Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Auto Grinding & Horizontal Machining
230 Plays5 years ago
Grimsmo has made some glorious progress on the kern. They have finalized an auto grinding routine for Rask blades. While Saunders' and their team have been toying with the idea of buying a Horizontal machining center.
Saunders' also has some awesome upgrades he is adding to Proven Cut.
References:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Purpose
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 191. My name is John Grimsmough. And my name is John Saunders and I run Saunders Machine Works. John runs Grimsmough Knives and we talk as friends, but I'm not here to be your friend. If you've got a group or a mentorship where they just say nice things, then that's not, it's just a friendship then. And I value your friendship, but I think we're here to try to help each other where we can and also call each other out on things, right? Sometimes, yeah.
Assertiveness in Business
00:00:29
Speaker
Not for the sake of creating strife, but darn it, because sometimes some of the best things that have come out of life have been when people who you know, like, or even love will say, hey,
00:00:40
Speaker
No, yes. I'm trying to develop that skill, too, because I'm a softy pushover in my whole life. I'm mostly okay with that, but in business, there are times when you've got to put your foot down in life and things like that. I'm flexing that muscle more and more, and it's good.
00:01:00
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think as unrequested feedback, I don't think you're, I don't think it's feel like that's like a problem or a shortcut. Right. I mean, I guess you're number one, you're conscious of it. That's like the first thing as a business owner, entrepreneur is at least admitting like the step one. Exactly. Like I'm, I'm very aware of who I am and I'm always stuck in my head and I'm mostly okay with that, but you know, just being aware of it. Um, but yeah, cool. How you been?
Grinding Wheel Dressing Techniques
00:01:27
Speaker
been good, been extremely busy, having a lot of fun. Remember last week I talked to you about the, so I made that ER16 palette, turned out perfect. Yes. I added my dressing stick, which is a stick of, it looks like a quarter inch end mill blank. It's like a quarter inch, it looks like carbide, feels like carbide, but it's actually tantalum. It's just like super heavy,
00:01:51
Speaker
tantalum metal that is used for dressing the grinding wheel. So you spin the grinding wheel, you rub it up against it up and down a bunch of times and it equally removes the tantalum and the grinding wheel. It doesn't look like a traditional dressing stick that has like a sandpaper texture.
00:02:09
Speaker
Nope. It's just smooth. Yeah, it's an end mill. It's like a blank piece. It looks and feels like carbide. It's weird. And it grinds away as well as the wheel grinds away.
00:02:22
Speaker
So you got to balance how much you're doing. And the first few times, I eyeballed it and just kind of jogged the machine up and down against it, and it worked fine. But on Monday, two days ago, I spent like six hours in the evening. I was here from 6 till midnight, and I just was the total surgeon. And I nailed my auto dressing.
00:02:43
Speaker
probing routine. So the pallet comes in with the tantalum stick. The probe comes in, touches the top of the thing, touches the top of the ER16 nut so that it knows if I grind it down to nothing, I'm not grinding into the collet nut. Yes. And it'll alarm out at that point, so that's cool. As of right now, I've got 0.63 inches of stick out. And then it'll call the tool in, it'll touch off, like measure the diameter of the tool, come in, it'll know, I figured out the variable that knows the diameter of the
00:03:13
Speaker
of the tool. I can use that for math. And then it goes down to the tantalum stick. It rotates the B at negative 90. And then so the stick is sticking straight at the side of the grinding wheel. And then it offsets based on the radius. And then it starts dressing 2,000, 1,000, 1,000, 3,000, 2,000, 1,000, 1,000, and then 0. And that's what they told me to do on the phone. And then
CNC Machine Troubleshooting
00:03:39
Speaker
it comes back. And then it goes to the laser probe. And it measures the diameter again. And we're done.
00:03:42
Speaker
And it takes off exactly 4.2 thou of diameter on every dress. Wow. And I don't know if that's too much or too little, but I don't want to do too little. I don't know. I mean, does it dress? Are you dressed in every knife?
00:04:02
Speaker
I don't know yet. I haven't made that many blades. I know I've, when you make a mistake and you load up the wheel too much and you grind away too much material, or it's supposed to be four tenths of stock, but it's like 2,000 stock, you burn up the wheel and you have metal bits stuck to the wheel, and that has to be dressed off. So I've done that a couple times. I actually cracked a wheel. I noticed it by looking at it. I'm like, there are two cracks in this thing. OK, let me replace it.
00:04:29
Speaker
Wow. We got to get you a, like a Linda wheel site. I know it's not the Linda wheel anymore, but I refuse to let go of that name. Are the wheels or the, what's that a stick made out of? Tantalum. Is that on the periodic table? Oh, I don't know. Maybe. Digging back through. I can't, the chemistry class, I didn't take in high school. Maybe I did. Um, weird. Yeah. How much are, are they expensive or not? Like no big deal.
00:04:58
Speaker
The wheels are like 60 bucks each, so it's really not that bad. A Linda wheel was like 300 and six weeks of lead time. These things are in stock. And the tantalum stick is cheap. I don't know, 30 bucks, 40 bucks. That's awesome. And I did some math. I figured I can get 21 dresses out of a disc.
00:05:19
Speaker
before it's one inch now before it's like 0.9 inches. And I figured maybe that's my kind of minimum. So 21 dresses, not too bad. And then put a new one in. It's easy. That's awesome.
Precision Machining Techniques
00:05:33
Speaker
Yeah. So it's like done. It's done done. So that 2D contour has to be programmed with either wear or cut or comp.
00:05:40
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm programming it one pass with cutter comp, and then using a pattern operation to step it outwards so that every single pass has cutter comp. Otherwise, cutter comp or roughing passes normally starts like not cutter comp, and then just the finish pass is cutter comp. Got it. Interesting. That's awesome. It works.
00:06:05
Speaker
It's like I'm looking at my checklist of tasks and trying to finish tasks. This dressing routine is now done. I just call it up whenever I need it, and it's done. And it auto compensates for the wear of the tantalum stick and for the wear of the grinding wheel. And when either one hits its minimum, it just goes, nope, not doing it.
00:06:25
Speaker
Awesome. Yeah. What? When you load and is it, am I using the right terms here, the Aroa pellet into the Kern? Do you expect measurable repeatability differences? Yeah. Really? It's fine. I have measured a couple of times and it's like less than a 10th. Oh, so yeah, nothing. I mean, anything can add up obviously on the stack, but boy.
00:06:55
Speaker
Okay, that's awesome. Yeah. I had a weird thing on Friday night. It's like Friday night, I want to go home, but I also want to finish what I'm doing, working on the current. It's doing a pallet change and I noticed that there were some chips on the chuck, like on the table.
00:07:11
Speaker
And I was like, and the row is like moving a pallet. And I'm like, I wonder if the current will let me open the door and let me blow those chips off and then close the door and keep going. I was surprised. It let me click the door button and open the door. And I blew off the chips. And then I closed the door. And then the machine's like, I don't know what to do now.
00:07:28
Speaker
And there's this auto door between the two machines that air cylinder opens and closes. And it didn't know how to close that. So I got stuck. And I restarted the machine and couldn't figure it out, couldn't figure it out. I'm like, I'm done for the night. So I emailed my current guys. And throughout the weekend, they helped me figure out. Basically, there's this
00:07:54
Speaker
what do they call it? The permissive button. It's got two hands on it that are like touching. Um, it lets you do stuff while the doors are open, but you got to hold it the whole time. So I had to hold that button during a complete boot up and like startup cycle. And then it was fine. And then the door just closed and I was like,
Material Exploration for Fixturing
00:08:13
Speaker
yes, okay. I got it. This is triggering back memories of the, uh, Robo drill.
00:08:19
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, ironically also had a pneumatic door between the machine and the robot, but just set things where you'd have a stop on the robot cell that you couldn't
00:08:31
Speaker
clear, but you couldn't get in the menu to try to clear it because of something else, and then it's hidden between four FANUC soft menu expands. Yeah. At some point, you're just like, I don't know what to do right now. I went through the manual. I read the manual and tried to figure it out, and I'm like, I just want to close that door, but there's no way to close that door. What's like, can I just tell the machine that there's no one else in the shop? No one's going to lose a limb. Start shutting doors. Come on. Let's go.
00:08:59
Speaker
That's cool. Awesome. Have you been grinding as well or just working on the exact process still working out? Okay. Yeah. I, I was burning up wheels because, uh, well,
00:09:16
Speaker
I'm glad that I got the grinding routine finalized so that if I do burn up another wheel, I just hit cycle start and it grinds the wheel down. That's been a necessary part of my long-term goal. I haven't actually ground a blade since two days ago, but I think the coat's all there and ready to go. I've noticed
00:09:36
Speaker
When you grind the first side of the blade, it's fully supported on the backside because there's no second bevel. It's a solid piece of blade. So I can grind the first side perfectly. But when I get to the second side and I start end milling away, I've noticed the blade is actually flopping over as the cutting pressures are moving it from the end mill.
00:09:57
Speaker
before the grinding wheel and I measured like a fourth out deviation of flex of this blade. So next step is to make a support, a Delrin support that goes underneath.
00:10:09
Speaker
So that's, I don't know what the fixture looks like, except could you do a, either monolithic or inserted surfaced steel and the profile is not going to change. Right. So yeah. And especially the way I'm doing it with probing and cutter comp and everything that geometric like tolerance profile should be bang on every time forever. That's kind of the goal. So yes, I could machine a super nice like fitted thing, but I think starting with dollar and it's probably a good idea. Um, it should be strong enough and hot enough and it should just work.
00:10:39
Speaker
How are you going to secure the Delrin to the... I'm going to bolt it down under the blade. It's like countersink basically. I didn't know there's that much room. It's pretty thin. It's going to be pretty thin. I've got like 50 thou, but if I countersink the screws deep into the fixture, then it should have clearance. So yeah, I'm playing with that right now. Can you just super glue it? I mean, yeah. Because once the knife's on there, it's kind of self-supported, right?
00:11:09
Speaker
True. It wouldn't be a bad idea for testing anyway. I wouldn't do it long term because I feel like it's super glue. I would leave. But either way, whether I bolt it or super glue it, I want to 3D contour the top to be perfect.
00:11:26
Speaker
That's the thing about Delrin is you can just put it on there and then kind of cookie cutter like machine away the excess Delrin. Yeah, exactly. Big deal. Having a bolt on solution, I'll make like five blanks or whatever and try the first one. Digging back in my memory to my car days, there's this thing called plastic gauge. Have you ever heard of that?
00:11:45
Speaker
I think I know where you're going. Yeah, and it's like, I don't know how thick it is, 5 thou, 10 thou diameter strip of plastic or wax or whatever it is. Little tiny, looks like 3D printer filament, but tiny. They use it when building an engine and you put your main bearings together and you put this little strip in there and you crank it down and you take it off and you measure how much the thing squished. That'll tell you how much bearing clearance you have, 1 thou or 5 thou.
Machining Thin Fixture Plates
00:12:10
Speaker
whatever. So I went to the store and I bought some. It's cheap. It's like five bucks for a thing. And I'm going to machine the Delrin and then I'm going to put it in and slap the blade on top, torque it down and see how much clearance I have. And then I can real world, not like theoretical clearances, but I can know like, okay, that's one thou. Let me bump it up by nine tenths and it should be like perfect.
00:12:31
Speaker
I did the poor man's version of that when we were threading on our sub spindle on the Haas, which you cannot, I mean, you can't see the sub spindle because it's all the way, the turret and the B axis are all the way kind of to the right. Oh, weird. I don't think that's a, that's not really a critique. It's just a fact.
00:12:48
Speaker
But it's just nerve-wracking because, you know, threading cycles are a little bit different with regard to things like feed hold. It just happens so quick and I think it'll work, but sometimes I feel like it may finish a cycle or a travel pass. Regardless, it's a moot point because we use the
00:13:07
Speaker
face of the subspindle collet is Z zero. So I can just look at the code and see that all my Z values are positive. And so it's kind of like, unless you did something really screwy, like a tool offset wrong, you know, that the, uh, can cycle is not going to push the tool into the Chuck face, but, um,
00:13:23
Speaker
I'll tell you what I did the first time was I put like seven pieces of painter's tape on the chuck. Then I wrote on them so that I could see if the tool got ... I mean it was like 40 thou off the chuck face. If it tool ripped off the painter's tape, I would get a heads up warning on RFC really close.
00:13:48
Speaker
And sure enough, painter's tape doesn't hold up so well to cool it, so it kind of peeled off. I think it peeled off that caught the tool. But yeah, I did peel off a couple layers of the tape, but the fact that others remained was a good confidence booster. Right. Yeah. And sometimes you just need those reality checks of like, give me the, you know, theory is fine, measurements are fine, but give me the practical real world, like prove to me that this is working kind of thing.
00:14:14
Speaker
No, actually, so where you were going with the auto parts thing is not. And so where I thought you were going, there's all these different things that exist, none of which I feel like are kind of quote unquote mainstream. And somebody, you know, talking about good ideas could kind of revolutionize it. So there's like, is it bismuth? Not bismuth.
00:14:33
Speaker
What's that? It must be the metal. Yeah. Is it Bismuth? I think so. You can literally buy it on McMaster. It's a super low, like 170 degree melting point metal that can be used to pour into self fixture or even just dampen out vibrations or add support.
00:14:49
Speaker
and you can just melt it out. They make plastic beads that do the same thing. There's things like great stuff, insulation foam that we've used before. It expands. For fixturing. Absolutely. Oh yeah. What about that? I mean, pain in the butt, but sometimes you don't care about the pain in the butt part because we had this huge
00:15:07
Speaker
thing and we just wanted to fill a void and we couldn't think of a way to do it that would basically dampen out movement. And so great stuff. I was like, remember from working construction, but like repair stuff in high school that that's a, that stuff expands like crazy. Well, we kind of like goof around with it and see how much we could get to expand. And I was like, well, that should work. Um, fun fact, if you do that, you need to leave like relatively large event holes so that the excess can go somewhere. Otherwise it will literally just like blow your fixture out. Whoa.
00:15:35
Speaker
What else? 3D printing fails here because from my experience with any reasonable accessible quality and capable printer, you just can't print with nominal accuracy close enough to do what you and I are trying to do here, which is to machine a certain thousandth thick tapered shim that can then just go in there and serve that role.
00:16:00
Speaker
And then there's like some fancier glues, like curing glues and ultraviolet glues that could do the same thing, which again, there's, we certainly would use it, this idea of like, Hey, a quick new, we use super glue. I'm using hot glue this morning. I use super glue yesterday. Like I love that stuff. Yeah.
00:16:17
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, four years ago when I made the first Rask fixture, I bought this two-part plastic stuff, whatever, from Smooth On that I casted into the Rask fixture to support the second side bevel. So I had this black link insert.
00:16:35
Speaker
Except I don't think I could hold good enough tolerances on the first side bevel to be perfectly matched on the second side bevel. If you have too much clearance, then the blade's still vibrating. If you have not enough clearance, then your blade's moving while you're bolting it down, neither of which are good. On the current, I'm trying to go double down and try to make it perfect every single time.
00:16:57
Speaker
Dude, this is what you do. Skip the Delrin. The Delrin is just a proof of concept where you're trying to show that this problem goes away. Just bolt the second side on so you have that void that you need to stabilize. Fill it with hot glue. Yeah. 100% guarantee you that that will arrest the party. It will stop it from deflecting or moving. You don't need-
00:17:19
Speaker
hot glue once and use that every single time or hot glue every time. No, just one. It would have to be for every blade. So it's not a production. It could be a production workflow, but it shouldn't be. The point is you have, I assume you have access to the void, right? Can you pour glue into it? Yeah, you're right. That's just potting the part in there. It'll come. Not a horrible idea.
00:17:43
Speaker
and it's securely fixturing for every single one, regardless of differences, and it just holds it in place. Well, I think you should do a machined profile later. The current is certainly capable of doing that, and I think that would work. But what you're trying to do now is just make sure that solves the problem before you go bananas with a surface. That's a really good point.
00:18:05
Speaker
That's like the quickest way to prove a theory and saying, I think that support will make all the difference, so let me do that.
00:18:14
Speaker
I wonder the, uh, durometer of hot glue, you know, the hardness. So you can squish it and compress it more than Delrin. So that's if it's weak, it's a less ideal choice than that. However, it will also fill the void as a potting agent, as a port thing, which I think makes it superior. And the pressures that you're putting here, uh, this will work. Interesting.
00:18:39
Speaker
Yeah, because I'm doing finished passes with the end mill anyway. It'll be way better than unsupported. There's actually this weird ghosting line in the bevel where you can tell it's bending. It's deflecting. Yeah.
00:18:52
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, if you wanted to go crazy, you could try to put a intentionally undersized piece of Dell, because here's the problem with Delrin is it's either undersized, which means it's not going to potentially work. It's perfectly sized, which is not possible, or it's oversized, which means it's actually flexing the blade out.
00:19:09
Speaker
Yeah, you're right extreme. But what you could do is make one that's massively undersized like only fills up 80% of the void and then pot that in there. Because then you have less hot glue to compress but look hot glue hot glue. It's not going to be an issue. Hot glue alone will work. It's simple. It proves it out. And frankly, you can use it. You could make 50 knives that way before you worry about going to the next step.
00:19:35
Speaker
No, I like that combined idea to build a Delrin fixture with like some grooves in it or something and like 2000 clearance and then just slap hot glue, just a little bit of hot glue on there every time. Slap a blade on there, you're done. Well, if you do that, don't do it on a Delrin 3D printer because you'll actually benefit from the texture of the 3D print to kind of give the glue more to bite into. And it's cheap and you could just make them. Great idea. Just make 50 of them on the printer. Yeah, exactly.
00:20:04
Speaker
Great ideas. Okay. I'm going to have to play with that. Good. Yeah. I like that. Literally like my anxiety in the morning is like, well, do I unplug the hot glue gun to save some electricity? Cause it's going to just sit there for three hours. So I need it again. But when you need it, it takes two, it takes a long time. I remember Lockwood has the like legit like 18 volt lithium
00:20:27
Speaker
It could be like a torque wrench that could undo a car lug nut, but it's actually a hot glue gun. I don't think we're at that level yet. I just plug ours in, but hot glue guns are cheap. What you should spend some time on, I can look them up on Amazon. I think that's where we get them, is not all hot glue sticks are created equal.
00:20:47
Speaker
Okay. Now you'll be fine for the current task today. I would use anything from the craft store, but we did find some quote unquote harder, like better hot glue stuff. And again, it's not expensive. That's one of those things to me, a hot glue gun is a craft item. So you don't think of the industrial version of it. Like I didn't even know there was a super hot glue gun.
00:21:08
Speaker
Yeah. I'll try to see if I can pull it up here without being distracting on the call.
Horizontal vs Vertical Machining Centers
00:21:13
Speaker
Because the company that makes them, you go to their website and you're like, oh, wow. You have all these industrial applications for hot glue. Yeah. Surebonder, one word, sure, S-U-R-E-V-O-N-D-E-R. If you go to their website, all of a sudden you're like, oh, so this is not, we're not going to a quilting party anymore. Nice. I'll add it to the show notes.
00:21:38
Speaker
Super cool. Speaking of current, kind of a random segue, but I had a call with an acquaintance who is at that point of kind of classing up in a machine and you made the leap from what Tormach to Dura vertical, which Dura vertical in my opinion was the end of the road on best three axis machines at the time.
00:22:04
Speaker
He has, this guy has gone the Haas route, as we have and many have, and he's hitting limits of the Haas machine. And it's interesting because when you take that step up,
00:22:15
Speaker
You can't even imagine that you'll ever, like it's such a, I mean, when we went from the tag to the Tormach and then Tormach to the Haas, you keep thinking like, oh yeah, it's such a level up that it's like a whole new world. Right. But now the level up things are the weird thing. So it's like, okay, it's a bottleneck problem for our production because I don't have ATC door access while the machine's running. That's a legit problem.
00:22:39
Speaker
or chip control or chip evacuation or filtering systems or stuff that's not like, I guess as the business person, I'm quick to say these aren't criticisms of any brand or design. And again, there's criticisms of many machine tools if you want to get nitpicky, but it's more just like, look, this is the step up.
00:23:00
Speaker
Yeah, there's so many quality of life improvements, whether it's that or it's the ability for the code to look ahead more, or better contour accuracy or whatever.
00:23:14
Speaker
things like that. Or for me on the Kern now, I have 210 tools available. I don't think I've ever removed a tool because I just keep adding more. I probably only have 60 or 70 filled up so far, but I'm like, okay, I'm good. Just keep adding. And the palette changing too is like game changer. I want all of those things on the Maury too now. Yeah.
00:23:33
Speaker
We started looking at horizontals. We're not there yet. It was kind of a buzzkill because I was aware of a price point on some of them and the big boy machines.
00:23:47
Speaker
Basically, the price point is reasonable when it's like a two pallet horizontal, which works for some folks, not what we were looking for. When you step up to the proper pallet pool horizontal, oh my gosh, it's expensive. Yeah. Yeah. Is it almost like double the price of the machine? I mean, the initial numbers that we got tossed were like current level.
00:24:09
Speaker
Which I'm like, just not in the cards right now. I mean, it's when I'm literally like, I don't know how other people make these decisions. What I know is that we can make money with our setup now, including whether we just buy more of them, which has its own shortcomings, real estate, your shops, floor space, as well as just think the fact like, hey, we've got some really good high end, that big highs are boring head. It's not that's who I'm going to duplicate across every machine. True.
00:24:37
Speaker
man, I kind of figured out I want to I still want to figure that out. Like I see that path to growth of having the the horizontal and the tombstones. For I guess making fixture plates like the biggest ones. No, fixture plates are a vertical product for sure.
00:24:53
Speaker
Yeah, I was wondering about that, like holding such a big thing on the side, you could, but. Horizontal don't have the right travel profile for, I mean, you could do small plates on them, but it's really going to be for mod vices, some of the modified accessories we're making stabilizer bars. So here's the problem with shape Oco fixture plates is
00:25:11
Speaker
Shape a couple extra place need to be relatively inexpensive. So we have, I forget the size. I think we start with either three quarter or five eighths inch material and then it gets machined down some. So it ends up being something like a 0.6 inch, which is what, like 13 millimeters, but it's a huge play. Maybe it's, it's 300 millimeters or 20 or 30 inches square. So.
00:25:34
Speaker
Unlike our big boy fixture plates for other machines, which are thicker and a smaller profile, the aspect ratio relative to the thickness is such that we can get it pretty darn flat in an unconstrained state. And then once you bolt it down to your machine, the plate inherits the flatness of the machine table period, something we've been through and are pretty comfortable with that process. Probably the Shapeboco plates is
00:25:58
Speaker
they're much thinner relative to the length of the plate and there's no inherent table that you're bolting it down to. So we have to figure out ways to make them even flatter in an unconstrained state, which is
00:26:13
Speaker
Very difficult to do, for sure. One of the ways we're tackling that is basically making it up to the user, which is ... We don't have a tolerance yet published, but they're quote-unquote pretty flat, but it's something you care about where you want to do larger work and keep it flat. Keeping in mind that the alternative is a piece of MDF, which actually is decently flat.
00:26:37
Speaker
We have basically a stabilizer bar, so it's a machined bar that will act as a surrogate to help keep your suck it down, just a stabilizing brace that goes underneath the machine. Okay. Oh.
00:26:50
Speaker
There's basically no drawback to them except it's another thing you have to purchase. Sure, but it's like a machine upgrade, you know, rigidify your machine. For your traditional fixture plates, I'm assuming you don't expect the user to surface them on the machine. Absolutely not. Right, I figured. No, I don't. Nor am I aware of anyone that ever has.
00:27:12
Speaker
Because I mean, I could see somebody making that argument, like, well, let me bolt it down. Let me constrain it. Let me face it plainer to my machine. And then it's perfect. But if it's not necessary, then it's not necessary. Almost every plate we sell has a work envelope that's larger than the machine's travel. That's actually part of the point. Good point.
00:27:33
Speaker
The reason you go to a fixture plate is because you can throw, in our case, the mod vices or whatever you're using and put the clamping stuff outside of the work envelope. So you're not using machine all that area you paid for to get access to just for clamps. You couldn't face that.
00:27:49
Speaker
I mean, unless you put in a huge fly cutter. Yeah. What we have seen folks do, which totally makes sense, is if they put in a custom fixture on top of the fixture plate, they'll deck that in place and then it becomes by, you know, perfect regardless of what's happening with your machine, tram or head, not, et cetera. Right, right. Hmm. It's fun. Yeah.
00:28:14
Speaker
Yeah. It's weird. I didn't think I'd ever be like seriously thinking about a horizontal. One of the folks tried to push us back toward a five axis and it's interesting because it's so enticing, but I'm like, no, that's not like what we, the part family we have here. Um, we're close to having the conviction to say, no, this is, this is the task at hand. Um, but for now we've got that, uh, VF two YT coming, which is going to replace the robo drill. Um, which is great because we're kind of down a machine right now.
00:28:44
Speaker
Yeah. And you feel like you could use it. Yeah, we can definitely use it. Cool. When's that slated to arrive? Should be finished at the factory today. So probably every year, Monday, Tuesday. Cool. Yeah. It'll be good. That puts us in a really stable place. I've got to be a surgeon a little bit on
00:29:10
Speaker
There's a stress around buying more pallet racking because I don't want to buy too little. I don't want to buy too much. And then the finishing touches to get that stuff organized. But we're getting there. Did you ever think you'd be at the point where if somebody asks you how many CNC machines you have, you have to think about it? I'm going to hold a mirror up to that question. Oh, I know. For sure. And I think about that too. And I'm like, six? Yeah. Yeah, I've got six right now.
00:29:39
Speaker
But a couple of years ago, I was like, one. Ooh, I've got two. Yeah. And then you think the future is forever. I will know instantly everyone I have. But you get to the point, I don't even know how many you have. 10? I don't know. You count all the Tormax. Maybe don't count the Chebokos. I wanted to do a trivia contest on Instagram, except I don't know how to announce the winner. How many stepper or servo motors are on this? Oh, that's an awesome one. Parcel property. But there's no way to count them.
00:30:09
Speaker
Yeah. Hey, I feel like you name employees. I don't know who they are. So right back at you. Yeah, true. Yeah. How's everything going operationally over Grimsman knives?
Scaling Production and Equipment Challenges
00:30:21
Speaker
Excellent, smooth. We're at increasing pen production and we're feeling it, which is good. Awesome. The monthly numbers of production are increasing.
00:30:34
Speaker
we're doing certain things that are going to like, next month is going to be another, you know, 20, 30% production on pens or something. And it's like, whoa. And then knives are just going to explode in production.
00:30:49
Speaker
I'm so close to the rask on the Kern. I want to do it right. I'm not rushing. I'm taking my time. I'm being a surgeon. I'm doing it well. But I'm so close to that. And it's like we're all aware that that's going to stress the system because we're just adding so much more production. Everybody else has to work harder now.
00:31:11
Speaker
Oh, like on finishing and packaging? Of course. There's so much work past the palette, you know, past the machine, pumping out parts, prep work before that and post work afterwards.
00:31:23
Speaker
So yeah, we're all aware of it. We're planning. We bought a second heat treat oven. We bought a second tumbler the past month or two. We bought two Crest ultrasonic machines to upgrade from the Amazon $200 ones. Crests are like, I think the one is the 1,000. One was 1,800. And they're like, big mama.
00:31:43
Speaker
And holy cow, do they work so much better than the Amazon ones. Like the Amazon ones are loud and they work okay, but you can hear it across the shop buzzing and the Crest one is silent. It's awesome. And Amazon one, you put your finger in it when it's on and you're like, yeah, I can kind of feel it. And the Crest one, like three seconds, your finger is hurting.
00:32:02
Speaker
I was going to say, are you not supposed to put your hand in while it's running? Yeah, probably. And now we know why. I did that at a trade show once. And the guy was like, yeah, put your finger in there. And it's like, ow. That doesn't happen with ours. I can grab parts in there while they're. Oh, that's awesome. It's powerful. And the guys say it works so good. And we're playing with different liquids, like cleaner liquids that go in the ultrasonic.
00:32:28
Speaker
Simple Green seems to be the best. And it's like non-toxic. And there's nasty ones we've tried too, but we're like, we don't want to be there, touch that every day, and smell it, and all that. So Simple Green just works great. But yeah, we're slowly scaling up every aspect of the business to prep for world domination kind of things.
Upgrading Production Quality with Crest Models
00:32:49
Speaker
It's happening.
00:32:51
Speaker
What's awesome as your business evolves and grows is when you can get a tool like that where $200 for the Amazon one fine and then $1,800. $1,800 is still a lot of money, but relative to what it could do for you, no big deal.
00:33:08
Speaker
You're buying almost maybe, I'm not sure what the brand reputation is in the ultratonic world, but you're basically at the end of the road. For $800 bucks, we came up with sewing machines. Someone was talking about how you can get one of the absolute best industrial commercial grade, no holds bar sewing machines used for under two grand. That's crazy. That's like buying a current for 12 grand. It's like, oh yeah, they're no big deal. They're around, whatever.
00:33:36
Speaker
Yeah. Speaking of which, I like modern technology by fancy CNC machines. My wife loves old stuff. She's like an 1800s kind of girl. Like a Bridgeport girl? Yeah, I know. So she bought a Singer sewing machine from 1920s or something. And she's so excited because it's built so well. It's got a leather belt that we have to replace the belt and it should work fine. It's like foot pedal operated. And she's like, every time I use my modern day,
00:34:06
Speaker
I don't know what brand she's got, like a normal brand sewing machine. She's like, I don't like it anymore. I want to use this, this like Bridgeport, this old school, like beefy thing that, uh, yeah. That's cool. Awesome. What are you up to today? Today, uh,
00:34:25
Speaker
Finally, I'm reprogramming the Swiss to make our pivot screw so I can save a tool.
Swiss Machine Optimization
00:34:32
Speaker
So I'm going to 3D profile the chamfer on the torques with a ball mill. So I don't need to have a chamfer tool in the machine, because I'm like, the only thing I chamfer is the torques head. And I need a ball mill in there anyway, so let me just combine that. So I programmed it last night. I got to finalize it, post it today.
00:34:50
Speaker
And then what else am I doing? And then I've got a grinding wheel in the tornos that I'm grinding the face of these pivots and pivot screws down. And I'm not happy with the result yet. So I'm going to play with that today and kind of get that nailed. The last batch I made, I just gave a turned finish and it was really nice. And I gave it to Eric and he was relatively happy with it.
00:35:16
Speaker
I feel like you shouldn't have to grind in a Swiss. Like shouldn't you be able to get just primo finishes? Yeah. They're thin parts too. They're like 30,000, the head of the screw and the heart. So I think it does deflect. Um, and yeah, when he, you know, tumbles it or, um, even just, you know, flat sands the surface to see how good it is, it's never primo perfect. Look up.
00:35:45
Speaker
Sorry, good. That's it. Look up tangential diamond cutters.
00:35:53
Speaker
These are like back from the hobby days. But I remember some guys had done some DIY projects making these tools. And it's a really strange way of holding an insert to minimize tool pressure. And it's a diamond. And it's a way of just getting bananas, Grimsmo level finishes. And I don't know if it's something that's still a thing and if it would work in a Swiss. But that seems like that could be right up your alley. And it's nice because you're not grinding now. You're actually using a diamond to cut this.
00:36:22
Speaker
You can buy diamond CCGT inserts, but they're material specific. I could buy one for stainless. I don't know why I'm not. I keep not buying them because I want to do titanium and they don't like doing diamond or CBN or whatever for titanium. I haven't found the solution for that. Got it.
00:36:42
Speaker
but really the solution I want it for is stainless. So what is my hesitation here? It's nothing. Well, and these, for what it's worth, if this works, these are not in anything like a normal insert. It's the way it's held is- Yeah, I'm looking at pictures and they're all DIY. They're all like, you know, practical machinists. It looks really cool though. Well, I am now obligated to tell you not to do it because it's DIY.
00:37:12
Speaker
That's a good point. I should re-look at diamond inserts for 17.4 stainless because that should be nuts, be perfect. In 17.4, machines like a steel to me, like a 40.40. It's not like a 304 where you've got stainless gummy issues. I don't think I have a diamond insert. I did. I think I chipped it though.
00:37:41
Speaker
Dude, this is where you just turn it over to your tooling guys, let them do all that work. This is what they want to do. And then it consumes precisely zero more minutes of your day. They come back to you with answers, not questions. And they bring me one insert to test or I buy it for whatever they cost. And then I just do it.
00:38:01
Speaker
Speaking of which, I put this right down on my to-do list to put a teaser up on Instagram of Drumroll turning on Provencut.
ProvenCut's Expansion into Turning
00:38:12
Speaker
Ooh. Now, we have no recipes to be totally clear, but we spent the last few months building out the back-end database framework to allow us to switch from milling machines over to turning. And obviously, turning has different inter-parameter. That kind of stuff. So we're ready to start testing it.
00:38:31
Speaker
That's cool. Yeah, like roughing and finishing strategies. Because I've got my baselines in my head. Basically, always finish at 9 tenths per rev. And even on the Swiss, you're like, one pass. Rough finish, same pass. No spring passes or anything. But differently, it's roughing passes and spring passes are important. Right.
00:38:54
Speaker
Yeah, turning is really, I mean, I'm still a milling guy myself, but turning is, in some respects, so much more potential for proven cut. First of all, the depth of recipes could be way deeper, but even just getting the base framework up, and for folks that are either new to materials or new to inserts or new to turning, you've got to take a chip load that breaks the chip or activates the chip breaker or works to get underneath it and get that finish.
00:39:18
Speaker
We've turned 1018 where you get great finishes and then we'll go turn it up again and we'll forget what that right recipe was and it looks not good. Exactly. Then you go dig up that recipe again and you're like, okay, so 1018 can look nice, but you got to do it right.
00:39:34
Speaker
Yep, this kind of insert these speeds and feeds. A lot of it, I mean speeds and feeds sometimes they feel like just such a black art like you try something or you look up a recipe and it doesn't work and you give up and just move on to a different material or different tool or something. There are plenty of variables to get wrong. And
00:39:52
Speaker
Cool. Well, no, but I'd argue the turning's easier than... It can. Sorry, I don't mean easier. I mean, when we come up with a recipe for 1018, that same recipe, not with saying things like horsepower and torque to turn the diameter apart, that recipe is going to work pretty well between a machine like the Slant Pro up to a Haas turning 10 or even yours, meaning
00:40:15
Speaker
1018, at this surface feed with this feed per rev, you tend to not have the issues you have in a mill where you've got varying tool stick out, varying spindle condition, varying spindle gauge length. It varies in fixturing that are massively going to impact the end result. I'd be pretty comfortable that that's going to be a solid, replicable platform.
00:40:38
Speaker
I mean, within extent, the amount that you're clamping it, if you're clamping it in a three jaw vise or in a 5C call it, the amount of stick out, if it's a one inch rod sticking out eight inches. Oh, sure, sure. That's going to affect. And then are you also going to offer suggestions for depth of cut and step downs? Oh, absolutely. Like for roughing, because I think that'll be where it's important. I learned early on to use as much of the insert as you can in one pass. It takes a little bit more horsepower.
00:41:09
Speaker
the inserts there to be cut. Don't just take 10 thou roughing passes every time because there's no point. Absolutely. You're wearing the tip of the tool. And a lot of people, if they're never told this, they don't kind of figure it out. They baby it, and they're just wearing tools because you have free cutting insert all the way up to the side here. You bought the carbide, use it. Exactly. Chip control is the other one that would be really good for you. I know you take pictures of the chips and things like that. But I'm sorry, have you not seen our ability to make bird's nests? John, we got this one under control.
00:41:38
Speaker
Exactly. The photo gallery on turning is going to be a lot funnier.
00:41:45
Speaker
Yeah, we could do a good parody video on that. I know it's a big deal, including a lot of the folks that we've started to talk to and get to know that are running through production on turning centers. It is a real bear, just not having stringy chips and not making sure they get off the turret, off the tool, off the part, out of the chip conveyor. Holy cow. I've been playing on the Tournos with Tournos' active chip breaker.
00:42:11
Speaker
which basically it pauses for like 0.1 of a second, moves back in Z, and then continues. So it just backs off and goes forward. And you set three parameters with a variable. And it works very well. And the finish was almost imperceptibly perfect. I could see little tiny witness marks of every 20,000 move. And chip control was better, but it was still birds nesting. So I got to change those parameters a little bit in stainless.
00:42:40
Speaker
You only do that on a roughing though, right? Which is where you generate the most chips? On the Swiss, you rough and finish in one pass. No, but I'm saying the finish was actually fine for this part, at least for the section that I was roughing. Then I come in with a diamond burnishing tool and I burnished the section I care about.
00:43:01
Speaker
Oh, sure. On the pen button. And it worked great. That's cool. Yeah. That's really cool. Kind of thinking about drilling, though, where when you peck drill and you re-enter, that's where you wear a drill out is every time you start the hole. And I'm wondering if you could see a measurable, I mean, I don't think you would necessarily care. But when you thin out that chip, are you putting more heat into the edge or causing it to wear more? And again, maybe worth it.
00:43:29
Speaker
Cause if you have chip bird's ass issues, you'll take anything over basically. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, man. We'll let Phil go park. All right. Have a good day. I'll see you next week. You too. Take care.