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#335 Grimsmo's heat treat improvements
214 Plays1 year ago
TOPICS:
- Grimsmo's heat treat improvements
- SMW puck chuck anodizing
- Scrap metal
- Okamoto surface grinder and UMC350 delivered!
- Bambu 3d Printers
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Transcript
Introduction and Business Insights
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 335. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. And this is your weekly dose of manufacturing where John and John talk about the joys and struggles of running manufacturing companies. Are they joys or are they struggles right now? I'm joyful these days. Yeah, it's been a good week. Good. Awesome. You tell.
00:00:24
Speaker
Last week we talked a lot about heat treat and flatness and warp and all that stuff. I've been digging deeper and deeper, which is really good. Sky and Ryan and I just filmed a pretty deep overview video yesterday. I think it's going up today.
00:00:41
Speaker
Kind of where we're at right now and what improvements we want to make to the whole system. We've got a lot of great ideas and then throughout the rest of the week I will implement those great ideas and Hopefully see improvements in everything both from like the quench plates that we have our water cooled So I bought a chiller to keep that water cooling like like 70 degrees or 68 or whatever. I want to choose
00:01:06
Speaker
So that came in, could install that, that's going to be sick. Got a filter in line so that we can just keep the water clear and nice. Even choosing what material all of the fittings are made from so that there's no chance of galvanic corrosion because our first aluminum plates like rusted on the inside and would create blockages.
Material Choices and Corrosion Prevention
00:01:25
Speaker
Holy cow. Yeah. Because we used copper RTV, which did not react well with the aluminum.
00:01:33
Speaker
Copper? Yeah. There's black RTV and blue silicone sealant.
00:01:40
Speaker
Um, yeah, yes. And copper is the kind of heat dissipating kind. So we're like, sweet, you have to keep dissipating. Let's use that. Uh, except it, it like reacted with the aluminum and costs corrosion. And, uh, yeah, is it weird? And then like brass fittings and aluminum usually fine, sometimes not fine. Um, so we've got stainless steel fittings for everything and going to push, connect hoses instead of hose barbs and,
00:02:06
Speaker
You have to eat? It's cool. You never had a freshwater or saltwater fish aquarium, did you? I have not, no. But a lot of aquarium stuff comes up in the research.
00:02:16
Speaker
Well, no, it's funny because I remember thinking too, I had like a short stint of a really is more of a buddy in college who was really into it. And it's super fascinating, like both the sea life, but also all of the gear that can go into it. And you're right, there's a ton of parallels because you've got this water quality and filtration and flow and chemicals and testing. And sometimes it's like the ingenuity of the simplicity. So like even just a basic baffle box that stops
00:02:43
Speaker
debris from flowing like sediment falls down, but then it can't get back up to go over to the next level. It's like so much more ingenious than getting and dealing with complicated inexpensive filters.
Innovative Manufacturing Solutions
00:02:55
Speaker
And then with the sediment and baffle box, you can just see it and they make like they make underwater vacuums that you can just stick it in there, just vacuum out the debris and maybe think of that stuff. That's cool.
00:03:08
Speaker
Yeah, there's so much more value. There's so much more bootstrapping because unlike our world where you're six-figure machines, this is like a lot of guys in their garage that just want to glue and fill it together and make this work. Yep, exactly. The chiller I got is marketed towards aquarium guys, but it does have a titanium coil, which makes it good for use in acids and anodizing setups and things like that where you have sulfuric acid flowing through it.
00:03:35
Speaker
I remember back when I was anodizing aluminum 10 plus years ago, they were harder to find with a titanium coil and now they're much easier to find. What you bought, you say in a chiller, is it literally like a heat exchanger, like has a radiator type fan and a free on? There's two kinds. There's a cooler and then I guess what I'm calling a chiller.
00:03:59
Speaker
The one I got, I made sure it's like an air conditioner. It has Freon inside or R134 or whatever it is. And it actually chills the air, whereas there are other ones that have a radiator and a fan and do make an effect in cooling it. But I think the actually Freon kind will maintain a temperature much more consistently than just a radiator blowing cold air.
00:04:19
Speaker
got it. Right, right. That's right. I never thought about that. A radiator is really just moving it to ambient versus chillers. And like TIG welders often will use some sort of a chiller so you can get like add-ons for your TIG welder for hundreds of dollars. The chiller I got was about 500 Canadian. It's like 350 US or whatever. It's like not cheap, but it's
00:04:39
Speaker
I'm very happy to buy it because watching sky heat treat yesterday and I felt the hoses, like the inlet and the outlet hose, and I'm like, oh yeah, that is warmer. It's obviously sucking heat out of the part and putting it into the water. Well, let's keep that water dead cold. And something you suggested last week was get a bigger tank. That's the cheapest heat dissipation you could possibly do. So we haven't done that yet, but it's definitely on my mind. Great idea.
00:05:04
Speaker
The other thing I love, and I don't know how janky this is in today's standards, but like 10 years ago when I was looking at air compressor, I couldn't afford, this is awesome memory. Awesome memory. I couldn't really afford the Harbor Freight air dryer at $200, $300. Like this is like legit. I was like, I cannot. I had $200 in my bank account, but I couldn't like justify spending that kind of money on that. And I believe what I remember seeing was
00:05:31
Speaker
you can find copper that's coiled up in like a 10 inch radius loop. And I don't know if it comes that way for its end user, whether it's just packaged that way to think about, you know, quarter inch or three eighth inch diameter copper that's in this big loop. And it was just big enough to fit it in a mini fridge.
00:05:48
Speaker
Okay. You can buy a used mini fridge for 50 bucks and then you would run your air or in this case liquid water in through that coil which gives it a fair amount of surface area and time in the mini fridge to at least pull some of that heat and or hot air down a little bit.
00:06:08
Speaker
Nice. I didn't think about a mini fridge because that's its own air compressor, air conditioner, you know? Yeah. Cheap as dirt. And you can put your pop in there too. Yeah. The other thing that came up a lot was home brewing, making beer for chillers and coils and radiators and things like that.
00:06:30
Speaker
Speaking of DIY anodized, I suspect you're going to rightfully trounce all over me here, but we have some new parts for the puck chuck that are the valve.
00:06:40
Speaker
The valve cover thing and we sent them out to our anodizer last week, but that's a couple of week process and Yeah, yeah 6061 and obviously fixture plates are big and heavy and have a fair amount of work in the recipe for anodizing them But these little things are just cosmetic. Is it a terrible idea or to buy like a Caswell or DIY anodizing kit and just Be able to do those I don't know production for playing around
Challenges and Considerations in Anodizing
00:07:04
Speaker
I don't know. I guess it's production. We can schedule sending them out. It's not the cost of it. I guess it just bothers me that that we can't do it. Like right now, we actually have some some baby and it's ready to ship. But we're going to send 3D printed valve covers. There is literally just a cosmetic cover for the throw valve. But OK. And then we'll just ship folks the anodized ones when they come back in two weeks. That's kind of bothers me.
00:07:29
Speaker
For beta units, you can get away with it. As far as a process, you need a little bit of floor space, bench space to be able to have your tanks. There is sulfuric acids. There's a danger, a mild danger involved. It's just controlling the temperature like you ideally need a chiller. Eric and I used to use frozen water bottles.
00:07:51
Speaker
Really? Yeah, yeah. Just swap them out? Just swap them out. Yeah, keep it because you want to keep that water. I think it was 70 degrees. No more than 74 degrees. Otherwise, it doesn't work and for two hours.
00:08:02
Speaker
Oh no kidding. Oh, I don't want to deal with two hours. I was thinking more of it. It was like a thing where you could, um, you know, clean it and then dip it in the whatever, and then just let it sit in there for 20 minutes and then dye it and be done or something. But yeah. Yeah. I mean, it depends on how thick you want the layer. If it's all amperage specific, um, I believe, you know, to do a couple of knife handles like we used to do. Um, it was like two hours in the anodized tank where it's growing that oxide layer.
00:08:31
Speaker
And then the rest of the process, the dye, the seal, seals for like 10 minutes or something like that and boiling sealant. This is all I need to hear to remind myself that this is a terrible idea. Yeah. And especially because you already have the professionals that you work with on a monthly basis. I don't know. It sounds like you're just impatient, but I think the impatience will lead to more headache in this exact scenario.
00:08:59
Speaker
No, no, agree. Although I do think what I should do is kind of separate church and state here a little bit, which is like the last batch of these we had 19 made and we just put them in a box with the custom built crate that we use for fixture plates. And I don't like doing that because it's kind of like, hey, you've got
00:09:18
Speaker
15 of these really high value custom fixture or fixture plates that I care about and then 19 little widget things. So I might actually just find even honestly a different anodizer that I could just UPS ground these two because maybe you know what I mean? Like I just don't like They're very just so they're so different. Yeah I assume with your current anodizer you've been working with them for quite a while
00:09:42
Speaker
We've two, yeah, quite a few years. Because we've both heard, and I think you've had issues with anodizers in the past. So there is value to you having an established relationship and a for sure.
00:09:57
Speaker
But it's almost, maybe that's what I'm saying, but not well, which is, for example, the shimped works. Don't I told you about the- A little bit. Yeah. Yeah, the valve covers and stuff, right? Yeah, it's going. It's pretty cool. We've had a couple of, you know, we're not in stealth mode, but we're not doing next to nothing in terms of our efforts on public facing marketing. What is happening kind of behind the scenes is our informal partner, not an actual partner, but kind of the guy that we decided
00:10:25
Speaker
to say this makes sense with, he's been buying them for his own builds or his customers.
00:10:33
Speaker
So those parts are anodized, and a couple of those have been racked incorrectly despite there being a racking print or other defects. And I don't want, we've got such a good process with fixture plates that it's quite stupid to have these phone calls and say, hey, you know, this $30 or $10 part, you racked it
Maintaining Relationships with Anodizers
00:10:52
Speaker
wrong. Just adds friction and lack of focus. Because this company, they don't know that, that anodizer doesn't even know that shit works. They just see the Sonder stuff that comes in.
00:11:02
Speaker
Yeah, that makes me think I should just find a different one. Those could be UPS grounded to them and then we separate. That's a good plan. I like it. What else going on? So the still going through the massive saga of trying to get the Aroa hooked up to this video. Come on. Latest update is
00:11:31
Speaker
When our local speedo dealer put in the auto door, they designed it, they fabricated, they put it in, and it's got two air cylinders that make French doors that slide sideways, like two doors kind of thing.
00:11:46
Speaker
That opens up the opening. Everything works great. There are sensors built into the air cylinders to open closed sensors. So those feedback to whatever. The theory is those will go to the aroa and say, OK, door is open. You are now clear to proceed. Otherwise, don't kind of thing. It's all staged. Doors have to be open, and then chuck has to open, and then arm has to move in, and then chuck has to release, and then step by step by step. Can't pass go unless every step is. So what I recently heard is that,
00:12:15
Speaker
I don't know if those sensors will work with the Aroa or something. I don't know. The guy's like, I need to look into it further, but Aroa is complaining about the sensors we put in. I'm like, okay. Like complaining from a safety standard or from an actual IO, like 24-hole? It sounded like IO, yeah. So I don't know.
00:12:37
Speaker
Yup. And it's battling with summer vacations and everybody in and out and scheduling. And our video dealers close by, they can be here in a day pretty much anytime. But scheduling a row to come up from Chicago to send to tech for a day or three. That's a good combination. Yeah. And it's a bigger job than I ever expected it to be, just in hassle.
00:13:04
Speaker
and annoyance. I know Dennis had an aroa hooked up between two speedios, and that sounded like it was no problem. Yeah. So that kind of led me to this. I was like, oh, it's a great idea. Let's do it. But that's the update there.
Cost-effective Manufacturing Modifications
00:13:18
Speaker
However, instead of buying the proper panel, I think I might have mentioned this, that was like a few thousand dollars shipped from Switzerland, which was ordered, and then they forgot it, and they missed the order, and it never got made, and they're like, do you still want it? And I was like, no.
00:13:33
Speaker
And then I took my current like sidewall and I shipped it. I had our water jet guy come pick it up and I sharpied in silver Sharpie, a square hole, and I just gave it to him. And 150 bucks later, I have now a water jet hole in my original panel and it looks great. And we're just going to touch up so it doesn't rust. And it's like, Oh my gosh, the best. Awesome. And they picked it up and delivered it. I mean, it's like this eight foot tall panel and nobody has a truck, but, uh, yeah, it was great.
00:14:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. Funny enough, I'll keep this anonymous, but somebody reached out who may or may not have a machine tool brand that you and I often discuss. We recently discussed where we had shown a pretty cool functionality example in a video tour from a trade show and the parent company saw that feature
00:14:26
Speaker
I believe it was an example, not on the show floor, but rather an example that was either being shown or discussed at an install and they like shut it down.
00:14:37
Speaker
or like turned off that future functionality for other customers of which that person reached out to us only to say that that was, you know, not like our fault. It stinks because it's like, yeah. So this is the power of social media in both good and bad ways. The bad is that we kind of apparently inadvertently, you know, ruling the party because this feature that was pretty cool got turned off. They had to do a safety of doors, opening, closing with the fix, including a very safe solution to be clear. Interesting.
00:15:07
Speaker
But then, in the power of social media, the end user that was hoping to integrate this figured out who the other end user initial one was that was being referenced, reached out to them, and was able to backdoor it and get it working. That's awesome. But it's just like, come on.
00:15:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's one of my concerns too is if I take a shop tour, if somebody tells me a piece of information, it's in my head now and I'm not going to have 10 pieces of information that I can't talk about and 100 pieces that I can talk about.
00:15:38
Speaker
I want to talk about it all. Oh, but no, this was proudly discussed. It wasn't a, we didn't blow somebody's request to say, Hey, don't sit here. It was literally, Hey, this is a customer that instead of having to deal with like a mechanical switch, maybe one a day, non-technical safety switch. So anyway, it's just funny.
00:15:58
Speaker
But sometimes that's super valuable for the market for the industry to like learn about like I didn't know what that feature or like that totally solves my problem, you know, so yeah, I like to share those solutions like on this video buying the submicron chip is Fantastic. And for what I'm doing it is 1 million percent worth every penny and absolutely required.
00:16:21
Speaker
Yes. I didn't even know. Exactly. That's cool. I remember when we bought the horizontal, I think I give my sales guy credit. He sent me the Excel file with, I mean, there must have been 700 options. I think it was more than just our specific machine. And some of them were like, there's seven different tool changers, that type of stuff.
00:16:44
Speaker
it was fun to look through it and just sort of say, Hey, what's this? What's this? Um, but you can quickly, you know, I know I'm predisposed to kind of paralysis, analysis paralysis. So it's kind of like, like in your case, you'll figure it out. Like, um, you got the shit back. Um, the kick in the kick in the, you know what, on our end is our,
Scrap Recycling Challenges
00:17:10
Speaker
main or only scrap recycler called us last week. And in my words, not theirs, said they are considering canceling us as a customer. It wasn't quite that direct, but that's what they were implying. Yeah. And I wasn't expecting it. And frankly, at this point, that thought of that is horrific because we generate a lot of chips. We're filling up those Gaylord boxes, which are the three
00:17:40
Speaker
No, a Gaylord box fits just on top of a 40 by 48 pallet. So that's like a thousand by, lower a thousand millimeters, same height. So it's like, is it three cubic yards or something like that? So it's like smaller than an IBC tote, but not a lot smaller.
00:17:54
Speaker
almost the same size as IVC actually. Yeah. So we fill up, I don't know, two, three of those a week. Wow. So like we do not. Yeah. No. So like we can't not have a solution for our scrap. Right. And I think some of it is some, we'll call it miscommunication about them claiming some of its mix when it's not.
00:18:16
Speaker
Some of it's probably, we need to do a really good job of making sure we're not inadvertently mixing. Like if we run on all the verticals, they are material specific. And if we switch, we just need to make sure we run the conveyor for five minutes, flush out the steel before we switch to aluminum. So the horizontal does create mix. And that's a problem because it's also the most prolific creator-owned chips.
00:18:40
Speaker
They were saying, and you know, there's probably some truth to it, but there's maybe some pushback here that they steal is worth nothing and that mixed is not only not worth anything, it's actually like we have to pay to get rid of it. Like it's like trash. And I'm not in the scrap business, but I know that whatever. Aluminum should be worth something.
00:19:02
Speaker
The solution for now is we're going to kind of work together to make sure we're not mislabeling stuff and see what they can do with the mixed stuff. And frankly, if anybody's listening has suggestions on all years, the more extreme option that I really don't love, but we could work with is we stop
00:19:19
Speaker
running aluminum on the horizontal, except when it's like during the day shift and we could swap, either swap out the tote, which is a pain in the butt right now. We could make it better. Or I had an idea, like a little shoot, a diversion shoot that we could just slide into place to slide the aluminum chips out.
00:19:37
Speaker
Garrett had an even better idea, which is to buy or build, hopefully buy a small conveyor that slides in there and can actually lift the chips over and up another three feet out of the way and up another six inches to drop them into the aluminum.
00:19:52
Speaker
Yeah. Gay Lord. And then if you really wanted to, that would not be difficult to put it on a like an in and out pneumatic cylinder with an M code so that when you run a movement of programs, you have to wait 10 minutes to flush out the conveyor and then slide that thing into place. And then you're going to get pretty clean separation chips. Hmm. I like both of those ideas. Yeah. Just wasn't something I expected to have to deal with. Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:21
Speaker
Yeah. We mix everything because I stopped caring like 10 years ago. Sure. Because it's so much easier just to mix titanium and stainless and whatever in a machine. We don't have enough machines to really dedicate to just blades or just whatever. And we don't produce the mountains of chips that you do, so it doesn't matter. We might fill up a garbage can on the current
00:20:46
Speaker
in a month, a couple of weeks, maybe. I don't know. Um, I don't know. Cause I don't empty them anymore, but I kind of eyeball it every now and then cause we water jet all our blanks and then we're just skim cutting like every feature. So the amount of volume of chips is very, very little, which is great. Um, but we mix everything and I think pretty sure we got paid somewhat for it. Really? Yeah. I'd be surprised with the,
00:21:13
Speaker
We just have a huge dumpster bin in the back from the metal people. They deliver it and it gets rained on and there's coolant in it and it's not a pretty thing. They just take it and they give us lunch money basically.
00:21:33
Speaker
Yeah, every time he comes by the metal guy, he's happy to help, happy to whatever. Yeah. It's funny, too, because it's almost the opposite of what I expected in terms of what causes problems. Having some steel in the aluminum is no big deal, because when they process the aluminum, they have a little magnet that can suck out the few bits of steel. But it's the opposite, where if you have much at all aluminum in the steel, it gives them a real downstream problem. So yeah. We'll figure it out.
00:22:03
Speaker
you know, which was a good segue to starting to do some thinking, I can't believe this to like, what do I want to get out of the rest of this year?
Reflecting on Achievements and Future Goals
00:22:12
Speaker
And then what's my sort of
00:22:15
Speaker
you know, is there a big thing I want to tackle for 2024? It's like in the past, there have been things like, you know, building out an ERP system, we crushed that. And then this year was Gen 3 mod vices, which are actually underway, but haven't become public facing yet. It's just fine. But we're making them now, which is great. And then the puck chuck, which is awesome. More to come on that soon, but going well.
00:22:42
Speaker
Anyway, the thought I have for what feels really good for this fall.
00:22:48
Speaker
And then early next year is I need to sit down on most of the horizontal programs and watch, just carve out a day or a morning and watch one program run start to finish to start looking at revising tooling feeds and speeds. We probably have a chamfer that's plunging at six inches a minute. And I can actually honestly have somebody else start doing this as well. You could also video it and just watch the video. It's actually a really good idea. Interesting thought. It's a great idea. Yeah.
00:23:18
Speaker
Um, but I just, I know it'll be, I should do, even if I do it involved, I should use it as a learning exercise with the team, but, uh, getting some tooling stuff cleaned up. And, um, but that also led me to think I'm gonna sneeze here in a second. Sorry. No worries.
00:23:36
Speaker
Bless me. Making sure we're not buying the wrong size material. Like kind of like, why are you creating so much chips? Like can you be, you know, we know on our saw cuts, they tend to run in a certain dimension. Should we pay more for this more precise saw cuts? As Area 419, we're ordering stuff that was saw cut within I think 5,000. I just like, wow, you can do that. And I'm starting to see why that's,
00:24:00
Speaker
maybe a good trade off because if you've got the right saw cut company with the right equipment, that's not frankly a huge deal. And it may be one of those things where you could give them a too tolerant ban. We want it to $5,000, but we won't reject it unless it's more than $10,000 or something. Fair, yeah. Yeah, one of our local metal places has practically a machinist running the saw. He's got his calipers in the leather holster on his belt kind of thing. And they take it seriously. They're pretty good.
00:24:27
Speaker
And then you're doing less air cutting, less tool wear, all that. And it's funny, too, because this reminds me of the power of knowledge. And the vendor that I was told about that can offer the service, I asked, and they're like, we don't do that. And you always got to be careful of how you make the next comment. But it's like, you do. You're wrong. You know what I mean? So you've got to coax it out of her, figure out, well, there is a way. It's like, yeah, you can. Right, right.
00:24:56
Speaker
Yeah. You don't want to be like, for me, you could do it, right? What's it going to take? Yeah. Well, it wasn't like a favorite type of thing. It was more of a, is it a different department or a different language that we're just speaking the wrong language. It's good to know that someone stuff like that is possible.
00:25:16
Speaker
And we're celebrating actually we're celebrating today for a couple reasons. Um, number one is we got two machines yesterday. Number two is, um, it was actually, we put up an Instagram as 11,000 technically Shopify starts it a thousand. So this week was our 10,000th order. Wow. Which is that's insane. Like, like Shopify order number kind of thing. Uh-huh. Yeah.
00:25:41
Speaker
Wow. That's good for you, man. Thank you. It feels good. Curious what I'm out of. I don't even know. Anyway. Yeah. The order that came in, you know, 17 minutes ago was order 11,009. Nice.
00:25:58
Speaker
Yeah, so we had a great day yesterday, kind of went as
New Equipment and Capabilities
00:26:02
Speaker
I'd hoped. We got the Okamoto surface grinder, came first thing in the morning, had rented the big, not the orange forklift that some folks have seen before. That's a, I got a shipyard forklift that can lift 30,000 pounds. But the one you almost bought at an auction a couple months ago. That was almost identical. Correct. That's right. This is just a really nice cat. It kind of looks like a warehouse forklift, but it's just bigger. 9,000 pound forklift worked great. Got the Okamoto.
00:26:29
Speaker
unloaded and moved into place. Just went great. And so we need to hear back from local motor to make sure we aren't going to be using the transformer, which is included with it. And that'll be, we're just waiting on our bactra. That'll get set up then.
00:26:45
Speaker
not next week because you and I are in California. And they're doing training during the setup, which is fine, but I need to be back for when it's set up. And then about lunchtime, the UMC 350 HD came. And for those that haven't heard me mention this elsewhere, it was
00:27:03
Speaker
kind of check the box of one of your second Haas machine for all training classes, including the five axis and wanted a smaller machine, wanted a lower price point. I'm very curious to see how that machine performs. I think it looks cool. Yeah, it looks great. And I want it to be great. I think to be kind of blunt, I think there's going to be folks that hope that machine can do more than this may be appropriate for it. That makes sense.
00:27:28
Speaker
So I'm excited, but it is exactly what I wanted. Like we just throw up the story, I guess. Yeah, I saw that story. It was like speeding sized. Yes, John, awesome. It looks cool, but the 18 pots kind of made me cringe a little bit. Especially the size of that tool change, you could fit 40 in that diameter. It's a good point, John. Yeah, I don't know why they have not hired. That is the
00:27:53
Speaker
You know, tolerances, rigidity, accuracy can be sort of improved. That's a price point, you know, like true. Exactly.
00:28:02
Speaker
but tool changer, I mean, the only argument I'd say is like, unless you can have a hundred, then you're going to have to do swap house anyway. So just get, get good at swap house, get your tools set up. I'm in a cart. Um, which honestly I need to practice on cause the speedio at 21 pots is, is already starting to limit me. And I'm on the Maury. We never swap out tools on the current. We never swap out tools. Um, and on the speedio to run a soft blade takes 19 tools.
00:28:31
Speaker
And then to run lock inserts takes a different 15 tools. So like they're all coming out and we're going to have a rack and 3d printed carts and bins. And we're just going to put all lock insert tools in and then leave the fan in the probe, things like that, like always in, but it's going to be weird, but we'll figure it out.
00:28:51
Speaker
I'll have to finally print that stack of tools in the machine. I've seen every Haas person have those and I'm like, why? I don't understand. I don't have a need for that and now I have a need for that. Yeah. I still like that but have often found any sort of information system
00:29:13
Speaker
it's so easy to forget to do one action and then once one thing is wrong, you frankly don't trust any of the data. So I have mixed feelings about it to be honest. Do people often, like if they pull out a tool, they pull out the tag, do they write the tool offset like the length and diameter on it, assuming they'll type it back in next time? Or is that just always tool 54 and it just goes back in and no offsets change, whatever?
00:29:38
Speaker
So you can do it either way. Haas makes it a little bit clunky because like if you have a 20 tool umbrella, you can only have tees one through 20 and you've got to like reassign and delete a tool to add a different tool. So it would be frustratingly simple to have
00:29:54
Speaker
a system, especially if you could just have all RFID holders. This is the case where I would buy it for sure, where it's like, no, I have 100 tools, and any of them up to 20 might be in the machine, just read the RFID D-tag, and then you can just swap tools in and out willy-nilly. That'd be the way to do it. And there's nothing stopping that from existing. Yeah, interesting. How many offsets can you have in a house?
00:30:23
Speaker
So that's why I don't remember. The tool table I think goes up to 200, but I feel like there's something weird about the clunkiness of like,
00:30:31
Speaker
reassigning a reassign it. Yeah. And then like tool offsets, I'm pretty picky about like the idea of just being like, well, it should be 7.6, 7.2. Right. The only thing I've seen that it's also a lot of work, but it's a different and proven workflow is folks that will actually take all the tools out of a machine for a job, put them on a dedicated job cart. And then the next set of tools are in a separate cart. They load all of them in and then they have a flash drive that stores the tool tool and they'll upload that. Yeah. Yeah.
00:31:01
Speaker
mentioning that too, that you can even automate that in a way, have a program that cycles through from a memory or something. I think Fusion even supports something where you can touch off tool at start or something for sure. Interesting. Yeah. Except for face mills and so forth, you can also do the quick break detect.
00:31:24
Speaker
It's a sanity. On this video, there's a hundred tools in the tool table and even I'm gonna probably get close to filling that up especially if I group them in like lock inserts, blades kind of thing.
00:31:40
Speaker
So I'll probably dedicate, you know, tool 54 is the whatever spot drill always. And then I just, nothing else uses that offset. So when the tool comes out, it just goes back in, touch it off. It's good to go. And you can assign tool 54 to pot 12 or whatever. That's what I was trying to say earlier. That's easy. And I didn't figure that out for quite a while. And then once I wrapped my head around and I was like, Oh, of course that's how you do it. It's easy. Yeah.
00:32:09
Speaker
Are you otherwise a high nine convert with the whole like naming convention? I, um, yes and no. It's super high nine fan boy now, but I don't name my tools. Like with a text name, it's still tool 54. Oh, okay. So in the program, I still call T 54 H whatever, whenever high nine, I think it's tool call 54 is what they call it.
00:32:35
Speaker
Got it. For those that aren't familiar, I really like it. The limited amount I've seen is really from like Dennis and Rob. You can have a tool, instead of it being tool 31, it can be T, I don't know if it's a T, something or whatever, but prefix.
00:32:51
Speaker
you can call it like quarter inch underscore 30 rad steel. And then it just finds that tool. So this idea of having like a pretty lengthy descriptive name is awesome for both avoiding mistakes and understanding what's in your library. Yep. And if you have a consistent, like a routine for your naming convention, you can sort by name and sort your tool list by diameter or whatever. Um,
00:33:19
Speaker
So in the height nine it uses tool number in your it's like a spreadsheet basically your tool table. It's literally looks like a spreadsheet. So it's still one through 210 on my machine. And then there's a name field and I use the name field pretty heavily. I'm like, the Lakeshore Jamfer Mill three sixteenths or something. And while I don't call the name in my program in the tool table, I can reference the name. Yeah. Oh, that's the tool. Oh, that's
00:33:45
Speaker
Because I have like several tools with multiple instances in the machine, like an eighth inch ball. And I have one for stainless, I have one for titanium, I have, you know, different uses. So they're named for hardened steel for titanium for whatever, which helps. Whereas I go to the fan deck and there's no one of my machines has an ability to name the tool itself and one doesn't. And it's like,
00:34:09
Speaker
It's really nice when you can. Yeah. Well, same thing on the Akuma and Haas. There's no ability to add descriptions and comments in both the tool library. I'm sorry. That's not true. The tool library does have a description field, but it's quite short in the Akuma. But same thing with offsets. It's like I want to know on horizontal. Offsets 131 to 137 are tomb 75 top shots. And it starts to make me think more and more about, and I feel like CJ's an advocate of this, although I don't
00:34:40
Speaker
That may not be true or I don't want to speak for him here, but like basically wiping your machine of offsets and tool values and having it all being written from Fusion.
00:34:49
Speaker
We're going to start doing this with the puck chuck because on the horizontal, we've got those swing pallets that have puck chuck fixtures that get swapped out between lower volume products. So that offset will be a swing offset, like offset 150. And every time at the beginning of the program, it will write to it for that program. And at the end of the program, it'll probably write it to the max values, dummy values, just to make sure it gets wiped. Right.
00:35:15
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Any amount of clarity that you can do is great. Like on this video, I can have a very short tool name for description, but I can't name the work offset. Whereas on the Maury, I can have a short tool name and I can also name the work offset, which is really handy.
00:35:32
Speaker
You can name it. What do you mean? I like the workoffs that I can, G59 can be like Norseman handles. Really? Yeah, it's pretty cool. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. That's a FANUC or is that like on top? It's like mouse four on top of FANUC. Okay. Got it. Interesting. Okay. You ready for another reason that you need to buy a bamboo?
00:35:59
Speaker
You're reading my mind here.
Daily Operations and Tasks
00:36:01
Speaker
I literally had a dream two nights ago where I was in the mall with the kids and I was like, I wonder if that store has the bamboo printer. I'm just going to go look. Yeah, right. That would be super meta if you could walk into an actual mall and purchase. Yeah, I would be walking out with one if I saw one in front of me right now. Anyway, what's the next, the 400th reason why I need to buy a bamboo right now?
00:36:21
Speaker
I was just told this by Spencer Webb, so don't take my word for it here, but I believe it's to be true on the newest firmware update. If you're printing, the way it was told to me was 10 identical objects, so I'm not sure if it applies to multiple objects that are different, but certainly if it's 10 identical objects, and that classic example of the front
00:36:42
Speaker
Second one from the right starts to fail from a first layer, whatever. You can just tap the screen and tell it to stop working on the one of the 10 that failed. So an hour into a four-hour print, you don't have to throw everything away and start over. Interesting. It's still a manual intervention.
00:37:03
Speaker
Touche. And I don't know, the spaghetti detection has worked pretty darn well for us. Actually, I'll come back to that in a second because I had a terrible experience this weekend, but it was user error.
00:37:15
Speaker
So I don't think I bet you it would warn you. I don't think it's going to like decide to stop printing one of them on its own. Yeah. My experience this weekend was stupid. My fault. I was in with the kids and they wanted to print something. They want to change the filament color. And I mean, it sucks to even say this out loud. I just pulled the filament out and so doing the unload feature left and left a three quarter inch section of filament in the hot end.
00:37:40
Speaker
And that then I didn't realize that's what happened because the reason I pulled it out was because I thought that's what you did. Like that's dumb. I know, but I forgot about the whole unload thing because the thing is so just easy to use. I just hands off that there's a routine for everything. It's not a prusa where you have to like pull on it.
00:37:56
Speaker
Well, I actually think it would have been fine if I had pulled out the filament that hadn't last been used. Because it would have just been kind of chilling in the AMS somewhere. But I happened to pull out the filament that was all the way through into the hotend. And so the next few prints failed for reasons I couldn't understand about like couldn't load filament. The error messaging wasn't great. So maybe I could say that that could be improved on their end. But regardless, I had to
00:38:22
Speaker
use a YouTube trick of like sticking a small needle in the back end of the hide and taking the magnet cover. It was actually really easy. Magnet cover off, two screws out, dip a hex wrench in there to help pull extract out the remnant and then it went back to work, back to work. Like with any machine, there's processes for everything and there's possible failure for everything. Interesting.
00:38:47
Speaker
Yeah, I have a need where I would love to print, um, you know, an eight inch by eight and square or maybe a nine inch by nine is square. And the process just not big enough for that. So I'd have to segment it. And I was like, it's enough hurdle that I'm just not doing it. I'm like, man, you know, if I had a bamboo right now that can print 10 by 10, uh, that would be printed by this morning. Yeah. Right. What are you trying to print? Can you share?
00:39:11
Speaker
So I made a bunch of cast iron lapping plates, like hand lapping plates, a couple months ago. They're fantastic. I made six-inch ones and I made eight-inch ones, except they're heavy and slippery and on a wooden bench, they move around, especially when you got two on top of each other lapping each other in. And right now, we have a piece of rubber underneath, which pretty much works. But I was like, what if I print like a ring? And I just bolt the ring to the table, and then I can put the thing in the ring. That's one example.
00:39:40
Speaker
So I was going down the rabbit hole. I was like, I could print three little feet and I could screw each foot down. You got to make one adjustable. So like do that. And then I looked at my guy, Steven, who's our machine lapping guy. And I was like, can you think about this for five seconds and tell me the easiest way to do this? And he just hands me another piece of rubber. I'm like, thank you. That really helped. It's funny.
00:40:03
Speaker
So, design that thing up, we'll print it down here and then just come down with the kids. True. And you can have them. That's very tempting. Actually, it'd be cool to see the bamboo. Although, I don't know, I just got to order one. You don't need to see it, John. I think the kids' passports came in the mail this morning. Oh, really? That kind of frees up our travelability. School's starting soon.
00:40:27
Speaker
Yeah, right. That's crazy. We do the same thing with the Puck Chucks Alex is building these assembly jigs. And it's been awesome to print these three things that just kind of make it fall into place. Yeah, just is. How often do you use the multicolor option? Either two separate colors in two separate prints or like in the same print two colors?
00:40:47
Speaker
In the same print two colors very infrequently, although I'm super glad I have it. Yeah, it sounds pretty sick when you want to. Yes, for sure. And I think that there'll be more of that when I want to build some more like quality of life, PocoYoke stuff in that shop. And we've done it with things where we want to have like text that pops more. Yeah.
00:41:09
Speaker
I find it useful just because you have four different colors that you can pick from. And sometimes I'll print something that is going to be thrown away or just quickly used. And I'll look at whatever rolls the lowest and be like, okay, well, I'll use up that little bit there. And the switch over to if you run out, if they're printing something in white and white runs out, you could be like, okay, continue in the gray. I don't care. It's great. Yeah. Do you specify that before you hit print or like does it alarm out mid print and goes, what do you want to do?
00:41:37
Speaker
I believe if you have the same software, knows what filament are in the machine. So if you're buying the BAM fulfillment, they have little RFID tags and auto-detects. If you buy generic, when you load the filament, you say what color it is. So I believe if you have two grays, it can auto-switch over to the sister role.
00:42:01
Speaker
If it's not the same color, I do believe it prompts you, although perhaps there's a way to pre-designate the spill. Backup, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that would be nice. I would totally do that.
00:42:13
Speaker
because I hate throwing away a roll with 10 coils left or something. Sure. I'm like, I'm not going to print something like sometimes I do. I believe it's smart enough too to track how much of a, what are those kilogram rolls I think or whatever. I believe it knows how much it used and thus how much is left and it can do the grim smoke predictive. Nice. But I paid attention to that. Yeah, cool. Very tempting. Cool. Yeah. What do you do today?
00:42:44
Speaker
Um, today doing more hand lapping, the new quenching plates are made of 70 75 aluminum and I lapped one and I still have a three 10th lake in the middle. That's driving me crazy. And I realized like, it's kind of huge, but I can't get it out. So I don't know. You're not gonna get that off laughing. Why not? Well, that's the purpose of laughing. Sorry, you could get it out with a heavier compound.
00:43:10
Speaker
Yeah, and I went up to 30 micron. I started at 15 micron, went up to 30. It's lapping. It's cleaning the surface, absolutely. But because the aluminum is a little bit bigger than the lapping plate, I think there's some technique that I'm missing or need to keep practicing with kind of thing. I mean, 3 tenths is probably not going to be the end of the world to our parts. It'll be significantly improved from what we're currently using. Got it. And that's 3 tenths over the whole 8 inch square kind of thing.
00:43:39
Speaker
Today, I'm going to keep playing with that, see if I can get that last little bit out. And I'm going to cut some carbon fiber, going to cut some damasteel, going to do some fun stuff, film a video. And that's my day. Sweet. Awesome.
00:43:55
Speaker
Um, I got a, I pulled the shirt, pulled the shirt around a new laptop. I, I was sort of telling myself, ah, don't, you know, save your money. Don't, don't, you know, my laptop's okay. But the battery's definitely not what it used to be. And, um, it's just, it's a little bit slower and I use it every day. And so then I was like, how old is this thing? Isn't it three years old? And I looked up and like seven years old. Nice.
00:44:19
Speaker
It's funny, it's like it still feels like my new MacBook and I was like, oh, seven years old, I could treat myself. So I bought a new M2. I know there have been some folks asking, I've only had a couple of days, but Fusion is definitely zippy on it. It's awesome. So that's a welcomed upgrade.
00:44:38
Speaker
The other funny, I think, computer nerdy thing is this is my third MacBook. The last one I bought, I used the Apple migration assistant, which is wonderful. They really make it seamless to switch to a new laptop, but it also brings along with it the baggage, the little stuff that you installed. I was like, you know what? I really want a clean break this time, but it's been a little bit more work to manually transfer over
00:45:04
Speaker
music, photos, Final Cut. But it's worth it because I don't want those legacy FTP utilities or malware bytes or SD card cleaner software that I used once six years ago. And you can always download it again. And now that I've found almost everything is cloud-based in my life anyway,
00:45:29
Speaker
It's easier than I ever expected to switch to a new computer. Isn't it funny? Just get Google Drive desktop set up and log into Chrome and install a couple applications like Fusion. And that's about it. Totally agree. It's so cool.
00:45:47
Speaker
Sweet. Well, I will see you in person next week. Yes. Next week. Wednesday podcast somewhere. Um, excellent. It's going to be fun. Sweet. Yeah. I'll see you in person then. All right, dude. See you soon. Bye. Okay. Bye.