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Pro tip: a 25 year old setup guy set me straight on warmup blocks and I owe him one
Last Tuesday I was complaining to Dave, the setup guy who's been on the floor longer than my truck has been alive, about my finish cuts tearing up on 6061. I figured I needed a slower feed or a sharper insert, so I'd been burning through inserts like crazy. He asked me one question: do you warm up the spindle before you run a finish pass? I said no, I just hit cycle start and go. He laughed and said the spindle grows about half a thou as it heats up over the first 20 minutes, so your first parts are cutting on a different machine than your last ones. He showed me how he runs a 10 minute warmup cycle at 8000 rpm before touching anything critical, and my finish cuts came out dead on for the first time in months. I felt pretty dumb because I've been chasing this ghost with feeds and speeds for like 8 months. Now I'm curious how many of you run a warmup program every morning, or do you just send it and deal with the drift?
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scott.alex2h ago
Dave just saved you 8 months of guessing with one question. I run a 10 minute warmup at 6000 every morning now, learned that one the same hard way.
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