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#389 HARDMILLING!!
2.2k Plays1 day ago
TOPICS:
- Kern is down!
- Internal inventory levels
- HARDMILLING!!
- Magnetic chucks
- Seville Classics cabinets and tables
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Living in the Present
00:00:00
johngrimsmo
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, Episode 389. My name is John Grimsmough.
00:00:06
John S
And my name is John Saunders.
00:00:08
johngrimsmo
And this is your weekly session, let's call it, where two manufacturing friends and nerds like to commiserate on issues and problems and successes and wins and perspective.
00:00:11
John S
Yeah.
00:00:22
johngrimsmo
That's one of the big ones is perspective because we forget where we're at and what we've done and where we're going and what we're trying to do.
00:00:27
John S
Yeah.
00:00:28
johngrimsmo
And you're just like, ah, so much of the time.
00:00:30
John S
You only live, what is it that saying like you, there is no living in the present because as soon as you think about the present, it's the past and then your folks, I don't know.
00:00:35
johngrimsmo
Yep. And there is no future because it's not is. Yeah.
00:00:39
John S
Yeah. I'm not feeling that philosophical, but there is some like, yeah.
00:00:41
johngrimsmo
Exactly. Like the the now is deliberate really the only moment that exists ever is is now.
00:00:48
John S
But I do, I don't remember a book, but I do love that. It's like when you're brushing your teeth, the only thing you're doing is brushing your teeth. You're not with one hand scrolling Instagram while you're also thinking in your head about like how I can tweak that tool path infusion, like just brush your teeth.
00:01:00
johngrimsmo
I do that. I just, I just brush my teeth.
00:01:02
John S
Do you?
00:01:03
johngrimsmo
Yeah, which actually I'm surprised to say, cause I'm often, my mind is elsewhere. Um, but it's usually like right before bed and then I brush my teeth and then I, I'm asleep within five minutes.
00:01:07
John S
Yeah.
00:01:12
johngrimsmo
Um, that's my routine.
00:01:13
John S
Got it.
Machine Maintenance and Problem Solving
00:01:15
johngrimsmo
But how are you?
00:01:18
John S
harry How are you?
00:01:21
johngrimsmo
I'll go first. I got a lot of juice this week.
00:01:23
John S
Okay.
00:01:23
johngrimsmo
um I am currently in a great place, great mood. Past seven days has been a lot of ups and downs, but like right now, like I'm solid.
00:01:32
John S
Okay.
00:01:33
johngrimsmo
Things are good.
00:01:35
John S
Good. Okay.
00:01:37
johngrimsmo
A big one is the current is back together and running after being down for almost seven days.
00:01:40
John S
Oh, ah sorry. Okay. Yeah. Right. The belt. Give us some closure around the belt.
00:01:46
johngrimsmo
so So I actually filmed a pretty solid YouTube video of this whole problem, including, something's wrong, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's this, it's not that. Maybe it's this, it's this. And then this whole progression, including installing the new belt, it's, Ryan's editing it right now, it's pretty solid. I was rewatching it, I'm like, I don't mean to sound vain, but I could watch myself talk for hours. It's dumb, but like, it's just interesting to me. That's exactly what I love to do.
00:02:15
johngrimsmo
um So it's cool. look It's fixed. We ended up replacing just the belt for 500 bucks instead of buying the $5,000 whole lower assembly.
00:02:23
John S
$500 belt.
00:02:25
johngrimsmo
Oh, yeah.
00:02:26
John S
Good grief.
00:02:27
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it's what, 12 feet long or something?
00:02:28
John S
Made of gold. Yeah, question stands.
00:02:31
johngrimsmo
um Exactly. But it looks just like a timing belt for for a car kind of thing, but it's endless.
00:02:36
John S
Which is like $27.
00:02:37
johngrimsmo
and But it's it's got the Festo name on it.
00:02:38
John S
Sorry.
00:02:40
John S
ah Yeah.
00:02:41
johngrimsmo
So therefore, it's $500. um And Festo was the only manufacturer in the world where I could find this. I didn't look in Europe too hard, but ah North America does not manufacture this size of exact belt.
00:02:51
John S
Yeah.
00:02:55
johngrimsmo
Cause I was like, dude, I could just, I'm an industry. I could just find it. I can just drive down the street and find it at new, you can't.
00:03:01
John S
Oh, that your, your, that connection blew up. it Didn't go anywhere.
00:03:04
johngrimsmo
Yeah, nothing.
00:03:05
John S
Oh, bummer.
00:03:05
johngrimsmo
Because it's so fine pitch, it's three millimeter pitch between humps, not like five millimeter they can get all day, but
00:03:06
John S
Okay.
00:03:11
John S
Got
Managing Downtime and Inventory
00:03:12
John S
it.
00:03:12
johngrimsmo
It's just weird, so thanks Festo for making such a weird, unique, pointlessly fine-pitched wealth. Whatever. So the machine was down for six and a half days. We ate into all extra inventory. The the finishing shop is is getting antsy. But now the machine's running again. It ran all night, perfectly fine.
00:03:36
johngrimsmo
We're strategizing, okay, we don't need handles, but we need but blades, we need inserts, we need heat treatable stuff.
00:03:40
John S
Mm-hmm
00:03:42
johngrimsmo
Let's run that first, nothing else matters. um So Angela's running around trying to get that caught up right now, but but things are good.
00:03:51
John S
So the you had enough because I'm like let's look at this from the positive you had enough buffer inventory so really Yeah, that's great Okay, got it.
00:03:58
johngrimsmo
to keep To keep making so many knives a day like we normally do, until the very end, past two days or something, start to get a little light. So that's good. And that's a good perspective for us.
00:04:06
John S
Yeah, John that's great
00:04:07
johngrimsmo
Like um conversely, we talked about, you know, say current stock, this $5,000 assembly in Chicago, which they didn't, they could have gotten it from Germany, but now two are on route to Chicago and will be in stock.
00:04:21
johngrimsmo
Cause this is going to happen to other owners like coolant is dripping on this belt and eventually it's going to fail.
00:04:23
John S
Yeah, sure.
00:04:28
johngrimsmo
Um, actually that's a good note for another topic. Uh, but.
00:04:35
johngrimsmo
The good thing is, it's pretty easy to just poke at the belt, as I showed in my video, and tell if it's getting gooey or not.
00:04:38
John S
Hmm.
00:04:43
johngrimsmo
Because it is a substantial difference from firm belt to bush. And obviously mine is past the point of failure, but anyway.
00:04:52
John S
Yeah. Rubber is a funny thing. Like, uh, it don't mean it doesn't last forever.
00:04:54
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:04:57
John S
And coolant and rubber long-term is, is a tough trade-off.
00:05:02
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:05:02
John S
Like obviously you can't have a, something that's so hard or the durometer or chemical composition doesn't give any flex to it. Um,
00:05:08
johngrimsmo
Yeah. There's like Polly belts that have their own pluses and minuses. I think they're a lot more expensive, but, uh, but yeah, so Angela and Steven put that back together completely without me.
00:05:13
John S
Hmm.
00:05:20
johngrimsmo
I came in in the last few minutes and just give a thumbs up and it's like, it looks good. I helped them, um, check it for vertical, like, like for level and, uh, and tighten it up and test it and it works great.
00:05:32
johngrimsmo
And it's been running perfectly ever since.
00:05:34
John S
That's great. That's a win, John.
00:05:35
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:05:35
John S
That's awesome. We just did this to two Tuesday lunches ago.
00:05:37
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:05:41
John S
We sort of talked about our inventory trigger levels for production and so forth. And it's like, Hey, we get, um, we get dis stocking distributor orders where folks will like resellers will order 20 or 30 mod devices at a time.
00:05:54
John S
And we will get, we actually knock on wood grateful and had a couple of customers order far larger than average orders. And I was like, okay, at the risk of.
00:06:06
John S
potentially having stale inventory, meaning we don't really want to have a modify sit in a box for six months.
00:06:11
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:06:11
John S
We can still do a FIFO inventory system and let's, yeah.
00:06:14
johngrimsmo
First in, first out.
00:06:16
John S
We can have, I forgot, actually I didn't even get involved. Yvonne and Serena took care of it, but it's like, hey, let's make sure any of those orders we can always fill from ready to ship stock, that's ready on the shelf. So 20 or 30 mod devices are always ready to ship.
00:06:28
John S
It's like if a customer walks up and just wants to order one retail like at our side door, they could.
00:06:33
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:06:33
John S
And then then we have the assembly inventory that's in the shipping room, and then we have a buffer inventory back at the machine. and those kind of waterfall or cascade down. um It's more, it's definitely not just in time. I mean, there's risk that if we make a mistake, we've got lots of scrap or rework that's inherent in the system. But at this point, with a lot of these products, I'll take that risk. And it's not that I want to be careful about that because A year or two ago, I would have sort of said, well, it's not a risk because we've confirmed they're not good. No, you still will. Like this will happen. Something will happen to us in the future where we catch a mistake. A chamfer tool broke, a chip in a corner, and we don't catch it. So that risk will be there. We hope we catch it. And we've got some ways to try to catch stuff like that. But regardless, it's still the right trade off, basically.
00:07:17
johngrimsmo
Yeah. And it's finding that number of what is the number? Is it five pieces in stock? Is it 50 pieces? ah You know, you don't want it to sit forever.
00:07:22
John S
Right.
00:07:24
johngrimsmo
You don't want this rolling inventory that's always old and gets same for us because we serial date our handles.
00:07:28
John S
Yeah.
00:07:32
John S
Mm-hmm.
00:07:33
johngrimsmo
Like on the Rask ones, it's to the second that they were made.
00:07:36
John S
It's funny.
00:07:37
johngrimsmo
And, uh, you know, if they're six months old, it doesn't hit the same. I mean, maybe it does, but, um,
00:07:42
John S
Oh, yeah, that's fair. Sure.
00:07:46
johngrimsmo
Yeah, dude, I've had some customers email me and they'd be like, the knife says, you know, the, the, the card says it was finished on April 2nd, but the handle say March. What's, uh, what's the deal there?
00:07:57
John S
Oh.
00:07:58
johngrimsmo
I like, because the handles were made first and then three days later, the the knife was finished.
00:08:01
John S
Yeah, it's funny.
00:08:01
johngrimsmo
Like, is that a problem?
00:08:03
John S
Yeah.
Exploring Hard Milling Techniques
00:08:04
johngrimsmo
Meanwhile, sometimes we have months of difference between, uh, you know, handle date and then finish date.
00:08:04
John S
Huh.
00:08:09
johngrimsmo
And it just happens.
00:08:10
John S
Yeah.
00:08:14
John S
Okay. I had a note to ask you first thing front and center. Talk to me about the feel.
00:08:21
johngrimsmo
ah I was here till 1 AM m last night.
00:08:23
John S
Okay.
00:08:26
johngrimsmo
Hard milling. So the the place i'm so I'm at right now, I'm totally all in on hard milling. In the past week, I've done a ton of research. I'm falling in love with the Maldino brand of tools.
00:08:37
John S
OK.
00:08:37
johngrimsmo
I haven't used them yet, but I just bought some yesterday.
00:08:40
John S
Oh, that's nice.
00:08:41
johngrimsmo
Zadaro sells them and they stock a bunch and they distribute as well. They're in stock in the US, like there's a Maldino USA. So Zidaro can get them from there, and anything else comes out of Japan.
00:08:52
johngrimsmo
um But their documentation, like the catalog kind of thing, is it's pretty impressive.
00:08:55
John S
Yeah.
00:08:59
johngrimsmo
It's pretty in-depth. And that's what Adam the Machinist was saying. He's like, live and die by that, because it tells you depth of cut, width of cut, speeds and feeds for each material, for this hardness.
00:09:06
John S
yeah
00:09:09
johngrimsmo
um They don't talk about stainless much, so I'm assuming that their hardened steel um numbers are close enough for my hardened high-carbon stainless.
00:09:18
John S
Okay.
00:09:19
johngrimsmo
Whatever. I don't care. um But the amount of tool life that they're claiming and the amount of, you know, they measure the wear on the tools and all this crazy stuff. And it just sounds awesome. Like it's like, yes, that's what I want. And I'm trying to hardmail now with like regular tools and they die very quickly.
00:09:39
johngrimsmo
So that's kind of been my experience is like, well, hard milling is hard to hit tolerance for a long time because the tools wear out so fast. But maybe you just need the right end mill, which is grade of carbide, grind, coating, substrate, blah, blah, blah.
00:09:53
John S
yeah
00:09:53
johngrimsmo
And the exact speeds and fees tailored to that tool. And these companies like Union, Maldino, NS, they kind of give you that.
00:10:03
John S
i just
00:10:03
johngrimsmo
And that's why they charge $80 for an end mill. and
00:10:07
John S
I just think it's too funny that this stuff isn't scripted, because this is one of the few podcasts we've had where I wish I was a half an hour later, because literally I hit cycle start, five minutes before we hit record on a 10 minute cycle of hard milling.
00:10:19
John S
And we started it yesterday, and it is also, I'm totally in love with it.
00:10:19
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:10:27
John S
Grant had already done it on the Willemite, we moved over to the Okuma.
00:10:27
johngrimsmo
Good.
00:10:31
John S
We are using the YG1, but it's a hard milling end mill, like it's for that purpose.
00:10:34
johngrimsmo
Okay. I haven't looked at their lineup yet.
00:10:37
John S
To be fair, I probably should be giving it more credit than I am about to because, right frankly, it's working great in the first, we've done four cuts already, but I'm only using it because the NS tools don't arrive till next week.
00:10:49
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:50
John S
um And look, NS tool is is specialty, you know it's the Herbal, all they do is this, whereas YG1 is great, but they make a million things. So plan is to go with YG, or NS when it comes and use that, but regardless.
00:11:02
johngrimsmo
And with NS, you bought a a carbide animal, not CBN or anything.
00:11:03
John S
okay
00:11:06
John S
Yeah, we bought a four millimeter shank, two millimeter ah diameter cutting bullnose per a conversation with and NS over email hilarious.
00:11:14
johngrimsmo
I bought that exact same tool from Maldino.
00:11:17
John S
Yeah. It was, I think I'm about two or three of them. They were under under $70 each.
00:11:22
johngrimsmo
Yeah, mine were 80, 81 or something like that.
00:11:24
John S
Yeah, and that'll be frankly nice because the YG I'm using is a ball and I would much rather use a bull here, but um, grab the, ah grab the fees and speeds, which were frankly strange. I mean, there is no normal here, but it was, uh, Oh, I don't want to misquote it. It's 9,000 RPM on a quarter inch tool. So it's a high surface footage. Um,
00:11:46
John S
and 72 inches oh man I hate talking I'd rather talk in feed for two but the papers out on my desk sorry I'll dust off for next week um but we've cut four parts in total that each have about a nine minute cycle time so call it 30 for 35 minutes in the cut and I grabbed a microscope and looked at the tool I seen nothing that
00:11:51
johngrimsmo
Agreed. Yeah.
00:12:09
John S
is a ah problem and the last part was still excellent. So that's not bad. Like it's a good start in the, Oh my God, it looks so good.
00:12:16
johngrimsmo
Yep, yep.
00:12:18
John S
Like it's just the, the quality of milling hardened steel. The finishes are phenomenal.
00:12:23
johngrimsmo
Yes. So shiny. And if you have a machine that is extra accurate, like the Wilhelmin will be, it's probably your most tightest, accurate, accurate machine. Okum is probably second to that, I'm guessing.
00:12:37
John S
Long question.
00:12:37
johngrimsmo
and Anyway, the point is, on those kind of machines versus a
00:12:38
John S
Yeah.
00:12:42
johngrimsmo
clapped out, insert brand, whatever.
00:12:43
John S
Yeah, sure.
00:12:45
johngrimsmo
the You literally see the cusp height change throughout a surfaced feature on the looser machine. um The tool path accuracy, like line to line to line to line.
00:12:54
John S
yeah Oh yeah.
00:12:58
johngrimsmo
And you put it on a tight machine and it's like a current or whatever. And it's just insanely like, like yes, that's that's what I wanted. That is point and shoot what I told it to do.
00:13:09
John S
We did, so we're doing the dual contact of our puck chuck. So it's a 15 degree tapered inside taper and then moves over and cuts flat datum.
00:13:17
johngrimsmo
That's a ah steep, no, a shallow 15, not a steep 15, or it's a steep 15.
00:13:20
John S
Super steep, super steep.
00:13:22
johngrimsmo
Super steep.
00:13:22
John S
Yeah, think like what a but kind of quotequote pull sub would go into.
00:13:25
johngrimsmo
The first time I had a custom ordered end mill made, I ordered the wrong direction.
00:13:27
John S
No, yeah, that's easy to do. So we, I programed at Steve and Shalv, but i don't want I want to have separate toolpaths for other reasons right now. So I started with a 3D contour for the taper and then a scallop for the flat datum. And problems with others, 3D contour will do oddly odd linking moves in the middle of it.
00:13:53
John S
which didn't really see, weren't visible, but then I remember seeing, but not really using the ramp toolpath infusion. And the ramp toolpath description is great. It's basically like, hey, this is 3D contour, except it ensures the tool is engaged at all times versus ah coming in and out with connecting, which could be important for such materials as ceramics, or in my case, hardmail.
00:14:09
johngrimsmo
Right.
00:14:12
John S
And this is a good example of where the visual toolpath tells you what I want to know. It's just a single blue spiral down
00:14:19
johngrimsmo
Corkscrew, yep, yep, With ramp or spiral?
00:14:20
John S
And then the same thing, Scallop, the first one we did, Scallop does concentric circles that have a small S transition linking move between each concentric ring. You literally see that. It's like you printed out the toolpath and put it on the part. You can't feel them, but you can see them. And so like, obviously you just moved it to spiral and it's now one spiral toolpath. So wonder if we just please spiral for the flat part.
00:14:48
johngrimsmo
Interesting.
00:14:49
John S
So I'm cutting i'm cutting a donut, like flat donut ring, if you will.
00:14:49
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:14:54
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:14:54
John S
That make sense?
00:14:55
johngrimsmo
And not really, but you want it to obviously be good, but also look really good too. You don't want to have those ah lead in lead out visual lines, right?
00:15:01
John S
Yeah, exactly.
00:15:04
John S
Yep. Actually, I think the reason I stopped using Steven Shallow, I wanted to have different parameters, but also I wanna say um you couldn't do bottom up on Steven Shallow, which seems, great is that true?
00:15:06
johngrimsmo
Cool.
00:15:16
johngrimsmo
Yeah. I don't know, but I know some of the toolpaths are like, give me bottom up. That's what I want.
00:15:21
John S
Yeah. Yeah.
00:15:23
johngrimsmo
Doesn't everybody want bottom up? Not always, actually. um
00:15:27
John S
but And there's the point of Steven shallow is blending transitions where you have a complex surfaces on one tool. But here I don't, I have completely discreet services. So two, two different tool passes.
00:15:36
johngrimsmo
Yep. Yep.
00:15:39
John S
So you, sorry, you, I'm just excited.
00:15:39
johngrimsmo
Awesome.
00:15:40
John S
You happy how you're going, going with you?
00:15:42
johngrimsmo
I'm happy, I'm super happy with the results I'm getting. um I've been able to, you know, late night validate my hard melt results because I can put the blade, because the spine of the blade is perfectly flat, well, almost perfectly flat, um I can put it on our optical comparator.
00:15:59
johngrimsmo
So I get the, you know, the green shadow 10X zoom, and we've got the computer with the fiber optic light sensor hooked up and hide nine glass scales on it.
00:15:59
John S
Okay.
00:16:07
johngrimsmo
So I have 10 millionths accuracy.
00:16:08
John S
Oh.
00:16:10
johngrimsmo
So what's really cool, and I want to do a video on this, is I can scan the pivot hole that I just hardmilled last night, and I can scan it before hardmilling and tell that heat treat ovalized that hole um from two tenths out out of round soft, and then after heat treat it's over a thou, not, out of you know, each point could be creating a thou circularity whenever it is.
00:16:35
John S
Yeah.
00:16:36
johngrimsmo
um And then hard milling it brings it right back to two tenths. And that could be the rounding error on this machine.
00:16:40
John S
Yeah.
00:16:43
johngrimsmo
um So that's cool.
00:16:44
John S
That's great.
00:16:45
johngrimsmo
And then i can i'm I'm using the bore function to kind of, like you said, ramp down and spiral down.
Precision Measurement in Knife Making
00:16:52
John S
Mm hmm.
00:16:52
johngrimsmo
um It can bore a taper, by the way, too, if if you want to try the bore tool path.
00:16:57
John S
Wonder why I didn't do that is a good point.
00:16:58
johngrimsmo
I'm pretty sure. It just needs a constant radius feature.
00:16:59
John S
Okay.
00:17:01
johngrimsmo
So I'm just trying to bore the this half radius where the stop pi where the blade hits the stop pin, basically.
00:17:02
John S
Yeah.
00:17:08
johngrimsmo
So I'm trying to either cup the stop pin or make the radius bigger so it's hitting the stop. So anyway, say I'm making a 1250 and I'm boring this toolpath and I put it on the shadow graph and I get to measure the exact size of that feature and it's like a tenth off.
00:17:24
johngrimsmo
And I'm like, oh, that's exactly what I wanted.
00:17:27
John S
Yeah.
00:17:28
johngrimsmo
So I'm playing with, you know, the size of it, the diameter of it, the position of it, so that I can position the blade open and closed in the handle. it's It's literally giving me full control ah of this knife, like where the blade sits, how it flips, and I'm getting the flipping action.
00:17:44
johngrimsmo
So good.
00:17:44
John S
Yeah, yeah, that's awesome.
00:17:45
johngrimsmo
I actually, I left one on my desk with big Sharpie on it that said flip me, and it made the rounds on the shop and everybody, you know, by the time I got in there, like, dude, that knife is like, holy cow.
00:17:58
johngrimsmo
Very happy.
00:17:58
John S
Awesome.
00:17:59
johngrimsmo
So now I just need tool life, which should hopefully come from the Maldino tools.
00:17:59
John S
Good.
00:18:03
johngrimsmo
And then, uh, and then I have a process.
00:18:05
John S
Bingo.
00:18:07
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:18:08
John S
That's awesome.
00:18:10
johngrimsmo
So I am super stoked on that. It's getting me what I've always wanted to get me. And I used to think of hard milling as like, Oh, it takes forever. It's crazy slow. And I think that's just cause the Harvey tools, speeds and feeds are like dumb slow.
00:18:28
John S
oh Really oh Yeah, I know Oh our taper on the puck chuck is 48 seconds.
00:18:28
johngrimsmo
So if you, if you punch those in, you're like, it's going to take an hour, but then you go to the NS Maldino kind of speeds and feeds and they're like, no, that's an eight minute cycle.
00:18:42
johngrimsmo
Really?
00:18:43
John S
Oh, yeah, it's nothing The flat datum is a little bit slower because I'm using a ball nose right now So I have to do really small step overs, but when the bull nose comes that'll go back to one minute
00:18:44
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:18:50
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:18:54
johngrimsmo
Yeah. That's awesome.
00:18:55
John S
Yeah, so it's really fun. And then we're you know we're measuring stuff. We actually had a call with a company called Arnold Gage that's here in Ohio. we I got to know the guy who runs it through training and just the YouTube and all that, super nice guy. And I was like, hey, they do custom gauging and automation gauging. I was like, I wanted to talk to them about the part. And I was like, hey, it may not be the right fit for you, but we might want some hard gauges. We wanted to understand automation.
00:19:22
John S
they um And having a great call with them, they had made some similar gauge products for the defense industry. If you think about how an ammunition round is designed, there's a similar taper that needs to be measured and it's actually in a tricky spot to do so. So we had a really good call.
00:19:41
John S
about that, and they showed me some automated systems that they were making that were super cool with UR robots. This is, you know, this is what they do. So we're waiting on a quote from them for hard gauges, but they also gave me a good tip.
00:19:58
John S
They use, work a lot with, I was trying to look it up while we were talking here. Abralink CMMs, have you heard of these?
00:20:06
johngrimsmo
No.
00:20:06
John S
I don't know the, um like micron resolution of the machines, but they are, I believe, Delta style, but a true CMM, not like a Renaissance equator and much, much, much easier software to use and work with. um We've all continue to agree that Heartage is better than a CMM just for a bunch of reasons here, but I still, we're doing that awkward, like at some point we're gonna have a CMM and so is it as ice or is it something that's, you know, Dylan from With Intolerance bought a different brand and he's using like the software that's like Mastercam or Ghostry Mastercam to program it, which sounds interesting.
00:20:32
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:20:45
John S
I'm not a Mastercam guy, but it sounds like it's much more like CMM cam and not CMM junk software that you seem to hear so so much.
00:20:49
johngrimsmo
Hmm.
00:20:53
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:20:54
John S
they
00:20:55
johngrimsmo
Interesting. Um, I'm sure you've thought of this. Could you not just use a very large, uh, bearing ball to measure this?
00:21:03
John S
Yeah, so that's exactly what we do now is we have a qualified gauge ball.
00:21:07
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:21:08
John S
We have a Milamis on a hardened trilobal thing that is works great. I actually finally found a copy of the um authorized big plus gauges from Big Daishoa.
00:21:22
John S
And ironically, it's very similar, different because it's different.
00:21:24
johngrimsmo
Really?
00:21:26
John S
This is the gauges that machine tool companies would buy who want to properly license and do big plus and not just dual contact.
00:21:32
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:21:32
John S
um And that kind of helped corroborate, okay, we're we're we're not on the wrong path. And then when when Arnold, we saw some of their gauges that do similar things and it's the same, basically it's the same thing.
00:21:45
John S
um And yeah, that's,
00:21:45
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Cause you don't, you don't want to overconstrain your contact points, I guess, right? You're trying to measure two tapers or one taper and If you overconstrain it too much, you're not measuring properly, I'm guessing.
00:21:57
John S
Yes. Yep. Yeah. So that's working out great.
00:22:01
johngrimsmo
Cool.
00:22:02
John S
Yeah. It's fun. It's really fun.
00:22:08
John S
Uh, what else? Hard million. Oh, I had a question for you. Um, we're, I want to buy a six inch, um, uh, magnet Chuck.
00:22:11
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:22:16
John S
That's just a, has the wrench on off, like a, not electromagnet, just a hand one.
00:22:18
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:22:20
John S
Um, have you ever worked with them or machined into one of them?
00:22:26
johngrimsmo
No.
00:22:27
John S
Okay, any, I want to, yeah, sorry, I bought one for, yeah, it's just like, a like who back on like when we had the Tormach grinder, I'm assuming it's like one of those where you just have a lever, you flip it over.
00:22:28
johngrimsmo
Isn't it just iron iron copper poles or something? I don't know. Cast iron? What do you machine?
00:22:40
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah.
00:22:42
John S
um I want to just put a, probably it'll be threaded to fit one of our fixturing pins, because that gives me some fla functionality, but thread mill or just precision bore for a locating pin so that the part will be located um and constrained in X, Y, and then the magnet will hold it down in Z.
00:22:55
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:23:01
John S
Pretty simple. I'm not nervous about this. I'm just kind of like, I've never machined a magnet. I'm assuming they're soft as could be, but that doesn't,
00:23:09
johngrimsmo
It's a good point, being a solid magnet, whatever you call it, with the lever, not an electromagnet. The magnet is just lifting and lowering when you move that screw, right?
00:23:19
John S
I, I, that's how the, you know, the mag basis that you use for testing the case.
00:23:23
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah.
00:23:23
John S
That's what that is.
00:23:24
johngrimsmo
So as you machine into the top, the deeper you go, the closer to the magnet you're gonna get, and the chips are gonna be a problem, I assume.
00:23:32
John S
Well, there may not be, I mean, there may only be a hundred thousand deaths. Now that you say that, which I can, I guess I could make that work, but, um, yeah, I can make that work.
00:23:36
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah.
00:23:41
John S
I got to figure that out then.
00:23:42
johngrimsmo
Yeah,
Innovations in Machining Techniques
00:23:43
John S
Hmm.
00:23:44
johngrimsmo
but you want a palletized magnet for machines.
00:23:49
johngrimsmo
So what you're trying to do.
00:23:50
John S
yeah Well, what we're trying to do now is R and&D, not rework, but like R and&D will have a better process long-term. Actually, in fairness, the long-term process could involve a magnet, but um being able to put an assembled puck chuck up and hold it down into two, so holding it down here, we we can actually screw it down because of the product is self-fixturing, but that takes a lot longer and um there's, that the nice thing about a magnet is it's easy to clean it or reduck it if you had to or something like that.
00:24:09
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah.
00:24:23
John S
So um there's some advantages to that. And then, yes, potentially long-term automating it. I think there's a path to that with a robot, you are or otherwise.
00:24:34
johngrimsmo
I think Adam the Machinist has your answer. I know he's got a magnet in his mori that he uses to machine everything pretty much.
00:24:40
John S
Oh, really? Oh, yeah. He's got that Herman. Yeah. I think I say that.
00:24:45
johngrimsmo
Yeah, and and he knows enough about grinding in magnets that he knows your answer.
00:24:46
John S
Okay.
00:24:50
John S
Okay. point
00:24:51
johngrimsmo
Um, I mean, chips sound like a nightmare on an automated magnet in a CNC mill.
00:24:58
John S
Well, right now this would be only doing the hard milling. So it's dust and yeah.
00:25:02
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:25:04
John S
Yes. Automated. Um, you would need a way of. We'll figure it out.
00:25:09
johngrimsmo
Yep. Yeah.
00:25:10
John S
I hear you though. It's a good point.
00:25:12
johngrimsmo
Nope.
00:25:14
johngrimsmo
That's why I love pallet loading so much. You just load something offline on a small pallet and you can automatically or manually load that into a puck chuck or a row or a chunk base or whatever.
00:25:22
John S
Yeah.
00:25:25
John S
Yeah.
00:25:25
johngrimsmo
Because then you do all the critical aligning offline.
00:25:29
John S
Yeah.
00:25:29
johngrimsmo
Maybe the probe comes in and just kisses it, but you're within a thou. um Yeah.
00:25:35
John S
yeah
00:25:39
johngrimsmo
Another one I came in last night and we were texting about this on WhatsApp. I don't know if you, if you caught the hundreds of messages back and forth last night, but the brothers.
00:25:46
John S
the brother drama.
00:25:48
johngrimsmo
So I come in to do some, some, you know, feel hard milling and stuff. And the first stop is you put the blade in the fixture and the probe comes in and measures the pivot hole and and locates it.
00:25:58
johngrimsmo
That's the pivot holes, your data. um That way I can slap the blade in and it just works. And the probe is going in the bore and over-traveling. And it's got it sets to move, I don't know, one millimeter or five millimeter over-travel before it goes, hey, I didn't hit anything. And then it comes back to center and leaves and it errors out. And I'm like, this has been an ongoing problem for days, maybe a week or two now, where it comes and goes and it's kind of flaky and we just run it again and it works. The other night it happened for me 10 times in a row and I ended up restarting the machine and that did it.
00:26:31
johngrimsmo
Same thing last night, it happened a bunch of times in a row and I'm like, what on earth is going on?
00:26:35
John S
Yeah.
00:26:36
johngrimsmo
And I know we talked about this like a year or two ago when we first got the speedio. The speedio only has one skip signal, whereas many CNC machines have two. So you have your laser and you have your probe, two separate inputs.
00:26:49
johngrimsmo
The speedio only has one input, so you need a relay to flip-flop between them. going, I'm running the laser now. So that takes the input or I'm running the probe now. So flip the relay and then the input goes to the, from the probe to the one input.
00:27:05
johngrimsmo
And I messaged our group chat and within 30 seconds, Dennis got back to me and said, relay stuck.
00:27:10
John S
ah
00:27:13
John S
Dennis A.I.
00:27:13
johngrimsmo
And I'm like, I didn't even think of this. Like Dennis has what, 12 speedios? Like he's done this before. um Relay stuck. Okay. That put me down
Troubleshooting Machine Issues
00:27:21
johngrimsmo
a rabbit hole. And sure enough, the relay was sticking on or so staying on. I don't know if the relay is malfunctioning or if the signals going to the relay are weird. I don't have the answer yet, but I have narrowed it down. I know where the problem is.
00:27:39
John S
Why on God's green earth are they using mechanical, instead of solid state relays?
00:27:43
johngrimsmo
It is a solid state relay in my machine.
00:27:46
John S
What you, really? And how is it sticking?
00:27:47
johngrimsmo
Yeah. I don't know. That's why I'm wondering if it's more signal related than actual mechanical failure.
00:27:52
John S
Uh, that sounds like a, some sort of a ground fault or that's not good.
00:27:53
johngrimsmo
Right. Yep. And that's, I realized that kind of sleeping on it. And I woke up this morning and I was like, hold on. The light was still on. Meaning it's not mechanically stuck open, like the light is still on, therefore it still has 24 volts.
00:28:08
John S
Mm-hmm.
00:28:09
johngrimsmo
Therefore, whatever's giving it 24 volts is still giving it 24 volts and it shouldn't be.
00:28:13
John S
Yeah, right.
00:28:14
johngrimsmo
Huh, so I emailed Blum again this morning and I was like, uh, here's my latest. What do you think?
00:28:20
John S
If this is totally unrelated to the RF radio versus IR or not.
00:28:26
johngrimsmo
I think? Yeah, I think so, because we were having different dropping out issues with with that system.
00:28:29
John S
Okay.
00:28:32
johngrimsmo
So the IR system has been totally reliable except for now this issue, which could be down to that relay or how the signals are getting to the relay. Um, so.
00:28:40
John S
I think what's ah ah surprising to me is we've only had Haas, I think, ever, or excuse me, Haas, Wrennishaw on Haas, Okuma, Willman, but I mean, I don't know, we've had like 15 Haas machines, other machines for eight years now, wherever, at man hour, I've never once had these probate issues, like ever.
00:28:47
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah. Never had an issue on our Maury, never had an issue on our NAC.
00:29:00
johngrimsmo
Never had an issue on the Kern with Bloom hardware. Um, a couple of little issues, but nothing like this.
00:29:03
John S
Weird.
00:29:06
johngrimsmo
I don't know. I don't know, man.
00:29:09
John S
Yeah, sorry.
00:29:10
johngrimsmo
I'm just dealing with it.
00:29:10
John S
So it's still in a not working state.
00:29:12
johngrimsmo
It's I, I. I figured out the fix is to, if it's, if it's hanging up and it's not probing a bore, it's because the relay is on and it shouldn't be on. And if you run a tool breakage cycle into the laser, it reactivates all the things that it does right.
00:29:28
John S
Okay.
00:29:29
johngrimsmo
So I wrote a, I wrote a sticky note for Steve this morning and I said, if it does this run oh 5,000, which is our tool breakage program.
00:29:29
John S
okay
00:29:36
johngrimsmo
And then, uh, that should fix it. Worked for me last night.
00:29:41
John S
Okay. That's good, but still.
00:29:42
johngrimsmo
And then he texted me this morning and he says, when you say run a tool in 5,000 program, like, is that any tool? Cause in a sticky note, you only have so many words.
00:29:55
John S
Right.
00:29:56
johngrimsmo
And I was like, yeah, anything but the probe because we don't want to spend the probe at 5,000 RPM.
00:30:02
johngrimsmo
Um, but yeah, I think it's been working.
00:30:02
John S
Interesting.
00:30:06
johngrimsmo
So we'll get it probably either new relay. They're not that expensive or dig deeper, but we're on it.
00:30:11
John S
Yeah, I don't like that though.
00:30:13
johngrimsmo
I don't know.
00:30:13
John S
That's weird.
00:30:14
johngrimsmo
I'm close to almost liking it though. Once that's fixed, it'll be solid.
00:30:19
John S
um We had a kind of a win. i don't I hope this is a canon option, but certainly for the US folks, um Seville. custom, what is it called? Seville, something. Seville Classics, that's what it was. um You can buy it at directsevilleclassics.com, Amazon, or I think it's actually a Sam's Club brand as well, or available there. But they have some pretty nice storage cabinets and work benches that look um that look really nice.
00:30:49
John S
They had that kind of aesthetic I'm looking for, adjustable height, some with rollers on them. And they're cheap, or like very fairly priced, like 200 bucks for a nice table that we, Grant had asked for one for the Rego fix.
00:31:03
John S
And then that, like that with the tabletop and the wheels is 200 bucks, right?
00:31:05
johngrimsmo
Nice.
00:31:07
John S
Like, yep, perfect.
00:31:08
johngrimsmo
Not bad. A couple little doors on the bottom. Nice, small kind of table, two by four kind of thing.
00:31:14
John S
Yeah, exactly.
00:31:15
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:31:15
John S
So I was happy with, I was checking all the boxes.
00:31:19
johngrimsmo
Beautiful.
00:31:22
John S
But now I'm back on, good.
00:31:22
johngrimsmo
I saw, I saw that picture. You posted it on Instagram. And my first thought, not knowing the full layout of your shop, it looked like that was kind of in an office in the corner somewhere. When it's probably right beside the Wilhelmin where it needs to be.
00:31:34
John S
that's representativeable Yeah, Yeah, that's right there.
00:31:34
johngrimsmo
But yeah, my first, I was like, did that leave the cell? Like, cause it needs to be right beside the Wilhelmin. Cool.
00:31:43
John S
um we Grant asked for, and Garrett have that and has asked, and I kind of was holding off to see, do we really need this? But the the we want a manual small manual lathe again, and I love lathe.
00:31:54
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:31:56
John S
So I'm back on the hunt.
Considering New Equipment Purchases
00:31:58
johngrimsmo
Interesting.
00:31:59
John S
The research six months ago was kind of a no-brainer. The precision Matthews is the best import, brand new. I mean, the smaller the better with the caveat that I don't want to tag.
00:32:10
John S
I want something that can actually cut.
00:32:12
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:32:12
John S
You know, a very light cut and one in one inch steel, but like, you know, it's going to weigh two to 300 pounds. I don't want to nine. I don't want one of the big, I don't want a big late. I don't want 1,000, 2,000 pound lathe. Um, I was trying to find one that does five C, but I have this old bison Chuck. It's a five C adapter. So I could put that on a, like a grizzly equivalent or, but it seems like Pete precision Matthews is the best quality for that. And.
00:32:37
John S
I think it's 2,800 bucks plus shipping, but then for another 600 bucks, you can get a DRO installed, shows up with that. And I'm kind of like, you know, I feel like we don't need the DRO for what the guys are asking it for, but it's like, if you actually wanted to do something, have a DRO, that's the John Saunders that's thinking smart would be like to get the DRO.
00:32:51
johngrimsmo
Be nice.
00:32:55
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah. Cause that's how everybody runs a machine now.
00:32:56
John S
So.
00:32:58
johngrimsmo
You're used to looking at those numbers. You're used to like watching them.
00:33:01
John S
Yeah, you just want to touch on on something, zero it, take a couple thou here there.
00:33:03
johngrimsmo
Yep. Yep. Yep. And the comparative measurements of something like that are massively helpful. You know, to be able to zero it on a thing and just start counting from there instead of counting turns or splitting things, whatever.
00:33:16
John S
Yeah, exactly. So that's on my radar.
00:33:20
johngrimsmo
Interesting. Yeah. Let us know how, uh, how that goes. Cause we've, we've talked about having a manual laid, even just an old hard hinge or something to be able to do random stuff. But honestly, the need has not been there to spend thousands of dollars or more on something. So we just, we haven't, and we're kind of fine without it.
00:33:39
John S
So that's the the line I'm walking. I'm kind of oversharing here, but some of the desire was, Hey, we have some screws and we want to shorten them down. I'm like, we're not buying a $4,000 lay tooling it up just to shorten the screw.
00:33:47
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:33:50
John S
Like buying, buying new from McMaster that arrived tomorrow, or the other hack that I'm more okay with is we'll just take a part or a screw, put it in a drill and walk up to a belt sander. Um,
00:34:00
johngrimsmo
yeah Yeah, we do that when we need to.
00:34:02
John S
Yeah, like is that janky or is that smart? Both, I don't know.
00:34:05
johngrimsmo
All right.
00:34:06
John S
But um we have some parts now that we need to turn like a thou or two off of and they're not the kind of part I want to, you actually could do that in a drill, but that's that is more janky than smart. So um I guess, again, I'm kind of, oversarying it's an awkward balance of like, we can afford it, but it's like, actually should I push back more and just say, no, no, no, we're okay without it.
00:34:24
johngrimsmo
Yep. Yep.
00:34:26
John S
I think at the end of the day, I'd rather just have it because we'll use it, it's fine.
00:34:32
johngrimsmo
And there is part of the business case, you know, you're creating basically your dream shop to do what you guys want to do. We're doing the same thing. At the end of the day, sometimes we just get to go, you know, I want that.
00:34:44
John S
Yeah.
00:34:45
johngrimsmo
within within reason, we can always justify it, but um one of those purchases for me, I don't know if I told you about, I might have, the electronic dial indicator that I got a couple weeks ago.
00:34:56
John S
No.
00:34:57
johngrimsmo
It's a Midutoyo, it's just like a one inch travel dial indicator with electronic one inch travel, and it reads down to 20 millionths of an inch, which is pretty tight.
00:35:00
John S
Okay.
00:35:04
John S
Hmm.
00:35:09
johngrimsmo
And I put the little finger lifter on it so you can lift the plunger
00:35:12
John S
Love that.
00:35:13
johngrimsmo
Right? Which I've always wanted some like that.
00:35:13
John S
Yes.
00:35:14
johngrimsmo
I see like hack-o and there's the button kind, but this is just literally a plastic little clip that goes on the the plunger right at the end.
00:35:15
John S
Like the remote camera shutter button thingy.
00:35:22
John S
I'm familiar with it.
00:35:22
johngrimsmo
You put your finger next to it, you lift it up.
00:35:24
John S
Yep.
00:35:25
johngrimsmo
And that apparently comes with it, even though I bought an extra one. Um, that kit, the, the McMittatori one, they have it on McMaster for, that was one of the best prices around. It was $580 for the indicator, which is not cheap.
00:35:37
John S
oh Holy cow.
00:35:39
johngrimsmo
but it measures out to 20 millions. And what's really cool is I've always wanted, it does, it does.
00:35:42
John S
doesn't really. Okay.
00:35:46
johngrimsmo
Um, I've always wanted to be able to do just a comparative measurement in Z.
00:35:52
John S
Yeah, right.
00:35:52
johngrimsmo
And we make, we make a lot of parts where this would be extremely helpful. Things you can't measure with a caliper, with a mic, with whatever gauges, pins. Like you just, I just want to go from a 3d machine surface down to a pocket ah without doing the back of the caliper trick, you know?
00:36:06
John S
Sure.
00:36:07
johngrimsmo
And I want an accurate measurement. So specifically for a Fiele, this is my justification. um The detent of the knife, the flick when it's closed, that is based on the position and specific depth of a certain pocket. And I want to be able to measure that to tenths or better and at least track what's happening so that I can feel versus track what the depth is. And already in the past week, I've been able to use this tool. It's on a big heavy granite base with a one and a quarter inch post in the back, um also from the master. And it's just a really solid, like,
00:36:41
johngrimsmo
vertical measurement reference thing. And the cool thing with the electronic indicator is you can zero it on anything.
00:36:46
John S
Yeah, that's nice.
00:36:47
johngrimsmo
That is super cool. You can move the whole thing up or down, preload it a little bit, hit zero, and then lift it up and move to your second reference and hit down. And it's, it's amazing.
00:36:54
John S
Yeah.
00:36:56
johngrimsmo
And it was not cheap, but one of those metrology tools. You're like, Hey, metrology is not cheap. If you want a good result, you know, and I'm really happy with it.
00:37:05
John S
Yep, that's awesome.
00:37:06
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah.
00:37:07
John S
you Will you throw up an Instagram short of that at some point? i'd like to see ah I'd love to see how you're setting, using that.
00:37:10
johngrimsmo
Yeah. i gotta do it Yeah.
00:37:14
John S
weve been We use our our sort of mass shop reference master is the Midgetoyo LH600, which is a, it's a height gauge, but you know, it's a single axis C and M.
00:37:23
johngrimsmo
yeah And you have, you have that.
00:37:24
John S
a
00:37:25
johngrimsmo
I don't have one of those. So you are used to that capability and probably use it all the time.
00:37:26
John S
equal Right.
00:37:30
John S
we We do all the time, and that's what we're we're using that now as we qualify against gauges and gauge blocks and and other stuff and checking stuff.
00:37:31
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:37:40
John S
But it's like, man, I i have a lot of respect when um folks like Josh and Nick or Robin or Tom Lipton share about like, hey, you gotta be careful about what's your methodology, behind how you're measuring something and what's affecting it.
00:37:53
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:37:53
John S
I'm trying to measure the height on a part, ah part but like the reality is the, the bottom of the part, the Z, the what it's resting on the plate, isn't quote unquote perfect. It's not as perfect as what I'm trying to measure, which means you've got this, you kind of just can't do it anymore.
00:38:08
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:38:08
John S
It opens up another can of worms. But yeah, it's fun though. so
00:38:15
johngrimsmo
I love measuring.
00:38:17
John S
Yeah, I do. It's good.
00:38:21
johngrimsmo
Whenever I hear that the kids are learning, measuring in school, I get like oddly excited, like annoyingly excited.
00:38:29
John S
She's starting to know only fans of metrology tools, John.
00:38:29
johngrimsmo
Claire's like, yeah, meteorology only, but only measurement, only, only tents.
00:38:33
John S
i'd Yeah, right. Well, that's what's fun about the, again, the mitzvah height gauge we have in the middle of this hard gauge we made was like, okay, we hard milled something, we put it back in, and we took one-tenth radial, negative radial stock to leave, which is on a taper, so it's not a one-to-one, but we we have the math of what it should be.
00:38:38
johngrimsmo
um
00:38:44
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:38:56
John S
and It's, it did what we wanted it to, like that's phenomenal.
00:39:00
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:39:01
John S
So like nominally, I don't know how accurate you are, a relative I know, or we're doing more things right than we are wrong.
00:39:04
johngrimsmo
Yeah, exactly.
00:39:07
johngrimsmo
And sometimes that's all you need is a relative measurement, you know?
00:39:09
John S
Right, right, it's fun.
00:39:12
johngrimsmo
anything
00:39:12
John S
is What else you got?
Insights from Industry Leaders
00:39:20
johngrimsmo
So last week on Thursday night, 11 PM, I had a ah text from Tony at Kern USA and he's like, so Sebastian, our CEO from Germany is going to be at Toronto for eight hours.
00:39:33
johngrimsmo
does Does he have enough time to come visit you and can he come visit you? And I was like, yes, of course. So between traffic and airport and leaving security and coming back for early security for international flight, you had just enough time to spend two hours in our shop.
00:39:41
John S
Oh my gosh. Oh, that's good though.
00:39:46
johngrimsmo
It was great. And Eric and I walked him around. Eric had never met him. And we just had a good tour, great chai, super smart guy. they're They're doing wonderful things there. And it's it's nice as we do, but it's it's nice to commiserate with another business owner and and be like, oh, even at a company 10 times the size of ours or more, they they still have a lot of, but like, running a business is hard.
00:40:09
John S
Yeah. I never want to see how the sausage is made folks.
00:40:12
johngrimsmo
Exactly, um but it was great and he loved touring around our shop and he had a hack or watch and I got to see that in person.
00:40:19
John S
Oh yeah.
00:40:19
johngrimsmo
It was just gorgeous, like next level.
00:40:21
John S
That's awesome.
00:40:24
John S
Do you know what his CEO title in responsibilities are or differ from Simon, the other CEO?
00:40:30
johngrimsmo
From what I gather, and I might be totally wrong here, is that Sebastian is more on the engineering and R and&D side and Simon is more on the business side, although
00:40:36
John S
Okay.
00:40:42
johngrimsmo
I don't know, cause they're both super smart at both, but they've, they've talked to me about this before.
00:40:44
John S
Yeah, yeah, right, right Yeah interesting agree Huh, that's awesome.
00:40:46
johngrimsmo
They, they've come up with a good balance where the two of them and their two brains work really well together, which is rare. And to have equal yet different separate responsibilities. You handle that.
00:40:57
johngrimsmo
I'll take this. Let's go. And they they get together and they chat and they plan and they organize. They seem to be doing well.
00:41:06
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it's really cool.
00:41:08
John S
That's fun. There's a fun little visit
00:41:10
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it's nice. so I don't mind giving shop tours, especially to you know friends.
00:41:16
John S
you Sure.
00:41:17
johngrimsmo
It does take up time, as you know, but I'm glad to do it.
00:41:20
John S
Yeah.
00:41:23
John S
um Have you ever seen a video or been on a tour where you've seen a workstation at a machine that is what I call U shaped?
00:41:35
John S
You know, I'm talking about where it may have
00:41:36
johngrimsmo
Yeah, i Paul Akers talks about it constantly, and Pearson does too.
00:41:40
John S
Oh, really? I don't watch Polyakers anymore. I definitely watch Jay stuff sometimes, but it didn't.
00:41:45
johngrimsmo
Yep. Yep.
00:41:46
John S
Okay. Well, that's interesting because i was I've seen it now a couple of times, most recently at Hymer in it. I like, there's something about like having, so basically ah it could be a standing, usually it would be a standing bench, so maybe 250,
00:42:01
John S
Yeah, 24 inches by twenty like two, like 2V, I can't talk, 2V or 2V, but instead of just having a back wall of tools or or metrology gauges or spaces for setup sheets, it has side flank walls as well, which is weird because it kind of puts on blinders and blocks your view of the bigger shop, but I also feel like there's something about it that makes it look more structured and organizing in a way that I find very romantic, but I,
00:42:27
John S
I have done this numerous times over my career where I will find the passion, but fail at execution or sustainability of it.
00:42:32
johngrimsmo
if yeah
00:42:34
John S
So I'm kind of going into this with a little more of like, what do I want to do here? And where do I want to buy them from? Lawrence in the 3D detector on the Netherlands has a beautiful shop. Some of them seem to be this way.
00:42:44
John S
They bought some pretty dialed. Furniture from Hoffman, which is, I think, a bigger brand over there. You can get it here, but um do I go Seville?
00:42:50
johngrimsmo
yes
00:42:51
John S
Do I put on, oh, what's that? Maker, the board stuff I i just bought from my basement. the Yeah, exactly, the slotted stuff, I'm blank.
00:42:57
johngrimsmo
Yeah, not pegboard, but the fancy pegboard.
00:43:01
John S
Wall control. um That would be easy to do, but I'm like, ah, this is not a janky DIY with two by fours or something.
00:43:02
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:43:07
John S
like This needs to like show up and look finished and refined. So I'm kind of just thinking about that.
00:43:13
johngrimsmo
Could you just sign me some tables together and and butt them together and do some backsplashes like you're saying with wall control, call it good or?
00:43:21
John S
That would be okay. I'm just conscious of like, again, we've made a couple of times in the past, we've put up pegboard behind toolboxes, but it's literally furring strips and it just looks like that's, I'm not doing that anymore. I want something that looks more
00:43:34
johngrimsmo
Yep, yep. It's almost the cubicle mentality where it's like, it's it's a cell. You go in, you've got desks on all sides and some some walls to hang your stuff on.
00:43:46
John S
Yeah.
00:43:46
johngrimsmo
um But at the end of the day, it's it's about motion. like When they talk about it in lean, they talk about not just one piece flow, but the flow of parts through this U-shaped cell. you know Raw material is in, assembled here, packaged here, out.
00:43:58
John S
Yeah.
00:43:59
johngrimsmo
And you're, instead of physically walking to the next, you're just turning. And that's an ergonomic movement. And it's all about reaching. You can reach any tool from any spot because you're just standing in the middle.
00:44:07
John S
What?
00:44:10
johngrimsmo
And that's, I think, the mentality behind a lot of it is is this cell around you. you know You got all your stuff to do that job. And I know some of our some of our stations have, I wouldn't say a U, but certainly like two tables at a 90 where, or like Eric has one front and behind and he's on a swivel chair and he can just turn around.
00:44:29
John S
That's funny. That's awesome. ah
00:44:31
johngrimsmo
But I know Sky's got an L-shaped cell and he uses both tables for quite a bit and he's on a chair as well. And and we use L-shaped cells somewhat.
00:44:40
John S
Now, that this is why I love talking out loud with you, because there's this idea now where it's like, OK, a U-shaped sanding bench at a machine. The left side could be standard measurement tools, calipers, mics, whatever, that always stay there. The back wall could be other stuff. And then the right could be a swing wall, like where it's like a version of a process bin. But like the process bin, which for us, for the most part, worked pretty well.
00:45:05
John S
um It's not a perfect system just to be very candid, but um okay, every time I want to set up to start a new job, I'm going to have a setup sheet, some examples, maybe a custom couple of custom gauges or test screws now. Like we even, a part that has M4 and M6 screws on it, we now have a little 3D printed block that has those screws in it that's just right there. So when you want to test one that way, not just a thread gauge, but with a screw, it's right there. That could become,
00:45:32
John S
Almost like ah yeah your current has the tool racks for your ATC.
00:45:36
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:45:37
John S
um
00:45:37
johngrimsmo
Mine doesn't actually, but that is an option.
00:45:39
John S
ah Those are so dialed. Okay.
00:45:41
johngrimsmo
I don't need it, but yeah, before the job.
00:45:42
John S
Well, you could have that be like the right side of the U-bin has swappable, hot swappable process bin drop sheets that has that stuff already there. So it's like, Hey, I switched from soft jaws to mod vice top jaws.
00:45:54
John S
I just switched those out. It could actually be stored on the hanger system like we did for the fixtures.
00:45:55
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:45:59
johngrimsmo
yep
00:45:59
John S
And then now whatever you have is right there. Like that I love.
00:46:03
johngrimsmo
I like that. Yeah, exactly. And ideally, and this takes time to flush out, but you set up a system that you can copy and paste across your entire shop so that you have this not only continuous feel of like, wow, every machine kind of looks the same.
00:46:13
John S
right yeah
00:46:18
johngrimsmo
You're like, well, we've got four different brands of machines, but yes, we've set them up the same because this is how we work.
00:46:18
John S
who
00:46:23
johngrimsmo
This is our process. This is how we flow parts through our machines. um
00:46:30
johngrimsmo
Now, on what I've seen on a CNC machine, I think what Pearson does is, so the machine is one part of the EU, and then you have a table 90 degrees to the machine, and then another table 90 degrees to the machine.
00:46:37
John S
Right. Yeah. Okay. okay
00:46:40
johngrimsmo
So the operator is working on the machine. He pivots left to access raw materials. He pivots right to measure and put finished materials.
00:46:49
John S
Okay.
00:46:49
johngrimsmo
And there's multiple ways to do this, but yeah.
00:46:55
John S
Yeah. Okay. Hmm.
00:46:59
johngrimsmo
But I like those small tables because they're not that intrusive. They're like what, three feet long or something. So you could put it at an L 90 degree to a machine and have it not eat up your entire aisle.
00:47:05
John S
Yeah.
00:47:11
John S
Yep. Yeah. That's a great day days off in the shop sort of project that I'm just not doing a great job of right now, which is okay.
00:47:19
johngrimsmo
Yeah, that's okay.
00:47:20
John S
Yeah.
00:47:21
johngrimsmo
It's all choices, you know.
00:47:23
John S
What's on tap for you today?
00:47:25
johngrimsmo
Today is Keep Hard Milling. I'm kind of hitting it feature by feature, which is super cool to be able to separate it, take the blade off, put it back on, probe the hole, hit the next feature, sneak up on a feature until it's absolutely dialed.
00:47:30
John S
Mm hmm.
00:47:38
John S
Mm hmm.
00:47:39
johngrimsmo
Knife Making Tuesday went up yesterday. Kern is Broken video goes up in the next day or two.
00:47:44
John S
nice
00:47:47
johngrimsmo
Probably start filming my next Knife Making Tuesday.
00:47:48
John S
Nice.
00:47:50
johngrimsmo
Pretty much just talking about this hard milling and what we've talked about, but showing it, which will be really fun. And that, honestly, that's my big focus right now is getting past this stage of hard milling on the Fjall and then tighten up the clip and then it's like good for production.
00:48:02
John S
Yeah.
00:48:06
johngrimsmo
Like we're back close.
00:48:08
John S
Are you able to do everything with one hard mill?
00:48:12
johngrimsmo
With one tool, I want to have a roughing tool and a finish tool because, so two tools.
00:48:16
John S
But that's fine. But you're not, I guess what I mean is you're not switching between tools where the gauge length difference could cause, will introduce some variance.
00:48:29
johngrimsmo
in in like blending tools, you mean?
00:48:31
John S
So, yeah, exactly. like no tools No two tools are gonna, using the same tool to do everything is better than using two different tools, period.
00:48:33
johngrimsmo
Yeah, no.
00:48:39
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:48:40
John S
like Even if you're talking about 20 millionths, that 20 millionths is something.
00:48:41
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:48:44
johngrimsmo
Exactly. Yeah, there's one feature where I want to ah slot, you know, this hard milled slot through the blade. Do that all hard. I want a roughing tool for that. I actually ordered a high feed hard milling tool from, you know, yeah.
00:48:57
John S
Hard built, interesting. Who's that from?
00:48:59
johngrimsmo
Interesting. Maldino.
00:49:01
John S
Hmm, from.
00:49:01
johngrimsmo
So it's a four flute. I think it's two millimeter high feed. So one thou depth of cut and just zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, zip.
00:49:08
John S
Yeah.
00:49:10
johngrimsmo
So I'm looking forward to that. So, and I can rough and finish. Well, I can one and done with that tool. I can make my slot with that tool.
00:49:17
John S
Yeah, awesome.
00:49:17
johngrimsmo
Because it's a clearance slot. And then the two millimeter radius tool is going to do all the finishing. The stop and end points, the pivot board, the locking feature, the detent feature, all with one tool. And taking off very minimal amount of material so it's not going to wear much.
00:49:35
johngrimsmo
Yeah, super exciting.
00:49:35
John S
Good, awesome.
00:49:36
johngrimsmo
So that's my that's my big thing right now. What about you?
00:49:40
John S
Literally gonna hang up and go look at the hard mill part that's done on the Akuma.
00:49:42
johngrimsmo
Go hard milling.
00:49:45
John S
And then i've a I think I told you before we hit record, I had a bunch of stuff on my plate today and tomorrow, and then I got jury duty tomorrow. So I am just in full disclosure, I am in that like,
00:49:59
John S
way too much stuff on my plate this very second.
00:50:01
johngrimsmo
Yup.
00:50:01
John S
And there's just no point. I think that's where I've matured a lot as a business owner and leader. It's like, what do you want to prioritize? like I want to do this hard milling for a bunch of other reasons of like what's going on with the team and the development and then what they can disseminate.
00:50:15
John S
And like the stuff I'm missing is um not important right now. It's OK.
00:50:19
johngrimsmo
Yeah, exactly. it's It's nice to be able to be like, oh, all those things that are exciting and need to get done are not that, that important, but these two are.
00:50:25
John S
Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah.
00:50:28
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:50:30
John S
Good.
00:50:30
johngrimsmo
All right, go do some hard milling.
00:50:31
John S
Good talking. They're just hard, really. Keep it hard.
00:50:34
johngrimsmo
Take care, bye.
00:50:34
John S
Stay hard. Bye.