Transcript
John Saunders: Good, I thought Grimsmo was on open. Episode 456, Welcome to the Business of Machining. My name is John Saunders.
johngrimsmo: My name is John Grimsmo. That
John Saunders: I literally have a note that says, be present during the bomb. And I had scrolled up in my notes and it said 455 Grimsmo. Sorry.
johngrimsmo: was fine.
John Saunders: How are you?
johngrimsmo: I'm doing awesome.
John Saunders: Yeah?
johngrimsmo: Yeah. I have a lot of good notes for you today.
John Saunders: um Okay, well, let's, you want to dive in? You want to do prelim lists?
johngrimsmo: Sure. Prelim list. My prelim list is house lady, a win and two thank yous, a carbon fiber white light interferometer and engraved knives.
John Saunders: Oh my God, dude. Okay, well, I'll keep my list punchy. Really wanted to come back to the waterfall approach on budgeting. I really like it. And a new shop air system, toolbox drawer, like a 10 year purge, like over major purge.
John Saunders: And just recapping a wonderful week of having Justin Gray do an internship.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Cool. Yeah, I want to hear all about that.
John Saunders: ah Dude, just start going.
johngrimsmo: Start. So, I mean, just before I came into work, I was chatting outside with Meg. We're just standing beside the house. And then, you know, this older lady walks up to deliver the newspaper, the local Grimsby newspaper.
johngrimsmo: And and she goes, is this your house? And Meg goes, yeah. And she goes, used to be my house. I used to live here. Like we live in a hundred year old house. It's kind of ah a feature in town and it's beautiful.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And The second those two started talking, I was like, I got to go to work. You guys have fun. Like me Meg loves history.
John Saunders: Hilarious. Hilarious.
johngrimsmo: She loves the history of our house specifically. She's gone to the archives in town. She's done research on our house. So this was like, holy cow. She wanted to know everything. The lady's like, do you still have formaldehyde in the basement?
John Saunders: so
johngrimsmo: And we're like, what? Tell me everything.
John Saunders: if you Wait, was it that's like embalming fluid, right?
johngrimsmo: I don't know. Yeah, I don't know.
John Saunders: Isn't it? Oh, okay.
johngrimsmo: Asbestos. I don't know what it was. Something about the pipes.
John Saunders: Yeah, yeah.
johngrimsmo: I left. Yeah.
John Saunders: Did you find out when, what era she lived there?
johngrimsmo: 80s, 80s and 90s.
John Saunders: Okay. So not the prior owner. Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: No, because the prior owners was like 2000s and 10s. And then, yeah so it's just interesting. Funny, a little like happened 30 minutes ago, you know?
John Saunders: That's cool. Yeah, yeah. That's super cool.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: And she's your regular mail lady?
johngrimsmo: um No, the just the newspaper delivery, like does it for fun, whatever, retirement.
John Saunders: Or newspaper lady. Okay, interesting. Interesting.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, random.
John Saunders: That's fine.
johngrimsmo: Okay, I'll jump into a win and two thank yous. I have two thank yous for you, Saunders. Last week, you gave me two suggestions that I ran with and it turned into an epic win. So with carbon fiber machining, you're like, just use the $8 end mills.
johngrimsmo: I'm using the $8 end mills. And you're like, don't you own a vice?
John Saunders: Good.
johngrimsmo: Well, I'm using a vice.
John Saunders: ah
johngrimsmo: So I actually really appreciate the bluntness there because holding the six by six aluminum half inch thick fixture, just a little chunk of aluminum. I was trying to vacuum fixture it, but it would slide and it would move. And I was thinking I got to like underbolt it and make this complicated locating fixture. You're like, throw in a vice. I'm like, I literally could do that. Couldn't I?
johngrimsmo: So I pallet changed in a big chunk vice that I have and I reversed the jaws. So they go big, like six inch wide. um And then, I put an and indicator on top because I wanted to see how much bow, like it's flat.
johngrimsmo: I want it to stay flat when you clamp it in a vice.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And I know it will bow. I just want to control the bow and I want to find the torque that like, you know, it gives me five tenths bow, not five thou.
John Saunders: Yeah, sure.
johngrimsmo: Surprisingly, it bowed down. i was shocked.
John Saunders: Interesting.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, it bowed five tenths down. and I was like, all right, I'm moving on.
John Saunders: oh oh yeah
johngrimsmo: i don't care. Like, I don't need to understand this, but it's fascinating.
John Saunders: yeah. You weren't using interrapid indicator, were you?
johngrimsmo: No, I'm a Mitzatoyo guy. Why?
John Saunders: Yeah, no, no. Because you know those are backward, which would like drive me...
johngrimsmo: I didn't know that.
John Saunders: They're good and quite common, but I...
johngrimsmo: But they go the other way? What?
John Saunders: Apparently, yeah.
johngrimsmo: Weird. um Yeah, so I found like I'm using my inch torque wrench, not the big foot pound torque wrench, because I don't need much.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: I like over torqued it and let the jaws bite into the side.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And then I untorked it and just like light torque, five tenths of bow, and then kind of reprobed it and reoriented it.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: And it's like, send it.
John Saunders: Yeah, for sure.
johngrimsmo: And it's actually great because now the fixture is repeatable in the grippy jaws because they indented the fixture.
John Saunders: Oh, for sure.
johngrimsmo: And so I'm like, oh, sick, this is amazing. I can just make fixtures and have them repeat and like drop it in and move on. And the $8 end mills, I have a bunch of 332nd Imco end mills that I bought for a job. And I have like 20 of them and they're both double ended.
johngrimsmo: They're all double ended. And I'm like, oh, sick, like.
John Saunders: Oh, nice.
johngrimsmo: These are free because I don't need them and they're working well. um
John Saunders: It's actually like arguably, and this gets a little MBA ish, but it's actually better than free because they were, they were, they cost no incremental, but they were, they were waste or what Jay, what Jay Pearson say, like they're actually taking up space in your shop.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, the junk, yeah.
John Saunders: So you being able to convert them away from being junk, freeing up the storage space and turning them into something that produces money for you is like, as good a win as it comes.
johngrimsmo: Yep, yep. And it's interesting. Normally I stopped using double-ended end mills completely because I like having the backstop in the collet, especially with the RegoFix PG collets.
John Saunders: Uh-huh,
johngrimsmo: So I want a single-ended tool that I can slam up against the backstop, but also like an eighth-inch end mill double-ended on an eighth-inch shank, you run the risk of chipping the tool while putting it into the holder.
johngrimsmo: um And it is a few tenths undersized than the holder, but it's like, it's not ideal. So i kind of moved away from double ended end mills, but this is a eighth and shank 332nd end mill. So it's smaller.
johngrimsmo: And they're free or better than free, as you said.
John Saunders: yeah
johngrimsmo: And I'm like, sorry, let's send it. So I put four of them in different holders and I tried to figure out sister tooling on this video, but I couldn't quite figure it out. um They have it grouping.
johngrimsmo: So you're like, okay, group tools 39 and 40 into one group. And then you call, group one, which is M6T901 calls group one, but the machine kept complaining some error.
johngrimsmo: So i'm like, I don't know if i need to unlock it or like something weird.
John Saunders: Interesting.
johngrimsmo: so I gave up, but, um,
John Saunders: The H value too, does that flow through to the corresponding T number for the H value?
johngrimsmo: good question. I'm not sure.
John Saunders: Hashtag don't crash your speedio doing this.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Hashtag know what you're doing. Um, it,
John Saunders: Hashtag ask Claude.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, it must. I did search through the manuals and then I just got fed up. And i was like, I don't need them yet. I haven't even started cutting yet. I just need to.
John Saunders: Is your, pardon, this sounds like an interrogation. Is your not first go-to just to immediately send picture to Claude?
John Saunders: It needs to be. I mean, I've
John Saunders: So you just paste it in.
johngrimsmo: Yep, yep.
John Saunders: And then literallyly on your phone, you can just take a picture if you're out of machine control. But mean, John, I was on the phone with somebody. I had a question about a very niche Japanese product and whether or not it supported whether it had a built-in rotary union.
John Saunders: And it's the same thing. I'm like, there's no way it's going to ask me this. But like I was on the phone, so I didn't have a choice. I literally grabbed the ah URL and said, do I need an external rotary union? And within seconds, I had an articulate explanation of how it for works.
John Saunders: It's just like, take picture of your brother, send it to Claude or whoever, and just sit back.
johngrimsmo: That's awesome.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, yeah. Just see what happens. Love it.
John Saunders: Are you going to group? Okay, so if you use groups, are you going to just do time limits?
johngrimsmo: Yes.
John Saunders: Okay. Yeah, makes sense.
johngrimsmo: Which comes from experience. You don't know what it is yet. And roughing tools will have different times than finishing tools.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: I use them differently. Like a rougher just blasts through and, you know, might cut a whole inlay in 18 seconds, but it's going to wear it a lot. Whereas a finisher might go for many, many, many minutes per inlay as it's like tickling it, depending on how I do it, whatever.
John Saunders: Got it.
johngrimsmo: But So then I cut a bunch of inlays over the weekend using the wax work holding, the mighty bite, you know, sacrificial layer of ultra thin wax, like like a glue stick kind of thing.
John Saunders: Oh, awesome.
johngrimsmo: um So I heated up the fixture and then I glue sticked on the wax and then I put the part on, put some weight on top, let it cool off. And then i had quite a lot of failures trying to make these, you know, the top of a so a saga pen.
johngrimsmo: the button where you push, I'm trying to make little round inlays for that out of carbon fiber.
John Saunders: ye
John Saunders: Oh, interesting.
johngrimsmo: So like 200,000 diameter. um
John Saunders: Okay. Okay, sure.
johngrimsmo: And I kept flying them off the fixture. And i was like, oh, you know, the first instinct is the wax is sucking. It's not doing the thing. And then I i sifted through the chip bin and I found all of the little pieces that fell off. And it turns out when you nest a whole bunch of little circles together, you get triangles between the circles of leftover material.
johngrimsmo: right And you're trying to be all efficient and nest them all together close. Turns out when the finishing tool gets to that triangle, it flings it off and it takes my part with it. So every single piece in the chip bin was my round thing plus the little middle triangle.
johngrimsmo: And I thought that was really interesting. So then I reoriented everything and spaced the parts out to be like, like leave stock material around every single part.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: It's wasteful, air quotes, but um much better success.
John Saunders: Sure.
johngrimsmo: And then the coolest thing is once I still had some that were stuck on, I could took i could take a Saga button with a hole in it that's going to fit and I can put it, i'm sort of, I'm installing it halfway to break it off the fixture.
John Saunders: You're installing it.
John Saunders: Okay, okay.
johngrimsmo: And I did one and I'm like, ooh, that's on there pretty good.
John Saunders: Still.
johngrimsmo: So I had almost everybody else in our machine shop like try this. I'm like, you got to like feel this.
John Saunders: Yes.
johngrimsmo: And it's like, you know you push and you're like, that's, huh. And it's not hard, hard, but it's harder than you think it is.
John Saunders: That's what she's, yeah.
johngrimsmo: So that was really cool. And that's for a tiny little like like quarter-inch circle.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: So imagine for a one-inch or bigger surface area. It's good stuff.
John Saunders: Oh, oh yeah. Yeah, that's crazy.
johngrimsmo: it's I'm like really impressed. And I was able to remove just one set of inlays with a hairdryer while mounted in the machine without altering like the rest of it.
John Saunders: Okay. you That's cool, John.
johngrimsmo: So like there's there's some some legs here. This is pretty cool.
John Saunders: And are you, so is it is reusable? You heat it up and then it...
johngrimsmo: It's, you probably want to clean it off between each use and then add new, because chips and dust and like contaminations and things like that, if you care about Z height and all that.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: But it's so, it's ultra thin.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: It's probably like a thou of final thickness.
John Saunders: Oh, I'm thinking of this like Play-Doh.
johngrimsmo: It's like, no, no, it's, you heat it up, right?
John Saunders: Interesting.
johngrimsmo: and And just like a glue stick, like an Elmer's kids glue stick, you're just melting it on.
John Saunders: Okay. Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: And then ideally very, very thin, very thin layer.
John Saunders: Okay, interesting. I'm gonna have to check that out.
johngrimsmo: But um grinding shop, Surface Engineering in California that I toured suggested it to me originally and they're like, we surface grind with this.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Like, yeah.
John Saunders: Yeah. Oh, with no magnet. Oh, that's crazy.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. And they're like, i'm never thrown a part.
John Saunders: sure
johngrimsmo: Like I've had worse problem. They said I've heard worse problems blocking in parts than I have waxing them.
John Saunders: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
johngrimsmo: So just um I'm onto something here.
John Saunders: Huh. what
johngrimsmo: It's pretty cool.
John Saunders: Yeah, that's really cool. Hmm. I want to pick some up. Are there different versions? If I recall, there's just one Whitey Bite Wax. Nice. Okay.
johngrimsmo: there are now four or three mighty white waxes in red white and blue american colors the blue one is the more powerful one most powerful one slightly higher working temp 170 degrees fahrenheit but uh yeah it's like great
John Saunders: Okay. Good.
John Saunders: nice
johngrimsmo: comes in, I think it's a five pack of sticks, the size of a pickle um that are like 170 bucks. So it's not free, but it's yeah.
John Saunders: Yeah, sure, sure.
johngrimsmo: And you kind of need the burner and you need the setup. You need to like really kind of mentally invest in this, which I have.
John Saunders: Yeah.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: So I'm i'm going to do a video on it and kind of explain ni it's kind of mind blowing. Like it's, it's pretty cool.
John Saunders: Yeah. I'd love to see. I should make a note to look up a video as well. wait
johngrimsmo: Yeah. and there's not much out there. Like, yeah.
John Saunders: Yeah. And that funny how there's still, it's kind of how I felt to reminisce like 10 years ago. They're like, man, you just can't find information about some of the stuff that now what ah anyone who's listening to this podcast probably flies their trade on, but there's still a lot of these niches, whether it's in robots or grinders or, um,
johngrimsmo: Right.
johngrimsmo: Well, what's funny about this is, you know, you can ask AI all you want about wax fixture holding and I have and it's helpful, but I would love nothing more than to watch a video of myself doing it.
johngrimsmo: You know, it sounds weird, but I enjoy watching my videos because that's the content I want to watch. I would love nothing more than to watch a video of you explaining wax fixture holding.
John Saunders: Yeah, yeah wait right, right, right, right.
johngrimsmo: regardless of what what ai tells me right like i want to see a real person do it for real and talk about the problems and like like fail and succeed and all that stuff so cool
John Saunders: Right.
John Saunders: we have a We really have enjoyed getting ah getting to know and work with the Lights Out manufacturing team. And then out of the Toolpath Summit came the idea of let's create a Discord for Lights Out, which is, I believe, an open Discord that anybody who's interested in machine tool tending with, you know, you are robots or other similar cobots, et cetera, is welcome to join.
johngrimsmo: oh cool
John Saunders: And it's been great because we've started to build Discord, sub whatever you call subchannels. It's like, hey, let's have a subchannel. my phone. phones right here on um in feed and out feed tables and on programming the robots and on other stuff.
John Saunders: And what was funny was we actually, i should probably have added an update on that to our list today, but the robot is working great, but we are having some quirky things on the outfeed table, which is totally fine.
John Saunders: um But we were like, let's just simplify it because we shouldn't really have the outfeed be what's holding us up now. And we we did it what I've talked about before. we We've now built kind of four phases of the outfeed that I think we can step into. But for now, let's just let it keep making parts, and which is awesome. And it ran. Grant actually came in on the weekend and added 10 more hours of runtime to the machine in a matter of minutes.
John Saunders: um And that's what it's all about. Like, it was not something that you would have ever wanted to to do on the horizontal where it's like, okay, I got to spend an hour torque wrenches, my hands are dirty, calling out tombstones.
John Saunders: This is just like, yep, put some material in here and let it keep running.
johngrimsmo: No way.
John Saunders: But I brought that up because there was a funny moment on the discord where Grant was asking about the outfeed set up in this. And somebody was like, go watch your own video when you toured metal quest.
John Saunders: And they walked up to a Maltus and had some like kinematic ball pins in the cart had a matching coupler.
johngrimsmo: think
John Saunders: And then it had some like um almost like welding style toggle clamps that when you move the cart up to the machine, it locates, it clips in and But it was funny that like there's someone telling us to go watch our own video because the solution is already there.
johngrimsmo: Okay. It locates. ah
johngrimsmo: i love that.
johngrimsmo: Yep. Yep. But we forget because we can't remember it all. And that's interesting that Discord, even if it had like literally eight members, but there are eight members that use robot loading tables, like that would be very valuable.
John Saunders: Yeah.
John Saunders: It's great.
johngrimsmo: You know?
John Saunders: Yeah. Oh, and you get a you get a thank you. I know I said this to you offline, but um i was I built a new computer this past weekend and it was at Micro Center, which is an awesome store. I'm really grateful that that exists in this day and age with whatnot. And I was sitting there in the back of the store and a guy's like, you John Saunders? And i was like, yep. And he's like...
John Saunders: Just want to say thank you. You and Grim Samoa are the reason, you know, he I think he said the reason he got into the trades and he worked at a concrete, yeah.
johngrimsmo: No.
John Saunders: And i we get that at trade shows, but it's very, it's less common out outside, I think, exactly.
johngrimsmo: House in the Wild. Yeah.
John Saunders: So tip of the hat to you, John, for, you know,
johngrimsmo: Oh, yeah, you too. That's cool. So what's the new computer? Is it some serious or just another computer?
John Saunders: Yeah, I redid my home workshop and I had it ah i had had a seven-year-old all-in-one.
johngrimsmo: Right.
John Saunders: And to be fair, it was totally fine for, I don't, like a power user these days on many things, but I'm very particular. Actually, I'm very much going full Grimso on this home setup.
John Saunders: um I'm literally thinking like, just how do you make this dialed? And so I bought a 24 inch portable monitor that is about a quarter of an inch thick, period.
johngrimsmo: Oh my gosh.
John Saunders: And what's awesome, that thing was on Now it's probably, I'm not ah i'm not in the know these days, it's probably not the right refresh rate for gaming or whatever, but like, For me, it's great.
John Saunders: It has a hundred millimeter V-sum mount pattern on the back, which actually just barely still matches up with pegboard spacing on the OmniWall that I'm using.
johngrimsmo: OK.
John Saunders: And so I bolt the monitor through the pegboard. And so the monitor is now floating on the pegboard. I'll show you picture. And the cables are hidden behind.
johngrimsmo: Behind the peg bar.
John Saunders: So it looks, it looks, it looks sick.
johngrimsmo: Oh.
johngrimsmo: Oh, yeah. it's just It's supposed to be there.
John Saunders: But it wasn't gonna work with the all-in-one. So I just went to Micro Center, bought nothing crazy. And it wasn't that expensive and built my first computer in 20 years. William and I built one, but we use their service where they help you build it.
johngrimsmo: Right.
John Saunders: And I was like, oh, I thought this was gonna be like a lot harder.
johngrimsmo: Right.
John Saunders: Cause even when I did it was like jumper cables and more quirky bio stuff.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: It's like, it's easy.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: Where were we? what or What's next on your?
johngrimsmo: I think since we talked last week, Of the two outside engravers that we, engraving people, experts, that we are using, one of them had come in. And then after we talked last week, the second engraver engraved these two Norseman clips and sent them in.
John Saunders: Okay. Okay,
johngrimsmo: And they are just so fantastically like intricate and precise. I haven't even put them under our microscope yet, but the engraver is like, I'm so excited for you to put them under the microscope because most of my customers don't have these microscopes.
johngrimsmo: And he's like, I can't wait to hear, like he went full nerd on these and like really flexed. He said, it's got 24 karat gold, like inlay.
John Saunders: I was just saying, this is the one you put on Insta?
johngrimsmo: Yeah, it looks so good.
John Saunders: Yeah, those look sick.
johngrimsmo: And so now we're trying to figure out, like finalize the knives that these will go on, that we'll bring to blade show. and ah it's just the craftsmanship and the the not only the art but the skill of engraving it by hand under the microscope and you know feathering the engravings out so they like dot patterns get smaller and smaller and it's he's like gray and black and it's like how did you it's just so good and the 24k gold looks awesome and i i
John Saunders: Yeah.
John Saunders: I don't know how you
John Saunders: do this. Yeah. it's electroplated.
johngrimsmo: No. So I asked him, i was like, is like, how delicate is this?
John Saunders: What?
johngrimsmo: Is this a tiny little wafer thin flake that's on top and it's going to scratch off? And he goes, no, I i i thought of you and I went full Grimsmall on this. He goes, I carved it out about 15,000 deep. I dovetailed the inside of the walls and I took gold wire and I hammered it in to the corners and I filled the whole thing with gold wire and like blended it all together.
John Saunders: No.
johngrimsmo: And then he scraped the top off to reclaim any excess.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And then sanded it flat because gold is so valuable. Like every single dust particle you want to keep and recycle. um And he goes, yeah, I was pretty proud of that.
johngrimsmo: So I'm glad that it was like, oh,
John Saunders: Yeah. Dude, now I want to just go Google, like, can I buy 30 thou strand of gold? Why?
johngrimsmo: You can.
John Saunders: I'm sure you can, right?
johngrimsmo: Yeah, absolutely.
John Saunders: That's funny.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. And, and for these kinds of engravers, that's the standard is to like gold wire. Cause it's easy to make easy to extrude, easy it to buy and sell whatever.
John Saunders: Right.
johngrimsmo: Um, and gold is priced by the gram or pound or whatever it is. i don't know.
John Saunders: Those
johngrimsmo: Um, so yeah, it was pretty, pretty cool. And, uh, yeah, it can be really cool.
John Saunders: those are gonna be awesome.
johngrimsmo: So,
John Saunders: Actually, I realized I'm out next week, which means is this the last podcast pre-played?
johngrimsmo: I am here, me pull up calendar. What is today? The 20th?
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: 27th? I'm here on the 3rd.
John Saunders: Okay, great. We'll have a third that. Great.
johngrimsmo: Okay, but we're out next week.
John Saunders: Sweet. I'm out next week.
johngrimsmo: Okie dokie.
John Saunders: I wanted to make sure I didn't deprive you of any last Bladeshow announcements.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, yeah.
John Saunders: Oh, how is this? So the eighth-inch beater end mills are or through 30 seconds. where they're They're working?
johngrimsmo: They're working great. I've made three Norseman's worth of inlays and about 20 little saga buttons.
John Saunders: Good.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: um And I looked at the tool about halfway through and it's starting to wear. but I'm like, dude, if I have to replace it every three sets of inlays, I'm i'm winning.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: This is amazing.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: They are lasting better than the $100, $120 CVD-coded fancy, fancy, fancy NMLs. And i'm like, this is dumb.
John Saunders: Good.
johngrimsmo: Um, Mary tool actually sells PCD, uh, either brazed on inserts or solid PCB, PCD cores that are brazed onto the thing like flutes, like, like, like the tip of the end mill is black.
John Saunders: Interesting.
johngrimsmo: Cause it's a, you know, solid PCD.
John Saunders: Yeah, sure.
johngrimsmo: And so they're having a local grind shop, make those for them. They're out of stock right now. Otherwise i would buy some, but that might be like the ultimate solution of like set it and forget it and make a couple hundred inlays before replacing them.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: But for now, I don't really care. This is amazing.
John Saunders: Interesting.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: It'd be, it'd be fun to hear somebody like Amar talk to what, what actually wears the end mill. Cause I'm wondering if like, if drills are cheap and there's a PCD drill, should you, could you gang drill the profile, leave it structurally take in your girl, avoid or minimize chip recutting, which may not be a thing because you're kind of making dust, but I don't know.
John Saunders: Like, what is it?
johngrimsmo: Yeah. I mean,
John Saunders: Is it just time?
johngrimsmo: It's the abrasiveness of the carbon fiber or the the glass in G10 or whatever that it it rounds the end mill like so crazy. And when we were cutting Richlight a couple years ago for Saga cases, Richlight is a paper phenolic.
John Saunders: Yeah.
John Saunders: Oh, yeah.
johngrimsmo: It is so incredibly abrasive. Like it's wild. You're cutting paper, but it's like, it just rounds the tool and makes it a blunt edge, like visibly under the microscope.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: It's interesting, but carbon fiber is just so abrasive that it does that quicker.
John Saunders: I have a really fond memory. Somebody sent us, think they sent us a Richlight kind of like an ashtray, and then but somehow we also did a we did a Wednesday widget. I don't know it was a fixture or a mold, and it made me look up Richlight, and it kind it kind of looks like something between a synthetic wood and a natural wood or something. And it is layers of tree, um wood or paper or whatever with, I think, epoxy and resins in it.
johngrimsmo: yeah
John Saunders: And it becomes a highly pressured laminate. But it's it is very, and don't quote me on this, like it's very de dimensionally stable. It's it's very machinable. It was a very cool thing.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, and we we still have 12 by 12 by one inch chunks, like 40 of them when we were making saga cases, but the process was just unsustainable.
John Saunders: Oh, nice.
John Saunders: Oh, yeah.
johngrimsmo: So we stopped doing that. But it's maybe one day we'll use keep using the material because it's really cool. You just got to plan for that tool life or buy the fancy expensive tools that should theoretically last for a very long time.
John Saunders: Yeah. Right.
johngrimsmo: But yeah, going good.
John Saunders: What if you could use, you can't use a, you're going laugh carbide burr or like something totally different.
johngrimsmo: A lot of people do use a diamond cut burr style tool, which breaks up the chips and works great.
John Saunders: Okay. Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And maybe the dullness doesn't matter as much because there's more burrs and there's more things. So a lot of people use that, use them DLC coded, use them whatever.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: So there's there's a lot of options for sure. I'm kind liking these $8 endmills though. Like I've gone full circle and I'm like, ah, you can't do that.
John Saunders: yeah
johngrimsmo: That's stupid. It's not going work. well
John Saunders: yep
johngrimsmo: So far, it's working well enough. And I'm holding somewhere under a thou of dimensional tolerance, which is good for now. um I haven't measured it that closely, but it's like for the Saga button, I want to press fit theoretically, but they ended up all being a slip fit. So I'm going to glue them in.
johngrimsmo: But for the knife inlays, we have a laser cut layer of VHB tape that we're lay underneath.
John Saunders: That's cool.
johngrimsmo: And so I want about a thou or more of clearance around the outside so that they just you know slip in. i don't have to push them in. And the tape works awesome. so
John Saunders: Yeah, that's cool.
johngrimsmo: But yeah, it cuts great.
John Saunders: That's awesome.
johngrimsmo: And then the carbon burrs up a little bit, so you've got to hit it with some 1,200 grit sandpaper on all the edges just to make it all nice.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: It's working. Love it.
John Saunders: Good.
johngrimsmo: Nice to be back in the carbon fiber game. It's weird and dangerous material to work with. You don't want to breathe it in ever. But um but yeah, as long as the parts are clean and burr-free going to the customer, it's good to go. and It's beautiful material. so cool.
John Saunders: Yeah, that's what i'm I'm excited to see. I've ever saw the gold gold inlay on Insta, don't know if i saw it. Maybe you did post the inlays actually, the carbon. I don't.
johngrimsmo: I don't think I have yet. I've just been like head down working.
John Saunders: Okay. Yeah, sure. Good.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: we are so close to like some stuff really falling into place here at the shop um vf6 sold horizontal i believe is sold like like next steps like getting it out of here um which means other things can now fall into place but then i need to kind of bring myself a little bit more accountable on bringing coming back to some of my days off in the shop And it's like, okay, so you've been kind of failing at this. You can talk about the excuses, but instead of talk about the excuses, let's just talk about the plan. And the plan would be, we're away with the kids next week, but then it's okay, when you get back, just start with 45 minutes a day. Like I know I can easily do that and pick your projects. And one of them is to kind of clean up and bring home some of the, the UMC 400 work holding. and And what made me think of it as you talking about, like, I have a vice. So it's like,
John Saunders: We have the puck chuck on there. It works great. It is so nice to have that zero point system. And we have three or four different vices already. We have one magnet. We have a little mod vice fixture. So I want to get a send cut sand bracket that holds those fixtures right next to the machine. And then I want to kind of round out the work holding, kind of like we had done on the Tormach 1500 of just showing like, okay, if you want to walk up to this machine and you want to just have ah a bare aluminum surface and you want to put some Mighty Bite on there or superlouin tape, it's just there, good to go.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: And you have a tool library infusion that's good to go. It's a really, you every time you're like, ah, I need to do that. Oh, it's there.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, it's there.
John Saunders: It just feels like a win.
johngrimsmo: It's ready. yeah
johngrimsmo: Yep, you're reducing the friction.
John Saunders: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And like Courtney was reworking some puck chuck, um, parts and shouldn't say reworking, losing a tolerance that we over tolerance when we made them.
John Saunders: So, well, that's reworked, but, uh, um, I was like, Hey, I need to do this. Can um, grab the horizontal? And I took her picture off, put, uh, the magnet on and did my work and put hers back on two hours later.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: And he was just like, yeah, not like cycle start.
johngrimsmo: big deal. Yeah, zero point fixturing is such a game changer.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: I was kind of blind to it pretty much before I got the Kern. um Because on the Mori, we had the orange of ice palettes, which relatively repeat. And there's lots of other ways to do it. but since the Kern kind of steeped me into the Aroa system, and I'm like, oh, this is, especially with the pallet changer, you just put it away and come, like, I can take the machine over for half an hour and be like, I'm just going to run this one thing, and then and then it's yours.
John Saunders: Yeah. Yeah.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: I don't even have to put stuff back. They just call the next program, and it's great. And with enough tools to do kind of generally whatever you need, it's the best.
John Saunders: I'm jealous of the tools. Yeah. Yeah.
John Saunders: Yep.
johngrimsmo: Mm-hmm.
John Saunders: What's next on your list?
johngrimsmo: Last thing on my list is a white light interferometer.
John Saunders: Hmm.
johngrimsmo: So I've been toying with that more and more lately. And i I brought it home. It's like it's been home, but like the project, it's it's 99.99% done.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: And all I'm working on now is just the final algorithm of tweaking the video feed into the fringes or into the height map scan pretty much.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: um So I have the stepper motor attached. I have ultra fine-pitched thread as my linear, and then I have a linear rail. And so I have the mirror mounted. I have a three-point kinematic adjustable mount on the mirror. I have my LED with the pinhole and making collimated light that points light in a straight direction. And I have all this stuff and it's working and I have fringes. They're dark, but they're there.
johngrimsmo: um So I can see like, it's it's like it works, except the scan data is garbage, like not good enough yet.
John Saunders: Oh, this is huge progress then.
johngrimsmo: And I need to just fine tune the way it interprets the data.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: And then today I had 15 minutes. I'm like, I'm just gonna turn the light on again and like see fringes again, because it's so exciting to me to basically watch light interfere with itself and make bands of light.
johngrimsmo: like across the surface of my part and you tap the table, you lean on it too hard and they jiggle all over the place and they move.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: It's like so accurate. Except they were, even with no movement, with hands off the table and everything, they were doing two things. They were shimmering side to side, like one or two fringes, which is like 500 nanometer, half a micron, something like that of movement. I'm like, that's weird. And then also they were getting lighter and darker by once per second.
John Saunders: ah hold
johngrimsmo: Like, that's also weird. And so I'm sitting there asking, Cursor, I'm like, could the power supply that's giving constant current to my LED cause a pulsation in the LED?
John Saunders: Oh.
johngrimsmo: And they're like, maybe, putting an oscilloscope on it. I don't own an oscilloscope yet, but it's an option, okay. And then they're like, turn the exposure setting down on the camera, which I have a setting in my program to do.
johngrimsmo: So I turned the exposure down to one millisecond.
John Saunders: Oh.
johngrimsmo: It got way darker. But what's really cool is the fringes, which are supposed to be straight lines on a flat surface, became literal zigzags.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: like like, you know, 20, 30 zigzags long over the image, you know, a quarter inch of the screen or whatever. And I'm like, that's weird. so I'm sitting there asking cursor like this morning. um And they're like, with your exposure that low, what's happening is, and this camera only records at seven frames per second.
johngrimsmo: that's That's all I can do at this resolution or whatever. So what's happening is in one frame, it's called a um uh rolling shutter yeah exactly so in the course of one frame being caught there are enough vibrations that it's literally going zig zig zig zag zigzag zigzag zigzag in one frame and it's showing up in the live video feed as all these zigzags and i'm like that is the coolest thing ever it turns out it was my computer pc leaning up against my old watchmaker's desk
John Saunders: roll It's not Rolling Shutter. Rolling Shutter, sure. Yeah. Yeah.
John Saunders: yeah
johngrimsmo: And I was able to just literally push it away a quarter inch away from the desk with my finger.
John Saunders: No.
johngrimsmo: And I could watch the fringes get a lot straighter. And then I leaned it up against the the desk again, and they went all zigzag again.
John Saunders: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
johngrimsmo: And i was like, the the PC fans are vibrating my house and my table. And I'm seeing that in the in the fringes. It's so cool.
johngrimsmo: so
John Saunders: This is what you have to do is like a fun, like you are watching the interferometer and you go have your son like jump in the backyard, you know, or something like that, or jump in the...
johngrimsmo: On the grass would be interesting. In the house, I would see it for sure.
John Saunders: in the house, sure, you know what mean, though.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: like Or like back a car out of the driveway or something. Like I bet you, you can pick up on some insane stuff.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, literally.
johngrimsmo: Yep. Yep. And you won't always know what it's from. So I'm sitting there fighting like I've got two refrigerators nearby. I've got the, you know, the pumps in the house that are vibrating everything.
johngrimsmo: i don't know what I'm fighting right now. So i'm going to bring some foam from work and put it under the interferometer so that it's somewhat isolated and kind of play with that because
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: all these things you're like is it software is it i don't know what's wrong is it the light source is it my setup my whole 3d printed arrangement is like total garbage because it's jittery and vibrating and like
John Saunders: It's not charge garbage. on You're using it works. like Don't be...
johngrimsmo: version one but but where's where's the issue where's the source of error is the question and uh yeah
John Saunders: Sure.
johngrimsmo: So it's great. It's fun. But literally finding fringes is so hard because everything has to be so perfect.
John Saunders: Have you... Okay.
John Saunders: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
johngrimsmo: The angle of the mirror has to be perfect.
John Saunders: Right.
johngrimsmo: The distance of the mirror to the beam splitter of the beam splitter to the part, they have to match exactly to like nanometers and the angle has to be good.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
John Saunders: you know You're right, Ray.
johngrimsmo: Otherwise you just won't find anything. And now that I have a motorized mirror movement, I can like with my scroll wheel, I can jog forward, you know, tenths or hundreds of a millimeter at a time.
John Saunders: Yeah. Oh, that's nice.
johngrimsmo: But even still, it's hard to find those fringes if everything's not angled properly.
John Saunders: This is weird. You don't have, if there's seven major variables in the like sort of light stack, if you will, how do you know to perfect variable one before you move on to variable two?
johngrimsmo: Yeah, exactly.
John Saunders: Huh.
johngrimsmo: I don't know. So it's been fun. But literally like a couple hours this weekend, just like, I think everything works, but there's no fringes. What am I doing wrong? What am I doing wrong? And that's mostly me playing with it rather than asking more questions to AI or whatever. Cause I'm just like, I know everything works. Like everything's here. And then literally when they show up, you're like, Oh yes. What? Oh, there they are.
John Saunders: Yeah. Good job.
johngrimsmo: And there's nobody else around.
John Saunders: That's awesome.
johngrimsmo: I was like, this is, did I don't want to show people.
John Saunders: but
johngrimsmo: So all good.
John Saunders: Have you, this is a bit of a tangent. Have you ever read up on or gone down a rabbit hole on LIGO? Okay.
johngrimsmo: who I hadn't. You told me about it a couple of years ago and I was like, what's that? And since then I've watched a lot of videos on it and it's exactly that. It's a Michael's in the Traverometer, just two kilometers long.
John Saunders: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's two of them that are ones in Texas and ones in Seattle. So it's like gravity.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. And they they corroborate.
John Saunders: wave
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: Yeah. I mean that, I think those are probably two of the most isolated movement measuring devices in the world.
johngrimsmo: Yep. And they're building one in Europe that's even bigger or something like that.
John Saunders: Is that right?
johngrimsmo: Yep.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And they were saying one of the videos, like if a car drives by on the gravel road, it is a problem. So they close the road when they're measuring like whatever. I don't know. So many weird things. But um it it is the literally the exact same concept of what I'm building on my desk at home.
John Saunders: Yeah.
John Saunders: It's awesome.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: It is awesome. So cool. It's crazy cool. Well, my stuff is is is pretty pedestrian compared to that. I got to give a thank you to Justin on a serious note.
John Saunders: He was able to help us um build a start building a custom plate front end. So we want to kind of move to a sendcut Send Type model for our custom work because the the kind way to say it is we want to give customers an interface to help them get quotes and and model up
johngrimsmo: Oh, cool, cool.
John Saunders: ah the plate that they want. The rude way to say it is like, I'm trying to limit how much time we spend talking to customers who may not convert or may want four weeks of handholding and then don't want to send through documents.
johngrimsmo: Love it. 100%.
johngrimsmo: hundred of percent
John Saunders: It's just kind of like nope, this is the platform that gives you the quotes, you do all you want, and then you have to sign off on it and then it comes to us. So Justin built most of that, which is insanely awesome.
John Saunders: And to the tune of like, once a plate sits a certain size, it automatically breaks it two, it shows you the size ranges, the customizations where you drop in.
johngrimsmo: Yes.
John Saunders: like It's just like, thank you. um He looked over all of Alex's work on Lex and he said it is the least worst that he's seen of all the shops.
John Saunders: so i'll take i'll take I'll take the wind on that.
johngrimsmo: Good for him. Yeah, absolutely.
John Saunders: um And most of what he did to help us on Lex was help build, and I'm i'm not gonna get the terminology right, but as we redeploy new parts of Lex, Justin helped Alex build in internal testing things that will, okay, there's a better way to say this, and maybe I'll talk to Justin and come back to it in a future episode, but basically making sure it'll self-test things we do.
johngrimsmo: Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, he was explaining to me it helps it build faster, better, more reliably instead of just throwing more, you know, more catch up on the burger kind of thing.
John Saunders: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Like it it just gets messier if you just keep adding, adding, adding.
John Saunders: yeah
johngrimsmo: So yeah, he somehow put these ninja tests in there that makes everything blend and like see itself and correlate and and error check itself, which is next level smartness.
John Saunders: um The last big thing is, again, when I get back, we're going to move both our air compressors. And it was great. I sketched out the design. I took a picture, sent it into an LLM, and it helped me give you some really good feedbacks on two compressors, ball valves, just to isolate each compressor, check valves to stop compressor one feeding into compressor two, which is something I had actually not thought about.
John Saunders: You don't want the air to be forced in you know that way.
johngrimsmo: Hmm.
johngrimsmo: OK.
John Saunders: The right style of Y valve so that when the airs blend, they aren't um
johngrimsmo: Turbulent or in a.
John Saunders: creating turbulence and then a coalescing filter as well as a diverter so that we can isolate out the coalescing filter and switch that filter without needing to actually shut down our air system.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, smart.
John Saunders: And none of it's crazy. It was really helpful to like, i mean, it's kind of janky, but like I literally just drew it all out.
johngrimsmo: Yep.
John Saunders: Um, Got part numbers, looked through it all, and i'll actually going to build it and like mock it out on my desk to make sure I really like the plumbing. Kind of like the full grid. So, like, let's just do this right. i want the things to be mounted.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: I want them to look good. um Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Now's your chance to do it right.
John Saunders: Yeah, feels good.
johngrimsmo: You know, it's like, you don't want have to redo this in a year. It's
John Saunders: Well, and I think where I'm going to go, maybe, maybe even beyond full Grimm's Mo, if that's it, there is such a thing is each of the compressive, each compressor is going to have something, um, could be as simple as a cam lever.
johngrimsmo: full Saunders.
John Saunders: It could be as complicated as an electromechanical lift. But when we take a compressor offline, I want something that automatically tips it up to seven, 10 degrees. We empty the tank. We allow the tank to manually drain just as a check.
John Saunders: if the auto drains weren't keeping up. Um, but just basically like maintenance is now working for us and we're not thinking, oh man, I gotta get a pow jack over here and crib this thing up and, um, blah, blah, blah.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: So one of our best customers, Bob, who's a truck mechanic in his day job, he told me the other day, he goes, if you don't make time for maintenance, maintenance will make time for you.
John Saunders: Yeah.
John Saunders: And for you, uh, that's awesome.
johngrimsmo: And was like, yeah, that's good.
John Saunders: That's a good one.
johngrimsmo: I like that. All
John Saunders: Yeah.
John Saunders: You getting ready for shot?
johngrimsmo: right.
John Saunders: Or not shot, blade.
johngrimsmo: bla so Yeah, it's Blade Shows in two weeks from couple days from now. And we are definitely get ready.
John Saunders: Good.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, I'm feeling good about it. Not stressed. I think the rest of the team is stressed. But I'm like, no, this is great. We're on track. like
John Saunders: Good. Good.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. Things are good, man.
John Saunders: Sweet. I'm off to, believe it or not a kid student graduation-y thing.
johngrimsmo: Nice.
John Saunders: Yeah, which feels good.
johngrimsmo: Have fun with that.
John Saunders: So thank you.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: i appreciate it. I'm off next week, though, but I'll see you, what was it, the third? Oh, we recorded on the third, air on the fifth.
johngrimsmo: Yep. Sounds good.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: All right.
John Saunders: All right. I'll see
johngrimsmo: Take care. Bye.
