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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?


Parents
  • My 1st ITERATIVE alignment program. It was a C-ARM that used for a small MRI machine. Used for hands / feet / limbs and such. We had to explain to the customer that we needed 2 DATUM points on the "RAD" so we could locate the machined features correctly as we couldn't use the center point of the Streatched Formed Rad as it had to much variation. We fixtured the part on those 2 points and milled both ends. Not overly complicated. Really, program was easy , it was more trying to explain to customer what we were doing and the internal people as well. So I prove out the program, give the DATA back to CNC setup guys, they proceed to 2nd guess everything and use the MANUAL CMM , beep the RAD to find center because they dont understand the 2 DATUM POINTS on RAD and make adjustments..... even though I specifically told them NOT TO CHECK IT AS A RAD and reasons why.... and then repeat.....and then repeat.....and then repeat ...... and then when ALL the parts are scrapped proceed to tell me the CMM program I made isnt working right..... So in a nut shell......the CMM program is always the easy part no matter how hard it hurts your brain, all the other " obstacles " are always worse...
  • Years ago I had a tooling/CNC operator manager that didn't understand after I dumbed things down for him multiple times. He was adamant that he was right and the CMM was broken and that was why it was saying the parts were coming off the machine bad. I finally told him I would explain it in a language he would understand and started grunting and pointing like an old Tim Allen comedy bit. He was furious but the rest of his department was laughing hysterically. I got a talking to by my boss... but it was worth it.
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  • Years ago I had a tooling/CNC operator manager that didn't understand after I dumbed things down for him multiple times. He was adamant that he was right and the CMM was broken and that was why it was saying the parts were coming off the machine bad. I finally told him I would explain it in a language he would understand and started grunting and pointing like an old Tim Allen comedy bit. He was furious but the rest of his department was laughing hysterically. I got a talking to by my boss... but it was worth it.
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