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Business of Machining - Episode 205
246 Plays5 years ago
TOPICS:
- Saunders is starting 2021 off great with their ERP system and staying busy with orders.
- Saunders also tells us about his broken tool on the lathe.
- Grimsmo has been getting their Okamoto surface grinder up and running and it has been awesome!
- The big news out of Grimsmo is that the Rask is back! They have been hard at work for almost 4 years to bring back the Rask.
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning, and welcome to the Business of Machine episode 205. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Rimsmo. This podcast is a conversation we have each Friday about entrepreneurship, mindset, struggle, happiness, CNC machines, toolpaths, staffing, growth, money, and more. Good morning. Morning, buddy. How are you? I'm wonderful. Good. Yeah, you? Also very good.
Managing Stress and Workload
00:00:29
Speaker
You know, we did what we needed to do, which was I think last week I had a lot on my mind and it was upsetting me and weighing on me about feeling like we were behind, period. And, you know, you can make up the excuses, but we just, we needed to execute and focus. And so.
00:00:48
Speaker
I tell you, the first thing I did made me feel a ton better. It's so funny. Once you do these things, they're not as hard. For me, the way I'm predisposed, you think about it and you're staring into this unknown abyss and you can overthink it. No,
Order Management and Customer Engagement
00:01:01
Speaker
just go do it. So we exported a unfulfilled order list from Shopify.
00:01:06
Speaker
and then broke it down into basically fixture plates and then other stuff. Like if we had an MSC screw pack of screws coming in, that's just a couple of days away. That's a different problem than needing spindle time to make something. And so then we sorted the orders by
00:01:24
Speaker
date. And then we looked at each one of them, what ones we had the material for in house. So we just needed to make them versus what ones had to then get made and sent out for anodizing. And that's tough because you kind of want to make the anodized ones first because it takes a while to send them out, get them done and come back. But you also want to, you know, you can't skip the line per se, you know, we try to be honest about that. And
00:01:51
Speaker
So then what I did was, and it didn't occur to me until I had done this, was I took that list, moved it into a Google Doc, a Google Sheet, and then got Julian Alex on board and said, okay, we're doing every, the order number, the plate, the customer name, and then we split it up. And all three of us reached out to every single customer personally, which frankly, I should have done a week or two sooner, but you know, whatever, a holiday, it doesn't matter, water under the bridge.
00:02:18
Speaker
And I got to say, what an awesome feeling. The customers were saying, hey, okay, thanks, but really wanted a couple of them sort of said that. And so, okay, noted, we're on it focused, but then so many of them were like, hey, we get it. It's a crazy time right now. A couple of them were like, we're traveling. I honestly don't even worry about it. One guy filled somebody else's order first. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is such a different feeling than I was. And so,
00:02:44
Speaker
Since then, I think I threw up an Instagram story. I mean, we are just crushing it. We're having to take multiple trips over to FedEx.
Production Improvements and Customer Expectations
00:02:54
Speaker
The machines are running. The quality is there. We're sending stuff out to anodize in multiple batches, getting stuff back from them, the crates are made, the pallets are made, the materials are there, new materials there. Lex is just on fire with
00:03:09
Speaker
numerous outstanding POs, numerous inbound POs. It's just absolutely awesome. That's incredible. Like emailing all the backlog customers and hearing the positive feedback from most of them changes your whole perspective of the whole thing. Yeah. We've done that in the past before too. You're so worried about it and it's such a big daunting task and then you just do it.
00:03:33
Speaker
And then you get all this support back because both of our customer bases are generally very nice, supportive, like go getter kind of, you know, they like what we do. Um, and there's going to be the odd guys that are like unacceptable, but that's okay. Like I get it. Um, but yeah, no. And then you just divide and conquer. That was awesome.
00:03:54
Speaker
But I think you and I need to stop thinking about our audiences like, oh, they love what we do, and they want to support us. It's like, dude, no. They're buying something from us. Exactly. We're running a business here. Yeah. I bought a desk, and the company was like, it'll be 14 to 16 weeks to ship it. In fairness, they told me that right up front. But it's kind of like, I don't care about this company. It's actually a perfect analogy to buy in a fixture plate.
00:04:21
Speaker
You just want it. You've made that decision to buy it, you want it. I can tell you it's a long lead time, but that's the right thing to do if that's true. I just remind myself, of course it's wonderful when people are like, you say nice things, but no, I need to execute. We are.
00:04:41
Speaker
Yep. And everything we can do. I mean, it's, it's tough because everybody is so spoiled with Amazon prime. Like you order it today, it comes today. Kind of like, and then you and I running businesses, we're like, that's not reality. Like, I don't know what they're smoking, but it's like ultimate irony. They're one of the customers. Oh,
00:05:04
Speaker
I didn't even know it until I was digging through and they bought a large fixture plate. Really? And I'm like, oh my God, the pressure. Who's going to ship this prime? Yeah, I know, right?
Leadership and Shop Organization
00:05:18
Speaker
But no, it feels really good. It really does. Yes. I'm so glad I took the time to dig. It was hard. Part of me is like, oh, I don't know if I want to know the answer to this. It's just not fun. And then you break it down. You're like, OK, rock and roll.
00:05:33
Speaker
And then you can move on. Your brain gets a lot clearer, free it up for more better critical thinking things, and then move on to the next challenge.
00:05:41
Speaker
Yeah, and steering the ship here, making sure we're not overproducing stuff right now that we don't need. I mean, there's no answer there. It's just doing the best you can at the moment in time. But hey, we'll make a few extra, but then we need to switch over because we have to. And that's what we're going to do. And I've come in some, just working together as a team, I've come in some earlier nights or weekends. And I'll tell you, I came in for two hours on Saturday and two hours on Sunday, kind of like a days off in the shop.
00:06:10
Speaker
in theory, the spirit of those is supposed to be during the weekday. But I came in, it was quiet. I cleaned, I labeled stuff, I organized stuff, I moved stuff around. Every once in a while, you need those jumpstart or those leap moments. Because even if you're building a sustainable business, every once in a while, some stuff just doesn't get put away right and all that. And even in the future, I'd like to have that be somebody else's job during the week. But it was absolutely the right decision to do that.
00:06:40
Speaker
You have to set the example. You have to set the standard. You have to implement it a couple times consistently before you just expect somebody else to jump in and do it. No, I get that. I've done that too. Sometimes I come in on the weekends or I stay late and
00:06:58
Speaker
Either I'll focus on my own work or I'll try to improve things for everybody else, make a thing for one of the guys to help him do his job better. And sometimes it's really nice to have that freedom of, okay, there's nobody here, there's nobody to pressure me. I don't have to hustle and make anything right now. I get to do this thing and I get to focus and just help. And that's nice.
00:07:26
Speaker
cryptically fun those COVID lockdown days were back in, I mean, almost a year ago. In a weird way. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Yeah. Hashtag over it. But yeah. How are you doing? What are you doing up to?
00:07:39
Speaker
Um, our surface grinder is grinding parts. Oh, so that's super exciting. Um, yeah, Angelo, um, got the last training day with the guy yesterday and now he's running it by himself.
Machine Operations and Shop Setup
00:07:52
Speaker
And he's like, this machine's awesome, but it's it.
00:07:56
Speaker
It's a process. You can't just jump on it and know what you're doing. There's a lot of buttons to push and there's a lot of order. You can run a whole cycle without turning the spindle on, the wheel. And he's like, you have to manually turn the grinding wheel on and know it's on before you hit cycle start. And I'm like, really? Yeah.
00:08:18
Speaker
Is that a design? I don't know. I think maybe it's because you're supposed to turn the wheel on and leave it on all day. The cycle is independent of the wheel spinning. Maybe that's what it is. But yeah, little things like that. But it was cool. He showed me yesterday and he walked me through it and the process and everything.
00:08:42
Speaker
And a couple little things he was requesting, like we need an air gun over here. It'd be really nice to have a cool and washed down gun in the grinder so that you can wash the parts off, like right as you pull them off the chuck. And a bunch of little things like that, but it's going great. Like the parts came off, I think he was shooting for one, two, six, and they came off one, two, five, eight, five or something. And he's like, yeah, I'll do better next time.
00:09:05
Speaker
That is awesome. Did you build a silhouette fixture to hold the profiles down? We didn't. I don't know if it's necessary. Angelo,
00:09:19
Speaker
I think one of the guys asked him about it yesterday and Angela's like, I don't think we need it. Like the parts aren't moving and we can nest them easily enough. Like it's not like we need a template to be like this one goes here and this one goes here, but the blades have no bevel. They're just, it's flat. Yep. Okay. That makes it seemingly easier. Yep. Got it. Well, I'll tell you, uh, I don't know if you've ever thrown a part off a grinder, but when you do, um, you'll, you'll need a new pair underwear. Yeah, exactly.
00:09:48
Speaker
Yeah, there's a big card. Throwing a, throwing a part off the surface grinder is normal. Throwing a grim smoke knife blade off the grinder, expert level. Hopefully there won't be some, some Norseman size dents in the, in the end of the travel. That'd be kind of funny. Yeah. Do I keep meaning to ask you, did you get the auto wheel balancer?
00:10:16
Speaker
No, it's like a $10,000 option, and I've heard it's really only beneficial for the bigger wheels. Okay. Although this is not a small wheel. It's like 12 inch by one and a half, I think. Yeah, it's beefy. It's bigger than I mentally thought it was before I saw it. So it might benefit from it, but yeah.
00:10:37
Speaker
No, no, backseat opinion. I probably write both because I don't think you're going to be changing wheels a lot for sure. I think so. And you're effectively rough grinding. Yeah. So yeah, this is a roughing op. The lapping is the finish up. So yes, good point.
00:10:55
Speaker
And then like I was watching your video at Orange Vice and he's got the bigger Okamoto with the bigger wheel and he's got the auto balance and I'm like, okay, that makes sense. That wheel probably weighs, I don't know, four times what mine weighs, you know? Yeah. And I was at a shop last year that I believe has a
00:11:13
Speaker
20 by, it's a weird size, like a 20 by 52 or something. Um, and it's just, it's an Okamoto and it's still, it's like the largest size that you can get as still a C frame machine before you get to the Eric orange double. And I believe they got the wheel balancer, but they're
00:11:29
Speaker
They're grinding as a job shop and changing wheels and probably actually looking for tolerances better than you are with potential. I'm not going to make this up, but maybe less skilled labor at certain points in the time. You want a system and a process that works. At that point, it makes sense for sure.
00:11:49
Speaker
Did Okamoto help you, or did your reseller take a look at the material and be like, okay, this is the wheel, like you want a 46J or something? Not. Tell me you don't even know the answer to this. I don't. I don't know what wheel is on there. I don't think he does either. It just came with a wheel. Oh, really? I actually haven't told us what it is yet. I looked at it, but it's covered by the hub.
00:12:12
Speaker
So I can't see what it says. So I really don't know it's white. That's all I know. You actually should you should get them to tell you that in case they like delete the files, but that's good to know because you it will it will wear down.
00:12:26
Speaker
Yeah, no, before they forget kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. No, we've been curious. We were asking about it yesterday. And yeah, we'll figure it out. Because you might want, I mean, 90% of the grinding we're planning on doing is for soft blades. But we might want to grind hard stuff. We do actually want to grind some hard stuff. So you might want a different wheel for that. And I don't know, if we ever grind titanium or something, you need a different wheel for that, I guess.
00:12:54
Speaker
We did get the Okamoto balancing stand, which is a really fancy contraption. They haven't set it up yet because apparently they said the wheel came balanced, mounted and balanced. But yeah, the finish on the first few grind passes was really good. I'm sure it can get better, but I'm like, this is acceptable. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Good. Super exciting.
00:13:20
Speaker
I have no idea how to turn this into a sustainable piece of advice for anybody listening, but when you're building a shop, whether it's your garage or a brand new factory, every single opportunity you have to add more airlines, airdrops, larger diameter air tubing, more electrical outlets, extra breaker panel spaces, anything of the sort.
00:13:44
Speaker
Please, I implore you, do it. Yeah. Please. Good. Yeah. I think we're set for air. We put drops every, I don't know, 12 feet or something, 18 feet maybe. But for power, every new machine has all new runs from the breaker to the machine and transformer and stuff. But you can't fully plan for that.
00:14:10
Speaker
think of the available shop space and think of where you might want to put stuff. It's just so much more disruptive to get a scissor lift in now. Yes. I mean, you can do it, but I think we're going to buy a second compressor and keep two versus one bigger one. Okay. But I want to frankly move both of them back to the far corner of the shop.
00:14:35
Speaker
Yeah. Simply because it's noise and then we can also, um, we can vent the heat out in the summer and then keep it in. And we're just a louvered panel in the winter and this winter keep the heat in. But, um, I don't have three things back in that corner. And it's like, Oh, now I got to run 130 feet of view as you hug the walls and go up and down. Um, and, and, you know, you can do it. It's not even, frankly, a money thing of the wire costs. It's more just like, you got to do it all. Um, so anyway.
00:15:06
Speaker
But you can't wire the shop for every situation, I guess. Well, sorry, fair point. And I wish I knew more about big electricity. When we filmed at Grove, did I tell you that? Yeah, I think so. OK, that video's in editing now. It's super, super cool. I mean, just super cool. And they, a lot of big places, have these, I think they're called them bus bars, because they have the ability to plug in
00:15:31
Speaker
I'm going to make this up, but 100 amp at 480 machines every 20 feet when and where they want. That's pretty cool. So whether it's a bus bar type system or what we have done is if you're running a new machine to say the far side of a shop, instead of doing just a home run is we ran a sub panel because now, okay, now I've got a sub panel that's
00:15:57
Speaker
400 amps or something at the far end of a shop. Anything I add down there is a short run, which is so much easier for a variety of conduit and wire length and the mess and all that.
00:16:08
Speaker
Yeah, when we first built out the shop a year ago, we did put all the panels on one side of the wall. And there's two being conduit under the concrete across the other side. So we had them run like new, nice wiring. So there is a breaker panel, like a, what do you call it? A sub-panel on the other wall, too, with
00:16:30
Speaker
I don't know, a lot of juice. The Maury, the Tornos, the Nakamura, and now the Okamoto are all off of that panel. Yeah.
Upgrading Machinery for Growth
00:16:40
Speaker
Same thing. I think we're going to sell our TM3 and replace it with a VF3YT. It's like we've outgrown the TM. It's great, but I'd rather have a VF3 for it.
00:16:54
Speaker
And I don't know the exact breaker sizes, but we should have, we know that the normal Haas is a 70 amp breaker. We should have never put a 40 in for the TM because it doesn't cost that much more for the incremental wire or breaker itself. The wire is the bigger deal because you got to run it and pull it. So, you know, little things you learn.
00:17:14
Speaker
Right. Now you have to redo it. When the current came, it actually had a pigtail to plug it into the wall, like three, four-inch diameter plug with a bunch of wires inside. Apparently, that's how they do it in standardized Germany. It's just like in a factory. Plug it in?
00:17:37
Speaker
Tormach doesn't even come with a plug. I know. They had to cut it off. When the current guys were here, I was like, that looks really expensive. Do you just want to take that back to Germany and install it on the next machine? Don't throw it away. It's probably like $1,000. It's funny.
00:17:55
Speaker
I got a good lathe broken tool story. Oh, nice. Okay. It's right up your alley circa 2017. Oh, boy. Running apart. Internal fixture part for process. Absolutely love it. Awesome. Had it programmed, material stock, Royal College. Everything was going great. Started running the operation.
00:18:25
Speaker
to turn it, ID work, OD work, live tooling work all went great. And then I went to tap it. And so we have a finite number of driven tools. So the tap, I was actually running, sorry, the drill I left in a static holder. So the drill doesn't rotate and the part does rotate. Obviously not uncommon for the lathe. The tap, I only had a driven holder, which is fine. So I put the tap in this CapTo driven holder to tap the hole.
00:18:55
Speaker
Kapto driven holders run backward. Oh, so I knew it as soon as the tap broke, not a big deal. Um, and, but what I got, what I sat there and looked at was infusion on any normal tool. There's a checkbox. It probably should be an improved interface in my opinion, but the checkbox that says clockwise rotation in the tool library, that doesn't exist for a tap. It's just not there.
00:19:23
Speaker
It's just not there. I looked up the G and M codes and found it actually shockingly easy. There's a separate code for Haas left-hand driven tapping. I changed the tap to reverse. I shouldn't say left-handed reverse. Then I switched it in fusion to a left-handed tap, which I hate to do. It bothers me, but I get it. As soon as I posted it, it hit that right G code. It's like, oh, kudos. They actually thought of this. It actually works. It's not the best terminology, but then it worked fine.
00:19:53
Speaker
Okay, so you looked up the M code so that when Fusion posted it, you understood that it was right. Yeah, it's like a G189 for backward driven tool tapping. Right. Left hand tapping is basically what you're faking to do. Bingo. Yeah. But I hate that because if somebody else ran that, they'd be like, we don't have a left hand quarter 20 tap. Exactly. Right. Yeah, you'd have to comment the heck out of that and be like, I know it says left hand, but trust me.
00:20:22
Speaker
But I just had to chuckle because the process works great. It's probably one of the most rewarding accomplishments in my machining tenure is having these templates that work. I need to do some more refinement on it. I needed to go back to our fifth axis one and do some more work on it. But I absolutely love them. Yeah, the problem there is tapping. I don't tap anymore. Oh, really? No, I don't think I've tapped.
00:20:50
Speaker
I can't remember the last time I've put a tap in a machine. Oh, that's funny. A lot of thread milling.
00:20:57
Speaker
Every now and then we'll throw a tap in a drill and just hand bomb it. Hand bomb it. Yeah. That's funny. Yeah. I love taps. They work. Taps are always scary to me. I don't know. I still clench every time I see a tap. It's like, oh, it's going to crash. I don't know. Threadmills are scary. I mean, they plow to the bottom of the hole fast, and then they go up. So that is scary. Yeah. What else are you going to say?
00:21:28
Speaker
Oh, totally random changing subject. We were hanging out with some friends the other night and the conversation came up of like, Hey, 2021 new years. And I feel like there's like a theme to you and me talking about like, Hey, what are our goals? What are our accomplishments? And a friend who I really look up to was like,
00:21:43
Speaker
Basically, I don't believe in resolutions in New Year's goals. I'm like, what? Not in a curmudgeon way, but it was an interesting left field thing about just... I'm now putting my own spin on this, but do what you want to do now. Be the person you want to be now. Very much the whole goals are irrelevant or silly because you just need to focus on the steps to get there. That's something you should do today and not think about
00:22:14
Speaker
Fast forwarding and in March, I'm going to be better in March at this. No, just do it now. Yeah, I'm with you there. I have a love-hate relationship for goals and New Year's resolutions and things like that because I'm with you. If you want something, you need to know what you want and you need to figure out the steps to get there and then you just need to get off your butt and do it. But I do like the analogy of it's like if you want to drive from here to LA,
00:22:43
Speaker
You can't just get in your car and go. You need a direction. You need to know which roads to take, which turns to go. You can't just get out and start driving because you'll go the wrong way. You need to have a direction. Same thing with a goal gives you that direction, like driving to LA or making X amount of money or bringing a new product to market.
00:23:05
Speaker
These are goals that give you a direction and a path and then you break it down into steps. First thing I got to do is I got to order material or spend 100 hours designing it or whatever. That gives you a path.
Boosting Productivity with Time Management
00:23:22
Speaker
Otherwise, you just come into work and you're like, what am I doing today? That doesn't work. I continually remind myself of how good it is to just get stuff done. I love
00:23:35
Speaker
Um, and I don't think it's caught on, which is why I feel like I want to keep bringing it up the whole, like just write down 10 minutes. Like it's 10 29 right now. Go until 10 39 and clean out the furnace room. What you can get done in 10 minutes, it will blow your mind. And in no way have you lost your day's productivity. And, uh, you've added to it, you know, right? Afterwards. And then you go do something else.
00:24:00
Speaker
Otherwise, it's this to-do list of like, oh man, I've got to go clean that room out. I don't know when I'm going to ever get to that and lots of work and all that. No, just go spend 10 minutes doing it. If you don't get it done fine, a lot of times you'll cheat and spend 15 or 20 minutes. One of those internal life hacks where the sum of what you do is more than you think you're able to do. To me, that's one of those keys.
00:24:23
Speaker
Yeah, and it's in a different way, but it's been working for me with my list because I write down eight things every day that I do. I don't question it. I just get them done, and I don't go to sleep until they're done. Sometimes, like last night, I was up till 1.30, getting those things done.
00:24:43
Speaker
But that's okay. But if cleaning out the furnace room or whatever becomes one of those important things, like, well, I'll find the time and I'll just get it done. And it won't take that long. And I won't question it because I'm like, I know it needs to get done. Right? I just do it. You turn off that internal debatable, should I know? Exactly. We're not having a conversation about this, son. You're going to go do it.
00:25:02
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So I'm careful what I write on my list because I know it has to get done. I know it will get done. So I'm careful not to put dumb things on there or too complicated things on there. But yeah. It's funny.
00:25:17
Speaker
We got our scrap material thing situated out. Okay. They told me three times, there's no more scrappies, the people that used to, private people that would drive trucks around and you'd work out a deal directly with them on the split. They's like, those folks don't exist anymore and then we don't have an option of picking up except for a 14-yard container.
00:25:39
Speaker
Um, and, um, so the last time I was there, fun fact, it's also like flat tire city, like driving around a scrap yard is like, like, I have no interest in getting a flat tire. So I was like, we got to figure something out here. And then they're like, Oh, we can just bring a box truck by.
00:25:56
Speaker
I don't like, are you serious? And so great. They came by Monday and that was another breath of fresh air because the last thing I want to do, I've been thinking more about how we get better at what we do and how we're more efficient.
Material Management and Overproduction Challenges
00:26:08
Speaker
And so the thing that Lex is letting us do is it costs us money to store stuff. I don't want to store extra stuff here because it takes up space. I've got to track it. I've got to pay for it.
00:26:20
Speaker
To the extent you've got vendors and distributors that are reliable and quick shipping and so forth, it's phenomenal because they become part of your inventory system. You've got to be careful. There's products we know that we can, like I joke, there's mod vice screws. I think we literally have bought out the nation's supply of them in the past because it's a super odd size screw.
00:26:38
Speaker
But the scrap is the same way. I don't want to store six containers of scrap here, so I don't really care about maximizing the dollar yield. I'd rather have them come more often and get that stuff out of here. I didn't think I had a solution, and then boom, found a solution. Easy. Yeah.
00:26:57
Speaker
Huh. Yeah. It's, it's, it's funny when either somebody convinces you that it's not possible or you convince yourself that it's not possible. And then you finally like take another crack at it and like look at it again. You're like, wait, of course there's a way. Yeah. Right. So that was a win.
00:27:16
Speaker
Yeah. The other fun thing is the work on exporting the Shopify list of kind of catching up on any outstanding orders led me to jumpstart the next thing, which I've always talked about wanting to do more methodically, which is, hey, let's pull up a list, pass 90-day sales, and then, hey, if we sold this many fixture palettes and this is many mod devices and this many talents or whatever, okay, I know what that number is.
00:27:46
Speaker
took 10 minutes to give you a very good quantitative understanding of what you should think about for raw material levels and finished inventory levels, period. Yes, it's not hard.
00:27:59
Speaker
But it takes time and it takes a little bit of brain space to think much. No, but you've been avoiding it. Yeah. But in the time I could drive out to get a sandwich and come back, you can do that. You know what I mean? If you know so many rasks you sell, you know how many pivots you need for six months period. So awesome. Cool. Yes. Speaking of overproduction,
00:28:29
Speaker
So I had Pierre set up to make the stop pins that we use in our knives. And we have a whole bunch of different sizes and they step down and neck down. And so we're like, okay, make 125 stop pins. And he goes, okay. So he sets it up and he checks it with me and we got it all dialed in. And then
00:28:48
Speaker
And then he checks in later in the day, and he's like, so how many do I make? Nobody ever told me how many to make. And I'm like, I usually make literally a handful. That's my measurement. Because Eric stores them in bins that are kind of handful size. And he's like, well, I made 300. Should I stop there? And I'm like, yeah, you're probably good there. Let's move to the next size. But yeah, I forgot. I didn't tell you how many.
00:29:11
Speaker
I would think 300 could fit in your hand. They're pretty small. Probably, yeah. Sorry, I didn't. We didn't have an order number there, so you're just going to make them. It's like that growth problem of like, well, okay, oops. I mean, you didn't put it on the print. Yeah, exactly. We're making my advice washers this morning, which is that square-ish washer that we make on the lathe. I freaking love that part.
00:29:40
Speaker
That's a critical part to make sure we don't ever run out because, well, actually, we're really quick at setting up for it. Nevertheless, I don't want to run out of those periods. It's like a personal thing. And so we kind of brought it all together.
00:29:53
Speaker
The setup is easier, the cam is easier. We've got the Haas video embedded in the control that tells us how to set the sub-spindle up, which I love. And then it occurred to me, I'm counting the parts as they come off, because we use egg crates still. Because if we ever have a problem like a chamfer tool breaks, I want to walk backwards on those batch of parts. It is helpful, yeah.
00:30:14
Speaker
And the egg crates holds 30, so after the 30 are finished, I dump them into a little cardboard box. It also helps, I think, make sure that they get coolant. We put them in an ultrasonic, and they get cleaned, all that. But I'm thinking, wait a minute here. You have that data information on how many you produced. Why abandon that by just dumping them all continually? So what I did now, we're going to try, is
00:30:36
Speaker
When we get to a quantity, it doesn't really matter, 90 or 100, whatever, we are then putting them into a polyseal bag versus a Ziploc. The idea of a polyseal bag is it's kind of sacred. You can crack the seal, but you can't crack the seal and reseal it. You know if it's been compromised.
00:30:53
Speaker
The concern that we want to make sure is that we don't build up any rust over time, so we're cleaning them, drying them, and then in the polyseal bag, we're both putting a piece of BCI paper, which we think will outgas and help a little, but then also a desiccant packet. I've got it on my desk, so I'm going to monitor it myself.
00:31:12
Speaker
Then, we put that into our Uline bin that is both the main one as well as the reorder trigger one, but we just have a little hundred pack. We know how many are left. You can do an inventory visually as you walk by. Yeah, exactly.
00:31:29
Speaker
We've been doing that a little bit more, too. We do our screws in 200 packs or 250 packs or something, because counting individual screws is just laborious, even with the scale, with the measuring scale. It's dumb. So having little Ziploc baggies with quantities, like two, four, six, eight, okay, yeah, we're good for a while.
00:31:51
Speaker
How are you doing? What's been going on? I've been playing on the current a lot. I've been making rasks every day since last week, which is excellent.
Tool Maintenance and Troubleshooting
00:32:00
Speaker
I came in on the weekend and I was like, I could just load more parts and leave and like pop in and out, you know, 10 minutes. But of course it wasn't 10 minutes because there was like one broken tool. So I had to replace that and then fix it. Like selling rasks, shipping them?
00:32:17
Speaker
We've sold the one that we finished last week. And then I think Eric's got like four on the go. That should, maybe they're done already today. I'm not sure. That is awesome. So, so we're relatively consistent and I've got a couple tools on the current that keep chipping the edges and throwing out some whole tolerances. Um, so I got a tool path. I got to figure out why not positive yet, but, um,
00:32:46
Speaker
Other than that, it's going great. The bevel grinding is nuts. Really? It was funny. After about 400, 450 minutes of cut on the grinding wheel is when I dress it. It seems to be pretty good there. That's it? Yeah. Wow.
00:33:08
Speaker
So I had one blade where the old, let's say the left side was end of life grinding wheel, and then I dressed it, and then the right side is fresh dress, and I handed that blade to Eric, and I was like, which side's which? And he goes, old, new. He just looks at it immediately. Here I'm staring at it under the light, reflecting it, going, yeah, they look almost the same. I can barely tell the difference. It's funny. But it's good. Is the current running overnight every night?
00:33:36
Speaker
Uh, yeah, like one cycle, like a three hour cycle. You say that so casually like, Oh yeah, of course. That's awesome. Does it, does it shut off? There is a button, but I lost it. I don't know what I don't remember how to find that. It stays on. It just sits there and waits for us.
00:33:53
Speaker
I keep wanting to figure out a way of doing like an amp meter or something to figure out that our houses will go into a power save mode, but I think they don't really pull any power. I guess the Z servo is probably holding the spindle up, but you would think the X and Y are pulling negligible amounts of power. I'm just curious.
00:34:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's that balance of like, I'm not super, super green conscious every minute of my life, but I also don't really care to waste unnecessarily. Of course. Yeah, we have the more you shut off every night at the end of the cycle. Just because it's like one quick APF button that just at the M30 it shuts off. So we've been at for years and years. And I'm not even sure how late it runs out. Probably runs till 2 or 3am, like every day.
00:34:39
Speaker
Cool. Yeah. It's amazing. That's awesome. I mean, we're probably five days a week. We're probably getting, I don't know, 12 to 16 hours of cycle time out of that thing. Like every day. It's awesome. Maybe more. Yeah, it's great.
00:34:55
Speaker
We got a super weird problem with tool life that just came out of nowhere. It's like the more you build good processes, the more you, I think, get a little bit, not overconfident, but it makes you a little bit less open-minded about troubleshooting because you're just like, no, this works. This works. What's wrong?
00:35:15
Speaker
And we were all like, is it the material? Something like that, which actually can be the material. But ends up for no justifiably good or rational reason. We just had horrible run out out of nowhere. So that can never happen. And we checked it. And actually, I shouldn't say horrible run out, but we fixed that. And then all of a sudden,
00:35:35
Speaker
we saw the direct correlation and it took us a while to get to that point. And so another one of those like PSAs of like runouts really important. Oh yeah. Yeah, it can. Yeah. We still check it on the Maury. I haven't checked it very much on the Kern because I just, I guess I have a lot of faith in the PG call-its and holders and stuff, but I want to check it more just to verify, you know?
Machining Tools and Techniques
00:35:56
Speaker
But yeah.
00:35:57
Speaker
Speaking of that, we are going to part ways with our shrink fit machine. And I think we've got like somewhere between 10 and 15 holders. So if anyone listening is interested, it works great. We just aren't using shrink fit. It's not the right fit for us right now. And it's as part of our kind of overhauling the shop where we all kind of huddle. We're like, yeah, let's, let's, let's let that somebody else have that. So if it was interested, you can shoot me an email, john at Saunders machine works.com.
00:36:25
Speaker
It's the Meritool one. It is, yeah. Cool. We built our own air cooling ring for it, which helps a lot on the post-heat cycle. We've got a bunch of our holders. I guess it's great. We've switched to hydraulic or collets or whatever. Do you use a lot of hydraulic?
00:36:46
Speaker
We do, yeah. We picked up a bunch of the YGs and the runouts been great and they come in the sort of short, stubby rigid ones. And then for the five axis stuff, they've got a number of the longer ones. And it's just so easy to switch the tools out when we want to switch them out. That's the thing I like. It probably is the fastest of all of them.
00:37:07
Speaker
Even the PG takes a little bit. I could see the hydraulic being faster than the PG call it. That's pretty cool. I don't have any hydraulics. Just have it or shrink. Have it. Cool. I've got an idea in my head. I've used a little bit of relieved shank end mills where you can stick it out two inches or more or whatever.
00:37:36
Speaker
just the end is cutting a little half inch at the end or something. You've used quite a bit of that, right? Have you found a significant rigidity increase versus just flutes the whole way? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't say we've done a ton, but we've certainly done a decent amount in both aluminum and steel, something like a three-eighths. Actually, we've done quarter, three-eighths and a half inch.
00:38:00
Speaker
taking a say two and a half inch gauge length, or excuse me, stick out on a three eighth inch tool. So that's quite a few times. Yeah. And having that, you know, only have say a half an inch of fluid at the tip and the rest is solid carbide core market difference. Interesting. Absolutely worth it. Well, application specific, but I wouldn't hesitate to try that. Cool.
00:38:23
Speaker
Yeah, the only things I have a couple in the current and I use them for tabbing off like you need the clearance of the neck to be able to do that. But yeah, I was just curious about the rigidity. And if you don't need the flutes that long.
00:38:38
Speaker
than don't. I mean, a better solution is for sure either a longer holder or a shorter tool period, but if you got to get in there. The other option to not discount is a number of people, AB Tool and I think YG, somebody else, I'm not thinking of, make extensions. They make collet extensions, they make shrink fit extensions, and that's great because you can reuse that and it's obviously going to be stiffer
00:39:08
Speaker
I don't know. I don't know how tight you're trying to get in there. Yeah. We've got a bunch of those, uh, AB tools, um, a little set screw on the side, like they're great. We use them on the neck and where I laid. Um, Oh, that's a great call for, for lathe clearances when you're tight. Yeah. I like that. We've got some eighth inch call it, um, and mill ones. And, uh, it's got like two or three set screws on the side and it just works right now. It's great. And yeah, they're beautiful.
00:39:37
Speaker
I don't know. The few we've gotten have been helical on the relief shank. I'm sure a bunch of people make them, but I don't know of anybody else that would be like a go-to who's got a good- Yeah, there's a company up here in Toronto, Deboer Tool, that they got a great website and they ship like the same day and cheap and great quality. So yeah, I've been getting my relief stuff from them. Sweet. And they're local and it's like, go local. Are you using them then?
00:40:03
Speaker
I'm using them just for the tabbing on the Kern right now, so not much, but yeah, it's good to know. What we found, especially on tabbing stuff when you're just trying to get through the material, was the recipe that we came up with that I put on Provencut for a
00:40:21
Speaker
a long aluminum tab off of a thick part was effectively a slotting recipe. So we slowed down the surface footage quite a bit, but you're also kind of burying that tool. Like you're actually taking a decent depth of cut and you're still moving at a decent feed right through the material. But I think I was going to like 200 surface feet versus 1500 if it were a stubby tool or, or, or proper, uh, ratio of, of length to stick out. Yep. Yeah. So you make sense, tweak. Yeah.
00:40:51
Speaker
Cool. Sweet. Yeah, I don't know. What else? What are you up to today? Trying to fine tune that. I'll see if the tool chipped last night like it did the night before on the Kern. Yeah, it's thrown off the pivot hole and the spacer hole tolerances. And it's just a four flute eighth inch end mill. Chipping on the corner, obviously.
00:41:19
Speaker
Yeah, or up the side sometimes to can't have a corner right on it. It probably could. So I'll have to look at that. And that might solve a lot of the problems or I'll switch out to a different tool that does have a corner right. Yeah, and we're having some inconsistencies with the Norseman blades to Eric says they're they're moving around a little bit like tolerance wise.
00:41:42
Speaker
On the eighth inch, if you are using that tool to do any form of roughing, you could rough it and then shove the tool deeper. If you can, there's geometry permits, shove the tool deeper and rough, or you can finish almost the top of the flute, which normally doesn't get used as much. That's a good point. Sometimes I do do that. Can I do it here? I might be able to do it here. I'd have to clearance the fixture underneath, but I could. You could do that once with a busted tool. Yeah. That's not a bad idea.
00:42:13
Speaker
I like little hacks like that. Yeah, for sure. I'll do that with an eighth-inch ball mill. I use the ball to engrave or to surface or whatever, and then I'll shove it down, and I'll use the side flutes as an eighth-inch end mill. That's a good one. And it's better because I'm closer to the shank. I'm more rigid because I'm up there. And it's a double duty for the tool on the Moray because it only has 30 tool pots, which is not enough.
00:42:39
Speaker
I get two tools out of the one tool by doing that. It's fantastic. Will the 30 be enough if you get a second proper vertical that lets you split up what you do? It could if you split it up, yeah. If we did blades on one and handles on the other, yeah, we could split some tools.
00:42:57
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, totally. John, you can absolutely get to that point, right? Because right now, we're trying to do everything on the one machine. It's great, but man, I'd love like three more tools to have some redundancies. We're talking about that if we get that VF3, which is do we get the 30 or 50? The easy way to
00:43:20
Speaker
play devil's advocate was if you did that upgrade for the next five machines, not that I can even think about that. That's a whole nother machine that you've just got almost in like upgrade or something like that. So it's like, as we get more product specific and process specific, like our 30 tools should be fine, but gosh, you don't want to screw that up.
00:43:43
Speaker
That's really interesting. I would definitely say if it's your first and only machine, get them all. Get the biggest tool changer you can, generally speaking. But for you, you've got, I don't know, 400 machines by now. And you're getting more product-specific machinery. The 50 might be wasted.
00:44:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's an interesting thought. It's not an easy one. I mean, of course, the focus of get every option that can't be field upgraded, which you can't switch from a 30 to a 50. But it's not cheap. And boy, 50 isn't even really going to be enough if you're a job shop. So hold on, you're better off spending that money on a tool holder system that lets you buy holders college dedicated set up like the s tool system that lets you swap stuff out because that's the key to long term. It's not just to have every
00:44:32
Speaker
Even if you have a 512-matte survey, the key is not just to have every single thing you own in the tool changer at all times. Then you forget about everything and you keep adding eight to 10 mils. Maybe actually that could be an answer. If I could have a cot in a bathroom in the tool changer, I might actually make that work. Awesome. Excellent. Cool. I'll see you next week. Have a great day. Take care. Take care. Bye.