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#243 - New Machines, New Adventures & Humbling Experiences
221 Plays4 years ago
TOPICS:
- Saunders had a humbling experience shooting and editing a video to completion again! Watch here.
- New air compressors.
- Optical comparators.
- 8 Deadly wastes - D.O.W.N.T.I.M.E
- Saunders is getting his Okuma very soon!
- Grimsmo gets the Willemin powered up!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Weekly Insights
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machining episode 243. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmough.
00:00:08
Speaker
John and I talk every week and hopefully us sharing our wins and questions and successes and insecurities as business owners can help you in your manufacturing endeavors. Because we're all in this together. I mean, that's one of the best things about this podcast is you and I have so many parallels that we're like, right? Me too. It's too many. Yeah.
Video Content Creation
00:00:31
Speaker
So I keep lists. We all keep lists. I keep a list in Asana of video ideas. And so shop update is kind of a one that I just, every time I have a thought of something I want to share, I put it in there and then eventually we get to enough where it's like, okay, let's go with shop update. I think I have
00:00:50
Speaker
I just didn't do that this year. I think it was as much because it's like we have so much going on. I always want to wait till that next level, that next hurdle. You don't want to snapshot this moment in time because it's going to be better. I was like yesterday, two days ago, I just picked up the camera, filmed the whole video myself, edited it myself, which I haven't done in like three years because it was just me. It was super quick. I don't really
00:01:15
Speaker
you know, I don't edit out anything. And I'll tell you, it was like the most rejuvenating fun.
Choosing Air Compressors
00:01:23
Speaker
You know, we'll have a link to the video in the show notes, but everything from we bought a new air compressor. Oh,
00:01:30
Speaker
So we had looked at the Atlas Copco, whom we already have. We looked at Kazer and then kind of out of nowhere, CJ bought a Fiat. I had not even heard of it, but he listed some of the benefits of it, which were price and the fact that it can run
00:01:48
Speaker
continuously idling so it doesn't have to unload and we're in a weird stage with our compressor where we're not running it well. You should either run screw compressors continuously or you should run them not more often than every five minutes or ten minutes because if you start and stop them a bunch it's really hard on the unit and our unit when it stops it has to unload the pressure because it can't start under load and that wears things out. Does it make a noise like it blow off kind of?
00:02:16
Speaker
It does. We've gotten so used to it that it's actually hard to listen to it because you've learned to tune it out, but yeah, it does do a psss sound. Interesting.
00:02:26
Speaker
So I think ours might too. And you kind of don't realize it anymore. Yeah, current. What is it? Kaiser SM 10, I think that we have idols constantly, I think it's got a five minute idol. And then if it needs more air, like if it hits its minimum within that five minutes, it'll pump up again. But because of that, it is literally always, always, always on doing something. It shouldn't be using the same energy when it's right. Yeah, but it still makes a lot of noise.
00:02:56
Speaker
Yeah. The other thing I really like is this unit has a digital control. We're going to be able to adjust the PSI with a computer screen, which we can't do with our current compressor. We'll do a lead lag setup. Our current
00:03:13
Speaker
Copco kicks on at 100 off at 140. And there are times where we run out of air. And the new one will kick on at 105, also off at 140. So in theory, under a normal day's use, the secondary one would never get used. But if the pressure does drop off, it will also kick on. And both of them will be running, which means everything will fill up. It would get to 140 quicker.
00:03:38
Speaker
Then I think what we'll be able to do is every once in a while on a schedule, switch the new one to 95 or something like that and let the cop code become the main one so that it gets some runtime and you don't have to sit unused for months. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. It's a whole theory behind balancing two air compressors, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, you just said it basically.
00:04:03
Speaker
There's a way to adjust our cop code. I just don't know how and it looks mechanically and not fun. So I'm just kind of like, I like the new one. And I'll tell you, it was interesting. We had a weird week with the world.
00:04:18
Speaker
But talking to the sales rep that I found when I looked up Fiat, the guy cared. He was super nice. He answered my questions. He got me a quote on a good time. He was polite. Their pricing was to the point where I did some research to make sure I wasn't missing the mark on something here. But it was
00:04:38
Speaker
kind of similar. It's the same size. So it was similar price to the one that we bought six years ago. I wouldn't expect it to be the same price. There's certainly been some inflation since then, but, um, the other two were, it looked like just not competitive. Um, so we'll see. I always kind of wonder like, Oh, am I getting, you know, is there something to this? But it's a real company. So we'll see. Cool. And you have it, it's in or it's ordered.
00:05:03
Speaker
That was the other thing. Not only was it just like a nice conversation. He was like, yep, we can get it to you next day. We can adjust this or that. Tell me about your setup right now. Let's figure out how this makes sense. Whereas the other ones were four to six weeks out, which that is alone. I don't necessarily criticize them for. It's a weird world right now. It's not a minus one for them, but it's definitely a plus one for the guy that can have it to you tomorrow.
00:05:30
Speaker
Yeah, it was just kind of like, it was nice because he was proud of that. And the other folks were like, kind of a like, not only is it four to six weeks, but man, you better get this order. And right now we're like, we're going to be, I guarantee you, we're going to be cramming down another price increase. And the world's going to be crazier.
Vendor Challenges and Supply Chain Issues
00:05:44
Speaker
And it's kind of like, that actually all is, is probably well true. But the way you're delivering the message doesn't, doesn't, you know, I'm not buying things within a gun pointed at my head.
00:05:56
Speaker
Well, that's not what happened to CJ, but he had a compressor that had some small issue and it was going to take too long to get a replacement, to get it fixed. So he just bought the Fiat and it came like next day and he was back in business.
00:06:13
Speaker
Yeah. That's interesting because you don't think about it, but the air compressor is literally like the one lifeblood of the entire shop that if your one compressor goes down, you can have 10 machines tied to it and they're dead without it. The shop is useless without a compressor.
00:06:30
Speaker
My horrible backup idea was always to drive to Home Depot, buy a piston, five horsepower, and know that we could run two machines or something off of that terrible plan. But for a year, literally my first quote was from November of last year to get a second compressor.
00:06:47
Speaker
Honestly, it was the sales attitude that made this one easier. I mean, price helped, but it wasn't the end all. It was the other folks, it was so long to get a back and forth. It was like seven page quotes. It just wasn't, it reminds me of a good, it's just a good experience so far.
00:07:10
Speaker
Yeah, that kind of ties to the whole industry purchasing perspective, seven-page quotes and things of that nature and long lead times. I mean, a lot of these machines, especially CNC machines, have multiple options, many different ways to configure them. So I understand it's not just like most of my vendors don't want to ballpark a price, shoot from the hip. Whereas I'm just like plus or minus 20%, I don't care. Just give me a number. I need a baseline here.
00:07:39
Speaker
But they are, they're super hesitant to do that because they want to go through the process and they want to do that full quote. And I get it. I just don't like it. When it wasn't just seven page quotes, it was on Monday. I'd asked for a quote on Tuesday. He called me and say, let me know he's working on it. And then Wednesday afternoon, he'd be like, I'll have it to you tomorrow. And then Thursday, multiple, it's just like, dude, no, like 20 minutes after we hang up on Monday, send me a one page PDF with the action. I like, let me rock and roll. Right, right.
00:08:07
Speaker
Yep. Yeah. It's just funny when you see inefficiencies like that, especially in other people and then hopefully in yourself eventually, um, it's painful to watch, you know? Yeah.
00:08:19
Speaker
Yes, that's actually a really good point. Don't become the person that you don't like without realizing it. It's not like these sales folks mean to
Economic Pressures on Manufacturing
00:08:29
Speaker
badger you and be bad at their job. Well, so on that note, kind of had a first. I don't want to throw shade at the vendor, so I'll keep it a little bit generic, but we bought from them before. We ordered again.
00:08:46
Speaker
And the sales guy gave me the quote. And I said, OK. And I said, one of the things that really matters here is timing. And the timing was we agreed on the timing. And then he really wanted 50% down, which is a little unusual. They asked for the first time. And I agreed because we were a new customer. But I said, that's not really something I'm super excited about because on the first one, we also had the timing conversation. And they blew the deadline big time.
00:09:12
Speaker
So I just said, hey, I'm not really keen on a down payment when you guys, you know, didn't meet the deadline and it costs us a lot of money and hassle and time. And he said, not gonna be issued, not gonna be issued. We're gonna get it this time, but I do need that down payment. So you kind of realize, look, he's just not gonna give on this. And, you know, I always try to keep, I hate to use the word ego, but like, okay, like, do you want this or not? Go ahead. So I gave him the down payment. And then three days later, the owner of the company calls me and chews me out.
00:09:43
Speaker
and is like, you are so rude to my customers. I can't stand people like you. I don't know what your problem is, but I'm not going to be able to make that deadline. My salesman shouldn't have quoted that. So you tell me what you want to do, bud. And I'm just kind of like, dude, whoa.
00:10:01
Speaker
he was referring to the fact that the first time they missed their deadline I was I was upset and I made that clear like hey you guys are costing me money this is an issue you told me this like I'm holding you accountable it was always simple it's I never lost my tone in anything of sorts
00:10:16
Speaker
And the guy was going on a tirade about, you don't understand how difficult my industry is right now. You don't understand my supply chain, my workers, blah, blah, blah. And I'm just thinking, Bud, we're all in this right now. And frankly, none of that was changed between the time you quoted it and the time you missed the deadline, like three weeks between the two. So I bring this up, not so much to vent, but rather to realize
00:10:45
Speaker
you kind of have to think about what life is like now when we're dealing with people because there's people that are
00:10:52
Speaker
We haven't had this global economic reset like we had in the dot-com crash or the 2008 crash. We keep hearing these buzzwords in supply chains and blah, blah, blah. But I think we're underestimating here, there's a building up pressure vessel of this. And I think I became that guy's pawn that day. And I ultimately realized to like, hey, man, after the crate arrived, it was late, after the stuff arrived,
00:11:21
Speaker
I was like, it was beautiful. I complimented you guys on the work. And I did, and thank God I did, because it was a good way to turn the ship here. And I said, yeah, I was upset. I think you would be too, and rehashed it all. And I said, look, you tell me where you're going to go with this. But I think it's disappointing that your sales guy is not given good information. But you leave me no choice. I'd still like this. And so I kind of
00:11:47
Speaker
I kind of talked him off a ledge, but I got a feeling that that's not going to be the last time that happens if this stuff keeps up like this. Yeah. I mean, economically, I've heard chatter for the past, whatever, six years. They're like, something's coming. What is it, cyclically, every eight years for the past 100 years, there's been some sort of a shift economically. I guess we're starting to hit it for many reasons, but
00:12:13
Speaker
But yeah, it's weird how it plays out in people's emotions and their interactions and everybody takes it differently. Yeah.
Considering an Optical Comparator
00:12:23
Speaker
We also got, for the first real time, we got no bid on normal material yesterday.
00:12:30
Speaker
So we've had delays, we've had to negotiate, had to pay more, but normal volume material from big suppliers, they said, we don't have any of this coming in for eight weeks. I'm not allowed to quote you because we don't know what pricing is going to be. I can't even allocate it to you right now. That's scary. Yikes. What do you even do?
00:12:57
Speaker
Look for alternative materials look at how much we have on hand get creative other vendors Yeah Just I just wanted to share because I there's been it's like you said there's been chatter about stuff But like okay, what's real like what is the whole like? I want to buy quarter 20 screws and McMaster this is not a big masters like we're out and we're not having any for four months You're like that's not possible. We haven't had yeah, there's been two billion screws on shelves for the last hundred years Why are you out of screws?
00:13:28
Speaker
Yeah, man. Yeah, we haven't directly had that hit. Some of our suppliers are increasing prices for sure. I've heard a little bit about titanium has come and go because it is an exotic material and there's probably less of it than aluminum. Yeah. But it hasn't hit us yet, thank goodness, but who knows.
00:13:53
Speaker
I've heard urban legends that most titanium that folks like us get is effectively byproducts of big titanium runs for the bowings of the world. Sometimes. Yeah, I've heard that too.
00:14:05
Speaker
I don't know. Not always, maybe. I don't know. Kind of like all the Swarovski, again, maybe an urban legend, all the Swarovski crystals that you see at the airport Swarovski stores, those are just crystal byproducts of one of the Swarovski industrial rifle scopes and precision instrument. Really? Yeah. Well, because I didn't even know they did precision stuff. I just know them from the little figurines and decorative stuff.
00:14:30
Speaker
Yeah, their friend has their pair of binoculars. I mean, they are- Yeah, you mentioned last week. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Total coincidence. They are incredible. They're crazy. Yeah. On that note- Speaking of- Good. I think mine's probably more on topic. Speaking of vision, optical comparator, I think it's way past time
Advanced Inspection Systems
00:14:52
Speaker
we buy one. I bid on one at an auction like a few months ago and I missed it by $50 or something.
00:14:58
Speaker
But I looked on a local buy-sell site and I saw a couple, I saw a stare at one and I'm like, yeah, maybe it's time we just buy one. I know Angela has been asking for one forever and it came up again. Yeah, I think we just need one. Make sure you get the right kind of background insert you want for what you're trying to do. They have different patterns. There's different magnifications. But the big thing I would say from a quality of life standpoint, twice a year that we use ours is
00:15:27
Speaker
the interaction and the quality of the digital readout. Basically like a caliper that's been bolted to the frame, but ours is pretty decent. That part of it though is not as good as I'd like. Like it has a digital readout, but it's not as quality, a tight or whatever.
00:15:42
Speaker
Yeah, it just doesn't feel like, like, reminds me of like, we have the Mitsutoyo quantum mics and then we have other mics and I will reach for the quantum mics every single time. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with the other ones. It's just, yeah. Yeah. Which optical do you have?
00:16:02
Speaker
So we have, I don't actually know, we bought it used from an auction as well. It is, I believe, branded suburban tool, that YouTube Dawn guy. Love that guy. I don't think they make them, so I don't know what they're doing. And then it, I think, actually has Fowler. It's effectively a digital caliper without the caliper pinchers on it as the readout form. So you can zero it or relative measurement or switch mitch to millimeters.
00:16:29
Speaker
Oh, but it's like one thou resolution or half thou at best or something. Yeah, but I don't, and I'm not a optical comparator guru, but unless you, I think the normal magnification is, is it 10 X and then there's some that are out there that are 50 you're, I don't know that you're going to do better than one towel on those, John. I mean, the, I was looking at a stare at, um, and it had six digits on the readout five, maybe I'm not sure.
00:16:58
Speaker
but it's still your interpretation of where the projected shadow of your part hits the line. So I can move mine one or two, two thou, you can tell it's different, but you've got to develop your own consistency of how you're measuring the intersection of the line with your part with the line on the screen. And I guess that would change between people unless you established a good process. I think so. Yeah. Interesting.
00:17:24
Speaker
I've never actually touched one, but I've seen YouTube videos. The thing I'd love, we don't have a use for it today, but let's see here, Zeiss demoed
Inventory and Quality Control
00:17:36
Speaker
one. I think Keant has them as well. Area 419 had one where you build a library of a couple of parts or many parts that you make, and then you just lay the part down on this little microscope.
00:17:48
Speaker
kind of, it's not an optical comparator, but it's more beefy than a microscope. And it just immediately, regardless of the orientation reads every feature that it can see like an optical comparator would, but with the consistency and sophistication of a digital system. And it can recognize your part from a part family and then immediately give you color band ranges of what's in and out of spell and tolerances and holes and features and stuff. You've seen these. Oh yeah. I've seen them. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's pretty sweet. And CJ has one, I think, and he loves it.
00:18:18
Speaker
Oh, yeah. They're not cheap. They're like $50,000, $60,000 or something, like the Keyance one. I thought it's $30,000 or maybe wrong. Yeah. Okay. Either way, it's a lot of money. Yes. But pretty cool when you have that kind of stuff. I wonder though, when we're making a screw, if you put it on a backlit plate, the screw will tip over and be thread. It'll be crooked. You know what I mean though?
00:18:45
Speaker
I do, yeah. You could print a jig easily that holds it the right way. Would the jig get in the way of the image? I don't know. There's got to be ways to do it. Yeah, I think about that. Half of our parts wouldn't sit square. They would fall over.
00:19:04
Speaker
But I think the area four and nine guys were using it for a lot of their turned kind of puzzle breaking related parts. So there must, and I don't think they were just holding the part flat. Like I think they were looking at stuff on the side. I don't know though.
00:19:20
Speaker
It reminds me of a, we had a little huddle this morning because we're, we're at that point. We basically have initial inventory of almost, almost everything we want to have, which is great. Like all these, you want to buy a, I'll make this up a Doosan plate or a Robo drill plate or.
00:19:37
Speaker
whatever, Akuma Plate, we have most of those, at least in quantity one on the shelf, which is awesome. Also scares the bejesus out of me because there are things that we have found in lessons that we have learned.
Manufacturing Process Efficiency
00:19:54
Speaker
It's not what I would say is a QC fail, but little quirky things like, hey, we wanted to change the way that we
00:19:59
Speaker
had the bottom of our counterbore intersect with a thread hole, and it may be it actually raises a burden you didn't realize about. It's not some sort of a like, you made bad parts, but it's not something where you want to look at a shop full of inventory and realize, oh, no. It's been on our top of mind. Yeah, that's the balance between overproduction and storing inventory and
00:20:22
Speaker
In our team meetings, we've been going over the eight deadly wastes, uh, for daily pretty much. So everybody kind of, you know, brings up an example and gets to know it. And, uh, it's, it's excellent. What is the eight deadly wastes? Um, we use the downtime acronym, which is, uh, defects overproduction waiting nonutilized employee potential transportation.
00:20:52
Speaker
Inventory, motion, and E is excess processing, I think. No, it's real processing.
Overproduction and Customer Perceptions
00:21:01
Speaker
I forget. Okay. Yeah, I like that. Interesting. But yeah, they're simple little things that is not too difficult to come up with an example in our team meetings. Yeah. Transportation, shipping things from vendor to vendor to vendor to vendor, or we do it ourselves.
00:21:18
Speaker
or excess inventory like we made. The current is so good at making Norseman handles that it's making more. We make the inside on the current and the outside on the Maury. The Maury can't keep up at the moment. So there is, we just got through our August inventory and it's October. Like we engrained the date on the inside. Yeah. So now we're, I think we're actually just getting through the September inventory. Um,
00:21:46
Speaker
But yeah, we overproduced and now we have too much inventory and now the date is getting stale. That's funny. It's a good talking point for us to talk about. Maybe we should flow this through a little bit better because that's not what we want. I've had customers receive a knife, they buy it say October 2nd, they receive it October 6th, and it says September on the inside of the handles. And they're like, I'm just curious. I bought it in October, right? Dude, that's like six days. I thought you said they'd be amazed.
00:22:16
Speaker
No. Oh my gosh. Customers are confused that the date is last month. Oh wow. I mean, maybe most people are amazed, but I've definitely had a few that they're like, yeah, this is old. What's wrong with this?
Setting Up the New Okuma Machine
00:22:29
Speaker
What do you think it was made like today? We aged it a month for you. That's funny. It's interesting to see from a customer's perspective, not a manufacturing perspective, what customers notice and what they think about.
00:22:46
Speaker
Yeah. Sometimes it's very blatant and factual and like it's not October or it's not September, it's October. Why does it say September? They don't actually maybe think through the process of things take time. Yeah, that's funny. I always look at like when we get a Haas, it's like, oh, when was it born? It's usually a couple of months, which is incredible in some respects. For sure.
00:23:12
Speaker
I was going to put out a request. If anybody listening is from preferably the Midwest, although I guess it could be anywhere in the country, we need some woodworking done. We want to build some stored fixture plate racks. We basically have the design. We know how to do it.
00:23:30
Speaker
And the only sort of quirk is we're going to line them with carpet, which can be normal carpet. It can even be carpet squares as though it's just a cushiony method. So nobody listening is looking for some woodworking work. Let me reach out to me, please. We'd love to get a quote on it. So we are getting ready for the Okuma. Okuma, yeah. Okuma, a week from tomorrow it lands.
00:23:59
Speaker
It was delayed a little bit on purpose. They could have delivered it last week as scheduled, but the conveyor was delayed, and they said, we'll deliver them separately or we'll deliver them together. I was frankly fine, giving us the chance. We realized we were going to change where it goes. And so I was like, oh, that gives us a couple extra weeks to reorganize a couple of machines. So we did that. We moved the VF3.
00:24:25
Speaker
and then the Okuma is going to go where it was. And the electrical supplies came yesterday, which is a comment slash kind of open-ended question. These machine tool builders seem to specify oversized amperage breakers. And similar to like they tell you you're supposed to have, I mean, I think Okuma said you're supposed to have
00:24:53
Speaker
four feet or six feet of concrete. And I talked to some friends and basically like, it's a kind of a crummy situation because nobody has that. But if you're going to get in a contested situation, they're going to point to that spec. Well, the power is another sort of issue. And so the Haasas are the same way. Most of our Haasas require either 60 or 80 amp breaker at 208 three phase, which is a lot of power. And so I actually got the amp meter out and went around to every one of our Haas machines yesterday. Nice.
00:25:23
Speaker
Now, we don't do insane hogging, which my understanding is we're going to use the most power is when all axes are moving, things like a lathe turning a big part from initial start. Most of our stuff is pretty light duty in some respects. Most of the machines were at sub 10 hamps. Wow.
00:25:46
Speaker
I got to a 40 amp peak when the VF2, it was like moving all three axes at rapid. Well, I think it started a tool change maybe, but it was a blip. But a blip will prop a breaker if it's undersized, right?
00:26:03
Speaker
Well, that's what I don't know. Look, I'm not trying to bootstrap here, but I do think it's interesting to say, wait a minute here, just because they say it needs that. How much over conservative is that? The real question I have is we have X amount of power coming into the shop, and if you calculated our capacity based on those max amperages, you'd be able to fit three machines in here.
00:26:30
Speaker
Yeah, right. So there's a balance like how much we actually using versus how much does the amperage limit say is possible. Sure, sure. Because that's assuming every machine is cranking at full load. Right. All at once, which is not realistic. So our electricians within legal limits are creative with how they analyze that.
00:26:52
Speaker
Well, that's a great way to put it. Yeah, I don't want to buy a 100 amp breaker when a 60 would do. I don't want to buy number two wire when number four would do. I just don't. But if it needs it, good grief all day long. And from a safety standpoint, what you can't do is put thin wire on a big breaker. That's a fire. Yeah, exactly. Because the thin wire becomes a fuse, not the breaker.
00:27:15
Speaker
Yeah, but it's interesting because you can absolutely exceed a breaker's capacity for a very short period of time. I don't know how long it is. I'm not trying to play that game.
00:27:28
Speaker
I had somebody test a machine for me, and they sure enough showed that they were getting a peak spike on startup at like 125% of the breaker rating. Really? But they've had that way for years, and it was a complete non-issue. Interesting. Anyway, just thought it was interesting. Yeah, I like what Jay Pearson says. He goes, there's two things I will never touch, accounting and electrical, because I'm convinced that both will kill you. It's funny.
Troubleshooting the Willimon Machine
00:27:56
Speaker
Yeah. It's funny.
00:28:01
Speaker
Speaking of which. Yeah, the big question. The big question. I told my guys yesterday, I'm like, I cannot face another podcast where I get asked if the Willimon has turned on yet and have to say no. So yesterday, Angelo and Pierre got together and they finished up what they needed to finish up on the Willimon. And then Angelo went home, Pierre and I started it up
00:28:23
Speaker
And it starts and the FANUC boots up and there's about a million errors. And we tried to clear them and I'm like, I don't even know what these buttons on the controller do. Like I couldn't find the MDI button. I couldn't find the reset wasn't labeled clearly. It's just, it's a different pictures on the things. And there's no letters telling me what's what. Really? Because they're worn out. I have four FANUC machines and every single control has a different layout.
00:28:51
Speaker
You didn't go into the archives and manual 37 subchapter 6 appendix D to look at the layout change? Book number 37 of the phone book sized yellow textbooks. No, so I didn't look at that. We poked around and tried to clear a couple of things, but eventually just said, OK, mission accomplished. We'll deal with this tomorrow.
00:29:12
Speaker
This is still absolutely awesome. Huge win. Interesting that once we put air to it, there's two spindles, right? There's the lathe spindle and the milling spindle. The lathe spindle has an air purge out the seal, which is interesting. The milling spindle, I didn't feel any air coming out of it, but I wouldn't be surprised if ... No, it's a grease pack spindle, they said. Maybe there isn't an air blow.
00:29:40
Speaker
It's a grease pack 30K spindle. Yeah. You sure? I'm pretty sure, like 72% sure that that's what they told me. You know, 98% of statistics are made up on the spot. I know. I've used that quote from you before. I love it. Interesting.
00:29:59
Speaker
Huh. Okay, so walk me through like I'm there, like you flip the disconnect, you hit the power on, and then Fanuc just starts yelling at you with alarms. What's up? So I was holding the camera and I let Pierre flip the switch and turn everything on so I could watch the control and everything. And then it was like, you hear the clunk, the breaker, and then you turn the switch and then nothing for a few seconds while the computer is booting up. And then all of a sudden there were these little words in the middle of the screen. I'm like, it's working. It's working.
00:30:29
Speaker
And then it took a minute to boot up properly. And then you get the FANUC screen, which was similar-ish to some of our other machines. And then we're trying to remember, what do you do first? Some machines want you to open the door and close it, or hit the reset button, or hit the power button to activate it. So we're trying all these combinations of stuff. And then eventually we hit the message
00:30:55
Speaker
button, which shows you all the errors. And there's like literally a wall of errors, like a page of them, um, phase, phase incorrect or phase something, the power, uh, fan motor alarms, Z axis, something, something. And there's a date on every alarm too. So you can see the dates that are now, and then the dates that are five months ago when they disconnected the machine. Cause it was like Z travel.
00:31:22
Speaker
inaccurate or I don't know what it said. Um, so when they started, you know, decommissioning it at the old place, it threw some alarms and then they just turn it off. So I'm like, cool. Okay. Yeah, there you go. So cause it was, I guess I'm kind of curious. It was sold to you, you know, as is whereas, but they represented that it works, right? Yeah. I saw pictures of it in operation and I'm quite sure that they ran it until they
00:31:49
Speaker
unplugged it and put it on the pallet or the truck. It was in use, so that's good. Meaning, I don't think there's anything functionally wrong with it, which is fantastic. It was good. It got a brand new spindle just last September, so like a year ago.
00:32:09
Speaker
A year from now is six months from when I purchased it. So a six month old spindle, the previous one lasted for 17 years. I'm happy. Yes. And I think the spindles they told me are 30K, $30,000 to replace, whatever.
Machine Capabilities and Comparisons
00:32:24
Speaker
It's a lot of money, but they did it for me. So that was kind of in the purchase price. And then the other big expense that can happen on these machines is the, I think you said the B-axis,
00:32:37
Speaker
all of it, like the bearings and everything. If that goes bad, that's another $30,000 to replace that. Okay. But he said everything else other than that is cheap to replace and like easy. So the B is what the head, the machining head tip, it's not like if I pivot my head left or right. Exactly. The milling spindle tilts zero to 90 degrees. Right. And that is a, I assume on an older machine like that, it's not a torque motor. It's a gear or belt.
00:33:11
Speaker
It can't be a torque motor. They didn't do that 20 years ago or whatever. I'm not sure. I don't know. Okay. I'm trying to think. I've looked in there, seeing which axis does what, and I'm not sure yet. Yeah, fair enough. But the whole spindle motor is inside the B head, right? It has to be. The milling spindle? Mm-hmm. It's kind of attached to the front, like a shape up here.
00:33:38
Speaker
It's not much bigger. You just, you just stretched from a shape. I'll go to a well women in a single sentence. So you have your HSK 40 taper spindle.
Tool Probing and Part Replacement
00:33:48
Speaker
You put a tool into there above the HSK 40 taper is a powered motor. That motor is in the B head. It tilted everything. Like I know there's some, it would be different analogy, but like the Hermla.
00:34:02
Speaker
performance line, not the high performance line. The A-axis motor is, I think, outside the trunnion, and it links through with the inversion joints in or something like that. Yeah, yeah. It would be a direct drive milling head spindle thing, and it's not big. It's like literally, I don't know, four inches wide by four inches deep by eight inches tall or something. It's really compact. Crazy, right? Yeah. That's cool.
00:34:27
Speaker
Somebody asked me on Instagram yesterday how much power the milling spindle has, and I was like, I have no idea. It's probably our weakest spindle in the whole shop, but I don't care because it's going to be amazing because I have 30,000 RPM. Right. Right. This is a face mill on this thing is like eight millimeters. Yeah. Although the funny thing, I noticed it on the current, is anything bigger than quarter inch tool in titanium or steel or stainless or whatever, it's only running 6,000 RPM to get your surface feet in a reasonable range.
00:34:58
Speaker
It's when you get down to eighth inch tools, 16th inch, one 32nd, like then you can start getting 17,000, 24,000, 60 or 40,000 RPM. Crank the rippums. Yeah, exactly. So you said the wall of alarms. Are those active alarms or just alarm history? Active because they came from us.
00:35:19
Speaker
Okay. We have to clear them and fix them. The phase might be noticing that the wires are backwards, your three phases coming in. Yeah, sure. Most machines don't notice it, but your spindle will turn in the wrong direction. Oh, our hostess have a little amber. They say it's a big deal and it gives you a little heads up warning in the back of the machine, which is quite nice. Okay.
00:35:43
Speaker
Yeah, I know a lot of our machines, the electricians or the install guys, they're like, yeah, just issue an M3 and see if it's been the right direction. If not, then turn it off and flip the wires and flip any two wires and it should be phased correctly. So because it gave the phase alarm, I'm wondering if it's telling us that we got it wrong. It's literally a guess, which way they go in.
00:36:05
Speaker
We are currently committing probably one of the dumbest mistakes in machine job history, but I haven't rectified, which is that we own a phase detector that is defective. What? It's a phase detector that somehow tells you the exact opposite of the answer you're looking for. Weird. I should hang up this podcast and go through that thing away. I don't remember what exactly the outcome is, but I've checked it, Ed's checked it. We checked on good machines, bad machine. It's kind of funny. Weird. Yeah.
00:36:37
Speaker
Does your Wilhelmin have, tell me about the probing on it, tool and spindle. It came with a laser tool setter. I can't remember. I think it's Renishaw.
00:36:55
Speaker
Okay. I don't know. And then because the shop came out of a shop that had multiple many, many other Willamans, they kept the tooling probe. Yeah, the touch probe, which sucks. I tried to talk them into like, can I have like, just a part off tool and
00:37:13
Speaker
A V-insert holder and the probe, and they said, yes, yes, no, whatever. Oh, at least they give you some holders. Yes, I got two holders. I got a slitting saw holder to do part off and a V-insert holder, which is good because they must have hundreds. So they kept the actual probe body, but they left the wireless receiver or the infrared receiver thingy. Awesome. So the machine is fully wired up. I just need the probe probe.
00:37:41
Speaker
I was asking the guys at Wilhelmin US and I was like, just curious if you have one kicking around and they go, yeah, we got one for you. We'll sell it to you. I got a good deal on that one. That came in a couple weeks ago. I don't know how to configure them and make them talk to each other because they're different. I don't know. I only brought this up because what we do,
00:38:05
Speaker
We didn't crash our VM3 probe. It just failed on us after six years.
Acquiring Machine Setup Accessories
00:38:10
Speaker
And so we did the thousand-ish dollar core replacement program and got a new spindle probe in. And I was kind of like, oh, no, I'm serious. It was the table probe, the OTS that went bad on us. And so I was kind of like, well, we'll see what this is like. And it couldn't have been easier. You just- That's true.
00:38:25
Speaker
It just, there's no one-to-one, it's not like a garage door opener where you need a program to talk to each other. Any of them will work with any of them to the point where I think it's actually an issue for people that have multiple probes in the machines. You do have to figure out ways of isolating frequencies so that, because there are machines that have multiple probes for sure. Anyway, so that's awesome. I don't think you have too much trouble. That's a good point. Yeah, and we actually did that probe replacement, the probe body, the tool and spindle probe.
00:38:52
Speaker
because I bumped it and I put a dent in the face of it six months ago or something and then we did the crash replacement, which is fantastic. Paid our $1,600 Canadian or whatever it was and then Angela put it in and I never heard about it again. I heard about dialing and run out and how long that took but didn't even mention the connectivity issue. Yeah.
00:39:13
Speaker
So that's cool. All of our little accessories that we needed to hook up the L&S bar feeder and spindle liners from JF Burns. And I needed to call it nut that goes in the back of the spindle and holds the spindle liner in place. Those three things all came in from different suppliers last week. So that's all good. And then I also realized the machine came with zero hand tools.
00:39:37
Speaker
Like no, no collet wrenches, no, nothing. So I asked Alex at Willowman, I was like, what do I need? Like, what are the basics? Every machine comes in a little toolbox with stuff. Like, what are we going to miss, you know, that we don't have? So write me up a quote on that.
00:39:55
Speaker
Yeah. We got all new windows, which was only, I think it was only $500 to replace all of the windows. I'm like, done. From them or on? From Willman. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. That was a no brainer. What is it called? It's called an F-35 collet. I bought a five sixteenths, no, five thirty, yeah, five eighths, jeez. Five eighths collet to make the material we need. And it was $500 for one spindle collet.
00:40:24
Speaker
Ouch. Whereas a 5C call, it's like 30 bucks. Yeah, that's a lot. But whatever, I just need the one.
00:40:31
Speaker
So when I was ordering that, I was like, Oh, another 500 for windows, like sold. Yeah. What do they call that in like economic theory? It's like you put a, uh, you put a $70 steak on a menu at a high-end restaurant because it makes the $40 entree look cheaper. If you're a guest or host or whomever, it's like a pricing psychology thing. Exactly. $500 for some polycarbonate. So that's a steal.
00:40:57
Speaker
Yeah, you could look at that objectively and you could be like, oh, you can buy that at Home Depot for like 40 bucks. No, no. Of course not.
00:41:07
Speaker
But yeah, Pierre said getting the old glass, it's not glass, whatever. Old windows out was not a big deal. They were siliconed in place with little clampy brackets. So he just peeled off all the silicon and it's an oil machine, right? So oil is everywhere. So when he puts the new stuff in, it's going to have to be cleaned extremely well. Windex works awesome for cleaning that kind of stuff.
Data Tracking on the Kern Machine
00:41:32
Speaker
Yeah. So I mean, the goal is get it powered, talk to Wilhelmin, get the errors cleared, get comfortable with the machine, like move it around. And, um, I started like very quick started, uh, programming my first part, um, just to kind of throw it into fusion and be like, what do I even do here? Okay. Let's start with the laid tool path. And then it's like the Swiss and the current put together. So I'm trying to, you know, utilize my experience on both to, to program this thing.
00:42:02
Speaker
CJ hooked me up with a post that I haven't posted yet, but it should work. Then I'm just going to cut brass for a little while, get comfortable with it. Oh, that's nice. Sure. Then we don't have to deal with the oil for weeks. Right. I like that. That's super exciting. Yeah. I'm pumped. I'm glad we made measurable progress. It's always fun.
00:42:30
Speaker
Well, I'm going to go pull the new cabling to just show up for the Akuma, which is we're going to see if it fits to the existing conduit, should, if not, will upsize the conduit. And yeah, I am like super excited. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. What do you do today?
00:42:53
Speaker
Last night, I was here very late. I wrote a program that on the current, after it makes a RAS candle on the inside, the probe comes in and it measures all of the hole locations, where the stop pins go, where the pivot goes, where the spacers go. It measures every hole and it writes it to a table file in the hide and hide controller, which is literally a spreadsheet, but it lets you write it line by line by line.
00:43:19
Speaker
with all these other details, the height of the detent ball, the serial number, the date, the palette number, basically every data that I want. It writes it per line. So every RAS candle, all of the data is in this one line and counts up the next and then the next and next. So we're going to start tracking that historically. So I was here to like 240 in the morning last night. Oh my God.
00:43:42
Speaker
I got that dialed though and then I ran it and the machine's still running, so it's eight hour cycle in now. I'm just going to look at that log file because there should be a lot more entries. It's awesome. That's good.
Future Automation Discussions
00:44:00
Speaker
That's what we got to talk about. I actually should run. We should talk about that next week, which is this idea of
00:44:06
Speaker
Like rubber meets the road automation. Like would you automate the three axis? Would you buy a new machine? Would you retrofit? Would you robot? Would you pallet sell? Would you buy? Well, yeah, that's a whole another conversation. We touched into it last week and I've thought I've had a lot of waves of emotion about that thought process in the past week to the point where I've almost forgotten about it and moved on to something else. But yeah, that'll be a great conversation for next week. Awesome. Have a good week bud. I'll see you. Okay, you too. Take care. Bye bye.