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WE LOVE CNC MACHINES! Y-Axis Lathes, 5-Axis Machining, Improving Tolerances, and Improving Workflow Processes
308 Plays6 years ago
Buying, Running, and Building Successful Businesses Around CNC Machines.
TOPICS:
- ST-20Y is back in business
- Tolerance Creep & Squeezing the Most Out Of Your Machine
- Tornos Lovejoy coupler slips during production
- GK Quarantine Vlogs - Second Nature Machining Tips and Tricks
- Finding Center Lines On A Y-Axis Lathe
- Fusion 360 NC Program Feature
- Simplifying Lathe Workflow - Lockwood's WCS & Container Method in Fusion 360
- Dovetail Workholding
- KERN - Tooling in Groups & Fusion 360 Cloud Library
Although the world is changing, one thing remains constant: the love of CNC machining!
Saunders is ecstatic to be reunited with the ST-20Y AND he's taking notes on how to get the absolute best parts the machine can produce.
Contrary to popular belief, you can't just buy a KERN, input the code, and have amazing parts appear. According to Grimsmo, the machine brand will only get you so far and the rest depends on tweaking and improving your process, even just that tiny bit more.
While lifestyle creep is to be avoided if possible, tolerance creep is definitely something you need!
Lovejoy Coupler Slips During Production The year-old Tornos has been opened up to be serviced by Elliot Matsuura's technician. The coupler that attaches the motor to the ball screw is specifically designed to slip so nothing is ruined in the event of a crash; however, since the servo motors contain the enocders themselves, the machine is not aware of a mechanical slip, meaning it'll keep making parts out of spec until you catch it.
MAKE LATHES GREAT AGAIN Grimsmo and Saunders hash out details on finding the center line on Y-Axis lathes. Grimsmo knows the best way takes a little more work but it's perfect every time.
Saunders has a do-while loop while he runs a certain number of parts. He shares how he wants to use a variable to streamline his post processor. Other ways to streamline and improve workflow come from Rob Lockwood. By implementing Lockwood's container method for programming parts and using a repeatable WCS, G55 stays put and the lengthy NC instructions on checking and setting offsets are a thing of the past!
Click Here for a Video on Part Programming Using Lockwood's Method.
KERN - Setting Up, Tooling, & Planning Grimsmo hasn't cut anything on special K for a while. Is he allowing fear to hold him back? With a large chunk of steel that could fall and damage the machine, he's not sure if he can trust dovetail workholding. Grimsmo shares how he wants the tools and sister tools to be organized and how he's using the Fusion 360 cloud library.
Up Your Confidence Bank Each time you keep a promise to yourself, your confidence account gets a little raise. Although Saunders crashed the lathe, he didn't let shell-shock stop him from moving forward. The only way Grimsmo will get that raise is if he gets off this call and pushes cycle start!
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Transcript
Introduction to CNC Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 166. My name is John Grimsmough. And my name is John Saunders. This is the podcast where two guys talk about the joys of buying CNC machines, running CNC machines, and hopefully building successful businesses around their love of CNC machining.
00:00:20
Speaker
And it really is a love. Like I was thinking about that the other day, you know, what, 12 years into machining. And I'm like, Oh, this is it. This is my, this is my thing. I'm so glad I found my thing. Right. We are lay this back up and running and I will honestly say I missed it. Like I love it. It's so much fun. It really is.
Challenges and Passion in CNC Machining
00:00:42
Speaker
different, totally different challenges. For sure. I've been making all my notes. I love it because it reminds me of why I love my role in this industry in business and niche, which is I don't care that I am not
00:00:59
Speaker
the world's best machinist. I'm not Robin Renzetti. I wasn't born into a multi-generational machine shop where I had really good insightful knowledge from a young kid. I think I'm a lot more like other folks, which is, hey, we're trying to figure this out. So I've been taking all these notes on every single thing I've been doing and learning from process on making
00:01:17
Speaker
when I would say hyper-accurate parts on the Haas ST20Y lathe, which it's not the current of lathes. It's a very good machined, especially for its price, but it is a machine where, but that's the thing. I start defending it and then I remember, but John, you kind of had to do the same thing on your Nakamura.
00:01:36
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, for sure. And I mean, we started with, you know, I had my grizzly lathe and then I had the tormach lathe and then I got the Nakamura and then I got the Swiss. And it's like these these
Precision Machining with Swiss Lathes
00:01:45
Speaker
progressions of quality. And even on the Swiss, I'm still fighting it to make exactly what I want. Now, my my goals and my wishes and my tolerances have gotten tighter and my, you know, like, why want to do this perfect little thing? It my skills have gotten greater and the machinery has, you know, gone up in quality with it. But
00:02:06
Speaker
You still fight with it. I thought you had said that the Swiss was also just way more thermally stable and consistent. It is for sure, but you're still comping stuff, and you're still tweaking stuff. The machine listens to you a lot better than a tormach late does as far as tolerance. Sure. You give it a tenth. It'll move a tenth.
00:02:30
Speaker
But, but yeah, it's, which is, which is, which is really crazy because you want to hold a 10th. Uh, but that's really 50 millionths of ball, screw ball, machine, the X, the X only moves half the distance because it's diameter, radius, whatever. Yeah.
00:02:49
Speaker
I'm going to go way past my comfort zone and say, it's almost like I miss the days of a manual lathe because you didn't have to be a rocket scientist to set your compound at five degrees and then do the trig math to say, okay, if I move my compound in 20 thal, which is a pretty large movement, I only actually get a very, very small fraction of that in my actual
00:03:12
Speaker
X dimension depth. Now you mess up your Z potentially, but it was almost a lot easier to take a mechanical advantage there. And I haven't had any issues with the Haas lathe, but what I'm figuring out is what's the right recipe for
00:03:29
Speaker
do I do a warm up routine? When do I retouch off the tool? What value am I calibrating my tool probe? Because you basically have this master offset, which is how far your tool probe is offset from the spindle center line, which shouldn't change in terms of its actual physical or mechanical connection, but it will change with
00:03:51
Speaker
the thermal state of the machine. And I want a recipe where if I do X and then I do Y and then I do Z, that gets me pretty darn close. And I'm getting there.
00:04:04
Speaker
See, that's my point, though, is
Maximizing Haas Lathe Performance
00:04:05
Speaker
the Haas is an amazing layer than you have a Renishaw probe on it. Is it Renishaw, the toolsetter? No. I think it's, well, I don't know if Haas makes it, but it's not a branded probe like the turret probes or milk probes. Sure. Anyway, all fantastic components, yet you're trying to inch more out of it by strategizing how you do things with
00:04:29
Speaker
the tools that you have you know which order you go xyz or yxz or when you're touching off a tool and you're trying to create a stable process that you can go back to and continue doing so
00:04:39
Speaker
I probably thought before I had this bigger, more expensive, fancier equipment that it was just perfect. You just buy the equipment and you push in your code. I didn't foresee still having to fiddle with it, but I think my propensity for tolerance has gotten so much tighter that it's like, well, I want that extra little bit. Even though the machine is so much better, I still want as much as I can get out of it. You know what that's called? Tolerance creep?
00:05:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's
Service Issues and Solutions
00:05:08
Speaker
like the lifestyle creep, but in the world of hyper-accurate machines. Yep, there you go. So speaking of layouts, I actually have the Elliott Matsura, what do you call it? Technical, no, what do you call it? Service. Service guy here looking at the Tornos, the Swiss lathe, because I've had a couple bumps with it over the year that I've had it. Wait, you've had the Tornos for a year?
00:05:35
Speaker
Just about a month or so. Well, I guess that makes sense because we did that trip a year ago, but I would have thought that machine's like three months old. That's crazy. Yeah, I know. Oh my God. Yeah, and that trip, I actually stopped by Elliott Metsura, signed the paperwork, and bought the lathe, and then went to the airport. Yeah. And then went to Germany and did Kern stuff, and then slapped my sticker on a Kern, and that's the end of that story. Or the beginning.
00:06:01
Speaker
Yeah, the beginning.
In-Process Inspection and Calibration
00:06:03
Speaker
So anyway, I've bumped it a couple of times over the years, and mostly in the x-axis. And the coupler that attaches the motor to the ball screw is a Lovejoy connector. You know what that looks like? Like the castle nut?
00:06:20
Speaker
Yeah, it's like I'm taking both my hands and I'm interlocking my fingers, right? So it's with a rubberized connection in between them. So it's these four pins, rotary pins, that kind of align with rubber in between them. So it's got that on all the accesses. And then the way those devices attach to the ball screw and the motor are with pinch
00:06:43
Speaker
connectors. So one screw on the outside kind of pinches down on the shaft. And it's meant to slip in a crash situation, which is kind of great, because you're not breaking anything. But it's kind of annoying, because now you have to reset your home. So it's kind of no big deal. I've gotten really good at resetting the home position. But it happened during production. I made 49 good parts, and the 50th part was like 20 thou undersize. And all the other ones were 1 tenth.
00:07:09
Speaker
with each other. And then the very next part, next two parts by the time I caught it, was like 20 thou under. And I'm like, OK, I think the X just moved during regular machining. What the heck? So I called service, and I was like, still under warranty, right? All right, sweet. So yeah, the guy's here right now, and he's looking at it, and he got the thing apart. And he's basically just re-torquing the pinch screw, waiting for an answer back from Tornos US to get the torque spec.
00:07:36
Speaker
And then yeah, it's just kind of cool to see it on the inside and actually for me to get a visual of how it works and what it does and what the torque spec is too. I wonder what the explanation would be for, if I understand it correctly, you basically have a set screw pushing up against a round shaft and that tension is what creates the normal connection. That's old school.
00:08:02
Speaker
That's like DIY milling machine back in the day with a flat on the motor shaft. This is not the set screw on a flat.
00:08:14
Speaker
I didn't think it would be a flat. I thought it was on a round, so you have some amount of engineered tension that allows it to slip. It's like imagine if you wrap your fingers around a shaft, like your thumb or whatever. Oh, OK. And then the pinch bolt is on the outside of the shaft. So it's pinching tighter and tighter and tighter the more you tighten it. Got it. And that is a slipping connection, as opposed to a set screw on a flat, is not going to move. Of course. Note that that's what a set screw on a round is not going to give a lot of
00:08:45
Speaker
I remember dealing with this back in the strike mark days, and I knew even less then than I know now. We were trying to build effectively a clutch so that if the user shot the target when the target was in the process of resetting and lifting up, we needed some way that that force didn't go back through the planet. That's the motor and all that.
00:09:06
Speaker
Yeah, the planetary gearbox will just get stripped out because you've got a three way rifle round at 3000 or 2500 feet per second slamming into the steel plate. Like no motor is going to say, Oh, I can withstand that. You're literally shooting the product. Terrible, terrible thing to try to bring to market as your first entrepreneurial endeavor. However, I will say,
Tool Wear Compensation Strategies
00:09:26
Speaker
I will say you and I shot that about a year ago, and it is amazing. It was such a fun thing to shoot. You shoot it. It resets. You shoot it resets. It was super cool.
00:09:35
Speaker
So I wish I had known things like, oh man, now there's so many different ways. Like if you've ever seen how a simple impact, like a handheld 18 volt impact works with a spring pushing a pin against a rippled surface that clutches out, there's slip clutches, there's shear clutches. That's what I was thinking for your machine. Why wouldn't you have a little ceramic pin?
00:09:54
Speaker
that is you can even purchase different type pins based on different kinds of machining you're doing but it's a very binary action where it will hold accurately and firmly until you crash in which case it shears the pin and then you get no movement which is kind of what you want. You don't want it to slip and keep working.
00:10:12
Speaker
I know. Well, and the weird thing that I'm seeing is two things. Not only is this potentially slipping connection on a machine that's supposed to hold like millions of tolerance, there's a rubberized connection in that Lovejoy connector. So it's literally a piece of silicone rubber that is always being compressed and pushed forward and back as the X moves back and forth. And how does this machine still hold five decimal places with a piece of rubber in the middle?
00:10:39
Speaker
My understanding of the need for a Lovejoy was that it's not possible to have a motor that's mounted perfectly in line with the shaft, but then also it avoids any motor noise being rigidly transmitted through the screw. That could be. But they're still quite rigid is not a scientific term, but it's not like there's cushion to it.
00:11:05
Speaker
I mean, looking at it, there's a piece of rubber between a couple of driver gears that move. But the other weird thing is these are all fancy servo motors, FANUC motors with encoders and all that stuff, except as far as I know, the encoder is on the motor itself. So if that coupler is slipping, the encoder doesn't know that it slipped. Yeah, that's strange. The mechanical side of it has slipped, not the digital side. So literally, the machine just keeps going.
00:11:32
Speaker
and keeps making parts out of tolerance now. If it happens during machining like it did for me last week. And I'm like, this is, I don't know, man. If you put an encoder on the other side of the ball screw, then you'd be able to see this and like stop. We're now
CNC Setup and Alignment Techniques
00:11:46
Speaker
starting the journey of growth eats cash for breakfast, episode two in process inspection. Yeah. No, let's just redesign the entire tornos and like make our own Swiss lathe company.
00:11:57
Speaker
So this guy that I know through everything we've done runs a company called Arnold Gage, I believe is the name of it, down in Cincinnati. And they build these amazing in-process, pretty darn fast and or accurate machines that'll use everything from URL robots to non-ton kayak.
00:12:18
Speaker
non-contact micrometers to some of the Keant systems. So you could literally have 100% inspection of a part coming out of the lathe and maybe you don't want it to be the plus or minus one tenth, you just want it to be plus or minus three thou to tell you if something's gone wrong. And then like a safety switch like, yeah, just stop. Just stop the machine or pause if you hold the machine and throw a flag.
00:12:41
Speaker
Well, it all depends on how accurate your measurement is because if you can measure accurately a 10th in process, then you'd comp and you'd make it perfect all the time. Yeah, I think that's a different battle. We saw that at IMTS, the robo-drill cell where it's CMMing and reverse feeding wear offsets. That gets to be, I think, a lot more scary because now you're potentially making a lot of bad parts. I just want to know, hey, my insert chipped or something's wrong. Sure, yeah, exactly. Well, on the Nakamura, I
00:13:11
Speaker
bought a Renishaw turret probe to actually be on the turret and be able to probe the part in process. And I used it all the time. I still use it all the time. So I'll turn a part that's supposed to be 180 diameter, 0.180. And if it's, for some reason, 1.86, then the insert probably chipped. And it'll throw an alarm because it has a tolerance range. But I will also use it to be like, oh, it's not 1.80. It's 1.803. So it'll calm 3 tenths down and try to hold 1.80 no matter what.
00:13:40
Speaker
And it'll also compensate for thermal growth and things like that, because I can now know my center line is off center, not just diameter. So it worked really well. So that gave me the in-process inspection that I need for that.
00:13:54
Speaker
Your Nakamura is a Y axis lathe, right? When you hold a one inch stick tool or 25 millimeter type stick tool in a traditional holder, like the wedge holders, do you use the Y axis to sweep the inside of that holder pocket to make sure you can even adjust micro adjust or make small adjustments so that you have different Y values for center line of a stick tool?
00:14:21
Speaker
I don't know what you mean about sweeping, but yes, stick tools definitely have different y-axis. Okay, you do. My automatic tool probe will not adjust anything for y. No, all I do, especially for a turning tool, is I'll manually turn a face down to zero or past zero and look for that little pip at the end. I'll move it up or down and do it again and again. I'll do that with boring bars, turning tools.
00:14:50
Speaker
The only thing you can't is drill bit. I'll do it with threading tools and everything. I want to make sure that Y is on center line. So I'll visually do it. And actually, I'll go smaller by 10th hour or whatever and make an actual nub at the end. And I'll measure it with the mic. And I can get super accurate by measuring with the mic. Because you're like, oh, that's 1006. And then I'll comp it down 1006. And then it's perfect.
00:15:13
Speaker
So, okay, that makes sense. The Haas service tech who I got to know when he was fixing my crash was explaining if you just find the center line of the, like a two inch pocket is on the, it's a one inch stick tool with a one inch wedge. So you just sweep both sides and then divide by two, I guess. Unsubscribe.
00:15:32
Speaker
Oh, interesting. OK. Because different inserts will have different tip heights. So like a shiny polished aluminum insert tends to have a higher rake tip height than a one meant for harder steels, I've noticed. Sure. OK. Because sometimes I would go, like normally I run stainless and titanium, but we also make our Delrin bearings, bearing cages. And I want those shiny polished aluminum inserts. And my Y height went up by like,
00:16:01
Speaker
I don't know, Manny Thao, just by throwing the new insert in there. I don't trust theoretical center lines. I just face the front of the part and call it good. Yeah. As usual, I'm in your club now. I like that. Do you, on a drill though, wouldn't it be as easy as using a coaxial indicator? Yeah, probably, if you have room for it. I mean, they're not the most accurate things either. They have a one thou range or something.
00:16:31
Speaker
Well, if it's rotating around the part, shouldn't it be? I'm trying to think of where it would be, how it could be. Well, you could put an indicator on a jointed arm holder in your spindle and just sweep it around. It's just a pain in the butt to read the indicator when it's facing away from you. Either with mirrors, it's not. Yes. Although I've done that a lot. OK. Yeah, and I have a mirror. I went to the dollar store and bought a three-pack of mirrors. And Clara stole one.
00:16:57
Speaker
I've got the other two here, but I definitely use the mirror technique and sweep it in with an indicator and a Noga base. Although in the Swiss, you can't fit anything in there. I heard you got into it. Oh, what? I haven't watched the video, but somebody messaged me or posted somewhere that it was funny seeing Grimsmill climbing into the Swiss.
00:17:23
Speaker
Oh, just leaning into it and doing stuff all the time. Oh, damn. That's disappointing. Yeah, I know. I would not fit inside without stabbing myself by 14 live tools. No, but on the Swiss, what I do is I put a quarter inch end mill shank, like just the back end of an end mill in the drill holder, and then quarter inch bar in the spindle. And then I align them visually. And then I have this little drill bushing that I'm passing between the two. Love it.
00:17:53
Speaker
And it works so, so, so. It's like finicky, because you have no idea how far to move, which way you're moving. But you're basically manually lining up the two surfaces until the drill bushing slides between them. And I can feel, literally, within a tenth or two of alignment. And once you're close enough, and you can tell if it's x or y, and it just feels better. And once you get it, you're like, hands up in the air, pumping your fists. You're like, yeah, got it. So good. That's a genius idea, the simplicity of it.
00:18:20
Speaker
Yeah. And especially somewhere with limited space, it's perfect. Like three months ago, I was helping a buddy detail his car. And he's one of those guys who's done this for 30 years. So he has his tips and tricks and all that. And we were trying to feel for an imperfection. And he goes inside and grabs a plastic grocery bag. There's a really thin
00:18:45
Speaker
grocery bags. You guys bag your milk. So I don't know if you have thin bags like this up there. And he's like, put that over your hand and feel the car through the plastic bag. And he was right. I mean, first off your hands and like the back of your hand, your palm, your fingertips all have different and shockingly accurate ability to feel things. But then
00:19:07
Speaker
There was something about putting that bag over your hand with your fingertips and running it across the surface. You could feel areas that had been polished and hadn't been polished. It was really cool. That's fantastic. It got me thinking a little bit unrelated, but that bushing left to right motion, that's awesome. That's like the old mill trick of if you have a complex angle, it's going to be hard to describe.
00:19:32
Speaker
But if you want to hold something up at a weird angle, sometimes if you just take a, if you have a feature that you can use that's normal to it, but isn't like square on the bottom, you can just hold it up against your spittle face or your mill as it's jog it down near the vice, hold it up against there and then tighten the vice. Yeah. Yeah. I get it.
00:19:47
Speaker
That's what's funny with experience is that there's all these little tips and tricks that nobody really talks about because they figured it out. And it's not that you're hiding it. You just do it naturally because you're like, oh, I thought everybody did it like that. And so
Sharing Machining Knowledge through Vlogging
00:20:02
Speaker
I've been doing these quarantine vlog videos, like trying to do a video every day in the shop by myself. And I think like guys are absolutely loving it in the comments. And I think what they're loving most is just those little hidden tips and tricks that are only
00:20:16
Speaker
visible by shadowing someone. That's why a print is a shadow of the master, machinist, or whatever, so that they pick up all these little things.
00:20:27
Speaker
You and I know this when we're trying to do a better production video with the camera person and a little bit of a loose script and all that stuff. You miss a lot of these tiny little details that just only happen when you turn the camera on and do work. Yeah. That's awesome. It's funny. It's just like the easiest. It looks like you're crushing on that stuff, which is good for you.
00:20:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's been fun. And I've said on the video before, I'm like, this kind of only works because I'm the only person in the shop and I can focus and I can talk and it's not loud. And I don't have four other people blasting air guns every 10 seconds and interrupting me. And it works because that's why it feels like knife making Tuesdays from six years ago is because it basically is. That was me in my garage then. Now it's me in my big fancy shop. Just everything's leveled up. But it's been super fun.
00:21:19
Speaker
And I got to figure out a way to continue this when everybody's back in the shop and things are back to normal.
00:21:25
Speaker
Absolutely. Okay, last laid question. I think I know the answer, but it's quite helpful to just talk it out. I've been posting these diamond pins, and that's the thing I'm walking in tolerance on. Once I get them working, I do a dual while loop that will run X number of them. Usually, I just run 10.
00:21:50
Speaker
What I'm doing right now when I decide to run that is I have to post the code and then I have to go add two lines at the very top, two lines at the very bottom. Not ideal because it takes time. It's somewhat error prone, although it's not like the crash error where you're posting in code that can really have catastrophic consequences, but I don't like doing it. It occurred to me
00:22:10
Speaker
This should be a pretty simple thing to add to the post processor. Heck, I've even done a video on it. And what I can do is have it be one of the post processor properties. So when you click post infusion, you can toggle on off loop and then the number of loops to add. And if that condition is yes, then it will add that code subject to the number of loops I chose in the post window. That makes sense? Kind of. Wait.
00:22:40
Speaker
in the post window, so you're creating a trigger, a variable, or whatever.
00:22:45
Speaker
in the post dialogue window that turns this on and off? Yeah. So right now I'm running that code. I actually just hit cycle start before I came in my office to record this. At the beginning, it just says pound 609 equals 1. So variable 609 is reset to 1. While 609 is less than or equal to 10, do 1. Do 1 is the whole code. And at the very end, 609 equals 609 plus 1. And then end 1.
00:23:11
Speaker
And so when it gets through to what would be the 11th one, or it hit satisfies the full 10, it ends and it just goes to the M30. Love it. But I don't want to keep pasting that in at the top and the bottom. So that should be a pretty easy thing to add to the post, but I don't always want it to be there. So the post
Setting Work Offsets for Consistency
00:23:29
Speaker
property option makes it something that's optional. As long as you remember
00:23:37
Speaker
Do it. But that's the beauty of manual NC. I'll just create two different, not manual NC, NC programs. One will be a single and then the other one will be the option that has the different post and that will be, I can set the default to 10 loops, but obviously adjust it if I need to. Right. I still haven't tried the, what's it called, NC program feature in infusion 360. Yeah, there's going to be consequences if you don't try that.
00:24:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's that good. Well, it's not even that good. It's just yes. Yes. Okay. You get stuck in your system and you just, I don't post a ton. I guess I post a decent amount of code, but I just, I know how to do it. I've got my way. I haven't tried the new way and changing things up yet.
00:24:21
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, we have all of our machines mapped, the Tormox and the Haas and the, and the, actually the Robo drill is not, but the Datron is. And so it automatically picks the right network drive. It picks the right post. It picks the right settings. You're not risking, you're not risking a major mistake where you, you know, just all that stuff.
00:24:42
Speaker
And then on more complicated parts now, we have different NC programs for making the soft jaws, for running the OP-1, for running the OP-2. So you don't have to go through and cherry pick which things you want to run. Nice. OK, I'll play with that soon.
00:24:58
Speaker
Oh, actually that's the other thing. Shout out to Lockwood. Good grief. For the first month or two, I was running the lathe SC20Y. I was programming it with the coordinate system in a random place, like at the front of the stock or the front of the part. And then I started using the container method.
00:25:16
Speaker
which we have a video for like on programming job shop parts. If you guys want to, if anybody's listening wants to see what the container method is, it's also basically a Lockwood derivative thing, um, or a Lockwood invention. Um, and even then I wasn't using a coordinate system in the, in the right place. I was using the coordinate system that varied based on what part job I was running and on a lathe, especially, and for you on the current with a single point system, good grief, your main coordinate system should just be the face of the Chuck. Holy cow.
00:25:46
Speaker
Yeah, don't ever move it off. I've been thinking about that unless I'm putting a block and I need to probe like the center point of the block for whatever reason or whatever. But on the lathe, I know Rob is a huge fan of putting it at the face of the chalk and your part sticks positive beyond that.
00:26:07
Speaker
I've defaulted to the face. The z0 is always at the end of the front of the part, the beginning of the part. And I'm working into the part as a z negative. At the end of the day, it's all kind of preference. But I certainly like knowing, oh, my part is 300 long. So my code now says from 0 to 300 long, as opposed to if you put it at the face chuck, then your dimensions are kind of
00:26:33
Speaker
irrelevant, don't you think? I had the opposite experience. The ST20Y sub spindle does work pretty far to the right. And it's a relatively small window that becomes obscured by coolant and the turret and the fact that it's far to the right. And I'm doing a threading cycle, which is not the most friendly for like slow down, single block.
00:26:53
Speaker
Easy, easy, easy. My sub spindle G55 work coordinate system is the face of the Royal Chuck on the sub. When I post a threading cycle, so long as the last G92 Z position is still a positive Z value, I know the tool is not going to crash into the sub, which is a sensitive topic these days.
00:27:17
Speaker
Yeah, I get that. But you have no idea where the end of your part is, because it's always going to be variable based on how your part sticks out. But Cam handles that. Oh, I know. But I look at the code so deeply, and I tweak it, and I edit, and I fix and move things. So that's true. If you don't look at the code, if you do trust Cam, then the numbers don't really matter. Well, I do look at the code. Well,
00:27:42
Speaker
I guess I care more about what Fusion can't handle, which Fusion doesn't know. Fusion would absolutely let a tool crash into your chuck because you can program your coordinate system so that it just slams right into it. That's not Fusion's fault. On the sub-spindle, it gives me a lot more comfort that I'm good to go. Well, I guess in this way, your G55 never changes. Yeah, exactly.
00:28:09
Speaker
which is the better, or as I'm changing it for every part, but I've got macros in math that purposely changes it for every part. It works.
00:28:19
Speaker
But we've already switched two different parts that we've got set up to run on the Haas, and that's another time the light bulb went off was I was like, oh my God, I can just delete all these manual NCs I had that were these thorough instructions and reminders about what I need to do to check and reset offsets and how to make sure it's correct and the sub spindle moves and the B move, because it's all now just chuck face done. Good. Right, right. Yeah, I see the benefits. I still don't know if I'm sold yet.
00:28:45
Speaker
Just because I, I prefer knowing that the zeros at the end of the part. Yeah. And that all the math and all the numbers and all the tolerances work from there into the part. Fair enough. And then it just all makes sense to me.
00:29:00
Speaker
Literally to each their own. Exactly. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. I mean, both ways make good parts and that's the point. I would probably recommend that people standardize one or the other and don't jump back and forth too much otherwise you're going to crash something. Well, and I would also say something
00:29:22
Speaker
When I start thinking about handing off the lathe to other folks in the shop, the prior version of, okay, we're switching from diamond pins to mod vice washers here, all the things you need to do. And if you do any of them wrong in the wrong order or skip them or fat thinker number, you will crash the machine. Whereas now I would actually tell, I would hand somebody off that full operation for two different parts with, with minimal explanation because it's all good to go.
00:29:53
Speaker
Yeah, work offsets are dangerous if you get them wrong. I mean, even wrong a little bit. In male lay, it doesn't matter. Either you standardize it so that it's always chuck face and it never changes and then nobody has to really understand it or you teach them how to understand it. Yeah, that's fair.
00:30:12
Speaker
Just like on a mill, like any operator has, you know, that's moving different jobs or whatever has to know, okay, here's the work offset. It's off of this face, this corner, this hole. Um, if you don't probe it, it's going to crash and like, you know, walk it in the first time, slow it down, make sure it goes where you think it's going to go. And, uh, yeah. Cool. How's Kern?
00:30:37
Speaker
Good. I haven't cut anything in a little while, but I've been loading tools and programming and mounting the material onto the vise and doing setup work, but while also running the mori and the tornos and trying to keep things going. So I'm hoping today, if not tomorrow, if I don't have time today,
00:31:01
Speaker
cut some stuff. And as you suggested to me through WhatsApp, just this one operation that's making me nervous, just cut it super light, super 5% step over, and it'll be fine. Oh, the blot of steel. Yeah. Yeah, that big tombstone of steel. Because I'm holding it in a way that's just not inspiring a lot of confidence to me, just because I don't know much about dovetails, really, experience-wise. But yeah, you're all full send.
00:31:30
Speaker
Well, with the caveat that you are clamping from the inside out, so there's always the risk if your part relaxes that you'll intrinsically lose clamping pressure. That what your operation you're doing isn't. Yeah, it's not going to relax. Yeah, exactly. But when we did that, that sort of like beginner's guide to dovetail fixture, because I didn't
00:31:51
Speaker
I learned a lot in researching it myself, which is that I kind of originally thought, and technically this is dovetails from a dovetail work holding standpoint. What you're doing is just a angled biting jaw on an actual traditional screw vice. But the idea of cutting dovetails as an op zero into part actually kind of originated from hardened tool steel or hardened products material where you want that mechanical
00:32:20
Speaker
actual connection that means in an automation standpoint you can't it's much you can but it's incredibly difficult much higher threshold to have a process reliability failure and that same sort of material tends not to
00:32:34
Speaker
go as well in other sort of clamping style workholding stuff. So that kind of surprised me because I thought when you see a dovetail vice, you don't think, oh man, that's really the way to go for the most, the most reliable, you know, lights out machine operation. But when you look at it, you're like, Oh, actually between the, between that angle and the Pokeyoke and the pin and all that, it's pretty genius.
00:32:57
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And the more I get into five axis and actually do it, like researching it and seeing pictures on Instagram only gets you so far until you start buying your own components and planning your own products and like, Oh, okay. It's all starting to come together now. That's all the dovetails
Tool Management and Organizational Tips
00:33:11
Speaker
are actually really cool. And all those little, what do you call those little dovetail fixtures, the little square ones, like the Christmas trees owner, just a little tiny dovetail blocks. Exactly.
00:33:24
Speaker
those are, I'm planning quite a bit of stuff with those. You could even have like small fixtures that plug right onto one of those things. And I'm trying to plan how to maximize the usage of each palette and have not just the palette itself be quick change, but whatever attaches to the top of the palette be relatively quick change as well. So you have kind of a standard set of stuff.
00:33:49
Speaker
Dude, even though I have a lot of pallets. You have like 80 pallets, man. You could just do like a New York reload and be like, oh, I want a quick change pallet. I'm just going to grab a different one. Exactly. That's awesome. But I don't want to have like 40 pallets that only had a one-time use on it because I did poor planning. Hold my beer. Yeah. No, but I was talking with Mike at Milterra last night.
00:34:13
Speaker
and about five-axis stuff, because I'll put a new video out on YouTube, and he'll text me later and be like, oh, I was just watching the video, and I had this suggestion for you. And because I've got so many tool positions on the Kern, 210, he's like, plan out your sister tooling now. And if you're putting in, I've already decided to plan out sections, so I'll look up my document right here.
00:34:40
Speaker
So tool 28 to 48 is going to be for ball mills. Tool 49 to 99 is for flat end mills. 100 to 150 is for corner radius, et cetera, et cetera. Drills, thread mills, corner rounding, chamfer, back chamfer, saws, and indexable end mills. And I think that gets me probably 90% of the kind of tooling that I'm going to put in there. And they're going to be grouped into sections.
00:35:03
Speaker
But as he was suggesting, he's like, if, for example, you've got an eighth inch flat end mill for flute that you know you're going to blow through and go through like two or three of them in a production run, plan them now so that they're beside each other because it just makes it so much easier to find them and to see them visually when you've got like, bam, bam, bam, right beside each other. So the current maintains to a pocket position.
00:35:29
Speaker
Correct. It's not random. Yeah. I absolutely love. I mean, it's probably like the least unique feature on that machine because there's some other really unique features, but I freaking love that tool rack. Yeah. It's brilliant. It's big and open and the door opens up and the light turns on and you hear Angel singing.
00:35:51
Speaker
And you can just see everything. So I'm looking forward to having it organized in a way that is visually appropriate. So like, oh, there's all my ball end mills. And oh, not only that, but obviously those four are identical. So they're all sister tools. And then it goes sequentially as well, like the first one and the second one and third one. And the control will tell you if the first two are blown out. So you can just go find them quickly.
00:36:15
Speaker
I feel like you might actually be in a position to pull that off. Everyone else I've ever seen that's tried to do groupings, it ultimately just fails because it's not possible to realize you needed more bullnose than you thought. I know. Let's say you don't use so many flat end mills, so then you just gave it 70 spots, but you only need 30. So what do you do? And then where does that random drill and thread milk? I'm not challenging you. I'm just saying it's always- I'm literally guessing here with the numbers. Yeah. It's a pure guess, speculative.
00:36:43
Speaker
It's a starting place. Otherwise, my other alternative, maybe there's a third or fourth that I'm not thinking of, but as I've been doing right now, it's like, oh, I need another tool. So let's put in tool two. Oh, I need another tool. Let's put in tool three. And then I'm going to have all these random, completely unorganized two, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 of just stuff as I'm filling it. And I have the ability to not do that with a little bit of upfront planning. So I'm going to try that. And maybe I'll redo it all.
00:37:14
Speaker
eventually. But yeah, I figured this is a good starting place. And I'm using the Fusion Cloud Library, which is the first time I've used the Cloud Library, to corroborate and have that be my master. Okay. So that all tools pull out of the Cloud Library. Are you on a Fusion team?
00:37:32
Speaker
I'm not, I haven't tried that yet either. Okay, you have to do that. Now is the time. Yeah, early. Well, because you're going to want Angelo, Sky, whomever to be able to also access parts or program parts or tweak parts and when they open the library, you need that homogeneity, not a word, I don't think. You want them to be pulling from the same library and so you need to be on a team to do that, period.
00:38:02
Speaker
Okay.
Overcoming Challenges in CNC Machining
00:38:03
Speaker
I don't, I don't know that. Well, yeah, I'll leave it at that. Um, that'll be awesome. Dude. That's, I'm so happily jealous of that. You got to cut that part though. I know it's driving me nuts that it's taken so long, but I'm, I'm slow. Yeah. That's the answer to that. So it was a good thing. Yeah. I, I, I don't think there's ever been a day I've looked back on or a month or a week where I've been like, you know what? I really should have gone faster. Yeah. Really, really.
00:38:33
Speaker
I might have said that a couple of times because I get distracted, but as far as a rushing aspect, no, you almost never wish you rushed a bit more.
00:38:45
Speaker
But yeah, somebody asked me in the comments if I'm scared of running the current. And I thought a lot about that. And the answer is no. But I'm scared of this very next operation, which makes it seem like I'm scared of the current. And literally, there's nothing else to make except this next operation. And I'm not putting it off, necessarily. I'm just taking my time to get there. When you say the next operation, you literally mean that 4140 chunk?
00:39:12
Speaker
Dude, if it's programmed and in the machine, just go run it when we hang up. You're going to realize it's okay. You got to learn the machine. Totally agree. Exactly. It's just to get your feet wet kind of thing. Right. That nervousness to jump in. But once I do that, and I know I can nail that, and I'm not scared of the toolpaths. I'm not scared of the machine. I'm not scared of the five-axis movement. I'm just scared of that big heavy chunk falling. That's the only thing.
00:39:41
Speaker
I had a hard time like really being honest. I had a hard time, uh, whatever last Friday, um, when the lathe was finally fixed and I ran the first part and it was actually pretty spot on. And I was like, Oh, that's just like, you just feel really grateful. Like I'm really happy and I really appreciate the
00:39:56
Speaker
cause guy and the outcome of that not being so bad but that's really cool and then i ran the first part and i really wanted to just leave it at that i was like no john you need to go back and get the sub spindle parts catcher stuff working you know why crash before it's a simple record.
00:40:13
Speaker
a simple X move that you forgot. It's that easy and you can run it, reduce rapids and slow down. It'll be okay. I really didn't want to and I forced myself to the proverbial get back up on the horse. I did that and it was totally the right call. Love it. I heard a thing yesterday that really struck with me. The guy was talking about self-confidence and he goes, self-confidence is the result of keeping promises that you make to yourself.
00:40:41
Speaker
And every time you keep a promise you make to yourself, it's like you're making a deposit to your self-confidence bank account. And so as you did, you kind of...
00:40:50
Speaker
push yourself to make a promise. You're like, no, I'm going to finish this. I'm going to do this. And that slowly builds your self-confidence, a little deposit every time you force yourself to do a good thing or to push past the fear or the nerves or anything like that and do what you know you have to do because you know it's right. And I'm sure that helped you in your confidence of the lathe to be able to... You're finishing the loop. You're closing the loop. Yeah, there was a problem. I crashed. It's fixed now.
00:41:20
Speaker
I could either go home and forget about it or I can finish the loop and I can fix the problem and know that it's good now. I can go home and sleep tonight. It's actually funny you say that because you're totally right because I went home and I told Yvonne. I was like, I got it working.
Striving for Excellence in CNC Machining
00:41:35
Speaker
I got it going.
00:41:38
Speaker
just left it at making the part but not finishing the loop part. I would have gone home and said, Oh, I'm almost there. But I would have been thinking about it. And it would have just been an open book. It would have been fine. But you made it great. You know what I mean? And we don't want a fine life. We want a great life. So it's all these micro decisions that lead us towards greatness. And that's, that's, that's why we're here. I need a grim snow knives shirt that says make lathes great again.
00:42:08
Speaker
Yeah. Seriously, go run that part. If it's really set up and programmed and the tools in there and the materials in there, go pop your cherry bud. Yeah, that's basically what it is. It's the fear of that. Yeah, I still got to load the tools, touch them off.
00:42:27
Speaker
The code is good. I've gone over it a lot. I've got some other stuff. Like I said, the Tornos guy is here today. But yeah, it's coming very soon. Awesome. And I'm looking forward to that. And then past that, I feel like the clouds are going to part, and the sun's going to come out, and I'm just going to be able to run all kinds of stuff. Awesome.
00:42:46
Speaker
Oh, I have a kind of a random request to you or anyone listening, which is I broke my phone, ended up buying a new iPhone, which I don't really care about, but just was the path of least resistance. So it ends up being one of the iPhone 11s, the basic one that supports wireless charging, bought a wireless charging mat that explicitly says it supports up to a five millimeter case or something like that. No credit cards that are like metal stuff, but
00:43:12
Speaker
Totally it was the anchor one and that is absolutely not true. Like I did some quick testing and it's complete BS So I guess I'm just curious It would be awesome to use wireless charging and I do have a case that has you know, it's a normal case I guess
00:43:28
Speaker
If anybody has any tips, is there a more powerful or a powered version, or is there a better way or quality? I don't mind spending a few bucks on the wireless charging thing, but I don't want to keep buying them. Especially nowadays, it seems like it's harder to clog up the world of shipping stuff when we've got more important things. Anyways, I would
Personal Catch-up and Sign-off
00:43:46
Speaker
appreciate any input.
00:43:47
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know anything about wireless charging really, because I don't do it, but I know a lot of people do and love it. Got it. Yeah, it would be nice. I know from my past memory of you, I don't think I've seen you in, geez, a long time. Have I seen you since Leif and I came down, like, a year and a half ago? No.
00:44:07
Speaker
current tour, I guess. No, no, no. I saw you in Germany. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was a year ago. Anyway, from my memory is you have one of those leather phone cases with the credit card flaps in the front. Not anymore. Just have a basic plastic one now. But yeah, I hope you find something. Thank you. Sweet. Well, I got to run because I actually have a call to like a local business chamber commerce call, which I'm kind of curious to see where that's going to go about the current world we're in.
00:44:38
Speaker
Interesting. Yeah. We'll have fun with that. Thanks, bud. All right. I'll see you next time. Bye. Okay. Bye.