Am I the only one who picked the wrong chuck jaw and paid for it all week
Had a job running 400 small aluminum parts and I was stuck between soft jaws bored to size or just running the standard hard jaws with a torque wrench and hoping. Went with the hard jaws to save setup time, dumb move. By part 60 the jaws had chewed up the finish and I scrapped 22 pieces, which at $14 a blank put me down about 300 bucks plus a rework meeting with the boss in Toledo. Next time I'm boring soft jaws even if it eats an hour of my morning. What do you all run for thin wall aluminum, soft jaws every time or do you have a trick I'm missing?
Soft jaws are worth boring for that wall thickness, no question. One trick that saved me on a similar run: bore the soft jaws about .005 under your part size and give each part a light tap to seat it before you clamp down. Keeps the pressure even so the walls don't spring. Also check your jaw pressure if you have a dial, backing it off a quarter turn made a bigger difference than I expected on aluminum.