Transcript
johngrimsmo: Good morning and welcome to the Business on Machining episode 443. My name is John Grimsmaug.
John Saunders: My name is John Sonners.
johngrimsmo: and This is your weekly dose of manufacturing where John and John talk about their businesses and their thoughts and what's what's going on and how to fix things and what what pleases us and what displeases us with our manufacturing businesses.
John Saunders: Ooh, is that top of mind?
johngrimsmo: and
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: It's not ominous. um I am mostly pleased with things right now, which is really good.
John Saunders: okay I had a viewer reach out to laugh wholeheartedly when last week, when you said all three lathes are down and I said, that warms my heart. So sorry, but not sorry.
John Saunders: No, good.
johngrimsmo: Tour back up.
John Saunders: That's great.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. Oh, actually, i I will update you on that. Add my list right now. um Yeah, on my list real quick. It doesn't need much discussion, but the half the guys and I went skiing yesterday.
johngrimsmo: was amazing.
John Saunders: Nice.
johngrimsmo: Yep. I got to get my ski legs ready for our mammoth trip um because I've never skied more than a day in a row.
John Saunders: Good.
johngrimsmo: Like, I've never skied two days in a row. And looking forward to that. So that was that was super fun. I am rubber today.
John Saunders: Oh yeah. Well, that's good. I feel like if you get that out of your system, then you'll be good, dude.
johngrimsmo: Exactly. Yep. Yep. No, but it was fun. um
John Saunders: Good.
johngrimsmo: More updates on speedio bevel automation, ah updating my office and lay the update.
John Saunders: Okay.
John Saunders: Laif or Laid?
johngrimsmo: Lay it, you know, machining lay it.
John Saunders: Laid. Okay. Okay. Okay.
johngrimsmo: That's right.
John Saunders: Okay. I have home assistant, um, measurement systems, fiber laser stuff. I forget. And then just Johnny five and ice storm here and all that.
johngrimsmo: Yes.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: I want to know all of that.
John Saunders: Yes. Great. I'll kick it off.
johngrimsmo: Sure.
John Saunders: Because I know I've talked a ton about this sort of openly of like of one of my many flaws, but it's over, it's sometimes overthink stuff. And so combination of just some self-imposed discipline as well as my time timer, my little ah I do.
johngrimsmo: You liking it?
John Saunders: yeah Yes, it's not, you know, it doesn't like It's just a trick, or let's call it what it is. It's just like a trick to let yourself like, oh, I don't want to do do do this or I'm scared to do this. It's just like, dude, set the timer for five minutes and just go do it.
John Saunders: Every time I used it, I've never looked at it again because you end up getting absorbed in it.
johngrimsmo: Love it.
John Saunders: like
johngrimsmo: Okay.
John Saunders: So it's just like I need that little trick to just start to do something.
johngrimsmo: So it's it's ah it's a kick to like start and then, yeah.
John Saunders: It's perm...
johngrimsmo: Okay.
John Saunders: It's permission slip to to do something, ironically, usually it's like work-related.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: it's not like i'm It's not like I give myself 10 minutes to go you know watch unrelated YouTube or whatever. but ah So for example, I was nervous about home assistant. I got really give a big shout out to a fellow Canadian who's been super helpful. I got stuck on installing Frigate. It's probably a good reminder of how technologically Wild West Home Assistant is in a bad way, in a way that like, I don't even know if I could ri get the setup replicated again, because you're installing third party app store called Hacks. And then the Hacks instructions were for regular Frigate, but Home Assistant, you actually want the Frigate full access version, which changed the, ah not truncated, the
John Saunders: It changed the very strange like local host DNS resolution address to from one thing. to like A bunch of characters you had to add a dash FA. Never would have figured that out. He helped me get through that.
John Saunders: um But punchline is that what led me to reach out was, was I think a great recipe playbook for me. i so I set my timer, I got Home Assistant kind of dusted back off and then I stopped and I was like, okay, I have this camera, I have the Home Assistant software.
John Saunders: What do I want to do with this, John? Like, fi what do I want to do?
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: And I realized all I want to do for now is I want to be able to have, video being recorded of the UR robot, and it will overwrite itself like any SD card does after it fills up. but So I could always go back and look back and scrub through the last few days of footage. But what I also wanted to do is copy off footage into the frigate shared folder, or a frigate special folder, or home assistant special folder, and alert me if an e-stop occurs.
johngrimsmo: OK.
John Saunders: Now we can figure out later, like if we e-stop the machine every day for some reason at night, maybe we don't want that to happen. So I can think about ways to refine it, but like, wouldn't that be great? Every time your machine has a unscheduled e-stop, you get a video feed of what happened 30 seconds or 60 seconds leading up to that.
John Saunders: um And we have that now with the caveat that we didn't order a tower light with the brother. So I need to like, I need to figure out what I want to be considered an alarm state.
John Saunders: um
johngrimsmo: yeah.
John Saunders: Lots of ways to, for sure, lots of ways I can do that. But to be clear, I haven't done that yet, but I have done everything else. I got the camera installed on the machine. Free it sees it. It's a peel it's a power over Ethernet camera and it's logging footage.
John Saunders: It looks mediocre on screen, but if you download the clip, it's full res and um the automation code is there. I just haven't turned it on because again I don't know what I want the triggering event to be yet.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, yeah.
John Saunders: And it was real win.
johngrimsmo: So with a tower light, you could like visually see green, red, things like that. Does that help?
John Saunders: The there's, there's frigate, which is the web cam or the, not shouldn't say webcam. The frigate is the camera. don't know what they even call it. um Cause you can use, you could use like real link has its own home assistant plugin, just like bamboo does as well. Oh my gosh. That's crazy. I'm watching the robot on the camera right now. um Sorry. I was looking, so frigate is like a better video.
John Saunders: I'm sorry. want to figure out what what it's called. is it Frigate is an NVR, so networked video recorder with real time local object detection for IP cameras.
John Saunders: And it has a subscription, paid subscription thing for inexpensive, maybe 50, 100 bucks a year, that is Frigate AI. So Frigate AI is interesting. That's the example I gave of the gentleman that's helping me who had it on his front yard and the AI,
John Saunders: relatively quickly and relatively eloquently learned his front yard behavior and it doesn't notify the system when it's ups or the trash truck but it does notify this the system if it's a stranger like tell a you know door-to-door salesperson walks up um i had thought about having that sort of ai on the robot system but i think that's overkill for now, so set it aside. So then I thought, well, with the regular frigate, could you just have the frigate look at a tower, a separate camera, I guess, looking at the tower light. There's probably a better way to do it. And I know lots of folks have already suggested like, oh, wire into the 24 volt or this that.
John Saunders: I'm aware that we can do that. There's just something nice about not touching the machine.
johngrimsmo: yeah
John Saunders: like an air gap thing where you just have the camera pointing at it and it now knows like a human knows, you know, I know in the machines he stopped as a human, I don't have to wire myself into it. Use my eyeballs.
johngrimsmo: yeah love it yeah you can buy a cheap tower light and wired in probably somehow um like we bought a cheap one for our router and it works fine yeah there's our cnc router
John Saunders: That's the top.
John Saunders: Yeah.
John Saunders: Wait for your router. Oh my God. I'm thinking like so Cisco network router. Sorry. hol Okay. Yeah. yeah
johngrimsmo: You got to know when the internet's up or down, man.
John Saunders: That's funny. Um, so getting in the weeds, the tower lights, probably not even the best thing because the frigate built in NVR doesn't actually see color.
John Saunders: So what you could do though, the tower light is probably three separate physical bulbs at different Z heights.
johngrimsmo: Yep.
John Saunders: You could probably just show it on the red one and have it understand whether it's on or off in a kind of black and white on off luminosity.
johngrimsmo: Hmm.
johngrimsmo: Well, wasn't CJ looking at her, Phil or something, looking at something where you could scan all your machines, like like take a video of all of your machines and auto detect green and red lights from all the tower lights.
John Saunders: Does sound familiar. Yeah. I'm not recollecting which one that was.
johngrimsmo: Which is wild.
John Saunders: Yeah. Um, but the UR will also know East side. In fact, it's likely that the UR system would be what triggers the East side, not the machine tool. Um, and the UR has IO pins that we could easily help put and then read.
johngrimsmo: Mm-hmm.
John Saunders: Um, so I'll figure that out.
johngrimsmo: I guess the thing with doing everything through a video feed is that kind of the one interface, the one program handles all inputs and outputs through video, as opposed to literally having individual wires going from somewhere from the UR to something that now tells your home assistant information.
johngrimsmo: Cause that involves another IO board that involves signal processing stuff. i don't know. It's all doable, but.
John Saunders: Yes. Again, i want to, i have to bring myself back. First off, we already have the webcam just recording everything. So I could just scrub through the footage if I needed to.
johngrimsmo: Yep.
John Saunders: I'd rather that sort of coolness factor of like, no, if it alarms out, it actually just scrapes that footage into a folder for me.
johngrimsmo: yep.
John Saunders: So I just need to trigger it. The better way to trigger it probably just will be with a, wired condition for now. And I could just parallel out a line from the UR or the machine tool and just monitor that high-low pin status and then be done with it or whatever.
johngrimsmo: ye ye
John Saunders: Sorry, longer explanation than I thought, but...
johngrimsmo: That's good. What you're really trying to do is um
johngrimsmo: account for all variables, all situations, all problems. You want to be able to scrub the video feed of what happened 30 seconds before the problem so that we can learn from that problem and eliminate it, especially with the UR, like doing actual physical motions and movements and like doing stuff.
John Saunders: who
John Saunders: the Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Cool. I like it.
John Saunders: Yeah. Awesome.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: Right.
johngrimsmo: And it's just fun.
John Saunders: Yeah. Yeah. Well, like the, you know, if I'm working remotely or I'm on the road and there's a problem, it's like, I don't have to go remote desktop in and scrub through the video feed on a remote desktop connection. It's just like, nope, the folder's there.
John Saunders: I grabbed the file. Like that's the wind.
johngrimsmo: Yes.
John Saunders: All right, your turn.
johngrimsmo: Um, okay. My big one is bevel automation on the speedio is working extremely well. So yesterday when I was skiing, I left, uh, I left some posted notes on, on the machine for Steven to come in and be like, I know things are different.
John Saunders: Ooh.
johngrimsmo: Things are weird. You're going run these programs now. And it's going to do this. And normally I'm there to like ah walk him through a change, but he knows how to do this. And, uh,
johngrimsmo: Basically, on top of the thermal compensation that is working fantastically, so now the machine is relatively geometrically stable and and tweaking G53, the global coordinate offset, based on the probed results of thermal drift.
johngrimsmo: And we're seeing up to a thou on all three axes at various states of temperature. So now that's basically null. Like, it's really, really cool.
johngrimsmo: On top of that, we talked last week about lasering the grinding wheel with the diameter and coolant around it, like oil, dried oil causes a problem kind of thing.
John Saunders: Yes.
johngrimsmo: So I got that figured out. Now we're getting extremely consistent results from lasering the wheel with the odd outlier of being like thou bigger and it should never be bigger.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: So I put, I think I put a 5 tenth outlier elimination, anything bigger than 5 tenths of the last one, ignore it for now.
John Saunders: Okay.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: and And then I looked at all the data for the past few months. Does it ever laser significantly smaller, like thou or two smaller for whatever reason? And no, it does not.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: It never lasers smaller, which is good. So if it lasers bigger, it's probably like dust or la dirt or grinding goo or whatever stuck to the outside. um So I have the outlier elimination on there. That's working fantastic. And now...
johngrimsmo: my guys not having to mic the wheel diameter um with little shims so you don't scratch your mic every time.
John Saunders: Yeah.
John Saunders: yeah
johngrimsmo: It's like, yeah, I'm like, you can stop doing that because this works great. um On top of that, the Python program that I made a few weeks ago for looking at all the dprint data is so, so helpful.
John Saunders: you're talking about that. Remind me though, what that does.
johngrimsmo: So to back up a little bit, when you manually or programmatically de-print information from the machine, any variable, any dimension, any size, any position, any number probed result, you can send to a text file.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: And it just keeps appending that text file, makes it bigger or bigger.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: The next day, a new text file starts. So you have one per day.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: I have these all going to a Raspberry Pi, to a folder on the Raspberry Pi. If that breaks or goes down, then the machine's going to complain. So there's no real redundancy yet there.
johngrimsmo: But basically, so I'm deep printing all kinds of stuff. Date and time, obviously. um Grinding wheel diameter before lasering, after lasering, um tool various tool lives for all kinds of different tools, probed values of heights and diameters and widths, things like that, all the thermal comp results. So I'm collecting a lot of data. And you can sift through a text file with your eyeballs and kind of like Yeah, OK, OK, I see it getting a little bigger. getting little smaller.
johngrimsmo: And you can drag all that into a spreadsheet and you can cut and paste and like sort and organize. But it takes time and it's annoying and I never end up doing it well enough. So when you're collecting all this data but you're not really reviewing it, it's annoying. So the Python program that I and Kurser created, um Basically it can open up one of the dprint files.
johngrimsmo: I can highlight a line of text and I can say search all and it searches through the entire thing.
John Saunders: OK.
johngrimsmo: It lists out every, basically dprint line will look like I have it open right now. So it'll say like whole diameter space space space 0.31308 is the size of my calibration hole.
johngrimsmo: If I copy that line of text, then every result, um, the actual diameter is the last few characters in that line of code.
John Saunders: okay
johngrimsmo: So my code, but my, my program basically says when I search for this string of text, uh, print the results of the last characters in that line of text. Does that make sense?
John Saunders: No, but that's probably because I'm being slow.
johngrimsmo: Like, like did this that's okay. It's so much easier to like show you, but, um, I will, I will for sure.
John Saunders: do Do a video on it if you're willing. Or is it, is it?
johngrimsmo: No, it's, it's really cool. But anyway, all the, all,
John Saunders: does deep Does it deprint one line at a time? Cause it's just like a serial string output, right? It's not.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: so you would have to like, okay.
johngrimsmo: And it it could be it could be a section that's like 10 lines long, but you're manually programming each line what you want it to say.
John Saunders: You're programming the deprint. It's not just like deprint whatever the machine is thinking at the time.
johngrimsmo: Correct.
John Saunders: Okay. God, thank you.
johngrimsmo: so So in my machining program, I have either a sub-program or in the program, it says, you know, D-print day and time, D-print hole diameter, D-print wheel size, D-print variable 500, whatever.
John Saunders: I'm with you. Yep.
johngrimsmo: And so the answer, the result of that query is the actual diameter of the thing or the actual tool life or the actual that.
John Saunders: Yes.
johngrimsmo: So that's the number I'm talking about.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: And basically my program shows me all instances of my highlighted text and it graphs it automatically into a plot. And I can do it for today's file. I can do it for the past seven days, the past 30 days, the past 365 days.
johngrimsmo: So all this data that I've been collecting, I can within like two clicks automatically graph like the results.
John Saunders: Yeah, I love it.
johngrimsmo: And then there's there's little fields of like min, max, average, and the difference. So if, say it's a thermal growth range, for all the data for the past seven days, it automatically shows me the difference of two tenths of of this, ah well, of whatever it is I'm looking at.
John Saunders: Wow. Okay, okay.
johngrimsmo: um
John Saunders: Will you leave this in and the text files for each day or do you actually scrape this into a database?
johngrimsmo: I leave them in the text files. So I have one text file per day.
John Saunders: OK.
johngrimsmo: And then I use this to visually like analyze.
John Saunders: OK.
johngrimsmo: Cause collecting data is useless if you don't analyze it and do something with it.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: um So this is a tool for me specifically to analyze my data and to like learn what the machine's doing, learn what the tool's doing, learn what lasering a grinding wheel does, learning how consistent our machined features are.
johngrimsmo: Like we've got one feature on the Fjell where we
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: rough machine in Z depth, rough machine a pocket 9 thou deep. And I have the probe come in and I probe the top of the blade and I probe that 9 thou pocket and I go, oh, i was actually 8,9 0.
johngrimsmo: i know
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: Like 8 thou 9 tenths or whatever. um Comp the tool by 1 tenth and then remachine it and then reprobe the results. And I have all this data for the past six months of doing this on our Fjall.
johngrimsmo: And it's automatically comping the tool length every time. So now that I have all that data, I can put it into my program and I can be like, how consistent is the final result actually over all time?
johngrimsmo: And I'm holding a Z depth of under one 10th consistency for for all time, or maybe it's two tenths, I forget, but it's like, really, I've never machined so consistently and proving that I can,
John Saunders: Yeah, it's insane. It's awesome.
John Saunders: I think you need to get a t-shirt made for IMTS this year that just has a picture of your brother and it just says hold sense all day and walk around IMTS with that.
johngrimsmo: Yes.
John Saunders: And everybody who knows knows.
johngrimsmo: That's funny. Cause I, I've been thinking about that phrase, you know, like every salesman goes, Oh, it holds two tents all day long.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: I actually want my speedy out to do that. And I am in some way.
John Saunders: The back of the shirt is just deep print data sets. ah
johngrimsmo: I love that. oh my gosh.
John Saunders: What? So to my curiosity is getting the best your. So like on the ninth out pocket example, it machines it.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: Let's assume it's off by two tenths. It probes it, comps the tool, remachines it again.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: if it's,
johngrimsmo: Remachine to two 11 tenths. That's my actual, I want 11 tenths or 11 thou deep. So I do a semi machine to nine thou.
John Saunders: Oh, okay. Okay. okay Okay. Nine thousand was a waste. ah Okay. I'm with you.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. Nine thou is a, what is this tool actually doing? It's supposed to be nine.
John Saunders: Yes, for sure.
johngrimsmo: It's actually eight, nine confident by one 10th remachine to 11. And then what actually happened is it 11 is an 11 one is a 10, nine is it whatever?
John Saunders: Yes.
John Saunders: So if it's 10, nine, does it then remachine it again?
johngrimsmo: No, no, it's good good enough.
John Saunders: Okay. It just, it just leaves it is.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: Yes. for Sure. Sure. Okay. That was my, it's like, hate to say this. So sorry for everybody for the trauma I'm about to impose on them. But like back when I used to run a manual, it's not well, but i used to run a manual.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: It's like, you'd use the the compound or the cross slide to like creep in, leave yourself fourth out, but you'd measure how much and you're like, Oh, i actually need to go in and you know, 4.3 thou and you should nail your final blah, blah, Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Exactly. Exactly. So that's, I'm trying to anticipate, I'm trying to prove with all this data. And it's just going extremely well.
John Saunders: That's cool.
johngrimsmo: Yep. And then the other part of this program that has been working amazingly, like, tab two of this program is my Findly Replace program. So because I have so many subroutines and so many macros and so many whatever, it like in my speedio folder with all my programs, how many programs use variable 699?
John Saunders: Got
John Saunders: it. Oh, sure, sure.
johngrimsmo: I can now search hashtag 699 and it'll display all results and it'll take me exactly to that line of code.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: It can masterplace if it wants. I've been using that so much
John Saunders: Find and replace in VS code or text editor.
johngrimsmo: in my Python program.
John Saunders: oh Oh, good for you. That's cool.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, so yeah, yeah, yeah.
John Saunders: So there's like it's a pilot program, but there's like a front end to it. Okay.
johngrimsmo: It's an actual like UI is really, really cool. So I mean, I do find a replace in VS code all the time, but it doesn't, as far as I know, work across multiple files, not cleanly or easily.
John Saunders: Right.
johngrimsmo: um And if I've got, you know, 40 machining programs that I'll use variable 699 or not, whatever, um it's been pretty powerful.
John Saunders: Yeah.
John Saunders: right huh
johngrimsmo: So a video there would really make things more clear, but then everybody's going to be asking for it. And I don't know if i want to share it, but it is pretty cool.
John Saunders: yeah yeah you should i mean i'd not tell you what to do but like
johngrimsmo: Maybe I should.
johngrimsmo: No, please.
John Saunders: um i mean, we've said the same thing, like less lately, but and when we first started releasing Lex, everybody wanted Lex. I'm like, sorry, pause.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: I'm like, should we go into the ERP business? i'm like, no, we should not. And we're not software developers, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, dude, Lex works for us.
johngrimsmo: Totally.
John Saunders: Like go write your own Lex. Like it's just, it was so much easier now than even when we did it.
johngrimsmo: That's.
John Saunders: Oh my God.
johngrimsmo: Oh yeah, exactly. And that's where I would kind of want to go with that. It's like, I'm just showing what's possible. I'm just showing what I did. You probably don't want what I built.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Although I also figured out how to make an actual EXE program.
John Saunders: Oh, really?
johngrimsmo: Like, like it's a single file. You don't even need Python installed on your computer to just run this file. Cause it does it all self-contained. And I was like, oh that just elevated this like 10 times better.
johngrimsmo: um
John Saunders: Are you using Claude's... Gosh, I wish I could look up the name.
johngrimsmo: Cursor is the one I'm using.
John Saunders: Cursor. you who's Cursor's for Anthropic? No.
johngrimsmo: I don't know.
John Saunders: Who's Cursor AI?
johngrimsmo: but From what I understand, Claude is the same thing by a different vendor.
John Saunders: Look that a
John Saunders: Okay. Yeah. I don't care. um i cursors any sphere, I guess I don't know that, but there were, there are these LLMs that have like, they're like coding sections within LLMs. We talked about that on the podcast before. You're not, you're just using cursor, like chat GPT. You're not using the, like with a Claude, I think it's Claude agent.
John Saunders: Well,
johngrimsmo: The cursor has an agent as well. What are you getting at?
John Saunders: not for use rate for I for, know what i'm talking about as a short answer, but there's LLMs where you just like, like chat GPT, I just log on and I ask it for help planning a a trip or help with a question about tax code. That's different than if you want to log into chat GPT and say, Hey, there's a codex. I think it's probably what it's called. Here we go. Codex is chat GPT's specifics for software engineering.
johngrimsmo: OK.
John Saunders: Are you using a software engineering specific subset within cursor?
johngrimsmo: I think cursor is all software engineering.
John Saunders: Okay. That may be the answer.
johngrimsmo: And whereas chatGPT will talk back to you and like like tell you all kinds of stuff, cursor's a lot more simple with its replies. um So I don't use it as much convers... Well, I'll like speak to it conversationally, but I don't like hash out ideas as much.
johngrimsmo: I'm just like, this is what I want to do.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: I want it to be here. I want that to be blue. I want this to be green. I want that over here. I want that bigger, that smaller. And then it goes, okay, here's what I did. Whereas Chachup PD is a lot more like, oh, good for you. This sounds really cool.
johngrimsmo: Let's dump.
John Saunders: Yeah. You wouldn't ask Kursa to write you a short story about a boy who would, yeah.
johngrimsmo: I don't think so.
John Saunders: The Wikipedia...
johngrimsmo: Maybe it would, but don't know. but But sometimes I'll i'll be like, um I'll be like, I want to do this thing. Don't write anything yet, but I just want to hash out this idea. Like, could it do this? how What are options do we have?
johngrimsmo: And course, it's just like more blunt with simplicity, which is good in like its replies, you know?
John Saunders: Yes. Yeah, sure. ah Dude. Awesome.
John Saunders: Okay, well, good segue on to my next topic, which is at our manager meeting, we were talking about a desire to have a different or better way to measure our, I think the example was our fixturing pins, but we make a number of different products that are half inch diameter, fixture pins, diamond pins, Modvice press inserts, there's more plug jacks.
John Saunders: And right now, most of those are done on the Willimon with turning. In the past, we have sometimes purchased where you've sometimes purchased centerless ground stock, which means we don't need to turn that critical. And we've also nick done experimentation on the Willamans. You can interpolate it with an end mill.
John Saunders: You can turn it. You can do a mix of the both depending on which one's your finishing strategy. Some of that's for tolerancing. Some of it's for chip control. In a weird way, Willamans are really, really, really good at interpolating. I think some of that also has to do with the fact that interpolation, you have twice the resolution because when you're turning, you're you only get the radius adjustment.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: this still seems very weird to me to think that a mill could ever be better than a turn feature.
johngrimsmo: and
John Saunders: But actually you and I saw that at Kern when we were with Marv and they, they polared and swarfed the, remember that?
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: The tape, the fake, the interpolation was better than the swarf where the swarf just rotated it in place on a see
johngrimsmo: Yep. That taper. And then they see a member right in front of us and they're like, no, no, it's really good. Um,
johngrimsmo: right. And the interpolation was better.
John Saunders: When it moved in 4XY, I think, yeah.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we've seen the same thing on our 20-year-old Willimon. Like, an interpolated feature is is holding less than two tenths all day long, cold or hot machine.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And that's that's the main feature on the Fjell clip that we're making on the Willimon, is you make that feature, and you know the guy's comping the the tool radius by like half a tenth sometimes, but generally, all day long, it holds less than two tenths.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Like, oh my gosh.
John Saunders: And that plays back into the same thing you've been dealing with, which is, do we touch off the turning tool? We can, do we want to comp it? Do we want to wait till the machine's warm? How do we, how does this play into the first parts that are run during the day?
John Saunders: How does it play into an overnight run where we don't want to make scrap?
johngrimsmo: Mm-hmm.
John Saunders: There's all these like very, they feel pedestrian, but I think they're pedestrian because that's the way life works. Whatever's on, whatever's on your plate right now feels normal to you. but You know, you don't mean that bias.
johngrimsmo: yeah Yep, yep.
John Saunders: So um I had visited Metal Quest in their Idaho facility back in November. They have three of the multi-spindle index machines.
johngrimsmo: Mm-hmm.
John Saunders: It's always fun to see different shops. And they had these Mitsutoyo digital indicators on granite blocks, a little like four inch square granite blocks.
johngrimsmo: Yep.
John Saunders: um And had The nice thing about those, I've never used one to be fair, but I know one of the nice things about them is that they will show you the high spot. Like on a multimeter, you can say, hey, capture the highest current or the highest voltage.
John Saunders: And so you don't you have to visually look for it.
johngrimsmo: Okay.
John Saunders: You just, you move it around it tracks the high spot.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: And so
johngrimsmo: This is a a vertical indicator. The plunger just moves up and down.
John Saunders: just like a dial indicator, yeah.
johngrimsmo: Yep. yep yeahp But super accurate.
John Saunders: But digital, correct, accurate and digital.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, I bought one of those about a year ago and it's one of my favorite tools.
John Saunders: Oh, really?
johngrimsmo: Yeah, so go on.
John Saunders: Is it set up for, is that what you for your knife bending your Oh, that that's ironic.
johngrimsmo: No, we use it for measuring that 9,000 pocket, that 11,000 D pocket.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. And it measures down to 20 millionths. Super accurate. um My favorite thing is it will zero instantly. just push the zero button.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: So you zero on the surface and then you measure down 11 thou and you're like, oh, that's perfect.
John Saunders: Right.
johngrimsmo: So every blade, you just re-zero it on its actual new surface if you're measuring feature to feature kind of thing. And we've got it on a granite plate with a rod on the back and a stand.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And it's it's absolutely and phenomenal. I just love the tool.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: We've used different for all kinds of stuff.
John Saunders: It's good to hear. i So that's option one.
johngrimsmo: Yep. They're not cheap. They're like $600 from McMaster or something like that. but And then you need a stand, like a super rigid kind of...
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: We've actually been buying small granite blocks indicator stands from McMaster as well. They're great.
John Saunders: Interesting.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, they're fantastic.
John Saunders: The thing other thing I like about them is that they support the Digimatic, which is the mid-tutoy is just serial output of, it's just like you can literally hook it in notepad on a USB cable and it'll just start putting your values in an Excel or notepad.
johngrimsmo: Yep, yep. You need the extra cable, which is like a hundred plus dollars.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: We got that too. Um, we don't use it though.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: That's, uh, it's annoying when you buy something and it, or you don't use it.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Nobody uses that kind of thing. I just got to build a process around it. But, but yes, logging data like that is super cool.
John Saunders: So that's the conversation we've been having. It's like, okay, the Willman has a robot. The brother has a robot. We can now create a system where it unloads these parts. It measures them. it could just do a It could just do a pass fail where the data is then thrown out.
johngrimsmo: Hmm.
John Saunders: It's just like, hey, is it with intolerance or not? um and But you could also very easily start logging. you got to be careful because it's you know the the you know endless data collection possibilities here but you know time of day cool temperature shop ambient temperature tool light you start tracking a lot of data which i do think i like but baby steps
johngrimsmo: OK.
John Saunders: Actually, coincidentally, have a call with our mentor after you and I hang up because option one is the digital indicator. Option two um is what's called a linear gauge.
John Saunders: And so it looks like an indicator, but it doesn't have anything other than the indicator plunger in a little sealed body. um They are more accurate or they have the capability of being more high resolution, I should say, and their IP, whatever rated.
John Saunders: They are then hooked into one of many different Mitu Toyu pairing devices that can support different data formats. I i don't know these other times, EtherCAT and Digimatic and i don't know other data formats. um They're actually the Linear gauge is maybe seven, $800.
John Saunders: So it's not markedly more expensive than the digital indicator, but you also then need the companion kind DIN rail IO device for it.
johngrimsmo: yeah
John Saunders: So, but still, I guess at this, I don't really view that as problematically more expensive. If the whole thing there is two grand, that's very, it seems very robust for what we're trying to do. The other option, which I love the most, but won't be able to justify it is both Mitsutoyo and it looks like key and have very, very common readily available laser measuring non-contact measuring systems that are, i mean, very accurate.
John Saunders: and
johngrimsmo: yeah
John Saunders: um they would be $10,000 to $15,000. Benefit is non-contact, but we're relatively low volume, low pace, you know, one per minute type of thing.
John Saunders: So I'm pretty sure one of the mechanical contact tools there will work fine, but that's what I want i now want.
johngrimsmo: Mm-hmm.
John Saunders: And so we started thinking through the logic. Okay. It measures the first part and it's, you know, let's say it's outside our, outside our target, but inside our scrap tolerance bands. Then the second one's the same, but then the third one is outside and truly scrap. Well, we have the robot put that in a scrap bin, but then we still let the system make one more. We measure it. If we're back to good for whatever reason, we're okay. But if it does two scrap parts row, then the machine stops.
johngrimsmo: Okay, or update the tolerance automatically in the machine.
John Saunders: I'm not, I'm going to let you do that.
johngrimsmo: Nah. Yeah, yeah.
John Saunders: I'm not there yet. not there yet.
johngrimsmo: yeah
John Saunders: We could, but
johngrimsmo: do you have ah Do you have a spindle probe on the Willimon? You must.
John Saunders: yes, we do.
johngrimsmo: Okay. I mean, yeah, you could do it all within the spindle probe itself. Measure the diameter, log the diameter, comp the tool automatically that way. Okay.
John Saunders: No. Sorry, sorry. Yes, we could. I want this done by a separate system offline while the machine's running the next part and you're not, i want to i want a third party system like measuring it.
johngrimsmo: what why yeah depending on how close you care for accuracy
John Saunders: Well, the Willowman, you shouldn't use the machine itself as a CMM. Like if it has ball squares or thermal errors, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah.
John Saunders: yeah I am stubborn in this one. It's for a thousand bucks. I can get a tool that I believe the linear gauges have 0.2 micron resolution, like insane that we need like, don't know, five to 10 microns.
johngrimsmo: hmm
John Saunders: So you're talking about a device that's 20 times more accurate than needed. Perfect. I now want to know offline what this really is period. For, for thousand bucks, 2000 bucks done.
johngrimsmo: I like it.
John Saunders: Yeah. That's my goal.
johngrimsmo: And you got to build some sort of interface to like do action based on these results.
John Saunders: Correct.
johngrimsmo: Right.
John Saunders: Yeah, I don't totally know how I'm going to do that yet. um But the there are lots of ways for the UR to sort of stop the brother. Because you don't even need to, you need to control where the UR puts the parts. That I know we can do for sure.
John Saunders: Put it into a different bin if we think it potentially needs to be rechecked or it's for sure scrapped. If you need the machine to stop, we just stop it. That's not going to be hard.
johngrimsmo: yeah i'm i'm moving a lot more towards the machine automatically um fixing itself within tolerance ranges so that it just keeps running instead of keep stopping all the time like if your tolerances are tight and then the machine's in kind of warm-up mode where it's still all over the place you're going to make a lot of out of tolerance parts and the machine's going to stop all the time and then by the time you get back to it it's going to be cold again and you're in this endless loop of
John Saunders: Yes.
John Saunders: yes
johngrimsmo: of the state of the machine when it stopped is not the same state as when you come to it to fix it. So you make a comp that you think is one thing, but the machine's cooled down a bit and the next part's not what the comp should be in a way.
johngrimsmo: And that's what I'm kind of seeing with the speedio too. So I'm trying to nip it as as live as possible to to do that. And then this is what I want to learn more about in the coming year. Like you said, you went to Metal Quest, you saw that thing. Like if I went to Metal Quest, I'd want to ask as many questions as I can of like, how are you consistently hitting TIE tolerances?
johngrimsmo: um you know it's one thing to hit a tolerance two tenths once anybody can do that to hit like all day long literally is involves measuring systems involve feedback loops involves the operator knowing all these things um mike at milter was telling me they a train driving by five kilometers away was in effecting his parts and i was like wow okay i want to know more about that like
John Saunders: Yep.
John Saunders: Oh my God. Crazy.
John Saunders: Did he buy, I mean, there are sensors out there. Did he buy something that can measure the building floor vibrations?
johngrimsmo: I don't know. Yeah, I don't know.
John Saunders: I respectfully, first off, you have more experience with this. You've you've done it, i you've proven it, you're implementing it. So like, end of conversation, you are ahead.
John Saunders: in ah in
johngrimsmo: For my needs and my goals. And maybe you have slightly different needs or or wants or, you know, theories to prove out kind of thing.
John Saunders: Well, I just philosophically am not going to worry about the state of the machine because I'm going to build a process that's ambivalent to it. So in other words, if we need to have a 15 minute warmup every time you start interrogating the machine condition, then we run the 15 minute warmup.
John Saunders: If we need a coolant chiller or coolant warmer or heater, we're going to do that to at least narrow the range of outcomes.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. Yeah.
John Saunders: um I'm not worried about daytime production as much, although it's a fair point. It's more about I don't care. Anybody who ran automation will happily tell you they'd rather the machine stop making parts at 7 p.m. than it made parts until 7 a.m., but they were all scrap.
John Saunders: I think I'm designing a system that will minimize, if not completely stop the ability for it to produce scrap because we're going to do a hundred percent inspection. There'll be a buffer. Like I'll probably be willing to let it run.
John Saunders: It may have made two more parts by the time it measures the third prior, and it may make two more to see if what's really going on.
johngrimsmo: Yep.
John Saunders: I care about that. I care about just unabashed production of scrap.
johngrimsmo: Yep. Yeah, we see it on our SwiftLave all the time because we have no feedback loop other than the operator measuring and checking parts. And a part could be made in as low as 30 seconds or as high as like five minutes.
johngrimsmo: And it's just keeps fitting out parts.
John Saunders: Yeah, right.
johngrimsmo: So it's up to the operator to learn that warmup curve to like, make sure it's making good parts. and And then he can walk away and like, leave it at night because it's running. It's running good parts, but.
John Saunders: Yeah. but that's the other thing I got. I gotta to get over myself, but like, I don't want to subscribe to the key and so information because of those turkeys, uh, how they hound you.
John Saunders: But like, there are those key ins glass table measuring systems that are 10, 20, 30 grand.
johngrimsmo: Vision systems. Yep.
John Saunders: And I'm making this up.
johngrimsmo: Yep.
John Saunders: Um, for like a lathe part like that, it's just every, it dumps it on there and measures it moves on like pretty, pretty awesome.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. That's what I built in on my on my desk at home.
John Saunders: Oh, that's right. Yeah. How's that going?
johngrimsmo: it's ah No progress, but it works.
John Saunders: OK.
johngrimsmo: It works great. I haven't used it for anything work-wise yet. My problem with a lathe part on a vision system is what if the part tips over?
John Saunders: OK.
johngrimsmo: it's depending on the shape of the part. Some parts are cylindrical and they sit square. Some have a big head, like a a screw, and it will sit crooked.
John Saunders: OK.
johngrimsmo: You're going to measure, you know, accurately if the part is crooked. So for those parts, you need like a little cradle to make sure it sits square.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: You know what I
John Saunders: Viable, don't know if this is what you're looking for but you could Viable feed it. You could buy a $500 robot that can pick it up.
johngrimsmo: You can load it onto a thing.
John Saunders: You pick tray.
johngrimsmo: Yep.
John Saunders: and Yeah, exactly.
johngrimsmo: It's all solvable for sure. But like I've seen people, i don't know if I'm seeing this right, but you know, they'll dump a whole bunch of screws on the table and I'm like, all those screws are now sitting crooked because like, yeah, you can see them all.
johngrimsmo: You're not measuring accurately if the, if the part is not sitting square to the cylinders.
John Saunders: Sure.
johngrimsmo: So I wonder about that, you know, it's great for like watch gears and like, like flat square cylinders, rods.
John Saunders: Right.
johngrimsmo: um It has its place, but you have to really fiddle with it to do the weird stuff. And most of my lathe parts would not sit square like that.
John Saunders: OK, I'm with you.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: Well, I'll let know what learned.
johngrimsmo: Hmm.
John Saunders: I'm also proud of myself because I figured out this based on just Google research chat and then mid toilet catalogs, browsing YouTube, because I didn't, was like, look, measuring half inch round parts has been done billion times in industrial America.
John Saunders: Like this is not a new thing, but I didn't want pick up the phone because like, actually remember when I toured Metal Quest, they had a automation cell that included an Okuma, uh, OD grinder, which apparently Okuma makes really good OD grinders and they're kind of a hidden secret. Um, and they had a MarPos gauging system that was, I'm sure non-contact that was measuring for true lights out, high volume, unattended production. And again, in that situation, you need a system that's independent of the thermal movement of the machine. That's ISO bearre or, you know, whatever ANSI, ISO, whatever, you know, it can be calibrated gauge proven, et cetera. Um, so i was like, okay, I can,
John Saunders: I can, more people I can reach out to. i was like, no, I think I got this. um And also like for a thousand bucks to buy that in the tutorial digital, like you just, you just added fuel to fire. Like those things are great.
johngrimsmo: you You'll use it for other stuff, maybe.
John Saunders: Yeah. Right.
johngrimsmo: Unless you build a cell and nobody's allowed to touch it because it's for this. But then that's fine. That works.
John Saunders: I hope it gets consumed by this and like, know, you had to be a great outcome.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
John Saunders: What up to in your office?
johngrimsmo: um so the office that i'm sitting in right now has storage shelves on one side with like t-shirts and junk and stuff and then just garbage boxes it's never been a nice space i use it for podcasting one hour a week that's about it i i don't work in here i have a i have a desk down by the curtain that i do all my work work at work then i have my office at home then i do all the work there too so i don't
John Saunders: Uh-huh.
John Saunders: That's it. it It's funny.
johngrimsmo: This office is underutilized. So what we're going to do and Angelo's taking lead on this, he's going to reorganize my office with a new table. It's going to put the podcasting computer into the corner and we're going to turn into a media room somewhere where we can just walk up film.
John Saunders: Nice.
johngrimsmo: There's already lights. There's already cameras. It's just like
John Saunders: Love it.
johngrimsmo: it's so It'll be so much easier because there's a lot of things we want to film this year, whether it's product introductions or teardown videos or like intros to other videos, things like that. And I think this will make everything a lot easier and more accessible to just film those things.
johngrimsmo: The caveat is I'm trying to remind myself having all the cool gear doesn't make you good at the thing.
John Saunders: do it.
johngrimsmo: You can buy a current and it doesn't make you a good machinist. um You can absolutely ba make bad parts on a current. So like having a media cell with all the lights and all the cameras and all the everything doesn't make you good at making videos.
johngrimsmo: it It doesn't write the script for you. You know, like.
John Saunders: Or does it make you make the videos?
johngrimsmo: Exactly, exactly.
John Saunders: Sure.
johngrimsmo: So i'm I'm super cautious of that, spending a few thousand dollars on on gear to have this perfect sell if we're not going to use it.
John Saunders: sure
johngrimsmo: So it obviously comes with some strings attached, but that's okay. I think I need that to do what we want to do this year, which is a lot of things. um So it's exciting and it's cool to have Angelo and Ryan and some of the other guys like handle this for me and I can kind of check in and make sure it's not horrible, but I trust them.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: I think it's going great. And then even with like, you've got nice posters on the wall, you've got cool things shown and I've never been good at that. And they're great at that. So let them do that.
John Saunders: You're so much better that than that John. You are. You've like, for sure, you can do that. think the wall art is like, I forget what, iCanvas.com.
John Saunders: It's easy and cheap.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, totally. It doesn doesn't mean I do it because I don't.
John Saunders: I know. Yeah. um It's fair point.
johngrimsmo: So let let other people do it. Yeah.
John Saunders: Fair point. Yeah. no good for you.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: I've done the, look, I've learned the lesson you said for sure taken to heart.
johngrimsmo: yep
John Saunders: Buying a get gizmo doesn't mean I'm going to tackle the project. So it's like, I would take a project like yours and be like, okay, first off, let's just purge and clean out. Then you can, you for like no money, you could add a drop cloth and ah the cameras you already have and that type of stuff.
John Saunders: And then you can add your laundry list to everything you're going to buy. But like,
johngrimsmo: Yeah, exactly.
John Saunders: wait till you, I I'm not telling you to do.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: I'm saying like, had to go through the same process of letting myself spend the money in my head, but like, wait till you've earned it Saunders.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, that's exciting. So that's going to happen in the next few weeks. Your view of me and the podcast will change over the next.
John Saunders: Exciting.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: Exciting.
johngrimsmo: So that should be good. I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, that's good.
John Saunders: I feel like I should do the same in my office in terms of, i have a, My office, um technically we rebuilt it because this had been this area had been, what do they call it, gutted down to the studs.
johngrimsmo: Right.
John Saunders: But my office was basically reusing the stud lines that were already here. But it's larger than it needs to. And we do we could use another office office now.
johngrimsmo: okay
John Saunders: And it's like, man, i would there's no ego in my part. like I would happily cut my office in half.
johngrimsmo: Exactly.
John Saunders: um and But maybe I should do that. Ask Yvonne about...
johngrimsmo: Well, we get we get ah lazy in what is. Like your office has been the same probably for years and years. And my office here, and it doesn't get used and it's underutilized.
johngrimsmo: And like you said, I have no ego with somebody else using my office. If we hire another person and they need a place, like, well, i just need it for an hour a week.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Like you can have it the rest of the time kind of thing.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: So we need a quiet, well-lit, like good place to film these videos. That's always a problem. And let's make it not a problem.
John Saunders: Love it. It's awesome. you have a view too, down to the floor? Is that on your right?
johngrimsmo: Not in this room in ah where the two other guys, Ryan and Darren work, but it's been blocked off since day seven.
John Saunders: Oh.
John Saunders: No way.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: Really? oh man.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. So nobody actually uses that window.
John Saunders: That's funny. It's funny.
johngrimsmo: But yeah, that that window looks from the upstairs offices down into the whole shop floor. But we've just had covered with the foam because you can hear like machine noises and stuff from it.
John Saunders: Yeah.
John Saunders: Got
johngrimsmo: So they just blocked it off. And then in my office here, I have a window looking out to trucks and snow right now. But I want to put like a blackout curtain on a rail that I can you know control the lighting of a video depending.
John Saunders: it. Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: so that's easy stuff, super easy.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And I think we're going to have a table, like a wooden Home Depot table in the middle of the room. So we can, camera guy can walk all around it or whatever, or tripods or things like that.
John Saunders: Nice.
johngrimsmo: it It should be, you know, we can have four people standing around the table. It should make it useful, you know, nice and dynamic.
John Saunders: Good. Love it. And that like walking into a room, flipping a switch having lights hanging and your power strips there, ah cameras on hanging.
johngrimsmo: Yep. You just, you're you're reducing all the reasons to say, no, I'm not going to do that right now.
John Saunders: Oh,
John Saunders: agreed.
johngrimsmo: Yep.
John Saunders: Yep.
johngrimsmo: And then my last thing, so of our three lates that were down, the Williman needed a $300 sensor, which Jeff was able to install himself and align.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
John Saunders: nice
johngrimsmo: It basically, on the tool carousel, it's the sensor that says, hey, there's a tool here. I'm going to grab it. um That sensor was flaking out, so it was saying, there's no tool there. We're like, yes, it is.
johngrimsmo: So that was good, down for less than a week. The Tornos had the servo motor that drives the live tools on the lathe.
John Saunders: yes oh yeah yeah
johngrimsmo: It was flaking out, and it would spin for a quarter of a second, not even a full revolution, then it would just alarm out. They dug in, they dug in, they asked Toranos, they got service documents. They figured out that the encoder on the back of the motor, these are the black FANUC motors with the red cap on the back, like every FANUC motor, that whole red cap is the encoder that measures the position and the speed of the motor and stuff.
John Saunders: Sure, sure.
johngrimsmo: And this being just a live tool motor, it doesn't matter that much, but it matters for RPM control. um And the encoder, a whole area was full of oil. Cause it's an oil, it's an oil machine and there's just oil all over it.
John Saunders: Oh.
johngrimsmo: So even though the surface documentation was like, don't take this apart. I'm like, take it apart.
John Saunders: ah
johngrimsmo: Just get the part.
John Saunders: Warranty will be voided, yeah.
johngrimsmo: clean it Exactly. Um, so they took it apart. They cleaned it nice, purple alcohol, dried it really good, careful with the glass disc. I didn't get to see it, but, um, the encoder and they put back together and I see Jeff throws hands up in the air and it worked.
John Saunders: Shut up. Oh, good for you.
johngrimsmo: Yep.
John Saunders: oh that's awesome.
johngrimsmo: So nothing's wrong. it was just dirty. After, what, six years we've had that machine running it hard.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And it's the motor that's at the lowest, so there's the most amount of oil on it. Whatever. i don't know.
John Saunders: Did you RT like ask at it again or code it?
johngrimsmo: I don't know what they did. There's an O-ring that seals, and I don't know.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: they They weren't quite sure how the oil got in. um So I don't know what they did, but therere I trust them.
John Saunders: Yeah, sure.
johngrimsmo: like it's kind of It's kind of weird at this point.
John Saunders: No, no, for sure. What's funny, like six-year-old machine, i would be like coding the outside of that with like a Flex Seal because it's like, I don't care that it looks janky.
johngrimsmo: yeah
John Saunders: Like we're just not dealing with this again if I can avoid it.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, it just works.
John Saunders: That's awesome. Good for you.
johngrimsmo: Yep. And then the third lead, the Nakamura, the live tools on that started making this weird bearing noise. So they stopped running it. And what is a $1,300 part is probably like 16 hours of service call to install.
John Saunders: Oh.
johngrimsmo: And so we're kind of stalling on organizing the scheduling of that. But I think Angela is going to take care of it like soon.
John Saunders: Yeah. Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And the service guys are like two weeks out, and even though they're an hour away at Elliot, but still scheduling.
John Saunders: Yeah.
John Saunders: Oh,
johngrimsmo: So we're not running that machine right now, but I think we're good for parts for the moment. So two out of three fixed.
John Saunders: that's good. When you know, on the third one is what is.
johngrimsmo: Yep.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Yeah,
John Saunders: Yeah. We had one real nibble on the horizontal. I don't think they'll be the ones that ended buying it, but they they were they had two others, so they were real.
johngrimsmo: that's good.
John Saunders: um But I still think, I'm still curious about if I'm having fun sharing out loud. Like, do I call a broker or I'm thinking about it. It's not called a Dutch auction, but it's just like, just start dropping the price until it sells.
John Saunders: Like, just you're good go, right?
johngrimsmo: yeah
John Saunders: um We'll see.
johngrimsmo: You still got to get the right eyeballs on it. like You know that that have hundreds of thousands of dollars or loan or whatever to like right machine, right time, right person kind of thing.
John Saunders: Yes. True.
John Saunders: Right.
johngrimsmo: Price matters, but less than having the right person, you know? Sure.
John Saunders: A hundred percent. and And I would much prefer to sell to somebody who already owns one of these because if I sell to somebody who it's their first horizontal, they'll end up being some handholding, which I don't mind, but it'd be worth more.
johngrimsmo: Yep. Yep.
John Saunders: somebody's like, Hey, we have three these, we go want a fourth one. let's Let's talk.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. Let's, let's find a price.
John Saunders: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Good. That's progress.
John Saunders: It is. Exactly. It is. So it's all I can ask for.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. I mean, are you up to today?
John Saunders: ah I, um when I installed the POE camera on the brother, I did plug in a power strip behind the machine for 110,
John Saunders: but Actually, I have a PoE like injection port is where you can take non-PoE ethernet and add PoE to it. Or I just had a little five port PoE router.
johngrimsmo: OK. Mm-hmm.
John Saunders: I just use the five port PoE router. But I have a router, ethernet cables, 110 cords. And I'm like, nope John, this is something you're doing differently now, which is that I was okay plugging in for today just to get it tested. But then when they go back, this is like a days off in the shop. going to spend an hour.
John Saunders: cable ties, rubber magnets that like mount on I'm going to zip tie the cables and make it look nice. Every machine we want should have a 110 power strip on the side of the machine. Cause guess what? You're always wondering where do I plug in a heat gun or a a shot back or whatever.
johngrimsmo: Yep.
John Saunders: Um, and
johngrimsmo: Have you found a power strip that you like? Because I have.
John Saunders: do we send it to me or post it?
johngrimsmo: Yeah, well, on Amazon, it's Trond, T-R-O-N-D.
John Saunders: Okay. Okay.
John Saunders: okay
johngrimsmo: um T-R-O-N-D. It's the brand, and it's just a nice power strip, but it has feet, like little ears on the end that you can like bolt through or you can add magnets to or whatever.
John Saunders: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
johngrimsmo: And I'm like, all power strips always have the like, the keyhole in the back.
John Saunders: Yeah, that's that.
johngrimsmo: But like, what do you do with that? Like on a machine, you're not going put two screws into the machine to do that. Anyway, I just really like them.
John Saunders: Oh, look at these. Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And they're fantastic. And they have all different sizes. They have long ones. They have square ones. I've probably bought 20 of them, like for home, for everything.
John Saunders: No, I don't.
johngrimsmo: Once you standardize on something, you're like, oh, these are great. I just love them.
John Saunders: Thank you for that. That's, these look awesome they're, they're not expensive, but this is of the things where I actually don't care anymore. I will, I would love to have, it's just what I want. When you walk in and you see and you're like, oh wow, at Saunders, every machine had that power strip in the bottom right corner or somewhere on the machine.
johngrimsmo: Yep.
johngrimsmo: Mm-hmm.
John Saunders: Like, love it.
johngrimsmo: and And you know, those magnets, uh, I get them from McMaster that were like rubber encapsulated.
John Saunders: You mean this pack that just showed up to replace the ones I just finished using?
johngrimsmo: Yes. Yes. So they have the ones with the threaded hole and they have the ones with the stud right on it.
John Saunders: Yeah.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: Um, either one would work for this, uh, for the power strips.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: Those are huge. You could buy the much smaller ones, the one inch diameter ones. Um, right.
John Saunders: We need the big ones down here.
johngrimsmo: But for the power strip, you don't. So you just put like one on each end of those and then you stick to the side of the machine.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: It's fantastic.
John Saunders: Yeah. Yep, not drilling any holes. You could move it or clean it.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: Love it.
johngrimsmo: But then you don't have to like design any 3D printed things.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: You don't have to three d print extra stuff. It's just like add a magnet to it. Good to go.
John Saunders: You buy those magnets at McMaster?
johngrimsmo: I do. Yeah.
John Saunders: Will you send me what part number you use for the Trons?
johngrimsmo: Sure. I will. Yeah.
John Saunders: because we have a, on our wiki, we have an embedded Google sheet that tracks magnets because I find magnets to be the weird thing. We buy some from KJ Magnetics. We buy from some super magnet man.
johngrimsmo: Yep.
John Saunders: We buy some from Amazon. We buy some from eBay and we buy some from McMaster. And um I've now become particular about which ones I want, right?
johngrimsmo: I like it. Yep.
John Saunders: So want to add whatever you get to my list.
johngrimsmo: And I like the McMaster ones because they're in metric threads and they just are really good, really powerful. A rubber encapsulated magnet for anybody who's never used one is like 10 times the holding force of anything else because it's rubber.
johngrimsmo: It's sticky. Like magnet magnets slip on a metal vertical surface, but the stickiness adds so much more like sliding force, sliding grip.
John Saunders: Oh, yeah.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: They're just fantastic.
John Saunders: And they don't have that like metal crash sound when they snap up against sheet metal or a pole, which I like as well.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
John Saunders: Good.
johngrimsmo: ah that That's a whole video right there. It's just gushing about those rubber magnets. Right?
John Saunders: Seriously, right?
johngrimsmo: I'm going to have that to my video list.
John Saunders: Thank you.
johngrimsmo: All right, man.
John Saunders: good What are you up to today? Okay.
johngrimsmo: um finalizing the speedio automation um i did some palette changing two days ago and i like ground the blade with one palette then i switched palettes automatically and ground the next blade two in a row and i got a one thou difference between the two parts and i was like okay that's progress that's good it turns out there's a one thou difference in the fixture which is good and now i can compensate for that right so it's like okay even though those fixtures are made on the current and everything's perfect nothing's perfect um
John Saunders: Oh yeah, sure, sure, sure. Yeah.
johngrimsmo: So you gotta, you gotta, the key is to find all the sources of variation and account for them. And I'm really enjoying the process of doing it. You're going through it as well with the, with the speedio. Yeah.
John Saunders: But it's funny because that problem is something I'm like getting rid of with one piece flow. Having even like, i love your system. i actually would like genuinely love to own what you have with the a row and the current and all that. But like, i also don't want to have 47 different pallets.
John Saunders: Each one is two tens, four tens, now different.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: Nope. I'm so, I'm so excited for this one piece flow stuff.
johngrimsmo: Good. All
John Saunders: Yep.
johngrimsmo: right, man.
John Saunders: right, see you next week
johngrimsmo: See you next week.
