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Business of Machining - Episode 85
185 Plays7 years ago
Are you ready to talk technology and tools from IMTS with Saunders and Grimsmo?
I hope so! Because this episode gets nice and technical
The Johns are back from IMTS, inspired, and ready to get back to hustling. They’re happy they can pick up where they left off because of their awesome employees holding down their respective forts while they were gone, and keeping up with the daily grind and processes.
“Make the process the expert” - Grimsmo
Thanks for coming out to the Manufacturing/Entrepreneurship Summit! It was a blast!
In this episode Grimsmo and Saunders reflect on the event and wrap it up with some final thoughts on certain questions that were asked during the Q and A period.
Teaser: Their favourite part of IMTS was talking to and learning from the people, and it’s amazing to see how many parallels there are between entrepreneurs’ stories.
At the show there were plenty of machines of the future, but what about machines of their future? Still lots!
Grimsmo discusses Swiss Lathes and 5-Axis machining, and Saunders gives some tips on how to get the deepest of information about machines from company representatives at the show.
“It’s almost worth stretching the truth to get a deeper answer about a machine, even its based on a question about a fictional tool” - Saunders
Pro tip: Go to a machine show! Even if it's small, it’s a great place to meet like-minded people and get some answers first-hand.
Looking into a Microscope
Saunders debates getting a super cool microscope from Vision Engineering. Without the show, Saunders might never have found that company.
“Go outside your comfort zone and find something you never would have otherwise” - Saunders
Crush it this week!
Recommended
Transcript
Post-IMTS Recovery and Productivity
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machining episode 85. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo.
00:00:08
Speaker
Good morning. Good morning, buddy. How are you? I'm doing good. I mean, we're all in the post IMTS, you know, get back into business kind of mode. Yeah, is it recovery or is it inspiration slash crush it mode? Totally. I actually took a couple of days to recover. Luckily, it was like Friday I came to work half day and then weekend I spent with my family. I didn't even open up my computer or anything like that, which is nice.
00:00:38
Speaker
And then Monday was, you know, get back into the swing of things. And by Tuesday, I'm like, man, I got a hustle. Like I'm in it now. Go, go, go. Yeah. All right.
00:00:49
Speaker
I had a, my flight was Friday at 11, so kind of an awkward time, but I woke up at the, I stayed at a hotel out near the airport. So I woke up, you know, normal time at six or something or seven. And actually it was great because having like three hours to
00:01:09
Speaker
Just I actually I have no problem going to airports early I think some people think that that's like super uncool to do but I actually find it's generally very productive for me And so I needed that because I I just don't enjoy it that when wherever we're traveling at those trade shows I just don't enjoy getting back from the inevitable evening events or whatever and then sitting down and banging through emails and stuff so, you know, it's very much a catch-up day en route, which was great, but uh I'll tell you it was it was weird because
Adapting to Challenges During IMTS
00:01:40
Speaker
IMTS wasn't a vacation. I mean, it's fun, and I enjoy it, and it's traveling, but it wasn't a vacation. But more so, even than other vacations I've taken, I felt like this was a inspiration and refreshing actually break from, like I feel reinvigorated, not just because of like the energy of a trade show or seeing the people we met and talked to, but like, I just actually really enjoyed getting away. I don't know. Yeah, I totally agree.
00:02:09
Speaker
it's, I mean, it's clearly a work vacation. Like we are a way to hustle and learn. And I mean, I learned such an insane amount of knowledge and, and passion and information, but I wasn't worried to be away. I knew that everybody at the shop knew what they were going to do and they crushed it. And they were a little short handed because I wasn't here in skies back to school now for more than half the week. Um, so we're definitely feeling the short handedness, but man, like,
00:02:38
Speaker
everything still happened. And I wasn't worried at all to be away. So it was nice.
00:02:46
Speaker
At some point, our stories need to actually diverge because we have the exact same thing here. We had one individual who went back to school, so he's not working here any longer. And then we have another individual who is at school, so he's working less, but also different hours, like evenings, so forth. So it's funny because all of a sudden you have this relatively big shift in
00:03:10
Speaker
People power you know people you get so used to it like we were used to having five six full-time people Throughout the summer and then all of a sudden it kind of dwindles even by a little bit you feel it. Yeah
00:03:22
Speaker
For that, I want to come back to IMTS, but for that sort of scaling workflow of people in and out and different shifts and all that, to me, all the more reason why someone who is here needs to be able to quickly learn how to do different things, which means processes, organization, a rhyme and a reason to it, but also the ability for other people to teach that to the other person confidently and not have it just be some
00:03:52
Speaker
You know, train wreckable. What's, what do you do here? How do you do this? And when do you do this? But just being very, like it's, it's freaking awesome. Yep. Yep. Make the process the experts that people can transition in and out as they need to. Um, yeah. I think this came up at the M hub talk, but I think it's almost, it's almost like a process for processes. Yes. It's true. Well, there's, there's.
00:04:16
Speaker
how you operate your business, and then there's how you run your business. I guess they're two different. I don't know if that works, but you know what I mean? Like every task has its own little operation manual, but the business has its own operation manual too. Right, right. That's interesting, total way to think about it.
Benefits and Experiences of IMTS
00:04:33
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know if I put my finger on why it was great to be at IMTS. Again, not counting the awesomeness of being around the community of people and seeing this stuff. I think it may have been just
00:04:46
Speaker
taking a solid four or five days away from the daily grind of the shop, you know? Okay, so what's your post IMTS recap, post IMHUB recap for folks that didn't get to go?
00:05:03
Speaker
Yep. Um, we took a ton of video when I was there. So that'll all come up. Um, the M hub event was amazing. Thank you for setting it up and thank you to everybody who came out. I mean, this is such good energy in that room. And, uh, I was sort of surprised to be the first speaker. I was a little nervous going up, but yeah, it was really fun. And, uh, Pearson gave his awesome talk and,
00:05:30
Speaker
Did I heard something about food trucks, but then I never saw any food trucks. Yeah. I never made it out to the parking lot either. So were they there? They were there. Okay. Just totally missed that. I guess we were busy with speaking and all that, but it continued the, uh, it started the theme that continued all week, which is me not eating food because I'm so busy. I know. I know. Be lucky to get like,
00:05:55
Speaker
A tiny breakfast and then big dinner. Oh, yeah. That's true. Big dinner is good, but like every day during lunch, I'd be like, it'd be like one 45. I'd be like, I should really find a piece of pizza or pretzel to show them carry on. But I got, I got so much stuff to see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the M hub was awesome. And then, I mean, every night we're going out to dinner with multiple people, uh, hang out with the Autodesk people a lot, which was awesome. Um, you know, our little crew.
00:06:25
Speaker
Walking around, but met so many people, like, I don't know. What's your wrap up? That wasn't very full, but. No, no. Um, M hub was, was great. It's an amazing facility. It's an awesome energy. And to me, I just want to hang out with like, um, coming back from IMTS.
00:06:45
Speaker
is or any coming back from any event where I get to hang out with you guys in that crowd is always actually a little bit of an adjustment because you're around like literally the people I want to get stuck on the ship with like this exactly like I want to have these conversations I want to talk I want to learn and then you come back to you know your normal world of people that are good people but don't talk about entrepreneurship and CNC machine right so the mhub event embodied that
00:07:15
Speaker
And what I really like, I loved hearing your story, which I've known most of it, but what was really cool was, and we take for granted that people don't know this and there's no reason they should know it, but there were so many early parallels between your story, Jay Pearson's story,
00:07:35
Speaker
even Tim Paul from Autodesk, who now is a cam guy, but he has had an entrepreneurial past in writing a job shop and working for motorbike or excuse me, we call that mountain biking companies. And a little bit of our story, too. And that I think is really, really good, important stuff for people that are trying to get started or trying to navigate the waters of of manufacturing entrepreneurship to hear and see where where we all got to where we are now.
Personal Stories and Reflections
00:08:04
Speaker
Absolutely. I had a lot of people come up to me after my speech and say, oh my goodness, like copy and paste my story. I did this. I did this just like you did that. And it was really kind of humbling and like, wow. So, you know, finally sharing my full origin story. I mean, in my speech, for those of you who weren't there is basically from age 11 till about 2011.
00:08:29
Speaker
was my 45-minute speech. And 2011's when I started Grimsman Knives, and I kind of ran out of time to get into the Grimsman story, but that's fine. It was nice to be able to share the origin and, you know, how I grew up and how everything kind of interrelates to what I'm doing today.
00:08:48
Speaker
We had a lot of people mention to us in an oddly specific manner, the folks that would come up and find us at the show or even at mHub, and they would say, I'm where you were when you were in your apartment, or I'm where you are when you first got your tour marker. I'm where you are because we're now thinking about moving into our first VMC. It's so funny because it's almost like
00:09:10
Speaker
It's almost like they had this subconscious timeline. Like a roadmap. Yeah, and they're like, OK, well, we're about here. And it's a little bit weird because it's like, dude, you don't have to follow our paths. They're totally there. They're a path. But I think it's probably a decent kind of roadmap of not just where you're going, but the timing. You know, some people think we've gotten here quickly. I would sort of say we've been pretty darn slow, you know, 10 year overnight success type of thing. So exactly.
00:09:40
Speaker
I like that part of it. And then the Q&A session that we had afterwards with Pearson and you and Bill and myself was amazing. Right? We've got to figure out how to do more of. Yes. I don't know what that platform is, but I love that.
00:09:59
Speaker
I was actually, I was okay for my speech, but I was extremely nervous for the Q&A. I don't know why. It was just super weird. Yeah, I don't know why. I was like jittery the whole time, but it was fun. I loved it. So I wanted to mention one of the questions. I think it was from Scott Moist, but the question was when you're getting started or working as an entrepreneur and
Product Decisions and Evolution
00:10:25
Speaker
You wait at what point do you kill a product? So there's lots of reasons why you might kill a product It could be because it's not selling enough or it's because you found a better product or it's because it's not working period like it's just um, you think it could work but it's not so you do you have to just cut it and move on lots of different reasons and um, it was fun to kind of bounce past the mic around and sort of give explanations as to why but I think
00:10:49
Speaker
It's important to know it's okay to be in that position. It's also good that you to think about if and when you kill it. The interesting point was that Jay almost killed one of his products. It became a very much integral part of Crimson work holding and
00:11:05
Speaker
I'm sure a profitable product and a good product and that's tough. We've killed a lot of products over the last year that were so hard to kill at the time of, but the reality is we've never looked back and we're better off for having focused us down on it.
00:11:21
Speaker
Well, when you put so much work and effort into something that at the time is the Holy Grail, you love it, you want it, you think everybody in the world wants it too. You put in hours or hundreds of hours into this thing that you're kind of blinded by.
00:11:38
Speaker
until you get to the realization, it's like, well, for whatever reason, maybe I got to, you know, shelve this product or kill it completely. It's hard. It's super hard to like stop and reel back and like focus on other things instead. But yeah, like you said, no, no looking back, basically. Yeah. Well, and it's fine. You know, Jay joked about having gotten started with a product that was a combination dead blow hammer, mallet, vice tightening wrench widget thing.
00:12:06
Speaker
And it's not a bad product. It has lots of uses. It just is insanely, it's insanely not successful. Like it's not something people are like wanting to buy or useful or Christmas gift type thing or whatever. And that's not Jay's fault. Just not one of those sorts of products.
00:12:23
Speaker
at what point do you kind of decide to kill that or do you decide to move on from it? And one of the things to think about is if you, I think is this, if you scale it big, like if let's say you sold a thousand times more than you were selling, do you want to, do you want to embrace that manufacturing workload? Do you want to buy machines and hire people around making those and more probably
00:12:47
Speaker
Do you want to be known as the guy who makes the hammer, dead blow, vice tightening wrench thing? I'm not trying to pick on Jay here, but I think that makes it clearer that really what you're trying to do is probably get started, get a little bit of a product out there, get a name, figure out where it goes. And that's all totally fine, but that's not the product that you identify with.
00:13:07
Speaker
Yeah. Cause a lot of times it takes several, uh, different products and certainly revisions to be able to find your niche, to be able to find the thing that, that speaks to you, you know, that, that you want to be known for. Um, somebody said earlier, just, I think it'd be sweet to have a, um, machinists Christmas list.
Insights on IMTS 2018
00:13:28
Speaker
So like, you know, sub $50 gifts that anybody can buy their machinist friend or something like that. That'd be a funny list. Yeah. I totally agree.
00:13:38
Speaker
So what about the machine side of things? What about IMTS in terms of tools, work holding machines, all that actual? So at IMTS, they have what, three or four different buildings and each building's kind of dedicated. Like there's the machine tool building, the tooling building, the...
00:13:55
Speaker
everything building. Yeah, software QC. Yeah, exactly. Yep, software measurement. And then also there's like a whole building with small stuff, like all the small booths that have all kinds of little things, lots of ultrasonic cleaners and, you know, portable things.
00:14:12
Speaker
I spent on the first day I spent six hours straight talking about Swiss lathes between a few different booths and I walked probably 50 feet in six hours. It's hilarious. But it was really good and eye opening and clearly a Swiss lathe is in my one year future or a lot sooner depending on how things unfold. Yeah, now it's just a matter of finding which one
00:14:38
Speaker
that I want to choose. There's a lot of good ones on the market. So it comes down to service, price, capability,
00:14:49
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So that's, that's okay. And I heard another, I've heard this now from a few different people of lead time, I think knock on wood when the economy's doing very well and machine tool, but people buying CNC machines, you know, machine tool consumption is probably a record levels ever. And people keep tipping them over. So it's insane that you there's now a, I've heard 10 to 15 week lead time, if not,
00:15:19
Speaker
a year for some of the more exotic higher end machines.
00:15:23
Speaker
Well, it's like all the, all the Japanese machines or, you know, anything coming from a boat, basically, they basically bring them in in bulk, like, okay, I'm going to order five Nakamura leads and we're just going to stock them here. And if they don't have it, you're waiting another many, many months for the next shipment, not just yours, but the next batch to come in. I have heard of, I've heard now, I think two specifics scenarios where,
00:15:49
Speaker
I think they have been German machines. Maybe it's not, it doesn't matter where they have air freighted them in. Yeah. Which is crazy. I think the one quote I heard was 17,000 or $7 for a machine, which actually- That's not bad. These are- If you're talking like half a million dollar five axis machines. Yeah. In fairness, it was a five axis mill turn style machine, but it was one of the small ones. So it wasn't that big or that heavy.
00:16:20
Speaker
Well, when you think of it as a high flow production shop that is making 5, 10, $15,000 a day, and the sooner you get that machine on the floor, it's nothing. It's kind of no brainer. Every day you're not running it.
00:16:36
Speaker
It's disgusting what a no-brainer it is. Exactly. Get the machine here. It ends up you save a bunch of other hassles and timing. And there's different ways things get imported that way. And then I guess I also heard from the other person is it changed the insurance and other logistical parameters. And I was like, good grief. I never thought of the risk profile of how it's being handled from an insured standpoint and cost. Anyway.
00:17:04
Speaker
So it just goes to show, explore all avenues when buying machines. I don't think I'm ever going to have a five-axis machine air freighted from another continent.
Exploring Machine Tool Capabilities
00:17:14
Speaker
I'm going to go ahead and make that. I'm OK with that not being part of the home run scenario of Saunders Machine Works.
00:17:21
Speaker
Buying one, yes, but air freighting it, I don't think so. Yeah, well, we'll see. Sorry, we got off track. So Swiss Leys rocking and rolling. Do you see that citizen with the B-axis tool change?
00:17:34
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. So it's got a positional B axis, like I want a machine. I want to drill a hole at 42.5 degrees and then tap it. Totally possible. That's cool. And the cool thing with that swing arm B axis is you can have four main live tools and four sub live tools on that thing. You just pull it out to 90 degrees and now you have more full tools, like more
00:17:58
Speaker
Axial or radial tools. Oh because you don't have to keep it, you know halfway Right. You're right. Right. You can arc it at zero degrees or 90 degrees and just have so many more live tools So that's really tempting and the B axis. I was just talking with the guy yesterday. It was about another think $25,000 or something. Mm-hmm As an option for the yes. Yeah, if it is tips in yeah
00:18:22
Speaker
It reminded me of my impression of how Frank at Maritool uses, they've got a Doosan, I call them mill turns, I guess they're multitasking machines. But one way to look at that machine is not as a mill turn, but really as a lathe that just has a tool changer turret.
00:18:44
Speaker
Yeah, you know, because it has a turn on it. It's bar fed round bar. This is my cat 40 holders. But you've got one turret station that happens to be your and that is a B axis head, I believe, right on a mill turn. And you can change out. I think it has 100 or 200 capital tools. So you can switch between mills, drills, turning, just any type of tool, which you can't traditionally do automated on a Turley.
00:19:11
Speaker
Right. That's kind of a genius workflow. Right. For the right kind of work. Right, right. A redundancy, having pulling in different tools like that. I think about, yeah, it's like- It'd be amazing. Right.
00:19:24
Speaker
Yeah. Um, so let's see, Swiss lades. Um, a couple companies have attached lasers to Swiss lades now so they can actually like cut a two thou, uh, cut width on a Swiss lathe part news nuts. Wow. Yeah. So they're making, they're making slinkies basically, um, out of these tiny little tubing. It was like, whoa, that's nuts. Yeah.
00:19:52
Speaker
When you said that I was thinking marking, which would make sense from a one piece flow standpoint. True, but no like cutting through. Wow. Yes, gnarly.
00:20:03
Speaker
Yeah, I briefly looked at the five axis machines, but I kind of, I know enough for now, like I'm not buying one in the next six months. Um, so I got to see a bunch of stuff, but, and then I spent a lot of time in all the smaller booths and, you know, talk to a lot of ultrasonic cleaner people, cause I want one of those talk to the pro shop guys, which is really cool. Um, what else? What else?
00:20:28
Speaker
That's in the basement building, like the lower ceiling. Yeah. That's like, it's like one of my phobias in life. It's like the, it's the dark Dungy floor at trade shows. It's so, it's so not fair because like the floor above it is like 30 foot ceilings with natural light and beautiful happiness. And, and then you go down there and it's like damp and, and, and, you know, if you put your hand up, you're going to touch the ceiling. Um, I'm exaggerating, but, uh, I always, yeah. Yeah.
00:20:57
Speaker
Well, so you missed a lot down there that I went, I walked part of it. Right. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. What else did you see machine tool wise? Part of me wants to say nothing that's noteworthy in the sense that it seems like it seems like we have reached some level of plateau of innovation and capability. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's just kind of like, look,
00:21:26
Speaker
We've gotten really good at making some pretty cool machines. And when you look at the mainstream machines versus, in other words, not going crazy custom or stuff that's not built en masse, it's kind of like, look, mill turns, mills, five axis, et cetera. It's all kind of there with automation and so forth.
00:21:45
Speaker
But then part of me wonders if that's our perception simply because you and I, I mean, you and I know so much more than we did two years ago. I mean, two years ago, I probably could not have labeled the axes of a five axis or described accurately what a mill turn. It's just basic stuff that now is common to us.
00:22:04
Speaker
Um, I tried to remind myself, look to a lot of people, this is what was new to me two years ago. Was it may not have been new in the industry either. It just was new to me. Um, I did, um, spend some time with a friend walking through some of the, kind of figure out what these, what the names of these are. Ironically, it's kind of the same type of machine. I was just referring to that got air freighted over, but these like phone booth, mill turn type machines. So Sharon makes them, Starrag makes them, uh, Willa com. I'm going to pronounce this correctly, Willa com.
00:22:34
Speaker
metal or something. But they're mill turn machines, but they're small. You know, the size of a, you know, you would make parts like no bigger than a golf ball and maybe even as small as one of your pivots on them. Insanely high accuracy, insanely precise. You know, they've got the little mini like HSK. What is that small HSK size like?
00:22:58
Speaker
23 or 40 or something, but they're cute. They're like these little holders that you could fit in your palm of your hand. But the takeaway there was the focus on true one piece flow finished manufacturing stuff. So these machines can do five axis work. They can do sub spindle or
00:23:18
Speaker
transfer the part to a vice or some way to do backside work to finish that off. But then also things like grinding and polishing. So I saw traditional stacked grinding wheels. I saw Linda type wheels. I saw a wheel that looked like the thing if you ever see to polish a bowling ball. So it's like the grinding stuff is on the idea of a cone.
00:23:47
Speaker
Okay. I'm not describing that well, but you put your hand over a ball and you rub around to polish it. It's like a stone or a tool that's that shape so it can polish these medical parts that have spheres or radiuses or whatever. So that's a pretty cool
00:24:06
Speaker
idea because into what made me think of it was when you mentioned the idea of putting a laser on a Swiss part of me thought, well, wait a minute, what about a marking laser? Because so many parts get smart. And it's like, why handle it again? Why set it up again? You know, maybe that's
00:24:22
Speaker
Um, this is not a fully baked thought, but maybe that's an area where we'll see a future workflow or innovation is this idea of doing different processes in machine tools. So deburring, marking, other types of finishing. Um, it sounds silly, but maybe there's something like that. Hmm.
00:24:44
Speaker
Yeah. Something I noticed when I was walking around, it was, I was not so much looking for new and latest and greatest. I was looking to deeper my understanding of specifically Swiss, um, you know, grill and the guy like, okay, how does the control work? How does this work? How does tool offsets work? How do, you know, how do you change a guide pushing all this stuff? I know enough about Swiss to like hold a conversation, but I want to see it. I want to touch it. I want to like have the guy walk through it with me. So that was cool. I did that a little bit with five axis too. Um,
00:25:14
Speaker
talking about palletized and workflow and things like that. And then, yes, it was just about getting smarter. This year more so than last year, I feel like I can hold a conversation much better about almost any topic in the room, which was nice and still learn an insane amount, but be able to ask the right questions to learn even more.
00:25:39
Speaker
Yeah, you've got to go with a super specific part or reason.
Acquiring and Utilizing New Machines
00:25:47
Speaker
We kind of stalled out on our five axis.
00:25:50
Speaker
research and well we didn't but like I don't have a specific part or specific thing and you could just say well we're buying it as a job shop which is kind of the best way to answer it but the totally open kimono answer is I want a five axis because I want to do some three plus two production on it I want to do some
00:26:09
Speaker
NYC CNC video parts on it. I want to do R&D and prototyping on it for future type products. I just want to have fun with it. And you can't hold that idea in your hand and show it to them. Exactly. Exactly. And that's OK. But it's funny because I really went with a totally open mind of what machines we want to look at, what are good workflows and solutions, what's going to tie in automation for now or for the future.
00:26:35
Speaker
And the answer is, I don't have enough information to concretely make that decision. But I will say, seeing everything with an open mind, I am absolutely now much, much, I'm totally on board with the UMC 750.
00:26:52
Speaker
I do still want to eventually think about what's out there in terms of the machines that cost three or four times as much. What's the differences? Why are they better? But I'll tell you, the parts that are coming off it are awesome. The control is awesome.
00:27:08
Speaker
and the automation host release pallet pool system for the 1000. They're coming out with HSK spindles. The probing thing, they're working on fixing it. This idea of probing apart when it's tipped over, but I talked to my AE guy. He's like, we already wrote some macros that can let you hack that. It's a little bit hacky because it has to do with hard values off the center of rotation, but those shouldn't change unless you crash the machine. So it's kind of like, look,
00:27:36
Speaker
I want to make parts. I want to be able to do that. So that's my goal. I'm still going to hold off for now, though, because I'd love to have information that either I want more information to make that decision better. It's not fun to buy these tools anymore because there's a lot more pressure and stress around it. Yeah, exactly.
00:27:58
Speaker
Yeah, and so many choices, and you don't want to get it wrong, and the dollars are getting so much more. Right. That, yeah. When I told Yvonne, my wife, I was like, look, I want to be able to just sell you why we are
00:28:09
Speaker
We are, it is stupid for us not to buy this machine. Like it is, we're losing out. We're harming our business by not having it on our floor. And there's an element of like, why do we do all this? You know, there's a, that's a much more deeper philosophical question. But part of the reason I want to five access is because
00:28:28
Speaker
If I have an idea and a part, um, I want to hop into fusion program and go out and make it at this point in my life. I don't want to go do parts like that may require three or seven setups because it's actually just, I'll be honest, it's demoralizing. I'm burned out. I don't have that energy anymore to go do a sign bar and soft jaws and custom stuff. I'm going to make the freaking part. And now that I know you can do it with five axis, I want that.
00:28:52
Speaker
Totally. I get that. Absolutely. Difference with me is I could absolutely walk around the show with a knife in my pocket, a pen in my pocket, and a pocket full of parts, whether they be laid parts or handles or, you know,
00:29:07
Speaker
blank blades or anything like that. And I could walk around and be like, these are what I'm making. This is the surface finish I want to get when I'm talking to all the double disc grinding and lapping shops and polishing and things like that. And I'm like, this is what I make. So it was handy to be able to just be like, here you go. I need solution for this.
00:29:27
Speaker
It's almost worth, for the folks listening, when you go to any trade show, it's almost worth fibbing or stretching the truth in a good way, which is that if you don't know what the heck you want it for, you're just trying to learn, take one of your products or take a product and just say, this is my product, I need to scale this up, I need to make this, I need tooling, I need work code, I need
Learning from Trade Shows and Tools
00:29:49
Speaker
machines. Because you're absolutely right.
00:29:50
Speaker
You're going to end up having the conversation, even if it's around a sort of fictitious part or something you don't actually necessarily want to act on. It'll be much, much richer time. Yep. Yep. Totally agree. And I mean, there's many versions of these shows all around the country.
00:30:07
Speaker
all throughout the year. So if people listening have never been to a trade show like this and you're interested in machine tools, like holy cow, find the closest one and just go there soon. It's a trade off. I mean, look, IMTS has a racket. It's so expensive in the hotels and getting to Chicago. And part of me dislikes that as a bootstrapper and so forth. On the flip side, we've been to some of the shows here in Ohio. And I've heard I've been to East Tech as well.
00:30:35
Speaker
Um, they are nothing in comparison, just absolutely not in comparison. Yeah. I guess I'm, I'm in a kind of manufacturing hub here in Toronto area. So there are lots of good, smaller shows. Sorry. Sorry. That's a great point. Absolutely. Right. Um, I did, I think knock on wood, find a microscope.
00:30:56
Speaker
Nice. Yeah. You were telling me about that. And it's awesome because this is the embodiment of why you go to trade shows, get outside of your comfort zone, find stuff you wouldn't have seen. And, um, um, it's a company called vision engineering. I haven't pulled the trigger yet because, um, I haven't pulled the trigger yet because darn it lifestyle creep. Um, it's not a, once you go microscope, you never go back.
00:31:21
Speaker
Well, so we but we have one. So they have vision engineering is cool because they take the optical microscope. So it's kind of a stereo microscope like you'd see when a biologist is looking at a Petri dish. Excuse me. And they get rid of those two eye tubes and they put this kind of like Star Trek viewfinder.
00:31:45
Speaker
thing up it's not digital though it's analog or optical still but what it means is you don't have to adjust eye pieces and eye relief and diopters and the width of them and it's much easier to use you just walk up to it and it's almost like you have a tv screen of your part so if we've got lots of different people using it and it's easier and
00:32:08
Speaker
When you just want to walk up to it, have an end mill in your hand, look at it and then walk away. It's just phenomenal. And I probably went back three times to look at it during the show and they didn't have any end mills at their booth and we're in that QC room. So nobody had, um, end mills around easily. So I found a fan of the channel and I was like, we were hanging out in a group. I was like, does anybody have an end mill on them?
00:32:34
Speaker
And somebody had a randomly an old 5 16th tap and I was like, can I borrow that or buy that off you or whatever? And they're like, yeah, we don't, it's like trash basically. Or, you know, I gave it back to them at the end, but, uh, I was able to, that was my, honestly, it was silly cause I was something I went to the show to look at and I can't believe I didn't think to bring the object that I want to look at.
00:32:55
Speaker
Right, like a chipped end mill. But that was so important because I was using my pen from Urban Survival Gear and looking at that under the microscope. And while that's good and helpful, it's not the same as looking at an end mill that I want to compare and look at. So anyways, they've got their traditional line, which ranges from three thousand up to ten thousand, depending on quality and features and all that. The problem is
00:33:24
Speaker
Most of them are four or 10 power and you need more than that to really look at it. You really need like 20 power. Mine's a 30 power and I love it. Yeah, I've heard from wise people that sometimes you don't need as much magnification as you think. But they have a model that I like the best. Ironically, it actually goes back to being
00:33:54
Speaker
a stereo optical analog thing that does convert it to a TV screen. So there's no viewport, Star Trek viewport type thing on this model, but it's absolutely great. It does have insane zoom. Great, what it has that ours doesn't is true stereo view of the part. You have a much better sense of the three-dimensional nature of it, much less
00:34:18
Speaker
fussy focus range. It's what I want, but it's seven grand. So I'm like, ah, um, yeah, we'll see. Well, like for our microscope, I don't think we ever adjust viewfinders no matter who's using it. I've just kind of got it set. Yeah. And you know, maybe different people have different eyesight and stuff, but nobody seems to really care enough because you just adjust the height, which is the focus. And then, uh, the zoom,
00:34:43
Speaker
And most of the time we leave to fully zoomed in, but sometimes we do have to zoom out because it's just too close, but it would just kind of like walk up, make sure the lights on and then look and then walk away. Um, and it's amazing and we want two more or at least one more at some point. Yeah. Maybe that's what I just hadn't thought of this. Maybe.
00:35:04
Speaker
I mean, I could buy the lower end model. No, it's not enough zoom. I could buy, you know, I could look for yours. Um, or the one that Seth Midor's got the science scope, I think is the brand or maybe AM scope. Anyway, I could maybe try to find one of those that's used or not. Even these ones, they're what 1500 to 2,500. Yeah. Yeah. I could go with the TV output. I mean, that's, that's half or a third, the price of the ones you're talking about.
00:35:30
Speaker
That's a lot of other investment. To be clear, I have no problem with that tool and the investment in using it. And just like that's an absolute thing that we will use even more when it's that convenient. The way I'm thinking about it is just, hey, if I can get an option for a third of that, that's more money I can put into the high-axis fund or somewhere else.
00:35:55
Speaker
Totally, right? Yeah. I think if you get one having a TV output, you'll use that a lot. Right. Absolutely. With a dedicated 20-inch monitor or something, at least. I want one of those at some point. Yes, absolutely. Especially for filming and sharing and showing people around the shop, oh, look, this one is chipped. Yeah. Yeah.
00:36:21
Speaker
that was fun to look through. Um, actually we just, Julie's done editing your shop tour, but I think we're going to try to get the complete video done before we release them. Cause I mentioned the camp video in your video, but, um,
00:36:34
Speaker
John had pulled out tools that hit your tool life management limit. And this is regular Lakeshore carbide stuff. So it's not their hard milling, NACO coated, whatever. I think these were pretty small, maybe like 1 eighth or 3 32nd. I don't know what size tool. I forget maybe quarter inch at most, but. Okay.
00:36:54
Speaker
Anyways, they were at their limit, but still we looked at the parts that they had made and they parts were absolutely grim smoke quality. And we put that tool under the microscope and that tool looks like it went through war. It looked like.
00:37:12
Speaker
Oh, it was the hard milling ball. Yeah. So we machine 60 Rockwell with that thing. And it's a three eights ball from Lakeshore Carbide, just like a standard three eights ball, not variable or anything like that. And yeah, it's, it gets trash. That tool gave you it's all. Yeah. Yes. We, we get about, I think we get 12 blades out of one tool.
00:37:36
Speaker
And then it's done. Yeah. No, like we need to have a memorial ceremony for that guy because it's just, yeah, it just pulled it all its weight. It was crazy that it was producing the surfaces that it did even at that point. So.
00:37:54
Speaker
John and I are on this Fusion 360 advisory board for CAM and stuff.
Tech Updates and Workflow Improvements
00:38:00
Speaker
And I will say, because Autodesk is a public company, they're always very sensitive about future information that they share. But some of the stuff that's coming, the energy, the team, the brain trust power, the feature set capabilities, fixing existing stuff, bringing in new stuff,
00:38:19
Speaker
All that stuff got me really, really fired up and excited. Yeah. The future, the future is bright with that company. Yes. I mean, I'll leave it at that, but like freaking excited. Exactly. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. That was awesome. What else? What else are you up to this week?
00:38:40
Speaker
I am going back to working on our new project thing. We totally redid our workflow for how we work hold. Well, that sounds extreme. We've learned a lot about making our fixture plates and what we've done now is kind of finally hit pause and re-implemented all of our little thoughts, plans, tricks, tips, and so forth.
00:39:06
Speaker
So it's not a radical change in terms of risk of like, hey, we're going to try this differently. But it's more like, oh my gosh, now I really like it. We remade some fixtures that were getting worn out or we'd been through some changes. And I now feel like we now have a really good run rate. And maybe we'll change it again at some point.
00:39:27
Speaker
We started our first batch of Haas fixture plates as well, which I was, I was talking to a guy walking around IMTS and he's like, Oh, I'm looking for this fixture plate. And I'm like, just get it from Saunders. Like I've seen him at your event. And so he knows you obviously. And he's like, he doesn't make one for a Haas. And I'm like,
00:39:45
Speaker
I think he does, and if he doesn't, just tell him to make one and he'll make one. We've been kind of quiet about it, mostly because we wanted to get the revised flow under control. Maybe I'll throw up a picture on Instagram or something. It's funny. I just would prefer to say,
00:40:07
Speaker
At some point, I should probably put my marketing hat on and actually legit like advertise these, but I'm okay. We do fine with them now. So it's kind of like, I always have looked up to the companies that have really grown well without necessarily doing explicit advertising, but I'm sure we'll have to start doing some awareness of it and so forth.
00:40:30
Speaker
Well, it's, it's almost detrimental in, in the case when you're not producing them and then you blast them out there and everybody wants one, but they can't get one. Then it's kind of, it can be bad for business sometimes because everybody's unhappy, you know? Right. Well, and to your point, I, people, if people are interested, it's, but I'm doing my business a disservice. If I don't at least make an attempt to say, Hey, we're making hospital plates or, or, you know, the brother speedio, robo drill size plates. Um, and part of me.
00:41:00
Speaker
While I love fixture plates for a lot of good reasons, I think where I really, it becomes a force multiplier is when you look at the Modvise system and some of the accessories, the soft jaws, work holding, the pimples, that's where I think, okay, this isn't just a fixture plate. This is a pretty freaking awesome system. Right. Do keep in mind with the Speedio and the Robo drill, they have like a seven inch spindle to table minimum. So you want to rise them up.
00:41:29
Speaker
need to rise them up like four inches at least. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So like your, your flat fixture played with a mod vice on top. No, nobody's going to reach that. Oh, sorry. I see what you're saying. Got it. That's a fair point without having a seven inch tool, you know? Yeah. Right. Increasing gauge. Right. So that's what sucks about those machines is like even putting an orange vice on it. I don't think you could touch the top of an orange vice with a typical tool.
00:41:56
Speaker
That's a really good point. Right, so keep that in mind. Making a note of that. Whereas on a Haas, you can bury the spindle, or no, on the Tormach, you can bury the spindle face into the table. I think a Haas you can get pretty close to. I think you can on a Tormach. Really? I think so. I've crashed them in Z, but never into the table.
00:42:16
Speaker
No, but I think, yeah, go for it. Okay, so you talk about actual, legit, to me, useful, practical innovation. Shout out to Haas. Seriously.
00:42:29
Speaker
Oh yeah, that one. Yes, it's coming. It's not here yet. It's in the next-gen control, which by the way, they are working on revving up a version of next-gen that will then let users do the updates of the control, which is freaking awesome.
00:42:46
Speaker
This exactly embodies why I've enjoyed our experience with Haas machines. It's like, we're not here to say wait four weeks for the service tech and we can't tell you part numbers. It's like, here's the website. We'll show you how to install it if we can. There's some stuff you can't do. But the fact that they're going to let us do updates on our own is great. So that's coming.
00:43:08
Speaker
This is a, it's called safe mode. You have to put the machine into safe mode. And then when you are either jogging or doing a G zero mode move, so linking move, a rapid move, um, there's some important caveats, which I'll come back to. If the machine detects a crash. So if you, in this case, if it was in a Z jog with a quarter inch tap and Terry Berry jogs the machine straight into the part.
00:43:37
Speaker
And what happens is you can't do this with motor torque load. They are like, it just doesn't work consistently enough because that varies. But what they do is they look at basically as soon as the encoder
00:43:47
Speaker
PID loop fails. So it's basically like it should be here and it's not. It basically says, hey, you were going to crash. You actually did just kiss your part. It backs the machine off 50,000. It gives you an alarm, but you could do it all day long. Never broke the tap. It put like a three to 10,000 ding in your part. Right.
00:44:08
Speaker
But there's a chance it could break the tool or chip in end mill, but it does not in any way, well, it minimizes, if not totally mitigates any damage to the machine, the tram, the spindle bearings, the linear ways, right?
00:44:25
Speaker
And to be clear, the caveats are it doesn't work if you're jogging at 100%, at least yet, or may not ever. And right now, they only have it in Z. They don't have it in XY. I think they're working to see if and how they can improve those things. But just like that's useful for how we use our machine. Yep.
00:44:46
Speaker
Because I've broken, I mean, this wouldn't stop a probe tip from breaking, but jogging an X, I've broken a probe tip. I think I've broken an end mill or three, jogging an X. And yeah, things like that would be super helpful for the average operator to just avoid. When I told them, we'll see if I can pull my influence here. I told them, let me call that safe mode as an end code or a parameter.
00:45:14
Speaker
because what I want to do when I'm just going to make a prototype tool and I stick six new tools in or have a new guy running it or somebody else, I just want to run all of my tool changes in safe mode because if you forget to set a touch of tool off, this basically saves your butt. I don't care if my rapids are at 400 versus 1200. No big deal. But I want to call that from my Fusion G-code, not from toggling at the machine control.
00:45:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's like a like a prototyping mode, you know, I'm in prototype mode. Yes, I love that. Yeah. So I give them respect for that. That's like, this is great. What are you up to cool this week today? This week, we are always fine tuning. I made a sweet
00:46:04
Speaker
What do you call it? A go-go gauge. Okay. So I'm showing you here. It's a tube of titanium that I drilled a hole into each side. I anodized it blue just to make it look cooler. I took two of our stop pins that we use in the knives and I shoved one in each side. Okay. And then I, these are stop pins that have relieved center sections so they're thinner in the middle.
00:46:26
Speaker
And then I took nail polish and I painted it in the relieved thinner sections. So basically as you push this pin into the stop and hole on the knife handle, it makes sure that the pin can go all the way to the bottom. It gives you a visual cue to make sure that the end mill didn't chip because this has been a big problem lately.
00:46:47
Speaker
If the square end mill chips, when it's making that hole, it now makes a tapered hole. Your pin doesn't go in all the way. Everything looks good. Everything seems good, but, uh, the hole is not deep enough. So then everything goes through the process. And then Eric's assembling the knife at the end and he goes, wait, this isn't going together properly. Now I have to manually like remount that hole and.
00:47:07
Speaker
garbage. So if, you know, I just made this two days ago, um, if we check it before the handles come off the fixture, then we can rerun it if we need to. That's cool. Which is good. So little thing, but Eric's been bugging me for it for months. And then I finally just did it. And I'm like, this is the greatest thing ever. Yeah. No, that is, that's awesome.
00:47:28
Speaker
Catching stuff is little things like that. Yeah, the earlier the better, right? In process check and control and gauging and things like that. That reminds me of a good topic that I'm going to make a note to talk about next week. But Jay Pearson was responding to a question about how do you measure lean, implement lean, and evaluate it. And he had a really good, as usual, lean response to that question. But it kind of reminds me of what you're saying, which is more about
00:47:56
Speaker
I already triggered me there because you're thinking about not having to measure it because you just solve it before it becomes something you even need to measure. We're not measuring how many blades failed to have this problem because we're just catching it right now.
00:48:11
Speaker
Right. The other solution that I thought about to fix this, because it's a three 32nd square end mill for fluid end mill and the tips chip on it. And I, I'm trying to optimize the tool path to not chip these tips, but it's, I can't quite figure it out.
00:48:28
Speaker
Anyway, a laser toolsetter would totally see that, or I'm trying to figure out if I can get my Renishaw OTS to like tap the side of the tool. You know, when it's doing a side measurement of the tool to like work its way up and see if all the tips are there where they're supposed to be. I think I could figure that out if I really played with the macros a lot. It is a blind hole.
00:48:54
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Can't go through further. Yeah. I would as good as you are at some of this stuff. Don't remember you remember your time is finite and precious. Yeah. Yeah. Um, keep that in mind. Balance that. Yep. Absolutely. Yep. Um, I've got an eight o'clock so I should run. Sweet. Me too. All right. Awesome. I will see you next week. Sounds good. Have an awesome week. Have an awesome day. You do it. Yes. Take it. Bye.