A talk with my kid's teacher made me see my setup drawings in a new way

I was helping my son with his homework last week, and his teacher told me he gets stuck because he can't picture the steps in his head. She said, 'He needs to see the path from start to finish, not just the answer.' That hit me hard. I realized I've been giving our new guy at the shop, Mike, setup sheets that are just a list of tools and final dimensions. No clear path. So yesterday, I redid the sheet for a simple aluminum bracket job on the Tormach. I drew little arrows for the order of ops, circled the first touch-off point in red, and wrote 'check this clearance before running' next to a tricky internal pocket. Mike ran the part in one go, no questions. Have you guys found that a more visual setup sheet cuts down on rookie mistakes?

3 comments

3 Comments

simonl8627d ago

Glad that worked, but maybe skip the red pen next time.

victor_stone27d ago

Honestly, that teacher's advice applies to so much more than machining.

alice_harris3513d ago

Yeah, Simon's red pen thing is a perfect example of that advice in action.