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I used to skip the rough pass and just take one deep cut, and a tool rep at the Rockford show changed my mind
For years I ran everything with one heavy pass, because my first job out of school was at a shop that was all about cycle time and the lead there swore a rough pass wasted minutes. I stuck with that habit for almost a decade of small parts on a Haas VF2, and I honestly bragged about it to newer guys. Two weeks ago I was at the Rockford machine tool show and got talking to a tool rep about chatter on a 4140 job I kept fighting. He said something simple that stuck with me: a rough pass is not wasted time, it is how you let the tool tell you if something is off before the finish cut. I tried it on a run of 30 brackets when I got back, roughed down to within .02 and then finished, and I got two extra parts per insert plus way less chatter. My cycle time went up 40 seconds per part, but scrap dropped to zero on a batch where I usually pitched three or four. Now I want to ask the guys running hard materials all day, do you rough everything even on simple aluminum work, or only when the steel is fighting you?
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