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#358 Gridfinity bins and inserted tooling
479 Plays1 year ago
TOPICS:
- Gridfinity bins and inserted tooling
- 75 Hard
- Grimsmo's new Employee
- What's more accurate, axial or radial cuts?
- diamond burnishing on swiss
- LTL freight stress
- Labeling fixtures with paint
- Speedio tool touchoffs
- Saunders sorting chips
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Organizing with 3D Printing
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machining episode number 358. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo.
00:00:07
Speaker
And it's episode 358, but I am holding tool 58 3D printed grid finity dual color insert process bin, which is why would I have to want to go look for extra inserts? Why would I want you to go look for the screws that we periodically replace? So it is so this is what I was talking about holding up or talking about multicolor printing infusion with no fuss, no muss, and they look great and it makes life better.
00:00:39
Speaker
I think when we talked last week or two weeks ago, I did put days off in the shop on hold because I just couldn't handle it. I was admitted that and boy, what a 180 degree flip to where I'm now back to like
00:00:56
Speaker
kind of those as close as any entrepreneur is ever going to be to having nothing on their to-do list. I'm holding up air quotes right now, which means I'm in a place to do all this stuff. But that's a long-winded intro saying this is John Ripe's conversation about balancing our love for machining along with the joys and struggles of writing a small business. Absolutely.
Challenges and Techniques in Multicolor Printing
00:01:18
Speaker
Okay, so on that print, I saw a white grid affinity bin and near the top, I assume you printed it bottom down. Oh, no, I see what you did. You did a it looks fine. Yeah, you did a single layer all the way across the whole layer is red. And then white on top of that.
00:01:35
Speaker
Yeah, we're going to do a fusion video showing what I have found to be the three different efficient workflows of going from fusion to a multicolored gridget print. And there's trade offs with all of them. But I want to do it super to the point like five minute video. But this is to me the path of least resistance, which is where I'm using the fill height range, which has the downside of also putting red around the
00:02:01
Speaker
It looks cool. It's a pinstripe. It doesn't look bad. I would rather it be white, but I don't care. It doesn't matter. Otherwise, you're printing the two-color print tower, whatever it's called, the side thing, and wasting quite a bit of time and filament. Sure.
Shop Workflow and Tooling Organization
00:02:20
Speaker
Actually, for folks, the YouTube video won't be out. We will throw this up as an Instagram story the day you're listening to this podcast so you can see what I'm referring to.
00:02:28
Speaker
Yeah, the takeaway was not actually so much the multihuller print, it was more having the little side pocket to hold the insert screws. Okay. Because we have lots of different insert, you probably use it to insert tooling, do you? We don't know. I mean, on the lathes and stuff we do. Yeah.
00:02:44
Speaker
Well, okay, my limited lathe experience, we don't need to worry about the insert screw integrity. Yeah, they're not a huge problem. Yeah, it's not an interrupted cut. But we use lots of inserted drills. We use lots of inserted tooling. And we actually do replace the screws on a schedule, if you will. So having the screws with the inserts, life is great. Is the screw replacement, is it actually timed? Or is it like when the head starts to get a little mangled from the torques?
00:03:13
Speaker
That's why I hesitated there. It is not as formalized in documentaries. I guess it could be operator specific, but the screws are so cheap. The dollar to a piece. Only if you actually have them in stock. It sucks to try to find the one screw for the weird holder or whatever. It's awesome that you're making it. You're removing all barriers to maintaining a happy shop.
00:03:39
Speaker
Well, you need the yeah, and you really want the never sees or whatever you call it the stuff. Yeah. And as he's screw stuff, a torque wrench and the right screw. Those three are all pretty important. We don't replace them every time. Although frankly, I'd rather them do that. We don't realize maybe that's, I don't know, I should talk to the guys. Maybe it's not when they rotate them, but why then they replace the whole insert. I don't really care. We actually,
Tooling Choices: Inserted vs. Solid Carbide
00:04:01
Speaker
pure coincidence, unrelated. We broke a screw off in a Sandvik tool yesterday.
00:04:07
Speaker
And I don't know why, but it was going to be better to just replace the body than it was to try to sit there and mess around with a screw that was broke off inside of it. So that's not, you know, that's $190 body. I can replace screws for five years. Um, now the bodies won't last forever either, but like, I'd rather not. Yeah. Right. Right. It's that balance. That's cool.
00:04:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think I have one inserted tool on the Kern. Um, was it 0.750 inch with two inserts in it? The Kyocera something. And I don't know if I've ever even rotated the answer. Yeah. Like I use it for, for making fixtures and light facing work and stuff. And I, I just don't think about the tool life on it.
00:04:58
Speaker
It's interesting because part
Personal Growth and the 75 Hard Challenge
00:05:00
Speaker
of me doesn't love inserted tooling. We use a lot of solid carbide where we can, but there are many parts where we need two, three inch face mills, so you can't do it there. And then a lot of our products, we are able to get superior finishes
00:05:18
Speaker
with one to one and a half inch face mills in a single pass, you don't have a step over line and you're not going to get that out of solid carbite. And we do need to rotate this inserts more often than you would be willing to replace the equivalent cost of solid carbite, blah, blah, blah. Necessarily evil, we have to use them. Yeah, totally. I have two questions for you. Number one, are you still going 72 hard? And number two, how's your new employee?
00:05:49
Speaker
75 hard. Oh, sorry. Yep. Yes ish. Technically, no, because unless you're doing the full program, you're not doing it. But I'm absolutely doing my own version of it. Continuously, I kind of stopped reading.
00:06:06
Speaker
this past year, which I kind of feel bad about, but also I'm kind of like, I'm okay right now. I crushed a lot of books in the past five years. I'll get back to it. And I've spent that time elsewhere with family or whatever, so I'm good there. But still working out every single day, at least once a day, if not in the afternoon or evening as well. Go for a walk.
00:06:30
Speaker
Yeah, I love it. That's legit, dude. That's really impressive. First off, 1,000% full respect. The rigidity of the 75 hard is extreme for the sake of being extreme, right? The goal of it is do it for 75 days to prove to yourself that there are no excuses. You build a habit in 75 days. I've done it for five years now.
00:06:56
Speaker
Oh, wow. Right. So it's not sustainable forever. It's OK. I'm trying to build a sustainable life for myself, not just busting the walls all the time kind of thing. However, it has trained me to be like, there are no excuses. Yeah, you can get it done. You can find the time. You can make it work. You will live for your priorities, and that has become one of mine. If I recall, though, it's something like an hour of indoor exercise every day. 45 minutes.
00:07:26
Speaker
Yeah, but for goodness inside and separately 45 minutes spent outside is being active. Exactly. Yeah, that's a I mean, look, people come with excuses, but that's all that's a while. And the whole point is to kind of break your brain in that first 75 days and be like, I can't possibly do that. Like when I first learned about it, I was like, Okay,
00:07:46
Speaker
I thought it was combined like 22 minutes inside, 22 minutes outside and then I read the fine print or the update later or whatever and it's like, wait, two? That's impossible. I can assure you it is not impossible. I go through phases. Usually I just walk outside, take my kid to the park and I just walk around the park kind of thing and that works out really well. Then I recently started, I don't know why, but I started doing hill sprints at the park. What?
00:08:17
Speaker
And there's just this ramp and I was like, you know what, walking's not just not doing it for me anymore. So I'm just going to run up and down this hill as many times as I can. And at first it was three, three times. And then I was, you know, falling over at the top and yesterday I did 22.
00:08:30
Speaker
And I, it sucks. I don't like to run, but like at IMTS two years ago, I did the 5k with Amish and that's, I've never done a 5k before. And I just, I was able to do it because I was fit enough to just do it. Oh, I bet you destroy it. Yeah, I did. Okay. Like, I don't know what the times are. I did 29 minutes or something like that, but I felt good. And even at that point, I don't run. I didn't run.
00:08:56
Speaker
That was hard for me. And I was jelly legs for the whole IMTS three days. But you know, I do think to myself, IMTS is coming up in eight months, whatever it is. And I'm like, Amish is going to make me do it again, his knee. You get, I didn't even thought of this. You going? I think so. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. I think it'd be good. Yeah. But yeah, I'll probably do that 5k too. So I'm like, well, I can start by practicing these Hillsprinter and be a little bit more prepared for it. Yeah. That's respect. That's awesome. That's good. I feel great. Good.
00:09:26
Speaker
Glad to hear and new employee, new employee. Jeff has been a week and a couple of days.
Employee Development and Transitions
00:09:33
Speaker
Absolutely crushing it. That's awesome. Last week, Pierre was giving him hands on instruction. I didn't, you know, I touched in touch base with him often, but I didn't teach anything. So Pierre, Pierre taught him everything and Angela was there to oversee and manage and stuff. And and then this week, let's say Wednesday, so Monday and Tuesday,
00:09:56
Speaker
He was all by himself on the Swiss, turned it on, made parts, you know, all by himself. And I'm like, I congratulated him Monday night. And I'm like, dude, like that's an accomplishment. I'm really impressed, really proud of you. And it's like, you know, the Swiss is new, but I know like, it's like, I know what I'm doing here. Like I'm a machinist and I've done this before. Never on a Swiss, but, uh, yeah, it's fun and it's challenging and I like it. And I'm like, dude,
00:10:22
Speaker
And he asked to borrow the FANUC macro programming book and bring it home and read it at night. And I'm like, yes, go here. Here, do it. Yeah. Oh, that's wonderful. It's awesome. Yeah, it's working out super good. Absolutely going to miss Pierre, but he's off to bigger and better things. And he's basically got all of Europe to find another job. You know, this job kind of thing. And I'm like, I know some people at Tornos, Willem and Kern, et cetera. I'll put your name out, you know?
00:10:52
Speaker
Oh, I can't imagine that'll be a difficult placement. Exactly. Does he want to work production? Does he want to work in sales or machine building or whatever? So it's cool. Yeah, that's awesome. It feels really good. And then spent the past two weeks doing annual employee reviews. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So last year we started this, um,
00:11:17
Speaker
Once we brought on Spencer, our accountant almost two years ago, he comes from a very corporate background and he added a lot of structure to how we do things. One of which is January performance reviews and compensation changes structured. It made things a lot easier because it's like, okay, bust it all out in January, schedule all the meetings, spend time with everybody, hear their story.
00:11:43
Speaker
And it's been, it's, it's always wonderful and eye opening. Um, sometimes nerve wracking, you know, going in, but, uh, it's great now because I've got basically three managers in the company, Eric Angelo and Spencer. And I'm like the tip of the spear. Um, so I get to sit in on every meeting, but they're the ones running the meetings, which is great. And we meet with every employee and said, you know, how'd the last year go? We did this, you did that, um, room for improvement, things you want to do throughout the next year.
00:12:10
Speaker
et cetera, et cetera. Just got a list of five questions or so and takes about half an hour or more. Hour and a half sometimes. Oh, is that right? Yeah, sometimes. You don't want to stop a good conversation. But it's really nice to spend time. For most employees, it's like, man, we shouldn't just do this annually. We got through a lot of good stuff here.
00:12:36
Speaker
I agree. I don't, again, a sponge more than a professor of this, but the idea of building up everything across the course of a year and then dumping it all doesn't, none of that seems great. Sure. Ideally as a manager, you give your feedback day of throughout time, but it is nice to catch up at the end and overview the year because how often do we step back and write things out and go,
00:13:02
Speaker
wow, you really, you're in a totally different place than you were last year. Like that's awesome. You know, and what do you want for the next year? What do we want for you for the next year kind of thing? And, uh, otherwise this never gets talked about, never gets thought about. And the employee just gets bitter and unhappy and you know, depending. Yeah. But yeah. Good.
Machining Accuracy and Tool Deflection
00:13:23
Speaker
Glad to hear. Yeah. Things are good. Things are flowing really good.
00:13:30
Speaker
We was gonna ask you, can we talk a little bit about something Lauren said in WhatsApp, probably in three weeks ago at this point, but on cutting tools, when you're trying to achieve critical, really critical tolerances, the idea that what's more accurate in making a radial cut, so the side of an end mill versus an axial cut with the tip of an end mill?
00:13:56
Speaker
I am all ears. I do remember this. I mean, I'm asking as much as I'm saying. So I would have thought.
00:14:07
Speaker
If you had asked me this question, a tool length is easy to measure accurately, whether it's with a Renishaw style touch probe or what I think of as a bloom style laser. I reckon both probably make both. But nevertheless, if I take a tool and measure it, especially if I measure it and then immediately make a cut, that seems to me like that would be pretty accurate. I think what was being said was
00:14:39
Speaker
Sorry, just pause. Versus radial, which to me, there's two major problems with radius or the size of the end mill. Number one, the diameter tolerance of end mills is not as great as you might think. Yeah, all over the place.
00:14:55
Speaker
Side note, I don't know that radius measurement of the blazers is asking. I'm not challenging. I'm just saying I don't know combined with whether it's diameter inaccuracies or run out, which run out is for sure a thing that exists even
00:15:13
Speaker
you know, in varying degrees, I'm sure even PG, Rigo, Bueno, you know, heat shrink, whatever you call it, have some amount of run out. So I would have thought Axial is better, but he seemed to say that the problem with Axial is you are always going to be having, I assume, meaningful amounts of
00:15:32
Speaker
thermal growth in the machine, spindle growth in the machine. I do remember this from our brief tour at Kern where they talked about, you know, is this spindle's cutting as it's warming up? So obviously, a 10 second cut in Delrin may not be an issue, but a 30 minute surfacing cut in a tool steel, yeah, your spindle and machine is going to change temperatures across 30 minutes in the cut surfacing. So I just wanted to throw it out there to see. I enjoy this learning about this sort of a thing.
00:15:58
Speaker
Absolutely me too. And it was neat that he brought it up and got me thinking about it for a brief minute. The other thing with a radial cut sideways is tool load, tool deflection, like how hard are you cutting or how many skim passing, whatever. So that's why in my head, I like an end mill, an axial cut to, especially on a five axis machine, you just tilt over and you face with the end of the tool. But yeah, he brought up a really good point that
00:16:27
Speaker
Uh, thermal growth in a machine is a real problem. And then he's like, Oh, but you're doing that on a current. You suck. Like not fair, not relevant, not relevant in a way. Um, but he's basically said you do that on a three axis machine and you're going to like fight yourself to like, cause the C frame kind of is going to thermal growth all over the place. Um, so.
00:16:53
Speaker
I think it was for the small fixtures that I'm making to hold our blades. And I am using the end of the tool. I'm tilting the B down to 90 degrees or 90, 94, I think. And then using the end of the tool to face the feature. And then I flipped the C180 and I do the same on the other side. And still juries out to lunch if
00:17:16
Speaker
That is an inconsistent problem for me or if I'm just making stories up. Yeah, right. I still have to measure those parts.
00:17:25
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like anecdotally, if I took, let's take one of our Kumba, so yeah, quote unquote, good machines. And if I did a left five, 10, five or 10,000 on a normal material, could be aluminum, mild steel, whatever. And I took a side cutting radio, you know, 2D contour around the profile of a cube or square. I think I could do a spring pass
00:17:52
Speaker
a couple of times and probably still either see chips coming off the material or the Sharpie would be erased, that sort of a thing. I'm not, I could go test this, but India Kumas are really great machines, so it's not a criticism of them in this scenario as it is deflection really of the cutting tool. Whereas I do feel like if I recut
00:18:15
Speaker
a floor finish, like an axial strip, like let's say I'm working on a fixture, I'm decking it. If I happen to repost and redeck it, I tend I feel like I don't see that get recut, which almost which I guess to speak. Yeah, I feel like I've done this. You know, you turn the coolant off, you watch it, you look for chips kind of thing. Hmm. Yeah, I feel like I've seen chips both ways. It depends on how much stock you left for the first finish pass. Mm hmm.
00:18:42
Speaker
Like sometimes for an axial facing pass, I'll rough it, not care, leave one thou or five thou or something. And then I'm just kissing it with the tool afterwards as my actual finish pass, which leaves a wonderful finish.
Machining Processes: Rubbing and Feed Rates
00:18:54
Speaker
And then if I recut that again, yeah, I don't think anything would come off. And same for the side. If I leave 20 thou for my finished pass, and then I go to do a skim pass, it's going to cut again. But if I leave two thou for my finished pass,
00:19:11
Speaker
And then I skim pass again, it's not going to cut anything because deflection basically, whether it's axial or radial deflection. Now your Akuma is a lot beefier than probably any of my machines. But yeah. I'm just curious if you. Yeah. Like I've definitely seen deflection. So that's why, um, what do you call it? Uh, there's a word for it anyway.
00:19:39
Speaker
cutting edge radius or something when- Not chip thinning. Yeah, it's not chip thinning, but when you're not feeding in enough, like enough axial or radial stock to actually get past the radius of the cutting flute itself. Oh, sure. Rubbing. Whatever that's called. You're rubbing, basically. I'm still on the fence if I believe in rubbing or not. Oh, John. No, no, no. I mean,
00:20:03
Speaker
You take it to an extreme. Yes, it's a thing. Extreme but for small sharp tools? I don't know. Yeah. Well, it's weird because all of those minimum inch per tooth, so how much IPT is basically how much you're allowing the material to
00:20:23
Speaker
cut in versus skim off the surface. And to me, a shovel and a pile of dirt is the great example. You can shove that spade, that sharp-bladed shovel or spade into the dirt, no problem. But if you try to skim it, if you tip the shovel all the way down to the ground, you try to just skim off 1.6 of an inch, it's a lot harder to get that shovel to bite in to get dirt and just not bounce off for it. And then if you put a one-inch foam tip
00:20:49
Speaker
Now you're really not biting in. Now these are extremes, but I'm a believer, but then it's funny because if you look at Harvey's speeds and feeds for micromachines. Exactly. I was going to say. They're not the worst speeds in the feeds in the world. Say what you want about them, et cetera. They're like one times per tooth.
00:21:08
Speaker
which is totally counterintuitive. Now, maybe micro tools are sharper, maybe whatever, but even an uncoated tool to a coated tool, the coating puts a radius on the edge of the cutting tool. Isn't that funny? Whatever microns it may be. Yeah, so that's where I balance. Probably the majority of my tools are certainly quarter inch and under, if not eighth inch and under. I'm more in the micro world for
00:21:34
Speaker
rubbing and, you know, very low inch per tooth than I am with like, you know, half inch hogging and melt. That's you will rub, you know? Yeah, right. Yeah, right. But yeah, it's interesting.
Surface Finishing Techniques
00:21:50
Speaker
Speaking of rubbing. I've had this on my notes for a while. A
00:21:57
Speaker
The thing we do on the Swiss is diamond burnishing, which is rubbing on purpose. Yeah. Like the cocktail tools? Yeah. We were using a cocktail, and I just bought this tool from, I think it's called Eco Roll. I haven't tried it yet. I guess Jeff is going to be trying it on the Swiss once he's man enough. But what is it?
00:22:22
Speaker
This, actually the old tool that we are currently using for our saga pens when you push down the button, these three ball bearings, ceramic ball bearings really, really hard are scratching this stainless steel shaft that we turn. The surface area that the balls are scratching
00:22:40
Speaker
is if the, you know, the feed forward lines on the turn finish are too coarse, then you'll feel like every time you go down. And even after diamond burnishing, if you don't do it really well, you can still feel some of those lines. And you know, the pen makes like scratchy noises and things like that. So the diamond burnisher has been awesome. We've been using it for years. And then this eco roll is not diamond, it's a hardened steel roller.
00:23:07
Speaker
Okay, that, you know, you basically push into the cut. And as the tool pressure causes the little tiny hardened roller to roll, and then you feed across the surface, supposed to be super even better than a fixed drag diamond kind of thing. Interesting. Yeah, so I'm super excited to try that out. And allow us to easier achieve an even better finish on the surface.
00:23:30
Speaker
Is the material hardened or does the burnishing action also perform any hardening? Both. Yeah, we're turning it at 45 Rockwell. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's 17.4 pH, H900 stainless. Yeah, so it is already hard, but yeah, it'll surface harden the material somewhat because you're burnishing it basically. Interesting. What makes you switch? At the CMTS trade show, the Canadian version.
00:24:00
Speaker
Eco Roll had a booth and I was like, what is that? And he gave me the pitch and I was like, that's exactly what I need. And he's like, yeah, it's only a couple hundred bucks. I was like, obviously I'm buying one. And then I get home and get the quote and he's like, oh, just the head is a couple hundred bucks, but the body is like a lot. So it was like two grand for this whole setup. And I'm like, oh, dang it. I still want it. Okay. I think it's going to solve a problem that we're having and you know,
00:24:28
Speaker
needs to happen. Ordered it, took a bunch of weeks to get here, finally came in. Pierre's moving back to France. Dang it. We'll get it going this year sometime. It's one of those preparatory purchases. I'm glad I have it now. Next time we make that part, we'll set it up.
00:24:47
Speaker
get it done. It just pushes from one side versus a pinch to support it. Interesting. There is deflection in mind, but it's a Swiss, so you're doing it right next to the guide bushing as the material is coming out. That helps. Interesting.
Logistics and Shipping Challenges
00:25:06
Speaker
We're switching gears. I think I brought this up on the podcast before, but it's come back onto my plate a bit because we're continuing to have stress and what I would consider just an uncool business behavior on our LTL freight. And we currently use FedEx. And so I'm both directly throwing them under the bus here, but also kind of a question in PSA to where
00:25:34
Speaker
What is a better solution that would work? And the specific problem is
00:25:41
Speaker
we will be quoted a rate, let's say $200 for a shipment and then the invoice will come and it will be $280 or $500. And the difference is not the quoted rate, if you will, but rather the LTL carrier seemingly at their discretion is just choosing to add things like service charges, limited access delivery charges, pickup, appointment scheduling requests.
00:26:09
Speaker
We have a mediocre relationship with our rep. We used to have a better rep, the rep we have now. It's just very difficult to get this individual. It's a specific person. It's very difficult to get them on the phone, and then there aren't productive calls at this point of, hey, this is not right. If you, we have the API integrated with Shopify, somebody puts in their address,
00:26:30
Speaker
Yeah, you charge them $200 for shipping. If Saunders is paying $400, that's no good. Yeah, you can't do this. It's not right. So we haven't made any progress. The response of we'll just keep contesting them is hugely inefficient because it takes a lot of time. We often lose those contestants. I'm not in the business of it. In many cases, I don't even care if you
00:26:55
Speaker
quote 280, just as long as what you quote is what I get billed. And so short of going through the dog and pony show of interviewing other national LTL carriers, there are others out there.
00:27:11
Speaker
short of them and hoping that you just have a better relationship where you can have a better way of handling these situations. I don't know what to do. Or the other thing I've heard about is just using, instead of using a direct carrier, switching to a freight broker. The counter I've heard is that brokers tend to not reduce your costs, although that's not necessarily even my priority, although I'd rather have more of a shipping, I'll have to.
00:27:39
Speaker
It's enough of a problem where it's taking up, we either ignore it and eat it or we're spending way too much of our time and I'm very protective of, I guess it's another way of saying it, I'm very protective of how Sondra's machine work allows
00:27:56
Speaker
us to chase down stuff like this. It's not a good use of time. If you actually divide a person's wage or rate into the hours you can spend, research needs voices, tracking them, following up, contesting them, it's ridiculous. I need to figure this out. Yeah, we don't do almost zero freight deliveries or shipments, so I don't have much to add here.
00:28:21
Speaker
And I'm sure the FedEx, just oversharing, you know, I am pretty sure there's probably some thing in our, you know, 64 page facts agreement that basically says that they can do this. And you know, taking them your this is, I read it, they've been an extreme scenario, but like taking them to small claims court over this would would just nuke the relationship because the way these records work is we have like a so
00:28:47
Speaker
A $200 shipment is the retail rate of that would be seven to 10 times that amount. So our discount is incredibly high double digit percentages. It's a stupid discount. I don't know if I'm allowed to share it, but 70, 80 higher percent discount. And that's what they do is we were kid testing some that we chose not to pay. And they started sending these nasty grams. We're going to send you to credit collection.
00:29:15
Speaker
and we're not going to honor your discount anymore, which is a big operational problem for us. And I told my broker, I was like, look, you know, we spend well into the five figures a year and we have contesting, we're currently contesting $1,300 with invoices, like, you know, and then he was like, well, that's just an automated system process. So anyway, you probably hear my voice, this is a stressful thing. I just want a solution, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's no fun. I don't know.
00:29:41
Speaker
If anyone's listening, we've gotten some great feedback from viewers over the years on what's a more mature company or somebody that's had the experience to handle this stuff do? Absolutely. Yeah.
Innovations in Manufacturing Processes
00:29:53
Speaker
Oh, you know what? When you were talking about burnishing, have you watched the Apple Vision Pro manufacturing video? I think I saw part of it. Yeah. It's three minutes long. Yeah, I might have seen it then. Yeah. I'm pretty sure it's on
00:30:07
Speaker
Apple's official YouTube channel. It's not it's not like a viral hidden sneaky thing. It's just them showing their pride of manufacturing. And there's a some sort of a drill, drill tap center doing the machining on the it looks like they start with an extrusion because I actually love to hear somebody talking about why wouldn't use a forging or casting where you have less material to machine away. So it looks like it's an extrusion that they are doing a lot of machine on. But the cool thing that for some reason reminded me of you was
00:30:37
Speaker
They hold the frame of these, I call them virtual reality glasses, whatever they're supposed to call them, and they drag them through sand. It almost just bark rovers. Remember the thing where you can put air through a sand thing? Yeah, it was a muck rover, the fluid something. Yeah. It looks like the- That is called
00:31:02
Speaker
drag tumbling or something like that. I've seen those tumblers at shows before and some of them sell those tumblers and it's whatever it is, corn, copper, walnut shells or even stones vibrate but also you fix your part to an arm and it goes into this vibrating loose fluid kind of thing that's abrasive in some way and then that can spin and the whole thing can spin and whatever so you're drag burnishing or you're drag tumbling.
00:31:30
Speaker
Super cool. Apparently, that's more effective than just throwing the part in and letting it do whatever it wants to do. Yeah. I guess they don't bang against each other. Exactly. Yeah. But they're stupid expensive, those machines. Right. It looks cool though. It really does. Yeah. The other random thing we found is Modge Podge. You ever heard of it? Yeah. Yeah. That's a white glue, isn't it? Yeah. It's a kid's stuff.
00:31:58
Speaker
Yes, I never heard it. So we had started to mark tombstones, whether we're just trying to write the tombstone number in better visibility places on them, or certain fixtures, we wanted to label stuff. In the past, we had written with a sharpie and then put the powder coat tape like that, clear tape over it.
00:32:19
Speaker
But over time, that won't really adhere, especially to cast iron. And so I Googled how to seal Sharpie ink. Oh, same thing. Paint pens will last weeks, but not forever. I want it to be on there for good. And I found Mod Podge, $10 at the local hobby store. It goes on like white Elmer's glue, but it dries clear. It looks a little like brush stroke, whatever. But I printed some of our
00:32:45
Speaker
what it like P-TEX labels that are kind of those glossy labels around the shop and stuck them on the tombstone, put a little coat of Mod Podge over it. And it's perfect because it's cheap, quick. It looks like it'll last forever. And if I want to just razor blade it off and you're back to scratch. That's cool. And do you think it's significantly better than just white glue would be? I don't think white. Does white glue dry clear? Sometimes, yeah. Oh, now it's a very significant elmer's work. I don't know. I just didn't even think about that.
00:33:15
Speaker
I was going to go grab my wife's nail polish. I don't like the smell of nail polish sometimes. This worked great. Yeah, nail polish would work too. I bought some, it's called one shot pin stripers paint. So like guys who pinstripe cars and fancy stuff, they use this one shot paint.
00:33:34
Speaker
And I use that for labeling. You do an engraving. You want to paint fill it, say, on the top kind of thing. So I got it in red, black, white, and yellow, I think. It was cool. We don't use it much. I want to use it more. But it's one of those preparatory purchases. I'm glad I have it now. Yeah, yeah. And it was cheap enough. Because I've used nail polish in the past. And it works fine. You get a couple different colors of nail polish. But I think this is the more better solution. Good to know. Yeah.
Knife Making and Tool Management
00:34:07
Speaker
What have you been up to? Making my new knife. I saw the soft blade. Soft blade, it's done-ish. Pretty much done ready for heat treat. I'll make some more today, and then send them off to heat treat for tomorrow morning. That's within your company. Yeah, yeah. Just to the building next door, and Sky's going to heat treat it. Yeah, it's funny. That's awesome. Yeah, super good.
00:34:35
Speaker
Worked great. It's the first soft blade I've made on this video, so I had to load a bunch of new tools. I set up a sweet tool touch off program that touched off every tool that needed to be touched off. So that worked out really well.
00:34:51
Speaker
I'm new to these kind of low tool count machines after being on the current for so long. Unsubscribe. I know, exactly. So 21 tools in this carousel, the new ones have 28, like just after I get my machine. Yeah. So if you want to do a high mix of parts, you just can't do it all in 21 tools.
00:35:17
Speaker
You know, making a soft blade takes 16 tools, 17 maybe, plus the probe, plus the fan that I have in there. That's almost 21 anyway. Plus we want to grind blades, which takes three tools. So I can do those two jobs. Luckily, grinding blades only takes three tools, so we can always leave that set up. Then I'm trying to figure out groups of tools to swap out.
00:35:45
Speaker
And so I had my brother Eric 3D print basically tool tags, but color coded with the number of the tool on it, tool 21, tool 37 on the tool tag, 3D printed dual color. And then he printed a rack for the side of the machine and magnets on. And I got into the workflow last night of like, okay, I'm loading this new tool. It's tool 25. I've got the tool in my hand, the tag in my hand. I go into the tool table, you know, apply it to the ACC spot number six or whatever it is.
00:36:16
Speaker
Put the tool in, put the tag in spot number six on the rack, and it's just a whole process I've seen guys do online with hoses and things like that. I've just never had to use tool tags like that. It was good to finally apply it and wrap my head around it, and I installed these 16 tools, and I stripped everything else out except for the grinding tools. It was a good process, and I'm thinking to myself, okay, how do I train the guys to do this too?
00:36:42
Speaker
It's not hard, but there's, you know, click, click, click, rotate the ATC, click, click, click, rotate the ATC. It's a procedure for sure. Yeah. Um, but then not only that he've 3d printed these tool racks for the bench that are also color coded. So the soft blade tools are in blue. So all the racks are in blue. The tool tags are in blue. So when we pull all the tools out, they go in the blue racks with the blue tags. It's all color coded. And then orange for.
00:37:10
Speaker
Something else, black for carbon fiber, green for general fixturing tools. It's great. It's cool. Are you able to get the color marked on the BT30 holder? No. Not that far. So how do you know if you pull out a random tool, how do you know where it should go? So in the tool table, it'll say tool 25 is in spot number two.
00:37:37
Speaker
And as you're pulling it out, you'll read that. And then the tool tags on the side of the machine also have the T25 tag is in spot number two. You pull them out, put them together. Okay, so there's only one T25. Yes, exactly. Because that's how I did it on the Maury, that's how I did it on the Kern. And I know some guys with these kind of machines, they only use tools one to 21. Those are the only tool numbers they'll ever use and they overwrite. I don't do that.
00:38:07
Speaker
Yeah, and all these workflows stink in the form of just like not having to have an infinite tool changer, but at least you're not. So if you don't have tool 21 in the machine and you accidentally post a program and it calls it, it'll just air out. Yep, which is great. Yeah, that's great. This version of speedio with this C00 control only has a maximum of 99 possible tool offsets, which is enough for me, but it's really only like four families apart.
00:38:37
Speaker
Yeah. And then the new version, if you buy a machine now with the D00 control, it has 250 tool offsets, just more memory or whatever, which would be nice.
00:38:49
Speaker
Oh my gosh, and somebody, it'll probably be our kid's generation, which is a tragedy in the machine world of just having a very simple RFID or vision system that can basically be like, I can just sit there and load every tool into here. I don't need to do a thing. And the offset values are stored. You can automatically touch it off.
00:39:12
Speaker
The machine can validate the length for the first time. It's so simple to do this stuff, but there's so many hurdles to get that to happen. Exactly. So we're left to the old school do it yourself kind of thing.
00:39:25
Speaker
Yeah, there was a funny WhatsApp conversation that stemmed from your my podcast conversation last week about how the problem with automation isn't that there isn't lots of progress made is that the progress happens by, you know, very capable end users who have no framework or motive to share it back into the ecosystem.
Automation and Material Separation
00:39:49
Speaker
So everybody's fixing what's broken themselves.
00:39:51
Speaker
Yeah, doing their own little quirky things. I'm doing it. You're doing it. Yeah, that kind of sucks, but there is no fully baked solution for everybody. That's the problem. I didn't sleep much last night either because I was at the shop till 3.30 in the morning. Dude, you keep doing this. I don't know.
00:40:18
Speaker
Hey, if you're doing, if you're doing good, that's right. It's usually only just for the podcast. Like it happens to be Tuesdays that I take, take that extra day, but, um, but yeah, it's not a, not a common occurrence for me, although getting more common lately, but once a week.
00:40:37
Speaker
I'll quickly update on our far too long of a drawn out saga of needing to separate chips on a horizontal. The magnetic separator is still a leading contender. What I don't like about that is it's expensive large device that has to use lots of power or power all the time to separate.
00:40:57
Speaker
We're not actively separating. We're going to run steel. Use my extreme example. We're going to run steel for 19 hours and then for one hour, we're going to run aluminum. There's no reason to be actively separating for 20 hours when it's that extreme of a split.
00:41:12
Speaker
If I could just have a simple hanging lever door, like a little flapper, and you could just basically have it default to being steel. And then if you want aluminum, you just have a little motor, linear pneumatic that just pulls it to the aluminum side. That would be easy. But the Akuma doesn't have easy IO, and there's a meaningful minutes-long lag between when you switch materials and when the chips start coming out in that new material.
00:41:40
Speaker
It's still kind of an awkward thing because if I go run a quick aluminum program or just it gets awkward to try to handle that from a G-code sample, not that you couldn't. And so I realized, wait a minute, vision systems are really interesting these days. And I quickly found that there is a open MV, like Mod Vice, Mary, Vision, whatever, and then Pixie Cam, which I actually used to play with and have one. Really?
00:42:09
Speaker
Once you mentioned Pixicam the other day, I watched their little preview video and I'm like, this thing is pretty sick. Yeah. Wow. And they've had a new version now. It's cheap. It can even learn. Now it can learn and teach itself like if you have a white background and you hold up a yellow golf ball, it's really good at figuring out how to identify that yellow golf ball.
00:42:31
Speaker
Yeah, discerning steel versus aluminum chips is something that a three year old could do but it's not well, so I took time lapses of the output of the shoot and unfortunately,
00:42:44
Speaker
you know, while we do get a large volume of chips over the course of the day, they come out in little small, clumpy clusters intermittently. So it's not, I'm not saying I'm giving up on it, but it wasn't, it would be, what I would have to do is let it assume it's all steel until it sees something that we recognize as aluminum, and you might be able to do that. There could be a creative way with a light that shows the reflectiveness or something, but it didn't, the time lapse,
00:43:12
Speaker
told me that right for problems not, oh, yeah, you got it. This will work with the care system. So then what occurred to me was, simplicity is the goal here. If I could drop the chips into some sort of a funnel. That's what I was just thinking, yeah.
00:43:29
Speaker
So yeah, and not all the chips have to go in the funnel, but some of them could or all of them could. And then you've got the chips in one location. Then it's quite easy to detect if they're ferrous or not. And then you could have it just automatically dump them.
00:43:47
Speaker
you could have it be a weight spring. So as soon as the chips piled up to a certain weight, they go on their own. Basically, all I need to do is collect the chips, determine what's in that, and then move them into the right shoot accordingly. So that's kind of where my head's at these days. Could you do that with like,
00:44:02
Speaker
a read sensor or some sort of magnetic induction hall effect, some sort of sensor that. So what we use in strike Mark, it's a $20 industrial grade sensor that if you put it, you know, five millimeters in front of. Yeah. And induction sensor or something. Yeah. Yep. Simple. Interesting.
00:44:20
Speaker
If you have weight or if you break the light beam, meaning there's material in the thing, you read the value of that sensor and we will have it. I confirmed with my scrap guy this morning that they would prefer to have a little bit of aluminum and steel, but with the aluminum chips that they get, they would prefer to have no steel in them. So we'd rather err on the side of accidentally putting a little bit of aluminum in the steel, not the other world. Yeah, that's hard to... Well, I guess if one's magnetic and one's not, then yeah, you'd have to think of that logic flow.
00:44:51
Speaker
which is you just want to fail. Yeah, exactly. So basically, if I know I've got aluminum, then I'll go put it in the aluminum shoot. So that's what I think. So to dumb this down to a three year old, you're basically you're putting your hands under the chip conveyor and collecting a handful of chips. And a sensor is looking at that going magnetic or not. And then you're opening your hands and dumping it. Yep. And then automatically doing that. I there's something there. Yeah, right. Cool.
00:45:16
Speaker
There will always be some mix, but we're talking 1% maybe of mix. Is there any coolant that comes out? I mean, I know some coolant comes out, but will it pool or does it matter? I mean, we definitely have runoff. Yeah, it will matter. Yeah. Super cool. Yeah. I want to get this figured out. I like that. And that doesn't require the vision camera or any
00:45:46
Speaker
much fancy programming at all. It's all logic. Yeah. That's what I kind of like about it. And again, the idea that the basic – I like the idea that it's a – like a weight. It's a trap door where as soon as you get enough weight on it, it just goes – Yeah. I don't like weight. I like volume, height. Like cross a light beam high or something. Weight – because you have steel versus aluminum. Huge weight difference.
00:46:11
Speaker
I just mean I want as simple and passive of a system as possible. Yeah, for sure. If you have a little spring on there, as soon as you get two inches of chips, it just falls open and then self-closes. That's what I'm thinking. Maybe. It will always go into the steel unless it's like, hey, everything I got in here is aluminum. I feel like it needs to open fully.
00:46:34
Speaker
drain for five seconds, not not like the pressure, you know, because it'll just it'll open a second, open a second, and it'll just drop a tiny little bit. Okay. It needs like on it needs to dump, you know? Yeah, you're right. And then okay, go back to my own design principles. I can, I can design it a little bit more complicated. And if I can simplify later, great. You're right. If you have a sensor,
00:46:59
Speaker
is one electromechanical thing you need. A mechanical, like an actuated door would be the second thing you need to drop the chips. And then the third thing would be basically a controllable lever, which basically says, do I go into bin one or bin two? Sure, yeah. That's the system. And this is a 3D printed project.
00:47:17
Speaker
Yeah, actually, well, I looked at tractor supply to get a farm funnel that's like rectangular to capture more trees. And so, start simple like, well, and look, the vision camera might come back in because I put a lunch tray out underneath the chip conveyor. And when you get chips on that, it would be much easier for the camera system to determine whether it's, you know, one material or another. This is cool. Yeah, I'm really excited to see where you take this. Yeah, the problem is that we've now had to like stop
00:47:47
Speaker
and run aluminum during the day, which we can do, but it's not ideal. I miss being able to run aluminum at night. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like it. Cool. What are you up to today?
00:47:59
Speaker
going to make another blade or as Sky said, ideally four blades for heat treat his best. So I might just have to make four blades. Oh, darn. Got the cycle time down to seven and a half minutes to make a blade. Nice. Speedy. Oh, yeah, that's awesome. At least that's what fusion tells me it is, but I'll see what real life says. But yeah, super cool. Super duper cool. Yeah, focused on that. Hang out with Jeff a little bit. Make sure he's doing good.
00:48:28
Speaker
Yeah. Got another performance review at two o'clock and then that's the majority of my day right there. Sweet. Yeah. Cool. I wanted to mention that it's cool. I see you wearing an Autodesk hoodie and I'm wearing a kern sweater. Yeah. It's got a kern on the front. I just think it's funny that I have so much free clothing.
00:48:52
Speaker
Whether it's from knife makers or I bought them or whatever, but it's like so much industry clothing that that's my uniform. It's what I wear all the time. I feel like cool clothing too. Like that current hoodie is what this is styled. Exactly. It's just fun. I buy very little clothing in my life.
00:49:12
Speaker
I will raise you that. I buy no clothing. Yeah. I like reluctantly buy a new pair of jeans every few years. Exactly. Jeans and it's perched a little bit on socks and underwear, but otherwise, that's it. Yeah. Have a great day. Yeah, you too, bud. Okay. Take care. Bye.