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#254 - Robots DO Call In Sick!
191 Plays3 years ago
Topics:
- KERN calls in sick at Grimsmo Knives
- Pride in Work & Small Business Culture: Read Small Giants!
- Last Part for Willemin Arrives Today!
- Eumach Spindles
- 3D Printing: Voron & Prusa
- Haas DT-2
- Saunders' Porche
- Grimsmo Debates the Fate of the Mori
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Episode 254
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 254. My name is John Grimsmo. And my name is John Connors. And this is the podcast where we get to talk about all things manufacturing.
Troubleshooting Grinding Wheel Alarm
00:00:11
Speaker
And first thing on the docket, robots do call in sick.
00:00:16
Speaker
Oh, uh-oh. So, uh, Ansel is texting me this morning and the current, um, the, the grinding wheel that does a rasp bevels hit a minimum tool diameter alarm, which happens every now and then it's kind of rare. But, um, so that stopped it last night and then he's trying to pick up from the middle of the code this morning and
00:00:37
Speaker
it's like a multi-palette change dressing palette routine, and he's trying to pick up from there, and it just got stuck. He's like, I don't know what to do. I've had this before a long time ago, but I forget how I got rid of it. Anyway, so right before the podcast, I was kind of helping him walk him through that step
Lack of Structured Documentation
00:00:55
Speaker
by step. You got to make the aroa happy. The current's just waiting for the palette changer to be ready.
00:01:03
Speaker
Okay. Whenever the pallet changer is in an automatic position, it'll keep going. And the current is just like, okay, I'm good now, I'll just keep going. So to make the Aroa happy involves homing it, unclamping the gripper, putting the pallet back where it needs to be and just step by step. It's not that complicated, but until you do it a whole bunch of times, it's a lot.
00:01:29
Speaker
I feel obligated to chalk one up for the to be created Grimsmo knives wiki. Yeah, for sure. Yep. Whether it's a little tutorial video or just a step by step, you know, instruction manual, how to undo this problem.
00:01:48
Speaker
We, uh, we, we use a sauna, but I would, it wouldn't be the right tool for what you're saying. We don't have a wiki either. Honestly, what I do now is, uh, I use Gmail so much and frankly, so successfully because the search is so good.
Improving CNC Operations
00:02:04
Speaker
I write an email to myself or I write an email to a bunch of people on the team, not for anybody to read it now, but it will be like Kern, a row, a palette grinding. We like, I have all these like SEO terms in it. And then like,
00:02:17
Speaker
It won't even make sense if you just read it. Yeah, but then you had like a little video or whatever, or even a link to a file folder on the data server where you do have a video. Just make it easy to be like, how did we do this? Because there's so many things that you need to access twice a year, but you can't remember every of the 17 steps twice a year. Yeah.
00:02:43
Speaker
We actually, I'll do a little teaser. We came up with a simple idea to improve quality of life around the topic you're talking about for each CNC machine, but I'm not gonna tell you what it is, because we're gonna show it in a shop update video we have coming out probably mid-January.
00:03:01
Speaker
You're not going to give us a teaser? It's not like some unique creation by us, but it's so simple. Again, I'm not looking for pride of authorship around what it is, but it makes a lot of sense to implement.
Importance of Team Morale
00:03:20
Speaker
Cool. Yeah, the quality of life and just the way we work is becoming a big thing on my mind lately.
00:03:27
Speaker
Obviously, we want the best result, the best quality product, quality control, things like that. But quality of life and operator intervention and the hands-off ability of some of the automated machines and all this stuff, it's a big thing.
00:03:43
Speaker
Well, it's funny that for years, I felt like we were taught, like you often heard, the customer's number one, the customer's important, the customer's your next inspector, like all these sorts of things around customer-centered companies. And for sure, it matters and customer service matters a ton. But I think there's a lot to be said for recognizing that the
00:04:05
Speaker
Customers are one of many important stakeholders alongside vendors and really your team and that your team is the number one priority. It doesn't mean at the expense of customers.
00:04:20
Speaker
the mood here, the morale here, how we're challenging people, what's on our plate. And I get some great feedback that came in around the difficult topic last week of like, hey, are you a failure as a leader if you can't change somebody or lead somebody to a better
Pride in Work and Company Growth
00:04:36
Speaker
way? And ultimately, it's kind of like, look, the simple threshold for everything in life is giving an S.
00:04:44
Speaker
You know, take, take pride in your work. Like that will, a guy wrote in with awesome feedback about like, I will, I will meet you more than halfway. If you're on the team and you care, you know. Yeah. It's such a critical point that now that it's.
00:05:04
Speaker
talked about that it's on our minds because we talked about it last week and I've been thinking more about it just pride in ownership, pride in your work. It might be like a nice subtle driving force to the future of our companies. Yeah. Something higher basically. It's a good way for me to also learn how to say no because you and I are both guilty as
00:05:31
Speaker
youngish, hungry entrepreneurs that get excited about a lot of things. And I've struggled with this forever, not like sure old and happy way of like, I like doing different things in life and enjoying having fun and manufacturing. It's hard to say no to things. But if you think about I'm only going to do it if it's something where I can just take absolute pride.
00:05:50
Speaker
If you introduce me to somebody that you look up to and that person, the only thing they see about me is this thing. Am I good with that? If I only showed somebody GURP and that's all they knew about Grimsman knives, what would they think of you? I see what you're saying. If I showed them going to your Norseman, we know the answer there. You want the pride to exude through every blood vessel in your company.
00:06:19
Speaker
Yeah. We're not there, but I think we try to do that naturally, at least you and I individually try to apply that to everything we do to the company. But yeah, as the companies grow and they have grown quite a bit.
00:06:34
Speaker
reinforce that, encourage that throughout the company. Sometimes people just need a little reminder that's like, guys, this is the direction we're going in. As the leader, pride is everything. Pride leads to quality, leads to happiness, leads to pushing yourself and growing.
00:06:53
Speaker
It's really clicking for me because it's what I think about, frankly, what a great team that we've got now. I can go through the list of every single person and their name and they care. It's not because they're nerves or fascinated with machining or whatever. Man, if that sounds cliche,
Balancing Work and Hobbies
00:07:13
Speaker
I'm sorry, but it's a pride of authorship, a pride of ownership.
00:07:18
Speaker
If there's one overarching thing, a piece of advice, it's that. It's like, look, there's going to be people smarter than you, people that work harder than you, the people that have more means than you, all these sorts of things in life. But like, if there's one thing beyond hard work, make sure when you do something, when you write a letter or become part of a team or organization or anything, take pride in what you do.
00:07:44
Speaker
Yep. And should go home now. Y'all don't know. Yeah. Is the current fix a big deal? Uh, no, I think, I think Angela's got it. Actually, let me, I can log in and see the video.
00:08:02
Speaker
three seconds while you're taking your time doing that. Cause I'll explain. I sat down last night actually on my own and, uh, went down to a quiet spot and, uh, and just, it's funny, you can't, I've talked about this before with you, like it's like exercising or yoga. Like you can't just start go from parking the car and like immediately into this like planning mode. Like I have a really, sometimes it's happening to be like a good grief. I'm not like, I'm not anyway. I'm not ready for this. Yeah.
00:08:31
Speaker
But I just chilled, relaxed. I actually fixed my drone that I broke. And then I was like, okay, no, now I'm starting to think about a few things. It kind of warmed up. I read a couple emails that people had written in and feedback that I really appreciated. And that kind of got me thinking about reflecting on 2021 and what I wanted to do in 2022.
00:08:50
Speaker
One of the single recurring theme that I've had that has spanned three years now is I enjoy who I am and what I do better when I slow down. And I know I'm projecting
00:09:07
Speaker
I'm making an assumption here, but the feeling of John Grimsmough of I just got into the shop. I'm super excited. I want to get these things done. I've got the podcast with Saunders and the current's broken. I need to help Angela. I don't, I hate that. You know what I mean? Um, I'm not folding you. I'm saying like I, you know, whether I need to, and you know, the podcast and stuff, because you and I keep to our schedule on it, you know? Um, so it's hard to flex on that. Uh, we can't, but you know what I mean? Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Um, and for the most part, that kind of.
00:09:36
Speaker
hustle busy stress is a lot lower in my life than it used to be. There's times and there's hard time schedules like podcasts this time. Let's go. Little things get in the way of that. I'm looking at the video feed right now. I see Pierre with his flashlight looking in the aroa and Angelo
00:09:59
Speaker
looking confused. Video feed, the current has a camera? It does now. I set up a Raspberry Pi webcam. It's sick. So I've just got a little sticky tact to the control panel, but it lets me see the machine running. And then through VNC, I can also see the control panel and what's going on there. So yeah, obviously, they're still a little bit stuck, which is fine.
00:10:29
Speaker
If anyone likes 3D printing and has a printer that's compatible with Octopi, which I think many are, I bought an Octopi. They're super cheap and just frankly didn't get around to dealing with it. And then I realized this is a great project for one of our high school interns who's into tech stuff. And I sort of said, hey, Samuel, can you get this rock and roll in it? Perfect. On a personal level, it's a disappointment at this point in my life because I do wish I could
00:10:55
Speaker
carve out time and get into Linux and Raspberry Pi and flashy. But I have to come to terms with being okay. For example, I've been flying drones on my free time. I'd rather do that at this point then.
00:11:09
Speaker
I've set up Raspberry Pi is 10 years ago.
3D Printing Tips and Tools
00:11:11
Speaker
I don't remember how to do it, but I figured out. Anyway, Octopi is great for ditching the SD cards, for monitoring your printer, for stopping it remotely. And Phil, Dr. Phil, who if you aren't following on Instagram, the Dr. Phil experience, you should recommended a plug-in. Do you remember what it was called? Spaghetti? Spaghetti Detective, I think. Did you try it?
00:11:35
Speaker
Well, no, because that's honestly not really, we don't really have prints fail. We had one fail recently. I'm not against trying it. And I think it's worth throwing out there. Do you use it? I've never used the Spaghetti Detective, but I looked into it when Phil suggested it. It's basically a camera monitoring app that if your print fails and your nozzle is just oozing spaghetti, it'll what?
00:12:03
Speaker
motion capture like it'll it'll see the video and like take little pictures and be like it's like facial recognition but first and alert you and text you or something like that and Phil sounds like Phil loves it.
00:12:16
Speaker
Um, I haven't had a big mess of spaghetti either. I've had lots of prints fail, but not for that. I'm not sure. Yeah. We, we, the types of prints we do generally don't fail. The materials that we're doing don't tend to fail. So I don't, it's solving a problem I don't have right now, but again, it's worth noting like, okay, that's totally cool. It's super cool. Yeah. How do you, why do you have a bunch of prints fail? Uh, it might.
00:12:42
Speaker
lift off the bed in one corner or something, or the nozzle gets clogged quite a bit. I'm trying to fix that for good. So that's not making spaghetti. That's just skipping. The extruder is just skipping gears, not pushing the stuff through. What material? PLA. Yeah, John. I mean, I've probably printed, geez, 100 things in the last 40 days. No joke.
00:13:10
Speaker
Yep. Not a single failure. You have a brand new Prusa. I have two old used, very used Prusas with thousands of hours on them. Replace the nozzle for- Yeah. I don't think it's just a nozzle. I think it's the whole hot end, which I am replacing the hot end. Okay. Putting a mosquito in.
00:13:29
Speaker
Cool. Is that aftermarket? Okay. Yeah, it's this American company in California or something, Florida, I think, that makes really well-machined engineered copper hot end. Cool. I've got one in my first Prusa, but then I had some other temperature issues on that machine, which I'm slowly replacing. Then I'm going to put another mosquito in my second Prusa.
00:13:52
Speaker
And then now I have the Voron, which is sick. Although the Voron, I think I broke it last night. I'm trying to upgrade to a screen, like a seven-inch touchscreen, so I can interface with it and not just have to use my computer all the time. And I think I did it out of order. I just plugged in the screen to see if it would work, and I might have corrupted the SD card.
00:14:13
Speaker
So, I mean, easy fix pretty much, but I was kind of confused last night. I'm like, oh no, this isn't doing it at all. I can't even connect to it anymore. What did I do? Have you printed with the voron yet? Yeah. Yeah. I've printed like nine hours already just in the first two days. Awesome. It's fantastic. Yeah. I watched the, what do you call it? Core XY?
00:14:35
Speaker
Yeah, I watched a YouTube video after we hung up last time and I was like, oh, that's really obvious point that I didn't catch on it first until I watched the video of like on a normal Cartesian printer, one separate controls X, the other controls Y. So one issue is the potentially changes the weight as the part weight increases on the table, but also you only have one stepper doing all the work in one direction.
00:15:00
Speaker
And a CoreXY can balance the load between two servos on one axis, which gives you a much smoother and consistent and more power or holding power or whatever. Yep. Yep. And it's belt driven. So you got to tension the belts just right. And the tension between the two belts has to be accurate. Otherwise, I think your prints will be a little oblong. So you can tune that, fine tune that. And with the Voron and with the Clipper firmware and
00:15:28
Speaker
All kinds of other cool features. You can tune this thing to the nines. That's cool. I hear some Voron owners almost complain that they spent the past year tweaking it just because you can. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's fine, but you're trying to eke that last 5% out and you can, but there's a lot of just bass tuning that takes 10 minutes and it's much better than right out of the box.
00:15:53
Speaker
Yeah, I'm very much in the camp of 3D printing as a tool where I just like that it works and I would buy another Prusa Mini today if we hadn't already put a deposit down on the new big Prusa that will have multi extruders in the hopes that that comes to fruition this year. Just because we're printing so much that I want more capacity and frankly, I'd leave them set up with either different material or a different color. It's 300 bucks. Yeah. You have the actual Mini?
00:16:23
Speaker
We have a mini and then the MKS3. Okay. And then I have an IDEX at home and I've actually been printing at home for work a lot. I'll go home at night on prints overnight. That's great. Yeah. In our, I don't know if I'll do it in the shop update video or I might just do a dedicated follow up to the 3D printing in a machine shop. But like if our first video on 3D printing a machine shop was good, this is on steroids. It's legit awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I've realized that 3D printing is my hobby.
00:16:50
Speaker
now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, especially over break, I got to build that for on it was so, so enjoyable and challenging and not really work related, but kind of work related. But just my personal, you know,
00:17:03
Speaker
outlet, my hobby. I'm really enjoying it. I learned that somebody developed a multi-extruder attachment for the Vorons and it can do up to nine different filaments.
Managing 3D Printing Workflows
00:17:17
Speaker
That's cool. They call it the enraged rabbit carrot feeder. Because why not? I'm like, I want that.
00:17:24
Speaker
We just did a video that I think it's going to come out next week on 3D printing through Fusion, like slicing in Fusion. Cool. I've never tried that.
00:17:33
Speaker
Yeah, so I wanted to try it as well. And there wasn't a ton of content out there. And I'll tell you, it works. And what's really interesting. And I mentioned this to the video is that it's a great way to build a workflow when you have team members or in this case, my kids, like slicing, like pure cura or prusa slicer is not hard. But I'll tell you, there's lots of little steps. Yeah.
00:17:55
Speaker
Yeah, like, oh, did you miss the wrong preset or material or, you know, when you switch between files, it just, you think about having an eight-year-old use it. And what we did with Fusion was we turned it into the container method with predefined setups. We have each of our printers in a master file. You just insert the component into whichever printer you want it to print. And then you can even have pre-built setups for
00:18:19
Speaker
like each printer and one for each printer for, excuse me, PLA on that printer, TPU on that printer, ABS on that printer. And that way for the most majority of print cases, especially when it's like, Hey, Garrett wants to print a skimmer
00:18:37
Speaker
Oil separator that we have there was a print another one. He doesn't care about, you know going to a different nozzle size on ABS He's just printing normal PLA point for rock and roll. Yep. Yep. It saves all that and it keeps you in one Software, so you don't export the STL re-import in a line and oriented. Yeah. Yeah in Pritz the slicer you can define printer setup and Preset
00:19:01
Speaker
like nozzle size and temperatures and all that stuff. So theoretically, you could have two clicks to switch between printers and like presets. I've not had it work well though. When I save it as a 3MF project, reopening it later doesn't bring things up. Oh yeah. No, that's a good point. That's the issue. But you can define, like I have my Voron defined as one printer, my Prusa defined as another printer, and a little dropdown switches between them. Oh yeah. We have that. Yeah.
00:19:29
Speaker
your setups like 0.4 nozzle fast, 0.4 nozzle slow. Yeah, I have those two. But on the Voron, I'm trying to push it to be really fast like to print it, you know, the Prusa prints at what 30 millimeters per minute, I'm trying to print at 180 on the Voron. Just as I can. There's printing at 1000. I'm like, what?
00:19:49
Speaker
When it's running again, will you throw up an Insta of it? I haven't shared anything yet, but it's fun. But that's the other problem with PrusaSlicer, if you're using that one, is that I have my home computer, my work computer, my laptop. We have work computers all throughout the shop. Those settings and stuff are not naturally built for a team. Like cloud-based. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's a good point. So this gives us a true, I hate the word cloud and team, but it does give us that functionality. That's a good point. Yeah.
00:20:21
Speaker
Total off topic, but when you mentioned tensioning the belts, I thought I'd just share. I bought a 1986 Porsche 944 that doesn't run from a friend. It sat in his driveway for eight years. He parked it after the water pump blew.
00:20:40
Speaker
And it was otherwise functioning and he did the, he already replaced the clutch, which the factories had a rubber clutch, rubber spring clutch, which is a horrible design. And he replaced it with a good clutch. So knock on wood, I ordered a water pump. And if I replace that, it's torn apart in my garage right now. Nice. I also have to deal with, by the way, this is like the most thing I've ever done in a car before was like rotors and a little bit of brake line. Okay. Yeah.
00:21:09
Speaker
and oil changes and stuff. So I need to figure out what to do with the fuel system because eight-year-old gas is going to be an issue on the injectors and fuel pump. But I'm loving it and goal is to see if I can get it running. That's amazing. Finally bought a Porsche. I know you've been wanting one for your life, basically. Yeah. That's so cool, man. I might have another one as well.
00:21:35
Speaker
Why am I not surprised? Yeah. What year is it? 1986. 1986, yeah. Yeah. Looked up a picture. That's what I thought it was.
00:21:44
Speaker
I mean, I love it, but it's a complete POS. The interior is frankly trashed, but it's a labor. At this point, I don't know what I'm going to do with it. I just want to see if I can figure out if I can get it running and I want to spend as little money doing that if I can, which I have to take the timing belt off to pull the water pump. That's a big debate online is retentioning the timing belt without the $1,000 Porsche tool. There's a way you can do it.
00:22:11
Speaker
with the dial indicator or others. I'm not too worried about it, especially for just getting the car up and running. That's cool. It's fine. It was always wanted to get better at basic ish car maintenance type stuff. And God bless YouTube. Like there's guys that are putting out.
00:22:27
Speaker
you know, videos that have no views, like 800 views or 1200 views, but it's the most helpful thing ever. And you want to like, you know, those are the people that I want to frankly, it reminds me of why I love what I do and not getting caught up in the trolls and the naysayers. It's like, no, I don't care if people don't like something or whatever. Like I'm doing it for the guy who's in his basement trying to drill with a 15,000 drill on his tormach and can't figure out what the heck with micro drilling video coming out.
Team Dynamics and Personal Projects
00:22:52
Speaker
Like that's who I'm doing this for. That is why this is out there, period.
00:22:55
Speaker
Yep. One of our guys, Sky, bought a 1989 Volvo 240, which is my home. I've been a Volvo nerd forever. Eric still has a 240 in the garage here in the shop. Yeah, so Sky's been going through. It's like, oh, I think the starter's broken. And we're like, maybe your battery's just dead. He's like, yeah, I think you're right.
00:23:16
Speaker
Let's be, you gotta start somewhere. Exactly. Yep. Yep. So that was yesterday. I think today it should be drivable, although I didn't see it in the driveway at work. Um, so, but he's like a day away from daily driving that thing. So exciting. Um, he's having fun.
00:23:32
Speaker
Okay, here's a dumb question for you. If I get this water purple place and I'm ready to try rolling the car over, like starting it, I don't have a battery for it. The battery was totally shot. I don't want to pull my truck or my wife's car battery that I want to just don't know. So is there a dumb question? Is there a way to try starting the car if I don't have an extra 12 volt battery or car battery?
00:23:57
Speaker
I would just get a 12 volt car battery. Just spend the money on it? Yeah. They're not that expensive. Under a hundred bucks for whatever spec fits. I mean, you could jump it to another car, but that doesn't seem like the greatest idea.
00:24:10
Speaker
Yeah, I just, I'll kick myself. If I do some, you know, when I looked at my, I have a new ish truck and like the batteries has connectors inside. I don't like, I don't want to take down my main vehicle. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Um, okay. I'll see if I can find a battery. Yeah. Hey, it's fun. I'm enjoying it. Cool. It's good to have little projects, little side projects. Hey, we, I don't remember if this was after we hit and record last week, but you said the you mocks were smoking.
00:24:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think it was after we stopped recording yesterday or last week.
00:24:45
Speaker
I was machining some aluminum part on the U-Mac and then all of a sudden I heard a pop and then smoke started coming out everywhere. Turns out one of the airlines broke in the tool changer air cylinder, which is an air over hydraulic system. So there's a little bit of oil and air pressure just leaking out this sight gauge hose. So I walk around, I freaked out, I shut the air off and then the smoke kind of dissipated.
00:25:13
Speaker
Yeah, it was just a sight gauge hose that was 20 years old and cracked. So super easy to replace. And I haven't put pressure to it yet. But today, it's on my list today to crack that open again. But one thing that was really cool was that, so we had that problem. And then before that, we were having some door interlock issues where the machine would just e-stop in the middle of a facing pass.
00:25:38
Speaker
So imagine I'm facing this piece of 7075 aluminum with a quarter inch end mill, just little passes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And it's in the middle of the cut and it stops. And I'm like, Oh, no, so I get, you know, get rid of the stop, lift the tool up, and then I can block scan from the middle of the program, like actually the middle, not from a tool call, but from the middle. And, and it repositions itself and it puts it down and it continues that facing pass again. And there is no dwell mark at all. Stop.
00:26:08
Speaker
I'm like feeling it with my finger and I'm like if I close my eyes and I squint I can maybe feel that there's something here but it's not bad at all. That's incredible. I'm really impressed with the accuracy of these machines and you put an indicator on the spindle you try to check for backlash or whatever and it's like a tenth or less like almost nothing.
00:26:27
Speaker
That's incredible. You see it, right? You have to see something. You see like a swirl, a circle swirl, but it's not there. That is awesome, John. I want to love these machines so much. They're not set up. They're old. They've got some issues.
00:26:46
Speaker
They're pretty good though. They're C-frame machines, right? Yep. Classic drilling machine. Okay. God, that's awesome. Dang. Good for you. I'm going to put air to it, see if that new hose works. It's a little thinner than the last one, so I have 90% sure it's going to work fine. Then I'm going to try to finish this part.
00:27:13
Speaker
Are we sharing what the part is? Oh, this is the heat. He sinks. Heat treating quench plates. Yeah, right, right. We're hoping the 7075 aluminum, apparently it has like twice the yield strength of 6061 aluminum, so they should dent less easily.
00:27:31
Speaker
when we're putting pressure to them under the arbor press during heat treat. Should be pretty sweet. I was like, instead of tying up the mori or the current or whatever, let me just throw this on the U-Mac, cut it dry and light, and just let the aluminum turn to dust.
00:27:47
Speaker
facing large plates with the quarter inch end mill. Yeah, why not? I don't care if it takes 30 minutes to face it. I love you. Yeah, exactly. Yes, it does. Exactly. Better to do that than to spend the time finding and setting up a face mill. Exactly. Doesn't matter. And the quality of the phasing pass is pretty nuts.
00:28:05
Speaker
Yeah. Well, that's the way I can minimize tram air or head nod. Like nope, there is no such thing as a perfectly trained machine period. There's always some head nod or tilt left or right. So a small tool minimizes that healing. Yep. Yeah. That's awesome.
00:28:19
Speaker
Hey, I finished Small Giants last night and I'll tell you, I'm really glad that I reread that book and without hesitation put it on the list for anybody who's frankly at any stage. If you read it five, 10 years ago or the other stage in your life, I would say it's worth rereading. I really did enjoy it. Yep. It's such a good perspective on small businesses. Yeah.
00:28:44
Speaker
I started the, I don't actually remember the name of it, but the culture book that you had recommended. Which one? It's a black cover. Well, the reason I brought it up was to mention all looking up while I'm talking. The first chapter gives this story of building a Stanford type study or some super formal study done to use uncooked spaghetti noodles, the culture code. The name of the book is the culture code?
00:29:12
Speaker
Yeah. I haven't heard of that. Oh, maybe somebody else recommended it. Forgive me. They gave groups of people a list of supplies, like uncooked spaghetti, noodles, a marshmallow, some tape, something else. And the goal was just to erect as tall of a structure as you could with the marshmallow at the top. And the groups that they gave it to included kindergartners,
00:29:37
Speaker
And then anybody else, like college educated people, engineers. I love it already. MBAs and statistically across numerous studies and environments in time, punchline, the kindergartners outperform. And it talks about how we all succumb as adults to, you know, we think we're going to like, okay, groupify people. We're going to kind of all share our backgrounds. We're going to think about a couple ideas. We're going to go break off and start planning, come back, reconvene. Like it's just that we think we're working as a team.
00:30:07
Speaker
but ultimately our own insecurities and desire to figure out how we lay in the pecking order of who's the most engineering oriented or who's the most creative. Like there's all this kind of where the kindergartners all just basically hover around everything and just start putting stuff together and don't care. Don't Tommy, Tommy doesn't care if Katie's better. Like it's just, they're just doing stuff, you know? That's incredible. That's mind blowing, right? Yep.
00:30:33
Speaker
Well, keep me up to date if that book turns out really good. OK, yeah, will do. Yep.
00:30:38
Speaker
I get most of my book recommendations from you, so I don't know how I came across this one.
Books and Educational Games
00:30:44
Speaker
Over Christmas break, I took the week seriously and I didn't read the business books and I didn't do my list for the whole week, which is really cool. Some of the things I'm struggling to get back into now that I'm getting back on track, but I started reading, Meg got me this
00:31:06
Speaker
kind of space fiction book. It's called the Apollo Murders by astronaut Chris Hadfield. So it's a legit astronaut like Canada's hero wrote a book set in 1970 about the space race Cold War era stuff and it's like really, really good.
00:31:27
Speaker
And I'm a quarter of the way through it. And I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to read this every night until I'll get back into business books later. But I'm really going to enjoy this. John, it's OK. Oh, absolutely. It's so cool, though, because he's such a technical like he's a fighter pilot. He's an astronaut. And he's talking about these helicopter scenes with a bell, whatever, 47 something something and like every detail down to the time. And I'm like, man, this guy really knows what he's talking about.
00:31:53
Speaker
Yeah, that's really cool. It's cool. William asked me this question last night, my son, who's in second grade about he's like, Dad, in college, do you do you get to pick your classes? Or do they tell you what classes to take? I'm like, Where did that come from? And that's a really good question. Like any parent, you're like, just try to answer it in a wholesome way. And I'm like, well, so it depends on where you go to school and what you're trying to study. But you know, if you want to go into engineering, and I didn't just answer with engineering questions, I have
00:32:23
Speaker
No desire to push my kid into just not how I was wired. He loves airplanes. I was like, there are classes around how you build airplanes. And he's like, no. How do they teach you how to build airplanes? I was like, well, what do you think makes an airplane fly? He goes to the engines that they create thrust. I go, that's a great answer. But the wings also matter. What do you think is more? We just started talking about it. Yeah. Is William into computer video games?
00:32:50
Speaker
So he just got an Oculus from Santa. Loves it. So far, really only played Beat Saber and oh, shoot, what else did we get? Something else. But he wants to get Madden. We don't have anything. Oh, we got Flight Simulator for him, but he's just a little too young to really sit down and play Flight Simulator.
00:33:14
Speaker
Yeah. Are your kids, or any advice? Yeah, Leif's really into his PC games, and he's got one called Trailmakers. Seriously, write it down and watch it. Yeah, I am. It's like an engineering game for kids where you can build planes and cars and rockets and everything. No kidding. The physics is real-ish.
00:33:36
Speaker
So like he's learning all about lift and thrust and dragon breaks and gravity and maglev and all this stuff and he knows all this stuff now because he's building. He's like yeah I used a dragon engine on that one and I needed more thrust here and more propulsion and I put brakes on this one and you can build anything.
00:33:52
Speaker
And it's like creative freeform world. And you can put ramps and jumps and sky hoops and it's really cool.
Machine Tools and Future Planning
00:34:01
Speaker
That's awesome. And like the coolest thing is the physics is, you know, close to reality. So he's learning principles and weight distribution and things like it's crazy.
00:34:11
Speaker
Factors of safety. Yep. Oh, that's what we got. I think it came with Oculus. There's a roller coaster game. You just ride them. Well, yeah, I've seen that one. I've done that one. One of our friends, Kid, has a make your own roller coaster game. It sounds like it maybe is kind of like Trailmakers, where they're just super into it. Cool. Does Lathe have his own PC, or do you guys just all share? Yeah, I built him a PC, or Fraser and Ryan here built him a PC for his birthday last year. OK.
00:34:38
Speaker
I was asking my wife, I was like, Hey, are you cool? If we give William his own PC, like he feels, it feels like that's like a terrible idea as a parent. And then I'm like, no, he's good. Like he's, you know, he's ready for that. Um, so I think I'll do that too. He's going to watch YouTube and play video games and it's going to be great. Yeah, right. Awesome. What are you up to today? Uh, let's play with the U-Mac.
00:35:02
Speaker
The last air part we need for the Wilhelmin should be here today. Pierre said he'll get that buttoned up, so he should be able to turn the Wilhelmin on today. Awesome. Everything should work. Awesome. That's been a slow, awesome road, but I'm looking forward to that. I wanted to ask you, how are you enjoying ... You have a DM-2, right?
00:35:25
Speaker
DT DT. Okay. Yeah. How was it? After months coincidentally, uh, two days ago as of the area of this podcast, our kind of like video review of having had it for six months just came out. Nice. So you're welcome to watch that. I will have to watch that.
00:35:43
Speaker
we kept it short. punchline if it's like your only machine and you can justify something like a VF2 where you have more travel and a proper 40 taper type spindle, that is a better machine. But, but we love the DT. It is insanely fast. And I recognize as our speedios and Robo drills, etc. But for us, the continuity of the code and just what a great job Haas does on
00:36:12
Speaker
making probing easy to use, makes it great. We talked about a couple of quirky gotchas in the video, like there's no side window. There's a side window that doesn't open, which is weird. It could be better at chip evacuation. There's minimum spindle to table. That's the common on all those machines. But look, for us, when we drill holes, tap holes, make parts, it is just a beast.
00:36:35
Speaker
Cool. And the finishes and the tolerances, I have nothing to say, but it's been great. Like there's no, I mean, sure. You're going to hog out steel. It's not the, no 30 tapers, the right machine per se. Right. I don't think we better not run that on the DT because I'm going to need a better, it's been great like that. But you don't have like a finished part and you look at it and you go, oh, that was clearly made on the DT because something, something.
00:36:59
Speaker
Dude, we make, we've rebalanced some of our work. So soft jaws used to get made on it. They came over to the VF three. So we have a bigger footprint to make those, but we make a lot of our small plates now. So we're holding phenomenal finishes and frankly phenomenal parallelism specs on that machine. Just go, go, go. And then, you know, we're tapping half 13 holes at 5,000 RPMs. It looks in aluminum.
00:37:26
Speaker
Yeah. Oh yeah. Sorry. Yes. But it looks like a machine gun, like in a tapping. It's insane. Dude. Yeah. I tapped on the Maury a half 13 hole like once and I exploded the tap. And then I said, never again. You got to get over that. Yeah.
00:37:43
Speaker
Are you thinking about a little mill drill of some kind? I'm playing my options like what to do with the Maury. Keep it, sell it, upgrade it, put a robot on it. I've had all these ideas. I don't know what I want to do. Sometimes I have to step back and be like, what is the result I actually want?
00:38:02
Speaker
and then work towards that. If the more you can get me there, great. If not, what's the next alternative? Whether it's a robo drill or two robo drills or some little horizontal or a little five axis or I don't know yet.
Project Updates and Team News
00:38:16
Speaker
I'm thrown around all these ideas in my head and
00:38:20
Speaker
having fun with it, but it's also stressful a little bit because I just want to know what to do so I can make the purchase and just move forward with it and start planning for it. I think the answer may not be feasible because there's real constraints in life of space and money, but I think the right answer would be you keep that machine as a tool room prototype R&D machine because it is such a good machine. It is such a good machine.
00:38:44
Speaker
If there were any other three axis, including a really good one that you could just buy again, I wouldn't hesitate, but you don't sell that machine, but also don't go do stupid things trying to automate it. And I don't know whether it's automated horizontal or an automated five axis. That's something you'll know better, but it's going to be one of those.
00:39:03
Speaker
Yeah. I guess you're almost prejudice because you can't think about doing automated five-axis without just being another current. And now all of a sudden, you've changed the scope of the ... It makes sense, but whew, that's not ... Yeah. I mean, a second current is in my future. The question is how soon. Yeah. And then the question is, having a three-axis machine,
00:39:24
Speaker
as well even with two currents is still a good idea. We still want that. So whether I keep the Maury, the big things I don't like about the Maury is that it's much bigger than we need. It's a 20 by 40 machine. We don't need a table that big. But that's not the worst thing. It's only got 30 tools, which is a big constraint for me because I like using lots of tools. I've got 150 in the current right now, and it's amazing.
00:39:49
Speaker
I'm super limited with 30 tools. And I can't change the tools while it's running. And that bothers me. Yeah. The ATC capacity is the real issue. That's what's going to stop you from what otherwise could be a good option, which is are those twin pallet mill drills, like switch out? But same thing, super limited. Yeah, 21 tools on this video or Robo drill, 24 or something like that. It's OK. But I could get two Robo drills and have 48 tools. That's something. Yeah.
00:40:21
Speaker
It's just so funny how the horizontals, I think had this reputation as being dinosaurs, but we're, I would guess, going to end up with one pretty soon. It's going to be what we talked about before. Probably 100, I don't know what the exact number will be, between 120, 150 tool matrix and probably the 10 palette APC. Which would be incredible.
00:40:46
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it doesn't do five axis, but I'm okay with that. And frankly, if I can justify it, I'm starting to think again about how to tackle that nut as well. Yeah. Getting a palletized five axis. Yeah. Well, your work is, if you've got a palletized five axis, you can't do all of your jobs on it. Like fixture plates and I don't know, depends on how big of a machine you get. That's not what this is for. Yeah. We've got a couple of things up our sleeve.
00:41:14
Speaker
Well, that's perfect for the Okuma and the three-axis machines to do the big fixture plates, right? Yeah, that's what those are for. Yeah, so you've got to think, what does the future hold for a four or five-axis machine? So for the horizontal, six of the 10 APCs would be split into duplicates of three product lines. One would be Modvise, the other would be Palace, the other would be, I don't even know, small plates maybe or something? Can't remember to be honest with you.
00:41:42
Speaker
and mod vices being one of the big ones there. Oh, no, mod vices, bases, jaws, and the other soft jaws, and then pallets that we make, and then other that. But like this, no one's able to see this, I'm sorry, but this is a product we've been working on that's- It looks like a plastic Benji. Yeah. That would be
00:42:03
Speaker
potentially actually shared between, if you could do it in one, obviously it's beneficial, but I think we would start with material that would make it more sense to have a part like that start on the horizontal and then actually move over to a five axis to be done with all critical datums in the second op. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was a cool looking part. That's a five axis part for sure.
00:42:27
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. The other part, teaser part that you can't share. Can I not talk about it? We cannot talk about it. Can I say some random details? I don't even know what it looks like. It's flat. I don't know. Can I say one parallel? Sure. It looks like an oil pan to a car. It may not be terribly far off. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Beautiful part.
00:42:51
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah. Actually, Alex prototyped on the Dormock. Nice. Yeah. That's our tour room as well. It was great. That's awesome. I have some news with our staff. We got two employees who are having, their wives are having babies like now. Whoa, congratulations. They're literally on the same weekly schedule. It's totally weird coincidence. But yeah, one of our guys, Steven, was off yesterday. I think they went to the hospital yesterday. I haven't heard any updates.
00:43:20
Speaker
but they're expecting the baby like immediately. Um, and then other guy, Fraser is expecting a baby, um, now ish. They're just kind of in this like that limbo of like any day. Yeah. Oh, that's great. 24 seventies on call. Um, yeah. Yeah. So it's super exciting. Uh, we're all, we're all pumped for them. Yeah, that's great. That's all I got. Awesome. I will see you next week. All right. Take care. Have a good day. Bye. Bye.