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#318 Fire hazards with oil machines
277 Plays2 years ago
Topics:
- SMW Okuma is 1yr old!
- cash budgeting and spending money
- A2 bushings heat treat
- Formlabs resin printer
- Willemin making the Saga clip
- Fire hazards with oil machines
- Process bins!
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Transcript
Introduction and Welcome
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machining episode number 318. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. And all those questions and debates about everything from how we program and tool pass to tool load monitoring to your business decisions are top of mind as John and I talk each week. Yeah. How are you? Anything. I'm doing really good. Yeah.
00:00:27
Speaker
and yourself. Good.
Okuma Machine Auto-off Issue
00:00:30
Speaker
Our Gossager guy just walked in crazy to think our horizontal has been online for just about a year now. What? Yeah. The only thing that we have that I have them coming in on a warranty fix on is the
00:00:45
Speaker
Okumas have an auto off feature and it's a button that if you push it in, it will illuminate, but it doesn't change the push in physical state. It just toggles on in and in that the same doesn't change the button just pushes in. Got it. Momentary button. Thank you. And if you push it in, it lights up and that means the machine will automatically shut off when the last program is done for whatever reason. That light and the light next to it, which is the power on light, don't work.
00:01:16
Speaker
Power online, I don't care as much about it, but the problem with the auto off light not working is that we don't know. Yeah. Does it show anything on the screen?
00:01:25
Speaker
You know, we couldn't figure that out. And I would love to go down that. Well, I don't want to go down there at all. I just want to have things. But honestly, the takeaway from that is kind of having to get in a place of scheduling internal downtime on a machine.
Scheduling Downtime for Maintenance
00:01:40
Speaker
Right. Is it weird? Because that's like your most productive, busiest, always has work machine, right? Yes, for sure. Is it weird? No. It's not a huge deal for us. But I didn't want to do it last week because I
00:01:55
Speaker
we didn't want to have it down and hopefully this will be a quick fix, but it's kind of like, hey, are you going to have it down? But can you still have operators or guys loading up the article or not? Or is it just kind of hands off? And boy, I have a lot of respect now when it's either unscheduled or longer term or you're higher, like a higher stakes shop where, you know, it's kind of like, hey, man, we can't lose in 12 hours.
00:02:22
Speaker
You ever had to, I guess the current hasn't been down, huh? We've had our issues on it for sure, but we've never had service come in on it. That's crazy. Yeah. It's just over three years old now.
00:02:36
Speaker
It's probably about due for like have Tina come up or something and give it a good once over completely through. We've talked about that for last year, just never got around to it, but it's probably worth the whatever thousands of dollars it'll cost. They can bring new stuff, the three-year maintenance kit or whatever it is.
00:02:56
Speaker
probably do that. And then they can do a full alignment, full calibration, and just check stuff that I can't check. I don't know to check. But otherwise, I'm solid.
00:03:08
Speaker
Yeah, I tell you, that's something I have to be really deliberate about as a business
Budgeting for Repairs and Maintenance
00:03:12
Speaker
owner. And just trying to be candid in this conversation is it's so easy if you're just an employee where your job is to keep. Excuse me. I mean, that is so easy to be employed. But if your job is a shop manager or machinist or somebody who's responsible for equipment, you're like, no, in my annual budget or two lists, these things need to happen. And as a shop owner, you're like, do I really want to spend? It could be $7,000, $15,000.
00:03:37
Speaker
to come in. So the way I'm trying to be a better leader about that is to starting to create little buckets of our repair maintenance money. Yeah. I think they're actually doing it.
00:03:50
Speaker
actually have a segregated account. Really? Now, I don't have it earmarked. But to me, it just is my own weakness, I guess, if you want, but whatever. You got to make it happen. If that money is earmarked in a separate account, it feels like it's already spent. So it's more of a, you're faking yourself into like a use or lose it mentality. We're like, no, I have XML. Like, hey, what's the best thing that we could do with that money right now? It needs to get spent to make our shop a better shop and equipment better equipment.
00:04:20
Speaker
Because otherwise you have a bank account with X amount of dollars in it and you need a revolving cushion to meet all your obligations every month. Anything extra, maybe you can take it out as a business owner. That's our right and our joy to do that. Anything under and you're like,
00:04:40
Speaker
It looks like a lot of money in there, but that's like three weeks of operating expenses. That's not a lot of money in there. We have several bank accounts, but really it's all just USD, Canadian. It's all one. It's all the pool. For the most part, it's like we have X amount in the bank account right now.
00:05:02
Speaker
What do we want to do with it? Do we need to do anything with it? Do we just keep it? We've talked about having rainy day funds, having an actual separate account. I haven't done anything yet, but for the most part, we're just operating out of the one pool.
00:05:18
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a big difference. Maybe it's not the next phase of growth, but it would be the next sort of two phases of growth that I've been honest with. I don't know that I want to do very honestly. I don't. But it would be having
00:05:34
Speaker
myself, really, I don't know that I would put it on anybody else today. Maybe it would be a more natural thing later when we reach that phasing, but you create budgets. I think I don't do this because it was part of my background when I pre-machined career. But the one thing about cash flow projections, financial models, budgets, the one thing that's true is they'll be wrong. That doesn't mean you should do them or they have the other group. Exactly.
00:06:00
Speaker
From a sales standpoint, I can't really predict or control revenue. And from an operating expense or so forth, I handle it more on a weekly and monthly basis of making sure, looking at our numbers, but it's sort of quickly, it's bite-sized retroactive analysis instead. It's that way we don't go down three or six months and be like, oh my God, what happened? We're losing our shirt here. Right.
Economic Impact of Silicon Valley Bank Collapse
00:06:24
Speaker
Yeah. I'm in the super fortunate position. Spencer as our controller is fantastic with
00:06:30
Speaker
Budgeting and forecasting and planning and he's been playing with that quite a bit and actually doing the kind of projected versus actual comparisons and you know, we check in every month and he kind of goes over it with me. He's like, this is what I thought would happen. This is what actually happened. So he's been here for a year now. He's learning the ins and outs of the business and you know,
00:06:51
Speaker
he's getting his feel for it. I thought this would actually happen. Okay, I was wrong. Okay, let's figure it out because our sales are quite consistent. Is that true? We sell what we produce. So unless we have a bad production month, then we can pretty much, I don't know what our, we're probably within 10 or 20% every month of similar, which is great. Obviously we want more, more, more.
00:07:17
Speaker
But it's more of a production issue than a customer issue at this point, which is great. Yeah. But yeah, so he's asking all kinds of questions like, what's your tool budget going to be like? We're trying to project material purchases, tens of thousands of dollars of material that's going to come up over the next few months. So that not only can we make sure the cash is there, but so that we can plan and know what's coming. Yeah, sure.
00:07:46
Speaker
I hear you. It's interesting. I was catching up with some old friends that are back in that finance world and what they said about the
00:07:58
Speaker
what the inevitable but not yet realized global fallout or at least US fallout from the Silicon Valley bank collapse is going to be, it was frightening. It was frightening to be here now. Sometimes when you talk to folks that were next to the theater that was burning down, they have a little bit more of an alarmist view than plays out in real life. But it was scary and we've certainly seen that with interest rates going up, lenders having a different approach, potential inflation, potential slowdowns,
00:08:27
Speaker
the tech world is now like hearing friends or friends who had job offers extended and then rescinded. It's all like weird stuff. It's weird stuff to hear. This is me just BSing that, not hypothesizing anything other than I know you and I have talked a lot about like, hey, for better or worse,
00:08:48
Speaker
our growth into manufacturing has happened in a pretty awesome time. I hope that continues. Yeah. I mean, luckily we've got good momentum at this point, but we got to be cautious and careful. I mean, that's what we talk about having that piggy bank of operating expenses to if it needs to get you through a period of time.
Paul Akers' Recession Strategy
00:09:13
Speaker
I remember hearing a story from Paul Akers, fast cap guy, who's like Mr. Lean. But he said, in 2007, and this still blows me away, he had put aside $5 million in cash from profits to build a dream shop. And then the recession hit. And I think back to that. And he said, instead of building the shop, then he kept his employees, didn't lay them off, like put it back into the current business, and then waited until about 2012 to build that dream shop.
00:09:43
Speaker
But I think about that. Back in 2007, he put aside $5 million for company use, not for himself, for whatever. That's an insane amount of money from a manufacturing business.
00:09:57
Speaker
It's weird to say it, especially 16 years ago. I don't know, go run the inflation numbers, but that's seven or eight million today. Right. Exactly. In profit, in after-tax, spendable money, huge. But that's also not relatable to me at this point. I put him in the Tim Ferriss bucket of like, okay, that's great. You check your email.
00:10:19
Speaker
four hours a week. And that's great that you think anybody can create an internet business where it's just like boom, boom, bam, like 3PL. But I also don't want to do that. Honestly, this sort of thought came to mind when I was talking to some of these, my finance buddies again, I'm like, perhaps you could make more, perhaps you could make a multiple more.
00:10:38
Speaker
but it's the Brazilian fishermen actually like what I do I don't I don't want to lose it either like I like what I do I don't necessarily I'm driven I'd be completely fibbing if I said I wasn't driven by profit but only is it always a byproduct of showing that's what means you're doing something right? Yeah, not like I don't know just the whole like
00:11:01
Speaker
I sleep well at night, I put it that way. Yeah, and we're not doing this for the money. The money is nice, but the money is a tool to be able to grow the business. You've put probably the majority of cash back into the business and so have I over the past 10 years. That's the only reason it's grown to the point that it is, but it's a tool. Money is a tool. The more I realize that, the more I get comfortable with it and learn how to play with it.
00:11:30
Speaker
I'll also hop onto the other side of that argument and say that money, saying money is a tool is what people who don't have money problems say. It really stinks because when you have it, you think about it differently. When you don't have it, it's just different.
Reflections on Financial Caution
00:11:50
Speaker
I spent so many years being broke basically, not poor, but certainly broke like no cash, not going out for lunch kind of money. At that point, I wanted money. All I wanted was like, I just want to make a million dollars, whatever. I just want the money.
00:12:09
Speaker
And then now that money is starting to flow a little bit, it's a different viewpoint than it was. I still have the broke kind of bootstrapper mentality, which I think is good. It's beneficial, but it kind of makes it hard to spend fun money at all.
00:12:24
Speaker
John, that's like the perfect organic full circle back to the spending eight grand to have Kern come in or somebody. It's almost impossible to put yourself back in their shoes, but that idea of a $7 end mill was just not on the table for me. That mentality of bootstrapping, this doesn't help you at this point.
00:12:48
Speaker
And I don't have it with two, we buy two and it's fine, but it extends into that lifestyle creep form of like, Oh man. Well, I'm going through that right now with computers because we have several computers around the shop, but I, um, I want to start spreading out laptops towards like staff members that they can take home, that they can actually like take time to like dig into fusion. Um, so that Eric can have a laptop and you know, cause there's a lot of guys in the company that don't need a laptop for their daily work.
00:13:16
Speaker
so they don't have an access to a computer at work. So here I'm looking at spending probably $1,000 for each laptop. I bought two already, very happy with that. And I'm like, I could really use like four more. But that's another four grand. I'm like, I don't really want to spend that money. But then I was thinking this morning, the return on investment of that money could be tenfold. The ability for people to be able to design things and print them because they have experience and access to a computer now.
00:13:47
Speaker
I don't know why that is still a resistance for me to spend the money. Because it's still money and compare it against the other things. Do you buy another 3D printer? Do you buy another whatever? Alex and I were debating buying something else. I forget what. And I was like, hey, I think I've said this a lot.
00:14:12
Speaker
at this point in our business levels, it's buying those $1,500 3D printers times X, but then stopping you from buying the $30,000 finishing machine or whatever. And it's all relative, I remember.
00:14:29
Speaker
Yeah and us as the business owners kind of see it all whereas the employees just don't have the full perspective of everything. Every $1,500 purchase does add up to big things we can't get. I will be better.
00:14:48
Speaker
worrying less about it and just say, hey, we'll make it work. We're good at this and we're fine. It's more just a... I think for the most part, we do that. I don't want to say stress, but I certainly think heavily about cash purchases and decisions and machines and tools and things that we buy over $500 or whatever, put a significant amount of time and effort into thinking about them so that when I make the choice, I'm like, no, I'm good.
00:15:15
Speaker
you know, whether it works or doesn't, I'm glad I made the purchase. I was ready for it. And then I never missed the money. I never regret the purchase. I just move on. Yeah, exactly. Right. I'd love to read if anybody has any recommendations, something casual, I guess more than like a textbook, if you will. But
00:15:33
Speaker
There's bootstrap business and there's family and friends borrowed money businesses but then there's so many businesses and this came to light recently again with Silicon Valley Bank. It certainly wasn't unique to them but there was an article about this person that started a box wine company in California and borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars
00:15:51
Speaker
And it's not your money. So it's like, Hey, we need pallet racking. We buy it. We need a packaging machine for 17 grand. We buy it. Somebody gets a PO. You put it on the floor. You just, you build this business up with borrowed money. Um, I've never done that. I wouldn't be the right fit for that. It doesn't mean it's wrong, but it totally dangerous. Yeah. But the lots of people it's, you're right. Anyway. Yeah.
00:16:14
Speaker
Well, that's the quick way to start a business, whereas we went the slow way to start a business. You know, I started my garage and you start in your basement and we like, you know, clawed our way up, you know, $500 purchase at a time. Right.
00:16:31
Speaker
Not to say we haven't borrowed money, but it's like I borrowed money for a machine tool, which is leveraged against the machine tool, but not very much cash borrowing for stuff. I actually fell into that early in the business with credit cards where I'm like,
00:16:46
Speaker
Oh we got ten thousand dollar limit on the credit card, let's just buy the tools we need so we go to Home Depot and buy all the hand tools we didn't have and air compressor and things like that. Now you got this debt that took a while too long to pay off.
00:17:03
Speaker
That's a great thing to avoid. You may not agree with me on borrowing structured loans or machine tools, but I would emphatically speak out against the credit card debt. I totally agree. Having gone through it and took years to claw back out of it, now we pay our credit cards off every month and it's clean.
00:17:28
Speaker
Can I switch topics, please?
Timing of Heat Treatment in Machining
00:17:30
Speaker
You mentioned last week some A2 bushings that we're going to get heat-readed and I guess my question was, do you
00:17:40
Speaker
heat treat the material then do you're milling or do you mill then send out a heat treat and they're done post heat treat? So these particular bushings I turn milled them and they're fully down on the Wilhelmin, fully complete and we heat treated the first one ourselves so that I could see what would happen and it does ovalize. It just changes shape by a few tenths.
00:18:05
Speaker
So luckily, that's fine for what I'm doing. But if you had a long skinny flat part, it would curl. Yeah, sure. Or if you just had a half inch pin, whatever. It'll change by a few tenths, but it doesn't matter. So a lot of people will hard grind them afterwards, like centerless grind them, send them out.
00:18:25
Speaker
depends on your goals, right? But I'm kind of trying to make it so that I just turn it once, send it up for heat treat, comes back. If we need to like tumble it to make it pretty, then whatever, we'll do that. But when I'm done. And when you heat treat, I don't just don't know that that much about it. When you do it in those vaccine type bags are professionally done, then you don't get you get discoloration, but not that nasty discoloration for Yeah, if the first one we did was
00:18:55
Speaker
black. I don't know, I think there might have been a hole in the bag or something. But yeah, when we use the stainless steel bags.
00:19:01
Speaker
the foil bags that we seal. Usually they just turn out like straw colored, kind of yellow. Nice. Okay. Which is really good. And same for a vacuum heat treat oven, which is where we'll send it out to. They should come back looking really clean, not like black and flaky. Yeah, like they would throw a house fire. Yeah, exactly. And a lot of times when you heat treat in open atmosphere and then oil quench it is when they get super gross like that. Got it. Unsubscribe. Not even interested. Yes. Right. Right.
00:19:29
Speaker
I think A2 is technically an oil hardening steel, but we're just air quenching it and not carrying. A2 was literally A because of the air, but maybe I'm an idiot. I don't know. I'm not positive either. I think it's O1 is an oil. There's got to be a two or whatever that's water. Interesting. Luckily, I have guys on staff who are much more better metallurgists than I am.
00:19:58
Speaker
Yeah, that's good. That's good to know. I just have a need and I'm like, he'd treat it, figure it out. For A2, Angelo was just telling me 58 Rockwell is the sweet spot. 60 Rockwell is too hard. It's no good at 60 here, whatever.
00:20:14
Speaker
I don't have an appreciation for the nuance of like two rockets, like both are so hard. Like is it? What's your practice? Yeah, it can turn brittle or it can turn, especially with the blade, you know, with a cutting edge on a blade, you know, you can chip the edge or it can roll over or whatever. So we get super, super specific about our heat treat for sure. Yeah, that's cool. Speaking of which, I have to send those parts out, stuff intelligent. Put that back on my notes.
00:20:44
Speaker
You send all that stuff the parcel not free What stuff? He treat I mean we do all of our own he treat ourselves. Okay in the shop here, but these Little bushings like it's not worth our time to he treat them. So the he treat places three blocks down the street. Oh, that's right It's like in a tiny little box. You can just pick it up It's great. Yeah we're talking about
Insights on 3D Printing with Form Labs
00:21:11
Speaker
preparatory purchases and growth eats cash for breakfast and all that good stuff. I was talking to, oh my gosh, I'm embarrassed to say I forgot his name, but the gentleman that runs Stuff Made Here. Oh yeah, that guy. Yeah, super good guy. We ended up talking for like 45 minutes on the phone and he used to work at Form Labs. That's what it was, yeah.
00:21:34
Speaker
Yeah, we just nerded out about all things machining and automation and so forth. I'm looking up his name because it's going to bother me. He really, in a wholesome way, sold me a lot on... Oh, Shane. That's right. On the FormLab system. He's a former employee. He's no
00:21:55
Speaker
Incentive here other than like it's really great and like resin 3d printer Yeah, we have the cheap China one, but I don't use it because it's just too much of a pain is the reality one Mm-hmm. Yeah, I have the same one and I use I'd like I had a goal for it about a year ago almost two maybe and like
00:22:14
Speaker
It's just a weird process. It's very messy. It's very finicky. Once you get it, it's pretty sweet, but I haven't touched it since because I don't like the process. It's not a tool for us at this point. Right. Whatever. The Form Lab 3, so we're not going to buy it right now. I don't need it. That's my kind of having slept on it for a few nights, but I did spend some time looking into it. I'll tell you, they've really addressed a lot of these issues. You buy the
00:22:41
Speaker
There are so many different resins. That's what's cool too. You can do rubberized versions and harder ones. They come in a little cartridge that looks like a quart of oil. You never touch the resin. It just plugs right in and then it prints. If you want to often print a bunch of different resins, you can buy different trays. They look pretty inexpensive.
00:23:01
Speaker
And it's kind of like a closed loop system where in a slicer, our software is apparently very good. And it is what, like, I know we talked a lot about the bamboo. It's kind of that same thing where it's just like, it just works. And obviously the detail that you can get with an SLA, that's what made it interesting to me. But we don't need it. So I'd like to know right now.
00:23:22
Speaker
Yeah, but it's neat to look into it and kind of wrap your head around it, let that float in your brain for six months or so. And then when the need arises, you're like, okay, I'm ready to go. I know Spencer Webb from Kinetic Precision got a formed lab sprinter and he seems to really enjoy it. Oh, really? Okay.
00:23:39
Speaker
He's been printing these, he calls it the schnoz. It's a nozzle attachment for a surface grinder with five nozzles that aim right at the wheel across the width of the wheel. He sent us a couple to test out. We've been using it all the time. It's just been on the Okamoto since we got them a year ago, whatever. That's awesome. I'll be curious to see what he says about
00:24:04
Speaker
I don't remember the exact design of that thing, but is there a reason to use the different resin capabilities versus an FDM style? Yeah, I think the resolution of the holes is one thing. Oh. And it looks better. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah.
00:24:26
Speaker
What have you been up to? I've been working on the Wilhelmin quite a lot lately, which is super fun.
Challenges with Wilhelmin Machining
00:24:33
Speaker
I believe everything functions, which is good. Mechanically, everything functions. Been working on the post, trying to get little things like, yeah, you're in the WhatsApp chat with us, but trying to do the 2D wrap function. Oh, yeah. We finally got that nailed.
00:24:54
Speaker
I never really understood what inverse time feed rate meant. I've heard the term for like six years now and I use it on the Willamette or on the Nakamura and now I finally get it. Will you explain it for a friend of mine? Yeah, for a friend. Basically, a feed rate is inches per minute. At one inch per minute, it'll take one minute to move one inch.
00:25:17
Speaker
Say that again. Every 3D machining program or 3-axis machining program, G1X 1-inch at feed rate 1-inch. It takes 1-inch to move that distance. 1-inch range, sure. Right. When you're wrapping around an arc, you can't do that because it just wants to go straight across. You want to
00:25:42
Speaker
Anyway, inverse feed is when instead of going one inches in one minute, it's programming how long in minutes it'll take to make this arc. Right. It's saying you have one second to complete everything. Exactly. That's all you have to do. Right. Yep. And the feed rates are like anything from 200 to 30,000, which is a multiple. It's like one divided by that number. So one divided by 30,000.
00:26:08
Speaker
is whatever seconds it'll take to move this arc. And sometimes it's multiple arcs, like five degrees at a time or whatever. So those feed rates constantly change throughout the program into completely nonsensical numbers. Because when you're machining a 2D pocket with a three-axis machine, it's like, oh, 10 inches per minute, done. Whereas with inverse time, every single line has a different feed rate, and it could be from 50 to 50,000. It's so weird. Yeah, right.
00:26:37
Speaker
And it's all seconds, basically, a portion of a second.
00:26:43
Speaker
Anyway. The distance, I guess that's what I don't remember is, I vaguely remember that a whole, but it's like one divided by, and it's how long it takes to get there, and it can help you sync things up. Is that maybe something different? Because it's like, if you need to move, if you have a five axis simultaneous move, and the C truck platter has got to rotate a bunch, but the B only has to move five degrees, you don't want, the B can't get there first, like you need them to be synced. Yeah, exactly. That might be something different.
00:27:10
Speaker
And that might be cut up into a million different lines of code where it moves, you know, five tenths at a time. If your controller can eat that, you know, eat all that code so fast without juttering. Anyway, so now I'm actually making the saga clip on our Wilhelmin.
00:27:28
Speaker
That's awesome. It's so cool. I have one finished part that came off and it's terrible, but it's a good step in the right direction. Something I noticed about the way the Wilhelmin works, it's bar stock and then the vise comes up and then you clamp it in the vise in these steel soft jaws that conform to the part in whatever you're doing. My clip has a ring on one side and then a tapered
00:27:50
Speaker
you know, the clippy part that clips on your pants or whatever. It's tapered forward. So my jaws match that perfectly. And what's happening is it's clamping on the taper, but it's not sealing seating on the ring of cloud because some sort of tolerances off or whatever, you know, I designed it to be perfect, but nothing's perfect in life. Um, so main, the ring where I have to drill a hole and opt to is wiggling jaws. So that's bad. Yeah.
00:28:20
Speaker
So, my current theory as of the past two days is to turn half of the jaws into a flexure so that when it's clamping the tip of the pen, of the clip, it flexes just 2,000, 5,000, whatever. It doesn't need much. And that lets the ring clamp fully. And that's why I want the rigidity, but I want a little bit of rigidity on the front part.
00:28:42
Speaker
So today, I'm going to start machining away my soft jaws into a way that I'm not going to do any math on the flexure. I'm just going to eyeball it and be like, yeah, that should bend. Yeah, sure. That's awesome. Because the tip, the ring goes in, it's not great. But here, I got a pen cap. So it goes in where, and obviously, you don't have all this here, but it slides in this way. And it's all going to line up.
00:29:13
Speaker
It doesn't get clocked actually, but well, sorry, it does on the machine, not installed on the pen.
00:29:21
Speaker
Sorry, that's fine, right. That's cool. I wonder what those soft jaws look like because they kind of look like they have a hole cut out left to right, like in parallel to the ground. Like two cups that come into the side and cup the round part. And then on the bottom, it's just a tapered cutout, like a step in the jaws that cinch in and clamp onto the tapered part, the clippy part.
00:29:47
Speaker
It's not much there to hold on to. There's not much there, no. So I need some rigidity, but not tons, but I need more than I have right now. So that's my plan today is to make that flexure. Yeah, I'm just thinking, it's almost like you want like a TPU insert that just squishes it, you know? Yeah.
00:30:11
Speaker
We did, it's not me if I said this already, but we did three different parts for the zero point system next prototype. And the OP-1s were all done in different machines with most of the criticals, but then the OP-2s, there were some clock features, not crazy critical features, but I needed somebody to do it. So I printed three different sets of soft shells on the bamboo. Love that they were done that quick. Love that I could put in clocky features.
00:30:38
Speaker
I never expected them to, wouldn't even sure if they'd be used twice. So I didn't really care about the material succumbing to coolant or weakness, but you do need, like you really want to print the soft jaw such that it doesn't go above the plane of the vise jaw itself, like the jaw that it attaches to because, you know, most steel jaws or soft jaws protrude above a quarter inch or so.
00:31:05
Speaker
That kind of causes, there's no strength. It causes them to flex back over, roll back over, lift the part up. Just kind of like Abby's error. If you would like, you want to clamp through the steel part with the soft jaw itself that you print more acting as a contoured thing, not really providing clamping force.
00:31:24
Speaker
And they worked good. Again, I think I'd do a couple of things like that differently. And then you just took it super easy on the cam because it's like, I want to rip it out, I want to face it. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I printed soft jaws once for this video and for kind of small parts. And I was kind of disappointed with how much they sucked. Like I got them to work, but I'm like, oh, these are not, these are not even plus or minus like 10 thou, you know, for the parts I'm making.
00:31:53
Speaker
Really? Yeah, I don't know. They were just weird. So I ended up remachining them. And then it was the soft dust that would hold like six parts or whatever. And I ended up just using one of the parts, like just one of the stations. And I just sat there and hand loaded 200 parts for like an hour. You do what you got to do. Yeah.
00:32:14
Speaker
Yeah, printing the multi, we were trying to do that with another new product. It's like trying to clamp two or more products across one clamping action is usually a fool's errand. Unless it's so compliant that it just does it. Which is exactly where I'm at with the Wilhelmin jaws right now. It's one part, but it's two separate features. It's the tapered flat part, and then it's the roundy part. I need some compliance to be able to just let it do what it's got to do.
00:32:40
Speaker
Do you need access to the top of the clip along the one inch stem? Yes, in the inside of the Columbia. Got it. Got it.
00:32:55
Speaker
But the surface finishes off the Wilhelmin are mint. That's super good. So now I'm just working on my 3D toolpaths and how they overlap with each other because I'm doing them at different angles. And you know, kind of your machine, the model avoid these features to this tolerance, things like that. So there's a couple areas I'm not happy with yet. But for the most part, like the clip is done, it looks like a clip.
00:33:19
Speaker
and now it's just fine-tuning after that. That's really great. Stage one complete. Fix Willaman, that took two years. Model and cam, year and a half. It's been, I think it was April two years ago that I found the listing and I started buying it.
00:33:36
Speaker
I thought I had October in my mind for some reason. Okay. I might not have gotten it until many months later, but it was certainly April where I'm like, Oh, CJ told me this machines on eBay. I'm like, maybe it's time. Grant brought in the first plug jack that came off the Wilman and John. It's just so, it's so dialed, like the engravings on it, the, that are just for fun, like quality of private manufacturing in the chamfers and
00:34:03
Speaker
That's a good phrase. Pride of manufacturing. I like that phrase a lot. When he was like, it's actually a little slower than they were on the Haas and I don't think there's more meat on the bone there. But I was just like, but we don't, if it can run as much as it could. Although I don't know, we don't have a fire trace on ours. I don't know if I'm going to
00:34:25
Speaker
I don't have enough appreciation for how sensitive I need to be to running it overnight. So we're not right now. You should put a fire trace on it. Yeah. Okay. It's 10 grand, but you should just do it. Yeah, I did. Uh, you know, just between you and me, I saw a flame in my Wilhelmin the other day.
Fire Suppression in Machining Equipment
00:34:44
Speaker
Yeah, I wasn't going to say anything. But yeah, I know. But just for funsies or for fact, you know, I'm not cutting titanium. But yeah, like, like a drill of a drill really breaks, you could do the same thing and steal, I bet. I try to get get super hot. Yep. It's just not a fun day. So consider it. But no, no, yeah, I'm not against it at all. Yep. Yep.
00:35:10
Speaker
if we're not ever running in after hours, which I don't think that's the thesis here, but if I was not ever. The goal is you want to walk away from it. You want to go do other stuff, even if you're there or not there, like it takes less than a minute for the machine to be engulfed in flames. Yeah. And you're going to have your head in the Okuma. Um, so like I hear that from people and it's like, but I'm there, but you're not paying attention. It's that's only effective if you're standing there and what are you going to do? Like,
00:35:40
Speaker
Get a fire extinguisher. Well, there's a difference between losing the machine and losing the building. I don't know that I appreciate which it is. Then I talked to, look, I'm not.
00:35:51
Speaker
I'm not trying to talk myself out of the fire trays right now at all, but I've definitely talked to Swiss people and it's not clear that everybody on Swiss runs fire suppression. I agree. Now there's people who had some Swiss fires that are swear by them and bubble on it. Which tends to be from cutting titaniums or zirconiums or other materials that themselves can be flammable? Yes. Like in my case, my drill, I was doing a quarter inch drill in the sub and I was
00:36:20
Speaker
This was the part I think that was wobbly because my jaws were not tight. I didn't know that yet. I'm drilling it, I'm watching it, I'm going slow. I turn off the coolant so I can see what's going on. I'm drilling slowly. All these chips are wrapping around the drill bit and going slow and titanium is bad.
00:36:43
Speaker
going, watching tip chips wrap around is also bad in a part that is not secure whatsoever causing weird vibrations and all this stuff and then I just saw a little spark start to come off, I freaked out, turned down the feed rate, let it dwell for a second or two and then I'm thinking that's a bad idea too and then the heat of just rubbing
00:37:07
Speaker
of the chips and just a little flame, just more than a candle, but less than a, you know, I don't know, it was a couple inches tall. Yes. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, okay. Wow. It was, it was like, you know, three inch tall flame. Got it.
00:37:24
Speaker
going up a pile of chips that is around the drill bit. So I opened the door, I was able to hit the air gun on it, and I blew it out within two seconds. But I was there. You have a fire trace? I do have a fire trace. The oil coolant was off at this time. It was not spraying. It probably would have been cool enough if it had been spraying. It would have cooled off the material.
00:37:49
Speaker
Yeah, just not fun. Did yours come with a fire trace or did you pay? No, I had to pay to install it. I paid a local company. Same people that did our Swiss lathe. Okay, got it. Yeah, that's good to know. But you basically talked to fire trace and they have their authorized distributors around and it's about 10 grand, eight to 10 grand Canadian, so call it five to eight for you. Okay, that's good to know.
00:38:15
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there's like zero doubt that I want to build this company in a way that has the, I hate saying this, it sounds so whatever, but like processes in place and equipment in place to do what it needs to do and not have it be a tribal thing where it's like, well, you know, someone check the tools or else you're gonna burn a machine down. So we should get one.
00:38:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's just kind of like I'm looking at it, mostly because we machine stainless and titanium all day, but an oil machine needs a fire trace period. Yeah, right. If you're just cutting aluminum or whatever, then you probably don't.
00:38:49
Speaker
That's true. We're doing steel, for sure. Even you could think through, oh, every tool break detect, because that break detect is awesome on that blazer. You're now just trying to control risk that still has a really bad outcome. But also, I was messing with the code, and I accidentally posted it wrong so that it
00:39:14
Speaker
You know, it did a first op with an end mill and then a second op, like a second operation with that same tool. And because I got it wrong, it did not put the tool offset on that tool. So it wanted to dive the tool three inches down into the material. And I was right there. I stopped right away, but it did crash the call it into the material. And I don't think it through sparks, but it's like, yeah, man. Right. So that stuff happens. Is there a lesson to like, is there a, well,
00:39:45
Speaker
I guess my point is, you know, end mills break. Yeah. People get offsets wrong. Like things happen. It's, it's easier than you think to throw a spark in any capacity, you know? Totally agree. In coolant, who cares? In oil? Terrifying.
00:40:02
Speaker
There are some, I guess you say you're welcoming problems, in my experience, with certain things where you're trying to, like if, weird, this isn't the exact situation, but like if you try to put, for us, an M202, which would be a tool break detect in between, and a cooperation that runs the same tool, there's a chance it doesn't turn the spindle back on, because of the way Fusion looks and sees where the tool hasn't changed. You inserted a manual, and you can sometimes,
00:40:30
Speaker
Like on Haas, the force tool change code is a great NC password. That force tool change code kind of ignores stuff that would otherwise be skipped if it's the same. Don't quote me on this, by the way. Post stuff is like super legit and risky. But force tool change could be nice because it's like, hey, I don't care. I'm going to reissue all my coolant commands, all my spindle commands, all my G43 commands. And that's a really nice thing. But I don't think that worked on the Akula. And I remember
00:40:54
Speaker
knowing this was risky, try it and be like, Oh, man, that definitely would have been bad. So yeah, a lot of respect for that stuff. Yep, exactly. No, I did this similar thing on the current where I added a probing operation and I forget exactly what I did, but the tombstone is usually at B 90, like laid down and then I probe the feature.
Near-miss Incident on Kern Machine
00:41:18
Speaker
And because I messed with the order of things, the previous op had put the tombstone up, whereas the probing op thought it was still down. So the probe comes in and it alarmed touching the probe, did like a safety move and it touched the top of the pallet when it was supposed to go all the way down. I totally lucked out there because otherwise I would have had a crushed probe body.
00:41:41
Speaker
Yes. If the tip had been like 0.2 inches over, it would have crunched the body and alarmed the machine and I would have had to pay, you know, bloom $4,000 or more for a new pro body. Thankfully, the tip happened to be in the way and it just alarmed and I logged in from home because of course this was running overnight and I assumed my change was perfect. And I logged in from home and I saw like probe alarm, probe
00:42:08
Speaker
open or whatever. And I'm like, what the heck? So I came in and I'm like, Oh, I figured out my mistake took me like an hour to figure out my mistake, but it's better now.
00:42:17
Speaker
On that note, I need to do some backtracking and shout outs in general for the folks that have reached out on Okuma stuff. We've had some followers as well as some folks from Okuma that are apps engineers and so forth that listen to the bomb sent, shoot emails. Basically, most of what I want to do should already be doable, which is phenomenal. What I thought was awesome was this approach that a comment that was kind of like, one of the things about Okuma is they just don't publish as much. They rely more on the
00:42:48
Speaker
Distribute distributors and so forth and that doesn't always you know, that's not the way the world works these days like yeah You want to access the information?
00:42:55
Speaker
Yeah, just teach me. To me, that's a huge opportunity for us to step into that role of like, hey, no, we're going to share what we learned. I don't have anything to share yet other than you can create tools as being flagged as violating a level D alarm that doesn't stop using them. It doesn't shut the machine down, but it flags it as hitting a threshold, which is perfect and otherwise keeps going. The Okuma control allows you to generate emails. If I can generate emails when it triggers the flag D, but otherwise goes on, we're done. That's
Tool Load Monitoring and Alerts on Okuma
00:43:24
Speaker
phenomenal.
00:43:24
Speaker
Okay, so you're putting the load monitor for a flag D so that if it hits 20% spindle load, then like email me. Bingo. Nice. That'll let you track and create data. Is there a way to data log spindle load like throughout a cycle?
00:43:41
Speaker
That's what I was still curious about, but I need to take off my John Saunders nerd hat and put on my like let's build a solution hat. So let's focus first on all I want is to start establishing loads. We can start figuring out alarms and that would be a huge step forward. And then I figure out if we can get smart about long-term tool life logging.
00:44:02
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's really cool because you could set your tool load limit like super low, way too low and it'll email you 20 times a day and be like, okay, that's not realistic. Crank it up a little bit until it stops emailing me.
00:44:16
Speaker
Yeah. I want like a used digital mixing console for live music with each fader. It's connected to a tool number and we just go over there and bump the faders. There you go. Now, actually you probably could do it with those digital faders that are assignable and like, anyway. Yeah, that'd be a huge set for it. And I was on vacation till this morning or last night. So I've been mixed most of this week, but that's on my shortlist to get on.
00:44:42
Speaker
That's cool. That's exciting. I assume all that info is in the manual somewhere. Unsubscribe. Yeah. Well, that's the thing is the manuals are like 700 pages long. Yeah.
00:44:55
Speaker
I mean a little facetious. They are thoroughly documented. Okuma has all the manuals on the control. You can search them, but I want to watch a video or see somebody else show me this stuff. That's your job. Especially since this is a huge use case. This is not a niche sub-case. Yeah, exactly. But the machine builders don't know every use case. They just
00:45:20
Speaker
they describe everything. Like I've been going pretty deep into the Wilhelmin manual and also in the Kern manuals in the past, the Hyde and Hyde manuals and things like that. Like they're so dry and boring, but everything's there. And you know, I've gotten through the habit of trying to skim much of it. So then I just kind of know where to look. And like this video came with basically Fana level manuals, you know, a box of books, um,
00:45:46
Speaker
I eventually got PDF versions, which is great. Then I can just search for stuff. It's like it's all there, but are you going to read through it all? Yeah, exactly. Good. What do you have to do today? I think I posted it on Instagram
Organizing Work with Process Bins
00:46:03
Speaker
yesterday. I took a page out of your book and I got process bins ordered and they came in. No. Oh, that's great. I got, so did I get a dozen gray and a dozen blue?
00:46:12
Speaker
And I didn't tell anybody else in the shop. And Angelo saw them come in on the Uline order. And he's going around asking everybody, like, who are these bins? Like, Eric, did you order these bins? And eventually, I was like, oh, this is me. And he's like, because they're fantastic. Like, can I use them for this? And what he wanted to use them for is exactly what I got them for. It's like, I want like job specific, you know, process. You know, the lathe is running so many parts. I want one for each bin. I'm like, yes, that is exactly. They are called process bins. Let me tell you how they work.
00:46:40
Speaker
Isn't that great? Yeah. That's awesome. I might have mentioned it, but we put the label on each side so you can read the part number as well as the description of what it is. And then many of them now have 3D printed replicas of the product. Sometimes it's scaled down. Cool. Because to me, I just like, I can just see. Digital queue. Yeah. Yes. Big. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. That's exciting. Sweet. Cool. Awesome. See you next week. That sounds good, bud. Take care. All right, later. Bye.