Transcript
Speaker: Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 337. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. And this being the weekly manufacturing podcast where John and John talk about all things related to our business and sometimes some personal things and just little updates and keep each other appraised of what's going on and help massage through the difficulties of life sometimes. Yeah. It's our therapy session is what it is.
Speaker: Amen to that. Yeah. Yeah, how are you doing? Good. I am good. How are you? Good. It's a second day of school for the kids and that's been a struggle. Oh, sure. Because you are homeschooling. No, we're actually going to a school we found, a nice school. Oh. But they've been homeschooled for a while, so it's been, let's just say a struggle to get them out of the house and to the school. Yeah.
Speaker: But doing it, it's just a lot of extra mental energy. But it's good. It's good. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, we had the, I think any parent knows this routine, like we were back in school, jeez, two weeks now or more. Really? But then you have the Labor Day long for us. We started after that.
Speaker: Yeah, it's all over the place here or just whatever. But was Monday a holiday for you? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So like, which is great. Like awesome, beautiful weather, nice weekend, but I still feel like there's this like fractured like routine routine guy. Like I enjoy the routine and then, um,
Speaker: Yeah. So we're getting there. Yeah. Like when I went to school, we lived in a farming town in Washington state and they would start school like late August, you know, kind of like you guys live in a farming town, right? And I think it's because of the farming schedule that those towns start school earlier. That's what I heard. Oh, really? Yep. Whereas we didn't start till after labor day, like here in Canada. Yeah. So anyway, I don't know. Well, that's good. The kids are there in what, third and fifth and eighth grade.
Speaker: It's crazy. It is crazy. Oh man. Yeah. Well, that's good. Yeah. Yeah. It's close to the shop. So it's really good. I drive them there and then I'm to the shop within five to nine minutes and then solid. So that works out really well.
Speaker: Um, super good school, super cool place. So they're, they're liking it when they want to. But, um, yeah, Claire's been, uh, she knows that we have a resin printer and that I never use it. And she saw some stuff online and she's like, I want to print this alien doll at 150%. Can we use the resin printer? And I'm like, sure. So over the weekend, long weekend, we came to the shop probably five times.
Speaker: Just like checked on the print. I'll failed print. I ran out of resin. Okay, let's try it again Oh, this one needs more support and it was really cool. It's a really fun process. Yeah, did it get printed in the end? We're still getting through all the parts. There's probably 20 components legs and hands and joints and arms and knees and stuff But it's really cool. That's awesome. Super super cool. Yeah, and it's fun to see her
Speaker: geek out about it. In her science class at the school, they bought one of those Dremel 3D printers. Have you seen those? I'm sure they're fine, but I'm like, I wouldn't have thought of Dremel as being a 3D printer brand, but sure, whatever. It seems like a nice off -the -shelf one that classrooms buy or whatever.
Speaker: And the teacher was like, I don't know how to use it, but I'll figure it out. And I'm like, Claire will help you out there. Right? So he actually emailed me yesterday and he said, yeah, Claire, talk to the whole class about the projects that you guys do and the prints and all that stuff. And it's really cool to hear. I like having her in the class. It's great. That's awesome. Yeah. I vaguely remember Dremel having a little router, CNC router, like micro router, which does feel more up the rally. Yeah. But sure, whatever.
Speaker: Pictures aren't that complicated. Yeah, but I appreciate the elegance when they're well done. Yeah. For sure. I was actually trying to get something on the bamboo and I was like, nope, just wait. You'll slice it better with the podcast. It's okay. Exactly. Yeah, it's good. I've actually put the... So we've got two producers right now, one in my shop, one in Eric's shop, and he's been using it quite a bit more and having little issues and problems with it.
Speaker: And he's like, I kind of want one of those bamboos. I was like, I want one too. You take care of it. You order it. This is in your court now. Like I don't have to make that decision. You can make that decision. And so I think he's a couple of days away from pulling the trigger on, uh, on two bamboos and a whole bunch of filament and stuff. So I'm like, sweet, your problem now. Love it. You know, I want one. So
Speaker: Does Ken have one? I don't think so. I don't think so either. Because otherwise, I wonder if everybody in our group has one now. Yeah, I think so. Amish just got one. Yeah, Devin has one. FedEx lost it. Yeah. Yeah, anyway. Yeah, it's coming. Well, so a trip down memory lane just for nostalgia purposes,
Speaker: first time I ever saw I think something truly CNC was
Speaker: maybe toward the end of college or right after Sears or Craftsman had what looked like a, oh, was it a planer? Yeah, a planer where you feed a board through a rollers, like, and it has an in and out and it's like get sandwiched through there to like almost like I think of it like duplex milling or double discriting for planing, except
Speaker: The feed rollers, I think, were your X axis. And then it was like a Y in the bridge. And then maybe, I don't know if it was two, three axis with a Z or just a positional Z. And it was like a V -carvish, like you could put designs in wood. And this is, you know, now almost 20 years ago. Okay.
Speaker: And I saw this thing and just the creative juices were flowing and like, oh my gosh, what could you do in wood for both artwork stuff and fun stuff? But then also you could make that work for practical stuff, prototyping, accurate dimensional stuff. Because I was kind of dabbling. At the time, I didn't realize metalworking was a thing or even able to be done, let alone at the home level.
Speaker: And frankly, it wasn't as easy back then. But I'm thinking, man, wood. I can go to a Home Depot and buy wood. And I can program this thing. And I started to feel more real. And I don't know, it's just fun to think back to like, I never bought the machine because as I went down the rabbit hole, you quickly realized there were other, I think I probably ended up finding sieg and grizzly and then tag. Exactly. Well, that's what's funny is when you first learn about a new tool in a new industry, it's never the one you end up buying. It's like the entry level or the most popular one or whatever.
Speaker: At first, you're like, oh my gosh, I just want that one. And then you go down the rabbit hole, you read more and more. I think the first kind of exposure to CNC machine that I had was probably early mid 2000s, getting into cars, super into cars, and like how car parts are made, right? And I'd see guys that would buy used Haas machines or whatever and put them in their garage. And that was kind of the beginning of that. And I wanted to start a business. So guys were also doing that, making their own parts.
Speaker: you know, just how car parts were made kind of got me and especially performance car parts, you know, I'd watch YouTube was not even around yet at that point, but you could like download videos from websites and stuff. Yes. Right. And that's when I started to learn and certainly pictures and websites.
Speaker: Explain explanations forums and stuff that's kind of what got me into cnc machining or at least learned about it and then a family friend had a neighbor bernie who was like this eighty year old dude who had a old school machine shop in his barn
Speaker: I got to go there and we had to drill a 15 thou hole in some boost valve controller or something. I asked my friend and he's like, yeah, let's go see Bernie. He had the whole set of drills that all went down to 10 thou or something and drilled this hole in brass. That was my first whole machine shot that I ever saw. It was cool. He had a laid bunch of grizzly tools.
Speaker: Because also where we left we had a grizzly location like twenty minutes down the road right so everybody had grisly to all that i'm jealous of that yeah that was really cool. And yeah this is really cool to be able to like if i needed a lady you know bernie was there for me and yeah cars got me into it.
Speaker: The, I was telling Chris Taggart who runs, awesome guy, runs Carl Bass's shop in Berkeley now. So like Fusion 360 Guru slash fabricator slash maker slash artist. Just really enjoyed the conversation with him at that PSI event. And we were talking about art and I was sharing my love of Donald Judd and his artwork. And that's part of also what got me into manufacturing was this idea of like artistic sculpture and so forth. And I bought some aluminum from speedymetals .com.
Speaker: Flew home or shipped at home when I was living in New York back to Ohio because my grandpa This is this is some like embarrassment right here. My grandpa had a real nice bandsaw in his farm shop I mean we're thinking like that's a horizontal to four by six that thing is just sweet and I get there and it was definitely a central machinery Harbor Freight whatever and I didn't even realize what that meant at the time, but I thought
Speaker: with a fine -pitched blade, if I put a little piece of aluminum on there, that it would cut it to effectively, like, Marv Grove, Kern mirror, like, Bueno, like, that's what I wanted, like, this mirror finish on these cubes. And it started to cut, and I saw the, like, hacksaw lines going down it, and I just remember thinking, oh, fudge. This is not what I signed up for. No. No. Yep. And the rest is history.
Speaker: Yup, yup. Yeah, and the more you know, the more you're like, oh, there's taper in bandsaws and burr. And it's like, it's never good enough. Yeah. Oh, man. I love it. And now it is like, it's like the most roughing operation ever is bandsaw. That's stage zero. It's not even an operation. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. OK, I was watching your screw video on the Willman, which was super fun. I think you're missing the obvious answer.
Speaker: of the chipping on the insert? Not too fixturing. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you folks haven't watched it, go watch it. But picture a quarter 20 screw type thing, but except it has a giant head. Like let's say it's a three quarter inch diameter head on it. Your issue is the jaw stroke only opens up a smidge, for sure. But you should be able to hold the screw with the head
Speaker: closer to the bottom. So the head would be machined first in op one. It would be the furthest away from the headstock. And then your vice goes to pick it up. Let's say that the head is a half inch for the sake of the example. You could drill a full half inch relieved hole all the way through your soft jaws, except that wouldn't grip anything. But then on the very front,
Speaker: 150 thou, you would not have machined a small clamping section that would just clamp onto the shank of the screw and then everything south of it once it's tipped over the vice would be relieved. So when the vice opens, it just falls down through. I don't think the stroke even opens up wide enough to get past the head and then clamp onto the shank.
Speaker: No, sorry. That's a great point that I did. I think honestly the solution if I really cared about it would be because the way the head is tapered, it goes to like almost a zero edge, which is not necessary. It just kind of looks cool. I could make a thicker, like not an overall thicker head, but a thicker like outside land and then grip on that exactly as you're saying. And then it would just drop. I don't really care. I just make them one by one right now. But yeah, I think that would be the solution.
Speaker: Yeah, sorry. I'm embarrassed to say you're absolutely right that I missed that obvious point. But I'm totally up for a suggestion because I miss things too, right? We need people to suggest.
Speaker: Well, to back up what you said, that's what Grant's doing now on our new, so we have a new plug jack. It's really a whole new product, but we're still calling it the plug jack. So it has, it's effectively like a mini ER nut that we make. And so when you use the plug jack as a jack screw, so you can use it to
Speaker: You could use it to lift something up. Really what we're doing with it is using it to either preload a part or stabilize a part. So you would screw that up. The prior version had no way of locking it in place, which was a big shortcoming. The new one, once you screw it up in place, the same wrench will then allow you to lock it down. Is there like a jam nut or something?
Speaker: It's just like an ER nut when you tighten down an ER nut on a holder. Okay. It's three -part. I don't have one in front of it. Interesting. Just took it out of my shot. It's a really nice product. It's a huge... It's like a very, very well -designed... I'm proud of that product. Yeah. It works as a buy -stop. Fine, but not as... We're actually having another different buy -stop idea in the works.
Speaker: This is exactly what you would want no compromises as a stabilizing tool, especially for the folks that are using the mod vices for larger parts or plate work, or just using it as a kinematic three point setup. You put your part on the three plug jacks and then clamping your mod vices around the periphery.
Speaker: So whatever. Oh, so we were holding the main body part, the largest part of that plug jack is has square, four square flats for wrench flats on it. And we were, forget what Grant was doing. I think he was doing softshells or something, but we switched that to having larger filleted corners. So the four fillets that effectively make up
Speaker: segments of I say three quarter inch circle and we hold on those with a round soft jaws works great. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. So it's, it's as if it's holding a round bar, but it's a square. It's both. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. The Wilhelmin is such, such a cool machine. It really is. It really is. It's such a joy.
Speaker: Yes. Although I am still chipping. I think, did I mention in that video? I can't remember. But I'm chipping the Vinsert. I think we talked about it last week. Ever so slightly. And still kind of struggling with that. Trying to gentlify the toolpath to not chip it. And is it because of rubbing? Or is it overloaded? I'm not sure yet. I don't know. Who makes that insert? Utilis.
Speaker: Oh, that's from the Wilhelmin company? Yeah. Should be generic insert, a V -shape, right? Probably. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, our recipe here on stuff like that, if we're really stumped is, is the absolute free false force multiplier is for us, it's usually Sandvik, but whomever don't care, call your tool rep, get samples, have them come spend their time, their money. Um, it's a problem for you. It's like, yeah, it's the way you go. Yeah. Cause we use this insert for pretty much everything. Um, which is 99 % of what we make is stainless and titanium. Um, and now I happen to be cutting a two.
Speaker: I don't know. It's not just the coating. You're actually fracturing or chipping the very tip, but you have to see with the microscope. I guess, yeah, under the microscope, you can see a small chunk is missing of coating and the substrate, which will basically make the part 5 ,000 bigger than it should be. I mean, when the Wilhelmin's dialed, every part comes out to a 10th. It's like consistent if you're not ruining the insert or dealing with thermal growth or anything.
Speaker: Um, but yeah. Hmm. And you've played, you're, are you turning it fast enough to get surface footage? Good question. I think I forgot 250 maybe surface foot for a hard material. Yeah. That should be soft, soft. Hey, too. Oh, okay. Still. Okay. Yeah. That doesn't strike me as out of line. Are you cutting deep enough? Probably not.
Speaker: Is that balance? Am I overloading it by cutting it 10 thou deep? Or am I underloading it by cutting a tooth out deep? Generally, I haven't seen too much downside with rubbing and cutting, making a tooth out finish pass. It seems to work for me. Because I tend to buy ground inserts, so they're actually sharp on the edge, not molded and have a huge radius.
Speaker: Is that what these are? I believe so, yeah. That might be your problem right there is I don't generally - Too sharp. Well, is it the insert even rated for - That's a good question. Yeah, it might not be. That's a good point. It's probably like the high temp alloy grade, which is mostly what we make. But this being a tool steel, maybe it's not tough enough or something. Yeah, interesting.
Speaker: We really don't, frankly, Pearl Willem is advice, we really don't use ours as a lathe. And I'm not joking about my disdain for turning centers, but for tip control and machine wear, like spindle, peg and spindle, stuff like that, we would interpolate it, leave enough material to properly turn a finish pass, like 5 ,000, but I saw you, like grooving work and even threading,
Speaker: We treadmill, we interpolate, and so forth. Yeah, I have threadmilled that same thread, and it worked great. I kind of wanted to get the threading cycle to work, and I did. It's G33, by the way, not G32. Yeah. Good to know. Willoughton eventually answered that for me, and they're like, yeah, because of the way the latest setup, it's everything normal plus one. I'm like, what? OK. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I can actually, instead of grooving that whole rough out, I could end mill that in like a lot less time probably. I didn't think about that. Great idea. I'd go get it wrong if we, you know, if it was.
Speaker: I get the sense that their guidance was that partly because it's also a used machine or older machine. But like if we had a brand new, like we've gone with that Sugami thing, like we'd be turning a lot. It's cheaper inserts and you can get enough behind it to do some chip breaking.
Speaker: Quick question. I replaced on my saga pen. I replaced my EasyFlow 9000 just maybe a month ago. And I use the pen every day, but usually these things last me many, many months. And last night it wasn't working super well. Like it stopped working and I tried to do the lick and roll it on paper. Do you know if I dropped it inadvertently, can that damage the tip? It can, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, where the ball is kind of held into the swedge outside. I'll look at them under the microscope and sometimes you'll see a dent or an example of issue, things like that. You will see it though, you think? Yeah, I don't want to say they're delicate, but they're a formed item. And when it works great, it works great. When it doesn't, it doesn't.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I just replaced it, but I was like, that's odd. It had nothing to do with the pen from you. It was just like, I like it. It wasn't working. Yeah. And sometimes inserts are duds. We write tests every single insert before we ship a pen. Interesting. Because the last thing we want to do is ship a pen with a dud insert. So the dud rate is not very high, but it's enough that it's like we can't ship without testing. So the guys all scribble something.
Speaker: Are you buying, use the, they come with that same internet I'm buying? Yep. Okay. Yeah. I think we're on Isaflow 900.
Speaker: which is a finer tip version of the 9000. Oh, interesting. Checking mine. Yeah, we're on 900F, which is a fine tip. 9000M is a medium tip. A little fatter stroke. I will buy the finer tip then if I can find it. Yeah, we really need to sell them on our website. Something we've been talking about a lot. Yeah, that's good to know. I love my saga though. Yeah, good to hear.
Speaker: We have sagas in stock if anybody else is interested. There you go. Speaking of our own products that we are using to bring on informal sponsorship of this podcast. Yeah. Today's episode is brought to you by the SAGA Pen. We ground our first puck check parts. Oh, yeah. I literally looked at ours this morning and I took a picture. OK, tell me.
Speaker: Couldn't be a better example of a product that is simple and just works. That being the grinder. Tech did the install Thursday. We kind of did the training on Friday morning. It was pretty simple because we knew what we wanted it to do. There's some quirky, like, oh, I remember why it's not happy here. So we did the little, I took the time to make short GoPro videos. And if anything, I've learned that it can be,
Speaker: It takes some effort to keep those videos on point because we're dealing with a very knowledgeable and well -intentioned install tech who also just wants to go off on lots of different tangents. It's like, nope, I want to do a 17 -second video that just shows when you get the error screen because they won't traverse right. This is what you do. So I made all those videos. And then after they leave, you got to sit down and label them all. That way, they have that resource. And
Speaker: That was super helpful, but he - That's a good idea. What's that? That's a good idea, making those little bite -sized videos for internal use.
Speaker: Yeah. Cause that's the only thing that'll get you is like, okay, what's the boot up sequence and then what you need to remember on what dressing cycle, um, values mean. It is the coolest thing that you have so much control over. I want to address every five foul as we're going through roughing cycles. Then we switch from roughing to finishing. I want you to do address with that dress. I want it to be done at a different feed rate and then finish in this depth with this. Uh, you can't change a step over, but finishing this depth.
Speaker: passes like two -tenths and sparked out two times. So super happy with all that. The factory white wheel, I think, stinks as expected. We tried to grind some of our fixturing, like internal fixturing stuff for the puck chuck, which is, I believe, just soft 4140, so probably low 20s. And again, my grinding
Speaker: novice -ness is such that I know the harder the material is, the easier it can be to get that nice grind out of it. But I've played with lots of different speeds and feeds on some test stuff and those products. And the tolerance specs are exquisite. They're wonderful. But the surface finish, if you drug your finger across it, it almost feels like it has
Speaker: you know, 10 million little birds, like it just feels pitted and like yucky normal. So actually shout out to Angelo from your shop as well, Spencer Webb, we kind of I kind of huddled on opinions and just ordered. Actually, let me share what that wheel is. It's the Norton. I was gonna I was debating between the one I bought and a five SG which is
Speaker: better but probably twice the price and a little bit more versatile but we don't necessarily need versatile right now. I thought let me start with the one that I believe will be great if it's even narrow focused because it's half the price. So a 32A wheel 46, no 46H I think hardness I got. Nice. Yeah.
Speaker: 14 inch or 12 inch? R to 12 by one and a half with a five inch bore. Yeah. Yeah, so that comes today. Action. Nice. Yeah. So I want to get that balanced. Oh yeah, they didn't balance the wheel either when they installed it and dressed the chuck, which I'm not too worried about the chuck, but it was funny because we grabbed a sample. They didn't balance it when you grind the chuck?
Speaker: I don't believe so. I wasn't pretty sure it looks good. It looks good. Like if it hops, then that's really bad. But well, so we definitely have wheel hop on the parts that we ground. And I only know that cause I grabbed some flat stones and there you go. And it was just like, yep. Um, flat stones are your best and worst friend in this area. But so the, the option that we got that I'm loving, I frankly, I don't understand why.
Speaker: As a machinist, this is how I think grinders should run, and I'm glad ours runs this way. It's called the chuck datum option. So our grinding chuck top is Y zero. They call it Y because it's a horizontal spindle, but Z zero, if you want to think of it that way. And when I want a part that's 1 .55 inches finish, I just type in, I want 1 .55 and I'll say I'm starting with 1 .59. So I've got to drown on that. 40 ,000 should be a mile, but it must be how we do it.
Speaker: I'm not actually sure, but that must be okay. Yeah, I love it though. Otherwise of like, I guess if you don't have that, you have to like, grind it and measure it and then say, okay, I'm here. I need to go this much more. I'm like, no, yeah, yeah. Take your parts off, clean the whole table again, get all the dust off, clean your parts, put them back on. Yeah, no, thanks. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I know. Like I saw the picture I posted this morning, the guys will measure every blade before they put them on and know the height of the thickest blade, the highest one. And I guess they use that as their starting point or like a few thou above that as the starting point because they all do vary it by a couple thou or more in thickness. Like I thought I saw 149 and a 165, which is like 15 thou different between two different plates of steel or whatever.
Speaker: But as long as you start with the highest one, then you're not overloading the wheel and you just air cutting until they're all touched. Yeah, it's fantastic. Yeah, the only thing I
Speaker: I guess, I think I knew this, you certainly now realize it now that you have it, is our machine, which I believe is identical to yours. It's not a G -code grinder, so it cannot load programs and do, well, and they always say a complex grinding, like I wanna grind up to a shoulder, or I wanna grind a feature, lift up, move over, and grind a different feature. I don't really need that, but what ours doesn't have that those machines would have is
Speaker: your x feed rate left to right is just a knob. Your step over settings in, well it's z, but again think of it like a y, like a normal vertical, is programmable but not like persistent. So if we wanted to switch jobs and move to a different part, there isn't a great way other than writing down a setup sheet with some like, hey, point the knob at six o 'clock and step over to its permanent value.
Speaker: But doesn't you have to change all of those settings and all the numbers for each new job anyway? Shouldn't have to. I've never run the machine, so I don't really know. Yeah, it's pretty straightforward. So I guess what you're saying is for a similar metal, you'd have a similar step down dress strategy, 5 ,000 dress every two tenths, whatever it is. Correct. Yeah, OK. And that's kind of your bread and butter recipe.
Speaker: Yeah, we took around one batch of parts on it, which was, it was, what was awesome was that I did my test part and I left and then Alex was like, I need eight of these ground for puck jucks. And I set them all up together, did my measurements, ground them and perfect. Like it's done. It was like, I came back maybe an hour later and they were all done. Like it was like, that's usually when you get a new machine, you're like, okay, I want to tweak this. I want to redo this or repost or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah.
Speaker: No, it's a super accurate machine. On ours, because we're grinding eighth inch thick knife blades, they do warp and they lead to difficulty in that scenario. Grinding whatever yours are, inch and a half thick, sounds easier. Yes, I'm sure it's much easier.
Speaker: Oh, and on that note, the way we're handling puck chuck beta list rollout, we've got quite a few people on the beta list. Nice. Is we are emailing batch sizes, I think there may be 10 or 20 at a time. I forget if that's oldest, I think it's the oldest and newest or something. But basically, we're saying, hey, we have this many beta units available. If you like them, go ahead and
Speaker: Lock it kind of like how you handle it like hey, here's a link for I think a day as a courtesy Otherwise, we're gonna reach out to the next group of people So if there's anybody we've tried to also reach out to the folks that were more specific like hey I really want it for this job or this time frame from
Speaker: what else are trying to be respectful of a list in general? Yeah, exactly. It's going to cheat if you will. But if there's somebody who is, we're having more come off regularly. So if anybody hasn't heard from us and wants them, please, by all means, reach out. Yeah. I mean, what I've learned with our list is there's a big difference between people who sign up for the list and people who will actually execute and buy the one. I think you'll probably have a higher conversion rate because you have a very specific desired product. People are signing up for a reason. However,
Speaker: Yeah. You want to get them in the right hands as quickly as possible. Well, that's what we want is we want to make sure we're not going to sit on product because it's really valuable for us to have them in users' hands right now and testing them and so forth. So that's exciting. Super cool. Yeah. Such a good product. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Love it.
Speaker: Oh, so I think I've already moved on from this idea, but we need to laser mark some anodized parts and we just sold our boss laser.
Speaker: which was the plan. It's part of my 2023 master plan, which is going great. That laser served as well. I'd buy it again. I had no regrets, but she put in a lot of hard time. We set it on fire years ago and it was at the point where it was
Speaker: It went down. Alex and maybe Patrick, one of the interns, did an awesome job. They found a couple of parts we needed to replace and it actually worked great. So I could have made the argument like, hey, it's back up and running. But we were only using it for some custom, fixed -stream jobs that are not super common. So we had one of those come back and I think I can fiber
Speaker: I know that we can use our new fiber laser to mark anodized aluminum because we're doing that for our puck chuck valve housings, but some of the markings on this product need to be across a larger area. The option I think I'm going to pursue is the local school college that I help with. It has the same boss laser. I think I'm just going to run over there and use theirs. Yeah. If it's not a repeat production job, you don't need to spend another 15 grand to buy one.
Speaker: Exactly. When we thought about buying a new smaller CO2 laser, it's just would be, you know, it would be reliable, brand new condition. And we didn't need that giant machine anymore. But just don't need it right now. But the thought I had was based on your experience with your router, of why isn't there a more vetted solution for like, what did your, what did your diode laser cost your router 1000 bucks? Yeah, something like that. Yeah.
Speaker: It just seems like you could mount that on a Haas VF2 head inside of it because it's not complicated to mount. There's no mirrors, right? It's not cumbersome. Yeah, you just mount it. You could screw it on, magnet it on, bolt it on, whatever. Ours is on a 3D printed adapter that wraps around the spindle and clamps around the whatever it is, four inch spindle.
Speaker: Yeah. And then integration with the control is where it gets a little more tricky, because as I was texting you, I forget how the laser turns on, but it's like, say, M3, M5, turns the laser on, turns the laser off. And as it's traversing, it's like, on off, on off, on off, on off, quickly, right?
Speaker: So the control, your G code, needs to be able to output that signal. And I don't know how Haas would output that to the little control box for this OPT laser. Maybe it's totally been done before. I just don't know.
Speaker: So that's the difference with like 2D contour would work except 2D contour leaves the spindle on. I would need to just have a post mod that every time it. I use lightburn laser software, which posts to the Maso control. Yeah, I don't use. Interesting. Okay. Huh?
Speaker: Yeah, like I said, I don't think I'm going to even bother. But I mean, 10 minutes of research might answer your questions anyway. And then it's a cool idea because you have all these big hoses with some of them VF6s, right? Yeah. Huge tables. You do whatever you want. And it could be a cool solution. You need to set the focal height. But OK, so you have a Z distance on the machine. Yeah, somebody else come up with this product. We'll buy one and use it.
Speaker: Yeah, it'd be awesome. Yeah, we actually, we use our laser almost every day for laser barking foam. Like we write the word saga, Norseman, whatever in the form.
Speaker: The clear path motors on the router still do jiggle a little bit, jitter. Interesting. And I've talked to Technic about it, but we haven't really gotten on the phone, video chat, and had them help us tune it and find the solution for this. We're just living with it for right now because it's cutting foam. It doesn't really matter. But say we wanted to laser engrave a business card or something with words and details or aluminum or something. We haven't done that yet, but I definitely think it would fail. It would jiggle too much.
Speaker: Yeah. But I want to get it fixed. Other than that, the router is amazing. It's awesome. Yeah, it's good. That's awesome. And I feel like that's a totally fixable solution. That's why I put clear paths on it so we could tune them so we could do. Yeah, that's strange. It is strange. Is it all the axes? Sometimes, yeah. In different ways.
Speaker: Right. And if you just slow it down, it's still there. I don't know. This, like I bought all these, um, I don't know if they're painted or anodized, but little cheap business cards that are black and you know, aluminum base. And, uh, the goal is to just lay them on the router and laser and grave, whatever, and see how accurate we could draw a little square circles, whatever, and see how straight the lines are. Um, just haven't done it yet, but yeah. Hmm. Hmm. What, uh, whatever happened with your coolant?
Speaker: The foaming. Foaming. I actually filmed a quick little video about it yesterday. It's going up today. We have a drum of Quality Chem Geocool 930 something sample coming to us. I think it's local. It's ready to be delivered and installed. So we're probably going to try that on one of the machines, see if we see a noticeable improvement in just by switching coolants.
Speaker: Yeah, I sort of haven't put a lot of energy into any solutions in the past few weeks, but it's either water, possibly bacteria in the water like we talked about or coolant itself or contamination in a machine or I don't know something, but it's still kind of weird for us. Are you having foam over issues regularly?
Speaker: Yeah. Okay. I think we're able to manage it for the most part, but it still happens. Yeah, that sucks. Okay. Got it. Yeah, I'm curious to try that. Geocool 960, whatever. It was 930. I've never heard of that. Yeah. John Wiley, Equality Chem was like, try this one. Okay. And I was like, all right, sure.
Speaker: Blaser guys really want us to try some of their Vasco mill, something like that. So might also try that. I mean, if you're really into it, these cooling companies are usually pretty happy to send you a pale, like a five gallon bucket to test for comp or discount or free or whatever. You just got to ask real nicely and firmly.
Speaker: Yeah, how much time do we spend testing and tuning and try this machine? What does it do with that machine too? Does it do it with high pressure coolant? I really like that all of our machines, including the Surface Grinder, run the exact same coolant. Totally. It's so nice. We're on 251.
Speaker: maybe he's bumping up to quality come to 91 is the answer. Like that's what CJ runs in his Willie. And, uh, it's like the high Tampa alloy version of the coolant. Whereas two 51 is kind of the generic, you know, every day version. Yeah. But we'll get it. Just takes time. Yeah. Yeah. That was funny. We,
Speaker: order the VACRA number one for the Okamoto, which is like a mandatory, you bust use this. Did you get like a 55 gallon drum of it? No, because you need 32 gallons of it. And I asked Angelo to make sure, like, hey, does this stuff, do you have to top it off? Cause it gets mixed in with the coolant or evaporates or, you know what I mean? Like, does it get consumed in some way? And he was like, in two or three years we've never touched it. Yeah. I'm pretty sure we did buy a drum.
Speaker: So I didn't want the extra 20. Yeah, exactly. I think we have it. So I want pails, which were the pricing was still way better to get just seven five -gallon pails instead of a drum. Yeah. Because, oh, so then the pails got screwed up on the shipping logistics and they were almost not going to be here. And I was like, well, I'm going to have to cancel the install because they can't run the grinder without that stuff.
Speaker: And so, um, Petra choice, you know, stepped up, figured it out. But one of their solutions was like, we'll just send you the 50 high gallon drum at the same price. And I'm like, I don't want the extra 20 gallon. I have to then pay to get rid of it. Like I'm not going to store this for a technical, you're supposed to replace the factor every year. I think it's probably one of those interesting depends on how you use it and so forth. But like, I don't think everybody does that every year. So it's like, I'm not storing 20 gallons of this for multiple periods of time.
Speaker: So what did you end up doing? Pails? They got the pails here in time. Nice. Yeah, which is perfect. But my point was kind of this overarching like we now between recycling older coolant or having extra oil and so forth. Like it's a deal to manage the volume of fluids that we've got and getting rid of them when we have extra. Yeah, it's not free to get rid of used oils and coolants and stuff. It's not that expensive, but it's still a cost. Yeah.
Speaker: What do you do today? I think I'm going to grind some more blades on the speedio, which is going really well. I tried a rougher grinding wheel, like a significantly rougher grinding wheel, and I'm getting pretty much the same results as I am with a super fine grinding wheel.
Speaker: which is amazing. I ground one with a fine finish and I ground one with a rough finish and I gave him both the sky and I said polish them out and tell me what you think and he's like they're the same. I'm like no way.
Speaker: I think what's happening with the fine wheel, which we've been using for three years now, it loads up because it's a 20 to 40 micron diamond. It's tiny, tiny, tiny diamonds. I think it's loading up with stainless steel and wearing the compound, the bind bond faster than it's cutting properly, so it wears down its size, goes out of tolerance. I have to auto comp so much that our accuracy is not as good as it could be.
Speaker: My theory with the rougher wheel is the diamonds stick out further and they are more rigid and they slice better and they don't load up. It will last longer without deep bonding itself or falling apart kind of thing, allowing us to have better consistency with the same finish. I think that's kind of where I'm leaning towards right now. I bought a whole range of different grid sizes and I'm like, no way is this rough one actually doing what I want. What have I been doing the past three years?
Speaker: Yeah, but you don't want a great finish, so I get the fine finish wheel, right? But it kind of comes back to like how an Okamoto surface grinder can get a great finish with a 46 grit wheel. Isn't that funny? Like imagine 46 grit sandpaper, right? Literally. You know? 80 grit sandpaper where I destroy a piece of furniture. Exactly. But how does the surface grinder get away with that? And I start to apply that to the grinding wheel, and I'm using
Speaker: Imagine like 2000 grit sandpaper. It's my grinding wheel or whatever it is, 1500. I was like, no, that doesn't need to be that fine. Yes, I want a great finish, but it's just loading up and falling apart.
Speaker: So, a bit more experimentation needed, but so far, great results. And this video is doing an awesome job with the submicron update, the five -digit inch screen to do grinding. Oh, yeah, right, the chip added? The chip, yep. Yep. Yeah, super good, super good.
Speaker: that's part of my fall plan is probably too aggressive. But I think I mentioned this on a previous episode of like, hey, some accountability around what's happening next. So we are, I'll bring this up next week. I met a
Speaker: Fan of the podcasting channel who came by to pick up one of the used machines this weekend. He had a really good Story and questions about polishing some small parts. I'll bring up next week because it's probably a fun longer conversation but um So we are
Speaker: Okamoto is running more work to do on the new wheel and so forth. Check off the to -do list, if you will. I'm now finishing cleaning up that back area, which is a bunch of scrap material that needs to be recycled or sold, and then moving some stuff to the training building just to get it. Treat Saunders like it's precious, and if we have some scrap messes, we can move it over there for now.
Speaker: then Alex is basically running with puchuck stuff, so that's not much on my plate. Gen 3 mod vices, we have so many produced that we needed to stop and build our product assembly workflow, like I'm looking at picking one of those automatic screw feeders for assembly. The difference with the Gen 3 is it's going to include a smooth insert and then we're selling an optional
Speaker: upgrade or addition to have the, we call it the Castle Grip, it would be like a Talon Grip. So it's a different product, different features, and we assemble them here where there's two pins that have to get pressed in. So we've got 3D printed jigs, I need to build the QC jigs, but we've laid all that inventory out, all the Lex IDs matching our quantities, like that's happening this literally as we speak.
Speaker: after that gets enough processes built around it, then my next step is to go backward and start going through mostly the horizontal because that's kind of still my world, but I'll probably try to help out some on the steel plates as well. Like, hey, where do we need to look at new tooling and feeds? What's an operation that we're spending 20 minutes on that I think could be done in half the time? That type of stuff. Absolutely. Same, same story.
Speaker: With the current, I think there's definitely some efficiencies to be had if we took a close look at every toolpath. It's tough because we have very consistent, predictable tool life right now, and I love that. But if we want to save some time, you've got to start pushing some boundaries a little bit and figure out what tools are eating up the most time. And maybe we went from a four -flute ball mill to an eight -flute ball mill and halved our cycle time.
Speaker: and getting the exact same result. And we're like, yeah, yeah, there you go. That's possible. Not possible on every finish, but on this particular finish, yeah, it works great. Still getting good tool life too. So things like that, more of that kind of stuff. And yeah, like you said, walking through the whole shop, I have been thinking about this lately of like having those open, positive conversations about like, I know this is how we do it. What are some ways we could do it better?
Speaker: because I found that everybody kind of gets into the routine of like, okay, I got to make parts. This is how I make parts and you make parts and make good parts. And to change that process, not everybody naturally thinks about, you know, like, like you and I do of like, everything's flexible. Everything is robbery. We can change everything. Like you actually want your employees to be fairly rigid in like, this is the procedure and this is how we do this.
Speaker: while also being listening and conscious to changes and updates. Absolutely. So it's always a balance.
Speaker: When it's like a combination of both scrap parts, but also toing, I've like, we, we buy a lot of YG1 solid carbide these days and there's this one end mill from them that we really like. I use it in the horizontal. Caleb's using it on the Akuma for plates. Grant started using it for some stuff. And so I keep turning around and buying, you know, 500 or a thousand dollars with this tool. I'm like, are we like, and I, in fairness, I broke two of them on Friday on a new product where I was just goofed on a stupid campaign. I thought that's on me, but that's like, Hey,
Speaker: We should at some point put a system in place to help us understand. Are we blowing through these or is it? Because tooling is basically for years we've been able to ignore tooling costs because it's just not the best battle for us to tackle. It's now becoming a battle we need to tackle. Yeah, we're literally spending thousands of dollars a month on end mills. Yeah.
Speaker: I don't mind, but if we can look at it closer, then for the better. I'll see you next week. Last week you asked me for this week if I was still going to planning on Tesla converting the Volvo Amazon. I did. Sorry, I forgot to ask you. It's on my notes. I'm probably 70 -30 definitely going to do it. I still have doubts every now and then.
Speaker: but I do think it would be super fun to do.
Speaker: That's a tough one because it's like you either you full commit, right? Yeah, exactly. Full commit, there's no go back. And I'm like, there'd be a lot of like a couple of frame modifications that you might not come back from, you know, putting a whole new rear end in kind of thing like, I mean, it'd still be pretty sick. Yeah. But that past few weeks, I have had a lot of fun spending some personal time thinking about cars and researching and playing and driving the car has been so much fun.
Speaker: That's been really nice to pull me away from the daily grind. I spent so many years just purely focused on business and family. I'm allowing myself to have some freedom here and even eventually spend some money on it because it's going to have to happen. I was even texting Eric. I was like, here's the link. We're going to need a hoist. We're going to need a lift at some point. Think about this. We should really be getting this at some point.
Speaker: Dude, we put a two post lift in a trainee building for, I think it was under four grand. Yeah, exactly. It's like, oh my gosh, given everything else we do. Does yours have the stringer on the floor or the stringer on the ceiling between the two? A stringer on the floor. On the floor. But the cables, the hoses go across the floor, so you have to drive over a little. Yeah, no big deal. Because some of them have them over the top, which means you can't lift it so high.
Speaker: Oh, ours doesn't have it on top. Oh, you're right. No, it's clear on the top. Yep. And I think the floor ones are a little bit cheaper, like $1 ,000 cheaper than the other ones anyway. I just wanted it enough to lift my truck. Obviously, it's not like the Porsche and guys in the shop would use it for their vehicles and stuff. It's just awesome. Yeah, we need it. Yeah. Yeah. Cool, man. I'll see you next week. That's it. Bye.
