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#313 "Ways to automate a shop without spending 6 figures"
279 Plays2 years ago
Topics:
- Origin of John and John meeting in 2015
- Saunders gave a speech: "Ways to automate a shop without spending 6 figures"
- Youtube content!
- Willemin!
- swiss machines and dual channel machines
- DIY Spectrometer and lasers
- visit shops and bring questions
- can we implement automated workholding?
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Origins
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, Episode 313. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. And this is the podcast where the two Johns who've been friends for many years, I actually used to watch you on YouTube well before we were friends. We've been having this podcast for six years or so and chat every week about what's going on in work. That's what's so great about the whole world we live in. YouTube, Instagram machinists,
00:00:28
Speaker
I remember feeling like I knew you, I mean, knew you as well as you could know somebody without, we were both much younger in our careers, but you and I met for the first time, I'm pretty sure at a Tormach event. Yeah. Yeah. It was great. Yeah, it was. 2015, I'm pretty sure. That's crazy to think back to. And I mean, we, I don't even know if we were like emailing often at that time, you know, like we weren't friends yet. We knew each other, but
00:00:58
Speaker
But yeah, I think we hit it off quite well at that point. Yes. And we had a lot of deep conversations, and we're like, man, there's a lot of future in this industry, and we just kept chatting about
Buying a VMC Without a Shop - Challenges and Lessons
00:01:07
Speaker
it. It's great. Well, I remember you telling me that night, like, hey, this is kind of crazy, but I'm buying a VMC, and I don't know where I'm going to put it, because I can't put it in my garage. That is true, because that was the summer. We had already committed to the purchase. Didn't have a shop lined up yet.
00:01:28
Speaker
I knew I would figure it out. Yeah, and you did, right? That stopped for four and a half years. That was not you getting backed into a corner. What I'm about to say is not what you or the situation you're in, but there's something to be said even when you have frustrating moments, low moments, tough moments.
00:01:50
Speaker
Sometimes getting back into a corner is exactly what needs to happen because it means you will figure it out. You will make it happen and it all will work out. I've got many of those examples throughout my life that I've learned to push myself to those moments so that I do figure it out and I've learned
00:02:10
Speaker
to gain the confidence in my own abilities to be able to figure things out when I need to. And that's been a huge benefit to my career, basically. It's knowing that, yeah, I can do that. Yeah. But it feels like one of the differences, and I've been thinking about this partly on topic, because I'm here, I'm actually out of a coma right
Shop Automation on a Budget
00:02:30
Speaker
now. And I gave a presentation about 10 minutes ago talking about the theme of the presentation was ways to automate a shop that don't involve spending six figures.
00:02:40
Speaker
How can you build processes and tools and mindsets that help us do what we do better with less human intervention, with less risk, et cetera? And it was really fun. I really enjoyed it. But, oh, I almost lost my train of thought. The point was to talk about, I don't enjoy those low moments by just being candid. Like it can be really tough.
00:03:01
Speaker
but they are inevitable. And I think what you have to remember is that's the difference between being a machinist and running a machine shop is you're going to have those trying moments.
00:03:18
Speaker
And it's up to the individual to figure out how they're going to deal with that. And yeah, an employee, a machinist who just sinks into that role and kind of gets stuff handed to them and doesn't deal with problems. That's fine, but it's limiting yourself. Whereas somebody who's an entrepreneur, if you want to do well at it, you're going to get punched in the face like often. And it's always going to suck, but you know, get back up again.
Late Start in Machining - Business Challenges
00:03:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:49
Speaker
Well, so we did this talk yesterday, like humble brag, standing room only, super awesome, really enjoyed the talk. And then, um, you know, as is kind of the case, we had people come up and they wanted to shake my hand, get a picture, super cool, love it, enjoy that meeting. And then we had another guy come up to me and I'm kind of just like, you know, it's another one of these, they want to tell their story or share a moment, which is great. And, and it was the total opposite. He was like, I got started later.
00:04:18
Speaker
and life and I regret it. This is kicking my butt. It wasn't like I was personally responsible for the struggles, but it was that reminder of just being a machinist doesn't mean that you can abscond from the realities of needing to understand running the business side of cashflow and sales and operations and hiring.
00:04:45
Speaker
I don't know what the takeaway is there, but I mean, I felt bad. I wanted to figure it out. Well, I want to think about helping. I also a big under unspoken theme of what I hope my story has been is making it a replicable story. It's why I love, um, running Saunders and not just being
From YouTube to Manufacturing Business
00:05:01
Speaker
a YouTube guy. Like we have a real business for better or worse. So, um, you know, that's something that anybody can do. Uh, you get getting lucky on YouTube is not something anybody can do. Yeah. Yep. And I mean,
00:05:14
Speaker
You and I both started out making a lot of videos about the things we're making and have grown an actual sustainable, profitable manufacturing business out of it, regardless of the YouTube. I mean, my YouTube's so stale, I don't really make any money on it anymore. But even when at the heyday I'd make, not even livable money.
00:05:32
Speaker
Correct. Sure. We are not YouTubers making bank. We have a manufacturing company. All our money comes from the work we make, which I love. I love making a thing and selling it to a customer. That customer's happy, and then everybody works. Everybody wins. Yeah. It's great. I mean, it's a huge... We don't explicitly sell fixture plates on YouTube, but obviously, the presence and branding is a huge... I don't mean to understand that. It's for sure part of it. Absolutely.
00:06:02
Speaker
But it's a part of it. It's not the core of it. Nowadays, especially, you're YouTube famous. It's your job. It's yada, yada. We're not those people. I think people think we are. Yeah. Some people have been like, wait, you make more on Saunders? I'm like, oh my god. No, it's like not even. Like a thousand to one. Correct. It's usually by lunchtime on a weekday, Saunders has outperformed a month of YouTube. Yeah, exactly.
00:06:32
Speaker
It's funny because, you know, I'm most active on Instagram right now and this podcast, but there's certainly people that only watch me on YouTube and it's been quite a while since I've uploaded a video. So I'll get the odd email like, are you okay? Is everything still like in business? You know, yes, things are wonderful.
00:06:50
Speaker
The, we are going to put out some, we've actually slowed down YouTube as well, but we are going to put out some more content, which I'm excited for. Including, I actually ended up filming a little bit here in Charlotte. I normally don't love filming at like company sponsored tech days because it's usually kind of just like a staley, like, you know, everything's great here. You should come look at how amazing we are. It's not like actually,
00:07:17
Speaker
I'm not going to put something out that's just that, but this is, there's been enough cool things to make it like, okay, now I want to film a little recap into it. And it's also like, I don't, that's the beauty of it. I don't care. Like I don't, I'm not here to sell you anything. I'm here to just say, Hey, for the most that can't make it to Charlotte, here's what I'm seeing and learning that catches my eye. That's wonderful. And I'm fired up because now I can switch gears here. Grant is killing it on the will of men. So now I'm like, okay, I feel like we've crossed the threshold, the line of like, this is going to work out
00:07:46
Speaker
So I want to start filming some to show off what that looks like. Um, yes. Yes. Yeah. So I left Tuesday for Charlotte and, um, Grant got the post working in the end. So shout out to you and CJ for the help there. And then, um, and then we were air cutting just to make sure we could load a file and all that. And then when I was here, he texted me, he's like, Hey, I think it will work. Are you, do you want me to run a chart cutting or do you mean wait for you to come back? And I was like, dude,
00:08:16
Speaker
rock and roll. And so he's added more tools, more toolpaths, and I'm loving it. That's awesome. And you're just kind of sitting back and updates on your phone. Yeah, send me videos of the parts, which I'm like, so I wish I was there, but I'm so happy that this is working. Well, even better, when you come back, there'll be a part to see. There'll be a program to run. Yes. That's incredible. How's your Willy?
00:08:45
Speaker
My will is pretty strong. I don't think, in the past week, I haven't used a machine. I've been meaning to, but my kids are sick and yada yada.
00:08:58
Speaker
But it's on my list for the week, for sure. And I'm pretty sure the way I left it is the machine is completely workable, ready to run. It'll transfer the part. It'll drop the part. It'll go to the next part. It should. But I haven't done a complete cycle with two parts in a row yet, because there's always something that goes wrong. But I'm pretty sure I fixed all those somethings, and it literally should just work. So I'm super excited when I have some time to like
00:09:22
Speaker
You know, shout out the world and just put my surgeon hat on and do this. I think it's ready to rock.
Advancements in Machine Setup and Production
00:09:29
Speaker
So I got to say, I'm kind of, uh, I feel like you're catching up way too fast. I feel like I need to get out there and like make a part before you do because John, you just take your time. No, you're, you're still ahead of us. We haven't done any of that stuff. And like, I've put a lot of, um,
00:09:51
Speaker
understanding into the machine, tweaking the post, tweaking the files, the way I use Fusion, the output, the toolpaths and tolerances. I've probably made 30 parts on it so far, but individual, one by one. It might be like, I cut it off manually kind of thing, but it's still called in part. But I'm at the point where it's like, I need to run continuously and I think I'm there. That's why I bought the machine.
00:10:19
Speaker
It definitely doesn't escape me the cash investment that I've put into this machine and you have to now that I've had it for almost two years. No. Yeah. No. I feel like it was April two years ago where I was like CJ sent me the eBay link and I was like, well, that's pretty cool and then it took a couple months to buy it and everything and get it, but year and a half plus for sure. Got it.
00:10:46
Speaker
And I mean that involved pull the whole spindle out, replace all the wiring. It's just been a lot of slow, slow, slow work. At the end of the day, I'm still super happy with it. There's a reason the windshield's bigger than the rearview mirror. Yep. It's only about what happens from here on out, which is your parts are going to be so good.
00:11:10
Speaker
I'll have you what we're going to make on it, but your parts are like, yes. Yes. It's a milling machine that happens to load round bar. Are you going to even use three inserts? I guess you turn. Yeah. When we make the pocket clip, we, I mean, we, we drill and we bore from the one side. Yeah. And then we turn the whole OD as a tube, as a cylinder, as a round object, basically. Okay. So the face right there has a turn radius on it. Okay. Got it.
00:11:39
Speaker
Which I'm wondering if the Willyman could actually like 3d machine it and have a good enough cusp height to tumble out and like be. Spectacular. Um, I don't know. I'll see, but oh, but it's so much faster to turn it. Exactly. Yeah. So yeah, that's cool. Yeah. Although the benefit to, I mean, I've done some turning on it and chip management is going to be fun, like without high pressure coolant and whatever. And if you get a bird's nest, what do you do?
00:12:10
Speaker
So I mean, milling it kind of wins there because you're just making dust and chips instead of stringies and long strings. So I'll play with that over time.
Productivity with Multi-Channel Machines
00:12:18
Speaker
Well, you could just tip the head to be 90 and do a 2d contour at the rad you radius. Like literally you just know that with an end mill. Yeah. You could, I don't know if an end mill can be long enough. Maybe gauge length limit. Yeah. Gaze length limit. But also, uh, you know, if there's a chip in the end mill, it's going to leave a chip in your finish kind of thing. Yeah, that's true.
00:12:40
Speaker
Hence why I'd consider 3D-ing it at 30,000 RPM with a 160th ball or something. That's what I've been talking with another guy. Actually, my buddy Scott Harms from Metal Quest. This is totally a tangent, but they are working on this software with
00:13:02
Speaker
It's Dassault Delmia that is like factory automation where they scan your LiDAR scan, your factory, every machine goes into it, every robot goes into it, every material handling device. They literally build a digital twin of your factory and show throughput and capabilities and rigging and electrical locations. This is for sure beyond me, probably beyond you in terms of what we would need, but it for sure makes sense when you got a 30,000 square foot facility and they're going to invest X amount and they need to understand
00:13:32
Speaker
the capabilities or they need to potentially rig five machines and move them around. But the reason they brought it up is they were talking about how, you know, they'll get a salesman from company A, let's say it's a robot company, who's like, Oh, hey, but if you upgrade this or buy this different version, this can go 20% faster. And this software is like, it doesn't matter. It's not the bottleneck. The bottleneck is the grinder or the tumbler that's two seconds down. Don't spend money buying a bigger, faster widget here when
00:14:02
Speaker
It's not the bottleneck. So maybe think about what your cycle time looks like on the pen clip. It may not matter if you surface it because that machine is going to run 24-7. Yes. Yeah, exactly. And I've read a lot of books and notes and articles about what's the bottleneck. And everybody wants to, like you said, kind of get the faster machine. And we see that here too. We get a current or something, but that's not the bottleneck. Maybe it's heat treat. Maybe it's surface grinding. Maybe it's something else.
00:14:29
Speaker
Yeah the cycle time on the neck for the pen clip is twenty two twenty five minutes like that. Wow and we still currently run them one by one so peers got a timer alarm that every twenty two minutes he goes back to the machine you know pulse it off and sets another one to go so he's time limited to making eighteen a day on the best day ever.
00:14:49
Speaker
Got it. Whereas the Willman hopefully can pull it, drop it, keep going, run 24 maybe, 24 hours a day if there's no problems. So just the throughput there, even if it takes longer, is a complete no-brainer.
00:15:04
Speaker
But there's no way it's going to be the same cycle time as the NAC because your RPMs are- I'm surfacing at 6,000 RPM on the NAC and I'll be surfacing at, I mean, whatever SFM limits me on the Willowman, but it'll just be better. Yeah. But it is more the quality of the spindle and the automation that I'm interested in than just the cycle time or the RPM or whatever. Oh, I hear you.
00:15:33
Speaker
Okay. 20, even 20 minutes, three, three an hour 24 hours. That's 72 clips a day. Yeah, totally. It's a complete game changer. Yeah. Yeah. That's like Scott Harms has these, they have two index MS40 machines. Like these are big boy machines. The eight spindle versions that hold 40 millimeter bars, which is a big bar.
00:15:59
Speaker
They were talking about how they run those machines and it's weird. It's not a lights out machine. There has to be somebody there because the machines are so productive that you have to have somebody there to constantly change inserts. What? That's interesting. Yeah. So you have eight spindles in the cut at all times. So the cycle times on some of these parts that
00:16:24
Speaker
Picture a part that's you know smaller than a coke can that may have milled features turn features five axis deburring like or whatever that kind of stuff their cycle times are Sometimes not under 60 seconds, but like I mean it's it's just a part where you can look at it and you could think okay on a twin Turret later triple Turret late Maybe that's a 15 minute or something, right? Yeah
00:16:52
Speaker
With eight spindles, you're theoretically eight times faster because all of it's happening at once. You're kind of operation limited at that point. If you have a 3D surfacing op, that's going to be the cycle time. Is that one up?
00:17:05
Speaker
Because everything else happens in that one time. We see it on the Swiss because it's a dual channel machine. If we're milling the torques on a pivot screw, the milling itself takes two minutes or three minutes or something. All the turning is done by the time that milling happens. You're just waiting for that milling to finish and the turning is waiting. I can't even imagine with six or eight.
00:17:28
Speaker
of those happening at the same time. Like I've thought about, Tornos makes their multi, multi Swiss lines, like multi cylinder index. Exactly. Very similar kind of machine. And I saw them at IMTS and I've always kind of avoided them. Never really understood how they worked or what they were or whatever. But I got talking to the guy at Tornos and I was like, it clicked. Like I finally get it now. I understand it. See what's going on. I'm like, it's the productivity of four or six machines in the space of two.
00:17:59
Speaker
That's where I'm like, I don't know how to say this. I can't imagine you're ever going to get one of those shots. But like, I want you to. I know you so well. And I can't. You should at least that but like, I don't know. I would have said something that occurred. I don't know how to say this. Like, I want you to. It's crazy, right?
00:18:17
Speaker
I don't have the volume requirements for it. You know, we have, we have enough variety of parts. Like we make, I forget 15, 20 different turned components. Um, so there's different setups and things like that. So there's a value to having multiple machines, not just one machine that can make a million parts in a row. Yeah. Does your tortoise then do this sync code thing where it waits for, because, uh,
00:18:44
Speaker
Okay, I've never seen that. I mean, never run that kind of a machine. They were saying it here, it's like a P100 and a P100. So Spindle 1 runs, does its code, and then if it hits the P100, it just pauses there until the second spindle hits that same code, and then they both go back together? Exactly, until the P101 and then the P102 or whatever it is on the Tornos, it's an M something.
00:19:05
Speaker
But yeah, it's a weight code. It's literally two channels of G code. The file is structured interesting. It's actually all one code, like if you open it up in notepad, but the upper section is channel one, and then there's some differentiator in the middle, and then the lower section is all channel two. But when you load it into the tornos, it splits it into the two machines, two channels.
00:19:28
Speaker
Interesting. So it's got a split screen. So you can view the code side by side. And you can watch you can watch each channel's current watch the one waiting and the others flipping through code. And then you hit the two and then there might be a dwell or something while it transfers the part. And then
00:19:45
Speaker
Because especially for multi-channel operations, like during a part transfer, you want the tool to be here and then to wait. And then you want the subspindle to come in, grab, wait. And then you want the part off to come in, cut off, wait. And then you want to pull it back, wait, and all this stuff. So it's like left, right, left, right, left, right. Oh. And Tarnos made this Tysis software that actually syncs up the codes, sort of like in Visual Studio Code, how you can compare two files. Yeah.
00:20:15
Speaker
So it lines up the sync codes properly and lets you see visually what's going to happen when. Huh. That's cool. That's super cool. It sounds like it's, I don't want to say easy, but is that a machine that gives you anxiety about when you have to do a new part? Or is it kind of like, no, it's just you've got to
00:20:36
Speaker
I don't do new parts on it. It's a lot of hand editing. The way I have it right now, I don't have a solid post for it. I'm using partial Nakamura post, partial Tarnos post, whatever. I'm basically spitting out an operation and copy and pasting it into my already structured master file, which has all the white codes and everything prepped and all my tool calls and things like that. It's kind of a messy way to do it.
00:21:04
Speaker
But unless you're going to get some fancy verification software, a really good post or a spree or something that I know Autodesk has been working on a Swiss post. I don't know what the update is. It's been a couple of years, but there's a way to do it for sure. The other thing that just came to mind is, so Autodesk bot can't complete. I think of this very machine simulation software, but it originally I think started more as posting software so you could pull in
00:21:34
Speaker
And I know you know this, but like you could pull in roughing from master cam and surfacing from power mill and drilling from Gibbs or whatever it would be. And it could handle all the linking moves. Like you just dump the file in the complete and it re does everything it needs to do. So these different NC files play together well. So my understanding is a fusion block complete. Obviously they're using a lot of that technology, um, in terms of the simulation stuff, but that I think now, if you can't now, it'll be soon. You can take a chunk of code that comes from.
00:22:03
Speaker
a competing cam platform or your own hand code, then you can pull it into Fusion and have it become part of your overall posted code. Have you seen this? I haven't seen anything about that. Or in Camplete, I know with Camplete, because it's its own post processor, I know you can bring in an entire master cam file and post it to your machine, or you can bring in an entire Fusion file or solid cam or whatever. I just don't know anything about splicing together bits of code and having Camplete figure it out. Yeah.
00:22:33
Speaker
I'd be weary there for sure, but there's a way, you know? Yeah. Cause it's like, you know, when you post from fusion to the dump file and it's just the raw data, it's kind of neat to look through and find things. Um, and that raw data can then be post processed to any machine. So like every, I wonder how the dump file, I'm sure it looks different from fusion than it does from master cam or anything else. Yeah.
00:23:00
Speaker
But it's probably different syntax, but it's got to have the same basic information similar. Yeah, yeah. Huh? It's cool. Yeah, it's cool. OK, so what have you been up to last week? It's not playing with you, will it? Finished machine and cast iron on the speedio.
Machining Cast Iron and Machine Maintenance
00:23:18
Speaker
I'm very happy to be done with that. The guys have been cleaning out the machine, literally scrubbing with a toothbrush and all the corners because I want all that cast iron.
00:23:27
Speaker
I'm on the fence whether I take all the fixtures off the table and clean it really well. Not sure yet. You have to, John. Yeah. Sorry. You have to. Yeah.
00:23:40
Speaker
Angelo's got this stuff called ACF 50. That is a rust inhibitor that they use in airframes and motorcycles and all this stuff. So he is using some of that anyway. But I don't know. I'll see where we're at with the thing. Like I got those silicone octane work holding T-slot covers. Yeah. Super glad I got those the day before I started machining cast iron. And that kept 90 plus percent of it out of the T-slots anyway.
00:24:10
Speaker
So we'll see. But yeah, the fixture setup that I have is involved. I mean, it's not that bad, but I'd rather not take it down kind of thing. Anyway, so that's the update there. I finally heard back from Eroa about connecting the Eroa to the speedio. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's been, it's taking far too long. But apparently they're asking, Switzerland is asking if
00:24:37
Speaker
The panel that goes between the speedio and the aroa on the aroa side, like I took the wall off, they're putting in a hole basically. Um, so they're making that new panel. Uh, they asked me if I wanted it painted or if I'm going to paint it myself and I'm like, I want it red, please. Like, yeah. Like, yes. Um, and then yeah, hoping to hear back. Uh, so at least I'm communicating with them. That'll be really nice. Um,
00:25:03
Speaker
And then my latest hyper obsession has been, we got that laser, we put it on the, on the router. It's cutting great. Okay. The results are amazing. Um, but now we're all getting super paranoid and super scared of the laser and of the, you know, the, the person operating it wearing glasses is one thing, but everybody else walking by, we've got, you know, multiple people in the shop at all times. Not everybody's going to wear glasses all the time. Um,
00:25:32
Speaker
So we're trying to figure out, I've been learning so much about laser safety and shielding and light waves and nanometer, et cetera, that I decided to build a spectrometer that can actually measure the wavelengths of the light coming off the machine and what the glasses are doing. So I kind of just finished that up last night and it's really cool.
Laser Safety and Spectrometry
00:25:55
Speaker
Really? Yeah.
00:25:57
Speaker
Is it not just like cover the machine with that laser glass? There's a few options out there and to varying different quality levels and emissions ratings and
00:26:12
Speaker
What do you call it? OD, your optical density of the material. So I'm trying to figure out what to buy. And the glass can get very expensive, like thousands of dollars. Oh. Interestingly, it's the whole machine. And there's some companies that make a film, like a tint. Yeah. And then we're like, well, what about just any tint? Does it work? I don't know. What's the difference? Try to figure it out. It's not the kind of thing you want to cheap out on. But I also don't need to spend $5,000 on glass for this router enclosure.
00:26:41
Speaker
And is the concern that the laser beam bounces out, or is it just the concern that somebody looks at it? Both. Because right now, we just have acrylic windows on the whole machine. And so we would need to replace those with orange tinted properly laser safety tinted glass. Right now, we just have a huge cardboard box around the machine. And it's actually pretty awesome. Everybody feels so much more comfortable with that.
00:27:08
Speaker
Then you walk around the cardboard box and put your glasses on and use the machine. That's a huge first step for Simple Simple. There's good articles online for how to build a spectrometer and actually see the wavelength of every light from UV to infrared and then to see what the glasses do to change that and how it kills certain wavelengths of light.
00:27:34
Speaker
So that's been a session the past few days. Yeah. And I'm filming YouTube video about it because it's pretty cool. Okay. So you bought this laser thousand bucks, wherever it shows up, you hook it up to the Maso and it just works like the focal length was good. It's engraving the phone like you want.
00:27:51
Speaker
It was pretty easy. It's like a couple wires to plug it in. You plug it into the wall and then two wires into the Maso. It was a little bit more complicated to hook it up to the E-stop circuit because that's very important to be able to kill the laser power at any time. Otherwise, you have to go in and you have to type M5 to turn the spindle off. If there's a fire, I'm not going to type M5. I'm going to smash the E-stop button.
00:28:14
Speaker
So that was a bit more complicated to wire up but totally like absolutely required. Don't even consider not doing it. So I did that and then it like turns on and I'm like, sweet. And then I held the foam underneath it just to find the focal length. And I'm like, that's hilarious. It's just starting to cut.
00:28:32
Speaker
And then, okay, so it's working. And when the beam's out of focus, it does nothing. It's a light bulb. It's like crazy, you know, the size of a penny, the beam. And I want to hit it with a temperature gun just to see if it's like degrees hotter or if it's not, you know?
00:28:50
Speaker
The focal length is probably a millimeter up and down, if I have to guess. How much? Not much, maybe even less. The one guy who was lasering our foam, if the foam had a bow to it, he'd have tapered engravings or it just wouldn't cut at all. He was struggling with that.
00:29:10
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, we've got engraving programs for the laser and we're actively cutting production foam like laser engraving our logo into the foam and it looks better than the other guys because we're able to control all the settings more and not only infill the lettering but outline them as well at a slightly higher power so that the outlines a little bit deeper and get this cool effect. And then you go to the Zeiss microscope and you look at it under there and you're like, oh, it looks terrible. But you look with your eye and you're like, it looks amazing.
00:29:41
Speaker
Yeah. So that's awesome. Yeah. So huge, huge wins there. Um, even Eric was teasing me. He's like, that's probably the fastest machine integration you've ever done John, like getting that laser up and running. Like, yeah, you're right. Yeah. So yeah, that's, uh,
00:30:03
Speaker
That's that. Today, I'm going to finish the spectrometer and I got to calibrate it to a fluorescent light because fluorescent light emits two distinct wavelengths, 430 and 564 or whatever it is. You should see two spikes perfectly and then you can calibrate the software to hit those spikes and then it should be fully calibrated. Cool.
00:30:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's really cool. So I've been going down the deep end of learning about light and light waves and what all the light bulbs do and what all the suns do and the sun does. And filming the YouTube video last night, which I haven't filmed in a good while, but this was a nice little solo project to film about. It was fun. I pulled out my flashlight to do the testing and I'm looking at the flashlight and I'm like, I still got to make flashlights. Like I still really, really want to make flashlights. And here I am learning about light and spectrometers and wavelengths and all this stuff. And it's like, oh, it's all coming together.
00:30:59
Speaker
I don't know. Yeah. You can put those on the eight spindle tortoise or index. There you go. Well, I think Surefire had dozens of indexes, index machines. I saw a photo of their factory years ago. Yeah, that makes sense. I know Leupold, the riflescope company uses
00:31:21
Speaker
a lot of indexes, but it's pretty, I don't know how easy it is at all to ever get inside that factory, but there's a couple of pictures floating around where you can see, it's really cool. I learned one thing. I think you have to make a concerted effort when you come to events like the one on that to like, okay, what do I want to learn? You want to just react to what you see?
00:31:50
Speaker
or you want to go on a purpose-based mission. And I sometimes feel like I need to do a better job of being like, no, let's go bring questions. Let's go ask. Let's go find out what you don't know. And I'm actually really glad I did that because one of the things I just learned is Okuma, I think only on the lathes, it might be an option on the mills. I need to go learn more about this. They have the, I was joking, they call it the poor man's probate where you can use the torque control feedback like you
00:32:20
Speaker
either used to do or still do on a knock. Okay, you don't do any more? I don't think so. No. But you could take a tool. And that's kind of weird to say this, like, you would you want to use a drill or you're risking and damaging the tip, but you can have it go a tool that you're willing to do this with and push it into a feature that should be there. And if it's not there, and the machine starts to see it load on the motor,
00:32:47
Speaker
it can go back and say, hey, something's wrong, which is that poor man's probing, like validate whether this is there or not. And I'm like, oh, that's really interesting.
00:32:56
Speaker
That's exactly what we used to do on the Nacomir, like you said. We had a cut off torques driver bit mounted in the turret of the machine. So we'd mill the torques and then we'd gently at like one inch per minute push in this driver bit. And if it goes to almost a full depth with no resistance, then it's there. If there is resistance, the machine would stop and be like just alarm, which is fine because it means your 20 thou end mill has broken. So I want it to stop. That's the way to do it. Do it with a
00:33:26
Speaker
Not a cutting tool. Do it with a work screwdriver. If you have the spot for it, yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I think we actually, next to a drill bit or something, we drilled and set screwed this hole for the Torx driver. I wasn't taking up a spot. It was just like, I found a spot. I made a spot. I'd want to do it without doing a tool change, because if I do a tool change, I could just pull the probe up.
00:33:55
Speaker
But you wouldn't want to. On a dual spindle, you don't always have a probe in both directions. Well, I'm talking about using on a mill, John. I hate lids. Oh, I didn't know. I thought we were thinking lids. Always mills. You can do it on a mill, eh? That's what they say. I got to go learn more. Interesting. Yeah, you're right. I mean, if it's like the ha safe mode thing where it probably tells you your material, right? Like a carbide drill.
00:34:25
Speaker
touching aluminum, I suspect it's sensitive enough to where it's not going to hurt the drill. But man, I'd love to think of a way to do it without a go alert figure. Well, that's the thing on a mill, you just tool change to the probe and do it properly. Well, tool changes cost money and take time. But yeah, I don't like the thought of doing it like you drill a hole and then you probe the hole with that drill. Well, the good news is that
00:34:54
Speaker
Interesting. Let's say you do this across the course of a year, 1,000 times. The only time the tool is going to ever even contact the material is in the situation where something was wrong. Fair. Maybe it may be worth the trade-off. Interesting. Very true. That's a little bit like that. They created it for a purpose. They must have reasons we're not thinking about. You know what I mean? Yeah. Because of the Haas zone.
00:35:22
Speaker
Boy, that was two IMTSs ago where we did the safe mode video. That was, again, probably a carbide tool drill in aluminum, but no problem at all. I'm sure if you did it continuously, it might eventually cause a problem. But anyway.
00:35:42
Speaker
Well, the closer we're inspecting tools and end mills under the microscope, the more I realize how delicate they can be and microchipping and chip the corners and stuff like that. I'm getting ultra paranoid about that. Yeah. We stopped using the touch
00:36:00
Speaker
able probes for the polished and ground aluminum inserts, because when you run them backward, we absolutely often immediately saw it compromised the cutting edge. Nice. Yeah, I see that. Yeah. So I wanted to, I've actually had this on my list for a couple of episodes. And I wanted to either ask you or just a general call to action, anyone listening, I want to start getting smarter on if we could implement some
Automated Workholding and Efficiency
00:36:30
Speaker
uh, automated workholding, especially on our horizontal with either pneumatics or hydraulics, because we're at the point now where there's often hours of work each day loading and unloading parts. And if, if we could do that quicker, that's the same, that's time that somebody can be doing something else more value added. And, you know, you now got across the course of 24 tombstone faces, you've got probably dozens, if not hundreds of screws or things to turn by hand.
00:36:59
Speaker
and re-torque down with torque wrenches. And if those could be done, we already looked at the Vectek catalog. Folks haven't heard of it, B-E-K, T-E-K, but they seem to be kind of one of the go-to options here. But we don't have hydraulics or pneumatics on the horizontal. So it will have to be something where when the tombstone comes out to the load station, we hook up air or hydraulics. Or Vectek has a little mini pump. The little mini pump by hand could sit
00:37:30
Speaker
on the tombstone potentially, which would be fine. But I also don't think I want one action to release all the parts at the same time, unless we build in little stop pins, which we've done to help hold the part in place so it doesn't fall off. But if anybody has any words of wisdom, or I feel like I'm learning from scratch here, and I'm sure lots of people have gone through this.
00:37:55
Speaker
Yeah, I haven't done any automated workholding, but I've certainly done enough research and playing with hydraulics and pneumatics to know that you'll be pressure limited with whatever cylinders get put on there. Pneumatic for sure. Hydraulic, you can pump up to more than line air pressure and actually get some huge
00:38:15
Speaker
some gains there, but it depends on how much clamping force you need. It's 100 pounds, 100 PSI of down pressure enough or not. Well, no, that techs, they know what they're doing. They actually sell a replacement product that takes a thing like a uniforms clamp or a pit bull clamp. You just take the quarter 20 screw out and you replace it with their hydraulic actuator and their little hand pump can run like
00:38:44
Speaker
token in this like 21, you know, forces or something, which is okay. Interesting. That totally works. Air or hydraulic? Those would have been hydraulic. Okay. I don't think air will work because you could use air to do a release mechanism, like spring to hold air to release. Yeah. But if it's going to be hydraulic, it'll probably have to be something like that. That's like where the pump lives on the tombstone somewhere.
00:39:15
Speaker
It'd be really interesting to see. Yeah. But there's going to be other players out there or people that have done this.
00:39:22
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I've seen stuff around Instagram over the years and in YouTube, like all these clamps come up and they rotate and then they go back and they go down. Right. They happen all at once usually because it's all one circuit. Um, so like you said, pins, they don't fall off or like you're not taking the tombstones out of the machine to bench load them kind of thing. Like, like that's what we do on the current. The tombstones weigh less than 20 pounds. So we just lift them up and slap them on a bench sideways and load them that way. Um,
00:39:54
Speaker
Well, on that note, that's kind of what happened to update everybody since I did drop a teaser a few months back about Saunders MachineWorks releasing a quick change work holding system is we realized we don't want it to be manual. We want it to be automatic as well. And so we kind of went back to the drawing board to come up with that system, which we've made good progress on. And then what we realized is, wait a minute here. Okay. We want automatics in the form of either pneumatics or hydraulics, but
00:40:23
Speaker
One of the things I'm proud of that we've done is we've still helped create product line for the hobby world. So you can go by the shape of those or the smaller benchtop machine product line. So we might, what might do is keep the more manual version, which is less cool, you know, requires more time, but still could be a more value oriented manual quick change system or zero point system for the hobby world. It doesn't exist. And I think that has a lot of, uh,
00:40:51
Speaker
Like just because you have a small machine doesn't mean you shouldn't value or be able to implement the benefits of a zero point or repeatable system. Yeah, which is basically the core of manufacturing now is if you have a lot of parts to make, you need some sort of repeatable fixed ring zero point system. And I've totally
00:41:09
Speaker
I understand that now very deeply. Yeah, right. Like I've seen the light and it makes so much sense. And for years, you hear all the buzzwords, the zero point, the quick change, all this stuff. And I've always just had fixtures that kind of stay on the machine all the time and don't get pulled off and replaced and tweaked and upgraded. And now that I have that on the current and on pretty much all the machines, it's like the way to go. Yeah, right. Yeah. Cool.
00:41:40
Speaker
One of the machines they have your Akuma on display is two Akuma horizontals that are fed by a pallet racking FMS system. Oh, so there's like, I don't even know, 40 tombstones. And it's just like, I mean, I've seen them before. I know it's nothing new. Heck, I saw them at the Haas factory years ago. But like now that you've now that I've had a six pallet system, you realize, Oh my God, that would just be
00:42:10
Speaker
We don't need it, but like, oh my God. Yeah, that's my A spindle index. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's a line of pallet pools with a racking shelf. And I saw that at the Tornos factory. They had, I forget what machines they were, but several big machines. One of them was the Ozda.
00:42:30
Speaker
that had this whole rack of 50 plus tombstones on the wall and with a loading station. So you'd stand at this operator zone. You'd call up the pallet you need to load. And it loads it right in front of you. And then you load it all right there. And then you put it back and schedule it into the cell. And I can't even imagine the programming and scheduling software that it would take to do that. But clearly, people have it figured out. And they are producing millions of parts every year.
00:42:58
Speaker
Just because we don't understand it doesn't mean other people don't either. Right, right. Isn't that cool though? And I don't, I asked the apps guy if like pricing, he didn't know of course, but like, man, I was like, I got to think that scales really well because it's just fancy palette racking. I'm sure it's, you know, expensive than that. But to get, if it's make this up, if it's a hundred grand to buy a 10 palette pool, I don't know if that's the correct price or not. I bet you going to a 50.
00:43:25
Speaker
First off, it's a great use of vertical real estate as well. The cost of adding those incrementals has got to be very reasonable. You already have the center robot, the arm that goes and grabs from your six pots, right?
00:43:43
Speaker
We do, but this is a totally different system. It's like military as you lay down that track on the floor. He's basically got a huge robot arm that will grab any number of 200 pallets or tools and change jobs between machines. Last time I was there a couple of months ago, he was actually showing me it's tied into the EDM cell as well. He's got a sinker EDM.
00:44:07
Speaker
I don't know if he has it for a wire, but he had it for a sinker
Technological Advancements in Automation
00:44:09
Speaker
for sure. And the sinker itself has tool change, a tool changer so it can sync different things. And I love more about sinker after seeing that. Um, and so he'll like mill the graphite on one of the microns and then load it into the rack on the EDM and have it scheduled and then mill the part, you know, EDM the part go to the CMM and inspect it automatically. And he's, he's gone down the deep end there for sure. That's really cool. Yeah.
00:44:36
Speaker
Yeah. Awesome. Well, that's perfect time. I'm going to run back and wrap up the street show and then go home. Sounds good, man. Awesome. Then you go play with your Willie. I will. I will. I will. I will as well. Yeah. For this week. So I got the next few days to actually make a whole bunch of parts. So I like it. Like I said, take your time, John. No rush. No rush.
00:45:00
Speaker
I'm going to call you out on Instagram and be like, I'm going to beat Saunders. Don't crash your willy, please. Oh my God. It's not, it's, it's purely a fun, fun, but I am proud that we were catching up. Yeah, I'm impressed. Yeah, for sure. I'm kind of jealous actually. That's a good thing. A rising, a rising tide raises all ships. Exactly. I'll see you there. Enjoy the rest of your trip. Bye.