Just ran a 3D contour program for 72 hours straight with zero tool changes

Honestly, I was machining a massive aluminum mold block for a customer in Detroit, and I set up a single 3/4 inch ball nose endmill from Helical Solutions. The program had over 2 million lines of code and I figured I'd be swapping inserts halfway through. Ngl, I checked on it every few hours expecting a failure, but it finished the whole job perfectly. Has anyone else pushed a tool way past its expected life on a long run and been shocked?

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3 Comments

harperjackson6mo ago

Man, that's a crazy long run. Did you just get lucky with the material or was the setup just that solid?

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the_eric6mo ago

Luck had nothing to do with it. Just pure skill and a little bit of black magic.

2

miac436mo ago

What black magic? I'm pretty sure my skill is just being too stubborn to quit. I spent like three hours on that one part, failing the same way over and over.

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