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#327 Tips for Youtube Channels
258 Plays1 year ago
TOPICS:
- New equipment for Saunders! Grinder, laser, 5-axis.
- tips for youtube channels
- Surface grinder notes from Adam Demuth
- Grimsmo grinding blades on the speedio
- PTO forms
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Hosts
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, Episode 327. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Sodders. This is the weekly podcast where two buds talk about their manufacturing journeys and businesses and growth and failures and problems and ups and downs and stresses. On that note, how are you doing?
Lifestyle Changes: Health and Family Adjustments
00:00:21
Speaker
A good, and as we kind of chuckled about five seconds before we hit record, way better than last week. Yeah. I'm about the same there. Yes. Nothing's good. And that shows, I mean, there's ups and downs in running your own business and it's not for everybody. And sometimes it's not even for us, but like, I love it. Yeah. I am, I just feel way better, feel more energized. And look, some of it wasn't, you know, avoidable, like, you know, um,
00:00:50
Speaker
not so much my grandma, the passing, but like the complications around that was schedule changes, families, you know, there wasn't drama, but every year, you know, yeah. And then, uh, uh, having a puppy is wonderful, but it takes, uh, everybody who's at a puppy knows you just disrupt your schedule of routine, all that. But then the other thing, which, uh, I'll say it and then we can move on is, um, I think I've mentioned it before as I chose to quit drinking.
00:01:15
Speaker
two, three years ago, not for any other reason than I didn't like how it made me feel sometimes. And what I've basically done since then is I'll usually be willing to have a few beers or something when I'm on vacation. And I've now jokingly modified the rule to where I don't drink in the state of Ohio.
00:01:33
Speaker
I still think, it's kind of crazy, but when we were in Germany three weeks ago, definitely had some beers, had fun. And I still think some of that is like for the next two to 10 days, it affects me. Really? Yeah. And so again, no need to move on not looking for any. It's interesting though. But man, I enjoy it.
00:01:55
Speaker
And it's fun. And I know you don't drink, so good for you. But I guess I can only say if folks out there are willing to give it a try for two, three, four months. It's a solid experiment you're giving, which is fascinating. And I love doing experiments on myself with exercise or with eating or whatever, and to be consistent and see what happens. And when you can actually see results, like I cut sugar out of my mornings,
00:02:25
Speaker
you know, 10 years ago, and that reduced my headaches tremendously. Yeah, so apparently sugars in every Yeah, exactly. So now I eat, I eat eggs. And I even stopped drinking milk, because there's sugar in milk. And I learned that too. And I wanted to punch the dairy slice poetry industry. I think some of it's natural. But I don't know if they fortify sugar in there. But oh, no, apparently, they put sugar in. Yeah, gross.
00:02:53
Speaker
But yeah, that's good to hear. Cool. Yeah, it is good. So I guess I can only share. I don't like having a gloomier outlook or being more irritable or frustrated and stressed. And it's kind of the crappy outcome of that. I found that if I just don't, and I never really drank a ton. So it is what it is. Yeah, and I mean, we're not
00:03:22
Speaker
babies anymore, like you're 40, I'm turning 40 in a month, two months. But we're not indestructible anymore. To a point like, like we're, we're 20, you know, things, things matter, things happen, things have consequences and results. And, uh, yeah, yeah, everything from sleep to food to booze to whatever.
00:03:45
Speaker
How about you? You're definitely look like you're feeling better. I'm feeling, I'm feeling good. Yeah. It's been ups and downs for the past few weeks. Um, some personal, some professional and, uh, I don't know. I'm just, I feel like I'm on fire right now, which is, which is good. Yeah. I saw the saga Saturday. I watched that one. I don't, did you, you put out, you put it on a trade show thing. I didn't watch that, but I was like, Oh, look at you. Good. Yeah. Getting back to it. Trying to hit two videos a week.
00:04:11
Speaker
Oh, John, no, no, no, no, no. I have a lot of in process footage. Fair enough. So we got some backlog to do it. But, um, saga Saturday is I'm trying to keep them short, trying to keep them like manageable, doable. So I can actually just pick up the camera and do it. Um, when they get into bigger, long-term projects, then you just don't want to do it. Like I need something that's like easy and maintainable and doable. Are you editing?
00:04:37
Speaker
I'm not editing, no. We've got Ryan here. I'm editing. Yeah, exactly. So a screeching halt there. Not good. But no. So I mean, Ryan is our main editor now, and he used to do shipping, packaging, order taking, all that stuff. And now we've hired another guy, Darren, to kind of take over that. And he's been here for a couple months. Oh, got it. And so he's grown to self-sufficient in that role. So Ryan had some extra time, and he's got a video background. And that's part of why we hired him two years
00:05:07
Speaker
And it's like, okay, guess what you're doing full time now filming and editing. And he's like sick. Good. So yeah, it's really fun. That's awesome.
Mark Rober's MIT Speech and Overcoming Challenges
00:05:15
Speaker
Yeah. Mark Rober just did a, he posted his MIT graduation speaker. He got invited to be the celebrity guest speaker at MIT graduation. Two takeaways I thought were funny. One is that Mark Rober is an incredible guy, but he bombed the public speech.
00:05:34
Speaker
I'm being critical. It was clear that he's a 10 out of 10 on YouTube, but he clearly was self-conscious for struggling with the public speaking. And I've struggled with this too. This is off topic a little bit, but I have no problem public speaking. But I started taking adult piano lessons and I had three recitals.
00:05:54
Speaker
And I can't get through a recital. I get tunnel vision and nerves and clamor. I'm trembling to the point of like couldn't hold a pencil. So I don't know how to overcome this. I'm not making fun of you, Mark. Yeah, yeah. But it was interesting to see him in not the Mark Rober, like killing it standpoint. But he mentioned three life lessons. And the first one is kind of what you and I have
00:06:17
Speaker
unconsciously dealt with, which is, I forget his fancy word for it. But basically, as you become more successful or vested or large and so forth, you don't take as or burden of knowledge, you don't take as much risk. So there's something to be said for not knowing everything, because it keeps you more curiosity or like you and I like buying your dirt vertical me by my first house, like taking those leaps and paths and proving them out. And
00:06:43
Speaker
You know, the more comfortable you get, it's like, Oh man, I don't want to put out a bad YouTube video to 430,000 subscribers. But sometimes it's just like, no, just shit. Like it's okay. Like don't think about it as just people that want to watch watch that. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about the trolls or, uh, whatever state state, keep a little bit green, naivety, hunger, all that. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. Cool.
00:07:11
Speaker
I'll have to watch that because it sounds even just to skip through it. Sounds interesting. Yeah. Cool. What else going on with you? Yeah, I'll cut right into
New Equipment: Surface Grinder and Fiber Laser
00:07:26
Speaker
it. We are going to purchase a surface grinder. We're going to purchase a fiber laser and we're going to purchase a second five axis machine. Sick. Holy cow. That's big boy.
00:07:36
Speaker
Yeah, the fiber laser, no big deal. I'm tempted to just buy it this afternoon versus waiting to hear if there's any feedback from the podcast. I'm down to Cloudray versus Omtec. And 30 watts will be fine. I'll probably get the rotary attachment and air filter sucky thing for safety health reasons. Somewhere under 10 grand for this whole kit. Oh, no, like 4 grand with the $700 air thing. Yeah.
00:08:05
Speaker
I've wanted one but haven't had a reason. And now we have three different pull studs for the puck chuck. Person A has their beta units and we're about to start trickling some out to the next people. And the pull studs, because there's three different types, we want to have them laser marked. And all of a sudden it's like, okay, I now have an absolute legitimate reason to mark these done. Like we're just buying the thing and moving on.
00:08:32
Speaker
What's that? For a few thousand dollars. Yeah. I've been on the fence as well with the fiber laser. I want one. I don't need one. But the second I have that absolute need, I'll purchase it tomorrow. Exactly.
00:08:45
Speaker
The only thing I was on the fence on was the rotary because the pool studs can probably be engraved without, if they're being tipped over on the hell on their side where you could rotate it, I suppose that could happen. I suspect we'll just engrave them top down so you wouldn't even use it, but I'm going to buy it because I could see how it could be useful. Yeah, totally. So that's that. The surface grinder is similar, sorry, for the phone.
00:09:13
Speaker
Puck chuck product is going to let us grind in a final state and do an easier and better job of how we've been doing the beta units. Similarly though, it's just like, okay, I have a rifle shot use. Here's why we need it. I know I asked you about this last week, so I've reached out and started getting kind of the research and the quotes. It ends up, one of the options might end up being
00:09:39
Speaker
All most identical and perhaps identical to yours. Literally the Okamoto fully automatic 12 by 24. That's the right size. And I don't need, I think Spencer Webb has the proper CNC optional work on his, like you could load code on it. We will be doing it. I don't think we've ever had the need for that. We grind flat stuff.
00:10:07
Speaker
Yeah, if you ever want to see our invoice, like for all the options we got, just let me know. That actually would be, I mean, I don't even care if you black out the numbers, I just want to know what you got. I think if I remember right, I have to ask Angelo, we got one magnetic chuck, but then Angelo didn't like it. Like the pole spacing was too much or something, so we couldn't hold small stuff. So we actually returned it and ordered another like fine pole chuck.
00:10:32
Speaker
I don't think that's correct, John. I think what happened, because I've just watched your video, is they didn't have the fine pole shot, and they shipped it with that one, but before you even turned it on, the other one wasn't stock, and they were coming to swap it out, which I think is just funny, because it's your own video that you don't remember. I have vague memories, but that's why I make these videos. No, it's hilarious. Yeah, if you could send me that,
00:11:00
Speaker
options list, that'd be super awesome. And because that's kind of trying to what I'm figuring out now is like, okay, table dresser and paperless band filter. Yeah, yeah, do that for sure. That thing's been great.
00:11:12
Speaker
And actually I will edify by relaying what Adam Demuth emailed after the last one. That'd be great. Because Adam is just a great guy. If you don't follow his YouTube channel, you should. Yeah, they're fantastic videos. And he has the Precision Microcast. He's been a guest on Spencer Webb's podcast. His videos are very interesting for you and me to watch, not just from a technical standpoint, but from a YouTuber standpoint, because he's not
00:11:43
Speaker
a great presenter like he's amazing but it's like nerd content but he's so good at it and he's like a teacher you know it's like you're just like glued to the screen I want to know everything he has to say but it's not flashy like you know yes extravagant he's very monotone he's very like it's wonderful
00:12:03
Speaker
I'm like, I hope he keeps it up. I totally agree. And like, it gets me to question, you know, what direction I want to go in. Like, he's just so good at relaying information, possibly better than I am. I'm good at sharing a story, but not so much like being a teacher. Just trying to figure out what, what best foot forward, you know?
00:12:24
Speaker
No, I give him a lot of credit, and he's been really creative with the simplicity of doing just paper cutouts, like consumption paper and marker drawings. Because like you and I, I'm not in the point now where I treat YouTube like a business. So I don't want to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a third party animator to start creating animation graphics. Just not my thing.
00:12:43
Speaker
you know, leave that to the Mark Rovers and the, uh, smarter every days and all that. So Adam, yes. Go ahead. Leave it to the people that treat the YouTube as their primary business, their source of income. Whereas I don't even think about the income really. It's like pennies. Yeah. Yeah. Comparatively. Like we have an actual manufacturing business, both of us and like the YouTube it's marketing for sure, but it's for funsies. Yeah, exactly.
00:13:11
Speaker
John, I heard you're looking at a grinder dresser options.
Surface Grinders: Accuracy and Setup Challenges
00:13:13
Speaker
My perspective, table versus top dresser, as the vertical column of a surface grinder slowly warms up, the wheel position lifts away from the chuck. With a top dresser, the dresser is mounted to that whole growing assembly and essentially it's along for the ride. So if the heat lifts the spindle up, leaving three tenths more stock, you address a thou, if the wheel would go back, your part will actually still be three thou thicker. So basically,
00:13:41
Speaker
whole column is bending backward and an overhead dresser doesn't do anything wrong, it just doesn't compensate for the change like a tail dresser would. So a manual taper dresser, you're effectively recalibrating the wheel height to compensate or correct or remove any changes in
00:14:00
Speaker
the whole column's height or relation or angle relative to the table. We are concerned with the tree diameter, just the distance, the datum. So regardless of how warm the spindle grinder and the column gets, the wheel's always in the same true position. So that kind of, I think that explains it really well. Somebody else had mentioned, yes, technically, too, you would be potentially putting an angle on the wheel relative to the
00:14:26
Speaker
table, but because we're surface grinding across the face, that would be like almost impossibly small. But if you were slot grinding, it could be more meaningful. So hope everybody's smarter every day for that.
00:14:47
Speaker
And then lastly, so we are, we need to add a second Haas for our CNC training classes because we only have one right now. We have more people that want to be on that machine and we're never going to oversell the seats for it where it's not a good student to machine ratio. We also would value some redundancy because God forbid something happens, whether it's a just minor break or a bad crash, having a second machine has the benefits.
00:15:17
Speaker
Because we're doing three axis and five axis class, there's really no reason to not have a second five axis because arguably there's more ways a five axis can break as well. So again, the redundancy value. And I actually just filmed a quick update video or shop a video on the UMC that I mentioned this as well. It'll probably be out next week, but when the lottery scenario that's still, you know, reasonable would be by a almost identical UMC 500, don't need the automation
00:15:46
Speaker
side of it, but same machine, same, you could basically share code between them, all that. Winding it back to not being in that situation, trying to be a little bit more judicious.
00:16:00
Speaker
The UMC 350, it's less. It's not like a ton less, but it's meaningfully less. The better thing is, maybe I'm sounding lame, but it's a better size. It's a DT, DM size. It's easier to rig. It's the less power. It's just way, way, way smaller. It still satisfies all the needs that we have for R&D prototyping, the class, et cetera.
00:16:24
Speaker
The knock against it that's legit in my opinion is it's only 18 plus one tools. The UMC though, the 500 is really only 30 tools unless you spend a fair amount of money to go to 50 because also a 70 option.
00:16:45
Speaker
I think where I'm still leaning is by the 350, and if you realize it was gonna sacred, you outgrow it after a year, move on, sell it. What I'm also curious about, though, is I haven't heard of or seen any in the wild. So if anybody listening actually has one, it's a weird machine. It's a DM2 that has a TRT on it, and it looks like everything is pretty far back in the machine, so it's kind of hard to reach out and get your part. But that's kind of where I'm at.
00:17:14
Speaker
Interesting. Yeah, I don't know anything about the 350. Did you see it at IMTS? Maybe like in passing. I didn't look closely at it. Got it. Given the price point and the size, it has the potential to be the kind of like lost garage machine. And I haven't seen that take off. But look, I don't know. Maybe they're out there. Maybe I'm just not seeing them. Maybe they haven't been available yet. I don't know. Cool. Yeah, I was thinking about yesterday.
00:17:46
Speaker
I'm planning a lot of work for the speedio and then the current is just busy. So I'm trying to take things off the current put on this video. The current is so spoiled with up to 200 tools. I just keep adding tools. I never remove tools. So I have tools in there for everything for fixturing, for production, for titanium, for stainless. I have separated tools for each operation almost and it's amazing. And then I try to do the same thing on a speedio with 21 tools minus the probe, minus the fan. So I have 19 tools and I'm like,
00:18:14
Speaker
I can only do like one job at a time before having to remove everything and put a new rack of tools in. So I bought a whole ton of holders from Mary tool. So my grand plan is just like, okay, we're making soft blades right now. Let's put in these 17 tools, make a bunch of blades, you know, take out the tools, make something else. And, uh, I don't like that workflow, but I think I'm stuck with that workflow. So.
00:18:39
Speaker
It kind of shows me that how spoiled I am with the current having so many tools and how few machines out there have that many tools, especially for smaller, more affordable machines. I mean, you're kind of the same with the Okuma, right? Horizontal? Yes. And your three-axis Okumas have 60 tools?
00:19:01
Speaker
No, the Genos only has 32. Is that enough? You find it. It is. Because we don't do anything with that machine other than fixture plates. So it's actually simple. Yeah, the UMC, I'm not defending the 18 tools. I think it's too small. It's too few, except if you have a- Is it a brother type? No, it's not. Wait, it's not the Robo drill. It's not the front facing one. It's the side mount, just like our DT.
00:19:27
Speaker
Um, it's enough tools for the training class. And then we will for sure lead tools set up, uh, offline. And I guess my argument, which is a little bit BS is 30 isn't enough either. And 50 probably isn't really enough to do the Kern or Akuma solution of like, everything's always ever set up. So it's almost middle ground is kind of the worst of both worlds because you don't know and you don't trust it, but it might be. Um, so, and the question is, are you going to use it?
00:19:56
Speaker
for production or is it kind of just for training class or teaching your staff or, you know, like, is it going to broaden every night? You know, how are you going to set it
CNC Training: Expanding with a Second Haas
00:20:05
Speaker
up?
00:20:05
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, to borrow the Jay Pearson terminology, it will major in training classes. That's what it's being purchased for. And that's what we can sort of tie some revenue to for it. But it will also double as a machine that we could use for certain R&D things, for sure. Because look, right now we're doing five-axis classes are going to be two to three days a month. So it's going to sit idle for a lot of time.
00:20:33
Speaker
Actually, I think about it too. Given Fusion's tool library flaw, which is it lacks a proper master link libraries, which I still will rail against with all my energy, you could argue that a, we just bought a tool cart for that, for the training class. You can argue that offline tools stink, but are almost better because at least then you can say, okay, here's my setup sheet. I'm looking at these tools, put them in. I guess you got to touch them off where you could,
00:21:01
Speaker
potentially soft save the pattern. I'll get through that. Yeah, right.
00:21:08
Speaker
To fund these purchases, we've already sold some of the hobby machines. Some of them have not sold. So I want to give a quick mention. We are selling a Tormach 24R, a Wazer water jet, a Pocket NC, a couple other tiny hobby machines, our optical comparator. I'm about to put them on eBay, but then I saw the eBay fees. If you sell a Wazer for six grand, the fees are $800, $900. I thought I'd much rather
00:21:34
Speaker
I just, that seems very silly, but it is what it is. They need to go. So anybody listening is interested in those machines, please, by all means reach out. Um, yeah, I like it. Yeah. Well, you've got to, so my big all consuming thing for the past week, uh, has been
00:21:56
Speaker
Right now we grind our Rask blades on the current. We use a little one inch wheel that's very thin. It's only a sixteenth of an inch thick. So it looks like a quarter or a dime? Exactly, yeah. A quarter, a little bit bigger than a quarter. More like a toonie if you're a Canadian. Is that a loony? This is like a two dollar loony.
00:22:19
Speaker
So sorry, I'm a little slow this morning. Is that really why it's called a toony? It's a $2 loony. It's a $2 coin. Yeah. I can officially tell you, I've never heard of that. Amazing gig. I come to Canada more, bro. Do you use cash in Canada? Almost never. Okay. Like at the farmer's market and stuff. Got it. I was like, what? Yeah, exactly. In parking meters, some places still. Um, um, um, where was I going with this? Okay. So grinding with this grinding wheel.
00:22:49
Speaker
Um, doing it on the current, I'm getting almost perfect results, very happy with the results, but it's very time consuming. Um, I'm doing chop grinding technique or jig grinding where the grinding wheel is moving up and down and stepping over a tiny little amount and then up and down again and stepping over. I think it's fourth hour at a time and then down up over it down up. Um, it's taking, you know, hours of the day to grind as many rasp plates as we can. Plus we have all the milling to do.
00:23:16
Speaker
machines, the machines booked. I'm like, how do I save time? Part of the big reason for buying the speedio was to do grinding on the speedio as well. So I'm like, sweet. I got the aroa in the middle. I can palette change to the speedio. I can go back to the kern. I can do all this stuff. I can save all these hours on the kern, put that grinding on the speedio, save time, make more parts, make more money, profit, win.
00:23:41
Speaker
So I've been grinding on the speedio and I'm very not happy with the results. John. And every time I grind a blade and I see the results, I'm like depressed. I'm like, crap, this isn't working. And I think it mostly comes down to, um, the accuracy of the machine. I'm spoiled with how tight the current is. And this video is an amazing machine. Like I can't fault it, but when you're stepping over a 10th.
00:24:10
Speaker
and doing another bunch of passes, I can see a visible line at that 10th move, whereas the Kern does a micro move even better than that. And it blends it better. So the blades coming off this video are very stepped looking in the one axis. And I'm like, oh, no. So then I tried a bunch of tricks. I'm like, let's post six-digit code instead of four-digit code. Maybe this video in the back end can figure it out anyway. No difference.
00:24:38
Speaker
So I'm trying a bunch of different things. And so far, not good results. Have you talked to Ken? I haven't, not specifically about that yet. I just wonder if there's either backlash settings or comp, or can you nice suck, but like tighten up the ball nut, which is not something maybe out of our view. Yeah, maybe there is something there mechanically to
00:25:05
Speaker
I don't know if it's backlash or just movement accuracy or what. I could dig into it further and I might. But what it did push me to do is look at how I'm grinding on the current and I realized there's a lot of wasted time in air cutting.
00:25:21
Speaker
Or spring passes, right? Just coming back up the same path. Because I'm using a reaming cycle. Like, I literally drew a sketch with 800 dots along the path. And I'm picking all those dots to do a reaming cycle. So it's taking this grinding wheel, ream down, ream up. Feed down, feed up, feed down, feed up. And I'm like, it's spring passing on the way up. Why don't I? I would love a tool path that goes down, over, up, over, down, over, up, over, like a 3D parallel would do. But I can't get 3D parallel or flow to work on a vertical wall.
00:25:50
Speaker
So then Devin on our WhatsApp chat suggested this new geodesic toolpath, which is like, I don't even know what this is. I haven't heard of this. Oh, it's a preview feature. You got to enable it. And so I enabled it. And it almost perfectly does what I want, except it puts a bunch of weird points in the toolpath, which I haven't tried to grind with it yet, but I think it will lead to not pretty grinding.
00:26:15
Speaker
It's putting points, uh, during the drill to use exactly. And you can't arc filter those out. I'm trying to, uh, it'd still be some at the top or some at the bottom. And it's also weirdly putting like a 10th of taper along that thing. So they point at the top and the point at the bottom.
00:26:33
Speaker
shift by like a few tenths. So it's not an absolute straight Z move. Off the record, who cares, John? I think it will lead to a gross grind even on the current, but I need to test to be able to see. Okay. The benefit is it's like going to be two and a half times faster than the way I'm doing it now. Why is it two and a half? Wouldn't it just be two times faster? Two times because you're going down over up instead of down up over down up.
00:27:03
Speaker
Uh, two and a half times because I can, instead of doing this block along the whole blade, I can get finer by the tip where it gets skinnier. And I don't need to waste all this air cutting all the way up, all the way down. I can just go down. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Cause the blade curves up. You want to have a trim tool path, which I guess you can't trim to kind of drill. Huh? So yeah, there's huge time savings in this, but I've literally spent like.
00:27:30
Speaker
10 to 20 hours in the past few days trying to figure this out. And I'm close. I'll get it. Interesting. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, because that's here. That's like hours a day I'm saving on this current. OK, so the Rask blade is this drill cycle is moving. Let's say the blade is sitting left right on the machine for the sake of this example. Is it moving?
00:27:57
Speaker
X along the top, like is it curved or is it a straight X line? On what again? So like I just pulled out my Microtech and if I look at this blade,
00:28:09
Speaker
It actually doesn't look like it's totally straight, like it's going along this. What I'm trying to ask is could you write a Python script to write this G code for you? Maybe, and I did think about that briefly. I actually asked ChatGPT how to modify the Fusion post to make a reaming cycle that goes down, over, up, over, down. Yeah. It suggested some weird stuff. I'm not good enough with posts to really understand it, but Python script is definitely an option.
00:28:37
Speaker
To go down over up, I think very much, but to trim the toolpath to get tighter by the tip, I think it would be much harder with a Python script. I don't think so. I mean, it may not be perfect, but you could have it feed into an array.
00:28:56
Speaker
Top is zero, bottom is negative one. 800 points, you could build out an Excel file that starts to taper it. You see it's not some error, but it doesn't really matter. Or you can actually have a linear or a polynomial curve, gives you your data points. Well, you can export a toolpath that arcs down the top of the blade.
00:29:15
Speaker
and then utilize that toolpath for the Python script or something. There are some cool ways to do it. I want to be careful not to dig myself into too deep of a corner that six months from now, even I forgot how I did it. I want to be able to post code. So there's some caveats here. But I think the time savings are absolutely worth it. And then it kind of says, because with grinding on the speedio, it needs two tools. It needs an end mill to rough the blade and the grinding wheel to finish the blade. So I'm like, sweet, I could grind all the blades all day long, 24 hours a day on this machine.
00:29:45
Speaker
Well, not anymore. Not anymore. Have you, and it's all kind of positive position moves. So in other words, you're always moving such that you've taken up the kind of backlash that's in every mechanical system and it's always pushing like X positive. That makes sense?
Grinding on Speedio: Challenges and Solutions
00:30:01
Speaker
Yeah. Is it relative? Because I'm just wondering, the other thing I've heard about doing is you want to do some work and you want to back off and then come back into the next area. So that's also...
00:30:11
Speaker
Imagine if you laid the blade down with the cutting edge facing the sky.
00:30:18
Speaker
And it's along the x-axis. Imagine if it chops in a straight line in x. So x down, or z down, over a little bit in x, x over a little bit, over a little bit, over a little bit. And then at some point, it does a one-tenth move in y. And then a bunch more x's, and then a little bit more in y, and then a bunch more x's. These straight x moves look amazing. It's that one-tenth in y that leaves a visible line. It's like the whole thing shifted a little bit. And then the next x's are fine, and then over a little bit.
00:30:47
Speaker
Whereas the current does the exact same thing and it blends it so much better. I don't know why. In the same fixture? Yeah, pretty much. It's not a work holding thing. Yeah, yeah. This total non-starter to grind this, slicing it left to right or with a... I used to do it like that and it wears the wheel weird and its job grinding is way more consistent.
00:31:12
Speaker
And faster. And then to the big thing, like I just explained, all these X, X, X, X, a tenth and Y. So I was like, well, what if I rotate the whole blade 45 degrees so that every single move is an X and Y significant move? Yes. There you go. Right? I was like, oh my gosh, this is perfect. Great idea. Great idea. So I made a new fixture that was 45 degrees. And I was like, yes, this is going to work. Oh my gosh, this is perfect. And it's different results, but it's still gross. Still gross. I'm like, oh no.
00:31:42
Speaker
Hmm. Interesting. So there's, there's something here. I'm still hopeful, positive. And I think I'm really close. So if I can make it two and a half times faster on the current, I don't care anymore. Like now it's not a problem. Sorry. That might be a fair point. Sinks that, that I mean, you'll find something to do with the Robo drill, but sinks or the speed. Yeah, absolutely. Um, what does, does that wheel get dressed? Yes. In the machine. In the machine. Yeah. That's cool.
00:32:10
Speaker
So on the Kern, I have to palette change in a dressing palette that holds a little dressing stick, which takes a minute or two, uh, which is time on the speedio. I mounted the dressing stick right next to the. Palette system. Yeah. So you could like, you know, chop grind and then, oh, I got a dress done over and it takes like seconds. And I was like, yes, this is going to be amazing. Do you just do the auto comp to apply the dress to the high offset or do you just retouch it off? Both. Fix out.
00:32:41
Speaker
Well, not both. After I dress it, yes, I touch it off again for diameter. But during machining, I'll grind, grind, grind. I'll touch the surface and see what actually happened. And then I'll comp the diameter of the tool, the wear, until 200 plus minutes have passed and then dress it again. OK. Oh, 200 minutes. Wow. Three hours between dresses. That's very legit. What remind me, these are hard blades? Or why are you grinding?
00:33:10
Speaker
Yeah, they're hard blades. Yeah. Because you get an amazing surface finish out of it, even though we're still hand polishing after this spinning. Yeah, good amount of time doing that. But and there's a curve like you couldn't laugh it because it's a complex. Yeah, it's a complex curve. Yeah.
00:33:30
Speaker
That's surprisingly challenging, but fun. I would argue with that, obviously challenging, not surprisingly challenging. This is super crazy. Yeah.
00:33:42
Speaker
realized the service grinder is gonna make sense. I was thinking like, oh man, could we just put like a cup wheel or something in the Okuma? And look, we, like I was telling somebody on the phone, when I was talking about this the other day, I was like, look, I'm really proud of, and I walked up to a bin of Mod Vice Top Shalls and I put a Mitsitoya Quantum Mic on one and it was five, oh, oh, oh, five, 15 millionths over. If you trust that to 15 millionths, regardless, I'm like, we have gotten good at figuring out how to make these that way. We're cheating, by the way, we're doing,
00:34:10
Speaker
the two faces that we're measuring between are in the same fixture, the same ops. So there's no fixturing risk. And even with that, you get some wear things, but basically the machine state doesn't really matter because they get cut at this one operation right after the other. And it works great, but I don't want to, I just can't deal with that on this product line. And I don't want to start grinding the machine because of the dust and really the dressing is just, it doesn't make sense. Yeah, they are challenges for sure.
00:34:40
Speaker
Yeah. It's probably something I should look at. Honestly, though, like we use a Mitsubishi WWX for a lot of our final finish, final spec, criticals on the modify stuff. And I think we use a Sandvik on the fixture plates, similar. Yeah, similar situation, because on the fixture plates, we care about parallelism, but not nominal. Here, I care about both, but especially nominal.
00:35:04
Speaker
I should probably look into a different grade because I want an insert. I actually don't even really care what it costs, like one that has no wear. Because we do, for us, minor amounts of wear then become an issue. Absolutely. And we have adjusted how we touch off the tool. We wrote a whole program that handles the touch off, which has been great. But we were, for the first
00:35:28
Speaker
time we were running it in the morning, which was too soon. We need to run it after the first warm up or first programs have run. Um, so it works out great that way. The first thing we run in the morning as a product or something that doesn't have that level of criticality, then come in, touch off the tool and then it should be set for the day. Um, at that, at that wear level, if that makes sense on the Okuma horizontal, correct. Yeah. What about, uh, have you ever used ceramic insert?
00:35:58
Speaker
Nah, no. Sorry, at some point. Yes. But no, no, I should. I should. I don't know what I forget what there's their best at, you know, but this sounds like something weird like that, you know? Yeah. The diamond stuff. I'm digging deep here. Like the PCM CD is really for non ferrous. But that's that kind of idea. Something I want. Like it's expensive. It's specialized. It doesn't really wear or has a much lower wear ratio. Yeah, like like
00:36:29
Speaker
Diamond is for really hard things. CBN is what we use to grind steel. Because you don't grind steel with diamonds because there's some carbon. Something, something. Yeah. Do you want CBN? And there are CBN inserts, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. For sure. Like lathe inserts and stuff like that. So maybe there's face mill inserts that are CBN. I don't know.
00:36:53
Speaker
There absolutely are. I can't say why. It's been a while. We don't have a... This isn't really broken, so it's not on the top of the list, but... But it could be better. Well, this is a lot of tribal knowledge and process, and we do every once in a while have some that are on the high side. In fact, right now what we do when they're high, it works out great, is we have a magnetic V-block and we come in and we then just...
00:37:20
Speaker
put them in the magnetic v-block which is the right way to fixture them so that it's not distorting the part and then we can kiss them off and usually get within a few tenths that way. Really? But it's a pain in the butt. We could grind them now that we have a grinder. Yeah, I was just thinking. I want that grinder to be focused on puck chucks and not something where we're... I don't like starting bins of work in progress of rework stuff and then
00:37:41
Speaker
It's just unless you build it into the process, you know, from the beginning, make them, you know, a thou oversized and grind them to spec kind of thing. Yeah. But it's work for sure. Like on our surface grinder, we have. I guess we just grind two things like our blades Norseman Arrasque and then the lock insert blanks. So these two inch by two inch pieces of a BL, which are weird because they're like warpy.
00:38:09
Speaker
All the blades are kind of warpy, even from water jet and everything. Um, so Angela has to spend time shimming them and making them good. Your puck jocks and things might be a lot easier to grind because they'll be all big, already relatively flat, not these like tacos of, you know, flexi steel. Yeah. Your aspect ratio is like 30 times. Yeah. It's like eighth inch by five inch, you know? Right.
00:38:36
Speaker
Yeah, we don't have 40 times we don't have I was sort of saying to Spencer on the phone. I was like, I'm not trying to be get ahead of myself or get cocky here. But like, this seems like a pretty easy task. Like, yeah, yeah, just not that worried about it. I don't know. But like, I also will will stay humble. I don't know anything about, you know,
00:38:58
Speaker
we'll start with the whatever's the white wheel, the 46 H or I or something just to get going. And I'm sure we'll learn. Yeah. Spencer's the one for that. He suggested some good stuff for us. Yeah. And I don't use it. The specialty wheels are just what we're using. We've gone through a few wheels already for sure. Um, and as they get smaller, the surface footage changes and they cut differently. Um, so while they, well, if you go too low, then you start to,
00:39:27
Speaker
to hit something. Like you can only go so small diameter before the machine like hits itself, crashes kind of thing. So even if there's meat left on it, but yeah, Angelo is completely in charge of that. And he's been trying a couple of different wheels, but I think he's got something he really likes. And are you grinding hard or soft? See how many hard probably. So you're just buying pretty hard material and
00:39:51
Speaker
Uh, don't possibly. Yes. You're not sure. Yeah. I think the things that will be hard will be other parts, but that's part of what we're. Yeah. Um, cause you might want a different wheel between soft and hard, but if you're semi-hard, you might be able to get away with both. Interesting point. Right.
00:40:08
Speaker
We'll be, we'll be soft. I mean, the lowest it would be would probably be 30 Rockwell, which is certainly soft compared to 45, 56. But yeah, I think our parts are like 20. So we have a specific wheel for pretty hard, like, you know, soft blade before any heat treat or anything like that. Um, and that's not the same blade you would want to do on a 60, 60 Rockwell blade, not the same wheels. Okay. It's good to know. Way through that.
Personal Time: Family Wedding Plans
00:40:37
Speaker
So today, I'm wrapping up because tomorrow I'm going on a wedding vacation to my cousin's wedding in Vancouver. Oh, that's right. Oh, that's awesome. Good for you. Yes, I'll leave the house at 5 AM tomorrow. And so my dad and I are traveling together, which is cool because even though we live in the same town, we don't see each other that often. And so we get to go on a little jaunt for four days.
00:41:01
Speaker
Uh, fun. We both spent a lot of years living in Vancouver. So some old stomping grounds kind of stuff and eat some good food. Yeah. I want to see my grandma in the islands. So we'll take a ferry and go to see my mom in Bellingham. And, uh, yeah, I won't have a lot of time to see, you know, friends or ghost tour or anything or whatever. So just kind of like turn my brain off and my work brain and enjoy this time. So that'll be really good. That's awesome. Well, have fun. Yeah, well,
00:41:30
Speaker
You all good on the shop front? I think so. Yeah. So Eric and his fiance are also coming separately to the wedding. And then Eric's going to stay for another two weeks and go down to Seattle and hang out with his friends and do all that stuff. So I'm more concerned with him being away for two weeks than me being away for two shop days, three shop days, but we're good.
00:41:54
Speaker
We're good. There's other people in the finishing department. Absolutely. But there's still a couple of things that only he can do. Got it. And so it's like, oh, I guess Norsemen are going to struggle. I guess we're only making rasks next week, like completed fully. But yeah, we're good. We'll figure it out. Good. On that note, we are doing a PTO form here, which I kind of resisted for a while because we just felt small enough.
Business Continuity: Implementing PTO Forms
00:42:24
Speaker
Yeah, this is the right thing to do. So we're just creating a Google form. Good luck. Here's my, this is what I said to everybody at lunch yesterday. Like look, if you need PTO, I'm not in the business of saying no. Like if you need to have it off, we'll figure something out.
00:42:41
Speaker
The more notice, the better, meaning two weeks is better than two days. But look, stuff happens as well. Or certainly if you know two weeks or three weeks out, let us know so we can coordinate it versus just sitting on it. But this just gives a process for people to go to to put it in. I guess it's probably going to be quote unquote approved, but like, again.
00:43:01
Speaker
But the nice thing I realized after I did this is that then it doesn't even have to come to me like necessarily. Yeah, exactly. Cause everybody comes to me right now or emails me, which is, which is again, I haven't given them a reason to do anything else, but, um, how do you handle that? Uh, so almost the year ago or at some point, um, Spencer, our controller, uh, implemented that PTO firms. And as you said, it doesn't have to go through me anymore. I don't even know.
00:43:25
Speaker
Because it used to be at our team meetings, everybody's like, I'm taking next Friday off. Just everybody knows. But that's so far away. We will all forget by tomorrow. Friday will come around. We'll be like, where's Angelo? So the forum helps at least administratively us know what's happening in the next few weeks. And then it's been great. I don't even know.
00:43:50
Speaker
How does person A know that person B is going to be out in two days? Do you have a shared calendar that lists that stuff? We do have a shared calendar. I don't even look at it anymore, but it is there. And then we've been pretty good lately about establishing management structures. Like Angelo runs a team of four or five guys. Eric runs a team of three other guys. Spencer runs three people upstairs and I'm just kind of boss of everything. So I don't know what's happening on the micro level.
00:44:20
Speaker
So as long as the managers know what's going on, then the department is fine. Okay. Yeah, we just haven't, we're either a little bit smaller or just hasn't folded out that way or worked out that way for us. And even as an example, like
00:44:35
Speaker
Garrett out. Well, that's quote in the quote unquote manufacturing side. But honestly, the person that might need most need to know about that is Shannon and shipping. So it's kind of like, I don't know, we have a we have a shared calendar, I suspect the same thing that nobody looks at it. What just occurred to me talking to you was
00:44:50
Speaker
because I also don't love mentioning this at the Tuesday lunches because it's just like kind of not why we do those lunches, but it just occurred to me we could have an email that somebody else could send out once a week being like, hey, here's what's coming up this week. Anything's like upcoming holidays, upcoming people out, upcoming deadlines or focuses because everyone checks their email or reads their email and then that gives them something to just react to rather than have to go look themselves. I like this. There you go.
00:45:17
Speaker
You don't do anything like that, do you? Like a push, like the Sondra's Mercy Works weekly employee newsletter. Yeah. No, we kind of use our Monday and Friday meetings for that. Like what's coming up, what's going on. Yeah. You know, Friday's a holiday. Everybody remember, um, things like that. Okay. Sweet. That's cool. A little joys of, of building a business and like establishing processes and things like that. It's great. Yep. Yeah. Good. Cause it feels like progress, you know?
00:45:46
Speaker
Oh, it is progress. Yeah, because in somebody, a sort of mentor of mine, I was on the phone with a few weeks ago, I don't think I mentioned this. And he said, you know, if you get to the point where you can, you know, not be at your shop for one or two days, and it really goes okay, that's a huge win. And I was like,
00:46:03
Speaker
I was in Germany for eight days and that went, honestly, no joke, went great. A big part of that is that Alex has really stepped up into a lot of my role and then the team of the machining side is going great right now. Shannon is being able to come on board. So everyone's doing a great job in their role, but still, I think I've said this before, but yet again, another level of awesomeness.
00:46:29
Speaker
Yes, that's incredible. And we don't congratulate ourselves enough. So we can congratulate each other, like good for you. Yeah, let's keep pushing forward. Somebody else said that this morning, one of our employees was talking to a coworker who was like, oh man, our company doesn't do anything with technology investing and all that. And I was like, yeah, it feels good to know that like we're, but again, I don't feel, I was telling Graham, I was like, I don't feel like we're like walking around like, oh no, Sonner's MachineWorks is cutting edge. We are better than so many, like no, I think about all the things that would be going better. Great.
00:47:00
Speaker
Dude, have fun on your vacation. I will. Yeah, it'll be really good. Awesome. Sounds good. I'll see you next. Are you good for next week? Yeah, I'm back to work on Tuesday, so I'm good. OK. All right. See you. Bye. Have a great day. Bye.