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Business of Machining - Episode 115
241 Plays7 years ago
Talking Growth and the Entrepreneur Mindset
Having a team doesn’t mean you’re not an entrepreneur anymore. You still have to clean those toilets!
“When you live it it’s not cliche at all” - Saunders
Delegating
Grimsmo is more and more comfortable with delegating tasks, which is awesome! But don't worry, he is still around to help whenever his team needs him.
Hear about what Grimsmo’s been up to, and what local day trips he’s had lately (hint: true to Grimsmo’s nature, the trips involve machine shops)
“You’ve gotta live in the clouds AND the dirt” - Gary Vee
Translation: keep dreaming, but also keep working.
“If you’re never in the clouds, you suffocate” - Saunders
Forkin’ Around
Saunders loses an old friend: his forklift. Grimsmo and Saunders also talk about the potential horrors of neglecting workplace safety.
“it’s like driving past a car crash, you can’t NOT look” - Saunders (QotD: Does that make him morbid?)
Should Grimsmo write off his pen clip probs?
The Johns discuss the problems that Grimsmo is having with machining his pen clips, and problem solving strategies in general. If this problem isn’t fixed, Grimsmo might have trouble nailing down a sustainable workflow for the part.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Episode Context
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machining episode 115. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Brimsmo. Good morning. Good morning, my friend.
00:00:10
Speaker
I'm
Team Size and Structure
00:00:11
Speaker
not going to ask how you are because I already know, because we just had a really good kind of offline conversation, which again, it continues to make me sort of just chuckle about the parallels of our story.
Balancing Roles: Technician, Manager, Entrepreneur
00:00:25
Speaker
But the relevance here for folks listening is, you know, John, how many employees do you have now? Seven, including us. Including seven, including what? Including us. So there's seven people here.
00:00:36
Speaker
including you. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. So we're, we're one or two less than that, depending on how you count like kind of part time interns and so forth. But, um, I,
00:00:48
Speaker
I love what I do and I love, you know, to go back to the E-Myth being the person that's kind of all the way down to, you know, I, again, I jokingly say I still scrub the toilets and I actually do still usually scrub the toilets, but I really don't care in sweeping and so forth as well as, you know, hitting cycle start less, less these days, but still doing it. Certainly no problem doing it. But then really being that entrepreneur, the manager, well, I forget the E-Myth titles, but technician, manager, entrepreneur.
00:01:18
Speaker
So I guess it would be really entrepreneur level things. So like for lately working on the new project, working on the finances, the cash flows, looking at the business at the true highest level, both present and future. I don't really do that much looking in the rearward mirror. That's another interesting conversation though. But I think the takeaway from me is that it's very difficult to ever
00:01:43
Speaker
not be that entrepreneur when you can't, because you can always rationalize spending time on those tasks as it's important for the business, nobody else can do it, how could we ever grow or succeed or stay on track if I'm not thinking about these big picture, just all that stuff, because it's kind of addicting, and there's a little bit of a self-fulfilling nature to it because you think you're entitled, but anyway.
00:02:10
Speaker
What
Maintaining Culture in the Shop
00:02:11
Speaker
I'm realizing, it was a really good conversation we just had, is you can't afford to not break away from that and go back to being other roles. So I still need to be spending more time
00:02:32
Speaker
working with the team doing anything and everything we've got going on and not just be that entrepreneur type person because it's important to
00:02:45
Speaker
is important to the culture. It's important to how the business works. It's important to working with and kind of mentoring directly or indirectly the younger people in the shop or anybody in the shop and just the culture of how everybody on a team is, it sounds so cliche, but when you live it, it's not cliche at all. Does that make sense? Right. Totally. Oh, 100%. Did I recap that in a good way that keeps it? Absolutely. And I resonate with that 1 million percent because
High-Level Planning vs. Ground Work
00:03:12
Speaker
I mean, you and I were just in Germany like three weeks ago. And so I did, I did that. I'm trying to find and or close on a new shop right now. Um, went to OSG and got a factory tour. They have a blooper couple hours, went to military yesterday, spent the entire day with Angelo. They are like, I have not been present in the shop, like physically working very much lately. And in a way, like I love it. This is, I'm like a pig and have her right now. Um, but.
00:03:43
Speaker
Now, like today, next few days, I actually need to pull back. I need to get some stuff done because projects are not happening that I am directly in control of, like pen production. And it's that balance of like, Gary Vee calls it clouds and dirt. Like clouds is, you know, high level, like planning for the future and dirt is getting your fingers dirty, getting it done. And he only lives in the clouds and the dirt, not this middle ground of just kind of faffing about and
00:04:11
Speaker
not being very productive. And I like that because I like to spend a lot of times in the cloud and I like to do the dirt. I like to actually do the work.
Shop Size Dynamics and Role Structuring
00:04:19
Speaker
That's why I do this job. It's fun. I love it. Oh, I like the dirt too. I really do. I feel like, sometimes I feel like if you're not in the clouds, you're suffocating because that's what has to like,
00:04:36
Speaker
It's it's not even that it's more interesting because it's not frankly that much more interesting. You just feel like it's mentally it's what you make makes you think that the business is making it tick. And I think being in back in that figurative dirt is important and I'm trying to think of examples that are.
00:04:56
Speaker
I think back to what Jay Pearson said about how he kind of goes around the shop I think each day and spends a little bit of time with everybody and I think if you don't do that I mean obviously if you're traveling or something no big deal you skip it a day but like I think it's important at our level
00:05:10
Speaker
which is kind of an interesting business size because we're not solo printers anymore. We have a team of people. There's many things happening directly between employees that you're not like decisions and processes and back and forths and tasks that you don't know that you're not even involved in, which is a good thing, right?
00:05:30
Speaker
But we're not at that stage of, I don't know, I would guess somewhere between 10 and 20 employees where you have probably a proper shop floor foreman, foreman, foreman that would really kind of step into a role that we're going to continue to fill at this size. And I don't really want to grow, to be honest with you. I hate the word growth.
Growth Challenges and Equipment Failures
00:05:52
Speaker
I want to grow in many ways, but I'm not growing for the sense of greed or scale or size or whatever. We have a good business right now. I love it.
00:06:01
Speaker
Makes sense. I want to be better at what I do. Yeah, absolutely. I struggle with that, too. Absolutely. Well, you want everybody to be better at what they do. And it needs somebody like you and I to walk around the shop and be like, well, how's it going? How can we change this? Are you struggling with anything? Maybe I can bring an idea, crazy idea. Because you and I are good at crazy ideas. We can look at a problem where the person running that problem is stuck.
00:06:24
Speaker
And then you bring an outside perspective, you and I are very clever people. And we look at it and we go, well, have you ever tried this? And they're like, that might work. And then it works. And it helps progress the business forward. I mean, there are tasks and jobs in this shop that I've never done before. Like, I don't know how to work Adobe Premiere.
00:06:43
Speaker
But Aaron sets me on the computer and says, OK, play this. And I'm like, what do I do? Where do I push it? Space bar, John. Always push space bar. But things like that, I've never run the lapping machine myself. Yet I understand the concepts and I've done all the research. I talked to all the reps. I chose what to order, et cetera, et cetera. So I've got just enough knowledge to understand conversations and to help guide and fix problems.
00:07:11
Speaker
But I don't need to run them. I don't do heat treat. I've never done heat treat. But I understand it. It's stuff that everybody runs into. It's just normal stuff. I'm glad we talked about it. And I don't want to not acknowledge it. Obviously, there's complexities of discussing it in a public manner.
00:07:32
Speaker
Yeah. We have a great team here. I'm grateful for that. I like that. I think about some of the stuff we're trying to do. Fun fact, growth eats cash for breakfast. Amen. Oh my gosh. Our forklift broke yesterday. Do you have electric or propane?
00:07:49
Speaker
Oh, propane. Yeah. Yeah. Jared, I think knock on wood fixed
Forklift Safety and Training
00:07:54
Speaker
it. I literally got a new starter relay last night. And Jared, I think, was working on it when I closed the door for the podcast. I heard it. I think I heard it turn on. But when we bought that forklift, it was
00:08:07
Speaker
probably just me and Jared here and we found a Craigslist beater and you know literally yesterday we had two different freight truck, one dropping up, one picking up. We normally don't have two a day but we probably have between three and five a week for sure and we've got stuff coming back later this week like we can't not have a forklift period.
00:08:31
Speaker
Well, we think about that because we don't have one. We have to borrow the neighbors and go politely ask and beg to borrow their electric forklift. And it's becoming more and more frequent. Like we did yesterday, we did last week, I think we did the week before, but mostly it's like once every two months or three months or something, but it's getting more frequent. Can you unload it their side and then just pallet jacket over though?
00:08:56
Speaker
Oh, it doesn't matter, really. Oh, really? Yeah. I always try to be polite like that. Sure, yeah. But we don't have a lot. Well, Eric can drive it. So he just walks over and says, can I borrow this for two minutes and gets back. Ah, got it. What do you mean Eric can drive it? You are? Do you not know how to drive a forklift? I never have, no. Are you serious? Yeah, no, never tried. Well, I don't want to impress you or anything, but I'd like to let you know that I am a certified forklift instructor. So you can tease me.
00:09:25
Speaker
Well, unfortunately, I think you'd have to get your US citizenship first, which may actually be easier than going through the process of becoming a forklift instructor. No, it's like an OSHA, not an OSHA's OSHA rule.
00:09:36
Speaker
In the US, anybody who drives a forklift in a commercial setting has to be a certified forklift driver, which means they have to have training. And the training has to occur at your facility. And so you'd have to pay quite a large sum of money every time you want someone to be certified to come out to your facility to do the training, blah, blah, blah. And so I went and took a two-day class to become the instructor so that I can go through the proper thing. Look, forklifts, we joke about this, obviously, but forklifts are
00:10:04
Speaker
are real pieces of equipment that can cause damage to property and to people. So it's not a funny thing at all. We do take it seriously. Nevertheless, it's frustrating because I suspect that that's probably a
00:10:17
Speaker
relatively unregulated
Visit to OSG and End Mills Insights
00:10:19
Speaker
or unenforced thing at the smaller shop level. Accidents don't discriminate in terms of the size of people. Backing them up, looking at where your forks are, how you unload a truck, how you put a load on it, it actually is really important. Yeah. Every time we're unloading the lapping machine,
00:10:41
Speaker
You have this big, many thousand pound machine up in the air on a forklift. I'm like, don't drop it. Yeah. The one thing I liked about the forklift class was they kind of cut to the chase and certain parts of it, certain parts were dry, but certain parts are like, look, instead of trying to tell you, um, these things are dangerous. We're going to show you 20 different fatality or injury videos.
00:11:04
Speaker
And I think the one element of me is morbidly fascinated with seeing those things happen. That sounds sick. But it's like rubbernecking. You can't drive by a traffic accident and not look. And obviously, these are very sad things. But they did happen, so you can learn from them. And you watch a couple of those, and then you all of a sudden, after the second or third one, you realize,
00:11:26
Speaker
There's nothing cool or funny about this whatsoever. This is real. These aren't people that were mean. They weren't trying to do donuts in a parking lot with these forklifts. They were sometimes the innocent bystander. And it actually is a good tool to show training people here. Look, guys, of course you can have a little laugh, like, OK, forklift safety. But look, let's watch some real accents. A lot of us have kids, families, all that serious.
00:11:54
Speaker
Well, and when, when you're just driving a forklift like normal or just walking by like normal, like, like you're not goofing off, you're not doing donuts, you're just, everything's normal and there's an accident, you know, or you forget something or you don't see that thing or you crash or you drop something or somebody walks in the way, like, holy cow, that's terrifying. Same for machine tools. I mean, sticking your hand into a lathe is not a great idea. Fun fact, I hate lathes.
00:12:20
Speaker
Well, no, but your legs have it. I mean, your door is an interlock on, right? I mean, it's sure. Yeah, but still like it's that, you know, laid mentality, you know, manual laid three jaw chuck kind of thing. Like this is not a toy. Don't have sleeves or jewelry or whatever. Right. Yeah. And then like first day here, Angelo showed us all this video that his old boss used to show him of a factory in China. It's a like a punching press die thing with the people going up and down.
00:12:49
Speaker
The people are, they have to duck every time to be able to put the workpiece in. Otherwise they would be switched and they're just doing that like, like every three seconds. And I'm like, what? We were joking. I may have seen the same video because I jokingly called it the Chinese transfer press because literally these people are in like a progressive die inside the die, moving the part between like draw stations in like they're actually, when the, when the die set closes, they are inside the thing.
00:13:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's that's crazy. Yeah, it's ridiculous so Worker safety very important fun stuff. What were so what's up with OSG and military OSG just because I needed to buy three three eights inch 60 thou rad and mills because I ran out of my lakeshore ones and I needed them for like right now and
00:13:42
Speaker
So I called my tooling rep, which is five blocks down the street and they're like, well, they're in stock at OSG. I can either have them for you tomorrow morning or you can just go get them. That's
Machining Process and Runout Values
00:13:52
Speaker
cool. It's like 35 minutes away. So I'm like, fine, I need them. Otherwise we're not making parts today. So I'm just going to go get them.
00:13:58
Speaker
And so I show up, I knock on the front door of the huge facility and it was like nothing works. And then there was like a video intercom buzzer and the receptionist was like, yes, how can I help you? I'm like, you're here to pick up some end bells. Go around back.
00:14:13
Speaker
So I just walked all the way around the outside of the building and then open up into this. Frighten receiving his round back. Oh, I know I just need three. Yeah, exactly. So I felt like it's that mentality of I felt like a nobody walking into this big warehouse by three little end mills. But I go inside and the guy looks at, you know, I signed in and looks at the grips of my knife. He's like, Oh, you make knives. Tell me, tell me. And, uh,
00:14:36
Speaker
Surprisingly, the one time I wasn't carrying one of our own knives, I was carrying a different knife, so I couldn't show them, like, this is what we do. But, and then from the warehouse, you could look in the corner and I could see a machine shop and I was like, can I go, can I go see? Can I get a tour of this place? They're like, yeah, sure, no problem.
00:14:54
Speaker
I totally expected a hard no from that. Yeah. Because it's like a warehouse environment. It's like, you know, delivery drivers don't ask for a tour. There's forklift drive all over the place, and you are certified. Exactly. I'm not wearing a hard hat or steel toes. But anyway, yeah, so I was there for at least an hour. And they have five, six end mill grinding machines. They do a lot of regrinds, a lot of drills. They do some light production, but not very much.
00:15:23
Speaker
and it was sweet I was chatting with like three or four guys and it's amazing how I mean I don't want to be disrespectful and take time away from their day and have them be not productive but man these guys have find it fun to share what they love to do oh yeah sure what they're doing every day it's it's amazing and I have to tell myself to tell these people like like I don't want to waste your whole day here you know kick me out whenever
00:15:50
Speaker
Please, don't be afraid to. They're like, no, we're good. We're good. I want to show you this. Come check this out. It's so awesome. And I learned a hugely interesting fact because I've been so fascinated with end mill run out. Yes. And like, you know, like a regular end mill, that's like a shank and then a reduced shank and then a tip like eighth inch shank, one 16th inch cutting flutes, right? Yep. And there's the taper. Yep. So.
00:16:17
Speaker
I don't know if this is industry standard, but I think for the most part, the taper and the small shank is done on a separate machine first as a roughing operation. And then the tool comes out and gets put into another machine and then you grind the flutes on, which is why the run out of the shank, taper, and flutes can be all different values. Yeah. We saw that at Melterra though, when we toured. I wouldn't pay attention then I guess. Although in fairness, I did not.
00:16:46
Speaker
I did not know what you just said in the sense that like what you're saying is that you certainly shouldn't even worry about measuring the, on a tapered reduced shank, you shouldn't even worry about measuring the shank or the taper for run out. It really only is the flutes that then counts. Yes. And I've always been under the assumption. I was like, well, when you're grinding the flutes, you just grind the taper at the same time. Yeah. The taper should match the flutes, but it doesn't.
Tool Holder Balance Importance
00:17:11
Speaker
Yes, that's interesting. They don't leave a couple foul to do a skim pass such that it is then.
00:17:16
Speaker
because I mean, I don't know. I don't really know what I'm talking about in terms of the true balance specs, but balance, you know, any imbalance contributes to problematic things, harmonics run out, so forth. So if the shank, if the taper is out by a very small amount, when you're turning the tool at 40,000 RPMs, I suspect that affects the balance. I mean, less so right at the core center of the rotating.
00:17:44
Speaker
more so on a holder near the outside. But yeah, yeah, that's fascinating.
00:17:51
Speaker
The guy from Big Kaiser, Jack Burley, that I've gotten to know who invited me on that trip to Europe a couple weeks ago. He's on the, I don't even know, the committee for the ISO spec for holders in the US or whatever. So they helped come to him up with the, so what used to be G, I think G2.5, like you see that on the Mari tool site, balanced to G2.5, 15K RPMs. He's the one that comes up with that standard on this committee. And I think they just re,
00:18:19
Speaker
the standard and he starts explaining to me all the things that matter and don't matter and how it speaks to different conditions and what is silly and what's not silly and I mean the technical language. I want to rehab that conversation where I can actually take some notes and think about it because I just was immediately.
00:18:36
Speaker
blown away at how fascinating it was. And he was kind of, there were certain situations where he was saying balance doesn't even matter. Like it's, it's irrelevant or it's overrated or people think about it in the wrong way. And then there's other situations where it's massively important. I should see if he's got some time to do that. Cause that was a really cool subject. Film it.
00:18:56
Speaker
Yeah, I should. Yeah, I'll figure something out. Just film them talking about it for 25 minutes. I'd watch that. Right. Maybe I'll put together a trip to Chicago and figure that
Visit to Milterra and Machine Purchases
00:19:06
Speaker
out then. Because they have a cool demo facility there anyways. Anyway, OK. Cool. Sorry.
00:19:13
Speaker
Cool. How does one buy three end bills from OSG Toronto? Did you bring a check? Did you have a PO for your distributor? My distributor sent the PO there automatically, so he said it'll be there waiting for you. By the time I got there, there was just three end bills sitting there with my name on them. They were already calling for them? Yep. It was probably a couple hours after I called before I ended up there. Oh my God. Sorry, you just reminded me of something.
00:19:41
Speaker
We have to go back up to Cleveland Clinic in a few weeks or a week. I gotta do this. You can do will call at McMaster car. Oh, Yvonne's gonna love this. Hey, sweetie. I'm just gonna order something random and go to pick it. Cause you can apparently pick it up at the like side door of McMaster. I've never done this. Yeah, you'll have to do that. Okay. That's awesome. Sweet. Okay. So how was a complete true path military?
00:20:09
Speaker
Right, so yesterday, yesterday, two days ago, two days ago. Yesterday was Monday, Monday. When did you go to OSG? Last week. Okay. Yeah, anyway, the other day, I've been chatting with Mike Blackburn, the CEO of Milterra, for weeks now.
00:20:33
Speaker
about all kinds of stuff, you know, business, shop space, machines, camp leet, et cetera, et cetera. And it's been great. We've had amazing conversations via email about all this. And then they're currently moving from their currently like 10,000 square foot shop to a 30,000 square foot facility that they just closed on, which is beautiful. So Angela and I got to go up and see that and get the tour of that place.
00:21:00
Speaker
oddly a somewhat small manufacturing space and an infinite amount of offices. Oh, really? He's like, this, this wasn't my preferred choice. Um, but it'll do for now until we can bust out the wall and make a bigger, you know, extend the manufacturing space. Um, cause there's some land there that they can just expand. Um, but he's like, this is the forever building. And when it came up, I bought it within hours.
00:21:27
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. He said he's been looking for years for a place like this and it came up and he's like, yep, I want it. I want to go see it. And then I'll sign for it right now. So yeah, it's cool. It was an existing manufacturing facility or warehouse and they got it. Holy cow. Yep. Been through a couple of big household names of places, been vacant for two years. He said, just didn't, they didn't know what they wanted to do with it.
00:21:51
Speaker
some pharmaceutical company wanted to make it all farm spec and they ended up costing way more than they wanted. So they just didn't do anything with it and then sold it to Mike. Anyway, yeah, so the kicker is he's got these two older
00:22:09
Speaker
U-MOC machines, E-U-M-A-C-H, which is a Taiwanese brand that I'd never heard of and I can hardly find any information about on the internet, that he picked up and they used for a couple years and then little issues developed with them and they tried to fix it and then they moved buildings and they just never got plugged in again. So he's like, would you have any interest in these two machines? They're like VF2s.
Considering Older Machine Purchases
00:22:32
Speaker
Yeah, these are the ones with the old Heidenhain controller. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I remember when you and I went, we glanced at them, but I didn't look very closely at them. But anyway, so we went there to look at the two machines and they've got little issues. Like this one has this spindle sensor alarm when you try to change tools so it just doesn't unrelease the tool. Otherwise it should work. And then the other machine,
00:22:57
Speaker
The spindle VFD blew up because somebody put too much voltage to it or something. So they put a new VFD on it, wired it up, but now it doesn't work. Like something's parameter setting something, I don't know. But those are kind of the issues with the two machines and the price is definitely right for them. And instead of building a CNC router, like I was planning on dumping a whole bunch of money and time into doing, I'm like, I should just buy these two. You were going to build a router?
00:23:22
Speaker
Yeah, no, you're not. We can talk about, we can talk about that. It's going to be amazing. No, absolutely not. I need a router with a tool changer. I will not accept this. There are a bajillion companies that build. Yeah, but they're expensive. Wine rack. Oh my God. You have no idea how to value your time.
00:23:38
Speaker
Yeah, I know exactly. Holy cow. So stop and you're going to still and you're going to have to use current spindles to make parts for the new. No, absolutely not. Unless you or think about how much it would cost if you job shopped out all the parts you needed. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Well, it was going to be a CNC router parts kit with clear paths and tool changing spindle.
00:24:07
Speaker
Okay. Most of which bolts together. I'm a little bit more okay with that, but still not really. Oh no, I wasn't going to build one from scratch. Okay. Okay. Good. I was about to reach the screen. Yeah, but still that would have been 10,000 plus, um, us for, for doing that. And it's a router at the end of the day. Right. Um, whereas now I can have basically two VF twos. They have 30,000 RPM HSK spindles and linear rails on all accesses.
00:24:35
Speaker
I love the idea that when you have a stable business, used equipment is a interesting way to grow because you can afford a downtime and you don't rely on it and there's good values. I really do believe in that, but who the heck is going to service these things, John, if you can't find info on them?
00:24:54
Speaker
Yeah, apparently, I mean, they have Siemens everything, drivers, motors, spindle, not motors, the axis drive with Siemens. Mike was saying that any kind of freelance service guy can figure it out.
00:25:10
Speaker
But as far as parts or spare parts, I don't know. Respectfully, if that's true, then he should figure it out. Because if it's that easy, I know that the military is growing and an awesome company is really cool, but anybody would sell them in working condition if it was just a matter of getting one or two. Or as is where is kind of thing.
00:25:34
Speaker
People sell stuff like that all the time too. But anyway, so I definitely have hesitation to getting them because I don't really need a project right now or a money bit of an unknown. However, for what we need them for, not for production, but for like foam, for plastic, for inlays, carbon fiber, like we need at least one of them.
00:25:58
Speaker
and we'd use it all, all, all the time. Are they identical machines? They are, yeah. So you could be a parts machine, and then we, right? Although the most value would be in having two working
Servicing Older Machines and Reliability Concerns
00:26:10
Speaker
machines. That can be the absolute, you know, beater, kick around, need to face off a piece of aluminum, need to do this, do that, and not take down our valuable mori time. Because we only have the one mill right now, and it's painful. Because when we have to do some side job that ends up taking half the day,
00:26:27
Speaker
that's four knives we didn't make or something like that.
00:26:31
Speaker
No, I wholeheartedly love the idea of another spindle. So these are three-axis verticals. They're 10,000 pound plus machines. They're real or whatever. VF2, 6,000 pounds. Give or take. Yeah. They're not bridge ports. They're not little routers. No, exactly. It's linear rails. But they're old and they're beat. I mean, if I were you, I would work out a deal where he gets those two.
00:27:00
Speaker
I'm just two examples come to mind. One is a friend here in Ohio who bought a brand name used working demo machine older from a household name. In fact, I may be looking at it behind you on the screen right now. Brand tool builder, CNC machine builder. Once it got into his shop, there's an alarm that cannot get taken off or removed. And it's going to be a probably three if not four figure service call
00:27:28
Speaker
to even before he's even started, even though it was working at the demo showroom of the brand name of the tool builder. That's frustrating. The second one is our kind of mutual acquaintance in California who just sold two or more Far East builder, Far East tool builder machines because service was just part service night was a nightmare and just didn't work for him anymore. And he got tired of it. And that's a person who throws a lot of money at
00:27:56
Speaker
at service who knows all the service techs on the side, he can get them to moonlight freelance, come over. He gives up on that and he fire sold them. I mean, cheapest could be, he's like, I want these things gone. I would have no problem with you getting those if they worked. So get them to fix them and fix them before you rig them. Fix them at his shop. Even if you have to work out a deal where you split the cost.
00:28:18
Speaker
Like say, look, let's, let's spend a thousand bucks on each machine. I'll split it with you or something. And if they don't get fixed, I walk away from it. You're out 500 bucks. Who cares? Right. But if they do get fixed, then you'll spend the money to rig them over. That's a good point. Other than taking the gamble of, of buying them and then
00:28:40
Speaker
Well, it's gonna cost, I don't know what it costs you, but I just paid a rigging bill for unloading. This was frustrating a little bit to me. Unloading our UMC and our TM3, the rigging bill just to unload them. Not the freight bill, the rigging bill was $5,100. What?
00:28:58
Speaker
Yeah, a little, a little tick about that. So you, I knew it would be something, but I didn't think about what it would be. Yeah. And you've got to have them, you got to have them lifted up there, put onto a flat bed, brought over to your new shop, unloaded. Right. And that's the other thing is we know, yeah, we don't, we can't put them here obviously. Um,
00:29:22
Speaker
Yeah, and he's moving shop too. He's like, I don't know when I close this shop down. Cause he's got the two shops, right? So the, you might machines are in the second shop and I think he's going to try to move everything within a few months. Yeah. Okay. That's fair. So there's, you know, there's a bit of timing, but yeah, I don't know. I don't know exactly what I'm going to end up doing here. Um, it's like if they work and if they're great, they'll be awesome. But if they don't, it could be a nightmare headache.
00:29:51
Speaker
problem child of some random park broke, and I can't find a replacement, and this is garbage now. Well, and even if they work, you're going to want to have a relationship with the service guy. So I would say find out who that person is, especially if it's allegedly easy to do. Get them in there, get them familiar with it, get their point of view on it, pay to get it finished. There is a dealer in southern Ontario that sells the current version of these machines. So I mean, there is a connection to the factory.
00:30:21
Speaker
The machine's allegedly like a 2002 era, both of them. It's pretty old. And they're twins. Yeah, it is pretty old. But it's, the other thing as I look at it, it goes like, it's 10 times more machine than a router is ever going to be. Arguably though, you just own all you need as a router. Yeah.
00:30:46
Speaker
You know, remember Jay Pearson, I don't worry about the fact that I have a TM3P because all it does is cut or whatever he has, the TM, and all it did was cut TM parts. Like you don't need a Kuma if it's just a little further. Which is why I'm not going to buy a VMC to do foam. Right. Not a new one anyway.
00:31:10
Speaker
I mean, if I can get both of these for slightly more than I'd put into a custom build router with everything I'd want on it, like more spindles, it's more power, it's more, I don't know, but not if it's a headache. I mean, it costs money even just to get the electricity to wire it up. Yeah, you're right, right.
00:31:32
Speaker
But it's interesting because if you got them working, they were delivered to your new shop. You've got a long, you're going to be at that new shop for a long time. Um, right. They could, they could make parts. I assume they're going to be decent. Um, I don't think they're ever going to make knives, but they're going to do work, you know, blank out parts or, um, you know, stuff for sure. Fall in layers, like there's work for them for sure. Yeah.
00:32:01
Speaker
So yeah. Yeah. Keep me posted. I'm curious. Yeah. Anyway, I had an awesome time at camp fleet military. We've got a full tour of the facility. Got to see a bunch of stuff that I didn't pay attention to last time you and I were there. Oh my gosh. You're right. That must be awesome to go back.
00:32:18
Speaker
Yeah, it was like round two. It's like, yeah, I've seen that. I've seen that. What is this? I didn't see that at all. Oh my gosh. Tell me about this. I have a lot of respect for what they've built for as a manufacturing company, as a software company, just as an entrepreneur. Like that's really impressive. Yeah. And they're clever and they're cutting edge and they're at the forefront.
00:32:40
Speaker
the things he was telling me is like, we're doing stuff that literally nobody else in the world is doing. Because we have developed the team and the strategies to do this stuff. Yeah. And it's like, whoa, that's amazing. You guys need to just go just capitalize on this. Yes, you're onto something is cool, right?
00:32:58
Speaker
Yeah, actually it's funny you mentioned that because literally yesterday our fifth axis vice arrived that I'd been waiting on
Excitement for 5-Axis Machine Projects
00:33:06
Speaker
it. Yeah, I saw the picture, the like last part of our kit that was was one of backorder just didn't ship with the first batch, which is fine because I was gone for that trip and then I've been catching up. So literally I'm going to hang this up.
00:33:17
Speaker
I'm on the call and then I have the part mostly programmed. So it is just one of the most exciting moments of my life. Like I actually get to go run our own five axis machine. I'm so excited for this. So is it positional or is it simultaneous?
00:33:35
Speaker
It's mostly, well, I have two parts that are, I have a Johnny five part that I think is ready to go. It's mostly positional. I have a couple of swarfs programmed in it that it would, would be a true five. Um, and I need to run that through true path from complete because the first time I programmed it, sure enough.
00:33:52
Speaker
the swarf would have tipped the bee. The bee is tipped up, so the platter would have hit the spindle housing or sheet metal, which is just funny because it's like we were joking yesterday. Ed's like, I don't have a... He's like, I'm not even scared of running this. None of us have made a chip on it. And we're like, yeah, we got this. And then if you saw that tour of that guy Theo in Germany, we're going to make his tool post.
00:34:17
Speaker
That's all positional. I'm not done programming it though, but it'll be a couple of setups so I could actually probably just start it now. I've got the first two ops are kind of done and easy. The third op is where most of the action happens. I think I'm going to make a, so you know fifth axis has the studs that you can use for the quick change. Yeah, exactly.
00:34:39
Speaker
the final up on that, I want to mount the tool post to a fixture, kind of like it will be mounted on the lathe, which will both let me lift the part up a little and it will represent the finished machining that's kind of like its institute, like it's like how it's going to be used. So I think what I'm going to do is just take a piece of aluminum
00:35:01
Speaker
put some rock locks underside it, mount it into our riser. And then I've got that natural work holding thing, which I can also use with my coordinate system. Should be good. That's so exciting. Yeah. You're five accessing. I know. I'm excited. I really am.
Machining Setup Challenges
00:35:19
Speaker
See ya. Sweets. What's going on today? Today is saga clip day. I've got this one diameter on the outside of the clip that is not making any sense.
00:35:31
Speaker
It is pissing me off, if you will. Is it critical? Yeah. It's plus or minus a thou if I'm generous. I'd like to be tighter, but it's like six thou out. Why is an OD a clip out?
00:35:48
Speaker
Uh, it has to mate with the tube of the clip to, to physically line up, like, oh, sorry. Okay. I see what you're saying now. Huh? Yeah. And it's, it's six or seven thou undersized. And I'm like, okay, the code is good. Three seven five. The tool offset is good. It doesn't move. It doesn't wear. It's we check it after every part, but why on earth is it cutting seven thou undersized? And it's a ball mill doing like a.
00:36:16
Speaker
2D contour wrap around the outside and I'm like, I can't figure this out. So either I fake it, which I don't like. Because then six months later you're like, why isn't this working? Oh, we were supposed to fake it. So I don't know. I might fake it just to make parts, but it doesn't make me happy.
00:36:38
Speaker
So anyway, today I got to figure that out. When I fake it, I put a calendar, like one month out, I put a calendar reminder and it's like, April 24th, we fake the cam in this file revisit, like, just as a trigger, because, you know, it's part of me commend you go make parts if you have to fake it, who cares, but then it's like, you want a sustainable workflow. Yep. And that bothers me. Why is that off that far?
00:37:04
Speaker
Can you cut a sample piece out? I'm thinking, is there a part deflection? I tried. I tried yesterday, but I destroyed the tool. Oh, sorry. That's fine. Yeah, it's not part deflection. I don't know. I'll have to look closer at it today. Just pay attention to it. Don't laugh. You're not miss measuring it, or you're not using a bad machined part to test that fit, right?
00:37:32
Speaker
Correct. I think I'm good, but I, I'm grasping at straws here. It's, it's, it's something, it has to be something. I mean, if it was a foul, I would be like, Oh deflection, whatever. But I mean, six thou is a mile. It's, it's a really big amount. I'm sorry. It's an OD. It's a circular, it's a turned feature, but you're using a ball end mill. Yeah. Cause I can't go all the way around. I can only go like, um, 270 degrees. Interesting. Huh.
00:38:02
Speaker
It's the part of the clip where we do the engraving that says like saga number 001. Um, so I have to mill like ball mill that feature.
00:38:13
Speaker
The crazy part is that diameter is 6 thou under, but the engraving looks fine. The engraving only goes like 3 thou deep. One of the things I try to do, it's easy to say, it's very difficult to process this or come up with ideas, but just break it down as little as possible. If possible, look at how much stock exists before
00:38:35
Speaker
you machine it, make sure that's correct. And then change, instead of just hacking it to get parts made, let's say you're removing 10,000 material, 20,000 material. Instead, just remove 3,000. Pause the machine and measure that and see where you're at. And kind of sneak up on it. I'll have to check, but I'm doing a fairly deep depth of cut, like 100,000 or maybe more, I'm not sure. And then a light step over.
00:39:04
Speaker
5,000, 10,000, something like that. And just pass by pass by pass, stepping to the right. But I will definitely have to check the, what it's actually doing, what it's cutting. You know, speeds and feeds and everything too. Okay. Yeah, I'll do that today.
00:39:21
Speaker
But that's easy because then you can even save, you're not even really in the points just classic lathe stuff if you want to turn one inch down to half inch and it's messing up will turn one inch down to 950 and measure, did you get to 950. If not, why not,
Resolving Precision Issues in Machining
00:39:33
Speaker
you're right. Okay, yeah, I'll do that. And I'll do it off by off. It's really weird.
00:39:37
Speaker
It's such a complicated part because the sub spindle is in, it's grabbing, everything is synced. You know, the two spindles are now synced and rotates. Sorry, you're making me not feel well right now. You're making me very dizzy. You're making you anxious. The lathe is very tied up, very tense, you know, confused at this point. And if I pause the code and have to restart from that area,
00:40:05
Speaker
Sometimes I have to type in all the codes again. You're like, OK, sync the spindles. Otherwise, it's going to twist the part or release or break it or something. So it's fun. I like it, but it's complicated. I heard a machine building factoid that I don't think is, I can't give the full context of it, because I don't think it was, quote unquote, public, but had to do with this idea of when you're doing something like you just said, where you've got a master coming into a sub or whatever.
00:40:34
Speaker
and you want to keep things really accurate, they intentionally have a way of pre-loading the two against each other to soak up any potential miniscule amount of slop or backlash. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. Pretty cool. Okay. Yeah, I can see that. Well, on this style of layout too, if you have a live center,
00:41:03
Speaker
where you're pressing up against the end of a long tube or something, you can measure the force. Say I want 40% force to push in. I mean, that's an example, a simple example of that. But yeah. This would be like turning your, instead of, so like if they're, I don't know, what is this? Is it a C-axis on the main spindle? Yeah, C1, C2. And C2 on the sub.
00:41:28
Speaker
So instead of having when C1 and C2 mesh up together to do simultaneous turning where both are driven axes, instead of having C1 and C2 both at 0, 0, you put C1 positive 0.001 degree and maybe you put C2 backwards or maybe 0. So it creates an actual tension between the two because
00:41:51
Speaker
Because if you go look at fundamentals of machine building, there has to be some potential for sloper or whatever. And it helps actually create a better result with that calculated preload, which is kind of cool. Hmm. Fun fact about sinking the two spindles. Um, maybe this is only in the manual jog mode. I don't know if it's happening while machining, but
00:42:12
Speaker
I sink the two spindles and I put it in manual jog and I'm rotating c1 where c2 is the slave so the sub will always follow the main there is a slight delay between the two main will move and then oh my god sub will move ever so slightly afterwards and I can see that's horrifying if if you know
00:42:33
Speaker
If some scientist comes in and like measured the actual delay in milliseconds, like it's measurable. Oh yeah. It's not much, but it's, I could see it. Yeah. I can see it. So you imagine a rigid part and they're twisted up. Like, I don't know what's going on. You could build wrought iron fences or ornamental iron twist. Just twist. Just, just see ones to see one zero C two. So let's turn that thing.
00:42:57
Speaker
Yep. I made a clip like that, a Norseman clip like that, or a saga clip last summer. I think I remember seeing that. Yeah. It twists it. No problem, huh? Yeah. It was an accidental home to see axis at the wrong time. And I just twisted it. It's funny. Cool. Yeah. Awesome. I should get to work. Me too. We have parts to make. Good. Awesome. Cool. I will see you next Wednesday. Sounds great, bud. Have a great day. You too. Take care.
00:43:52
Speaker
Okay, bye.