I finally stopped touching off by eye and started using a feeler gauge on the Haas, night and day
Everyone at my shop swears by eyeballing the Z zero and tapping the part with a .001 shim, but I ran a 12 part batch on the VF2 in Tulsa with a .002 feeler gauge set and scrapped zero parts. My boss said eye is faster, but I spent two hours re-cutting three parts before that. Anyone else get pushback for taking the extra 30 seconds to grab a gauge instead of trusting your gut?
The shim tap and the gauge aren't really doing different things anyway, you're just judging the gap by sound and feel with one and by an actual number with the other. Problem with feel is it changes with how tired you are, how cold your fingers are, whether the coolant is still wet. A gauge gives you the same answer at 6am and at 6pm, and that matters a lot more on a 12 part run than on a one off.