got burned on a job where the previous guy left a worn insert in. Now I always do a quick test cut on the first piece, takes like 5 minutes and saves me from the heartache of scrapping a whole batch.