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Business of Machining - Episode 69
194 Plays7 years ago
There Ain't No Rest for the....Knife Maker? Grimso's dragging from pulling a 14.5 hour shift to get the SAGA ready for Blade Show!
Speaking of Blade Show, it's TODAY! Gathering the team with pens in pockets, GK heads to Atlanta, GA for the World's Largest Knife Show--and it's going to be his best year yet!
If you're headed there, make sure to stop by table 948 to find them!
Tolerances on Tolerances Is GD&T controversial? This system for defining and communicating tolerances seems like a great way to employ another lean principle but Saunders senses some hesitance.
Work-Flow for Tweaks? Numbered egg crates. Low hanging fruit. Multiple Fusion File Updates?
Boring Out Stainless 45RC? With constant surface speed 350 ft/min (106.68 M/min), the RPM changes make the subspindle sing. That little ditty could be a sign of struggle.
The MAM72-35V has made a lasting impression on Saunders. Check out the newly released AMAZING Matsuura 5-Axis CNC Show Room and Interview with Katsu Matsuura!
It's about the JOURNEY--not the DESTINATION Grimsmo's taking advice about capturing the SAGA of the SAGA on film! See the newest SAGA SATURDAY EPISODE! The journey is ALWAYS on PI TIME.
Process Sheets & Manuals Underway The SAGA is the first GK product with documented process sheets! Ed creates a Guide to Shipping for SMW.
QUE:The 2-year long Johnny 5 Project With helping hands from the J5 Guru, the SMW team is making headway at a faster-than-anticipated speed but remember, Rome wasn't built in a day.
Broken Tools - THOSE ARE ROOKIE NUMBERS! Click HERE to check out the IG POST.
Recommended
Transcript
Long Workdays and Precision Challenges
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machining episode 69. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. Good morning. Good morning, buddy. How are you? A little exhausted. A little tired. Yeah, I was good today. Great tired, great tired. But the day yesterday, I haven't done in a very long time, 14 and a half hours at the shop.
00:00:27
Speaker
Which is what, seven, yeah, that's seven to nine or something of the sorts. No, that was a 30 to 11. Yeah. 30 in the morning. 11. That's late. Yeah, it was late and all good. Like totally my choice. Wanted to do it. You know, I was, I was here to get it done basically. Yeah. Working on pen stuff to bring to the show. And yeah, no, it's just,
00:00:55
Speaker
I don't do those long, long tastes anymore. What were you, um, you just, are you just cranking out parts or did you get stuck on a, on a specific challenge? A bit of both, but, um, just on these parts, there's so many tolerances that all work together to make the mechanism perfect or not. So, you know, a lot of the tolerances, a lot of the, uh, features just gotta be perfect.
Understanding GD&T and Tolerances
00:01:19
Speaker
You know, the threads shouldn't have any burrs on them and all this little stuff that kind of adds up, but right.
00:01:26
Speaker
I was reminding you, I was reading something a while back about GD&T tolerancing or dimensioning, which I know I've almost already exhausted my complete knowledge on this topic by insane GD&T. But I watched either video or explanation in it.
00:01:44
Speaker
The idea is by referencing the features off of a single point, it's actually quite brilliant. In respect, it almost has this element of lean to it because they're tolerancing off of what matters. So you're not creating extra and unnecessary and tolerancing unimportant features, but rather giving you a data which directly, if I understood it correctly,
00:02:08
Speaker
will directly tie into how you QC the part because if all of your dimensions are off a specific face, well, that's the face that you need to put on your surface plate or CMM for whenever when you go to measure, which all of a sudden it's like, oh, that's actually pretty cool. So I guess I always thought GD&T meant, you know, the work was just insane and difficult and complicated. And no, it's really just a good method of like in your pen, like this issue of right stack tolerances.
00:02:33
Speaker
You were off seven tenths across four parts, all of a sudden you've got two or three thousandths of an inch, which may, I guess could be an issue. Yeah, absolutely. And for those that don't know what JNT means, I had to look it up to get the exact definition. I knew most of it, but geometric dimensioning and tolerancing.
00:02:53
Speaker
Yeah, so what does G&T mean to you? What does it do for you? It's certainly not a word that I say all the time, but I've heard of it. I've thought about it. I know Angelo is quite the expert at things like that, which is great. But yeah, it's certainly a case of not every tolerance matters. Not every surface has to be checked. Some things just don't matter at all.
00:03:16
Speaker
Why do I feel like GD&T is either controversial, or when it gets brought
Iterative Workflows and CAD/CAM Integration
00:03:21
Speaker
up, people shrug their shoulders like, oh boy, here we go. Am I misunderstanding the perception of it? Maybe. Maybe it's just the book speak of precision measuring and tolerancing, basically. It's the next mile. It's not just dimensions. It's more, right? Right.
00:03:41
Speaker
But yeah, that stack up is, the struggle is real, you know? Yeah, right. What part were you working on a specific part yesterday or just like banging out pens? I made finished with the tubes of the pens yesterday. I made the slider and I added a pattern to it. What's the slider? The slider is the release mechanism that you'll, not the button on the back, but the slider on the side that retracts the ink into the pen. And, um,
00:04:11
Speaker
huge improvements on the slider. Like the original had kind of a chamfer at the top and it would hurt your thumb and it would cock to the side a little bit. And the new ones, I put a bigger radius on the top and a cool pattern on the side that just works really, really well. And I mean, the pen is, it's done. It's coming together now. It's, it's working. So when you, when you pull a part off the Nakamura and you, you don't like it or you want to change something, what's your workflow?
00:04:42
Speaker
For something like this that's small, that I'm changing a lot to dial it in, I'm using the egg crates, and I label each segment one, two, three, four, five, so that I have a progression, because when I have parts on my desk, I forget which one's the first one, which one's the last one. So that helps me here. And then I stare at it for a while, and I look at my tolerances, and I look at my CAD, and I figure out what's the most important tolerance, which I guess ideally you would know beforehand. Yeah, right. Right? I'm kind of a do it, and then
00:05:11
Speaker
and then figure it out and make sure it's good and figure out what's important kind of guy. And I'm writing it all down now, so it's going to be way easier next time. But yeah, and then I kind of take an eyeball on everything and see what I can tweak, see what I can make better, look at the cycle time, see if there's any improvements to be made, and then make my tweaks, do another one, hopefully make a few less tweaks, do another one, a few less tweaks, and then ideally get it down to like, okay, these are good now, I'm happy with these.
00:05:42
Speaker
multiple fusion files though, right? Because you've got the sketch, the CAD, and then the pen cam file, or no? Exactly, yeah. The sketch, the assembly, and then the cam. Right. Yeah, so if I want to change the tolerance, I do it in the sketch first, then I save it, then I go to the assembly, and then I get all latest, and then I save it, then I go to the cam, and then I get all latest, and then I save it, and then it should just repopulate properly.
00:06:08
Speaker
Yeah, not the most fun. Agreed. Yeah, but it is nice to have the sketch file, just sketch. And it's all interrelated and it's all parametric.
Machining Strategies and Material Challenges
00:06:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:24
Speaker
You know, it's nice. It's not too busy. We did a personal project last week, which is really fun and started it. And I did a much more deliberate effort of doing some really good and somewhat complicated sketching all in. It was not a master model. It was sort of a pseudo master model because.
00:06:42
Speaker
one sketch drove multiple different bodies and shapes out of, but it's all within one fusion file. And it was really refreshing because sometimes you want to make a big change and any CAD system would fail on itself if you all of a sudden lost reference planes or a plane moved to the other side. So all of a sudden the dimension doesn't work because it's negative. And then all of a sudden you end up with this trapezoid and you're like, wait, I had a pen a second ago.
00:07:07
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So you're playing with tellers in sketch, but then also obviously in the cam settings, your speeds and fees, recipes, passes, etc. Yep. Yeah, I'm being pretty good. I'm not trying to cheat the cam too much with like stock to leave and, you know, like, let's mess with stock to leave to make it fit. I'm trying to keep that pretty good. But but yeah, speeds and feeds, having a bit of trouble
00:07:33
Speaker
boring the 17.4 stainless steel that I'm doing. It's about 45 Rockwell and I was just chipping the insert so fast and I did some research and basically the guys on the internet were saying, if you're having trouble, you're not going fast enough. On service footage or feed per rev? Yeah, service footage. So I was doing 150 which is my titanium recipe and internet recommended more like 350.
00:08:01
Speaker
So it's hilarious. Don't shoot me. We started taking on some job shop work again. I could share more, very selective. But one of the things that we were looking at last night was a stainless job.
00:08:17
Speaker
I was looking at my old notes, some quick internet searches, and then I talked to another buddy. I think I actually shot a WhatsApp text out to you guys. It's like everybody is like 250 service feet done. This was 304. We actually are machines in 304 this week for that job shop job. It's actually really, really nice stuff to machine.
00:08:39
Speaker
We've got our machine down. We've got our finishing down. We've got our drilling down. We're actually even doing some slotting. I know it's like job shop slotting stainless. This is like, this is like troll bait. Um, no, but it was really, it was really nice. Uh, this stuff stuff looks really good. Good. Good surface finish. Yeah. Beautiful. Feels just feels good. Like you feel proud of it. Yeah. So it's not like cutting mild steel or something. That's right.
00:09:07
Speaker
kind of ugly to machine. Right. But it's one of the things where you don't know it's better until you've seen it. Right. But 350 in 45 Rockwell stainless, that's pretty fast. Yeah. And it's on the sub spindle on my lathe. And I'm doing constant surface speed. So the RPM kind of changes all the time. And it actually, it goes really quick at that surface speed. Yeah.
00:09:32
Speaker
I hear the spindle singing up and down a little bit. And I'm like, I wonder if it's having trouble keeping up kind of thing. Because it's a very small moves, very tight detail. I wonder why, from a true metrology and cutting tool standpoint, if you increase the surface footage, I always think back to when you were a kid running your hand over carpet. And when you run it really fast, you create more heat. And that is heat. So I get that carbide likes
00:09:59
Speaker
to be run hard, and materials have sometimes narrow bands where they like to be cut. But I wonder, are you generating more heat that's actually, I don't want to misuse words, but like plasticizing or actually helping shear the metal because it's a hotter cut? Or I guess I wonder why it cuts better when you start bumping up the speed. Yeah, and like some coatings, they say like to be
00:10:26
Speaker
hot. You know what I mean? They work better when they warm up. It's weird to say that, but yeah, I don't know. They don't like active. Well, so to take it to the extreme at that Matsura event, whatever, two weeks ago, we were at, there was a Kenametal guy there and he handed me what looked like a 3D printed toy.
00:10:48
Speaker
cutting end mill, like a tool. And it looked like this, like, you know, olive drab, OD green. It literally looked like a toy, plastic. It was super lightweight. It wasn't particularly sharp, like you think of an end mill. It's like a half inch end mill. And I was like, I just looked at it. I'm like, I don't get it. And he goes, ceramic. And I go, are you serious? And sure enough, it was a legit end mill. And I forget what he said.
00:11:18
Speaker
The surface footages were which are really really important obviously when you're using these things But I think it was something like steel at three thousand surface feet per minute Which most most people have the spindles to run and the reason it has to be that hot is that it's literally
00:11:35
Speaker
creating magma. It's like melting the steel, not magma, but it's melting the steel at the cutting edge. Then once it's melted, it's able to shear through it. If you run that tool at 1,000 surface feet, it will literally just break apart right away because it can't cut steel in its normal state. Pretty cool, right?
00:11:55
Speaker
Yeah. So what do you need like 50
Saga Pen Production Update and Deadline Management
00:11:58
Speaker
,000 RPM to be able to use that kind of thing? I got my speech and feeds right here. So if it's 3000 surface feet, I could be wrong on that. Half inch end mill. No, that's half inch end mill. That's 23,000 RPM, which is not, but we've got lots of friends with 20K spindles, right? Right, right. So although the smaller diameter you go, you'd need more RPM. Oh yeah, not happening.
00:12:23
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. That is cool. But I'd love to, I don't know, it's fascinating. So are you boring out the pen tube ID? Not on the tube. I've got this threaded sleeve on the back that holds the three little ball bearings. And that needs some undercut details, some inside bores. That all has to be solid carbide then, right?
00:12:50
Speaker
Boring bars. For boring? I've got a Kyocera indexable boring bar that fits into a quarter inch hole. Serious? Yeah, it's got this tiny little triangle insert. And it's a screw through the center. It's like a T size insert? Yep. No. What do you do with the thread pages on the screw?
00:13:09
Speaker
I don't know, 256 or something. That's not even that crazy. Wow. It's not that crazy. I dropped one in the chip bin though, and I couldn't find it. It's funny. Good thing it literally comes with an extra. I thought your chip bin was empty. Shouldn't it be easy to find it? Yep. Not filling up fast, man. Cool. So what else is going on with Saga? So I've just got two more parts to make today. Luckily, I left the easiest two parts until the end. Nice.
00:13:38
Speaker
the main button that you push on the back and then a little screw that retains that button. So they should go really quick. I mean, with any luck, I'll have those done by noon today. And then we're done. Yeah. Oh, serious. Yeah. And then the guys can assemble skyded all the anodizing on them yesterday. They look insane. So that's titanium. Yeah. So almost everything's titanium except for most of the mechanism is stainless. You get you don't
00:14:04
Speaker
You don't really use aluminum in your products, nor do you anodize aluminum. Yeah, right. We used to years and years ago. But no, the only aluminum I make now is in fixtures and stuff. And every time I cut it, I'm like, this is both easy and annoying at the same time, you know, if you chip load or something. Right. Yeah, it is fun to get out and do different cut different materials for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So we've been
00:14:31
Speaker
Based on some comments that you gave me and Meg gave me and everybody, but I've been filming a lot more for the Saga Saturday videos, which is great. And we've got like, I think Aaron's editing episode six or something already. And there's only two online or something like that. So it's like, we've got footage, we've got documentation, we've got the story of what's actually been going on in the past few weeks. So it's really fun to be able to share that stuff.
00:15:01
Speaker
Yeah, it is. It is. I have to remind myself it is very much the journey and not the destination. And I think I put a lot of pressure on myself. I know I did again for some sort of specific goals and so forth. And I have to remind myself things take. I think we talked about this before, but things take time and that's OK. Like, you know, you obviously have a time crunch with Blade Show and that's probably a good thing, right? It makes you. It is a good thing. You wouldn't have. Yeah. Yeah.
00:15:30
Speaker
Obviously, I've been pushing hard the past month and it's been a lot of work, but it got the project started and finished in the month, not three months. Things have to mature for sure. They take X amount of time and I suck about
00:15:52
Speaker
estimating the time it's going to take. No, you don't. You know, that you, you now know there's always what we call pie time. Yeah. The rule of pie. Yeah. Everything's going to be three times longer than I think. Um, but yeah. Yeah. So having a deadline, an actual deadline of like, I want to have, you know, pens to bring to blade show.
00:16:17
Speaker
Um, no matter what. So it's, it's been good, but now we're that much further yet. So once we get back, we can kind of sit down and take a break and just like step back and look at things. Okay. How do we produce these properly? Not just slap dash. Uh,
00:16:31
Speaker
you know, how do we set up the right workflow and make sure we have all the best tooling and all that stuff so that we can actually produce them on a regular basis. Yeah. So like with Saga, is this going to be the first product where you create documented procedures, set up sheets? Yep. Yep. I'm doing it too. Are you? Oh, that's cool. I want to come see that. I'm doing it.
00:16:54
Speaker
while in the middle of a time crunch, but I'm still writing everything down. Cause I'm like, I don't want to have to remember all this stuff for next time. So I'm just, I mean, the formatting is terrible and the, you know, there's no pictures or anything like that, but I'm just dumping, brain dumping, all the information like, okay, use this tool, use this tool, set up this call it, put the stop here, you know, these are all the notes. I'm having trouble with this. Here's the surface footage. If this happens, try this. And it's just so nice to be able to, it's like, it's like a release, you know, it's like, wow, I don't have to remember that anymore.
00:17:24
Speaker
I think it was Ed who started that, which is just phenomenal. He made me very pleased that started this Saunders shipping, guide to shipping products type thing. It was perhaps overdue.
00:17:42
Speaker
And just as a resource where you can go to, but then the question is that proactive or reactive? Are you using that if you have a problem or a question, or is that something you're going to every time?
Efficiency in Tool Management and Setup
00:17:50
Speaker
And we were reading through it. And of course, all good stuff in terms of constant improvement and getting better and making it a living document. But there were a couple of things in it that I noticed where it put too much
00:18:05
Speaker
it put too much ambiguity or decision making onto the user and not in a good way. And it's like, no, like little things like make sure package has enough packing material in it. Well, what does that, that doesn't mean anything. Like you've got to tell them like dropped something more, um, a target that they can hit. Right.
00:18:25
Speaker
Yeah, a picture would help or something. Yes. And that's what the other thing is, is I find, make sure it's something I want to use. And when I look at something that has a full page instructions to package a box, it turns me off because it's like, no one wants to actually read a full page of instructions. So we're trying to do things like, what made me think of it was with your lay.
00:18:48
Speaker
maybe it makes sense instead of having a bullet list of 10 things that need done is to take a picture of it set up correctly and then draw arrows to each thing and be like tailstock needs to have the Royal 5C in it here. And this tool needs to be like, you know, then it's so much more visual and stimulating and not as daunting. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. So my plan for the next few weeks is to like show my
00:19:14
Speaker
brain dump of bullet points to Angelo for sure, who would be really helpful with this, but also to Sky, who's like, how would you want to read this so that you could set it up? You know, because I want, I want this to be clear enough that a moderately, you know, uh, trained person can, can just get it done. That's huge. Yeah, it's going to be awesome. That is cool. So you're feeling good. That is weird though. I mean, yeah, it was, so I'm,
00:19:45
Speaker
like every part of the saga is different than the knife stuff that I normally make, the screws and the pivot and things like that. So I'm changing out more tools than I'm used to doing and I'm adding tools that I've never used before and you know, like live tools and all this weird stuff. So it's like I'm breaking down and setting up the machine often, which is weird, but I'm getting faster at it, which is great.
00:20:06
Speaker
Not good though. We're editing all that Mazzura footage right now and looking at the MAMs and the Mazzura Ethos. The whole thing, the MAM seems crazy. The one that they had there had 32 pallets and 512 tools. Someone is rightfully like, why would you ever need 512 tools? Think about at 200 bucks a pop, that's 100 grand in tool holders. It's insane, right?
00:20:35
Speaker
But not counting the actual cutting tool. And perhaps that is overkill. I think part of the point is the casting is effectively the same. So the cost to go from 300 tools to 500 tools from the actual tool storage rack is nothing. Like it's a couple of grand, thousands of dollars, something very low.
00:20:54
Speaker
But their point is don't set up tools, don't change tools out, or excuse me, don't tear down and reset things up. It's kind of like if you had this idea of a lathe turret where you could just, think if you could swap out your whole turret face, right? If it was accurate, that would be insane. And I really do, I am intrigued by that. I mean, it's a trade-off, it costs more money, there's other,
00:21:23
Speaker
questions about how you label things and making sure you don't have catastrophic mistakes, but I do think it sounds interesting and attractive. I think Rob Lockwood was saying that he's got so many tool holders in one of his machines that people just keep putting in
00:21:39
Speaker
Oh, I need a half in general. I'll put in a half in general and then I'll put in a half in general. It's like at one point we had 10 half in general in there. Nobody knew that. I mean, that's not a problem really, but weird. No, that is though. They're job shopy though, right? I mean, I'm thinking back to S&H machine tour where they have a ma'am, they also have a proper tool crib, a tool room and they have like, you know,
00:22:02
Speaker
job set up for certain customers where all the tools, that's actually pretty cool. They put the cat 40 or whatever the tool style is in these racks and then they wax coat all the cutting tools and they're all labeled through all the height gauges are there. So when XYZ company calls up this new fighter jet part, they like go just pull that off the rack, put the tools in the machine. It actually is a very deliberate process. Yeah.
00:22:30
Speaker
Yeah. You keep the tooling for that job ready. Right. Yeah. I like that. I like the wax thing, too. There's something nice about that that would help. Probably not hard to do, but I've never seen it. I've never seen what people use for that. Do you remove it, or do you just go cutting? No, no, no. You just take a, I assume, when we get tools reground, we just usually take a thick paper towel or gloves and just, you just kind of twist it off. Okay. It comes off.
00:22:57
Speaker
Sweet. That'd be kind of funny if you just ran it. Let the heat of the end mill kind of top it off. It probably wouldn't hurt anything, but I wouldn't really want it in one one more thing to filter and clean or smear. Exactly, exactly. Yep. We did try it. We have ever so slight of a surface scratches on our Tormach fixture plates, and it's like you can really only see them
00:23:22
Speaker
in a certain light angle, but it's something where I would rather they weren't there. They certainly don't make me happy, but it's pretty nitpicky stuff. And we right now have a way of kind of blending them in afterward, but I don't want to do that.
00:23:37
Speaker
And they're coming from either the drill or the tap. And I think it depends on the drill tends to do it a little bit more as the drill starts to dull and the chip shape changes. And it's pulling that chip out and twisting it around. It just ever so slight swirl marks around the face of the plate. So we tried this idea of
00:23:59
Speaker
a sort of specialty adhering plastic that's meant to be, I think it's meant to be used in a situation about putting that over it.
Customer Expectations and Outsourcing Challenges
00:24:09
Speaker
And I was actually shocked. It really does protect the plate.
00:24:15
Speaker
Interesting. So you're putting a sheet of plastic on top of the plate and then machining it. Correct. We ultimately aren't using it though because the drills or other tools will cause very, very small
00:24:32
Speaker
air pockets or, you know, cavities of pull it up just a hair and then we're using obviously huge amounts of flood coolant from through spindle and flood. So it'll end up creating bubbles underneath it and then and then it could trap it. It's too much. The trade off isn't worth it. There's too much risk of bad things happening. But it was still pretty cool. And it really does like if you take a sharp chip and you rub it over that plastic surface, it really does protect it.
00:25:00
Speaker
That's too bad that there's enough trade-offs to make it not usable. I'm sure you'll find something. It's okay. I was happy we tried it. Right. And that's the thing. It's this process. Like you were saying about this little scuff that's kind of borderline, I'm okay with it, but I'm not happy with it. That's like
00:25:20
Speaker
everyday life for us. Like, is this good enough? I don't know. Should we redo it? Yeah, we should probably redo it. Right. No, but it's... Ah! Yeah. Yeah. I've never, ever once... It just sucks.
00:25:32
Speaker
Yeah, I've never had one customer say, you know, disappointed or I thought more or really you can't like it's, the plates are beautiful. But still that those scratches weren't there when it went on the machine there when we take it off. So how do we do a better job of that? Right. Well, the sad thing is we are starting to get a few customers that are that nitpicking. Oh, really? And like, oh, there's a little scuff here or there's
00:26:00
Speaker
you know, a scratch on my stonewashed blade that actually has a million scratches on it because it's been in the tumbler and it's just one kind of longer streak that might stand out or something like that. On one hand, I'm kind of flattered that people are that picky with our products because that's what we are and that's, you know, the culture that we've provided. But on the other hand, I'm just like, come on, man, we work so hard on that thing. And you're going to point out that one little thing.
00:26:27
Speaker
So it kind of drives us to be better and find better solutions and things like that, but it's annoying at the same time. Yeah, that's tough because I guess there's a question of who is it the user being too picky or did I mean at the risk of
00:26:47
Speaker
saying I'm sure one product in the history of Grimsman eyes has left the shop with something that you would consider a mistake and you didn't wish it were there, right? I mean, it just happens. But so what do you, how do you handle that? Right? Yeah, it is tricky. Um, you know, for some, some guys, right? Yeah, exactly. Refund or send it back and we'll try and fix it or something like that. We've done that a few times. Um,
00:27:14
Speaker
It's just obviously you wish it weren't there in the first place. Of course, but we're all human. Exactly, right? We were writing an article on sourcing machined parts. You've been through this when you tried to get some assistance with some of your lathe parts a while back. And I think people, especially who aren't as seasoned, think that you can just send parts out, period.
00:27:40
Speaker
You were just saying that not everybody should do. Yeah. And like in we get it's actually something I've been kind of struggling with, which is one reason I wrote this article, is people just expect like they'll email us and they'll be like, hey, can you put me in touch with a really, really good lathe shop or a really good five axis shop? And it's kind of like that's actually a huge.
00:27:59
Speaker
That's like a huge asset to have relationships and working relationships with shops. And we've made the decision to stay away from recommending shops because it gets to be, it's just not what we do. I don't want to recommend a shop that's not a good fit for somebody or they have problems with, or it's just, it's a very invested process. So what was I bringing that up for? I lost my train of thought. Quality of,
00:28:30
Speaker
I was just thinking, I'm sure this experiment's been done before, but it'd be kind of interesting to take one product and have it machined at five different shops and see not only the price, but the quality of the return product and compare them all. I don't know if there's any real value in that, but just to show the difference.
00:28:49
Speaker
and the different methods and the different time everybody takes and ways to attack a project. Yeah, it's tough. But it's also fun. That's why we do it. Exactly, right? Yeah. So you're making finishing pen parts today?
Blade Show Preparations and Supplier Relationships
00:29:08
Speaker
Got those two last pen parts then we can assemble and then we're done and then with any luck I can go home early today and actually spend some time with my family before I Go to blade show tomorrow morning. Oh my god. It's tomorrow Yep. Oh, I totally thought that's so weird. I thought we had a whole nother week for some reason. Oh My god
00:29:28
Speaker
Dude. Yeah, so tomorrow. Oh, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Now I'm fired up. Yeah. Gosh, that's OK. Really cool. Oh, man. Awesome. Hence the time crunch. Yeah, but I figured it was I thought it was one of those things where you had to get it done so that you could then bang out another week's worth of other stuff or whatever. But oh, man, good for you. Yeah, super excited. That's awesome. So it starts on Friday. Star set up. Yeah.
00:29:58
Speaker
Cool. Oh, man. I feel like this is your moment to shine, the chance to meet fans and do what you do. Yeah, it's the big one of the year. And I just love talking to everybody. And it's going to be fun. It's going to be exhausting, but in the perfect kind of sense. Right. And who's all going? Everybody except for Barry.
00:30:21
Speaker
So five of us. You, Angelo, Aaron, Skye. And Eric. Of course. Sorry. Of course. Got it. Very cool. Oh, dude. Have fun. I feel like this is going to be your best Blade Show ever. I totally agree. And yeah.
00:30:43
Speaker
Oh, so this would be cool, too, because people can be listening to this on the right before it starts. Is there any anything people should know about where to find you if they're new to Blade Show? I think we're at Table 930 ish. Is Blade Show multiple rooms? How big is it? I know it's huge. It's huge. Imagine it's hard to get a sense of the scale, but imagine like a giant Costco. It's just one big warehouse room.
00:31:14
Speaker
possibly bigger. Although I think we were just looking at the map yesterday, I think they expanded it into the room next door. So it's bigger this year than it has been in the past, which is great. But yeah, it's the biggest knife show in the world. And there's like 1000 exhibitors. Cool. And can't wait. It's always in Atlanta. It has been for the past, yeah, 20, 30 years or something. So yeah. Cool. Yep. Well, that's awesome, dude. Really cool.
00:31:42
Speaker
I can't wait. So I'm making sure that all five of us have a pen in our pocket at all times to show everybody. The fidget factor is pretty huge with these things. Literally, literally right here. I'm sitting with my Inkjoy PaperMate 300 RT and clicking it a little. Just nice. Yeah, it's funny.
00:32:03
Speaker
Oh, I wanted to ask you, so that Kira Sarah boring bar that you can shove into a 25 or quarter inch hole, how did you find that? I got it from my local tool shop. Either I was looking through their catalog or I just asked them. Okay. Are they sharp? Are they somebody you really think, hey, they can help solve quirky problems? Okay. Yeah, I think so. And we use them a lot. And they're
00:32:33
Speaker
four minutes down the road. So do you call them or do you go drive over there? Both. Got it. Got it. I've been ordering a lot lately, like once or twice a week. I need drill bits. I just crashed my Kyocera pouring bar. I need another one. OK, we'll have it in two days. All right, perfect. Do you keep a tool like that? You always keep an extra?
00:32:55
Speaker
I have two that I need on the
Maintenance Strategies for Machinery
00:32:57
Speaker
machine. Like some ops, I need more both sides. So I have one on sub spindle, one on main spindle, and I don't have an extra. And last week I crashed one of them. So I called them up right away. I'm like, I need a spare. OK, two days. Sounds good. Got it.
00:33:11
Speaker
Yes. It sounds very, you know, six months ago, I would have said, you know, the sort of like business person of like, oh, you should always have an extra spare of critical tools. Let me tell you, as the shop owner, it gets expensive. It gets real expensive very much.
00:33:26
Speaker
We broke one of our little Sandvik 390s, and we actually is quite similar. We used two of them in the machine at the same time, different inserts. And I could maybe justify one extra, but darn it, that's like 300 bucks. And I roll that across a lot of tools. Yeah, a lot of money tied up in spares. Yep. But you look at it from a downtime perspective. If you can't be down for that three days that it takes to get it again,
00:33:56
Speaker
and you know it's a risky item, then you do it. It's like having extra end mills, you know?
00:34:04
Speaker
You don't just buy one end mill at a time anymore. I'm sure you don't. Well, it's interesting. I think the end mill is like $20 to $50. Well, and the question is also, how quick can you get it? Because we could, yeah, I'm trying to think. A lot of stuff we could probably get in two days. Maybe we could get a substitute that's not as good but works the next day, like gets us up and running. Because I think you and I, I suspect, will probably
00:34:32
Speaker
change our tone over the next five years as our machines start getting some more age on them. And we start, you know, you and I have never had your knock nor your DMG has ever been down for two or three days because of a silly issue out of your control, right? Like some, some, you know, fluid sensor alarm inside the machine that you had to have service come out for that just, you know, put you right. I don't think so. Okay. So like an older machine is more likely to have that is what you're saying.
00:34:59
Speaker
Yeah, stuff happens. I mean, it just does. I think it's worthy young guys that have new machines that are well kept. And so, again, we don't have problems that do happen. I mean, they absolutely do happen. On my desk, there's a... Go ahead.
00:35:16
Speaker
I was just going to say, you can't exactly have extra coolant temp sensor alarms in stock for everything. So it's like you have to prepare for that downtime. Yeah, that's true. Well, and there's this Haas PM sheet on my desk that I've been debating. I'd like to do some of it myself because it'd be fascinating, and I feel like it's that bootstrapper mentality.
00:35:35
Speaker
or I believe you can pay your HFO to come out. I don't know what it costs, but I would guess between one and $2,000 to do like just proactive annual style PM, like whatever it is, draining stuff, checking, they pull the weight covers back, like all this little stuff. And I can certainly see why that's a good thing to do. I just don't want to do it right now.
00:36:06
Speaker
Yeah. Luckily, when I go to the Elliott open house and I visit all the places, then I get eight hours of free service on one day. That is insane. In a year. So I've got that racked up now and I need to make sure I use that and it'll be for preventive maintenance stuff to come in, check, check everything, check backlash, check tram, check a level. And like you said, pull the covers
00:36:24
Speaker
Yeah, I just don't.
Johnny Five Project Progress and Educational Impact
00:36:29
Speaker
back, make sure chips aren't getting what they're not supposed to do all this stuff. Just tell me what I don't know. Right.
00:36:29
Speaker
I don't know.
00:36:34
Speaker
And when that came in last year, he's like, do you even use this machine? Clearly, he didn't look in the chip conveyor. That's where all the chips were hiding. Tiny chips. Yeah, awesome. Cool.
00:36:51
Speaker
Well, good luck. Oh, I got to share. So we announced it on the podcast last week that we're starting the Johnny Five. And I got to say it is a little scary cool how quickly that's coming together. OK. Just like a kid or two. No, it's amazing. So it's it's it's you know, don't get me wrong. It's still going to be a huge undertaking. I think it's probably more like a two year style project, not a one year. OK.
00:37:22
Speaker
It gets me excited because it's just now the confluence of all of these skill sets and equipment and technologies and abilities and and also the world that we live in with social media and sharing and so forth. So the there's this guy, Terry, who runs this Facebook group, and I think they used to have a website, but they've kind of gone down. He's known as J5 Guru. He, long story short, has been working on a Johnny five since 2002.
00:37:52
Speaker
And he has what is by far the most comprehensive CAD model. But they don't they used to share it and they don't anymore. But they saw we're doing this. And basically, they were like, look, you guys, we'd rather you do it right. And we've done we've we've made a lot of mistakes and there's no reason to do it. So really, really solid.
00:38:16
Speaker
set of guys in a solid gesture and that they sent us. For now, we just asked for the bottom track and we were like, let us just work on the base. That's all we are worried about right now because it's a big, you know, they put a huge amount of work into it. But Ed, I mean, we were, we've got the tracks partially made. We cut out, used our laser to cut out some MDF to test template fits. We were machining some parts for things like
00:38:40
Speaker
And, you know, we ordered the motor drivers, the control or some chain like this is going to be it don't get me wrong. We're going to we're going to do it all obviously on the NYC CNC YouTube channel for sure. But for now, we're just kind of we're just poking around. But it's cool. Just playing. But make sure to film some of that. Oh, absolutely.
00:38:59
Speaker
Yeah, of course. Like we were going to make the track ourselves until we found the existing track. So we already had, I think I'm still going to share a video on how we were going to machine the tracks, even though it's not going to say we're going to do. I think we learned a lot of lessons, even in iterating through that process ourselves. Yeah. So the original Johnny five was an actual robot robotized, like,
00:39:27
Speaker
machine. It wasn't CGI or anything. It was before that, right? Correct. It was real. From talking to Terry and just recollecting facts the last few months, they built, I believe, 15 of them. It must still exist.
00:39:42
Speaker
Yeah, some number of them because in 2002, Terry was able to go to California and spend some time with one of them. I think it's in a private collection or maybe the directors owns it or something. They built some number like 15 of them. Some were more fixed position props that they could use for like stunts where they threw it out of the car off a roof.
00:40:05
Speaker
But a number of them were animatronic where they had either remote controls or other, I think in short circuit two, they had the suits you could wear to do spatial awareness sensors so that the arms could be, yeah, which isn't, I think, we're not there yet, but I think we can probably do that on ours. There's some safety issues to think about as well. This thing runs over a kid's foot, it's 400 pounds, it's not, you can't do that.
00:40:35
Speaker
Yeah, they build a number of them. They did have different functionalities so they could cheat. One of the Johnny Fives had the more complex head. One of them was more good with the third arm, that kind of stuff. Yeah, and that's Hollywood for it. Exactly. Exactly. Cool. Yeah. Have you ball parked? It's tough with time and money and tooling, but have you ball parked? How much is it going to cost? I mean, it's over two years. It's going to be a lot. Yeah. So for sure.
00:41:04
Speaker
No, I don't really care because if you take this project and you look at, like if you just look at, we were doing a screen share with Andrew at the J5 Guru guy and he was showing us some of the more detailed parts.
00:41:19
Speaker
I mean, all of a sudden you just want to crawl into a corner and cry. This is insanely complex and actually it's a cool. Apparently they built the short circuit one robots that they built them in three months. What year was this? I can't remember 83 or 86. I should know that.
00:41:43
Speaker
Like where they CNC machine like old school Mets or is there? Yeah. No, it's cool. Actually. So that's one of the things we're going to do. I don't know if I want to give this away. We're going to have some fun with the intro. I'll leave it at that. But they they I mean, it was sort of a no limitation. We need to get sharp people in here and building stuff right now. And I believe it was a seven figure price tag then.
00:42:10
Speaker
Yeah. But I mean, yeah, freaking awesome, right? Right.
00:42:17
Speaker
Oh, so there's no way it's under five figures. If you look at just the cost of materials, and we bought the left track motors that drive the tread. So you've got two gearboxes and a motor. Those were $180. There's another one of those. And then that's just part of the base assembly of one side. You're going to spend. And if you look at it that way, it's
00:42:45
Speaker
it would be, um, it would not be helpful. So just one, one, one separate, you know, Rome wasn't built in a day. Exactly. Yeah. And it's, it's kind of like you bring up Rome. It's kind of like the reason they built those gigantic overdone cathedrals. And that's just like it cost is not really the concern right now. Let's just show how good we are kind of thing. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. It's a point of pride. I mean, that's what we'll do. We'll just bite size it down. If you look at,
00:43:14
Speaker
If you look at creating your shop or my shop or I think about the Haas CNC factory, it is easy to become overwhelmed. And that's not part of the process. I'm not interested in that. We're going to get some momentum behind it, get some confidence and progress, and just go from there. Absolutely. And it sounds like you develop that momentum and confidence quickly, which is great. And bring everyone along for the ride, which is fun.
00:43:40
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. That's the best part. Last night, William was like, mommy, daddy's robot is going to come live with us at the house. And mom, mom's like, no, it's not. It's going to stay at the shop. Oh man. Okay. Leif and I are going to have to come visit to see it because Leif's been telling me, he's like, dad, you got to build me a robot. I want a robot to help me out. 3D print them a little Johnny. I'm like, sorry.
00:44:02
Speaker
No, he wants it to move and do stuff. While technically possible and while we technically have all the equipment to make it happen, it's not going to happen. Daddy's very busy. Exactly. But I should tell both my friend, John Saunders, is building one. So if we finish it and if we drive up to you with it, I will film driving over the bridge through Canadian customs with a Johnny 5 in my truck bed.
00:44:31
Speaker
And just see like, do I have to declare this? Like, how does this even work? Um, yes, it has, yes, it has a laser on it. Is that a problem? But no, it's not a weapon. It's a, it's a prop. I don't even know what to call it. So would you, I don't know, would you take it on tour? Would you take it to robotics clubs and schools and things like, yeah, absolutely. I mean,
00:44:56
Speaker
Like you wanted to inspire the next generation of people that are going to go out and do things like that and better. Oh, yeah. We'll do the serious stuff with it. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, it could go in parades. It would be kind of fun to ghost ride it. Like just just like hiding a bush and driving down the sidewalk on a street. Anything that's going to get kids interested. You know, I think I'd want to.
00:45:20
Speaker
I'd want to bring along some of the story to show, like I don't want people to be able to see Johnny five and not also see a little footage of a CNC machine or get some idea of the takeaway from it. Because again, I don't care if you're not into it, but if you are into it, I want you to see something about hydraulics or pneumatics or engineering or Arduino or machining or CAD or CAM or project design. I mean, there's so many different ways that you could take this and that's what's cool. Yeah, maybe.
00:45:49
Speaker
I mean, you're, you're bound to have failed parts and scraps and things like that. So maybe bring those with you. Pretty clean, clean, but it's like, when I go to knife shows, I'll bring like, you know, a handful of dead screws or something like that. Parts that people can look at me like, wow, these are really, this is what goes into it. Cause when it's assembled in the knife, you don't appreciate it. When you can hold like a handful of scrap in your hands. Yeah.
00:46:17
Speaker
And there's like 400 pieces in there. And you're like, whoa. And these are all scrap. Yeah, I've got a bigger bucket than home. Did you see the Instagram post yesterday of the tools, the broken tools? No, I don't think so. Yeah, I thought you commented. We were pouring out. I forget. Oh, yeah, yours, right. That guy, I think his name is Sam, Venom Defense. I was losing it. He was like, those are rookie numbers. You've got to pump those numbers up. I was like, oh my god, that was great. So yeah.
00:46:46
Speaker
Bringing along extra parts will be perfect. I've always enjoyed seeing a part broken down into like four versions where they show the billet, then op one, op two, op three. And you start to have been an understanding of like, oh, wow. It's that I think, ooh, going to struggle here with some art history. I think it was Michelangelo who said when he was speaking about chipping away at the Carrera marble that the object is inside of it. It's just my job to get it out. Yep.
00:47:13
Speaker
And I've heard knife makers use the same thing. Like I remove everything that's not a knife from this piece of steel. And yeah, I like that. Dude, have fun. I'll see you next week. Take care.