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Ep. 13: Lock (tail)Stock and a 4th Axis
75 Plays9 days ago
Join Curt and Jamie as they go into the day to day struggles and decisions of running a solo machine shop.
The Lone Machinist:
- Website: https://thelonemachinists.com/
- Merch: https://www.jspeceng.com/online-store
- Patreon: https://patreon.com/TheLoneMachinists
Jamie:
Curt:
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Transcript
Introduction to Loading Machines Podcast
00:00:08
Speaker
Welcome to the Loading Machines podcast, podcast where it's just you, your tools, and the work. No team, no backup. I'm Jamie from JSpec Engineering, and every episode we're tackling the highs and lows of flying solo in the machining world.
00:00:21
Speaker
And I'm Kurt from Confound a Machine, here to chat about everything it takes to make it as a one-man show in the shop. From grinding and turning to the struggles of running a one-person operation, we're sharing the stories, the tricks, and the challenges that come with going it alone.
00:00:33
Speaker
If you're out there in the shop grinding away by yourself or just thinking about taking a solo plunge, this show's for you.
Casual Banter and Work Challenges
00:00:39
Speaker
So throw in your ear protection and let's talk about life behind the machine.
00:00:46
Speaker
Good evening, Kurt. No, no, good morning, Kurt. It's evening for me. and Good evening, Jamie. How are you doing, man? Yeah, carrying on. Literally came in 20 minutes ago from machining parts. Oh, nice. Yeah. I came in 32 seconds ago from shooting part. Nice. Yeah. I stopped, took a 10 minute break and then recording time.
00:01:07
Speaker
But yeah, we are right at the end of the month. So pushing a bunch of stuff out the door. I know the month always sneaks up. Oh, it's up coming so close. Okay. Okay. Good to know.
00:01:17
Speaker
Yeah. no it's ah No, it's right there. I've got to deliver. ah I've got to go to bean counting tomorrow at one customer and go and deliver like five different orders to a different customer. And then go and deal with that stupid spinning lathe, which is nearly off of my plate.
00:01:33
Speaker
Like I have lost money on that. It is frustrating as hell. Yeah, that looks like ah that's that's been a long time coming, that one, it seems. Well, I was at my mate today. We were welding it up. I went to weld it up on Saturday because we finally got the laser cutting back on Thursday.
00:01:48
Speaker
we had a public holiday on Friday. and sent down to go pick it up. She nearly got T-boned by a car because came to a robot that was broken. So four way stop.
00:01:59
Speaker
And she stopped, pulled off and a guy came screaming through. he didn't even know there was a robot that had stolen the poles. Oh no. Yeah. So you don't even know was meant to be a stop.
00:02:10
Speaker
So she was a bit, a bit annoyed. And then I went to weld it on Saturday and realized, Oh, um, we can't assemble this thing if we weld it together. So I had to bring it back here and machine out. There was a hole in the plate. I had to machine a slot so the spindle can drop in.
00:02:24
Speaker
And then this morning had to machine bearing blocks for a job. I've lost money on that heavily, but it is what it is. Yeah. I guess just get it off your plate and yeah move on through lights and say no next time.
00:02:37
Speaker
Yeah, that's a powerful word. Yeah, helping people at your own cost is not not not very sustainable. Yeah, that's probably my biggest fault too, is just taking on things from like, oh, I could i could probably do this. It won't take much. then you just yeah end eating it. It'll be fun.
00:02:54
Speaker
ah why Yeah, why am I doing this to myself over and over and over? Yeah, I spent three hours at ma at my mate today welding the thing up and helping him get it outside because he can't handle it by himself.
00:03:05
Speaker
um That's three hours I could have been running production. lock Yeah. It's a bit infuriating, especially when you've got ah a lead time sneaking up on you. that you need to, or delivery date sneaking up and you need to act on, but yeah, that's just, it is what it is.
00:03:21
Speaker
No, totally. Yep, I get that. and But do you like my first topic there? Yeah, I love that because you seem to just be sponsored by printing companies. So tell me why you have, but so is this three or four now?
3D Printing Projects and Challenges
00:03:36
Speaker
I have three now. So the one is going to just get given to my mate Dave if he listens. Best you get your shit together. um The Anycubec Photon Mono 2, I hate it. It can go to him.
00:03:48
Speaker
He's really good at getting really good prints off bad machines. Like he had an old R3 cutout of acrylic. It was the absolute most potato printer and he used to get the best TPU prints I've ever seen off of that thing.
00:04:01
Speaker
um Yeah, so I'll send him the crappy printer. And then i bought another one of the Halet 1 Pros. Oh, the dirty Harlots. Yes, the Harlots. That arrived on Wednesday afternoon.
00:04:15
Speaker
I'm printing the 49th and 50th component now. That ran all weekend. ah Allegedly a five and half hour cycle time, which is actually six and a half hours.
00:04:25
Speaker
The thing can't keep track of time. ah So I've been waking up at stupid o'clock to go and change prints and rinse prints and get things running again. But that's got to be tomorrow is the delivery day for that order. So the last two are printing now.
00:04:40
Speaker
They'll be done before I go to bed. And... I can be done with that. And then I'm selling one of those to Roger, one of our listeners. Oh, nice. Yeah, I said to if he's interested, yeah i'll give him a good price. So he's on his one.
00:04:53
Speaker
He broke his one a while ago. So he's been in the market for a princess. So I'll give him one with a dodgy Z. How many milliliters of resin have you gone through then? I have gone through six kgs since Monday last week.
00:05:11
Speaker
Okay, so sizable prints too. or ah Yeah, every two parts is 87 grams. Okay, yeah. I bought six bottles of resin on Wednesday last week. I have two unopened and one half bottle left. And obviously whatever's in the two printers.
00:05:29
Speaker
So all in all, I've probably got three liters left and I ah bought two bottles previous to that. Okay, cool. And then I printed 12 parts that were left-handed, so I just gave them to them.
00:05:41
Speaker
So instead of 50 parts, they're getting 62 parts. Oh, wow. I've got nothing to do with the left-hand parts. What am I going to do? Just give them to them. They can play with them.
00:05:52
Speaker
And these were like those injection mold samples? Yeah. Or like they're going to get injection molded if they work out? so I need to go and fix the model now because I've just kept extruding it up to make it taller. So it's not a continual taper now.
00:06:04
Speaker
It's... doing the doing dolphin shit up the side so i need to just go and uh project the bottom project the top and do a loft between them but it's a bit of a it wasn't my model to start and i've just made it work as i've gone so i've got just tweak it a little bit but this is a five battery version in production they'll do a two battery version they just want to do a whole bunch of data collection now and they need additional capacity all right gotcha gotcha this is for the drones correct i know this is uh container tracking
00:06:37
Speaker
so it's actually one of the bolts for sealing the container it's got a whole board and batteries and gps and gsm and like every freaking sensor in the world and then that will uh pull every like 30 minutes and send to update wirelessly anywhere in the world oh sick okay that's pretty cool and then they've got a five minute version as well so every five minutes it updates the position can detect if the bolt's being cut can detect a whole bunch of stuff like But yeah, that's more the software side of the site I don't get involved with.
00:07:06
Speaker
I just make boxes for them. Well, I mean, nice nice way to justify or to build you or yeah buy you a couple of printers. Exactly. I'm looking forward to having it. Like I've got to print some stuff for another customer. I need to work on the design tonight or tomorrow and then put that on the printer, print them some followers for magazines.
00:07:26
Speaker
Cool. So those going to have to buy Soritec Onyx Blue, Blue Onyx, the the black yeah um blue resin. I love that its they've named it a color because I've got the clear blue, but it just, it prints like garbage. So yeah yeah, I don't really feel like troubleshooting that too much.
00:07:47
Speaker
Yeah. That's basically what I print with. It's yeah. It's so annoying to dial in, but it it is a nice resin. Is you using the the gray one? Uh, yeah. I mean, blue and it's, it's supposed to be black, but it comes out like really dark blue. Oh, okay.
00:08:02
Speaker
So it looks black on camera, but I've got the clear, uh, Srytec blue and it is the worst thing to print. Yeah. Yeah. um I'm sure I could dial it in. Yeah. I'm sure I could dial it in, but I don't want to.
00:08:15
Speaker
Yeah. I'll literally just give the bottle to my mate, Dave and say, Hey dude. Yeah. i Have fun. yeah I don't feel like fighting with this. Yeah. Nope. Yeah. I get that.
Comparing 3D Printers: Bamboo vs Prusa
00:08:25
Speaker
sick yeah i know i was printing too as uh i was printing just holders for the tool tags um yes i every year like my printer is such an ancient it's an old mendel 90 but i just don't i like sometimes i don't print for 10 months so i'm like i can't justify a new printer but then today or last the weekend i was like oh i got it it has a little bowden tube because i made my own extruder for it anyways i had to replace this one part and i spent like a couple hours doing it i'm like
00:08:47
Speaker
I should just like printers so inexpensive nowadays. I'm like, I should just buy a printer that works. that I don't ever have to think about even if it sits for like 10 months. I'm like, it's just that's that's a want. That's not a need. But I totally I totally understand the yeah ah there's been advancements in the last 10 years in that area and just having something where can send a print to it. in or even the last five years, there's my beefcake printer.
00:09:10
Speaker
And it was pretty much top of the line when we built it. It's got a Bontek dual gear clone. It's running a V6 because that was the most advanced thing at the time.
00:09:22
Speaker
Well, a clone of a V6 with a genuine nozzle. um It's running a big Tretec SKR board in it. like It's a good printer. It does the thing, but it could probably be better.
00:09:33
Speaker
But if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Yeah, and that's that's my problem too. is like The prints that come off this off my printer, are like they're beautiful prints. I'll put them head-to-head against any bamboo. The only problem is they take probably 20 times as long. The bamboo probably spit this part out in 20 minutes, and mine takes three hours. so it's like nine hundred Most of time i don't most the time, I don't care. I just queue it up and go do something. But there is ah there is times where it's like, this would be nice to have this just like now, as opposed to waiting you know a day for it.
00:10:01
Speaker
Yeah, I was looking at the Prusa core ones. they look They look really nice. That's what i was looking at too. actually talked to a few guys that have bamboos and they said they're fantastic, but they're like they're they're just they're built to a price point. And honestly, my printers, I keep them forever. So I'm like, either I'm going to go Voron or I'm going to go probably a Prusa because I just think they're just built a little bit better.
00:10:21
Speaker
yeah I won't argue though the bamboo is like the user experience for a bamboo is... winning a buzzard but i think the the core one they really trying to uh to match that like yeah it looks like i was watching a review and the issue yeah the issue i've got here so what does the x1c cost it's like a thousand two thousand two hundred dollars thousand four hundred dollars yeah yeah about 14 yeah yeah how much do you think they cost here ah
00:10:52
Speaker
no ah No idea.
Cost of Imported 3D Printers in South Africa
00:10:54
Speaker
I mean, the X1C, so they're shipping from, I don't know. I'm going to say they're- So there's a local distributor. There's a local distributor here. $1,400. Call it $1,600 day when you want one somewhere else in the world.
00:11:10
Speaker
ah two thousand two hundred and sixty eight dollars that's a bump yes they like bend over sir but down we're going and draw Yeah, that's up there.
00:11:21
Speaker
Yeah, no, though, since South Africa ripped the ring when it comes to imported goods, like, I'm sorry, but why is there almost $1,000, like, just because we have it fee?
00:11:32
Speaker
I also got told that that I was at Rage two years ago, and they had just released the P1S or P1P, whatever it is. um They had a X1C and a P1P, and the guy's like, no, the X1C is fancy because it has carbon. I'm like, dude,
00:11:47
Speaker
Just go away. They both have the same carbon tubes. That is part of their motion system. This one just doesn't have covers. Like the X1C, the C sand stands for covers, not for carbon.
00:12:00
Speaker
Yeah, the salesman. I get annoyed with them. yeah My wife doesn't like going to the 3D printing store with me. Mostly because I tell their customers straight, don't buy this. It's cuck. Buy that.
00:12:12
Speaker
ah They got a very irate with me the one day.
00:12:16
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, they're so cool. There's so much, so much neat tech in that nowadays.
Versatility of 3D Printing in Workshops
00:12:20
Speaker
just like, it is. And it's a super useful tool to have in the workshop, like for printing tool tags or gridfinity things, or like, yeah, there's a million uses for it. I mean, the webcams, the 3d printed mounts, my microphone boom is on him a 3d printed mounts.
00:12:36
Speaker
Like they're everywhere. i know It's a super useful technology. No, totally. And this thing is, what if it if it was faster, like if my printer was faster and yeah perfectly reliable, I would probably use it more. That's kind of the justification. But anyways, it's still a want. I don't need it. it's so I just realized my TPU is on my printer and it's been there for a week.
00:12:56
Speaker
It's going to need to go back in its bucket tonight or it's going to be unprintable. look Yeah, I get lucky with the winter here and all my film, it just goes bone dry because it's like 10% humidity. So I don't worry about it. But now I have to.
00:13:09
Speaker
Yeah, mine literally lives in buckets. Trying to see. That's behind the microphone. Yeah, they live in, I've got a PLA bucket, a TPU bucket, a PETG bucket, an ABS bucket with desiccant in and the spools just get tossed in there.
00:13:22
Speaker
And it makes the world a world difference. Like even on PLA, you'll have like funny business going on. You but put a roll out of there and it's perfect. Like it actually makes a big difference. But so important questions. Did you get Siemens gray filaments for your tool tags?
00:13:39
Speaker
and No, I just ended up using, had a bunch of like flat black. So I just printed it all in flat black. And then I went against my better judgment. And I have like 10 kilos of white ABS. So I printed all the tags and white ABS. And was like, you know what? If these get disgusting, I will, uh, I'll print it in a different color. Disgusting.
00:13:57
Speaker
when i don't know keep my hands pretty clean i have other ape white abs around here so was like yeah you have oil in your workshop yeah that's true i don't know it's i don't know i'm pretty um i'm pretty pedantic what's the pc word uh particular about cleanliness so i think i'll be okay yeah well uh have you ordered shrink for tooling i did yeah um when's the expected delivery I just got an email actually before the podcast started, so I don't know. It should be in the next, ah the short, oh, I lost you here. Okay, there we go. um
00:14:31
Speaker
The shortest window is, I should have it maybe today, and the longest is two weeks because they just, I went with i went with some Haas shrink fit because they were the only ones that had this stick the stick out I wanted um in the bore diameter, which is one eighth, and then the price.
00:14:46
Speaker
They were half off right now, so. pick them up and then yeah everybody warned me they're like oh a shrinking one eighth is like super hard was like oh so we're gonna find out together if uh if i can uh i mean shrinking it in is gonna be no issue yeah getting it out that's yeah So I think if I have issues, I'm going to build and like an aluminum cooling block that I can put on the end of the tool, like kind of just like
Tool Maintenance and Optimization
00:15:10
Speaker
a compression fit. Okay, to sink the heat out, yeah.
00:15:12
Speaker
Yeah. And then have you ever messed around with, it's called here it's called super cold. um I don't know. It's for electronics. like It's ah it's a just an aerosol can, but it's like minus 50 degrees. So you can blow it on chips. and like It's for detecting like cold solder joints or weird missing circuits.
00:15:28
Speaker
Yeah, you just say you freeze. Okay. You could get tinned air and you just turn the can upside down. yeah Yeah, exactly. it's the It's the fancy version of just flipping a can upside down. Anyways, so if I have issues, I'm going to try to do it with that and then just hit the end with that super cold and see if I get enough differential to pop the tool up. But that's burning problems that haven't happened yet. So we'll see. Yeah, 100%.
00:15:48
Speaker
a hundred cent But yeah. um Yeah, I'm curious to see how your tool off goes with that. Like, it's going to be interesting. Yeah. I mean, all told, it cost me, I think, $500 to buy. i bought an 1800-watt induction module power supply, and then the couple holders were like $400.
00:16:07
Speaker
four hundred bucks um So we'll try it. We'll see how it works out. I also had a friend reach out, local guy, that has a proper shrink-fit machine that's broken, so that might find its way to me, which is like six kilowatts, so that's a lot more juice. Yeah.
00:16:25
Speaker
Yeah, that's a lot of power. That should get the job done. Yeah, I got a quote on a mirror is the maker.
00:16:36
Speaker
It's the brand I use for my roughing tool. Hoffman Vera something or other. And i asked for a quote on one last week when I was at the Mazak dealers because they're the agents for these tools.
00:16:48
Speaker
And it's a 12-diameter, 3.5 times D mirror maker for machining the anchor points. But it's a spendy tool. Oh, yeah. like Compared to what I'm running,
00:17:01
Speaker
um It's a $200 tool. What I'm running is, yeah, what I'm running now, I think, by the time I landed, she has a $54 tool. So it's four times the price.
00:17:15
Speaker
It's like, that' but ah don't think it's four times the quality. Maybe. Not going to shunk hydraulic. It might make the world a difference, but yeah, it's an expensive tool.
00:17:26
Speaker
Are you going to go with the hydraulic holders? I am going to go with the shunk hydraulic. I just need to be less poor first. So I'm working on that. But yeah, with regards to that, ah yeah, Anchor Point News.
00:17:39
Speaker
ah Are you on the mailing list? Oh, I saw the email, of course. yeah Okay, you saw the email. Okay, wasn't sure if you were on the mailing list. i didn't Danica sent it out. But yeah, we are committing well we ah committing to a ah shipping date or to an availability date of the 30th of April, which is... ah Five weeks away.
00:17:59
Speaker
It's a little terrifying, um especially because I'm funding the whole batch myself, which is, I think, going to stretch us a little bit. But I'd rather do it that way than take people's money. And then, I mean, if I have to push the delivery dates, oh, well, like sorry, guys, inconvenience. not I've got your money and I'm not delivering. So...
00:18:19
Speaker
No, yeah totally. we Ball's getting rolling on that this week. I'm waiting for an order to come through for another job and then I'll order the alley duck or one big batch of aluminum. But yeah, that's we' going in. My sample anno part is ready for collection.
00:18:35
Speaker
Oh, cool. you haven't picked it up yet? Yes. Oh, no. I don't even... Yeah, I think last week we discussed I was going to drop it off. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I got pricing. Okay. Okay.
00:18:48
Speaker
Take a guess how much to anodize the body. I'm playing the take a guess game today, if you hadn't noticed. Oh, just, just, are we talking just or are we going talk batches? ah So but if I do a batch of 15 per, per unit, I can do one, but then a minimum lot charge me.
00:19:05
Speaker
Okay. I don't know. Minimum lot charge of 200. hundred Well, so, so, okay. the If I do a batch of 15, what do you think it is per unit?
00:19:15
Speaker
Ano cost. Call it 15, 20 bucks. $2.48. two dollars forty eight Whoa. I cannot turn my anodizing setup on for the cost of anodizing one of those pots.
00:19:30
Speaker
I can't turn my truck on for that price. That's insane. So I spoke to them when I went there, discussed racking. They're like, oh, can you make racking pins? I'm sure. Piece of aluminum, like 50 millimeters long or two inches long.
00:19:41
Speaker
M5 thread on the one end. It screws into my parts. They're literally going to take the part with those pins and clamp the pins to their bars, to their titanium bars. So racking is a non-issue because I went there, had a chat to the guys.
00:19:54
Speaker
Like it was a confidence inspiring. I'm going to go pick up the sample ah probably on Wednesday. I'll go pick up the sample of that body. Then mark all the holes and see how much growth we had so that I can adjust my manufacturing tolerances to match their growth tolerances. And then yeah, can be making good parts from the get-go.
00:20:16
Speaker
Oh, awesome. i hope I hope the part doesn't look like a $2 part, but yeah, that's awesome. That's a wicked price. don't think it will. Like, I had ah had a long chat to the guys about what I expected, how I'm like, I do my own Anno. This is like, these are the criteria.
00:20:29
Speaker
They could see that I knew what I was talking about with the Anno. So they, yeah, we'll see. I'm very curious to see what it comes out like. Why is my wife there now? I have many questions. Sorry.
00:20:41
Speaker
She's a gallivanting to get a McFlurry and now she's at Burger King for some reason. She did buy something at McDonald's, but now she's at Burger King. Who knows? She's her own mission tonight.
00:20:54
Speaker
She can come bring burgers. The sample Anno part was free as well, which is
Tax Strategies for Small Businesses
00:21:01
Speaker
nice. I got an invoice for a free free thing. Like, cool. Thanks for the paperwork.
00:21:05
Speaker
um But yeah, they want me to make racking consumables. And that's, I mean, there's a minor detail to make that. so And then, yeah, at least I've got that part of the process dialed in now. Like, assuming it comes back good quality, that is one less thing i have to worry about.
00:21:20
Speaker
no totally. It takes it off your mind and, yeah, that lets you move a little quicker. And like you said, for the price, no you can't, like... Yeah, it's hilarious. Like, i can't even turn my Anno setup on. Like, I literally burn more electricity than that heating my Anno setup up. ah Like, I ran Anno on Sunday? What's today? Monday. Yeah, on Sunday.
00:21:39
Speaker
I ran Anno yesterday afternoon. No, Saturday afternoon. A day of the weekend, I ran anodizing and I ran five batches and it's like, that's six hours of my life.
00:21:51
Speaker
It's a schlep. luck And that's because I've got a short acid dip time on my, on my anno setup because I'm just looking for cosmetic. I'm not looking for like particularly high quality, super thick anno.
00:22:04
Speaker
Yeah. No, it's something nice to get rid of. Plus, I mean, it's not it's not like it's extending your life to be like breathing over Anno Tanks. Yeah, no, it's not good for you. Like, breathe too much, you have a heart attack. It's great.
00:22:18
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So I obviously prefer not to do that.
00:22:22
Speaker
But yeah. Cool, cool, cool. Okay, so what's happening with your fourth axis tailstock, Kurtz? So I talked on the last podcast of going to do the next run on the Grizzly because it's not doing anything and I'm just going to run. And then I started designing this the Canadian pen. And then I just, the more I thought about it, the more I'm like, you know what? It's going take me fruit grip, any kind of fancy pens, whatever.
00:22:46
Speaker
um The more, the more I thought about it and then I'm like, it'll take me let's say it takes me one day to make the tailstock and then let's say it takes me one day to get all the code figured out for the the style. I'm like, it's probably going to crank through all the pens in this batch in another day.
00:23:02
Speaker
I'm like, so I'm like, I'm just going to do it now. i like Screw it. like Maybe i might have over, it might take me three days to make this tailstock and three days to program it and then I'll just be eating my words.
00:23:14
Speaker
You're going to be running four times as fast. That's going to be four times as many rip-ems. Yeah. So I was like, I'm just going to do it now. The finishes going to be better. Everything is just going to be better. And was just like, let's just do it. So I have, that's what was doing this morning. I roughed out the tail stock. It's just sitting in the machine. I just had a chunk of steel of the right size. I'm basically going to mimic what I did on my little machine and just make it go. Go for it. Yeah.
00:23:35
Speaker
It's got to, I got to do it sometime. I was going to do it next batch just to kind of make the cash a little bit easier because I'm getting near the end of the month. I like to do a release. So I'm not, you know, starving. Um, yeah food is I think it'll work out.
00:23:48
Speaker
Yeah. Food is really, I really enjoy food and I really enjoy keeping my house warm. And yeah, so I think I'll be okay. I think we'll be okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I know. Good. Those kinds of things. You just need to just do it and you will reap the benefits in the long run.
00:24:03
Speaker
I designed a fixture last week, realized I ordered the wrong material and had to go buy another, it was a thousand rand, so another $50 worth the material today that I wasn't planning on buying because I ordered 8 mil instead of 10 mil.
00:24:20
Speaker
But I had them chop it to size like I did last time. I was going to do it with vacuum fixture and then i'm like, okay, I'm going to spend four five hours making a vacuum fixture that might not work. Let me just have them cut it to size, do material prep and just run these things two at a time and then...
00:24:33
Speaker
The process works. I'll build a fixture that takes up the whole envelope or most of the envelope of the machine and holds 20 parts for the next batch. But for now, I'm running two at time every three, just I think it's four minutes with reload.
00:24:46
Speaker
I've got to run that tomorrow morning. I've got to run another 60 parts. It's a stupid way to do it, but it gets it out the door in a day, not spend a day making a fixture and hoping for the best. Totally. Yeah. No, i I see it. Like, yeah, no so no sense of burning three hours to save two. Yeah.
00:25:02
Speaker
Exactly. Like these guys are hopefully going to start placing proper orders shortly.
Customer Negotiations and Fair Pricing
00:25:07
Speaker
Like this is the first batch of 60 units. So it's a hundred of these specific parts. um They are product releasing at the end of this month. They are releasing their product in six days.
00:25:17
Speaker
So I'm delivering their assembling and the products going to customers. And then from there, it should be a batch of like 500 components. And then I'm going to seriously want to optimize my process.
00:25:29
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. But then you can optimize it once you have, once you have, yeah. Yeah. Ideally four anchor points, just drink whole palette spanning four of them. Done. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. That is, that is the direction I'm moving in at this point.
00:25:42
Speaker
That's awesome. Yeah. That's, that's going to be fun. Oh, I said I'm jazzed, jazzed to plop that in my machine to see how it works. I'm trying to work everything through in my head of how I would set everything up. So yeah. Yeah. need to get yours off to you. I've just, yeah.
00:25:56
Speaker
trying to eat food and whatnot. Yep. No, I get that, man. Take your time. yeah No, it needs to go because it's sitting there looking pretty. i was My last excuse was i was waiting for some rulers for you.
00:26:08
Speaker
Those are done. I want to toss them in there. There's a bunch spare for the Patreons. um But yeah, I want to get that off to you because it's just sitting and frustrating me a bit. But yeah, I was harassing customers today. I think I shared that tilt mechanism with you.
00:26:23
Speaker
I was harassing them today, just trying to interrogate them for what the actual production numbers will be on those. And the guy's like, oh, ah you sent us four. We only paid for two. I'm like, no, your quote was for two sets of two.
00:26:36
Speaker
They got them at their final production cost because I underestimated my, um, the time to prototype it and that's not their problem. That's my problem. So they were like, please let us know what to we owe you. I'm like, no no you guys don't owe me anything. I could have got another, could have got them to double pay me, but it's like, no, that you got what you were quoted and the production price is now the same as that coincidentally.
00:26:59
Speaker
Um, We don't make like million dollars an hour, but we make good money doing them, especially if we roll it into production and optimize it a little bit. But job they want to do batches of 10 every probably, if they do 10, it would be every two or three months. So it wouldn't be, yet it wouldn't be recurring.
00:27:18
Speaker
They're still doing testing and certification on it, but hopefully they'll ramp those numbers up going forward, which will be nice. Oh, yeah, that'd be awesome. Nice little subscription. Well, i been I was chatting to showing to one of my customers today. went to go drop something off and I was having a chat to He keeps me very busy. He sends me a lot of lot of the gun stuff, or most of the gun stuff comes from him.
00:27:40
Speaker
And I like, I've got a quote on another machine. He's like, have work for it? I'm like, are we getting there? na We're playing the long game with a bunch of our customers. It's a bit risky, but we're playing the long game where we... making samples, making samples, six, seven months of just R&D and d in making samples, waiting for them to go into
Production Optimization for Diesel Sensors
00:27:57
Speaker
full production. And then, and then we smiling because then we just printing fricking money.
00:28:01
Speaker
All the processes are dialed. It's just hit go and print. i mean, even the, yeah, the diesel tubes I do, I did 200 of them since Thursday last week.
00:28:14
Speaker
I assembled 200 of them on Sunday. Like it's two days of lathe work. It was an hour. It's what doing on Sunday morning. It literally took me an hour and a half to machine 200 parts because it's all set up on the anchor point. I load the fixture, slap them in, hit go.
00:28:28
Speaker
It takes four minutes to run nine parts, put them on the rack. And then while it runs, I laser them. And then Danica pressed in the PTFE inserts. And that afternoon I spent an hour and a half assembling 200 parts.
00:28:40
Speaker
Like we've optimized the hell out of it. So in the and the next six months, if I were to give you a machine, I can give you a lathe or I can give you a mill. What's going to be more beneficial to you for the next six months?
00:28:54
Speaker
That is a difficult question. Or a year. Say a year if you want. So no, the issue there is Big Bertha does the thing it needs to do right now.
00:29:06
Speaker
Like it makes the parts I need it to make right now. um Even if, even anchor point, if we're doing a hundred units a month, Bertha can keep up. That's a non-issue. The, it is the first machine on the, on the list to be replaced, but a mill might jump the queue just because if a few things start rolling in, we're going to run out of mill capacity very, very quickly.
00:29:29
Speaker
um We're doing a diesel sensor housing. They are, I think four five minutes each machining and they want to do 250 to a thousand of them a month. So that starts to eat up, eat up days of production.
00:29:43
Speaker
And that's where another mill that runs my recurring production work becomes very beneficial. So yeah, right now I'm between the two. I don't know which one I want to go with first. Um, but both of them are stuck.
00:29:55
Speaker
The, the lades a little bit cheaper, the later I was looking at, um, The lathe I was looking at, well, it's definitely not $4,000. It's $43,000. um And that is a Sino C-axis live tool gang lathe with parts catcher chip conveyor, all the bells and whistles.
00:30:15
Speaker
And they'll put a smaller servo motor the spindle for me. The lady looked at me like I was drunk, but I'm like, no, no, I have power limitations. Can we do this? I don't care if it takes two seconds to spin up instead of one. Like, can you put a 2.2 or 3.7 kilowatt spindle on you for me?
00:30:30
Speaker
And they're like, no that's fine. We can do that. They'll make a bracket and convert it for me at the factory. Oh, nice. Okay. Yeah. So, but that, I mean, that's a, that's a $43,000 machine. It's not a, not a cheap machine. And, uh, cause i know you talked about, uh, like adjusting the Gibbs on Bertha and that, yeah is that like, they were super loose.
00:30:48
Speaker
Super, super loose. Um, we were getting a bit of surface finish weirdness, but don't know. Uh, parts line, it gets crumped. It doesn't matter. Um, but yeah, Euro steel struck again.
00:31:02
Speaker
So yeah, yeah. You're still is my favorite company. They owe me a meter of bar. Well, actually they don't owe me a meter bar cause on account. So they wouldn't have invoiced me for the meter. I ordered 12 meters. My cousin's like, Hey, um, we only have 11 meters. We're sending you 11 meters.
00:31:17
Speaker
And five of those 11 meters were from different stock. So we've always got 30 millimeter bar and it's been between 30.1 and 30.6, give take.
00:31:28
Speaker
So it's been oversized. I bought a 31 mil collet. It works perfectly. Never had an issue. And then Danica was running parts and she's like, I go there. I look what's going on here? the parts pushing back in the collets.
00:31:41
Speaker
Messed around a bit, thought maybe, i don't know, Udril lost the insert. No, everything's fine. Measure the bar, 29.8. twenty nine boyites So my 31 collet won't collapse enough. So I sent her the next day to go buy me 30 millimeter collet.
00:31:57
Speaker
And yeah, that's I mean, the 173E collets are not exactly the cheapest fricking item. It was a $67 collet that I shouldn't have needed.
00:32:08
Speaker
But now I have a 30 mil collet, not the end of the world. So we ran the rest of the stuff the next day and yeah got that finished, but you' a little bit annoying. My job, that Gibb was super loose. I'm a little worried the turquoise wearing out or the carbon-filled PTFE.
Handling Unexpected Machine Failures
00:32:23
Speaker
And it's not the end of the world to replace it, but it's like four or five days that the machine is down. Yeah, fair. I also went to run parts on Saturday, turned it on in a wooden home.
00:32:36
Speaker
After four years, my inductive sensor that's been beaten by shavings and coolant finally died. So I opened it. It was connected with way goes. Just click the way goes open, connect a new one, check it works. Cool. Cut the wire the right length, replace that. It took all of, it took me all of 15 minutes and the machine was up and running again.
00:32:55
Speaker
Nice. But it was one of those things. It's actually one of our topics that we'll get into at some point. um Yeah. Driving the struggle bus because some days are just, just like, i don't know you saw I added a topic.
00:33:08
Speaker
Oh, driving the struggle. I see that. Yes. yeah yeah And how to cope with driving the struggle bus. Like, yeah, you, you have those days, some days. Yeah, no doubt. Yeah. And yeah, my coping mechanism is use the force and just force your way through it. But that's not always the healthiest approach.
00:33:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. No, exactly. Just plod through. Yeah. The work will set you free. Yeah. Yeah. yeah But it's like some days yeah that I mean, and the day that I'm referring to there specifically, turn the laser cutter on to laser cut something and thought, let me clean the lens. We haven't cleaned the lens in while.
00:33:44
Speaker
Pull the lens out, put the lens back in. And then it's hitting the inside of the, so you've got your lens and you got the little ah airblasty nozzle. Yeah. It's glowing.
00:33:56
Speaker
It's shooting, like it shoots a reflection out because it's now hitting the side there. So, okay, stop what I'm doing. Unscrew the lens mount, put a piece of tape, get it pointing in the middle, put the lens cover back on.
00:34:07
Speaker
And now it's hitting the side. So adjust, adjust, adjusted adjust, messed around for like 20 minutes just so I could start laser cutting stuff. I'm like, then I go turn the lathe on and then the lathe sensors shut the bed.
00:34:18
Speaker
So eventually I just was like, okay, enough now. Let me leave this leave the lay alone. i'm not going to get around to this. I've got other stuff that I need to give attention to. And then Sunday lunchtime, I just climbed in all of 10 minutes, lads up and running again.
00:34:32
Speaker
Oh, no. Cancel. Sorry, I accidentally hit back on my mouse and it was trying to leave the webpage. It would have been less than ideal. But yeah, how do you deal with things when everything goes ah against you in a day?
00:34:48
Speaker
I don't cry in a corner. Like, I don't know. I find that works, but it's not the most productive. No. Yeah. It makes you feel better, but doing in the shower is better because you can wash away the tears. um Yeah. I don't know.
00:34:59
Speaker
It's like, ah
00:35:02
Speaker
I don't know. I try not to get like the whole point of like my last while of running this company is trying to get myself to a point where I'm not like, under the gun of either time or money or bills or like just give myself some running room and then just try to keep building up that lead.
00:35:19
Speaker
That is probably been my biggest like stress reducer in like hitting something where it's like, yeah, sometimes like the hard inch, like for instance, the turret just once ah couple times a year just decides to not behave for
Machine Maintenance and Problem-Solving
00:35:31
Speaker
me.
00:35:31
Speaker
Um, it's just a pneumatic valve. It just sticks. So I've taken the entire valve apart, like relube it, put it all back together. It takes me like an hour to do it. I'm getting pretty good at it now, but it's just like, that usually happens right when I need those parts made.
00:35:42
Speaker
And just like, ah, I can't, like I like, don't know the time. It's like, well, you have the time cause you have to do it. Yeah. So, but giving myself, like you said, giving yourself a little bit of leeway in all regards to being like, okay, no one's waiting on products for me. I mean, that's different for me. Cause I have a,
00:35:56
Speaker
i don't I'm not a job shop, so i have yeah I can build myself my own time buffer and then a cash buffer. And that's that's probably my best way to deal with weird stuff like that. Still not 100%. I still get roasted, but ah so stus I'm pushing towards that.
00:36:10
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's, I mean, yeah, the the deadlines thing is... Like I don't have to deliver the stuff that I'm delivering tomorrow, but I like money. So I'm delivering it. Like the one thing at a three week lead time, three weeks ends like on Thursday, but it'll be delivered tomorrow. And then I don't have to worry about it The other stuff was due tomorrow, but even the pallet system, like if I don't have it, that's why Danica put a deadline on it. Cause she knows if I don't have a deadline, nothing's getting done.
00:36:36
Speaker
I will find excuses to drag this out for the next 10 months. I mean, yeah, but it is annoying when you want to go do something specific and then everything is broken.
00:36:48
Speaker
yeah Yeah, no, exactly. and I mean, that's, that is a problem with old machines, but it's not, it's not like it doesn't happen on new machines either. So so exactly. I mean, I broke the tool changer on my machine. It was great. Oh, no.
00:37:00
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, that was a while. That was like a year ago. Yeah. Right. We had pop it Yeah. Yeah. And then shit happens. I could have waited three days for someone to come and fix it. Nope.
00:37:14
Speaker
I fixed it myself because that's just how I roll. I'm that kind of... like I'm not afraid of machines. It's a mechanical system. It can't be that complicated. Yeah.
00:37:25
Speaker
Yeah. yeah You just figure it out and carry on with your life. like No, no, no. And that's my old boss used to say that he's like a human built this. He's like, of course I can like fix it. He's like, it's not like this was some alien tech. He's like, someone figured out how to build this. Like all you have to do is figure out how to fix it. Like, it's not that complete. Just take it in steps. It's like, yeah, it's,
00:37:46
Speaker
I don't know. I always think about that. Whenever I hit something where or I'm like this isn't like, this will never come out. It's like, someone did this. It wasn't just magically put together. like Someone figured it out. So you you have to just unfigure it out. You have to do the easy part. You don't have to come up with how it works. You just have to figure out how it went together.
00:38:01
Speaker
yeah exactly. And yeah, I think there's there's a bit of a lack of that in in the trades in general where people are like, ah especially electricians. Yeah, we're going to get into my hatred for electricians.
00:38:12
Speaker
ah We delivered a machine. Can I have the electrical drawing? I'm like, dude, there's where you connect the power. What do you need electrical drawing for? There is the isolator. Put power in the isolator. No, we need the drawings. I'm like, dude, just leave and I'll connect this thing. Like, come on.
00:38:26
Speaker
But there's a, yeah, travel electrical trouble. I don't know. Do you watch Rotary SMP on YouTube? Yeah, I do. Yeah. Yeah, there's this video yesterday where he smoked his Mesa card. no no i haven't seen yeah i know a while but yeah no he uh he had some electrical issues with his maho um and it turns out it was just uh one of the connectors and the plug came loose he was missing a phase and it ended up yeah i ended up smoking one of his mesa mesa cards yeah but like he had a whole whole video was about electrical troubleshooting
00:39:01
Speaker
And how to go about it. And yeah, I think there's just a general people are scared of things when they shouldn't be like, what's the worst that can happen. You need a bigger stick to hit it back into shape. Like, come on. Yeah. But I think yeah again, ah come from building machines and that's also a different mindset. Yeah.
00:39:18
Speaker
Yeah, well, i think that's the whole problem with our entire trade is basically all of us are more mechanical. like Like, this is our forte. Like, we're just naturally more inclined to be good with mechanical systems or electrical systems. Like, you don't fall into this trade and be like, I don't want to, you know, mess around with that. Like, that's kind of already your...
00:39:36
Speaker
passion so our our views are skewed everyone i talk to is good with like machining and mechanical design because they have to be so it's just like i think everybody has that and then you go and run into the average joe and you're like oh you don't know how to do this it's like oh i guess yeah that's probably not your that's probably not what into and you just you haven't developed the knowledge on it so Well, that's the thing. like yeah there's a I think also in the trades, it tends to be a lot of curious. you I mean, you obviously you get the people who do their 9-5 and that's it.
00:40:03
Speaker
But a lot of the people are curious and side hustling or designing stuff at night something. Yeah. Like they don't want to stand at the machine all day, every day. Like I've got a, my cousin's boyfriend, he's getting over where he's working. He moved there so that he could work on their mill from 1980 something.
00:40:23
Speaker
um And he's been stuck on their, on their Akuma lathe because he's the only one who understands the subroutines
Entrepreneurial Spirit and Work-Life Balance
00:40:30
Speaker
and whatnot. And he's like, this isn't hard. Someone else needs to do this so that I can go play on the machine i want to play on or I'm leaving.
00:40:36
Speaker
Like, I'm not enjoying, ah he's meant to be the foreman and he's standing at a lathe all day. And yeah, I mean, they're not doing particularly well, but yeah, he's getting very, very over that whole situation.
00:40:49
Speaker
Like he wants to actually be stimulated where he's working, not just programming hand cycles. Yeah. No, that's exactly it. and I do get that. I actually had a video that I saw today on Instagram about working a nine-to-five that I sent to my mom. And she was like, yep.
00:41:08
Speaker
Because mom both my folks, my mom worked at the bank when they were engaged. They got married, went on honeymoon for two and a half years to the US, to Hawaii. We were about to get kicked out and came back to South Africa.
00:41:19
Speaker
And then my dad started his own business. And my mom worked at a caravan park for bit and then worked with him my whole childhood. They ran their fiberglass business until my dad got bored and then tanked it. But yeah, like, I've never, my folks have never worked nine to five while I was around. Like,
00:41:38
Speaker
My dad would go fishing in the morning. like His mate would phone him at 12 and a half noon at the Sugar Moe. like, hey, listen, I can see the snook boiling. We're going at three. They would meet up at the ski boat club, launch the ski boat, go catch like way too many, like way over quota.
00:41:52
Speaker
Come back as it's getting dark and yeah catch some pocket money, basically. Like my brother and I used to make all our pocket money fishing. That's cool. yeah but That's my thing. like I want to be able to...
00:42:06
Speaker
Yeah, I was actually, i don't know if you've listened to Chips and Tips from Tupac. Yeah. Yeah. Did you listen to the Dylan Jackson episode? I just, yeah, just finished it last week.
00:42:17
Speaker
Yeah, so nah. um But were saying, when he started on his own, ah keeping regular hours, he was like oh no, I'll just knock off early today. Oh, I'll come in late tomorrow. And then end of the week, oh shit, all this stuff has to be delivered.
00:42:28
Speaker
And you're now working 14 hour days. And i was like, yeah, but I know that exact story because you keep somewhat regular hours, some some semblance of a routine, and you can actually get a lot of work done. like You've got to make sure that you you do that. Otherwise, yeah, you can very quickly fall behind.
00:42:48
Speaker
Yeah, or like and that's the problem. There's no one standing over your shoulder to be like, you have to do this today. like I can be like, you know what? I'm going work on this today. And it's like, I have to sometimes just like talk to myself and be like, all right, is this is this making the beer taste better? Or is this just making you think the beer will taste better? It's like, well, it's it's more of a want than a need right now. it's like, all right, tough guy. Okay, get the things that are paying the bills rolling first.
00:43:09
Speaker
Then you can focus on this. All right. I mean, I've gotten significantly better at that. But I mean, you have to be or else you're just going to die. That's a bad thing. Yeah, this is a litanus step litmus test of ah of running your own business. Like if youre yeah if you play too much, you starve and you go under. It's pretty pretty ah brutal method of proving it out. Well, yeah.
00:43:29
Speaker
That's one of the things that annoys me a little bit about our podcast editor.
Challenges with Remote Work Management
00:43:32
Speaker
um I'd be cool, I need you to do this today. And then I've got to go and chase it for him. Like I asked you to do this this morning. Like I can't be motivating you on every single task. Like I told you it needs to get done. It needs to get done.
00:43:45
Speaker
Like... Cause I don't want to be a person manager. That's why I want robots. no Yeah. Yeah. Different problems. Let's do the thing. It'll go and crash itself for you. Like it'll crash itself just how you told it to.
00:43:59
Speaker
But yeah, we are, mean, tear around a whole bunch of pots. Can't really complain too much. but Considering I don't pay her, I can't complain. I was going to say, doesn't this qualify as slave labor? but um I know, it actually.
00:44:13
Speaker
So we met with the bean counselor on Thursday because obviously I don't want to go to jail. with selling stuff overseas and whatnot so ah to try to get ahead of releasing the anchor points.
00:44:25
Speaker
Just how do we get money in and out of the country? Because now it's going to go through PayPal, but PayPal is not linked to my business. And I need an invoice through the business so I can claim the VAT on the materials. like yeah It's a whole thing.
00:44:39
Speaker
um So I went and met with him and I was like, yeah, we need the payroll forms, please. I lost them. We need to fill them out so we can actually pull a salary. And it's better if Danik and I... take what we need out of the business and two salaries.
00:44:51
Speaker
We pay less tax on it because we're in a lower tax bracket. We each in a lower tax bracket. So yeah, we got to, she's actually going to get a salary now. What she doesn't realize is I'm just going to make her pay for everything then.
00:45:03
Speaker
Like, oh, we need groceries. You can pay. Ooh, you need this. i can pay. Make it a her problem. But yeah, we finally, after six years, are going to start actually taking a salary from JSpec Engineering.
00:45:16
Speaker
Wow. Yeah, I've just been taking money out on my loan account and then sold the the business, my sister Slowio, a few years ago to offset my loan account because that I built before the business. So technically it was mine.
00:45:28
Speaker
And then I've got a plan to sell ah the business, my vehicle as well. because then we can also claim the tax on that and depreciate and there's whole bunch of shenanigans we can pull to give the government as little money as possible because taxation is theft.
00:45:43
Speaker
Yeah, it can get brutal. Yeah. yeah No, my tolerance for for them is very low. Oh, yes. I mentioned last week that that job for the golf tees.
International Shipping and Pricing Strategies
00:45:53
Speaker
Yep. you' The aluminum. Yeah.
00:45:55
Speaker
Yeah, we heard back. The guy started crying. So we actually looked at the the costings and... Went in three-fifths of the price and he was still crying.
00:46:08
Speaker
yeah So we told him to fuck right off. Yeah. We're not placing to the bottom. Because we could we could go again. We could half it again. But then if anything goes wrong, we start dropping our shop rates and start losing money. Like, no.
00:46:22
Speaker
That's the price. If you don't like it, look at all. like yeah roger Roger told him to just go away. Like, that's the price. That's the best price you're going to get. find it somewhere else. because yeah or redesign it so it's not so complicated yeah yeah well they're looking at getting it cost but then i'm gonna have to make the mold and that's gonna be not a cheap endeavor so i don't mind either way but yeah like it's yeah tomorrow i'm probably gonna chat to roger for like an hour once he listens to the podcast and he has his name a bunch he then phones me and we talk for like an hour yeah no roger no bad two of us get together and it's like no matter what's going on that's like a three four hour visit every time
00:47:01
Speaker
Because we just told talk cuck about everything. It's great fun. That's cool to have someone like i yeah for sure. Yeah. So I have a question regarding your ah packaging.
00:47:15
Speaker
Don't worry, you can finish dying first. and Sorry, it's mute my microphone so I don't cough in everybody's ear. um Are you using gum tape?
00:47:27
Speaker
I know we discussed tape a little while ago. Is it gum tape? no i No, I can't get in the size I want and the color I want. So I'm not using it right now. I want to be, but no, I am not. Okay. So you're just using normal packaging tape?
00:47:40
Speaker
Yep. Is it paper packaging tape or polypropylene? Just clear tape. Okay, clear tape. Okay. No, because I was... um I was looking into gun tape, obviously with going to pro pack. I've had a few things that I want to get the reinforced one for the anchor point boxes. Although, although the anchor point box is going in a DHL box because I got to pay for the box anyway.
00:48:02
Speaker
So I'm shoving it in there with a bunch of padding. and Mark, I'm getting my money's worth. It is literally cheaper for Danik and I to fly to the US and hand deliver the bloody units than to ship them with DHL. But flying to the US and hand delivering is not a sustainable system.
00:48:17
Speaker
Yeah, that's a different one, yeah. Yeah, like, hey, by month three, the TSA are going to be like, hey, friend, this is your third batch of samples. We need to search
Anchor Point Product Launch and Marketing
00:48:27
Speaker
what's going on here.
00:48:28
Speaker
So yeah, we're going to go the DHL route. We've decided on it. It hits the profits heavy, but it's fine. Yeah, that's rough. It starts to benefit us a bit more when if someone orders two units or four units because then we can use – it isn't proportionally expensive.
00:48:47
Speaker
as the the boxes get bigger. so Right, okay. But yeah, I look forward to going down to the little place that's the DHL Agent 3 at 1 there, like a little copier shop, and being, cool, swap card for like, yeah, it'll be a stupid amount of money.
00:49:03
Speaker
It'll be like $2,000, ka-ching, could just swap my card for it. um But it is what it is. the The joys of living in the arse end of Africa. Yeah, no, totally. I get that. oh Like I said, your offers on the table. I'll cover shipping happily. So just if you need it, reach out. No issues. Yeah, I might do that. But anyway, we'll discuss that later. um that's what But yeah, for now, for now we are we've got our price points in mind.
00:49:31
Speaker
We're going to probably do an announcement in the next week or so just to everyone on the list saying this is the price point. and roll it out over social media that people can ah know what to expect. And I need to, that that's another thing there, making documentation. Like I've got to sit and make, okay, cool.
00:49:46
Speaker
This is what comes in the box because like yours doesn't come with strap clamps because, well, it's the old version, but we're going to sell them with strap clamps that match the Saunders plate. So it'll come, you can either, like there'll be, the this is the required hardware depending on how you want to mount it.
00:50:01
Speaker
I'm not supplying you Lang studs, buy your own Lang studs or 5-axis studs, or buy your own M8 bolts to fix it to your own fixture plate kind of story. And then I think what we'll end up doing is releasing the plans for the mewing points in the harbor, which is the two units and the four units.
00:50:17
Speaker
You can either have the the model or you can buy a plate from us um that we would recommend still machine the top of. So we do all the roughing and whatnot on the back.
00:50:29
Speaker
And then you just do final machining on the top that you know it lines up exactly. Nice. ah job yeah It's a yeah making work holdings fun. i actually got added to, well, I know for a fact that people are listening to the podcast because I just got a message regarding it, regarding episode 11. Let me just look up one moment, please.
00:50:52
Speaker
a Ken from Flux Workholding. Okay, yeah. i did Yeah, added Joshua from Firmworks and myself to a WhatsApp group. I know WhatsApp group. about ah Group chat.
00:51:04
Speaker
So we've been chatting because he's like, we're all one-man bands doing workholding. So we've been chatting over the last little while. yeah Interesting. Nice. I was ah was very interested in the Flux work holding about a couple of years ago. Then they kind just went dark for a little bit. And I was like, oh, bummer. That was a good product. And I'm so happy to see you it's up and rolling again. So he bought it from he bought it from the the previous owner.
00:51:26
Speaker
yeah Yeah. i I can tell you a bit more about that later. But yeah. um he yeah He bought it up, so he's now ah bringing that that product line back, which is sweet because yeah I might need to get my hands on some of those. so My plan right now is to build a mooring point. I'll send you a picture this week of the the two station.
00:51:45
Speaker
That material's in the material order for the
Improving Workholding Processes
00:51:48
Speaker
for the production run. And then I want to use that to manufacture because then like when you've got two stations like that, you can get away with some silly stuff.
00:51:58
Speaker
So then I want to start moving my vices and stuff over that when I want to set up to run my self-centrings, I can put two on there or I can just load it up and swap work holding quickly. Cause that is in my mind, swapping work holding is still a huge thing, but that's, yeah.
00:52:14
Speaker
leftovers from where I used to work, like everything was a fricking struggle. So even now in my mind, like I needed to, well, you saw my video this morning using my Melissa lathe. Um, there's holes in my riser.
00:52:27
Speaker
I've picked up my chuck. I threw it on there. tightened down to the impact driver, probed the pot and I was ready to go. Like that whole riser took me not even three minutes to machine. Right, yeah. Yeah, like, aluminum's easy.
00:52:40
Speaker
That's actually yeah another thing. ah Remembering that there are lots of ways to end up with the same finished product. So that, I was making some bearing housings this morning. And my general workflow these days is, have material that's four five mils taller, grab it with serrated jaws or my my special grippy jaws, grab the thing, machine all the sides of the top in one go, turn it around in soft jaws, deck off the back.
00:53:06
Speaker
And I needed to make two bearing blocks, but the material I had was 30 mils. So I'm like, hang on, let me just make square blocks. I don't need to machine the outside. Let me machine the block square and then just put them in soft jaws. Cause then it's got, i don't know if I don't actually own parallels.
00:53:19
Speaker
I just machine soft jaws, like ledges on my soft jaws, put it in there, machine the ball out and I'm done. Like, yeah. And those took all of six minutes to machine. It was, yeah.
00:53:29
Speaker
The LK is really good at making circles. Nice. That's good. Yeah. I made a comma two undersize, bought it to, or contoured it to comma two undersize, marked it. I'm like, it's exactly comma two undersize.
00:53:42
Speaker
It ended up 10 microns under bearing size. I just pressed it in with the press. It was great. Sick. Yeah. I ah was so stoked. ah yeah that twelve risk The recipe I've got for that 12 mil cutter is like dialed in.
00:53:55
Speaker
Yeah. That's awesome. See that my gate closes. My wife has just returned. Okay. She left and it closed and then opened again. Got stuck on a rock. But yeah, I see it's closed now.
00:54:06
Speaker
the but Yeah, that's the magic of like having, oh, I want a McClury. I haven't had one in a very long time. um Yeah, that's the magic of like having a nice, like once you have dialed everything, like I'm starting to notice that even on the machine now, it's like, oh, I have a dialed in thread mill for titanium. I have a dialed in. This is great for finishing. This is great for rough. Like I just like, it's so much easier to drop apart it and be like, oh, i I know everything works here. I have you know presets for everything. It's just like I can program a thousand times faster and I don't have to, but it's,
00:54:34
Speaker
It's so nice. But it's nice to be able to. Well, i went, what was I making? i was making the the first spacer and the machine bogged down. like, hey, what's going on? Dropped the feed override down, let it finish.
00:54:45
Speaker
Had a look. I had a four millimeter step over, not a two three millimeter step over. So I'm like, oh, okay. it must have just I forgot to change it because it pulls in with a four default and I just haven't bothered to fix it. But I was running ma Magwells over the weekend.
00:54:59
Speaker
And there I run at two meters a minute, not 4.3 meters a minute. And two mil step over, not three mil because of the work holding being the limitinging limiting factor. Because I have to grab it with like three millimeters on a on a ledge because I've got to surface a thing. So I learned the hard way on the first part.
00:55:16
Speaker
Don't go full cowboy. You s slow it down a little bit and you can get much more reliable stuff.
00:55:25
Speaker
yeah no exactly yes like yeah yeah that's okay oh yeah i'm sorry that's what noticed no no shoot go ahead no all right guys i was gonna say before we uh jump into the very exciting one that you want me to tell you about let's do what i call our uh mid podcast things oh no it's better do i get a straw oh I've got a steel straw.
Podcast Promotion and Listener Engagement
00:55:52
Speaker
It is cream soda slush puppy. Oh, that sounds much better. And it won't sound as it won't sound as vicious for people on the podcast as you just eating ice cream.
00:56:05
Speaker
Maybe people like that. Maybe it'll be the new ASMR version. Jamie Eden. Sorry. We are talking about food. like Okay. my office My wife is being a sketchy.
00:56:16
Speaker
Okay. So let's, ah yeah. So if you're looking for information on the podcast, you can check out our website, theloanmachinists.com. On there, there's a link to the Patreon where we have one really awesome patron.
00:56:30
Speaker
ah Patreon. ah Jade from Benchmark20, thank you very much for your support. It's greatly appreciated. um There's also a link to the merch line, which is a bunch of hoodies. Speaking of, have you got yours back, Kurt?
00:56:42
Speaker
No, that kind of leads into one of topics. Not yet. ah um So, Kurt's got some of the jackets and apparently they're too warm for his workshop because it's nicely climate controlled. But yeah, you can pick up some shirts, shirts hoodies, I think there's hats, I'm not quite sure. ah But yeah, that's all available on on the merch store, it does link through to JSPEC engineering store, but that's just because it's all under one, one banner for the moment.
00:57:07
Speaker
Um, yeah, if I think that, uh, yeah, that pretty much covers the middle of the show call to action. Nice. And then, yeah, yeah what were you saying before? I rudely interrupted you, Kurt.
00:57:19
Speaker
No, no, not not a rudely interrupter at all. um So I just set a point of making one is not the same as making 100. And that's quickly what I discovered with those screws that I was machining last week. So I can machine 12 without issue, and then the tool would just explode.
00:57:35
Speaker
And then i was like, okay, well, maybe, yeah, I'm like, ah maybe side cool and access something. Cause there was like no bird, nothing was like, it was still machining beautifully. So I'm like, and the tool is it's, it's 15,000. It just disappears. So it's not like I can look at the tool after and be like, Oh, it jammed. i was like, I have no idea where went. It just goes into Neverland.
00:57:52
Speaker
ah So plot the new tool in and ran again and 12 screws twelve screws in blows actually 10 10 screws it wasn't perfect or 11 or something like that so it's not like it was a linking move or something weird that was in the okay that's what i was about to ask was it like in a corner or something like and i checked where it exploded on the on the cuts and it was it was always moving around sometimes at the very bottom of the pocket sometimes it was the very first pass so i was like okay it's not related to something stupid and um yeah Anyway, there's a a billion things I'm going to try. I'm pretty sure I figured out what the issue is, is just load
Machining Challenges and Tool Failures
00:58:25
Speaker
on those cutters. It's just better to load it once and let it slot, essentially, just slot as opposed to adaptiving because I was kind of doing a spiral adaptive. um
00:58:35
Speaker
But anyways, I'm going to change the operation. So disengaging and re-engaging in the loads? Totally. Oh, okay. Totally. Yeah. I mean, it was technically almost engaged the whole time, but it was still coming out. I mean, we're talking fat like a thou.
00:58:48
Speaker
like Yeah, but on a 15 thou tool, a thou is... A lot. it's on Yeah, like it's it's cutting load is microscopic. Anyway, so yeah, um ah a ton of people that actually machine screws told me, to like, you know what you should do is just ramp at profile. Like once you clear the center out, they're like, just ramp at profile and just go down spiraling. They're like that way you have one engagement and it just engages all the way to the bottom and, you know, everything is constant. I'm like, that's a smart idea. So.
00:59:12
Speaker
Anyways, that's the, but that's just, it's just knowledge of like, if you make one of something, no matter what you make, you know you never know if it works. you'd never know if your tool path is dialed or if you're at the 110% of that tool. And it's like, yeah, of course it'll last for one, but it won't last for more than four. And it's just. Yeah, but that you said that a while ago, making one of something and making 10.
00:59:30
Speaker
Yeah. 10 or 15 or 15. It's a very different, a very different situation. Like things that weren't issues on one become big issues. Yeah, and things that aren't issues on 10 become issues at 100, and 100 becomes thousands. and like it just yeah it's It's a scaling game that I always forget.
00:59:49
Speaker
Yeah, I'm looking forward to discovering that on the on the Anchor Point system. Oh, I'm sure you will. I'm sure you'll find all kinds of where pull your hair out. Although, man, I don't really think so. fairly certain.
01:00:00
Speaker
oh because i'm i'm not doing anything with with silly no I'm not doing anything with silly small tools. The smallest tool is a two millimeter. like it's yeah There's nothing yeah absurdly small.
01:00:13
Speaker
No, you'll have issues of something a yeah like chips building up and your touch probe not detecting or yeah dumb stuff like that. There'll be something. like There'll always be something that's going to be dumb and happen. but yo'a will I mean, like I had a chip on the on the tape of the other day. like What the hell? Who expects that?
01:00:30
Speaker
Yeah, no doubt. and So yeah, I'm sure there'll be stuff that pops up. But yeah, that that's just... I'm going to change the order of operations now that I, the first thing I do is I make any critical features because there are very few of them.
01:00:47
Speaker
So the first thing I do, even if it takes longer is go and put the dial or the locating pin holes in, in op two and the, and um, the Langstad holes in an op one, because if those aren't right, the thing gets scrapped.
01:01:00
Speaker
So, I would rather the get that. I would rather know that it's ruined right in the beginning than ruin it 20 minutes into machining. Totally. Yeah. So there's a few tweaks to production that we will make.
DIY Solutions vs Commercial Products
01:01:14
Speaker
Nice. But yeah, that's what but happens when you go to production. No doubt. So you have one topic here I want to hear about, even though we're starting to get long in the tooth. um DIY vapor home.
01:01:28
Speaker
Yes. So there's a guy who lives down the road from me who built CNC, c c a three d printed CNC machine. Did some really cool ISO grid coasters on it.
01:01:41
Speaker
He's having some issues. We're chatting. Yeah, follows me on Instagram. So he finally came to visit me on the weekend. I messaged him on Friday because it was a public holiday. I'm like, hey, I'm around today if you want to pop in to visit. That was four hours of visiting.
01:01:54
Speaker
But anyway, we were chatting and he's like, no, he built a paper home. hey, hang on. He reckons he bought a standard sandblaster from like our local Harbor Freighty guys.
01:02:05
Speaker
i Quite a hardcore submersible pump by the looks of it. Like a pretty hardcore one in a bucket. Put his meteor in, added water till it would flow, and that's it.
01:02:18
Speaker
You have a vapor home. No, they're not. Like someone wanted there was someone selling one here or someone makes one here. He was telling me it $7,000.
01:02:28
Speaker
He's like, no. Ooh, that's, that's up there. yeah He's like, nope, he will make his own. So he made his own, like, really good finishes. I'm tempted to convert my, my little sandblasting cabinets to a vapor hone, just so I don't have to deal with dust.
01:02:42
Speaker
Because dust is, yeah. Yeah, that's the reason I was looking at him. It's just no dust. I mean, the thing is, I can buy a commercial unit here for, like, two, three thousand bucks. So it's like, it's not worth it for me to DIY it. But for It's pump in a bucket, Kurt.
01:02:54
Speaker
It's a pump in a bucket. It's not that. It's my time. Like I'm going to mess with that thing for days and it's just, yeah. Pump in buckets. Come on. It's a pump in the bucket. It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. I'm not going to build my own vapor home.
01:03:07
Speaker
It's a pump in a bucket. If I'm going to build something, I'm going to build something more fun than ah than a vapor home. It doesn't excite me. doesn't excite me enough to build myself. a pump in a bucket, Kurt. It's like a 10-minute job.
01:03:19
Speaker
You say that. You say that. You build one, and then we will chat. Well, i'll send you I'll send you the pictures later because asked him for pictures. He sent me the pictures of the whole setup. like It's literally a pump in a bucket, so and he connected the pump to the the media, and that's it.
01:03:34
Speaker
Mm-hmm. well on the nozzle and a nozzle keeping the screen clean and then filtering your yeah that that was the thing he said the screen was a bit of a schlep but he's just gonna put a wiper motor on it and fucking wipe it like i know a few guys that have built them and they they're like i said they're not they're definitely not complicated but yeah but tom is money and uh yeah yep make pens not vapor hones That's kind of how I have to boil it down to. Yeah. and There's so many things i want to make where it doesn't make sense for me to make it.
01:04:08
Speaker
Yeah.
Optimizing Work Cycles and Setups
01:04:09
Speaker
No, a hundred percent. Like the, I was listening to our podcast the other day and you're like, just pull the bar puller.
01:04:19
Speaker
That is the correct answer. It is hundred percent the correct answer. It's going to take me 20 minutes. I just haven't needed it yet. So I haven't done it. Like I'm not going to build it now until I need it. Like when I need it, I'll spend the 20 minutes setting up and then the machine can run auto automatically.
01:04:32
Speaker
totally yeah I'm finally like that job that I ran the stuff's being delivered tomorrow like it's all been tumbled it's been half assembled I'm waiting on the HTP parts I was machining before the podcast kind of tempted to go off to the podcast and just carry on but I think I'll leave it for tomorrow morning yeah it's yeah a bit annoying running two at a time when it's a uh it's a whopping three minute 40 second cycle for two parts ah Yeah, it's rough. yeah You're just married to the machine at that point. Yeah, I'm running a laser cutting job where laser cutting packaging as well. So that's got that's just on 4 minutes 20 and the mill's on 3 minutes 30.
01:05:12
Speaker
thirty So 3 minutes 39. So I'd like run between them. And it gives me time to deburr the parts. Like I've got to do a little bit deburring. It's HTPE. Stuff's horrible. um Yeah.
01:05:23
Speaker
Deburring and peeling the stupid protective film off. It's horrible. ah oh But yeah, the guys cut it super skew for me today. So I did material prep on it, on all the blocks to make them the right length. So when I clamp them, they clamp and then I machined the remaining two sides in, in the operation.
01:05:43
Speaker
Nice. But yeah.
Sandblasting Media and Tool Costs
01:05:46
Speaker
What media are you using for your sandblasting? i use oh i can never remember the number i think it's number two it's a glass speed though sphere yeah just glass speed you bet okay cool and then they just kind of use an evapor horn yeah they just kind of get finer and finer with time as they break yeah and then just they get less effective just swap mode it's kind of why i wanted to go to zerk but okay my tumbling media is disappearing yeah well your tumbling is a rather aggressive so
01:06:17
Speaker
30 minutes tumbling down. yeah it's very aggressive. So what is your last thing there? Reading comprehension. Oh, reading comprehension. So it's funny. I got... um So those tools, those 15,000 tools for the Torx, I'm like, you know what? I'm going to look up some fancy pants versions just to make sure it's not the tool because the tools I'm buying, they're okay, but um they're not like specifically designed. So I looked at some, I think they're called Hexalobe tooling that are specifically designed designed for Torx. Some people are like, oh, reach like reach out to these manufacturers because they make proper tools for like actually machining Torx.
01:06:49
Speaker
So I looked at them and then I looked at the price and I was like, hey, nope. like I thought those were patched most of the time. ah Yeah, definitely there are broaching for it, but ah there are still people that mill Torxes.
01:07:00
Speaker
And so they've designed a specific end mill that matches the radiuses for each size of Torx. Okay. Yeah. Because they're usually like 14 thou or like, you know, 26 thou. They're weird numbers.
01:07:10
Speaker
Stupid sizes. um But yeah, the tool was like $200 for a, you know, 15 thou tool. And I'm like... that's like i will buy that once i decide that that's my weak point like right now i think there's nine different areas that are weak points um but the funny thing is i saw i sent a quote to my or my distributor i was like hey this is what the tool i'm looking for find me some tools like if i'm if i'm going to use you may as well i'm just looking legwork or you may as well do the legwork for me percentagech They read my email and then they found me tools. They sent me back tools and got the quote. I'm like $200. It was a Sandvik tool. And I'm like $200 for this. I'm like, I'll get a Moldino tool for that price. And then I looked and they quoted me 0.15 inch tools, not 0.015 inch tools.
01:07:49
Speaker
zero one five tools So I was like, oh, these are 150 thou tools, which are super oddball size. So no wonder they're crazy expensive. But I'm like, reading comprehension, folks. Like, take your time.
01:08:00
Speaker
Read what I sent you. Like, yeah they're just you're just wast they wasted a whole day trying to find me all these tools and quote all these things. I'm like, you missed a zero. This is like, happens so often. and It happened a bunch times last week where it's like, yep just read. Read, slow down and read.
01:08:14
Speaker
So, yeah. Yeah, we got a job in last week. I think I've run it once in the last year. We we did a like ah couple thousand of these on my little router.
01:08:25
Speaker
um That poor router. Six millimeter, three flute end mill through two millimeter aluminum extrusion and like a three millimeter step over. All 400 watts of that spindle were being used.
01:08:36
Speaker
ah But it was four tool changes per part or three tool changes per part. And then when I got the LK, I moved it onto the LK because it has a tool changer.
01:08:47
Speaker
And I ran off 50 parts in like... three hours or something stupid customers like how urgently can i get these i'm like uh send me material when can i have it because i don't have stock of his material so he sent me 50 pieces to make that's enough to make 100 parts so i made him his 50 parts quickly but i was like hey hang on i wonder how much i'm leaving on the on the table here because i'm running a one millimeter end mill so 39 thousands
01:09:14
Speaker
I was running it at 82 millimeters a minute for my adaptive and then 120 mils a minute for my finish pass. Pushed it through toolpath, through pretool, 324 millimeters a minute. I'm like, cool.
01:09:29
Speaker
Let's see what happens. I've got a few spares. It ran through all 50 parts, no problem, at like three to four times the speed. It was great. Hmm. And then I discovered that ah corn cob roughing tools do really well for chopping extrusion and not leaving flappy burrs because it's interrupted cut.
01:09:49
Speaker
So the burr flies off. Because I was just coming in and just slotting past, but then it would fold the fold the material over. And yeah, I was using an eight millimeter corn cob and works like a bomb.
01:10:02
Speaker
huh But yeah, that's also just not not running it the way you've always run it. It's like... try new things because you can always save a bit of time or make your life a little bit easier like it saved me an entire deburring on that i used to have to hand deburr these parts with a little spinny deburr tool like now it just comes off the machine done it was great yeah that's awesome that's awesome all sorts of weird stuff going through the workshop yeah all right do you want to do the the call to action things this one might be a little bit shorter than normal because i don't think we're gonna into call to actions for like 20 minutes but
01:10:35
Speaker
Yeah,
Product Launch Updates and Shipping Logistics
01:10:36
Speaker
probably not. ah So yeah, you want to find my wares, compoundermachine.com. Got a batch dropping, hopefully in near the end of this month. ah Yeah, we'll be very close to it. And some of the Canadian pens. So if you're Canadian and you're listening, your chances are higher because for this first batch, you have to be Canadian ah to ship to those addresses, which is cool. A ton of people from around the world would be like, I'm not Canadian, but I want one. So I very much appreciate that. The next batch will be open worldwide. um But this this first batch of and I'm not just doing these. there It's just a portion of the batch. We'll just go to my my fellow friends. So anyways, that's where my stuff is. How about you, Jamie? How can people find your wares?
01:11:10
Speaker
So you can find us at jspeceng.com. ah There's an Anchor Point page and there will be some technical documents going up there shortly, just technical resources regarding the Anchor Point, palette pallet drawings, a couple models.
01:11:24
Speaker
So if guys are planning on picking up an Anchor Point at the end of next month, they can start getting their heads around ah how to how to use it basically and start planning the shenanigans they're going to get up to.
01:11:36
Speaker
um We're going to be doing a bit of stress testing on the V4 that I have. i've got to just make a riser for it. Found some material under my one cupboard. So going to make those up this week. But yeah, so there's a signup form for the newsletter for the Anchor Point.
01:11:50
Speaker
There's also the Framework Utility Knife available on our website on online store. And there's a bunch of machinist related shirts, which... Judging by the podcast number, I think I'm only going to be there for like another month or so. And then Danica is going to have some new ones and the new ones look quite spiffy.
01:12:04
Speaker
She was showing me one of them today. actually bought vinyl today so I can get some new work shirts because my work shirts are... a little bit long in the tooth. And then, yeah, we got on our website for the podcast, theloanemachines.com. There's the Patreon link where you can join our Patreon.
01:12:23
Speaker
Kurt and I have some things planned for our Patreon, hopefully Patreons soon. ah So yeah, join in there. There's also an after show, which is usually quite entertaining. Like what is the average length of a banana?
01:12:35
Speaker
Kind of entertaining. and That is literally one of the titles. So yeah, you can check that out and pick up some merch or join the Patreon to support the podcast. And then hopefully we don't have to stay in South Chicago in 2026. Because that is the main goal is not live in South Chicago for a week.
01:12:54
Speaker
That's if the US is still there. Exactly. Yeah. But anyway, so what have you been Googling this week, Kurt? I've been Googling all kinds of nonsense. I actually kept some of my tabs open. So most of my Googling has just been around shrink just because I've been trying to learn as much as I can about shrink and shrink fit holders, induction units and sizing and coils and all that jazz.
01:13:20
Speaker
ah The cool thing is I realized i was running one operation on the little X5 here and the spindle would like drop down to like 5,000 RPM and then spike up to like 16,000 and drop back down to five. Like I just, I coded it stupidly. So it was your rams going.
01:13:34
Speaker
Yeah, I was like, it was dude, like ah it was trying to but bulk the tools together. So it was doing like a little pack to get like, a chamfer essentially and then doing a big another operation where it needed not much speed so anyways i got to watch how much juice the power uh so it draws 20.6 amps of three phase 220 which i think works out to about 8 kva uh so kind of well that's about right it is a 10k well i but sure don't know what the siemens one is what the actual spec is I can't remember off top my head right now, but I knew I sized my phase converter to be close. And I'm just happy that like, yeah, so 20 amps, I can, that thing can output about 30 continuously. And I think it can spike a bit more.
01:14:13
Speaker
um But yeah, so I will probably never draw 30 unless I'm doing something very bad. Yeah, it's just kind of cool to see. ah I don't know that stuff. Well, ah yeah.
01:14:24
Speaker
Well, not even because your spindle's like, it's on there, what's it, 5.5 kilowatts? Yeah, well, like 20.6, I'm assuming it's putting everything it can into ramp of the spindle. So it's never going to draw more than 20 amp. And I'd have to max out all the other servos. So that would just be bad.
01:14:39
Speaker
Yeah, i actually I actually tripped one of the breakers in my machine last week. It was ramping up and rapiding at 100% rapids. And I pushed the wash down button.
01:14:53
Speaker
And that pump is not small. And then it trips a breaker in the units. You've got to e-stop, release the e-stop and repower on the drives. because it hits a bit of a whippy. Like when that pump turns on, my lights dim in the house.
01:15:06
Speaker
Like the wash on pump, I think it's insane. So I have got some stuff left here from last week, apparently. Um, Ooh, I found out that I can get slock. Um,
01:15:20
Speaker
Torx driver, the the little torque wrench for the Torx drivers for putting in inserts. Can get those locally. I don't like that shop because they keep having fancy stuff. um Was looking at Mori tool for hydraulic holders.
01:15:35
Speaker
Yep. Was looking for a spare part for my Bucky. Looking for cardboard. Oh, wait, there was something interesting here. Where did it go? ah well, I've got... PFG open because I was looking at, oh, I was looking up tariff codes today because obviously
Exporting Products and Reducing Duties
01:15:52
Speaker
I'm exporting. So I need to make sure everything's in line with tariff codes and assign the correct tariff code so that there's as few duties as possible because there's some interesting stuff. There are some duties on CNC workholding, but it's only pertaining to...
01:16:07
Speaker
It was lasers, ah anything using laser on a photon or whatever beams and something else that didn't pertain exactly to what I'm doing. So I need to just get my tariff code story sorted out just to try and make that as pleasant an experience for the people receiving the items as possible.
01:16:25
Speaker
Yeah. Nice. Yeah. That we can get those shipped out with as little headache as possible. Like I have to go to the little shoppy down the road with the boxes unsealed so they can see what's inside. So they know it's not full of bultong and drugs.
01:16:37
Speaker
And then i can take them closed and pack them and send them at their store. But yeah, a little bit, little bit tedious, but part of the process, I guess. I suppose. Yeah.
01:16:47
Speaker
Yeah. i got a quote from an actual freight company and they wanted $270. Yeah.
01:16:54
Speaker
Per parcel. So I was like, that's cute. I'm not even going to fill out your paperwork. Like just go away. Like yours are ripping the ring. Not going to happen. But yeah.
01:17:05
Speaker
So what are you, what are you going to be up to today? Go ahead. think if all goes to planned, I'm going to finish that fourth and then I'm going to start bringing the code over to machine because I got all the bodies just sitting there. They're all reamed. They're ready for the fourth axis work now.
01:17:20
Speaker
So I will probably get the lathe making some thumb studs for me and finish that. that's That's the goal for today. How about yourself? Your day's over.
Managing Production Timelines and Tasks
01:17:30
Speaker
Either today or tomorrow. yeah what ah what are more Yeah, I can't decide if I'm going to go work still. Like, I'm super not keen. But and also, if i get it done tonight, I have to do it tomorrow.
01:17:39
Speaker
But I think i'm going to leave it for the morning, go have a rest because we worked all weekend. um And then yas tomorrow morning, 5 a.m., I chat to John, the old co-host. um I have a chat with him on a Tuesday morning and do CAD work. I don't really have CAD work lined up, so I might end up being in the workshop on my headphones while I talk to him just because I need to get stuff out the door.
01:18:00
Speaker
uh oh just ah yeah just to just interrupt for one second yeah so john john just released a video actually john i think in practical machinist just released uh the video on him machining that magnesium i think there's a valve cover forgive me it's the power of this cover yes yeah motorcycle parts motorcycle part yeah super cool video so yeah go check it out um i think it's on the practical machinist page right now but yeah i enjoyed that so thanks for doing that john thanks for shooting all the video because it was it was cool to watch i was kind of curious to see how magnesium machining worked and yeah i enjoyed it yeah and he didn't even have a fire it was quite impressive uh yeah so i know gonna chat with him and then i've got to go cut another ah seventy
01:18:42
Speaker
uh 72 82 a number of cardboard inserts for a box and while that happens i'm going to be machining hdpe and then i'm going to assemble everything and then jump in my bucky and go and drop it all off And then after that, go pick my friend up with that stupid spinning lathe spindle and go and install that. So yeah, my day's in.
01:19:00
Speaker
It's not going to go well. And I've got to sign off stuff with another customer just so that I get paid on time. I've sign off with them by the 25th with all the stuff from the month. um yeah we did The only thing we've actually done for them this month is a bunch of idiot sticks.
01:19:14
Speaker
We made another 50 idiot sticks. But I like making those because... actually I actually, need to make a pneumatic chuck specifically for the op one because the op one is 14 seconds long and have to tighten a vase. I'm just going to make a pneumatic pneumatic cylinder. just I'm putting two holes in to fixture it for the next op.
01:19:34
Speaker
Um, I'm going to build some custom work holding for that just to make it, uh, more tolerable. And then it's a whopping three minutes of machining. like who did 50 of them in an afternoon and then they get thrown in the tumbler you can't do 50 in the tumbler at once i learned this the hard way you can do like 25 um and then they go in the laser and again like 30 seconds each so yeah really really profitable stupid job but it's the kind of jobs i like that there are no tolerances involved the magnets that get pressed in are knurled and to form the aluminum so there literally is no tolerance
01:20:11
Speaker
Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. like there They put it in with a 40 ton press. It can be well understood. It will go. Like there is zero tolerance. It's the best kind of job. Like, yeah.
01:20:24
Speaker
a Sweet.
Closing Remarks and Engagement Encouragement
01:20:25
Speaker
Well, thank you everybody for listening. This one, we're not that short. We're like four minutes short from normal. So yeah, thank you very much everyone for listening. Please, ah if you're on Spotify or Apple mute apple Podcast, give us a like and a follow and a review.
01:20:40
Speaker
Or if you're on YouTube, which seems to be quite a lot of people actually watching on YouTube, thank you very much. Give us a like and maybe consider hitting subscribe there. i And yeah, we will see you guys next week.
01:20:52
Speaker
Take care, all.