Machining 101 - What is a Tombstone? | Custer & Wolfe Building a Watch Company

If you’ve been itching for some more behind-the-scenes content in the machining room, you’re in for a treat. We’ve got an informative solo episode from Tyler coming to you today as he describes what a tombstone is in the machining world. Don't worry, there's nothing spooky about these tools. Rather, they received their name due to their visual resemblance to an actual tombstone.
Tombstones are used for multi-axis machining, so four-plus axis on a mill. Normally, we can only work on 3 parts at a time. However, using a tombstone allows us to work on 12 parts almost simultaneously since we can rotate the tombstone while working. To put it plainly, tombstones not only speed the machining process along without frequent interruption, but they provide us with several different angles to access the parts as we’re working on them.
We’re Building a Watch Company with Custer + Wolfe and giving you an inside look into what it takes to manufacture in America and build mechanical watches. We want to bring you along on all the successes, failures, innovations, and inventions that go into American manufacturing and watchmaking. Follow along as we restore vintage pocket watch movements and give them new life with Vortic Watch Co., and as we build a brand new watch company from scratch, focused on making high-quality American-machined watches.
00:00 - Intro
00:14 - Why is it called a tombstone?
00:31 - What's the benefit of using a tombstone?
00:52 - How do we use tombstones?
01:03 - How many pieces can we work on each time?
01:44 - Are there different kinds of tombstone?
01:48 - Tombstone for delrin inserts and case-backs
02:06 - Tombstone for prepping case materials
02:40 - Tombstone for making buckles.
03:25 - How many operations can be performed on each tombstone?
03:33 - One more cool thing about tombstones
04:48 - How will we use tombstones on the 5-axis DMG Mori?
05:24 - Executive summary
05:58 - Outro
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Custer&Wolfe is a CZcams show created by the founders of Vortic Watch Company (vorticwatches.com) and produced in part by Carter&Custer agency: carterandcuster.com
We’re Building a Watch Company with Custer + Wolfe and giving you an inside look into what it takes to manufacture in America and build mechanical watches. We want to bring you along on all the successes, failures, innovations, and inventions that go into American manufacturing and watchmaking. Follow along as we restore vintage pocket watch movements and give them new life with Vortic Watch Co., and as we build a brand new watch company from scratch, focused on making high-quality American-machined watches.
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[@robertgovoni662]

Short sleeve shirt. Must have got the heat working LOL.

[@robertgovoni662]

Do you make your own tombstones? Or are they customizable.

[@vorticwatchcompany]

Yes we make absolutely everything in-house! We customize each tombstone specifically to the part we are making.