Spent 4 hours chasing a 0.003 inch offset that was just a dirty collet

I was working on a Haas VF-2 last week trying to hold tight tolerances on some aluminum brackets and kept getting this weird drift on my X axis. After tearing apart the machine, checking backlash, and even swapping out the tool holder, I finally noticed a tiny bit of swarf stuck in the collet. It took me a good 4 hours to figure out something that a 20 second cleanup would have fixed. Anyone else ever waste half a shift on something this dumb?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_diana11d ago

So you're saying proper prep is a waste of time?

taylorshah11d ago

Waste of time" makes me think of last week when I forgot to oil my chainsaw. Big mistake.

williams.sage10d ago

Hold up, I gotta push back on this a little. 4 hours on a dirty collet? That's a rookie mistake for sure but is it really that serious? Swarf in a collet is annoying but it's not exactly a deep mystery. You probably could have saved time by just checking the basics first. I've had days where I spent way longer chasing ghosts that turned out to be a loose bolt or a bad measurement. It happens.