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Business of Machining - Episode 73
192 Plays7 years ago
If you haven't felt STUPENDOUS lately, this podcast will brighten your day. Get ready for a game of Not Metalurgist Part 1 & 2, a nugget of advice from Brad Southard, and Saunders gets his butt kicked by a 5th-Axis toolpath on the HAAS!
Up the ANTSY? During the annual Blade Show lull, Grimsmo suddenly finds extra time AND the urge to move on to something new. Instead of making parts, he's pinpointing areas for improvement and keenly observing his behavioral patterns. #itfeelswrongbutitssoright
IMPROVEMENT NO. 1 Thanks to the lapping machine, flat is actually FLAT. However, that means turning a critical eye toward the heat treating process. Grimsmo's idea involves a 2-ton arbor press. Wave goodbye!
THREADMILLING: Are you "doing it wrong?" If it's wrong but it works, does it matter? Ya might be killin' your tool life though! Grimsmo and Saunders discuss multiple passes, spring passes, cutter comp, and macros for tool life management.
VIDEO: Renishaw Probe like CMM
IMPROVEMENT NO. 2: LOCK BAR INSERT + DISGUSTINGLY TINY SCREWS...
We Paul Akers'd it! The evolution of the podcast process represents something bigger. Grimsmo shares an EPIPHANY when first encountering macros & tool life management--not knowing where or how to start and NOW, he's teaming up with Autodesk to teach it! So, get out your SAGA and get ready to take notes!
The end is nigh for the Super Comfortable SMW Adaptive T-Shirt Campaign---get yours HERE!
MYTHBUSTERS: Keep Torque Wrenches Stored at 0? The release of the SHOP UPDATE video provokes a litany of comments surrounding stored torque values. Fact or fiction? If you have any empirical data on this, PLEASE SHARE!
Push Cycle Start. Saunders paraphrases an entrepreneurial, button-pushing e-mail. Both try their best to give advice for a fellow, overwhelmed entrepreneur.
Failing isn't the only issue. How do you deal with people losing faith in you after having failed multiple times?
FINALLY, 5-AXIS TOOLPATH ON THE HAAS!
Click Image for the IG Post!
OTHER LINKS:
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Transcript
Introductions and Well-being
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode number 73. My name is John Grimsmo. John Saunders here. How's it going, buddy? Good. How are you? Stupendous. Oh, really? Yeah, just do it good. Awesome. What's going on? All kinds of stuff. There's so much going on.
Starting New Projects
00:00:18
Speaker
Oh my gosh. I might as well jump right in. I find that when things start going really smoothly, I, John Grimsmo,
00:00:30
Speaker
Looks for a new project. Yep. It's my default nature. Okay. I'm all ears. You know, like we had a bit of a law laughter blade show and this happens every year. We just, we take the time to like breathe and, uh, do changes and updates. And we got the lapping machine. So that took a bunch of time and you know, now we're totally getting back into the swing of things, doing super good production. And then I'm like, what can I fix? What can I make better? What can I, what can I build that'll help everybody out?
Heat Treating and Blade Flatness
00:01:01
Speaker
Which is great, and I love it. I just kind of feel guilty about it. Yeah, you're setting up this conversation as if that's not exactly what you should be doing. I know, and I agree. No, but you should be doing that. Yeah. Okay. It does have a weird feeling to it internally. I feel like I should be making parts, not widgets.
00:01:23
Speaker
But I know deep in my heart that the things I'm doing will save significant time, short-term and long-term for everybody else. So it's obvious. I don't know. Yeah. No, you got to get over that. It's cool. Yeah. It's super cool. Yeah. So tell me, you can't leave me hanging on that. Yeah, there were two things. What was it? Oh, so for heat treating the blades, when we pull them out of the oven and they're 1,900 degrees Fahrenheit, red hot,
00:01:53
Speaker
We sandwich them between two big aluminum plates so we it comes out of the oven you drop it down to an aluminum plate and Barry's got to drop the pliers and Pick up this other big aluminum plate and squish it on top and you want to do that as fast as possible like like two seconds
00:02:09
Speaker
Any delay, the blade starts to cool down and then it doesn't get a full quench and all that.
Using Arbor Press for Quenching
00:02:14
Speaker
So the faster, the better, the easier and more repeatable, the better. And now that we have the lapping machine, we know what true flatness actually is. And the blades are not coming out of heat treat dead flat.
00:02:25
Speaker
They've got a little bit of a wave to them. Well, so they're malleable. I don't know what the correct engineer term is. So it's air cooling. It's in an air cooled heat treat quench. Is that what you're saying? Yes. And we're quenching with aluminum plates. So it sucks the heat away through the plate more than through air.
00:02:46
Speaker
Yeah, just faster quench, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So the wave must be happening when it cools unevenly, even though it's sandwiched in between plates, like it's not, it's not curled up in the oven. You could do anything to it. You could probably bend it by hand. Yeah, exactly. I've heard it's like lead at that temperature. Oh, wow. That's actually stronger than I thought. Yeah. So you have to be, I mean, I don't know, you're not going to go in and touch it at that temperature, but, um,
00:03:12
Speaker
You know, it could be when you drag it and drop it onto the plate. It might ding it a little bit, but the plates should be able to quench it dead flat. So anyway, I'm trying to come up with a better, more repeatable flatter way to quench that provides some good pressure because right now it's just your body weight pretty much, you know, your upper body weight pushing down on that top plate.
Machining for Heat Sink Efficiency
00:03:32
Speaker
So we're like, what if we used an arbor press, like a big one?
00:03:35
Speaker
and mounted some three inch thick aluminum chunks in between it. And that'll provide tons of mechanical advantage as you crank the lever down. So yesterday I ordered a, was it a two ton arbor press for like 200 bucks and designed it up in solid work or in fusion. Got the solid model from GrabCAD. Hence the solid work slip there. I was just saying that was a funny slip. Yeah, exactly. And yes, I drew it all up.
00:04:05
Speaker
We're very excited to see how that's going to work out. But yeah, it's a little thing that adds more time to lapping. Eric has to now bend the blade straighter after heat treat, which takes a minute or something
Preventing Blade Warping
00:04:19
Speaker
like that. And it's just all these things stack up. So are you and the two aluminum heat sink platters, are they machined?
00:04:28
Speaker
Right now? Correct. I don't even know. I think so. They're my old, old, old Tormach fixtures. Hilarious. So this came up sort of similar thing in the context of the DIY lathe that we're working on. And we put a photo. Actually, I got to post that new photo on Instagram. This is how my life has gotten to. I don't do anything without writing down a note. Smart.
00:04:53
Speaker
because it actually I'm trying to like let it go just like stop worrying so much about stuff like this but it now has it bothers me more when I wish I remembered something from 10 minutes ago you know it's gonna just just let it go be like no I want to function at this high level so I just write everything down now more so than ever um
00:05:15
Speaker
So we posted a picture showing the linear rails mounted on top of the aluminum plate, like half inch by four inch plate or something. And some people had aptly commented, oh, you need to machine that flat like it really matters. And the other thing that came up somewhere, I can't remember what the context was, but oh, man, that's going to bother me.
00:05:39
Speaker
you by machining it perfectly flat, you actually do increase the surface area or something like the contact area. So that would be my thing to think about when you press these two things together, you've got to be conscious about how you're imparting bow or stress as you press, right? You want a almost like a four pillar press. Um,
00:06:02
Speaker
Yeah, something straight and linear and parallel. Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder, like right now, I don't know. Go ahead. We take one blade out of the oven and then there's these huge like 10 inch by 18 inch plates that get put on top with just one blade in the middle. And then we have two scrap blades on either side to kind of create a stability.
Knife Material Innovations
00:06:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:27
Speaker
So between the plates there are three blades with the one in the middle being the thickest. But there could be some rocking, there could be some difference. Whereas I'm thinking with the arbor press, apparently 100 pounds of input equals three tons of output or two tons of output or whatever it was because of the mechanical advantage. And then I'll machine those plates flat so it'll be square. Yeah, right.
00:06:52
Speaker
And yeah, so that's my current thinking. So this is sort of like the half blind leading the half blind, because neither one of us are formally trained heat treaters, metallurgists, quenchers. But my guess is
00:07:09
Speaker
The knife will do whatever you tell it to at first. In other words, it's malleable or shapeable, formable. So you put it between these two aluminum plates. It's going to cool at different rates simply because there's different amounts of heat or densities as the blade changes its own. Because the blade, oh, no, the blade is terribly flat. There's no bevel yet? Or there is a bevel yet? There is no bevel yet. OK, so it's totally flat. It should be quite flat, right. OK.
00:07:37
Speaker
My guess, and it's just a guess, is that what's happening is you don't want pressure to flatten it. You want pressure to resist it from becoming unflat. Does that make sense? Meaning you need a resistive pressure, not a, like, I am going to straighten you out.
00:07:58
Speaker
Right. I think I see what you mean. Are you thinking that it might curl as it cools naturally? No, I'm not thinking that. That I'm sure of. Yeah. So the only experience we have here is when we built our original strike mark targets, we had a lot of welded, machined, fabricated, laser assemblies that all had to fit together with a bit of an annoying tolerance.
Challenges in Knife Making
00:08:23
Speaker
And that's when I started to get a little bit more exposure to
00:08:26
Speaker
things that are heat treated and quenched and how weldments are fixtured, how weldments are either stress relieved or backbend or welded in the incorrect position knowing that you can predict how it moves. And there's an art to it. And usually the art of doing that is not brute force, kind of like where you're going with this.
00:08:46
Speaker
Um, it's trying to understand what happens. So like hand pressure is not good because it's inconsistent and it's subject to how you push with both left and right hand. But what I'm thinking that is almost something like a giant pair of, uh, not vice grips, but like just something that basically holds down with a constant static pressure that prevents the aluminum from being allowed to turn into a potato chip or wave as it starts to cool.
00:09:17
Speaker
Well, I think an arbor press would do that, wouldn't it? Seems overkill and... You don't need like full pressure, but just... Sure. I'm not trying to... This is the creative process, right? Right. It's not a bad idea. I just wonder, again, what I've seen is delicacy and deliberate actions and not just like, hey, I'm just going to clamp the...
00:09:35
Speaker
The aluminum itself. The aluminum, I'm sorry.
00:09:43
Speaker
I'm just going to clamp the heck out of this part to prevent it from warping. Because if it's going to warp, it's going to warp on you. I don't think it's going to warp naturally. I think it's only going to work based on your own input. So the flatter squarer evener way to do it, I think will be best. How consistent is the lack of flatness right now?
00:10:08
Speaker
I don't know what the actual difference is.
Threading Techniques and Tool Deflection
00:10:11
Speaker
Like, is it high and low in the same spot? I don't know. That's a good question. Because that would maybe lend itself to, I guess that's my question, is the knife moving on its own, or is it, again, a human input factor? That's a really good question. I'll ask Eric. Yeah. Maybe call Linda? Yeah. OK, so what's the other project?
00:10:38
Speaker
The other is a lock bar insert for our knives. Do you know what that is? So what you and Lockwood were talking about on WhatsApp? Yeah, yeah. So right now you've got the Norseman in your pocket. When you open it up, the frame lock is titanium and the titanium is contacting the blade.
00:11:02
Speaker
Yeah, this is the handle part. Yeah, exactly. So that part of the handle is contacting the blade. So you have essentially titanium on stainless steel. We do carbidize the end of the titanium. So we're adding a thin layer of carbide. Like case knitting it? I don't know what that is. Case knit is like, it looks like sugar, but it's black and it's high carbon and you heat it and rub it on there and then quench it. It's like a home shop case hardening.
00:11:28
Speaker
No, basically what we do is we put a carbide end mill in a Dremel engraver and apply 45 volts to it. Uh, the Dremel gets, I think the Dremel gets positive and the part gets negative and you're basically you're, you're telling it on basically tattooing. Yeah, exactly. You're tattooing it on. That's a good way to put it. And it's, it's jumping and sparking and all that stuff. So you're applying carbide to the surface. Cool. Super common in the knife industry. Super cool.
00:11:58
Speaker
very delicate, very difficult to accomplish. We had a finished knife. I go through and I check every single knife after Eric makes them. And we had one that was sticky. So the lock bar was like gritty and sticking on there just ever so slightly.
00:12:14
Speaker
And Eric wasn't getting around to fixing it. So I went in and fixed it. And I'm like, Oh, I used to do this. I did so many back in the day and I haven't done one in two years, but so I went through and I fixed it and I almost ruined it because it was just such a delicate process. Like this finished perfect knife that has this one little thing. So I talked to Eric about it and he's like, this is a very variable process. It can be five minutes. It could be 50 minutes of trying to get it right. So
00:12:38
Speaker
Installing a hardened stainless steel insert so you have stainless steel on stainless steel i thought you let's play let's play not metallurgist part two of this podcast episode i thought you weren't supposed to do by identical metal on identical metal.
00:12:57
Speaker
Maybe different hardnesses might help. Okay. Um, but my knife maker friend, Brad suthered says he has tried same metal, same metal, tried the insert soft, hard, different metal inserts, and he's never had a problem in any configuration. Okay.
00:13:14
Speaker
So that's fantastic. And he says he never gets lock stick. So Brad, you're listening right now. Thank you so much for that advice, which I just shared with the world. And that's not an easy, you know, it's not an easy thing to make. It'll be a very small part. I'll probably be machining it hard, but there's a lot of benefits to it. If I can pull it off properly, how
Tool Wear and Replacement
00:13:34
Speaker
are you going to secure it to this like wavy thin tab?
00:13:39
Speaker
You should see the size of these screws that I just made. You should see the grin on John's face right now. It's disgusting. You're going to thread it in? Yeah, with a screw. It's a very small screw. And of course you're making it.
00:13:54
Speaker
Of course obnoxious, um, hey when you thread mill do you? thread mill in one pass multiple passes spring passes it depends for Multiple passes for sure with at least one spring pass Interesting. What if what if I told you that's that's the wrong way to do it What if I told you it just works perfectly? I would exceed your uh, or I would secede your suggestion. No, so
00:14:20
Speaker
This came up on the Sandvik trip, which guys were talking about thread milling and they're like, no, just do it in one pass. And I was kind of like, whoa, like, um, you have to, you'd have to overcomp the pitch diameter offset because of the tool deflection, but it should be, it should be quite consistent. Um, but the bigger thing is they were saying that spring passes killed to a life. I wondered about that. Right. It makes sense. Coming from the horse's mouth, that kind of,
00:14:46
Speaker
Well, sorry. In fairness, this was not Sandvik, but rather the customers on the trip. But all these guys run super dialed shops. I was in full listen mode. But I was like, oh, it kind of just made sense. Or if it's either harder material or for some reason you've got to do multiple passes, they were saying the way they talk about it was like a 70-30.
00:15:12
Speaker
or 60-40 or 80-20 split, which makes sense because it's a thread, so it's the triangle. So as you increase, as you go out, you engage more contact area along the tool cut, the cutting edge. So they would take 60% in the first pass and 40% in the second pass.
00:15:27
Speaker
Yeah, that does make sense. Same thing on lay at single point threading. I do that a lot too. It gets finer and finer and finer because it's more engagement. Fusion even has that as an option, but I've never seen that in thread milling, CAM, nor have I. I just feel like at this point in my machining career, there's usually not something
00:15:48
Speaker
Like that, like that's not some crazy mill turn application that I'm like, is out of left field. Like I usually don't hear a new phrase and I'm like, wait a minute, what are you talking about? And they were kind of like, Oh yeah, we'll run, we'll run, we'll run thread mill ops 7030. I'm like, what's that mean? Hmm. It does make sense. Do you have problems? Are you, are you happy? Are you happy with your thread mill life, John?
00:16:08
Speaker
Very much. I do have to comp for wear every few hundred holes. They do get a little bit tighter. And now we have a fancy go-no-go thread gauge that we use for the 440 threads. And we notice them getting tighter over time, so we add a tenth of wear here and there.
00:16:25
Speaker
And then, but yeah, I get, I get probably at least a thousand threaded holes from the 440 multi-flu thread mills. 440, that's tiny. Can you just use cutter comp? You have cutter comp on your lathe, right? That's possible to do it. I do, and yeah, that's what I use. Okay, so, sorry, second question. The cutter comp with that measurement taken from your probing system rather than manual. I guess I don't,
00:16:54
Speaker
re-measure and update the diameter every now and then. Maybe I should. Shouldn't it work, right? Yeah, it should work. I should probably do that. I just never got around to it. Sure. Yeah, I should, though. Because then you don't have to think about it. That just keeps it in line. Maybe I'm worried about... It's a process.
00:17:14
Speaker
about it automatically messing with the diameter. Not that it's ever really proven anything otherwise like put it that it shouldn't be trusted, but so I was what I'm thinking about is putting in conditional if statements like if it moves it more than a certain amount from four tenths five tenths or something.
00:17:32
Speaker
do a feed hold alarm and have the operator come in. And what I like about this is that you could somehow store the starting value and then look at how much you've cut or comped to date, which can give you a threshold for when to replace the tool. Yep. I think with the Renishaw macros, you can do that automatically
Innovations in Tool Management
00:17:52
Speaker
too. You can set a wear limit. Oh, really? Yeah. No kidding. Okay.
00:18:00
Speaker
And if not, you can do it with a macro pretty easily.
00:18:04
Speaker
We just figured out, it wasn't even that hard, but it took a little couple, it's like anything probing. As soon as you find the right macro variable or the right statement, it all of a sudden comes together. But we did a video on using your mill Renishaw probe as a CMM. So basically how to use Fusion, take a solid model, pick two faces, post the program, and it just gives you the measured value.
00:18:32
Speaker
which is super useful. Yes, there's the limitations of using the machine as a CMM and accuracy or wear issues and so forth. But nevertheless, it's pretty darn accurate, especially newer machines. So to be able to measure something 34 inches and get a really good measurement in while it's in the machine as well is super cool.
00:18:52
Speaker
Have you measured small things and like compared with a mic or your surface gauge? First thing we did was a one, two, three block and it was within a tenth or two and they're not yet for Chinese blocks. I wasn't right. But but there you go. Right. Right. So we threw that up on the NYC site. It was kind of cool. Again, once you figure out it's awesome. Yes. What else are you up to? We are wrapping up. I think, well, four days from today, so two days left of the T-shirt campaign.
T-shirt Campaign and Branding
00:19:21
Speaker
Yes, I can't wait to get mine. Everybody else is getting theirs. Yeah, I know. It's kind of cool that they're shipping so quickly, which is awesome. So we'll put a link in the description. But if you go to Store Frontier, Saunders Machine Works, or just, I don't know, look at our site. We have it on the Instagram and stuff. But really happy. All the t-shirts came into our shop, and they're like,
00:19:43
Speaker
Um, I liked our last t-shirt, but I didn't like that. It wasn't as comfortable as yeah. I'm wearing it right now. So too much ink and Mari tool crushed it with their t-shirts with that comfortable, just like you, you look at that shirt in the morning and you're like, I want to put that shirt on. It's so fricking comfortable and soft and nice. And so we found that, um, next level 60, 40 blend thing and then less ink. And it's like, it's freaking awesome. I love it.
00:20:11
Speaker
I was just wearing a shirt yesterday from another knife maker, Thompson knives or something. Like a year ago at blade show, I just met him in the pit and he's like, Hey, you want a t-shirt? And I was like, yeah, sure. And it's, I think it is a next level shirt. Just like you were saying as the brand, it is the softest shirt I have. I was wearing it yesterday. Even Meg was saying like, this is such a nice shirt. You need to get your shirts made like this. Yeah.
00:20:33
Speaker
It was funny, the t-shirt company was like, oh, you should really try this one from next level. And it wasn't the one I thought I wanted. And I was like, nah, I want you guys to send me a sample because I don't, I'm not willing to take it. We ordered a lot of shirts. I was like, I don't want to take a risk. And they send it to me. I'm like, nope, not as comfortable as the one I was thinking. And they're like, it was, it was.
00:20:53
Speaker
You know how it is as an entrepreneur. You're like, the last thing I want to do is slow this down and wait to get a sample and pay. I was like 30 bucks to get the sample made and sent all that. It's like a note when it takes time. It's hassle. And you're kind of going against the grain of this t-shirt expert who was
Podcast Production Improvements
00:21:08
Speaker
like, no, it's really comfortable. And then I got it and I was like, nope, nope. I want this absolute super silky smooth. I don't know why they didn't want to do that in the first place, but they're great.
00:21:18
Speaker
Love it. I was thinking about that too. Remember when we used to like have such a poor, not bad, because process for the bomb, like we used to record two weeks out. We used to be kind of all over the place with like the equipment and the software and how we edit it. And like now it's like, we have done, we have Paul Akers did.
00:21:41
Speaker
Yeah. No, seriously. You know what I mean? There's probably levels more that we haven't even considered yet, but we're recording Wednesday. It'll be up Friday morning. It takes Aaron or Julie not that long to go through it, hopefully. And yeah.
00:21:56
Speaker
Right. The only thing that's even close to stressful is when one of us are traveling. We've had a couple of random technical glitches with Zencaster, but really, I guess what struck me about it isn't that we did this.
Personal and Business Growth
00:22:11
Speaker
It's that I didn't even realize we had done it because it was just an evolution over time. Yeah, of course.
00:22:16
Speaker
And it's probably like that with any aspect of our business or our lives or anything like that. You think back, you're like, man, we used to do it like that. Oh, I can't believe. But when you look, you know, a year or two ago, it was stressful. It was like, how do we we don't know what to do? And that's that makes it anxiety. Yeah. We used to edit the podcast in our editing software. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right. And then audacity. Right. Right. At first, it was like, what do you know? You know, Final Cut. I know Sony Vegas. Let's just edit it in there. It was finest.
00:22:46
Speaker
Yeah, but now what's funny is so like when we the parallel here is is everything in life when it comes to being a better entrepreneur and like shop operations like when you don't know like rent a shop probing it's like When I'm trying to figure out that it's it's stressful. It's frustrating. I'm going through PDFs. I'm trying to find notes I'm trying to test stuff and then
00:23:06
Speaker
And it's difficult to see the future and it's difficult to say, we're going to figure this out with 100% success. And then when you get it done, sometimes it's like, you wipe your hands together like, heck yeah, I just nailed that. And then you move on and you never kind of like,
00:23:23
Speaker
bask in the improvement. You just kind of move on. You never look back. It's just the new normal. It's like I had that epiphany a couple of weeks ago. I remember being at Autodesk University 2016, so two years ago, and I was talking with Chris from Swiss Ovation.
00:23:42
Speaker
He's got a shop with like 70 Swiss layers or something like that. And they, they pretty much hand code everything for their layers. Um, but they do use fusion for the milling ops and other things like that. But he was telling me that he created, um, using macros, he created tool life management for all his machines. And at the time I was really, really new to macros and I didn't really understand it. And I was blown away. I was like, man, how do you figure out tool life macros? That's what I want.
00:24:11
Speaker
And then I implemented that here a year ago and I haven't looked back. Like it's, it's been amazing.
Tool Life Management Strategies
00:24:17
Speaker
I can't imagine life without it now. And then this year at AU, I'm teaching a class on macro programming. Hilarious. So it's like, wait, so what does that, that's for the lathe or mill?
00:24:30
Speaker
mostly lathe, but also mill. And I'm going to team up with CJ from Autodesk and we're going to integrate probing into it too. So it'll be a macro slash probing class. And I've got examples for lathe and mill for both probing and macro statements and all that. But if you have a CNMG insert in your Nakamura, it'll basically, the machine will just tell you when it wants to rotate the insert edge. I'm not doing it on my lathe, but on my mill I am doing. Okay. So it'll tell you when to swap an end mill. Yeah, absolutely. Based on, Oh, that's right. Based on number of,
00:25:00
Speaker
pallets based on a counter. So after every pallet, it goes plus one or plus two knives, depending on if I'm counting pallets or knives. And then through historical data, like Orange Vice was saying, just historical data will tell you that you get, you know, 14 pallets out of this end mill before it tends to break around 17 or so. So replace a 14, you'll always be good.
00:25:22
Speaker
And we're getting it dialed so that every night run is successful. And every daytime run, there's almost no surprises anymore. That's awesome. And yes, maybe we're sacrificing a little bit of extra tool life out of it, but it's reliable. Downtime sucks. I'd rather waste the $2 of potential end mill life
00:25:43
Speaker
to have no downtime. That's what actually got me on the thread milling thing is we used to replace our taps at a certain interval for making our fixture plates. And then we had to back that off about 25%, which is a big deal. And again, it's because the consequence of breaking the tap or having a problem is something you want to avoid.
00:26:03
Speaker
It's still a new machine. It's not, well, you always worry that you're incorrectly diagnosing the problem. But I don't think it's something like our machine has now all of a sudden got slop in it. And so that's causing tapware prematurely. But it makes you think, OK, what is the next step? Do you ever start thinking about analyzing that tool after it's run 14 knives and saying, hey, maybe I can actually go two or three more? Because at the end of the day, yeah, you don't want to,
00:26:34
Speaker
absolute priority to process reliability, but if the tool's got 20% more life left in it, you don't want to lock in never taking advantage of that forever. What I tend to do is I just put those used but still good tools in a box and eventually I'm going to give them to a new machinist.
00:26:54
Speaker
Because that's what somebody did to me when I was starting out. Yeah, that's cool. And I remember I got these used end mills, and I'd look at them, and I'm like, this is perfect. What is possibly wrong with this? The microscope could be helpful for that. Oh, I use it every day. Right. I can't wait. You know what I'll do? I'll bring my microscope. Yeah, the little plug-in one. No, no, no. It's like a desk. It's a digital. Yeah, yeah. I've got a little like $60 plug-in one. That's no big deal.
00:27:24
Speaker
Cause I want to compare, I want to compare them. Um, yeah. When I'm writing that down, what was it? Um, Liberty machines. Yes. He got into microscopes. I wonder how much that costs. I think they're like two to three grand. Two grand. Yeah. That's what I figured. I may be actually massively understating that though. Yeah.
00:27:46
Speaker
I wonder. I wish mine had a screen output, but otherwise I love it. Do you have a little screen or do I need to bring a monitor? Like an HDMI input screen somewhere? I don't. Okay. My computer might. No, it's fine. It's a little, I'll throw in a little 13 inch thing I've got. I wonder if measuring tool cutting quality and cutting condition and wear is as simple as its diameter.
00:28:16
Speaker
In other words, is it possible for a tool to perform subpar but not have that manifest itself in a diameter measurement? Depending on what you're going for. If you're going for a size dimension, probably, yeah, especially if you're doing like a deep flute cut with a lot of engagement. But for a lot of our finishing ops, the end mill will streak and create this line around the part that's not diameter related. It's just like a little chip in the end mill or something like that.
00:28:46
Speaker
Right. So that's why, like our finishing end mill, we replace after every 10 pallets. And then it becomes a rougher. Sure, sure. Okay, that makes sense, right? Because you compromise the edge in the form of a small chip or micro tear, or not tear, but you know, burr of some sort. Yeah, exactly.
00:29:04
Speaker
Interesting. It's really cool to know long term, this tool life, this process, like you think, you know, it's daunting at first, like, Oh, how am I going to track every tool? You just start. And then before too long, you're like, yeah, every 10 pallets replace the finishing tool, have the machine remind you. So you don't even have to think about it. And then it's just golden. Every knife is the same basically.
00:29:24
Speaker
So in the Haas control, to use tool life management. So let's take drills. They're a little bit easier to think about. And let's say you only want to drill 1,000 holes, and then you want it to switch. Well, let's say you want to have two drills in the machine. So it'll automatically go to the next drill.
00:29:41
Speaker
So what you do is let's say, uh, let's say the drills are tool 12 and tool 13 in the actual controller tool numbers. You create a new group called T 1000 or T 1000, whatever. And then T 1000 in the Haas ATM terminator. Yes. Cyber cyber, cyber, cyber, Dynetics drill. Is that cyber? What is cyber system? No cyber Dynetics.
00:30:06
Speaker
Yeah, that's embarrassing. So you go into the Haas ATM, automatic tool management, I think it's called, and you create a new group, T1000, and then within T1000, you add T12 and T13. So that basically tells the control that those two tools are eligible within T1000.
00:30:25
Speaker
and then you can set the conditions where you want it to cause it to switch in the number of holes or torque or whatever. What's weird is that you then, not weird, but you go into Fusion, instead of calling tool 12 in your tool library, you call T1000, right? You with me, make sense? It is the same way on Memorial, though I don't use it. Well, so what's funny is we did this two weeks ago and I called,
00:30:53
Speaker
I renamed the tool number, renumbered the tool to T1000, and I posted with the most up-to-date Haas Fusion post, and I got a post error. And it actually still posts, it just generated an error warning, but that told me that with decent likelihood, no one has ever actually used this, because otherwise that would have gotten reported.
Practical Machine Shop Considerations
00:31:15
Speaker
It was an invalid tool number out of range.
00:31:19
Speaker
Right. And so I sent it over to Autodesk, but I was like, kind of one of those awkward moments where you're like, really? No one's using this? Or they're not calling it 1000. They're calling it something. No, you have to. Ooh, good call. I thought you had to start at 1000, but I could be wrong on that.
00:31:38
Speaker
Because I know in my Maury, I think there's only 400 tool slots in the registry for tool offsets. But this is different. Yeah, this is specifically not. In fact, that may be why you have to start at 1,000 because it's not a tool number. It's an ATM number anyway. Does it go, because let's say you go T12M6 to change and then G43H12.
00:32:06
Speaker
to apply the offset to it. How do you do it for 1,000? Do you go T1,000 M6? Correct. H1,000. H1,000. Yes, I think. Because it jumps in. Eric from Orange Vice. Eric from Orange Vice has Maury machines. And he was explaining this to me. And he's like, you got to do an H0.
00:32:26
Speaker
to somehow negate the offset value and then the tool management will apply it for you. And I'm just, I don't know how to do that from fusion. It seems weird. And I just never tried. Yeah. I mean, I will, we're learning to like, as much as I get excited about it, I don't want to, I don't want to come off as, as you like, or certainly me, like we've got this mastered and we're just like, we're better than you because we're running to work. We're very green. Uh, I look forward to how much better we get.
00:32:57
Speaker
Yeah. And my issue with it is I don't have any extra tool slots. I use 29 out of the 30 tools to run a palette. I just realized yesterday, I'm like, I do have one.
00:33:08
Speaker
one spot that I can put, maybe I'll put a deburring tool in there today or something. It's brutal, right? But yeah, it's, it sucks. It's funny how easy it would need to be to say no, just to somebody offering a phenomenal, sweet, super good deal on a machine that had like 20 tools. And you're like, no, no. Yeah. No, thanks. For like an, like an older robot drill that has 14 tools. It's like, I just can't,
00:33:36
Speaker
What do new ones have 20? 14 or 20. Ah, okay. 24 maybe. Different machine there because it's like, it's smaller, but like. Yeah, you might dedicate it to more to something smaller, but for a bigger production machine, we're both intrigued by the bigger palette changing. Right.
00:33:55
Speaker
hundreds of tools. I was just thinking, I wonder how many Dr. Phil's using on, he's gotten 90. I wonder if he's gotten up to 30 or 40 or 50 yet. I feel like he originally said he only ever uses like 20 or 30.
00:34:10
Speaker
but maybe that was somebody else. I can't remember. I'll ask him. Do you store your torque wrenches at zero? I store my torque wrench at zero and I never use it. That is not a good answer to my question. But I saw your shop update video and I saw that and so you store them at their
Debunking Machining Myths
00:34:33
Speaker
values. Absolutely.
00:34:35
Speaker
Which is not ideal from a super geeky technical point, but I think it's fine. Well, so this just reminds me of some of these old wives tales where some of them are true, but some of them are also over. I remember Tom Lipton, who's smart and whose opinion I respect, did a test on a similar subject of
00:34:57
Speaker
What if you clamp a part on the very right edge of your vice? Is it twisting the vice and damaging all that? I mean, he I forget what he how he proved it in the video, but I believe he used some pretty good scientific and empirical data to basically show it's a bunch of hogwash. It's like A.B. Tools was explaining that set screw holders, they do push the tool to the side. It's about 20 millionths, which is two tenths of a tenth or something. So the same thing here. I'm less interested in all of the
00:35:27
Speaker
chatter about it and more interested in, okay, well, let's figure out what it does. Is it over years? Is it over months? Is it immediate? Is it 5% change? Is it 20% change? Because I'll tell you, it just doesn't work. Taking six torque wrenches every day and moving them back up to their appropriate ranges to leave them there for eight hours to back them off at the end of the day is
00:35:53
Speaker
not there makes me want to vomit.
Handling Entrepreneurial Stress
00:35:56
Speaker
I feel like it might come from the automotive or maybe even the aerospace industry where, you know, when you're building an engine, the torque values are fairly particular and you don't want your tool to wear out over time. Um, however, like you said, you've got a $60 torque wrench and you're not torquing to plus or minus a one foot pound. If anybody listening has data on this or actual empirical, like stories behind,
00:36:22
Speaker
Keeping in mind that one of our torque wrenches is like $120, the rest are $40, so these are not high end. Like you said, we're trying to make sure we're in the ballpark and not just using inconsistent hand elbow grease with a box wrench. Where do you get your end attachments for your torque wrenches? Like to tighten all your collets and holders and stuff?
00:36:47
Speaker
So the year 32 one we had to make. So we bought one from like Lindex and then ticked on the right adapter and made the figure what we did. I think we modified it enough so that we didn't have to do a torque adjustment because of how it is positioned. But.
00:37:04
Speaker
Mari tool, I hope I'm allowed to say this, is, if they haven't already, is soon to be releasing ER, XYZ, ER32, whatever, Torque tools, because they're not actually that easy to find.
00:37:20
Speaker
I know that Technics sells them. They also sell a torque wrench. You know how your torque wrenches are kind of 90 degrees? It's a straight one. Like the tip comes down. It's a straight one. Right. But theirs is like $350 and then plus attachments. So we bought their attachment and modified it for our torque wrench because I wasn't willing to spend the money then and probably still not now on that.
00:37:42
Speaker
Um, because, and you let you like having multiple different torque wrenches, like for each different size. Yes. I mean, I don't want to change adapters. I don't want to use them to, you don't want to use torque wrenches to loosen. I'm told. Um, and store them at the right values. It's totally the right way to do it. Yeah. Does make sense. Um, I had a quick filming question for you. I was watching your latest.
00:38:09
Speaker
gallivanting around the world videos, specifically the DMG open house. I noticed you actually did get a camera inside most of the machines while they're doing palette changes. Are you using a Noga base or is it something else? We have a Noga base that's awesome. It's a shorter arm on an actual C-clamp style thing. Clamps
00:38:32
Speaker
Really securely it's in the other room where I'd go grab it But it's it is superb We'll put a link in the description for it and then it mounts to standard GoPro stuff, but then I also have a Back from the strike mark days a magnetic Machined GoPro base that we made that's super low profile that can then be positioned anywhere basically
00:38:56
Speaker
because right now I have two mag bases for NOGA's that they seem a little weak, a little different. You want the clamp for sure. Yeah, almost yours. It's either 50 or 90 bucks. I can't remember. It's just rock solid. Maybe throw up a picture on Instagram too. Yeah, sure. I'll do that later.
00:39:23
Speaker
We had an email from a guy which I wanted to share because it hit a one of my entrepreneurial buttons in a good way, which is kind of one of the reasons why I like doing this podcast is keeping it
00:39:36
Speaker
What's interesting, when you and I started this, it was a much more, we both needed to help each other and traverse some tough journeys ahead and growth. Now it's much more, I think, coolness and fun and we're doing well and blah, blah, blah. But just a guy who feels a huge amount of pressure to do a ton of things. He's overwhelmed. He's balancing family life and trying to start businesses while he's doing a day job.
00:40:03
Speaker
feels like he's backed himself kind of into a, I'm using my own interpretation, a bit of this email, but, you know, wants to start all these different things, start some of them, and then feels guilty telling his wife or anybody that maybe that one's not going to work out. So I should really stop doing that. Because that's a sign of accepting failure. And I just want to reiterate how much
00:40:29
Speaker
I've been through in terms of stuff that didn't work out, stuff that we decided to kill. So I thought I wasn't willing to kill and held on to it for too long because I wasn't interested in acknowledging and you've been there too. So yeah, John and I get on here and we're mostly pretty happy guys, but that doesn't mean it's easy. And that doesn't mean that I've said it before. And I'll say it again. I still have moments where I have self-confidence questions. You doubt yourself. You wonder, am I doing this because I want people to like me or am I doing just yes.
00:40:55
Speaker
I find it very hard to give advice to questions like that because it's so important. You know what I mean? I don't want to give the wrong advice or the wrong perspective or anything like that, but I don't want to cop out either and just ignore it.
00:41:11
Speaker
If you're doing something that you truly believe in and you need to give that time, then you give that time, then you make it happen. If you honestly don't fully believe in it, then maybe it's time to kill it and move on. Yeah, you have to. I don't know anybody who has thought
00:41:31
Speaker
Looking back, you know, in hindsight, like, Oh, I'm really glad I didn't focus. I'm really glad I did way too many things for too long to figure, you know, to kind of, that's what led me. Like when you think back to the things, and I don't want to name companies here because it seems too personal, but like when I think back to companies that we mentioned and we talk about on this podcast or the products that we use, these are all people that I think of to outwardly appear to have a focus. That doesn't mean inwardly, they don't bounce around some, but, um,
00:42:00
Speaker
I think if you're looking for a recipe, it's to call down, focus on something, pour yourself into that. And if it doesn't work, it's okay. I'll tell you, my wife still hears me say, because a lot of us folks, whether we're entrepreneurs or type A people, when we decide we want to do something, you really pour yourself into it.
00:42:23
Speaker
It can be, you just do, right? And so to then turn around and tell your business partner, your employees, your wife, like, Oh, two months later, six months later, that doesn't work. We're going to kill it. That's tough, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, like I was, um, you know, whining about in the beginning of this episode, starting to jump around again, just when things are getting smooth. That's, that's the fear. But that's okay. You know, I don't, I don't think it's okay to get out like that for you.
00:42:54
Speaker
Yeah. But I've just gone through so many different periods in my career of jumping around and they've all led me to here. So I don't, I don't regret any of it. Absolutely. Right. Every failed project and experiment has led me to this point.
00:43:10
Speaker
It's all required and I gave fully to every single one of them, which is great. I just wanted to say like, don't, um, I don't want this, the day this podcast becomes some puff piece on how easy it is and how you know, we're perfect. And if you have any questions about doubting yourself or struggling, um, you're wrong is, is no, that's not it. Like it's, it's, I care about that topic a lot. Uh, on the flip side, you know, if it's that hard too hard, you got to change things up, um, or talk to people, get, get some help. Like it's okay.
00:43:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's amazing when you can talk to people that will listen and help and a lot of times it's just listening. Like I've got friends that I let them talk to me. I let them tell me everything because I'm a good listener and they don't talk much and I let them, you know, kind of vent and then it just helps clarify everything in your head when you can actually tell somebody else. You can watch them solve their own problems.
Plans for Future Improvements
00:44:05
Speaker
And yes, you know, they have the answer before they actually see that they're getting the answer.
00:44:10
Speaker
Yes, exactly. And you just got to keep pulling on that thread until they, aha. Yeah. That's what I love. It's fun actually. I'm still reading that book, Never Split the Difference and it has so many unspoken parallels to how to win friends and influence people because it deals with that human psychology of interacting with people. And it talks so much about how it is incredibly rare to find somebody who's actually able to listen.
00:44:37
Speaker
We all love, I mean, look, in some respects, this podcast is you and me talking. We all love talking. Humans love talking about themselves. Absolutely. But as a chronic listener, this gives me the opportunity to just talk without really being interrupted.
00:44:55
Speaker
That was awesome. What do you have to do today? Today I am going to try a deburring tool on the blades, on the machining op to help pre deburr something that Eric takes a lot of time to deburr afterwards. Interesting. That's going to be sweet. I'm going to maybe
00:45:15
Speaker
try making a lock insert today, or at least make progress. The first one, I'm going to take a scrap blade, which is hard. And I'm just going to find a lock insert. Right. I know you're in here. Yeah, exactly. Machine away everything. That's not right. Try it out. Don't use the super glue technique way too small. That's a good point. They're going to be tricky to make because they're window machine it like tab it out.
00:45:44
Speaker
Basically, that's what I have to do. I wish, yeah. I've been thinking about bottlenecks in life, and I feel like it'd be cool to see Cam take a big leap forward. I feel like I just do so much repetitive stuff. I'm kind of burned out of doing Cam, and I love it, which is what bothers me, because I want to like it. But I'm like, why am I just redoing so much
00:46:04
Speaker
you know, templates are great, but still like clicking on features. Like if I want a window machine apart, it's so much freaking work to get that set up and simulated and dial just the way you want it. And I'm not the kind of guy that has the experience or team or interest in solving that problem. But seems like seems like that would be an interesting opportunity. Sweet. What do you ask you? Well, the deburring like a name, like a name power brush.
00:46:31
Speaker
or a very small, a 3M radial brush. Oh, the ones that Seth, we talked about the Seth. Yeah. Seth was telling me about. Um, okay. If you just Google 3M radial brush, it shows up there. They're cheap, but you have to buy a pack of fifties. So that's like $50 for one for each grit. Um, but we got a bunch and I think they have a lot of merit. I think they'll be super super sweet. Yeah. I love this. You just kind of need the tool holder spots, right?
00:46:58
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. I found one spot that I can use. So that's tough. Cool. Yeah. Yep. That's good. And then pens, um, today, tomorrow, Wednesday. Awesome. That's cool. Sweet. Yeah. Awesome.
00:47:14
Speaker
What am I up to? I have not been doing Wednesday widget stuff, so I gotta get back to look at a couple of those videos, and we have the trunnion on our Haas right now, so I got my butt kicked running five axis toolpaths yesterday. Some of it is for sure, so there's all these different things that influence the quality of the toolpath. There's the solid model itself, there's the cam, there's the speeds and feeds, there's the machine,
00:47:43
Speaker
quality and capability. Our trending is not the same as Phil's Metzera, right? It's just not. But I think most of it is actually really the cam or the solid model itself. And it's weird to look at how the toolpath point distribution changes between certain shapes as you're looking at a flow toolpath. And I know
00:48:06
Speaker
That's a big driver of it. And that's, that's on me. That's not the Haas. So I've got a, um, it's, it's a pretty deep rabbit hole because there's so many darn holes to go down. Um, but just playing around the positional stuff. I feel pretty good about, um,
00:48:21
Speaker
But, um, I want to get some basic simultaneous stuff that I look at and think, yeah, that's awesome. Yes. Well, it'll be fun, uh, following your chronicle down that to go from like crappy first part to like beautiful dial. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's, um, it's actually legit fun. Um, it's not fun to feel like you've got to balance everything else that's going on, but like, just to shut all the rest of that stuff off and say, Hey, I'm going to go play. That's awesome.
00:48:47
Speaker
I was just going to say, so
Episode Wrap-up
00:48:49
Speaker
you're going to play today. That's that's perfect. Yeah. Um, that's all I got. Awesome. I'll see you next week. I should get back at it. Take care. Sounds good. Okay. Take care. Bye.