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What Was Your Mentally Exhausting Program??

The reason I ask is because of the program I am working on right now. I have 3 fixtures with 4 parts that I have been working on. All of them have complicated Datums / Poor design. The fixture that holds two parts is the most complex of course. The gage is the only one built to hold the part vertically. It has a hole in the back of the gage to probe the bottom of the part through. So the part sits with the rear surface in the CMM's +x direction. The part sits on the net pads for datum A about 120mm from the back surface of the gage (where the hole is) There are 18 small clips spaced around the outside edge of the part that I need to touch in the -x direction. This means I need to articulate my probe to, at times, an angle of A-115B35. This shortens the distance from the end of the probe to the Z axis column. Most of the time I am less than 2mm from crashing into the gage.

The part also only has one tiny slot to control rotation on one side of the part. So when placing the part on the gage it can rock, roll and slide everywhere. So that means I need to create local alignments on each clip to ensure that they hit correctly which means dancing around that almost crashing point the entire time. And I need to create alignment after alignment to ensure that I am hitting it correctly and then be sure that I recall a fixture alignment before proceeding because if I forget to revert back to the fixture and the next part changes in size/ location/ rotation by a mm or 2 I am guaranteed to crash. And this doesn't include the complexity of some of the dimensions and the callouts. For example a profile without datums with a unequal tolerance called out..... or a position on a single plane.....

So with all that being said I have been programming these parts for a couple weeks now and my head at the end of the day is just mush. That's where the Forum comes in. So I want to thank all of you for giving me a source of relief from my mental torture chamber over here.

Also, What are you more exhausting program memories. What is that one job that really kicked your butt?


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  • Years ago I had to do a full layout program for a drive shaft yoke forging. It was symmetrical left to right side and upper half to lower half. 2/3 of the dimensions were called out in all 4 quadrants. There were close to 300 measured features on the final report. I had no CAD, I had to fabricate my own fixturing with stuff around the shop, and I was 3 weeks out from my CMM 100 courses at Hexagon. There were a lot of short arc radii and distances to and from short arc radii. At the time, I really didn't understand what a short arc radius was. Took me 2 weeks and most of my sanity but, I got it done.

    I guess it was only bad because I was so new to everything. It didn't help that the layout was a month past due and everyone was rushing me to get it done. I still have a little PTSD from it.
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  • Years ago I had to do a full layout program for a drive shaft yoke forging. It was symmetrical left to right side and upper half to lower half. 2/3 of the dimensions were called out in all 4 quadrants. There were close to 300 measured features on the final report. I had no CAD, I had to fabricate my own fixturing with stuff around the shop, and I was 3 weeks out from my CMM 100 courses at Hexagon. There were a lot of short arc radii and distances to and from short arc radii. At the time, I really didn't understand what a short arc radius was. Took me 2 weeks and most of my sanity but, I got it done.

    I guess it was only bad because I was so new to everything. It didn't help that the layout was a month past due and everyone was rushing me to get it done. I still have a little PTSD from it.
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