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#256 - Snow Day, Parking Lot Woes, & Brother Speedios
188 Plays3 years ago
TOPICS:
- How to have a crappy day (vendor issues, forklift gets stuck)
- Grimsmo considers adding 2 Brother Speedio Machines
- Graphite EDM Vacuum Setup, Manual Indexers, UR Robots
- Purchasing Horizontal CNC Machines, Tool Matrix Considerations, & Tombstone Workholding
- Purchasing CNC Machines: Travel, Weight Capacity,
- Automation Washdown & Spin Drying Parts
- Want to take over the DeWalt product line at SMW?
- Culture Code & Clear Communication
- Deep Dive on the Fancy Chip Conveyor
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Hosts' Background
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining episode 256. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. This is the podcast with John and John chat every week about all things manufacturing and what's going on in our business lives.
Dealing with Setbacks & Vendor Issues
00:00:15
Speaker
What is new with you, my friend? What is new with me today is a great day because yesterday was a terrible day.
00:00:24
Speaker
I just took it on the chin like six different ways yesterday. And you know, it's interesting, I really, I was really down about it yesterday. And it was felt great to wake up. It's like that proverbial sleep on it. Like, yeah, I'm in a weird way. I'm not I was talking to somebody yesterday, they're like, well, I'm an optimist. I'm like, I'm not an optimist. But maybe that makes me not a negative person, just more of like, sometimes you're just taking it on the chin. So, you know,
00:00:49
Speaker
No big deal. Just some little quirky frustration. My wife always says, people problems or machine problems, which is it? That's hilarious. That's really funny. Just annoying. It's not even worth diving into. A new vendor service rep, it's not as good as the old one where you're just like, man, I miss that. The one thing that was comically funny was
00:01:14
Speaker
We have this little soft spot of asphalt in our driveway and it needs to be fixed. And there's a, the reason I've been waiting to fix it is I need to just resurface our whole parking lot, but I'm not like, I should have probably just fixed it in hindsight, even on its own, but we had a bunch of snow and then it melted a little yesterday and it got softer than it's ever gotten. And we got the forklift stuck. The back wheel just kind of went into that soft spot.
00:01:41
Speaker
Luckily, honestly, it wasn't all that hard to get it out. I just hooked up to my GMC, put on some Bob Seager, and I pulled it out. No big deal, but it was just the culmination of one of those days when you feel like hitting the un... Yeah, right? Yeah. Oh man. Yeah, I know the feeling.
00:02:03
Speaker
Yeah. But then to bring that home, I got a quote from a company a while back to fix it.
Tackling Driveway Problems
00:02:09
Speaker
And the quote was absurd. And this is very much coming from the guy who criticizes openly for taking on too much stuff. I get it. But I'm not spending literally this much money on a small patch repair. And so I called the local equipment rental company. They're like, oh, we can deliver a small backhoe
00:02:28
Speaker
saying, you know, deliver it to you and pick it up for $300. That's all you all you need to pour some zone in there and do some, some cold patch. It just needs to be a temporary fix until we get the lot resurfaced. So it's kind of one of the things where like the bad event pushed you to figure out, you know, 300 bucks to get a backhoe delivered is phenomenal.
Weather Impact on Operations
00:02:48
Speaker
Good grief. Sure. Yeah. Yes.
00:02:54
Speaker
Random question that how is your exterior like, do you deal with this with deliveries and forklift trucks and condition of your parking lot and all that? Yeah, I guess in the front where we park is asphalt, but the side lane all the way to the back is
00:03:13
Speaker
concrete pads, I guess. Oh, that's awesome. So it doesn't really, I mean, they're moving a little bit and they're like the cracks are getting, not the cracks, but the seams are getting more mismatched as freezes and stuff, but it's not an issue. I don't know, how much snow did you guys get? It's kind of a good question. I think like seven to 10, it seemed to vary a lot even within our county. In inches, yeah. Yeah, that's the only measurement you want to use.
00:03:43
Speaker
No, I had like two feet of snow. Serious? Yeah. At least one and a half. It was nuts. So we literally took Monday off.
Importance of Small Tasks
00:03:53
Speaker
We're all texting in the morning and we're like, I don't feel comfortable driving in this. Yeah. Okay. Have fun guys. Just go sledding. Yeah, totally. Yeah. That's, but you, well, we don't get that much. So you, that's even a lot for you. It is a lot for us. Yeah. Yeah.
00:04:11
Speaker
I've got to go shovel out our dumpster because the dumpster people come tomorrow and they could probably pick it as it is. I shoveled it a little so that we could get stuff into it, but it's just one of those things. And look, I'm not saying this to portray myself as some saint, but like, um,
00:04:28
Speaker
I want to be the person and thus I will be the person where when the trash truck pulls in, the guy sees it and is like, thank God, somebody actually took the time to show up at dumpster for us. That's the way I care about that stuff. It's like you can't care about absolutely everything, but it's empowering to care about many things. I try really hard to care about even the little things.
Machining Error Resolution
00:04:58
Speaker
There's that, uh, I think it floating around on LinkedIn though, like, and who knows how true this is, whatever as an original quote, but somebody's like, I don't know any successful person that I look to look up to who leaves their shopping cart in the middle of the parking lot. Yes. Yeah. I have absolutely parked shopping carts in the corral better because yeah, I can't stand it. Yeah. Yeah. How are you? Excellent.
00:05:26
Speaker
Yeah, things are flowing really good. A little current issue this morning, Angela's texting me and he's like,
00:05:33
Speaker
He's like, oh, the profile finish of the rask handles on the outside didn't clean up at all. It just didn't get machine. There's this huge fat chamfer on the outside. I can't figure out what went wrong.
Production Optimization with Speedio
00:05:43
Speaker
Something weird happened. And I'm like, I didn't change anything. And then I'm thinking, thinking, we're chatting. I'm like, wait, I did change something. I changed the order with which it probes a locating feature. Not a locating, but there's a little screw I put in to tell what pattern to machine into the handles.
00:06:01
Speaker
And so I used to do rough and finish profile first and then probe the pattern. But now I switched it yesterday to probe the pattern first. And then it, because of that logic, it actually skips the roughing and finishing of the profile of the outside of the handles and just moves on. And I'm like, Oh, okay. I figured it out. That's, it's not a big deal, but that man, that had a stumped for like 10 minutes. Little things, but.
00:06:27
Speaker
You look at it and you go, man, I didn't change anything. Wait, yeah, actually I did. Are you going to rework those or just scrap them? No, rework them easy. It's cool. Yep. It should be fine. Replace one tool because it cut the finished Jamford tool. Instead of cutting like 2,000, it cut 100,000 or something of material. But yeah, other than that, I mean, everything's rocking great. The current's still holding. It's pretty much 125 hour a week average.
00:06:56
Speaker
And absolutely awesome. It's bonkers. Love it. Okay. So where are we on this now three week sort of conversation on the next spindle in. Yes. Teams, Grimms, Mohs, fiefdom. I have thought of nothing else for the past week. Um, lots of research, lots of planning, lots of asking people what, what to get, uh,
00:07:23
Speaker
And I keep, I'm trying to be really good about sharing my thoughts with the team, with my brother, um, with everybody here. And, you know, normally I just kind of sit in the corner and think and research and don't tell anybody what's going on. But it's funny because every couple of days I'm like, okay, if I had to make a decision right now, here's what would I do? And then like three days later, it's totally different. But as of right now, if I had to make a decision today, um, I'd get two speedios.
00:07:53
Speaker
Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay. Talk to me. Um, once our good friend, Lauren's suggested last Friday, why don't you just put a speedio on the other side of the Kern and hook it up to the pallet changer and then let's load into that second into that speedio. And I was like, you can do that. And he's like, obviously. And I was like, okay, let me think this through. If I had like,
00:08:21
Speaker
Some shops run five axis parts all day long and every part needs to be five axis. My parts do not need to be five axis. I make them five axis because it's awesome and it's fun and I can do the tombstones and rotate them and stuff, but I can easily make a lot of my work on three axis machine. So I'm like, okay, hold on. If I had a three axis machine tied to my five axis machine and I could swap pallets between them and run like op one on one machine and op two on the other machine, holy cow, this is starting to make so much sense.
00:08:50
Speaker
And, uh, you know, you get a decked out speedio for about 150,000 with three spindle, coolant, chip conveyor, everything. And I'm like, and you can tie it to the, to the, um, a rowa. Can you, I emailed a row of the other day, just to like, you know, we're my way into talking to the right guy. I just emailed the website and then, uh,
00:09:18
Speaker
within the next day, this guy emailed me back and he's like, give me a call when you get a chance. It's like, okay. So I called him and he's like, we actually met like 10 years ago. I don't know if you remember this. No kidding. Like back when you were just getting started, I remember you telling me about your first little machine. You're working on Volvos, things like that. And we had this great conversation and I'm like, holy cow. Like I made an impact on this guy. He remembered me back when I was a nobody.
00:09:41
Speaker
And then he's watching my latest YouTube videos and he's like, holy crap, man. Good for you. So anyway, yes, it's totally possible. The guy said, we don't really care what machine is on either side of the aroa. We can do Fannock, Heidenhein, Brother, Siemens, whatever, 3-axis, 5-axis. If it can reach, it'll work.
00:10:04
Speaker
So I guess I think the beauty of what you have with the current is that it's technically in a row, but Kern takes care of everything. So it's not that kind of third party bolt on appearance, but I'm so there's not an issue with Kern permitting this legally or operationally, I guess, or whatever the phrase would be. I don't know. I, I pulled a Tony from Kern. I was just.
00:10:25
Speaker
ballparking the idea to him and he goes, but that's not full Grimsmo, like you need a second current on there. I'm like, obviously you're going to say that. Yeah, right, right. And I'm definitely considering it. But, you know, there's a lot of things to it. There's a lot of factors involved. And even just trying to explain it to Eric, like in a lump sum conversation, I'm like, okay, there's a lot of things to go over right now. I don't want to brush over things.
00:10:51
Speaker
Obviously,
Spindle and Machine Setup Evaluation
00:10:52
Speaker
the cost of the current is gigantic. Lead time, took custom order one, eight months at least, whereas video and order it immediately. You know, they're in stock in the US.
00:11:03
Speaker
Well, the interesting thing I'm thinking now is fast forward to the home run scenario for you. Maybe this is the recipe and the second current is not replacing the speedio, but rather the second current is another one, two punch recipe where you use a fraction of the cost machine like a speedio to do that kind of work hooked into the same aroa.
00:11:27
Speaker
And then you pass the part off to the current because capital is limited. And there's a point of pride in ROI that matters to all businesses. And if it doesn't matter, it will at some point. So it's kind of like, wait a minute here. You can do more with this workflow period. For less money, for the same quality and same output. I have to think logically. I don't
00:11:49
Speaker
need another five axis machine. I want another current because I love the way it runs. I love the height and height and I love the setup that I have on it. Absolutely. What I need is another spindle to do the time consuming work that doesn't take a lot of tools. I've been mapping it out in a spreadsheet going, okay, if they were tied together, that's awesome. What can I do on this video that doesn't take a lot of tools, but it takes like hours a day?
00:12:17
Speaker
If we increased our production with a few more masks a day, I figured out quickly last night, I could put 16 hours a day on the speedio. No kidding. And I could gain back 13 hours on the current, give or take. Cause this video will be a little bit slower to do some things. Okay. Got it. But John, even if it was half that, like getting six hours back on the current, no brainer. So like what? Yeah. Okay.
00:12:45
Speaker
Is the speedio going to be fourth axis or just three? I don't think so. Just three axis. Okay. And if I get the, um, I could get the 700, which has a 27 inch X travel, um, put the a row of ice, you know, the automatic Chuck on the far right-hand side. Yeah. And then I still have like a 20 inch table. I was going to ask how far in can the a row reach? I don't know.
00:13:11
Speaker
I'm sure it's a little spec I could look up real quick, and I need to know that answer. Yeah. Because that'll decide if the S700 speedio will even reach that far, or if I need to get the smaller one for it to reach that far. Little things, but. Yeah, or the bigger one for some reason, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then this will require moving the current five feet over in the shop. Oh, sure, sure. Because it's like right up against the wall right now.
00:13:39
Speaker
But yeah, I figure I'll get a Toe Jack, Machina skates, and then probably move it ourselves. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know anything about kerns, but I'll tell you, I don't regret for one second having those skates on hand. We've used them countless times. How heavy is the kern? Less than 10,000 pounds, I forget. Yeah. It's like light. Yeah, it's not bad. And it's got three feet.
00:14:05
Speaker
Which is really interesting. Satisfying. Because I was asking Tony about it at current and I'm like just thinking like my pads are limited and there's you know the seams in the pads and there's a couple cracks in the pads. So like is it the end of the world if I straddle two pads or straddle a crack or something like that?
00:14:25
Speaker
I can imagine with a machine that has four feet or six feet, you're actually going to twist the casting more by being on multiple
Foam Machining Techniques
00:14:32
Speaker
pads that move around. But I'm like, this has three feet. What's the worst that's going to happen? You're going to go at a level? And he's like, yeah, pretty much. Just level it more often. It's not a big deal. Because the super epoxy polymer concrete casting, the base,
00:14:47
Speaker
is like super rigid and it's just on this little tripod of feet. Level is kind of your biggest only concern other than vibration and things like that. Right. Right. Then probably get a second speedio to do more work, other work, all the foam stuff. I'm going to deck it out. I thought about keeping it a dry machine, but
00:15:06
Speaker
talking more to more people, they're like, if you're gonna run carbon fiber, run it wet and filter the coolant because you just want to keep that crap out of the air, period. And then cut your foam dry and just hose down the machine afterwards and filter your coolant really good. I'm like, I like this plan. Because then I could deck out both speedios like identically, and they'd both be totally capable.
00:15:27
Speaker
What do chips look like when you cut foam? I would explain this. I don't know, like a cheese grater. Oh, but real chips, not dust or? Both. It's both. There's a lot of dust.
00:15:43
Speaker
Well, I wish I had an answer for a solution, which is not the shape of code because it lacks a tool changer, but I still respectfully disagree with buying a hundred plus thousand on a machine to cut foam. I need it for many other things too. No, I'm fine. Well, I'm fine with that. I still feel like it's overkill and the wrong fit. And you're saying
00:16:06
Speaker
hose it down or clean it out, but that's frankly painted in the tush. I was laughing because I saw, I think it was Yates Precision Instagram the other day. He's like, here's how we cut foam or something. It's like a Jevoco cutting beautifully. I know you need a tool changer, so I don't have it. I don't know what to tell you, but yeah, that's my thought. Yeah, I get it. That could always be a solution down the road as well. Right. That's true.
00:16:30
Speaker
But maybe you can do the, we've talked about this, the graphite EDM setups where they bring in a plastic housing to the left side of the part and there's a mirrored plastic housing on the right side of the part and it has an air pass through that way you're creating a vacuum in the sense of pulling a vacuum and a vacuum in the sense of shot back where it's controlling because like Rob was saying on WhatsApp, you can't try to
00:16:57
Speaker
pull vacuums out of a huge cubic volume of a speedy enclosure. It just doesn't work. It's too much cubic area, but those smaller EDM machines do quite well with that. Interesting. Yeah, I know you've mentioned it a couple of times. I don't think I've ever actually looked it up, but I do need that visual. I get it, but I want to see how other people are doing it too, because that makes sense. You're creating a flow through of air, like left to right basically. You're guiding air into the vacuum.
00:17:25
Speaker
and we got a big huge Oneida dust filtration set up and like a three horsepower, it's like eight feet tall, this huge thing. Yeah. Fits under a 55 gallon drum fits under it like a little tray and it sucks pretty good. Yeah. I actually would fully support even DIY in this. You could get some
00:17:54
Speaker
plastic sheet, some 80 20, some 3d print parts, just like, you know, you're just building a, almost like a light box on like a photographic light box on one side. How maybe you can use a light box, like find something that's off the shelf and the lights box. And they're probably under a hundred bucks and parts, um, 3d print shot back adapters or the Oneida adapters, um, hook it into an M code relay so that it turns on when you're running a certain tool, you know, like get smart about it. And yeah,
00:18:19
Speaker
You can even put like giant computer fans on the one side to blow air forward towards the shop vac, you know, to create that flow. Oh, yeah. I don't know if those do anything for CFM though, really, compared to... What are you thinking? You thinking like the output of a shop vac, like that kind of thrust?
Automation & Process Optimization
00:18:38
Speaker
This is where I need to say a hard stop. I don't actually know what I'm talking about from here on out on how these systems actually work. I believe they are only pull systems. They only suck. I don't believe there's a push assist. I think you're just trying to focus in the area that you're creating that flow. But we've done this before with DIY. You can buy
00:18:59
Speaker
$30-ish inline ducting fans. So the CFM is huge on these compared to like a CPU fan. And it's just like a six-inch or eight-inch piece of HVAC duct that has a fan inside of it. And could you use one of those to help? Sure. But if you do this right, I don't necessarily think you'll need it because the key is just to avoid trying to evacuate the whole machine enclosure. Yeah. These are all
00:19:27
Speaker
Very good options. Sweet. So what's next? Waiting on final quotes and just thoughts and plan it all together. Yeah, I talked to the ROA guy. He happens to be in Canada that he's their Canadian sales guy, which is good. He's only like an hour or two away. But I was like, can I install this myself or do I have to get texts in to install from Chicago travel? Got to put him up in a hotel. It's like thousands of dollars to get somebody here. Yeah.
00:19:57
Speaker
Plus with COVID and everything like that, it's, you know, I'd rather not. Um, but he's like, ah, I don't know. He was fighting me on it. He's like, you really should have a tech install this. And it was like, okay, we'll, we'll talk more about it later. Does it brother need to be ordered with a automatic side door for the current? Yeah. Yeah, it would.
00:20:15
Speaker
So I'm waiting on a quote for that. I mean, I don't know how much it's going to cost, but if it's not stupid, I might just get both machines with that. Just say the same or make sure it's field upgradable. Yeah, exactly. Which I think it is. But if you're going to put a UR robot on the second one or if you're going to put another ERC 80 on the second, I don't know. If it's only a couple grand, I'll definitely think about it. If it's like 10, then I'll be like, no, I only need one. Thank you very much. Yes.
00:20:45
Speaker
Agreed. The other thing I saw this week that I made me think of you is these manual indexers that can be fourth axis or I've seen them actually done as four and a fifth axis on top of it.
00:21:01
Speaker
There's a couple of different ways that I've seen them work. The most common one is a push pin. Think about a traditional fourth axis, like a Haas, HRT, or a Tormach, just a regular old A-axis fourth axis, but does not have any power to it, no hydraulics, no cabling. It's just a standalone unit.
00:21:20
Speaker
And on the top of it is a pin that protrudes out just like a car lock on a door. And what you do is you bring your machine spindle over and you push down on that pin and every push of the pin indexes at one degrees or five degrees or some of them.
00:21:38
Speaker
The further you push it, the more it indexes, but it's a very controllable. Now these are the ones I've seen are Japanese. They're very high end. They're thousands of dollars for good reason, but what it allows you to do is sure, it's not quite as quick or efficient per se as a true electronic CNC fourth axis, but it made me think of you because wait a minute here, if you just need to take your three axis brother and you just want to do a bunch of work
00:22:06
Speaker
And then you want to tip it 22 degrees to do the rest of the work and infusion, you'll do to orientation. Well, you could buy one of these things and have your spindle orient the thing to 22 degrees, finish up your work. Uh, and honestly, it could be a great fit. That's pretty cool. I didn't know that existed. Yeah. That's a good way to like manually, uh, index apart. Right. Just store that store. Yeah. Yeah. Well, for sure.
00:22:33
Speaker
Like when grinding the Rask blades, I can make the fixture to tilt the blade at four degrees where I need it. So the three axis machine can grind them just fine. But then on the second op, I do need to tilt the blade, lay it flat again and nip off the tabs and the edge and stuff like that. So I'm just going to put it back in the Kern and do a one minute operation. So the fact that I can auto load between both machines, like it ties this together so good. Yes, that's really cool.
00:23:03
Speaker
It'll be weird though, to look in the Kern or into the Aroa and be like, has that been passed back and forth yet? Like is it done? I guess managing that's going to be really interesting. I've got some good ideas for that. Um, cause the machines are going to have to talk to each other now. And that's where the Aroa cell controller comes in handy is because it becomes the boss. But, um, I really like the way I have the current program right now. So I want to keep that. And I want to probably do something similar on the brother. And I got some ideas.
00:23:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's weird because it's like, what if the brother has pallet S27, but the current was like, I was going to work on S27. Yeah, they're going to have to be scheduled. Very few pilots are going to get both machines touching them, but some will for sure. Got it. Like op one here, op two there, op three here, you know? Yeah, yeah. But it's all doable. It's all just logic. I love this stuff.
00:23:56
Speaker
It's very intriguing. Like Phil said, throw a couple of Raspberry Pis at it and John can do anything and he's not wrong. That's awesome. Well, good. Keep me posted. I'm really excited about that. Obviously, there's logistically things and cost and money and I'm not far from making this decision though. It's really fun to think about. Got it. That's great. It's awesome. I still believe
00:24:23
Speaker
I still believe in that whole gut thing. When all of a sudden something clicks, you know it clicks. What's hard is that when it's not clicking, but you feel pressure to make a decision. You don't always realize you're not clicking because you just feel like, I need to not keep dragging this out. That's the way I work. That's why I don't like to
00:24:45
Speaker
share my thoughts too early because they're just thoughts. They're just like, I could do this or I could do this or I could do this and it's not going to make sense to anybody else. I need that time to pine over it and stress about it and do all my research and read every forum post on practical machinists. Just do the hard research until it starts to click.
00:25:06
Speaker
buying a standalone brother sounded kind of cool, but then when Lauren said, tie it to the current, and I started to think it through it and map it out and plan out, okay, there's only 21 tools, but what can I put on there that takes so much time but very little tools? Yeah, there's stuff. There's these jobs and these jobs and these operations, and okay, how much time is that? How much time does it save from the current? Okay, it really adds up, and holy crap, right off the bat, I could put 16 hours a day on that speedio. And what?
00:25:36
Speaker
Has anybody put a UR robot on the other side of a brother in the front door to do additional tool change capacity?
Horizontal Machine Options
00:25:45
Speaker
I've seen it on the robot drill. That was that system you sent though. Yeah. Yeah. That was more integrated. It loaded the tool up at like two o'clock. I'm talking more like
00:25:59
Speaker
You could have the speedio put the tool away, move to an empty pocket, and that empty pocket could be any tool that the UR robot wants to load, and the UR robot could have its own Christmas tree outside the machine with another 20 tools. As far as I'm aware, on the speedios and the robo drills, I've never touched one, but you can only load at that four o'clock or two o'clock position. I think that's literally the only place you can put a tool in. I mean, you had a robo drill.
00:26:27
Speaker
I don't think you can put one through the spindle. I don't think you can put one at any other clocking. I don't know. I think there's only the one spot. If you had asked me 10 minutes ago, I would have told you the only way we ever loaded tools was just in the spindle. Okay. Maybe that's another way. Yeah. Yeah. That could work too, actually. I don't know. Seems interesting. Maybe a dumb idea. Because I mean, speaking of dumb ideas, I totally thought through
00:26:50
Speaker
on the Maury, how would I do exactly that? How would I? So I was like, okay, if you had a pallet on the table, like a little small pallet with two holes in it, your new tool goes on the left, your old tool goes on the right, and it can just spindle down to the old tool spot, let go, lift up, move over, grab
Strategic Machine Investments
00:27:09
Speaker
the new tool, lift up, logic tells it what tool it has now, and then the robot comes, takes that pallet away, puts it on the rack, like theoretically, that's possible.
00:27:19
Speaker
Right? It's got to be possible. So I saw this somewhere on a Haas machine, and I don't know if it was the factory demo or at a shop, but it was like a V8, like a huge machine, and it had some like 20 inch tool, like a dual head boring head or something.
00:27:38
Speaker
And it was a formally supported Haas macro where it would call up an empty pocket, move the table over to this position and pick up the tool, apply the tool height offsets, do the work, put the tool back. And I was like, oh, and if you can do that, the only last step is updating
00:27:59
Speaker
Because the robot to swap those out from a third party external rack is easy. So that's just a question of the passing along the offices, which actually, if you can write, you could totally do this. That's cool. Yep. Yep. And there's.
00:28:12
Speaker
Especially on the Fanuc, I was talking to DMG guys. They were like, we might have to get Japan involved in this to rewrite the ladder in the back of the machine or something because the door will be closed and you're trying to unclamp and release a tool from the spindle like you'd normally do with the door open and you'd normally push the button to do this. So you need to figure out how to control all of that logic to be able to do it. But geez, it's all there. Don't tell me it's not possible. Come on.
00:28:38
Speaker
Yeah. That could be an annoying hard stop though because as soon as you get that, they may be four figure quotes to do annoying stuff. It's just a binary value. If we don't think outside the box, who's going to? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So keep the more in this scenario. Yeah. I mean, the more he's making, it's doing several Norseman operations. I could put one more set of operations on there and it can just keep doing what it's doing.
00:29:08
Speaker
Yeah. It's not very busy, but it's busy enough for now and I can put a little bit more work on it and then it's just, don't worry about it. We need to make more rasks and I'm trying to figure out the best solution to do that and this is a great way to do that. Awesome. I'm pumped. I'm not quite ready, but I want to pull the trigger today.
00:29:28
Speaker
Yeah. I am still lacking the gut conviction on the horizontal options. If I didn't need to worry about the cost of the machine
00:29:44
Speaker
I think a 500 millimeter is the right way to go, but it is a lot more money and everything would be more expensive, namely the tombstones for it and making use of the additional travel. What I realized, I think this happened between our last talks, so forgive me if I'm repeating myself, but
00:30:03
Speaker
What I really would plan on having long-term is two, I can't believe I'm saying this, two horse huddles. One for aluminum and one for steel, which solves the obvious problem of chip mixing and contamination. A good example where the gut did click in and say, that's the right path, is that means I want to try to avoid a tool matrix. They sound cool having a multi-hundred ATC matrix, but
00:30:30
Speaker
If the long-term plan is to split out materials between two machines, then we should be able to get by with the standard ATC size, which is a good thing.
00:30:44
Speaker
If the first machine could remain the aluminum machine, which needs fewer tools, if you really found yourself saying, ah, the steel machine does need to have whatever number, 120 tools, or it's something that pushes you into the matrix. The tool matrix being the, it's not like the current or the row, like a separate, it's attached to it, but it's a separate, effectively third CNC machine that has a whole racking system versus just a traditional,
00:31:11
Speaker
I mean, that's how the current is. It's basically an XY plotter that grabs the tool from the magazine. So it's got its own XY axis. And then it just grabs forward with little pneumatic cylinders, sensors everywhere. It's literally like 80-20.
00:31:35
Speaker
Yeah, right. That's funny. So I have a 500 millimeter machine. I modeled it up. I imported some tombstones and started looking at what parts look like on it. I haven't quite done that yet with a 400 millimeter, but that's just, I got to carve away some time to do it. And then last, yesterday afternoon, I was talking to Garrett and
00:31:59
Speaker
Add, but Garrett obviously honestly knew the answers right away, which is like, Hey, here are six products that are the most important. What are we running right now for cycle times? The cycle times would should improve, but nevertheless, it gives me a starting point to think about. Okay.
00:32:14
Speaker
So round numbers, a 400 millimeter machine is only 22 inches in Y, whereas a 500 millimeter jumps up to about 30. So that's a big difference. Especially when you think about the fact that you may need a one or two inch lead in or lead off for some of these parts.
00:32:32
Speaker
So if it's a two inch lead on and lead off, it's four inches. Well, that's 30 or 25% of your Y axis on a 400 millimeter machine. So if you stretch it out to 30 inches, you're amortizing that wasted movement into a smaller across a bigger area.
00:32:48
Speaker
So it's the difference between, well, I can only run three parts vertically, or I could run maybe five parts. So, wait a minute here, going from three to five is a, whatever you want to call it, 40% increase in the capability for a relatively small increase in cost. But the three, getting three parts done on a four or even six-sided tombstone, three parts per edge. It's still really good.
00:33:10
Speaker
It's such a huge increase that that's why I need to stop using emotion and use data to look at, wait a minute, this machine can run this much capacity over where we then just get the 400 millimeter. It's not a dumb decision. It'll do it right. It's a little bit easier to bite off. Unless you have plates that will not fit on a 400 millimeter machine that you need to run on them.
00:33:38
Speaker
It would be easier if we did, frankly, because it would force me into a decision. We do not have a single product that needs to be on a 500, but boy, some of the people I've talked to who have went 500 were really glad that they have that extra room. It depends on the parts you're making on it. I don't need big machines in my shop for the small parts I'm making, especially with automation, because you just load them out.
00:34:06
Speaker
Yes, I hear you. Um, so why don't you do this? Um, have you considered like a Haas horizontal for the aluminum parts and whatever you want for steel parts? Yeah, we haven't really, I'm not quite as worried about the builder yet. I want to just figure out what size machine it's easy to be like, okay, we want a horizontal. We want the same brand. Let's just get two of these, but they don't have to be the same brand.
00:34:34
Speaker
Oh, yes, that is true. That is very true. I want to figure out, I want to have more conviction around, because the crazy thing is that horizontals, there's huge differences in the travel on 400 millimeter and 500 millimeter machines between the builders, like Matsura, Okuma, DMG, Kinamura, Haas, all have very different travels for the same size machine, which is kind of crazy.
00:35:03
Speaker
Yeah, the way they're built, I guess, just the room. Yeah. And table weight capacity is another issue. Some of them are too light, which I got to think about. You don't want to be living near the upper limit of their weight capacity. Because if your tombstone and all your work is 90% of their weight capacity, that doesn't sound like a daily driver kind of situation.
00:35:31
Speaker
What's funny? Why? Who cares? I mean, if it's somebody said it can topple over and I'm like, well, that that's weird. I don't think so. Like, let's say it's a 1200 pound capacity. I would run an 1100 pound all day long. The question is, what if you need to go to 1300 pounds? Does it alarm out? Is it not safe? What happens? I don't know. Well, it's kind of that same conversation that bugs me a little bit where
00:35:58
Speaker
People are like, I keep the rapids at 50% because I don't need the speed. And I'm like, no, it's made to run at 100%. I'm running it at 100%. Yeah. Do you have a weight limit on the kern or the aroa? Yes, but it's way above what I ever even think about. It's like, I don't know, hundreds of pounds. My tombstones are 20, 30, something like that. Yeah. Yeah, so I don't even think about it.
Chip Management Systems
00:36:27
Speaker
Area 419 does a spin dry on their NHX 5000, which is just like all smiles. I love it because we do the fan and blow off, but spin dry would be an awesome addition. And that's pretty crazy. When you think about the weight of the tombstone and the parts, but also the actual B-axis platter, it's probably 2,000 pounds that's rotating at like
00:36:51
Speaker
I don't know. It looks like it's a couple of hundred RPMs. I think John might have even said on the video, but it's nuts. So that's where you could sort of see the weight issue, but it's also relatively balanced. So I wouldn't think it's the case where it's trying to fly off
00:37:07
Speaker
Yeah, on the Kern, I can spin dry at 200 RPM. I think that's the maximum, which is fine, but it's not like a lathe spindle where it's flinging. It's still some cool and still sticks to it, but it's fine. It works great at 200 RPM. And then our buddy Ken posted a video on his Instagram of an MX
00:37:28
Speaker
140 or 300 or whatever, the brother speedio like five axis kind of machine. Anyway, he spun dry apart there and I'm like, holy cow, that thing's going like a thousand RPM because it's an actual turning spindle. Right. And I'm like, that's fast. Right. That's cool.
00:37:45
Speaker
You spin dry when it's parallel to the ground, right? I tip it down a little bit. I forget, 20, 25 degrees downhill. So it drips down. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Further, not even parallel to the ground, past parallel. Yep, just past parallel. Yeah. Awesome. Because there's a big hole in the middle of my tombstone, so I want to drip that. Yeah. So every pallet has a wash down program that I can choose to call or not call.
00:38:10
Speaker
that tilts it at 45 degrees, like from vertical, 45 degrees, spin dries it while blasting with coolant, all the chips fall off, and then it goes negative 25 or something, drips for a little bit, and then spin dries dry, and then drips again, and then takes about, I don't know, a minute or something to do a full wash down. I don't care because it happens automatically.
00:38:35
Speaker
They're still a little drippy when they go back into the aroa, but give it an hour and the coolant evaporates and the parts are fairly clean. It's amazing.
00:38:45
Speaker
I saw a really ingenious tool. It would take up a tool pocket, I guess. I don't remember whether it was flood coolant that was aimed at the tool or whether it was through spindle. In theory, either could work, but it was effectively where you would have a cutting tool. It was a little shoot or slide. Remember when you were playing on a playground as a kid, if you had a basketball, you could shoot it up into this upside down triangle.
00:39:11
Speaker
and then the ball would come out one of four holes. I may be dating myself here. Yeah, I remember. So basically it takes coolant that you get into the top of this thing and then it rotates it like two RPMs in a full circle and it shoots coolant out to the side of your machine to help just give that one last wash down of the machine periphery.
00:39:30
Speaker
Love it, right? Love it. Yeah, I have seen Kern posted. There's a German company SG something, SGS, I don't know, that makes a through spindle coolant fan that has several ports around the outside. You spin it as fast as you want, but it shoots jets of coolant all down the sides and the windows of your enclosure and stuff.
00:39:53
Speaker
That is what I saw. Okay. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for recollecting who that was. And, uh, it's, it's pretty cool. Cause even on the current, there are chips that stick to the walls that just never get splashed again. Like there's Delrin chips from last week that are stuck, you know, higher than the coolant normally sprays. So I have a wash down gun, but I haven't, I've been meaning to get in there and spray it down. But, uh, but yeah, this kind of tool would, would clean that, right?
Product Line Focus & Communication
00:40:18
Speaker
Yeah. Build a process. Um, random change of topic.
00:40:22
Speaker
We for years have manufactured Dewalt fixture plates. They are a replacement steel base for the Dewalt DW872. Like many things, we built them because we wanted a better base for it. They've been great. We sell quite a few of them.
00:40:39
Speaker
but it's not what we do anymore. It's the last product that we have that's not really a Saunders machine works, CNC machine fixture plate mod vice, et cetera. So I don't want to shut the thing down because it's a good product and we make money and we sell them, but it's not what we do. So if anyone listening would love to have a conversation about that. We have some inventory on hand. We have some processes around how we make them not particularly complicated.
00:41:04
Speaker
a lot to figure out the design. I'd love to find somebody who wants to take that product line and run with it and is better suited. That's amazing. What an awesome opportunity because it's a ripe market that works.
00:41:18
Speaker
And yeah, and there's guys out there in the fab world or just different, a little bit different niche than us that could do a better job. I think even growing it. Um, yep. That's cool. Yeah. But it's part of what we need to do as well as, is stay focused. And there's too many little things where we want to do it. We want to make those well, but it's just, it just, it's, it's a fork in the road and operationally we need to say laser focused on doing what we're doing well.
00:41:45
Speaker
Exactly. Like whatever you do, you want to do very well at it, but now you have to choose what those topics are. I'm going to spend my energy on it and it's going to be great, but is it worth it? Is it profitable? Is it who we are? Is it what we want to do? Is it worth our time? Yeah. The other comment I wanted to bring up was a quote I saw this week that I personally love and it's simple. If I had more time,
00:42:14
Speaker
I would have written a shorter email. I really value and look up to folks that have learned how to communicate well. I came up in that book, Culture Code, I'm reading right now about how different teams work well. Sometimes they work well by communicating less or just be more clear. Sometimes we don't realize that we have our own sense of pride or ego, which can get in the way of saying,
00:42:34
Speaker
you're subordinate to me. This is kind of weird to say it this way. You're subordinate to me, but I'm here to help you. How can I help you right now? And sometimes subordinates don't realize it's okay to say, hey, I need help too. It's like breaking that down. But I've always respected people that can communicate well, write well. I try to do it. I find every time I reread an email and I thought, I didn't need to reread that. And I do, I'm like, God, I'm glad I reread that and changed a word or shortened something up. So
00:43:02
Speaker
Yep. Yeah. I've absolutely heard that quote with regards to like writing, writing a story or something. Um, but it's so true. Yeah. You know, it's easy to just work with word vomit on the page, but to have it be clear and concise and make sense, you know, it takes time. Yeah. Yeah. And same goes with planning a machine purchase or, you know, building a business takes time.
Podcast Conclusion
00:43:26
Speaker
Yeah. I'm looking for that. I'm looking for that nugget.
00:43:29
Speaker
that clicks in to say no John we're good on the 400 millimeter or no needs to be the 500 and maybe i'll find that today i've got the cycle time i need to just sit down and do a quick calculation of what you know if we have a six APC and these tombstone sizes we could run this many parts on it and yeah that'll i think that'll be the next step
00:43:49
Speaker
Are you fairly open to any brand like DMG, Kidamora? Obviously, you're looking at them all for reference, but would you consider getting any one of them if they fit? Shortest answer is yes. There's a lot to be said for minimizing the number of additional controllers. I agree. And additional relationships. But some of it's going to come down to this isn't just buying a Haas VF2 where you just pick out what you want and order it like
00:44:11
Speaker
what's in stock in the US, what's custom lead time. Some of the options are frankly priced such that they basically don't want you to select that option. APC size, how big a tool changer can we get before we have to go to the matrix? That's all you got to figure out. One last thing. Can I ask you more about that fancy chip conveyor you got?
00:44:34
Speaker
The may friend concept 2000. Oh, it is the concept 2000. Okay. Yeah. Cause I've been deep diving on chip conveyors. Explain it to me like belt hinge scraper. Yeah. So I have heard all those words, frankly. Yeah. I didn't really understand them either until now. Yeah. So, and let me explain it how, cause I actually just literally have a PDF on my paper. I had the PDF right here on my desk. I'm holding up that is explaining. Sure. So here's how they work.
00:45:00
Speaker
Wait, can you show me that again? I just want to, I think it is the one I'm thinking of. It's put up on the screen. I just want to see it. So it is the kind with the drum. So it's got a hinge belt conveyor as well as a scraper conveyor and a rotating drum to filter out the coolant. Like that's what I want. Okay. Yes. So it's actually really simple to explain this. And I wish the people that I talked to had explained it in dumb layman's terms that I can understand.
00:45:26
Speaker
Start with, it's a simple conveyor, just like my Haas, probably your Maury, where it just has a steel belt. Chips fall onto the belt and it carries the chips up to dump them into a bucket. Simple, understand, move on. It also has a scraper. So the scraper runs the opposite direction. So it still pushes chips up toward the chute, but instead of carrying them on the top side of the belt,
00:45:53
Speaker
it actually has these pieces of angle iron that push along the bottom of your coolant tank and scrapes the bottom of the tank and continues scraping up the taper slope so that it's literally like you were holding a squeegee and pulling it along the bottom of your tank. So that's the second conveyor. And that captures a lot more of your smalls and fines and so forth. And then in order for any coolant to get back to your coolant tank, it falls down to the
00:46:23
Speaker
corner of this thing where there's this rotating drum filter. So the coolant has to pass through this drum filter. What's different than just having it pass through a filter or like cheesecloth or whatever, is it rotates with coolant blasting from the inside out. So as the coolant hits it, coolant that's hitting it is still going to have some fines and chips kind of suspended in the coolant.
00:46:48
Speaker
So when it hits the conveyor, or excuse me, when it hits the drum, the blast of coolant coming from inside the drum helps agitate and detach those chips. So they actually get pushed away from the drum and fall to the bottom where the scraper can pick them up. But what it doesn't let them do in any situation is it doesn't let them pass through the drum filter and get back to the return tank, nor does it let them
00:47:13
Speaker
Just stay on the outside circumference of the filter because it's rotating with that Airbus. There's a small chance I get something minor part of that wrong disclosure, but generally speaking that's
00:47:24
Speaker
what it does. That's exactly how I understand it after having read it and stuff. And so on my Maury and my Nakamura, I have a hinge type belt filter, which the salesman will always tell you that's for steel. If you're only cutting aluminum, you want the scraper. And I'm like, that's not true now that I think about it because I mean, you guys- No.
00:47:44
Speaker
You guys always tease me for making dust, but we do make fine tiny little chips. All these chips pass right through that chip conveyor out the flushy thingies on the side and into my coolant tank. We got a bunch of junk that stays on the belt and makes its way into the bucket, but still, even if 10% of that misses, that's so much crap going in the tank.
00:48:09
Speaker
It's just a pain in the butt. Then on the Kern, it only has a scraper style, so it's constantly scraping. Then it's actually got a fluid transfer pump that transfers whatever's left, chips and coolant to the paper band filter, and then filters all that little stuff out. Quite a lot of junk comes out that way too.
00:48:28
Speaker
the scraper style works amazing. And to put them both into a package with that drum filter as well, like sounds like the greatest thing ever. So what I'm thinking about is for the speedios, you know, do I get the $10,000 conveyor or do I get the $25,000 conveyor or whatever they end up costing? And I'm kind of of the mind like spend the money because I value clean coolant. I care about it for a bunch of reasons of part finish through spindle coolant. And then
00:48:53
Speaker
To the extent I had any hesitation, I saw Chris Fox, Digi Ignite, a guy down in Australia that has the Akuma's literally at quite an expense upgraded his conveyor post purchase to the concept to us. And I was like, okay, that's telling me exactly what I need to know.
00:49:10
Speaker
This is the way to go. And we are, we've made huge progress on the Akuma in the last two weeks. It's super exciting. And I'm finally starting to film our first video on it. We've had some folks where, when is content? I'm like not, trust me, I'm not like intending to delay. I'm just, we're doing it the way we need to do it, which is we're learning how to get this machine to what we need to do it. And it is crushing it. I can't wait to see you show everything.
00:49:37
Speaker
Yeah, that's all I got. That's awesome, man. Good. Thank you. Yeah, happy to help. See you next week. Excellent, man. All right. Have an awesome week. Take care.