Spent 4 hours chasing a ghost offset that was actually a loose set screw

Honestly I about lost my mind on this one. I was running a bunch of aluminum parts for a job that pays peanuts and every fifth piece was coming out with a .003 offset on the X axis. I checked the offsets, I checked the tool wear, I even rehomed the machine twice. Three hours in I'm thinking the ballscrew is going bad or the encoder is shot. Turns out the set screw on my soft jaw had worked itself just a quarter turn loose and the jaw was shifting a tiny bit under the cut. Took me about 20 seconds to fix once I actually touched the damn thing. Has anyone else spent a whole shift hunting a problem that was just something simple and stupid?

2 comments

2 Comments

thomas_roberts29d ago

Oh man, I feel your pain. Once spent a whole afternoon chasing a .001 taper before realizing the coolant hose was pushing against the spindle just enough to tweak it.

elizabetht5629d ago

Finishing up a 4 hour shift chasing a .002 taper in a stainless part just to find out a chip was jammed under the leveling pad of the machine. Wanted to throw the whole thing out the window. Yours at least makes sense, a coolant hose is a dumb but reasonable gremlin. Mine was literally a piece of swarf smaller than my pinky nail running my whole afternoon.