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Business of Machining - Episode 105
234 Plays7 years ago
The Pen and Knife Balance
With limited machines, Grimsmo is always trying to balance knife and pen production. Sometimes he has to get creative.
Saunders and Grimsmo talk tools, and creative solutions to achieve Grimsmo’s high standards.
“That would work, but it wouldn’t be the finish I want” - Grimsmo
Sometimes the solutions are simple.
“We both figured out at the same time that the live tool needed to go first...it’s just one of those little things that takes forever to figure out” - Grimsmo
SMW Bought a 5 - Axis!
It’s a Haas UMC-750, and Saunders signed the paper work for it last week. It should be delivered in about 2 - 3 weeks (so soon!). Look out for the video on Saunders’ YouTube channel. To make space, they would also move the other machines around a little.
“You’ve got your high-end cell, and your training cell” - Grimsmo
Pro-tip: You don’t want too big of a machine because it makes it very difficult to get to a small part, so you have to solve that by lifting the part up high off the table.
Interested in getting trained in 5-Axis machining? Keep following Saunders for updates on potential classes.
“I’ve always been more interested in showing what you can do with a machine, rather than showing what you can’t do with a machine” - Saunders
Grimsmo’s Future 5 - Axis
“I would get a palletized version...Rob Lockwood sold me on the idea” - Grimsmo.
Listen to the episode with Rob Lockwood as a guest! It’s episode 93 of this podcast.
“I try to push the boundaries for accuracy, not so much for power” - Grimsmo
Failed Lean "Fixes"
Collaborative video between Grimsmo, Saunders, and Jay Pierson.
Where have YOU tried to go lean, and it just didn’t work out?
3D Printing without heat...Can it be done?
Saunders tours a revolutionary 3D Printing company called Fabri Sonic.
“You can put electronics in your 3D printed part!” - Saunders
Hacks:
- The Snippet Tool on every windows computer. It’s so small, but helps SO much.
- Creating a keyboard shortcut in your phone to fill out your hashtags automatically.
At the end, Grimsmo and Saunders get into measurement techniques, and solving problems by probing. Saunders mentions that he learned a great technique from Edge Precision’s YouTube channel!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Voice Mix-up
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, episode 105. Five. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. Everyone probably knows that by now. Yeah. Well, I think I hear some people get our voices mixed up. Oh, that's an interesting point. Yep. Sure. Okay. Fair enough. Yeah. How are you doing?
Balancing Knife and Pen Production
00:00:22
Speaker
I guess that's good. Good. You? Very good. Awesome. Yeah. Excited.
00:00:30
Speaker
ready to get after it today. The past week has been a bit of a blur on my end.
Tackling Boring Bar and End Mill Challenges
00:00:38
Speaker
What have you been, what have you been up to? We, we're always trying to balance like, especially on the lathe knife production versus upcoming saga pen production. So we had a couple of days to play, maybe almost a week to play on the lathe, um, get some pen parts dialed in, had some issues. We're trying to like fine tune. Um, we've got this tiny little boring bar that we kept chipping the tip on.
00:01:04
Speaker
Like every, the Kyocera one, like chipping the tip every part or whatever. And I'm like, I can't figure it out. I still don't exactly have the answer for it. And we've tried everything we can think of, but, and then I had this weird idea. It's like, what if I take a live tool, a spinning end mill and pretend it's a boring bar and then trace the boring bar tool path and turn slash mill the idea of this part. Does that make sense?
00:01:34
Speaker
interpolate it? Not around. So it's like, it's the same toolpath as the boring bar, like the identical toolpath, except the tool is spinning. Okay. But okay, so you're just moving in with one, the z axis only right in and then x up and then back and x and z.
00:01:54
Speaker
Oh, so you back bore it? You moved from headstock to tailstock? Okay. So it would be like you could use an end mill as a boring bar if it were clocked, but you're not clocking it. I'm actually spinning it. You're spinning it. Okay. I've never heard of that. I know.
00:02:09
Speaker
But I'm like, that'll make, uh, that'll make little chips, not big, rappy, stringy, stringy chips too. Um, so I've been experimenting with that a lot and, uh, called my guy at Elliott Matsura, Kevin, and, you know, got a couple of little things. It turns out you have to turn the live tool on first and then the spindle. You can't turn the spindle on and then the live tool because the Nakamura complains.
RPM Adjustments and Chatter Issues
00:02:32
Speaker
Oh, weird. And that was one of those little things that it took me forever to figure out. I was on the phone with him, and he was standing in front of a machine, like trying some numbers. And at the same time, we both figured it out. Like, oh, live tool first. OK. Hilarious. Yeah, that's awesome. So anyway, the only weirdness with that is that, say you match the RPM. Say you go 800 RPM on live and 800 RPM on sub-spindle. And that gives you a 1600 RPM total.
00:03:01
Speaker
because they're spinning against each other. There are like five flute and mill. There's five distinct chatter marks or something. It's super odd. I don't even know how to explain it.
00:03:18
Speaker
And then if you double the RPM on one, you get 10 chatter marks. And if you half it, you get like one chatter mark. So it's like you're knurling? Yeah, ever so slight. Like the RPMs are matched in a way that every flute is leaving the same mark in the same spot every time. And it's no big deal in this part, but under the microscope, everything looks gigantic. And it's just not the amazing finish I had anticipated it to be. It's just kind of odd.
00:03:48
Speaker
Yeah. Well, first off, the fact that you're converting your lathe into a mill is something I fully support. Uh, but that's, yeah, you're, I mean, you're, you're getting the benefit of an interrupted cut via an end mill with small chips, but you're also inheriting the massive downside, which is run out in both the holder, but also the flute grind. Okay. I don't think so. You almost have a problem.
00:04:15
Speaker
I mean, there's always run out. No, I don't think that's the issue though. Okay.
00:04:22
Speaker
because it's consistent around the entire, I'd have to show you a picture. Maybe I'll post a picture on Instagram or something. Well, you can, like Haas has some cycles that will allow you to do constant minor variations in CSS to sort of prevent harmonic. Maybe that's not what this is, but you should be able to, instead of saying it, say 800 RPMs on your main spindle, you should be able to have that fluctuate constantly, which should help
00:04:49
Speaker
You have a clocking issue, right? They're almost clocked together. That what you're implying? I think so, yeah. Yeah. You're not running the speeder and the tool backward, are you? No, but I almost did that yesterday. And I had to stop myself. Be like, oh, nope, nope. Speeder needs to go backwards. Got it. Hmm. Interesting. You could also play with Helix geometry of the end mill.
00:05:18
Speaker
I've tried a bullnose end mill, a square end mill, and a ball mill. And I get the same results for all of them. I mean, not the corner rattle, but the actual helix angle. Like you've seen some of those helical tools that look like they almost, on a one inch tool, they must have like 30 wrap-arounds, which is a shallow helix, if I recall.
00:05:47
Speaker
I don't know why that's so hard to remember whether that's a steeper shallow helix. Yeah. High helix, I think. Is that what it is? A low helix would be like very, like two turns. Two turns? Okay.
00:06:04
Speaker
I have to check that I'm inclined to argue with you, but I have no basis to do so. I have a 30, I have a 40 and a 45 from helical or a 35 and a 45, which should be easy to put them up next to each other and see that anyway. Um, what do you get? What is that from then? But since you're tracing, I'm tracing
End Mill Experiments and Surface Finishes
00:06:25
Speaker
the path. I'm using the tip of the end mill, like the, the,
00:06:31
Speaker
the corner most, not so much the side flutes. But not if you're back. I thought you were plunging the tool in in air and then moving up in X and then coming back toward the tail stock. But you're doing a profile as well. So every time you turn, the finish is going to be from the tips of the tool. Okay.
00:06:52
Speaker
Yeah. And then I did another part I did yesterday. I did a 45 degree chamfer on a threaded part. And we were getting these burrs on the threads. So I'm like, let me try this same turning method. And it works amazing. Like it leaves zero burr in the thread whatsoever, which is awesome. But it leaves the weird kind of chattery finish. And it's not chatter. It's merely the intersection between each flute and RPM cutting in the same spot over and over again.
00:07:22
Speaker
Right, right, right. I would be inclined to say this is something that is better solved with a single insert traditional lathe tool. It doesn't tend to agree, but it's not to give me the result that I want.
00:07:38
Speaker
But have you, you're using the sharpest tipped insert they offer, a 4,000? Yeah. Okay. Doesn't Fusion now have some sort of a PEC? Oh, maybe that was groovy. You could hand code it, which I don't like, but that should break the chip, right? If you just PEC bore it. Yeah. But it's not just chip wrap around. It was chipping the tool.
00:08:04
Speaker
which clearly there's a reason that I'm not finding why we're chipping the tool so much. Interesting. Yeah. Is it a positive? What's the geometry of the tool and the holder? Yeah, positive. Okay. Do you need positive on titanium? Obviously, it's a weaker tip. Right. Look, I wouldn't hesitate for a second to call up your ISCAR rep or Sandvik rep.
00:08:32
Speaker
This isn't, plenty of titanium gets turned. It wouldn't reinvent the wheel. The endo thing is creative, that's for sure. Yeah, it works. And the finish is not the end of the world. It's just odd. And I wish it wasn't so oddly chattery.
00:08:51
Speaker
What if you're not chipping, did you do enough cutting to confirm in your mind that the end mill isn't chipping?
Using End Mill as Boring Bar
00:08:59
Speaker
In other words, that recipe is working with regard to tool life? Yep, it's not chipping at all. We made 50 parts and the end mill looks brand new. Man. Okay. That said. That's perplexing, that's frustrating. Once we had something that worked, which is the end mill method,
00:09:17
Speaker
We were able to make 50 parts and they're dialed. We were like, hey, first production part on the saga pen, we made 50 of them. All right. Can you try using that same end mill as a boring bar and don't rotate it? See if it works. You have to clock the flutes and then I'd have to put it in a different holder as well because right now it's in a spinny holder. Right.
00:09:46
Speaker
I'm just thinking when you get perplexed, try to start breaking down the variables. What is it about? Is that tool working because it's the greater carbide, the coding, the geometry? The helical guys were in to do some testing and I was asking about why surface finishes on certain tools and he started to explain, I don't have my notes up in front of me, but
00:10:10
Speaker
You had the leading edge of an end mill that cuts. It's a sharp edge, but nothing is sharp because if it were a trade off of edge life versus edge stability. So there's some amount of roundness or honeness to that edge so that it lasts longer than a millisecond. But what's interesting is what happens behind that cutting edge. And you can either have, and I'm going to throw out the terms I remember from memory, but I could be wrong.
00:10:39
Speaker
which is two different ways you can grind that second edge, which is an up sharp versus a cylindrical land. And cylindrical land
00:10:51
Speaker
would have a slight curve to it so that it's actually somewhat cutting, excuse me, it's actually cushioning and supporting the tool as it cuts through like a drill would so that you are not, so when you're taking normal cuts, which have some cut depth to them, you're actually giving that tool some stability.
00:11:12
Speaker
But what happens on a really shallow depth of cut is that can cause the tool to bounce. And again, we're talking about very minor amounts. So he said, maybe we should try an up sharp because an up sharp isn't supported, not quite as stable, but gives you perfectly sharp edge with a true relief behind it so that it can kind of do its job of cutting with pretty low radio load and give you that really clean look. Okay.
00:11:37
Speaker
which all that did was tell me there's so much more to do. Absolutely. Which is cool, right? So we
Excitement Over UMC 750 Purchase
00:11:44
Speaker
actually did that. We pulled up, I think, just a regular high-speed steel twist drill on our microscope, and you could see some roundness to the first edge, and then we looked at an end mill, and you can see, I guess, the same. Apparently, we're doing the same thing there.
00:11:59
Speaker
Maybe we need to pull up a high speed steel end mill, like an old Chinese from the tag days or something. You could see the kind of double, I think that's what it was. You could see like kind of the double edge grind flatness to it. Cool. Yeah. I'm looking at some end mills right now, trying to decipher. Look at one under a microscope afterward and see. That's what it was. Do you have any old high speed steel junkers?
00:12:28
Speaker
Probably not.
00:12:30
Speaker
Yeah. If you come across one, it's actually something you can see with the naked eye, but most of the time they'll have the cutting edge and then they'll have two equally equal with sort of shiny bands that are those two flat grinds. I hate the main grind or the main relief and the secondary relief or something. And those would be, I guess what you would consider an up sharp. Um, well, like most, most of the animals I'm looking at seem to have that up sharp. Is that right? I think so. Okay. Including actually have a helical one here.
00:13:00
Speaker
which doesn't look as up sharp as this Harvey Tool small one. See on the Harvey I see two distinct grinds on the OD of each flute, whereas on this helical finisher I only see one.
00:13:15
Speaker
There you go, that might be it. Interesting. And so for the folks that have had a couple of emails come in, we have not forgotten about the folks that have asked to sign up for the beta and have heard about this quote unquote project. We are still working on it, but it all relates to the stuff that John and I are just talking about surrounding speeds and feeds and recipes and all that, which is exciting. Excellent, yeah. Oftentimes I'll get,
00:13:42
Speaker
people emailing me asking me speeds and feeds questions like, how do I run a quarter inch high speed steel drill bit? And I'm like, I don't know, ask Saunders. Yes, I am excited. But I actually have more exciting news than that. You already know this.
00:14:02
Speaker
You already know this. I think I know. I was killing me to not share it last week, but I had my final meeting just after the bomb is recorded on Wednesday morning. We purchased drum roll a UMC 750. Five axis. Congratulations. Thank you. I am super, super excited.
00:14:26
Speaker
wanted one so badly. And part of what made it a little bit of a more difficult decision was the word want versus need. We arguably needed another spindle, but it's a general purpose machine. So we're going to use it for everything from filming and videos to Johnny five parts to moving some of the Saunders. I think we're going to try the mod vices on it. I say that because we have so much stuff I want to do on it that I'm hesitant to book it up with production right away. But
00:14:55
Speaker
There's a lot it's some new products like we've we had these single station mod vices They're only like one inch wide and they're they're very much a pain in the butt to make Normally, but they'll be great on the five axis we think at least so It is like a breath of fresh
Machine Reorganization Plans
00:15:14
Speaker
air. I am so excited to get that in awesome yeah, my first thought because you know, we've been talking about five axis stuff for a
00:15:24
Speaker
at least six months, if not a year, seriously talking about it, planning it and trying to figure it out. When I invest in one,
00:15:36
Speaker
I think I'm willing to spend the extra money to get a palletized version so that there are like either built in or in a ROA system or something like that. Automation. Automated system because that Lockwood got me totally sold on that concept. But it makes me think about yours. Are you thinking about some sort of easily swappable base plate so you could just dump anything on there?
00:15:58
Speaker
and have your own little offline palettes, you know? Yes. So we are going to make Saunders fixture plates for the UMCs, obviously. We already have that CAD done.
00:16:09
Speaker
So there's so much more you can do with this whole thing. Haas has automation stuff coming out. There's third party. There's other brands, other machines. One of the hesitations was I don't want us to be perceived as the Haas fanboys. But there was also, that wasn't a reason not to purchase the machine if it was the right machine for us when it comes to the capabilities at the price point. They're familiar with the control, the experience we've had, which has been
00:16:38
Speaker
darn good, if not great. So what I realized was, okay, let's think about automation higher in functionality, et cetera, and recognize that this doesn't stop any of that. But what I need now is to learn and get this machine running. And I suspect we will have it a long time, but worst case, if you wanted to switch it to something that has more functionality, you're built in automation. So you do that. That was kind of one of the thoughts was let's
00:17:09
Speaker
No, not a life's too short thing, but we've got work to do. Let's go do work. Like, let's get that machine in here. Didn't do it. It 1000% resonates to your stepping stone, uh, philosophy of machine tool life. You know, you take tormac, uh, more tormacs, Haas, right? It's, it's perfect. You know, work your way up and then eventually in, you know, five years, imagine, you know, the kind of stuff you might have because you need it at the time.
00:17:37
Speaker
Right. You are totally different. Your focus gets almost narrower and narrower in terms of your conviction and so forth. I'm almost, I don't say going the opposite way, but I want a machine that me and Jared and Ed and we're going to make Johnny Five Parts and have fun with it and share that. I am excited. Yeah. That's epic. Yeah.
00:18:03
Speaker
When's it come? We signed the paperwork on Wednesday. I was supposed to hear back any day this week about more specifics, but honestly, I think it should be here in two to three weeks. Yeah, so soon. Is it in stock? Are they building to order? I believe they do all of them as billed to order, but they have most of the
00:18:26
Speaker
parts or sub assemblies kind of ready to go if you will. You can kind of see that in the factory tour video that we did. So like on our VM three, it was like a, I don't know, six weekly time or something four weekly time back then. But
00:18:42
Speaker
I remember asking, I was like, Hey, can you guys let me know? Like, how's that bill going? Like thinking it was going to be six weeks to build it. No, it was like, they build the machine in like three days. Um, it's just, they weren't going to get to it till then, um, in terms of sort of assembling everything and so forth. So, um, and then it's got a good drive out there from California to Ohio, unload it, rig it.
Shop Floor Aesthetics and Workflow Optimization
00:19:04
Speaker
Um, I think we're going to move our VF two nights. Did I explain this on the podcast?
00:19:10
Speaker
I don't think so, briefly, but go ahead. I think we're going to move our VF2 and some Tormox over to the Bay 1 to give ourselves sort of a separate room so we can do our training classes, we can do some filming where we don't have as much background noise or stuff going on. And then some other stuff like Helical asks if they could use our spindle to test some titanium tools. And I'm kind of like, I'm fine with that if we have the spindle time, but I don't...
00:19:40
Speaker
my view of that is just come use the machine for an afternoon or a day. Like I don't really want to, you guys run the machine, you bring the material, you bring the tools. And so that's a way to, I'm not sure where that, if that goes anywhere, if that's something we really want to do more of, but I'm excited about that. I think it's cool. It ties into the project we're working on. Like, okay. So yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Oh man.
00:20:06
Speaker
I forget if we talked about this in the bomb, but I know you were thinking about clearing out the other side, painting the floors. Have you made any headway on what the plan is there? Yep. We're going to clear out some of it and rearrange it. I'm not going to do anything on the floors. I just can't. The timing doesn't work, if anything, just because of the seasonality of it. And it's OK. I recognize it would be much better to do it now.
00:20:36
Speaker
It's harder to do it later, but it's just not in the cards right now. It's a big nut to crack right now. We have a nice shop. I'm a little self-conscious about making sure it stays nice and it looks nice to people. The only reason that bay one floor doesn't look, in my opinion, doesn't look awesome for a shop floor is that it's next to one of the most beautiful shop floors I've ever seen, which is our epoxy floor in bay two. Exactly.
00:21:06
Speaker
Awesome. Yeah. So you're going to, I guess the VM three is not going to move. It'll say where it is. Yeah. Okay. Yep. And you'll put the UMC close ish.
00:21:17
Speaker
I think across from it, you had to go look at the pack, crack, the cracks in the pad and all that. Yeah. So I guess you've got, you've got your, your high end cell and then your training cell, right?
Intricacies of Five-axis Machining
00:21:30
Speaker
It's true. Um, awesome. That is so cool. So, okay. I, I've been thinking about this because if I do get a five axis eventually, are you already planning
00:21:44
Speaker
jobs for it. You're already programming for it kind of thing. Cool. I'm excited because the TR200Y, the training that we had, it was a lot more tricky because you lost a lot of the Z in the machine when it was on the table, but also it's a 200 millimeter platter, but it had the supports quite close to it. The UMC
00:22:08
Speaker
For folks that may be listening who are new to 5-axis, one of the things that's different about a 5-axis purchase or process is that you don't want too big of a machine because it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to get to a small part because of clearances with the spindle, spindle housing and the table diameter. The way you have to solve that is by lifting your part really high up off the table.
00:22:31
Speaker
So, for example, on a relatively large UMC 750, which has approximately 30 inches, I think it is 30 inches of X travel. But what's the platter size? It's not 30 inches, is it? I can't answer it off my... Oh, it's 20 something inches, yeah. So it's like a big pizza plate. Yeah. It's like a large pizza. Pizza platter. Something like that. Okay. So you're thinking if you put a
00:22:58
Speaker
a six-inch vice jaw. If you were making a six-inch vice jaw, you can't just put it on the center of the table on the table if you wanted to rotate the table to the side and still reach the side. Right. Exactly. What you would do is you'd hold that part up. If you're machining a golf ball, you'd hold the golf ball up on a riser that's like 10 inches up, which has some consequences of additional fixturing, loss of rigidity or change of rigidity. A loss of 10 inches of Z-travel.
00:23:25
Speaker
Yeah, that shouldn't, a famous last word, that shouldn't be an issue. And this would be fine. I'm not, I don't, I, there is always, there are always compromises in life in terms of, okay, so like for instance, I think Haas is,
00:23:41
Speaker
Basically, I think they were telling folks in IMTS that there's going to be a new rep of the UMC 750 sometime that's going to inherit some of the stuff they put into the UMC 1000. Those are not insignificant changes. They're offering HSK option spindle. They're doing, I think, a hypocycloid drive mechanism in the table, which should be a big improvement.
00:24:01
Speaker
But again, it went back to what am I trying to do? How does it affect what I want to do today? We actually just went with the base UMC 750. I didn't even get the SS version and talking to a friend out in California who has purchased six of them for different companies or shops and going through the motor sizing and the functionality and the price point and what it's going to do for us and
00:24:25
Speaker
There's a coolness factor. The SS uses the roller cam system. So it's a worm gear that has a very cool grind to it that allows roller studs like ball bearings to interface with that worm gear. So it could go faster, higher loads, less backlash. But I'm fine with the UMC 750. It's great. So let's play. Sweet. And I assume you got through spindle coolant.
00:24:54
Speaker
Yes, there aren't actually that many options on the UMCs. It's kind of funny compared to the vertical. So through spindle coolant, chip conveyor, probing, I think that's honestly, there were like four options
Expanding Training with TM3P
00:25:09
Speaker
or something. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah.
00:25:14
Speaker
And then we also got a TM3P. So we got a second vertical mill. OK. That was no big deal. You just tap that on at the end. Like relative to the UMC, that's not a big deal. All right. That is as a.
00:25:29
Speaker
sort of two reasons. One is an additional just general purpose spindle, one that we can use for a lot of stuff, some products, some filming, some larger parts. But then also, it was part of the business plan, I don't know, whatever, six months ago, where we wanted to start offering the Haas machines for the training classes. And that's been more popular than I expected.
00:25:53
Speaker
Which is great, but I don't really like having the training classes on the VM3 because that's a machine that's important to us. And it's your machine. Yeah, right. So the idea will be the VF2 and the TM3 will go into the training program, which I think is great because those are very... I think the VF2 is the most popular sold Haas.
00:26:20
Speaker
TM3s are a good machine example to see where that fits in the spectrum. And it ties into our new project of speeds and feeds and tooling, allowing us to show, hey, the TM3 has a much lower powered spindle. It's a different machine. It's different weight. But I've always been more interested in showing what you can do with a machine, not what you can't do with a machine.
00:26:53
Speaker
I'm trying to formulate a phrase like, these machines are probably more overbuilt than most of us are using them for with regards to power and accuracy and things like that. Certainly, I try to push the boundaries for accuracy, not so much power. You know what I mean? So a machine like the TM3, or TMP3? TM3P. The P means as a tool changer. Yeah.
00:27:13
Speaker
Yeah, I guess
00:27:21
Speaker
I mean, nothing can make amazing parts regardless of its power or class or quality or whatever.
00:27:28
Speaker
Great. Yeah. I think there's a really important element to life here, which is we're all social creatures. We interact with each other. And there's a lot to be said for I am doing amazing things on this machine.
Value of Various Machines for Efficiency
00:27:41
Speaker
But there's always a better machine. There's always a different machine out there. And at the end of the day, I like I like making parts. I like showing again what you can do with it, recognizing that the world is full of finite resources. So
00:27:58
Speaker
I am very excited for this, even though I think a lot of people would say, wait a minute. That's a TM. You're going backwards. No, it works perfect for you because, I mean, not only now you have the spectrum of a Tormach 440 to a VM3 slash UM750. You've got the gamut of volume there, but I also love how in your videos, you or Ed or Jared or whatever still make parts on the Tormach.
00:28:25
Speaker
Yeah. It's like awesome. It's perfect.
00:28:29
Speaker
Yeah. The one thing I wish is that we had probing. You get spoiled with the rent-a-shop. But again, the rent-a-shop probe is discounted house price, I don't know, $5,500, which is not. Yeah, well, no, but it's expensive relative to the cost of the whole. Our model works because we've got another guy, Brian, in here helping out recently, Josh, Alex, Ed, Jared, making parts, which is freaking great.
00:28:59
Speaker
Yes. I was also talking to another friend and he was just laughing. We were kind of joking about the
00:29:10
Speaker
feedback from folks who like to rag on different brands and models. And he was like, I made a lot of money with our, he had a TM type machine. And it's just, it's just funny. Cause it's like, that's when you think of who you want to be, you want to be the guy, you know, I like being a positive person in sharing and making parts and being proud of what you make. But it's also like, I always liked the guy who was like, no, we, we, we're crushing it. We're okay with what we've got. You know, you can,
00:29:38
Speaker
And one day I do, I love this idea of buying a higher end machine as well. So we'll see. Yeah, it's exciting.
00:29:49
Speaker
Cool. Well, I'm excited to see the delivery video and the setup. Yeah. I'm actually really interested in how you, I guess, tool it up, but I'm more thinking fixturing advices to see what you end up doing there. Makes me curious. Yeah, sure. That's the strange thing about the TMs is they do have a really small table.
Balancing Family and Work Responsibilities
00:30:10
Speaker
It's almost like a Bridgeport size cast table, but it's a 20 by 40 machine.
00:30:18
Speaker
So I actually think we'll put one of our fixture plates on it, which will help, I think, a lot with the kind of usable real estate of the machine itself. Wicked. Yeah. Sweet. I'm trying to think what else is going on. Leif has pneumonia. Oh my god. I'm sorry. Is he OK?
00:30:46
Speaker
Yeah, it was like one night and one day of just horribleness and then we went to the doctor and they got some chest x-rays and yep, he's got pneumonia. Okay, here's antibiotics and then the next day he's like bouncing off the walls. Kids are resilient. Yeah, exactly. So he's fine. But it was nice. I took the past, I took a day and a half off to help with them and watch that.
00:31:07
Speaker
it was awesome that everything just worked. I got a few texts throughout the day, like how do I do this and that? And I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is the dream. Like, like I never, I never really foresee myself just disappearing and having the business continue without me, but to go away for a couple of days and not be worried and know that stuff's still happening. It's fantastic. And it further reinforces the need to, um,
00:31:33
Speaker
further e-myth this business. Totally agree. Do more process control and more written instructions so that everybody understands what's going on and what to do and who to ask for what or where to look for information, et cetera, et cetera.
00:31:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's a really good minor wake up call that it's like, yeah, and it works for any of us, like any one of us should be able to be sick for a week, and their job should still go. You know what I mean? It's difficult, but it's gonna happen sometime. Yeah. You know, we need that flexibility to an extent.
00:32:14
Speaker
So yeah, it's a good thing. I like it. Barry actually went to Mexico for a week. Say what? Barry went to Mexico for a week with his son and granddaughter and daughter-in-law. And it was kind of a last minute thing, like with less than a week's notice. And it's like, whoa, this is...
00:32:35
Speaker
All right, go for it. We'll take care of things. So Skye is now doing the heat treat. Barry taught him very quickly. Skye picked it up amazing. He's crushing it and other things around, like Aaron's doing the shipping now that Barry used to do and things like that. Oh, really? That's awesome.
Streamlining Shipping Processes
00:32:50
Speaker
Yeah, things are good.
00:32:52
Speaker
That reminds me of something I haven't heard very often elsewhere from Jay Pearson, which is the idea of majors and minors. So everyone has kind of a minor in a task. And I always kind of wonder how sustainable that is because things are always changing and you get your kind of
00:33:08
Speaker
personal. We're continuing to not struggle, but shipping kicks our butt. We have a shocking number of times somebody will order something and then they'll order something else five minutes later because they forgot to add it, which also makes you wonder, do we need to do something different on our website or our front end? But then it's like, what's the process for
00:33:32
Speaker
combining the orders in ship station, refunding them, the additional shipping, because of course we're happy to combine the order, but then making sure you don't also make a mistake because of that process. So to do a minor in that seems like it's something that's a little bit more hands-on. But I'm always wondering, are we just looking at it the wrong way? I don't know. Yeah, it could be. It's just always good. But good for you. That's awesome.
00:33:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's good to see areas to improve. I mean, luckily for us, we have essentially one product, one box that gets shipped out, one weight, one item. It just goes to different countries and has a couple different options in ShipStation. But I can only imagine if you have multiple products and they're all different size and all different combinations of stuff, like you need to basically create boxes. Yes, exactly.
00:34:21
Speaker
or stock a bunch of different size boxes. And I can see that being annoying. Like even in the future, we want to stock t shirts small amount. But if somebody adds a t shirt to a knife order, it's not going to fit in the knife box. Right? Yeah, that does that happen? We don't have really t shirts. Oh, okay. Got it. Got it. Yeah. Huh? That's funny. Was I gonna say the
00:34:48
Speaker
Oh yeah, so I had this idea of we've had some lean endeavors or some shop organization efforts that have just been complete flops. And so I called Jay Pearson and I called you and I want to do this like kind of a self-deprecating parody-ish, but a real insight into what it's like from a just a, hey, we aren't perfect. There's always improvements. We make kind of mistakes, kind of a lean gone wrong or a lean fail video.
Tour of Fabrasonic's Innovations
00:35:18
Speaker
So, um, you're going to send me some footage and Jay, it's going to send me some footage and then we're going to make a video showing all the dumb things that we've done or the things that we tried to make it work. It just didn't work. That's okay. I love it. I can't wait. Yeah. Um,
00:35:33
Speaker
Other thing is I got to tour this company called Fabrasonic. Did I talk about that? No. This is so cool. They are a additive 3D printing research, we'll call research company.
00:35:49
Speaker
they have a product or a machine that does ultrasonic low temperature 3D printing. So what it is is spools of thin metal. So spools of aluminum, copper, titanium, Inconel, all these different metals. And they feed them, strip feed them
00:36:10
Speaker
into a vertical machining center with a head that ultrasonically welds the material together. So it's building up layers that are whatever the thickness of the feedstock is. So usually something in the thousandths of an inch. And
00:36:23
Speaker
It happens at a cold temperature, you know, something like 200 degrees Fahrenheit, but only for 0.05 seconds. Meaning you could put USB devices, strain gauges, fiber optic cables, electronics, other stuff inside your 3D printed part because there's no, there isn't this sort of heat that you would have with a, you know, SLS machine or some other hot machine or whatever.
00:36:49
Speaker
And it's a hybrid machine. So these, um, we got to film it, which is amazing. They have a giant custom made, you know, six foot travel bridge column, vertical machining center. That's just amazing. HSK like custom built. And then they have a kind of turnkey machine that they actually do sell. That's a, I think it was like a 25 by 50 format VMC. So a large vertical machining center, 50 taper, but the,
00:37:15
Speaker
that those machines can tool change out the 3D printer head and go back to subtractive machining. So it's hybrid in a different sense. And we will throw in a description somewhere like some of the parts, but they can do mixed metals. So they can 3D print aluminum and brass is a common one. And so they're doing some pretty amazing work with NASA and JPL on things like thermocouples or heat sinks where
00:37:41
Speaker
They have some really amazing properties for monolithic structures that are machined in place, higher process reliability, shorter lead times, amazing thermal properties, built-in cooling tubes that have very unique geometry, and just a really awesome bunch, pretty darn nerdy in the best way possible. I love it. Yeah, I know some machines.
00:38:04
Speaker
Some builders like Sotic, I know, I think, Makino, DMG Mori, they're doing these laser welding 3D printer machines that you can then subtractively machine. So you build up a layer machine, which you don't want, build up another layer. And they seem neat, but still some ways to go on a lot of this stuff.
00:38:28
Speaker
That sounds awesome. I can't wait to see that video. It's just different. Again, their big claim to fame is how easy it is to do mixed metals. I think it's a lot more different. Apparently, powder machines can take over eight hours just to swap out because of the cleaning required, and the low temp thing is pretty cool.
00:38:47
Speaker
It's super cool.
Discovering Useful Tech Tools
00:38:48
Speaker
Yeah. But it was also just like, it was attached to and somehow affiliated with, I believe Ohio State. And it's this, and they're affiliated with this other thing called the Edison Welding Institute. So there's just like a, you know, a sea of PhDs there.
00:39:02
Speaker
They had, John, they had a room full of lapping machines doing profile analysis on materials like metallurgists, scientists, um, you know, the craziest microscopes, electron beams here, measuring here, but you would have totally nerded out on, on what they had. And this is in Ohio. Yeah. Yeah.
00:39:22
Speaker
I love it. Yeah. A bunch of the guys there that we were working with went through Ohio state's welding engineering program. So everything to do with the like science behind welding and less to do with, you know, your, your ability to hold a torch. Um, right. Um, so they were, it was cool. It was cool.
00:39:46
Speaker
Yeah. My last nugget on my list is I do a lot of screenshots. Sometimes I don't need to make a video for somebody, but I do want to send a screenshot and I used to install third party software and Alex here was like, you can just use the windows snipping tool.
00:40:03
Speaker
Yes. Great. I only found this less than a year ago. Okay. Maybe like eight months ago, the windows snipping tool. It's probably been around since windows 95. Yeah. But I guess if I wasn't so focused on finding the minesweeper icon, maybe I know it's great. Yes. I actually, it was our WhatsApp chat that kind of drove me to start using it. Cause then I could do like just snip a little bit and then send it to you guys for questions. Um,
00:40:31
Speaker
Oh, interesting. You know what I mean? Like for sharing photos without sharing the whole screen or something. Right. Yeah, the snipping tool is amazing. That's my PSA for the day. I love it. Yeah. And there's so many little things like, like, we find this revelation, but we don't tell anybody. So it's good to be able to make a public service announcement to like
00:40:52
Speaker
You may know this, but you may not. My other really, really good life hack is if you need to type something often, especially on your phone. Let's say you like to put certain hashtags every time in your social media. All you do is create a keyboard. I don't know what they call it on the iPhone, but it's like the keyboard spelling fix.
00:41:19
Speaker
And then just make something like mine used to be JJJX for no reason or something JJX or something I would never otherwise type in. You just create a shortcut.
Production Tasks and New Metrology Tools
00:41:29
Speaker
So when you type JJJX, it replaces those four characters with hashtag instant machinas, hashtag manufacturer entrepreneur, hashtag Johnny five or whatever. And it's so simple once you see it. And then, but it's a wonderful little, uh, you know, daily life hack. Yeah. Yes.
00:41:48
Speaker
Clever boy. So what are you up to today? Making more knife spacers. And then once we make 600 of those, we will go back to pen parts spacers. Okay, that's the Delrin part. No, that's the cage. No, these are okay. I'm thinking of the cage, I guess. Yeah, yeah, the bearings. Okay, got it.
00:42:08
Speaker
Cool. Yeah. So I got those dialed yesterday or Angelo got them dialed throughout the day and then I kind of did my final loving tweaks. And then we made 120 overnight. Nice. That's awesome. I came into a probe fail alarm, but it was only because I got my bar count wrong and the last part was not there. Oh.
00:42:31
Speaker
Oh, that's funny. So it was trying to probe like an empty no bar. Right. Only because when I'm when I'm playing with the parts and I, you know, make one pull it out early, it doesn't count up properly sometimes. So you got to be careful of that. Oh, but that didn't cause a problem didn't break a tool didn't
00:42:46
Speaker
nope, nope, no problem. That's good. How are the and I had, I hacked the Renishaw macro to if it alarms out to actually turn the probe off because it used to just stay blinking all night. Then I'd come back to dead batteries. Oh, that's funny. Good grief. Yeah. Do you are you going to have an a the fixtures running better on the mill or running? Well, okay. Yeah, super, super good. Now.
00:43:14
Speaker
more probing was the answer was that probing surprisingly, more, more probing, right. Now I'm probing a lot of stuff and it was super complicated to set up, but it's like, if it's a trustworthy system, which it has been, then it just works. It just, you know, more probing can be better. It can be over complicated and over, um, whatever you call it too much process control, but it works. That's awesome. Glad to hear.
00:43:42
Speaker
Yep. Love it. So yeah, we've been doing a banger job of production and doing a really consistent. Love it. That's awesome. Awesome. Yeah. Good, good, good.
00:43:56
Speaker
So yeah, that's what I'm up to today. Sweet. Yeah, we're running, we're finishing up some, I think I had two, uh, hospital plates to ship out, which is always awesome. And I've got to run some test cuts on some other stuff. And, uh, I saw a, uh, metrology tool that I'm super, I was, as soon as I saw it, I was like, Oh my gosh, that's.
00:44:17
Speaker
freaking genius. They sell them, but they're unnecessarily expensive. I thought that's a fun project to actually just go make it. I'm filming a couple of videos I'm making. It's called a shallow, what's it called? A shallow height test gauge, but it's an adjustable bar that has an indicator on when
00:44:36
Speaker
So if you need to measure something precisely, you just adjust this off of a master or a reference, like I said, a gauge blocks, and then you can move that over to sweep in. So like, let's say you need to measure a 22 point, whatever inch part.
00:44:52
Speaker
especially if you can't move that part over to something like a height gauge. The awesome thing is that we have that mid-to-toil U height gauge that's pretty darn accurate. So as long as I know the stack of something. So I think we'll have to prove this out, but I think I could use something like relatively inaccurate two, four, six blocks combined with some gauge blocks to get a specific dimension on the tool and then just transfer that measurement over to measure the other object to make sure our indicator shows that we've got the correct tolerance.
00:45:23
Speaker
Okay. So you kind of master it, zero to master. And then I think of it like telescoping gauges, except with an indicator on one end and a pin on the other. So you just find zero on the indicator, uh, and then moved in and measure your off the master and then measure your object. Nice. Is this meant for bigger parts? What's that? You don't want to, you just meant for bigger parts that you don't want to buy a 20 inch micrometer for.
00:45:47
Speaker
Correct. The flexibility of it is for sure part of it. I actually originally saw it on Edge Precision's YouTube channel. He was measuring a round part that he wanted very accurate. While it was on his, I think he's got a pretty beautiful Okuma mill turn. Then as soon as I saw those, when we were researching them, I realized that these things exist. I just have never come across them. You can do IDs and ODs and of almost any width or dimension, which is
00:46:16
Speaker
And again, you could go do a much larger part. And generally, there's some caveats, of course, of thermal issues or potential deflection. But generally speaking, I think it's going to be a little bit better than trying to do a vernier or trying to have large micrometers, which have other measuring issues, or we don't have them. Yep. Yep. And as long as you have your master, that is the master for that part, then you calibrate it as much as you like. Yeah. So that's what I'm working on.
00:46:47
Speaker
Love it. Yeah. That's a fun time. All right. Cool. I will see you next Wednesday. Awesome. Have a great day. Bye.