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#260 - Solocast, Okuma MB-4000H, and Quality of Life Post Modifications
192 Plays3 years ago
TOPICS:
- Saunders and his team anxiously await the Okuma MB-4000H
- Building Inventory + Moving Machines
- Programming Tombstones
- Post Modifications: Date & Timestamp & G11 Coordinate Plane Rotation
- Grimsmo's Eumachs are for sale!
- Haas chip filter system, Bringing Products to Market, and Small Victories
- The E-Myth Revisited: Technician VS. Entrepreneur
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Transcript
Host Updates
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machine episode number 260. Unfortunately, my name is just John Saunders. John Grimstow is taking this week off and I'm actually going to be out next week. So I wanted to just hop in on a short episode and mention what is going on over in our neck of the
Running Inventory Strategies
00:00:16
Speaker
woods.
00:00:16
Speaker
We've been really focused on trying to run as much inventory as we can on the VF2 and the VF2YT. So this is reversible inserts, top jaws, soft jaws, Saunders pallets, that kind of product line.
Shop Layout Changes and Machine Setup
00:00:30
Speaker
And it's because we're going to move our VF
00:00:34
Speaker
two and the YT to the other side of the same room in the shop. We realize it's going to make more sense to put the horizontal where those two machines are. It's sort of up against the wall. We'll leave plenty of space off the wall for maintenance and to keep the machine away from the breaker panel as required.
00:00:52
Speaker
We just think it's a better location. Also, the horizontal is effectively three separate machines. It's the machine tool itself, the tool matrix, and then the APC, and the machine has to be bolted to the ground because it accelerates so quickly, which is crazy. I think of that as an issue with like the DT machines, like the little light fast drill taps. This is a 20,000 pound horizontal. The thing that it moves and accelerates it, I think it's over 1g.
00:01:20
Speaker
is crazy and the APC, it looks like they are like five or six pedestals that have to be individually mounted into the ground and the APC, they have to be mounted so that they have a consistent location as the arm comes in and grabs the different tombstones.
00:01:38
Speaker
Needless to say, not a type of machine that you want to willy-nilly just move around, nor can you. So we're gonna move the VF2's machines over to the other side because that leaves us some more space in the shop to reconfigure things in the future if we needed to. And it's also closer to the breaker panel, which I hate to be a reason to drive a decision.
Electrical System Efficiency
00:02:00
Speaker
This is the right decision regardless of that, but it doesn't hurt.
00:02:04
Speaker
Side note, it's now at the point where I do wish we had the higher voltage system in our shop because, boy, having a 480 volt and being able to run less expensive, smaller diameter wire, it's less expensive and it means you have to have smaller conduit and it's just easier to work with. So nothing we can really do about that at this point.
00:02:26
Speaker
I asked Grims about if he had anything real quick to chime in on, and he said they are still working on the Willowman, no unfortunately real big updates yet, and he's chewing on the Speedio.
Project Updates and Reliability Issues
00:02:37
Speaker
I get the sense that that's still going to be the way they go, and honestly it does sound like a really awesome setup to have one
00:02:44
Speaker
Aroa compact ad be able to kind of do some work on the speedio machine that cost a fraction of price and then transfer them over He did say and he'll chime in next week that they were troubleshooting some stuff around I think process reliability on loading the pallets I think it was made just be like a cleaning issue on the pallet side But I'll be curious to see what he learned or says on that He's got the two you lock machines for sale and folks are interested in those Definitely reach out to him
00:03:10
Speaker
We had one person reach out, and it sounds encouraging, regarding the idea of a Haas chip filter system.
Haas Chip Filter System Development
00:03:17
Speaker
I think this is definitely doable, and we had some folks say, you should do this, and it's interesting because part of me thinks, man, as an entrepreneur and a guy who likes, it's fun to bring products to market. It's a wonderfully satisfying thing to
00:03:29
Speaker
develop something and bring it to fruition, but if there's one thing I've learned over the last year and a half, it's the value of focusing, and it's a hard, easy no. Yeah, there's gonna be some quirks and tricks to it, but I think it's doable for somebody who has the desire to see this through. It is an electromechanical thing, so it's gotta have probably machine parts, probably some sheet metal type parts, some sort of a drive system, springs, motor, so you're quickly dipping into a lot of different manufacturing arenas, and so I say that
Simplicity in Product Development
00:03:58
Speaker
Having learned, frankly, a pretty hard lesson when we brought the strike market target to market, jeez, 12 years ago, I had all the hunger and passion and desire, but didn't know that much about manufacturing. And those targets had every bucket of manufacturing in them. They had weldments and sheet metal and laser and plasma cut and AR500 and circuit boards and rubber.
00:04:20
Speaker
injection molded dampers and shoulder bolts and motors and drivers and we quickly realized makes things much more difficult than things like the next product we came to market with which was a GoPro mount that we machined, anodized, lasered, a much more pure play win for us.
Challenges in Chip Basket Maintenance
00:04:38
Speaker
That being said, the idea of pulling like a cassette reel, the filter material across the Haas machines, good grief. I think there's huge opportunity in demand for this. And frankly, we're struggling with it here with inconsistencies of how often we remember to clean our chip baskets and the fact that I just, I want them clean and it's silly to not have a better way to do that. Otherwise,
00:05:03
Speaker
I've really been enjoying running the machines.
Software Updates and Improvements
00:05:05
Speaker
It's not good long term. I have to remind myself of that, that a business needs a leader and somebody to think about. I've got to be programming the tombstones that were coming for the horizontal and we've got a bunch of
00:05:20
Speaker
quality of life post mods that we're working on. Last week I added, made sure that all of our posts have a date and time stamp at the very top. I actually did a video on that because every time I reload code I want to be able to make sure I grab the right latest version. And then we're working on some minor bugs around the post where you can't do certain ranking moves if you're in a G68 condition and sometimes we can just
00:05:45
Speaker
clear that out and then reapply it. So it should be totally doable, but just gotta sit down and do it. And then trying to look at what parts of the Akuma post infusion are not totally fully working and baked yet. Again, the most likely thing is gonna be that idea of a G11.
00:06:03
Speaker
which is the coordinate plane rotation that we use.
Probing Process Enhancements
00:06:06
Speaker
It's kind of an open book for us. We don't exactly know what we're going to see because even though we've gotten along great with the Genos, I'm wondering how different it's going to be with the fact that the horizontal is also involving the b-axis. I don't think we need to use that. I'm just curious to see what it's going to look like. And the other thing I really want to do is
00:06:26
Speaker
build that ability to probe numerous parts, storing those data points in kind of an array. I think I mentioned this last week and then pulling them back up later. It'll really speed up the probing process. But otherwise, the horizontal comes in like two weeks. So we're really excited. This first three tombstones came and we've got some of the fixtures. We're starting to work on them right now.
Data Utilization for Inventory Management
00:06:47
Speaker
And otherwise we're just trying to do what I had said a while back, which is using Lex and the data that we know from both Lex and from Shopify to help give us the right info we need on
00:07:02
Speaker
producing the right amount of finished material, having stuff in stock, and then knowing how much raw material to have on hand. So short episode this week, folks, Grimmsville will be in next week. I'm gonna be on the road and take a little vacation, and then we'll see you together in early March. Take care.