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#233 - Pouring gas on the fire
160 Plays4 years ago
TOPICS:
- CBN Endmill testing.
- Humble vs confidence.
- Saunders building accounting data to LEX.
- Grimsmo is going to use oil on the willemin.
- Rushing emergency parts.
- Saunders solves lathe chatter.
- Saunders playing with a new shop layout.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Manufacturing Entrepreneurship
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode two hundred and thirty three my name is john saunters and my name is john grims mo john and i have talked each friday for years about the questions that you always want to know or ask in our passion and you know insecurities about how we succeed as a manufacturing entrepreneurs.
Books on Success and Identity
00:00:21
Speaker
Sometimes it's fun sometimes it's not sometimes you want to pull your hair out and throw things.
00:00:26
Speaker
Yeah. The two books, oh man, I can't remember the first one. It was, I want to say Crazy Rich Asians, which I think is a movie, like a chick flick that I watched with my wife. But I don't know that for certain, but then the Tim Grover book, Reckless. Reckless. Relentless. Very different. Thank you.
00:00:51
Speaker
really offer a wonderful differing opinion on the side of success and hustle and how that ties into an identity and meaningfulness and what you do, which is that it's a bit counter, I think, to a lot of the recent sediments of everything needs to be happy and great.
Embracing Ambition
00:01:13
Speaker
And don't get me wrong, I believe very much in the Tony Zapp, Tony J.
00:01:19
Speaker
Thank you. Jay, delivering happiness. I think there's tremendous amount of wholesomeness to that approach, notwithstanding the irony of his own life. But I also very much resonate with the Michael Jordan approach and the approach you see in I think other cultures
00:01:38
Speaker
I don't know if that's true or not. It's certainly my perception of hustle work. It's not always going to be fun, but take pride in what you do. It's the pride of that is in and of itself incredibly rewarding. Absolutely. I struggle with that too because I want to be happy-go-lucky and
00:01:59
Speaker
nice and help everybody and do my own thing as well and balance that act and reading a book like Relentless kind of makes you more selfish in a good way. You're just reading it and you're going,
00:02:16
Speaker
Okay. I do have a lot of similarities to these kind of high achievers. Obviously I'm not anywhere near, but like you start to see some parallels and you're like, yeah, I'm not like everybody else in the world. You know, I want things. I want to succeed. I want to push myself and push, push, push.
00:02:35
Speaker
Wear that hat, John. Yeah, exactly. No, you're not Michael Jordan. None of us are. None of us will be, but one of the points is nobody's Michael Jordan. Kobe Bryant wasn't Michael Jordan. Right. Be who you are, but you and I need to wear that hat. I've been too focused on staying humble
00:03:00
Speaker
I don't intend to deviate from that, but darn it, no. Come with me because we're going
Marketing Strategies and Data
00:03:07
Speaker
places. I've gotten us from a company that does many days we're doing in one week's revenue what we did in a year, five years ago. There is not one ounce of me that is going to be a bashful or apologetic for that.
00:03:29
Speaker
Think we're so focused on not getting full of ourselves or in cocky But but don't but it's also quit apologizing. I want that seventh NBA Trophy or we're in you know what I mean? I want to keep Growing this not for any other reason than it's what I'm programmed to do I don't care about Lifestyle creep. I don't care about Cushiness I care about working hard. I want to work harder tomorrow than I do a year ago. Yep
00:03:59
Speaker
Absolutely and I think for years I've been afraid of being or coming across as arrogant because I've seen people throughout my life like that just boast arrogance and I never want to be that so I hide and I humble and I kind of
00:04:17
Speaker
you know, be meek. And that's not, that's not the deep down fire inside is not that, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So you got to light that up. You got to pour some gas on there. Bingo. Right. I'm in the, I'm in the gas buying business. Oh, so I've been talking to Dustin about, you know, we're, we're going hard on data. Dustin being your marketing guy. Yep.
Data-Driven Decisions
00:04:37
Speaker
Yep.
00:04:38
Speaker
So to put it into two buckets, there's the technical side of marketing and there's the creative side of marketing. And so we have now for four months put into place numerous different analytics platforms and understanding where are we getting retargeting ads. We've got email campaigns started in click-throughs and upsells and lost carts.
00:05:02
Speaker
And we're starting to get data. And we go over this in our Friday meetings on what's working and what's not, what costs a lot of money. And I'm not a marketing guy. I don't have seasoned experience. And I think one of the takeaways from, again, that Jim Grover book is, I don't care. I'm not sitting here overthinking about it.
00:05:21
Speaker
I know, I know enough to know what we're doing and we've got Dustin and people like him on the team. And so when we see something is doing well, that gives us guidance. And if it's not like we fix it, I'm not.
00:05:34
Speaker
I'm not going to spend one more second thinking about whether I'm making the right decision or not because we know we are. Yeah. I want results and I want progress.
Learning from Others' Stories
00:05:44
Speaker
Everything we do is towards that. Whether or not you're doing it perfect or could be better or whatever, it's just progress every day. Exactly. I don't even care. I think a lot about
00:05:56
Speaker
The analogy of somebody who's like a card counter or, um, hacking the gambling system. Like if you watch that as a great movie for fun, when they, like MIT kids, the 21. Thank you. Yeah. I don't know what the movie was called, but I think it's called 21. Was it with Matt? It was like Matt Damon or Ben Affleck or somebody. Oh.
00:06:16
Speaker
The MIT kids were smart enough to count cards before Vegas had a way of shutting that down with multi shoe decks and whatever. Basically, know where you are in the count and then when the counts in your favor go big. Going big doesn't mean you're always going to win, but data doesn't lie. It's having enough data and the right kind of data that gives you the confidence to go big when you need to.
00:06:42
Speaker
and know when to hold them, know when to slow down and stop buying things. It's probably exposed the next biggest weakness right now that we need to tackle, which is Lex never did handle the accounting side of inventory from a working capital standpoint now.
00:07:08
Speaker
We can do that. We have it handling inventory now, and so to tie that into a value is actually not difficult, although it will be separate from our accounting system. But we have grown enough, and because I care about data, I care about the fact that we're issuing PO's for
00:07:29
Speaker
The POs themselves may not be huge amounts, but 1,000 here, 3,000 there, it adds up. I don't think I know to have a decently accurate representation of where we are. I need to understand how much we've got tied up in that.
00:07:44
Speaker
Because, gosh, if there's one overarching lesson I could impart on anyone who wants to listen as an entrepreneur, it's that you have to form your own opinions.
Inventory and Working Capital
00:07:55
Speaker
You've got to find people out there that have similar or different stories, read their stories, and then take away but form your own opinions even when you're reading a book like Relentless.
00:08:05
Speaker
Tim Grover is not Tim Grover for you and Michael Jordan is not Michael Jordan for you. You've got to think about that, but then say, is that who I am? Is that how I want to handle this? I love the fact that we've got good relationships with our vendors. We can generally get a lot of material quickly, but I also
00:08:23
Speaker
value that lesson from the Glock factory 20 years ago. Now that's an extreme example, but we keep two years of steel inside our four walls because we do. And I want to be able to over inventory to the extent we have conviction in the product line and so forth, but I also need to know what that looks like.
00:08:46
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because when you have lots incoming and lots outgoing and just money tied up and purchases and things that are due in 30 days and 60 days and there's a lot going on and I'm fortunate to have Barry kind of keep an eye on all that for me. So I don't have to worry about it, but I get updates every now and then and it's a lot. And right now we have that in Google spreadsheets pretty much and then Outlook to do the actual accounting or not Outlook.
00:09:14
Speaker
QuickBooks? QuickBooks, yeah. You moved to the online? You did a change a year or two ago, right? Probably three. Yeah, QuickBooks Online. Yep, seems fine.
00:09:26
Speaker
And so if GURP continues to make progress, very similar to Lex, GURP will not handle the accounting side. No, not the filing taxes kind of accounting side. But as you're talking about tied up inventory, how many dollars of inventory do you have on the shelf?
00:09:46
Speaker
all the open POs, like money in that regard, cost of end mills and all that stuff. Yeah, that's easy to put into the ERP system because you already have the inventory of the parts of the stuff to put a dollar value on it and then figure out how to present that dollar value, like how you want to see it. Yeah. The other lesson I would emphasize is every
00:10:16
Speaker
good piece of advice or infrastructure or system or process I've heard about from companies that were beyond us, that were more far along, were larger, were better.
Precision Machining Tools
00:10:29
Speaker
Almost without regard, we have faced as we've hit those milestones. And thus, I think we will continue to face. In other words, the average person thinks they aren't. When we first originally built Lex, I knew enough to know that inventory levels could be something that was important.
00:10:45
Speaker
Frankly, ignored it. Perhaps that was a right call because we got Lex working great and now we're tweaking it. But with the benefit of hindsight, there was no reason to not think that that would have been something that was important to me because every shop that I've toured, the top shops know that data, period.
00:11:06
Speaker
And I think in the beginning of a project like this or a new skill or a new thing, we're green enough and just unaware enough to go, we're not going to need that section of it. I'm not going to need to know that or I'll figure it out or whatever. I'll put it off till a later date. And then when that later date comes, you're like, yeah, they said I was going to hit it and I hit it. I'm here. I've hit that so many times.
00:11:35
Speaker
How are you doing? Pretty great. Feeling good. Have you ever used a CBN end mill? No, turning insert. Yeah, turning insert. A little cubic boron nitride end mills. It's like braised to the end of a piece of carbide. I have two coming in today and I'm very excited to use them on hardened stainless steel blades.
00:12:00
Speaker
Oh, so yeah. I believe the turning insert we've used looked like a CNMG where it did have a separate piece of CBN that was quite small, maybe a one millimeter that was, I guess, it doesn't look like it's braised in the sense that when you first bought your seven by 12 inch,
00:12:20
Speaker
Harbor Freight lathe and it had braised carbide. Those look like they were like plumbing soldered onto the end of the metal part. These things look pretty dialed in. So what's an end mill look like? It looks like a tiny little end mill, depending on the size, of course, with just a, I don't know what color the CBN are. I have some PCD ones that are just a black chunk of, like the tip of the end mill is black and is grounded to the shape of an end mill. So you only cut with the very, very tip? Yeah.
00:12:48
Speaker
Depending on how, like I'm getting two ball mills come in, so the full ball radius plus a tiny little bit of side flute. Interesting. The neck is relieved just a little bit, so you can use the full side flute, not that there's much of it, but the ball mostly to do the contouring. Who makes them? I don't know. The quickest ones I found to buy were from McMaster, so they are an unknown brand for now. Good grief. So we'll find out. Interesting. Find out in about two hours maybe.
00:13:17
Speaker
Okay. I've gotten good stuff from McMaster before and they come as really good brands sometimes. Yeah. But it's a crapshoot. And they're not as tight lipped as you, as I thought. A couple of times we've gotten stuff like that and I emailed them and be like, hey, will you tell me who makes this? And if they won't, they won't. But sometimes they'll be like, yeah, these are, in an end mill's probably going to come. Yeah, it's going to come in the packaging. Yeah, so you'll know. Yeah, I would think so. So yeah, super excited. What's the goal?
00:13:46
Speaker
We're having some inconsistencies in our blades that we finally nailed down to heat treat because metal moves in heat treat and our critical tolerances are moving variably blade to blade through the heat treat process. So we're like, either we try to nail down the six variables in heat treat, or we leave extra meat on these critical faces and then hard mill them.
00:14:11
Speaker
Do you, right now, do you do any machining post-E3? Uh, just the blade bevels on the Norseman. Okay. Just a lot of material. This is grindy though. Uh, on the Norseman though, it's milling. I just use end mills. Oh, that's right. It's the stepped. Yep. Okay. Yep. So yeah, we do a lot of hard milling, but nothing like super fine, super critical tolerance. Like I want to hold, you know, tents kind of thing. Um, so I've been playing with it the past few days with carbide end mills, getting fantastic results, but the end mill wears fairly quickly.
00:14:41
Speaker
So, I'm pumped for CBN
Materials for Tooling
00:14:43
Speaker
because it should last a very long time. Interesting. And speeds and feeds on CBN are way faster than carbide in hardened steel. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. So, it should be like ... I think you could play with this. It should be awesome. Yeah. What diameters? Two millimeter and one millimeter. Okay. Small stuff. It's like really small stuff. Were they nosebleed expensive? Yeah. They're about 200 bucks each. Yeah. Wow. Okay.
00:15:11
Speaker
But yeah, the more I think about it, the more like I weighed the balance and some guys suggested to me, um, union tool is a Japanese company that makes really quality CBN and also just carbide end mills. And, um, this guy was saying that the union tool carbide end mills are about $70 and last forever in hardened steel. Like he's got, um, what did you say? 40 hours of cut time on an eight bow ball end mill. Wow. Eight bow. Yeah.
00:15:41
Speaker
Wow. Crazy. Union tools. I was like, okay, so I could get that or I could just jump in and get the CBN, which I think will be better and think will last longer. Which do I do? Just jump in and do the CBN. Faster feed rates.
00:15:57
Speaker
Just solve the problem now and then you can figure out better ways later. Yeah, exactly. And that's the other value with the McMaster one is like, it might not be the best brand out there. It might be whatever, but it will work. It will give me an answer today, hopefully. And then if I need to get like a super brand name, CBNN mill, I can do that tomorrow.
00:16:18
Speaker
Right. It's another third nugget of lessons learned is you and I at this point in our business need to make sure we're getting out of our own way of don't overthink stuff. You can think about it later, but like, yeah, you don't know. I think get the tool and solve the problem and then, okay, now another solution.
00:16:39
Speaker
Yeah, I need data and results. Then I can formulate. You can think all you want upfront, but I'm like, no. I was sitting there on Saturday and Sunday. I'm like, no, no. I need a solution now. I'm not going to email my tooling vendor and saying, which brand can you get in stock and how are they? Well, sure. Email them now. I will. Dual track that. Yeah, exactly.
00:17:00
Speaker
The Adam Demuth, with whom we've done a number of good shock tours, great guy, has a one or two brand of tools.
00:17:10
Speaker
He's mentioned, I think he did a couple of proven cut recipes. I'm just trying to think of where I'd have that name, but I want to say that they were quote unquote regular carbide, not insanely expensive. Um, with exceptionally good to a life when he has been machining either hardened steel, like 60 Rockwell D two types off, or I want to say he even used them to machine carbide.
00:17:34
Speaker
I thought he used PCD and mills, like the little black ones for carbide. I thought I saw a post about that a long time ago. Have you tried a PCD? I have too, but no, I haven't tried them yet. PCD is diamond.
Machine Features and Comparisons
00:17:53
Speaker
Cubic boron nitrate is fake diamond, right?
00:17:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's a different kind of stone. CBN being the next softer grain than diamond, like diamond's the hardest. CBN is the second hardest. But it also sheds heat better than diamond does. Like diamond doesn't absorb and shed heat at all. CBN is better at that, so it's better for different things. And isn't PCD... It's not like coating, but well, can't it be a...
00:18:24
Speaker
coating-like coat over carbide, whereas CBN is a chunk of CBN. PCD is polycrystalline diamond, so it's a chunk of man-made diamond. But it's black. Not sure why.
00:18:38
Speaker
Because I know MCV mono is significantly more expensive and that's where you have a single piece that is going to give better finishes because it's kind of like a shaper where you're taking a single piece and pushing it along. Let's say polycrystalline diamond versus monocrystalline diamond. So one versus multiple, whatever that means. But yeah, similar thing. So as far as I know, PCD is for
00:19:05
Speaker
carbides and super hard stuff. CBN is for steels and then there's, what's the one for aluminums? PCD? Like the face mills that everybody gets and I forget. But yeah, it's kind of that next level of not only precision and machining but you know, cool tools that lets you hit that next level of finish.
00:19:31
Speaker
I love that you got them from McMaster like next day, basically, right? Well, I ordered on Sunday and they said they'll be there on Wednesday. And I was like, come on, that's three days. I wanted Monday. Do you use CBN on your knock or Swiss? Only in a grinding wheel. We have some resin bonded CBN grinding wheels. So the Rask bevels are done with the CBN wheel. Okay. Yeah. And it worked great. Yeah.
00:20:00
Speaker
I remember back to playing with CBN on the old poor mocks 15 L and turn hard turning. And it was just probably some of the best video footage we ever got. Cause it's just raining down. Yeah. Like the law parks. Yes. Yes. It looks beautiful. It looks like a eight 10 warthog running trace around out of the mini gun. Yeah. Um,
00:20:23
Speaker
How's the willing? Not too much more progress. Angelo and I took a good poke around it for half an hour yesterday, trying to wrap our heads around what's next. He's going to level it. He's going to get power to it probably next week, and then we'll know some more from there. Fair enough.
00:20:43
Speaker
We talked a lot about the oil fire extinguisher kind of coolant debate. We should go oil and we should get the fire trace. Okay. You know, installed. And then, yeah, just keep picking away at it. Yeah. The Wilhelmin bar feeds into, is it a Royal or similar chuck?
00:21:09
Speaker
Yeah, it's a call it like not five C, but it's some sort of a taper. Yeah. And then you do work.
00:21:18
Speaker
Totally straightforward on there. What's, I think, unique about these relative to a mill turn like an Akuma Multus or similar is instead of having a sub spindle or tail stock, you have this vise that pivots up, holds the part, saw it off, and then accurately moves the part down to a secondary work coordinate system where you can do the finishing work on the backside.
00:21:41
Speaker
Does yours, does that arm that pivots, pivots, I believe 90 degrees, right? It goes from laying down to spot. So does that move in and out left to right? And what would effectively be a Z axis relative to the spindle? Yes, I believe I'm 80% sure. And I'm only hesitating because I haven't seen it move, but yeah, I'm sure I was looking at the rails yesterday and they're covered under covers. So that axis you're talking about, I'm looking at that must move. Like, of course it moves.
00:22:11
Speaker
Let's say you're working on a one inch long part and you want to come up and hold on to half of it, then that's a different location of that vice than if you had a two and a half inch part and you want to hold on to surround. Now you could change that by how you machine the jaws. That seems too limited. Right? When you part off, you want to be able to pull it away a little bit and things like that.
Machine Setup Considerations
00:22:35
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sure it's probably got four inches of travel that way or something like that.
00:22:40
Speaker
Because I'm trying to think about, it's clicked that the parts that we were looking at a Swiss for, frankly, we have more milling than we do turning on them. I love the programming workflow, the tool holding, the automation side of this as a barfed mill versus a Swiss lathe. I know we joke about not lovely lathes, but really, Swiss lathes are different beasts with
00:23:06
Speaker
with the configurations, the setup, the changeovers, the tool holders, touching off tools, and we don't have...
00:23:13
Speaker
you know, tens of thousands of small parts that you need for this. And so the only drawback I can think of on this style machine, the Willem in Chiron, I think STERAG makes one as well. Yeah, I think so. Is number one, they're not inexpensive. And number two, you are doing a tool change for every part, which is relatively slow. And ultimately, you know, I've heard
00:23:39
Speaker
I've heard, again, wiser folks talk about long-term. Tool changes are expensive because they take time and ultimately they're leading to wear. It's a wear item because you're moving lots of mechanical things. Whereas on a Swiss, there's a quote unquote tool change, but it's just basically a ball screw moving a very strong amount. So for us to make a part that has seven different tools, we're doing a lot of tool changes for every part. But what I want to think about or figure out is if you can hold
00:24:07
Speaker
the end of a part, like with step jaws or custom soft jaws, can you hold the end of a part, do work, and then move that vice in to change the work location, how you're holding that part. Pretty sure. I'm pretty sure I saw CJ do that on his. That's pretty cool, eh? Right? Yeah. Did you look at other brands of these?
00:24:31
Speaker
of this style of lathe mill, milleve? No. I'm aware of the Charons. They're crazy, but not seriously. They're not that different than a Willaman, right? Some of them, yeah. The way the tool changer works and... But yeah, they have a similar kind of lathe mill.
00:24:55
Speaker
The, the, yeah, the tools here is different, which is what it is. The biggest difference I've seen is, um, actually had the chance to see one in person yesterday, which is, whereas the Wilhelmin pivots, the arm pivots up from the ground up to the face, this, the Chuck, our call it grabs the part and then moves it back down so that it's facing the sky. If you will, the Sharon, the vice is kind of behind the call it in line with it. And it comes out and then moves around like it's currently around.
00:25:25
Speaker
And so it never changes the part is when the part is being turned or in the first off, it's being held left to right. And then it's just being held right to left when it pivots that vice back around. So there's some, there's some differences for sure. Like first off, you think about the fact that then when you're doing your work up to work, your head is going to be tipped down like the B 90, if you will, to face the end of that part, which should be okay.
00:25:55
Speaker
But it's a very distinct difference between the Willaman. Yeah, still. It's such a neat way to do bar work. Yes. I can't wait to see this thing running and just on and throw some brass in there and just make some chips. When you don't need ground stock, there's no guide bushing hassle. Yep. Yeah, it's really cool.
00:26:21
Speaker
Did your, did yours still have the soft jaws in it from their last job? Yeah. Yeah. They were making this tiny little flat square thing that does not look like it should be made from bar stock. Right. Love it. Yeah. It's like, uh, I don't know, like, like the thickness of a dime, but square and a quarter of the size of a dime. Yeah. With tiny little features. Mm-hmm.
00:26:45
Speaker
Seeing the work CJ does with tiny pockets with insane depth to diameter ratios is really cool. Yeah. Does it have through spindle oil cooling? It does not. I think they were telling me the new ones, it's an option, but older ones never had it or something. But as far as I know, ours does not. Of course, it's a thing with oil. Your Swiss has it, right? Yeah.
00:27:12
Speaker
Interesting. It's really exciting. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm taking my time. Uh, we have, we have other priorities to, to nail through right now first, but make sure we pick a way at it, you know? Yeah, sure.
00:27:25
Speaker
Speaking of through spindle coolant, I finally tried a what's called a CF call it from rego fix. It's a PG call it like my rego fix pressing unit, except it's got three slots around the end mill. So your through spindle coolant can come out specific slots.
00:27:45
Speaker
and directed straight at the end mill. I haven't tried that yet on the current and I just put one in and tried that last night and I'm like, oh, this is super cool. You'd think the coolant would fan out, but I spun it to 10,000 RPM and turned the coolant on and it's the same spread as that zero RPM. Is that right? Yeah. Maybe at 40, it'll be a little bit different.
00:28:09
Speaker
It looks really cool. I've been having a chipping problem with this one end mill, so this should hopefully eliminate that. This is the lock bar slot.
00:28:18
Speaker
No, that one's been solid now. I use a high-feed end mill for that to rough it out. That's not a problem anymore. Don't even think
Optimizing Machining Processes
00:28:27
Speaker
about it. This is for our small lock bar inserts. They're made from AEBL stainless. As I cut the screw holes and the screw head pockets, the tool is just chipping. It's driving me crazy. Yeah. Do you think it's recutting chips?
00:28:45
Speaker
Yeah, dude, we love I think the best sort of brand success we've had on that is the YG. I think their YG.
00:28:56
Speaker
side locks, which I know is kind of the old technology, but they work great when you're not dealing with small tools, though there's not that much TIR or additional run out, which I think is a bit of an old wives tale. Um, I wouldn't use them for precision micro machining and so forth, but they're inexpensive and they have just two ports. And so we run through spindle core through the holder, regular tools, short gauge length. Um, and it is two ports through, through the holder. Yeah. Or the call it or what the whole, through the holder.
00:29:26
Speaker
What kind of shrink fit ER? The side lock, the screw. Coincidentally, those are also YG1 end mills, so they have the weld and flats. I don't know that we've ever tried a different brand, but the YG1
00:29:47
Speaker
holder with the YG1 end mill and the welding flat lines up perfectly. So like your tool is sticking out right where the coating starts. And so it keeps it nice and stubby, nice and rigid and stubby. Sometimes the problem with stubby tools is it's harder to get the coolant in there, but now it's not because you've got these two ports, which I think they're slightly angled toward the tip. Um, I recommend these things all day long for process reliability on flushing chips out. Yep. Yep. So I got to get, uh,
00:30:16
Speaker
I got to get more of these slotted collets. Yeah, that's awesome. That's great. What happened to your guide bushy? I saw your post that you can't even get one. Yeah, I mean, some of the manufacturers are on vacation for the next three weeks, like the European ones. These guys in Connecticut have a 20 working day turnaround time, so it's a month, which I understand whatever, but I'm looking for somebody that has one in stock.
00:30:44
Speaker
20 working days because they have to make one? Yeah. Ooh. Yeah. They're like, yeah, no problem, but we'll make it for you. But yeah, when you're in a rush, it's just, I don't know. So today I'm going to call Tornos US and see if I can beg one off of them, see if they have one, even a demo one or something. I'm sure they do. Yeah. The Tornos Canada doesn't have anything, but
00:31:09
Speaker
But yeah, we'll figure it out. But it's specific to Tornos. You know, Star and Citizen, they all use different guide bushings. Right, right, right, right. Interesting. Yeah. And I'm really trying to rack my brain. Like, do I have any friends that have a Tornos GT 13? I know one guy that used to, but I don't think he does anymore. Right. And I'm like, come on. Yeah. I know people. Like, come on. I can't think of any.
00:31:39
Speaker
I don't remember how much we talked about this, but we've had a couple of soft crashes. So not in any way near a crash, but a situation where like... That's called a hump.
00:31:50
Speaker
but not even a bump. Where you ran one too many parts and so the part only had a quarter of an inch in the collet and then when it did the parting it just pushed the part out. It may not have even broken anything, maybe the insert, maybe not, but it's pushed the part out of the collet and then it'll just roll or gouge the end. We have tried
00:32:14
Speaker
I don't say everything, but we've tried sanding, lapping, diamond filing, scotch writing. This is the end of your 5C call it or whatever call it? GQ65, sir, the Royal College. It's the big ones with the tool, the grippy tool to take it in and out.
00:32:30
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I'm not sure it's any different than what would be with a 5C or similar, but once a colitis marred, it's marred. Maybe you can file, if you can file the whole, sometimes if it's on the corner of where two of the pie pieces meet, you can just file a whole chamfer into it. But even then, it seems to just not be the same. Yeah. What diameter is that one?
00:32:56
Speaker
I think I've done two of them. One was a half inch. I don't remember the other. Have you ever used a barrel lap? Yeah. Yeah. Like an expandable mandrel brass. Oh yeah. Yeah. We screw the end down and it pushes. Yeah, it opens up a little bit. Use some diamond compound. We've got the flex hones from Brush Research. We've got cylindrical and flat diamond files. Yeah.
00:33:23
Speaker
which is that's probably the best is if a diamond file, if you want to try to just, you're not going to blend it in, but you can just erode that area away. So it's not marring it. What's what I like about the barrel apps is they make a.
00:33:34
Speaker
relatively round hole. I'm not sure how perfectly round it gets, but it's evenly, you know, it's going to hit the high point first. That's true. And then it's going to make a straight bore. That's what Pierre did to ours to kind of break the carbide crack down. Oh, interesting. Yep. And he says it works okay, but it's still not perfect. Yeah. So we're using it. I mean, we're still making parts every day. Got it. But they are sub ideal. Right, right. Interesting. Have you,
00:34:04
Speaker
We have a part where we have a very minor amount of chatter on the lathe, which the answer is just like what you said. It's not ideal. It's acceptable, but not ideal. But the only way I think I can solve it because it's a relatively long stick out would be the part gets pulled out to call it two inches as part of the parting operation. It has to get pulled out that far because of clearances with the collets.
00:34:33
Speaker
Then the problem is you have two inches sticking out and when you do work on the very face turning work is fine. The end milling is not stable. So the only, only reasonable solution I could think of right now would be to come back in with a sub and push the stock back in an inch, inch and a half choke, which is a chokes up on it, do that milling work and then pull it back out to the two inches, which is actually easy to do. And it takes time, but whatever. We're not in a time crunch on these parts, but.
00:35:03
Speaker
Have you ever done that? Would it, if you push the bar stock back in, can you pull it back out? Is the call it big enough to regrab it? It's the same. It does. Luckily the not, the, the subset will call it remains the right diameter to continue doing that work. Great. Um, on our pen tubes, we do grab it twice for, um, for part off. Why do we do that?
00:35:32
Speaker
I forget. Yeah. Why did you do that? I can't remember. That was the whole spring loaded ejector thing. Mm hmm. But that was an awesome fix with the be at or either.
00:35:44
Speaker
Yeah, I know why. Because when we're making the first side of the pen tube, it's only sticking out half an inch. So we have rigidity, we can drill the whole thing, we can thread the end, and then you only have a half inch to grip on. So you grip on that half inch, you pull it out all the way, and then you re-grip it deeper so that for the Op2, you're gripped with a half inch stick out on the other side. So it's just playing with the transfer, basically. Yeah, you inchworm it out, basically.
Innovative Machine Washdown Solutions
00:36:11
Speaker
You could do that.
00:36:13
Speaker
Yeah, I guess it's different because when you do that second grab to fully encapsulate the part on the sub-grab, then the main spindle stock is in the right place to start the next operation on the main spindle work. It's now sticking out like a half an inch. Yeah, it must be. Yeah.
00:36:34
Speaker
the same thing just in a different order. I basically am going to, I have to have it further out to do the party. I'm going to move it back in, do work, move it back out, which we actually do it. Uh, we kind of do this on a different part without actually doing the grab, but we changed the offset using the G 10 command. So we actually moved, yeah, we move our G 54 in and out by a known amount so that it's all built into a process. So when you, if it wasn't for part off, how far would you stick the part out?
00:37:06
Speaker
Like how long is the part? Part's one inch, sticking out an inch and a half right now, but it's a quarter inch diameter, so it's six times standard on quarter inch. It's just not having rigidity.
00:37:17
Speaker
We'll just do that. Don't overthink it. I love it though. Repositioning the part, do work, bring it back out. Yeah. Yeah. It's like once you understand how it works and what's possible and you're like, I can do that, right? Yeah, I could do that. You just figure it out and it's all logic and code and I love that.
00:37:41
Speaker
Yes, our wash down system is effectively a total fail. Just calling it. It seems to be the case that the pump plus the major components, keeping that at or below $1,000 is going to only let you wash down one or two spots
00:38:03
Speaker
reasonably well. Again, maybe I probably am wrong, but we hit that point where you've got to call it. Distributing that pump across four or six areas just doesn't have enough full flow or velocity or wash down properties. What it forced us to do is just to rethink. There's two different things that we all have at our advantage that I wasn't thinking enough about, which is compressed air and gravity.
00:38:34
Speaker
I don't want to use compressed air because blowing chips is not always a good thing, but I have this idea of 3D printing a shape
00:38:43
Speaker
which has gravity benefit, which I'll come back to, but then you could even have it printed with a almost porosity or porous front side, and then relatively easy to use a solenoid with an air blast every 10 minutes, five minutes, whatever you want. That's easy. That's cheap. We all have air, and then you could just do a little puff that's not going to blast chips underneath your weight covers, but could also help get them out of those nook spots.
00:39:09
Speaker
Before we even do that, we're printing inserts, which I think is the way to go because simplicity is the beauty and elegance. And we all have one free source of energy at our disposal, which is gravity. And changing the sheet metal angles on the Haas is the best way to do it. That's such a cool idea. It's so funny that it sometimes takes thousands of dollars in a couple of months to realize that a $2 3D printed angle bracket
00:39:37
Speaker
is going to keep the chips from piling up in this corner. Isn't that so funny? There's so many ways we can go with this. We can 3D print them. We'll open source them or put them out once we get them dialed in. You can coat the 3D print with something with a super low coefficient of friction if you want it that way, or you could put a little piece of sheet metal over it to protect it, but
00:40:01
Speaker
It could be a simple piece of sheet metal rather than something that's complicated that has to get flat packed and cut on a razor and bend and broke. You know what I mean? So that's where we're at. Yeah, it doesn't work for everywhere. I know Yeti Man, Titikin, makes that Y axis sprayer that sprays the whey cover. You can't 3D print a bracket there because you need full travel.
00:40:24
Speaker
Not true. I don't know. You have a couple of inches, even on the backside there. And so when you think about it, it totally makes sense. It's really not worth. The Haas ethos of value means those extra ornamental or complicated angles in sheet metal are very expensive to design, to make, to paint, to hold, to assemble, QC.
00:40:49
Speaker
So I totally get why they don't do
Future Plans and Projects
00:40:51
Speaker
it. They just leave these kind of vapid corners for stuff to pick up. Okay. So fix it. Great. Yeah. Done. I can't wait to see a picture of this. You'll just have these bright orange little corner markers. They're going to look perfectly good. They're going to blend in. Yeah, I'm excited. I love it. So yeah, that's today. Um, Kern is still running from last night. Oh, I'm always excited to see that.
00:41:17
Speaker
So what are we at? 14 hours, 38 minutes. Still got quite a bit of work left. Have you looked at the spindle hours? Uh, no, no. I wonder how many they are now. Could, but, um, yeah, I don't know. It's running pretty good now. Good. Awesome. But yeah, no, what are you up to today?
00:41:44
Speaker
Um, I am actually, I was out yesterday on a trip, which included looking at that Sharon. So catching up with paperwork. Um, and the thing that struck me when I was in that shop is they had a really open layout and made me put on my list to revisit our floor layout because as we've added some machines, um, it's gotten a little bit clamped. Um, and we're not really out of space, but, um,
00:42:10
Speaker
I don't like, I don't love our layout right now. So I suspect though, I suspect we could do a sort of machine swap out of a couple of machines and change things up that's kind of been on my radar.
00:42:28
Speaker
It's both the long-term plan and the short-term plan. If we ended up with a Willemin-esque machine, that actually could also change things up. I love this machine. They're tiny too for the footprint. Yeah. Would you put a bar loader on it? I'm offended. Yeah, of course. It's a big bar loader, even the six-footer. Really? Yeah. The ones yesterday didn't seem that bad. They didn't take the brand. I thought they were L and S.
00:42:58
Speaker
They weren't insane. Yeah, it's the size it is, but it's like nine feet long. Yeah, that's right. It takes this tiny little phone booth machine to take a big corner of the shop kind of thing.
00:43:10
Speaker
Yeah, and these had, I think the external, there was definitely an external filtration system that may have been an external chiller. I think there were two large external devices. Those two plus the bar feeder were, if not the same size, larger than the machine tool itself. Yeah, mine has the spindle chiller on top, the miscollector on top, and a hydraulic pump unit that sits beside the machine, but it's pretty small.
00:43:40
Speaker
So yeah, we'll see. Cool. Good. Cool. I'll see you next week. Hopefully my McMaster order is here and play with those CBN end mills. I just heard a noise in the background. I can't tell if it was an end mill doing a really nice cut or a horn honking. It was like literally out the window right now. Pure later truck. That's McMaster. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's, uh, okay. Goodbye.