All CNC all the time. Our class set out making about 20 sets of soft jaws for the school shop and a take-home set for the students. Gee, this must be a good excuse to buy a 6" Kurt don't you think?

The programming was a group effort but I did the programming for the pockets. Of course we chamfered all of the edges as well and squared/trued all 4 sides...well six sides if you are picky. These will be the most accurate parts of my machine if I can just get my hands on a new vise.

It's kind of hard to tell but the surface finish is shiiiiiiny. We got a new 6 insert 3" face mill from SECO/Carboloy. The inserts are polished, very positive and specifically for alumnium. Really showed me what the proper tooling can do. We took a cut .140 deep, 3000 RPM and feeding 60IPM...not on these parts, just to see what that baby could do and it cut without a whimper. It's amazing the kind of bargains you can get for $800 bucks. Now if I can just figure out how to turn my Shoptask into a HAAS VF0.