CNC machinist shift handoff checklist: what I learned after chasing bad notes

The worst handoff I ever got in a machine shop was not a broken machine. It was a machine that was "running fine" with no real notes. Tool life was close, one offset had been touched, and the material lot changed halfway through the run. Nobody wrote it down. That shift taught me to stop treating handoff notes like paperwork. I started writing the boring stuff: which insert was changed, which too…