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Shop talk with a retired machinist flipped my setup thinking
Old dude named Frank who worked at Boeing in the 70s told me I was wasting time with my toolpath order - do your finishing passes first on aluminum and let the roughing chips fly after. He showed me a part he made in 1982 that still holds tolerance within a thou. Any of you guys ever try reversing the conventional wisdom like that?
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sage_green1mo ago
Hold on, are you SERIOUSLY buying into that old-timer nostalgia trip? I swear, every retired guy has a story about some part from 1982 with "perfect geometry" but they conveniently forget all the scrap piles they had to make first. Doing finishing passes first is just begging for disaster in my shop. You take all that thin material off and then come back with a roughing pass, you're gonna introduce stress and vibration that'll completely wreck that nice surface finish you just cut. Aluminum work hardens, too, and if you're not careful with that approach you'll end up with a gummy mess and a part that's out of tolerance by the time you're done. It sounds like a neat trick for a specific part Frank made forty years ago, not a universal rule to throw out everything we know about material removal.
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hannah4001mo ago
Reminds me of the time Frank used a wood chisel on stainless.
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jade5171mo ago
Oh come on, is it really that deep? One guy uses a wood chisel on stainless and suddenly we're rethinking the entire history of material science. People act like Frank personally insulted their CNC machine or something.
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quinncarr1mo ago
Honestly, that whole thread is missing the real question - how long did it take Frank to get the chisel sharp enough to even try it?
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