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#286 - A Story You May Not Believe & New Tool Syndrome!
234 Plays3 years ago
Topics:
- Vacation + Work Trip: Autodesk Event in Birmingham, England
- Saunders, A Pilot/CNC Book Author, Tormach 770 MX, and an Escalator
- KERN Spews and Sputters Coolant Everywhere at Grimsmo Knives
- KAESER Air Compressor Coats Entire Shop in Fine Oil Mist
- New Tool Syndrome: Forklift Edition
- Abom79's SMW Shop Tour Video
- Speedio Training for GK Team
- BLUM Laser Tool Setter Installation Blues
- The Johns Gush Over CNC Machine Design Aesthetics
- Sticker Bombed: Erowa Pallet System from IMTS 2018
- Low Coolant Sensor
- CNC Lathe Talk
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machining, episode number 286. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. John and I talk every Friday as young, budding, and manufacturing entrepreneurs growing our facility businesses.
John's Trip and Work with Autodesk
00:00:17
Speaker
Maybe not so young or budding anymore, but coming off of a week of vacation slash work trip was actually, I didn't feel like I needed it, but it was actually great.
00:00:28
Speaker
Really nice to get away and spend some time with the family and also get some work stuff done. Yeah, so give us a story like what you do Went to so the short version of a longer story is we were gonna take a vacation New York City got asked to go do this Autodesk thing in Birmingham north of London looked at my wife and said why not let's do it and so ended up going over to England with the family from New York and I
00:00:54
Speaker
did some sightseeing and tourism stuff in there, had an absolutely great time. And then I took a train or bus up and back from Birmingham for a two-day Autodesk event at their facility there, which is a pretty major part of their Autodesk manufacturing and CAM world because when they bought Dell CAM, I don't know, five or six years ago, that's where Dell CAM was based. And so now a lot of the brain trust and engineering and developers are based there.
00:01:22
Speaker
It was incredible. You know, sometimes these are just like office building type places with coders. This is not, they had a DMG portal five axis machine. They had a UMC 1000 that had a 3D print, like a sentry machine bolted onto it. They had a hospitalize, Doosan mills, Doosan glaze, Mazak. I mean, it was chocked full of machines, many of which were actually running. They were running CAM samples. They were running customer test parts. Like it was awesome to see
00:01:57
Speaker
3D printing, almost 3D printing with a pellet fed additive head. The other had a milling spindle on it. And the idea here is this is like super preliminary testing for how two of these robots could be used on Mars with the Martian soil to 3D print items out of that soil. What? I got the sense that that's the end goal there at the beginning of that journey, but it's still really cool.
00:02:14
Speaker
They had two KUKA robots that were
00:02:25
Speaker
It's still super amazing to see the beginning of that journey and be like, here's our crazy wild idea.
Unexpected Encounter on Flight
00:02:30
Speaker
Engineers go nuts. Yeah. Yeah.
00:02:34
Speaker
Um, so, but I got to share a coincidence or story that I'll never repeat in my life. Just absolutely bonkers. So, uh, three or four months ago, a guy reached out and said, Hey, I wrote a book, wanted to send you a copy. And of course I obliged happy to, and, um, not, this doesn't happen like every day, but we get some folks that will do something like write an article or a product and they just kind of are looking for a free, you know, not always the best motive. Yeah.
00:03:03
Speaker
Yeah. And so the gentleman sent me the book, it was far crazier than I thought. And it's his journey of buying a tormach and learning machining. And it's a 300 page book, chocked full of notes and details and all that. It's very well done.
00:03:22
Speaker
in a little bit of a weird way. I'll admit, look, I started a YouTube channel because I'd rather watch videos and not a book, so kind of sort of not a book guy. But nevertheless, it was very impressive. And I hadn't really
00:03:36
Speaker
further engaged with the guy yet. And then we're in Heathrow Airport having just taken an overnight flight. So you're kind of basically have pulled an all nighter. And we're going down the escalator. And the gentleman behind Yvonne goes, is that John Saunders? Shut up. Yvonne goes, it gets better. Yvonne goes, it sure is. And I look back, and I actually basically recognized him in a weird way. I've never met him. I'd seen the picture in his book and his name.
00:04:05
Speaker
So not only was he the author of the book who's behind us on an escalator in a foreign country, he was the pilot of our flight.
Shop Issues and Resolutions
00:04:15
Speaker
No way. Look at this junk.
00:04:19
Speaker
Yeah. He is a captain for British Airways who flies triple sevens. He was the captain of our flight. And it's funny because we got off the flight at Heathrow. We used the restroom. William wanted a plane wash for a minute. So we actually sat there and washed planes for a few minutes. So it's totally like a weird flow of events. And so it was just like, what a great start to the trip to like everybody and all that. So it was really nice. Wow, that's so cool.
00:04:49
Speaker
The book's called Blurring the Edges, and it focuses, again, on his journey of buying this case of 770 and getting up and writing with it. He says some very kind things about us and how helpful we've been with our content, which I appreciate. Absolutely. I've never written a book, but I've known enough people who have to respect what an undertaking that is. Yeah. How are you? We've had some hiccups the past few weeks, for sure. We talked about the power outage two weeks ago.
00:05:18
Speaker
A couple of days later, after the power is all good, we come into the shop and there is, first of all, the current has been spewing coolant, copious amounts of coolant onto the ground and out the door. And so when we come in, there's like coolant outside the building because it came out the bay door. And that happened three days in a row and that's a big cleanup as well.
00:05:42
Speaker
Long story short, it turns out our chip conveyor relay had tripped and was never untripped. The circuit breaker. So our chip conveyor never turned on for a week of running nonstop production. So it just jammed with chips. And then the coolant, instead of flowing towards the pump in the back, just found its way out. Yeah.
00:06:01
Speaker
And we had a custom made drip tray, stainless steel made for it three months ago, but that filled up to a bathtub. It's three inches tall. So that filled up with coolant and then that still overflowed and it was a lot of cleaning. So then the third day this happened,
00:06:22
Speaker
Our first guy, Steven, came in and he is like, oh, no, not again. And then as he's walking through the shop, he starts slipping. And there is a fine mist of oil on absolutely every surface in the shop. And it's not from the coolant, which I thought it was at first. It turns out our air compressor, our fairly new two year old Kaiser air compressor,
00:06:45
Speaker
blew something that, so it still functioned, but it was misting oil throughout the entire shop. And so by the time I get in, like everybody's Cinderella on their hands and knees with, you know, Windex and paper towels and rags and everything, cleaning everything in the shop. It took four hours just to clean up from it. And then meanwhile, nothing's running. Meanwhile, everything, like we have to figure out what's going on.
00:07:13
Speaker
So we call the air compressor service people to come in. They come in, oh, it's got to be this. Let me replace that. Oh, actually, your intercooler radiator thingy is cracked as well, which I don't know, both of which are probably the cause. Long story short, he's like, I don't know if this part's in stock, maybe in Germany, maybe weeks away. And I'm like, how much for another air compressor? Do you have one in stock for tomorrow morning delivery? This is like 4.30 in the afternoon.
00:07:43
Speaker
And he's like, let me call. Yes, we do have one in stock, identical. It could be here at 9 a.m. tomorrow. We've been talking about getting a second compressor anyway and doing the sister like.
00:07:53
Speaker
two stage thing. Um, lead lag. Yeah, exactly. And so we're like, I was not expecting to spend this money right now, but, uh, just do it. Yeah. Have it delivered 9 AM tomorrow. And he's like, you're going to need a forklift. We don't have a forklift. So I'm like, call the rental company. They're driving home already. Send me an email. You'll have a forklift at 9 AM tomorrow morning. And then, uh, yeah. And by 10 30, we were running with the new compressor. Wow.
00:08:22
Speaker
I'm very impressed with the turnaround time. And then now we have the time and freedom to fix the compressor whenever the parts come in and then set up the lead leg system over the next few weeks, months, whatever. But that was fun. Yeah. Good. So it's all fixed, but go buy a used forklift for like four grand. Yeah. Yeah. We really should. Unless you don't have room for it. We could have room for it, but yeah, we've been hesitant, not just on the cost, but on the training and the certification, but
00:08:51
Speaker
Yeah. And we don't, we keep telling ourselves we don't use it enough to justify all that hassle. But it's one of those things, as you know, being a forklift lover, like you'll use it if you have it.
00:09:07
Speaker
This is borderline off topic, but I've had my eye on buying a big forklift for a while. A machine forklift? Yeah. A VersaLift or whatever? Yeah. So VersaLifts are super expensive, like five-axis machine expensive. Yeah. And so cut to the chase, a welding and fabrication shop's 16 miles away. Like you could almost drive. Almost drive, yeah.
00:09:36
Speaker
went up for auction. They had a 36,000-pound yard-style forklift. Like that orange one, you might have seen us rent. It's like the outdoor style. They're huge. They're huge and massive. With the big boom in the front that goes forward? The tilt cylinders are over the cab, over top of the cab.
00:09:58
Speaker
If you see Haas has videos where they're showing how they load machines out in their equipment yard or their storage yard, those sorts of forklifts. First the lift just looks like a bigger forklift. These look like giant outdoor whatever. I went up Monday to look at it in person and it actually sold for the price that I was willing to pay for it.
00:10:26
Speaker
And I got, I checked all the boxes. Like I got to see it running. It's very similar to the one that we've rented. They had, it has 12 foot forks, which is great because a lot of them have eight foot forks. It makes it easy to pick up machine, 36,000 pound lift capacity so it can unload anything we need to. It was stored indoors. I met the guy who worked at the company for 30 years who bought it and maintained it. I got his cell phone number. We were talking about, like all these things came together.
00:10:54
Speaker
But I checked myself, huddled with Ed, and I'm like, what problem am I solving here? I'm solving the problem of the annoyance of renting the forklift when we just need it here and there, which is one thing. It's a different thing. Rigging the horizontal was basically 25% of the price of this forklift was rigging the horizontal alone.
Exploring New Machinery
00:11:18
Speaker
That rigging cost wasn't just raining forklift. It was a team of probably five guys who did a day's worth of work undoing fasteners, bolts, sheet metal, more than just access to a forklift. And look, the fatal flaw was then finally, this thing is huge. Yes, we have this new building where we could store it, but it's actually really close to fitting. It would fit, but it's also ripe for damaging the building if you aren't super, super, super careful. Not an indoor forklift.
00:11:49
Speaker
You can't even use it indoors. It's too big. Which is fine. We would use it to pick machines off of trailers and hold them across the threshold, then skate them in. So that would work. But you've got like, it's 112 foot wide and you've got like one inch or two inch of clearance to move it in and out of the doors. It's tight. And it weighs 63,000 pounds. And I'm like,
00:12:13
Speaker
If I crack our slab or if we don't use this thing but twice a year, which might be realistic, then the one time I'm going to use it, it's not going to turn on for whatever reason or oil changes or the fuel filter, just whatever sort of stuff. I was ultimately like, look, I'd love to say this makes sense, but the reality is I'd rather have a VersaLift. They're smaller.
00:12:34
Speaker
they can be used indoors. It's just better on all that. And I can't afford one. Don't ultimately I didn't buy it, which only was hard because it didn't get bid up to where I made it easy for pass. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, the new tool syndrome is real in things that we look at, you know, and it's like, I can justify that. That makes sense. That takes all the boxes. Like I could totally use that. I need that. Right. And then either circumstance or reality sets in.
00:13:04
Speaker
And you're like, I'm fine without it. We have other things to invest in and to spend our time on. Yeah. Yeah. But look, there's something to be said too for if we need to move a machine or, you know, we, there've been this idea of if we do more training classes with machines that are
00:13:22
Speaker
like made available on consignment, which I don't necessarily even love that for a bunch of other reasons. Like, Hey, every six months, we're going to swap out a machine boy. That's where you really don't want to be spending thousands of dollars to call in a low boy with permits to bring a forklift in to use the forklift for like literally a hundred seconds. Yeah. And maybe we'll get there. Yeah. Yep.
00:13:47
Speaker
So what's the next steps on that, on your compressor? So yeah, I'd say over the next few weeks, month or two, probably, uh, parts will come in and it'll get fixed and then they'll set up the lead leg system. And I mean, after power, which we had two weeks ago, air is kind of your second most valuable commodity other than people, obviously. But, um, with no air, the shop is useless for the most part. We can clean and mop and like do organizing stuff, but you can't make Jack without air.
00:14:16
Speaker
It's so freaking critical. Like you know it in the back of your head and like you used to say, I could just go to Home Depot and get a compressor. We tried to run a line between the two shops and have our little air compressor power. And it was just a quarter inch line, like an air hose line. Oh yeah. The current did not like that. Yeah. It tried. It turns on for about five seconds and then it says no. Yeah. If we had like a one inch line, it might work just fine, but that's a hundred foot stretch of one inch line.
00:14:44
Speaker
I had asked the Warther guys that we bought our Fiat from the same question. I was like, hey, if I trench a one inch liner even bigger between our two shops, and there were some issues about, I mean, just the pressure loss across that distance, but then also I think it was like a question of the moisture or something else where it's like, it's just not really how these are meant to be.
00:15:04
Speaker
Well, but it's silly too, because then you look at like the factory next door, I mean, they have 1000. I mean, they probably have 6000 feet of compressor lines that are in one run of one area. And that's going underneath and burying a line. But is it insulated the hot cold? I don't know. The master sells mufflers for air compressor. Yeah, we might have to look into that.
00:15:29
Speaker
Yeah. I think it's just venting through a Barb fitting like to air right now. So it's video. Speedio is good. We had our training. Yes. Two days ago, um, guy came in and just showed us a bunch of stuff. We'd figured out a lot of it, but it was really nice to have kind of a more expert from the distributor come in and be like, yeah, this is what this means. This is what the RST button does. Um,
00:15:53
Speaker
All that stuff. So that was really cool. It's like a reset button. So if you happen to jog it past the hard limit switch, you hold that and jog it away from that kind of thing, little tweaks, um, having some trouble getting the bloom laser toolsetter installed. Um, the bloom guy has been here for a bit. Um, nobody knows what the problem is. Oh,
00:16:18
Speaker
But they're figuring it out. They've been really good about it. And it's kind of nice. It's like, while you're here, can I ask you questions about the bloom laser on the current, about this cycle, about this? He just took the shutters off of the laser on the current so you can clean them and inspect them and stuff. Because we've had a couple of tool measurement issues on the current just in the past few days while he's been here, where a tool is assumed to be measured perfectly
00:16:45
Speaker
But it's cutting the feature wrong and then we measure it again without changing anything and it measures three thou differently. And a lot of the features we're cutting, we might leave two thou floor to leave kind of thing. So accuracy is critical, important to us.
00:17:04
Speaker
So we're going through it with him trying to figure out, is it something we're doing? You know, when we clean the tool, we use the green erotico putty to clean the tool after installing it so that the laser has no like junk to pick up on. Maybe we're doing that wrong. Maybe we're leaving the booger on it, like skin cells, if we brush up against it or something. So we're trying to figure out that, but like we need absolute reliability so that this just works.
00:17:31
Speaker
And it has a air blast, right? It does have an air blast. Yeah. Um, so yesterday I, I forcefully applied. Rodico putty to the flute in a way that like, like I tried to poke the Rodico and pick some up and it just wouldn't. So I scooped some and left it on a flute laser measured it and it measured two thou long, which is less than I expected. Um, I mean, it'd be variable depending on where it's measuring and how much Rodico is on there and stuff. But.
00:18:00
Speaker
It's unlikely that that amount would go on there on a normal basis and it stayed on at 10,000 RPM. That was really funny with the air blast. We serious? Yup. Oh, that's funny. 10 grand and it, uh, and with the air blast and it was still on there afterwards and I was like, no way. So, but yeah, so we're trying to figure out the process. We thought we had a good process where we clean the tool every time we put it back in, be very careful with it.
00:18:28
Speaker
So now basically we're going to still going to, we're probably going to replace the chunk of rodico because it's been used for six months or something. That's easy. Um, and then after we poke the rodico with the new tool, we put it under the microscope, visually inspect. Yes, it's clean. Put it back in the machine. Um, it's an extra little step, but it'll train me and Angelo to look closer all the time and know that visually we're putting in good tools. This is happening with new tools, not just in process touching off. Correct.
00:18:57
Speaker
Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. You're not, do you ever hand load in the spindle or do you load in the ATC and then the machine? Always in the ATC. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And I mean, because the way I've got the tool touch programmed, it only touches off the tool when it needs it. So it could be 4AM in the morning when it's mid cycle and it's like, Oh, I need to 1 53. Oh, I have to touch it off. Let me touch it off. Continue. Go.
00:19:20
Speaker
But it's the same cycle as we would do manually by hand, like standing there. Reminds me of the probing thing. I was wondering about probe stylus repeatability. You could write a little macro that would re-probe the same tool 20 times and just look at the deviation. But if it has junk on the end of it, it's going to probe it wrong a couple of times in a row, I would assume.
00:19:42
Speaker
But it, well, it would still potentially eliminate a variable. Like, is there a loose, who knows? Like, is there a loose screw on the blue Mount? Yeah. It's good to have him here. Cause he's looking at it today, just inspecting making sure it's all good, but, but yeah, that's interesting. I'm like the default cycle does touch it three times. And if it varies by four 10ths between the three touches, it flags an error. And I've tweaked that tolerance range to not error out basically. Um,
00:20:12
Speaker
So it kind of does that in the cycle already. Okay. I would say I would have a lot more confidence if you put a tool in that was, you know, I know you say you're already cleaning them and checking it, but like we see this on our Spironi. If you have skin cells on the template, it looks like Mount Everest on the camera. It's crazy. So the, we use just the poster putty, um,
00:20:33
Speaker
and you had to take my Lamborghini Countach poster down from the 90s and for the Tool Presetter. But I like, you know, when things repeat, it gives me a lot of confidence that there isn't something else wrong. Yeah, with the putty, there's the poster putty, which is usually blue, I guess, and made by Crayola or whoever makes it.
00:20:55
Speaker
And then the Rodico is the actual watchmaking stuff that's green. It's a bit more malleable and it absorbs oils really nicely as well. Whereas the blue stuff kind of just piles on top, but the green stuff does absorb it and it's really good.
Shop Improvements and Delegation
00:21:09
Speaker
You buy it on Amazon. It's not as cheap as the blue stuff, but it's like 20 bucks gets you a year supply. Like who cares? Yeah. Outside of that, we're still battling that on this video. However,
00:21:22
Speaker
I created just a dummy facing pass that faces the air and it let us learn how to load a program with the USB stick. I still haven't networked the machine, but I want to do that. Load a program, call it, start it, get used to the cycle starts and the feed rate overrides and all that stuff. And we're running it kind of slow, me and the applications guy.
00:21:45
Speaker
Okay, yeah, we'll watch it face, watch it face. Let's turn up the speed of that facing pass. Okay, 200 inches per minute, 300 inches per minute. I couldn't go higher than 393 inches per minute, and it just wouldn't let me. So then we found the parameter that lets you go more. So we changed it to 800 inches per minute, and it allowed us to do it. And it comes in and face, face, face, face, goes home. But when it was still going slow, we were getting used to the machine. We had the feed rates at like 50% or whatever.
00:22:14
Speaker
And we got used to it. And then we turned it to a hundred percent and ran it again and didn't really realize we turned it to a hundred percent. And the retract home where it goes up and over, scared the crap out of both of us. It was so shocking that we both took a step back, freaked out and started laughing immediately. It was glorious. I wish I had it on film. Like, yeah, yeah, it's shocking. Oh my God. And I don't know if it's faster than your, your DT,
00:22:43
Speaker
One or two, whatever you have. You know the fastest machine in our shop? The MB4000. Really? The Okuma? 2400 to 2600 inch per minute rapids. Yeah, I think so.
00:22:58
Speaker
as fast. I think that's what this video is too. Yeah. It's it does like when it plunges, we were just programming the that AB tools back chamfer kind of custom woodruff tool we have made. It plunges into a hole in it. It's like it teleports your blink. Yeah. Well, there's no travel appears there. That's a big machine to like. All right. All right.
00:23:26
Speaker
I can't believe how small the brother is on the Instafoto. I mean, it literally just tucks right in there. Yep. Yep. The jokes are we got a vinyl rapid red, um, might or might not probably won't cause cost, but we're definitely going to make a little label that says little brother or, or, or paint the Kern blue. Oh, sacrilege. You can order a current in absolutely any color you want, but it'd be a tough decision. I like the red.
00:23:53
Speaker
Yeah, current red. The white ones look pretty sweet too. Agree. So did the new Willemins. Holy cow. Yes. Oh yeah. The Willemins look the same from year 2000 to like 2020. Yeah. Yeah. And then just now they've redesigned them. They're all black and cool and stuff. Reminds you of Herco. It's like, for some reason, like a 2017 Herco looks like it was from the eighties, like really angled old school font. Like it doesn't look good. Yeah.
00:24:23
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, when you put up the pictures of the brother, we saw the side of the aroa that I don't think we normally see on social. And I laughed because I forgot that that was the aroa at emo like forever ago. 2018. Yeah. Yup. And you made the joke on the podcast. They're like, whoever's going to emo, you got to sticker bomb this aroa from Kern.
00:24:44
Speaker
are from Grimsmo and people did. And the current guys who were not on board with the plan yet stopped it and started peeling off stickers. And then somebody sent a memo, Marv probably, that everybody worked in the booth. They're like, no, no, it's okay. Like the customer approves. The Grimsmo is okay. So they printed up a sign on a piece of printer paper and big fad letters in German that says like, ouchtung, you know, warning, do not remove stickers, something like that. And that's still up there too. The little white piece of paper taped up there.
00:25:14
Speaker
Oh, that's awesome. And probably 20 or 30 just slaps from people. And now you can see it because you're standing there operating the brother. It is right there. That's cool. That's awesome. A row is not hooked up yet then. It's not hooked up. No, I'm working with a row on that plan. That'll be kind of the final stage of the whole integration process. The auto door is in process. Should be done in a couple of weeks. The speedio side auto door.
00:25:43
Speaker
And then, yeah, and then the Aroa guys will come hopefully in the next few weeks and get that hooked up. And then it should be rocking. But once we get this probe figured out, then I can still manually load parts and run this video, like make something, make parts. Yeah, right. So that's cool. Do you guys do any of your shop to be notified or made aware of low coolant levels? Low coolant levels.
00:26:11
Speaker
We don't. Visual inspection on all the machines. I've thought about it a lot. We had this debate this morning. We've made a lot of progress on just processes and stuff to the point of in a huge moment of pride sharing. When I was gone last week,
00:26:34
Speaker
I think I did like one or two working out things and those were even frankly optional. When I came back, everyone here was like, yeah, we're good. A lot of times when I come back, the first day back to be blunt sucks. The first backpack just feels like you just got to go into it with the right attitude of like, okay, I'm going to be walking into who knows what.
00:26:54
Speaker
And that's not to say anything anything bad about anybody here. It's just more like this work. Yeah, that's right. And I'll tell you, I don't think it was a fluke. You know, it was a good trip away. I didn't have to do stuff stuff happened. And then I came back in the first day back, I was like, Oh, I could just start like programming parts. Like we're good. There's nothing there's nothing for me to do was don't have a big list of catch up things that like, it's got 42 things to talk to you about.
00:27:20
Speaker
Yeah. So I was like, Holy cow, that's great.
Enhancing Shop Operations
00:27:22
Speaker
Um, so that leads to, uh, one of the ways we've gotten there has been doing a better job at clarifying responsibilities, maintenance obligations, processes, checks and balances. And I have no problem with saying, Hey, employee, why you need to do these three things every morning or something of a sorts on the flip side. If we don't have to do that.
00:27:42
Speaker
Oftentimes, I'd rather not create unnecessary business work and check. So simple thing that Ed thought of this morning was good grief. There's float valves in all sorts of applications in the world, fuel, your gas tank and your carbine. So I want to find a simple float valve that we can install, adjust it to where we want it, and then just have a red light turn on. I'd rather react to that regardless of what time of day it is than do. At this point, checking nine, 10 machines every morning is just annoying.
00:28:10
Speaker
Yeah. I thought about years ago, I thought about having a red light, but it's directional. So it's like, imagine a bright flashlight that just hits the ceiling. So, I mean, you could see a red light on the ceiling from anywhere if it just shown upwards, right? And then from anywhere in the shop, you'd know to react and like go do that. I will caution you with float valves though, there's a lot of different kinds and
00:28:32
Speaker
I've determined that the best kind is either the IFM makes a kind of ceramic rod cylinder kind that capacitively measures coolant, but even that can get wrapped with chips and oil and stuff. The kind that I think will be best is like a toilet bowl float.
00:28:52
Speaker
Okay. You know, it's like the, the rubber bubble floats on the water and then your micro switch is outside the coolant completely. Yeah. Um, so because chips will accumulate on your float and you cannot have that effect with the shaft it's sliding on or with the micro switch or with any of that. Um, cause I've had that problem on the current a lot. Okay.
00:29:16
Speaker
Yeah, I forget the fluid principle where there's always an equilibrium. So you could actually just have a switch that is a separate little vessel that's hooked in, that has its own level that can be heavily filtered. And then you would just have a visual indicator that lights off once it hits the low point or something. Okay, but keeping the switch outside is a good idea. Yeah.
00:29:42
Speaker
Yeah, because I've put systems on the current or it's like, oh, it'll work fine. But when it doesn't, it doesn't, you know, chips, especially the way the current is, because it actually is pumping all the fine chips to the paper band filter.
00:29:57
Speaker
Um, the conveyor brings the big junkies up, but everything fine gets pumped and the float switches are in that same pumping area. So there's lots of, lots of garbage there. Um, whereas a lot of machines like the hostas and stuff in the speedo now, it's like a waterfall shoot out into filter paper. And then the coolant tank stays relatively clean. Um, that system is cleaner, but yeah. Yeah. Right.
00:30:26
Speaker
Okay, good. The other thing we did is like I'm finally doing like the stuff I wanted to do for quality of life on the horizontal, because we're at that point now we've kind of caught up and I
00:30:41
Speaker
found out that there's a separate M code for all of the wash down nozzles, which we weren't even using for the first three or four months. Like, yeah, which whatever. I mean, I kind of wish I'd taken the time to figure it out because it was simple, but whatever. So M 120 turns down these turns on all these wash down valves. So spend some time adjusting the ball valves and the angles. It's actually not as much flow as I would have expected. So Gossager is checking to see if that's something we can improve. But, um,
00:31:10
Speaker
The reason I wanted to share this was that I wanted a coolant option in Fusion to only run the wash down because we do a fair amount of dry cutting, but even in dry cutting, I want the option to use the wash down, which doesn't really hit the spindle.
00:31:31
Speaker
And there just isn't a good way of doing that. What I did temporarily was I reassigned suction, which is not a coolant we use in our shop. I assume that that's like a router that has a suction spindle. Anyway, it was easy to assign suction to M120. But now I've got to train everybody that, hey, if you see the face mill operation with suction coolant, that means wash down. That's not great. And I tried to figure out if you can add a coolant option to Fusion's dropdown list.
00:31:59
Speaker
because you can add them in the post. Basically, we can't add coolant options. But you can add operation properties. Have you played with this?
00:32:11
Speaker
operation properties. I don't know. If you open up a 2D contour, your first tab is the tool, the second tab is the geometry, third tab is heights, fourth tab is parameters, whatever. You can make your own fifth tab. What? Yes. Now, the key to doing it that I had forgotten about is you can only do this if you have machine config enabled. It's just I think it has to be. Okay, which I haven't played with yet.
00:32:34
Speaker
So what's great is what you can do now is it does require some post-work encoding. I think I've done a video on this though. So for example, you could have an option property be the G187. I don't forget what Haydnheim calls it, cycle 32 maybe, the smoothing settings. The smoothing accuracy, yeah.
00:32:54
Speaker
you could have an option property that overrides or forces the smoothing setting that you want for that specific operation. Ooh, that could be cool. Because right now the way I'm posting it is every operation, everything just gets the same smoothing setting that is set in my post or incomplete. Bingo.
00:33:11
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And for us, what we could do is have an option property for wash down, which we could then control in a much better logical way. So it's a really good. And that's been around. But I don't see it use a lot. So that's something I want to work on. But I gotta tell you, the stuff that we saw that's coming in fusion is Yeah.
00:33:30
Speaker
bueno. I mean, it is exquisite. I hesitate to mismanage expectations, but I feel like over the last two or three years, if there's stuff that I've really just felt like I wanted and I asked for it, I gave a presentation and it was awkward because almost everything on my wish list in my presentation had already been addressed and we saw previews of.
00:33:55
Speaker
I was like, I'm sorry. It's actually great, I guess, but holy cow. Awesome. That's awesome. I mean, that's the beauty of Fusion. It keeps evolving, and it's actually making noticeable changes almost month by month. And a new update comes, and you're like, oh, wow. Oh, I like this. Oh, this is cool.
00:34:15
Speaker
And there's new stuff coming that's great. But I think some of us have felt like sometimes fusion focuses a lot on the new shiny stuff. And they're like, Hey, man, I'm really trying to fix this. A lot of things and bingo. Yeah, this is freaking cool. So that's cool. And I mean, it's the same running our business too. It's all the little quality of life things that we do a lot for sure. But there's always more that aren't getting done.
Considering New Equipment Purchases
00:34:43
Speaker
And it's very easy to
00:34:45
Speaker
wants to buy a speedio and move on to the next big shiny thing when I could be spending all of my time on these tiny little quality of life improvements. And the reality is it has to be both so that the business improves and grows at the same time. Um, but it's a conscious effort of making sure enough gets done, even if it's all not getting done.
00:35:10
Speaker
It's tough. I want to do all of the things. I want to do every project I can think of. I want to do every tweak in the shop, but there's only so many hours in the day that one can focus on that.
00:35:21
Speaker
On that note, we've kind of had a whiplash effect of we lost three interns that went back to college, which is great. But it's a testament to like, hey, we've had some really good folks helping out here. And so that help has gone away for now. So we're kind of huddling. And I guess it's a soft announcement or software quest that we could use another machinist or another person that wants to be doing what we're doing here. So if anyone listening is
00:35:50
Speaker
interested in a central Ohio job, running some pretty awesome CNC machines and being part of our story by all means reach out. Absolutely. I watched the Adam Booth shop tour of your tour. I finished that last night. I was like, that's a really cool like different viewpoint of your shop, not you walking around showing everything, but him walking around. It was so good. Right.
00:36:13
Speaker
Well, that's why I want to, um, I don't, if COVID is like over, man, I want to come up like with William and film your shop tour. Cause I haven't even seen your new shop. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure there's things that you would see that I've never shared or showed or just never thought to like point out, right? Yeah. I feel like we should just buy a Swiss lathe. Um, I should buy another one. Do we get a group by group discount? Like how does this work?
00:36:41
Speaker
But that's why I told Ed, when we go to IMTS, I was like, let's just...
00:36:46
Speaker
When we looked at them a year, year and a half ago, we were trying to have it do everything. And we just got inundated with features and options. And I was like, I don't know how to deal with this. And frankly, the costs became not interesting. But I think a pretty simple, straightforward Swiss lathe will relieve a significant capacity constraint that we have on our ST20Y right now. We've got to let it do the stuff it needs to do, and we can pull the Swiss stuff off onto it.
00:37:12
Speaker
It's weird because in retrospect, you and I both have a lot of CNC machines now. In the beginning when you're purchasing, when you're looking, when you're about to spend large dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars on a certain piece of equipment, you want to buy one that does everything.
00:37:29
Speaker
Because you have all these plans, you have all these projects, and you're like, if I get the one with the extra tools, then it'll do everything. And then as the business matures, and as you start thinking about more equipment and specialized equipment and segregating things out, you're like, you don't want one that does everything because half those features go unused. And in the end, you're going to end up with two if the business grows to that point. And you'd rather have them be like,
00:37:54
Speaker
different specialists. Exactly. Right. Yeah. There is value in copy and pasting more machines. Like if I got a second Swiss late, I would almost definitely get the exact same one over again, maybe with a couple of tweaked options. Um, but still like, yeah. Yeah. That that's what we kind of, it was like, Oh yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's not even an exciting process. Cause it's not like, like the John Saunders recipe of like, I am so excited to get
00:38:24
Speaker
UMC 750. I'm so excited to get this. This is more like, oh yeah, it's just going to go do those parts in the quarter. But we'll see. That's on my radar, I guess. Do you have any brands or price ranges or quality levels you're shooting for or minimum effective dose kind of thing? I don't have conviction on any of that other than
00:38:52
Speaker
you know, it'll probably be a, well, so we need to do half inch work on it, which means I'm pretty sure 12 millimeter machines are no go, right? Well, my machine's a 13 millimeter machine, but anything over three eights, um, you have to prep the bar. You have to turn the end of a half inch bar down to three eights. It's super easy to do, but still a pain in the butt, like so that your three eights grabber will grab onto it in the bar loader. Um, not hard, but.
00:39:22
Speaker
It's like the cheater way to get up to half inch bar, um, 12 millimeter citizen machines. I don't know if they can run a half inch bar. Yeah. So if you buy, I forget the increment, is it 18? There's something between 13 and 20, right? Or is it usually it's like on the tornos it's 1326 on citizen. I think it's 12 22.
00:39:45
Speaker
So if it were a 22 millimeter, would you have to turn down half inch bars as well? I doubt it, no. You'd probably be able to do a half inch bar, no problem. Three quarter inch bar. But it is a bigger Swiss. But you get the tool for the job, right?
00:40:01
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I really don't like the idea of having to prep the material. Um, cause you can't, that has to be done in a, what do you do at the knock? We do do it in the Swiss and we manually push a bar through the spindle. Um, don't grip it with the bar loader and just bump it against the, um, cutoff tool and just run one program. Oh, okay. And we only do it for half inch Delrin. So it's like cakewalk easy. Okay.
00:40:31
Speaker
but it's still a manual one bar at a time operation in a machine that's supposed to run all the time. Um, yeah, you could do it in another machine, but you've got these six foot or 12 foot long bars. You're not going to spin that in a hard hinge. Yeah. Yeah. Do you, and so when you do your Delrin, do you do one at a time? You're making those washers. So a stick makes a bajillion washers, right? Yeah. Like 300 and something. Um, or.
00:40:58
Speaker
Yeah, the washer is actually thinner than the part off blade, like by quite a bit. If I went one size down in part off blade, I'd get almost twice as many washers out of it. But you can't because of you need that bigger standardization. I don't know. No reason and materials cheap. I don't really care. Like you could though. It's tempting. Yeah.
00:41:17
Speaker
Because we would be making a one inch long that pin on it. So you were going to get 40, 50 parts out of a stick, which means it's going to crack through those in 20 minutes or something. So the prep time is no joke on cycling every bar through twice, basically. It'd be a daily process where you're manually loading each bar just to prep it.
00:41:42
Speaker
Um, not ideal. If I recall from my Swiss research, um, there's machines that cut one way and there's machines where the bar is fed the opposite way. Like yours, yours is. My tornos is more conventional style. Like your lathe has the bar loader on the left. Yes. And then, uh, like most, uh, traditional lathes, like our Nakamura is like that too. Um, whereas the citizen, Sugami star, everything has the bar loader on the right.
00:42:12
Speaker
and the material comes the wrong direction. It's like one of the jokey kind of reasons that I didn't go with those machines is like, it's backwards. I don't like it. Right. But that's kind of legit, right? Yeah, it's a joke, but it's not a joke. And then our friend Christian, who has a whole bunch of citizen machines, he said in our shop once we had, you know, left hand machines on one side and right hand machines on the other. And if an operator jumps back and forth, he's going to crash something.
00:42:41
Speaker
Because the code is different too. It's like Z positive or Z negative, I think. I think maybe I'm wrong. Yeah, that doesn't tell. No, maybe it's not. I don't know, but it's weird. It's weird enough that I didn't like it. Unsubscribe. Yeah, no, right. But that said, I mean, Tornos is a premium machine. It's like on the upper end of the price range. Probably right there with Citizen, but I think Star and Sugami are an octave cheaper. Yeah.
00:43:07
Speaker
My guess is we probably can get by with perhaps not the most basic, but you know, we need, we need some driven tools, but we don't need obviously we need, I mean, but every Swiss has driven, right? Every Swiss has sub spindle work, right? Yeah, but not always driven on the subside. Yeah, that's fair. Your radial tools, your axial tools. Like you got to think about the part, which you already have and you know, and you've got to think, okay, I'm going to want milling care, milling care.
00:43:38
Speaker
That's enough, you know? Yeah. And often you get away with the same end mill doing multiple operations. Like we have a radial chamfer mill, eighth inch chamfer mill that we use for chamfering and we also use it for side milling. Right. Yeah, that's huge. It's easier too, because when we were looking at a year, year and a half ago, we were thinking about some movies, some other products on it and that now are great on the horizontal. So it's like, okay, now it's a pure play. I don't need to be trying to do crazy things with the Swiss, like just. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
00:44:07
Speaker
I guess we're out of time. Well, I was just going to say our Swiss is getting very busy. Oh really? And just the scheduling wise, like, like right now we've got four jobs that kind of need to run now. Yeah, that's tough. And it's, it's doable, but it's to the point if our lathe machinist, you know, is sick for a day and takes a day off, um, then it's, we're just that much more behind and it's fine. It's doable, but it's not a scalable thing. So, um,
00:44:36
Speaker
Well, I definitely, I don't need to buy more machines right now. I'm good for a while. Um, I think a second Swiss is kind of the logical next, like not fun and sexy and cool and exciting and five axis and stuff, but it's like, we're going to need it. We're going to absolutely need it.
00:44:54
Speaker
Oh, I am right there with you with the, we're now all of a sudden realizing what the word scheduling means. Yeah. Period. Um, with, Hey, where's our self-anodizing? What's on the plate for this? What's our expectations for custom lead times? Like it's, um, and we're, we're there. We've got some tools for it with Lex, which is great, but it's, you know, how much do we create stress and pressure and, um, you know, or how much do you, my, my approach, which is wrong is to.
00:45:24
Speaker
mitigate all risk by doing everything as quickly as you can. And no, no, no, it has to get scheduled and that's fine. Right. But it's a break. It's a, it's hard to think like that when we've been a solo shop for so long that like, yeah, I just do everything when it comes up and I it's done a plan for the future, but you know, it's still going to come up at some points. I'll be ready. So anyway, yeah. All right. See you next week. See you next week. Take care.