Originally Posted by henry_phd  When I was running the Haas VF4, we had ~15 standard tools always loaded such as a fly cutter, flat end mills of various sizes, ball end mills, single point tap, jacob drill chuck. |
Hmmm...that sounds very familiar.
I've got a VF-2, the first 12 tools are always left in place, pocket 20 is the probe, pocket 19 is the Jacobs chuck, 18-down are loaded with job specific tools. I keep it that way for exactly the same reasons you cited.
That library is stored in Mastercam so I can grab the standard tools and just use them. If a cutter gets changed, it gets altered in the Mastercam library so the two always match.
I have the default cutter information loaded into that Mastercam library but I still don't use the defaults every time, for every cutter.
I still don't know if I'd trust somebody to run code on my machine, even if they were as familiar with the exact machine as you are. I also think that you're a rarity. That in itself limits the possibility of such shops existing.