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John Grimsmo CRASHES Swiss Lathe! John Saunders' Talks Education & Tool Management
254 Plays6 years ago
This week both John's talk about how John Grimsmo crashed his swiss lathe. John Saunders talks about his class called "Growing Into 5 Axis at Autodesk University". They also touch on rigging and moving CNC equipment and a new tool management system that Saunders' created!
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Impact
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining podcast episode 145. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Rimsville. This is the kind of podcast where two buddies like to chat about
00:00:14
Speaker
what's really happening in work, a little bit in life, and how we interact with the world. Well said. And on that note, a reminder for folks that listen, please, I think we've received two submissions, which is awesome, but I think we could encourage some more.
00:00:34
Speaker
from folks that we're going to stick at the end of the podcast, which is a short audio clip between 30 seconds and two minutes talking about how the Business of Machine podcast has helped you or raised awareness or inspired you or affected you in any way. And that way we can have our listeners start to hear something about your story as
Negotiations and Tool Purchases
00:00:55
Speaker
a listener. And we don't want it to turn into an overt advertisement, but a byproduct or benefit. As you get to mention who you are, your company, your story, et cetera.
00:01:05
Speaker
Yeah, I like it. I think that'll be really cool because it'll show real concrete examples of how the stuff that you and I are spewing and just talking about for each other really, but is actually benefiting other people and their businesses. So a nice little testimonial would be wonderful. We'll tack it at the end.
00:01:26
Speaker
Yeah, I like it because part of what life is all about is learning for me. You're always trying to absorb more and even the conversation last week on net 1%, 10 net 30 was eye opening for me to help think about, hey, we've got a couple of vendors that don't want to give us that. So I'm just going to go back to credit card and bag the points on that.
00:01:52
Speaker
Um, or I, one person I emailed and they were like, yeah, of course we'll give you that. Like I just saved myself 1% for nothing. Right. Right. Yeah. Like for asking. Yeah. Yeah. And little things like that, like their wins, they're, they're good. And you need perspective to even realize that they exist. Yes.
00:02:12
Speaker
Yeah. Speaking of 1% 10, we do get 1% 10 on our Sandvik stuff, and that's important because I literally just clicked by on, I won't say all of the stuff, but the lion's share of the holders, driven holders, static holders, inserts, stick tools, hydraulic jucks, live tooling chucks, cap toe conversion, all that for the new lathe.
00:02:41
Speaker
Whoa. What hydraulic chucks? We are using a Coro Chuck 930 stubby length with this Capto 4 C4 adapter for our driven tools to hold like an end mill. Fancy. That sounds awesome. Okay.
00:02:58
Speaker
Yeah, we'll test it. I also picked up an ER, hard to go wrong with a couple of ERs actually because of the versatility, but we know we have some parts where we're going to predominantly use probably a three-eighth inch helical end mill.
Machining Tools and Efficiency
00:03:15
Speaker
The first one actually is axial, and boy, you can't beat hydraulics in terms of their convenience factor and good run out, good gripping power, and pretty darn solid holder as well.
00:03:28
Speaker
Yeah, I've never used a hydraulic. I don't have any, always been curious. So it'll be cool to see how it works on your lathe for sure. Yeah. Did you go rego for the current?
00:03:39
Speaker
I did, yeah. The Rego PG collets and holders, and with the hydraulic press E unit, very excited to see all that stuff come in. That should be like tops. Yes. I don't think you'll ... If you were like, you're going to use a bunch of shrink fit, I would say look at hydraulic stuff. Hydraulics are pretty snazzy, but you're going to be, I think, probably pretty smitten with that. Yeah, I'll be fine. Yeah, good for you.
00:04:05
Speaker
cool. Go ahead. Are you with the lathe? Are you you're obviously tooling up? I am fresh in the tooling up phase both with the current coming and the Swiss previously. Is it is it fun? Or is it stressful to like think through all the products you currently make and all the products you will be making and try to figure out okay, I'm gonna need that tool, I'm gonna need that tool, I'm probably gonna need that tool. Talk to me about that process.
00:04:31
Speaker
I loved it. Arsandecrep actually gave us a full blown sheet. I had only asked for a couple of tools and then they sent us this Excel file that literally had a tool for every turret, like everything you would want, ID grooving, ID threading, OD threading, boring, et cetera, with the inserts they recommend and the pads. That's helpful.
00:04:52
Speaker
Well, I give him a lot of credit because I wasn't looking for it. My first reaction was, you know, Mark, come on. I didn't need all this information. Then I was like, good on him. When it goes like as a salesman, you're giving me the path of least resistance. It was overwhelming. Then I'll be honest this weekend, a couple of different nights, kids were in bed. I grabbed a beer, sat down with the... I brought him all the Sandvik books.
00:05:18
Speaker
Um, I have two or three different parts that I was referencing as kind of example parts. And I was like, okay, this isn't that hard. 12, 12 positions does go fast. We're not right now using any of the half position stuff, but, uh, I, the key was that the Coro drill eight 80 is a, is one of those you drills or in thrills that have two inserts.
00:05:42
Speaker
Um, and so the one that I bought is a 0.937 inch drill and that can drill on center, but then it can also, it will actually act as a boring bar. Right. That's cool. Right. So that means I only need one of those type of tools, kind of the axial non-driven type tools. And so I bought two, uh, we'll have two axial driven tools and three radial to start. Okay. So that's like your big boring bar, uh, for anything bigger.
00:06:12
Speaker
Say it again. That's your big boring bar. So you don't need another 880. Yeah, the U drill. So you don't need another boring bar really big size. No, we are going to use some micro 100 stuff. Yeah, I'm a big fan.
00:06:27
Speaker
are you? Yeah. Okay, awesome. We got the little quick change thing for small stuff. The QT whatever. Yeah, so it just came in. And I thought, well, if we have small ID work or threading stuff, we could try that that's not going to be the primary. So I like the fact that that's going to be easy to use when we need to, but otherwise, not
00:06:47
Speaker
Yeah, I've got those in, I have them in my tornos or in my tormac. I have them in my Nakamura and I've got a couple. I still think I need, no, I've got one or two installed on the Swiss right now. They're awesome. It's like, are you? Yeah.
00:07:01
Speaker
Are you using the quick change system or just straight carbide from them? It's the quick change system with the angled V-groove. So just an eighth inch, like I've got the tiny one. So an eighth inch Allen key, like one or two turns unscrewed, the thing comes out, new one comes in. It's within two or three tenths of X and Z. Like they keep a really tight tolerance on those things. So sometimes I won't even touch it off. I'll just replace it.
00:07:26
Speaker
and just make parts and then maybe tweak the part size as it comes out, but they are great. When you say repeat, obviously, like on a boring bar, I would assume that there's some mechanism that keeps the correct angle of the boring insert or the carbonate, but does it somehow repeat in Z depth as well when you put it into the QD?
00:07:48
Speaker
It does there's a tapered let's call it 45 degree the backside of the carbide the square end is tapered 45 degree and that butts up against a stop a pin. Okay so the cam action that holds it in place is shoving it back against that thing so it does repeat very well.
00:08:07
Speaker
Got it. That's funny. That's how our big Kaiser digital head works like the carbide sleeve or
Mistakes, Learning and Sharing
00:08:13
Speaker
the carbide boring bar itself. Same thing. It's a tapered wedge at the end or whatever. So that way it locates in two axes perfectly. Yeah, exactly. Which is all it needs to like repeat in all directions basically. Awesome.
00:08:29
Speaker
Yeah. So for any, any small like ID threading work, whatever, make sure the insert is parallel, like, like flat, you know, sweep the face of it. Um, so that you're installing the holder in the correct rotational orientation. You know what I mean? Flat relative to what earth relative to X.
00:08:48
Speaker
relative to X. Oh yeah. So that's going to bring up a weird subject on the lathe, which is, it's so weird when you jog and you see two axes move at the same time. Like I don't, I don't, I don't trust you. It's like an interpolated line. It's cool. Yeah, it's cool. Good. Well, welcome to the dark side. It's uh, I'm so excited. Good. Good. You're going to have a lot of fun with that. So who's primarily going to be running it? Like who's going to do work on the lathe? I'm curious.
00:09:16
Speaker
That's a good question. Ed has definitely taken the lead on the Robo drill. That wasn't necessarily planned. It ends up that it's become a really good machine for making some of the mod vice parts. He has run that machine for hours now. I've never hit cycle start on it. I thought I would, but that's actually great. Then with that now,
00:09:40
Speaker
you know, the bulk of the learning curve tackled on that. And it's funny, like, I know I've joked for years about a lot of things, including not liking FANUC and I will reserve I will stand by the frustrations of like the limited memory size of the soft menus and the head menus, but darn it, that that is a solid machine. We really like it. I suspect it'll be the one that picks up the first lathe project, although I think I'll be on there to myself. That's good. Yeah.
00:10:11
Speaker
fun. Yep. It is. What's going on with you? Um, I, this is a truth moment here. I crashed this way on Friday. Okay. Uh, it's fine, but I'm not happy. And I don't know what happened. That's the worst part is I don't know what happened. Um,
00:10:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's, it's fine. I destroyed a boring bar. Uh, so I'm waiting for a new one to come in. I don't think anything else is bad. It wasn't a bad, bad crash, but I, you know, even the call it that smashed into the boring bar is still okay.
00:10:53
Speaker
but chewed up a little bit. But anyway, it shook me up. You had a tool inside a part, and then it just crashed through it? Or did you actually have a machine? This was on the sub-spindle, so the part had already been transferred. And the first operation is to come face the face of the part. And I'm using a boring bar for this operation.
00:11:12
Speaker
to face the top hat, whatever you call it. And for some reason, my offset on that side was way off, because it just smashed into itself. And I was like, what just happened? What do you mean smash into itself? Like, it's supposed to stop, you know, 10 20,000 before and then slowly feed and start cutting the top of the part. But there was there was 400 thou of interference by the time it stopped moving. And
00:11:42
Speaker
Yeah. If the holder just hit your workpiece, I would think that's a low risk crash compared to you didn't have like an immovable part of the axis crash into the spindle. No, yeah, I've, I've done worse on this and other machines. So this was not a huge deal. But I still don't know why it's annoying. What was that? Good. Yeah.
00:12:12
Speaker
I was thinking of, was this an Instagram story that you posted or was it a WhatsApp where you're talking about the, you caught the slide bushing error was a relic in your code. It's like a hand edit in your code. Exactly. It was a hand edit that was necessary before, but it was causing me problems now. So I just posted that on Instagram last night because I told people I would tell them what the solution was because everybody was super helpful with ideas. So that was good.
00:12:38
Speaker
But yeah, this wasn't that and I was making parts all morning. And then I turned it off for a little bit because I wanted to learn how to write to a tool offset, like have a piece of code that writes to a tool offset. So I was playing with that, but I didn't actually change anything.
00:12:54
Speaker
And then I ran it again, and it crashed. And I was like, oh my gosh, what did I do? Well, so you don't think you changed anything, but you did, right? Isn't that the easiest explanation? Exactly. Got it. So I still got to dig into that. But yeah, it sucks. And luckily, no real damage, a couple hundred bucks in tools, whatever.
00:13:16
Speaker
I got to be...
Habits and Machine Programming
00:13:17
Speaker
I mean, lads are dicey. You got to be careful. Yeah. I truly am sorry. That's not fun. Yeah. No, so I guess the learning experience is... I don't know. I was just re-running a program. I just hit start. I didn't think to walk into it. It was a solid done program. Right.
00:13:40
Speaker
That reminds me of the time I bumped the UMC, I posted two different toolpaths separately, thinking I'll prove them out, posting one at a time, and they were fine. It was when I posted them together that the linking move bit me. It's this false sense of security.
00:13:56
Speaker
And I don't mean to be a backstreet driver here, but if you were writing programs fine, and then you go switch topics, and you go experiment with writing the tool offsets, don't think you did anything. Yeah, exactly. But then it crashes because of the tool offset. The lesson learned is you definitely did something. Exactly. And yeah, you're right. So I should have had that extra four seconds of clarity going, OK, maybe I should just quadruple check this and make sure it is still the same as I think it is. Let me watch it slowly. Let me run it by itself.
00:14:24
Speaker
And yes, I should have done that. So it's good. It's good to hear that actually, because now I get to like, like realize what to do next time. But it goes back to Oh, man, I was just trying to reread a book that I really liked on how we as humans form habits and why they're so difficult to break.
00:14:43
Speaker
and how one of the ways to do something like stop biting your nails or some other habit that we generally associate with a bad outcome is you've got to replace it. You can't just mix it. I think people that have tried to fight smoking or drinking problems have
00:14:59
Speaker
I think have the similar methods where you can't just quit smoking. You have to say every time I want a cigarette, instead, I get to eat a peanut M&M, which are delicious. What I found is I will sometimes send emails without proofreading them, especially when they're important teachers. I find myself
00:15:18
Speaker
just always wanting to treat myself, the serial, like the exception, like, oh, just send it, Saunders. I'm sure you wrote it fine. Don't worry about it. Just send it. Because when I finally developed that inner strength to stop and reread it, almost every single time I want to tweak something or correct a mistake. And I've never once done that and been like, that was a waste of time. I should have just sent it the first time. But the problem is I'm not ever giving myself a
00:15:44
Speaker
reward or like a nugget for forcing myself to do that. That makes sense? Like when you're trying to do big John Grimsmo, you're not thinking, well, if I stop after playing with the offsets and go check something, I'll let myself, like literally I'll go move 20 bucks into my fun tool. You know, some like stupid little carrot. We don't think that way, but maybe we should. I don't know.
00:16:11
Speaker
Right? Because otherwise, it's very difficult to do. It's easy to criticize and talk about from the benefit of hindsight. Yeah, you should have. I think especially with regards to emails or answering DMs or comments or texts or whatever, we're becoming such a fast-paced world that especially when I'm chowing through DMs and trying to catch up on 50 of them or something, you just want to plow through them.
00:16:36
Speaker
And sometimes I'll reread what I wrote and sometimes I don't. And sometimes I hit post and it's like garbled and I'm like, Oh man, autocorrect screwed me on that one. So like delete it and then rewrite it. Um, in every scenario, like slow down. Can someone please develop an autocorrect for machinists because it would
Handling Machine Crashes
00:16:57
Speaker
really help. Yep.
00:17:00
Speaker
Does the Tournos have like a crash detection break where it'll stop? Yeah, it certainly stopped itself immediately. Okay. And I'm sure that saved a lot of damage as well. Some machines will have like the Nakamura has what they call the airbag system where it kind of knows it's getting too close to itself and it'll slow things down.
00:17:22
Speaker
and then actually back off, I think a little bit, so you're not stuck in the constrained state. And I think I've seen that a little bit, but I'm sure other scenarios, bigger and more deadly, would benefit from that more than my little bumps. But yeah, still not. Well, my humble advice is
00:17:44
Speaker
We learned this at the UMC, obviously a Kern is a whole different level of build quality than a UMC, but
00:17:53
Speaker
better doesn't always mean it's more resilient to bumps and so forth. I actually am leaving in an hour to go to Vegas for AU, and I'm super excited. I'm doing a class called Growing into a Five-axis, which is a very practical talk about the lessons that we've learned with everything from programming to workholding to verification to
00:18:16
Speaker
the workflows, the tooling. One of the things I would encourage folks to think about is when you get into more complex machines, multi-axis lays, five-axis mills, walk through what's going to happen the first time you crash. How are you going to run kinematics? Are you going to run in Haas world MRZP? How are you going to log those differences? If they're different, how much means I need to call a service tech? What does that process look like? The first time we crashed,
00:18:45
Speaker
The only time we crashed our UMC, luckily was also just a holder into a part, but it was not a good crash. And the first service had to show up was like, I'm not sure we might have to ship the machine out. What? And I was like, Oh my God.
00:19:03
Speaker
Luckily, they didn't have to do that. But I would encourage folks to figure out and learn, like on Leha's example as well, the regular UMC 750 can have more field work done versus the UMC 750SS or the SS models. Yeah, the roller cam design is not something that it can do as much field repair on.
00:19:25
Speaker
Didn't know it. Just something to think about as the ownership process of, especially with that current, oh my God, I'm super jealous of that machine. I don't want to see any bumps. Yeah, I think I'm going to need to wear ear protection while using it. Basically, everybody knows if I'm wearing these, leave me the heck alone, please, because I need to focus. Did I tell you about that from the Allied tour? No.
00:19:55
Speaker
Oh my God. We filmed it a while back there. It's taking a lot of back and forth to get this video publicly releasable, but one of the best tours I've ever had in my life totally blew me away.
00:20:10
Speaker
A lot of really, really amazing nuggets. And one of those nuggets was they keep construction worker safety orange vests around. You know what I'm talking about? I assume you have those in Canada. And I'm like, what the heck? Why do you have a Hunter Orange or construction orange vest next to this beautiful DMG, NVX, whatever? And the guy just looks at me and he smiles and he goes, if you're in the middle of a complicated setup and you don't want someone to bother you, you put on the orange vest.
00:20:38
Speaker
I'm buying three of those today. I was like, oh my God, that's genius. Yes. Like leave me alone. I've got my head over backwards using a mirror with an inter-rapid indicator trying to get this thing dialed in. I don't want someone to ask me where the, where the Torx wrench is. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Um, I'm doing that. I like, I like exactly how you said it. The guy turns around smiles and just says, cause he knows it's going to blow your mind.
00:21:06
Speaker
Right? I love it. I love it. It's so good. Yeah. And thus for no reason, we're going to call them Pearson vests for no reason. Perfect. It was a good takeaway, but yeah. Yeah, I love it. So you got a new
00:21:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's going to be fun. I, I chose not to go this year. Like I didn't even really think about it. Uh, I was just like, eh, I'm too busy. Yep. I there's a, do you guys use that term FOMO? Yeah. No, I don't, I don't use it, but I've heard of it. Yeah.
00:21:46
Speaker
It's a, I only think I heard about it maybe this past summer and it's kind of funny because there's that FOMO element. If like, I would feel a smidge of FOMO because I enjoy seeing people, right? It's fun to hang out with people, but, um, fear of missing out for those who don't know what it means. But, um, so I am excited to go, but, um, I think next year the fusion Academy is a very, very strong, I would, as I will try to come to this job. Oh my gosh. Yeah.
00:22:15
Speaker
I have been listening to the online classes of that, and that's been very helpful. Did you listen to that Dan Pacific Five-axis one? I did, yep. That blew me away. Part of it is over my head because I really don't know what I'm doing yet, but I have the base, and then I'll probably start current stuff, and then I'll go back and rewatch it or something, and then it'll blow me away properly. You know what I mean? Oh, you know what we could do?
00:22:40
Speaker
Let me see if I can figure this out. You and I, I don't think we'll do it as a bond episode because this is kind of separate, but you and I could do a one hour screen session and let anybody else join in. Join in how? Audio? Like an online, like a Zoom, like a screen chair, whatever. Okay. I don't have a paid account, but I can honestly probably ask somebody like Autodesk if we can use their account. You know, like those go-to meeting things? Yeah.
00:23:09
Speaker
And I could just have a back and forth with you. And I think people would love seeing what we go over. Oh, for sure. I'm in. Yeah. OK. Yeah, we'll think about that. Let's chew on that. Very cool. Hey, I had a note to ask you this week on the podcast talking about rigging. Can you walk through how you handle rigging? Yes.
Moving and Setting Up New Machines
00:23:39
Speaker
Well, especially with our move coming up, which is awesome. I have one rigging company that has moved almost all of my machines, the Nakamura and the Tornos for sure. And they do, what do you say, like 60% of all rigging in this area. So it was like, whoa, sweet. And I called them up and I was like, look, I've got a, they call it a plant move. So,
00:24:06
Speaker
They had a guy come in and I'm like, I don't have a plant. This is crazy, but I guess I do. From your perspective, it's just a tiny version. Please purchase a fern. Yeah, exactly. Move this plant as well. He looked around and he measured everything and he's like, oh, this one's this way. Anyway, blah, blah, blah.
00:24:27
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm using them again, and I assume they'll send one or two trucks and just zip stuff back and forth. Is there anything more specific you wanted to know? Well, that is still actually interesting and helpful. I guess some of the complexities and frustrations that I have had relate more to delivery of a machine, so I can't necessarily control exactly when the truck is going to show up. So let's say you purchased
00:24:54
Speaker
a second DMG DER vertical. Do you handle it? Well, I guess in the States, it seems like most of the time we handle rigging. Sometimes, like I know Lawrence mentions in Europe that the distributors or machine tool folks handle the rigging. For all of our machines, the machine tool vendor handled rigging. They coordinated with me to get a time that worked. And they were almost always here between 7 and 9 AM. Yeah, OK. But yeah, like Elia Matsura,
00:25:23
Speaker
or DMG Morey handled the rigging themselves. Yeah, that's really nice. Yeah, it is really nice. Because it's one of those big boy topics of like, I've never called a rigging company. I've never sent a freight package. You don't know what you're doing until you do it. So it was helpful to lean on them to organize that for me. Now I'm just using the same riggers to do the plant move, and it's like,
00:25:50
Speaker
They've already been here. They know what it's about. I trust them because I've seen them work and it's no big deal. But yeah, it would be frustrating to run it yourself.
00:26:01
Speaker
Well, we've had so many riggers charged by the hour, and that's not unreasonable. So when we've had trucks show up late for various reasons, one was broken down, the other had a driver who stopped for religious reasons for like an hour and a half. And what are you going to do about that? It seems a bit strange, especially when you were given a window.
00:26:28
Speaker
I only care because it's like trying to coordinate this whole orchestra. So I think next time I may just have the machine delivered to the rigger, because then they just offload it whenever it shows up. And then the next day they can drive it over to our shop. Yeah, that's actually what I'm going to do with the current. We have it scheduled, it should ship in 10 days from Germany, which is epic. It's going to spend a couple weeks on a boat, it's going to land, it's going to drive to
00:26:55
Speaker
I've got it delivered right to the rigger because I don't think we're going to have the shop in time to have it anyway. Where does it get off the port? I don't know yet. I'm sure I'll find that out very shortly. Did it go down to St. Lawrence? Probably. Because I think Toronto, Montreal, something like that. But I'm not sure yet.
00:27:16
Speaker
Okay, it's not like it's getting out of port in Maine or Boston. No, I'm pretty sure it's not going to the US. It's coming directly into Canada, which helps for various reasons, import duties and stuff like that. But yeah, it's getting directly to the rigor because they have my two U-MAC machines that I got from military.
00:27:35
Speaker
if they're in storage at the rigger. So I'm like, you have to lift those and put them on your trucks and drive here anyway. Just park the current right next to them, bring all three during the move day.
00:27:46
Speaker
dump them at the new shop, drive across the street, pick up our old machines. It should work. And I've talked to them about this. They're like, yeah, no problem. Thanks for letting me know. We're going to have to pay. I'm sure we're going to have to pay unloading of the current and storage for a couple of weeks or whatever, which kind of sucks. But it is what it is because the shop's not ready yet.
00:28:08
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know how it may not be that bad. We're going to be three or four. When rigging goes well, it's phenomenal. Those people have 30,000 pound forklifts or whatever. They just literally slide in, pick it up, move it over, scoot it down. Not a big deal. When rigging goes wrong, you get the wrong piece of equipment, or it doesn't work, or you can't get an access to it, or people aren't there. That's when it becomes... From your perspective, for the next seven machines that you buy, if you get it delivered to the riggers, unloaded, weight, loaded back up,
00:28:38
Speaker
If that's costing you a lot of money, it might not be worth it. Do you know what I mean? I don't know. Well, yeah, on the flip side, there's a lot of stress and unnecessary hassle factor with the getting it delivered.
00:28:52
Speaker
within a window. Maybe I'm overreacting. It gives them the chance to figure out what equipment they may need. Again, in this past example, we had a problem with the rigging because we tried to use a crane and something was wrong. Still trying to figure that out. I'm happy to share once we figure that out. I don't think it'll necessarily be that much more.
00:29:13
Speaker
And I'm just, I guess what I'm getting frustrated is I have no problem paying a full price to good rigors for doing work. I'm not trying to cheap out of it, but the UMC bill that we got was unacceptable. And I was unfortunately not here. That was when Yvonne was in the hospital. So it makes it all the more complicated to try to figure that out. But
00:29:37
Speaker
I guess it'd be helpful. It's always helpful to talk to other people, which is what I did. I know five or 10 people that have had UMCs rigged, and I got price points from all of them. I was like, yep, my bill was double. Really? It's one thing if the rigger is just like, yeah, we screwed this guy. We made a bunch of money. Let's figure this out. I have no problem paying you a fair rate, but I don't want to pay $5,000 for a job that you should be able to earn a perfectly fair profit for $2,500 on it.
00:30:08
Speaker
Well, the other aspect to rigging that I certainly didn't think about until it happened is, so the machine's getting shipped, especially for a more distant delivery, something that's not coming from.
00:30:20
Speaker
you're more indirectly to here. But your Haas comes on a truck from California to Ohio, and then your rigging company has to meet that truck at your location. So you've got two scheduled apartments, scheduled appointments that have to be there at the same time. Otherwise, people are sitting on their hands just burning time and waiting. That's what I was talking about earlier, where we had the truck driver, quote unquote, breakdown, and then religious break and all that.
00:30:49
Speaker
Meanwhile, you have your patient riggers that are sitting there waiting for the truck to be delivered. We had that a little bit with the tornos, but it happened within a couple of short hours. By 10, 11 o'clock, everybody's gone already, so it's fine.
00:31:07
Speaker
I assume you'll end up buying a forklift in your new shop anyways, right? I've thought about it. Maybe not something big enough that could move machinery. What's the tortoise way? 7,000, I think. Yeah. We have a 5,000 pound forklift, and I think I honestly may swap it out for a 10,000 pound because
00:31:28
Speaker
we that that's bigger than that like to lift like you're you're not gonna ever want to lift your vertical but we bought skates john and we have a tow jack none of that's expensive and we we on the lathe that's a 13,000 pound machine we had the rigors drop it inside our garage door and then we we moved it over no big deal
00:31:50
Speaker
And you figure that the hundreds of dollars per hour they charge, it was no big deal for us to take our time moving it to where we want to try to testing it out, tweaking it. Yep. And then the counter to that is pay the experts what they're good at. And you do what you're good at. And I don't, I don't need to become an expert at a rigging machinery. You know, I hear you. There's a safety element to it for sure, which we're exactly. So, but, um, it's not,
00:32:15
Speaker
I don't think of it like that. I think about it more like, Hey, there's some things that meant, you know, you, you are a guy who likes to insource in, um, I don't know. It's just not that, um, it's, it seems that it made sense. Like I guarantee you there's one thing about your new shop is you're going to rearrange it.
00:32:33
Speaker
that there's no way you won't learn from that workflow and who knows what your next machine is. I'd like to publicly say that I'm not buying machines for a short period of time. Good. But yeah, it's tough. I haven't spent too much time trying to plan the new shop, but I'm sort of percolating it. And we're going to sit down here soon and figure out the layout with now and future machines and room for expansion, hopefully so we don't have to move. I actually haven't considered
00:33:02
Speaker
the option of rearranging machinery. I guess I'm trying to get it one and done, where we put them is where they stay, but I don't know. Because there's like power and everything, power and air, and you'd have to redo a lot of that to move them across the way. I hear you. I'm not saying you should plan for it, but I think you learn a space. Yeah. You just do. Good point.
00:33:29
Speaker
Moving air is not that big a deal, and power ends up not being as big a deal as you think. Do you have higher voltage, like 480? 600. Oh, I love you. I'm jealous. That's great. Yeah. But like the Robo drill, not a heavy machine. Sure, yeah. Better to move it on skates than just with a forklift, depending on what you're doing. And so having skates dropping on there, scooting around, it's been great. Sure. Yeah, I see that for sure.
00:34:00
Speaker
Cool. Did I tell you about our new tooling system? Yeah, I don't know if we've talked about it here. It is working out excellent. It's still early. Okay, simple.
00:34:15
Speaker
T numbers are always changing, whether you take a tool in and out of a machine or sharing it between machines. It's simple, like the Haas has a 40 tool changer. We have more than 40 tools that we would like to use. I don't have a 100, 500, you know, Matt Sura ATC. So what we've done is we've created an S number.
00:34:35
Speaker
Very simple Google sheet once we get this polished a little we'll probably share this but as one through 56 our drills as the next 56 are Taps the next 56 are and Mills and there's one more category. I did 56 because those 28 bin Acro Mills drawers that I have at my shop. They're like plastic bins. They're about a hundred bucks per 28 set that gives me a very good cubby hole or like a
00:35:05
Speaker
physical storage solution there. And so S, we'll make one up, S180, I know off the top of my head, is a YG1 three-flute roughing aluminum end mill. So S180 stays set up, that tool happens to be in a big Kaiser, one of their high precision collet chucks, so it's a really low run out, it's a nice tool that lets me know that that stays set up. So I have it programmed in Fusion, my tool library,
00:35:34
Speaker
And then the Cat40 holder has one of the yellow, flippy tag things. We bought them from MSC. Some people print them. And on that is just written a very basic description, like YG, half inch, three flute, whatever. And then S180. So when I take the S180 this morning was on one of the Cat40 tool cards. I wanted to use it in the UMC. So the open pocket was T23.
00:36:01
Speaker
I pull the s 180 collar tag off the cat 40. And I have Ed and I made this laser cut we tried 3d printing ends up laser cutting acrylic is better. Again, we'll share all this once we kind of perfect the minor details. We have 40 slots in that that are labeled. It then goes into t 23 slot. Okay.
00:36:22
Speaker
And then the Acro Mills storage bin has an S180 drawer. And in that I can keep the box for the tool, extra tools, the wrench, inserts, never sees, whatever I wanna have for that tool. Super simple, the Google Sheets, easy to search.
Tooling System and Financial Discipline
00:36:39
Speaker
This isn't for thousands of tools. We actually have our database, we've renamed Alex because Alex made it. That's more for like, hey, I have a really quirky
00:36:48
Speaker
helical or Harvey lollipop cutter, some really, really weird radius key slot cutter, those go into Alex, because that's like, once a year, I need to find that tool. The s numbers are for like the daily stuff we're using. Right. That's very cool. I forget that on Haas machines, the tool number is the pocket number, right?
00:37:12
Speaker
No, that's true on the umbrella changes. On the side mounts, it's not, but you're still limited to tools 1 through 40. Now, if I wanted to add say tool 56, I could do that, but I literally have to go into the tool table and delete a pocket. I could delete a tool number and add it to 56, which is like PathPilot does it much better. I don't know how the other controls
00:37:36
Speaker
Yes. On my Moria with the fan of control, I think I can have up to 255 tools. Okay. Tool 16 is always tool 16. It's my quarter inch five flute rougher. Tool 41 is my chamfer. Tool 80 is my thingy. They never change. A certain tool always has a certain tool number. That said, as we're developing our ERP system too,
00:38:01
Speaker
we will have to come up with part numbers just like you did with S where it becomes this tool is now this designation. And so your S number accounts for the holder and the end mill combo.
00:38:14
Speaker
Exactly. And we record a approximate stick out, plus or minus 10 pal. That way we set it back up again, especially for five axis work. We don't need to worry about collisions. Right. That's cool. Yeah. In Pro Shop, they called it an RTA or a rotating tool assembly. And they would allow you to pick a holder and an end mill, put them together into an RTA.
00:38:37
Speaker
And, uh, which is exactly what you're doing with an S value. Basically. Yeah. That's awesome. It's, it's amazing to be more organized with this stuff and realize how fly by the seat of your pants. It is normally like just, just the way we tend to work.
00:38:54
Speaker
Yeah, I tried to make the tool numbers work. I really did. And then I just realized we can actually keep it simple. And then who cares? Like, you know, if it's just frustrating, because if you have, let's say T32 is a normally certain tool. Well, let's say you had a one off tool set up in T32. And I want to use one of my now s number tools in T32, because it's supposed to be that number. Well, now I've got to go change a bunch of things. And this s number system, basically,
00:39:21
Speaker
I don't care about tool numbers anymore. That's pretty easy. It's a pretty easy solution. It's so funny when you say T32 because immediately at the millisecond after you said it, I'm picturing my one 32nd ball nose and milk because that's my gravy. Immediately. It's like always T32. Ansel can tell me T32 broke and I know exactly what it was. T31 is my, that was like the first tool I used on the Tormach in my garage was a quarter inch. Yeah.
00:39:51
Speaker
Now it's going to be weird. I'm trying something new. Real quick, because I've only have the one mill right now. So I have one method of doing tool management. With the Kern, it's Heidenhain, which is so different. We're running similar, like we're going to be running knives on both. So we're going to have similar tooling on both. We're going to have to figure out a way to manage both with sort of the same theory. I don't even know how tool names work in Heidenhain yet. I think they're names, like words and letters. Descriptive.
00:40:20
Speaker
It's just cool. But it's actually wonderful. I think it could be wonderful. I've just got to wrap my head around it. Yeah, I'm envious except it breaks down if you're ever using non hide and hide with the same system because it's only hide and hide that lets you do that naming convention. Yes.
00:40:40
Speaker
Yeah, I spent a little bit of time this weekend. You can actually download Heidenhein control software onto your laptop or computer. And the screen is there with all the buttons and everything. And you can run code. Do you have to put in a serial number of a Heidenhein machine that you own?
00:40:58
Speaker
Nope, it's free for 100 lines of code, which is very limited, but it's very cool. And what I really wanted to know was how the heck do macros work and logic and functions and macro B programming like they do in FANUC, which I'm getting very good at. I'm still a little bit in the dark with how that works in hide and hide, but they're like Q values. And logic still works if this plus that, blah, blah, blah.
00:41:25
Speaker
But is there a table of macros that gets stored, like in FANUC or Haas, where it's like T0 through 33 is volatile, T1 through 199 is, or whatever, 100 through 200 or something. You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm trying to figure that out because I'm going to need that with the current.
00:41:46
Speaker
You will, yeah, sure. That's going to be weird. You're actually going to, what are you going to use the Maury for? Holy cow. Yeah, I know. In a perfect world, I don't need the Maury anymore. It becomes supplement, it becomes backup. We'll use it for a lot of stuff, but nothing critical. But for now, you want to sell it to me? No. I'll buy it. I've got one year and nothing's mine and I'm paid off. It's going to feel good, right? It's going to feel amazing. I need that milestone.
00:42:14
Speaker
The Maury is right now making Norseman. They're going great. So we're going to put rasks on the current, allow the Maury to like be bread and butter for a while and just keep doing what it's doing. Until at which point we can pull Norseman onto the current on top of rasks. And then the Maury becomes a little freer. But until then, like it works so good. Just keep it going. Don't don't screw with a good thing. So that lets me get time to do the current and make the rasks and do it slowly and properly and you know,
00:42:45
Speaker
That sounds very well thought out. Yeah. Awesome. That's going to be exciting. New shops going okay? New shops going great. Yep. January 1st. Pumped. Awesome. Awesome. Congrats. Yeah. It's happening. Yeah, I had a really good moment this week when I was thinking about
00:43:10
Speaker
that whole like paying off machines thing and how there's a form of lifestyle creep that I didn't even think about that really existed in terms of, and I'll give a kind of just random example, like let's say, well, it's not really that random because it's kind of, it kind of was what I was thinking about, which is like, let's say you want a new truck and it's like, okay, well, I can trade my truck in and then for another make up a number 15 or 20 grand, you could then get a new truck or new vehicle. Well, if you get to that amount of money,
00:43:39
Speaker
You may think, well, I can do that and I could pay cash and that's great. And like, that's a win and so forth. But let's say you're trying to pay off a machine or you have as a goal, and that's assumedly more than that amount. It's those little hurdles that are a form of lifestyle creep in a really weird way that will sometimes stand in the way. Because if you, let's say the machine payment was 60 grand, and you were at $54,000 saved up, you might think, holy cow, I'm this close to paying off a machine? Screw the truck. I can hit that number.
00:44:08
Speaker
another month. That's awesome. You know what I mean? And I don't know.
00:44:12
Speaker
what the takeaway is other than that kind of either discipline or for me, it's like using those online savings accounts where you can just kind of take money out of your business checking account or whatever and put it away so you just don't see it. Because I log into my account all the time to pay bills or look at stuff and I've got to get away from using that as a barometer for how things are doing. Exactly. Yeah. And when you are sitting on some cash, which is very good and very healthy,
00:44:41
Speaker
it's tempting to like, pay down stuff or you know, use it for something or buy something new or, you know, blah, blah, blah. But as you're saying, if you kind of push it aside and hide it from day to day operations, then maybe you're a little bit less likely like it's all about figuring out how you work best and how you keep yourself safe and accountable. And don't lifestyle creep beyond your needs. Right? Yeah.
00:45:06
Speaker
It's a, it's, it's fun. I know I did this one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. What's going on the rest of the day? The rest of the day. It's Monday. I got to figure out, I think I can make two different parts on the Swiss without this boring bar that I crashed until a new one comes in. So that'll be good. I've been programming those all weekend. So get those going. And then other than that, just rinse and repeat on making knives, crushing it, doing very well. Make more saga pens.
00:45:34
Speaker
sagas are in like steady production now. We're selling them, finishing them almost every day. And like, yes, I want to be, we got Norseman, we got saga. Everything's gravy. Everything's steady. Um, it's great. Awesome. That's really cool. You run the lathe either Swiss or knock regularly overnight or unattended. No, I used to run the lock camera a lot more at night. Um,
00:46:01
Speaker
I don't know why, well, we're putting the harder jobs on it now, so I don't. And I haven't really run out the Swiss overnight yet.
00:46:09
Speaker
Okay. Just fear, I guess. I don't know. I don't want it to catch fire. But it's been solid. It's not the it's clearly not the unintended operations that represent a danger to it. Yeah, no, you're right. The thing is when I when I am running the Swiss and when it's going great, it just runs and runs and runs and runs and runs. And, you know, an awesome day is when it's
00:46:33
Speaker
You know, 930 and the machine is warmed up and running and making good parts and it makes good parts until I leave. And then usually Eric stays later than
Swiss Machine Production and Listener Feedback
00:46:40
Speaker
I do. So I'll be like, you just watch it and turn it off when you go home, please. And he does. And then I've got like 10 hours of machining done in a day. I'm like, yes, that's awesome. That's a total win. Right. Total. Like don't need to push it much more than that because it's so fast and I've made so many parts that, uh,
00:46:56
Speaker
Yeah. But one day I need to run it like, and come back in the morning and it's still running. Cause that's the goal. That's the purpose of it. Um, and we'll get there. No, I was asking anecdotally, not sure. Yeah. No, for sure. Yeah. But the mill we do run every night, it, it, it runs till deep into midnight or early mornings. Uh, yeah, it's great. And then it, does it power itself off or you just, it just goes into like sleep safe, but oh, that's cool. Yeah. Boston shots, shots off, which is sweet.
00:47:26
Speaker
Yeah. Cool. More machines need that button. Yeah, right. Well, I gotta go catch my flight. Sounds good. And yeah, I'll have my FOMO here from snowy. Take care, but I'll see you. Take care. Bye.
00:47:46
Speaker
Each week on the Business of Machining podcast, we ask viewers to send in an audio clip of how the Business of Machining podcast has affected or helped them. Here's this week's viewer. Hi, my name is Jacob. I'm a manufacturing and engineering student in Oregon. So I don't actually have a company that's producing products or anything like that. But one of the reasons why I like listening to the podcast is because it lets me play that game in my head where it's like, oh, what if I did have my own company making these parts?
00:48:14
Speaker
What would be the struggles I'd be going through? How would I solve them? Like what machines would I want to buy if I did get into it? Because it's something, the idea of making parts, producing them, selling them, being proud of them, sounds like a super fun thing to me because I've always been a little entrepreneurial.
00:48:31
Speaker
And I'm obviously a manufacturing student so the idea of making a product and then selling it is the best of both worlds in my head. So that's why I like your podcast so much is not necessarily because I'm taking things from them and applying them to my business but because I get to hear about what people who are in business are doing.
00:48:50
Speaker
That's just it's it's a fun thing for me to listen to especially with a one-hour commute to my school I get to you know get in the get in the mindset of being interested in this sort of thing and it's Yeah, it's really fun. I've actually started Listening to all your newest ones and then recently I went back to the first one and I'm gonna you know brush up on all the podcasts and then Hopefully keep on listening to all the other ones you put out. So, uh, thanks so much for your
00:49:18
Speaker
for putting all this out there. I haven't really seen anything else similar to it. So yeah, keep doing what you're doing. Alright, bye.