The hardest part to keep quality on that I remember running was these flat cover panels that had a very very small dovetail feature going around the entire part, presumably to be later fitted with a very fine gasket. The dovetail at the widest section was only 0.030! We kept getting the smaller width of the dovetail out of tolerance, but the wider part was OK. (Keep in mind that we had to destroy our parts to get this measurement accurately) I finally figured out that the angle specified on the dovetail cutter was not accurate! The supplier on their website listed the angular accuracy as +- 5 whole degrees, when we had a 1 degree tolerance! This was causing the shape of the dovetail to not match to the print. We had to go through a different supplier to order the correct cutter, but after that setback we were making good parts!

Great! I look forward to seeing what you have made!

Hi I'm Tyler, For work, I'm in charge of improving and upkeeping JDU and other trainings! My main goal with this is to create a master template for trainings that can be applied all throughout the workplace to improve the standard of knowledge across the board! Besides my work here, I play a lot of minecraft :)

@Jd Jessop JDU is JD Machine's in-house certification program for machinist apprentices! This is a college equivalent program for students that want to get their formal education required to become a journeyman machinist. JDU combined with our apprenticeship program means that new machinists that work here can get everything they need to become a journeyman at little to no extra cost, and almost entirely on the job! 😃

Submit an improvement idea and escalate to the proper person! If you don't know who can fix it, your team lead is a great start! Using improvement ideas is important as it is a huge tool that management can use to find common/overarching issues, and it keeps each issue from being forgotten!