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#209 - The Return Of Johnny Five
234 Plays5 years ago
TOPICS:
- Reaming holes.
- Endmill coatings and storage.
- Grob factory tour.
- Tool like time and replacement methods.
- Johnny Five returns.
Links:
https://www.mscdirect.com/product/details/09782467
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Business of Machining
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 209. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Rimsmo. John and I talk every week because, darn it, that's what you've got to do as an entrepreneur to push yourself inside and outside of your comfort zone, what we're doing well, some of the successes that we've had, and what we know we need to work on. Yeah. It's super, super helpful to have these chats and to shoulder to cry on sometimes kind of thing.
Impact of COVID-19 on Business and Personal Visits
00:00:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:29
Speaker
That's totally fair. I think the whole world's in a better place for many of us than we thought it would be a year ago with COVID and stimulus. Obviously, you're in a different country, but it doesn't feel like that. Is that fair to say? We're in North America. Same team, bro. Same team. Same team. There's a wall right between us. I can't remember.
00:00:54
Speaker
Apparently, a closed border, but whatever. I figured a wall. It seems crazy that I can't visit you now if I wanted to. Is that still true? I think so. Wow. I don't know. You can fly across the border, but you can't drive across the border? Something like that. I don't know. Hilarious. Yeah. Well, we are in a weird way, both do up to hang out and see. I mean, good grief. Our shop is, I feel like as much as we're friends, I feel like if I want to visit each other's shops with this fly on the wall perspective of,
Leadership Challenges and Feedback
00:01:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's one of the problems. It's a good segue to like talking about running a business and leadership and I'm actually filming a video right now on it's probably going to be 10 things I wish somebody had told me 10 years ago. So it's not a pity party and it's not mistakes or it's not regrets, but darn it.
00:01:41
Speaker
try my best to think back to this, not the stuff that you learn and it's obvious, but the stuff that surprises you or you wish somebody, and it's tough because when we're in those, you're young and hungry and you're not going to listen to everything because it doesn't make sense. That's why you reread books and books make a different impact on you depending on where you are in your journey.
00:02:01
Speaker
It's a good video and I'm excited for it, but the problem with being a leader or running a small company is so infrequent that people tell you point blank, this could be better or you're doing it wrong. Not wrong.
Small Improvements in the Work Environment
00:02:17
Speaker
There's a million ways to do everything, but sometimes it's obvious to the experienced person that the inexperienced person is doing it wrong. Right.
00:02:28
Speaker
It would be fun to see that we know each other's businesses so well, but what's that outside perspective of that? Hey, or little things like, actually, it's freaking awesome. I came in this morning and Grant had 3D printed a kind of like a D hook thing, just like a circle loop with a backer where we just threw a magnet on it and it's a air gun hook for the UMC. Literally 22 and a half months, we have fumbled with that air gun.
00:02:58
Speaker
trying to put the handle on this little sheet metal bracket. And I'd like to think that I'm a decently intelligent individual, but that's been completely negated by the fact that I missed such an obvious massive improvement. Yeah, 100%. And I printed a similar holder for our Nakamura like two years ago.
00:03:17
Speaker
I fumble with the one on the Kern, we fumble with the one on the Maury. Yeah, go fix it. Yeah, exactly. I don't think about that sometimes. I notice that in other people in our company and in myself too, but what you just get used to and what you just put up with.
00:03:34
Speaker
And then I remind myself and I remind the guys, we can change that.
Organizing Workspaces and Toolbox Efficiency
00:03:39
Speaker
That doesn't have to stay. I admire your fortitude and put your head down to get it done, but I can fix that. You can fix it. And you're smart enough and it doesn't even take that much time, but there ends up this mental block somewhat self-imposed because you think, no, John Saunders told me to stay focused on the long goal. I can't be doing these tasks, but don't listen to me. I'm wrong. It's okay.
00:04:03
Speaker
it's okay to spend 15 minutes cleaning out a drawer. Your day, and I actually- It feels better. Yeah. I just went through our soft jaw drawer and again, the bootstrap entrepreneur is like, oh man, we could reuse these or some of them don't have the other side. No, they've been sitting there probably for some of them for up to three, four years. No, John, gone. Recycled. Love it. Yeah. Yeah.
00:04:30
Speaker
Yeah, so on that note, that's actually kind of my days off in the shop today is I am going through a couple of different shelves and a couple of different toolboxes. Toolboxes are such a good example because we spend so much money buying these beautiful toolboxes and we love them and we love them when we buy them and then it's the ultimate irony that you would spend so much money on something just to not take care of it and just leave junk in it.
00:04:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Pack it up, think it's full, but realize you only use like 20% of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, there's value to having like an organized plier drawer and you almost never use the various pliers, but you need that. Totally. It's the junk in the back. We all have that in our cupboards, toolboxes, shelves. Yeah.
00:05:18
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. We do the same thing. I'm fine. I'm fine with our tape drawer. I'm fine with our glue drawer. They're not perfect. That's fine. But I have a set of pop rivets from my grandfather. I ain't in the pop rivet business. Got to go. But you might need them one day, man. I know. I might need them one day. No. Likely not. Yeah.
00:05:42
Speaker
Yeah, we got one of
Effective Tool Handling and Personal Stories
00:05:43
Speaker
those U-line, it's like a big gray wheelie cart, but it's got all the big blue bins in it, like 50 of them. And they like hang on the inside. And man, it's been amazing. We use that for all of our pneumatic fittings and like... Oh, interesting. ... fittings and stuff. So one side is all fittings and air valves and regulators and ball valves and things like that. And then the other side...
00:06:06
Speaker
I think it's mostly empty now, but we're going to keep using it. And it's got a tabletop on top that we used. Yeah. It's our maintenance cart kind of thing. Super cool. And it wheels around? Yep. Yes. Love it. I mean, we used to have all the MPT stuff in a box, all of it.
00:06:22
Speaker
you're looking for a quarter inch MBT plug and you're digging. And I'm like, no, no. All the plugs in one thing, all the ball valves in another thing, done. I don't like the fact that it's open and thus it inevitably get a little bit dustier over time. But man, there's something about not having to open drawers or bins to see what's in it. I think that's a win.
00:06:44
Speaker
Yeah, I like to see what's in there or if they're in a drawer, open top, so you can like see all of the bins in the I don't know. Yeah, I do like to be able to see, you know, at a glance, I guess labels are benefits beneficial for that too. But
00:06:59
Speaker
No, no, they're not. No? No. Because even if you have a quarter inch end mill drawer, which we do, it's just so easy to just say, well, not sure which bin it is, even if there's label, I'm just going to put it back.
Challenges and Techniques in Reaming
00:07:11
Speaker
And you can criticize everyone's personality is different levels of willingness to pursue that correct course of action. But the reality is, it's not sustainable, in my opinion, over time across any reasonable set of people. Right, right.
00:07:25
Speaker
It's funny you talk about putting back an end mill because I don't know if I ever put back an end mill. Just because we run mostly the same stuff, mostly production, even on the Maury, it's like I might put back a half inch aluminum end mill or something, but like super duper rare. Usually we break it or it wears out. Then we just replace it. Or in the curtain, you just keep adding tools.
00:07:50
Speaker
unsubscribe. You discussed me. Yeah. I was actually thinking last night about adding a whole series of reamers to the current for the knife handles and the knife blades. I'm like, instead of interpolating those holes, I should just ream them with a carbide reamer and hold insane diameter tolerance and
00:08:10
Speaker
last forever pretty much and just go. Are they through holes or blind? Mostly blindish. Most dreamers have a 45 degree lead and they don't last forever for sure. We've been experimenting more with them lately and
00:08:31
Speaker
better results than I had initially hoped, because we played with them a couple of years ago, but reamers are just a funny animal. Whether you're looking for tolerance, nominal tolerance, or finish, which you're going to say yes to all these things, which is one of the reasons it hesitates. You'll see sometimes,
00:08:54
Speaker
Well, I'm not a reaming engineer, but generally speaking, the idea of a longer shank that you commonly see on reamer is actually to give it the ability to follow the hole. The idea that a boring bar is somewhat indifferent to any out of roundness or directionality of the hole. It'll kind of correct the hole as it goes.
Tool Wear and Machining Techniques
00:09:13
Speaker
Whereas a reamer really is designed to follow the hole, which is why you have that additional shank.
00:09:17
Speaker
We've actually sometimes found to cut them down and create a little bit stiffer and kind of tell it where it's going. Sometimes all of a sudden you'll have one that just is a little bigger, sort of tangential jump from that. There's an old trick for larger reamers. You actually just put a toothpick in one of the flutes and that actually causes it to ream a couple of tenths larger. I believe it's the imbalance of the rotation then.
00:09:43
Speaker
You can get floating reaming holders that are the inverse of a synchro tap head. Instead of floating up and down, they float on the XY plane to allow it to correctly line up and stay perpendicular. There's a bunch to it. Interesting. The goals, like you said, would be relative finish, but also just diameter accuracy. I'm not too worried about locational accuracy because I feel like I can interpolate a hole on center.
00:10:12
Speaker
And you got to calculate the 2,000 under size or whatever. You have to make the hole for the reamer, whatever it is. What sort of tolerance would you? I mean, 5 tenths total would be nice. That's OK. That's not crazy. Yeah. Like the last would be nicer.
00:10:39
Speaker
But if you can interpolate, I would think you'd do two tests. And I find myself kind of chasing, especially on the Maury, but less so on the Kern. But I'm still fine tuning where that happy spot is of the right hole size that I want. And then the end mill wears. And I guess I'm not probing the diameter throughout the run and making it smaller, smaller, smaller as the tool wears out.
00:11:06
Speaker
Well, think about this. A carbide end mill versus a carbide reamer. A carbide end mill wears, but you're generally able to use a 2D contour strategy where you're cutting with the majority of the sidewall of the tool. Whereas a reamer, especially in a blind hole, the significant amount of the cutting is always the leading edge. So you're wearing it in one spot and you can't run it all the way through to kind of- To wipe itself, yeah. Yeah, chip thin it as you kind of cut through fresh flute or unworn flute.
00:11:36
Speaker
It's interesting because I feel like I wish there was an answer almost like getting a jig bore, like a grinding tool to do your interpolation at leaving two or three tenths and then use a tool that's not subject to wear. Right? Just a little burnishing even? Yeah. The Cogstill roller burnishing tool that we have on the Maury is fantastic. It is subject to the pre-hole size. If we interpolate a hole to 1.870,
00:12:04
Speaker
and we cog still at 1.873. It's great. But if it's a few tenths under, it'll burnish a few tenths under as well. So it is picky to the pre-size. But the problem with that tool is it's too long to fit on the current. What?
00:12:21
Speaker
I can't fit whatever length it is, an eight inch long tool on the current. Interesting. They do have a micro version that I've looked into, but I think even that's a little bit too long. I did look into it. But I don't need it. I just need a good hole size.
00:12:39
Speaker
Yeah, for the critical hole, that hole is the pivot hole in the blade. We burnished it to get a nice size, nice finish. But we still barrel lap with a brass barrel lap and diamond lapping compound after heat treat on every single blade anyway.
00:12:54
Speaker
We've burnished every Norseman blade forever, but we're not doing the Rask blade because
Ceramic Cutting Tools: Benefits and Limitations
00:12:59
Speaker
they're made on the current and the guys are like, it's fine. I just burnished your interpolated hole and it's fine. It's great. It's fine. I would, don't fix, don't solve a problem where there isn't one or even do your interpolation in two passes, the second pass being a finishing tool that takes so little cut. I do a lot of that actually.
00:13:23
Speaker
Yeah, I'm trying to find ways to tighten tolerances and whether it's locational or diameter, especially on these holes on the inside of the handles or the blade hole, things like that. And yeah, Riemann came to me just yesterday. I haven't thought too much about it, but this is a helpful conversation because it's a good wake up call. Like, no, they don't last forever. And yes, they only cut on the very leading edge.
00:13:49
Speaker
If it lasts long enough that you forget about it, you might not check that tolerance often enough, and then you might just assume it's good forever, but it's not. Reamers also have generally crummy tolerancing. If you go look at a standard spec on a reamer, it's quite a bit. This is the one area where we go full grim spell, which is our whole diameters.
00:14:14
Speaker
We're generally in the boring business on those, but it wouldn't be uncommon to see a reamer having a, is it plus or minus two or three tenths, which is like, what? No way. Yeah. I was looking on the Harvey website last night. They said their uncoded reamers are plus zero minus two tenths. Their coded reamers are minus zero plus two tenths because the coding adds two tenths.
00:14:39
Speaker
That is the reamer tolerance, not necessarily what hole it will make, but. Yeah. Pre-ream diameter, just like the Cogxale, it'll massively affect your reamed hole, which kind of creates a circular loop of what we're trying to solve to where it's used. You're already interpolating the hole, the pre-hole size, like perfect.
00:15:00
Speaker
I guess in some scenarios, a reamer will give a like for a deep reamed hole, it will give a very consistent finish through the whole hole maybe, especially a through hole. But I'm doing short holes like one times diameter kind of thing, maybe two times diameter at most. So it's pretty short. Interesting.
00:15:23
Speaker
It is fun. What was I going to ask you about the Kern? Oh, that's what I was going to say. If you have a tooling rep in, to consider talking about codings because I know it's like the one thing our Sandvik rep used to talk about that we just didn't get into, which is like when they go to these big production shops and big auto and lights out and like the real
00:15:45
Speaker
big shops. They do a lot more in, they wouldn't need exotic coatings, but we buy the Stanvik 1130 grade or 4325 grade. It's like they're common, really good, but still general-ish purpose grade stuff. And they do make coatings that are more
00:16:01
Speaker
wear resistant at the risk of being not quite as tough. If I recall tough being things like interrupted cuts or porosity or other surprises, whereas wear resistant is like, Hey, what you're looking for. Like I'm just going to cut thinner, lighter cuts, but that coding can really, I think that could be one of the keys for you is the right coding that allows, especially if you're taking a sub thal finishing pass, that's potentially actually difficult situation where you could be, uh,
00:16:31
Speaker
Rubbing or or not perform creating a proper chip So where is this encoding could could be helpful? Don't they say with coding so you have to like heat it up to make it work? You just put a brook popping torch Every time yeah, there's difference between PVD and CVD CBD no There's a
00:16:53
Speaker
But yes, I think generally speaking, coatings do require or get activated at a certain SFM. Yeah. And for a light finish pass, is it going to do anything? I don't know. Is it instant? The tool hits the material at that SFM? Or is it seconds later? It has to
00:17:13
Speaker
I suspect it's quick for two reasons. Number one, rug burns as a kid, and number two, if you've seen the ceramic cutters, and if you haven't, the 10-second explanation, these are amazing. They're literally like plastic, ceramic. It looks like plastic. If you hold one, you think it's a toy. And these things will cut Inconel and other exotics, and they do so by turning, if you normally cut Inconel at 200 surface feet, you run these, I'm making this up, 2,000 surface feet, something astronomical.
00:17:41
Speaker
And what it does is it creates so much friction that it melts the material or effectively melts it. There might be some more scientific terms here. And once it's in that melted state, it's able to use the tool to just scoop it away. Yeah. Yeah. It runs red hot. They're crazy to watch. Do you run them dry?
00:18:00
Speaker
Yes, I believe so. I believe so. You got to be careful watching only machine demos because they're not real life. You know what I mean? If they film this tool, it's dry for filming so you can see it. Oh, right. You know what I mean? But it might want to be run under coolant in real life. I think, and back actually two days ago from this airing, we aired the Grob video, excuse me, and they were running a
00:18:26
Speaker
ceramic tool demo on Incanal. Now, this is still technically a demo, but it was more a machine tool demo, not the cutting tool. It's two things I took away from that. Number one, it is just absolutely crazy to see it cutting. They were running it dry. I do think there's some real thermal shock around ceramics. I mean, it's fricking pottery.
00:18:47
Speaker
What the other thing was i think you said they get like twenty minutes of life which is acceptable given the trade off of of removal rates or so forth but they took a tool out we did this in the video we took the tool out it was still cutting and it was still.
00:19:05
Speaker
acceptable to continue cutting, even though they were calling it tool. Like, John, the thing like it had been through World War II. I mean, I mean, chip galling, welding, fracturing.
Tracking Tool Life on the Kern Machine
00:19:17
Speaker
It looked, if I saw that in a machine, I would be like, get that out of the machine and get that out of the shop right now. And they're like, no, that's good. That's crazy. Yeah. I'll try to pull out the screenshot of that and throw it up on Instagram because it was cool. Wow.
00:19:34
Speaker
And that video's up now, eh? Yeah. Okay, I gotta watch that. Can I give you the pitch on this? I don't know. So they invited us up, which is really cool, into their Ohio facility. They have the largest
00:19:49
Speaker
I believe the largest machine tool campus in Europe, which is kind of crazy because I think it would be forgivable if you hadn't heard of them as a manufacturer of CNC machines, right? You visited the German factory as well, right? For like a hot second. Okay. And they were like, no filming, which is fine. We actually, we eked out a video, but it was not like
00:20:09
Speaker
It was not open arms at the time. I go to their Ohio facility thinking like other manufacturers where they have a different location. I'm thinking it could be a service center or a showroom. No, it's four or 600,000 square feet and they have full blown
00:20:24
Speaker
So they make their machines like the universal lines like Dennis has, but then they make these systems machines, which are big auto automation for not just machining, but assembly manufacturing. But you'll enjoy the video if you watch it. It's the amount of nerdiness and capability. And there's something surreal about seeing that European or German culture and company in your own backyard. It's just mind blowing.
00:20:48
Speaker
Yeah, I did watch a group tour from like six months, a year ago or something where I guess one of the, one of the guys that works there walks around the shop for like 40 minutes and explains everything similar to how we would do a shop tour. It was fantastic. You get to see the whole thing. And it was neat having that video done internally, like by their own guys. And it felt like super personal and not corporate or anything. It was awesome.
00:21:11
Speaker
Um, and I assume yours is going to be like that and, and, and you, you know, well, and I think that guy, if I'm thinking of the same video was a guy named Derek, who was my host and was just like awesome. Yeah. He started in their internship program from Ohio, uh, and has worked his way up and knows it's just, it's just like, this is so cool.
00:21:29
Speaker
I love it. Yeah. Speaking of tool lifetime tracking, do you track how many minutes of cut you get out of tools? Is that how you track them? We definitely track drills and taps for fixture plates, and I am doing more around certain things like in turning, but I would brag about the drilling and tapping. The other stuff is more ad hoc or experimenting. Okay.
00:21:59
Speaker
On the current, it tracks tool life in minutes default, like every tool just counts up. You have to manually reset the timer when you replace the tool, although not anymore on my machine because I figured out how to automatically do that. I love you. But I got 1,900 minutes out of a ball mill. Machine need what? Titanium.
00:22:25
Speaker
John, that's insane. Divided by 60 is 31 hours of machine time. All it does pretty much is the starburst pattern on the rasp candles. Oh, that's not a particularly easy pattern of machines. No, but it's slow and it's long, and I do it twice for every handle, roughing and finishing.
00:22:49
Speaker
I think it's almost an hour for a pair of handles or something like that. But yeah, it's still producing a great surface finish. I finally looked at the tool, and it was pretty chipped out. But I was like, it's still making a good cut. So instead of 1900, I set the timer to 1600, the limit. And I was like, put a new tool in, run it again, and good to go. What brand of tool?
00:23:11
Speaker
Zadaro. Yeah, the military guys. Yeah, it's like a super stubby four-foot ball meant for titanium geometry.
Automating Tool Probing on the Kern Machine
00:23:21
Speaker
Awesome. Yep. So okay, get this. I'm going to have to do a video of this because I'm too excited to not share it. I told my wife and she was like, good for you, honey. But the Kern is like an automated machine, right? It's supposed to run 24 seven theoretically. How do you replace a tool and tell the machine to probe it next time it gets called? Oh, I feel like a lot of talks about having this as a, there's a flag in the database. Yeah.
00:23:49
Speaker
there is. I have to make my own version because there's nothing and the current guys were like, I don't know. If you did an offline toolset or like you guys have the Spironi, you could measure it and then tell the control and you're done, right? But what I did is there's a bunch of
00:24:06
Speaker
flags in the tool table, like there's time one, time two, current time, things like that. Time one is not being used. So I made a code that if time one, if the value is 999, so every time I replace a tool, I make that 999. That's all I have to do.
00:24:23
Speaker
The second that tool is called up, it notices the 999. It does the tool setting probe. It probes it, length, diameter, same code for every tool. And then we'll reset the current time to zero and we'll continue machining. So that can happen mid-cycle no matter what. And it's fantastic. So I don't touch off tools anymore because now the machine does it by itself.
00:24:47
Speaker
I really don't like this though, because you're breaking. Well, I guess this could potentially exist in Lockwood's scenario, assuming he's screaming at the computer right now that he has a solution in hide and hide built for this, or there's one already. But regardless, it scares the crap out of me that you can replace a tool. And if you forget to set the 999 out, the solution is to try to keep your stick out within 10,000. Because then you're just breaking. Which I do. Okay. Yeah, I keep with it.
00:25:15
Speaker
Okay, then comment redacted, but still, not a sustainable or scalable workflow. Yeah, but unless you have an offline toolsetter, which would solve this, but I don't want to buy one.
00:25:28
Speaker
you need a solution for this. Otherwise, I'm stopping the cycle to touch off a tool manually. I'm not against you. It just scares me. Well, and I played with it gently, and I watched the first few, and the bloom laser will alarm out if there's something bad, and I had that once. I had to increase my scatter tolerance so that it just has four tenths instead of two tenths of
00:25:56
Speaker
of mistake proofing, whatever. And now it's been totally reliable. But in any solution, you have to follow the steps. You have to follow the recipe. Otherwise, something's going to screw up. Same for machining, setting your offsets, whatever.
00:26:11
Speaker
You have to follow the rules, but in this scenario, all I have to do is write 999 every time I replace a tool, a known tool, like a replacement, not a new tool. Of course, yeah. Although it does work for a new tool as well, but slightly scarier because you haven't done it yet.
00:26:27
Speaker
What about, is there a way every time you say, because if the current, if I remember correctly, the tool changer is quite different. It has actually an access door on the side and the tool, it's just a rack of tool, like a wall of tools. It's almost like, could you have a flag window pop up on the hide and hide control that says the tool door was opened, which tools need a 999?
00:26:52
Speaker
I'm an anti-nanny state because I think that trains you for crutches that aren't good, but this is one of those jump ball like, ah, you're changing tool lengths, that scares me. Yeah, but you're not changing tool lengths to a degree. You keep it within one or two thou of stick out by replacing the tool.
00:27:12
Speaker
So worst case, you'd make a bad part, not crash a two-inch longer tool. Totally. But yeah, I've actually got a spreadsheet now with my tool lengths for every single tool so that you just know where it is.
Implementing Tool Storage Systems
00:27:28
Speaker
For now, the system works great. I got to monitor it.
00:27:34
Speaker
This is the next step with S tools. S tools is working. Like I'm starting to separate out our systems that stink and our systems where we got it going on. And I would encourage you to look at something like S tools where like on the current, if you have 200 pockets, buy those consistent nice bins that are up to 200. That way tool 17 has a bin and in that bin you could put the never sees, the wrench for extra tools, the tool boxes, notes about it. And you ready for this drum roll?
00:28:03
Speaker
3D print a plastic gauge length tool setting stick out. We'll finish one. Bingo. Yes. Because I don't want metal scales or rulers or calipers next touching my tools and then you just have a little plastic thing that you slide over the tool or the holder and that sets your stick out. I like it. You print the S number or tool number into it as well and
00:28:31
Speaker
Do you keep your replacement end mills in that spot? Absolutely. Yeah, of course. Yeah. That's cool. See, we have some shared tools that get shared between the Maury, the Kern, the other machines, the Tornos and such. But there's a lot of dedicated tools that are like one machine only. Doesn't matter if they're sister tools. They should be treated as individual tools
00:28:58
Speaker
and stored in inventory levels for each machine. And somewhere else, you could have a master sister tool note sheet in case you run into a pinch, you could steal from the other one. But otherwise, you're just solving a problem that doesn't exist. If you have 12 end mills instead of four because of sister tools, who cares? It's an extra hundred bucks in inventory or something.
00:29:19
Speaker
No, my point is, I guess S tools is regardless of machine, regardless of tool pocket number or anything like that. A quarter inch aluminum end mill is an S100.
00:29:34
Speaker
S-Tools for us is really just for, happens to be the UMC 750, but really the point of S-Tools is more the non-production, job shopy stuff. For you with production on the current, I think it actually works quite well as well. But S-Tools for us has a lot more to do with needing a system that recognizes the fact that you can't always have every tool in there. And it forces us to treat these tools a little bit differently than tools we don't necessarily, we don't care about them. But if I have
00:30:04
Speaker
three aluminum cutting 60 thou radius aluminum bullnose end mills that I haven't modeled in my fusion library and I want to have in the UMC and they're in a four inch gauge length holder. That's different than just having a bunch of ball end mills in a quarter inch drawer that we grab them and fish through them when we need to. S tools is an asset beyond just owning the cutting tool.
00:30:27
Speaker
Okay, so S tool is not necessarily for the end mill by itself. It's for a holder. It's a rotating tool assembly. Gotcha. Yeah, that's what Pro Shop calls it an RTA. Yeah. Okay.
00:30:41
Speaker
That makes sense. But it's just great because I don't have to, those wrenches that everyone has extras laying around, but they all get stuffed in a bin. Well, now I know that's the right hex or torques or whatever for this tool. A little bit of never sees extra insert pamphlets, a note on the coat. It's just so happy. Yeah, you need a place to keep all that stuff. We have that too. We've got little Kyocera, Iskar, Mitsubishi, Enmils Wrenches, like you said, never sees everything.
00:31:11
Speaker
We don't keep on the more we have a few rotating assemblies outside the machine, but not really just the stuff we never really use too much. But at the very least, I need to start organizing and keeping all that extra stuff with the packages of cutting tools in like their own bins like like these inserts. Here's all the stuff you need for this insert.
00:31:32
Speaker
Yeah, we'll put the Acromills bins we use in the podcast description. They are like 120 bucks from MSC. They're 28 drawer bins. I think they're great quality. They hold most lengths of their tools and wrenches. Yeah, they're probably, I'm going to hold up, it's probably about the size of a computer monitor. I mean, that's, I know that varies, but 20 each computer monitor, about 12 inches deep.
00:31:56
Speaker
Yeah, but each bin is fairly sizable compared to a lot of the bins that we have around here. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I wouldn't say it's problematically. If it was fully utilized and you had 28 tools that had extra end mills or extra packs of inserts, I don't think anybody would say that that's wasted. No, no. It's good. I'm comparing to the 400 shallower bins that I have around here that are small. A boring bar doesn't fit in them kind of thing.
00:32:25
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Well, and this is a case coming back to the earlier comment where I don't want open visibility.
Generative Design in Architecture
00:32:32
Speaker
I don't care or need to see in every bin at once. It is useful for NPT fittings. I know, hey, you have S179 as your titanium rougher. Well, I just look at S179 and pull the drawer open. I don't want to see all the other stuff. Yeah.
00:32:50
Speaker
You don't want to be clouded by too much visual stimulation. On that note, we're trying something new for Shop Operations Lex Tool Storage, which is I bought a touchscreen monitor. So touchscreen is like a weird world. Touchscreen TVs are like non-existent kind of sort of, but you can get touchscreen computer monitors.
00:33:19
Speaker
I'm sure a tech person could explain the difference, but to me it's kind of like, what? HDMI inputs, same-ish thing. We have an Intel Compute Stick, but what I want is a way of using Lex and Asana as kind of a centralized shop location. It's not anybody who's one computer where you can just check stuff in, look at stuff, reorganize stuff. I actually do think, I have mixed feelings on touchscreens, but I think here it's going to work out pretty well.
00:33:49
Speaker
Sweet. Yeah, we've got a couple touch screens. I mean, the current is a touchscreen and I've been liking it. You think coolant oily fingers is going to be a problem on a Swiss lathe? Maybe it'd be gross or on a current with oil, but it's not a problem. It seems fine. I don't know. We run a clean shop, so yeah. It's quick. Here's a good idea, John.
00:34:18
Speaker
implement a bin system for G tools, S tools, whatever you're gonna call it. And on top of the bins, where all the tools are that you're gonna grab one from to replace it, print for us blue, it's a giant blue object. 3D printer by a giant blue.
00:34:34
Speaker
like barbell weight could be the size of a running shoe. Kind of a joke like what the hell is a, excuse me, what the heck is a large blue weight doing here? And anytime you go to change a tool out, you pick the barbell up and you put it on top of the high nine control. Okay. That's the 999 reminder.
00:34:57
Speaker
Yeah, because I am worried about forgetting anything you get phone calls. Yeah, somebody gets hurt or you know, you hear noise. I mean, who knows what pulls you away? Yep. Yeah. And I do use those little mental reminders, whether I leave the door open on purpose or whether I do sometimes.
00:35:17
Speaker
I forget, but yeah, I'll try to do the most blatantly obvious, like this is in my way. I do not pass go until this is not my way anymore. We keep those squeegees near most of our machines to wipe down chips and so forth. And so whenever I do feed rate override, the squeegee
00:35:38
Speaker
goes, gets wedged into the door handle. Nice. And so when you open it, it's either in the way or it falls out. And it's that, and I cannot tell you, I think it's probably more than 50% of the time that happens. And I'm like, what the heck? Oh, that's right. I have to be right over right on.
00:35:53
Speaker
Yeah, there's too many variables to remember everything all the time. We need these visual cues that just make it idiot proof and we're all idiots sometimes. It's not even that. It's not a criticism or judgment. It's not a skill I need to get good at and we as humans aren't designed to get good at it. Exactly.
00:36:16
Speaker
So exciting, exciting news, both for Saunders and on a personal level, Johnny Five is back. Yeah. I saw your little post about that. Yeah. Cool. Yep. So we started building it a couple of years ago. Last year, just got sidetracked for COVID and, frankly, a bunch of legitimate reasons. But what's important is we're back on it. We found a local high school student who's involved in a robotics program.
00:36:45
Speaker
I think this one's VEX, but it would be similar to first and so forth. He is just diving in and it's great. It's also fun because he's got a good, it seems to be working out well and understands a lot of fusion, 3D printing, some basic assembly, but hadn't heard of the 1024 screw or didn't know what an M6 versus a quarter 20 is.
00:37:11
Speaker
I think it's exciting that there's so much to learn, and if he's going to pursue, as he's planning on, any sort of a path in engineering, then you know this is going to be a great... It's so much hands-on.
00:37:22
Speaker
There's theory and then there's like, okay, tighten that bolt and tell me how tight is tight. Yeah. Well, and so a bunch of these parts are user crowdsource parts that folks sent in. So there's- It's phenomenal. Right. It's awesome. But there's going to be fitment issues. So he had like a sheet metal-ish part that didn't fit. And so we talked about, okay, you could drill it, you could ream it, you could put a dremel in there, you could put a sanding arbor in there, you could lap it.
00:37:48
Speaker
The number of ways to open up a hole by 5 to 10 thou is just such an awesome little microcosm look into the world of subtractive manufacturing. You know what's funny about that is I just got like a grandpa machinist vibe from that, like the old guy who's been doing this forever. He just knows how to make a hole bigger. And then new young green guys like, wow, I didn't know there were so many different ways to do it. And then old crusty guys like, oh, yeah, that's you.
00:38:18
Speaker
I will take that as a compliment. Exactly. It is a compliment, but it's funny. That's great. That's great. The last thing I want to share is just a complete nerd out note, which is you know what generative design is, right? In Autodesk? Yeah. You're making it like latticed on the inside and stuff. Yeah. So it's like that example of an airplane part or a car part, minimizing the amount of material to create the necessary static and dynamic load to make a part structurally sound. And it ends up, like you said, looking kind of like a
00:38:48
Speaker
Actually, a biological, lattice-y, crazy-looking part. Here's what blew my mind. They have generative design for architecture. Okay. That's actually used in architecture now? Well, so that's what I said. I was like, what are you talking about? I'm thinking lattice-shaped buildings. No. Apparently, it's the same algorithm and code process, but it's a totally different input and output. You put in
00:39:14
Speaker
things like the building's direction, which way is facing north, the airflow, the number of people, the goal density, what the A3 system is going to look like, your desire for interior and exterior space. And it literally tells you based on building construction style and the ground's ability to hold a skyscraper versus not, it tells you options for where to locate hallways, where to locate restrooms, where to locate cubicles, where to locate offices, where to have full walls, height walls, not fully halls, how to get the airflow correct.
00:39:44
Speaker
Oh my gosh, John. The Autodesk facility in Toronto was built on this premise. Oh, really? Because the generative design team is in Toronto, I think. So they built their own new office based on generative design and they're like, yeah, I want the bathroom close to this and I want, you know, sign in the evenings and whatever. And it's phenomenal. I got to tour there a couple of years ago.
Prioritizing Tasks and Strategic Business Decisions
00:40:07
Speaker
super cool how they did it. And then I asked them a couple of years later how they liked it. And they said, most of it's great. Some of it just didn't work out. It's funny. Yeah. But that's the generative process, iterative design, except in this case, you're building a super expensive office, building it out. So to make it fake and not like it three years later is expensive. But give that 10 years, and it's going to be normal.
00:40:33
Speaker
That's the key, I think. My wife and I did some house renovation stuff. It's weird because it's cutting edge. Who knows how and where it'll come to be in our lives. I readily accept that we often fail to predict how technology really affects the future.
00:40:50
Speaker
I'll tell you, the ability to just say, these are things I want to think about and just give me 20 different options would be in and of itself, incredibly helpful to think about. Oh, I didn't realize I could rotate the bathroom or I didn't realize, you know, get rid of hallways. Cause as Rob Luck would like to say, hallways are wasted space. It's true. Hallways are wasted space, complete waste. Yeah. Yeah. And you don't always see, like you said, rotating something 90 degrees, you know, when we're staring at a design and
00:41:18
Speaker
it finally clicks. You're like, I could move that over there. And the computer would do that for you. Right? Yeah. Well, and it's also just like the ability to be reactive instead of proactive. To me, that's much easier. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, you're
00:41:35
Speaker
Does that lose one's creativity if you rely on the computer to be creative for you? No, not for me. Yeah. No, it's just ideas. It's exactly yeah, it's it's the ultimate spitballing machine It's like I try this try this try this try this. What do you like?
00:41:51
Speaker
When creativity from industrial design or art is ultimately all still rooted in your experiences and influences and role models, that's over a longer time period than an immediate reaction. But it's all, that's how it constructs our identities and how we think about stuff.
00:42:08
Speaker
Yeah. And your creativity is still going to be drawn towards certain results. So if generative gives you 10 things, your personal creativity, yours and mine might be different. You'd be like, I like hallways. I don't like hallways. And then you'd pick a certain one based on what you want. Yeah.
00:42:24
Speaker
But like you and I aren't architects like even if we use this and we hated it But the output told us hey if you want windows and sunlight you by the way, you never put windows facing West I'm not sure which rules. Yeah, there's like a direction I don't even know it where you're not supposed to put windows for something and it's like oh, okay. Well, that's good to know
00:42:44
Speaker
Yeah. Well, in the shop here, I love the windows that we have. They're up high. There's four big windows in the machine shop. And amazing, except for the 2 to 4 PM at certain times of the year where my desk just gets blasted with sunlight. And I'm blind.
00:43:02
Speaker
for that period of time. Dude, that's screaming auto shades. I agree with that, but just haven't done anything yet. I think we've gotten past that season because now I don't think it's a problem. Like the sun is just not in my face as of February 4th. It is still a problem though. It will be next season, whatever, but it's funny. What do you say today?
00:43:26
Speaker
Today, as we talked about last week, I think, I'm putting some Norseman parts on the current for production. And I want to have that at least cutting a Norseman part by the end of the week. So I started working on the new tombstones. And I'll be doing clamps later this week. And things are going good. Awesome. Yes, I'm really excited about that.
00:43:50
Speaker
Yep. We've been having Norseman problem after Norseman problem. And I'm like, it's time I fix all of this right now. Are they truly new problems or are they just things that you're now allowing yourself to focus on? Because... Oh, and once you see it, you can't unsee it kind of thing.
00:44:09
Speaker
And Eric's fitting up parts and he's like, this actually has been a problem for a long time. It'd be amazing if it was gone kind of thing. And I'm like, I can fix that. Let's do it. Let's go. Yeah. So going back to the reaming whole position kind of thing, I want the best solution for me. And if that's interpolating, then I'll just keep doing that.
00:44:29
Speaker
But there's different ways to interpolate a hole. Do you do a bore tool path? Do you drill it out, plunge down, and 2D adaptive? And then how do you finish it? And how much stock do you leave? And how long is the end mill going to leave? And do you use that end mill for anything else? Has that titanium end mill touched stainless? Because that will wear it down too. And so I'm trying to wrap my head around all of these things. Yeah.
00:44:53
Speaker
Yeah. That's one of my lessons or nuggets in the video though of like 10 things I wish somebody had told me 10 years ago is you're going to be constantly bombarded with lots of problems and your desire as a hungry entrepreneur will be to solve them. That is the correct thing to do, but you also have to remember to triage and solve the problems that help. I'm not intimately familiar with obviously these Norseman issues, but
00:45:19
Speaker
If Eric and the team have been dealing with them for a year, it's not going to be another big deal to deal with them for another six months. If your time is better spent getting sagas ramped up or whatever the other thing is. Yeah, you're absolutely right. There is no end to the amount of triage that can be done.
00:45:35
Speaker
So I'm constantly basically putting a value on everything that I have to do so that I know I'm getting done the important things, the things that will move the team forward more, save guys time, and ultimately produce more product in the same amount of effort. So that's what I'm working on now. Awesome.
00:45:56
Speaker
That's what I love. It's like my job now is make everybody else's life easier and I love it. Awesome. Good to hear. Good. I'm back to cleaning. Have fun. You have fun in your day off in today's shop.
00:46:11
Speaker
everybody else. Just set a 10 minute timer on your Android or iPhone, just 10 minutes and clean. Feel free to email me if having done that, you are upset with me and think that's a mistake. Seriously. Everyone needs that kick in the pants sometimes. Just say, it's okay. Clean up a little bit. Cool. I will do that today too. I'll see you next week. Okay. Take care. Bye. Bye.