Registering multi-sided parts

[brebey]

I feel like the dog that caught the car: I've got my machine up and running, I've got some wax all ready for the milling, I've got my part drawn and CAMmed, and I've even milled the front face of it.

...how on earth do I accurately register the cutting tool on the back of the stock block when I flip it over?

I'm guessing that there are some generally accepted practices for doing this, but I'm clueless.

The way I've been milling my practice parts, and the way I milled the front of my two-sided part, is what I thought was the "typical" way to do it: I home the machine, clamp stock to the table, jog the cutter until the tool just touches the surface of the stock somewhere near the "home-most" corner, zero the axis in Mach3, and cut the part. It works great, but flipping the block over gives me no good reference points. I can't be sure that the part was cut in the precise center of the part, so when I flip it over, I can't even use the previous "zero" coordinates as a starting point, because once the stock it's flipped, the exact cutting location on the stock will probably change.

What am I missing?

Bill Rebey

[tapka]

Hi,

the method what I use is: I place for example piece of wood andur the stock before I start milling. I bore holes thru the stock so deep that holes comes to wood also. After that I mill front face of the stock. Then I rotate stock and but some kind of bars into holes of wood. These bars guide stock to the right place. Faste the stock and remove bars. And mill rear side of stock. Hope you understand without pictures and my bad english.