I own The company so I don’t interact with machines much/ am not a cnc machinist. I was working late last night as I typically do and checked on second shift before leaving on Friday night. The guys on second are pretty green because finding skilled people in SE Wisconsin who need placement is pretty tough. One Puma was stopped on a load monitoring break value and the second shift guys were debating calling a first shift person for support.

Picture attached. This Iscar Penta D40 tool obviously was either not properly tightened to 34-44 in lbs, or the double side opposite hand threaded screw was marginally engaged in the holder and buried in the clamp. Either way, tool load registered a break value, and about .03” of the cut edge was gone, but the machine feed held and stopped the spindle.

Upon backing off the tool, I realized the top clamp was completely unscrewed. We didn’t lose the holder, clamp, or insert.

I remounted the holder, indexed the corner (a bold move rather than junk the insert with 4 remaining corners), and the night shift guys read a procedure and touched the tool on the setter. We swapped the bar, and got the machine back into production where a tool failure would have cost us 8 hours of production as we would have had to check turret alignment on Monday.

Tool load monitoring works well when it is supported by the control and plc/ladder.