"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Tom Gardner" wrote:

I did 18 mill operations in less than 2 hours including set-up time. This
by changing the way I do my drawings and visualizing all the operations
with
the thoughts of reducing set-ups, minimizing tool changes, laying out the
tools and parts and figuring the correct order of events.

[snippage]

I'm probably not the only guy that gets part way through something and
change how I process things as I figure out a better way to do the job.
Maybe some day I'll consistently get it right from the start.

Wes

Ayup! I try not to cut metal until we are on version 3 or better in
Solidworks. Even then, I make note of all the improvements for the next
version of a machine subsystem but we don't change design in the middle of
the build anymore, that version gets built and run knowing another complete
version might be justified. I have to be careful not to let the good be the
enemy of the perfect.

This machining I did was for version 3 of a mechanism that has been in use
for four years. I haven't thought of a single improvement yet and it will
go on a production machine next week. If it works, it will be the last
version...probably.