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#462 LLM's and software/hardware projects
1 Playsin 10 hours
Topics:
- Leave yourself a good starting point
- LLM's and software/hardware projects
- Linear gage projects
- Vision system, Keyence vs DIY
- Blum laser install fixed
- Air compressors down
Recommended
Transcript
The Art of Focus: Managing Machining Projects
00:00:01
John
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining episode number 462. My name is John Saunders.
00:00:07
johngrimsmo
And my name is John Grimsmo.
00:00:10
John
Projects, projects, projects. like it should
00:00:13
johngrimsmo
Never ending stream of projects.
00:00:15
John
But it's all, I would, i would ah there's some fable, I would just, I will die when the projects are over. That's all I do.
00:00:21
johngrimsmo
yeah Yeah, exactly.
00:00:22
John
That's all I do.
00:00:22
johngrimsmo
Do you find yourself starting more projects than you're finishing? Because I do.
00:00:26
John
ah So, yes. but I am much better about being more disciplined these days, including for every reason of just like being, being realistic in the focus and also not spending money, um, or buying stuff.
00:00:35
johngrimsmo
I am too.
00:00:45
John
Like there's no, i think we talked about this. There's no correlation to be buying something and it getting done. Like if it's sitting on my desk or on the side of my office, like, Nope, it could sit there for two years. So, um,
00:00:54
johngrimsmo
It's still a preparatory purchase though.
00:00:56
John
It is a perpetrator purchase and those are fully supported, although they do consume a lot of clutter credits.
00:00:59
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:01:02
johngrimsmo
Yeah, exactly. um I mean, it's almost like buying the thing is the easy part. And it's kind of fun to do all the research and to get Oh, I need that I need that and I need that and I need that.
00:01:12
johngrimsmo
And then you get all the things and they sit on your desk for a while. But part of you goes at least like that part of the project is ready. And whenever I'm ready to dive into it, I have preparatory purchase. And now I'm ready to go. But you're right, it doesn't like having it sit there doesn't like mean it's going to get done.
00:01:29
John
So you just said something that maybe occurred to me that again, and if anybody is listening and doesn't want to hear me continue to be excited about the basics of LLMs, like probably no longer the podcast for you.
00:01:41
John
Cause like I just remain blown away.
00:01:44
johngrimsmo
Same.
00:01:44
John
um First off, there's a thing i mentioned to you six months ago that I have continued to really find is helpful, although it's not necessarily intuitive or not necessarily what I always remember to do, instinctual, I guess, which is when you do have to step away from your project, leave yourself a really easy kicking off point again.
00:02:07
John
like Because when you're doing it, you and I are the same i think think the same way.
00:02:07
johngrimsmo
Right.
00:02:10
John
like We're like, oh, no, I could fit three more things in before I have to leave or pick up the kids or whatever.
00:02:10
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:02:14
John
And it's like, nope. actually rewind and just leave yourself the easiest starting off point.
00:02:20
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I forget about that point, which is really good because it's so counterintuitive. Like you you do the easy things because oh I can squeeze in one more easy thing before I go. And then I leave the hard thing left because I don't have time to do the hard thing next.
00:02:31
johngrimsmo
So you're almost saying like cut bait earlier than you could by kicking off those last few things.
00:02:32
John
Yeah.
00:02:37
John
Mm-hmm.
00:02:39
johngrimsmo
But purposely, like there might be a level of pride with that too as you do it because you're like, no, no, I'm going to leave myself a a little treat for when I come back to this project, you know?
00:02:47
John
Yeah.
00:02:50
John
And, you know, it's kind of like the hard part of going to the gym is going to the gym. The hard part is not starting your second set of whatever.
00:02:57
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah.
00:02:58
John
um So, you know, knowing that, okay, all I have to do in the next step is to like plug that wire back into five volts and then turn the pie back on and then SSH into it. Like this is what I've been doing the past few days, a lot of, I forget, I lost my total frame of thought, but yeah.
00:03:15
John
Are you...
00:03:18
John
Well, okay, the last thing I'll say is also the projects I'm doing right now are also very germane to Saunders Machine Works and the team and the automation and the phasing. So they're different than like the general like, oh, I remember my point now. They're different they're different than some the just like things I enjoy or personally or work related but aren't necessarily correlated to like, no, this is like, so it's a lot of the stuff on the which I'll talk about today about the the brother of the automation and metrology. But then the other point, it was like the major point, I guess, was that like,
00:03:48
John
A year ago or three years ago, that project sat at my desk because I didn't necessarily know how to tackle it. And it was going to be a, I knew i was going to be frustrated or have some questions.
00:03:54
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:03:57
John
And now you just ask Claude.
00:04:01
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:04:02
John
It's like it continues.
00:04:03
johngrimsmo
And it's just done.
00:04:05
John
Well, you're just not alone.
00:04:05
johngrimsmo
And if you're not happy with it,
00:04:07
John
You're not alone. That's the beauty of it.
00:04:08
johngrimsmo
Yeah, no that's what it feels like, right?
00:04:10
John
Yeah. Yeah.
00:04:11
johngrimsmo
And, and You don't need to know how to do it. You just need to know exactly what you want. And if the result is not what you want, you just ask again, ask a better question. And then the problem gets solved.
00:04:21
John
Yeah.
00:04:23
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I continue to add more and more incredible features to GURP. And I'm trying to make sure that they're actually important and not just like cool, because I'm spending a lot of time on it.
00:04:28
John
Yeah.
00:04:32
John
Yeah.
00:04:33
johngrimsmo
So that goes into the whole, like, make sure the projects you're starting are worth starting. um just because you you Just because you have an idea doesn't mean it's a good idea and doesn't mean it's worth your time and doesn't mean it's like going to help.
00:04:39
John
Okay.
00:04:44
John
Mm-hmm.
Harnessing AI for Project Efficiency
00:04:45
johngrimsmo
um So I'm really trying to be cautious of that, of making sure that my time is, you know, like I can have fun, but make sure it's like wisely spent. um But yeah, it's crazy.
00:04:57
John
I could see so much ster being relevant though. Are you worried about going overboard? Or...
00:05:03
johngrimsmo
um For sure. I'm worried about putting in, you know, spending dozens of hours on something that nobody's going to use. It doesn't really matter.
00:05:08
John
Got
00:05:08
johngrimsmo
It's just like, it's you know, it's icing on the cake kind of thing. But there there is also that, like, as we've seen with our own projects and with a lot of our friends and and colleagues, they're like, it's very easy to make an 80% project now and not eat not finish it well.
00:05:12
John
Got it. Yeah.
00:05:23
John
Yeah.
00:05:25
johngrimsmo
You know, whereas the companies that are trying to sell software, they need a 95% product that... product that won't piss people off all the time. um and And that it's very easy with LLMs now to get to that 80%, like very easy.
00:05:40
johngrimsmo
But the 80 to 95% of completion of goodness, of of spin polish, you know like it oh it really works. It really does what I want. And it's so intuitive and it's so easy and and it never fails. Like that takes a lot of time. And I like it. I like living in there.
00:06:02
John
Are you being specific about what LLMs you use or even what models within LLMs you're picking?
00:06:07
johngrimsmo
I don't. I don't really care. um
00:06:10
John
Yeah.
00:06:10
johngrimsmo
ah use Cursor for everything, ChatGPT for like brainstorming and and research, and then Cursor for basically executing code.
00:06:15
John
Mm-hmm. even
00:06:20
johngrimsmo
um And that's kind of my workflow.
00:06:20
John
Okay.
00:06:23
johngrimsmo
And I still haven't tried Claude.
00:06:27
John
Oh yeah. I might have to drive up to Toronto and punch you.
00:06:32
johngrimsmo
Is it any different than Cursor? Like, i don't know.
00:06:36
John
Yeah. I don't know what cursor is. I think cursor is just an amalgamation of other models. And I got, I mean, doesn't like, okay.
00:06:41
johngrimsmo
It is, yeah. A lot of the cloud models are like in there, like Opus and whatever else, ah Grok.
00:06:47
John
Okay, yeah.
00:06:48
johngrimsmo
and it just auto like I'm on the auto session where it just picks whatever model like makes sense for my request.
00:06:53
John
Okay.
00:06:54
johngrimsmo
i don't really care. And then in cursor, there's now four sections.
00:06:55
John
Yeah.
00:06:58
johngrimsmo
You can go to the ask section, the plan section, the agent section, and the whatever. so If you don't want it to change your code, you go to the plan session or the ask or whatever.
00:07:04
John
Okay.
00:07:07
John
Okay.
00:07:08
johngrimsmo
And then the planning session is sweet because it can just it outlines this whole like document that's like, okay, we're going step one, we're going to step two, we're going do step three.
00:07:16
John
Okay.
00:07:16
johngrimsmo
And then i can review that. And it's like for brainstorming, okay, I want to add this whole new section to GURP. let's Let's plan it. And I skim through that and be like, yep, yep, no, not step two, not step three. Okay, yeah, go.
00:07:30
johngrimsmo
And then it just goes.
00:07:32
John
Okay.
00:07:32
johngrimsmo
Whereas if you're in the agent mode and you ask a question, it will change your code.
00:07:37
John
Well, to eat my own, uh, whatever words here, I should check out cursor. Cause I really haven't. And I guess to your kind of point, who, who cares?
00:07:47
johngrimsmo
Kinda, yeah.
00:07:47
John
Well, except I just remember being in love with chat using Gemini. And then I asked Claude to do a few things and it, the way it did them was so much more eloquent, so much more helpful that you don't know what you don't know.
00:07:59
John
You don't know what you're missing.
00:07:59
johngrimsmo
Exactly.
00:08:00
John
Um, but again,
00:08:00
johngrimsmo
It's the same when when i went when I went from chatGPT to cursor for code for like doing stuff.
00:08:03
John
Yeah, right.
00:08:06
johngrimsmo
I'm like, oh my gosh, this is a night and day difference.
00:08:10
John
Yeah.
00:08:11
johngrimsmo
So yeah, you don't know.
00:08:11
John
ah The... Go ahead.
00:08:13
johngrimsmo
That's it.
00:08:15
John
When I was ah about to leave on Friday, Alex had a laugh. laugh He's like, yep, so... um Actually, I don't even know. i think he used Claude, but it doesn't matter. He's like, so it wiped all of Lex, I think.
00:08:28
John
Wiped all of something. And he's like, I wish Alex could sort of share exactly what happened specifically, but basically total massive violation overstep.
00:08:39
John
We were fine to Alex's credit. He's done the right way of sandboxing and forking and backing up. So it was like no problem to get back up in like five minutes.
00:08:44
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:08:46
John
But when he asked about it, it was just like Claude responded like, Oh yeah, that was a huge overreach on my part.
00:08:46
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:08:52
John
i never should have done that. I'm really sorry. Would you meet like help like fixing it, which is just kind of like, it's kind of like me shooting you and being like, I have a tourniquet. Would you like me to show you how I apply a tourniquet?
00:09:02
John
So I'm like, what? um
00:09:05
johngrimsmo
With no remarks, no nothing.
00:09:05
John
So, yeah, yeah.
00:09:06
johngrimsmo
Like it's, yeah, it's dangerous. Interesting. That's a good, good warning, you know, make your backups.
00:09:12
John
Yeah.
00:09:13
johngrimsmo
Don't give it too much. try It's so easy to trust it nowadays though. Oh my gosh.
00:09:19
John
Yeah, it's scary.
00:09:20
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:09:22
John
Agree. Yeah. But it's also like I'm trying to work with some electronic stuff that's outside of my wheelhouse. And I screenshotted a line level shift voltage board, blah, blah, blah.
00:09:29
johngrimsmo
Totally. Totally.
00:09:33
John
And I was just, I was like, I was sure it was the right one. It's like $8 and screenshot it just to make sure it's like, Nope, that's actually the wrong one for this reason. What's up? Like refresh rate or something. It would cause lag issues to be fair.
00:09:45
John
I guess I never even interrogated that to to confirm what it's saying and there was true, but it had me pick a different $8 board.
00:09:48
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:09:52
John
And like, those are the sort of things that like you or I could have spent, um,
00:09:52
johngrimsmo
Right.
00:09:57
John
We could have stopped a project forever on that.
00:09:57
johngrimsmo
Money and time and yep.
00:10:00
johngrimsmo
Yeah, because those are the things you you don't know what you don't know. And you're probably like me, like I don't need to be an electronics engineer. i don't need to be a software engineer. I don't need to know everything about this stuff. I just want to solve problems.
00:10:11
johngrimsmo
I just want to like do cool stuff.
00:10:12
John
Yeah.
00:10:13
johngrimsmo
I just want to run fast and break things.
00:10:13
John
Yep.
00:10:15
johngrimsmo
And I can do that now. I feel totally, i was thinking last night, I'm like, I feel unrestricted with this kind of access.
00:10:23
John
Yeah.
00:10:23
johngrimsmo
I can do whatever I want, whenever I want. And sure, not to like ah an athletic level of you know software engineering. I don't really care. The fact that I can pull it off is like so cool.
00:10:38
johngrimsmo
And I've always tried to my whole career.
00:10:38
John
Yeah.
00:10:40
johngrimsmo
i mean, I was soldering, my I placed my first DigiKey order in 2002.
00:10:46
John
Mm-hmm.
00:10:47
johngrimsmo
You know, I was like soldering the engine management system for my car when I was 19.
00:10:51
John
Oh, yeah. With all the...
00:10:53
johngrimsmo
Right.
00:10:53
John
Yes.
00:10:54
johngrimsmo
And and I like flash the EEPROM, whatever. And like this was early two thousand And I could get so far with reading on the internet and then I would be just stuck.
00:11:06
johngrimsmo
I'm like, I can't, I don't know how to do any more than this.
00:11:07
John
Mm-hmm.
00:11:09
johngrimsmo
And I don't want to like deep dive that much and learn it all. And then Raspberry Pis come around and I can like, I can force my way through it the past eight years. And then now it's just like a joke. It's just like so easy. Yeah.
00:11:24
John
I'm so excited to see like what comes next about even like a lot of what I'm doing now is putting together, build materials and projects. And it's like, there's, we're going to look back and think about how it is still somewhat stressful or anxiety inducing to figure out, okay, what's it recommending? Where do I buy it from? Is it the right variant? And so there's some,
00:11:43
John
future that you could see that integrates that better. That probably unfortunately, for better worse, ties in some rev share AdSense type model of how LLM's recommend products, which is really unfortunate if it starts skewing the results.
00:11:55
John
But nevertheless, like a guy like me and you, like, just tell me what board to buy.
00:11:55
johngrimsmo
Interesting.
00:11:58
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I kind of don't care. Just like and help me not make mistakes here.
00:12:00
John
Yeah.
00:12:02
johngrimsmo
and
00:12:02
John
Mm-hmm.
00:12:03
johngrimsmo
And then I don't know if you find as much as I do, because I'm such a tweaker. I love to like like fine tune things. um Once you get kind of the working first version of whatever kind of, whether it's a Raspberry Pi thing or whether it's a featured group or whatever, how much do you massage it and fine tune it after that?
00:12:26
johngrimsmo
Because I do a lot.
00:12:28
John
Yeah, I don't think as much as you.
00:12:29
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:12:30
John
I'm more like minimal viable product, get it to do, move on, or maybe hand it off. Exceptions being like where it matters. But no, I think I'm probably much more, i mean, that's who you are for sure as a person, a product company.
00:12:39
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:12:42
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:12:43
John
you will go to those nth degree insanity details. so It's like makes Grimms and Knives awesome, right? Like on so many levels.
00:12:51
johngrimsmo
Yeah, that's true.
Exploring New Tech: Radar Detectors and GURP Expansion
00:12:53
John
Okay, well, so to keep it more machining specific to talk a little about what i'm doing, First, i have four projects going on. Number one is a human presence detection. Number two is, um, linear, linear gauge use. Number three is a DIY vision system.
00:13:09
John
Um, which again, totally transparent, ironically is basically going to replicate a lot what you and others, I think like Cyrus have done. I think I shared, I shared that story publicly last week. I don't recall the Keyence visit.
00:13:20
johngrimsmo
No, not.
00:13:21
John
Okay. I'll briefly share on that. And then, um, the raspberry pie, photo archive of products that come the machine, which is pretty simple. Yeah.
00:13:29
johngrimsmo
Nice.
00:13:32
John
The first one is really cool. It is product that I didn't know existed. It was recommended by whatever, some LLM. And it is called a millimeter wave radar detector.
00:13:44
John
In layman's terms, and was I was familiar with like the PIR, time of flight, like some of the other things you'd see on either Fruit or Spark Fund that we just sort of see motion detection or person detection. This again, way misperms, actually uses some wave, millimeter wave, whatever, to detect if the object that it sees in front of it effectively has a pulse.
00:14:07
johngrimsmo
Hmm.
00:14:08
John
So if you move a box in front of it, I will tell you specifically if anyone wants to kind of play around with themselves, it's an $8 chip called the LD2410C.
00:14:09
johngrimsmo
What's it called?
00:14:19
John
two four one zero c
00:14:22
johngrimsmo
because when I was at Hacksmith, he was showing me a product like this, but it was ah it was a brand name. It was like a kit you buy or whatever that could do that.
00:14:35
johngrimsmo
And it was like crazy resolution.
00:14:37
John
Yeah, this is, I bought mine on Amazon, 10 bucks, human presence radar, millimeter wave radar sensor.
00:14:42
johngrimsmo
Cool.
00:14:43
John
So what basically it detects if the object near it has also micro movements that would resemble like the human pulse or fluctuations.
00:14:51
johngrimsmo
Hmm.
00:14:51
John
And I was able to tune the frequency of the c sensor itself to say, I only want to detect if a person is within about one to one and half meters of the object.
00:15:02
John
And then that passes the signal over to a Python script. And on the Python script, I then do, okay, I want that object to, I want the person to be there for five seconds. So basically I want to know if a person walks up to a CNC machine, not a robot moving or not some shadow that's casting.
00:15:17
John
If a human and being walks up to the machine and stays there for three seconds, then I know a human is present.
00:15:22
johngrimsmo
Mm-hmm.
00:15:23
John
And this is doing it now.
00:15:27
johngrimsmo
That's awesome. And then what will you do with that output?
00:15:27
John
You're right.
00:15:30
John
So we we it was a whole back research for just like the idea of like, I want to know if a person is there, which could be things like turning the lights on or presenting information or screens on. And it becomes a little bit more difficult because you have a UR-10 robot in front of the machine that's always moving.
00:15:48
John
So you can't use the traditional motion sensors.
00:15:55
johngrimsmo
But still, what are you going to do with the output? I guess you said a couple things, but...
00:16:00
John
Yeah, there's more I'll share later. But like, yeah, a simple answer could be like the brothers really, those Japanese machines are really aggressive about turning the lights off.
00:16:02
johngrimsmo
Okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
00:16:10
John
And so at a simple point, you could just have it update cameras, update lights, turn on iPad, ERP, stuff like that.
00:16:17
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Even like an interesting stat would be hands-on time. Like how much operator time versus runtime, right?
00:16:26
John
oh Oh, yeah, that's a good point. Sure, how much in front of, yeah, right.
00:16:28
johngrimsmo
You know? Because you're like, we'd stand in front of the machine for 5% of the cycle time. Like, yes, please. That's awesome.
00:16:34
John
sure, sure.
00:16:34
johngrimsmo
You know?
00:16:35
John
In the spirit of transparency, but I am not doing this to start tracking people like, or like, you know I mean?
00:16:40
johngrimsmo
Yeah, right?
00:16:41
John
Like, no, that's for sure not the point.
00:16:44
johngrimsmo
yeah why aren't you working hard now and ah those are the kind of questions you got to watch out for from the team because whether you mention it or not you know you can't help people from wonder if that's why you're doing it or whatever so just things you watch out for yeah yeah exactly cool
00:16:44
John
Um, yeah. Yeah. No.
00:16:56
John
Uh, I'm pretty, we're pretty transparent. It's like, that's not what we're, not what we're here to do. Um,
00:17:08
johngrimsmo
So on the topic of that, my latest Sunday update to GURP was, remember I told you a while ago, maybe a year or two ago, I had chat write me a Python script to make our chop grinding code for the speedio, right?
00:17:09
John
so you
00:17:22
John
Yes, love this.
00:17:23
johngrimsmo
And it's super awesome. ah Basically I feed it a 2D profile arc, line, arc, most of them pretty much.
00:17:30
John
Mm-hmm.
00:17:31
johngrimsmo
And then the retract distances from Fusion of that 2D profile are my kind of chop height.
00:17:40
John
Sure.
00:17:40
johngrimsmo
I think I have it programmed as whatever. And then it's it's good, but it was a ah Python like dot PI program that I have to like run in terminal or something like that. And it's, it's messy. I think I made a bin file or whatever to run it automatically, but it's messy. And it's like, you know, be cool is if I just had like a little Python program that opens up that I can run this and update it from. would be cool on top of that is if I could visualize it within the program itself.
00:18:10
John
yeah
00:18:10
johngrimsmo
And then you know would be cool on top of that is why don't I just put this into GURP, like into a custom scripts section. So that escalated quickly. And then basically, I'm sorry, Xander, but my NC Viewer is better than yours.
00:18:24
John
But that's crazy. The fact that that's even remotely doable is nuts.
00:18:28
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's absolutely fantastic. And then it's it's just me asking constantly more questions. Like, you know, it'd be sweet as if I could enter, um, not just for chop grinding, if I could just open like NC viewer does, if I could open a a full program and see all the tool paths, you don't be sweet on top of that is if I could isolate each tool path and just show the tool path that I want, you know, be sweet as if I click on the, you know, and it's like and on and on and on and on on and yes yes yes yes yes, yes, yes, no problem.
00:18:56
johngrimsmo
And now it works on mobile and it's like, It's like really, really, really clean. And I already used it. I used it yesterday and I saw a mistake that I made in my Post-it program and and I caught it.
00:19:13
John
I guess what I want to wish I understood better is for guys like you and me, is there any situation where we would purchase, subscribe, pay, adopt, embrace new services any anymore, software services?
00:19:28
johngrimsmo
Yeah. For guys like you and me, are like I'm willing to put in the time and it does take time.
00:19:30
John
Oh.
00:19:33
johngrimsmo
And there are situations where, like I said before, you know we can make an 80% solution given the time invested. There might be situations where, you know, you want a 95% solution and you're just willing to just handle it.
00:19:47
John
A
00:19:48
johngrimsmo
Like, like you're about to talk about with the vision system. I'm sort of on the fence money aside that, um, the commercial vision systems are like really thought out, you know, you might want it different because you like to tweak things and I like to tweak things, but some of them are probably just like, you just walk up to it and hit the button and it works.
00:20:07
John
hundred percent.
00:20:07
johngrimsmo
Whereas if it's all written by a Python script and a program and it crashes and it doesn't edge detect properly and all this, like we can, we can mess with it till the end of time, but depending on the situation and the money you want to spend and the result you want, and the operator that's going to use the thing, I think that will always be a case for just turnkey solutions.
00:20:07
John
Yeah.
00:20:13
John
Great.
00:20:27
John
Oh, 100% agree. And especially recognizing that um if you're a you know Fortune 500 manufacturing company, et cetera, you might have in-house R&D that does certain things, but you're also just more in the business of like yeah leverage on the experts to give you turnkey solutions.
00:20:43
johngrimsmo
Yeah, instead of re reinventing every wheel.
00:20:46
John
Exactly.
00:20:47
johngrimsmo
which i'm
00:20:47
John
Right.
00:20:48
johngrimsmo
And that's what I was talking about before, of like being careful which projects I go down, because I could reinvent every wheel, but like of do I need to?
00:20:52
John
Right.
00:20:58
John
Yeah. Well, so the let's come back to the vision system in a second because i for me, that is a call it 50% odds it works type of thing.
Precision in Machining: Measurement Innovations
00:21:08
John
The linear gauge, i mean, we literally just bought, I just bought an eBay one because if they work on it, getting probably new ones that are modern and match, but an eBay was fine for now.
00:21:08
johngrimsmo
Mm-hmm.
00:21:19
John
And the quadrature encoder, I'm having a soldering cut.
00:21:22
johngrimsmo
This is LVDT basically.
00:21:25
John
No, no. So the problem with LVDTs is that they are effectively a fair, like a piece of steel passing through a variable, their variable voltage tube.
00:21:39
John
So they're infinitely, um,
00:21:39
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:21:42
John
refinable or measurable and they're kind of like analog. And so you have to, to the consistency and quality of the measurements relates to how your downstream amplifier or whatever you want to call it, it is is tuned and calibrated and and so forth.
00:21:56
johngrimsmo
OK. Yep,
00:21:56
John
Whereas the um linear gauges that I bought from it to toy you, which effectively look identical. um They actually have a little bit of a bigger housing where they hold the glass scale. So it's just a, it's just a quadrature encoder that you,
00:22:09
John
you You can misread it or screw it up if you exceed the refresh rate of the device you're using to read it. i think you can kind of like lose steps, if you will, which is which is really bad.
00:22:18
johngrimsmo
yep. man
00:22:19
John
um But for the way we will be using it and the hardware we're going to build around it, I don't think that's going to be an issue. And it means us putting the device on it to read it is is just It's not affecting the accuracy.
00:22:35
John
The accuracy that we're getting comes from mid-to-to-you full stop.
00:22:38
johngrimsmo
The device. Oh, interesting.
00:22:39
John
You know what I mean?
00:22:39
johngrimsmo
not Not your amplifier, not your, yeah.
00:22:42
John
Exactly.
00:22:43
johngrimsmo
Interesting.
00:22:43
John
Yeah.
00:22:43
johngrimsmo
Yeah, that's really cool.
00:22:45
John
Maybe a better example is like the record player, which is like the needle and the turntable, but then also you have some preamp or whatever that affects like the quality of how it's interpreting the needle's motions, if you will.
00:22:55
John
um LVDTs are for sure cool, but just not necessary for what we're trying to do.
00:22:56
johngrimsmo
Hmm.
00:23:01
johngrimsmo
Hmm.
00:23:01
John
The Mitsutoyev makes their linear gauges in 1 micron, 0.5 micron, and 0.1 micron, and they are between 6...
00:23:10
johngrimsmo
It's 100 nanometers.
00:23:12
John
Yeah, no joke. I mean, 0.1 micron is, well, 5 microns is 2 tenths.
00:23:15
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:23:16
John
Yeah.
00:23:16
johngrimsmo
There you go. Yeah. And it reminds me of the magnetic encoder that I've been using on on my little projects where I have a string of ah cylinder magnets.
00:23:26
John
Oh yeah.
00:23:27
johngrimsmo
And as the sensor goes across, every other magnet reads 2.1 million pulses or raw counts.
00:23:34
John
Yeah. Crazy.
00:23:36
johngrimsmo
over and I'm using eighth inch cylinder magnets. So every quarter inch of movement, I get 2.1 million data points, which I believe equates down to about three nanometers per raw point of data.
00:23:49
John
Yeah. Yeah.
00:23:51
johngrimsmo
And so like I can blow on it and see three nanometers move. And it's not calibrated.
00:23:56
John
Yeah.
00:23:57
johngrimsmo
It's not perfect. It's not accurate, but like it could be.
00:24:01
John
So for the linear gauge, the next step, again, literally, I have to get soldering situation fixed, which I will. And then I bought a a kit from touchdro.com, which seems to have solved some of the potential situations where you could exceed the refresh rate of the data stream, et cetera.
00:24:13
johngrimsmo
is
00:24:20
John
It was also a hundred bucks. Whereas the home project, our project I built that used the quadrature was just directly on a pie. Basically, i think on on a pie, if you were to push the plunger really quick a bunch of times, you will totally overload the system.
00:24:31
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:24:33
John
But then it's the nice thing is that we can also just check this against a master. So kind of simple. like I know if it's working or not.
00:24:39
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Very cool.
00:24:42
John
Yep.
00:24:43
johngrimsmo
And the goal is to use that to basically make some sort of measuring gauge where you put the part in and it automatically measures it. And you can have a calibration part where you can verify sanity check all the time, gauge blocker, gauge pin or something like that.
00:24:53
John
who
00:24:55
johngrimsmo
And then with um basically a touchscreen DRO, you can have a zero button, reset button, measure here to here, range, display everything you want, basically, which is so sick.
00:25:11
John
It's kind of converging on what Grant already did with a accurate, but not as accurate dial indicator, digital dial indicator at a USB output that he hooked in, wrote a quad script. I give Grant all the credit for this. It's incredible.
00:25:24
John
And on a web app, he sees the data of the measurements. He can push a button and it uses the FANUC Focus 2 to push tool offset updates to Williman, which I don't even want to do right now.
00:25:35
John
That's like a second new phase to it.
00:25:36
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:25:38
John
But what I want to do is have the Willemann to take off a half inch turned part, measure that half inch feature. And if it's off, we can at a minimum, just stop the machine.
00:25:47
johngrimsmo
Yeah. He could text you.
00:25:48
John
Done. And that's, yes.
00:25:52
johngrimsmo
Willimon needs a two tenths offset on tool 15. Be like, okay, I'll be right there.
00:25:55
John
Yeah. Yeah.
00:25:56
johngrimsmo
Pause for now.
00:25:57
John
Yeah.
00:25:57
johngrimsmo
Stay in a warm up cycle until I get there. Like, right?
00:26:00
John
Oh, that's a good point.
00:26:01
johngrimsmo
Right.
00:26:01
John
Yeah. Yeah. But it's stuff like that, that I get too, I get real excited about where it's like, okay, if it measures off, have it put that part in a, uh, inspect bin, have it idle for, or warm up for 10 more minutes, run the next part, measure that one.
00:26:15
John
And you could go into this kind of like triage mode.
00:26:17
johngrimsmo
It is a loop. Yeah. Yeah.
00:26:18
John
Yeah. Yeah.
00:26:19
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Cause I mean, thermal growth is a real thing. If one part's bad and the machine stops and you come back two hours later to run the next one, like it's a different temperature. Your, your two tents is now wildly different. Um, actually it was funny. I was at, uh, an event at the historic house nearby us where Meg was doing a thing. And one of the musicians there was, um,
00:26:43
johngrimsmo
Just an interesting guy. And I get to ask him, he's this retired dude. And I was like, so what'd you do? And he goes, I built um control systems for curling rinks.
00:26:55
johngrimsmo
like ice, you know, curling with the stones that you throw.
00:26:56
John
Oh, yeah.
00:26:58
johngrimsmo
um And he he monitored the ice temperature and like made sure the ice was exactly. And i was like, what do you got Plus or minus one degree? He goes, 0.1 degree, buddy.
00:27:08
John
No kidding.
00:27:08
johngrimsmo
And i was like, I just programmed my first PID or my first um PLC last weekend. He's like, oh, what'd you use? think Random, but funny.
00:27:15
John
Yeah.
00:27:19
John
Well, so this, that reminds me of, did you finish the precision microcast yet?
00:27:24
johngrimsmo
i am I think I'm on the latest or second latest episode. I'm just about there.
00:27:28
John
Okay. That's right. forgot you had a bunch to catch up on.
00:27:30
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah.
00:27:31
John
Um, but I'm not really spoiling much. Um, Josh Hacco was talking about building a new facility and my words here, he basically is struggling to get HVC contractors engaged because a lot of the brain power and equipment in the world on for HVC systems that are operating in controlled environments is going to our data centers.
00:27:53
John
So.
00:27:53
johngrimsmo
Oh, interesting.
00:27:54
John
For him to have a metrology room that has a certain parameters that he was looking for is now proving to be quite difficult. And again, i enjoy a lot of what you and I are doing. im sure Josh is more than capable of doing this because it made me think about PIV loops and controlling temperatures range.
00:28:08
John
How do you, how do you run a loop like that? Because there's such a lag as temperature changes.
00:28:12
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:28:15
John
But it's just like, no, we just build ourselves.
00:28:16
johngrimsmo
Well, Yeah. I remember reading in the Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy, the book by the Moore Company, written in the, I don't know, 60s or something.
00:28:26
johngrimsmo
They talked about thermally controlled rooms and how they have basically a concrete room within a concrete room underground to like make this perfect.
00:28:33
John
crazy.
00:28:34
johngrimsmo
And they had, this is in the 60s, they had temperature sensors every 12 inches up the wall. And what did they figure out? Air coming in from the floor or something is better than air coming in from the ceiling? Or i forget the details, but...
00:28:47
johngrimsmo
I mean, that's like 80 years ago, 60 years ago.
00:28:52
John
Well there's a whole thing about, oh who is telling this? There's like special ceiling tiles that are made that have holes in them that caused the columns of air to actually flow the correct way.
00:29:03
johngrimsmo
Laminar flow? What?
00:29:04
John
Yeah. when whatever Yeah. Yeah. Crazy.
00:29:08
johngrimsmo
That's awesome.
00:29:08
John
Very.
00:29:09
johngrimsmo
You collimated air. yeah
00:29:11
John
Okay. That's my segue. So, and I'll keep this short. We had a really cool demo from Keyence. There's a chance we buy that system. um But what occurred to me is that a lot of the secret sauce is split half of it. And it may not be half that, but part of it's in the ability to get the image from
00:29:28
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:29:29
John
period, full stop.
00:29:29
johngrimsmo
The hardware and the software.
00:29:30
John
Just how you get exactly so you cliche to say like that. And then once you have this image, it's almost, it doesn't matter that you have the hardware. You just have this image that I need to now parse. And the latter, I'm quite confident in our ability to experiment with.
00:29:43
John
And in fact, you could just probably use sample images and build the software off of sample images.
00:29:47
johngrimsmo
Yeah. That's what I did.
00:29:49
John
Um,
00:29:49
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:29:51
John
Bingo. And like, again, LLM, OpenCV, there's existing software and folks have done this. And there is some quote unquote secret sauce. They're interpolating edges to find gradients to get the crispness.
00:30:00
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:30:01
John
But, you know, to Keynes' point, you put a gauge pin down on their system and it shows you, I don't know what the stated accuracy specs are, but it's to a tenth they say it can measure this part.
00:30:12
John
um
00:30:12
johngrimsmo
it It depends on zoom zoom value.
00:30:13
John
So I sort of...
00:30:14
johngrimsmo
That's what I'm finding out. Um, and what camera you're using and what your pixel to micron ratio is like when you zoom all the way into one pixel and I have to program mine to like, not, um, dither or whatever, like, like blur the pixels together.
00:30:16
John
Is that right?
00:30:20
John
Yes, yes.
00:30:29
John
Okay.
00:30:30
johngrimsmo
When I zoom in fully, I want to see a square pixel. I want to see like, you know, one pixel and then you measure across that and it's whatever a real number is for me, it was 10 microns per pixel.
00:30:33
John
Mm-hmm.
00:30:41
johngrimsmo
Um, So I can't, you know, i measure less than really 10 microns because that's one pixel.
00:30:50
John
So you can, you can, it
00:30:53
johngrimsmo
Yeah, you can kind of guess and math it and like, don't know.
00:30:57
John
would depend on the shape. Like if ah it was a straight line, you would be able to take a averaging line and get some factor higher.
00:30:59
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:31:02
johngrimsmo
Right.
00:31:03
John
But that's what I learned, saw too, was in talking to LMS. Again, a major caveat of assuming that there's no hallucination, which is a major risk, but basically sort of told me, okay, if you want,
00:31:11
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:31:13
John
to handle something like five microns, we can build that system. But going down to like confidently one or two microns is a whole different ballgame. um And
00:31:25
johngrimsmo
Unless you zoom way in and then you're kind of getting free accuracy, but you're losing your field of view.
00:31:29
John
yeah, so to your point, that probably is true.
00:31:33
johngrimsmo
um
00:31:33
John
got it. god Yeah, it makes sense.
00:31:35
johngrimsmo
I mean, to a point you're at some point, you're basically viewing, you know, a two millimeter square and that's like a really tiny,
00:31:44
John
Right.
00:31:44
johngrimsmo
But then you can get half micron per pixel or less.
00:31:44
John
Got it.
00:31:47
johngrimsmo
Well, not like light kind of doesn't split at less than half micron. It's the wavelength of light.
00:31:54
John
Okay.
00:31:54
johngrimsmo
But ah apparently Keyence can zoom in more and it just kind of, it's you're not really splitting light that much smaller, but it they can average it or something.
00:31:54
John
That's crazy.
00:32:04
johngrimsmo
It just gets blurrier.
00:32:04
John
Yeah.
00:32:05
johngrimsmo
I forget.
00:32:07
John
The way the Ellen discussed it, made sense and didn't seem all that difficult. And I think it's something that's commonly done by tools like OpenCD already. So I'm not having to like reinvent the wheel on a lot of it.
00:32:15
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:32:17
John
And so the real question, similar to the Mitsutoyo situation, although this is much more wild west was, can I do this system? And so I bought a Basler camera, very specific attributes to that camera.
00:32:31
John
And it was 600 bucks. I bought a,
00:32:32
johngrimsmo
What was it? Was it new?
00:32:37
John
I can't remember. I've been on a few different ones. It was either used or new old new open stock.
00:32:42
johngrimsmo
Okay. And what do you remember what some of those specifics were? Cause I went down this rabbit hole too.
00:32:48
John
It is an ACA2440-20GM. I don't remember. i mean, I can look that up real quick. Actually, we'll take a second.
00:32:57
johngrimsmo
Cause for me, what I found, um, yeah, using, especially for a vision system, you just want black and white, like,
00:33:04
John
Yep.
00:33:05
johngrimsmo
you don't need color and color is actually a detriment because of the Bayer filters on the lenses or on the, um, camera systems.
00:33:11
John
Okay. Okay. Okay.
00:33:13
johngrimsmo
You basically don't need the blue and the red pixels. Um, so you're mostly only using the two green pixels. And now I, when I'm using a color camera, I'm converting the blue and the red pixels to green pixels or something like that. So I'm still using them, but I'm counting it as a green light or whatever.
00:33:30
johngrimsmo
um But for the white light interferometer, the Thor Labs camera, I bought a monochrome camera that technically has kind of twice as many green filters or green pixels as a color camera that has blue and red as well.
00:33:45
John
Oh, sure, it sure. Doubles up on the one color.
00:33:46
johngrimsmo
So yeah, it's interesting.
00:33:47
John
Sure.
00:33:47
johngrimsmo
You can kind of get free accuracy just by either using a monochrome camera or telling the software, all those blue, red pixels, like make them green.
00:33:55
John
Trade off. Right. Makes sense. So camera, I bought a telecentric lens that was also hundreds of dollars.
00:34:06
johngrimsmo
what's What's your... I don't know what the word for it is. This is like... but Mine's 0.275.
00:34:12
John
Specs.
00:34:15
John
Opto engineering TC 12056 half inch F slash 8 156 millimeter C mount. I mean, I need to go play with this stuff.
00:34:24
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah. No, because that directly defines your view, your zoom in your field of view, um whatever this number is, whether it's a a two is pretty zoomed in, 0.275 like mine is fairly zoomed out.
00:34:28
John
Correct. Yes.
00:34:37
johngrimsmo
So I can see almost a full inch of viewing area, even though the lens is like five inches in diameter.
00:34:39
John
Okay.
00:34:43
John
Okay.
00:34:43
johngrimsmo
um Yeah.
00:34:43
John
Oh, wow.
00:34:47
johngrimsmo
And that the directly affects your pixel to micron ratio.
00:34:47
John
And then bought it.
00:34:52
John
Yes. Part of the reason I did this too was, and again, this is much more in the, let's just see how we get along.
00:34:58
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it's awesome. fun to see you going through it.
00:35:00
John
um
00:35:00
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:35:01
John
A lit columnated LED backlight, which is also very specific to have it be monochromatic.
00:35:05
johngrimsmo
Nice. Yeah.
00:35:06
John
And then I bought a calibration pattern thing as well. But again, the thing I like about this is that
00:35:10
johngrimsmo
night
00:35:13
John
We're not using it in the job shop environment where like if you purchase a system from say Acheans or Zeiss, it needs to just be able to handle any part that's presented to it. I can i can say, hey, here's a good known good part, compare it to the part we're making today.
00:35:30
John
So I'll keep everybody updated to see if we bail on this or if it works.
00:35:32
johngrimsmo
That's awesome, dude. So the the next challenge is more on the hardware side, now that you've bought the components, just like I did, is mounting them and aligning them and having it be like rigid enough and accessible enough, whatever.
00:35:43
John
Okay.
00:35:47
johngrimsmo
And then your height, like your Z focus, basically, is a real thing.
00:35:55
John
Yeah.
00:35:57
johngrimsmo
um
00:35:57
John
Okay.
00:35:58
johngrimsmo
So what I did on Amazon, I bought a Z stage motorized stepper motor.
00:36:02
John
Okay.
00:36:03
johngrimsmo
I haven't used it yet, but for like a couple hundred bucks, it's it's a literal linear rail ball screw Z stage. You just mount that vertically on some base plate and you can program that into your system.
00:36:16
johngrimsmo
And I haven't done it yet, but I want to. There are very simple autofocus algorithms out there. that, especially on a vision system that have edge detect. And it's like, oh, blurry, not blurry, blurry. There's my zero. Now I'm in focus.
00:36:30
johngrimsmo
And you basically hit an autofocus button and it just goes, yep, there it is. And then you hit the calibrate button on your your calibration thing and it goes, yep, okay. And that will get you just better results faster.
00:36:44
John
Yeah, you're way further than me. I'm trying to sort of build a poor man's version of what Keyence brought by, which was left to right camera system.
00:36:54
John
was horizontal, not vertical like the traditional microscope.
00:36:56
johngrimsmo
Oh, okay, yeah.
00:36:57
John
And let's say that this thing had a 12 inch um empty void between the camera and the lens.
00:37:05
johngrimsmo
Interesting. Okay, yeah.
00:37:07
John
There was about a two inch range that was marked in the middle of that where you could put the part anywhere in those two inches. So it was very forgiving.
00:37:13
johngrimsmo
Is that what you're thinking too? A horizontal style? Or whatever that is.
00:37:17
John
Probably. Yeah.
00:37:18
johngrimsmo
side Like the beam is side to side.
00:37:18
John
Yeah. I am.
00:37:21
johngrimsmo
Interesting. I haven't considered that. So your part... You still gotta have the part in focus.
00:37:28
John
No, I like, I'm not fighting.
00:37:29
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:37:30
John
and I'm just saying that theirs was very, so long as you were in that relatively forgiving range, it was fine.
00:37:30
johngrimsmo
Yeah,
00:37:35
John
and I think if you moved it out of that range, it didn't so much lose focus as it's just the the measurements were, would have been inaccurate.
00:37:42
johngrimsmo
yeah. I'm sure the key ends has auto focus and just does that. Like you don't even notice.
00:37:47
John
Yeah, that may be the case.
00:37:48
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:37:49
John
Um, but the,
00:37:49
johngrimsmo
And then, and then the, the squareness of anything, whether it's that system where the light goes side to side or my system, traditional microscope, we have your edge light on the back on the, on the bottom. and you put your part on top of that and the microscopes above, um, the squareness of your lens affects the telecentricity and the like edge detection.
00:38:01
John
Yeah.
00:38:09
johngrimsmo
Like it needs to be able to be trammed, you know,
00:38:11
John
Our plan right now is to use this on round parts though, unfortunately.
00:38:16
johngrimsmo
Yeah, that'd be better.
00:38:16
John
So it's, it's less of a less of an issue on some, well, yeah.
00:38:18
johngrimsmo
Less of an issue, but. But also as when Cyrus made his first white light interferometer, he did it all laying down. Like where the, you know, the microscope's objectives go left to right, not up and down.
00:38:32
johngrimsmo
And that's just like so much easier because you can just put it on a V block and all of a sudden it's square.
00:38:32
John
Yeah.
00:38:37
John
Yeah.
00:38:37
johngrimsmo
Whereas trying to build something up vertically in space, you have tilt, you have squareness, you have tram, you have all this grap crap that's like not easy to do.
00:38:37
John
Right.
00:38:44
John
But aren't you trying to do it the hard way?
00:38:47
johngrimsmo
I am trying to do it the hard way, which takes so much time.
00:38:48
John
yeah Why? Why?
00:38:50
johngrimsmo
i don't know.
00:38:51
John
Left or right? Okay. I mean, I don't know if I'll need a granite piece, but you buy those like eight by 12 granite blocks for, you know, a hundred bucks, not even.
00:38:53
johngrimsmo
Exactly. So that's funny.
00:39:01
johngrimsmo
ye Yep. Yep.
00:39:04
johngrimsmo
Fun. Good for you, man.
00:39:05
John
Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah.
00:39:08
johngrimsmo
That's awesome.
Challenges and Solutions: Calibrating a Laser System
00:39:13
johngrimsmo
this is cool
00:39:18
johngrimsmo
Okay, I've got a couple other things. Remember last week I talked about installing the updated laser system on the Speedio, the Bloom lasers.
00:39:27
John
oh yeah
00:39:28
johngrimsmo
um Continued to struggle with that even after the podcast for a little bit. And then eventually I roped in one of my machinists, Jeff Jeff, and i was like, can you just... can I just tell you everything and and let me explain this to you and maybe you'll see something I'm not seeing.
00:39:43
johngrimsmo
Cause it's, I'm running the calibration program and it's not calibrating properly.
00:39:43
John
Yeah. Okay. Yes.
00:39:47
johngrimsmo
And it's still reading off by, I forget how much, but like enough. And I was like, something's wrong. And eventually after him asking enough questions and me, um,
00:39:59
johngrimsmo
answering and thinking about it enough. um I might've told you a few months ago, I added Fjell blade. i bolted it to the top of the bloom laser to give me a hole, a precision perfect hole that I can probe with the touch probe, the spindle probe.
00:40:12
John
yes I do remember this.
00:40:15
johngrimsmo
And so now I have a calibration feature on the machine for the spindle probe, which is so sick.
00:40:18
John
Sure.
00:40:19
johngrimsmo
So I cant i can not only auto calibrate the probe every time for run out, for eccentricity, for whatever.
00:40:20
John
Love that.
00:40:27
johngrimsmo
um I can also verify that it's measuring 0.3109, whatever the hole is. And it turns out I was running that right before the calibration program for the laser, and it just makes the laser calibration not work.
00:40:37
John
Oh my God.
00:40:41
johngrimsmo
And he's like, how would you just block that off for once? All of a sudden, perfect results. We're like, what? And then we turned it on again and did it again, and it didn't revert to the bad way.
00:40:46
John
Oh my god.
00:40:50
johngrimsmo
It just stayed good. And we're like, okay i don't understand this but it's fixed so i'm happy but i'm disappointed about it so i still don't know like really specifically to the line of code what the issue is but it works and that's good to know um
00:41:09
John
It's not overwriting a variable that...
00:41:11
johngrimsmo
i thought it might be but it doesn't seem to be but that's possible maybe i'm just not seeing it and then the other the other one that got me was um
00:41:15
John
Weird. Yeah, sure, sure, sure.
00:41:21
johngrimsmo
I forget exactly what was happening, but when when we do a pallet change with the Auroa, it turns on the air blast for the laser during pallet change, which is, those are separate systems.
00:41:31
John
Which it shouldn't.
00:41:32
johngrimsmo
no those And I'm like, we've always just kind of left and dealt with it.
00:41:32
John
Yeah, right. Okay, yeah. That doesn't make sense.
00:41:36
johngrimsmo
What's funny is Above palette number 64, it doesn't do it. Below palette number 64, it does do it. And I'm like, what? So I started to dig into it. It turns out when the laser guy installed the laser, the bloom laser, he used parameters 1100, 1101, 1102, 1103. When the aroa guy came in a little bit later the AROA, he used parameters And I'm like, oh my gosh.
00:42:04
johngrimsmo
And once I figured this out, and these are in the ladder logic of the program, not just so visible in the code or in whatever, like it's being set by ladder logic stuff. So it took me a while to even find it.
00:42:18
johngrimsmo
And now that I understand it, I can accept and avoid the issues from it. But because it was leaving the shutters open after some pallet changes, which let coolant ingress into the shutters.
00:42:30
John
Ironically, maybe why?
00:42:30
johngrimsmo
that's That's our big problem.
00:42:32
John
Yeah.
00:42:32
johngrimsmo
like
00:42:35
johngrimsmo
And you don't know what you don't know.
00:42:35
John
Yeah.
00:42:36
johngrimsmo
i can't really blame the Aeroa guy. I can't really blame the Bloom guy. It's just they didn't they came six months apart and didn't talk to each other and just happened to overwrite the same things. And we've been living with it for two years.
00:42:45
John
Well, nor will they, nor will they ever talk to each other. Like this is what, if you want to like lose sleep at night and and be a worrisome person, which is not a good thing to do.
00:42:49
johngrimsmo
now
00:42:54
John
It's like the wild west of like who's using what variables and what are they being written to is horrifying.
00:43:00
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I've been very good at documenting how I use them on the machines that matter. But that's not to say that Jeff is going to reference my documents when he goes to program something new.
00:43:10
John
Yeah.
00:43:11
johngrimsmo
you know
00:43:11
John
Yeah. Just let an agent handle it.
00:43:14
johngrimsmo
Exactly, right? The context. It has all the context.
00:43:16
John
Don't. Don't.
00:43:18
johngrimsmo
to To a point.
00:43:20
John
Yeah. Yeah.
00:43:23
johngrimsmo
So yeah, everything everything's all good.
00:43:23
John
Well, our stressor. um This is nothing other than a commiserating story, but our stressor of the week was that um we had that air compressor back up and running that we had to swap the motor out on.
00:43:35
John
And then after it was running for a few days, um both compressors went down at the same time, which stinks.
00:43:41
johngrimsmo
No.
00:43:43
John
And it really does. Talk about crappy timing. The compressor that had not had any issues literally hit a service interval where it just goes into a shutdown maintenance mode, not because anything's wrong.
00:43:56
John
And what are the odds that it did that? The other compressor, we must have somehow... damaged a different part. They call it a transformer. I haven't actually seen it myself. So take that for it's worth. Um, cause I was sort of like, ah, that's weird to have a transformer in a machine and that's weird for it to be broken. And under these circumstances ends up that the new one just came this morning.
00:44:17
John
Um, somewhat frustratingly, they shipped the wrong one. We paid for overnight shipping. and It's like frustrating. You pay for FedEx overnight and the wrong one was sent, but right. One came this morning, swapped it out. it is working, which is great.
00:44:28
John
Um, the other compressor was just simply a quick maintenance kind confirmation that we are doing the maintenance. Um, but, uh, to, to have,
00:44:35
johngrimsmo
So you got that one back up and running right away pretty much, but okay.
00:44:38
John
Correct. But like, don't know, kind of feels like a kick in the pants when you have two compressors specifically for redundancy. And then, and I'm a little bit of a Karen, like when one goes down, then we don't mess with the other one because we were going to move them both.
00:44:47
johngrimsmo
Oh, man.
00:44:53
John
i'm like, nope, that compressor does not get touched. We don't move it. We don't do anything that will create additional risk around its use in the shop and it's still in town.
00:45:01
johngrimsmo
Yep. Oof.
00:45:03
John
Oh well, it's okay.
00:45:04
johngrimsmo
Yeah, because a shop is useless without power or air. You can't do anything, really.
00:45:09
John
Yeah. And we can run most what we need to run on one. um
00:45:13
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:45:14
John
So now both are up but until we got that confirmation about two hours ago. I was considering the older one is six years old, which isn't even that old, but i'm considering i look at the math, like what I think I could sell it for and what I could buy a new one for.
00:45:30
John
um and buy one that's a little bit bigger because the we can run on one compressor, but we have to stop running certain machines.
00:45:33
johngrimsmo
and
00:45:39
John
And if the but the new one is big enough, a loan should run the shop. So the second one is, obviously, yeah if the big one breaks, we're still not back.
00:45:48
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:45:49
John
But what kind of a cribbing up growth method? And then ultimately we'll replace the other one to get it bigger.
00:45:54
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:45:57
johngrimsmo
Yeah. No, I like that, especially something so critical. You're keeping it fresh pretty much, keeping it up to date, you know, sell it for a good deal to a younger shop that just, it's the greatest thing ever for, you know, half price or whatever.
00:46:06
John
Yeah.
00:46:08
johngrimsmo
And then you invest in the newer one for reliability, for service, for all.
00:46:09
John
Yeah.
00:46:13
johngrimsmo
Yeah. It's a good idea.
00:46:15
John
Yeah.
00:46:18
johngrimsmo
Cool. Well, I guess that about does it. I have a lot more notes, but they can save until we get back. So I'm off next week.
00:46:25
John
Okay.
00:46:27
johngrimsmo
little family vacation.
00:46:28
John
Have, yes, love it.
00:46:31
johngrimsmo
And then we'll be back the week after.
00:46:34
John
Good. I will see you August. Well, for the audience, it'll be August 7th. I'll see you on the 5th for the recording. i Have a good time, though.
00:46:40
johngrimsmo
Perfect. right, man.
00:46:43
John
Take care.
00:46:43
johngrimsmo
Take care. Bye.