My girlfriend’s birthday is right around the corner. Last year we walked past a jewelry store, and she casually said how beautiful a bracelet set there was — that line stuck with me. I spent a full week putting this together, from design and 3D modeling straight through to machining. I made this entire matching couple’s bracelet set completely by myself. They’re 6061 aluminum, machined full 5-axis simultaneous, and I used an MCD diamond end mill for high-precision milling to achieve this finish. I think it’s super meaningful because I put so much work into it, and I was set on giving it to her as her birthday present. But I can’t stop second-guessing myself. I’m worried aluminum will feel too cheap, that she’ll be underwhelmed and I’ll end up ruining her birthday. I’m wondering if I should pair it with a nicer, more expensive gift too. For the record, I do get her pricey presents all the time — I just think a handmade one like this means so much more. This is my first time ever making a handmade gift for someone, so I wanted to ask you all what you think. I really don’t want to mess this up. Also, English isn’t my first language — I’m using a translator to communicate here, so please bear with me if anything comes across off.

My dad asked if my home shop was busy, I said not at the moment knowing he needed a part made, so I asked what he needed and he needed a new hydraulic cap for his skid steer, couldn’t find a over the counter replacement, so I whipped one up in 45ish minutes. Then I had to send him an invoice for funsies 😂 after he got the invoice he called me and told me to keep the part lmfaoo

Hi machine driving people, your fellow engineer here who is always here to help you get through the day. I have bought great improvements to our shop such as standardizing +/-0.001mm tolerances unless specified and standardizing making parts only from the finest materials (316, inconel, uhmwpe and ldpe ). Well we are going through a 6S transformation in the shop (it's one better than 5) and being the helpful person I am I helped by printing out a probe storage system in the correct colour for probes that do not meet tolerances anymore. Even labelled it to iso0.5-hr-pc standards. Anyhow till next time I have to walk a print down to the workshop floor and offer advice about things.

Turned a shaft collar into a hex index and it didn’t quite clear the hardware as anticipated. Still works though!

We had a 5/8” gang jig that was very crappy (probably older than me) so I decided to take some time to make a new one.

Stock was squared up on grinder. Checked with indicator on each face and they were all square/parallel to each other within reason

Took it to the mill, made sure vise was trammed in perfectly. Set it on two known good parallels. Indicated basically every point on the face to make sure it was perfectly flat in the vise. Spot drill, drill, ream. Flip to do the tapped holes.

A few were too tight, so I took them to the hone. All pins fit perfectly with zero play, even “pop” when i take them out

Appears now that 1. The holes angle downward (see marks on the pins 2. they aren’t at the same height

The height isn’t a big issue, but I don’t like how the flat i’m grinding has a slight taper to it

Any tips? I’m pretty much self taught and the only machinist at my company lol

Like the title states, I have just joined the world of machining, as I am just about to complete my second week of training. I have almost two years of experience operating a 80" horizontal lathe, but other than that, I have no experience in this field.

I am 30 years old and have job hopped a few times trying to find my "place", long story short, I stayed away from anything that involved measurements because if anything, that is my achillies heel, or so I thought. I have gotten let go for not knowing how to measure, and jobs not wanting to teach. I can learn from YouTube, but things like that I am best learning hands on, and I finally found a place that is basically willing to teach it all. I have people willing to take the time to show me these tools instead of fire me, and now I realize how easy it is and I feel like I have just wasted the last 10 years of my life because of it. Just two weeks in and I love this, all I am doing now is operating a Doosan Puma V550, but it is so much more satisfying than anything else I have done.

Do any of you veterans have any tips for someone just getting their feet wet? The turn over rate is really bad, and I am starting to see why, but all I am focused on right now is gaining knowledge and potentially leveraging that into a better shop in a few years.

100 degrees today and this is what I walked into

I use these everytime I setup a machine and I made some foam cutouts to fit in the slim low profile packout box. Super nice I just carry it to whatever machine i’m running / setting up no need to grab a handful of tools. Bonus it snaps to the 15” milwuakee packout tote I have!

Hi All,

What do you guys use for workholding on wire edm machines? We have a makino ux6 that we just got and it’s our first wire edm. They are asking us to check out zero point system from KIMZ(korean company). But just curious what y’all are working with and any recommendations for someone who is in a jobshop and will be running a variety of shapes/sizes/materials.

Thank you!

Our system is having a folder that is called "updated" which the supervisor is supposed to review the programs that come from the machines and then override them but there is also another folder called "pending update" which could be where a program is stored. Or it could still be on the machine because it's a frequent job.

Our customer wasn't happy and is requiring us to develop a better system so I'm hoping for some ideas.

Thanks

I’m starting a training program from scratch and want to set new employees up for success and part of that will involve note taking. What notebooks have you seen last the longest on the shop floor?

I’ll also have handouts— are page protectors the best option, or is worth it to laminate everything?

Hi

I work as a Manufacturing Engineer in a production machine shop. I’m wondering if anyone has any experience in monitoring systems for machines so we can track machine OEE. We currently have a paper based system which operators fill in manually with any downtime, but this can be frigged to suit. Cheers

Not a whole lot to say, mainly been running Haas machines (mill and lathe at my last job, been running a router for about a little longer than a month now at current one); all the cnc machines I've ran have been Haas. I'm finally going back on a mill, no idea the differences between Mazak and Haas though, besides the ui looks different.

Any good tips/resources yall could suggest so I can brush up and not waste my trainers time too much? They aren't expecting me to learn it instantly, but still would like to streamline it if possible.

I teach first semester machining at a community college in MN and every year I have students tell me they want to machine a twenty-sided dice. Every time I have to re-ground them back to reality and explain how difficult that would be.

I finally found some time this summer to commit to figuring out a way to accomplish machining a twenty sided dice using manual machines only. I am very happy with the results, the pictured part is my best attempt so far, some of the vertices are a little mismatched, but I know what I did wrong.

Anyway, it was a really fun challenge. Now when a student says they want to make a twenty-sided dice I can pull this out and they can try to figure out how I did it.

Edit: I used a tiliting rotary table and custom soft jaws. I had to make the soft jaws on the rotary table as well. Lots of geometry.

*SOLVED

Running on Mazak Quick Turn Nexus 400-11M. Part is ~29”. Machine program is hitting the Z-soft limit at the start of the program. Options are to somehow change the home position of the program or the soft limit parameter and I don’t know how to do either, nor can I find anything online. Any help would be great.

Anyone use there stuff? Never heard of them till I came across there split ball gauges.

There Italian based too. Quick look at there website and everything looks like it should. I now have my eye on a new digital 0-1 micrometer. Mainly cause I want something different then mitutoyo. Everyone does that

https://www.dasquatools.com/

Hey I wanna change careers I don’t like shops and it seems like you can’t make 6 figures in this career unless you worked decades in this trade. I want out. I was just wondering what I could transition in with my current skill set.
Would like some guidance

Probably not to impressive with all the stuff on here but I just finished my 45° vise for my apprenticeship. Almost entirely done on a surface grinder. While closed the top surface all within. 0001. When open the vise has +-.0002 across the top.

I’m looking for a small local machine shop, independent machinist, or someone with a decent lathe in the Inland Empire who can make a prototype steering-rack bushing set from Delrin/acetal.

This is not a large production order. I’m looking to have two prototype sets made first so I can install and test one set on my own truck.

The parts are mostly simple turned bushings:

• Two flanged cylindrical bushings
• One larger double-flanged round bushing
• Center bores through each part
• Possibly simple steel crush sleeves and bolt-through hardware later

I already have the original polyurethane bushings, caliper measurements, and basic 3D models/STL files. The final dimensions and tolerances can be discussed with whoever machines them.

I would prefer a smaller no-frills shop or an experienced home machinist rather than a high-end production shop with large setup charges. I’m not looking for free work—I’m ready to pay a fair price for the material and machine time.

Ideally somewhere around Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana, Montclair, Riverside, San Bernardino, or nearby.

Does anyone have a local recommendation or know somebody who takes on small prototype jobs?

how do i bypass the tailstock interlock. I'm unable to program to face/center drill, then engage the tailstock and continue machining. in order to do so, I need to manually go into the operator panel each time, to turn on and off the tailstock. very annoying

Has anyone ever seen a setup for manual tracing with a Bridgeport mill? Here's the situation. At the museum we are trying to remove the old rubber from the track links of an M3 (Stuart) light tank. The rubber is probably 80 years old and rock hard. We've tried drilling, shaving, sawing, etc but what we've hit on is to chuck the track pads in the Bridgeport Mill and mill most of it out. We're in the process of making a jig to hold the links to avoid the time-consuming job of measuring each link before cutting but that's a different issue. What I've considered was if there was away to run a tracing probe, just a tad bigger than the mill tool on a processed (cleaned) track link held in a similar jig as the work piece, we could just trace the cleaned example and get most of the rubber off. This does not require 0.001" accuracy 0.1" would be good enough for what we are trying to do.

So, I know of Bridgeport tracing mill and True Trace attachments. I'm just wondering if anyone has seen a trick to do tracing on a standard vanilla Bridgeport? Thanks!

(Also considering a pantograph router.)