Lost 6 hours to a bad collet I should have tossed months ago

Spent last Thursday chasing a runout issue on a stainless job. Parts kept coming out .003 off and I kept messing with speeds, feeds, and even the whole tool setup. Turns out the collet had a hairline crack near the slit that I never noticed because it looked fine on the outside. By the time I swapped it out I had burned 6 hours and about $180 in scrap material. Now I check collets with a magnifying lamp before every setup. Anyone else have a part fail in a stupid way after you wasted time blaming the program or the machine?

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riverm481mo ago

Man, I spent a whole shift once blaming backlash on a mill that just needed a worn ER32 swapped out, brutal.