Quit fighting the toolpath simulator, finally trusting it saved me 2 hours

I used to eyeball every roughing pass and just let the machine eat, figured the simulator was for guys who didn't trust their G-code. Then last Tuesday I had a 4140 part for a job out of Toledo and the simulator showed a collision on the vice jaw I would've absolutely hit. Ran it through the sim, changed my retract plane from .1 to .5, and it cut clean first try. Anyone else skip the sim out of habit and regret it later?

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the_olivia22d ago

The sim is only as good as the guy programming it. If you set the tool incorrectly or miss a fixture you didn't model, it will show you a clean pass right up until the moment you scrap a part. I've seen guys chase phantom collisions in software for an hour only to realize their stock model was wrong, meanwhile the machine would've been done by then. Real machining is about feel, spindle load, and chip color, none of which a screen can tell you. You got lucky once with a retract plane change, but that doesn't make the sim the answer, it just means your original setup was sloppy.