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#365 double tape and glue method
502 Plays8 months ago
TOPICS:
- double tape and glue method
- Saunders open house April 13
- Willemin crash
- CNC machines of the Future
- Looking for an aluminum machine
- LIGO gravitational device
- Nut runner torque device
- Drilling holes efficiently
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Journey
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, episode 365. My name is John Grimsmough. And my name is John Saunders. And this is the weekly manufacturing podcast where we talk about ups and downs and struggles and wins and losses and all of running your own manufacturing business, starting in a garage and building it to something kind of serious now. Yes. Yes.
00:00:25
Speaker
Well, I was out last week, so I have a few things, but the floor is yours.
Innovative Part Holding Techniques
00:00:30
Speaker
Okay. Well, do you want the big win or the big loss first? Let's say positive. Big win. I mean, I can be positive with anything.
00:00:43
Speaker
We've been playing with the double tape and glue method for holding parts down and I've honestly struggled with it quite a lot. Losing parts, making carbon fiber inlays and all the inlays fly off. I've not had a super good success rate with it.
00:00:58
Speaker
And then last night I tried it with some of your advice and some of the other guys online. Put down the powder coating tape on both parts. Make sure it sticks really good and it's clean. Scuff it up with some sandpaper. And then I'm using thick CA glue and no activator as opposed to medium and activator. And then I clamped it and set it for like 45 minutes or something. Let it really cure. And those parts were on there good.
00:01:25
Speaker
And I was like, yes, pumping my fist in the air at the end. I was like, this actually worked really good. I'm trying to remove the little pieces at the end and I'm chiseling them with a little screwdriver. And I'm like, even the small pieces are held extremely well. I'm like, yes, this is my answer. Whatever brand combination, like it's finally working for me. So I have so much more confidence getting back into inlays and doing that. I was actually cutting damasteel blades.
00:01:49
Speaker
So two blades of Damascus from this bar. And last time I cut Damascus blades, it started to flutter at the end because the glue let go. I was like, oh no. But yes, that worked out really well. I'm pretty happy with that.
Precision and Machining Strategies
00:02:05
Speaker
Do you burnish the tape? I push it with my finger.
00:02:11
Speaker
You can use a dowel pin, but you can also get ... Our heat treat foil roll came with a little roller that would block on a handle. Like a pizza cutter, but not a cutter.
00:02:24
Speaker
Yeah, but a, yeah, bearing. Okay. Yeah. And so burnishing the tape down for sure helps, but I'm really happy because I felt like we talked about this weeks ago. I was like, I was kind of like, you can't abandon this because it will work. Yes, exactly. Awesome.
00:02:41
Speaker
Yeah, so once once I felt how secure the final pieces were, and as I'm trying to chip them off, I'm like, I could machine a quarter or a dime with this method. And I'd feel confident if I was gentle with the machining. So it's like, finally, okay, this this feels great.
00:03:00
Speaker
I would humbly remind or add that it is still, you know, with a vice A plus B equals C, you know, tightening it in the part equals clamped full stop with this stuff. If you ran, you know, five runs a day for a year of this, sometime something's going to goof. Like you're going to have a bad whatever for it. So it's a lack, it's not the same certainty. And so I always think about that with regard to like, when it fails, how do I know? And is it going to, what's it going to damage?
00:03:29
Speaker
Exactly. Because I love it, but it's still not a vice or whatever. Yeah, of course. And obviously, your machining strategy plays a big role to how you tap the parts off at the end, how you cut through all that stuff.
Exploring Glue Types for Machining
00:03:43
Speaker
but I was able to perfectly cut through the first layer of tape and not touch the second layer of tape and even the tape remnant felt like thicker and kind of stronger from the thick CA glue and it just looked really cool. I'm just super happy with how that worked out. What did you learn on thickness? Does that change?
00:04:02
Speaker
the thickness of the glue, it gave me a lot more time to set up the parts. Okay. Which is good. It gave me time to squish the glue down, move it all around, and then put the part on and jiggle it around. And that probably, you probably have minutes before it's actually like settling, which I found was really good. Just with the medium glue sometimes, and the activator especially, you put it down, you got about two seconds to position the part before it's, you're committed.
00:04:29
Speaker
And then I also made these really cool, it's like a camp twist clamp, but not, but I made them specifically fit to be super low profile and fit around this vice palette that I made. So that helped me grip it down good.
00:04:44
Speaker
We, but the viscosity is not always correlated to the cure time. Is that correct? I think it is. Oh, really? More or less. Yeah. Like thin glue is one to two seconds. Medium is five to 10 or something and thick is more. Not all brands advertise that, but some brands do advertise that. So I'm assuming it's kind of the answer. We buy those 10 packs off Amazon of the little like semi disposable
00:05:10
Speaker
super glues, they're like the size of a, they're shaped like a toothpaste tube, except they're only like an inch long. Crazy glue ones like, yeah. They're not, we don't, well, actually, we will use that for fixturing. But it's more just for when you need superglue for a random piece of plastic or whatever. And we always used to buy the regular whatever CA's and then somebody bought the gel type recently.
00:05:34
Speaker
And it is nice because like, well, I think the most recent time I used it was I cut my finger. And the gel is nice because it just doesn't run all down your hand, kind of stays in place. Is it different than a thick? I don't know. I don't know that I've used the thick, but the gel is more like a gel, like, I don't want to say it's like peanut butter, but it's more, it would be like it's like, it doesn't
00:06:00
Speaker
have that runniness to it. Like thicker than honey kind of thing. Because even the thick CA glue is still runny. Yeah, like if I put the gel on a piece of aluminum that I was holding up perving the ground, it wouldn't run down at all. Okay. And the thick kind of wood a little bit. Yeah. I'll let you look at someone you're here next week. Yes.
00:06:22
Speaker
But the activator, for sure, kills your setup time. And I believe the activator weakens the bond. Yeah. Well, because traditionally, you put activator on one part and glue on the other part, and you shove them together. And what I'm wondering is if the activator is preventing a lot of glue from hitting the one side part that doesn't have glue on it, because it has activator on it. I don't know. That was the instructions on how to use it, though. Yeah, exactly. Activator one. I wonder. I don't know.
00:06:52
Speaker
I just put, I didn't put glue on both parts, but I put glue on the one part and then just put it together. I remember years ago doing a job out of Maycore on, actually it was on the, you've never seen like ceramic material, Maycore. You had a video on this, didn't you? Yeah, good memory. I feel like I saw it not that many years ago. Well, now I'm going to bear something. It's like a cigar tray or something?
00:07:22
Speaker
I'm wondering if I did use a scrap for a video because we did a job shop job. I don't remember if we filmed that but now I'm embarrassed if I'm making this up on this job or a different job. What punchline was, and this is hardly a Eureka moment revelation, but basically when you have a really slow
00:07:40
Speaker
When you have a very small amount of time, what we would do is 3D print or put in some pins that would give you a quick alignment. Basically, you could push the material up against the two pins before you pushed it down. That way you're not worried because, oh my God, anytime you try to pry pressure downward with the lubricant, it twists the part. Then you're like, no. Your cure time is still only a few seconds.
00:08:07
Speaker
So that's great. You're back to making inlays? Back, yeah. Yeah, I use that for damaged steel. I want to start making a lot more damaged steel so that just increase the confidence exponentially. And then inlays will get a lot easier. And yeah, I mean, that's the proof in the pudding. Like last time I tried to make inlays from a one foot squared piece of carbon fiber, I think I was supposed to make 16 sets and I got like two.
00:08:31
Speaker
Yeah, the bags that were full in. Yeah, it was just bad, but yeah. Yeah. Another reminder, if you ever could, even if you have an extra corner somewhere is one or two small finger clamps will be a huge force multiplier. You know, if you're able to like, for example, do all the work and just avoid those two little areas and fusions. Well, depending on your pattern, I've been using the trim toolpath more to
00:08:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think I talked about that on the timing chain covers that we're making on the Porsche stuff, and it's really helpful to just do a simple 2D contour and then use a parametric trim to say, hey, I don't want you to machine into the, we call them castle grips, like town grips in this certain area. Yep. I like it. Okay.
Community Engagement: Machine Shop Yard Sale
00:09:23
Speaker
So speaking of April 13th,
00:09:27
Speaker
You want a quick update on that? Yeah, we have the hours and info over on sauntersmachineworks.com. If you go to the bottom of the page, it says equipment for sale. Sorry, that's just, we put it in there because we have some, the Haas machines up there still, but then machine shop yard sale. So Saturday, April 13th, we are going to have a door opening time at 9.30, first come first serve. We appreciate everybody that's reached out. We're not kind of,
00:09:54
Speaker
taking the time to answer questions on prices for two reasons. Number one, I haven't figured everything out yet. And number two, it's a yard sale. Come here. Prices are there. Bring cash. I think we are going to end up having to charge a credit card surcharge for stuff that people want to run through a credit card because I'm just trying to keep it simple and would rather people pay cash than incur that. But laptops, timers, tooling,
00:10:19
Speaker
Probably our scissor lift. I mean, like a whole schmuck is board of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And John's going to be there. Yeah. That's going to be good. Yeah. I've heard from a couple of people that are excited to come. Yes. Yeah. It's good. Yeah. In inevitably we'll end up kind of just hanging out and talking shop, which is fun too. Yeah. That's fun too. So nine 30 star time. Is there like an official end time or is it just going to like Peter out until everybody's like, well, what are you having for dinner?
00:10:46
Speaker
It'll be that. From a sale standpoint, I'm hoping that I'm pricing everything correctly, but if for some reason I've missed the mark on something, you know, come one or two o'clock, I'll probably start tweaking that as needed. And then, yeah, hang out. For sure, it'd be fun to get a group hanging out, all that stuff. Anything I'm missing that we should do or whatever.
00:11:16
Speaker
I don't know. Selfishly, kids might want to come down and hang out with you guys, your family, your kids away from the shop, but also in the shop. We will coordinate maybe some stuff to do. We'll probably come down on Friday, actually. Yeah, perfect. Obviously, because if we're starting that early on Monday, we got a six-hour drive or so.
00:11:37
Speaker
Yeah, we'll be there on Friday. I'm pretty sure our kids are going to be helping out, too, which is important and helpful, if you will. Sweet. Cool. The Willamond is still here, which it's supposed to not be. So I mean, I don't know if the event is supposed to be next door, but inevitably, I'm sure we'll want to have people come check this shop out. What
Tornado Experience and Impact
00:12:00
Speaker
else do I say? Oh, kind of on off topic, but we had crazy weather last night. First time in my life, I've actually
00:12:07
Speaker
had my phone's tornado warning go on. So warning, you learn this stuff, is not a watch. A watch is like, hey, FYI, could be a tornado. A warning is there are already rotational patterns happening that have not formed a tornado, but one could happen in 10 seconds. So you need to be in your basement. So we all went down to the basement.
00:12:30
Speaker
We had some lots of rain, lots of flooding. We're okay in our parking lots of mess, but no big deal there. But then across the road from us and down about 300 yards as a barn roof blew off and it blew across the road into an airplane hangar. There's a little municipal airport here. That's no joke. So it won't affect the event so far as I can tell for next week. But yeah, that was kind of, that's pretty close to home. Yikes.
00:12:59
Speaker
So a tornado did not form, but the wind was still nuts and crazy. Yeah, and there's lots of flooding around the area with roads closed. And I don't know what the storm seemed to be way less than they were saying. But it also hit the greater area with just a lot of rain. Crazy. OK, what's your bad news?
Wilhelmin Machine Crash and Resolution
00:13:25
Speaker
So I crashed a Wilhelmin.
00:13:27
Speaker
Oh, John. But it's fine. I'm machining these soft jaws and I've done it before, not this exact program, but I copy the Fusion file and I apply it to this new program and I'm making a new set of soft jaws with similar programs as I did before. I was just engraving the top of the soft jaws with the name of what they are.
00:13:48
Speaker
And so it does a couple tool paths and it goes to the engraving tool and then it just plows right into the soft jaws, like deep. And I was just like, what the heck? I'm standing right there. I'm like, holy cow. No, you're not supposed to do that. I don't know if the machine is all armed out or if I paused it, but I was ready for it.
00:14:09
Speaker
And so I'm trying to figure out why on earth that happened. Like I've engraved soft jobs before, the tool offset is the same, everything's fine, but it plowed right into it. And then so I go to look at the fusion file and I eventually figured out that my Z orientation is pointed down, not up. What?
00:14:27
Speaker
But it did the rest of the part fine? Yeah, but that particular engraving operation had the Z pointing down, not pointing up. Oh, because you had tool orientation on. Yeah. And you shouldn't have at all, right? Because it would have been... I usually do for like some of the machining is done from the side, so it'd be 90, so you need tool orientation on. And then this is on the sub side, the vice side. Vice
00:14:54
Speaker
Vice was up because I was engraving the top of the adjust. Anyway, I did have tool orientation on and as he was down and I was like, come on, John, like you're supposed to know this.
00:15:08
Speaker
But so the Regofix PG holder plowed about almost half inch into this aluminum jaw. It bored a hole. That's impressive. It is kind of impressive. And the machine was stuck. It welded itself to the jaw. So I'm like, how do I undo that? I can't just lift it up. I tried to unclamp the tool holder and lift up the Z, but it doesn't want to lift Z with it to unclamp manually.
00:15:37
Speaker
I'm like, I just got to unbolt the soft jaw and lift it up with the spindle. And even that was kind of tied up and tight. And I'm like, do I open the vice, do I close the vice or whatever? But I did that. I unbolted it, lifted it up. The soft jaw stays stuck to the holder. Then I manually remove the tool. And then I actually got it on video where I tried to tap off the, um, the aluminum jaw from the holder with a little dead bull hammer. And, uh, I got it off.
00:16:04
Speaker
And, uh, and then I did a calibration on the machine and Z axis moved by nine thou, which is not terrible, but something it's, it's not great. Um, but it seems fine. Everything's seems great. If I remember the, so the Willamins V axis is a dinner plate on a dinner plate, two circles. They're both, both of the other. Okay.
00:16:29
Speaker
and so that rotates with a belt and that B rotation as well would also be what determines your Z and technically your X, but basically it's meant to have the ability to move because somebody has to move when you crash.
00:16:49
Speaker
So they are. We think they are pinned in place the. Well, they are. Yeah, because when I took the spindle out, yeah, it's you put it back on, it's pinned into place. I don't think there's a slip plane in the. Thank you. It's a little orientation definition. I think just the servo ball screw, something like moved or slipped or.
00:17:14
Speaker
Okay. So that would be great if that's all it was.
Future of CNC Machines: Intelligence and Prevention
00:17:16
Speaker
Yeah. And like on our Tornos Swiss lathe, it's literally the, um, the coupler that attaches the servo to the ball screw. It slips. Yeah. It's like if you put your finger in your other fingers and you slide it, it's like that. And it just, ours was not tight enough from the factory because we kept losing X axis.
00:17:37
Speaker
Oh, I remember this. Yeah, on our tornos. And then the guy came in and he tightened these two little screws and I'm like, okay, so what's the torque spec? How did he go? And he goes, I don't know, I've just done it a bunch. I can't learn that. I just got a feel for it. But it hasn't been a problem since. So yeah, on the Wilhelmin, I'm thinking something like that. Gave up some space.
00:18:00
Speaker
So the only reason I know it's 9,000 is because I turned to diameter and it's like way bigger than it should have been. Um, but I'm still aligning X, Y and Z. And then B also I've got a test bar in the spindle. Um, I still have to do some of that, but, um, so I'm taking my time on that.
00:18:18
Speaker
What does simulation show? It shows a massive crash and I did not simulate. Oh, and I am far from ever going to throw shade on that because I don't know. I often do, but this one, it was like soft dress, whatever. I'm just engraving it.
00:18:35
Speaker
It reminds me, which I usually do, but before you post, click on every operation and make sure your orientation is in the right place because on a five-axis, on a Wilhelmin, on a Swiss, it's messy if your orientation happens to be in the wrong direction. Sometimes it is.
00:18:56
Speaker
I remember eight years ago, probably, frankly, when I was much hungrier to be innovative with video content, that was full of energy. Not that I'm not now, but I'm much more chill now.
00:19:12
Speaker
I started talking to a buddy Tyler at Matsura about like, hey, can you help me? Because Matsura is, I mean, they are amazing machines, but especially back then, these were like, just, you know, incredible machines. I was like, Hey, I wanted to start doing a video on like, what would from a ground up
00:19:27
Speaker
how would you build the CNC machine of the future? And we're so beholden to, we all are riding horses and somebody's saying, hey, let's make a faster horse. And Henry Ford is saying, I'm gonna build a car.
00:19:43
Speaker
There's no reason between software and the controller and the post and the kinematics of the machine that this stuff can't be far more intelligent on machine crashes, on software. It tells you that there's a crash. And I've used different CAM systems. I've used CAMplete. It all stinks, frankly, compared to like, I post, I don't post as much these days myself, but as a shop, we're posting thousands of programs a month. We're not simulating each one, no way. Yeah.
00:20:10
Speaker
And I come up with all the other ideas of what would a CNC machine be able to do? Datrons control has aspects of it with the camera system and the vision. And Rob Locke would have talked about it would be so easy to put cameras in a machine to look at recognition of, hey, you're trying to call program 27, but that sure looks like the fixture for program 33. What are you doing? That's like
00:20:35
Speaker
You could do that today, but nobody is, and there's all these burdens of interfaces and control systems. I feel like everything is iterative on what we have, and we're just tweaking and making an improvement. Even you look at a CERN or a Hermely, there's greatness of it, but it's also built upon the standard and the format of what everybody else does.
00:20:58
Speaker
Yeah. It's very hard to start from scratch and make a profitable company and invent something massively different, but I'm sure some people are trying. Yeah. Remember what CJ was talking about with the vibration bars and how you can find those harmonic ranges where tools work? I like hammering on the boring bar and measuring the vibration and all that stuff.
00:21:21
Speaker
I like that because it's not what you sometimes see of fake or stacked demos where it's like, this is not real. This is real. This is like using science to understand the actual physics of a cutting to get a tool like, oh my, I could go on. It's like that idea of building the new machine tool of the future.
00:21:44
Speaker
Well, I'll share. We had two crashes. I wouldn't, neither one of them are particularly noteworthy. But the first is relevant to your story because we had a bar remnant that we miscalculated the remnant. And so when it was doing the OD turning on our Saunders MachineWorks SC20Y, there wasn't enough sticky in the Royal College to push the bar out. Not a big deal.
00:22:07
Speaker
We would just need to realign the turret. That is what you call a sliding plane. Slip plane. Slip plane, yeah. And I actually have come to love that system. We build our own little realignment jacks and you just loosen the turret screws like a four jaw, chuck if you will, and then you have these jack screws to realign the turret, sweeping it in. It takes three or four hours. Grant's really good at it. Nice.
00:22:33
Speaker
It's probably one of those things where the first time it happens, you're like, this is a dumb design. Why don't they just pin it into place? And then you start to realize the beauty of it, right? Yeah. And like we didn't even that crash didn't even generate an alarm. We just heard it. So you knew you knew it was not great. But it's nice that the machine doesn't have an actual like over travel alarm or crash alarm. Yeah, I would I still wish there could be more like ceramic-y shear pins where it could hold it in place until a crash and then it let's go.
00:23:03
Speaker
And then the horizontal, first time ever, and it's actually, it really stunk because we were trying to run, we were a little familiar, we were a little bit stressed on production. So part of that's because we're still running the aluminum on it. Happy to come back to that, I'd subject. But we were running aluminum and then we needed to run steel because we were getting low on a few products.
00:23:27
Speaker
And then I was about to leave for spring break with the kids and family. And I was, I think at home, though I was at piano lessons with the kids, and I got an email with a bad alarm. I don't remember what the alarm was, but it was not what I had seen. I googled it and I'm like, oh boy, we just crashed. And it upset me. I was not able to, like,
00:23:49
Speaker
I was not able to say, oh, it is what it is. I'll go look at it later. I'm like, no, this is not good. So I actually left the kids at the lesson and drew over to the shop. And I was actually really relieved when I got there. A piece of material had, uh, face mill had pushed it out of the vice. So probably operator error of just forgetting to torque it, which
00:24:14
Speaker
I can't complain. We've made thousands of parts and we've never had somebody do that. Or usually if you do it, it's actually sort of why we rough first on the outside because if it's loose, the end mill will just pull it out. Okay.
00:24:31
Speaker
The face mill caused the part to dislodge, but when it dislodged, it got pinched between the face mirror fixture. So it was traveling at like seven inches a minute. It only even barely chipped one of the face mill inserts. Really? Touched off a few things to make sure nothing moved. So knock on wood. Was the machine, I mean, that's a very strong machine, but was it kind of twisted up? Was it under compression in this crash state?
00:24:59
Speaker
So, yeah, so what happened was the part
Learning from Machine Crashes
00:25:02
Speaker
pulled out and then it kind of part went to the right. As it went to the right, it got wedged between the vise and the tool. And then must have been enough for the machine to generate a out of like position error, if you will. But it was, I mean, I'm going to guess it was able to very, very quickly. Actually, I'm sure it was able to quickly tell it because it
00:25:23
Speaker
it didn't even really damage the face mill. That's cool. Yes. I got lucky there. I was like, Oh, actually that was a good example of where even though we were stressed, uh, our focus on production, I should say, I saw it and I was like, okay, we're actually okay. I reloaded up a new piece of material. And then I was like, no, John, walk away. Like I was pretty worked up about it. And I was like, we'll deal with it tomorrow. We'll do more checks, make sure the machine's okay. Exactly. Yeah. It's,
00:25:50
Speaker
It's easy to want to rush back into things, but stuff like that is time to put the different hat on, as Angela says. You can put your nerd hat on and apply this properly. Yeah. Okay, so here's my question for you.
Choosing a Machine for Aluminum Work
00:26:06
Speaker
I think I know your answer, but we are looking at what other options we should consider for the aluminum machine.
00:26:15
Speaker
I still really want the twin, I call it twin pallet machine. I don't know if there's a better term, but the dual table machines. So you have one spindle, but you have an extra pallet so that you can be setting up pallet A and B's running and then just does a 180 degree rotation. Brother R650 seems like probably the best option, but also probably the most expensive, but lots of people have brother controls. CJ has his exact machine. You just got a brother. That certainly helps.
00:26:46
Speaker
The other options that I found, Smart Machine Tool makes a machine like this. Doosan actually makes one that I didn't know about, I found. I can't remember if I found any others off the top of my head. But the ringer is that the Brother is the only one I've seen with 40 tools. Okay. I created a tool library infusion with all of our aluminum parts, consolidated it down. It was 28 tools.
00:27:16
Speaker
You can get 30 tool changes from other people. It's 20 tools. I can pretty easily get from 28 down to 23 by just being smarter with tool management. But still, that means I only have seven extra tools. And boy, I'd rather have 17 extra tools. Exactly.
00:27:36
Speaker
Is the plan for this machine literally only aluminum? You don't see steel running in it. You got other machines for that. There will never be a piece of steel in this machine. Yeah. That's an interesting way to do it. Because if you were to mix materials, you need a whole set of tools, like steel tools. You know what I mean? So for tool count, that would be a plus one for getting the bigger tool changer. But I mean, the other thing is the brother is just a fantastic machine.
00:28:06
Speaker
No, I don't disagree with that at all, but it might be the case that the initial quotes I'm looking at is such that the brother could be 50% more expensive. Yeah, that's a lot. I'm an ROI guy. I want to make sure I don't get in love with brands and colors because the reality is this machine needs to be a Honda Accord. It needs to make these soft jaws and relatively basic parts that don't have crazy tolerances.
00:28:33
Speaker
And if you can buy a machine for, I'll make this up, it's for 110 instead of 170. I care about that. Yeah, that 50 grand is going to be a lot. It's going to take a lot of work to make that back. Yeah. But the bigger question is the tool thing. And I do, I mean, I feel like you
00:28:56
Speaker
like you would give your left arm for more and the Maury, right? Yeah, on the Maury and on the speedio. Speedio has only got 21, which is quick, quickly eaten up by a probe, a fan, you know, some basic tools. A speedio with 60 tools would be incredible. Yeah, right. I'd buy more of them, you know, like the new ones have 28, which is very helpful, but still
00:29:22
Speaker
Oh, yours is old enough to- Just after I get mine six months later or something, they're like, check out the 28 tools. I'm like, darn. It's fine. Luckily, we don't need more than 21 for any single run, but I can't run too many mixed components because the whole groups of tools are different.
00:29:49
Speaker
I don't know. All I can say is I'm super happy with this video, but it's got its quirks and it's learning things. But the benefit is lots of people have them. We know, we probably know a hundred people that have a speed. Is it as simple as just updating your post infusion and running? Like you didn't have to, the controls doesn't take. It's very famicky, which is kind of like Haas. Um,
00:30:16
Speaker
There were some weird things. I can't remember exactly what they were. It's just this learning, like, I don't remember. And mine's kind of weird because it put the laser on it. And so some of the cycles there were more challenging. Oh, yeah. Did you do what's your spindle and table probe hardware versus software? How did you mix that up? What do you mean? Somebody, maybe a CJ, somebody has bloom hardware with Renishaw codes.
00:30:43
Speaker
Yeah, I've heard of people doing that too. I'm using all Bloom codes, and frankly, they're not great. And I've had to change them quite a bit to do what I want. Oh, yeah? Yeah. And I just found out, fun fact, that my probing cycle, the main master file program, the G code, is, I think, from 2005. What?
00:31:10
Speaker
and it doesn't match the manual as far as one code, which I've now crashed two bloom probes and I'm on my third. This is part of the reason is because my file doesn't match the manual. That's B. Yeah, that's not fun. Maloney. B-Loney. I just found this out a couple of days ago.
00:31:33
Speaker
Because there's this feature where you type in A0, A1, or A null for no value. And it chooses if you're doing a relative move, like move a quarter inch and touch the object. Or if you're moving to the origin, wherever that is in space.
00:31:48
Speaker
So for Z especially, imagine you hover over the part and you go probe Z 0.25 down. Okay, done. But if you're six inches up on the vice and you say probe Z 0.25 to Z 0.25, which is way below the surface, I pancaked a probe doing that once. And it didn't, there's another reason to it. But anyway, part of it is my understanding and part of it is the codes being very,
00:32:17
Speaker
weird for me. Yeah. Huh. I'm sorry. But other than that, the machine itself is another machine. It's great. Yeah.
00:32:27
Speaker
We, the quote, or the first quote we have at least shows a Renishaw spindle probe, like the LMP40, but then a Bloom Z Nano laser. Yeah, I've seen that a lot. Tool setter, which I'll use, frankly, more for brake detect, because aluminum tools, the wear is not a big thing. We'll have to change tools to that often. It seems like most video people just get the Z height probe, just the Z Nano.
00:32:52
Speaker
and just no diameter, no nothing. It was like 200 bucks more for diameter, I think. Really? So I was like, yeah, I'd rather have the ability to. Sure, yeah. We don't do comping, but I'm wondering if.
00:33:04
Speaker
where we have had problems, and again, this is more of a steel, a tool leading in shoe and un-steel, but we've had end mills break where the side of it breaks off. I think we talked about this. The gauge is the same, but half the side of the tool is missing. Again, going back to my dream CNC machine, kind of like what, oh, who's it?
00:33:24
Speaker
Canon, no, Karen, I think. Yeah, Karen engineering. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I want to love what they do, but it just seems very, it's like great if you're a tier one auto supplier with engineers and, you know, years long production runs of a single part, but like the machine should be able to recognize the same exact NC file, the same tooling, something is off by huge percentages in terms of noise or sound or spindle load or whatever.
00:33:52
Speaker
I was teaching life about structures and engineering and some topics and stuff. We were reading a book on it and I was telling him that one of my friends runs a CNC machine shop and was getting a bad surface finish on a certain part. We were talking about concrete and stability and stuff.
00:34:12
Speaker
And he figured out it was because a train was driving by five kilometers away. It was leading to a bad surface finish. And Leif was like, no way. I was like, how thick do you think the concrete is under a machine? He goes, I don't know, making stuff up. And it was cool to be able to explain this concept to him as like, no, no, a train driving five kilometers away can vibrate the floor enough to cause a surface finish imperfection on a part. Like, this is the level. Isn't that cool? It was cool.
00:34:40
Speaker
We had a Zoom high school reunion during COVID and it came up that one of the people from our class was working on the, shoot, not LIDO. What's the gravitational wave detector?
00:35:00
Speaker
I can't think of. Oh, LIGO. Yeah. LIGS. So I'm going to butcher this, but they built a machine in Texas and they built a machine in Washington. So they're a thousand miles away and they are probably like the most stable things built in the history of mankind. There's like YouTube videos on it that are worth watching, but they had this theory again, I'm like,
00:35:22
Speaker
not even take physics, let alone explain this like cutting edge stuff. But basically, they were positing that a black hole erupting or star erupting or something would cause gravity to wash across Earth or through space as a actual way like a water wave. And they basically wanted to see what happened in
00:35:43
Speaker
Washington and then 0.000001 seconds later, what happened in Texas or vice versa. And so they needed these devices that are in like a mile long vacuum. But the cool part is they show on one of these YouTube videos how they had suspended them from these isolation suspension bars that are like a mix of glass and tuned dampeners and like string. And it's just like so you know, a train 100 miles away isn't going to affect them.
00:36:11
Speaker
Yeah. So they're really cool. I'm going to have to look up that YouTube video. And they proved they were right.
Automating Torque with Nut Runners
00:36:20
Speaker
They proved that there are waves of gravity. Cool.
00:36:31
Speaker
I owe everybody a thank you and an explanation on improving of the way, actually somewhat ironically, given that we had that part pull out, how we torque parts on the horizontal. I had this question two weeks ago about torque devices and the absolute, this is exactly why I love this community. The term I did not know is called a nut runner.
00:36:57
Speaker
Okay. And there are a billion nut runners and they are, there are pneumatic ones, there are electric ones, there are plugged in ones, or your back cordless ones. And they there's a bunch of different options and varieties. I sort of specked out, it's overwhelming to me. What I specked out though, that I want is
00:37:16
Speaker
a nut runner on a balancer, the big one, at least for the mod vice screws, which is going to be 35 foot pounds. I want it to be on a flex arm style device that does two things. Number one, it means the operator doesn't have to hold the tool, but rather just has to position it. And it means when you torque it, that stabilization arm is absorbing a lot of the torque and not you, your body.
00:37:37
Speaker
And it will also help keep the tool perpendicular. It means you can't drop it. And then I want it to torque down to a settable torque range setting of 35 foot pounds. And then here's an awesome thing. When you set it to loosen, it will loosen the bolt. It's been torqued. It will loosen it, but it will only back it off a preset number of turns. Oh, cool. Yeah.
00:37:58
Speaker
And so I'm going to start with the, um, we do a bunch of quarter twenties and smaller screws that I think I could consolidate to one Torx setting. Um, we actually might end up making some custom screws, which I'm okay with because I want to standardize around a Torx head that's commercially by, um, so Torx plus baby Torx plus everything.
00:38:18
Speaker
We'll just machine it, especially in the new Willyman. I have a call with Sumaki. If you've heard of them, they seem like a super cool company. I first found out about them through Andrew Henry with Henry Holsters, who bought one of their $600 screw feeder. It looks like an ultrasonic, but it feeds screws out. It's like a vibe bowl. Bingo. Yeah.
00:38:42
Speaker
And I actually had that kind of our like, should we buy this list? And then I found out that they make a lot of these, again, it seems overwhelming. There's pages on pages of different models and options. So I was asked if they do sales calls. They're like, yeah, absolutely. So I have a call set up with them. That one doesn't need to be a flex arm because it's like 45 inch pounds, I think. Don't put them in there.
00:39:02
Speaker
But same thing, I want it to tighten down and then I want it to loosen off two turns. Cool. I don't think I need the... The other option you can get is to set up programs that count the number of screws. So basically it gives you a green light after you've tightened 18 screws, if there's 18 screws on the fixture. Is that what Area 419 did something like that? They had the Ingersoll Rand system. Yeah. I thought it counted or did something. Correct, it does, yeah.
00:39:31
Speaker
Or maybe it was some car video I watched, Koenigsegg or something, where they're like, literally, you have to torque 72 screws before you pass go. Yeah. I saw it at Hermlove, but in a more of a wow factor or not, I'd like to be a customer of that stuff, because I think I mentioned this. If you buy the Hermlove from seven years ago, they can tell you what person at what time torqued the screw on the casting. So they can scold them?
00:40:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's a whole different but there's an accountability around like no is you can't. Yeah. Yeah. So I will keep folks posted. I'm hoping the sumaki works out. It looks like the for the lower
00:40:19
Speaker
Uh, the smaller one that would do again, sort of like the 60, 70 inch pounds, I think the tool and the controller and the power supply and maybe like a thousand bucks, which, yeah, that's, that's fine. That's totally no big deal. Yeah. Inch pounds. So what does that max out in the foot pounds, like low foot pounds, 20 or something? Actually fun fact, super easy to divide by 12. So it'd be four foot pounds, five pounds. That's really light. That's like little screws. Yeah. Quarter twenties. I'm going to embarrass here.
00:40:49
Speaker
Sorry, so our torque values that we currently use are 44, 65, and 97 inch pounds. The 44s are for, I think, M5s or 832s. And in that case, I think what I would want to do is move those up to the quarter. I forget what I have to do there. I may need to, well, I can figure that out. But I really want to standardize so we don't have to have different torque spits, different drivers, different programs, different torque values. Yep, yep.
00:41:21
Speaker
What are you up to today? Today is Fusion Training Day. Oh. Super excited. I've got two guys in the shop that have very specific projects that need to get done, and they need some guidance on Fusion. So I'm like, sweet. Wednesday's the day. We're going to sit down. We're going to figure this out. I'm going to push you guys, and we're going to learn some new stuff.
00:41:40
Speaker
It's more off my plate. It's great. Yeah, good. Awesome. Yeah, they're excited. I'm excited. It's hard to find the time honestly to like set aside where multiple people are not tied up. But it has to be done and it's it's good. Super good.
00:41:57
Speaker
Good. That's great. The CAM stuff or just CAD? Mostly CAM stuff. So new foam insert designs that we're making on the router, different combinations of products, and then some Swiss CAM stuff. Nice. That's awesome. So some new integral parts that are going on the Swiss. Jeff is eager to start programming those, which includes some macro stuff. And it's funny, he was digging through
00:42:24
Speaker
They're trying to make a tweak to one of the parts on our Nakamura and I use a lot of macros to determine like bar pull and re clamp and grip and part length and all that stuff. And so he was like going through the logic of reading through my macros and
00:42:39
Speaker
trying to figure out which values to change to do what he wanted. And it was good. He took some time and he came and asked me one question. He's like, what's this number? And it's like, it's like parameter variable 5052 or something. I was like, I don't know, but it's probably like current B position, you know, like the, in the B axis, the sub spindle comes in, it's, it probably reads current position and then applies it to the math. And he reads, looks through again and he's, that makes perfect sense. Oh, that explains everything. Um,
00:43:07
Speaker
So that's cool. Yeah. And in this project, he's going to do, um, do some, some fun little macro tweaking, um, write it himself basically to make this next part. So awesome. Very cool. Very cool. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. That's what I'm up to. What are you up to today?
00:43:27
Speaker
I am, we're adding vendor notes in the Lex. And again, it's kind of one of those things you realize how much tribal richness knowledge there is because some vendors have, it's everything everybody would know. Some vendors have free shipping all the time. Some have free shipping on a certain amount. Some people they deliver on their
Streamlining Vendor and Shipping Processes
00:43:46
Speaker
own truck. So it doesn't actually matter. Some people deliver on their own truck, but we really don't want to ask them for an order unless it's a thousand bucks. So you don't, you know, and
00:43:56
Speaker
There's actually more pressure on me to update that stuff because Serena, who has taken over all of our shipping and fulfillment is crushing it. And so far sooner than I expected, I just realized kind of like what John at Area 419 did. Instead of just like a transition period, I just fired myself. She took over everything. All of our RFQs, she runs through and it's now reactive to where if there is a question, she'll just ask me.
00:44:24
Speaker
But it's confusing because of the reasons I've mentioned, plus some vendors, the PO's still go to a personal inbox like mine or Serena's, now Serena's, because we still place the orders on the website. Long story, it's just easier that way. So if you push a, for example, YG1 or actually even Haas Tooling, if you do orders from there, it's all in Lex, but then the email PO just goes to Serena and then you go place the order on the website. It's pretty simple. Yeah.
00:44:52
Speaker
sort of polishing up that stuff and then looking at should we move away from through spindle coolant drills. We spend a lot of money on modular insert drills for steel fixture plates and it's money I'm happy to spend because it's a... I want to talk to you about that, but you finished your thought.
00:45:17
Speaker
Well, so we found a vendor that makes solid carbide tools that are, the solid carbide drill equipment is cheaper than the modular insert drill. But it's not through coolant? Even the through coolant one is cheaper. In theory, you could push a solid carbide drill longer than a modular drill. Like there's an inherent weakness. Okay.
00:45:40
Speaker
But then I was like, wait here, we're only drilling two times D. Like you don't need through spindle coolant on the two times D hole. Now is there a benefit in terms of tool life? That matters to us because we're drilling literally tens if not hundreds of thousands of holes a month, but it's worth testing both because we've had, you know, we spend at this point,
00:46:01
Speaker
thousands of dollars, certainly a year, maybe even a month on drill inserts. And we've had some availability issues and I don't want to, I don't always want to combat that by loading up on a bunch of inventory of carbide. I'd rather know that we have backup options and drills are weird. Like I'm not willing to, we use a Sandvik right now, I'm not willing to just say, oh, we'll just throw it in his car or Ken and I'll because
00:46:28
Speaker
I don't, they're different enough in how the drill performs, speeds and feeds and so forth. So I'd actually just like to find a better option long-term. That's interesting.
Drilling Tool Options for High-Volume Applications
00:46:40
Speaker
I just quoted a, what's the smallest insert drill you guys use?
00:46:45
Speaker
11.1 millimeters, which is 0.43 inches, aka seven sixteenths. Okay, yeah, we're trying to drill a seven, we are drilling a seven millimeter hole, which is 275 inches, so just over quarter inch. 10 to 12 times D kind of thing. Using a through coolant solid carbide drill, and we're investigating using an insert drill. Not a bad size.
00:47:10
Speaker
Yeah, the ISCAR does make one. Really? Yeah. Oh, wow. And the price wasn't crazy. It was actually very similar to a solid carbide replacement, like the holder of the body. OK. So pricing wise, it probably makes more sense to use the insert drill. But is the performance like the body, is it carbide or is it high speed steel?
00:47:37
Speaker
I have never seen a carbide drill body. It's not to say they might exist, but all of the, I'm going to wager that a thousand, if you'll walk into machine shops, 999 out of a thousand are going to be just, which in some respects you kind of want because carbide is
00:47:54
Speaker
not, the stiffness is not always good. Yeah. And how does the insert sit? Does it literally just click in and that's it? Everybody has their own system. Sandvik is a center tip, or center tip, I should say really, and the side lock screw. Oh really? Kennen metal has a ken tip design. There's a bunch of different. Okay. They all do the same thing though. Yeah. And the drill bodies wear out in theory. Yeah. Every 10, 20 insert changes, you probably should replace the body, which is, it doesn't last forever. Yeah.
00:48:24
Speaker
What's, what's making you think about not keeping a solid carbide there though? Um, performance, the way it sounds when it's drilling, um, and surface finish of the whole various, various things. Um, I don't know. Is this the one that blew up in LA though? That is the same drill. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
00:48:47
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sort of collecting secondhand here say from from the guys in the team. This is titanium. Yeah, and other materials copper and things but okay, the and are you even with it to hold that deep and titanium are you like truly
00:49:05
Speaker
gun drilling it where you just go in and out, which I know you can do. But I'm curious if you are pecking at all. We're not thinking it. Yeah, we do pilot drill like spot pilot drill and then all the way through. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. Good to know. No.
00:49:23
Speaker
My only concern, insert drills below half inch are far less common. I know this because that's all we use. It makes sense. Having that much carbide and half inch carbide is a waste of carbide. Yeah, sure. But I'm very resistant to stuff that's either not available or weird when you're fighting that weird battle. Exactly.
00:49:54
Speaker
Yeah. See you next week. Yeah, week and a half. I'll be there. Awesome. What do you want to do? You still want to talk on Wednesday? Yeah, I think so. I'll see you normal time. Sounds good. Bye-bye.