A sparky's comment about my offsets threw me off

Last week this electrician was waiting on his machine and watched me do a setup on a new job. He's not a machinist at all, but he asked why I was running my roughing pass at 0.15 depth when the tool could clearly handle more, based on the chips coming off. I started to explain feed per tooth and all that, but he just said, 'man, you're not racing the tool, you're racing the clock, right?' which sounds dumb typed out, but it hit me. I've been babysitting feeds and speeds like I'm still on the manual machines from my first shop in Toledo. So I bumped it up 40% on the next part, kept an eye on it, and finished that run nearly 2 hours early. I spent all that time thinking I was being careful, but really I was just wasting runtime. Anyone else ever get a simple comment from a non-operator that made you rethink your whole approach?

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morganhill19d ago

Twenty years of hoping the old guy was right and I'm still running 0.1 passes out of pure muscle memory.