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#340 "Tool Acquisition Syndrome"
325 Plays1 year ago
TOPICS:
- CMTS tradeshow
- "Tool Aquisition Syndrome"
- Tool life and Sandvik tooling reps
- Polishing small parts
- Saunders designed a door for his surface grinder
- Machine maintenance, Kern and Willemin
- Carbon fiber Saga
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Overview of CNC Challenges
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machine episode number 340. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. And exactly half of this podcast is discussion of speeds and feeds and CNC machines. And the other half is the discussion around what running a machine shop is like, which has nothing to do with speeds and feeds or programming parts. Yep. As much as you wish it entirely dealt with that. Yes. Yes.
CMTS Trade Show Experience
00:00:27
Speaker
How you doing? I'm doing fantastic. We had the CMPS trade show yesterday. I saw it. It was fun. It was really, really good. We actually decided, made the tough decision, shut down the whole shop and bring everybody. And it was great. Super, super fun. Half everybody. We all kind of switched packs and went around the whole show and learned different things. And like, you know, we, there were like a solid three hours where I didn't see anybody of my team.
00:00:56
Speaker
I was like, you roll on your own? I did at that time. I was like, OK, I'm just going this way. And nobody followed, and we all just disappeared. And we probably had 10 of us give or take, maybe even more, show up. And it was just awesome. Because then when the groups would pass, like I saw Eric and his team, and he's like, oh, you've got to come check out this thing. I've got to show you this awesome thing over here. So it was just great.
00:01:23
Speaker
And some of the guys like, you don't know what you don't know. And I don't know what my team doesn't know. And like, like Ryan, my kind of media marketing guy, he, what did he say? He didn't know. I can't remember. Some of the laser cutters that he just saw when it actually, it's like, I had no idea that was even a thing. Isn't that funny? You just don't know. Yeah, totally.
00:01:44
Speaker
I hear you. CMTS has nothing to do with the Elliott and DMG days. Correct. Those are the joint open house days, just with a few brands. This is the Canadian IMTS. It's committee. That's why it happens every other year with IMTS. Got it. And they've been doing it forever. And it's like a 10th the size maybe of IMTS, maybe 20%. And probably 10%, like 5% of IMCO or IMO.
00:02:15
Speaker
But that's still big. I mean, you can still. Still huge, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was great. It was great. It took a whole day to feel like I saw everything. Yeah. And have good conversations with a lot of people and definitely had a few guys, you know, stop me and be like, I listen to the podcast. It's awesome. I really appreciate the videos and everything. Those are always good reminders for me that I'm on the right track because you question yourself all the time and like,
00:02:40
Speaker
I could be doing so much better. And then a couple of key people point out how much of an impact you might have had on them. And it's like, oh, wow. Thank you so much. It means a lot. But
Shop Equipment Upgrades and Investments
00:02:52
Speaker
yeah, it was really cool. And then I try to think at the end, I'm like, OK, what did I learn? What was really cool? And I don't know. I don't remember. It was just a lot. Like a lot of the same, but just a lot of conversations, a lot of cool stuff, a lot of, I don't know,
00:03:11
Speaker
Were you looking for subtractive technologies, milling and cutting sheets or were you looking at cleaning? I know you've gone in polishing and deburring and ultra-tight stuff before. Anything on that?
00:03:25
Speaker
I mean, the guys that Vibra finished, the tumblers that we have, we have two of them, they have a new version with a new drive motor and a new, they made a new mold to do the urethane casting on the inside of the tumbler. So it actually like agitates the media in a different, better direction. And I was like, Hey Zach, what do you think about a trade in? You know, R2 tumblers for two new ones. And he's like, I'm always open to that. You know that. So that could be a good option for us. It reduced tumbling times and
00:03:55
Speaker
They're a bit quieter when they're more balanced. Ours is belt-driven, so there's a motor mounted to the housing, then a belt, and then the eccentric shaft that shakes the whole tumbler. The new ones are integrated drive motor, so there's no belt. It's more dynamically balanced and better, better. It's great to see them growing and thriving. It's the kind of tumbler that has an insulated lid, so you close the lid and it gets 10 times quieter. When I first saw it at CMTS, like four or six years ago, probably six,
00:04:26
Speaker
You walk up to it and you're like, oh cool, it's a tumbler. Can you turn it on? He's like, it's on. It's not that quiet, but it was quiet enough. And then you open it and it gets super loud. I'm like, oh wow, okay, that's amazing. So we now have two of them and one more. Are they a bottleneck? Not really. Don't replace them. Probably not, but just fun to think about. No, no, I hear you. Yeah.
00:04:50
Speaker
I was also succumbing to lifestyle creep, which again, for you and us now,
Tool Temptations and Shop Needs
00:04:58
Speaker
that amount is a different amount than it was when I got started and you didn't want to buy the $30 tool or whatever. But I kind of reminded myself, okay, I don't need this today or tomorrow. It's not going to hurt a business if I don't have it. I can always buy it again or later.
00:05:13
Speaker
Which is hard because, I don't know, like I'm a- You can buy it. Yeah, there's that Taz to acquisition syndrome. Like it's fun to buy stuff. But yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm definitely seeing the, you know, take a minute, look around the shop and realize some of those things you've purchased that haven't been used fully or at all.
00:05:38
Speaker
And maybe you over-purchased, maybe you purchased an experiment tool and it was a lot of money that didn't end up working out. And I'm seeing a couple of those big and small that I'm like, well, okay, maybe take a minute. Maybe you have enough stuff for now. Maybe you have what you need.
00:05:57
Speaker
Unless, like you said, there is something that's a bottleneck and it's like, no, no, if we invest in this, that direct impact on whatever productivity or output or whatever. Those are serious conversations for sure, but there's way too many shiny objects out there that are just cool.
00:06:13
Speaker
No, it is fun. Like I remember the same thing. Like you're going to laugh. Like my grandpa had that wood lathe. I think I've told this story before, but I didn't know that a metal lathe existed, which is kind of crazy to think about peeling steel off in a precision manner. Like that's not something that intuitive as a step forward to me, especially if you look at the way it would lay this run, you don't, I didn't make the natural leap. So what would that be? Hold the ground, harder tool, blah, blah, blah. And so walking around, it's easy.
00:06:44
Speaker
automation capabilities, integration, the tumbler. I keep coming back again to the cleaning,
Tool Maintenance and Shop Organization
00:06:50
Speaker
not deep brain, but cleaning and stuff like I broke a tool last night and I was frustrated with how long it took. This is a big Kaiser holder.
00:07:02
Speaker
couldn't even pop the ER out there, which snug or fit ERs. And I had to like physically agitate the built up chips inside the ER out before I could snap the call it out before I could then get the worst the media before I then put it in the ultrasonic. Yep. Yep.
00:07:22
Speaker
I, as I've been cutting more carbon fiber, I've realized that running sealed collets even on a non-through coolant setup keeps the crap out of the collet. That's a good point. Which has been working really well. No, that is a really good point. I wonder too, I've never taken the time to measure or run out before and after but
00:07:45
Speaker
I don't know. It's a good question. Like if the ER collet is properly torqued down and the TIR is kind of set, then you would think the chips would just pack around the void inside of it and wouldn't compromise it. But then I could also see pressure building up and you know, kind of the theory of everything's a wet noodle. I don't know.
00:08:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting for sure. How many times do you measure run out on a dead tool? Yeah, right. Like last time when it broke, it's probably a bogus reading anyways because it broke it. Yeah, exactly. So it's interesting. Well, on the note of 2I position syndrome, I can kind of say with maybe the last hurrah needed of the purge is over. There's still some more stuff, blah, blah, blah.
00:08:33
Speaker
We've sold most of the stuff that we wanted to get rid of in terms of the smaller machines and so forth. And then we had a fair amount of material that our discontinued parts, I mean, the purchase price of the aluminum alone would probably be between $5,000 and $10,000.
00:08:48
Speaker
Not that it's something I just want to throw to the scrapyard. Yeah. And it's all saw cut plate or bar and neatly stacked. So we, for now, I just put a very reasonable price, like 25% of purchase price sticker and we moved it over to the training classroom. I'm hoping that when training students are here, if they see something, they're like, oh, I'll buy two pieces of that or I'll buy all of that.
00:09:11
Speaker
but it's hard to sell raw material and ship it. I don't really want to deal with that. At least it's now symbolically out of the shop and available for sale. There's a few other last little things.
00:09:27
Speaker
But the huge thing I need to do a shop update video but the area back next to the Okamoto now was kind of our just mess of an area and it's now looking really nice and clean to organize and that was the
00:09:43
Speaker
It just feels really good. I'm really happy with where we are and having sold all that and scrap stuff out, it's just really nice. That's awesome. It's a progress. As the shop gets, it feels bigger, it feels more open. You don't have those corners that your
Balancing Shop Management Tasks
00:10:02
Speaker
gaze avoids it. As you're looking around the shop, you're like, oh yeah, don't worry about that corner. That's not fun. In the back of your mind, it's like,
00:10:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I'll get to it. We've got a couple of those corners too. That's what motivated me a lot though after our conversation last week was it's the perfect e-myth analogy of there's a lot of
00:10:28
Speaker
I guess I would call it, was it technician, manager, entrepreneur, right? There's a lot of managerial stuff I wanted to do in terms of like shop organization. That's not, I wouldn't say it's technician. Technician is like baking the pie, right? This is more like improving the pie cooling rack.
00:10:44
Speaker
But then there's a lot of leadership stuff I want to do. And frankly, technical stuff, one of the things I put on my to-do list this fall was when I mentioned sitting down and going through every horizontal program, speeds and feeds, and then new fixtures, new work that can be done. And it nudged me to realize we're better off further separate, basically getting more help here to do some of that stuff, which is
00:11:14
Speaker
As soon as you realize it, you're like, oh, yeah, that's the right call. If it becomes kind of obvious, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think I'm very slow to come to those realizations. But then once I allow myself to like realize it, then it's kind of a, you know, rock rolling down the hill kind of thing. Like it's got momentum. Yeah.
00:11:32
Speaker
I think I'm scared of getting away from machining because that's the Brazilian fisherman story. I actually like it, but when I look at that to-do list of all the things that we could be doing, new fixtures, improvements, tweaks, I want to turn our reversible clamps from regular strap, not strap clamps, we machine them.
00:11:54
Speaker
They're pretty cool strap clamps that hold round bar across each side. They look like a tee without the stently or yep, but I want to change those from the way they are currently to be quarter circle or quarter twist clamps. So they have a
00:12:11
Speaker
How does that work? I've got the, in fairness or disclosure, Adam Deema shared this on Instagram, so it's his knowledge share. I don't believe he invented it, but basically as you loosen the screw, it pulls the clamp out, and then as soon as it hits a clearance plate, it automatically twists 90 degrees left, it stays there. And then when you tighten it back in, it tightens 90 degrees back, so the clamp correctly orients itself relative to the material, and it screws down like just super.
00:12:37
Speaker
It's stuff like that that I am. I'm good at, but I'm better at not doing it because there's other stuff that I... Yeah, yeah. I'm exactly the same. And that's over. That just ended. Yeah. And if you had the firepower and time on your team to be like, here's a direction, here's a task, I want this done.
00:12:56
Speaker
Go nuts, please. And then it would happen. And then you could move on to the next, and the next, and the next, and you will have a never-ending stream of next cool things to do and get done. And that's your job.
00:13:09
Speaker
And I'm talking to myself here too. Yeah, you know, right. And then while, you know, we've got a great team of folks that three of them can already do that. I think we just probably are ready for that next step. Yeah. And then while that's happening, I actually like don't mind sitting there and are with this table with the sprony pre-setter. And it's got a intern designed rack that holds each dedicated Torx tool that's labeled in a 3D print holder. So that's pretty nice. But it's like 70% of the way there. It needs to be 100% of the way there. It needs to have an integrated
00:13:38
Speaker
ultrasonic tank and instructions and places for everything. And I'll be good at that. I'll do that. Well, I'm just not doing it. Yeah. And that's the thing. I could do that. I could do that. But I have a list of 100 things that I could do. And they're not getting done because I kept to choose one. You know, too cool. How was like the mood and attendance? It seems yes. I thought it was great. I thought it was busy. I wouldn't say packed, but it was
00:14:08
Speaker
It was good. It felt really good. The Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau was there. I missed him. Really? But apparently he walked by like five minutes before I did in this one spot. Wow. 20 security guards in front of him kind of thing. Photo ops and shaking hands and stuff like that. That's like if Biden showed up at IMTS basically. It's the Canadian version of that, right? I was like, well, that's kind of a big deal. Interesting.
00:14:34
Speaker
Have you seen him before? No, I've never been in the same area as him. That's cool. What else? What else? It was really cool talking. I wanted to
Sandvik Innovations and Techniques
00:14:50
Speaker
kind of
00:14:54
Speaker
I wanted to pick everybody's brain, you know, whether it's somebody comes up talking to me or me talking to a vendor or a apps guy or technician or whatever. And I want to see how deep people are willing to go in a conversation technically. And it was really cool to be able to.
00:15:09
Speaker
let people free with their knowledge and their talk and stuff. So one of the Sandvik guys was super knowledgeable and just freely shared all his cool information and I was like, this guy knows what's up and I like that, I appreciate that. I need to continue to surround myself with more people like yourself who like, who know stuff, who've been around the block and like, you know, like Mike and Miltara and things like that. It's super inspiring and it's super,
00:15:37
Speaker
helpful. What was this topic? All kinds of stuff, mostly laid stuff. Um, he used to run, uh, both the Toronto, Swiss laid Anna Nakamura, just the same as ours. And he's like, did you know there's a turbo mode? If you have this certain software option, you just enable this turbo mode and it saves three seconds on every cycle, like just freely. He's like, nobody knows about this. I'm like, I didn't know about this.
00:16:00
Speaker
It's actually right next to the brother high precision option. Exactly. That nobody knows about. And yeah, it was cool. This is a guy that's willing to read the whole manual, like our TF amp, read the whole manual, and just know what's possible. And he's just curious. He's hungry. He wants to know what's possible. And I'm like, this is the guy. This is cool. And he used to work at a shop that would make tens of thousands of parts. So cycle time was
00:16:27
Speaker
was a treasure hunt for him. It's just such a cool perspective because our programs are pretty locked down. They don't get changed much. Both our lathes just run the same things, same programs they've had for years, and we're just scheduling when to make parts. And I don't have time to chase cycle time on those machines, nor is it maybe beneficial, I don't know, but both machines are busy, and that happens. You know what I mean? No, I do. Thoughts?
00:16:56
Speaker
What? No, that's I love. I don't know if it's
00:17:02
Speaker
I keep hearing examples of where Sandvik is an industry leader on the quality of their apps and technical research at R&D. I'm not a fanboy, no affiliation other than a happy customer here, but the first day our old rep, I missed that guy, he was great. The new ones are fine, but he was my favorite to be honest, walked in and was like, no, let me bring in an insert to try this stainless turning thing you're trying to do.
00:17:27
Speaker
And I'm usually probably unhelpfully dismissive of like, you know, if somebody calls us on the phone for, hey, we're a new shipping company, we want to let you, we want to help try your LTL freight, I'm just basically like, go away. I don't, I'm very close minded about solutions.
00:17:47
Speaker
But this made different. The brand, I guess, is different. But this is the first time the guy ever walked in our shop and introduced himself. And thank God I said yes. Because again, it's just like that wealth of knowledge of, hey, grades and inserts and testing and tool life. It's awesome.
00:18:04
Speaker
Yeah. And he was explaining a little bit more about prime turning. Remember hearing about that? Sandvik's turn both ways kind of thing. And he said, when you're turning forward normally, you can only go up to even 30 thou per rev, which was crazy to me. But he said, when you're turning backwards, because the tool is stronger, you can go up to 60 thou per rev or something. And I was just trying to imagine 60 thou per revolution is insane to me. Yeah.
00:18:33
Speaker
We go like 3,000 per rev and that's a roughing cut for us. Right? The chips that would come off are like, yeah. The paper weights. Whatever happened to, was it a drill or an insert that you were chipping? It was an instrument.
00:18:55
Speaker
I think a couple weeks ago I was chipping the VCMT insert in everything in A2 and in stainless and I still haven't solved it. I don't think I haven't had time to dig into it but he did say, he's like, you know, I see a lot of customers using a DCMT insert.
00:19:13
Speaker
And that's like the 55 degree, I think. And he's like, if they don't need to, I switched them to a CCMT insert, which is the more 80 degree, it's just stronger. And he's like, if they don't need the D, I just switched them to this and tool life goes through the roof because the tool is actually stronger. And I was like, well, I use a VCMT for literally everything. He's like, do you have to? I was like, I don't know. I haven't thought about it. It just, sometimes I need it to get into little corners and stuff. So I just use it for everything.
00:19:42
Speaker
It kind of made me think. You're dealing with very, very small amounts of fraction on the very tip, right? You're not like lopping off the end of the insert and you're hogging now stuff. Well, on the Swiss, we do single pass turning. Oh. So we might cut like a quarter inch depth of cut in one pass slowly with 2,000 PSI of oil.
00:20:08
Speaker
Sure. Crazy.
Polishing and Finishing Techniques
00:20:10
Speaker
So that's an option. So what? You're just using the flute length of the insert. Got it.
00:20:16
Speaker
That V versus C definitely makes more sense here with the Wilhelmin though. If I'm picturing, like actually it's funny, I have a 870 drill insert right up here where we're having like, it's visible to the human eye only because it's a shiny wear pattern. If it wasn't shiny, like the coating were still on it, you'd be hard to tell it. Of course, through a microscope, you see it, no problem at all. But similar thing, like that's not breaking because of
00:20:46
Speaker
support or geometry. It's because of the wrong grade or speeds and feeds or something on how we're using it. Run out or chatter or something. Yeah, exactly.
00:20:57
Speaker
So actually, it's literally an example of where I use the microscope, create a video, send it to our Sandvik guy, and I was like, hey, could you give us some pointers on? And actually, Sandvik's technical resources have a great, like have a whole web page that's probably 10 or 15 pages long if you printed it out on different types of wear, you know, flank wear, center wear.
00:21:19
Speaker
shipping versus I forget the different terms and I kind of found the one I thought it was just to show him I was trying to put my best foot forward and do some own research on it and he ended up recommending a different grade which we bought but I don't think we've used yet. That's the other thing Sandvik I was saying he's like on a Swiss because you have rigid stick holders that with very little stick out and very little
00:21:43
Speaker
you know, quite a rigid setup considering and he's like oftentimes we can switch a customer to a harder grade than is normally recommended because it can take it it can it's rigid enough to do that especially in harder materials. I think he said and that you only get that from knowledge and experience and like like old guy Joe, you know suggested this so we're gonna try it. Yeah, right.
00:22:11
Speaker
Oh, random question, change of topic. This has been on my sort of mentioned list for a couple of weeks. We had actually a fan come by to pick up one of the machines we sold and he had a question. I gave him some pointers, but I'd love your opinion or others. He makes really small
00:22:30
Speaker
We'll call them samping dyes, like making parts that are the size of things that would go in the end of wires or small dyes where you're pressing a little bit of material. I think it would probably be similar to that video we did of Superb Industries with Adam Dima's old job where they were making these things in a much grander scale. I think he's got these smaller presses to do low quantities of these things in there. Some of the dyes, I don't remember if he said they were aluminum or steel or both.
00:23:00
Speaker
He wanted to start repairing or making some, and then he was asking about polishing. So for the sake of the specific question, like assuming that you had machined a small piece of tool steel and assume it was hardened, and let's say there was a little like eutrophinid or something that had some amount of surfacing or not a 2D prismatic shape to it. It was more complex than that. How would you polish that?
00:23:26
Speaker
for I guess the term with stamping would be to minimize friction so that the material can kind of flow over that as it's pressed. So smoother the better kind of thing. Yeah. I know a lot of times aluminum dyes will get DLC coated because it adheres very well and it's really good for mold release and stamping and things like that. It just makes the aluminum dye last significantly longer.
00:23:50
Speaker
That's cool, good idea. Yeah, so I learned about that at our coating place because they had dyes, they were coating and I was like, whoa, that looks cool. Why is that dye black? And he's like, well, I'll tell you. Yeah, that's really cool. That's an option. Those were already polished beforehand. I know a lot of mold makers will literally hand polish like features and the whole mold gets hand polished.
00:24:11
Speaker
You could use vibratory polishing to a degree either with like walnut shells or something to gently tumble it. It also might get your corners and locating features and all that say pluses and minuses there. Blasting might be an option like walnut blasting, sand blasting.
00:24:32
Speaker
with super fine grit stuff. I know Comco makes a micro blaster. It's like 10 grand, but we really want one. It's like a micro bead blaster that has all this super fine medias and apparently higher pressure than line pressure somehow. I'm not sure about that. Intensifiers.
00:24:52
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know how that would work. But anyway, it's a micro blaster and you use it with your hands, so you just put your hands in the thing, no gloves, no nothing. And that's how like aerospace will deeper parts and that's how like the fancy medical places will... Yeah, comco micro blaster. Definitely look it up. Yep, they have some cool YouTube videos.
00:25:14
Speaker
We've had it on our hit list for like four years now, because Angela used to use one at one of his old aerospace jobs. And he's like, that's the stuff right there. Just haven't been able to justify a $10,000 bead last year. But we could use it. What would you use to pay for itself?
00:25:31
Speaker
Do you bring the parts giving surface finishes? Interesting frosted, blasted surface finishes. You could mask parts off and blast certain features. If we had an engraving, you could mask it and blast just engraving. There's ways to use it very artistically. The watchmakers like to use this kind of stuff too because the parts are delicate and you want to get rid of a one thou burr and not alter your whole size. That's the tool for that for sure.
00:26:01
Speaker
Interesting. The fact that there's like precision abrasive blasting that actually improves your finish is one of those like miracles, eighth miracles of the world. It's like a mind bender. Yeah. And then one of the guys I follow on Instagram, Robert's custom creations, he got a wet blaster, which I didn't really know was a thing. So it's like a wet sandblaster that shoots water in sand or whatever.
00:26:28
Speaker
glass beads at your part and especially for aluminum, it, I don't know what the benefits are, but it keeps the dust down and it, oh yeah, it's better and cleaner and something probably filters the water, something, something, but, um, so he's been getting cool results from an aluminum, like, like frosted look, really cool, uh, deburring features, things like that. So there are options out there for sure.
00:26:53
Speaker
The, if you DLC coated aluminum, obviously you'd want to prep it and polish it first, then you would DLC coat it, but then you don't need to or don't even want to do any sort of lapping or polishing after the DLC. Okay. Actually, that's a good question. I'm curious what happens when you lap DLC. I'll have to try that sometime.
00:27:12
Speaker
Yeah, I mean the coating is only so thick, like a tenth if that. Yeah, right, right. So it's like an end mill coating, right? Like you can barely even measure the coated and uncoated jank. So it's almost nothing, but yeah, you definitely, and it doesn't hide anything. It doesn't fill in the voids like powder core does. It's just, it is what it is.
00:27:33
Speaker
I continue to appreciate having flat stones in the shop. Obviously, now that we're grinding stuff, but then even I was running some Gen 3 mod by stuff this morning and one of the fixtures I saw a nick and I was like, is that a nick? It's just like PFG is the way to go. You just get that.
00:27:54
Speaker
I think I asked Spencer to talk about it on the last Sunday's episode. I don't know if he did or not, but I still want to understand what is a good workflow about stoning something and then using your hand to wipe it or a rag. When I use shop rags, not microfibers, but the red shop rags we do, I can definitely sometimes see red fibers and I don't like that leftovers. I think those have to be verboten as a part of that workflow.
00:28:23
Speaker
I don't know. It's a good question. Wipe with your hand, stone it, either leave it or wipe it again but that leaves fibers. I don't know. Yeah. Back and forth a couple of times. Right. I think the answer is probably you can just stone it and
00:28:39
Speaker
be done or so in the end. But yeah, I think for most practical purposes, where this is an unrelevant, like it doesn't matter. But the the every now and then you don't want one of those fibers in the way of something you're doing, right? Like, oh, no, totally. I absolutely know that that would affect the tolerances we hold on on those parts. Have you ever heard the car body trick?
00:29:05
Speaker
of when you are running your hand over a body panel that like you're painting or sanding or I used to be beyond the stage, putting your hand inside a shop, like a plastic shopping bag. No, no. A couple people soared by that are like lifelong body guys. They say that when you put your hand in a grocery bag and run over your body panel, you get better feel of the surface below it.
00:29:34
Speaker
That's fascinating. I wonder if that would work for Flappus surface paint. Yeah, you should. I mean, that's the point. Interesting. Like when you sand it, you're trying to get that perfect sand before you do your painting. Interesting.
00:29:48
Speaker
The thing that jumped into mind about the micro blasting was Sandvik does it for I believe it's CNC micro blasting for their inserts. That's how they get if you look at a C like a CCMT insert, the sides are gold and the top is black. Okay. It's all been coated say black then gold and then the areas they want to go back to the old layer they blast off or something. Oh, that's interesting.
00:30:17
Speaker
That's one of the things you look at and you never wonder how they do it. You just take it for granted. You're like, wow, that looks cool. Do you, I know you laugh. Do you, I guess you're finishing guys polish. Like if you, if we had a little intricate one inch by one inch mold that was hardened day two, would you personally be cool with like, no, I'll grab some guess when stones or some lapping compound and a piece of wood and polish it myself.
00:30:42
Speaker
Are you good enough? I have done it. I've played with it enough. It's certainly not part of my day-to-day job. Some of the other guys are better at that. But I think I'm comfortable enough with the tools and the selection we have. And I know where everything is. And I know how lapping and polishing works to be comfortable enough to pick that up. And I've done that in some ways with some of the things I've made, where it's like, no, I'm going to take this. I'm going to lap this flat. I'm going to polish that surface. I'm going to get a little rotary grinder.
00:31:09
Speaker
you know, pick the right burrow polishing stone and you don't get in here and do it nice. Oh, you do it on a dremel. Sometimes, yeah. Interesting. With a little like cotton pad thing and some liquid compound? Some rouge or diamond polishing paste. Okay.
00:31:28
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good way to by hand get in with little features. We've got these really fancy motorized Dremels, not Dremel brand, but I think they're Gaswin brand. The guys win and it lets you adjust the speed and to just really quality units. Yeah. For subtle control. Mm-hmm. That's cool.
00:31:48
Speaker
We have, when we were at CMTS yesterday, there was an NSK booth and they make all these little hand polishers and micromotors and things like that. And they have this display with two chunks of, one chunk of aluminum, one chunk of steel, and they're kind of scratched up on the surface. And they have the demo units where you can use these polishing machines on this scrap piece. And lo and behold, at the top of one of them, it says Grimsmo Knives, because Eric engraved that in there like six years ago.
00:32:15
Speaker
Hilarious. Every show we go back, we're like, yup, still there. That's really funny. It's just sitting there recycled every two years. Yup. Absolutely. I love it. It's not
3D Printing Success and Machine Maintenance
00:32:27
Speaker
super bold. You have to look to see it, but it's absolutely there. That's funny. Well, I saw somebody on Insta was at the Kern booth at Emo and was like, Grims, we need you to buy this one so that we can sticker bomb it. Nice.
00:32:44
Speaker
We did not use Upwork for our Okamoto grinder build. For the coolant curtain shield. You want to get a slidey door thingy designed and built.
00:33:05
Speaker
I had every intention of getting it off my plate. And then I looked at it and I we have cardboard base sheets that we use for when we start building a pallet of the ship. So I grabbed one of the cardboard sheets. We have a tool called a Fletcher, which is a wall mounted cardboard cutter that lets you cut cardboard. Yeah, I remember easily. So I was like, okay, I want an 18 by 16 inch piece on the left and right. I just duct taped it or gaffer caked it to the side panels. And then I
00:33:33
Speaker
I was like, I want about a 40-inch linear rail. When on Amazon, they had 36 bucks. It has two trucks on it, the round linear rail, whatever you call it, versus the machine machine stuff.
00:33:48
Speaker
It came in two days and then I 3D printed. I used my grandpa's old angle gauge. I saw that that front trough is at a 17 degree angle. So I 3D printed two tops for the trucks that hold a quarter inch piece of, in this case cardboard, at 70 degrees upright. This is like that rare example of a project that went
00:34:08
Speaker
It just went perfectly. I was just like boom, boom, done. I threw the video up in the WhatsApp. I put that piece of cardboard in the 3D printing truck mouse and it slides to the left. I realized I needed to cut a little curve in it to clearance it so that it slides further to the left. I wanted to change one thing to add an overlap for coolant and so forth.
00:34:31
Speaker
I was just basically like, I'm done, this works. I hot glued the rail in place temporarily and then realized that that's probably going to be plenty good to hold it in the place for a year. I didn't want to drill anything or even like JB Weld it yet. And so then I took the dimensions I had, dropped them into a DXF and I'm just wanting to slip. I wanted to sleep on it last night before I clicked purchase on SendCutSend to get them out of acrylic done. I just delivered, dropped them in and be done with it.
00:35:02
Speaker
That's amazing. Problem solved. I saw the little video you posted. I'm like, wow, that slides really nicely. How does that cardboard sliding so nicely? I didn't realize you had rails. You went a bit above and beyond, but fairly simply and quickly. Yeah. I'll throw it up on an Instagram post. It'll be awesome.
00:35:22
Speaker
I suspect the grinding swarf will ruin the linear rails over time. $36. Yeah, exactly. There's no precision required in that.
00:35:34
Speaker
Well, I might actually print some guards over it to prevent the coolant from splashing directly on the rails and or some TPU wipers on each end. Like it's not hard. I don't know how I'm going to, I don't think I'm going to put a handle on the top, like a cut out, because I don't want to cut out, but I want something that is more conducive to the sliding motion, like how you slide it. Yep. And these are acrylics, you can drill and modify them.
00:36:02
Speaker
add on 3D printed brackets and handles and whatever you want. Oh, a 3D printed handles the obvious answer, John, of course. They didn't want to cut the like shopping bag cut out in the acrylic because then that's cool. I'll just add a 3D printed tab on the top that lets you run. Yes. There we go. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Good. Yeah. That was a win. Love it.
00:36:28
Speaker
A non-win on our end is the current is down right now. We have a tool unclamp sensor that has got flaky and then it worked for a little bit and worked for a few more days. And then last night again, it got flaky. So after the CMPS show, I stopped by the shop real quick and I saw the machine was stalled at a tool change. And I'm like, ah, that sensor's bad again.
00:36:49
Speaker
Luckily, I had already ordered one and it's coming in today anytime now. I literally shut the machine off, which almost never happens. You can have the night. You can fall asleep tonight. Take a rest. You've been really good to us. I don't know how to do that. This little $70 sensor, it should be easy to replace. Just got to snip some zip ties and re-string it relatively accessible. That's all good.
00:37:14
Speaker
And at first, I was like, oh no, we're going to be down for a little bit. And I'm kind of over that now. I'm like, no, no, we've got a plan. It's in place. It'll be back up soon. It'll be fine. You posted that, right? It's like a little, it looks like almost like a little mini capacitor. It looks like that, yeah. But it's either a Hall Effect sensor or a Reed sensor or something measures magnetism. It just measures that the grippers have opened and then turns off when they close. Why is it going bad? I don't know.
00:37:44
Speaker
I don't know. This is not the first time, right? This is the first time for this switch. Yep. I've never had these fans before. Forgive me. Oh, the rubber bumper was the thing that was... Exactly. The dampers. Okay. And those have been solved. There's a new design model for those, like an upgrade that once we went to the upgrade, they're going to last for the sweet time.
00:38:04
Speaker
Yeah, so like you say, everything mechanical will fail eventually, especially electronic and kind of makes you feel bad that a $70 part is stalling a whole machine for making zero dollars going forward, but I'll get a face.
00:38:20
Speaker
Is it like a digi-key part or a current part? It's a current part. I'm sure if I looked hard enough, I could find it somewhere else. But I'm like, current has it in stock in Chicago, so no big deal. I did ask Tina. I was like, is there a way to bypass the signal for this and fake it and tell the machine I don't need to know it's open? Because it's physically opening just fine. It just isn't confirming that it's open. Yes. Yeah. Good. All good.
00:38:48
Speaker
We heard Dale's advice. Thank you, Dale. I did my first phanic servo surgery. Unclear if the patient's going to survive. Yeah. But took the, and actually really, I enjoyed this. I'm really happy I did it. Pulled the red cap off the end of the servo. On the willow end. Correct. Yeah, on the U-axis.
00:39:10
Speaker
The red cap was just a cap. I thought it would be more than the servo, excuse me, the encoder itself is a round circuit board that holds the optical sensor on it. Then you could slide out at like toward four o'clock and then you slid it out so that you could get it out from the encoder itself, which is actually mounted on the back end of the shaft.
00:39:40
Speaker
I mean, this is not a scientific answer. It all looks fine. Like it wasn't oil there, or it wasn't like dirt. It looks pristine. It's not broken. Yeah, exactly. But a speck of dust could do it. And in fairness, the gasket around the whole area was slightly, actually, I shouldn't say that. Oil didn't pour out, but there was some stuff in there. So I gently blew it out, just kind of did it once over.
00:40:07
Speaker
got it back together. That was itself like a big confidence booster of working on machines. I don't have a lot of experience going that deep. Put it back together and then somewhat expectantly because it's an absolute encoder, you have to do a manual process for rehoming the U-axis with some parameters. I have that process. I could do it myself. Grant's out this week.
00:40:30
Speaker
If I get to a grade, if not, we'll do it together when he gets back. So I have, unfortunately, no knowledge or update of whether that's going to fix it. But prior to that, what we did do is set up a GoPro. I didn't say this on the podcast last week. So we did 50 loops, 50 loops, and then 100 loops, a total of 200 movements. On the 50 loops, it's moving exactly
00:40:57
Speaker
Was it a thou? Yeah, a thou over 50 loops. And then it repeated that exactly. Let me just hit cycle start again, do that and exactly a thou again. And it's incremental perfect each time. It's not sporadic. Really? And then for the next 100 loops, it should have gone 2 thou. It went like 1.8 thou. So it was 2 tenths shy of being a perfect pattern. Right. But this is after you put it together and cleaned it and it still didn't doing it?
00:41:22
Speaker
No. Sorry, prior to. Got it. Right now, the machine is totally broken because the U-axis needs to be home before it'll do anything and I haven't done that. Got it. But what that sort of told us and Marcus and the team was like, look, it's not mechanical. It's not like a backlash or a thrust bearing. And we did that step
00:41:45
Speaker
My logic was to do that, hold those patterns for a one inch movement from 0.5 to 1.5, so kind of in the middle of the U-axis travel, which should have less wear because most of the U-axis work should have been done at the closest part to the shock, but it doesn't pick off and then furthest away when it goes back to its home, the far side. So next step is to just home the U-axis, see if that fix it and if it didn't just buy the servo, replace it.
00:42:14
Speaker
Yeah, which I feel better
Machining Carbon Fiber
00:42:15
Speaker
about doing now that I started some of that. Yeah. I like it.
00:42:26
Speaker
I ended up buying the very expensive CVD diamond coated end mills for cutting carbon fiber. Okay. And made by a local company here in Ontario. And, you know, a regular eight inch four flute end mills, but eight bucks from the bore tool. And same thing from them is $140. Yeah.
00:42:49
Speaker
But I tried it, and I was nervous running the parts. I was like, don't crash an ammo, don't break an ammo. So I programmed it very carefully, and it worked out great. I've only cut a little bit of it so far, but all the tools are set, and it's working, and I cut a little bit, and it's great so far, but tool life needs help. And what I'm looking for is literally length of tool life, so that I can actually get through a lot of work before having to replace them, as opposed to
00:43:13
Speaker
a third of a sheet or half a sheet of parts before it gets replaced. So that's progress. That's good. And then I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but I made a carbon fiber saga. What? No way. And it turned out the other tube. It turned out so incredibly good. Now, the tip is not carbon. The tip this tip on my pen that I'm showing you is Delrin plastic.
00:43:40
Speaker
one of our set up pieces. We'll run Delrin to prove out the program kind of thing. But we could do a DLC coded tip or we could actually have a blackout pan with carbon fiber.
00:43:52
Speaker
Took the words out of my mouth, like the blackout edition. Yeah, yeah. It's going to be something else. That's super cool. Yeah. So I had to figure out how I've already got the speedio set up, not only to cut carbon fiber, but also to filter the coolant for carbon fiber. So I was like, I want to thread these tubes in the speedio. So I literally 3D printed a bracket on the bamboo printer to go in a vice and pinch and clamp two tubes in a way. And if it doesn't last forever, I don't care.
00:44:18
Speaker
but it worked completely well and then i, put the diameter to know my location cuz the print moves everytime everytime i clamp it so i wrote a program to probe probe x y zero and then.
00:44:31
Speaker
You mill the length down, thread mill the ID, clean up some little features, even thread mill on the outside where we have a little beauty groove to match our regular stuff. And it worked out really, really well. And I brought it to CMTS. I'm showing it to everybody and everybody's like, oh yeah, when can I ask? I can't believe you can thread mill carbon fiber tubing. Heck yeah. That's crazy. Yep. Huh.
00:44:59
Speaker
Yeah. So yeah, that's gonna be good for us. How's it feel? It feels buttery. When it when the tubes first came in, they have this like roll wrapped finish, which looks kind of gross. So under the sink, I sanded it with 220 grit, I'm just put in the drill, spun it real slow and hand sanded it to 220. And now it looks really good. So I got through all the outside resin and exposed like kind of the beauty carbon fiber.
00:45:26
Speaker
Yeah. I'm working with the company, the supplier to be like, can I just buy these tubes already sanded? Is that an option? Can you hold a fowl of tolerance on this sanding process? I'll pay. This needs to happen. I'm in talks with them to do that. Then set up the speedio, thread mill them in there, and then we've got a new process here, new product. Send the tubes out to a centerless grinder. Good luck.
00:45:55
Speaker
What? No, it actually should work. Maybe. You don't need magnets or anything? True. I don't know how. I mean, aluminum oxide grinding wheels just like aluminum oxide sandpaper. Right? I don't know. It's just make a mess. Yeah. But that's not my problem. Yeah. I should send a quote to the center of this grinder. Can you do carbon fiber tubing? I might actually. That's not a bad idea.
00:46:21
Speaker
Because I'm thinking, how fun would that be to do the automated sanding?
00:46:28
Speaker
DIY automation. Well, this company that makes and supplies the carbon fiber, I saw a picture, a video. They have a... It's a belt sander, but it's a slack belt and they feed like 72 inch tubes through it and can do that. What I don't know is if they can hold a thou plus or minus diameter, which ideally I want it tighter than that, but I have to be realistic here like what's possible. On the OD? On the OD, yeah.
00:46:54
Speaker
Got it. Because it has to match our tip and our clip. And if there's a step, you feel it. Yeah. So I have to have some flexibility there, but I also want to push them to do their best and be like, what is possible here? Talking to the salesperson, I'm like, can you make sure to ask the team, whoever's doing this, if it's possible? Right. That's cool. Yeah. OK. All right, so that's how you get a run. All right, man. I'll see you. Have an awesome day. You too, bud.