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#275 - Moving The Kern & Jamming Up Chip Conveyors
208 Plays3 years ago
TOPCIS:
- Saunders is machining parts for Johnny 5
- What is a tool room?
- Coolant & air conditioners.
- Grimsmo has a daunting task to move the Kern over to make room for the speedio.
- Saunders did an oil change on the horizontal and jammed up the chip conveyor.
- Knife grinder discussion.
- Expoy tombstone is in!
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction & Casual Updates
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 275. My name is John Grimsmo. My name is John Saunders. And we seem to have coordinated our wardrobes this morning. We're both wearing Saunders Machine Works t-shirts. Yes. I was just wearing my Grimsmo shirt the other day. Love it. Yeah, I love it. 275 was great. I'm going to go to our t-shirt printer tomorrow and we're going to finalize the next design. Awesome. Very excited about that. Awesome. That'll be exciting.
00:00:28
Speaker
The 275 feels...
00:00:31
Speaker
Numerous. That's a lot. Right? It is a lot. It's like, well, I guess 250 is like quarter of a million or quarter of a thousand, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, I love it. How you doing? Doing good. I feel sick today. It sucks, but like just congested and it's definitely something, you know, when you're like a little bit sick and you're like, is it something, is it not something? This is something, but whatever. So I might, I might head home after this.
00:00:58
Speaker
podcast. I don't want to get anybody else sick at work, but good thing with my role is plenty to do at home. Give me a laptop and fusion and I've got, I've got a day's worth of work easy. Yeah. That's awesome. Yep. What about you?
Machining Techniques & Tools
00:01:13
Speaker
Good. I had a wonderful afternoon yesterday making a part. We had some 3D printed parts on Johnny Five that need to be machined. They're not complicated, but they could be as many as like four setups, which is just annoying. What do you mean 3D printed part that needs to be machined?
00:01:37
Speaker
So they are, there are six blocks that connect his head to his torso, sorry, I guess you could call him his neck. And they are a block on each side of what is a screw that has half of its right hand have its left handed thread. So you can kind of adjust like a turnbuckle style and they require enough strength that the 3D printed parts just weren't sufficient. And we, we get by and large,
00:02:04
Speaker
not 3D printed things that need to be machined on Johnny Five. There's 3D printed parts that are cosmetic or like external skin type parts, which I think is totally fine. And I believe in the movie, as is I think common in the prop world, they did things like vacuum four meter foam.
00:02:19
Speaker
for some of those parts as well. So I don't think we're cheating there. But the majority of the bones of J5 are machined. These hadn't been machined. We needed to machine them. And so I did them. It was wonderful. I did them out of their, what did they look like? They look like a little nail boxy type part kind of. But I did them out of round bar on the Tormach fourth axis.
00:02:43
Speaker
It was great because I was able to do what could have been multiple ops. Well, one op got most of the work done. There was an additional op where we had to set them up in a vice and just drill and tap one hole. No big deal. It was great because we had to make six of them, three.
00:03:00
Speaker
Two of them were pairs, and then there were a fifth and sixth part were all different, but the majority of the part was the same, so we just did them in one file, and then I just inserted the new component, changed a couple of the CAM toolpaths, reposted it, and the MX that we have with the microarc has a tool changer.
00:03:21
Speaker
I have not run a tormach in a year probably. They get used regularly, but usually by VINs or the interns. And so it kind of reminded me of
00:03:33
Speaker
There's a never ending, well, you're the best example of that in the world. I mean, you started with a Chinese machine and you have a Kern. That bookends things quite nicely. And yeah, it's wonderful to have hostas and Akumas and big fancy heavy machines, but I really enjoyed, like I just genuinely enjoyed the Tormach. That's awesome.
00:03:57
Speaker
And I've got four of them done. I got to do two more. I wasn't going to rush. I was thinking about squeezing one in before the podcast. And yeah, it turned out well. I did a video on it as well because there are some good Fusion tips on just typical cam nuggets that we figured out, as well as some of the new features in Fusion. That's incredible. Yeah, I see other guys posting pictures of their Tormax, and a lot of guys eventually upgrading to something else.
00:04:25
Speaker
It's either an amazing, you know, one and done machine that that's, that's the level that you're going to play at, or it's a stepping stone machine as I've seen, like it was for me, like it was for you. Um, and yeah, I definitely reminisce and it's like, it's been years since I've run a tarmac, um, since I sold mine basically in like 2016. And, uh, yeah, there's some parts sometimes that I'm like, man, I just, I wish I had like just a cheap spindle.
00:04:51
Speaker
Like I was at a buddy's shop yesterday and he had one of those micro lathes, like little hand turn ones. They're like 500 bucks or something. And he just uses it for bushings and stuff. And we do not have a chuck lathe, a manual lathe. We don't even have a CNC lathe with a chuck on it. It's all collets and like cam programming and stuff. And I'm like, you know what? If we had a little micro lathe, we'd actually use it for stuff. You know, just tuck a bar in there, face the end off, put a chamfer on it. Like every now and then,
00:05:20
Speaker
if we have to do something like that, it's a setup, it's a cam op, it's your hand jogging the CNC machine to like, we do it. But yeah, there's certainly value in all levels of equipment, you know, this is perfect time to bring up the tool room discussion on the precision micro cast where Adam and
00:05:39
Speaker
This is pure coincidence. Adam and Joshua talked about the role of tool rooms in machine shops. We don't have one, but I feel like we've been talking about it. We don't have a dedicated space that acts as a tool room per se, but we have tool room-esque equipment. I think I've mentioned this, buying the building next door.
00:06:01
Speaker
We close in a few weeks but we actually already poured the concrete pad that helps bridge the two parking lots so that as of today, actually as of last week we can drive a forklift or even a pallet jack between the two buildings which was a big step to start being able to move stuff back and
Business Expansion & Management Challenges
00:06:19
Speaker
forth.
00:06:19
Speaker
And the new building will really be focused on our training classes that we're opening back up. But it'll also give us the ability, either over there or preferably moving other stuff over there and having some more space here to do a kind of a tool room type environment. Because, you know, boy, I can see you picking up like a Shaolin or a Tardinge. Yeah. I totally thought about it. Yeah. Or a Monarch Tenet W. Sorry. Yeah. That screams you. Yeah.
00:06:50
Speaker
Yeah, I did spend some time looking into the like rebuild hard hinges and there's a couple of guys that rebuilt them and make them all nice again and paint them. And that are just what want this crusty old, like smelly, you know, 70 year old lady that functions fine. You know, I don't know. Get a DRO and then you don't have to worry as much about, um, the condition of the true mechanical ways and so forth. Yeah. Um, what's the latest on, um, your lathe pump?
00:07:21
Speaker
Um, it functions. I mean, the machine's running. It's running fine. Pierre's got a good method of like you removed through coolant programming from a bunch of the ops, but we're still making parts. It's working. Um, we're talking with Blaser about getting a thinner oil in basically either like a really thin oil to cut with ours to thin it out or pull it out and swap it and get the new one. So I got it.
00:07:51
Speaker
Angela's in charge of that one. So I haven't gotten an update in a couple of days. So I'm not sure exactly where we're at, but it functions. So that's good. Super dumb question. Does oil evaporate? Nope. Not at all. Really? Not at all. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
00:08:08
Speaker
We kind of got caught with our pants down. We had what I thought was a relatively fresh barrel of coolant. And, uh, all of a sudden, I don't know if it's because we're making more parts or I mean, the Kuma, the horizontal has been run neat. I meant to kind of grab a, like an hours thing.
00:08:27
Speaker
Because I'm pretty proud of how much has been running until it broke last night. We'll come back to that. But yeah, we're out of coolant. Or we are going to run out of coolant. Like the oil concentrate. Yeah, the 251C. And so luckily, we have a drum shipping tomorrow. But I don't know. Oh, the other thing I'm wondering is if it's the summer. Even though our shop is climate controlled, still, we've got to have more evaporating
00:08:56
Speaker
Yep. Does your, um, AC keep up with like a really, really, really hot day. Yeah. Um, so yesterday when I got in my truck at four o'clock, it was 104 degrees in the Fahrenheit in the truck. Now that was it quickly cooled to like not look cool. Did like 96 as I started driving, but it was hot. It's a hot day. That's 40 degrees Celsius for the yesterday here was a hot day.
00:09:23
Speaker
And we only keep it at like 74. But if you walk in the shop, it feels totally fine. Yeah. I'd almost say it feels refreshing. It's not an issue. And one of our new interns, Patrick, is going to borrow the design that
00:09:41
Speaker
CJ had, it's not really a proprietary design, but using some ducting to get our air compressor exhausts. We're at least going to duct them up to the ceiling because I figure that at least gets the heat to rise. I think we'll also tie them in and duct them out with a louver that allows us to open it back into the shop to heat in the winter. But honestly, if you walk by the air compressor when it's running,
00:10:05
Speaker
It's hot. Yes. The blast of, it's like you open the oven door, you know, getting the cookies out. It's like walks. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. We keep ours at 70 degrees and I walked by the thermostat yesterday and said 79. It's really struggling to keep up. It's fine, but it's, that's not, uh, let's not see a memory room temperature controlled. Oh yeah. But it's fine. Yeah. So I think our, with the machines and the space and the people inside and everything, I think the,
00:10:36
Speaker
Did we get 12 ton air compressor, air conditioner? I forget. It's not quite keeping up on the hottest of days. 70 is pretty cool. The 74 for us, I think it feels wonderfully comfortable and it's stable. I guess I'll put it that way. Which is probably more important. Yeah. Yeah, like 70 is cold sometimes.
00:11:06
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's, uh, it definitely costs money, but I don't, that's like, was it completely. You don't think about it anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We put it in a year or two ago and it's like, I went, like the buddy shop that I went to, they did not have AC and they had the door open and it was like sweating inside. It's like, Oh, I don't miss that. We were there, but no, no, thanks. Yeah. Um, what else is going on?
00:11:34
Speaker
Um, we got a new miss collector install, um, delivered yesterday, which is the timing was perfect because we, we don't have our own forklift or scissor lift. So we rented them. They arrived and then like 20 minutes later, the miss collector shows up on the truck. So we were able to unload it like perfect timing. Um, but yeah, it's a really big one from arrow X and it's the same one we have on all of our other machines. I think we have six of their products now. And, uh, it's made like two hours north of here in Barry.
00:12:02
Speaker
Ontario and it's going to go on the wall. So we got to mount it up on the wall like 10 feet high. Um, and it's going to tie the speedio and the Kern into it for miss collection. Cause I'm not happy with the electrostatic miss collector that's on the Kern right now. Um, it gets dirty, super easy and you got to clean it all the time and it's just not as
00:12:26
Speaker
Like we bought that air quality meter and it fails the test, you know? Whereas these ones are HEPA filtered and really good quality. Not that the quality of this thing is bad, it just in our application doesn't function the best.
00:12:41
Speaker
I mean, you run coolant in your current. Exactly. But most people or it would be common to have oil. I think so. Yeah. And maybe the thing works much better with oil. They have customers running it with a coolant, but I don't know, in our case, like when we're running high RPM and really flinging the coolant around, it mists like
00:12:59
Speaker
Crazy. Yeah, so unacceptable just health wise. So anyway, instead of buying like one normal size one for this video that we would have needed anyway, I'm like, well, what if we just get the bigger size and feed both machines because it's going to be a cell, you know, like the two machines and the aroa and everything. So let's treat it as a cell. So that big miscollector, it's huge. It's like a
00:13:22
Speaker
mini, well, I don't know, it's big. Going up on the wall and we're going to do like six inch PVC pipes, one for each machine, duck them up. So yeah, step one is to get it mounted on the wall. And then next big thing is Monday, Tuesday, the plan is to move the current over. So unplug it, extend the wiring. We got to move the chiller.
00:13:45
Speaker
And then ideally the current is down for as little as possible. Like we're kind of blocking two days for it, have our electrician here at the same time. And then hopefully we get it plugged back in. You know, we got to level the machine again, um, probably do a calibration, teach the aroa where the new position is. Cause that's, they're not tied together, right? They're just sitting next to each other. So I think that's just one teach point, like where the arm drops the pallet into the thing. Um,
00:14:16
Speaker
I don't think it'll be that difficult, but famous last words like, Oh yeah. Right. Yeah. Ooh. I didn't think about that. How it's, if it were just a current, I'd be like, Oh, easy peasy. Right. Yeah. Hmm. But yeah, I don't think it's a big deal. Um, are they physically attached? Like this is, it's just like structure, non structural sheet metal is attaching them together. Are they actually not even touching? They're not touching. There's a,
00:14:42
Speaker
hallway between the two that's like three inches long with a rubber seal. Yeah. So they're like shoulder to shoulder, but not connected in any way.
00:14:53
Speaker
Have you thought about like 3d printing little template blocks that give you alignment? Cause it's like, I would just want to replicate as absolute as possible. I think just the forward, um, and the, the width like alignment, you know, measure. Okay. The arrow is six inches in front of the current and it's three inches away, something like that. And, and, and square together. Um, so yeah, we are going to have to get those measurements.
00:15:19
Speaker
But I mean, the arm on the Aroa has so much reach and angle so it can aim for some pretty big misalignment. Yeah. So I'm not too concerned. I've never done the teach position, but I think I know where it is in the menu. The Aroa has its own little like PLC pendant. You can click through all the menus and you got to go layer by layer. We'll figure it out.
00:15:44
Speaker
Good luck. Are you, sorry, I'm sitting here yawning. Um, were you, do you think about trying to get to a production standpoint, like a head per se, or is it more just like, look, we got to move it. We got to move it now. Both. Um, we don't really, like we're certainly scheduling what parts specifically to run this week so that we're, we're, we're okay for next week. Um, but.
00:16:10
Speaker
The machine runs so much. It's not like, oh, let's run it harder. Yeah, right. Maybe I'll come in on the weekend and load up a couple extra pallets or maybe not. But we scheduled, the blade is our most intensive operation because there's a lot of surface grinding, there's a lot of lapping. You machine the soft blade, it goes to heat treat for a day, goes to lapping for a day, goes back on the current for a day.
00:16:35
Speaker
So we're doing extra blades so that when the machine is down, there's time to do heat treat and lapping beforehand.
Advanced CNC Operations & Maintenance
00:16:41
Speaker
Um, which is, we'll work out really well. And do you, um, who loads you the fixtures for the current these days? Uh, Steven, okay. One of our guys. Do you get involved in that at all?
00:16:55
Speaker
Not at all anymore. I will if I have to, but really don't know. Sweet. Yeah. And Angelo operates the current, he changes the tools, he schedules the thing. So him and Steven communicate. They've actually got a, like a clipboard that they laminated so they can sharpie on it with, you know, wet erase markers. So they, like I've done, I've loaded these, you know, schedule these, run them.
00:17:21
Speaker
And it's working really well. So I'm, I'm basically hands off unless there's a problem on the current, you know, I do the programming, the setup changes, um, on the Norseman handles, we're engraving the month and the year. So every month I have to post new code basically that says June, July, whereas on the current, I have it counting up automatically. And it says the day, minute, like hour, minutes, second, that that engraving happens. So that's, I don't worry about it on the Rask anymore.
00:17:49
Speaker
That's that's on the, is that on the current or the Maury? On the current. Okay. It is. Both of those engravings happen on the current. Um, but only on the rask knife have I programmed it to like automatically do the exact time. Got it. Got it. Which is super handy. Cause then, you know, days or weeks later you're like, Hey, when these handles that have been sitting here for a while, Oh wow. They're actually like three weeks and two days and six hours old. Yeah, that's awesome. That was cool.
00:18:18
Speaker
Yeah. When's the brother come? I just got confirmation. They're picking it up in Chicago tomorrow and then it's shipping up to here and then it has to go to Toronto to Faroe technique, the dealer, and they got to put on the auto door and a couple of sensors and the little upgrades that I got.
00:18:38
Speaker
So two weeks, maybe. Nice. Not exactly sure yet. You'll hire a rigging company to unload it and we'll move it in. Yeah, exactly. And we'll probably skate it in, like I bought those skates. Just because once we move the current, the access to roll things through, like forklift things through is getting tighter.
00:19:01
Speaker
Um, but I don't know, we'll figure it out. You should be able to push it by hand. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Especially the CEO. It's like 5,000 pounds. Do you know what that'll cost you? The rigging? It's usually a couple thousand dollars. Yeah. Okay. I don't think about it because it just has to get done. Yeah. No, I hear you. You know, it's like at the very least it has to get off the truck and we certainly don't have a forklift at all, yet alone one big enough to unload a machine. Um, so, you know, the riggers got to come with, uh,
00:19:31
Speaker
a forklift. A lot of times when we get a machine, it comes from the States directly, so just on a truck. So we have to schedule our local rigging company to also arrive at the same time, which is tricky with the border and the guy crossing and delays in the border and everybody's waiting for each other. So yeah, oftentimes we'll have the truck to arrive and then the rigging company also here to offload.
00:19:55
Speaker
Although in the past, like with the current, I had it shipped directly to my rigging company and they stored it for a couple of weeks so that they just brought that and their trucks and their machines and everything. It's just an inefficient process. It's a lose-lose to have riggers who are like, look, we charge by the hour and you're waiting for a truck. Yes. Whether it's customs or we had a guy who just was like, I'm taking a break and you're like, a break's costing me $400 an hour. I don't think it was an hour. It was whatever.
00:20:25
Speaker
Yeah, interesting. So we had two Akuma hiccups. The one is just whatever. The external high pressure coolant system, you have to do an oil change like in your car. Really? After 100 hours, I think it's like the first oil change. And then honestly, they were like every year, but they sounded like it was kind of a like, it'll be fine. And it takes one quart of synthetic oil. No big deal.
00:20:53
Speaker
And I was proud of myself because on the Genos that has the exact same high pressure pump, the drain tube for the oil is not in as great a shot spot as I wish it was. And you know how it is when you it's a horizontal tube, so there's no there's no real way to undo it and then and then attach another type of tube onto it without dripping some or whatever issue could.
00:21:18
Speaker
Anyways, I took a shower bin, modified each end of it so that that can just rest underneath it, and then you unscrew the thing and the flow is right out through the shower bin onto a drip, like a catch pan. Well, the horizontal, the access panel to get to that drain tube happens to be facing the matrix. It's just the way they had to install it, so you really have very limited space.
00:21:39
Speaker
So I came in this weekend when the machine was not running, grabbed my 18 millimeter socket, got my tools, I'm back in there bent over, crouched in, it's dark, tight, and I'm undoing this cap. And I just, you know, when you get that feeling, and you're like, this is not
00:21:56
Speaker
Right. And I knew it wasn't cross-threaded. It wasn't that bad. But I was like, you know what I bet's happening? I bet you I'm unscrewing the whole pipe and not the end cap. And sure enough, the stinkers that built that unit put the end cap on so tight. Fast forward, even with a pipe wrench, when the whole thing was removed, I couldn't get the cap off. And I just figured, well, I'll replace the whole thing later.
00:22:25
Speaker
That made for a messy, a messy cleanup later. But then what happened last night was I came back just to, I'm starting to be more deliberate about stepping back. The horizontal's got the parts running on it that can be run. Garrett's taken over that. It's going pretty darn well.
00:22:45
Speaker
And so it's kind of like, okay, take a step back, it's running. But we're just adding another set of fixtures for the reversibles. And I wanted to run that on my own or let it run offline to sort of see how it went. So I came in last night literally to like load that up and hit cycle start. And I walked open the door to the shop and I saw a red light on the light tower. And I thought, oh boy, wonder what happened.
00:23:10
Speaker
and walked up to it and it was a chip conveyor motor current overload alarm. Yeah, okay. I've had one of those. Yeah.
00:23:20
Speaker
What happened with yours? I don't think something got stuck. I don't remember. Okay. So three days ago when I ran this first new fixture in perfect storm, the socket head cap screws that screw down the clamps, which are done with a torque wrench, were
00:23:43
Speaker
Blind holes and we changed the fixture height just enough such that the same hole depth meant that when the fixture when the screw was torqued down It was hitting the bottom of the hole But it was actually holding onto the part enough that it wasn't gonna fall out but not enough to actually grip on to it and so when I came back the other night four of these 17 or 18 inch long strips were just missing and
00:24:08
Speaker
Can you imagine that, like walking up to a Norseman pallet and being like, everything's off the pallet? But there was no damage. There was no alarm. There was no crash. No tools were broken. The fixture was not marred. And literally, the helix angle of an end mill just came in and just pulled them out one at a time. Is the fixture designed such that you're machining the screw heads? Like you're bumping into them a little bit? No, not at all. OK. But their picture of the four sticks
00:24:39
Speaker
Basically, it was just they were being held in there more than finger tight, but barely more than fingers tight. And so as soon as an end they'll touch, they just pulled them out. And so I found two of them pretty quickly in the chip bin. I found one of them in the conveyor and I couldn't find the fourth.
00:24:58
Speaker
probably shouldn't have been so cavalier about it. But I was just like, well, I mean, maybe it's in a chip bin and I just can't find it. But sure enough, last night, the fourth one made itself known. And so I this was right, right before dinner, I wanted to go home, have dinner with everybody. So
00:25:15
Speaker
went home and then came back to the shop about nine o'clock and I spent an hour tearing the chip conveyor lid off trying to find it like I wanted to find it and I couldn't and then I was having trouble getting the chip conveyor before everybody with the details but I was having trouble getting the chip conveyor to go into manual mode to override it forward or backward finally figured that out
00:25:33
Speaker
And as soon as I figured that out, there's the lesson here is, as soon as I figured that out, and I knew I could now run it manually in reverse, I thought, okay, that's a huge win. I'm going to call it a night. It's 10 o'clock. You don't need to be doing more of this tonight. And it's kind of one of the things you and I talked about. I'm like, it's not always intuitive to like,
00:25:51
Speaker
take a break to stop. And I thought when we come back in the morning, I know exactly where we're going to start and I can have people to help me to look with flashlights here and there and be safe about it. And so sure enough, we ran it in reverse a little this morning. We took a couple panels off the machine that let me get in and I found the
00:26:07
Speaker
Actually, the way it gets machined, it made sense that it broke into thirds. I found two-thirds of it was still together and the one-third piece is still missing, but that's only a short stick. I don't think that'll cause a jam up. Long story short, we got it fixed. That's amazing. It spooked me again because we need that machine. It shows how little something can cause a problem.
00:26:36
Speaker
in a steady automated production. And I see that on the current too, like the littlest thing will cause an issue. And actually last week I talked about the tool changer dampers, right? Yeah.
00:26:52
Speaker
The small one in the open position when the tool change garden comes out was bad on the weekend the other day and then the Thursday, I think after our podcast, the other damper, the big one that happens in the closed position also kind of failed and got stuck. So I ended up replacing both of them within the week.
00:27:13
Speaker
just got more from Kern. So we have more like on the shelf for the future, but it's a maintenance wear item. Like I'm not complaining. And now I know exactly how to fix it. I actually filmed a video on how to fix it for the next guy, which is great. And then it turns out Kern has an upgraded version
00:27:29
Speaker
like they're constantly evolving and changing their designs up. And it has a red silicone boot on the outside to protect the thingy, the mechanism from getting gummed up. And they're like, oh yeah, yours doesn't have the new ones yet? I'm like, no. Yeah. So that'll be kind of the next upgrade. Next time we need to do it will be that. And they should last a lot, lot longer that way.
00:27:54
Speaker
One of my thoughts was that this machine has been great.
00:28:02
Speaker
We have had I think over 10 Haas machines and the simplicity and ease of use, I give Haas a lot of credit for that. That element of them has been great. On that note though, super exciting and honestly kind of flattering and humble brag.
00:28:21
Speaker
A guy I know at Akuma reached out and said, hey, we've seen some of your fixture plates and work holding stuff. Would you be willing to make a fixture plate with some odd vices to put on one of our IMTS machines?
00:28:36
Speaker
And I was like, Oh, that's really like, that's, it makes me proud of the products we built and the, the fact that they are seeing that out there and say, Hey, this stuff looks really quality. And it means we get to kind of have a little smart Paul, small part of my MTS. Yep. Yep. Little flex. I love it. Yeah. So I'm excited. Full circle. Yeah. That's awesome. Um, that's about all I got for my notes.
00:29:04
Speaker
I have a grinding belt question for you. Yeah. Okay. So actually I filmed, I took your advice and I filmed a video last week about grinders. Okay.
00:29:14
Speaker
Like me and Eric just talked and I filmed it vertically because I'm like, I'm going to throw this up on Instagram as a reel. You can do reels that long, right? And it's like eight minute video and reels can only be 60 seconds. So I'm like, now I have this vertical video that's like, I can't post it on Instagram. I don't want to post a vertical video on YouTube. What do I do with this? So I gave it to Fraser and I said, cut it down to four minutes. And he's like, I don't know what to cut.
00:29:40
Speaker
Because with four minutes, I can post it as a post and it'll slice it up into like four slides of a post each a minute long. Anyway, so I do have a video to show you if you want to see it. Can you just send me the IP treatment here? Can you just DM me the MOB file?
00:30:03
Speaker
So I took a page out of my own playbook and just sort of calm, sort of thought, okay, honestly, the problem with the grinding belt world is it's death by 1000 choices. There's so many options from so many people for belts or machines? Well, I was speaking to machines here, but belt belt is what I was actually planning on asking you about. And honestly, when I think about what we need them for, we use them
00:30:28
Speaker
We use them often, like probably gets turned on every day, but it's so casual and quick and not a big deal. And so troll me all you want. I ended up buying one of the Harbor Freight one by thirties and one Amazon one by 30 that also has the six inch pad. So basically both are Chinese cheapos, but
00:30:47
Speaker
They're together $130. That's compared to the 2000 plus for the bad boys. And I don't know what I want to need per se, but what I do know is that having a one by 30 that one of them has, I might even buy a third. One of them can have like a course belt. One of them can have a fine belt and the other is going to have a Scotch-Brite belt on it. And that means I've got three grinders right next to each other, but we need to just hit something real quick.
00:31:12
Speaker
Yeah, it's all there ready to go. They don't have a ton of power. I know that but like we're not knife makers, blacksmiths, etc. We still have that two by 36 multi grind attachment which has a lot more butt behind it in power. So I got some better belts for it. And I still I like the idea of a two by 48 now because
00:31:34
Speaker
We don't need the belt length, and they're easier to store the shorter ones. But even some of those options that I found, and thanks to everybody that sent in suggestions, they're $1,000 to $1,500. And I want to make sure we're not succumbing to lifestyle creep, because $150 will do the job. So don't spend $1,500. Yeah. But belts.
00:31:58
Speaker
Yeah, we still talk about that. Eric's got probably eight different brands of belts from 3M to Norton to VSM was another one. I forget what Clingspore. It's application specific. He said he really likes ceramic belts. They tend to last a lot longer. They cut harder. They're more expensive, but they
00:32:22
Speaker
you know, you're replacing them less. And then like the, if you really want to rip material, the orange Norton blaze belts are just beasts. And then we have like super paper thin five micron belts that are for micro polishing. We use those sometimes too. And we've got all kinds of, we've got a leather strap that goes on the belt grinder and you can get scotch right belts.
00:32:50
Speaker
that are very cool. But for general deburring shop tasks, like I don't know, McMaster sells belts. That's where we get our one by 30 belts. Really? Yep. Okay. And they're not terrible. Okay, that's good to know because I tried to buy some for trick tools. Their cart shopping site wasn't working. MSC just has such a bad website interface. And then it's like eBay or like random grind shops. Yep, check McMaster. Good to know.
00:33:18
Speaker
Cause yeah, like we have the one by 30 in our machine shop and it's, it was given to me 11 years ago and it was used at that point. Uh, so it's a piece of garbage, but we use it. We'll use it like every day. That's how, um, Pierre chamfers the bars for the Swiss lathe. Um, we use it for general deburring stuff and we all hate it, but we use it. It's fine. So same story, like are we.
00:33:42
Speaker
Do we go full Grimm's moon by a $3,000 like knife grinder to have back here that we're going to use for a combined total of 11 minutes a day? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. There's, there's money to spend everywhere, you know? So it's like, we have to be very conscious of where those resources go. Do you have that one by 30 near the tornos?
00:34:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of, there's the tornos, then there's the Nakamura, and then there's the surface grinder and grinding area. So it's like 20 feet away.
00:34:16
Speaker
No, okay. It's not like six inches away. I didn't know if you were worried about those like 80 grit course belts, I think tend to make some dust. For sure. Yeah, we got pretty excellent dust filtration setup. We bought like a three horsepower Cyclone dust sucker and ducted it to the workbenches so that the disc sander and the belt grinder and the Scotch bread wheel and the bandsaw, they all have their own
00:34:46
Speaker
Ducted sucker. Oh awesome. And that's in the machine shops. I'm not Eric. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Eric's actually jealous of it He's like I need that set up. Is that in your video? I know it's not so we should do another video. I need a second video Yeah, exactly who should go cool YouTube on this one and just explain.
Workshop Safety & Vendor Relations
00:35:03
Speaker
Yeah
00:35:05
Speaker
Because I see people here walking across to our little grinding station and I'm like, no, why don't we just move this to where we need it? But then I don't necessarily want to be encouraging particulate stuff. Well, it's like on a sunny day, you'll see smoke and stuff in the air because the beam of sun comes in through the window.
00:35:24
Speaker
doing a lot of that grinding will absolutely show up in the air like in that test. Um, and the real test is like, where does the dust land? You know, if the dust, if you're finding, if you swipe your finger on dust, like new dust after somebody's grinding and you're across the shop, then that's not good. Yeah, it's everywhere. Yeah. And that gets into your machines, into your ways, into your oil coolant, like just be conscious of that. You know, it's like, yes.
00:35:53
Speaker
I don't remember if I left off with this, but the epoxy tombstone is in the machine. Yeah. You said you poured it. You're happy with it. You didn't use it.
00:36:04
Speaker
and still haven't. I need to figure out how to load a large tool in the Okuma. I think I know how, but I don't want to risk mucking things up right now. If I don't need to do it today, I didn't want to cause a problem on the machine over the long weekend for us when it was going to be running. But I swept it and I dialed it in
00:36:26
Speaker
Like turning it like a line along the b-axis within five foul or no within one and a half foul across the face easy like that was not hard at all which.
00:36:39
Speaker
I'm pleased with, but not necessarily shocking. It is out about 20,000 or 25,000 when you sweep up and down along it, which is more than I expected, but also won't be an issue because we planned on decking it into place anyway. But I'd probably try to do that better next time because- Where do you think that came from?
00:37:02
Speaker
Considering what you did to that thing, 25,000, not a lot. Yeah, across 20 some inches. Yeah. The lesson learned was the little one, two, three cleats blocks were not sufficient. We need next time a better way
00:37:20
Speaker
will actually probably end up machining some flanges so that the side walls actually kind of mesh with the base plate instead of it just being like a butt joint. You actually want them to have connecting stuff so that the cleat pulls them in. That should solve that whole problem because what happened is we needed to tip
00:37:42
Speaker
When we tipped it down to do something, we had to do that. And then we took it back up. We found that all four sides were shifting and moving, which is probably what had to do with them also then moving a little on you.
00:37:57
Speaker
Is it easy to rotate the, what do you call it? Your C axis? Your rotation axis, B of the tombstone. So to square it up. So like this palette needs a three degree zero offset. You know what I mean? No, I don't even have to. I installed it.
00:38:18
Speaker
It's pretty close to true, just looking at it relative to the pallet base. Then I put the machine, it does have a B0 because the pallets, the bases themselves have four sides, so there is a true B0. I think our old UMC, there is no A home. It's just whatever you want home to be, period. Then I just use the dead blow.
00:38:41
Speaker
There's four pieces of all thread going all the way through the Tombstone to clamp it down I kept one of them finger tight and the other four loose and then I just use a dead blow and I lined it in to be zero within two thou Yeah, and you're gonna face them anyway. So yeah. Yeah So it's good. That's good So next step is face it down and put it to work. Oh
00:39:03
Speaker
Next step is to get the reversibles running after that hiccup last night, and then it wouldn't let me load a large tool. The Gossager apps guy said, you have to put a dummy tool in on the adjacent pockets. I don't know what that means. Do I put in... You're talking large diameter tool? Yeah.
00:39:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's like Moria was like that or I read about it in something else. It's like the tools beside the really big tool, the big diameter tool need to either be not there or some dummy tool, like you said.
00:39:38
Speaker
Yeah. The Haas, I don't think we've ever even done it in the Haas, but I think they're smarter and easier. If you designated a large tool, it just takes the adjacent pockets out of service. Okay. This one doesn't like that. I think we have to, like if we're putting it in pocket 145, we have to tell the OSP control that 144 and 146, I guess have tools and they're, that's what I understand. Yeah. I'll figure it out, but. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah.
00:40:05
Speaker
But it's amazing how these little hiccups, it's no big deal, but it's like hours of your time. Oh, we're talking hours. I just, I know. But in, in general, like these little things that you do not expect, uh, you know, eat up more of the time of the whole project of like, okay, I'm just going to face that surface. Oh wait, now I got to load my big tool. Oh wait, how do you load a big tool? Oh wait, what's this adjacent pocket thing? You know, by the end of the day, it's a 20 minute job is now three hours.
00:40:33
Speaker
Honestly, our apps guy has been great. I knew he was on vacation last week, though, and I didn't want to bother. I didn't know he was on vacation. I emailed him about something else. He called me, and I'm like, dude, thank you. Go enjoy your time off. And so if anything, though, the embarrassing thing is I didn't know I needed the large tool. We built this whole DIY tombstone, plan on facing the machine. And then after we kind of got kind of done building it, or partway through, I realized, oh, my gosh.
00:41:02
Speaker
the tombstone is pretty significantly larger in Y than the machine travel. So I can't deck it in place, but I bought a five inch face mill, which will give me enough over travel on the extremes of Y to clean it up. So why is the width of the tombstone? Why is up and down like the height of a person? Oh yeah.
00:41:26
Speaker
If you think about a vertical machine center, Y is front to back. But think about that Y axis relative to the spindle face. So on a horizontal, you just lay it down, and Y is still that same axis. And X is front to back. Left to right. Left.
00:41:46
Speaker
I'm sure it's obvious once you see it and understand it more. What's your spindle axis then? That's Z. Take your Dura vertical and you know how there's a column on the back of it? Yeah. Take a figurative forklift and lay that Dura vertical down on its back. Right. Now you have a... So Y is up and down. Yeah. Z is moving the table closer to the spindle.
00:42:09
Speaker
which is your spindle axis. Yeah. Oh yeah. That makes sense. And then X is left, right. So nice. So it should be fine. Yeah. That's all I got. Everything else. Good. Yeah. Everything's good. It's a, I don't know where my CMM is, but I, I mean, it's not a big deal. I just haven't gotten an update yet. I asked them a couple of days ago,
00:42:34
Speaker
And it was like, we got a lot of things in the air right now. Like I just, I need to know for planning purposes. Yeah. Um, very much looking forward to getting that. And yeah, it's just, there's quite a few things in play right now with the speedo come and move in the current and, uh, Oh yeah. Cause that'll be required rigging as well. Yeah, exactly. So. Yeah. Well, let's, let's talk about this next week, but I, um,
00:43:02
Speaker
Well, actually we are frustrated with two vendors, just bad, bad product deliveries, bad communication, you know, invoicing us for stuff that they said that they knew was wrong. And I'm just, I, I know that it's never good to lose your patience because that's not what they need to do. But there's, I need some guiding light on, okay, but you know, I think bigger, more tenured shops would have more rigid policies around.
00:43:32
Speaker
you know, like part of me wants to tell them, this is our new, this is how you have to work with us. Like you need to, when we send an order, it needs to be processed within four days. It doesn't mean it has to be delivered, but like you can't come back to us a week later and send us paperwork that has the wrong items on it that we then have to check and then get like, that's, that's amateur hour.
00:43:52
Speaker
But it's like, what are we doing wrong? What can we do to make this better? I don't know. It's frustrating. It's causing me some stress. For sure. Yeah. It's like, do you fix and reprimand the situation? Or do you take your nuggets of wisdom and learn for the next time, establish your policies, roll that going forward either with this vendor or with the next vendor so that everybody's on the same page and you get clarity from day one, basically like, here's my purchase order and here's my terms and conditions too, basically.
00:44:22
Speaker
It's more than that, though. I don't want to throw these vendors into the bus publicly, but let's say we were ordering ground blanks. You can't email me Thursday at 4 o'clock and be like, oh, by the way, a bunch of them, we think the corners are out of tolerance. Let us know when you get them.
00:44:41
Speaker
which we've already talked about this, like don't send those or let's have a call to discuss how we want to handle it. Cause I'm not going to make you scrap all of them if we can work around it. But then I wrote back within five minutes and I immediately got an out of office from this person. And it's like, don't, don't pump and dump, don't email me some problem that you might have known about. And then immediately you're on vacation and, and then still send me an invoice for the full amount. And I called our, the relationship person above that, the sales person, and then they haven't called me back.
00:45:12
Speaker
And you always kind of stop them. Am I that difficult customer that no one wants? No, we're not. We're not that person. What we're asking for is not unreasonable, period. But I want there to be some more sense of ownership. It's kind of like that when you go on people's websites and they're like, we strive for excellent communication, quality, customer service. And I want to be like, could you please load your website right now? Because this is not what you guys are delivering. And you need to know that. Yeah.
00:45:38
Speaker
Am I being unreasonable, John? I don't think so. But I totally have been there. We've certainly been there with vendors. And I don't know what the solution is. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know either. There it is. Have a great day. Have a lovely day. I'll see you. Bye. Later. Bye.