Hot take: a shop tour in Rockford made me rethink setting tools offline vs touching off on the machine
I was at a job shop up in Rockford last month and watched their setup guy preset every tool on a stand before it ever hit the spindle. He had a 12 tool job and claimed it saved him close to an hour of spindle time, plus he said crashing a probe costs more than the stand ever would. Back at my place we touch off everything right in the machine and I have always figured it was faster for the one off stuff we run. But standing there watching him load a full carousel and just hit cycle got me second guessing. The flip side is you need a decent presetter and somebody who actually keeps the offsets straight, otherwise you are scraping parts. So where do you all land on this, presetting offline or touching off in the machine?