Zeroed in a part in under 10 minutes today, felt like a boss

I had a stainless steel part that needed a tight +/-.002 tolerance on a critical bore. Normally I baby step the offset and check twice, but today I just trusted my last tool offset after a quick test cut. It hit right on the money with the mic. Anyone else have those days where you just nail the first try? What do you do when you get that feeling?

3 comments

3 Comments

riley_taylor1d agoMost Upvoted

Had a setup where the datums were all over the place and still hit it. Crazy feeling.

daniel_lane301d ago

Getting the right feel for it matters more than perfect datums, just gotta trust your eye sometimes.

derek99437m ago

Oh I gotta jump in here because that's actually a dangerous way to think, especially if you're doing tight tolerance work. I've seen guys try to "trust their eye" and end up with a part that's off by .005 because they eyeballed the datum structure instead of actually checking. That feel thing works fine for rough setups or quick and dirty jobs, but when you're holding tenths you really need to verify your datum surfaces are flat and square first. Riley's case sounds like they got lucky with a setup that was floating on random high spots, which is cool until it isn't. Your eye can lie to you, a dial indicator won't.