Good morning everybody.
Ok I’ll try to make this short.
What methods do you use to teach a newbie machine operator to set up the pods for through operations?
We are going through operators and pods like crazy.
Thanks..

I either draw the part with the pod locations, or set it up myself. Sorry, but I don't know a good way. Depends on your parts, too. All our parts have barcodes and labels, and I'll put a note on the label when cutting through for a heads up for the operator.

We have the pod placement feature on our Busellatos supposedly they use that, but still hitting pods and I guess it’s a little time consuming.
I used to just set the part thickness up and run it part way through, move my pods out of the way, set the part thickness back to spec, and re-run the part, but they cant seem to get the parts loaded back to the same place so its trashed when it routes the second time.
we run very small batches, maybe 5-10 of the same parts, most times you have 1 or 2 of the same, so setup is critical and I just don’t know what to do at this point, we’ve been going through people pretty quickly, the people we are getting have little or no experience with PTPs.
Thanks

CrashMasterKev,

All Busellato's P2P's with CNC90 or later software, (App. 1992), have the ability to "Dry cycle".
The machine will go through the movements without running the tools, app. 30mm above the programmed panel, for vertical tools.

As long as you are not running parts thicker than 1.5"-1.75", you should be good to go to do this.

Let us know what software your machine(s) are running, I can let you know what to do to make this happen.

If you are doing cabinet parts, program your parts with toe kicks so the bottom of the cabinet is on the reference side, against the pins. Put a stop block made of wood or whatnot just wider than your toekick cutout, on the "X" axis of the pod rail linear guideway, and create a "Safe zone". This will save a lot of cut pods with new operators.

These 2 things will help a great deal, but an experienced, motivated, empathic operator is by far the best way to avoid hitting pods, although no one is perfect.

BTW, why are you going through so many operators?

Best regards,

Blaine :