Repurposing part for a floating tailstock die holder

[Frank S]

Being under tooled is no sin, no one can ever have every bit of tooling in their kit even after years of TAS (tool accusation syndrome)
Also struggling to process a piece of mystery metal can wreck havoc on even the best equipped shops. And small divots in a part that do not prevent it's serving the purpose only matters if it bothers you.
Some things on the other hand do matter when you are repairing a costly item for a customer and sometimes they don't
. While visiting one of the few remaining manual shops with in 150 miles of me a while back they had a casting in for re-man it had been annealed then welded then annealed again they were about 2/3's through the final stages of machining when an end mill struck a hard spot breaking 1 of the flutes. Keep in mind this was a 1.5" 6 flute end mill doing the final pass in a 1" deep slot 15 Hp horizontal mills do not care their mission is to cut anything in the path and should that path become obstructed by a very hard surface in this case an older repair done with the wrong filler material which did not anneal. Even the most robust securement save for a specially made fixture will not be sufficient to prevent damage from an errant cutter. In this case the broken piece of the flute lodged in the pathway of the next flute jerking the casting from the set up creating a deep wide gouge in the side of the otherwise near perfect slot.Also medium sized mills like that one do not stop immediately without an electric motor brake The safest thing for an operator to do is hit the stop button and step away Time to examine the carnage is after ther is no movement
MR Barns and I heard it when it happened from across the shop by the time we had negotiated our way to the machine the operator had it stopped and was scratching his head. No need to ask what had happened it was obvious the casting had a hard spot the only way to repair this we all agreed was to send it to welding have them grind out the bad place and as much of the hard material they could then fill the area send it to annealing but have them spot heat the area first before placing it in the oven.
I don't know how the part turned out as there was no reason for me to make another visit a couple days later. but I imagine they were able to salvage a casting that was worth thousands of dollars