There are plenty of ways to crash your machine, but you have to remember: CNC machines don't crash, operators crash them!
Here are nine of the most common reasons we see people crash their CNC machines, and what you can do to prevent a CNC crash.
- Not resetting Feed Rate Override
- Transpose your tool height value
- Putting the tool height in wrong field
- Swap a tool out, forget to update height
- Putting the wrong tool in the machine
- Load the wrong program
- Forget to load the latest version of your Program
- Setting the wrong work coordinate system in CAM
- Not updating your current tool (e.g. tool 99) in PathPilot when touching off your Z height!
Read: Workholding of the Month: Double-Sided Tape
John Saunders is the author of the NYC CNC YouTube channel and runs Saunders Machine Works, a machine shop in Zanesville, OH.