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#247 - Problems & More Problems
156 Plays3 years ago
TOPICS:
- Saunders got his Okuma chip conveyer this morning.
- Horizontal milling machines.
- Haas lathe origin went wonky.
- Grimsmo is diving into optical flats. Watch this!
- Rask blade surface finish issues.
- Willemin updates.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Surprise Machine Delivery
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode number 247. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. And this is the podcast where we get to share stories about surprise machines that show up that present Tetris level rigging dilemmas. Okay. So I am late to this morning's recording, which is not something I take lightly. I've always thought that it was personal thing. I've just
00:00:26
Speaker
To me, a form of respecting other people's time is sticking to the schedule. Not everybody agrees with that. But I felt bad for John because I said, hey, I'm going to be late. And the reason I'm late is that a truck calls me and he's like, hey, I'm in your driveway. I can't get around the parking lot.
00:00:41
Speaker
So and I wasn't exactly sure what was going to come. So when we bought our Akuma, we have a May Fran, I believe concept 2000. It's kind of like the Rolls Royce high end super awesome. Like if you could if you can get excited about chip chip.
00:00:58
Speaker
uh, sorry, conveyors and filtering types of stuff. This is what you can get excited about. And it was delayed kind of a supply chain. Everyone knows that story these days. So it wasn't supposed to show up now until the end of November. And it sounded like that may
Creative Rigging Solutions and Appreciation for Riggers
00:01:12
Speaker
even get pushed. So this thing shows up well, um, egg on my face, because when Gossager asked me way back when they're like, Hey, the machine is probably going to ship separate from the conveyor. Are you able to unload the conveyor?
00:01:27
Speaker
I've had like nine Haas machines. I'm like, yeah, we're good. Like we've got a forklift, we've got extensions. It's a, I don't remember like a six or 8,000 pound forklift, like not worried about it. Well, conveyors are awkward. They're like a mile long and holy nuts. This thing, first off, it came on a semi-truck enclosed and it's pushed all the way up to the front of the tractor trailer.
00:01:52
Speaker
Like literally touching the, kissing the front and the truck driver got good. Like, thank God that folks are still in that you hear about the, I couldn't even begin to get mad at the truck driver because of the world that we're living. Although he was doing everything that it could be to make you, he's like, he's like, I don't touch it. Not my fault. You know, he just was not the kindest person.
00:02:15
Speaker
I'm like, okay, we got to make this happen. This was in an enclosed semi-truck, like a trailer. You have to pull it directly out the back. Yeah, and he didn't have a pallet jack. All the machines and all the conveyors I've ever gotten are in the like the top comes off kind of semi-truck, so you just get it from the side. Yeah. I think one word, I think it's a fun word, which I'm now forgetting, Castinea, I think is the name of that something.
00:02:42
Speaker
I'm probably getting that wrong. Or just like a flat bed, low boy, whatever. So we, there's no reason to delay the drag this way out. We put a pallet jack up in the truck bed, we go to the front, lift it up, not even close to moving it with the pallet jack alone because it's so long. So thank God we have all this rigging stuff. We grab a tow jack, we grab two rigging skates, we jack up the other end of the pallet, throw skates underneath it. Now it pallet jacks out, no easy. We get it to the lip of the bed. The pallet is like an extra two and a half feet
00:03:12
Speaker
proud of the heavy end of the conveyor. So we quickly sawzall the end of the pallet off because we need to pick it closest to the CG. Then we get our extensions on, we get in there, we lift it. I lifted up like five inches and then I kind of do the backward slam on the brakes test to see
00:03:30
Speaker
I had already figured out it balanced okay based on the way it tipped, but I just wanted to make sure we weren't precarious and it was fine. Safe, we keep everybody clear and then we backed up, cleared it, dropped it down and then when we went to lower it down, we had done such a good job of getting the CG back that we realized the exit shoot of the conveyor was going to hit the mass of the forklift when we lowered it down. So we grabbed two of our new anodizing crates that are these beautiful
00:03:56
Speaker
three foot tall boxes, lowered it down onto those stably, and that let us pick it from the side. It's safely on the ground. It's been a busy morning. A busy past like 32 minutes. Note to self, don't just say you can pick something. Ask for dimensions first. Yeah. I remember when we got our tornos, I think,
00:04:21
Speaker
we didn't get a chip conveyor, but the bar feeder was in just this, it's only a six foot bar feeder, which is in this machine sized box. And I'm like, is that the right thing? Cause this six foot bar feeder, this box is like 12, 15 feet long. I'm like, did we get the right one?
00:04:36
Speaker
Yeah. How do you get that kind
Trade Show Complexities and Machine Purchase Considerations
00:04:38
Speaker
of stuff off? We have the rigors. Yeah. Yeah. I'll tell you, if that's a job, if I could snap my fingers and go work for a year in a totally, well, not totally different, but fairly different world, I would love to go work as a rigger. Really?
00:04:53
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I just think when you see the way they have those forklifts that pick from the top and they've got these, even our local rigger has these A-frame skate style lift posts that can do 100 tons each.
00:05:09
Speaker
Like the weights are just unbelievable and they have these hydraulic systems that can be balanced. You've got the air pads, you've got, you know, most of the big riggers that nowadays in the bigger cities are using VersaLifts that are remote control. So nobody's on the lift. Um, it's pretty cool. So I know a way where you can condense a year's worth of rigging into three days. Just work for MTS. Oh my God. Right. Yeah. No, I don't, I don't like dropping machine. No.
00:05:39
Speaker
Have you ever seen the time lapse videos of those trade show setups? It's super cool. In a day or two, it's like a zoo in there. It's crazy. Yeah. It's weird to think about, too. You get dictated based on your booth placement. If you're at the front, you have to go in earliest. Okuma actually had done the last scientist I think we were at. Okuma had that bridge mill.
00:06:03
Speaker
right at the front of the show. Yeah, a huge one. Remember that? Yeah. I think that's like a month of setup. Oh my goodness. And when I'm there, you know how you can sometimes feel the floor bouncing a little bit? Correct. I don't know if they designed that building for all these machines. Every trade show around the world, right? CNC machining is probably the heaviest
00:06:30
Speaker
objects that are placed on a trade show floor. Is the building designed with that in mind? Obviously, it's safe and strong and they've planned it, but it's more like, yeah, this exhibit hall is big enough for a trade show. Let's put it there.
00:06:45
Speaker
Are you thinking of McCormick or are you thinking of AU in Las Vegas Convention Center? McCormick is what I was thinking of. It's like this is halfway between an urban legend and fact. I'm pretty sure it's true, but I can't prove it. Lost the Autodesk University trade show that occurred at whatever when trade show still happened at. The trade show that's connected to Palazzo Venetian and all that. Sands, I think it's called.
00:07:15
Speaker
they apparently knowingly violate the code requirements for the floor load every year and just pay the fine. That trade show definitely the four shakes. Okay. Now maybe that's the shake I'm thinking of, but I just remember having felt it before and I'm like, this is weird. It's crazy.
00:07:33
Speaker
So it feels good though. We've rigged some of our own equipment. We certainly moved it around in the shop. And what's interesting is we started to seriously look at horizontals. And when you look at a horizontal
00:07:52
Speaker
installed. It just looks like this giant machine or certainly giant compared to a lot of the three axis verticals or even your machines. And when you actually strip them down, it's basically a relatively normal size machine tool. In fact, sort of smaller because the footprint is a bit more compact of the actual iron that has the rails and machines. And then you have a whole ATC matrix and then you have the APC. So those three separate things. Right.
00:08:22
Speaker
in and of themselves, none of them are particularly crazy. Yeah, you just add them up and it grows. But yeah, after we were talking about horizontals the other day, and I was complaining about how big they are.
00:08:34
Speaker
Um, I got a couple of people DM me like this Kitamura horizontal. That's very, very tiny footprint. Yeah. My centers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That one looked pretty cool. Um, I think I'm just used to seeing like the ma'am machines, you know, with a 10 pallet pool at trade shows and it's just a gigantic floor floor plan. Yeah. Well, the ma'ams are the, they're five axis pallet pool thing. Um, they look big, but yeah, they're, um,
00:09:03
Speaker
Well, it is weird. We've got to actually still need to 3D print it to put it on our 3D printed model. But our thought is debating between the 6 or the 10 size where we would leave, like let's say we went with the 10. We would kind of have 6.
00:09:20
Speaker
or excuse me, three product families that we would put in two tombstones per product family. So that would fill up six, which leaves us the room for growth or just having a pallet pool that we could use for one-offs prototyping, fixturing, all that. That is super valuable.
00:09:35
Speaker
Yeah. And it's basically all three-axis work. There's one setup we'd save by having a B, but it's really just higher tool capacity matrix, built-in automation, being able to produce in small batches without having to do any setups. I'm not excited about the
00:09:56
Speaker
quirks and complications of programming put to possibilities. It's not something to take lightly. And we're not the typical, hey, we're going to put 600 parts on it. It wouldn't run. It's not even well suited for the lights out because we'd have relatively low part densities, which means if you hit cycle start at the end of the day, it's going to run for maybe two hours or something. Still valuable time. That's true. And it doesn't negate why I still think we want it.
00:10:24
Speaker
I'm also trying to remember the kind of mistake I made when I bought our first Haas VM3, which was I went all out thinking it was the only machine we were ever going to be able to afford for years, and I over optioned it, which I loved. I mean, it was great, except had I known I was going to buy my second
00:10:40
Speaker
VF2 in like nine months, it would have changed how I bought it. So on this horizontal specs, I'm like, hey, do I want that size matrix? So I want a six or a 10. Do you want certain options and so forth? No, it's a good thought process for sure. I was talking to our buddy Amish about this a week or two ago, because he has his DMG5 axis, but no pallet pool. And it's a big machine. So when he's putting big work pieces on there, it's it.
00:11:07
Speaker
The machine is tied up doing this job until he breaks it down. So if he breaks a tool or whatever, he can't just throw the pallet away and put an easy job in there and go to lunch. The machine is stuck doing that. And I was telling him that's one of the beautiful things I love about the Kern is not only having 200 available tools,
00:11:26
Speaker
So all my fixture making tools in there, my drills, my thread mills, I have steel tools. I have all my production tools are separate. Like I never take a tool out of the machine. I just keep adding more and I use them. I do it very wisely, but all the tools are always in there. So I just, any code I post, the tool is there.
00:11:44
Speaker
And also the pallets, just being able to put a temporary pallet on their advice, an in-process thing. Oh, I broke a tool in that one. Just put that pallet away, put a sticky note on the door, and I'll deal with it later. That kind of stuff is so incredibly valuable. You don't really think about it until you have it. And then it's like, why would you want anything else?
00:12:07
Speaker
Yeah. No, that's what I'm... The way you said that gives me hesitation because we... A couple of years ago when we went down this journey, I was like, man, I'd still rather just have the... Not a current's not the right fit for us, but a Hermla or Matsura was on the radar, like a five-axis pallet pool because like everybody, you really aren't doing true five-axis work, but if you could have little tombstones on there and we're just not...
00:12:33
Speaker
Horizontal is the right work envelope, the right build frame. It's just the right fit for us. Even though I feel like you're selling a little bit of your soul because it's like the word horizontal is to dinosaur as Kern is to the future. You know what I mean? But no, it's machine tool. Exactly. And as you were saying,
00:12:56
Speaker
Think about how you option it and it might not be your last automated machine, your last palletized machine in the next five, 10 years. So maybe the horizontal is the right choice for you now because you make larger work envelope, mostly three plus one axis kind of parts. And then maybe an automated five-axis machine is in your five-year plan.
00:13:18
Speaker
Yeah, I know for sure. And it's actually interesting. I'm pretty darn sure that there's nothing confidential about this because Haas just isn't that way. But we were in a Haas like, we went down to the Formula One race and Haas did like a little, they jokingly called it a trade show or a
00:13:34
Speaker
timeshare pitch like you have to come see us talk about our product so that we can justify having this event and And they talked about like what's coming for Haas on 5-axis and they have a Effectively DT sized UMC coming. Oh Like a little through I think 350 which and if that includes automation, I think that's going to be a super sweet little machine Yeah
00:14:00
Speaker
Well, the UMC 750 is large, right? And then the 500 came out and everybody's like, sweet, this is perfect. And they're working on their automation cell for the 500, right? And yeah, 350. I mean, yeah. That was the takeaway I had from emo too was more
00:14:22
Speaker
folks, rightfully, more machine tool builders are focusing on direct automation integration, so there isn't the need to use third-party software relationships integration. It gets
Dedicated Machines for R&D and CNC Tool Capacity
00:14:36
Speaker
complicated. Yeah. Yours is kind of that middle ground, like it's an aroa, but I think current is a pretty good job at integrating. Current came in, they installed it, they aligned it all up. They've done this before.
00:14:51
Speaker
other than me figuring out the best way to call my palettes and schedule them, which is what I did. Otherwise, the integration is like perfect, seamless and easy and wonderful. Whereas, like I said, I put a lot of research into putting a robot on the Maury or buying an Aurora for it or something, something.
00:15:11
Speaker
It gets complicated real fast or expensive real fast. If I ask you a question, you promise you'll take it seriously and not just start vomiting profusely? Sure. Why not get a horizontal for what you're doing on the Maury? I have tried to consider that. It's perfect, John. Yeah. You could get a two pallet or like it's just one of the two or a four, six.
00:15:42
Speaker
to scale the way you're using those orange tops. It's basically the same style thing. Holy nuts. Or even like the Brother R650 or whatever, the two pallet position one, something like that. It would... Yeah. You get the intrinsic fourth for free though. True. In horizontal. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm keeping my options open.
00:16:12
Speaker
I don't know what I want to do yet. I mean, I still want to buy a second kern as soon as I can, but at that point, do I keep the mori or do I replace it with some other kind of light three axis? I don't know. I keep looking at the Robo drills and brothers and I'm like, these are tiny and amazing. I've always wanted one. Yeah. Yeah. I hear you. And we kind of are, I can see the right on the wall of like,
00:16:39
Speaker
We're doing a really good job utilizing our machines right now, and it means we don't really have a free machine these days, which Ed and I both miss when we need to tinker, test, or whatever. That idea of a tool room, I see it organically. It won't look like that for us, I don't think, but having a machine that's like a swing machine is
00:17:03
Speaker
Or, you know, which could be like for you, it could be the current during the day because you just tinker and then go back to making parks or, um, I'm running out of daytime on the current as well. Like it's producing parts all day, all night. It's fantastic, but yeah, I kind of miss.
00:17:18
Speaker
tingering, like playing. And if I do, if I take time out, then it's like parts that aren't getting made, you know? Yeah. I think that's the obvious distinction to be analytical about it is like, don't mix up your profit center machines with the support. And R&D is super important and having the ability to do R&D without the burden of, ugh, I have to be counterproductive. I have to tear down a fixture or I have to stop
00:17:44
Speaker
producing parts that make us money, that's no good. Or especially like I was talking about in Amish's case, if he wants to R&D parts or slowly program a new job or create something from scratch, his machine is tied up. Whereas my current is literally 30 seconds, if that, to like, okay, I'm done with this. I'm going to run production now.
00:18:07
Speaker
Did they, on his DMU65, they could add the RP3, but they're basically like just buy a new machine and sell yours, right? I don't remember.
00:18:21
Speaker
His machine is sweet. His machine with a RP, I think it's called RP3RPS would be like a three pallet pool would be whole. He said there's also a robot pallet, like a FANUC robot arm cell that they're integrating and can like add right on.
00:18:37
Speaker
So whether he adds it to his machine or buys another machine with that or whatever, I think he just paid off his machine now. So he's had it for five, six years. Yeah, it's amazing. Good for him. It's amazing how five years flies by. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:18:54
Speaker
Well, if anyone's listening that has words of wisdom, the big debate. So we are certainly moving away from the, um, any sort of a chain or default ATC that limits you, maybe limits you upwards of 80. We're moving to the matrix style on our, our thought, which is like,
00:19:11
Speaker
I think it's the one we'd look at is the first cabinet, which gets you up to 148 tools. I can't even think that high. Yeah. I believe you could add even to that in the field, but that should be sufficient. I think we have 120-ish installed in the current right now. Maybe a little bit more. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I used almost all. 200. 210, yeah.
00:19:35
Speaker
We don't do any surfacing to speak of. We don't have that kind of tool wear or lengthy stuff. You could probably get by with 60. I just refuse to. I'm not going to invest in this kind of a machine. Six or 10 ABC. I just can't imagine we're going to pull the trigger on a six because
00:19:58
Speaker
even if we grow, it'll just get used. And then the big debate, which is kind of scary that I don't have more conviction, is 400 millimeter versus 500 millimeter. And the reason to go 500 millimeter isn't because we have big parts. It's because sometimes the only way you can gain efficiency on certain style parts is to go up and why. So taller
00:20:19
Speaker
Like why is, um, up and down, up and down on a horizontal. Yeah. How tall you are at the six foot height of a person. That's why. Um, because if you want to do parts where you machine on the parts, it'd be 90. So when the, when you're on the side backside or front side of the moon, if you will, then you can only basically have one part of running along the, the Y axis because you need access to it.
00:20:44
Speaker
Right, right. Potentially two of you can access just one side of it, one at B90, one at B270, but it's not a detrimental amount of money to move up, but it's more money on everything plus footprint and all that. Anyway, it's fun. Then for the tombstones themselves, do you buy like a blank core?
00:21:10
Speaker
Good question. We've only looked at an Okuma in the Haas EC so far. The Okuma, I believe, comes with the pallets themselves, and then what you do north of the pallet is up to you. The round face, the thin hockey puck. Yeah, exactly. Not the tombstone itself, but
00:21:33
Speaker
What did I say? Oh, yeah. I'm just clarifying. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The palette itself, like the little thing. And then Tombstone City seems to be prolific. And we're the one I hear about a lot. I think we might build some of our own, either monolithic out of material tubing or weldments. Some of the fixture plate stuff we actually have already ideas for in terms of product design would lend itself quite well to it. But I know we've learned a lot there, but that doesn't make me nervous at all. Yeah.
00:22:05
Speaker
For my small pallets, I had a local machine shop with a Haas VF2 core out these four inch by four inch, seven inch tall cubes. They were heavy, so I'm like, I don't need the center. Just core it out so it's like a three inch diameter hole all the way through it.
00:22:25
Speaker
His VF2 must have sounded angry cutting that. Oh, really? Because it looks good. They looked amazing. But yeah, it's a deep hole and a lot of chips to come out. And I was happy to pay it. And I'm really happy to have, I got them to make 25. Now I just have them on the shelf. So I machine the interface and I machine all the sides and all the features. And we're actually making more Rask palettes right now. Two more palettes.
00:22:50
Speaker
So I'm in that process of thinking about those tombstones and how much I appreciate having somebody else do all the roughing, and I can come in and do all the light finishing. It's amazing. That's sweet.
Troubleshooting and Probing Challenges in CNC Programming
00:23:04
Speaker
Yeah. This is a really probably simple physics 101 kind of static. Is it a static load question or something? But take something like your palette. What are they? 4 by 4 by 7? Yep.
00:23:18
Speaker
I think the example is a little bit easier if you extend the length of it let's say it's a four inch by four inch by twenty inches is it stiffer as a monolithic like just bill it block or is it does it actually be some become stiffer if you core out.
00:23:34
Speaker
the center. Other way of asking it, like is a beam, a beam that's running across a bridge, would it be, it would be heavier. Of course there's more intrinsic weight load on it, but like, is an I beam stronger than just a solid beam? I think it has to do with surface area. So if you have a square, you have the outside surface area and the inside is solid. But if you put a circle on the inside of that square, like a hole going through the center of it, you now have more structural surface area to resist sending loads. I think it's something like that. I'm no structural engineer, but, um,
00:24:04
Speaker
with ours, the first palette that we made had I on the Maury, I cut out a hole in the side, not through the top. Um, and that created like a U channel and vibrate vibrations, like mid bad parts kind of thing. Um, but having the hole down the middle, the vibrations kind of travel around the outside evenly. And, uh, they're perfect now. Yeah, that's awesome.
00:24:34
Speaker
Oh, random PSA FYI, like 2B signal or Hozlaid just went super weird on us. It was like it moved its global offset in Y and X.
00:24:49
Speaker
But not Z so like center it thought centerline was an inch high in both Y and X which is super weird and scary and Grant when I were working on it and I ended up rebooting the whole machine and it went away and that was a major
00:25:05
Speaker
data point, red flag. I was like, hmm. Because I was like, made sure we could crash it or alarm history or offset moves or all that. And it was fine for a couple weeks. And then all of a sudden it came back again. Like telling the story in hindsight makes it super obvious, but it wasn't that crystal clear to me at the time. Okay. And so- Can I make a prediction? Please. Probing something changed something you didn't anticipate. Actually, no. Okay. You want to take another guess?
00:25:36
Speaker
Only X and Y intermittent in the sense that it happened, went away and came back. Yeah, unless I don't know. I don't know. If you're in your car right now, scream out the answer as loud as you can. Limit switch.
00:25:54
Speaker
How so? So there was a copper line that somehow moved and it was intermittently triggering a limit switch at an inch too early. Okay. So when it homes itself and re-zeros itself. Yeah. Ouch.
00:26:10
Speaker
Yeah. So it's super, super simple fix. Like you can visually see that one of the cables was wrong or something. It was a, I assume a hydraulic line, like a copper, it was like a brake line. And yeah, I mean, it was literally, it was an L joint. So it wasn't affecting it until it got really close to the bracket that held the limit switch. And it was actually scraping the bottom of the line. So we saw some copper chip shavings. So we literally just bent it a quarter of an inch out of the way and don't anticipate it being a problem. Problem solved. Oh man.
00:26:39
Speaker
Man, those kind of things can take weeks to track down sometimes. You could pull out your hair. You could rebuild the whole machine. Well, I'm glad it was off an inch because if it was off by like 30 thou, I would have gone down a rabbit hole of, like you said, probing quirks and offset quirks and retouching off all my tools. I would have probably solved it the wrong way.
00:27:00
Speaker
Well, I had a thing where I machine a feature on the current and then the probe comes in, hits the feature and offsets the tool diameter based on the feature cut size. And I've been doing that for a long time, years, a year anyway. And all of a sudden recently, the tool wear offset started getting like weird values, not 5,000, but like 50,000, 80,000.
00:27:24
Speaker
And it all armed out because tool radius too large issue going into that corner, thankfully. But I see the tool wear and I'm like, why is that so ridiculously high? Like the probed value has a limit of five thou or 10 thou or something. So if it's beyond that limit, don't do anything, like stop, it's fine. So how on earth is it achieving such a massive limit? And it turns out it was because of some weird little programming thing that I did.
00:27:52
Speaker
Um, where when the machine is running through what's called block scan, or when I start in the middle of a program, it reads everything up until that point. Yeah. And it like, it reads probed values, but then nothing's there because it didn't actually probe anything. So it's reading the wrong value. And I was like, Oh my gosh. So I've, for all probing operations, I have a piece of code that skips all the probing during a block scan. Um, I just have to remember to use that all the time.
00:28:22
Speaker
Interesting. Yeah, that's crazy. It's like building a process around that is hard to think about, you know? Yep. And weird to track down. But I mean, I love the challenge and I love when it's something, when it's calculable, I'm like, okay, something's actually doing that. And it's probably something I did. Okay, so let me just line by line, figure this out. And yeah.
00:28:45
Speaker
We're starting to learn more about OSP, the Akuma control. And something that's pretty interesting is each tool can have, I think, up to three different height and wear offset values. So you could have a three inch end mill, and you could have wear offset A, wear offset B, wear offset C, and you could control them differently or query them differently. Or I can already see being useful if you are doing a process inspection where
00:29:13
Speaker
It's a feedback loop version, an iterative loop, because if you cut it, probe it, comp it, the next time you go to cut it, it's going to be also wrong because of tool pressure or deflection or something. So the idea that you could cut it with your A wear offset all the time, and then B is the swing offset that just fluctuates or gets reset each time or something. I'm sure there are more uses of that than I'm not thinking of, but it's kind of cool when you see it. Is it just for the wear offsets or for the actual main length and radius offset?
00:29:42
Speaker
Uh, good question. I mean, I think the height one is them. I think that both could be either, I believe. Okay. Cause on the, yeah, there are two wear offset columns, like where, where one, where two pretty much. I never used the number two though, but I think do they add together? I doubt it. I don't know. Like on the lathe, it's a little bit different lathe, but like lay this, you just basically add all the wear offsets, which is nice because then you can have really.
00:30:13
Speaker
Uh, yeah. Well, cause you can have one that's your major offset and then the other is just what you, you know, move in a few tents or foul or something. Huh? Yeah. The tornos, we can
Blade Flatness and Optical Flat Usage
00:30:25
Speaker
have multiple, uh, multiple offsets as well, but you have to call it specifically. I mean, this case too, I'm sure, you know, called tool 20 offset one offset two kind of thing. Yeah.
00:30:40
Speaker
So how is the Okuma control overall? I mean, fine. That huge learning curve the first day of it's just totally new. So like, hey, here's MDI. Here's how you do tool changes. But then, I mean, you quickly are like, OK, we're good.
00:31:01
Speaker
They they wanted us to map. A network or network folder to grab files from the Kuma control and I try that and it's like that fan gross like 6 different keystrokes, copy, load, reload, change screens, load, preview, like no, no, no. So instead we found because it's just Windows OSB, we found the MD MD or MDI folder if it was called or something else. On the Kuma control and I turned that into a map network drive from our
00:31:31
Speaker
Cam computers so when you post that a fusion it just pushes it right into the controls and then you just load the program. That's sweet the tool changer is fussy like Ed got stuck on something yesterday because we didn't have a tool in the spindle it knew that but it thought we did and it wouldn't let him
00:31:49
Speaker
change the tool or do anything. I've heard this and it's proving true that the Okuma is just very particular about how you interact with the ATC, but we're good. I think a lot of people are when you really break it down this process. The Haas is very forgiving. Well, I would say it's not to its detriment because it's just good.
00:32:14
Speaker
But yeah, we're just waiting on some material to show up. And then we'll start really rocking and rolling with it. Nice. Yeah. What are you going to do? Just dialing in processes. I went on a deep dive again for the third time in the past few years on optical flats. Did I talk about this last week? Yes.
00:32:43
Speaker
I forget when we got them, if we got them before last week's podcast or not, but our six-inch optical flat came in. It's a big optical flat now. It's a big optical flat. I got it used on eBay. It is quite scratched up, but it seems fine. It's an old do-all optical flat. We wanted the six-inch so it can span a blade or a handle completely.
00:33:04
Speaker
And I also bought things I need for the lightbox to come in. That guy on Instagram, Lady Machine Tech. Yeah. I love that guy. Really cool. Yeah. He put up a couple of posts almost a year ago about how to make a DIY lightbox, like with a monochromatic light. Yeah. Right. And they're fantastic.
00:33:24
Speaker
I was looking at his more complicated one first, and I was texting him about it, and he's like, do the simpler one first. It's way easier, way cheaper. So it's literally just buying a photography light tracing box, like tracing station kind of thing, putting in uncoated fluorescent bulbs, and then a UV filter, and then a green filter screen on top to get your green light to come out. It's like perfectly 539 nanometer light wave, whatever it is. Oh, cool.
00:33:52
Speaker
So I'm waiting for all that bulb stuff to come in, but the flat did come in and we're all running around the shop trying to find the perfect lighting that actually shows light bands. Yeah. And the only, there's only one room in the whole shop that actually shows any bands. It was kind of neat because you don't have the light box built yet. We don't. Yeah. Got it. Okay. Yeah. And, um,
00:34:15
Speaker
There's only, I don't know, I guess certain kinds of fluorescent lights will show an interference pattern. But yeah, so we found the one and it's dim, but it's there. And I spent literally one minute in that room just playing with it and then I had to go. But I was like, okay, progress. This is good. Because we're having warping issues out of heat treat on our blades, which is causing huge problems in lapping.
00:34:39
Speaker
Which is because if you have a potato chip and lapping, he tries to bend them straight on an arbor press. Then they turn into like wavies and then he laps them. So all the high peaks and all the end peaks are getting cut down. So if you have a potato chip, he's cutting off the end points and the flat on the top. And then the parts are weird thickness.
00:35:04
Speaker
So we're really trying to fine tune that and really learning a lot about flatness as a team, which is wonderful. There was certainly a lot of headbutting for a couple of days there between the different departments, different guys and stuff. It's kind of interesting, fun to watch, but challenging for everybody obviously. But once we started to get more knowledge and more
00:35:28
Speaker
information between everybody, everybody really started to work together. And it's, it's become like a fascinating challenge for everybody. Now they're like, okay. Um, like Angelo and Pierre set up a three point
00:35:42
Speaker
like checking gauge on the ground surface plate so that you can set the blade on three points and then sweep the top surface. And that is the way to establish a flat plane. And it was great. I've seen it. I've never done it. So it was awesome for them to do it, to teach our younger guys, to teach everybody in the shop. And even Sky said, he's like, that is the most information I've ever seen on blades out of heat treat.
00:36:07
Speaker
you know, being able to check for flatness because we have, you know, we have a flat thing with a light behind it that we kind of, you know, you hold it up against the light and see if it's flat or not. But this tells you with numbers and where the blade dips off and stuff. So once I saw that, I was like, I'm buying everything I need for optical flats right now. Did these have been ground on the Okamoto?
00:36:31
Speaker
Yeah, soft ground on the Okamoto and then milled on the Kern. So all the features are put in and then heat treated. But during heat treat and during quenching, they get a little wobbly. Sure, sure. They're parallel but not flat. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you're not interested or willing or able to re-grind them. We lap them afterwards. Yeah, I don't really want to re-grind them. Right, right. Because the magnet's going to suck them flat and then they're going to be parallel still and then
00:37:00
Speaker
It's not an unconstrained process, right? Well, that's an interesting question.
00:37:06
Speaker
And you can get in there with papers and shims and like shim every blade, but pin the butt. If there, if it's, if it's a, I guess I don't know how they're, are they bending in a convex or concave arch or are they wavy? Cause if they're wavy, the magnet wouldn't suck everything out. It actually could help. Although you'd have to grind both sides, but right. They're not wavy, but because of the features of the blade, like the tip and back where the stop pins are and the thumb stud hole, they kind of curl in weird little places by a thou or something, but it's enough to cause problems.
00:37:36
Speaker
Interesting. You're probably the only knife maker in the history of knife making that has thought it's in any way reasonable to use an obstacle flat. In any way, it's a part of your regular manufacturing process. I'm having so much fun with this.
00:37:51
Speaker
If anyone's listening, do yourself a favor. God bless Tom Lipton. The guy is just an absolute awesome example of a guy who's paying it forward and doing a lot for the trades. He's helped me out on a few times and I really think highly of him. Go watch his video on optical flats. He does a great job showing, explaining this idea that you're measuring with the
00:38:12
Speaker
frequency wave, is that the right term, of light. So you need to know what light you're using, because that's what tells you, I believe it's both the spacing between the lines, as well as whether the lines are parallel or curved. So you get two different data points out of the optical flat. I think it's more so how curved the lines are. As long as the spacing is even and the lines are straight, then your surface is flat. But when the lines start to curve, then you measure
00:38:40
Speaker
basically over a set distance, how curved they are, like how many light bands wide is that curve. And it gets a little tricky until you do it and then obviously it makes sense. But yeah, and then we're going to have to convert what nanometers is in inches or whatever is a number we can actually understand or learn to understand nanometers.
00:39:04
Speaker
trying to think how can you etch a like silkscreen template on top of your optical flat that gives you the right comp in like data set kind of like an optical comparator. A lot of them have a line scribe down the center. So you have a straight line reference. Okay. Which is pretty cool because then you can count easily. Oh, that's like three light bands off center from that. So I bought two smaller optical flats from, um,
00:39:28
Speaker
eBay from this guy in Ukraine who sells to everybody. They're cheap. They're like 40 bucks or something. But delivery is not till Christmas. So I was like, well, I also want the big one. And I found this guy in the States selling an old one. And it was expensive. It was like 400 bucks. Oh, wow. But it came next day, two days later, FedEx or something. And I was like, OK, sweet. So yeah. So now I'm just waiting all for a light stuff to come in. We're
Surface Finish Challenges and Machining Techniques
00:39:56
Speaker
going to set up a little corner.
00:39:58
Speaker
Yeah, having the light buffs gives you perfect green monochromatic light, so one light band, not all of the light bands, and gives you much more clarity and calculable distance. Yes.
00:40:12
Speaker
Cool. That's awesome. So actually, I want to mention there's a video. I'll put the link in the description, but it's from a YouTuber called New Mind. It's like one of those compilation videos, but he explains flatness in such a beautiful, simple way, talking about surface grinding, lapping, optical polishing, like optical flats. It's like a 13 minute
00:40:35
Speaker
Oh yeah. Deep dive on flatness. You could show it to your kids, you could show it to your wife or everybody on your staff. We shared it around and it's fantastic. Is this the one that has like 2 million views? Probably, I don't know. There's a one that's kind of viral that has... Yeah, it's one of those popular ones, but it's really good. It touches on a lot of points that all the deeper, nerdier videos don't. Yeah, that's cool. I respect that.
00:41:03
Speaker
Hey, speaking of all this, what'd you learn? Remember we were talking about your radial cuts with the end mill on the bevel or the edge of the spline that was somehow dipped or... Yeah, I haven't solved that. I've tried different depth of cut, different speeds and feeds. The guy from Dubois Tools is wondering if the helix angle will play a big role in that.
00:41:30
Speaker
Oh, interesting. Like a higher helix tool versus the lower helix tool. I've used both in the past. Um, I don't know. I, I'm trying to get the ultimate surface finish, you know, on the profile of that part so I can take a stone to it and it's flat, flat. Um, yes. Cause it's actually becoming a problem with, or it's always been with our finishing guys, you know, the rask has the engraving on the spine. So they're trying to like sand that off or stone it off or, um,
00:42:00
Speaker
And there's like a skunk stripe down the center of the blade through the engraving and everything. So they're trying not to cut through the engraving too much. And it's just challenging. And I'm like, well, if I can fix it at the source, then all the better. This is on Maury or Kern.
00:42:19
Speaker
Can you have, you have like good spindle orientations on the current, right? Dude, you know what you need to do? Turn that sucker into a scraper or into a shaper. Interesting. Should work with a regular end mill, although there would be,
00:42:40
Speaker
there may be some, maybe the wrong profile, but I don't see any reason why you couldn't take an end mill, lock it, and sweep it across like a shaper. In fact, Marv was talking about this recently on something, and I know like Fanuc has those high-end diamond mirror machines that are, they're CNC
00:43:00
Speaker
Shapers. Interesting. That leads to the issue of if one little chip develops in your side of the end mill, you're going to scrape it across the whole part.
00:43:11
Speaker
You don't know this yet, but you actually in the future are going to write an algorithm that moves up the helix of the tool. So that is always has a fresh edge. And it's a six foot end mill. So, and you can comp it up five degrees. So you get 382 cuts the edge. And then it expires the tool. Yep. This is in your future. You just don't know. Yeah.
Reviving Old Machines and Future Plans
00:43:30
Speaker
Just times just catching up. Yep. Yep.
00:43:35
Speaker
Nice. Awesome. Good. I know you said you got to run, and I'm sorry I was late, but anything else? Oh, yep. Anything else you're up to today or this week? Yeah, the guys are just putting back together the Willyman. I think we're still waiting on our package to come in of parts for the Willyman. Got it.
00:43:53
Speaker
It turns out the chiller, the fittings, the coolant fittings on the chiller are all corroded out and rusted and they have to replace everything and clean out the tank and flush the whole system and start from scratch. But that's almost done. Are you guys able to do it yourself? Yep. Awesome. It's all just BSPT and NPT fittings and stuff. Yeah. But yeah, so I'm excited to get that going.
00:44:18
Speaker
I really enjoyed your, note to mention, I really enjoyed your willing video. Just super cool to see that. Yeah, that's going to be awesome. Any progress on the one that you're looking at? I think we're on the same page. It's yours, but let's talk later. We have got a multi-month project to do on them, and we need to make sure that goes okay and see where we're at both on.
00:44:47
Speaker
the quality and stability of the machine and what the price needs to look like. And I need to learn more to make sure it's got a couple quirks about being an older machine. It doesn't have the size capacity I wanted it to, which doesn't mean it's not worth it, but it's a big bummer for one of the parts that we actually two of the parts that we were going to try to run on it.
00:45:07
Speaker
So like length or width diameter. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, don't have any more news and I probably will check in with them. Um,
00:45:18
Speaker
probably after the holidays and see where they're at. Cool. I'm super excited for it. I don't mean to imply that. Yeah, yeah. But it's got to work. For sure. And I was thinking about that with ours. It's been on our floor for, I don't even know, months, many months. I bought it six months ago. I started the process. We don't need it today. We're not waiting for the spindle to be turning and making parts, but the sooner it is, the better it is.
00:45:48
Speaker
And we haven't had to do, honestly, a whole ton of work to it, but there's always little tiny things. And our guys only have, you know, a couple hours a week to devote to it. And it's just, through no fault of anybody's, it's taking forever. You know, like, I wish it were done. And I can't deny that I've thought a couple times of how nice it is just to buy a new machine.
00:46:12
Speaker
and have it come in, and it works, and it's done, and you plug it in, and you learn it, and you start making parts. It removes the whole repair process, like the UMAX that we have. One works, but it's still quirky. And the other one still needs a spindle unclamped sensor, which is a two-day job for the guys to come in and fix. And there's a lot of value. For a shop that gets paid by turning the spindles, there's a lot of value in just having a machine come in and plug it in.
00:46:41
Speaker
The money you saved, though, versus a new or even good use of Wilman is probably worth it. The U-MOCs, water under the bridge, you're doing well with them. I don't know if I would discourage you from that again, because it's like, dude, go buy a really good used cheaper figure. Yeah, for sure. For sure. But the Wilman could be awesome. And look, let's pull a chapter out of Relentless. Stop thinking about it. If you need them running, allocate the resources to get it running. If you don't, you're doing it on the schedule where you order in parts, you test stuff, and
00:47:08
Speaker
You don't overthink it. No, you're absolutely right. Good. You don't owe it to anybody. Other than everybody who wants to see you get it running, you owe it to them. Exactly. And I get all these DMs like, I can't wait to see it running. And I'm like, me too. Yeah, right. No, that's a good point. And I don't allocate a lot of time to worrying about this, but every now and then the thoughts come in and you're like, I really appreciate the new machines that just came in and we made parts. Yeah.
00:47:35
Speaker
I had that thought on the horizontal. I was like, oh, man, I could start looking in the market for used pallet pool horizontal and do the options that I want are so specific. And this is not the Wilhelmin. It's what could become the backbone for a driver of our operations, not the right time. It's like the current for us. It's the one, and we're using it to its absolute maximum potential for us. And no questions asked.
00:48:01
Speaker
Yeah. Awesome. Have a good week. I'll see you. You too. Take care. Bye. Bye.