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Manufacturing & Covid-19, How to Navigate Economic and Financial Uncertainty, & Tight Tolerance Lathe Workflow
227 Plays6 years ago
Two Small Manufacturing Business Entrepreneurs Learning to Navigate Covid-19.
With an uncertain time frame, Grimsmo and Saunders discuss the importance of looking ahead, monitoring your burn rate, and being ready to use available programs before the cushion runs out.
Grimsmo Knives made the decision to shut their shop in response to the non-essential business shut down order. That doesn't mean things aren't still progressing! Not only has he reached out to the Canadian government to offer GK's shop and skill sets, he's got time to LEARN THAT KERN--all in the name of the Rask!
Last episode, SMW had shut down the shop in response to the non-essential business shut down order BUT within the last week, he's busted his butt to figure out a way to be part of the solution.
DELVE reached out to have his shop manufacture face-shields, the Badger Shield to be exact. This well designed, open-source file gives SMW everything they need to make PPE the right way.
Click Here To Learn More About Operation #BadgerShield
Saunders shares his crazy experience with trying to secure materials to make it happen. The whole team is on board to help as many healthcare workers as possible.
If you have a machine shop, it's a good idea to see what you can provide in this great time of need. For Ohioans, go to https://repurposingproject.com/ to see how you can help.
TO THE LATHE, JENNAYYYY....
Saunders asks Grimsmo about whether or not wear comp on a static lathe tool should be updated in Fusion CAM or at the control.
While discussing the workflow for holding tight tolerances on the lathe, thermal expansion and tool wear enter the conversation.
5-Axis, Where Have You Been!?
All the recent lathe talk has been great and all but with Grimsmo about to get knee deep in the KERN, he needs some resources to learn Steep & Shallow in Fusion 360.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Community Support
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 164. My name is John Grimsmough. And my name is John Saunders. This is the podcast of two machine shop owners who are currently navigating the coronavirus, COVID, Wuhan flu, epidemic, pandemic, shops are shut down sort of situation. It's an interesting time to be alive. It is.
00:00:27
Speaker
I will say this, I've come to appreciate the sense of community that you and I have formed between us but then within our audiences but then on the greater kind of social media, Instagram, et cetera, because I think
00:00:44
Speaker
we're literally forced into isolation or in many situations folks are.
Challenges in Shop Operations
00:00:49
Speaker
And there's this kind of question of what do we do? We started a discord for the NYC CNC members and it's been awesome. We've had a couple of conversations and I walked folks through the decisions that we made to shut down the shop and why we made them and the thoughts that went into that. And I know you went through a very similar process, John, of figuring out what to do, when to do it, what's the right thing to do? How do you balance
00:01:14
Speaker
balance everything. You've got to balance your personal lives, safety, health, workers, but businesses too, and figure that out and make it work and do the right thing and so forth. Yep. Yeah, as of last podcast, we're like, we're still open. But then, yeah, last Friday we made the decision. Yeah, let's close it down for a little while until we can stick our heads out of the sand again and see how things turn out.
00:01:39
Speaker
And on an interesting turn of events, I think I'd ask everyone in our audience to take this with a grain of salt or extend some latitude, because I am thinking out loud here, but I think we're reopening.
The Badger Shield Project
00:01:54
Speaker
So it's a company out of Wisconsin called Delve, D-E-L-V-E. They produce this thing called the Badger Shield, open source. They shield, but they did an awesome job. This is what I was hoping to see. It's clearly done by a professional design firm or industrial design company.
00:02:13
Speaker
they talk about all the criteria to think about how to source it, how to price it, how to make it, build sheets, specs, tolerancing, notes on material selection. Very, very well done. It's awesome.
00:02:28
Speaker
So I reached out to some hospitals and then finally heard back with a lot of questions and that's when the light bulb kind of went off that this isn't going to go anywhere if you just have this back and forth of, well, this is what we could do. What do you want? How do we make this work? But you've also got to comply. Like I already learned that we can't use most common headband elastics because many of those include latex and latex is basically a no go for most healthcare environments these days.
00:02:57
Speaker
So I realized I just got to buy this material on spec, which I don't want to lose my shirt here, but if we wait, we're not going to get anything. And so actually it was one of those, hopefully knock on wood, good examples of a good deed is rewarded, which is
00:03:14
Speaker
About two hours after I ordered quite a few thousand dollars worth of polycarbonate and foam, I got a hospital email back. It wasn't a formal PO, but it was basically a we want to order between three and five thousand of these if you can do it.
00:03:31
Speaker
This has been a fluid situation. We're recording this on Wednesday. That was on Monday. We had already placed the order, finding some of the polycarbonate material. I think I bought 800 sheets of it. Then I actually literally just got a text.
00:03:48
Speaker
while we just had a hiccup, folks, if you notice a weird lack of continuity in the podcast here. But during that three-minute hiccup of our internet, I got a text that the polycarbonate just came in. It got delivered to a buddy who runs a glass company in town who had the connection on the polycarbonate.
00:04:06
Speaker
And then we got foam. The foam story is pretty funny. It's from one of our favorite distributors. I'm not gonna name their name because I just don't wanna name their name, but everybody knows them. And we ordered a lot of this foam for the forehead or brow, and we actually called them. We confirmed that it was in stock. We placed the order within a minute of hanging up the phone. And then we got an email like two hours later that they canceled our order for it.
00:04:35
Speaker
Oh, and I was kind of like, are you, this is, this is the company that has exceptional customer service, a great website. And I was like, I was furious. I was fuming. This is after, well, I guess I could have called, but it was later like dinner time. And so the next morning I got a phone call. Uh, and I was kind of like, why did you cancel it? And they're like, well, we look at your account history and you aren't a healthcare related manufacturer.
00:05:02
Speaker
So we canceled it and didn't give it to you. And then between in the last eight hours or whatever, it has been sold to somebody else who is making healthcare stuff. And I was just kind of like, you know, I'm really disappointed because this is, I understand that that was, you know, if we were buying it for widgets here or whatever, you would have every right to triage that material, but that's not true. These are for a hospital.
00:05:29
Speaker
But it didn't do any good at that point because they had already sold it out from under us. And I was torn because I felt like they should have called us, but I don't know. What are you going to do? Anyways, to their credit, they found some material and I think incurred a fair amount of cost getting it to us pretty quickly. And it's supposed to arrive here. Actually, the LTL freight truck just left the terminal in Columbus. So it should be here in the next hour.
00:05:58
Speaker
And so we've got one more thing to come in, which is what we're doing for the elastic. Um, and we're going to then open back up. Uh, that definitely makes us essential. I've talked to the team briefly or email here, everyone's on board and excited to help. So, um, cautious because I want to make sure this all comes together. And if it doesn't all feel pretty personally disappointed, but I can't, I can't figure out why it won't work at this point. Right. That's that's awesome. Yeah. Five thousands, a lot of components, a lot of parts.
00:06:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's working on the nesting pattern for the laser, but I think we have enough material to do potentially upwards of six, seven or 8,000 of the polycarbonate. So we have to start to find more foam. Yikes. So I guess it's been tougher to find, I mean, under normal circumstances, you're like, oh, I just buy polycarbonate. Oh, I just buy foam. Are you finding that it's like insanely difficult now?
00:06:52
Speaker
The clear face shield material is very difficult. We talked to one of our main plastic suppliers and they're like, yeah, right now we're looking at a six to 10 week lead time, which is basically completely worthless. There's no foreseeable demand for these in 90 days. Well, I guess, yeah. There might be, but whatever. We need it now.
00:07:16
Speaker
Um, so we'll do what we can. I mean, look at it feel great. Uh, I absolutely will say it'll be a huge personal point of pride, mostly because, um, this particular hospital connection started with a friend who's a doctor there. And she said, um, this is frustrating. I've heard this in the news media, uh, about PP and E. And I said, I think we can make something. Do you think you'd want them? And that percolated through the chain of the supply procurement person reached out and that's, that's going to feel good. I think anybody would want to feel like.
00:07:46
Speaker
Um, it's a real, it's a, it's going to be something that is absolutely will be used to help out. I ran into another doctor who wants to buy some of them to use. He works at a healthcare system that provides, uh, for a lot of the folks that can't afford, I forget what it's called, but they can't afford normal healthcare. So they're higher at risk folks. And he's like, look, I'll just buy them out of my own pocket. Um, and I'm like, good grief. Don't let's like, this isn't about the money. I'd like to not lose my shirt here. I think that's one of the things I liked about the Badger shield.
00:08:15
Speaker
PDF as it said, there's a description of connections and talking to hospitals. You should figure out who to talk to to see if they have a need, see if they're willing to pay $2 to $3 per mask to cover your costs, see if the infection control department will approve the use of it, be very clear that it's one-time use and cannot be sterilized. I like that they're talking about the business practices of... We've heard about that other side of hospitals are struggling because they're getting
00:08:43
Speaker
hundreds of packages that are showing up. UPS may not even, or the postal, parcel service companies don't even necessarily want to come into the hospitals. They've got to now think about if you had, if your hospital and you had 600 boxes show up or 60 boxes show up and you don't know what's in them, how to organize it. If somebody sends in five masks, well, five masks sounds great, but how do you do that when there's hundreds of them sitting on your door and you don't know what the quality was that went into them? You know what I mean? Um, anyway, yeah.
00:09:13
Speaker
That's fantastic. Good for you.
Personal and Business Challenges
00:09:15
Speaker
Right when the material hiccup happened with the distributor, my cell phone broke too. What do you mean you broke? Microphone stopped working. It would work if I rebooted the phone and then it would just stop working.
00:09:29
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Where's Jay Pearson when you need him? I'm like, Jay, how do I not get stressed right now? Because I'm stressed. Yeah. Just too much happening at once. Yeah. We got it. Good. I've been looking for a chance to help out too.
00:09:51
Speaker
You know, we have a lot of manufacturing capability, but we don't have, like you, we don't have a laser, we don't have a 3D printer, you know, I got a baby one. But I'm like, I did reach out to the Canadian government because they put out a feeler a week or two ago. So I sent them an email and I said, look, we have a machine shop that's, you know, going to be quiet for a little bit.
00:10:17
Speaker
We got a lot of capability we can make. We specialize in tiny, intricate parts. You said you need manufacturers. Let's have a conversation. So they called me back a couple of nights ago and had a nice chat with the guy who was basically just gathering information of all the people who signed up.
00:10:37
Speaker
But I said, look, we got five axes. We got Swiss lathe and we got some manpower. Let me know what you guys need. And and hopefully this will be a little bit of a back and forth conversation. But I've part of me is always like even before this whole pandemic, I've always wanted to help with something bigger, something more important than just making pocket knives. And this might be an end to that. So yeah, awesome. Let's see if anything comes out of it.
00:11:07
Speaker
It's been cool to see, like we have a mutual friend that's been working on, I think that, uh, kind of government driven ventilator project. And, um, man, like that's, that stuff is happening. It's, which is awesome. Yeah. What's, what have you been up to? You're in the shop.
00:11:28
Speaker
I'm in the shop right now by myself. Eric's in the front building by himself. It's weird. It's quiet. It's calm. It's good, I guess. Like from a selfish perspective, I'm like, oh, I can finally work on my own stuff.
00:11:48
Speaker
But, uh, yeah, yesterday I spent the entire day setting up the Swiss to run this new part, uh, film the vlog of it too. So that'll be cool. Um, today I'll finish up on the Swiss making that part. We get to work on the current and then we'll spend the next few days or weeks. Um, finally, like really, really, really digging into the current and making the fixtures and the clamps that I need and then getting rasks into production. Awesome. So that's what my next few weeks look like.
00:12:18
Speaker
It's, I mean, you roll with the punches here, but it's actually kind of fun, right? Yeah. So long as neither of us lose our businesses, it's fun. Yeah. Or anybody gets sick or whatever. Yeah. Sorry. Exactly. Thank you. That goes without, yeah.
00:12:35
Speaker
But yeah, once you get over the fear of like, oh my gosh, I'm going to lose everything. I mean, our sales have certainly dropped tremendously from very consistent to like very small. But I understand because this is a point in time when literally everybody in the world is freaking out and that's okay. Like of course nobody's buying crazy stuff.
00:13:00
Speaker
But I like to hope that once people start getting back to work, once they start getting their paycheck again, however long away that's going to be, then sales will pick right back up again.
00:13:13
Speaker
Um, make sure, and I know this is, you know, we, we, we joke about this being a complete candid conversation, but it is different because sometimes we share it with the world here, but, uh, fun fact, we love you guys. This, the audience I logged in for the first time in months to look at our audience on the bomb. It is awesome. Yes. Um, but get with Barry and make sure you're realistic about, um,
00:13:38
Speaker
We are for sure. Planning for the worst, that way you don't have to be surprised. I think there's a big theme for what to spend time on is I'm trying to look at what can happen in the next week, in three weeks, in six weeks that could happen. That way, if it does happen, it's not the first time I thought of it. I'm trying to be- Correct. What happens if an employee gets sick or what happens if we have to retool or what happens if sales go to zero for an extended period of time and thinking that through
00:14:08
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, yeah. I'm typically especially now I'm in a good mood and I'm, you know, optimistic about it all, trying to be realistic as well. Whereas, you know, Barry or some other guys are more on the doom and gloom side still, which is good, you need that perspective, that balance. Yeah, so we're trying to see all avenues and
00:14:33
Speaker
The good thing is we were sitting on a little bit of money so that we could, you know, ride this out a little bit. Um, the government is doing a pretty decent job, the Canadian government of, uh,
00:14:45
Speaker
offering programs and employee things and all kinds of stuff. So we're reaching every avenue that we can there. We got almost all of our machine payments delayed by three to six months. So I mean, our operating costs have dropped significantly, which is amazing. So that extends the nest egg that we had further, which is great.
00:15:09
Speaker
Awesome. Good job. If we don't sell anything for, it's, we're still selling like a knife a day instead of like three or four knives a day. Okay. But it's, it's nice to still see the sales come in. Every time one comes in, I'm like, Oh, see, see, it still works. And I mean, there's still tons of interest from our customers. Like, yeah.
00:15:29
Speaker
Like we still have diehards. They're just cautious. And I totally understand that. That's fine. So it's just a period of time. We just got to get through it as safely and, you know, together as we can. Yeah.
00:15:42
Speaker
And it's interesting to see how the US government has treated its specific programs as well as its guidance to banks about things like loan extensions and cashflow and borrowers treatment and policies. It's very much right now in a, we're not trying to stimulate a recovery. We're not trying to move past this. What we're trying to do is keep things
00:16:12
Speaker
keep things alive in this point of uncertainty and the kind of lowest point of
00:16:17
Speaker
We're on lockdown. No one knows what the world's going to look like. In other words, it's not fiscal policy or capital that's trying to stimulate things to improve them. It's just saying, hey, don't feel like XYZ company or salon or manufacturer or whatever restaurant has to shutter. Here's money to buy the time with payroll, with rent or delays, et cetera.
00:16:45
Speaker
So I think, which is a little bit scary if you put on your economic hat. Yeah, exactly. But there's probably more to come. So we'll see.
00:16:59
Speaker
Yeah, we just got to navigate. It's good for us as business owners to know what is available in our region. I'm super grateful that I have Barry on the case who not only likes that stuff, but also just does a really good job of keeping on top of it all and tracking it down.
Economic Policies and Financial Planning
00:17:19
Speaker
Then I can focus on what I need to focus on with the customers, with the business, with our employees.
00:17:25
Speaker
with R&D for future stuff. And like I keep saying, I want to come out the other side of this stronger than ever. Whether that's a week from now or a month from now or two months from now, I don't know, but hopefully sooner than later.
00:17:39
Speaker
The SBA has a variety of programs that I think folks will start hearing more about, and one of them is SBA. Sorry, in the US is the Small Business Association, but I'm going to say it's a public-private entity. I don't know if that's totally a true statement.
00:17:57
Speaker
For example, under normal times, there's various different SBA programs where the SBA can say guarantee a loan, so the bank still makes the loan, but the SBA will guarantee it, or they'll guarantee part of it, or they'll even fund a part of it.
00:18:13
Speaker
One of their programs, I was on a webinar yesterday on this whole status of the world when it comes to businesses and lending and recovery programs, or whatever you call them, incentive programs. Normally, the SBA would require a company to reach a dire point for a disaster recovery loan or something like that where
00:18:34
Speaker
They need to have exhausted all resources. They need to have gone to other lenders. They need to have drawn down lines of credit, and they're saying the opposite now. Don't draw down your line of credit. Don't get to that point where you can't make it a day further before you reach out.
00:18:51
Speaker
It's always difficult to give advice to a broad audience, but if there's one thing I would say, don't just think because you say have a little bit of cushion or a little bit of cash, that means you're okay. Make sure you fast forward it however many intervals of time you want to looking at your own burn rate or your ability to work.
00:19:11
Speaker
in the current environment, because if it takes longer, what are you going to do then? Or when are you going to decide to make any sort of a change? You want to keep yourself in a position where you've still got some cushion. It's all management right now. We all have an unclear target of time, basically. And it's like you said, burn rate. Nobody knows how many sales are going to come in the door. Nobody knows
00:19:40
Speaker
when people are going back to work so that they can, you know, go to restaurants and buy knives and buy fixture plates and, you know, stimulate the economy. Nobody knows exactly when all this stuff's going to come around. So you got to manage your cash. You got to manage that burn rate. And we're playing with different scenarios too. Um,
00:20:01
Speaker
What, uh, what are they saying in Toronto area about like, are you, is it, does COVID feel like it's prolific there or have they extended any sort of quarantine sort of language?
00:20:13
Speaker
So I don't watch the news, but I hear, you know, everybody around me watches the news. So I hear what I need to hear. Um, but I heard that the state of emergency was extended for another two weeks. I think, um, I don't know if that, I don't think that's the exact same thing as all non-essential businesses must close. I think they're two different categories. Um, but that's still active that the non-essential thing. Um, as far as I know,
00:20:44
Speaker
I don't know what the caseload is like in Ontario at the moment, but it's not bad compared to a lot of places. Right. You guys aren't like a New York or apparently Detroit or Louisiana. No, we're doing pretty good.
00:20:58
Speaker
Yeah, knock on wood. That's what's interesting here. Technically, I think we have two cases in our county and it doesn't seem to be uncommon for many areas of the Midwest or certainly less populated areas. It's hard to say that that's a good thing because you're thinking about this from a humanitarian sense, not a, we didn't get sick, so that's great. Of course, that's not a bad thing, but we're trying to figure out how to stem this thing globally.
00:21:26
Speaker
Well, it's tough because like, my mom lives in Northwest Washington, you know, two hours north of Seattle. And I was talking with her the other day, and she's like, Oh, I think we've only had like, I forget, seven, seven or 17 deaths in our county. And I'm like, What? Yeah, crazy. That's so close. That's like right where you live. Don't leave the house, please. Yeah. Yes. Crazy. Got it. Can I can we switch topics?
COVID-19 Impact and Lathe Operations
00:21:56
Speaker
Yes, that would be wonderful.
00:21:58
Speaker
Really, really dumb lathe question, asking for a friend. Wear comp on a lathe, static lathe tool. There is no need to turn on or off wear comp. It's simply in most controls. I know you haven't used a Haas control, but it's a FANUC based control. If you add a value to the wear comp, it's just going to update that tool's X-axis position. So it just works without anything out of fusion or your poster. Exactly. Okay.
00:22:26
Speaker
I did a quick test to make sure that that seemed true, and it absolutely did seem to make true. I thought, I'm still going to ask John to make sure I'm not skipping something obvious. Sure. Yeah, because I know in Fusion Cam, you can post as wear or as whatever the other options are. I never post as wear because I think, how does that work? If you post as wear, then you have a zero offset in the control, and you only mess with the wear offset or something. You're talking about milling though? Well, I forget.
00:22:56
Speaker
See, most of the turning stuff, it seemed like one of the turning operations might have had something. Many didn't, which is what made me think, oh, wait a minute. So there's no, yeah. So like facing has a compensation type. That's typical options of in control, where inverse where, but then if you look at say, a finishing operation, which is where you would normally think where is more
00:23:19
Speaker
uh relevant there no there's a there's in computer or in control period and then there was one where i didn't see anywhere offs options yeah like grooving single groove there's just nowhere control
00:23:34
Speaker
milling or turning, I always just post in computer. Unless like milling, I'm doing a cutter comp, or I want a perfect diameter or something, then I'll do in control. But yeah, for turning, I just do in computer and then
00:23:52
Speaker
at the opposite screen. If my part is five-tenths too big, I'll type negative five-tenths in the where, and then just play with it through there. And that works. Okay. And then I want to explain my workflow for holding really tight tolerances. I will just
00:24:11
Speaker
You absolutely say that on the Haas lathe when we've been running some other parts, it has been repeating incredibly well. Good. I actually am very happy with that.
00:24:23
Speaker
But that last time I really checked that was more of a larger batch of parts run where we were really following tighter tolerances across different diameters. And it was great. So I know the machine is actually pretty good recognizing the kind of joke about no piece of iron holds outside of current level. Things move and things change. I get that. I'm struggling a little with it right now.
00:24:48
Speaker
But part of it is because with this COVID stuff, I've been kind of coming in, I'll play with it for an hour, I'll have to go do other stuff because we're in a weird time. So it's not the same or normal use. So what I've been doing is I turn the wave on, I'll run a couple of warm-up cycles that include the spindle and coolant flowing.
00:25:08
Speaker
And then I'll retouch off the finishing tool with the tool arm, which lucky on the Haas is just automatic, which is great. And then I changed the program for this. It's our diamond pins that we're making now. I added a spring pass because we cut the critical tolerance relatively early in the part because I don't want the, there's some other interrupted features like grooves that I don't want.
00:25:39
Speaker
I want the finished diameter tool to just go across one smooth continuous surface. But some of those other features are raising the slightest of kind of burrs and other stuff. So my thought is adding a spring pass later. Now, maybe I haven't done this yet. Maybe I adjust that spring pass to be, say, one-tenth
00:25:59
Speaker
bigger so that it's only gonna knock off a burr or something. I mean, they're the tiniest of things, but I'm getting some jumpy values, which I think mostly just relate to the fact that I've now got a spring pass in there and maybe the machine isn't totally warmed up. What are your thoughts? So you're doing an interrupted spring pass? Technically, now I am, yes.
00:26:27
Speaker
Because you just got to assume that there's tool pressure moving things. Sorry, it's not interrupted as it rotates. But as I'm cutting along the part, there's areas where the spring passes no longer contact any material because there's a completely circular groove. So it's not interrupted in that sense.
00:26:46
Speaker
Oh, I see what you mean. It's not like going across a hex where it's going to get slammed. The answer is getting slammed. Then I'm not as worried about it. I don't know. Sometimes I do spring passes. Sometimes I do it when I'm done. Okay. You haven't noticed spring passes wearing at your tools because it's quite rubbing? I can't say I've noticed. No. Okay.
00:27:10
Speaker
I try to do a full radius cut whenever I can, but I also do a two thou finish pass like often. So you use a different tool to rough all the way down to two thou. Uh, same tool. Oh, okay. So if it has like an eight thou rad,
00:27:32
Speaker
Maybe I just don't have a steady system yet, but I know that sometimes I'll try to go for an eight thou finish pass. Just for the chip breaker? Yeah. And just to, they say you want to bury the radius, not less than the radius. Yeah. Seems like a good idea. But especially doing a facing pass, sometimes I'll just skim like one thou or something. And I find that I get a better tolerance and a better finish.
00:28:00
Speaker
When I do it like that, I might be wearing through the insert more. I certainly replace inserts kind of often if I'm looking for the best finish on the face. And maybe it's because I'm only going one thou finish passes, but it looks so good. Yeah. OK.
00:28:17
Speaker
I don't think I care that much right now about the quote unquote insert cost. I'm trying to save this tool. In fact, I've got it. It only has one job to do, which is that last finishing pass that's critical, which is a good thing.
00:28:34
Speaker
I probably shouldn't have even asked you because I got more playing to do, but I want a repeatable workflow so that when you come make the first part, the first part's going to be, even if it has to get thrown out, you at least know, well, you shouldn't even have to. You should warm up the machine, retouch off the tool, and then your first part should be pretty darn good.
00:28:58
Speaker
Because if it's not, what are you going to do? You're going to update the, you know, where copper stock to leave? Well, then why? Because the machine's got more warming up to do. The trick with warming up a machine and having multiple tools is that if you touch off one tool because the machine's cold, then the other tools are still off. Well, I don't really care if the other tools are off because nothing else is doing a critical dimension.
00:29:20
Speaker
Okay. In that case, you're okay. That's a good point, actually. Your tool arm is also cold. Exactly. Especially on the Nakamura, we have two different offsets that we play with. We have individual tool offsets, but then we also have a global offset that changes
00:29:37
Speaker
everything. And as the machine warms up or cools down, we'll often play with that because we know that it's the machine, not the tool wearing out. That's why this part is a thou undersized or whatever. So yeah, we like to play it like that. Whereas on the Swiss, it's got about a 1000th hot to cold range.
00:29:59
Speaker
That's amazing. And I only really mess with each individual offset as necessary. But I'll do them in pairs. So if I'm, as the machine warms up, I know that I've got two critical diameter tools. So I'll change them both by 5 tenths or 2 tenths or whatever. Because I know that they were in line yesterday. So they're going to be in line today. They're just both off the same amount. Yeah.
00:30:28
Speaker
and I can see it in the measured diameter. I'm glad you brought that up because I know right now I'm not dealing with any insert wear. At some point I probably will, but that's why I don't like the idea of fighting. I like the idea of copying a cold machine for
00:30:46
Speaker
for that, for the temperature of the machine when I know it's going to warm up by doing things that I really should just be doing for the insert wear itself. So I really think I just need to, I may just need to do a little bit more of a robust warmup cycle that gets that machine closer to being to temp.
00:31:03
Speaker
And the funny thing with insert wear is, I mean, they wear out and I replace them for sure, but I don't notice tolerance changes from insert wear, really, maybe sometimes. I mean, I get thousands of parts out of some of the inserts and we cut titanium and hard stainless. And whereas some inserts I get a hundred and that's just experience, but
00:31:29
Speaker
For the most part, it's thermal and just minor fine tuning adjustments that we're playing with. What's your Nakamura warmup cycle? Just a handwritten piece of code or do you run a sample part that just cuts air? We do have a warmup that moves the turret down in a big like X shape or whatever, coolant spraying, spindle spraying, everything changes speed and RPM. And we use that sometimes. But sometimes we'll just make parts. Yeah.
00:31:58
Speaker
Like I'm totally okay scrapping the first few parts to dial in, especially on the Swiss. Like I'll just, I don't think I have a warmup on the Swiss. I just make parts. Okay. There's nothing wrong with running as long as I've got something in the Chuck to keep coolant from blowing through the spindle hole back to the tube through just because it'll leak out the back end. Um, there's nothing wrong with running your program in air, right? No, not at all. Yeah. Okay. I might do the more of that.
00:32:29
Speaker
There's actually a button on the Swiss, which I removed forcefully that doesn't move the stock in Z. So the stock doesn't go anywhere. So you're just air cutting. And when it does that, and I'm not aware of it, I'm like, why isn't it working? Why isn't it doing what I need it to do? So I just, I ripped that button right out. That's hilarious. Because that confused me more than once. And I was like, no, this is dumb. That's funny.
00:33:00
Speaker
Hmm. Got it. Thank you. Um, other than that, and, uh, oh, me and Higby are friends now. Oh, good. Yeah. I'm quite happy with that. This is awesome. I'm going to do a little video on it. I'll give you a big shout out because, um, well, actually I kind of sort of had it. Um, and then I thought that photo you showed was possible. And then you remembered that that was an end of no. And I was like, no,
00:33:27
Speaker
I've been spending, I've been really thinking that was possible with the way that you, the way that you, the speed with which you rapid it out, a tool could give you that kind of ski slope. And no, that's just an end mill. Right. You do the ski slope by figuring you have to just guesswork, figure out the C axis orientation. Do they didn't come in with the end mill?
00:33:49
Speaker
Yeah, pretty much. I think I made a variable in there to make that easy to change. Yeah. And yeah, so I was able to use a live end mill to do the Higbee thread. And as long as you clock everything properly and match the thread pitch, I think I even used a threading cycle just with some extra codes in there to turn the live tool on and to offset it properly. Hilarious. Yeah. And it just worked well. And the fact that the end mill has a radius on it,
00:34:16
Speaker
as opposed to a grooving tool is probably what leaves that ski slope at the end. Yeah, sure. Something like that. Yeah, it's not like you have to fade it out. The radius is just the radius of the tool as it could come in at a right angle move basically.
00:34:30
Speaker
Yep. Yep. But that, so that last one, I asked you a question, which a regular Higby, I feel like I could now program and with reasonable confidence, believe it's going to be correct the first time around with a regular Higby cycle, right? The end middle cycle is something that there's no way on our machines of knowing because you don't really know the encoder orientation of where the threads going to actually start, which you need to know that by making a test part, I guess, and then guess.
00:34:59
Speaker
Your tool Z position is still relative. You just have to do it sometimes to play with it. And then you gain your experience
Machining Techniques and Future Plans
00:35:11
Speaker
and then you figure it out. So if you're going to do a video on it, make sure to stress and to be clear about your struggles going into it and how you thought it worked versus how it actually worked.
00:35:23
Speaker
why you thought it was a bigger deal than it was or whatever. I think that would help a lot of people. Yeah, absolutely. No, it's going to be one of the typical, like, hey, this kicked our butt. We were confused. We had a lot of different conflicting advice. It actually is a lot more simple than I think some of the standard PDF means well, but it confused me because they assume
00:35:40
Speaker
all these, some of these stupid is the word I want to use companies that just assume the world exists without cam, which is like, dude, I mean, I guess, like, yes, production turning, I could totally get hand coding stuff that makes sense for production turning, but but
00:35:55
Speaker
Yeah, the world lives in so much of the world lives in camera than the world to come. Yeah. So this idea that you're using your like line to your Z offset to fake the tools position because you can just do that in cam. Yeah, you're making it much harder than it needs to be. Yep, exactly. So awesome. I feel like I feel like the past few weeks of machine shop talk have been laid stuff. Sorry.
00:36:20
Speaker
That's fine. I like it. But I've been ignoring my current and today, tomorrow, our current days. So talk to me about five axis. Let's spend a few minutes just getting back into the five axis mindset. Have you made anything lately?
00:36:33
Speaker
Yeah, we're still working on the generative part, which is a mix of, I could probably open it up pretty quick. There's a lot of positional scallop, so just tool orientation and then a traditional 3D scallop. So that's nothing, I'm not gonna teach you anything there. But a ton of steep and shallow and some pencil toolpath.
00:36:57
Speaker
And that's probably it. There's no flow, there's no blend, there's no swarf, there's no multi axis contour. It's really, it's really steep and shallow and scallop. I still haven't figured out how to make steep and shallow work. I tried a model yesterday and I just even with shaft and holder on, it was totally violating the part and like crashing everything in simulation.
00:37:22
Speaker
I can email you this generative file if you want to look at that and then – That would be helpful, yeah. I will send you the link. It's on – if you just Google NYC CNC AU2019, we made a page because the AU classes are stupidly hard to find.
00:37:40
Speaker
We made a page called Autodesk University 2019 Growing into a 5-axis. It's our video, but ironically, you should not watch our video. Because yes, you should, but you may know most of it. But at the bottom, we have Phil's presentation, Lawrence and Rob's. Lawrence is the one that comes to mind because Lawrence gives some steep and shallow examples in there. And he talks about what you, it's kind of like that exact thing that you want to hear.
00:38:08
Speaker
Got it. I listened to Phil's making complicated parts quickly, which was fantastic. I don't think I've listened to Rob's or Lawrence's yet. Go watch Lawrence's. His goes over a bunch of different stuff that came out in Fusion, but the Steven Shallow section is absolutely perfect because
00:38:26
Speaker
Um, you want to focus on the modes that he, uh, to control the aesthetic, you want to do lead and lean. The other options is set the angle relative to a setup. Um, AKA the machine angle. That's what's actually really cool with steep and shallow. You might be the exception to this because you have a Kern, but for most of us, um, things get worse, not better when you're moving B and C or A and C at the same time, because more degrees of freedom and more things that can kind of go wrong or in, in.
00:38:53
Speaker
uh, slop or movement or breaking or whatever. So one of the things leading, leading to what you do is basically say, okay, I want a five axis tool path. Uh, but keep, how does that work? I go watch the Lord. I don't want to misstate it because it's not just to orientation. It's not just setting it at one location, but yeah. Cool. And then for sure, the reach out if you have any questions, but I'll email you that file after we hang up here. That'd be great.
00:39:24
Speaker
But yeah, I've got a huge chunk of steel to mount to an Aroa base, maybe today, tomorrow. I've got to make a list of the stuff. I've got to go to the metal store and order for the clamps that I need to make and any brackets and stuff. And then just keep plugging away. Awesome. I want to have rasks. I want to make rasks so bad. Awesome. It's going to take a while. That's OK. Like, be OK with that.
00:39:52
Speaker
but I need to make progress. Otherwise I'm just driving myself crazy with, you know, theoretical, like, yeah, they're coming. Yeah. I'm working on it. So break it down. Just, you know, don't spend all your time breaking it down either. Cause that's just, no, for sure. Then you become in the business of making to-do lists, but just pick a simple achievable goal. You're not going to do it today, John, just be okay with that. It's already 11 o'clock. So tomorrow you want to do one thing simple, even if it's as simple as clamping the steel and the vice and putting it in the aroa.
00:40:21
Speaker
Yeah, I'm almost there. Once I finished with this miss, then, then I'll get, get rocking. It's awesome. Super excited. We'll be safe and I'll see you next Wednesday. Sounds good. You too, buddy. Take care. Okay. Bye.