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#359 The inverse of the Rule Of Pi
439 Plays1 year ago
TOPICS:
- Grimsmo's new knife has a blade!
- Saunders yard sale! Sat April 13, 2024
- inverse of the Rule Of Pi
- Programming on the Horizontal
- Having a hard time selling 2 Haas machines
- carbon fiber double tape method
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Episode Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, Episode 359. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Sodders. This is the weekly podcast where John and John talk about their growth journeys and future visions and present challenges of running their ever-growing manufacturing companies.
Valentine's Day Drive and Shop Observations
00:00:19
Speaker
It's funny, I was driving through town. Yesterday was Valentine's, there are today's Valentine's Day. Yesterday I went to the flower store downtown.
00:00:27
Speaker
There's this machine shop called Universal Tool and Die that I drove by and it's beautiful signage out front and I'm looking at the building and I don't know why it's always empty. There's no cars in the parking lot. Maybe they park out back. Anyway, I'm like, dude, our shop's twice that big. That place is funny. Our shop is twice that big.
Reflections on Machine Shops and Tools
00:00:48
Speaker
I've put a big piece of pride in my ...
00:00:52
Speaker
Yeah, no, for sure. I remember vividly being on the train. I don't remember whether it was Metro North back in the commuter days or just Amtrak on the East Coast, but I took it enough to where it would blow by. I think it was a manufacturing company, not like a job shop, machine shop, but if the lighting was right and the speed of the train was right, you could see through a window and you could see
00:01:16
Speaker
vertical machining centers inside. This is this is back when I had, you know, a tag, maybe a tormach. And okay, I like, you know, I wanted in the worst way. This is kind of embarrassing to say, like, I wouldn't buy a cat 40 holder to own one and see what it felt like. Like, that's a crazy thing to me. And every time that train would go by that I tried to like, look in just like, yeah, they think that there's somebody that's driven by your shop, maybe and felt that way.
Invisibility and Contentment of Their Shop
00:01:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:42
Speaker
You haven't seen the new show at all. I don't think you've been up here since many years. From the front, you can't see anything. It's a white building record. That's it. You have no idea. Our sign is not even out front. We are hidden in the background and I like that actually. It's really cool. Cool. How are you doing? What's new?
Knife Making Process and Challenges
00:02:06
Speaker
What's good new? Happy Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day.
00:02:13
Speaker
Let's see what's new, what's new. Making really good progress on the new knife. Put up a video yesterday. Made the blade in the soft condition and then we heat treated it and I think this morning Angelo is surface grinding it.
00:02:28
Speaker
hard, which we don't normally do. Normally we lap them hard, but you need usually four blades to lap. I only have two and I have to make these carrier rings to be able to hold them in the lapping machine. So I haven't done that yet. So Angela's just like, I'll surface grind them no problem.
00:02:45
Speaker
So he's doing that this morning. And then the next step is to make the button, which will be a Willimon project. And the button is when everything starts to come together and see if the lock actually works, see if my theory geometry design is actually going to function. Because fun fact, the first button, the first Norseman ever made was a button lock. And it didn't work at all.
Button Lock Design in Knives
00:03:08
Speaker
It didn't stay open. It didn't stay closed. I got the geometry completely wrong. It's just wrong.
00:03:14
Speaker
Um, so I've given up on button locks since then until now. And I think my theory is correct, but I won't like, I need to feel it to put the parts together. And so, you know, I'm not a knife guy, button lock is just some sort of a defense detent or interference. Obviously, unless you press a spring loaded button, like a switchblade will have like a click button down. Um, but there's no, no spring to switch the blade out. So.
00:03:39
Speaker
the button, if you push it down, it'll unlock the blade and the blade will sweep freely. Okay. And there will still be a flipper tab on it like all of our knives.
00:03:47
Speaker
And the trick is getting the closed detent feel of that button to flip the blade out really crisply and smoothly. And then when the blade is in the open position, that button springs up, and there's a three degree taper on the button itself that matches with the three degree taper on the blade to lock the blade in the open position, theoretically. Wow. Yeah, that's, I assume,
00:04:13
Speaker
The hardness, relative hardness matters. Yeah. I'm going to make it out of 17.4, which is 45 Rockwell, and the blade's 61. So I don't know if I have to make it out of a 60 Rockwell kind of steel. We'll see. I'll make it out of 17.4, and we'll see how it performs. And if it starts eating itself up, then we're like, OK, let's move to whatever, 440C or something like that.
Precision Work and CNC Maintenance
00:04:38
Speaker
Heat treat it.
00:04:40
Speaker
Robin Renzetti put up an Instagram yesterday and you know, God bless Robin for doing what he doesn't share and what he shares because, you know, as much as it's inspiring, it's also horribly intimidating because he has a, I don't know if it's a two or three axis open knee mill, kind of like a Bridgeport prototype. I'm not sure which the example is. And the table's off of it and he's got this ball screw.
00:05:04
Speaker
Yeah, it looks like it's five feet long and not a narrow diameter. I mean, maybe inch, inch and a half. He's got all the balls out of the truck. What do you call it? The ball nut. The ball nut, yep. He's talking comfortably about how the two to... What was it? Like two to three thou of table backlash. That's a slop, yeah.
00:05:27
Speaker
was because the one eighth inch balls had worn by almost a foul. And so buying new balls on size, putting them back in is, you know, just kind of a like tisk task. Like, yeah, like I just popped a microwave lunch in the microwave. Like, Oh, we'll be back up and running now.
00:05:45
Speaker
What really got me was that he could confidently say with his experience that the ball screw and the track in the ball nut had not worn. And he said there's no deformation, there's no branelling or whatever. He's like, anybody can measure that the balls are smaller, but he's confident enough to know that the screw and the track are fine. Do you remember how he said that? I forget exactly. OK. But it was something like that. I might rewatch that.
00:06:16
Speaker
Yeah, it was really cool. I mean, have you ever taken a ball nut apart?
00:06:21
Speaker
intentionally or accidentally. Back when we had the hobby stuff, I'm sure one of those 12 or 16 millimeter China specials just fell apart, but that's not really totally apples to apples with a T-H-O-K. Yeah, exactly. Back in the day, building the Grizzly X2 Mini Mill CNC conversion, this is like 2008 is when I first did it.
00:06:49
Speaker
There was a lot of talk about that, like how to buy the cheapest ball screw and pack it with, you know, balls that are two tenths oversized to get less backlash. So I definitely did a lot of research way back then.
Saunders Machine Works Yard Sale
00:06:59
Speaker
And I did buy, you know, the five tenths over balls and I, you know, you alternate them. Like every other ball is a different size. So I did play with that back then, but ever since it's like.
00:07:10
Speaker
Thankfully, we just buy better and better equipment. We don't have to think about that anymore. In the vein of taking a trip down memory lane,
00:07:21
Speaker
I realized the absolute best way to put a icing on the proverbial cake of wrapping up a one year plus cleanup project is to have a yard sale. So this is my formal ish announcement that on Saturday, April 13th,
00:07:41
Speaker
We at Saunders Machine Works are going to have a machine shop yard sale. The list, I'll put more up on Instagram as we get tables set up, which I'm actually planning to start laying out the items because it'll just visually help me see what we have. Let me do a page on your website for this.
00:07:57
Speaker
You guys actually have a good point. I should, because it's Tormach tooling, it's micrometers, calipers, lots of raw material, our old DeWalt chop saw. We don't use any more old strike bark targets, a flex arm, some firearms. Strike bark targets? Like functionings? Nah, they need new battery. If you want some battery, they should work. Totally.
00:08:16
Speaker
There's a good example. I don't know exactly what I'm going to price everything at, but the goal at the end of the day is to not have anything here. Strike 20 years ago, a functioning strike market target was like $1,000. I will probably list them for $100, maybe $50. They need a $20 battery. It's AR500. The goal is
00:08:36
Speaker
It needs to be gone. They're really fun to shoot. I shot them when I went down with you. It's like, this is how life should be. This is cool. I'll keep a couple because they're fun to shoot and nostalgia. I've got nine of them and I haven't used them in nine years. Time to go.
00:08:55
Speaker
And then just a bunch of shop stuff that's kicking around. Cutting, carbide cutting tools galore. Yeah. Just vices. And so I've reached out for the folks that have seen our videos over the years. Paul Diebolt is a local machinist as well.
00:09:12
Speaker
I can't vouch that he's going to attend, but he's going to bring over the day before he says he's going to bring over a pallet of some work holding stuff that he'd like to get rid of. So I'll probably try to round up some other local friends and folks, kind of a more the merrier, bring a sit at the table, come, you know, hang out, swap meet. And like, you know, there's a couple of things I want to try to get a reasonable price for because they have certain value. But otherwise, like the goal is, I was kind of like, if I wanted 50 bucks for something, and it's
00:09:41
Speaker
It's three o'clock and it hasn't sold. We're going to start cutting the product. Exactly. I like that a lot. Yeah. I'm going to be there barring any catastrophes. I want to be there bringing them to the kids and just make a nice weekend out of it. Thank you. I'm excited to see it. Yeah, I'm excited to see that too.
Community Support and Giving Back
00:10:00
Speaker
It sounds like it'll be a really fun event.
00:10:02
Speaker
Because I'll see what I can bring, what I can cross the border with, what I can sell in a different country kind of thing. But I'm sure I've got good stuff that we just don't need anymore. We're just not using, which I'd rather see it go to a good home with most things. But it's not painful enough to put up an eBay posting.
00:10:22
Speaker
Oh, no, exactly. Exactly. We've got six inch vices. We've got four inch vices. I've got like all that stuff where you know, I just it's like already feels therapeutic.
00:10:35
Speaker
When I was starting, and thankfully I was already doing the YouTube videos, but I had my grizzly mini-mill and this guy from Calgary, I think, I don't remember who or where or whatever, but he sent me a packed box full of carbide end-mills from his big fancy machine shop that had been used, but me in 2008, 9, 10, whatever, looks at these and they're like,
00:10:58
Speaker
brand new. Why'd they stop using them? And we have a mountain of those end mills that look brand new, but they are worn out, they're chipped in their mic. But as a beginner, that free box of end mills set me up. I felt so, it's like you holding that cat 42 holder. I just want to be a part of that world.
00:11:17
Speaker
Yes. And maybe this is a small opportunity for us to do that for other up and coming new makers. You got something for a steel that's going to change your life. But make an impact. Be useful. And things that are no longer useful for us, that can absolutely be useful to the next up and comers. Love it.
00:11:38
Speaker
Yeah, so thank you for, I mean, I'm excited. I haven't seen you in a while. And I guess we haven't seen each other at our relative home bases. Yeah, we've always seen peers or something. Pre-COVID, right? We always see each other on the road. So I guess if you want to come buy something from John or John,
Optical Comparator Maintenance
00:12:00
Speaker
come put on your calendar in Zanesville, Ohio on Saturday, April 13th. Yeah. I'm going to need to bring cash, although the goal is not to walk away with stuff you don't need. Amen to that. You already bought an optical comparator, right? Yes. And we've got a really nice one locally. You have one, right? It'll be at the sale. Yeah. I won't be needing that because ours has the five-digit micron digital scales on it, the glass scales.
00:12:31
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that's awesome. It's got hide and hide scales on it. That's nice. Yeah, it's super nice. And our new guy, Jeff, that's on the lathe, he's never really used an optical more than just a couple times. And Pierre showed him how to use it and showed him how. And he's like, oh, for the parts we make, this is the tool to measure these features and these diameters. And yes, so he's really enjoying that tool.
00:12:53
Speaker
Yeah, awesome. Except ours is 20 plus years old, probably from the late 90s, in really good condition. But we had the stare at guy come by because he's kind of local to us. So he came by, got to the shop, looked at the comparator and we're like, well, you're here. Can you just look this over?
00:13:11
Speaker
And it tends to burn out light bulbs. I don't know if the wiring or the transformer or something is just overcurrenting these light bulbs, but they tend to burn out in like weeks and they're not cheap. What kind of, is this not a LED, a bull light bulb? Yeah, it's like an incandescent. And they're like, I don't know, they're not, they're not free cheap. They cost some money each to get that size that fits in.
00:13:35
Speaker
But I thought about LED upgrades, but you need a good optical quality to cast the light to the reflector. And then also, it's got this huge glass mirror in the back that's at a 45 degree that bounces the light into your viewfinder. And it's like a 12-inch diameter mirror, silver-coated mirror. And we looked inside, and it's all covered in dust. And it's just old, right? Which affects the clarity of your image, of your shadow.
00:14:04
Speaker
And so we asked the guy and he's like, Okay, these older mirrors, like, you're gonna want it, you're gonna be tempted to clean it. But that silver foil on there might peel right off. Oh, my god. Like, ideally, don't clean it or test in a corner spot test, whatever. Don't just attack it with Windex in a paper towel, because you might trash it. So like, we're using it, we have it, it's not bad, but it would be a lot nicer if it was crisp.
00:14:26
Speaker
I would half jokingly have serious call up like a local art museum and ask if they're one of their conservator or story people wants to come down and help out. Interesting, yeah. That's a good idea. The other thought is it must be possible to get it re-silvered.
00:14:47
Speaker
It's a mirror. I don't know. Can you do a mirror shop? Sounds expensive. Yeah. I don't know. Angela and I were just talking about that yesterday. Otherwise, we use it every day. Do you leave the bulb on all day long? We have done that because one theory is bulbs die turning them on and off more than actually leaving them on. It's like you ever see that light bulb that's been on for 100 plus years at this fire station somewhere?
00:15:16
Speaker
I don't, I don't understand the shot. I watched that video last night.
00:15:20
Speaker
I had no idea. It was the Veracium channel, Veritasium. Veritasium, yeah. I was something about why we can't have nice things, William and I. Right, yeah. I remember that video. It's like some California fire station that has a pre, before the Philips and GE got together to collude on making light bulbs junk so that we had to buy them more often. This is freaking me. That's funny timing. Well, anyway, after watching that video, it's an older video I saw it a while ago.
00:15:50
Speaker
We're like, okay, let's leave it on. Still burns out in a month or something like that. I wonder if you could do an ACE, is there, this is really dumb question, there is AC PWM, right? That's not just the DC thing. I think the bulb is 12 volt DC. Whoa, what even easier, you definitely PWM it. Okay. To like just reduce the- To dim it. I'm not like a electronics or a bulb expert on that. It could be even worse where you're like thermal, like shocking the on off at microseconds.
00:16:18
Speaker
But yeah, I wonder if the power is over current or inconsistent current, like if the transformer is, you know, I don't know. Yeah. But
Machine Troubleshooting and Customization
00:16:30
Speaker
yeah. Hmm.
00:16:31
Speaker
Yeah, I looked into LED upgrades, and I've tried. Pierre had this Olight flashlight that he wrapped like half a roll of green tape around so that the butt was big enough to fit into the lens where the light usually comes out. And that was his personal flashlight, so he took that with him recently. And he would use that flashlight as his beam reflector in the optical. And it worked very well. It was more of a spot.
00:16:57
Speaker
Then it was a flood over the whole thing, but it worked. We're playing with ideas. You own a 3D printer. Just buy a Cree LED thing. Yeah, exactly. Here I am encouraging you to DIY. No, I know. I think I've already bought those parts actually.
00:17:16
Speaker
Well, so on that note, there's the kind of getting serious here. There's something to be said for as a leader, having to discipline to fix things that need fixed, and not just talk about them or think about them. And I'm, you know, I'm guilty of living in both camps. But um,
00:17:33
Speaker
I sat down, I was a surgeon. And like, well, it's funny, you have the rule of pi where things take you three times longer. There's an inverse of that as well, which is where you psych yourself out about something. And when you actually sit down and spend 20 minutes on it, it's actually not that big a deal.
00:17:51
Speaker
The example here was I wanted our, what we'll do a YouTube video on this with all of the actual information for folks that may want to replicate it, but I don't want our Akuma to run if somebody has intentionally or accidentally hit the all coolant off button, which will leave off. We've ruined a drill once and it was only a matter of time, given how much we run that machine.
00:18:19
Speaker
I'm not going to go through all the iterations of ways I thought about trying to solve this. I realized when you hit that button, a little light turns on on the keypad. It's like one of those double buttons that has a blight on it. I had been told that Okuma allows you to read the state of that LED.
00:18:41
Speaker
What I didn't know was the, I think it's like hexadecimal value of that, how to address that. I found this out through a Okuma guy now, Charlotte, then an Instagram follower sent us a similar example, but it was a strong code. Then the apps guy sent us a program that you can run that shows you what is being kind of like an IO monitor that shows you what the port guide is.
00:19:03
Speaker
And so that's all it took. It took me five minutes to install that program. Then I pushed the button. I got the fourth string, like O-V-E-F or whatever, like alpha numeric string. I wrote that in a little post processor mod. And all that does now is an option stop with a big message that pops up that says, please turn coolant on. It allows you to hit cycle start to go through and continue because there are situations where you actually want to do that. But every time a tool change comes up,
00:19:32
Speaker
that you still have that button on, it's going to option stop and tell you that. And if you turn it, if you turn the button off, the string cool back on, it goes back to be normal. And it's done. It works great.
Procrastination and Productivity Strategies
00:19:44
Speaker
I love it. I love it. Yeah, that's perfect. It lets you force through the the rare error because in that case, you're standing there, you're watching it. Even if it waits at the next tool change as you're going to the bathroom or something like that's okay, because you're doing this on purpose. I love that. That's perfect. We're great.
00:20:02
Speaker
And, uh, was it, I had a similar example where the inverse of the rule of pi, I like that because I do psych myself out of, um, you know, tasks, 20 minute tasks that I, ah, it's going to take, um, put it off, put it off, put it off. It's going to take so long. And I had a couple this past week, actually, where I was like, okay.
00:20:23
Speaker
calm down, how long is it actually gonna take you? I think I can do it in 15 minutes. What are you waiting for? You know, okay, I'm doing it tonight.
00:20:34
Speaker
And one of them was, I think in the past couple of weeks, we've talked about the fixtures in the speedio that grind the blades and how as I make multiples of them, there are slight differences between them and we want to CMM scan those. So I ended up buying a manual base for the Aroa that we can mount on the CMM.
00:20:56
Speaker
so that we can take a fixture off of the Kern or the speedio and put it right onto the CMM, lock it down and have Angela's learning how to create basically a G54 for the CMM that pallets can load onto because up till now we're probing every fixture, every part and creating its own work offset. He's learning how to set that origin basically.
00:21:19
Speaker
In my head, this big task was like, first, get the CAD models from the supplier for these bases, and then also put together packages. So it's like fixture base plus my machining fixture as one file, fixture base by itself as one, just models that get sent to the CMM so that Intel can have the physical CAD models.
00:21:45
Speaker
yada, yada, little things. And it took me 20 minutes. I thought it would take 15. It took me 20. And I was like, done. And there were a couple other examples, some programming, engraving things that I've been putting off, putting off. And yeah, I got them done in no time. And I've been putting them off for weeks and weeks. And I was like, no, no, that's over. Those are many, not to kind of steal your progress here, those are kind of like many days off in the shop, like, okay, just stop what you're doing, charge your phone for half an hour, you get a lot done.
00:22:13
Speaker
Yep. Actually, I bought, I've been getting into watches lately, dangerously, like old vintage watches. And in the thrift store, because my daughter loves to go to the thrift store, I found a stopwatch, a Minerva 1950s stopwatch for, was it $40 or something? And I was like, yes.
00:22:33
Speaker
So I bought it for myself for Christmas, but it's really cool mechanical softwatch. You got to wind it up, click, stop, repeat, um, reset. And so I use that now for my, um, 15 minute tasks, just cause it's kind of fun. You hear clicking and, uh, it's what is it? It's a 15 minute, um,
00:22:54
Speaker
counter. After 15 minutes, it loops around and repeats times. It really sucks for recording several hours of whatever because you lose track of how many. It doesn't tick up an hour meter, if you will,
Programming and Machining Efficiency
00:23:11
Speaker
or anything. The second hand, it's not 60, it's zero to 30. One minute is two full revolutions because that gives you tighter resolution for 10 seconds, stopwatch kind of thing.
00:23:23
Speaker
It's meant more for a runner's lap timer or swim timer or something like that. Not so much for recording a 30-minute work sesh. But anyways, super fun. Are you going to take it apart? I've opened the back. I've looked inside. It's in fantastic condition. So I don't need to take it apart. But the watch I'm wearing, the 1940s long jeans, I do need to take that apart and learn how it works and oil it and clean everything.
00:23:52
Speaker
That'll be a fun journey. Two or three months ago, I got into this guy for a short period of time called Wristwatch Revival. Yes. I've been watching a lot of his videos. Yeah. For sure, not my thing. I'm not a watch guy. They're so watchable. They're like hour-long videos deconstructing a 1940s Rolex or something, cleaning it, and he explains it really well.
00:24:19
Speaker
Insanely beautiful videos like yeah, and so simple the concept but oh, I don't know about that. I know but he's crushing it It's very enjoyable videos. Yeah, they really are. It's it's like a good way to waste an hour
00:24:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's like relaxing, it's intriguing. I watch it go to sleep sometimes if I just need something. Yeah, it's easy. Yeah, it's fun. Cool. So similarly of like not psyching yourself out over the burden of a task, we've started to rethink some of the programming on our horizontal.
00:24:56
Speaker
So for example, mod vice top shawls, we run op ones eight at a time using dual station mod vices, works great. Today, in the last two years, we've had each of those eight top shawls as an individual offset.
00:25:13
Speaker
and that works fine. You program it once in Fusion, you in the setup eight, you know, post that eight times and it posts out G54 through whatever that would be. It's different in a hospital or a Kuma world, but you guys have a pattern.
00:25:28
Speaker
That's the beauty, you don't have to do it as a pattern because you're just, it would be under, I'll pull it up here while we're talking, but it would be the, under the setup, you would post it multiple times. I mean, get the correct nomenclature here, so I'm not. So I don't think I've really done that.
00:25:47
Speaker
Are you serious? Well, I don't know if I've needed to. Oh, I guess, okay. So what you do under a Fusion 360 setup is you would right click on the setup and this is me talking slowly so I can try to get it open. Nope, and sorry folks.
00:26:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's like, can you just share your screen with the podcast here? I would if I could post process, you can say machine WCS and you can check. Yeah, I've seen the CS offsets. And so that will just it'll post the exact same thing to every offset you
00:26:28
Speaker
Oh. So when you click that, does it open up a range that you tell it to? So you pick the starting number, and then you say, I want eight of them starting at G54. You don't, to my knowledge, have the ability to pick a random selection. I don't know why you do that anyways.
00:26:45
Speaker
Interesting. Yeah, I don't think I've ever done that. The downside of that is I have to take eight offsets on the machine. I've just used eight offsets in perpetuity. Now, we have 200 offsets, which sounds like a lot. That's a lot, yeah. But it's actually not a lot relative to having 24 different, quote unquote, tables, if you will, on a horizontal plus.
00:27:08
Speaker
I don't like offsets. They are unbelievably important to the safety and operation of the machine, but the way FANUCs and AHASAs and Okumas store offsets, you don't get to put a meta field or description field saying what it was for, when it was last updated or what the history was before.
00:27:26
Speaker
Yeah, God bless them. Oh, that's great. Like limited characters, call it 20 characters, but it's... Yeah, I can say Norseblades. I can say, you know, Rask thing, engrave this. And on the current, I can as well. But on most fanic machines and this video and stuff, you just can't and it's so limiting.
00:27:45
Speaker
Yeah, when you can find yourself in a situation where it's like, okay, offset 173 has values in it. Who knows if any of the 50 programs that we regularly run use it. Now, we actually do have a way of figuring it out, but it's not great. It's like you need to keep what we actually do is keep a spreadsheet live with all the updates, but you're now corroborating.
00:28:09
Speaker
There's all sorts of risks around that, whether that's accurate info. So I started to change it because these are op one parts. There's net material on sides and tops. You don't need your probed offset to be in any way perfect. And it actually ends up being quite repeatable to the point where it probably is quote unquote perfect.
00:28:28
Speaker
went into Fusion, I did this the right way. I created a single sketch. On that sketch, I have the location of the first part, which will be my G54, if you will, or main, where I actually probe. And then I create points that are spaced over and down to give me center points across the other seven parts, eight parts. I then, in Fusion,
00:28:53
Speaker
start copying and joining the other seven instances of the CAD data to those locations. And then they're all slaved to that sketch. So if I needed to adjust something, I have one sketch where I could move it, say, over or down. So you're not doing a pattern each. Hold on. Wait. Yeah, I don't follow yet.
00:29:14
Speaker
Well, so just think about laying playing cards out on a table. Just lay them out in a grid. So all I'm going to do is probe the top left deck of playing cards. The other seven should be in the same place every time because we're using mod vices on fiction plates. They don't really move. But you want that ability to adjust something if you had to. So I have a sketch that has the points of those other, the center points of the other seven things.
00:29:38
Speaker
I then like theoretical like eight inches over four inches down or more realistic like what what's probed once the first time on a machine. I set it up. Well, they've been set up for years. I just measured it real quick to the I rounded to 10,000 increments. Okay, just like 3.62 over actually ends up being 7.5 inches down because of the fixture plate spacing gives it an even integer down. Got it. Yeah. So then I
00:30:01
Speaker
create a bunch of CAD copies and link them, join them, excuse me, to each of the locations. So now I have a CAD file that has, it looks like the fixture, it looks like the actual physical setup of the machine. And then in Fusion, there's a, ooh, you got this right, there's a component, let's see here, top jaw, one. It is a component pattern, I believe, which,
00:30:27
Speaker
I like a lot better than the rectangular pattern where in the pattern instance itself you have to, I was wrong, excuse me, it is what's called a cam duplication pattern. And what you do is you pick a specific point on the main object, so like the center of a hole, and then you pick the same point on the other seven instances and it knows enough to move all of your cam duplicated over to all of them.
00:30:56
Speaker
Interesting. So it's a pattern operation, but the pattern style is not circular, rectangular. Bingo. It's component based. It's kind of solid model. Sketch. Yeah, you can still pick order by toolpath or whatever, right?
00:31:13
Speaker
What works out really well for these parts as well is because to date we were face milling each one individually. It happened to work because we had enough clearance for the face mill. The better way to do it, which we can now more easily do, is to actually program sketches for the face mills to go full. The face mill itself is actually not patterned.
Swiss Lathe Learning Experiences
00:31:35
Speaker
Yeah, I've done that.
00:31:37
Speaker
So last night I needed to do that on another part and I'm like, oh man, we got to go out to dinner in 20 minutes or something. And you just sat down and you do this in like 14 minutes. It's kind of a big deal. Yeah. That's cool. I like that a lot. Yeah. What have you been up to? What's on top of mind?
00:32:01
Speaker
I would say teaching Jeff the Swiss lathe, but more observing him learn his way through the Swiss lathe, which is cool. I'll check in a couple times a day. Yesterday, it was setting sub-spindle G55 offset and setting a couple new tools. And it's weird on a Swiss because there's no home. There's no origin. There's a G54 and a G55, but you kind of just make them up in space.
00:32:30
Speaker
Like you put your turning tool in and you turn the end of the bar and that's your C zero. Okay. And then all other tools have to relate to that. So you basically shouldn't touch every tool based on that on the sub. It's kind of the same thing. You make half a part, you put it some, some spindle collets or extended nose, some are stubby nose, some are middle range, half inch point one eight kind of thing.
00:32:52
Speaker
So you make half a part and you go over and you go to the sub facing tool and you walk it in and you face it. And that's now your tool offset. And then every tool gets shim touched to the part after that. Anyway, he did it the way he thought it was supposed to be done. And I happened to come in when he was kind of slowly, you know, running the first face cut, whatever. And he's watching the distance to go.
00:33:16
Speaker
remaining distance thing and it looks like about three quarters of an inch and it says 1.9 inches distance to go. We're watching it. We're both going, okay, bring it a little bit closer. That's an inch. No, 1.9, why? That's where I left yesterday and I'll have to check with him today to see if he figured out where the mistake was.
00:33:39
Speaker
At first, he was doing that for a new tool that he set up, so a lot of new stuff. And I was like, how about do the same thing to an existing tool that didn't change, that should still be the same? And he did that. I watched him do that last night. And it still gave a weird number. So it's like, OK, that proves something's weird. I don't know what the answer is. I'm going home to buy flowers. But let me know tomorrow how it figures out. So it's fun.
00:34:05
Speaker
That's great. Yeah. When Pierre was here last week training him, they set up a bunch of different parts just to get used to doing changeovers and setups and things like that.
Haas Machine Maintenance and Sales Challenges
00:34:15
Speaker
Then he set up the smallest part that we make, which is by far the smallest part that he's ever made.
00:34:20
Speaker
Um, it's a tiny little stubby screw that holds the lock, the hardened locks, bar insert into the handle. So it's a four 40 screw, but it has like literally one thread of thread on it. The head diameter is 0.15 inch. The whole screw is probably an eighth of an inch long, maybe a little bit longer. What's the fast, like is it a Torx? Uh, yes. Torx machined into the end. What Torx number is that? Torx nine T nine.
00:34:51
Speaker
Really? We use T6s reluctantly on face mills, which I hate. T9 is pretty big. Milling that. It was a 20 thou end mill. He made that tiny part. He made probably close to a thousand of them and now it's time to the new setup. It's good. That's awesome. That's fun.
00:35:18
Speaker
What else do I say? Oh, sort of a PSA. We, like many, I think other Haas owners, jeez, six months, a year ago, kind of went through this whole, yeah, not good situation with many Haas machines that had the
00:35:34
Speaker
purple grease, which got switched like a tan grease, and some was hardening, sometimes it was no big deal, but the consequences were crummy if it didn't, if you happen to be in a scenario for whatever reason, the grease would harden up and then starve your linear motion components of lubricant, so.
00:35:50
Speaker
We had all of our machines switched over to what I believe has now been kind of the run rate scenario where they're using an oil instead of a grease. And you had to change an orifice, I think, and add check valves. Kind of one of those like no big deals if you fixed it proactively. But the PSA is we have a note to check our weight covers periodically.
00:36:16
Speaker
And so we got lucky, frankly, that on one of our machines, one of the axises just didn't look great. And sure enough, we had just run out of oil in the canister. And the PSA is, for years, we always got a controller warning when the grease level was low and we didn't here. And I'd like to think that
00:36:41
Speaker
That was a fluke, but I don't trust it. So we just put a maintenance note in Lex where every month or two we just check or top off the canister oil level. But I would encourage everybody to just take a quick look and make sure because it's a really, really unfortunate way to potentially trash a perfectly good machine. Yeah, absolutely. You'll need oversized ball screws, ball screw balls.
00:37:06
Speaker
No, I need to compel Robin to visit Zanesville. That's beyond my, that's a comfortable one for me to say. Yeah, exactly. Outside of my know how. Yeah. While we haven't quite gotten to the maintenance schedule stage yet, it's something we talk about a lot. We've been meaning to put in. Angelo is really good about doing a walk around with the guys and walk all the way around the machine, look at all the things, look for leaks, look for empty, spindle oils, things like that. Get the whole team to kind of
00:37:36
Speaker
take more ownership pride in their, the machine that they're in charge of kind of thing. And it's like, this is your baby. If your car runs out of oil, it's your fault. You know, it's like, yeah.
00:37:47
Speaker
Keep an eye on it kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. Actually, now that you said it, I wish those canisters had sight glasses in them. They don't, so you have to unscrew it and check. Add a sight glass. I don't know. I guess you could because it's not fresh. Well, I'm not going to do that. I'll put it that way. If somebody sold a retrofit canister, that'd be a great product idea right there. Yeah.
00:38:10
Speaker
On that note, half sharing, half soliciting here, but we have not succeeded in selling our two Haas machines. When they've been with a broker now, Clark Machinery, ST20Y, UMC 500 with Paletteful.
00:38:29
Speaker
Both machines are very good, common machines. The only reason we're selling them is that we're aligning down our training program, unfortunately, at least for the time being, but super low hours. They're about one year old. I mean, very low hours. Yeah. The UMC has the pallet pool, so it's different than just a standalone UMC. I think it's a good thing, but more money, more space. Anyway. Is it the 500 or the 300 UMC?
00:38:54
Speaker
500. Okay. UMC 500 SS with a 10 pallet pool, well optioned, all that. So I told the broker, hey, let's give it another couple of weeks with them because I was happy to pay them their fee and let them take care of it. But yeah, the fee is not zero. And so I think
00:39:13
Speaker
on the market seller. We have reason to believe that our pricing is absolutely in line, but they also haven't sold. So if they don't sell, I'm considering taking them back, well, like figuratively taking them back and selling them to where basically like, I was kind of laughing again. It's like every day I dropped the price $250, like just, you know. So if anyone's listening as well,
00:39:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's either price or eyeballs, you know, the amount of the right person at the right time at the right choice kind of thing. You could try different brokers. I mean, I've been chatting with the guys from CNC machines.com. You could try. I don't know.
00:39:56
Speaker
It was a weird time right at the beginning of the year, holidays, new budgets. We lost one captive buyer because they couldn't get private financing to buy ours. And of course, Haas can step in and finance anything because they own the collateral, which is a smart business tactic by Haas.
00:40:18
Speaker
but that also kind of told me, okay, price isn't wrong. It was just, that was a quarter of the lending markets right now. So yeah. The point is they will sell. I'm not gonna, there's zero chance they are here in three months. Like they have to be sold for what they sell for.
Superglue Adhesion Issues and Solutions
00:40:33
Speaker
Nice. Nice. Nice. Um, question for you since I'm, um, I don't want to say blaming you for this method, but I'm, I'm, um, using your method of the,
00:40:48
Speaker
What do you call it? The green powder coating tape on the fixture, on the part, and then super glue in the middle. That's how we're laying down our carbon fiber and our G10 and things like that in the Speedy O2 machine. I'm getting really good adhesion to the fixture, really good adhesion to the part, bad super glue adhesion. That's the part that fails every time, and I'm losing parts. I'm losing sheets because that super glue will fail, and then the part kind of flaps around, and then it reeks all havoc, and I break $100 end mill.
00:41:17
Speaker
Sure. I'm frustrated with that method because it's not living up to what I need it to. I don't know if I need a different glue, a different tape method. I'm just throwing it out there because even last night, Claire and I came in late to finish up these inlays that were running. I think there were 45 inlays on the sheet. I probably lost more than half of them before the end of the run. The inlays are small. No.
00:41:47
Speaker
maybe two square inches. It's like a stick of chewing gum though, right? It's not. Yeah, pretty much like tiny. Exactly. Not tiny, tiny. And it's, it's the glue itself that's failing, not the tape bond. Are you we're not scuffing up the tape as we glue them. Maybe we should. No, we shouldn't have to. Are you using a particular brand of superglue? It's a medium CA glue happens to be a made in Canada brand. There's your problem.
00:42:15
Speaker
Okay. The spray activator, so you spray activator on one side of the part, you superglue on the other. We ended up using a business card to distribute the medium superglue evenly because otherwise you have strips. Sure. That helped, but still, is it too brittle? Is it too something?
00:42:36
Speaker
Um, what seems odd is the method is quote unquote, quote unquote proven to work pretty well in other applications. Even like our makers and you know, they use it for inlays, all kinds of stuff. So am I doing it wrong? I don't know. What I would try is.
00:42:55
Speaker
consider ditching the activator, that all that does is accelerates the cure, potentially at the compromising the strength, although superglue is so good, notwithstanding your situation that the compromise from accelerated doesn't seem to be an issue. But I would consider, it's kind of funny, you don't need a ton of superglue, but you do want it well
00:43:17
Speaker
distributed. So if you ditch the applicator, then you could put the super glue on like your toaster, your strudel, you know, just like whatever. Then you can take your sheets or your two parts together and you can really circular move them around. That's going to do a better job of distributing it than a business card. Then put something that's got some weight to it, you know, 40, 50 pounds if you can on for five minutes, 10 minutes.
00:43:45
Speaker
Because the sheets, they're either 12 by 12 or 6 by 12. You should be big surface area. But it's like a corner will peel up, even just sitting there curing. So it's spraying the applicator, the activator on one side and then the glue on the other. And as you squish them together, you're kind of assuming that glue is getting through the activator and sticking to the other side, right?
00:44:10
Speaker
I don't know where this where super glue fails. So the the guitar method, which is where we got this from was with painters tape, which is definitely cheaper than the powder coat tape. The problem with painters tape is that when it gets exposed to coolant or liquid, very much period of time, it will fail, which is one reason why you can consider using the Kapton tape instead. But
00:44:37
Speaker
The glue, like you said, shouldn't be the failing point unless there's liquid that's permeating it. When you cut them down, are you going, quote, unquote, all the way through by the end?
00:44:52
Speaker
So, but not until... Quickly in line, I would leave 10,000 on every single part and complete all the parts so that your shit is almost done before you come through and do that last little bit of machining away. That makes sense. I've played with different variations of that. Right now, I'm cutting all the way through, but I'm leaving 15,000 tabs, like a bunch of tabs around each part. Don't do that. Point being,
00:45:21
Speaker
I'm using the CVD diamond-coated end mills, which are not cheap. I tried your method first where I left 15,000 on the floor and then I just nipped down like 1,000 at a time or whatever it is, 5,000. Gently nip down the part so that there's no cutting load and get to the end. Because in my head, I'm like, that's a sweet way to do it. Then there's no load. It's not going to fly off, whatever. The problem is it wears down the tip of the end mill. Yeah, okay.
00:45:45
Speaker
the carbon is so abrasive that even a diamond coated end mill, it'll wear the coating right off the quarter rat of that end mill. And then now you have a tapered part because by the time you're at the bottom, it's, you know. So I'm not arguing with you. Yeah, no, I'm just playing it out. But I would at least try
00:46:03
Speaker
a different method to see if it helps you learn. So the reason to leave 10 thou on every part is two reasons, both of which are important. Number one, that means you always have the full surface area of the superglued surface, helping everything else out. The other reason which might be more important in your application is by not having machine through, you're minimizing the amount of time that there is cool and exposed to the stuff. Buy some Bob Smith Industries glue,
00:46:31
Speaker
That's what I used to use. This was just easier to get now.
00:46:37
Speaker
But buy some of that to try that. Don't use the accelerator. Yeah, this is my humble advice is this is very much a solvable problem. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it was neat last night. I was able to define it's the glue that's failing because the part flies off, the tape is still stuck on it. The tape is still stuck on the fixture. And you can see the glue residue left. And we're getting pretty even coverage now that we're spreading it out with the business card. But I like the no activator.
00:47:05
Speaker
Because it's not like we need this cured in a minute. It can sit for six hours for all I care.
Exploring Glue Options and Catalog Critique
00:47:12
Speaker
And since we can remove the pallet from the machine, we could put weight on it. We can do it, set it up properly. I like it. Do you have to use coolant? Yeah, the way we're filtering the dust and the coolant and stuff, yeah.
00:47:28
Speaker
I was going to say, even if you, I think it depends on kind of how close you want to get it, but you could even use coolant down to like 5,000, 7,000 left. And then the last little bit, if you could do it with air blast or nothing, you may not want to, but yeah. Interesting. Which would prevent the coolant from seeping under the part and causing a delamination or something like that. But, um,
00:47:55
Speaker
Yeah, we're getting good adhesion from the tape to the part. That's where I would most worry about coolant seeping in, but coolant seeping into the glued bond. It's not going to dissolve glue. I don't know. Shouldn't. You just use a coil like that? Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. I think there's something with the activator. That's my favorite.
00:48:16
Speaker
new idea so far. Yeah, like you should get going. I don't can't think of like the motion would be but like, you know, rubbing your belly like moving that and circling around with the activator, we don't have enough, we don't have enough time to do that. Yeah, you got seconds. Yeah. And without the activator, the medium glue, you should be able to sweep it around within, you know, 1020 seconds before it starts to harden up, square corners, put a bunch of weight on it.
00:48:45
Speaker
They make runnier glues because you don't get thick because you don't need a lot of ... You don't really need a lot of the adhesion here and you don't want thick stuff that's going to lift up and fill the gap and thin the well-distributed weight on it. The thinner it is, the faster it cures. It could be like a two second cure time. Is that true? Yeah, like 10 second cure time.
00:49:11
Speaker
I built a lot of model airplanes when I was a teenager. There should be a cryo expert. I mean, Bob Smith stuff's really good. Locktech makes some CAs. I thought there was run of your stuff that had 30 plus seconds, plenty of time to swish it around and then put some weight on it. The classic off the shelf Bob Smith stuff is like thin two seconds, medium eight seconds.
00:49:35
Speaker
Yeah, so maybe. And the more you deep into the Loctite-Hankle brand, there's a billion different glues and Loctites out there. It's kind of crazy. Yeah. Well, an area where I think McMaster has really done a great job at giving you good, reliable, concise information on different Loctite thread lockers, on Loctite bare entertaining compounds, on CA's, on epoxy. I never thought about buying glue from McMaster. I don't think I've looked at it. Oh, John, yeah. Yeah. The way to go.
00:50:03
Speaker
Um, last PSA as we wrap up, it was the, um, inventor captain guy, the guy who made pocket and see, um, on his score. Yeah. He, um, I met him at IMTS last year. He posted a story the other day with his whatever five year old son, looking through a McMaster catalog and say, tell me what you want. And I'm like, that is the greatest idea ever. I'm going to go to work and get my McMaster catalog that nobody ever looks at. And I'm taking it home and I'm showing life. So that's my reminder for today.
00:50:34
Speaker
we uh sad trombone we i felt like a hero felt like you know
00:50:39
Speaker
I had made it the first year I got a McMaster catalog because you can't ask for one. You've got to earn it. We've gotten it now for five years. I've never opened one. It came- It's fun the first time, but then- I emailed them and I was like, hey, love you guys, but please remove us from the mailing list because we were doing what other people do, which is give it away, but that's just a waste. Did it work? Did they actually stop sending you? Not like Uline that will never stop sending you.
00:51:05
Speaker
You, McMaster is the definition of a good company. They responded right away with no fast, no muscle. And like, I'm going to throw some shade at Helical. I like a lot of the stuff that Helical and Harvey do, but they are, we've asked them numerous times to remove people that used to work here. They don't work here, have worked here for years. They continue to not do that and they continue to send us
00:51:24
Speaker
like five or six or eight catalogs. We don't want them. It's a waste and it needs to stop. Like I don't make it. Like if you're, if you're need to market junk is more important than respecting, I don't want to throw it away. I don't want to see it in the mail. Yeah.
Bamboo 2D Color Printing Video Brief
00:51:41
Speaker
Cool. What do you do today that we need? Um, not sure yet. Honest answer. Okay. Okay.
00:51:54
Speaker
Ooh, more bamboo 2D color prints. We just put out a video showing what we learned. Cool. I'm sure there are people who know more and have even better workflows, but I also know that there will be people that learn something from the integration between Fusion and the bamboo software, how to pick height ranges. Shout out to you. And who was it? Was it? Grayson. Thank you. Who actually was a big part in one of those tips. And yeah, quality of life stuff here at the shop.
00:52:23
Speaker
Perfect. I'll see you next week. Take care. All right. Take care. Bye.