Transcript
John Saunders: Welcome to the business of machining episode 416. My name is John Saunders.
johngrimsmo: And my name is John Grimsmo.
John Saunders: CNC machines ends up, uh, you got to repair them and maintain them. Um, I've been through actually have a kind of conclusion, which I'm, am really happy about. Like it just feels right on the coolant side.
John Saunders: Um, as I feel like it's a pretty boring topic. So I'll, I'll share, I keep it short. And I know you've been through some, you've been through some stuff this week too. Okay.
johngrimsmo: ah had a week, yeah.
John Saunders: correct
johngrimsmo: But I'm feeling good now, so we can get into that in a bit. But let's ah let's dig into your coolant situation.
John Saunders: So again, the windshield is bigger than the rear view mirror. Here's what I think is kind of funny now that I've had some time to digest it. Here's the honest answer. We've used, really only ever used QualiChem. We tried Blazer once, didn't love the stuff we had, but we really only used QualiChem. So for better worse, it's all we can use.
John Saunders: And to be honest, we haven't really ever changed the coolant. Like the one coolant machine I remember changing was a machine we don't even own anymore. And so, um yes, our coolant went bad. Yes, I think we could have avoided that going bad. On the flip side, it was way overdue for first full swap out.
John Saunders: um And so being able to remove a tank from the whole machine would make it way easier to clean it, access it, power wash it, whatever. Didn't have that luxury on the first one. So I was on my hands and knees scrubbing a bit, which again, get it done, no big deal.
John Saunders: um Ended up buying a Freddy. This hasn't come yet. And I'm actually going to use the Eco, the thing we already have, EcoVac or whatever, um to probably get through the machines this summer because they're probably all pretty disgusting.
John Saunders: We have at least a quarter inch or more of sludge built up on the tanks, just sticking my hand in there and testing it out.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. Yeah,
John Saunders: um So, but... I kind of took that step back and was like, okay, what do we need to do for tools, both for this summer overhaul, but also ongoing maintenance. So we've got a nice aluminum scoop that we can use to scoop stuff out more regularly or even during the clean out.
johngrimsmo: Like a kitty litter scoop.
John Saunders: Exactly, but it's aluminum and or steel actually bought the cheap Amazon airbags.
johngrimsmo: Nice. What is
John Saunders: That way for coolant tanks, whether they're in place or or you can wheel them out, you put the airbag under it, you squeeze it and it will lift up one side of the coolant tank to drain, to drain.
johngrimsmo: that?
johngrimsmo: No way.
John Saunders: These will lift for 300 pounds or 500 pounds and they're 20 bucks.
johngrimsmo: Holy cow.
John Saunders: um
johngrimsmo: It looks like a blood pressure cuff.
John Saunders: so Yeah, there's just little um lifting pads. I'd had them before for like furniture.
johngrimsmo: That's kind of cool. I've never seen that before.
John Saunders: It's like the perfect, I don't know what to get my father-in-law type gift, you know? um
johngrimsmo: Okay, I got to snip this and and Instagram that because that was kind of a cool little... Nice. That looks awesome.
John Saunders: Yeah, because it was like, okay, I don't want to sit here and have the eighth of an inch of coolant across a whole tank. So tip it up on the side. That makes it easier to vac it out or whatever you got do to get it out.
johngrimsmo: Mm-hmm.
John Saunders: um Bought some eco clean, cool cleaner from... uh, quality chem that hasn't come yet either. VF3 got re redone though. Um, started it off with the, it's a hundred gallon tank approximately.
John Saunders: So little more than half tap water. Um, and they call it 40% RO water. We have fairly hard water. So i didn't want to go all hard or tap water, but, um, you need some of the minerals.
John Saunders: when you start and then we always tap ah top off top off ro and then mix it up bricks wise and then have a pond aerator on a timer to pump oxygen in and then have a um i think i said this last week but a relatively low gallon per hour aquarium pump by amazon they they come with the clear hose tubing um
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: The problem with that was I wanted a simple and easy way to make sure that it was at least blowing or discharging the liquid away from the pump intake so that we are creating some amount of flow.
John Saunders: The idea here was somewhat to avoid stagnation, but really more to help um the skimmer be able to skim because otherwise just skims, you know, a six square inch area around the skimmer belt.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: yeah
John Saunders: And so what I did was I put the clear hose that it comes with in a $2 piece of PEX, just slid it through there.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: This stuff can bend enough that you can get it in a cool tank port. Then I don't have to deal with like magnets or suctioning and it'll discharge you know three feet away from the intake of the pump, which should be pretty good.
johngrimsmo: Sure.
John Saunders: um And then we started a log. We're going to start a log each week of the BRICS. Daily, I could see a justification for changing the interval, but let's just start easy.
johngrimsmo: sure
John Saunders: BRICS daily versus, you know, ever excuse me, BRICS weekly versus what I could see some shops doing, which is every day or every shift doing both BRICS, pH, and the current level.
John Saunders: And so this summer I got to go through every tank though.
johngrimsmo: So that log, is that going to be like one notebook that's in one location for every machine or what's the digital?
John Saunders: It is starting off Google Sheets because that's easy. um While Alex will add it to Lex, Lex will let us and analyze the data. Well, so would Google Sheets, but Lex will let us probably better keep it over time, but also um create some sort of a check system where if a value is not entered by a person, they can say, hey, XYZ, you didn't enter the DD2 call this week.
johngrimsmo: So on a practical level, the person that is measuring the coolant, do they have their phone, tablet, Google Sheets open, computer nearby? like How is that actually getting entered?
John Saunders: That's a good question.
johngrimsmo: Because that's where I like paper in that scenario.
John Saunders: i
johngrimsmo: like
John Saunders: Yeah, I assume they'll just walk around with notepad.
johngrimsmo: yeah
John Saunders: What we've done in QC is we've laminated papers that are pre-printed with the with like the fields you need, and then they just use a dry erase marker on the laminate.
johngrimsmo: That works. That's good. Yeah.
John Saunders: And you can just erase it when you're done for the that week or that day.
johngrimsmo: But then you're, you're in some canaries, importing that into Google Sheets. like That's your temporary data, and then it gets logged in the Sheet.
John Saunders: Yeah, you walk back and put it in.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: Yeah, well look we have, uh, I think 10 tanks right at this point. So you could do all this with a digital bricks. If you had to rush, you could probably do it in 15 minutes.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, yeah.
John Saunders: Um, it's not a huge undertaking.
johngrimsmo: Mm-hmm.
John Saunders: you know,
johngrimsmo: i I think I can assume the answer for this. So say a coolantank's been sitting for two months. Would it read different bricks than one that's flowing in in use? Probably the same.
John Saunders: If it's, so it's probably more question about how it evaporates in your shop with, in terms of like humidity, time of the year, right if it's runoff, um, obviously.
johngrimsmo: true
johngrimsmo: But that's, yeah, that's still an accurate measurement.
John Saunders: I
johngrimsmo: Like if it's evaporated to a tie as opposed to my wrong theory of like, is stagnant coolant going to read different than, you know, active coolant?
johngrimsmo: I don't know
John Saunders: think that's why people check pH.
johngrimsmo: know. Mm-hmm.
John Saunders: Um, I'm starting here with the stuff I just mentioned as my baseline, because I think that will set us up well, rather than go too far about like, okay, there's three machines that we know are idle. Let's create a second set of procedures for those machines.
John Saunders: Um, cause frankly, I need to sort of sell those or reevaluate that anyway. Um, one other thing I forgot I was going to say was air pump clean.
John Saunders: don't remember, but yeah.
johngrimsmo: I love that justification. We have some cooling going bad, so we should sell those machines.
John Saunders: ha
johngrimsmo: it's
John Saunders: Well, no, there is some truth to that.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, it's the proof.
John Saunders: It's like, yeah. Yeah.
johngrimsmo: It's like, oh yeah, it hasn't run in two months. Like, do we need it? Yeah.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: yeah The cleaning was... um it was perfect timing because that machine was going to be idle with somebody on vacation anyways. so you could kind of let it dry out. But I mean, a man, like it builds up in the sheet metal exit shoot ramp.
johngrimsmo: yeah
John Saunders: Like it's, it's, um, it was easy to get in there with a flashlight every day and find a new area where like, Oh, I really need to get that cleaned out.
johngrimsmo: Like, it's been dry, like empty, and you're still looking and finding more.
John Saunders: Um,
John Saunders: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Good. Progress.
John Saunders: Oh, that's what going We'll put laminated stickers or something on each machine that'll say after two years, we need to monitor like you're on warning.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: And after three years is a hard tank needs drained and cleaned and cool and refreshed.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, that's good.
John Saunders: That's my thought, which is a pretty long time.
johngrimsmo: it's It's those visual cues. Like like we have painter's tape with Sharpie on the side of each machine that says cool and glass cleaned out.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: at this date with no further warnings but at least when you do your walk arounds you'll be like oh that cool it's like two years old whoa maybe we should um but i like your idea to have actual action steps that have been premeditated so that when somebody sees it they're like i guess it's time i don't have to think about it it just is because it's so easy for any of us or our team to be like yeah it's fine it's still performing it's good you know
John Saunders: Yeah.
John Saunders: Well, we have so much top off and runoff that I'm sure it's all been cycled through. So that's, it's probably a point worth clarifying that it's, it's not like it's the same coolant for three years.
johngrimsmo: yeah
John Saunders: I mean, we're adding on a 50 gallon tank, we're adding five gallons every week or more probably. So you're getting turnover that way, but, um, still the clean out part was sobering.
johngrimsmo: yeah yeah exactly cool all right my turn i'm in a great mood because the current's fixed uh we were able to do the entire fix ourselves
John Saunders: Yeah.
John Saunders: Yeah, let's go.
John Saunders: Dude.
johngrimsmo: and it cost me couple hundred bucks in tool rental and a whole bunch of my time and some of the guys time too. um so There's a cost benefit ratio in there, but I'm pretty sure it is now Wednesday. It's done before Kern could have even been here.
John Saunders: Exactly, John. Like, dude, well done.
johngrimsmo: And that's, Yeah, it's it's pretty awesome. And I learned a lot more about machine alignment and kinematics. And we talked a couple weeks ago about the what is the calibration procedure?
johngrimsmo: Is it laser? Is it kinematics?
John Saunders: ah
johngrimsmo: Is it this? Is it probe? Is it that? um And so I continued to refine my procedure for that. And I gained a much deeper understanding and I went through the whole procedure a couple of times on this machine um just to like, okay, now I get it.
johngrimsmo: And now currently we are retouching off every single tool, which is annoying, but yeah,
John Saunders: Oh, dude, last week, if that was the place you'd be in, I would have, it would have been both.
johngrimsmo: yeah exactly. Exactly.
John Saunders: That's awesome.
johngrimsmo: So what happened is we had a Z crash and the entire trunnion Like, you know, in the current, this big white table, it moved down an eighth of an inch.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And with a stick, exactly.
John Saunders: On a sliding, like a sliding surface.
johngrimsmo: So imagine imagine a rectangle going back away from you you're standing in front of the machine. On the side, the right-hand side, there's four bolts that hold this rectangle in.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: That's the motor and the trunnion and the whole B-axis and everything. So there's four bolts holding it in a shear plane vertically. So it is kind of, it's not pinned in place. it's It's meant to move if it needs to, to a certain degree.
johngrimsmo: um And it also lets them align it. If it was pinned shear planes, they can't tweak it. So that's a good thing. And they're torqued 300 foot pounds, 400 Newton meters.
John Saunders: Yeah, that's crazy.
johngrimsmo: so I had to rent a torque wrench that big, because ours only goes up to 250, like all the automotive ones you buy. um
John Saunders: What size fasteners are these? M20?
johngrimsmo: It's a 17mm hex head.
John Saunders: Okay, yeah.
johngrimsmo: I don't know what thread it is actually, but yeah, it's probably 15, 20, something that.
John Saunders: Oh.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, like 140. Yeah, exactly.
John Saunders: Gosh.
johngrimsmo: And
John Saunders: Yeah, that's a ton. I mean, i've put I put wheels on lug nuts on before.
johngrimsmo: that's a lot.
John Saunders: Like half that.
johngrimsmo: yeah exactly and and that's a lot So it was a great experience. um Sweet that I could rent the tool. I'm kind of tempted to buy my own torque wrench that's that big so we can have it. Although the rental was fine. We're close enough.
johngrimsmo: um
John Saunders: Is that from Canada Tire?
johngrimsmo: The rental?
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: No, there's, since I happen to live in quite an industrial area, there's an industrial tool supply rental place that
John Saunders: Oh, interesting.
johngrimsmo: I once rented a huge croissant wrench from them and I had it in my mind and I was like, oh yeah, they probably have it. I called them up and they're like, yeah, no problem. $24 a day or $14 a day or whatever it is. And I'm like, yes, I'll be right there.
John Saunders: but this is the place where you could also rent an air compressor or an excavator type whatever
johngrimsmo: he Yeah, I don't know about big equipment, but um all kinds of tire balancing machines and like weird stuff.
John Saunders: okay interesting oh yeah love them yeah yeah
johngrimsmo: Very in industry have a like heavy, like downtown Hamilton sort of stuff. um And then, you know, those Nipex pliers, like the croissant wrench ones, but that, you know, close in better.
johngrimsmo: um I've never had my own personal set, but some of the guys have bought their own. And here at this rental place, they had a wall full of them. And I'm like... Well, while I'm here paying you only $24 a day for this, like I'm going to self justify this preparatory purchase.
johngrimsmo: So I bought two, I bought the, the smooth jaw ones and the grippy jaw ones. And then when I returned the tools, I bought two more for home.
John Saunders: Yeah, right.
johngrimsmo: Cause I'm, and we use them in the job in, in doing the spindle. And then I, the second they got home, I used them immediately. And I'm like, these are the greatest things that I've ever lived. I'm showing lay phones. Like you want to see the world's greatest pliers? Like check this out.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Um,
John Saunders: I wish they made them in crescent wrench style form because there's been some times where I've actually wanted to grip onto something with that crescent style clamp like just to keep it in place.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. Which ones do you have? You were going to reach for them.
John Saunders: I was going to grab them. There must be
johngrimsmo: They have flat-jaw ones that are just like a Crescent Ranch.
John Saunders: Yes, sorry, but but those are pliers that where the clamping force is contingent on you holding this them squeeze in versus a crescent style where you, exactly, you adjust the thing and then it clicks, it cam overs and clicks on.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. You can tighten it down and... Yeah. Yeah.
John Saunders: These are the only ones i have my desk, but but I got the smooth ones out of the shop, which they're,
johngrimsmo: Okay. Yeah, so I got one of those and a smooth set. um Those are the Cobra ones. um Okay, so what happened? so
John Saunders: but So we hung up the podcast and you, we didn't even know what had happened.
johngrimsmo: Right. um So the whole trend moved down. And then I'm like, it's the spindle toast because the spindle was not spinning when the tool holder smashed into the fixture. that's kind of worst case scenario.
John Saunders: Uh...
johngrimsmo: You know, you think, imagine, I don't know, 20 ball bearings around the outside of a spindle that are now dented into the race. And they're probably ceramic ball bearings because high RPM spindle. They could be cracked. They could be whatever.
johngrimsmo: So one of my first tests was to run the spindle at, do do the warmup pretty much, the automatic warmup routine. Right. And watch the temperature log because the current shows you that in degrees Celsius.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: And since the current is so thermally controlled, it should be at 20 degrees Celsius, like constantly. Cranked on the spindle, went higher and higher, and it held 20. And I was like, whoa, we've actually had issues with previous spindles that they would run away.
johngrimsmo: Anything over 30,000 RPM, they would start climbing up to, you know, not 20 degrees, but 30, 40, 50 degrees Celsius. And I think there's a... it's the current turns off at 48 degrees Celsius or whatever. Like if this is that high, it says, Nope, Nope, not happening. and And we've had that in the past, but this spindle reads fine.
johngrimsmo: And we put a test bar in the spindle. We checked for run out, we checked for squareness and it's great. And we're like, I think the spindle is good. And with the test bar, we checked Z um both squareness and,
johngrimsmo: and and run out and then current has the oscilloscope built into the control that as i jog the z-axis up and down or the x or y side to side it can tell any vibration in a weird spot in the travel so say you dented the ball screw because of this crash or whatever it would absolutely show up in the oscilloscope nothing smooth as a rock and i'm like sick okay the spindle and the z-axis seem fine
John Saunders: Yep.
johngrimsmo: Uh, the tool changer is changing tools. So it's not like the Z axis moved ah significantly, maybe it moved a little bit. Um, the pallet changer was not happy because the, the whole pallet is at an eighth of an inch down.
John Saunders: yep
johngrimsmo: So we tried to remove the pallet by pallet changing and the pallet changers just bumped into the wrong spot. And it just said, Nope. Like there's your proof right there. it is an eighth of an inch.
John Saunders: Yeah, yeah, right, right, right.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. Um, And then talking to current and talking to service and they're like, we should really come out because we have this, they have this fancy granite rectangle. That's like a four by four rectangle. That's tall, 10 inches tall or whatever on a pallet changing base.
johngrimsmo: So they put in this calibration tool like a spindle test bar, but upside down.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: um and then they have two lvdt sensors on this fancy bracket that measure the squareness of this tool as you move your z up and down and feedback the machine and competent all that stuff sure it's better i get it um it's like a digital distance sensor like an indicator nope no it's just a measuring sensor but they work work a certain way i don't know what lvdt means so um
John Saunders: oh
John Saunders: What is LVDT?
John Saunders: Like interferometer? Okay. Okay.
johngrimsmo: But they're like a plunger style indicator, like a dial indicator, but all digital.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: So they feed back to the machine. um And they're like, you know, if you want the machine to read perfectly, we should come out and do that. And I'm like, well, I think I can get it good enough.
johngrimsmo: And when you take the palette out, you have the Auroa base and you have the pads basically where everything sits. And that should sweep super square within less than 10th. And it does. So I wrote a probing routine that probes um this kind of plus shape on the pallet base where the the feet sit.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And I probed you know at the extreme front, the middle front, the other side middle front, and the extreme rear. And then same for left and right. So I've got these kind of eight points that I'm probing. And on Heidenhain, you can have a table file like an Excel spreadsheet that you can spit all this data to if you set it up properly.
johngrimsmo: um So every time I run this routine, it writes a new line with date and deviation front to rear.
John Saunders: Oh, that's awesome. Yeah.
johngrimsmo: So the tip, the tilt front to rear from furthest front to furthest rear was measuring 20 thou at this distance from wherever the pivot point is.
johngrimsmo: But 20 thou difference in the front to rear of this palette, that's not good.
John Saunders: Is the shear plane, um the mating surfaces, is that parallel to X?
johngrimsmo: parallel to y.
John Saunders: Okay, which would make sense as to why it could tip because
johngrimsmo: Yeah, and it can only tip down. It can't tip sideways. It can't tip.
John Saunders: yeah right, right, right.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. yeah
John Saunders: Interesting.
johngrimsmo: So whether it rotates down or shifts down, who knows?
John Saunders: Huh.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: So there's four bolts that mount this thing, and depending on which one you leave tight to jack it up will depend on where the pivot point is and how tilty it gets. um So I bought a Sterrett Machinist jack, which I've never bought before.
johngrimsmo: And I looked at like the cheap ones on Amazon and they're like $20 and the stare at one with the full kit was close to $200 or 150 or something. And i'm like, I'm going to get that one because I trust it. um I got the fine pitch version, which has 40 TPI instead of 20 TPI.
johngrimsmo: I got it. This thing's beautiful. It's, it's a really nice piece of kit. And that was one of the biggest expenses of this whole job was buying a machinist vice like, yes, please.
John Saunders: No. Okay.
johngrimsmo: ah Not vice, Jack.
John Saunders: okay Would you need that to lift the toilet bowl up?
johngrimsmo: And, Exactly.
John Saunders: Okay. Okay.
johngrimsmo: um In the back of the ah turntable motor, there are two jacking screws, one on the top, one on the bottom, that you can pivot from the rear, but they're kind of awkward to get at.
John Saunders: what you say?
johngrimsmo: i'm like ah At the bottom of the coolant tank, there's this rectangle cutout, so we cut this three-quarter inch thick piece of aluminum that fits in it perfectly. And that became our tabletop, um, for right underneath the trunnion that's on the granite base, super stable.
johngrimsmo: We put our machines Jack on there. We jacked up the toilet bowl and I was able to put an indicator on the top and see even without loosening anything, just move the jacking screw up and I could, okay, I am preloading it.
johngrimsmo: like I moved it.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Now, as we start loosening the bolts, we have the indicator on top. Um, And it worked so fantastically well. So we figured out which which bolt we want to leave.
John Saunders: So awesome.
johngrimsmo: We've cracked three of them. We left the fourth one tight, hoping that that's the pivot point.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And then the indicator i used is a Mitutoyo electronic indicator that's like a dial indicator and it's got one inch of travel and it's a super accurate one that has 20 million digital graduations.
John Saunders: who
johngrimsmo: And so having that on the spindle gave me like super confidence, like I just moved to 20 million with my fingers.
John Saunders: yeah
johngrimsmo: I'm like, yes, this is amazing. And I knew from various probing that it was down an eighth of an inch, give or take one, two, four. So I needed to jack it up one, two, four, lock it down, and then run my four point probing routine to see how flat the table is.
johngrimsmo: like how level the table is, um front to back, side to side.
John Saunders: the
johngrimsmo: And it got super close. We went from 20,000 deviation front to rear to like 1,000 deviation front to rear. And we're like, okay, we're on the right way. Now, how much do we need to overload this so that when we torque it and everything settles and torquing it moves it?
John Saunders: Right.
johngrimsmo: So I wrote down, okay I'm jacking it to here, to this much movement. When we torque it down, it moves to here. And then when we take off the the jack, jacking screw, it moves to here.
John Saunders: ah Sure, sure, sure.
johngrimsmo: and then with that data we were able to guess guesstimate okay that was a three thou move this time let's do one and a half thou and yes so within probably five tightening sequences we got it front to rear accurate within uh 20 millions of an inch like i'm super happy with that and then side to side i'm able to comp with a b-axis tool tool work offset shift
John Saunders: John. it's Yeah.
John Saunders: Oh, sure. Oh, of course. It's actual access.
johngrimsmo: Which just works.
John Saunders: Yeah, you don't even have to be.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: It's really the front to head nod or the so toilet bowl nod.
johngrimsmo: The table. Yeah. That is the mechanical alignment.
John Saunders: Sure.
johngrimsmo: And then I have 0.038 degree rotational shift in my in my work offset table.
John Saunders: Oh, my gosh.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: i'm like And that got me down to 20 millionths or less of sideways you know accuracy. And I'm like, bro, this table is now square to the X and Y axis to within 20 millionths of an inch, less than one micron, half a micron.
johngrimsmo: happy with that. Um, now Kearns way, I think does it to the Z axis. It aligns your C axis to the Z axis, which might be better.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: I don't know. I'm kind of assuming squareness of Z to X and Y right now.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: I don't care. I'm i'm good enough. Like it works. And then after all this is said and done, um, The table is still, ah let's call it 2,000 lower than where it used to be because everything moved.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: Like I got it level, but it's still down.
John Saunders: Yeah, right, right.
johngrimsmo: And then you got to recalibrate the laser. You got to recalibrate the kinematics. And then it's still touching off tools, 1,000 four tenths wrong. which I didn't think it should have.
johngrimsmo: I thought everything should have realigned and like just worked.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: So I battled with it for a day or two and I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna retouch all the tools and and then move on and it'll be good. I've done a very accurate calibration of this whole machine, retouch all the tools.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: I'm i'm confident with that solution.
John Saunders: if i I think I've followed everything along. You did a very nice job explaining that.
johngrimsmo: thank you
John Saunders: if you What you're saying you're not sure of is if you purchase an HSK 63 gauge length master tool, like a calibration bar, not for TIR, but just gauge length.
johngrimsmo: Which I did.
John Saunders: So let's say like, we usually use we usually see these as ah monolithic holder that's got a three inch ground gauge length.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, i have one of those.
John Saunders: and you put that in a preset or a Sprony, it'll tell you it's three inches. Now, obviously there are could be deviations, which then becomes the question of well, what's your master?
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: But that's more of a, ah what how do you want to run processes in your shop about what's the master reference tool?
johngrimsmo: Yeah, and that's
John Saunders: You're saying that the three inches is going to show up 1.4 thousand different, but again, you don't care as long as you're consistent across everything.
johngrimsmo: Well, that's a good question. um Well, on that point, something Rob said to us a couple weeks ago, he said that calibration tool holder is your ultimate reference.
johngrimsmo: That is, you just trust that.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: You base everything off of that because that is the one fixed thing that is not adjustable and it comes with a certificate.
John Saunders: Right.
johngrimsmo: So however accurate that certificate is, who cares? That that is your basis.
John Saunders: it doesn't It doesn't matter. It's just your nominal reference.
johngrimsmo: That's your basis for everything. Yeah.
John Saunders: yep
johngrimsmo: um And so I didn't...
johngrimsmo: I never like touch that tool off because you just run the calibration and it does it for you. like So I don't know if that tool would have read differently necessarily, but yeah, probably.
John Saunders: But if you put a three inch calibration length tool back in there, it's gonna read three inches. And cause you calibrated it that way.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, yeah.
John Saunders: Like you, so it doesn't, like you just told it that way. So if you put a a really accurate drill in there that's 2.966 gauge length, it's gonna read 2.966, right?
johngrimsmo: Mm-hmm.
John Saunders: Like it's, yeah, yeah, yeah, great.
johngrimsmo: ye Yep, yep. yep But all of my previous tool offsets, if I retouch them again, were off by 1.4 thou.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: um And I'm like, okay, well, that's wrong. So I got to touch them off again.
John Saunders: Great.
johngrimsmo: So I created a pretty awesome auto touch off routine that touches all of them without overwriting some of the critical information that we want.
John Saunders: Oh, interesting.
johngrimsmo: um And so you go in the tool table and everyone every tool that you want to touch off, you can type either 997, 998, or 999 in this one field, which does three different things.
johngrimsmo: um And it'll touch them all off and it'll write the results to a new table file telling me the old gauge length, the new gauge length, and the difference.
John Saunders: I love it.
johngrimsmo: So now I have a spreadsheet that literally, it's probably done running, but it was running when we started this, um touching off 150 tools.
John Saunders: Right.
johngrimsmo: graphing me the difference, or not graphing, but ah putting it in a spreadsheet for me um so that we can go through the whole spreadsheet.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Because my theory is every tool is going to read 1.4 thou off. If they vary much more than that, that's weird.
John Saunders: Agree.
johngrimsmo: But this will tell me.
John Saunders: love it. I love that you can capture that data as just you know, look, I mean, I may be the bigger wimp than some shop owners or operators out there, but like, yeah, I would, I would want to know, I would want to know that I don't hit cycle start and do something catastrophic where you end up back.
johngrimsmo: Exactly.
John Saunders: where you were last week or worse off, right? That's awesome.
johngrimsmo: yeahp Yep. Yep. Now making these table files and sending data to it is, is not easy enough for the faint of heart. I've just gotten really good at it over the five years of current ownership. And I still spent the better part of a day and a half just doing that, just getting it to touch off all the tools properly and write all the data.
johngrimsmo: But now we have a tool that we can use in the future, um, to auto touch off multiple tools at once.
John Saunders: yeah
johngrimsmo: Um,
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Now, if I weren't here and if Angelo had to do this himself, he had a great suggestion. He's like, we already have this 999 system in place where any tool you you type 999 into the tool table, it will touch off when it is needed.
johngrimsmo: So the next time you call that tool, it'll just touch it off then. um And that's what he would have done. And there's nothing wrong with that. And then as the tools are needed, they'll get touched off, but doesn't tell you anything.
johngrimsmo: It doesn't show you. It's very trusty.
John Saunders: It feels so good to know too that like you give it three hours and you you you are just setting things right.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, yeah.
John Saunders: ah
johngrimsmo: exactly so not everybody's going to be willing to go as deep as i do full grim smote but i'm i'm glad that i am who i am and i can do this kind of stuff
John Saunders: What talked to me about the AROA and ToolChanger, both working, were working fine or had to be readjusted?
johngrimsmo: um because we lifted the table back up to within about a thou of where it was before row doesn't care it probably has a you know 40 thou wiggle room of not caring but not 120 thou it bumped
John Saunders: Great.
John Saunders: Ah, OK.
johngrimsmo: it bombed
John Saunders: Got it.
johngrimsmo: um yeah, so that's good. Tool changer is good. And everything, the machine's done. it's It might even be running right now, um like making parts.
johngrimsmo: So that's good. It's been a week. And we didn't, we actually took the weekend off. We're like, we could come in on Saturday and mess around with this, but let's just not.
John Saunders: Yep.
johngrimsmo: And that's okay.
John Saunders: You have to reprobe ah do you use, do you program off zero points? So like you, for the whole machine.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, I have one offset. It's the Yep, the face of the Auroa on the center.
John Saunders: Oh, right. That's great.
johngrimsmo: um And that's so nice, so nice.
John Saunders: That's so nice.
johngrimsmo: I i will sometimes on Heidenhain, you can do a datum shift where you take your zero and you add 5,000 because you probe the whole 5,000 off or something like that, which is cool.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: But yeah, it's this whole zero point concept is kind of the greatest thing that I never really knew existed and until I did.
John Saunders: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Dude, that is phenomenal. I'm really glad to hear that.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, me too. I'm really happy with how it all turned out. Last week, you know I was in that depths of despair. I was like, oh, you know this is the worst. And it's going to cost so much. going take so much.
johngrimsmo: And at the end of it, as you said, the windshield's bigger than the rear view. um The future is bright for I intend to create it. And i'm like I'm like, what problem?
John Saunders: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
johngrimsmo: that wasn't That wasn't so bad.
John Saunders: Oh,
johngrimsmo: Whereas on Friday, I was like, no.
John Saunders: there's probably like a nugget. i don't know if it's like a teachable moment for people listening that would consider a Kern, but, um and I'm not sure to be fair, like I commend you for being able to do this.
John Saunders: I could see why a machine tool builder wouldn't necessarily want to like help everybody because it just takes up time and there's risk.
johngrimsmo: ah Sure.
John Saunders: But what I do know is that a lot of machine tool builders, if you call them or their distributor or the support, they just don't, they they just won't help you. Like they won't, they're not going to give you the information that I think you probably like, um, we're grateful that our local HFO has always given us Haas service keys when we needed them to do this kind of, never this extensive, but like, you know, we messed the lay through it up years ago and you got to realign it.
John Saunders: You need the service key to get at that level of data, or you need somebody to explain to you some basic processes or send a PDF.
johngrimsmo: he
John Saunders: And I, I love having that relationship with a smaller company that you clearly have where that could happen, I guess.
johngrimsmo: Yep. Yep. Mm-hmm. yep
johngrimsmo: Yeah, and they don't want to give out willy nilly that access. Like on Heidenhine, there are passwords basically that allow various levels of this password grants you access to the PLC in the background.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: This does this.
John Saunders: Right.
johngrimsmo: And every time they told it to me, I would Sharpie it on the side of the machine.
John Saunders: Right. Right.
johngrimsmo: And then and the next time the service, like when Tina came by, she was like, i I want to erase these because you're not supposed to have all these. And I'm like, i I'm careful.
John Saunders: so
johngrimsmo: It's fine.
John Saunders: Yeah. Right. Right.
John Saunders: Awesome. Glad to hear.
johngrimsmo: I'm feeling good. Good. And i I have a kind of um renewed sense of appreciation is not the right word, but like, I know the machines calibrated now, like, at least in this regard, there's ball bar test results kind of things that it's kind of fails at currently, because it's not as square as it could be XY.
John Saunders: Got it. Interesting.
johngrimsmo: and don't care about that right now. um But
John Saunders: But that's pre last week's stuff.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, exactly.
John Saunders: Yeah. Well, I'm proud of you. Make your first part and check it first. Then we can, then we can celebrate with the, uh, go out for scoop ice cream, but you know?
johngrimsmo: For sure. Exactly. Yep. And I kind of justified it too, because we're making very small things. We're not making, i don't need the, whatever the enclosure, the the build volume is called 12 by 12 by 12.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: We're not making parts that big that have to be one micron corner to corner. Um, If we were, i'd be like, yeah, Kern, come on in. Let's get this thing back up and, you know, perfect, better than factory.
johngrimsmo: um We're not. We're making little parts that don't see the error of as much, you know? It's fine.
John Saunders: Yeah. Awesome. Well, that's great.
johngrimsmo: So, it's good.
John Saunders: It's got to feel like a relief.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, it does. i'm it It just happened like an hour ago, I'm not quite there yet, but
John Saunders: Yeah. Oh, is that why you were like, hey, i might be, yeah.
johngrimsmo: That's part of it. Yeah.
John Saunders: Yeah, happen yeah, That's awesome.
johngrimsmo: have to run out. So yeah.
John Saunders: um The other thing I wanted to mention but also ask is we're adding, already ordered some from SendCutSend, clear, I think Lexan or acrylic, I don't recall.
John Saunders: um Hopefully I ordered Lexan. I think it'd be better. um Viewing ports for our coolant tanks. So many of these coolant tanks, not a lid, doesn't open, it screws on ah just a window, viewport.
johngrimsmo: feel like lids.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. Yeah. But on top. Yeah. Yep.
John Saunders: So many of these cool tanks you don't see into the tank. And again, on that VF3, the thing I'm disappointed in was for weeks, maybe months, it was just like, just the darkest, richest brown color on the top.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, that's weird.
John Saunders: And you should just be able to walk by a tank and look in and see what the color is.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. Yeah.
John Saunders: It's like the Akuma's have a bunch of sheet metal cutouts for accessories. So I just measured one of those, ordered Sink-A-Send, it's gonna pop on there.
johngrimsmo: Nice.
John Saunders: The Haas tanks have, they have removable sheet metal lids, but Um, I don't, I don't own a laser that will cut steel and I'm trying to think, I don't know how thick they are, but it's like eighth of an inch.
John Saunders: No, probably not that probably 60 thou thickness, like six engaged.
johngrimsmo: Hmm.
John Saunders: Um, how would I'm trying to think how to be bootstrapping here. Whole saws not like the, I want this to be like a six inch or a bigger port window. So i don't want use a whole saw scare the crap out of me.
John Saunders: Um, Now, I'm thinking would be that just a 3D print and then sharp. but I'm trying to think of like a way I can use a 3D print with a jigsaw.
John Saunders: And then that's not going perfect, but then I can do a 3D. I can do a 3D printer bushing inside that helps get rid of that view, that sharp edge view. Is there, can't think of a good way to cut an eight inch hole in sheet metal. That's what I'm sort of trying to say.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, don't know. I'm not your guy there.
John Saunders: I know, right?
johngrimsmo: Yep. There are no panels that can come off.
John Saunders: Must
johngrimsmo: like
John Saunders: No, there are many panels that come off. In fact, the one I would probably cut it in is no bigger than, um, two feet by two feet or something. So I could, I guess I could even ship it to somebody, um, ship it out.
johngrimsmo: Can't you just cut a piece of acrylic that big?
John Saunders: Oh, uh, probably not because it's, it's got, um, like lips to hang over it and it's, it's a complicated sheet metal. It's got ridges for rib, uh, ribs for stiffening, um,
johngrimsmo: OK, I see what you mean. Yeah.
John Saunders: So ah it would be easier to look at you. I'm probably overthinking it. A jigsaw, um, I actually even print it 3d print and and use that as a jigsaw guide.
John Saunders: As long as I don't, I'm not just like cut into the 3d print if I'm not careful, but, um, that'll be okay.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
John Saunders: Sand it and then put a little, we've done that before where we just 3d print a little grommet inside of it. And then the acrylic can go on top of that. It'll look nice. doesn't have sharp edges, et cetera.
johngrimsmo: Yep.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: Sweet.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, on the Mori we have 6x6 sheet metal cover where a motor could go. Four bolts that attach it, we just leave three of the bolts out, one of the bolts in, and we can just rotate it out of the way.
John Saunders: There you go.
johngrimsmo: and like
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: So we leave it rotated out, and we can see inside the tank, and like, who cares?
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: yeah
John Saunders: Not perfect. um Sweet. The only last thing I have on my list, which I just gotta share is freaking cool, is I may or may not have scraped the audio of a certain robot named Johnny Five from the video, from the feature film.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: From the movie? Yeah.
John Saunders: and upload. So I did that, edited it, edited it like further down to make sure it was only scenarios where it was that particular voice I was looking for. And then for $5, I bought a one month subscription to a, like this good thing was called like 11 labs, AI voice cloning.
John Saunders: John.
johngrimsmo: Wait.
John Saunders: Yep.
johngrimsmo: Okay. You extrapolated a few clips of voice into a ah language.
John Saunders: So like, Case in point, I've got plenty of your audio. I could take i could start mimicking John Grimson. Like this stuff is scary.
johngrimsmo: no way
John Saunders: um I wasn't sure how it would work given that this is a particularly quirky voice, right? like the But it worked. I mean, I can hear the difference. also didn't spend any time tweaking the parameters of which there are many.
johngrimsmo: sure yeah totally
John Saunders: And also your average person, if they see the robot and meet it and they hear the voice, they're not gonna sit here and think, that's a little off. Now the problem is that this is a paid service that is, takes process compute time up down the cloud.
John Saunders: so I wanna do, as I found on Reddit, there's a like offline open source version of this software. I don't think it's, sorry, I just hate real time. I don't think it's actually real time, but that's my goal and this is like total like side project stuff, but I would like to integrate the voice cloning algorithm with an LMM because then I can feed it information about the, and
johngrimsmo: What's LMM.
John Saunders: a large language model, which IGBT.
johngrimsmo: Okay.
John Saunders: LLM, I say that right? LMM, whatever. Um, so I don't think what I'm saying is actually frankly, all even all that hard, but it's one thing to talk about So I'm going to do it, but you feed an information about a person or give it access to chat GPT, tie that output into a voice and have it be able to have a conversation close enough to real time in his voice offline without what would need the cloud.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: It would need internet for chat ebt That's okay. I just don't want it to have to compute. Even if it's five seconds, that doesn't, that's no good for the voice stuff, but it's,
johngrimsmo: Yeah, so you just you don't just want to give it like 10 phrases that it can say on a push of a button. You want to talk to it, basically.
John Saunders: Those that's actually, that's a fair point. I will do that with a ton of phrases because then you program sequences through the Kyber control with the, what are called Pololu maestros that like all these sequences, if he can like walk into a room or do a spin move and say, you know, neat, neat input, or um wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?
johngrimsmo: OK.
johngrimsmo: isn't
John Saunders: That'll be all done ahead of time, but I would also like it to have a conversation.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, that is so sick.
John Saunders: Right. If anybody's listening that has done this stuff and wants to help out, whether it's on the house or you weren't paid, I don't really care.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: Like I would, I would happily piggyback off of some folks have been on this road because it's, it's pretty, it's pretty cool what's out there.
johngrimsmo: Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: That's cool, man.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Well, let's see, let's see. I was watching a video last night and I saw young John Saunders.
John Saunders: Oh,
johngrimsmo: I was ah skipping through one of the um Keith Rucker videos on the scraping class. And I saw, you know, 10 years ago, eight years ago, ah John Saunders get interviewed in the scraping class.
John Saunders: Isn't that crazy?
johngrimsmo: I was like, Hey, I know that guy.
John Saunders: Hilarious. Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And that's it. That that was cool.
John Saunders: Yeah. That was a good, that was, I don't know. i don't know how to say that. Like very hard to think of how long ago that was, but also how fresh it feels.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: if That makes sense.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: Yeah. I mean, you,
johngrimsmo: Cool. And it was like multi-day. You you went to California, maybe.
John Saunders: three days That one was in Georgia, I believe.
johngrimsmo: yep really Okay. Okay.
John Saunders: yeah like I think it was at Keith's shop.
johngrimsmo: Cool. cool
John Saunders: Yep. The last thing I have, it's actually been on my list to bring up for quite a few weeks and it's not that great of a point, but I'll say anyways, we need to do a better job at our shop on these. Sonder style setup sheets, um for especially for oddball parts that we don't run all the time.
John Saunders: Shimptworks products are a good example.
johngrimsmo: yeah
John Saunders: We make alignment jigs for our multi-fixture plate sets that we only run once a quarter. And so it's not and it's not a Fusion setup sheet, it's really a handmade a template or something.
John Saunders: um But it's gonna have the material, because a lot of times we're able to use some of these parts we share part families or material families.
John Saunders: have the part number. It has a photo of the torque wrench and the torque values that we use because we have lots of different styles of torque wrenches, but um it either needs to be one that's in a process bin, but then there's still a photo of it. So you know that not grabbing the one that's at the machine and you adjust it, a photo or description of like how you set up um the fasteners and extra supplies that we can. It's basically like a cheat sheet. You're like, oh, okay, great.
John Saunders: They have extra M5 Torx Plus screws for this. Here's the Fusion setup and like a screen grab of what the cam looks like. Here's the, where you torque the bolts. Kind of here are the gotchas.
John Saunders: It makes sense.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, definitely.
John Saunders: Just great ideas.
johngrimsmo: ye mi
John Saunders: Just need to do it.
johngrimsmo: Make it obvious. I don't love the term idiot-proof, but it's what it is.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: like
John Saunders: Yeah. Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, and half the time, you're the idiot reading it again, going, oh, yeah, thanks. Thanks, Setup Sheet. I appreciate that.
John Saunders: Well, it just feels, um, feels like you're winning, winning when you're like, oh, I gotta do this. And you're like, oh wow.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, this makes it easy.
John Saunders: I remind, I reminded myself how to do this.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, this takes zero brain power. Like I have the skill and experience to do it, but it takes no thinking to remember.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: What's the Torque spec again? Where's that tool? I can't find it. Yeah.
John Saunders: You would laugh. i think you'd laugh if you saw some of my maintenance notes to myself that are either in Lex or some of them are in my calendar and in the line will read like, John, this is actually super easy. When every time you finish this, you're like, that wasn't hard.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: And you, you know, like replacing a furnace filter, you're like, it always sticks on the bottom. Just tip it up a little when You put it in. Here's the Amazon link for a new one.
johngrimsmo: and Nice.
John Saunders: Like it just, it always feels nice to read that and be like, Oh, I was really thinking of, of myself.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: it My future self. Like, yeah.
John Saunders: yeah
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: Um, yeah.
johngrimsmo: I like that. Yeah. Set yourself up to win. That's what it's all about.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: Well, so what's on tap for you today?
johngrimsmo: So verify that the current works, make some parts, confirm that they they're good, um look through that that new spreadsheet of results um and and see what kind of variation there is.
John Saunders: Yeah. Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Do that. It's three o'clock, so the guys are going head out soon.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: um And then now that this is done, my next tackle is we've talked about many times over the over the past year is speedio bevel grinding um i have a new theory i want to try of literally rotating the palette 90 degrees which brings me into a whole different type of thermal growth on the machine because right now i'm growing
John Saunders: Okay.
John Saunders: Oh, sure.
johngrimsmo: in the y direction and i'm grinding in the y direction or i'm grinding in the x direction um so any head nod of thermal growth is is making my problem worse um if i rotate the ballot 90 degrees the machine doesn't grow in x in thermal growth it it's stable so i'm gonna maximize my grind angles to help that
John Saunders: Is angry.
John Saunders: Yes.
John Saunders: You want the blade. Actually, gonna be fun i have it yeah this If I'm grinding this type of a blade, you want it in line with the Y, like you're throwing the knife at the the column.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, exactly.
johngrimsmo: Correct. So, yeah.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, it's it's pointing at, like, the tip pointing at you kind of thing, or away from you.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: Whereas right now, when you look at the machine, you see the whole blade.
John Saunders: Here.
johngrimsmo: You see it sideways.
John Saunders: Yes, sure.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: So head nod means you're going to change the angle of the bevel.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: Whereas head nod, if it's in Y, doesn't matter really.
johngrimsmo: what Yeah. And or the total engagement of the tool because of a few tenths of head nod and a lot of angles involved. um i don't want to calculate it. I just want to try.
johngrimsmo: um
John Saunders: Yeah, it seems easy.
johngrimsmo: Unfortunately, it's not as simple as just turning the palette and hitting go because I got to generate all new cam. And e it's not even that simple because my cam is now, remember, Python script chat GPT generated.
John Saunders: That's right. That's right.
johngrimsmo: um which won't be hard. It's just, I just need like a couple hours to focus and do it right. um
John Saunders: Brother doesn't have, or do you sub-complete?
johngrimsmo: No.
John Saunders: Okay. They have a, they have a polar, like a XY rotational thing.
johngrimsmo: but True. Yeah.
John Saunders: Interesting.
johngrimsmo: I mean, yeah, brother does. What's a G 68, whatever um that
John Saunders: Yeah, that's probably a bad idea.
johngrimsmo: might work, but yeah, don't
John Saunders: You could air cut and test it, but I mean, ignore me.
johngrimsmo: You could air cut and test it. Yeah, no, that's fair. I want to do it right. um And maybe that's a slow way to do it, but that makes me feel better.
John Saunders: This is where you're, you used to use the geodesic to like chop grind up down on it, but you did the point.
johngrimsmo: Correct. And then I wrote my own program to do it more accurately. um But it's still chop grinding.
John Saunders: Yeah, cool.
johngrimsmo: Yep. Which by itself works great. It's just consistency is... Seemingly unpredictable. We're getting somewhat erratic results and I can't really track it down to thermal and I can't put my finger on it and it's frustrating. So this is another thing to try.
johngrimsmo: And if we have the same results, that's an answer.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: If we have better results, that's good.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And like we're pushing blades through, but it's, I still can't automate it because I don't trust it enough yet.
John Saunders: Yeah, no, that's totally fair.
johngrimsmo: So we're cutting one by one and it is, don't say it's the biggest bottleneck, but it's probably top three, top two bottlenecks in the shop.
John Saunders: Oh, really? Oh, interesting.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. Yeah. Which is a big deal.
John Saunders: Sure.
johngrimsmo: Now that the current kn is fixed.
John Saunders: Just because it creates more finishing time.
johngrimsmo: No, well It's inaccurate, so we can't automate the bevel grinding, meaning we can only grind, you know say, a maximum of seven blades a day in any day that we're hustling.
johngrimsmo: um Whereas if it was automated, I could grind 20 blades at night.
John Saunders: God, it's...
johngrimsmo: you know And that that will unlock potential for us hugely because then some machine some days the machine doesn't run because the guy's busy doing something else or something like that. So this will help.
John Saunders: Probably not a solution or even relevant here, but the thing I hear about folks like Dennis, and I've heard it elsewhere do that, I don't and even think about this, is they will rough complicated parts in a cheap three axis and they'll get a bunch of material hogged off, even if it's not like you obviously don't have five axis axis, but you usually have to do a lot of roughing work and then they'll transfer it over to a more expensive five axis and let it finish.
johngrimsmo: Mm-hmm.
John Saunders: So the thought was like, could you, rough grind overnight and finish grind during daytime, but I don't think that's, you don't you don't have to do two passes anyway, so it doesn't make sense.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, I mean, we we do rough the hard material with an end mill, and then we go in and finish grind it.
John Saunders: You just want to fix it.
johngrimsmo: We actually semi grind it, and then we finish grind it.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: um It's the grinding that takes a long time. Roughing takes like two minutes.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Grinding takes 20 minutes per side.
John Saunders: Yeah. Sure.
johngrimsmo: And that's the whole reason this is in the speedio, that it's not in the current eating up current time.
John Saunders: Yeah, right, right.
johngrimsmo: um However, this kind of rotation idea came to me because I thought i was like, wait, how was it running in the current? It was running rotated the other way. um Because being a five axis, you can tilt it to whatever.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: but And the current is obviously thermally stable.
John Saunders: Do everyone. Yeah.
johngrimsmo: But I was like, wait, it was pointed the other way in the current. But now I'm pointing at 90 degrees in the speedio because of the way it pallet loads. um The only downside to having it loaded like this, the 90 degrees from I'm currently doing it, is it eats up three spots in the pallet changer instead of one spot.
John Saunders: Oh, that does stink though.
johngrimsmo: It kind of sucks, but I'm absolutely willing to run the experiment and even eat the bullet if that is the solution.
John Saunders: Yeah. Right.
johngrimsmo: Because like, holy cow, we're we're not using up all 55 spots on the small side.
John Saunders: or Yeah, right, right, right.
johngrimsmo: So like, it's a win.
John Saunders: Could you... um So you want to basically... You want to orient the knife in Y, not X. It's currently in X.
johngrimsmo: Yes.
John Saunders: You want to move it to Y.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, exactly.
John Saunders: Can you not try in Y with the Fusion Geodesic Toolpath? Because you can generate that in three minutes and it'll tell you what you need to know before you invest the time.
johngrimsmo: You'd need to make multiple of them to see what the consistency is like throughout the day. um
John Saunders: got it. Okay.
johngrimsmo: And the only downside with the geodesic is it leaves a slightly crappier finish, which takes more time to finish out.
John Saunders: Okay.
John Saunders: That's fair.
johngrimsmo: So yeah, it's always balance.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: You know, where do you want to spend your time kind of thing?
John Saunders: Fail fast. Yeah. I'm just thinking like fail fast, fail cheap.
johngrimsmo: Sure.
John Saunders: like Isolate the problem before you invest in the solution.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. Yeah, so...
John Saunders: Yeah. You're onto something and for sure. Like that idea of like.
johngrimsmo: I think so. I think it's another big variable. Like we've killed a lot of variables and this is another big one that I'm like, whoa, okay, hold on. You know, so I'll report back next week.
John Saunders: Yeah.
John Saunders: Yeah. Sweet. right. See you next week.
johngrimsmo: All right, later.
John Saunders: Take care.
johngrimsmo: Bye.
John Saunders: Bye.
