The day I stopped eyeballing my tool offsets and started using a presetter

I remember back in 2013 when I first started running a Haas VF-2, I would just touch off tools with a piece of paper and call it good. My parts were within tolerance maybe 70 percent of the time, but I spent way too long re-running offsets after every tool change. About 5 years ago, my shop got a used Zoller presetter for around $3,000 and it felt like cheating at first. Now I can set a tool in under 2 minutes and my scrap rate dropped to almost nothing. The funny thing is, I used to think the presetter was a waste of money, but now I can't imagine going back to the paper method. Has anyone else made the switch later in their career and regretted not doing it sooner?

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charlie26927d ago

Three grand for a Zoller is a steal man, I paid like $500 for a beat up used presetter from an old shop that was going under and it looked like it had been through a war. First time I used it I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out why my tool was reading 3 inches short, turns out I forgot to zero it properly because I'm an idiot. Now I can bang out a tool in like 90 seconds without any of that paper guesswork and my scrap rate went from "oh crap" to "not bad.