Trammed the spindle wrong on a Haas VF-2 and paid for it immediately

I was setting up a job on a Haas VF-2 over in the industrial park near 38th Street, and I thought I had the spindle trammed perfectly. Ran a test cut on some aluminum block and it looked fine until I started the actual production run. About 15 parts in, the finish started showing this slight taper that got worse with each pass. Turns out I was off by maybe 0.003 inches on the Y axis and didn't catch it with my indicator because I was rushing to get the order out. Had to scrap 12 parts before I stopped the machine, then spent 2 hours re-tramming and re-running setup. Boss wasn't happy about the material cost. Has anyone found a reliable way to double-check tram without taking forever? I'm thinking of building a quick test fixture.

2 comments

2 Comments

patricia6851mo ago

Don't you think it's funny how rushing always makes things take twice as long in the end? That's just how life works, you skip one step to save ten minutes and end up losing two hours. I've noticed the same thing happens when I try to cook dinner faster by ignoring the recipe times, always ends up burnt.

jadew6329d agoMost Upvoted

@patricia685 yeah, that burnt dinner rule proves itself every time.