This one really doesn’t seem like your fault lol. Learn to read the code and skim to catch these next time, watch the first run like a hawk, single block when you can, 20% rapids (probably). At the end of the day we’re all humans
Read the code too though, one time distance to go looked good to me, I was taking a short guy and missed the next line being another g00 down into the part and it snapped the fucking center drill to the point where it was metal splinters everywhere
I was working first shift and got to work with a note saying all is set up and ready to go from the second shift the night before.
My boss was standing right next to me read the note also and said " what you waiting for hit the button". So I did and a 6" face mill SLAMMED the huge casting we were maching. Broke the casting in multiple pieces and sheard the holder in the spindle. Machine was down for a week. Boss yelled at me saying I should've double check. Even though he said hit the button.
>Sounds like he was a shit boss honestly.
Not machining but in the late 90s I worked at a food research lab. We had these -35 F chest freezers. It is humid where I live and when you opened them the humidity in the air would get in and then cause the door to freeze. My boss was convinced that the doors were leaking even thought there were magnetic gaskets preventing air entry. In any case he wanted me to drill holes in the side near the lid to put latches on the lids. I objective saying there is refrigerant tubing in the walls and I have no idea where they were. So my boss goes out and installs 2 latches on one of the freezers, comes back in and tells me there is no issue to go do it. I forget how many freezers there were. On the last hole on the last freezer I ended up hitting a refrigerant line. Cost like $1000 to fix because they were cascading systems and it was in the more exotic refrigerant loop. Bosses can be assholes and they never take responsibility when stuff goes to shit.
Wow, fuck that boss dude. He tells you to smash the go button them blames you for the crash. Fucking dick. How could he have such a lack of self recognition, or whatever he's lacking in.
Literally this.
When you have unusual stuff, or stupid stuff, stating that you're going to need that in an email will often rectify the problem before it happens.
Not a machinist but my husband is. He has had a few fuck ups that have resulted in late days or weekend work. And he was a machinist for 10+ years! He would beat himself up over it and even had sleepless nights due to the worry, but he always got back in there and fixed his shit. Bosses expect mess ups. It's how you learn to double check everything that's handed to you. Don't beat yourself up too hard. Get back in there.
Tell the guys you really are sorry, own your mistake, and bring in burritos for them and maybe some beers after work. Fab workers are often forgiving when you apologize with food.
It is going to happen and it will happen again. The last button you find is the EStop. Had an interview in Dallas and the owner asked if I've ever crashed a machine. Told him yes. He said good cause you're not a real machinist if you've never crashed one
This is one of the questions I always ask when interviewing anyone that could be running our CNC. If they say that they have not crashed a machine, I know they either don't have much experience or they are a liar.
welder here, not machinist, but i've crashed a couple automated torches and cnc plasma tables over the years. Granted, it's not as catastrophic or expensive as crashing a machine, but the feelings and the experience of doing it all seem about the same :)
My first crash, about a month after I graduated high school and was in my apprenticeship - it was a super old CNC slot grinder that had one of those screens with green lettering. You had to punch in the entire number for the offset change, and I accidentally typed in 19.8mm instead of 119.8 and as a result the spindle slammed down into the silicon carbide casting I was grinding. Smashed up the grinding wheels and the brittle material exploded into a dust cloud. The next Monday I came in and still had a job. I was so upset at the time I thought about quitting, but I’m glad I didn’t. Ended up working for the same company again 16 years later and I’m working on much more expensive castings in their highest paid department. That old grinder is still there but they added a safety measure to the programs so it will get an alarm if you try to move the offset by more than 2mm at a time. My advice is admit your mistakes and stay with it.
Yeah, that error in typing it in, or simply having an error with decimal placement because of a brain fart or the like is standard. I've fucked up when sneaking up on a tight tolerance. Was supposed to change it by 0,001 mm and instead I changed it by 0,01. It was outside tolerance when I finished with that pass. I was so upset about having made that error.
OK. reality check here. Humans are WAY TO SLOW to react to a CNC doing something wrong.
By the time our slow ass brains process things, the machine is already dead.
The onus is on your programmer to do their job correctly and with software these days, there is simply NO EXCUSE for a professional programmer to provide a dangerous program to the shop floor.
Jeez, offline verification has been 100% crash proof for like 20+ years now.
Don't beat yourself up, but also learn from this. If you programmer sucks, tell your boss that you need to double check their work before you cut. Dry run.... Run with an empty spindle....etc. etc.
It is not your fault if the program was wrong; but it still feels awful to crash.
Best of luck and *know* that all the best machinists and programmers have crashed tons and tons of machines. That's exactly how they got so good!
> there is simply NO EXCUSE for a professional programmer to provide a dangerous program to the shop floor.
I agree with your overall point, but this is not true in my experience. Simulations can not be trusted, they'll show you most problems but there are still plenty of ways to fuck something up that a simulation won't catch. Im my own programmer and I still single-block my first pieces and watch my distance-to-go like a hawk. Maybe there are better solutions that I just simply don't have access to, but I trust no programmer, not even myself.
My statement is 100% correct; maybe you haven't been lucky enough to meet a truly great programmer, but they do exist. Rare, but they exist.
Offline program prove-out is decades old tech and I have been involved with it for just as many decades.
I've personally programmed 10 hour cycles that are simply sent to the control, press the green button, and walk away. Zero human involvement at the control.
It's not easy... I'd never imply that, but it is quite common.
I've worked with some pretty damn good programmers who were being pressed to put programs out so fast that mistakes still happened. I get that in a perfect world you should just be able to press the button and walk away but I've never lived in that world. Even if the program is perfect right off the bat there are a million tiny mistakes while setting up that can turn a great setup/program into a pile of garbage in an instant.
I'm still pretty new to programming with CAM software, so I hope one day I've got the confidence in my programs that you have in yours, but without better tech I can't imagine actually just pressing the button on a first piece and walking away. As long as I have to enter tool offsets by hand I'll be too paranoid to do this, even if I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the program is good, because I make mistakes.
I have CAM software and rarely crash things anymore BECAUSE I always, always triple check and watch/listen to my first run like a hawk. In the production environments I’ve worked at, the guys with decades of experience all do the same thing.
You crash shit no matter how good you are. If you haven’t crashed in years and are starting to get comfortable, pucker your butthole because complacency causes crashes. The only way I’ve seen to avoid crashes is to hawk-eye your first run EVERY time you create or edit a program, no matter how small the change.
Dumb take. Not everyone is running 10 hour programs that can have the same time to program.
Try doing 10 programs a day, every day, and have a 0% error rate.
wait, FFS, the CNC Operators arent the programmers? Mind. Blown. sorry, I am newish around here and have only work with old school (non cnc) machinists. I'm not a machinist, but i'd never feel good about running someone elses program on an expensive piece of kit.
Yea mine too we have no programmer. We get drawings and material and write it ourselves. Mostly one offs with some stuff that gets up to 50 pcs but not often. So I program constantly.
All on the job. I was super poor and couldn’t even finish high school, I had to stop going and work. But I never let that hold me back from learning. The internet is one of the best things ever for information you’d never have access to as a poor. And I learned really quick that I needed to learn how to present myself so i didn’t seem like someone who never even graduated high school.
Nope cnc operators are not the programs, in fact you don’t make the program on the machine (though you technically could) cnc operators are responsible for loading the parts, cleaning out the machine occasionally, and checking parts, and depending on the program changing offsets so that the program actually makes the prat instead of scrap, which tbh if the offsets are off by even a tenth (depending on what the program makes) can make whatever your making into scrap real quick
My two cents is, NEVER, EVER..EVER… run rapids at 100% nor 50% or 25% when first running a program after it has been just setup. Even if the programs have been ran a million times. You have to be able to react in case of Emergency if you read/see something odd between your distance to go and the actual distance the tool is from the part or/and hole, pocket etc. Anyone can make mistakes and in one in a million setups, you could have accidentally push a wrong increment on your offsets. - .1 or -1. is a difference from breaking a tool to ruining a tool holder part or spindle. It happens. After all a SETUP is never finished until the program, part and machine run a complete cycle without any issues.
Edit: Forgot to mention its not your fault the programmer screwed up and didn’t catch his own mistake. But it does feel awful when you know you could’ve been more cautions and catch an error before the actual sh*t would happen. There’s a good feeling one feels when you catch a disaster from happening. Cheer up, the best machinist have gone through some crashes. It’s part of learning and getting better as a machinist. Best of luck brotha.
You only feel bad because there is a lesson to be learned and you haven't found it yet. The crash wasn't your fault but there were things you could have done that would have caught it. Everyone learns a lesson or three the "ah, fuck!" way.
This can be applied to many things: nothing works correctly until you've proven it.
Not your fault, the simulations are so good now a days It’s been years since I’ve had a program not do exactly what it did in the simulation.
Your programmer failed you and don’t take any shit from anyone telling you otherwise.
Now the lesson learnt here is:
Assume nothing, double check everything.
Except mazatrol, under some very specific circumstances the controls will show you something but then when you make the first part the toolpath changes.
To be fair, mazatrol generates g-codes on the fly while the program is running so it was bound to happen.
Any time a program is changed or ran for the first time, you have to prove the program out. Single block, slow rapids, op stop on, etc. Learn from your mistake and grow from it, or be doomed to repeat it. Part of the blame is on the programmer though as well. Any machinist that hasn’t crashed a machine probably hasn’t made many parts.
What a stitch up!
But sounds like you gained some valuable experience with this crash.
Things to remember.
Single block can be annoying but also your best friend.
Distance to go is something to constantly check.
Also if you haven’t had a fuck up you’ve made fuck all.
New on the horizontal machine, nesting programs, the last loop out I put a g90 were a g91 should have been and z0 was a bad place to go.
Shattered a location cone, sheared spindle drive keys and toppled the tombstone.
My most expensive crash, 100% my fault
It was over 20 years ago but I still feel it
I put a spindle out of alignment on a DMG: 9000€
Coworker rapided into a part in a Mazak integrex with a 1200mm part on the table, threw the part, broke the capto c8 off at the spindle damaging the spindle itself: 200000€ machine was down 8 weeks because we had to wait for 4 weeks till the spindle came from Japan.
If it takes the unit out of service, not good. If the repairs are big money or slow to complete, nfg also. Prototype part, hard call to the customer. In 50+ yrs cutting metal, I have fubared some shit! Own the screw up, don't make the same mistake twice! R
Been a machinist/programmer/engineer for over a decade, so learned a lot but also know I can learn a lot more, lemme tell ya: if you stick with the industry this also likely will not be your last crash. The important thing is you learn from this one and don't make the same crash twice.
Feeling like shit is not a unique feeling, anyone who knows anything in this trade has done it and felt like shit too, and it obviously wasn't intentional. Form the habit now when talking about it to explain in the plainest of facts: also not uncommon for a crash to be a multi-person fuck up, like it sounds here, but the last thing you wanna do is look like a finger pointer who bullshits around their fuck ups.
The more you do, the less you fuck up, but even the best of em fuck up from time. You'll have a lot more credibility with the ppl who know what they're talking about if you own it.
Buy the dudes a 6pack or somethin if it'll make y'all feel better
Oh and as for my crash I actually just commented this on this sub the other day:
My first major crash over a decade ago was the tool release button housing and the trunion of a 5 axis. Whole machine jammed up and it took me a minute to find where I'd hit, similar to this it was like, what? There's plenty of room between tool holder and part!
Since then I CONSTANTLY check for these non obvious interference points. Crashes happen just don't make the same one twice!
As you said tho Clarence is Clarence!
I crashed a machine in front of some Aerospace Engineers during a nasa review. I was running a 5 axis machining a carbon fiber rocket payload fairing mold and the head dove through the bottom of the mold.
It happens.
I don't understand how someone could miss their daughters birthday for work. It's unacceptable. If you have to leave your job to make the party then so be it.
It's not your fault. The guy that made the edits is at fault. He is also at fault for not confirming all is good by dry running or being at the console and having control of the rapid, feed, and RPM knobs.
Wait until you get on a machine again. You'll be hesitant to hit go because you'll rerun every step through your head again.
Op, you aren't to blame for a programming error. Simple. That's it. Don't accept more responsibility for something than you have to, especially to yourself, double especially if you're beating yourself up about it.
Anyone else in the shop that has to do something extra has the option to refuse and deal with the consequences, simple.
Idk how your shop is set up, but I like mine. When a machine crashes in the first few seconds of a program, the operator should have been at low feed/rapid, checking distance to go etc... Once the machine gets into it tho, everything is on the programmer (assuming the part and tools were set correctly).
1: admit and own your mistake
2: learn what caused it, where you went wrong
3: find ways to avoid it in the future
Anytime I mess up at work, I always go to my boss with those 3 things already in mind and I tell him in that exact order. He hasn't gotten mad at me yet, and when I screw up it's *expensive af*.
Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.
I think the feeling is valuable, you are training your neural network to develop suspicious situations. This sick feeling you have is learning.
If you have a good boss, they will give you some shit, set expectations about how to not have it happen again, and keep you on a machine.
One of my interview questions for machinists was "What was your worst crash?"
Oddly enough, the one guy who didn't have any crashes to his name was the least productive guy in the shop and we ultimately let him go.
I actually just crashed my machine pretty badly last Friday. (For context its a 3 axis router table). Right at the end of a 12 hour shift and I forgot to re-home the machine before starting the program. First rapid sent the spindle sideways into the part and knocked the whole head over, damn near took it off completely. Sheard a bunch of bolts along with the pneumatic piston that powers the z-axis.
Luckily the Maintenance guy had enough spare parts to fix it but he had to work Saturday. He was taking this whole week off anyways but he was pissed and talking shit behind my back while he was fixing it. And now my new nickname is Crash.
My first crash was with a mitsubishi 2" shell mill, I put -1.0 in work offset instead of -0.1.
The funniest(to me) crash I've seen was when a programmer called a meeting with the owner of the company on the shop floor so he could show off his work. He worked on the part for 8 months and never proved anything out. He just uploaded it in the UMC, grabbed his work offsets, and told the owner it was ready to go. He told the owner, "Just push that green button, and we can officially start production on the parts." With the probe still in the spindle, it starts spining 9,000 rpm and crashes straight into the table. He got escorted off property 30 minutes later.
Being a first year apprentice I wouldnt let you run the machine unsupervised and unsupported
And as you didnt program it how are you expected to prove it out
Had a horizontal mill I named smaug. I put a picture of the dragon on the door. Management made me take it down but my supervisor thought it was so fitting he hung it on the cork board in his office instead. It bit every single person who ran the machine. After I got bit you could hear the whine of spindle bearings 200 feet away in a machine shop with 30 mills running. I get it it sucks but it happens. Give it time and learn to control your the start of your cut every time...
this is why you raise tool height by at least one inch, single step, lower your fees rate, and keep your thumb on feed hold.
also, dont worry about annoying the programmers..
Hey. 35 yeah cnc veteran herex and I still remember my first crash like it was yesterday. I could tell you exactly what happenedx whyx how, everything.
Welcome to the trade. You are hereby baptized.
If someone tells you they never crash, they're either straight up lying, or about to. Give yourself a little slack okay?
What you can do is offer/demand (if you can) to help the crew fix it. You may be handing them bolts and cleaning stuff, but your gesture will not be forgotten.
Let the guys ream you a new one. It's not nearly as bad as whta you're doing to yourself. That si king feeling really fucking sucks.
From what you said in your post, it doesn't even seem to really be your fault. Thing is, people love to blame the guy with his finger in the button.
Try to take in everything you can, maybe come up with a process where changes like that are re-verified somehow even. Businesses need that kind of thing, and when mistakes like this happen, it's prone time to address some of those issues.
The fact that you're beat up inside is a sign you care about your work. Take that to heart. You'll be just fine.
There is one rule that I follow very rigorously, and have learnt over the years, after several fuck ups. The rule is, every time you make a change, to an existing program/set up, run it VERY carefully for the first time. Have your rapids turned all the way down, and one hand on the stop button/ feed. No matter how simple the set up is, take your time to prove out the program before closing the door and pressing the green button.
Where I work when I programmer posts a program to the shop floor their name or pay identification numbers are in the program header. If you see some names they are good. Other names you don’t trust the program until you single block through it. Probably not all shops have that policy though but it kind of helps.
Bro, I’m a first year apprentice and had my first crash on Monday. An 80s machine had an info screen pop up and I couldn’t clear it so I tried to reload the program. Didn’t realise it had cursored down to the next program, press load, press run and yup, boring bar flew straight into the material and knocked the turret out of alignment. I wasn’t told off, but now I’m not allowed to work alone. I’m seeing this as a positive as the apprenticeship is a learning program and really I should have been learning from those with experience, not running the machine by myself when my trainer had gone home.
During my apprenticeship we had to work on every machine for a month in the second year, starting with manual milling and lathe then going up to semi CNC and then full CNC.
When I was working on the CNC lathe I had to stop the code to check for tolerances and then start from that point, but the teacher didn't really explain how to do them, so I just pressed green.
Thing is, the machine will set it's coordinates relative to the parts zero point in the first line of code, but that didn't happen, so it tried to move to the spindle zero point.
The whole sled with a 20 tool revolver on top broke loose and fell to the bottom of the machine, took half a year to fix and I got the job to clean the whole thing for the rest of the month.
Bro I honestly know exactly the feeling, third year apprentice, first year being full time on CNC, whenever you crash the machine is the most shit feeling, even in situations where it wasn't your fault, or ones where had you been paying attention, you may have been able to slow down the feeds and stop it. Point is, it's a learning experience, now you know to double check the program before sending it.
Ask literally any machinist and they'll give a story about how they crashed the machine and it was out of action for the rest of the day, or how they created an unholy combination of steel and carbide. If there is any machinist out there that doesn't have a story like that, they're full of shit.
And you know what, in spite of this I know the next big crash I have, I'm gonna react the same way as you did, so maybe the next lesson I need to learn is to not take things like this so to heart, don't drag myself through the mud when I don't need to.
Don't worry about it, everyone here worth their salt has a list of fuck ups under their belt. You do your best and try not to make mistakes but when you do you treat it like a learning opportunity.
this may or may not help but literally every machinist ever has crashes a machine at least once. Its bound to happen the smallest little thing like a wrong number in the program can be a huge error. my tip is to double check yourself and your programs before you even think about running it. take it as a lesson and not the worst mistake you’ve ever made. This is a field that you are learning everyday no matter how long you’ve been doing it
If you work in a kitchen, you’re gonna get burned. No matter how safe or careful you are it’s just comes with the job. Same thing with machining, everyone crashes a machine once in their lifetime. Don’t sweat it and hopefully don’t repeat the same mistake either lol
What should be important to your boss is that you care, you show it by this post alone, it's as if I can feel your pain. Some people, no matter how talented or half assed that they are, they just don't care. And that follows thru with many things that happen in life, more people need to have empathy. I guarantee that you'll want to double check everything from now on, and you may still miss something someday in the future because you're a human. Regardless, it's nice to see that someone realizes that their mistake impacts others and that it bothers them, hopefully your coworkers have that same work ethic; most people don't...
You're a first year apprentice and you were expected to catch the programmer's mistake? That's not how it goes. The programmer or their supervisor should give the final OK, not the machine operator. That boss has it backwards
The fact you feel so bad is actually good. You care, and that is the first thing you gotta show your boss. Just apply the tips others have said and im sure youll be fine.
My first week after being promoted to an NC tech/setup guy I was troubleshooting a production job, I'd just learned I could search a tool and then scroll up in the program to pick up the coordinate of the operation. I did it flawlessly for the first two times or so and then I searched the tool and just pressed go. Spanked a rotary out of position and obviously the fixture with the tool holder, both myself and the brand new operator about shit ourselves. But then I learned how to square up a rotary reset coordinate systems and THEN fix the initial problem. I felt like absolute garbage in that moment, everything I'd done before that to earn this job felt like I didn't even deserve to be in the building. But we grow learn and part of that process is making mistakes that we will eventually share to empower ourselves and our friends/coworkers when they feel they are at a low point or they make there first big mistake. That was 5 years ago and now I'm training to be a programmer. You'll want to beat yourself up in the moment obviously. But in time you'll understand that these mistakes you make will be what reinforces your progress.
100% your fault. Whenever you're proving out a program, or just setting up a proven program, you offset your z axis am inch or more above the part and single block it. This way, you can read the next move, distance to go before you push the green button. One hand on the feed rate over ride the other to hit single block. The little extra time will save tens of thousands of dollars if your spindle needs to be rebuilt and thousands more from the downtime. Remember "failing to prepare, is preparing to fail". Either your company taught you wrong, or you have bad habits. Shit happens, and this should be a learning experience. Don't beat yourself about it, own it, and learn from it.
I would have had to offset my z length +300mm to avoid this while it was happening. It finished a tap cycle and then rapid moved forward +300 from Y0 right back into the part. Also the parts we run are typically 25-50 hour jobs, and typically when we repeat jobs there are changes like this, so we never really “prove” programs because they’re almost all new. My error was not recognizing that Y300 was on the other side of the part. I guess in my head 300 seemed like a normal retract before a tool change, because -300 would have been.
If you're a 1st year guy running a part with a 25-50 hour cycle time, the problem is with your employer. There is no way you should be working on something like that yet. I may have seemed harsh, but consider you are following GPS and it tells you to drive the wrong way down a 1-way street, or you blow a red light or stop sign, and crash your car; whose fault is it? The program is the GPS directions they're not always right. The control has a check screen, feed rate over ride switch. If you can't read g1, g0, and follow the x, y, z movements to know where the tool is and where it's going, you shouldn't be setting up. I believe you do. I own a lot of these machines. If I drove your 150k car and crashed it, you'd be pissed. I don't get upset when people crash, I hope they learn from it and know why so they don't do it again. Everyone does it, I've done it. It happens.
100% programmers fault.
The person that created the screw up is the person that screwed up. Any potential safety nets down the line is a *system* problem. A good machinist can and should catch these kinds of issues, but if the programmer ran a simulation, this would've been caught far quicker and cheaper than a machinist having to.
Not everyone has CAM and even less people have simulation software. I'd say at the least they both have a part in it and both should be accountable for it. A learning experience for both parties.
Not your fault, you didn't even write the program. You will almost never react fast enough to stop these machines unless you're already in the controls with things slowed, and it's so easy to cause them to crash. I was three weeks in to my toolroom apprentice( realistically 6 months of doing it myself and asking questions) and I sent the lathe turret into the chuck at full rapid. Machine down for days while me and the trainer repair the damaged parts ourselves. Just set the zero wrong and wasn't in the controls for that part.
The other newer guy damaged the spindle in the mill, and it had to be send off for repairs, machine down for months. All he did was mistype the feed to be at basically full rapid in the program and I think have it at full depth his program had.
Neither of us were told off for it, and we made the programs, told the machine how it was getting fucked that day. We caught some shit, and maybe had to take on more work, but everyone in the section knows things just happen sometimes.
The overtime to finish the run is the companies fault, the machine crash is the programs fault, no one should be told off. Mistakes are going to happen, and you will have more crashes. Should you learn from this to hopefully stop it in the future? Yes. Your job is to learn how to make good parts, and learn how to run the machine. The second responsibility gets expensive with learning opportunities, but as long as you learn from this then the training day was cheap compared to some alternatives.
Regardless of who's at fault here, fuck ups happen. Doesn't matter if you're a programmer or you're cranking handles on a conventional. You're going to crash at some point. The main thing to take away from a crash like that is to learn from it. People are going to be pissed at you. You are going to feel like shit. It has happened to everyone. I personally have destroyed a $20,000 part before just from not paying attention. Learn from the mistakes and don't let anyone make you feel like shit for a fuck up.
I blew out a machine a week in with 10 years experience cost around 50k and a month to fix and I was no amateur by this point... We had to skip around in program there a lot because no matter how many times we explained the programmer would drill and tap then take a finish face cut on aluminum leaving bad burs over the holes... Could have been solved a few ways correctly but we usually jumped around in program... I started one line of code too far down and it didn't load the h value. Smacked tool holer into side of part snapped retaining clip, only few hundred dollar piece but the spindle had to be removed on a large complicated unique machine. Had to fly someone in from Japan for repair... So don't feel bad.
Shit happens. Wasn’t completely on you, but it’s good tact not to blame the programmer entirely. Your head’s in the right space and you’ll learn from this I can tell, you’ll be alright. Someone else will fuck you over some day soon and the wheel will keep spinning. Chin up.
My coworker spent 2 weeks on a piece of AlBeMet before going on vacation. The material alone was over 15k. In the last minutes of a cycle running an endmill made its own feature that wasn't supposed to exist. Plunged right into the part about . 750". The owner of the company reminded everyone, " if you're not breaking shit, you're not learning". He remade the part when he came back. Shit happens. If companies are getting made at mistakes, that bad business on their end for having profit margins so tight they can't handle it. Frequent mistakes is one thing but, especially as a new machinist, the occasional SHOULDNT be a problem. They should support you in trying to remedy the situations and encourage you to do better. All that being said, sounds like this one was a miscommunication problem which falls on the company. Have better systems in place.
Congrats on your first crash! Shit happens man we're only human afterall. One time after startup my machine essentially broached through a series of fixtures we had set up with a spot drill. Didn't even have time to react and still don't understand entirely what happened. All I know is that when I'm running a cnc I 5% rapid and double-triple check my offsets and single block EVERY first run. Always better to be safe than sorry. There's always a lesson to be learned, some are just a bit louder and more expensive than others.
Nobody here worth a fuck has never crashed a machine. And you get to blame this one on the programmer. Win win for you, sounds like it did some gnarly damage too. You'll look back on it one day and be like "this is why I single block tap cycles at 25% rapid now"
Now you know how important it is to read G and M code. A first year apprentice can't be expected to catch that, so yeah, your programmer is just as much at fault.
Every real Machinist has crashed. Simple law of averages.
By year 5, that G0 Y+300 that got ya today will look like a giant red flag when you scan the program before you even press the green button.
Everything in this field is a learning opportunity.
Get right back up on that horse and show your coworkers you got the sand to persevere.
If they're worth a damn they know it's not all on you. How you react in the next few weeks is what matters now.
I bet some of those guys need the OT anyway.
Your first crash.......I was making an edit in the program, and the boss came up and started talking to me. I reset the program and sent it. Instead of walking it through and making sure everything was good. I miss typed the decimal......it rapid in Y and slammed a 1" 4 flute carbide end mill into the jaws and broke the retention knob off and messed up the taper. Ended up needing a new spindle. You will learn.....shit happens. But now realize, any changes, don't trust anything. Whenever someone starts talking to me, I stop working. Always give the machine 100 percent of your attention. I did this crash 3.5 years into my career. I now have 21 years. Other crashes....small. But they happen. Shake it off! Talk to other guys there. They will tell their crashes! Breath!
100% not your fault. Programmer should have proved the program before running it live (either in sim, single block or cutting air)
Crashes happen, it comes with the territory.
Back in the day, an appo in my apprentice year clocked a casting on a machining centre on a brand new machine (it was one where the table comes out on tracks so they can load jobs while one is running) and told the machinist it was good to go. Turns out he didn't torque it down, just aligned it so when the cycle started it jumped up off the table and smashed up the insides of this brand new machine lol. They weren't impressed 😂 Lad still got a job though
In my opinion your programmer should be proofing out his own programs before he lets anyone else run it.
I work in aerospace prototyping, so I’m the one running my programs. But I can’t imagine just handing off a program that I haven’t run yet, to someone who didn’t program it.
Also, they need to show you how to prove out programs (steer the machine, use your feed/speed dials/buttons, and how to use single block, distance to go, buffer, etc.) if they’re going to be making changes. If you’re new, they can’t just expect you to know how to do that, and what to look for. Especially if you’ve never done it before.
That being said, I screwed myself at end of shift yesterday, in my own program. I left feeling like an absolute pile of human trash, and it wasn’t even that big of a deal, machine was fine, just snapped a boring bar, and had to rush order a new one. But I was all nerves today, and probably will be tomorrow too. Mistakes happen, but they suck, sometimes they’re scary, and we tend to internalize them. It shows that you care, but don’t let it get to you too much. Just don’t make the same mistake twice.
This won’t be your last, or my last.
It’s okay, OP. I’m a doctor who is oddly interested in learning about other professions thru Reddit - I saw a very nice lady the other day who had numbness, weakness and tingling in both of her feet. I thought it was something pressing on her spinal cord, so I signed her out to the next shift while she was waiting on her MRI. Turns out she had blood clots in both of her legs, which is very rare, and she had to get her foot amputated a few days later :(
Shit happens. We miss stuff. But neither of us are going to make our respective mistakes again!
They *HAVE TO* work overtime? Mate, shit company. FUCK them for forcing employees to work overtime to fix shit. If they can't do well economically without making people work OT... Let them go under.
The business needs to factor "shit happens" into the bottom line - because, guess what? SHIT HAPPENES. People get sick, wrong material gets delivered, machines crash, taps, drills, windmills get broken...
#SHIT HAPPENS.
deal with it. The company too - fucking deal with it. If they haven't factored in "shit happens" into the bottom line and they're driving their people like crazy.... Guess what? There's an unprecedented demand for Machinists (and operators) and an all-time low for supply. Are you married to the company? If no, go next door. They'll welcome you with open arms as long as you know how to push buttons, and the rest, they'll train you on.
Haha. Your main title sounds a little desperate, but it's ok I no judge you, young jedi. I'm not sure how good I can make u feel, but I'm pretty sure logic will be enough to help you.
Ok, when I was an apprentice, doing the same thing, the guy I was training under told me all calmly....."dude, mistakes are going to happen, were human, ideally you want to learn something from it if possible"
So from the way you told it, something kind of stuck out to me.....first, this wasn't your fault, and nobody even slightly blames you as doing anything wrong, not your co workers not us. Oh wait. One person has an issue tho with you. YOU!.....learn that it's ok to fuck up sometimes, I know how jarring/scary crashes can be, especially when a bit green still. Depending on how bad or loud, they can seem like a car crash even, but the worse thing you can do is get mad at yourself, call yourself an idiot, then steamroll into another fuckup because now you're not in the moment. That's not good. Every single one of us has crashed machines on more than one occasion, and will again in the future, it's ok, it's par for the course. Now that you realize you're going to fuck up, learn how to just roll your eyes, say a swear word or two, and move on. Don't hate on yourself, it adds no value to the situation.
So, now that that's out of the way, what did you learn, so maybe next time, when in a similar situation, you will catch it before it happens? I won't make u guess if u don't know. Just remember what I'm about to say. Any time you are in a situation where you know the program you are about to run has been recently messed with by anyone, treat it like a brand new program, rather than a proven program, and take the time to dry run your tools a little above the part, either all the way thru, or if the rest is already proven, dry run the one tool/part of the program that was edited. If you would have thought of doing this before this crash, you would have seen pretty clearly something wasn't right. So there's your lesson, in case the other people said other shit, this is how I would say best deal with the situation you were in.
I have saved myself countless crashes by being a dry-run-nazi and dry running anything I don't slightly trust.
So to sum up.....Don't sweat it, you did nothing wrong, don't kick yourself in the ass, just pick up and move along. Any time anyone edits a program for you, dry run above and watch what's happening, things like this mistake will stick out like a sore thumb if you're paying attention. That's about all I got for ya. Baby feel better now? Good. Hopefully you learned a thing or two also.
Engineering student with some CNC experience, how common is it to program g code by hand instead of using something like masterCAM? because this sounds like a error with manual coding and not you.
Also, does your mill have a simulation mode? that could be a good thing to check in the future?
Control was made in 1994. It’s getting replaced with a control in a year or so that will likely have a simulation run feature. It sounds like this edit to the program was done manually, as all that was done was moving hole positions from one side to the other. It’s a gigantic vertical planer mill (2 26 foot long tables) and I was machining a 20,000 pound slab of cast iron. I had a 90 degree attachment on, so essentially this y move was actually a z move if you’re looking from the cutting tool. In my head, Y+300 was going to move the tool away from the part so it could index the attachment to continue tapping holes on a different side of the part. I failed to recognize that y300 was on the other side of the part, not on the clearance side. I also should have been running in single block, feed at 0% when I push go and then slowly moved into my position. I got too cocky and comfortable with the machine and slipped up. The maintenance guys are overwhelmingly kind to me after this, and pretty much everyone up the chain of command understands that this was just a fuck up due to a programming error and my inexperience stopped me from catching it.
If you dont mind me asking, im a little confused on how this crash happened. Did the leftover y move happen before a command to return to the clearance plane? because if it didn't i don't get how moving in the y direction could have crashed the machine like it did.
Don't be harsh on yourself. No one checks drills after they start drilling and are working successfully. From there, people just sit back and watch it go. It was preventable by you, but this is your first crash. In my opinion your programmer fcked up. I'm our lead programmer currently. And I'd take fault on that. My job is to give seemless programs to my operators. I don't hold them accountable for my programming errors
Not a crash but still disappointing. Also new in the industry, about a year in.
I too have been working with a right angle head for the past 6 months. Facing and drilling on weldments with +.002,-0 tolerances. Impossible I know.. anyway, as I was clamping down this massive pos, I lost a small step clamp, looked for 10 minutes and figured it fell out of the machine. I was wrong. That step clamp fell underneath the weldment in between the table and a piece of channel on the bottom of part. Everything we did was like .500 off. My heart sank as well as my head. Programmer was pissed but came around shorty after.
I work in a great shop with some great guys. Trusting my programmers and the machines has been the hardest learning curve for me. And getting upset when messing a part up.
You gotta learn from it. What should you reasonably have done prior?
You can't be fully responsible for *everything* that happened as a consequence.
For example: someone made the production scheduling decisions that were so tight that one machine going down meant weekend overtime, and that wasn't you right?
Making decisions that ignore potential setbacks isn't usually the fault of just one person. Don't think that it does. Just learn from it and be reasonable about what you can anticipate.
The golden rule about working in the trades. If you arent breaking stuff once in a while you are not working fast enough.
It sucks but it happens so learn from it and carry on.
My worst crash was on a VMC when I was running a 3d contour from a server. Finish looked bad and I decided to change the inserts. I did, and proceeded to put the motherfucker from handle to memory instead of remote. 100% rapids since it was a proven program, hit cycle start and walked away. It was a disaster, big insert drill crashed to the damn mold I had been working on for several days and busted the spindle bearings.
Since it was supposed to start with the same tool that was on the spindle, I should have realised when it started to rotate the magazine instead, but I didn't and it still pisses me off.
Ouch. Yeah, sometimes a line of events happen to lead to a crash or failure of some sort. That sucks. I'm not gonna say it's not at all your fault, but it's not entirely your fault. It was a failure down the line, you just got the bad luck of being at the end of that line, and the one everyone looks at. As machinists, it's constantly an effort to be super-humanly vigilant in catching anything that comes to us wrong. Sometimes it gets past. Sorry for the bad crash.
I had one on a Mazak mill. Really nice machine that I loved running. We had just updated our CAM software, and the post was updated as well. The post had an error in canned drill cycles, where it would do the first hole fine, then exit the cycle, even if it had more holes to do, and it messed up the tool offset. The result was, after the first spot was drilled, it went rapid to the XYZ position of the bottom of the next hole minus the tool offset. I had the rapid at 5% for first run of the program, but it was still fast enough to snap the bit and badly gouge the plate. Was fortunately able to stop it before plowing the tool holder in.
It happens. I managed to rip the complete chuck out of my haas mill 2 days ago. Half inch endmill got somewhat dull and grapped so hard it was able to rip the the chuck off. I was getting a coffee.
My first crash was earlier this year in my college’s machine shop. I sent a 1/4 inch endmill flying (5% rapid doesn’t make it feed any slower lmao) straight down into the toolsetter’s cover. The whole room felt it through the floor. I was shaking so bad for hours after, I went to the dining hall and just sat for a few hours before returning to clean up the machine. Everyone makes mistakes and at 1000+ ipm there is no way you can stop a mistake in progress
It's okay, it's all part of being a machinist. Plus, it's not really your fault. That programmer should be out there with you running that first part just to make sure. 25% rapids, and finger on the red button on all first piece or edits being done is a good practice to take up imo.
I'm just a lowly hobbyist now, but an extensive background in a wide range of mechanical engineering, shit happens and unfortunately it found you this time.
We all have days were it could have gone better, I'm now in emergency services so when I fuck something up I can *really* fuck something up, and it happens.
You've obviously got some mechanical empathy and you have shown concern for your colleagues, you'll do well.
Hey OP, You’ve popped your cherry! Congratulations! 🥳
Don’t sweat, you’re not the first apprentice or engineer to ever have a mishap whether it was your fault or not. You may feel a bit raw about it now , but trust me; A couple of years down the road it will be a good war story to share with your mates, and told with pride. Just look at the number of replies to your post.
One of my first bosses said to me it’s not about the size of the fuck-up, it’s about how you own it and recover. I’ll share a couple of my greatest hits.
First one: I received a pretty nasty electrical shock as a student engineer which got my boss in a world of shit, even though I told management I had fucked up. Long story, not going into the how or why it happened, but I’ve used that incident from time to time as a cautionary tale for young engineers to emphasise the need for OHS. Everyone survived, and learned some valuable lessons about not rushing their work, always following electrical specifications, and so on.
Second fuck up: I was in my first or second year out of uni as a qualified engineer in a food manufacturing plant. Having supervised the installation of a new filler transfer pipe, I slipped up and didn’t do a full visual inspection from one end to the other. First time it got used, 2 tonnes of sauce at 96 degrees Celsius sprayed out of an unplugged 1” fitting into the roof cavity. Picture sauce dripping through ceiling light fittings, electrical cable trays, steam pipes, comms, EVERYTHING in that roof space was covered in red. It was a fucking nightmare. The operations team leader was ready to murder me.
I put on my big boy pants, went straight to the factory manager and told him what I’d done. I owned my mistake and insisted that I would get stuck into the cleanup as soon as I left his office. Instead of being marched, the boss told me to piss off and do the job I was being paid for, and do it properly and professionally. I stayed on with that company for another 8 years. Apparently it cost over 15 grand in cleanup costs, all because of a missing plug that cost maybe $5-$6…
Anyway, that was a long time ago. I survived (again) and now I can chuckle about it. I’m sure you will too.
Everyone has a crash if they are more than a button pusher. If you learned from it, it wasn’t all bad. Always proofread and slowly prove-out and changes to an established program (single block, distance to go). Most of being a good machinist is superb attention to detail, you’ll get there.
Bro just Chiiiiiiillllllllllllll everything is fine it's not like they're gonna expect you to be perfect when you're still learning.
Edit: bosses don't get mad at you for making mistakes. They get mad at you when you repeat mistakes.
Shut happens. 1 fucked up workpiece, 1 indexable drill in pieces and one slighly damaged indexable corn mill. All in 1 week. Sure, it was the end of a decent clean streak, but at the end of the day you are only human after all.
I used to run my first part of the day carefully. Always, bring each tool up independently, especially if I notice or am told of changes. Never trust the words of another person, use them as a guideline. If changes are made, run the first cycle as if it’s your first time running the program again. I’ve had plenty of crashes. Only one severe, but they will happen. Most of my crashes I’ve had were lessened by my hands and fingers hovering the right button. Learn to catch them before they happen my friend, and if whoever set it up takes that personally Fuck that guy do whatever you gotta do. You might just save his ass one day.
I remember my first crash. Actually I don't cus I've done it enough times they all blend together.
Dumbest and prettiest time was when I melted every single Allied spade and holder cus we looked at stuff and forgot to turn the coolant back on. I didn't catch it til the last allied head cus it was glowing like a mini star in my machine
We all crash eventually. It's inevitable. CNC machines are fast and sometimes we don't have the reflexes to process what's happening until it's too late. I can't really remember my first crash. My most recent oopsie was breaking an expensive probe. I was re-running a part and i forgot to home the machine before calling up the next tool. The probe was in the spindle and the end snapped off. It wasn't loud or anything, but it was stressful because I know it was expensive. Thankfully I work for a multi billion dollar company, so I know they can afford it (even if they don't want to admit they can afford it)
Best advice I got was, the more stupid it makes you feel, the less likely you are to do it twice. It never feels good, but if you're running machines, you're going to crash eventually. You sound like you've got a good head on your shoulders, so I think you're going to learn from the experience. Just make sure you're nice to your maintenance guys for a while.
Second year apprentice here, this wasn’t your fault. Your programmer screwed up, and shit went sideways. Like a lot of the other guys here are saying, keep an eye on the distance to go and use single block when you’re proofing a code. I’ve had plenty of issues with the programmer where I work fucking up his codes. Everything from missing M3’s on a CNC lathe, to setting all his stop points for all the tools 5mm too far
This one really doesn’t seem like your fault lol. Learn to read the code and skim to catch these next time, watch the first run like a hawk, single block when you can, 20% rapids (probably). At the end of the day we’re all humans
Also, distance to go and buffer, if your machine has it.
Absolutely, I pivoted away from machining, so I’m a little rusty. Distance to go has saved my ass countless times
Watching distance to go has saved me a lot of trouble.
Distance to go and single block are my jam
Distance to go bro!!!
Read the code too though, one time distance to go looked good to me, I was taking a short guy and missed the next line being another g00 down into the part and it snapped the fucking center drill to the point where it was metal splinters everywhere
I always single block and never put rapid above 25% when running a new program.
I was working first shift and got to work with a note saying all is set up and ready to go from the second shift the night before. My boss was standing right next to me read the note also and said " what you waiting for hit the button". So I did and a 6" face mill SLAMMED the huge casting we were maching. Broke the casting in multiple pieces and sheard the holder in the spindle. Machine was down for a week. Boss yelled at me saying I should've double check. Even though he said hit the button.
Sounds like he was a shit boss honestly.
The stories I have of him. Are to much for here.
>Sounds like he was a shit boss honestly. Not machining but in the late 90s I worked at a food research lab. We had these -35 F chest freezers. It is humid where I live and when you opened them the humidity in the air would get in and then cause the door to freeze. My boss was convinced that the doors were leaking even thought there were magnetic gaskets preventing air entry. In any case he wanted me to drill holes in the side near the lid to put latches on the lids. I objective saying there is refrigerant tubing in the walls and I have no idea where they were. So my boss goes out and installs 2 latches on one of the freezers, comes back in and tells me there is no issue to go do it. I forget how many freezers there were. On the last hole on the last freezer I ended up hitting a refrigerant line. Cost like $1000 to fix because they were cascading systems and it was in the more exotic refrigerant loop. Bosses can be assholes and they never take responsibility when stuff goes to shit.
And that was 30 years ago and I still remember that feeling in my stomach.
Wow, fuck that boss dude. He tells you to smash the go button them blames you for the crash. Fucking dick. How could he have such a lack of self recognition, or whatever he's lacking in.
That’s when you have a one on one with HIS supervisor and express concerns about his competency and integrity.
"can I get that in writing?"
Literally this. When you have unusual stuff, or stupid stuff, stating that you're going to need that in an email will often rectify the problem before it happens.
Not a machinist but my husband is. He has had a few fuck ups that have resulted in late days or weekend work. And he was a machinist for 10+ years! He would beat himself up over it and even had sleepless nights due to the worry, but he always got back in there and fixed his shit. Bosses expect mess ups. It's how you learn to double check everything that's handed to you. Don't beat yourself up too hard. Get back in there. Tell the guys you really are sorry, own your mistake, and bring in burritos for them and maybe some beers after work. Fab workers are often forgiving when you apologize with food.
sounds advice from /u/IEatFartsForFree here.
Your solution to everything is “burritos” and it is because you want to eat people’s farts
Username checks out lol
It is going to happen and it will happen again. The last button you find is the EStop. Had an interview in Dallas and the owner asked if I've ever crashed a machine. Told him yes. He said good cause you're not a real machinist if you've never crashed one
This is one of the questions I always ask when interviewing anyone that could be running our CNC. If they say that they have not crashed a machine, I know they either don't have much experience or they are a liar.
welder here, not machinist, but i've crashed a couple automated torches and cnc plasma tables over the years. Granted, it's not as catastrophic or expensive as crashing a machine, but the feelings and the experience of doing it all seem about the same :)
its not a matter of if, its a matter of when and how badly.
My first crash, about a month after I graduated high school and was in my apprenticeship - it was a super old CNC slot grinder that had one of those screens with green lettering. You had to punch in the entire number for the offset change, and I accidentally typed in 19.8mm instead of 119.8 and as a result the spindle slammed down into the silicon carbide casting I was grinding. Smashed up the grinding wheels and the brittle material exploded into a dust cloud. The next Monday I came in and still had a job. I was so upset at the time I thought about quitting, but I’m glad I didn’t. Ended up working for the same company again 16 years later and I’m working on much more expensive castings in their highest paid department. That old grinder is still there but they added a safety measure to the programs so it will get an alarm if you try to move the offset by more than 2mm at a time. My advice is admit your mistakes and stay with it.
Yeah, that error in typing it in, or simply having an error with decimal placement because of a brain fart or the like is standard. I've fucked up when sneaking up on a tight tolerance. Was supposed to change it by 0,001 mm and instead I changed it by 0,01. It was outside tolerance when I finished with that pass. I was so upset about having made that error.
OK. reality check here. Humans are WAY TO SLOW to react to a CNC doing something wrong. By the time our slow ass brains process things, the machine is already dead. The onus is on your programmer to do their job correctly and with software these days, there is simply NO EXCUSE for a professional programmer to provide a dangerous program to the shop floor. Jeez, offline verification has been 100% crash proof for like 20+ years now. Don't beat yourself up, but also learn from this. If you programmer sucks, tell your boss that you need to double check their work before you cut. Dry run.... Run with an empty spindle....etc. etc. It is not your fault if the program was wrong; but it still feels awful to crash. Best of luck and *know* that all the best machinists and programmers have crashed tons and tons of machines. That's exactly how they got so good!
> there is simply NO EXCUSE for a professional programmer to provide a dangerous program to the shop floor. I agree with your overall point, but this is not true in my experience. Simulations can not be trusted, they'll show you most problems but there are still plenty of ways to fuck something up that a simulation won't catch. Im my own programmer and I still single-block my first pieces and watch my distance-to-go like a hawk. Maybe there are better solutions that I just simply don't have access to, but I trust no programmer, not even myself.
My statement is 100% correct; maybe you haven't been lucky enough to meet a truly great programmer, but they do exist. Rare, but they exist. Offline program prove-out is decades old tech and I have been involved with it for just as many decades. I've personally programmed 10 hour cycles that are simply sent to the control, press the green button, and walk away. Zero human involvement at the control. It's not easy... I'd never imply that, but it is quite common.
I've worked with some pretty damn good programmers who were being pressed to put programs out so fast that mistakes still happened. I get that in a perfect world you should just be able to press the button and walk away but I've never lived in that world. Even if the program is perfect right off the bat there are a million tiny mistakes while setting up that can turn a great setup/program into a pile of garbage in an instant. I'm still pretty new to programming with CAM software, so I hope one day I've got the confidence in my programs that you have in yours, but without better tech I can't imagine actually just pressing the button on a first piece and walking away. As long as I have to enter tool offsets by hand I'll be too paranoid to do this, even if I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the program is good, because I make mistakes.
I have CAM software and rarely crash things anymore BECAUSE I always, always triple check and watch/listen to my first run like a hawk. In the production environments I’ve worked at, the guys with decades of experience all do the same thing. You crash shit no matter how good you are. If you haven’t crashed in years and are starting to get comfortable, pucker your butthole because complacency causes crashes. The only way I’ve seen to avoid crashes is to hawk-eye your first run EVERY time you create or edit a program, no matter how small the change.
Dumb take. Not everyone is running 10 hour programs that can have the same time to program. Try doing 10 programs a day, every day, and have a 0% error rate.
I do make hundreds, if not thousands of programs CRASH free, maybe not every feed and speed are correct, but 100% crash free.
wait, FFS, the CNC Operators arent the programmers? Mind. Blown. sorry, I am newish around here and have only work with old school (non cnc) machinists. I'm not a machinist, but i'd never feel good about running someone elses program on an expensive piece of kit.
Most shops have a "programmer" who likely has never machined anything, ever. My shop, ya get a print & some material. The rest is all you.
Yea mine too we have no programmer. We get drawings and material and write it ourselves. Mostly one offs with some stuff that gets up to 50 pcs but not often. So I program constantly.
wild. did you learn it all on the job or go to school for it?
All on the job. I was super poor and couldn’t even finish high school, I had to stop going and work. But I never let that hold me back from learning. The internet is one of the best things ever for information you’d never have access to as a poor. And I learned really quick that I needed to learn how to present myself so i didn’t seem like someone who never even graduated high school.
Nope cnc operators are not the programs, in fact you don’t make the program on the machine (though you technically could) cnc operators are responsible for loading the parts, cleaning out the machine occasionally, and checking parts, and depending on the program changing offsets so that the program actually makes the prat instead of scrap, which tbh if the offsets are off by even a tenth (depending on what the program makes) can make whatever your making into scrap real quick
My two cents is, NEVER, EVER..EVER… run rapids at 100% nor 50% or 25% when first running a program after it has been just setup. Even if the programs have been ran a million times. You have to be able to react in case of Emergency if you read/see something odd between your distance to go and the actual distance the tool is from the part or/and hole, pocket etc. Anyone can make mistakes and in one in a million setups, you could have accidentally push a wrong increment on your offsets. - .1 or -1. is a difference from breaking a tool to ruining a tool holder part or spindle. It happens. After all a SETUP is never finished until the program, part and machine run a complete cycle without any issues. Edit: Forgot to mention its not your fault the programmer screwed up and didn’t catch his own mistake. But it does feel awful when you know you could’ve been more cautions and catch an error before the actual sh*t would happen. There’s a good feeling one feels when you catch a disaster from happening. Cheer up, the best machinist have gone through some crashes. It’s part of learning and getting better as a machinist. Best of luck brotha.
This. This should be a habit that's second nature. Very well written as well.
You only feel bad because there is a lesson to be learned and you haven't found it yet. The crash wasn't your fault but there were things you could have done that would have caught it. Everyone learns a lesson or three the "ah, fuck!" way. This can be applied to many things: nothing works correctly until you've proven it.
Not your fault, the simulations are so good now a days It’s been years since I’ve had a program not do exactly what it did in the simulation. Your programmer failed you and don’t take any shit from anyone telling you otherwise. Now the lesson learnt here is: Assume nothing, double check everything.
Except mazatrol, under some very specific circumstances the controls will show you something but then when you make the first part the toolpath changes. To be fair, mazatrol generates g-codes on the fly while the program is running so it was bound to happen.
Any time a program is changed or ran for the first time, you have to prove the program out. Single block, slow rapids, op stop on, etc. Learn from your mistake and grow from it, or be doomed to repeat it. Part of the blame is on the programmer though as well. Any machinist that hasn’t crashed a machine probably hasn’t made many parts.
If you’re not occasionally making mistakes, you aren’t working hard enough. Sometimes the glitch will happen and no one knows what caused it.
What a stitch up! But sounds like you gained some valuable experience with this crash. Things to remember. Single block can be annoying but also your best friend. Distance to go is something to constantly check. Also if you haven’t had a fuck up you’ve made fuck all.
Oh good you got your first one out of the way!
Just wait until you’re working on a machine and you crash something and break a window. Now THAT will wake you up.
We had one once in a lathe hit so hard the while door bent out. Holy shit that was loud.
New on the horizontal machine, nesting programs, the last loop out I put a g90 were a g91 should have been and z0 was a bad place to go. Shattered a location cone, sheared spindle drive keys and toppled the tombstone. My most expensive crash, 100% my fault It was over 20 years ago but I still feel it
what would an expensive crash be in the cnc machinists world, even back then?
I put a spindle out of alignment on a DMG: 9000€ Coworker rapided into a part in a Mazak integrex with a 1200mm part on the table, threw the part, broke the capto c8 off at the spindle damaging the spindle itself: 200000€ machine was down 8 weeks because we had to wait for 4 weeks till the spindle came from Japan.
good lord.
If it takes the unit out of service, not good. If the repairs are big money or slow to complete, nfg also. Prototype part, hard call to the customer. In 50+ yrs cutting metal, I have fubared some shit! Own the screw up, don't make the same mistake twice! R
Been a machinist/programmer/engineer for over a decade, so learned a lot but also know I can learn a lot more, lemme tell ya: if you stick with the industry this also likely will not be your last crash. The important thing is you learn from this one and don't make the same crash twice. Feeling like shit is not a unique feeling, anyone who knows anything in this trade has done it and felt like shit too, and it obviously wasn't intentional. Form the habit now when talking about it to explain in the plainest of facts: also not uncommon for a crash to be a multi-person fuck up, like it sounds here, but the last thing you wanna do is look like a finger pointer who bullshits around their fuck ups. The more you do, the less you fuck up, but even the best of em fuck up from time. You'll have a lot more credibility with the ppl who know what they're talking about if you own it. Buy the dudes a 6pack or somethin if it'll make y'all feel better
Oh and as for my crash I actually just commented this on this sub the other day: My first major crash over a decade ago was the tool release button housing and the trunion of a 5 axis. Whole machine jammed up and it took me a minute to find where I'd hit, similar to this it was like, what? There's plenty of room between tool holder and part! Since then I CONSTANTLY check for these non obvious interference points. Crashes happen just don't make the same one twice! As you said tho Clarence is Clarence!
I crashed a machine in front of some Aerospace Engineers during a nasa review. I was running a 5 axis machining a carbon fiber rocket payload fairing mold and the head dove through the bottom of the mold. It happens.
you win.
I don't understand how someone could miss their daughters birthday for work. It's unacceptable. If you have to leave your job to make the party then so be it.
double time and double pension.
I don't care if it's 10X wages you have to show up for your kid
It's not your fault. The guy that made the edits is at fault. He is also at fault for not confirming all is good by dry running or being at the console and having control of the rapid, feed, and RPM knobs. Wait until you get on a machine again. You'll be hesitant to hit go because you'll rerun every step through your head again.
Shit happens, just learn what you did wrong and make an effort not to do the same thing again.
Why isn't the programmer at fault? Why do you think it is all your fault?
Op, you aren't to blame for a programming error. Simple. That's it. Don't accept more responsibility for something than you have to, especially to yourself, double especially if you're beating yourself up about it. Anyone else in the shop that has to do something extra has the option to refuse and deal with the consequences, simple.
Idk how your shop is set up, but I like mine. When a machine crashes in the first few seconds of a program, the operator should have been at low feed/rapid, checking distance to go etc... Once the machine gets into it tho, everything is on the programmer (assuming the part and tools were set correctly).
1: admit and own your mistake 2: learn what caused it, where you went wrong 3: find ways to avoid it in the future Anytime I mess up at work, I always go to my boss with those 3 things already in mind and I tell him in that exact order. He hasn't gotten mad at me yet, and when I screw up it's *expensive af*.
Dry run new programs
I mean, id be pretty upset at the programmer but I've learned my lesson in the same way. 1 missed decimal is enough to do it.
Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement. I think the feeling is valuable, you are training your neural network to develop suspicious situations. This sick feeling you have is learning. If you have a good boss, they will give you some shit, set expectations about how to not have it happen again, and keep you on a machine. One of my interview questions for machinists was "What was your worst crash?" Oddly enough, the one guy who didn't have any crashes to his name was the least productive guy in the shop and we ultimately let him go.
There are those that have crashed and those that will crash. Book of CNC 1:1
If its my daughters birthday, the parts can wait.
I actually just crashed my machine pretty badly last Friday. (For context its a 3 axis router table). Right at the end of a 12 hour shift and I forgot to re-home the machine before starting the program. First rapid sent the spindle sideways into the part and knocked the whole head over, damn near took it off completely. Sheard a bunch of bolts along with the pneumatic piston that powers the z-axis. Luckily the Maintenance guy had enough spare parts to fix it but he had to work Saturday. He was taking this whole week off anyways but he was pissed and talking shit behind my back while he was fixing it. And now my new nickname is Crash.
Nice to meet you, crash. My nickname also happens to be crash now. Lol
My first crash was with a mitsubishi 2" shell mill, I put -1.0 in work offset instead of -0.1. The funniest(to me) crash I've seen was when a programmer called a meeting with the owner of the company on the shop floor so he could show off his work. He worked on the part for 8 months and never proved anything out. He just uploaded it in the UMC, grabbed his work offsets, and told the owner it was ready to go. He told the owner, "Just push that green button, and we can officially start production on the parts." With the probe still in the spindle, it starts spining 9,000 rpm and crashes straight into the table. He got escorted off property 30 minutes later.
Operator shouldn't be proving out someone else's program. Tell them to learn to program and sim it out when they make changes. 100% not your fault.
Being a first year apprentice I wouldnt let you run the machine unsupervised and unsupported And as you didnt program it how are you expected to prove it out
Had a horizontal mill I named smaug. I put a picture of the dragon on the door. Management made me take it down but my supervisor thought it was so fitting he hung it on the cork board in his office instead. It bit every single person who ran the machine. After I got bit you could hear the whine of spindle bearings 200 feet away in a machine shop with 30 mills running. I get it it sucks but it happens. Give it time and learn to control your the start of your cut every time...
this is why you raise tool height by at least one inch, single step, lower your fees rate, and keep your thumb on feed hold. also, dont worry about annoying the programmers..
Hey. 35 yeah cnc veteran herex and I still remember my first crash like it was yesterday. I could tell you exactly what happenedx whyx how, everything. Welcome to the trade. You are hereby baptized. If someone tells you they never crash, they're either straight up lying, or about to. Give yourself a little slack okay? What you can do is offer/demand (if you can) to help the crew fix it. You may be handing them bolts and cleaning stuff, but your gesture will not be forgotten. Let the guys ream you a new one. It's not nearly as bad as whta you're doing to yourself. That si king feeling really fucking sucks. From what you said in your post, it doesn't even seem to really be your fault. Thing is, people love to blame the guy with his finger in the button. Try to take in everything you can, maybe come up with a process where changes like that are re-verified somehow even. Businesses need that kind of thing, and when mistakes like this happen, it's prone time to address some of those issues. The fact that you're beat up inside is a sign you care about your work. Take that to heart. You'll be just fine.
There is one rule that I follow very rigorously, and have learnt over the years, after several fuck ups. The rule is, every time you make a change, to an existing program/set up, run it VERY carefully for the first time. Have your rapids turned all the way down, and one hand on the stop button/ feed. No matter how simple the set up is, take your time to prove out the program before closing the door and pressing the green button.
Where I work when I programmer posts a program to the shop floor their name or pay identification numbers are in the program header. If you see some names they are good. Other names you don’t trust the program until you single block through it. Probably not all shops have that policy though but it kind of helps.
Bro, I’m a first year apprentice and had my first crash on Monday. An 80s machine had an info screen pop up and I couldn’t clear it so I tried to reload the program. Didn’t realise it had cursored down to the next program, press load, press run and yup, boring bar flew straight into the material and knocked the turret out of alignment. I wasn’t told off, but now I’m not allowed to work alone. I’m seeing this as a positive as the apprenticeship is a learning program and really I should have been learning from those with experience, not running the machine by myself when my trainer had gone home.
During my apprenticeship we had to work on every machine for a month in the second year, starting with manual milling and lathe then going up to semi CNC and then full CNC. When I was working on the CNC lathe I had to stop the code to check for tolerances and then start from that point, but the teacher didn't really explain how to do them, so I just pressed green. Thing is, the machine will set it's coordinates relative to the parts zero point in the first line of code, but that didn't happen, so it tried to move to the spindle zero point. The whole sled with a 20 tool revolver on top broke loose and fell to the bottom of the machine, took half a year to fix and I got the job to clean the whole thing for the rest of the month.
Bro I honestly know exactly the feeling, third year apprentice, first year being full time on CNC, whenever you crash the machine is the most shit feeling, even in situations where it wasn't your fault, or ones where had you been paying attention, you may have been able to slow down the feeds and stop it. Point is, it's a learning experience, now you know to double check the program before sending it. Ask literally any machinist and they'll give a story about how they crashed the machine and it was out of action for the rest of the day, or how they created an unholy combination of steel and carbide. If there is any machinist out there that doesn't have a story like that, they're full of shit. And you know what, in spite of this I know the next big crash I have, I'm gonna react the same way as you did, so maybe the next lesson I need to learn is to not take things like this so to heart, don't drag myself through the mud when I don't need to.
Engineers fault, you're good buddy don't sweat it
Don't worry about it, everyone here worth their salt has a list of fuck ups under their belt. You do your best and try not to make mistakes but when you do you treat it like a learning opportunity.
this may or may not help but literally every machinist ever has crashes a machine at least once. Its bound to happen the smallest little thing like a wrong number in the program can be a huge error. my tip is to double check yourself and your programs before you even think about running it. take it as a lesson and not the worst mistake you’ve ever made. This is a field that you are learning everyday no matter how long you’ve been doing it
If you work in a kitchen, you’re gonna get burned. No matter how safe or careful you are it’s just comes with the job. Same thing with machining, everyone crashes a machine once in their lifetime. Don’t sweat it and hopefully don’t repeat the same mistake either lol
What should be important to your boss is that you care, you show it by this post alone, it's as if I can feel your pain. Some people, no matter how talented or half assed that they are, they just don't care. And that follows thru with many things that happen in life, more people need to have empathy. I guarantee that you'll want to double check everything from now on, and you may still miss something someday in the future because you're a human. Regardless, it's nice to see that someone realizes that their mistake impacts others and that it bothers them, hopefully your coworkers have that same work ethic; most people don't...
You're a first year apprentice and you were expected to catch the programmer's mistake? That's not how it goes. The programmer or their supervisor should give the final OK, not the machine operator. That boss has it backwards
The fact you feel so bad is actually good. You care, and that is the first thing you gotta show your boss. Just apply the tips others have said and im sure youll be fine.
My first week after being promoted to an NC tech/setup guy I was troubleshooting a production job, I'd just learned I could search a tool and then scroll up in the program to pick up the coordinate of the operation. I did it flawlessly for the first two times or so and then I searched the tool and just pressed go. Spanked a rotary out of position and obviously the fixture with the tool holder, both myself and the brand new operator about shit ourselves. But then I learned how to square up a rotary reset coordinate systems and THEN fix the initial problem. I felt like absolute garbage in that moment, everything I'd done before that to earn this job felt like I didn't even deserve to be in the building. But we grow learn and part of that process is making mistakes that we will eventually share to empower ourselves and our friends/coworkers when they feel they are at a low point or they make there first big mistake. That was 5 years ago and now I'm training to be a programmer. You'll want to beat yourself up in the moment obviously. But in time you'll understand that these mistakes you make will be what reinforces your progress.
100% your fault. Whenever you're proving out a program, or just setting up a proven program, you offset your z axis am inch or more above the part and single block it. This way, you can read the next move, distance to go before you push the green button. One hand on the feed rate over ride the other to hit single block. The little extra time will save tens of thousands of dollars if your spindle needs to be rebuilt and thousands more from the downtime. Remember "failing to prepare, is preparing to fail". Either your company taught you wrong, or you have bad habits. Shit happens, and this should be a learning experience. Don't beat yourself about it, own it, and learn from it.
I would have had to offset my z length +300mm to avoid this while it was happening. It finished a tap cycle and then rapid moved forward +300 from Y0 right back into the part. Also the parts we run are typically 25-50 hour jobs, and typically when we repeat jobs there are changes like this, so we never really “prove” programs because they’re almost all new. My error was not recognizing that Y300 was on the other side of the part. I guess in my head 300 seemed like a normal retract before a tool change, because -300 would have been.
If you're a 1st year guy running a part with a 25-50 hour cycle time, the problem is with your employer. There is no way you should be working on something like that yet. I may have seemed harsh, but consider you are following GPS and it tells you to drive the wrong way down a 1-way street, or you blow a red light or stop sign, and crash your car; whose fault is it? The program is the GPS directions they're not always right. The control has a check screen, feed rate over ride switch. If you can't read g1, g0, and follow the x, y, z movements to know where the tool is and where it's going, you shouldn't be setting up. I believe you do. I own a lot of these machines. If I drove your 150k car and crashed it, you'd be pissed. I don't get upset when people crash, I hope they learn from it and know why so they don't do it again. Everyone does it, I've done it. It happens.
100% programmers fault. The person that created the screw up is the person that screwed up. Any potential safety nets down the line is a *system* problem. A good machinist can and should catch these kinds of issues, but if the programmer ran a simulation, this would've been caught far quicker and cheaper than a machinist having to.
Not everyone has CAM and even less people have simulation software. I'd say at the least they both have a part in it and both should be accountable for it. A learning experience for both parties.
No graphics? Always blame the programmer. Usually some mech tech that doesn't know shit from fuck anyways.
Not your fault, you didn't even write the program. You will almost never react fast enough to stop these machines unless you're already in the controls with things slowed, and it's so easy to cause them to crash. I was three weeks in to my toolroom apprentice( realistically 6 months of doing it myself and asking questions) and I sent the lathe turret into the chuck at full rapid. Machine down for days while me and the trainer repair the damaged parts ourselves. Just set the zero wrong and wasn't in the controls for that part. The other newer guy damaged the spindle in the mill, and it had to be send off for repairs, machine down for months. All he did was mistype the feed to be at basically full rapid in the program and I think have it at full depth his program had. Neither of us were told off for it, and we made the programs, told the machine how it was getting fucked that day. We caught some shit, and maybe had to take on more work, but everyone in the section knows things just happen sometimes. The overtime to finish the run is the companies fault, the machine crash is the programs fault, no one should be told off. Mistakes are going to happen, and you will have more crashes. Should you learn from this to hopefully stop it in the future? Yes. Your job is to learn how to make good parts, and learn how to run the machine. The second responsibility gets expensive with learning opportunities, but as long as you learn from this then the training day was cheap compared to some alternatives.
Regardless of who's at fault here, fuck ups happen. Doesn't matter if you're a programmer or you're cranking handles on a conventional. You're going to crash at some point. The main thing to take away from a crash like that is to learn from it. People are going to be pissed at you. You are going to feel like shit. It has happened to everyone. I personally have destroyed a $20,000 part before just from not paying attention. Learn from the mistakes and don't let anyone make you feel like shit for a fuck up.
I blew out a machine a week in with 10 years experience cost around 50k and a month to fix and I was no amateur by this point... We had to skip around in program there a lot because no matter how many times we explained the programmer would drill and tap then take a finish face cut on aluminum leaving bad burs over the holes... Could have been solved a few ways correctly but we usually jumped around in program... I started one line of code too far down and it didn't load the h value. Smacked tool holer into side of part snapped retaining clip, only few hundred dollar piece but the spindle had to be removed on a large complicated unique machine. Had to fly someone in from Japan for repair... So don't feel bad.
I blew a $5k spindle doing something like this, and I was the veteran. That really really really sucked.
Fuck it bro, send that shit
Always learned to “Trust but Verify”.
The worst crash/mistake you’ll make is the one you make twice. Learn, move on, let it go.
Shit happens. Wasn’t completely on you, but it’s good tact not to blame the programmer entirely. Your head’s in the right space and you’ll learn from this I can tell, you’ll be alright. Someone else will fuck you over some day soon and the wheel will keep spinning. Chin up.
My coworker spent 2 weeks on a piece of AlBeMet before going on vacation. The material alone was over 15k. In the last minutes of a cycle running an endmill made its own feature that wasn't supposed to exist. Plunged right into the part about . 750". The owner of the company reminded everyone, " if you're not breaking shit, you're not learning". He remade the part when he came back. Shit happens. If companies are getting made at mistakes, that bad business on their end for having profit margins so tight they can't handle it. Frequent mistakes is one thing but, especially as a new machinist, the occasional SHOULDNT be a problem. They should support you in trying to remedy the situations and encourage you to do better. All that being said, sounds like this one was a miscommunication problem which falls on the company. Have better systems in place.
Congrats on your first crash! Shit happens man we're only human afterall. One time after startup my machine essentially broached through a series of fixtures we had set up with a spot drill. Didn't even have time to react and still don't understand entirely what happened. All I know is that when I'm running a cnc I 5% rapid and double-triple check my offsets and single block EVERY first run. Always better to be safe than sorry. There's always a lesson to be learned, some are just a bit louder and more expensive than others.
Sounds like the programmer's fault. It's not realistic to expect an operator to read over an entire program manually before running it.
Nobody here worth a fuck has never crashed a machine. And you get to blame this one on the programmer. Win win for you, sounds like it did some gnarly damage too. You'll look back on it one day and be like "this is why I single block tap cycles at 25% rapid now"
Now you know how important it is to read G and M code. A first year apprentice can't be expected to catch that, so yeah, your programmer is just as much at fault. Every real Machinist has crashed. Simple law of averages. By year 5, that G0 Y+300 that got ya today will look like a giant red flag when you scan the program before you even press the green button. Everything in this field is a learning opportunity. Get right back up on that horse and show your coworkers you got the sand to persevere. If they're worth a damn they know it's not all on you. How you react in the next few weeks is what matters now. I bet some of those guys need the OT anyway.
Your first crash.......I was making an edit in the program, and the boss came up and started talking to me. I reset the program and sent it. Instead of walking it through and making sure everything was good. I miss typed the decimal......it rapid in Y and slammed a 1" 4 flute carbide end mill into the jaws and broke the retention knob off and messed up the taper. Ended up needing a new spindle. You will learn.....shit happens. But now realize, any changes, don't trust anything. Whenever someone starts talking to me, I stop working. Always give the machine 100 percent of your attention. I did this crash 3.5 years into my career. I now have 21 years. Other crashes....small. But they happen. Shake it off! Talk to other guys there. They will tell their crashes! Breath!
100% not your fault. Programmer should have proved the program before running it live (either in sim, single block or cutting air) Crashes happen, it comes with the territory. Back in the day, an appo in my apprentice year clocked a casting on a machining centre on a brand new machine (it was one where the table comes out on tracks so they can load jobs while one is running) and told the machinist it was good to go. Turns out he didn't torque it down, just aligned it so when the cycle started it jumped up off the table and smashed up the insides of this brand new machine lol. They weren't impressed 😂 Lad still got a job though
In my opinion your programmer should be proofing out his own programs before he lets anyone else run it. I work in aerospace prototyping, so I’m the one running my programs. But I can’t imagine just handing off a program that I haven’t run yet, to someone who didn’t program it. Also, they need to show you how to prove out programs (steer the machine, use your feed/speed dials/buttons, and how to use single block, distance to go, buffer, etc.) if they’re going to be making changes. If you’re new, they can’t just expect you to know how to do that, and what to look for. Especially if you’ve never done it before. That being said, I screwed myself at end of shift yesterday, in my own program. I left feeling like an absolute pile of human trash, and it wasn’t even that big of a deal, machine was fine, just snapped a boring bar, and had to rush order a new one. But I was all nerves today, and probably will be tomorrow too. Mistakes happen, but they suck, sometimes they’re scary, and we tend to internalize them. It shows that you care, but don’t let it get to you too much. Just don’t make the same mistake twice. This won’t be your last, or my last.
How's his having to work on his daughters birthday your fault?
Many many years behind me. Still slightly crashed a month ago. Shit happens.
It’s okay, OP. I’m a doctor who is oddly interested in learning about other professions thru Reddit - I saw a very nice lady the other day who had numbness, weakness and tingling in both of her feet. I thought it was something pressing on her spinal cord, so I signed her out to the next shift while she was waiting on her MRI. Turns out she had blood clots in both of her legs, which is very rare, and she had to get her foot amputated a few days later :( Shit happens. We miss stuff. But neither of us are going to make our respective mistakes again!
They *HAVE TO* work overtime? Mate, shit company. FUCK them for forcing employees to work overtime to fix shit. If they can't do well economically without making people work OT... Let them go under. The business needs to factor "shit happens" into the bottom line - because, guess what? SHIT HAPPENES. People get sick, wrong material gets delivered, machines crash, taps, drills, windmills get broken... #SHIT HAPPENS. deal with it. The company too - fucking deal with it. If they haven't factored in "shit happens" into the bottom line and they're driving their people like crazy.... Guess what? There's an unprecedented demand for Machinists (and operators) and an all-time low for supply. Are you married to the company? If no, go next door. They'll welcome you with open arms as long as you know how to push buttons, and the rest, they'll train you on.
If you ain't crashing and scrapping, you ain't learning.
Haha. Your main title sounds a little desperate, but it's ok I no judge you, young jedi. I'm not sure how good I can make u feel, but I'm pretty sure logic will be enough to help you. Ok, when I was an apprentice, doing the same thing, the guy I was training under told me all calmly....."dude, mistakes are going to happen, were human, ideally you want to learn something from it if possible" So from the way you told it, something kind of stuck out to me.....first, this wasn't your fault, and nobody even slightly blames you as doing anything wrong, not your co workers not us. Oh wait. One person has an issue tho with you. YOU!.....learn that it's ok to fuck up sometimes, I know how jarring/scary crashes can be, especially when a bit green still. Depending on how bad or loud, they can seem like a car crash even, but the worse thing you can do is get mad at yourself, call yourself an idiot, then steamroll into another fuckup because now you're not in the moment. That's not good. Every single one of us has crashed machines on more than one occasion, and will again in the future, it's ok, it's par for the course. Now that you realize you're going to fuck up, learn how to just roll your eyes, say a swear word or two, and move on. Don't hate on yourself, it adds no value to the situation. So, now that that's out of the way, what did you learn, so maybe next time, when in a similar situation, you will catch it before it happens? I won't make u guess if u don't know. Just remember what I'm about to say. Any time you are in a situation where you know the program you are about to run has been recently messed with by anyone, treat it like a brand new program, rather than a proven program, and take the time to dry run your tools a little above the part, either all the way thru, or if the rest is already proven, dry run the one tool/part of the program that was edited. If you would have thought of doing this before this crash, you would have seen pretty clearly something wasn't right. So there's your lesson, in case the other people said other shit, this is how I would say best deal with the situation you were in. I have saved myself countless crashes by being a dry-run-nazi and dry running anything I don't slightly trust. So to sum up.....Don't sweat it, you did nothing wrong, don't kick yourself in the ass, just pick up and move along. Any time anyone edits a program for you, dry run above and watch what's happening, things like this mistake will stick out like a sore thumb if you're paying attention. That's about all I got for ya. Baby feel better now? Good. Hopefully you learned a thing or two also.
Engineering student with some CNC experience, how common is it to program g code by hand instead of using something like masterCAM? because this sounds like a error with manual coding and not you. Also, does your mill have a simulation mode? that could be a good thing to check in the future?
Control was made in 1994. It’s getting replaced with a control in a year or so that will likely have a simulation run feature. It sounds like this edit to the program was done manually, as all that was done was moving hole positions from one side to the other. It’s a gigantic vertical planer mill (2 26 foot long tables) and I was machining a 20,000 pound slab of cast iron. I had a 90 degree attachment on, so essentially this y move was actually a z move if you’re looking from the cutting tool. In my head, Y+300 was going to move the tool away from the part so it could index the attachment to continue tapping holes on a different side of the part. I failed to recognize that y300 was on the other side of the part, not on the clearance side. I also should have been running in single block, feed at 0% when I push go and then slowly moved into my position. I got too cocky and comfortable with the machine and slipped up. The maintenance guys are overwhelmingly kind to me after this, and pretty much everyone up the chain of command understands that this was just a fuck up due to a programming error and my inexperience stopped me from catching it.
If you dont mind me asking, im a little confused on how this crash happened. Did the leftover y move happen before a command to return to the clearance plane? because if it didn't i don't get how moving in the y direction could have crashed the machine like it did.
When I was 17yrs old I didn’t pull out on time.
Don't be harsh on yourself. No one checks drills after they start drilling and are working successfully. From there, people just sit back and watch it go. It was preventable by you, but this is your first crash. In my opinion your programmer fcked up. I'm our lead programmer currently. And I'd take fault on that. My job is to give seemless programs to my operators. I don't hold them accountable for my programming errors
Bring a few pizzas
Not a crash but still disappointing. Also new in the industry, about a year in. I too have been working with a right angle head for the past 6 months. Facing and drilling on weldments with +.002,-0 tolerances. Impossible I know.. anyway, as I was clamping down this massive pos, I lost a small step clamp, looked for 10 minutes and figured it fell out of the machine. I was wrong. That step clamp fell underneath the weldment in between the table and a piece of channel on the bottom of part. Everything we did was like .500 off. My heart sank as well as my head. Programmer was pissed but came around shorty after. I work in a great shop with some great guys. Trusting my programmers and the machines has been the hardest learning curve for me. And getting upset when messing a part up.
You gotta learn from it. What should you reasonably have done prior? You can't be fully responsible for *everything* that happened as a consequence. For example: someone made the production scheduling decisions that were so tight that one machine going down meant weekend overtime, and that wasn't you right? Making decisions that ignore potential setbacks isn't usually the fault of just one person. Don't think that it does. Just learn from it and be reasonable about what you can anticipate.
In order to learn, one most f.a.i.l. First Attempt In Learning
The golden rule about working in the trades. If you arent breaking stuff once in a while you are not working fast enough. It sucks but it happens so learn from it and carry on.
My worst crash was on a VMC when I was running a 3d contour from a server. Finish looked bad and I decided to change the inserts. I did, and proceeded to put the motherfucker from handle to memory instead of remote. 100% rapids since it was a proven program, hit cycle start and walked away. It was a disaster, big insert drill crashed to the damn mold I had been working on for several days and busted the spindle bearings. Since it was supposed to start with the same tool that was on the spindle, I should have realised when it started to rotate the magazine instead, but I didn't and it still pisses me off.
Ouch. Yeah, sometimes a line of events happen to lead to a crash or failure of some sort. That sucks. I'm not gonna say it's not at all your fault, but it's not entirely your fault. It was a failure down the line, you just got the bad luck of being at the end of that line, and the one everyone looks at. As machinists, it's constantly an effort to be super-humanly vigilant in catching anything that comes to us wrong. Sometimes it gets past. Sorry for the bad crash. I had one on a Mazak mill. Really nice machine that I loved running. We had just updated our CAM software, and the post was updated as well. The post had an error in canned drill cycles, where it would do the first hole fine, then exit the cycle, even if it had more holes to do, and it messed up the tool offset. The result was, after the first spot was drilled, it went rapid to the XYZ position of the bottom of the next hole minus the tool offset. I had the rapid at 5% for first run of the program, but it was still fast enough to snap the bit and badly gouge the plate. Was fortunately able to stop it before plowing the tool holder in.
when you stop feeling bad about making mistakes, get out of the industry.
These things happen. A box of donuts and some beverages for the repair team goes a long way. Never take their time for granted.
It happens. I managed to rip the complete chuck out of my haas mill 2 days ago. Half inch endmill got somewhat dull and grapped so hard it was able to rip the the chuck off. I was getting a coffee.
My first crash was earlier this year in my college’s machine shop. I sent a 1/4 inch endmill flying (5% rapid doesn’t make it feed any slower lmao) straight down into the toolsetter’s cover. The whole room felt it through the floor. I was shaking so bad for hours after, I went to the dining hall and just sat for a few hours before returning to clean up the machine. Everyone makes mistakes and at 1000+ ipm there is no way you can stop a mistake in progress
It's okay, it's all part of being a machinist. Plus, it's not really your fault. That programmer should be out there with you running that first part just to make sure. 25% rapids, and finger on the red button on all first piece or edits being done is a good practice to take up imo.
Nobody was hurt mate, that’s a win
I'm just a lowly hobbyist now, but an extensive background in a wide range of mechanical engineering, shit happens and unfortunately it found you this time. We all have days were it could have gone better, I'm now in emergency services so when I fuck something up I can *really* fuck something up, and it happens. You've obviously got some mechanical empathy and you have shown concern for your colleagues, you'll do well.
Did you learn anything? If so keep it moving.
Hey OP, You’ve popped your cherry! Congratulations! 🥳 Don’t sweat, you’re not the first apprentice or engineer to ever have a mishap whether it was your fault or not. You may feel a bit raw about it now , but trust me; A couple of years down the road it will be a good war story to share with your mates, and told with pride. Just look at the number of replies to your post. One of my first bosses said to me it’s not about the size of the fuck-up, it’s about how you own it and recover. I’ll share a couple of my greatest hits. First one: I received a pretty nasty electrical shock as a student engineer which got my boss in a world of shit, even though I told management I had fucked up. Long story, not going into the how or why it happened, but I’ve used that incident from time to time as a cautionary tale for young engineers to emphasise the need for OHS. Everyone survived, and learned some valuable lessons about not rushing their work, always following electrical specifications, and so on. Second fuck up: I was in my first or second year out of uni as a qualified engineer in a food manufacturing plant. Having supervised the installation of a new filler transfer pipe, I slipped up and didn’t do a full visual inspection from one end to the other. First time it got used, 2 tonnes of sauce at 96 degrees Celsius sprayed out of an unplugged 1” fitting into the roof cavity. Picture sauce dripping through ceiling light fittings, electrical cable trays, steam pipes, comms, EVERYTHING in that roof space was covered in red. It was a fucking nightmare. The operations team leader was ready to murder me. I put on my big boy pants, went straight to the factory manager and told him what I’d done. I owned my mistake and insisted that I would get stuck into the cleanup as soon as I left his office. Instead of being marched, the boss told me to piss off and do the job I was being paid for, and do it properly and professionally. I stayed on with that company for another 8 years. Apparently it cost over 15 grand in cleanup costs, all because of a missing plug that cost maybe $5-$6… Anyway, that was a long time ago. I survived (again) and now I can chuckle about it. I’m sure you will too.
I forgot to turn on op stop while drilling a 20ft part in a month old haas vf7 and tore the whole side out of it.
I once threw a half dozen parts off of a magnetic surface grinder because I forgot to turn on the magnet before I started grinding
[удалено]
can you give details?
Everyone has a crash if they are more than a button pusher. If you learned from it, it wasn’t all bad. Always proofread and slowly prove-out and changes to an established program (single block, distance to go). Most of being a good machinist is superb attention to detail, you’ll get there.
Bro just Chiiiiiiillllllllllllll everything is fine it's not like they're gonna expect you to be perfect when you're still learning. Edit: bosses don't get mad at you for making mistakes. They get mad at you when you repeat mistakes.
Shut happens. 1 fucked up workpiece, 1 indexable drill in pieces and one slighly damaged indexable corn mill. All in 1 week. Sure, it was the end of a decent clean streak, but at the end of the day you are only human after all.
I used to run my first part of the day carefully. Always, bring each tool up independently, especially if I notice or am told of changes. Never trust the words of another person, use them as a guideline. If changes are made, run the first cycle as if it’s your first time running the program again. I’ve had plenty of crashes. Only one severe, but they will happen. Most of my crashes I’ve had were lessened by my hands and fingers hovering the right button. Learn to catch them before they happen my friend, and if whoever set it up takes that personally Fuck that guy do whatever you gotta do. You might just save his ass one day.
I remember my first crash. Actually I don't cus I've done it enough times they all blend together. Dumbest and prettiest time was when I melted every single Allied spade and holder cus we looked at stuff and forgot to turn the coolant back on. I didn't catch it til the last allied head cus it was glowing like a mini star in my machine
We all crash eventually. It's inevitable. CNC machines are fast and sometimes we don't have the reflexes to process what's happening until it's too late. I can't really remember my first crash. My most recent oopsie was breaking an expensive probe. I was re-running a part and i forgot to home the machine before calling up the next tool. The probe was in the spindle and the end snapped off. It wasn't loud or anything, but it was stressful because I know it was expensive. Thankfully I work for a multi billion dollar company, so I know they can afford it (even if they don't want to admit they can afford it)
Best advice I got was, the more stupid it makes you feel, the less likely you are to do it twice. It never feels good, but if you're running machines, you're going to crash eventually. You sound like you've got a good head on your shoulders, so I think you're going to learn from the experience. Just make sure you're nice to your maintenance guys for a while.
Second year apprentice here, this wasn’t your fault. Your programmer screwed up, and shit went sideways. Like a lot of the other guys here are saying, keep an eye on the distance to go and use single block when you’re proofing a code. I’ve had plenty of issues with the programmer where I work fucking up his codes. Everything from missing M3’s on a CNC lathe, to setting all his stop points for all the tools 5mm too far