Discovered soft jaw tricks at a trade show in Cleveland and it saved my Friday shift

I was at the Precision Machining Expo in Cleveland last month and caught this old-timer demoing soft jaws on a Haas VF-2. He showed me how to bore them out with a 1/4 inch end mill at a 45 degree angle instead of straight down, which gives way better grip on round parts. I tried it on a batch of 80 aluminum spacers yesterday and my run time dropped from 4 hours to 2.5 hours per 20 pieces. The trick is to leave a 0.020 inch step on the inner diameter so the part seats consistently. Has anyone else got a weird soft jaw trick that changed their cycle times?

2 comments

2 Comments

kim_hart713d agoMost Upvoted

What about doing a rough pass with a boring head first?

robinson.jake13d ago

Depends on how tight your tolerances really need to be I guess.