Wasted a whole shift chasing a bad finish that was just a worn collet

I was running a batch of 304 stainless parts on our old Fadal and the finish looked awful, like chatter marks. Spent 8 hours messing with speeds, feeds, and tool paths. Turns out the 3/4 inch collet I grabbed from the drawer had over .002 inches of runout I never checked. Lost a full day of production, maybe $1200 in shop time. Anyone got a good system for tracking collet wear before it bites you?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_paul1mo ago

Read an article a while back about shops that use a simple color code system. They mark new collets with green paint, check them at set intervals, and mark them yellow when they get close to the limit. Once they fail a runout check, they get a red mark and go to the scrap bin. It sounds basic but it stops you from grabbing a bad one in a hurry. Might be worth setting up something like that before it costs you another day.

the_john1mo ago

Totally agree, that's a solid system. I've seen similar color coding for rental keys and it saves so much time.

margaretm231mo ago

That's a good system, but the red mark should mean it's already failed, not about to fail.