Dumb machinist story of the day.

[thad]

Some how, between QA and his machine, he forgot to shift the offset back and ran the part. 

Like you've never walked into a room, then forgot why you went there.     

[JParis]

Latest one for me was someone buying a machine that never had a CNC Machine. They let the MTB order the tooling for them and I was asked to help get 2 parts running. Customer was expecting to hold 16 finishes with ER collets on a machine I will not name that was not even setup correctly. Part was to the correct to the print and looked good, but not to what they wanted to see. It needed to look polished and since it was not they refused to pay for the programming. They asked me what could be done to make that happen I flat out told them buy a better machine. Nope I suck as a programmer and they paid me for my time onsite and one part, but for a different part they didn't.

I was there when the revision change for that part happened. They no longer needed that part. They didn't set it up correctly for OP2 as their justification to not have to pay me for it. I built a Vericut Machine for it and ran everything through Vericut. That process is accepted by NASA for work I have done for customers, but for this place that never had a CNC before or even has a programmer it wasn't. Crazy what some people will do. 

Having lived in that world Ron, sadly, crap like that happens too often...

I've done design and programming work, I won't get into the story but many know which industry a good majority of my work came from, never been paid for it and just gave up....in my head, it's on "them"... I can sleep at night knowing I've done it right.

[CNCAppsJames]

There's a  Fortune 50 company that technically still owes me mid-5 figures from when I had my own company... I wrote it off years ago. Sucked. Went into debt just to put food on the table. 

Sadly, there's a LOT of unethical... borderline criminal organizations out there. Many of them have legions of lawyers purely DEVOTED to keeping from paying you the money they owe you. There's fine print. There's fine print in the fine print. Then there's unavailable or extremely difficult to obtain at best specs devoted to keeping you from what is rightfully yours.

Lessons learned from those pieces pf garbage. Lessons. Learned.

[ghuns]

Sadly, there's a LOT of unethical... borderline criminal organizations out there. Many of them have legions of lawyers purely DEVOTED to keeping from paying you the money they owe you. There's fine print. There's fine print in the fine print. Then there's unavailable or extremely difficult to obtain at best specs devoted to keeping you from what is rightfully yours.

Lessons learned from those pieces pf garbage. Lessons. Learned.

The worst offenders in my experience are the Big Three and their tier 1 suppliers.

We have two customers, each supplying a different tier 1, who are molding parts for a GM program. Our customers came to us and said, build these 20+ mold in China. We said, OK.

Both of the tier 1s decided, after kickoff, to change their payment terms to our customers. Instead of 1/3 at kickoff, 1/3 at first parts, and 1/3 upon PPAP, it's now gonna be ZERO dollars until PPAP. That could be as long as 18 months.

The tier 1s are both multi billion dollar companies who are effectively forcing their 15-20 million dollar a year suppliers to float them an 18 month interest free loan. Fuckin dicks.

I am excited to see what happens next. The tools are all done and ready to ship. The tier 1s are HOT for them, to point they want air shipping on several 10K pound tools, that's about $25K each. Both of our customers grew a pair this week and said, hold shipping. Nothing leaves China until we get some dollars.

[TylerBeer]

Latest one for me was someone buying a machine that never had a CNC Machine. They let the MTB order the tooling for them and I was asked to help get 2 parts running. Customer was expecting to hold 16 finishes with ER collets on a machine I will not name that was not even setup correctly. Part was to the correct to the print and looked good, but not to what they wanted to see. It needed to look polished and since it was not they refused to pay for the programming. They asked me what could be done to make that happen I flat out told them buy a better machine. Nope I suck as a programmer and they paid me for my time onsite and one part, but for a different part they didn't.

I was there when the revision change for that part happened. They no longer needed that part. They didn't set it up correctly for OP2 as their justification to not have to pay me for it. I built a Vericut Machine for it and ran everything through Vericut. That process is accepted by NASA for work I have done for customers, but for this place that never had a CNC before or even has a programmer it wasn't. Crazy what some people will do. 

The worst offenders in my experience are the Big Three and their tier 1 suppliers.

We have two customers, each supplying a different tier 1, who are molding parts for a GM program. Our customers came to us and said, build these 20+ mold in China. We said, OK.

Both of the tier 1s decided, after kickoff, to change their payment terms to our customers. Instead of 1/3 at kickoff, 1/3 at first parts, and 1/3 upon PPAP, it's now gonna be ZERO dollars until PPAP. That could be as long as 18 months.

The tier 1s are both multi billion dollar companies who are effectively forcing their 15-20 million dollar a year suppliers to float them an 18 month interest free loan. Fuckin dicks.

I am excited to see what happens next. The tools are all done and ready to ship. The tier 1s are HOT for them, to point they want air shipping on several 10K pound tools, that's about $25K each. Both of our customers grew a pair this week and said, hold shipping. Nothing leaves China until we get some dollars.

I've heard that a lot about GM and tier 1

[CNCAppsJames]

T1's are bad. They dangle juicy carrots to distract you while BOHICA.