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5 Leigh Aitken of Twig and Bot
123 Plays7 months ago
Leigh has assembled a robot arm on a 20’ track with a tool changer that can swap between a 3” router bit, a full size bandsaw, and an electric chainsaw! This is an amazing chat with an amazing guy!
https://www.instagram.com/twigandbot/
Things of the week:
Leigh: Corin Urquhart at Niroc Tools https://www.instagram.com/niroc_tools
Al: Geodesic domes
Jeff: Binbata laundry soap sheets
https://www.amazon.com/Binbata-Hypoallergenic-Eco-Friendly-Biodegradable-Liquidless/dp/B0BZ449P9G
Patreon: http://patreon.com/digifabricators
Discord: https://discord.gg/hHp8Sv7vt4
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:12
Speaker
damn
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Digifabricators, the show where we learn how makers and artists use their computer-driven tools for fun, art, and profit. I'm your host, Jeff Stein, aka a Weird Guy, and with me is my talented but sleepy co-host, Al Schultz of New York Woodworks. How are you tonight, Al?
00:00:36
Speaker
I'm doing wonderful, Jeff. Thank you very much. Had a little snow to plow and some salt to put out today. It was, it's a crispy 20. Oh, I'm sorry. 16 degrees and 20 mile an hour winds. So I'm, uh, I'm happy to be inside and, uh, looking forward to this guest. I'm excited about this.
00:00:57
Speaker
Well, I got your beat. It's 18 degrees here, but it's supposed to be up to about 32. So we should be up to the freezing point tomorrow. So that's fantastic. All right. Well, let's fire off the disclaimer and we can get started here.
00:01:15
Speaker
Even though we pretend to be experts on the internet, I would like to point out that neither of us have any actual training and are just guys winging it in our shops and learning as we go. All advice provided is based on our personal experience and possibly inaccurate assumptions and is worth exactly what you pay for it. If listening to this show causes you to take out a loan to buy new and expensive digital tools, you may tell your spouse that it was our fault, but do so at your own risk.
00:01:44
Speaker
So this episode, we have a guest who owns the holy grail of digital fabrication, and he uses it to make the kinds of stuff that I would make if I had it. He gets done more than most of us, even though he's upside down and only using one arm. A big how you going to Lee Eitken from Twig and Bot. Welcome to the show. How you doing? Thanks for having me.
00:02:13
Speaker
Good evening sir afternoon okay Yeah ah Yeah, so basically I have a big robot arm ah that I've set up as a wood carving system with a ah chainsaw a bandsaw and a large spindle ah Yeah, and basically I can throw a ah login to that and carve it into whatever I want um so I do a range of furniture, mostly from ah reclaimed ah timber, so trees that are getting taken down locally. And then I also do a ah bunch of aye contract machining, so um machining for other furniture makers or architects or construction companies. Yeah.
00:03:01
Speaker
Has it has this been a like like what got you to to here? Like have you always been a crack in the crafts? Are you ah from a family of craftsmen, you know, just just a quick history of how how did we get to this room?
00:03:16
Speaker
so two minutes ahan making things since I was a kid tinkering around in the garage, so a bit of woodwork or making billy carts and go-karts and motorized scooters and things. I had a next-door neighbor that ah yeah had a welder and chop saw and I was constantly borrowing them off him, you know well probably when I was in high school, um to build bits and pieces.
00:03:41
Speaker
um Yeah, I went on to study robotics engineering and then spent 10 years in the industry designing and building ah robot um automation systems for factories.
00:03:57
Speaker
sort of focusing on metal polishing and linishing applications, but also doing a whole lot of other, um, yeah, different, uh, applications as well. So we did a few, uh, systems kind of similar to mine or, you know, a robot with a spindle for universities, uh, robot welding systems, handling systems, um, yeah, all kinds of stuff. Um,
00:04:24
Speaker
I built a CNC router ah with a guy I went to uni with probably going on 20 years ago now. um And yeah, started off a part-time business while I was working at the robotics place. So I was doing a little bit of CNC machining at home, making branding irons for woodworkers and um yeah, doing a bit of yeah wood machining as well. ah And then, yeah.
00:04:54
Speaker
So your robotics, your your education got you into digital fabrication and you've just taken it literally to the left. Even in high school, I was interested in it. um I built a little sort of CNC circuit board making machine. So it was basically little XY plotter with a edge resistant pen on it. And I could draw her on copper clad circuit boards and and then etch them out afterwards. and but it was sort of before you could get, you know, stepper motors and and software off the shelf. And um so it was yeah programmed in Q basic or something at the time and very clunky, but it did some work. So, and definitely got me interested. I had a baseball bat when I was that age. I used to hit things with it.
00:05:53
Speaker
I used to throw a lot of rocks. yeah i was I was pretty good at skipping them.
00:06:02
Speaker
um yeah yeah I don't want to talk obvious, Jeff, but I just. This. I have looked at other. ah A axis, I guess you are.
00:06:15
Speaker
Yep. Um, I've looked at some others as well as yours and um, I have a standard three axis CNC. Um, I just cannot wrap my head around like the silliest thing. I can't fathom how you zero this thing, so but like, like, how do you, is your zero point, uh, literally left? Like, is that a point in space now left?
00:06:44
Speaker
no it's like yeah Is there a simple um You don't know what Germantown is. It's the town I'm in and I grew up in but I graduated from here So you get to speak very slowly ah and use small American American public school system was in play. Yeah, as a lot but yeah, yeah. But if if you could, is there a is there a layman's? This is kind of how it works. This is the basics of after three or four axes. This is what happens. Yeah, I'll give you it. I'll have a shot at it. Sorry. Basically, you the the robot itself has six rotary axes on it that drive the arm.
00:07:27
Speaker
um And then there's obviously the track that moves the robot along and then there's the rotary table or headstock that um can rotate as well. So every one of those axes has a little datum switch on it. So you can screw an electronic measuring tool into that. It's basically like a dial gauge or something. And the robot will drive itself back and forth across that um It's a little block with a V in the middle and find the center of the V, and then it knows exactly where that axis is. So that gets all your axes to a known zero position. i But yeah, that only has to be done if youre something goes wrong with the robot. or So I haven't recalibrated that for six, seven years now, even since before I moved factories. so
00:08:25
Speaker
um So if you're if you're going to if you have a and I'm gonna have to use American You know freedom units we call them. Yeah If you if you have a 12 inch by 12 inch cube Yeah, and you want to cut and you want to cut a 10 inch sphere out of it Yeah Do you is your is your known point the center of that sphere and then you work in all directions around that point and?
00:08:51
Speaker
Is that kind of the concept? So basically, once you've got the robot home like that, um you can set up the origin of the cell to wherever you want. So for me, I've got it set up to the center of the rotary table. So if I drop something on that rotary table, the bottom center of the part is XYZ0.
00:09:16
Speaker
okay If I put something on the table at the other end of the cell, um that'll be, you know, say X four meters or, you know, X 15 feet or something like that. um ah Although the robot doesn't understand freedom units. Right, right. And I Josh completely. i josh and one One of mine does.
00:09:45
Speaker
Yeah, one one out of the four robots I have understands freedom units. The other three are strictly metric systems for some reason. Yeah, yeah. That's okay. I've got an old life that's in inches. um gar getting I have illustrations.
00:10:03
Speaker
Yeah, I have a special tape measure so I could talk to my buddy. i literally Oh yeah, okay. Wow, that's a nice size. you know I'm holding the tape measure up in front of my face. I 3D printed a ah ruler here that does millimeters up to about 220, I think.
00:10:27
Speaker
because Because I mean I when I'm 3d printing stuff I've had a I mean I like to download stuff and hit print and I don't always pay attention to the exact scale on things and sometimes the stuff is just too big or too small and I'm like God damn metric if it would have been in inches I could have just Visualized how big that was gonna be and then it would have known to adjust it But I mean, if I need to print something out and it comes up and says it's, you know, 70 centimeters across and I pick up my little ruler and I look at that and there's the seven mark and I'm like, okay, that's that's a little small. I can scale it up a little, you know? So I mean, that this gives me something I can have in my hand when I'm scaling things so I can actually see what 10 centimeters is right in front of me.
00:11:16
Speaker
because I just, I mean, I can work in them, but I don't really think in them yet. I'm guessing, you know, after another couple of years with the 3D printer, I may just get to the point where I can think either direction fluently, but I'm absolutely and not there yet.
00:11:39
Speaker
anyway So that's sort of cool. So so you'll zero at the center of the table before you put something on it and then you'll just tell it that the object is You know that at 300 centimeters tall and then it'll know where to carve from here to there Yeah, you it's the same as doing a bottom zero on a three-axis machine yes That makes sense Yeah, so that that turn tables relatively permanently set up um As the zero position um Yeah that makes how Edit the config files to change that so there's a so I'm sorry No, I was gonna say there's almost everything you're gonna want to carve You're gonna want to put on that turntable to give it that extra rotary ability I mean that saves the arm from reaching around to the other side I guess so but I mean
00:12:36
Speaker
So, I mean, I would just say put it on the table, even if you don't need to spin it, just because it's a good mounting spot. you know it's yeah it's your It's your anchor point. How do you hold stuff to that? Is that a fixturing thing? How does that work? Every trick I can find. You're like running screws up through the bottom of it into the wood or something? Yeah, a lot of stuff's that. um If we don't have to spin it, we can use vacuum work holding.
00:13:04
Speaker
Um, use vacuum pads to hold it down. Um, yeah, sometimes tech screws or bolts and clamps and ratchet straps. yeah handing no Now in a perfect world, I'm assuming, um, just from looking at it, that you're an amazing tactician at what you do.
00:13:24
Speaker
For example, the bolt or the nut you just did. What is that? Other than the concept, because that could take, I understand creation in your mind takes any amount of time for anybody. But once you had the, I'm going to make a wooden nut. A foot and a half tall or two foot tall or whatever that is.
00:13:41
Speaker
yeah um
00:13:44
Speaker
What's it look like to get from here? Is there. hours and hours and hours of programming in different steps with different tooling because of all these axes or am I just over complicating this in my mind? ah so Something like the nut there is a fair bit of programming involved so yeah for making those it's done in quite a few steps so we put a big log on the turntable we use the band saw to cut it down to hexagonal
00:14:17
Speaker
Then we use a chainsaw to hollow out the center, sort of cut a core out of it. um And then the bandsaw parts it off, so it's switching back and forward between different lots of tooling.
00:14:29
Speaker
So the tooling is set up like a tool changer. they're just instead of little bits Instead of little bits, you're literally picking up a ah slab mill. yeah yeah so Yeah, it's got both of those. So the spindle is auto tool change, so we can drop off collet chucks and pick up different tools, but then we can yeah drop off the whole spindle with the robot tool changer.
00:14:51
Speaker
and pick up the chainsaw or bandsaw or shake metal forming head or... for for Yeah, for for those of you that... Tool changer right there. Yeah, I was going to say, for those of you that haven't gone to check out Lee's page yet, this arm can run a spindle with a quarter inch, three eighths or half inch mill and mill in it, and then put that down and go pick up a 60 inch bandsaw head and mill logs like Matt Cremona.
00:15:23
Speaker
And then go back to it and you know with an with an eighth inch or a quarter inch, you know deep z bit and make a sign Yeah, so how How did you get this thing together? Um It sounds like you had quite an adventure parting this thing into shape from the beginning here, didn't you?
00:15:44
Speaker
Maybe we should hear the backstory of what you made and a really solid description for the audio listeners as to exactly what we're looking at here. As I mean, Al and I have already looked at it. So we get kind of, that's kind of cheating for us, but you can give us the creation story and a better description of all the ah fun parts, tracks and changers and arms and tables and Yeah, so well actually it was the robot track that kind of kicked all this off. um Basically it's a track you can bolt the robot to. It's servo driven or controlled by the robot and it can move the robot along. So ours has got a seven meter travel. So what's that 23, 24, 18 something like that. meus
00:16:37
Speaker
yeah Um, but yeah, basically one came up for sale secondhand here, uh, saw it, uh, one night on one of the auction, uh, on one of the equipment dealer sites. Um, sorry to interrupt, but what, what was it doing before you came and converted it to what it is? Uh, nothing, it turns out. So a company had bought it, uh, for a project that never went ahead.
00:17:07
Speaker
Um, it was bought by a toilet manufacturing company. So so it was it was doing line work at a factory or something. No, they they bought it for a project doing line work, but they never installed it. So basically when we got it, it was brand new. It had just been sitting around for, for probably five or six years, um gathering dust and a bit of moisture. And, um,
00:17:34
Speaker
Yeah. So yeah, they don't come up for sale very often in Australia. So I've kind of been dreaming of building, you know, this robot wood carving system. And I saw that and I'm like, I'll buy it, but I had nowhere to put it. Um, I was, you know, working full time, uh, still. And so actually I shipped it down to my work and they were good enough to keep it, uh, in the factory there for a while.
00:18:00
Speaker
And then um I bought a secondhand robot um to go with it, um as well as an extra access to make the turntable from. um So I got that from a robot dealer in Spain ah called Urobots. That got shipped to my work as well. And um yeah, a few months later, um the company I was working for ended up in liquidation.
00:18:29
Speaker
And I'm like, oh well, I guess I've got to do something with this. So yeah, it's got a lease on a factory with some friends um and decided to take this full time. and Um, yeah yeah, get it set up. So this is, is this a one-off machine or is it a machine that you, I'm sorry, if I'm not wording this correctly. Do these machines exist and you just built one like it or this doesn't exist and you built this? No, it's it's pretty unique. Um, that's amazing. Yeah. So there's, yeah, there's other companies with robots with spindles on them.
00:19:06
Speaker
um right Yeah, so some of the universities and research places have even put a small bandsaw on there. um But yeah, in terms of the the mix of tooling we've got and the scale of it, yeah, it's fairly unique and and most of what's on there is sort of custom designed and built.
00:19:26
Speaker
Yeah. Most of the parts seem seem to be fairly. I mean, the the robot arm in the track is a pretty standard factory item, you know, and the turntables aren't that rare either. But the fact that you've put the robot on the track, given it a turntable and then added the tool changers.
00:19:51
Speaker
Really kind of I the number of people who get these things and end up using them for woodwork is Very very slim number. I'm assuming I There's a couple other people on the internet that have robot arms that they just play with but it's a very short list Yeah, I only know the one like lignum Yeah, yeah. No, there's definitely a few others around, but yeah, compared to CNC machines and that it's it's quite a small niche. um it's a amazing It's amazing with all the capabilities that you've pulled out of this that mega companies aren't using them. Like it it just seems like, why would you buy five machines when you can buy one to do all five machines jobs?
00:20:41
Speaker
Yeah, it is very flexible what we can do with it. um yeah Yeah, I guess the main things that compete with it are um like some of the big beam processing machines and things that have got a five axis CNC that can um yeah yeah um process timber as it flows through. um but Yeah, certainly this is a very flexible system and for the size of it can handle quite a large work pace. But yeah ah yeah, I'm sure there will be more of them going forward. But yeah, yeah it's it's not cheap either. There's a lot of yeah parts that go into it. could you venture of Could you venture a guess as to what a machine like that would cost? Just ballpark, not asking what your numbers are.
00:21:38
Speaker
ah Yeah, I haven't been brave enough to add up my numbers yet. But like, yeah, I've done everything I can from secondhand parts designed to build everything myself over the last six, seven years. I think if you went to a company and like a robot integrator and asked them to build you a system like this US dollars, you'd probably be looking seven or 800,000 something like that.
00:22:06
Speaker
That's kind of where I was thinking, 750. Yeah. But yeah, certainly we haven't spent anything near that, but it's still being substantial. Sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. ah um so So what is your business model? like do Do people just walk in off the street and say, can you make these for me? or are I see you got a robot in the back. Can you do this?
00:22:31
Speaker
Or are you, you know, so are you working for for big conglomerates and companies? doing If you can, if you can speak. ah Yeah, yeah. ah So not Yeah, not too many people walking off the street. A lot of people find me online, either through the websites or through Instagram or um yeah Yeah, or through word of mouth.
00:22:55
Speaker
um But yeah, I guess a large part of what I do, as I said, is sort of machining components for other companies. We've done a a lot of stuff lately for a few new peers that have been built down here. um They're architecturally designed and they've got these giant curved timbers in them that are pretty hard to cut sort of using any other means.
00:23:22
Speaker
um But we've got the bandsaw on the robot and can basically cut whatever radius they need and um cut big notches out of things that are you know deeper than you can get into with conventional tools. and it's I can't wrap my head around this thing. i yeah All I'm thinking, I'm not sure how much you're into the American maker community, but the the the staple of the American maker community is Jimmy DiResta, who seems to be a band saw king. And you seem to have found something you can do with a band saw that Jimmy has never thought of. oh I'm gonna have to give you props for that.
00:24:10
Speaker
but He mightve you might have thought of it, but yeah i don't know he's thought of it but probably going to think about it soon. yeah yeah he he's a coette after you If you don't follow him, it's he's amazing at restoring and he loves old, old 1800s.
00:24:26
Speaker
Putting presses and things like that. And he's probably got 50 bandsaws. Yeah. Yeah. I've definitely come across some of these content. Okay. Yeah. it's It's hard not to. yeah he He's everywhere. Yeah. Yeah.
00:24:43
Speaker
But yeah, that's that that's that's a new one for band saw. It's sticking that on there. Oh, man. is that How complicated is that? I mean, it it'll do about anything. You just got to watch. Do you use like wider bands or thinner bands on that? Because I mean, I've got a shitty little band saw. I mean, I think I've got a 10-inch rycon, almost a toy. But I mean, I've already got to adjust the blades for it. If I want to do the vertical rip thingy, I got to use the wide blades. And then if you want to like cut shapes and angles, you've got to use the thinner blade. is that Do you have a restriction on the angles of the depth or the amount of curve you can do with that without you know breaking a freaking blade, torquing it around?
00:25:38
Speaker
ah I've been surprised at how few blades I've broken. but yeah but It's basically set up, I guess, like a bandsaw mill. So i I did look at Matt Cremona's stuff when I was designing and building that. He's got a lot of information online on on how he built his and how he's done tracking and things like that.
00:26:00
Speaker
um But yes, I'm running a what's not doing he's he's not going over the hill and through the woods with it but but Yeah, yes, I'm running a blade It's probably a bit over an inch and a quarter wide About 40 thou thick That's a beast. Yeah, and if I adjust the guides right out, I can cut up to about six foot wide logs. um Yeah, at a maximum. up sorry
00:26:39
Speaker
um yeah and but so Yeah, those blades are designed for cutting straight. um I've definitely cut, you can cut gentle curves with them.
00:26:51
Speaker
Um, you know, if you're talking about it, you know, 10 foot plus radius or something like that. Um, but then, yeah, I can put smaller blades in there, different guides and, and do quite tight curves. Um, and even sort of three dimensional curves where there's twist involved as well. And, um, yeah.
00:27:13
Speaker
that's that That's some extra dimensions of band saw that nobody really gets to think about. Band saws are supposed to have you know they're supposed to go one direction and your work stuff is supposed to be flat down on them.
00:27:32
Speaker
floor and cut it 90 degrees and you're not supposed to twist the material as you push it through the band saw because then that's you know that's that's how you know people end up with stumpy hands but uh apparently as long as it's the robot hand in there it's all good yeah yeah yeah you want to stay well clear of that it could definitely take off more than a finger so I was going to say, is this just like like a giant room full of Fruit Ninja going on with like blades and everything flying around? The robot's got its own room and then ah that's got a sort of 10 meter wide opening in the front of it where we can load stuff.
00:28:20
Speaker
ah And then that's got a ah safety scanner that sort of monitors that whole opening. And then if anything goes through and breaks it, um either a person or something getting flicked out of the robot cell, it'll just stop everything. Right, right, yeah yeah. I think that's pretty common on on matt and heavy duty. I've got a friend who has a works at a cabinet shop with a monster machine. And if you get within two feet of that thing, it just Yeah, it stops. It stops so hard that they have to throw everything away because it'll, it'll break the vacuum and slide it yeah i guess something i so stop kind of damage speed. Yeah. He said that gantry will get going. It'll break your arm if it hits you. Like if you get close enough to it, if you could break the laser and and it hit you, it would break your arm. Yeah. yes Yeah. Yeah.
00:29:11
Speaker
Yeah. There's some of the high speed laser cutters, um, like for sheet metal. Uh, I've heard that they accelerate so hard. They'll so rip themselves out of the concrete. They keep getting foundation issues. Well, I mean, you're throwing a lot of weight around. and I mean, if you want to have high acceleration starts and stops with something that weighs, what's a fucking robot arm way?
00:29:40
Speaker
uh yeah a bit over probably 1200 kilos so a lot yeah thirty six hundred yeah no i plus a couple of hundred kilos of band saw and yeah i mean yeah just the weight of the band saws throwing it around let alone the weight of the arm that's yeah i i but i suppose it's a lot easier when you're mounted on the track because the track is mounted all the way across the damned room so you've got Yeah, you know 21 foot a track bolted to the ground and it's attached to that like ah ah Like a roller coaster kind of right? Yeah. Yeah, and there's something like
00:30:22
Speaker
I think there's 36 3 quarter inch anchors going into the concrete to hold that down. It's over the length of 20 feet. yeah that's That's not as big of a problem as ah as an arm that would just be bolted by six bolts straight to the floor. Then you're just ripping up the carpet i mean i riping up the cement directly underneath it.
00:30:45
Speaker
yeah that's 1200 kilos is 2,645 pounds. That's two Volkswagen Beatles and doing 700 inches a minute on the wall. Yeah, and I mean, they want it to start and stop quickly. You know, it's different around back and forth. It ain't taking its time. Yeah, I'd say that moves along pretty quickly at full speed.
00:31:11
Speaker
man What's maintenance, if anything, on a machine like that? ah The robot itself um has been really good. Like, I think you're supposed to change the oil after 20,000 hours ah of operation. And we bought it secondhand and it had like 1300 hours on it.
00:31:32
Speaker
So you're, you're, you're good for a day or two. yeah So everything seal, they're all sealed, right? And they run like wiper seals on the elbows, basically. Yeah. And they keep everything. Yeah. Yep. Just shaft seals on all that. Um, yeah, the track, you've got a grease occasionally, just the, I think the rollers and the, it's got a rack and pinion drive on the back.
00:31:59
Speaker
um is Is there a dust collection in that room, or do you just let it fall on the floor and then blow it out? That's a constant battle. The robot can send dust in just about any direction. So yeah, trying to get dust collection is tricky. But we've got a basically a six-inch duct that can follow the robot along and come down to the spindle or the bandsaw and sort of yeah collect from the source.
00:32:27
Speaker
um Yeah, a lot some of the heavy stuff still escapes, but yeah, we're we're improving on that. Yeah, it's it don't feel bad. that's I don't know anybody's wood shop who has perfect dust collection yet. Yeah, yeah.
00:32:43
Speaker
It would be kind of hard to get a whole lot out of the band saw. I mean, you can hook it into the band saw if it's got a port right on it. But I mean, you're never going to catch the stuff that's coming off of it. yeah It's not as bad as you think. You can get close to where, you know, you can get within enough inches of the tip of it to catch a lot of it if you got enough suction going.
00:33:07
Speaker
Yeah. You want to be on turn one at a NASCAR track. Yeah. Well, I mean, you've got a dedicated room. You can just make a mess and sweep when you're done. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to have to sweep anyway. Why, why make a big fuss over sweeping ah seven minutes versus five? i Yeah.
00:33:29
Speaker
god so Some of it got more of a shovel than a swipe, but... Right, there you go. But I mean, yeah, it's just the depth of the... You gotta to sweep the whole room wall to wall. It's just a matter of how deep the pile is. Yeah. I don't know that I would make a big deal about dust collection. I mean, I don't really do dust collection on my own shit. I just... I just don't care.
00:33:54
Speaker
um I don't I don't collect it. I just set it free. Yeah. I love that. I've damaged my lungs too bad already. I have to. I'm a I'm hyper about it now. Yeah.
00:34:09
Speaker
Now we try and keep it out of the air as much as we can. to Yeah. Well, I, I smoke cigarettes too, which dummy a lot of years for a lot of years. But I mean, I haven't smoked for several years now, but I got, I think nine, nine years. Maybe I think I had cigarettes and he was a pack a day for about nine years. But, you know, by, by my mid twenties, I'd had an I couldn't run across the parking lot without wheezing. And I decided that.
00:34:39
Speaker
I'm still super young and I'm having these kind of effects. I, it's time to quit. yeah and i so thirty ten years Yeah. It's been, yeah, it's been over 30 for me. i I can track it pretty carefully because, uh,
00:34:59
Speaker
I've got a kid that's 31 and right after I quit smoking she got pregnant. I think there's something to do with the the nicotine and the swimmers there that as soon as I stopped smoking cigarettes, they started- Wrong podcast, wrong podcast. but um This is a wrong podcast.
00:35:23
Speaker
Anyway, yeah, the so thankfully, it's been, you know, 30 years since I've had a cigarette. That's amazing. ah Yeah, i but I don't have as much dust as most people. I mean, I tend to do a lot of smaller intricate projects. And, yeah and I mean, if especially if I'm using the shape Oco, it's a freaking trim router.
00:35:45
Speaker
Yeah, it is literally a trim router running around and I'm taking, you know, 50,000 passes off of something and it really just throws a little bit of dust right in the general vicinity. It doesn't go everywhere. And I generally do smaller projects. So I mean, it, it, it's not, you know, big, massive,
00:36:08
Speaker
Scale of projects, you know, I don't run a four by eight bed with vacuums or anything fancy but Yeah, so i mean I don't make that much dust and I yeah, I just sit a couple feet away from it and call it a day What's the what's the horsepower and and like bit diameter like like how big a bit are you you guys generally running?
00:36:33
Speaker
So the spindle itself is 11 kilowatts, so around maybe 15 horsepower or something. um yeah Yeah, the bits we use just about anything, but like, yeah, some of them are like three inches diameter and 10 inches long or something. We run a 16 inch or 400 mil circular saw blade in the spindle as well.
00:37:00
Speaker
my that That really likes getting dust out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, like we're, so our dust extraction's got a fairly small bin. I think it's only 80 liters or something. So it was that under 20 gallon. um And yeah, and with certain processes, we can fill that in under 10 minutes. Yeah. and theyre right aye So so with with the robot, you said that you built a CNC early on, like before CNCs even had names. um what Do you use other digital equipment today in your everyday process? Do you have other other mills? Yeah, so just metal you know yeah certainly the the CNC router we still use a lot. um We've upgraded that over the years, so that's an auto tool change now. and
00:37:57
Speaker
um we yeah We cut wood and metal on that. Got soft metals anyway, brass and aluminium. um ah Got a... Wait, wait, wait, wait. I knew you were going to pick me up. Sorry. ah let' do Did you say aluminum?
00:38:20
Speaker
I'm just, I'm just busted on it. I can't, I catch my, my, my buddy Colin all the time with it. He's like, I'm not saying it. I'm not saying it. You can't make me fucking say it. So, so it's just one, one tip like a. Yeah. So, uh, it's maybe a five by three foot bed or, you know, processing area. Um, but it's fairly heavily built welded steel frame.
00:38:49
Speaker
ah ball screws on all axes. Um, so yeah, actually like even a bunch of parts for the robot cell were machined on there. Um, aluminium. an argument youminum ye yeah Yeah. All the spindle mounts and things like that. Um, got a small 3d printer, um, a flash forge, something or other, nothing fancy. It's yeah, a few years old now, but, um,
00:39:18
Speaker
Yeah, mostly comes in handy for yeah making bits and pieces for the equipment. A lot of dust extraction fittings yeah where you need some strange size.
00:39:31
Speaker
So you basically have the robot and then you have a fleet of robots to support the robot. Yeah, we've got a whole workshop to support the robot. yeah what kind of so What kind of software are you running? like Is it like off the shelf or is it something you've had to write over years to work with all this stuff? No, so we use a program called Robot Master. um So yeah, that'll and let us generate toolpaths and simulate all the robot movements.
00:40:00
Speaker
um make sure it's not going to crash into anything or end up out of reach. We can you know move things to different areas different parts of the robot cell if we want to run it on the the rotary table or the fixed table. I don't even think about that. like You could literally shove that thing through a wall if you're not careful.
00:40:20
Speaker
yeah ah yeah Or punch punch a hole in the wall with it. When I work back at the robot integrators, we had a couple of customers try and do that. Wow. You got to carve a big Kool-Aid man first and then push that through the wall. Yeah.
00:40:42
Speaker
yeah
00:40:45
Speaker
But not anyway, yeah, the robot must be good. We can kind of simulate, you know, things and make sure it's not going to hit the walls or, or the roof or whatever else is around. And it's just going to be a heavy, a heavy CAD manufacturing type software. Like, you know, not, not, um not maker software. Like obviously you see. No, no. And then, yeah, ah for the CNC I run, um, Kafka. Um, yeah, that's a vet. That's a vetric program. Isn't it? courtroom No, not nancy compet it's a competitor. Yeah. Yeah. Use it used to be art cam minute. I think I bought by auto desk and then.
00:41:25
Speaker
but Okay. My name's Graham and so i back to the original people and they re-released it as Carveco. Yeah. Yeah. That's a monthly subscription, which is a pleasant change to a $2,000 surprise at one annual mass. It's an outright license that I've got. ah They might do it by subscription too. but Yeah. they've got to They've got a subscription model. You can just sign up by the month.
00:41:53
Speaker
yeah I think I paid for two or three months of it ah when I was getting started. I started on the manufacturer software and then I tried Carveco for a project and it's it's really good. I'd say it's pretty comparable to like the Vectric desktop kind of thing. What it's really got going, I thought was nice was they had a good ah clipart collection for reliefs. Yeah, which is what I tried it for was my that was my first experiment with 3d carving was on carve Co is I threw a jack o'lantern in there out of the clipart and figured out how to get some 3d paths on there. And then I and then I got bored with that because it was too easy. It was too user friendly.
00:42:51
Speaker
And I went straight to Fusion, which makes absolutely no sense and is very complicated and made my sense of doing things complicated very happy. So is your is your software kind of Fusion-ish, same similar interfaces? ah To be honest, I haven't used Fusion. um I think I might have downloaded it once and had a look, but that was a long time ago.
00:43:20
Speaker
um But yeah, a lot of my design I do in Inventor, which is also Autodesk. um So yeah, do the 3D design in that and then take it across into one of our CAM softwares. and it's It's very interesting. like We've talked to a couple of different larger level, higher level ah software users in design and digital fabrication.
00:43:49
Speaker
and it's I'm sitting here. I'm with v i'm using Vetric Aspire, which is their top line. I get top prosumer. ah Is that the term we heard? yeah That's the word we didn't have last week. Yeah. yeah But like I do everything in Aspire. like I do the designing, and it like I draw in it, you know or or I'll import something and and and start from there. yeah Whereas I hear a lot of ah lot of meant Ladies and gentlemen who are using big high-end commercial production machines are
00:44:26
Speaker
like doing design and then taking a design into this software and then just putting it in the controller software at the end. Yeah. Do you find that you just have to do it that way or because there is no software that does it all or is it just dumb? I don't want to say dumb down, but is it just simplified for maker users like me, low level production guys who don't need all this horsepower? Yeah, I guess the the kind of design I'm doing Um, yeah, you can, you can do, you know, solid and surface modeling and stuff, you know, in these programs, but, uh, it's probably just cause I used inventor for, you know, 10 years when I was at the robotics place and it's fucking hand or something. Yeah. Go, go with what, go with what you, yeah, go with what you know. Right. Um, yeah, I can design something in that far quicker than I could in, yeah. Um, the cam software.
00:45:26
Speaker
but kind of That has kept me from going to, I downloaded Fusion two or three times back when it was still student usable. Now they've changed their format a little bit, I guess, as far as I understand. It's it's still there. they just They just keep hiding it better. Yeah. On the license page, scroll all the way to the bottom. right the Right above the fine print at the bottom, right above that is a link that says hobby license.
00:45:55
Speaker
yeah jeff Jeff is going to do his level best to get me on Fusion and buy a 3D printer. ah yeah so ah yeah So it's kind of a just people at the level you are right now have been doing it for so long that you just have your library of sources, like your software that you're good at. yeah So it's kind of it seems to be It seems to be, that's the answer, if you will. Like I started in Vectric. I know lots of, I have lots of friends who look at that and go, no way. i' I'm happy where I'm at. You know, I don't need all that horsepower. And then I see people like you guys. And I'm like, I don't have any horsepower at all. This is, this is a pony.
00:46:40
Speaker
ah Well, not not all the packages try to really be an all inclusive for everything. um right A lot of ah ah lot of these controller softwares are more focused on you import the model that you want. You create it in Blender, you create it in Fusion, you create it in whatever software you're into, and then you export that out and you've got a 3D model.
00:47:08
Speaker
And then you can import that in. And then it's really focused on running the machine and creating the cam because it has to know how your machine moves to be able to create the cam for it. Yes. And you could probably do it with fusion, but it'd be a real pain in the crotch. It'll do about anything if you pay them enough. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure if fusion's got a robot thing.
00:47:37
Speaker
Yeah, they may, or you can probably know generate five access code and then export that to some other software. and use that for the robot conversion. Yeah, I think it's programmed for six at least. yeah i've so I've seen it. It actually outputs X, Y, Z, A, B and C for me. And I have to manually take the B and the C out of my rotary code because I can't as it's something about the
00:48:11
Speaker
ah the fusion shit. There's like an export profile for Rotary. the the par There's not, there's not a lot of good, uh, the, the, the export. Oh, I can't remember what you call the export profiles, but there's not a lot of those out there for Rotary. And the one I've found is programmed for AB and C yeah and I can't get it to.
00:48:36
Speaker
There's just one line at the beginning ever every G code that resets all three of them And if I leave the B and the C in there that I don't have it crashes the program instantly so na Now you remember about 30 minutes ago when I was making fun of how simple I was with my baseball bat I Have a button in my software. It says create done
00:49:03
Speaker
But I don't know what it's doing. Right. so
00:49:09
Speaker
That's fine. But. Oh, geez. So what was the out I'm missing, I'm missing a hand. um You're you've got the spindle, you've got the bandsaw. What was the other one? Chainsaw? The chainsaw. We haven't really discussed the chainsaw. I knew I was missing something. I was blanking on it. with that So is that like a full size chainsaw or what? It was mo one basically the biggest ah like plug-in electric one, um like just handheld that we could find. um So they don't sell them in Australia. I had to get it from Germany.
00:49:55
Speaker
um ah Yeah, but it's a two and a half kilowatt. I think it's got a 16 inch bar on it or something like that. And then we've made up our own sort of mounting bracket to to mount it to the tool changer and um yeah, all the power's ducted through the tool changer so we don't have to disconnect anything and yeah.
00:50:21
Speaker
But yeah, so we use that for a combination of things. um A lot of it's just roughing parts out. So if we want to remove a big bit of material, we can do a few cuts and cut a chunk off rather than turning the whole lot into wood chips. It just speeds things up. Yeah, so we'll often carve something with that to start with and then come in you know with the spindle and a rotary cutter after that, a big ball nose cutter or something. and
00:50:54
Speaker
and machine it down to the final shape. Yeah, I suppose that'll reach all the places that you can't get with a band saw. Like yeah the insides of a 200 centimeter nut. Yeah. For example, that you can't get to the inside and you don't want to have to spindle your way all the way through the middle. Yeah. You can kind of use that to rough the hole down through the middle of the nut. Yeah.
00:51:24
Speaker
You could also, I'm assuming since, I mean, I'm probably answering my own question here. I'm sorry, but like chainsaw carving is big kind of in the Midwest, mid Southern States here, like for cabins and totem, you know, type stuff. So I'm assuming if you wanted to take the time to put the text, you would have to do some kind of texturing on a model and then carve the whole thing with the chainsaw. Yeah. Yeah. Theoretically you could, um, yeah.
00:51:56
Speaker
It's probably not something I'm going to get into too much. Mainly the um yeah the chainsaw runs oil on the chain. So it's a bit messier than if you're carving with a spindle or something. sure Yeah, a bit less detail and stuff. but And we don't want to put chainsaw carvers out of work. oh It'd be cool to make a ah sculpture of somebody standing there though, you know? Yeah.
00:52:25
Speaker
If you ever feel like it, there's a maker scan project out there where somebody is scanned all the people that went to maker camp. And there's a detailed model of a couple hundred makers out there on a on the internet. yeah yeah yeah yeah You ever feel like carving a life-size Jimmy DiResta out of a tree? but The model is out there, is all I'm saying.
00:52:54
Speaker
Yeah, there was one guy um that yeah did set up a ah chainsaw carving robot. I think he carved out a dog or something. It was like a low poly model he did of it. I can't remember his name. I think it's like stuff made here or. Oh, yeah. yeah But yeah, it does. Yeah, check that out if you if you get a chance.
00:53:20
Speaker
That's, that's one of those Mark Rober level guys, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's Brian is operating on a whole nother level. He carded it and like did always algorithms himself to automatically generate chainsaw. cuts over a gym Yeah. Does this arm, does this arm exist? Like in a desktop, what we would call a desktop version, you know, like one meter or something or.
00:53:47
Speaker
but yeah but You can certainly get robot arms that size. um yep So that yeah, the robot I've got's got a 240 kilo payload and a 2.7 meter reach. Yeah, you can get little ones with a, you know, a one meter reach and a 10 kilo payload or something like that. um Yeah, and I have seen people using those with a small spindle.
00:54:11
Speaker
to do machining. There you go, Jeff. What do you think that's going to cost me for Christmas this year? that's that's Even a little tiny one that's going to fit on a desktop is still probably pushing six figures, right?
00:54:28
Speaker
I was gonna, I was gonna say, I don't know what the number is, but I know it will cost you your marriage.
00:54:36
Speaker
yeah <unk> I don't know what the conversion rate is there, but not good. but yeah But yeah, like a lot of people will pick up a secondhand robot, you know, maybe for $10,000 or less, and then yeah, stick a spindle on it themselves. And yeah, take a spindle on it and in, you know, maybe a small band saw. There, that might be pushing it with a little robot, but give it a shot. Wow. I mean, there's, there's small band saws out there. I mean, I've got a 10 inch band saw. It's pretty light. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You know, one of those little right kinds, everybody loves these things. I think they've got an eight inch too. So I mean, yeah, smaller stuff out there. Yeah. And that's
00:55:27
Speaker
That's something to think about. And I mean, here's the other weird thing is if you were going to do a smaller robot arm and you were worried about the weight of the tool, then maybe you could have the tool be a static item and then you could, you have the robot arm grab the work. Yeah. because and the the The robot could take a piece of square stock.
00:55:57
Speaker
and push it through a band saw on a twisting rotating path that would get you a spiral sided piece because you could push it through while it's spinning where you can't do that stuff by hand. yeah I mean, first potential that you could just grab the work piece and push it through your normal tools. Yeah, yeah you definitely can do that with the robots. yeah I think it's called remote TCP or something similar depending on the brand. but Um, yeah, you have basically the, the origin of the robot cell is actually attached to the end of the robot. And then, um, yeah, you can have various tools arranged around the robot that you can run the workpiece over. So the robot picks up a piece of wood and, and sort of carves it in reverse, moving it over the spindle or the, yeah, as you said, the bands or.
00:56:50
Speaker
Yeah. So, so when you come back for episode 100, are you going to have two arms juggling? That that would be cool too.
00:57:02
Speaker
Yeah, that would be fun. Yeah. Yeah. You picture like the, those Japanese hibachi chefs that are like swinging their knives around and chopping up in the air. Yeah. You can do that with a couple robot arms. Sure. Why? I can't.
00:57:20
Speaker
Why start making it safe at this point? I mean, really, you might as well just have it start throwing knives. I mean, by the time you've got it reaching, by the time your arm can just decide to reach over and pick up a chainsaw and swing it around, you've already hit that point. It's the point of no return. And the point where we've decided that safety's out the window. We're just going to stay in the other damn room when this thing runs.
00:57:50
Speaker
but you have a window so You can keep an eye on it that Has anybody seen any of the final destination movies? ah Yeah, and I still won't drive behind a truckload of lumber Logs the the chopped telephone poles, you know, there's an entire generation that will not drive by a long truck No And for good reason, you know those things come off part and every once in a while ye So do we, uh, are we doing a thing of the week? I think we can always get around to doing a thing of the week. You, did you actually bring something this week? I've always got a thing of the week, but anyway, Mr. Mr. Lee, do you have a thing of the week? Is there something that that's, uh, tickling your fancy doesn't have to be robot arms or anything like that, but just something, uh, a song or do you play music? Do you have another hobby that you're like passionate about?
00:58:51
Speaker
that you want to share. I don't think I'm allowed to have other hobbies ah with the time I spend on this one. So my thing of the week is another maker ah here in Australia, um a guy called Corin. um I think he goes under Niroc Tools, N-I-R-O-C. um But yeah, he makes a range of ah
00:59:20
Speaker
really high quality hand tools, um ah punches, scribes, deburring tools. And then I just saw this week, he's about to ah make an automatic center punch. um ah Yeah, but he's heavily into laser engraving. ah He's got a few fiber lasers with rotaries on them that he uses to engrave all kinds of patterns on these things in um yeah pretty amazing colors that he can get out of it.
00:59:51
Speaker
um Yeah, and he's also just a really generous guy. He's pretty open with information and helping other makers. He's heavily involved in the knife making community over here. um Yeah, so that's that's my thing of the week. I think I'm it's going to get one of his ah automatic center punches once they're out. Nice. it sounds I love gadgets and gizmos like that. Yeah.
01:00:19
Speaker
Everybody needs a friend that makes stuff like that Yeah, you know the maker community is an amazing place But I can honestly say and I we appreciate you coming on tonight But I have never met an Australian person that was not an amazingly beautiful person Just like they're just nice and they don't get stressed out about things it doesn't seem like
01:00:43
Speaker
They're just having a good time. I don't know. I I think they're out there. I mean, I I hear my australian friend complain about him There's yeah There's always these people i'm not sure what a bogan is but apparently it's something he doesn't care for Interesting
01:01:08
Speaker
My uh, I think my thing of the week is a pretty simple i'm not even going to name a brand because when I bought it there's a hundred different brands, but i've With all the technology I own i've never had one of these things It's a it's a box that you hang on the wall and you plug your chop saw into it And then you plug it into the outlet and then you plug your shop back into this box And when you pull the trigger on your shop on your chop saw it starts your shop back for you or dust collector i Actually have one ah the one I have has two outputs so I can I'm actually hung hung a shop light over my chop saw station so when I grab my chop saw it turns on the vacuum turns on a light and Leaves it on and it's they used to be ridiculously expensive, but I think I paid $27 on on the Amazon for it and it's 20 amp, you know, it'll switch 20 amps, which is plenty for a chop saw So it's
01:02:06
Speaker
I don't know what you would call that, an auto start switch. um There's so many different brands. That's why I didn't want to name one because they'll all be fighting about whose is better. good Just the fact that you turn on the tool and it automatically turns on the suction. Yeah. yeah And it leaves the vacuum on for like 10 seconds after the saw stops and just gets everything cleaned out.
01:02:30
Speaker
I would probably actually use dust collection if it turned itself on Well, that's the you know what and that's the biggest the biggest contributor under the other than like a drum sander or something like that is the chop saw and 90% of the people have vax on them and only 10% of the people turn them on and Because they're like they're yeah i'm just gonna make a quick cut, you know, you're walking past it and you're go like It's just one cut. It's just one cut and then at the end of the day, you've made a hundred cuts with no dust collection Yeah Yeah, not their great idea It's yeah. Yeah, and It makes my life easier and I don't have that's one more thing. I don't have to think about Yeah
01:03:13
Speaker
How about, how about you, Jeff? You got the thing of the week this week. I've got a weird one. It's a, this is a household product, but I think it's an improved household product over what most of us use for this product. So I think it's a definite something to recommend. Um, washing soap for the washing machine to do your laundry.
01:03:40
Speaker
You know, most people go down to the store and they buy this big heavy jug full of tide or some kind of big liquid soap. And it's expensive. A lot of it's water and there's a lot of wasted plastic involved and ah you end up with I mean, depending on your brand, you're usually paying like 20 cents to 40 cents a load or, or sometimes the people have got, you know, obviously the tide pods, you know, the ones that kids supposedly love to eat so much because they look like candy. Although there's not a whole lot of, I don't know. I haven't heard too many people actually dying from them anyway, but yeah, but between the pods and the liquids, you're looking at 20 to 40 cents a load.
01:04:31
Speaker
And I found something that is a completely different product entirely from this. ah the The product, then the name of it is called Binbata, which is B-I-N-B-A-T-A. And it's a it's a sheet.
01:04:48
Speaker
Think like a dryer sheet, except instead of being like a flimsy fabric sheet, think it's maybe three mil thick and about the same size as a dryer sheet, but like three mil thick. And what it is, is it's concentrated soap that's dried and pressed into a sheet.
01:05:14
Speaker
So when it's time to do a load of laundry, you grab one sheet of this stuff and throw it on top of your clothes and slam the lid and hit go. And it completely.
01:05:27
Speaker
turns into soap and dissolves. And it's cheap as hell. I'm buying these on Amazon. And it's been costing us about five or six cents a load to do our laundry. And it comes in a little cardboard box. And there is no other side product waste of this. It's it's you know, a fraction of the cost. There's no plastic in the landfill. There's no bring the jugs home from the store. It's just drop a sheet on top of your clothes and start the laundry and get going. It's clean, clean quality is good. It's an Yeah, I mean, I haven't noticed my clothes being any different than when we used to use like the tide sent free liquids as what we used to use. And then
01:06:23
Speaker
i haven't noticed any difference in my clothes being clean and i'm saving a lot of money and nice amazon will send you a box in a couple days and it's like ten bucks it's like ten bucks for cheats or something. I don't know. Maybe it's 15 bucks for 200 cheats. I don't remember what it is. It was like five or six cents a load though under easy. It's a, it's an odd recommendation for a, for, for a tech show, but I mean, Hey, it's, it's something practical. We all get our clothes dirty in the shop. We got to wash them somewhere and we might as well save some money. used to design it Yeah.
01:06:58
Speaker
I'm sure somebody, yeah, I'm sure there's all kinds of robots figuring out how to take the soap and flatten it down into a little. It's wafer. Yeah. It's just, it's almost like a little foam sheet and it's like two or three mil thick foam sheet. You know, it just dissolves in there and does a good job. Interesting. Yeah. It's a good product. I figure, Hey, you know, everybody should, you know, hear about it.
01:07:27
Speaker
Yeah. All tens of our listeners should get the tens of people. yeah Yeah, exactly. But, you know, I mean, that that said now, but that doesn't mean that, I mean, we we may have ah tens of listeners this week, but that doesn't mean that these episodes won't rack up hundreds eventually because of perpetuity. i've I've noticed that every episode we release all of the episodes tend to go up by the new amount of listeners. So I mean, most of the people that are finding us on episode four are going back and downloading one, two, and three. So yeah, yeah you know, even though these ones aren't super popular yet, we're going to get there. I think if we give it time and, uh, everybody that's super interested in the show is super interested in the guests and the people and
01:08:25
Speaker
There's no reason to not go back and hit the back catalog. I mean, you you find a good show, you go, well, there's only this many, let's go back and listen to them all. And this many can be crazy. Cause I mean, uh, like, uh, Jimmy and the guys on making it are what 460 episodes and the people will find them now and they'll go back and listen to the whole thing from the beginning.
01:08:52
Speaker
which is some level of commitment. I got to tell you, you must have some spare time on your hands. Um, yeah. Yeah. So, so outside of becoming famous on this podcast, um, where can people find you Lee? Uh, yeah. So, uh, primarily through Instagram, uh, under twig and pot, um, twig and, twig and bot. Yep.
01:09:16
Speaker
And then, ah yeah, that also gets posted across to Facebook under the same tag. And then, ah yeah, twigginbot.com.au is the website that's got our furniture on it. Awesome. Yeah. and yeah Okay. Well, you know, this is going to be tough for you. I mean, I like to ask people what their dream tool is, but you've kind of already got the dream tool.
01:09:45
Speaker
um Is there a different tool that is a dream tool or are there just some really amazing upgrades that you could give to this one because you've already got the best thing? What is your dream tool and do you already have it? Yeah, I dreamed about this tool for a long time and the dreams keep changing and adding bits to it. ah But yeah, the the point I've got it to, I'm pretty happy. There's always new cutters and and bits and pieces I'd love to add to it. Or maybe I could throw a ninth axis in there sometime. um So the yeah, the turntable we can actually stand up and use like a giant lathe. We've got a tail stock at the other end. And um yeah, it can mount a log up to 10 meters logos long or something between it.
01:10:42
Speaker
But it's ah it's a forklift job to be able to you know change that configuration. And it'd be nice just to have a ninth axis that magically brought it up to to that position. But there's always other tools I'd love. I'd like to get a small machining center um for cutting steel um and yeah maybe a fiber laser at some time at some stage ah for engraving metal. and Um, yeah, but yeah, what about you too? Oh, well, you've got mine. I would actually really be interested in finding something that would be of the scale. I could actually fit in my basement shop, you know, something that, uh, you know, the one meter reach and, you know, 10 or 20 pound capacity.
01:11:42
Speaker
You know, just enough to push a, you know, couple horsepower spindle around in circles and maybe hook a spinning circular blade onto it or something like that for fun. But I I'd say it's small arm. I I've got nowhere to go and no, and not enough ambition to do something with a robot of your scale, but something, you know, desktop or maybe even Bolted to the floor in the corner. Just give it the whole corner of the shop Give it like a you know, five foot by five foot. This is your corner. This is your safe zone You you you'd work over here. Yeah protect it with the soil blade Exactly. Yeah guard the corner with the blade exactly. Yeah, just don't don't go near it Remote shut off just in case it ever gets intelligent and wants to come after me
01:12:40
Speaker
Just keep, uh, just keep the power switch just out of reach of it so I can get okay keep it off the network. Yeah. What was yours? Al it's been a few weeks. It it has been a few weeks. I mean, and you know, I kind of got scolded because I was like, you know, I'd really like a bigger, more capable CNC, and but that's like not dream dream. You know, I already have a CNC you, but you know what? One of my dreams has always been, and I'm.
01:13:09
Speaker
I'm not an archaea an architect. A file like, ah you know, I'm not an architectural geek over things, but I have always wanted to and I have a dream and I have even drawn up my version of plans for an Earth contact geodesic dome workshop.
01:13:31
Speaker
I want I want to basically build an eight foot basement in the ground, open, you know, walk like a walkout basement. and then put a and then put a geodesic dome on top and have the workflow of the shop just be a circle, have ah have my desk or ah you know an office kind of in in glass where I can keep clean a clean room in the center and then just have tools all the way around the would be an amazing shop.
01:13:59
Speaker
it's actually Those geodesic domes are pretty cool. um yeah I lived in a nice neighborhood at one point when I was younger where we had a neighbor that had a geodesic dome over a small a swimming pool built on their house. It was, yeah these people were loaded.
01:14:21
Speaker
Clearly yeah yeah there was a lot of money in that neighborhood. We were not the we were not the nice house in that neighborhood by There's there's actually a gentleman right through the woods here interestingly enough to your statement He lives in a geodesic dorm and he owns a pool company there go Yeah, they just that there's wasn't it it was maybe a Maybe a 20 foot dome 20 foot across, you know and like 10 or 12 foot tall but it was that was the roof over their pool room basically and uh The area around it and that was but I mean we we had another neighbor with with an olympic sized pool indoor
01:15:11
Speaker
attached to their house. So I mean, it was it was one of those neighborhoods. Yeah. Mine, mine would have to be about 60. Yeah, because if you're go it's gonna be a big um Yeah, it's a big dome. That's why I want to go with content, you know, basically earth contact, because then you can just do the top. You don't have to do all the structure you can use. It'll be like a hybrid hybrid dome, but, uh, yeah. And they're just, I just liked the, it like they're the strongest, you know, an arc is the strongest form, you know, that we have geometrically, you know, type thing. And we're not violent storms, but.
01:15:52
Speaker
weather up here but we do have nasty winters so it would uh it would be a good efficient building so yeah that's it geeking out on buildings why not well i mean the climate controlled workshop of any kind would be nice oh My mic my shop it's it's a two-car garage. It's 20 24 by 28 feet and it's air-conditioned and heated because I'm fat No,
01:16:24
Speaker
no no we do I use I use window units and I've got a just a like a mister heater for a pain hang, you know hangs many splits we were gonna do a mini split and we figured I Cheap window units that you can trash and throw away every two or three years and the commercial resiners You can just maintain and keep them clean because there's four working parts in it Whereas the shop environments they just destroy many splits there, you know Everybody that's put them in all the mr. Cools that we see all the videos a couple of years ago They're all either being replaced or they're not using them anymore Because the shop the shop just destroy them
01:17:06
Speaker
I can't remember who was talking. Was that was that on making it? They were talking about that a couple months ago, having to replace their mini splits. Where was that? Could have been Jay. Jay Bates did a really in depth and he built serious filtration for him. And then he like, you know, and now he's moved. He's onto another building, but he did like a whole series on pros and cons. And that's kind of what made me decide not to.
01:17:31
Speaker
Um, cause I'm not, I'm not going to do the maintenance he was doing, which means I just eat them faster. right Is it just the dust that gets into them? or Yeah. The, the, the fins, you know, they're like a radiator basically in this defined fine dust, big sawdust that if you can see it, it's that's not a problem. yeah It's the stuff you can't, the, the electric static stuff that really just jams everything up. I mean, it even dust collector filters, it wrecks them too. Yeah.
01:18:02
Speaker
Excuse me, but uh, and that's the dust is dangerous, unfortunately. Yeah, you know, right. Of course it is. Yeah. It's always the invisible stuff that wants to kill us yeah the yeah microbes, the germs, the yeah fine particular, the cause the war of the worlds.
01:18:22
Speaker
The, the, the carbon dioxide that comes up through your basement floor somehow. And it's, it's all that little stuff that you can't see pervasive. So you have no climate control in your shop. How big is your shop? I didn't even, did we ask you? Uh, no, it's about 400 square meters. So 4,000 square feet, maybe.
01:18:50
Speaker
That's a big shop. Yeah. It's a factory we rent that, yeah. Yeah. All set up. in But no, it's brick walls and a tin roof and it's got isolation on, so just like a layer of foil, ah but it's you know probably 30 years old and falling off your spots. So yeah, you get ah you get a good idea of what the temperature is outside. Yeah. And it gets toasty there, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah.
01:19:18
Speaker
Yeah, we're saying we need other factories. So if it's if it's one hot day, or maybe two, we're not too bad. But after three, and yeah, really heats up and starting to get thermal mass. Yeah. It's pretty cold in the winter too. Helps a little bit when we run the kiln. We've got a vacuum wood drying kiln here.
01:19:40
Speaker
Um, trying the pieces that yeah, got some big heaters in it, but, uh, that'll keep you warm. Yeah. Yeah. Hold that. Does it actually get that cold there? No, like, yeah, we might get maybe down to zero, uh, Celsius on a really cold, you know, night here once or twice a year. But yeah, normally it's, um, yeah, above that.
01:20:11
Speaker
It's 22 degrees Celsius here outside at the moment, so. Yeah, well, it's summer, so. Yeah. We've got summer down there. Yeah. The world is that the world has tipped to you towards the sun this time of year. Yeah. And and yet you managed to not fall off the earth. Go figure.
01:20:38
Speaker
ah Holding on. Gotta hold on. Yeah, well, good thing the gravity all pulls towards the middle, right? Yeah. Man, and you know, uh, we have not gotten any ask the host segments yet. Nobody has asked us any questions. We're going to have to do something about this. I'm going to talk to all four of my people.
01:21:00
Speaker
yeah well but Eventually we're going to get a listener that wants to know something and we will be happy to potentially answer that question.
01:21:11
Speaker
But yeah that is true you know, I mean, hey, if you're out there, send us a DM to our Instagram or drop into our Discord and throw us a question and we'll we'll give it a shot.
01:21:23
Speaker
um you You got anything else you want to you want to mention about the robot toy here or did we miss anything? um I don't know, we've covered a fair bit of it. um But yeah, I guess the other key thing we have here is the yes the vacuum kiln. Because we're working straight from a log at some point, you've got to dry that um you know to create a finished furniture piece. um So yeah, designed and built a vacuum kiln because there weren't many options available in Australia.
01:21:59
Speaker
um But yeah, so we'll we rough out something roughly to shape with the robot from a log using the band saw and chain saw. And then typically put that into the vacuum kiln. um Yeah, use that to dry it over a couple of weeks and then put it back in the robot cell and and finish machine it to shape.
01:22:23
Speaker
So you're literally farm to table. yeah yeah ah Snapped to time. Yeah, you went to the farm and bought a tree and made a table.
01:22:36
Speaker
ah considering about a 30 year product line appears to be tables, that is about accurate. Beautiful work, by the way, your work is amazing. Amazing. No, thanks. At least i've I've seen the Instagram page as well. Everything looks better on Instagram. So yeah yeah, it does. And if it's not on if it's not on Instagram, did it happen? Yeah, no, probably not.
01:23:04
Speaker
well there's I hear there's people in the workshop that don't post anything online. um I don't know many of those people, but I hear it's a thing. yeah You don't actually have to share everything you do online. It's apparently just ah it's something that a lot of us like to do because it's fun.
01:23:27
Speaker
and you know we like and a lot of us shouldn and we like the attention and lots of us that are actually making product like the customers that come when they see you do flashy stuff on Instagram and on Facebook, they, that they see somebody making a, what is it? 200 centimeter nut with inside threads and nice beveled edges and everything. And they're like, wow, you know, that's, that, that's some eye catching shit. Um, may so do you think you could car, could you take a log and carve a crescent wrench?
01:24:09
Speaker
big enough to turn one of your 200 centimeter nuts? Yeah, definitely. And I've had had quite a few people ask. Well, initially, they would ask when I'm making the bolt. So I'm working on the bolt at the moment. But yeah, now people are you know asking for spanners and sockets and Right. It would make sense to have a spanner and a socket to put the nut and the bolt together once you've got those. Yeah. Have you heard of Paul Jackman? but Even if you've, even if you've got no use for it, it would be some amazing content. Really. yeah Yeah. I did definitely consider doing that a few years ago. We even had a chat to a tool company over here. We were going to brave one with their logo and, and yeah, do a short video with that.
01:24:59
Speaker
That would be a good promo for a brand. It really would, you know, just a standard Craftsman wrench. yeah print Somebody like Craftsman would give you enough money to make that happen because that's super, that's super content for a brand like that. Yeah.
01:25:22
Speaker
Yeah but yeah I actually the nut the giant wooden hex nuts we actually used to make the we'll do the final machining by screwing them on to a matching jig so it actually thread them on um but yeah I left one on overnight uh once and it because I was machining them wet then the timber actually shrunk onto the jig and we couldn't get it off so but yeah we really could have done with the span
01:25:52
Speaker
Yeah. Well, wt 40. Yeah, well, I mean, you could always just get a big grabber hand for the robot. like Think, think, uh,
01:26:08
Speaker
ah aliens, the movie, you know, they've got those big walking things with the big grabby hands, you know, the grabby hand part you don't need you don't need to go all Hacksmith and make the whole loader. Just the hand just having a big grabby hand that works like a ah like the ah Crescent Ranch that opens and closes. I mean, you could just have the robot arm reach over and do all the turning the nut and that that'd be amazing content too. Just honestly, I mean, once it makes the wrench, you have the wrench mounted on the robot arm so the robot can turn the nut for you. That's content.
01:27:00
Speaker
it sounds like a lot of work though yeah Yeah. No, it's a good idea. might ah money It is a good idea. if you can If you can slide that in between jobs that actually pay you money, then yeah and there's there's priorities in life and the things that you can charge money for are definitely more important for somebody that's running ah ah you know renting a factory sized place to make things. One had to find ways to make money to cover that rent.
01:27:33
Speaker
Well, I tell you what, I'm going out to my shop tomorrow and tell Hannibal, that's the name of my CNC that he's half the CNC he should be. Yeah. what Oh, well. but You better, you better step it up. Sounds fair. It looks like he does some pretty good work anyway. I that. He does. He does. Yeah.
01:28:03
Speaker
I guess I've got a question for the host. Sure. Yeah, sure. Fiber lasers. You're ah you're using one there, aren't you, Al? I am. Yeah, a little. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what sort of like what sort of power and specs have you got on your machine and and what can that do? Mine. it Mine is a a Thunder brand. um It's the Aurora 8. It is a 50 watt.
01:28:33
Speaker
It's not a Mopah or any of that. yeah It's just a straight 50 watt. I have a 300 millimeter lens, I believe, which is kind of the middle of the road. I can handle, I can i can do six inches by six inches, roughly. yeah um If you're going to do super fine detail, you can do, big it's a bigger lens, I think, but that drops you down to like two and a half by two and a half.
01:29:00
Speaker
okay um My laser is fully encased with it. It's got the garage door, you know, like it's not open. And I, that was considerable. You like your eyesight? I do like my eyesight and and it's right next to me. And from what the research I did, you know, fiber lasers can talk about stupid fine. You don't want to be breathing brass dust. Yeah. I mean, wood dust is, you can process that. It's it's organic. Yeah.
01:29:31
Speaker
so i just you know i spent i went with a little less power and got the safety of the enclosure and and and the comfort of knowing that it's it's safe and all that i got a rotary i mean i i engraved the casing of a uh a brass casing of a hole puncher yeah are We let oh, are we allowed to say that on here? But I engraved I engraved that in the rotary so it gets pretty small I could do the inside of a wedding band, you know, it's pretty It's pretty pretty amazing. Yeah, and So but to your point, I know you're interested in them. You can get a lot more power for a lot less money You have other brands
01:30:13
Speaker
Yeah. But I, I chose to go with comfort and safety. Yeah. For me, you know, if I end up ah power on these things is an absolute trade-off on time. but that's all And that's the only trade-off as far as I can tell is somebody who doesn't have one is that with the fiber lasers, they can all do the same job, but with the low power,
01:30:40
Speaker
you're going to take an hour of repeated passes to get the same thing that a high power one could do it in 20 minutes. But it's, it's just, if it's important enough for you to get it done quickly, the power matters. Otherwise yeah it's like, if I was going to do it for a hobby, I don't care if the thing has to run for two and a half hours to do a a deep engraving on like a challenge coin kind of thing.
01:31:10
Speaker
If I want to do 3D engravings on something, I don't care if it takes three hours because I have three hours. This is hobby for me versus somebody that wants to turn out challenge coins one after the other because they're selling them at for a hundred bucks a piece. You're going to want those to get done in 15 minutes. You're going to need the hundred watt fiber to get that done quick or 200. I don't know how high they go. Yeah. yeah You can get 250 now. OK, the only the only thing you would. And ah and again, at ah at a hobbyist level, probably non. Probably not a a something you should be super concerned about, but if you're going to be doing production, yes, time. But I i have found and have in reading. Though.
01:32:03
Speaker
The lower power lasers take like a hundred watt takes an hour. A 50 Watts going to take two hours, a 25 Watts going to take three hours or four hours, I should say. But the problem you run into at 25 Watts is the thermal load on the piece. and Actually, you could lose, um you could lose detail because you're heating it longer, slower and longer. yeah and yeah you're not dissipating heat fast enough. You're heating the metal up for four hours straight and it's going to retain that and build up.
01:32:36
Speaker
you can do cooling tables like they have like almost like candy tables you know what i mean like you people use marble people use like our aluminium ah with computer coolers running through them like there's all kinds of mods now that people are doing yeah um okay so yeah he but but you would really have to run that thing you'd be running a 20 watt maximum and if you're gonna If you're going to do the things that will cause those issues, you're going to buy a bigger laser anyway. But 50 to 100 watt, you can mark and do pretty much anything comfortably. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Over 100 watt, you're just looking for speed. Yeah.
01:33:19
Speaker
and until you get up into cutting lasers and they're just fun. yeah not Now, there's something to put on the end of the robot. We did do one robot system with that at my previous work. Right. and Three kilowatt laser on this.
01:33:37
Speaker
yeah i me time See, see, that's how the world ends because of because of people like you robots just start slicing buildings open.
01:33:50
Speaker
um Yeah, that's that that's ah that's that's working and stuff right up into the Austin Powers or Tony Stark range right there, aren't you? Yeah, yeah.
01:34:04
Speaker
Oh, well. It is what it is. But I think that's about all we're going to have for today. I think Al's about ready for bed. It's getting kind of late and it's yeah almost mid-afternoon in Australia. yeah and what I think you're 17 and 18 hours ahead of us respectively.
01:34:29
Speaker
yeah so behind ahead of us yes yeah Yeah, he's a man from the future. Can you tell us what the stock market did tomorrow? on today It seems like i said you few key recommendations. Yeah. Yeah. Lee, this has been amazing. I've been, when he told me he was having you on before, as we were beginning this podcast, he's like, I've got a guest already. I was, I've been, excited I've been excited for five episodes now. Well, I think five episodes ago, I think he was on the, uh, he was near the top of the, uh,
01:35:11
Speaker
want list of people that I wanted to talk to, but, uh, he hasn't been confirmed for that many weeks. yeah it's good I didn't know anything about it then. Well, you know, we, we had to get a couple episodes in before I found yeah my dad yeah a pleasure to meet you, yeah. jeff michael's great chatting to you both and Definitely. Good to have you on. Thanks for coming on the show.
01:35:40
Speaker
Really appreciate that. And that's an amazing conversation about that fun tool you've got going on. And everybody else who enjoyed this episode should go follow Lee under Twig and Bot. And I'd like to thank Al for taking the time to hang out tonight and thank all the listeners for tuning in.
01:36:04
Speaker
I need to give a huge thank you to all our current patrons for their support. So many thanks to Adam from BKR Customs. And a huge thanks to our new patron this week, who is Ed Swanson of Ed's Clocks and More. And Ed makes a lot of awesome clocks and more.
01:36:26
Speaker
So you need to go give him a follow on Instagram. It is Ed's EDS underscore clocks and more one word. So thank you for the support. And, uh, if you've enjoyed listening and would like to help support the show, you can, uh, share it with your friends, leave a review, or you can join our Patreon and find the Patreon at patreon.com slash did you fabricators?
01:36:56
Speaker
You can leave podcast reviews on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Podchaser, Spotify, Podcast Addict, Audible, and GoodPods. And I see we've got a Discord server open to all listeners. Patrons get access to an exclusive patron channel.
01:37:15
Speaker
and direct links to our discord server and patreon page are in the digifabricators instagram bio which you should also be following at digi-fabricators And if you or someone you know does cool things with their tools, please contact us. We only have so many friends to invite and we will need your suggestions to keep the show going. So I can be found most places as a weird guy and Al can be found under New York woodworks, which is NY woodworks with an X. Thanks again to everyone. And we will catch you on the next episode.
01:38:04
Speaker
Sweet, nailed it.