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#448 Everything in the world is triangles
535 Plays1 hour ago
Topics:
- Shipping and tarrifs
- Fishbone diagram
- Clamping induced distortion
- Managing our growth
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Episode 448
00:00:01
John Saunders
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machining episode 448. I'm John Saunders.
00:00:06
johngrimsmo
I'm John Grimsmo.
00:00:08
John Saunders
and We are friends, but we're not here to be friends. We're here to kind of share our passion, but also try to like brainstorm through stuff.
Topics Overview: Customs, Tariffs, and Manufacturing
00:00:14
John Saunders
And I've definitely got some stuff I wanted to talk about today.
00:00:16
johngrimsmo
Same.
00:00:17
John Saunders
Good. um Here's my list, customs and tariffs, Stimptworks, some Fusion and SolidWorks advice, managing growth on our end as it relates to machine tools, our phone system, and making custom tips for dial-in caters.
00:00:32
johngrimsmo
Oh, interesting. Alright, my list is update on my fjellblade quest to not suck at making them.
00:00:39
John Saunders
Yes.
00:00:41
johngrimsmo
um
00:00:41
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:00:42
johngrimsmo
More on that. A phone call from a mutual friend. And bismuth wax and thermopolymers.
00:00:54
John Saunders
Can I ask is the phone call was from Tuck?
00:00:57
johngrimsmo
No.
Challenges with Shipping and Tariffs
00:00:57
John Saunders
Oh, we, Grant ran out of his, um, Grant ran out of his notebooks and I went to just order some on your website and i was like, Oh, totally get it Actually could be a very good taste segue to the tariffs, the section, but, um, I couldn't order them.
00:01:02
johngrimsmo
Oh.
00:01:09
johngrimsmo
but Sure.
00:01:12
John Saunders
Uh, hope I'm not getting anybody in trouble here. So I asked Tuck if he had any more and he was like, let me take a look. So, uh, yeah.
00:01:17
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I'm pretty sure i i I meant to leave Tuck with a lifetime supply. He might have... briff brim re what's it called? I don't know. Giving us back a bunch because he had them after blade show.
00:01:27
John Saunders
Ah,
00:01:29
johngrimsmo
So he like had hundreds at one point.
00:01:30
John Saunders
Got it.
00:01:32
johngrimsmo
But anyway, yeah. Yeah.
00:01:34
John Saunders
Shout out to, sorry, go ahead.
00:01:36
johngrimsmo
Just on the tariffs thing, and and we don't ship small packages right now because of tariff costs and issues and things like that. And my accountant just said, that might be better now changing. We need to do some more research.
00:01:48
johngrimsmo
Because I don't like that I can't ship you like three notebooks normally normally through the website.
00:01:51
John Saunders
Right.
00:01:53
johngrimsmo
But I'm also very happy to hear that you guys have used some up.
00:01:57
John Saunders
Well, that's what I was going to say as your friend and want somebody who'd love to see you continue to kill it is, uh, we love our saga notebooks. They're great. Um, I've now ed you, you'd see one for six months, the guys here use them.
00:02:05
johngrimsmo
Good.
00:02:08
John Saunders
Um, so if anyone out there is looking for a fun gift for yourself or for someone else, go buy one of Grimms Moe's saga notebooks. Um,
00:02:16
johngrimsmo
Yes, im I am clipping that and posting it.
00:02:19
John Saunders
So I don't, I had jotted this down um probably two or three weeks ago and um to sort of overshare the way I think, at least the way I run this podcast is I just have a running list of topics to talk about and it gives me a place to dump them throughout the week or usually I end up prepping before we we talk, things I'd like to get your opinion on it and so forth.
00:02:39
John Saunders
And a lot of times we don't get to stuff so I just move it to the next week. So sometimes these carry through week after week and um coincidentally, I had a note to say, oh, I wonder how Grimstone's doing with,
00:02:44
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:02:50
John Saunders
customs and tariffs stuff, knowing that it sort of smacked you in the face more than it smacked me in the face directly in terms of like, I don't have to ship into the U S on the flip side.
00:02:54
johngrimsmo
Mm-hmm.
00:03:00
John Saunders
We're now starting to see some real ramifications of prices. And right after I'd wrote that note, wrote that note down the, um, It's funny, i ah segue. I used to follow a ah website 20 years ago called the Firearm Blog, and it was like only firearm news, not politics.
00:03:17
John Saunders
And it's great because you like you don't listen to hear people rant and ramble about politics.
00:03:17
johngrimsmo
thank you
00:03:21
John Saunders
So in the same vein here, trying to say as apolitical, not because I don't want to have an opinion, but because I want this to be a refuge from opinions, um my personal opinion.
Tariff Implications and Legal Challenges
00:03:33
John Saunders
ha ha um But Trump was largely had his like ah the Supreme Court ruled against him. Lots, most of that, um executive order tariff stuff was ruled to be illegal.
00:03:47
John Saunders
i again I'm not a politician or a lawyer, et cetera, but like that was supposed to be pursuing, I think to some wartime extreme measures thing. And generally speaking in the U.S., you know, we have Congress and they're supposed to they're supposed to do things like go to war and pass bills and pass tariffs.
00:03:54
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:04:02
John Saunders
So now there's this all this uncertainty and turmoil of what's going to happen. And now he's claiming to do 10 15% blanket tariff. um I know you were affected by the de minimis, right?
00:04:13
John Saunders
Because you normally ship under 800.
00:04:15
johngrimsmo
the sagas yep and all little stuff the notebooks you know packs of notebooks
00:04:16
John Saunders
Yeah, right?
00:04:19
John Saunders
Right. Yeah. And for us in the U S I know the people that would buy stuff from Ali express or from sheen, the clothing company, and it was, you know, 30 bucks or or even 300 bucks. It just showed up usually via USPS, which fun fact answers that kind of question I had years ago like, how come if something comes to you, the post office, there's just magically no tariff.
00:04:39
John Saunders
But if you ship that same $40 item via FedEx or UPS, they're going to charge you tariffs and they're gonna charge you like 60 or a hundred dollar processing fee.
00:04:48
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:04:49
John Saunders
It's de minimis is the answer. So I don't know if that's, if that's coming back?
00:04:52
johngrimsmo
I do not know.
00:04:53
John Saunders
Okay. Well, I don't know either. So I don't think there's a point in us same what we don't know um but it's certainly top of mind because i am curious um and i am also curious because we're now starting to look pretty seriously at some new equipment and i'm kind of curious to know you know if you were selling a six-figure machine tool and it had a large tariff on it at what point are you comfortable quoting that without the tariff and i know a lot of the builders got real
00:04:58
johngrimsmo
Guessing. Yeah.
00:05:23
John Saunders
real weird about not wanting to show the tariff amount because they didn't want end users to be able to try that back into what their, their pricing was. And so that frankly is ridiculous.
00:05:31
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:05:33
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:05:34
johngrimsmo
Hmm. Yeah. Buying a new piece of equipment, especially from outside of the U S uh, like you're in right now. That's an interesting position.
00:05:42
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:05:44
johngrimsmo
Hmm. um
00:05:46
John Saunders
So if anybody knows, I'd love to hear, but otherwise I'll kind of keep an ear to it.
00:05:48
johngrimsmo
Good. Yep. Yeah.
Freight and Customs: Navigating Shipping Complexities
00:05:50
johngrimsmo
And as far as day-to-day shipping of of tariff stuff for us, ever since we signed on with the customs broker like six months ago, it's been smooth sailing.
00:05:59
johngrimsmo
A bit more paperwork on our end, bit more cost per package, but it has been absolutely problem-free.
00:05:59
John Saunders
Got it.
00:06:06
John Saunders
Good.
00:06:06
johngrimsmo
Yeah. So it's good.
00:06:08
John Saunders
And you, they handle paperwork, but it still goes via a carrier like a FedEx or UPS.
00:06:13
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:06:13
John Saunders
Okay.
00:06:14
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:06:15
John Saunders
So that's like the tracking and deliveries is do the buyer is none the wiser that there's a year a customs.
00:06:20
johngrimsmo
Exactly. Yeah, we we FedEx pretty much everything now, which we used to be very heavy on UPS, but UPS didn't like to talk to our customs broker.
00:06:23
John Saunders
okay
00:06:28
johngrimsmo
So we switched everything to FedEx and then now everything was working much better. So yeah.
00:06:33
John Saunders
Interesting. This hadn't been on my list, but we do a lot of freight business now. You know, wouldn't be uncommon for us to have, m i mean, five or 10 freight shipments outbound a week now.
00:06:45
John Saunders
And we, FedEx Freight is being spun off from the FedEx fiefdom.
00:06:50
John Saunders
And so we probably will end up leaving them because they're just not being, the freight world is just so messy and not fun. So the ah the Yvonne and Serena have been having meetings with, a freight broker as well as with some of the other major national LTL carriers like think Estes is one and SIA.
00:06:50
johngrimsmo
Eww.
00:07:10
John Saunders
But, you know we need to know, we need to have an API that works with one of the Shopify apps so we can quote stuff. and And we, I won't bore everybody with this, but the not only do the rates matter, but for a while in our experience with many of the household name YRCs, they're gone.
00:07:28
John Saunders
Fade at FedEx, so often you'll get, oh, we showed up and the customer had a narrow driveway, so we're tacking on $100 limited service charge it's like noga not like no you quoted it give the address like the commercial it's different it's resi but like for these loading docked industrial facilities like nope not the other you know school zone it's a school so we just add 100 on so um trying to know where you can stand firm stand your ground especially when they have quoted it through there know you log on you put the address in you get a quote that's the rate you need honor
00:07:38
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:07:59
johngrimsmo
Yeah. yeah so Good. OK, what you got next?
Exploring Schimpfworks and Porsche Parts
00:08:08
John Saunders
A fun share. um We have our little company, Schimpfworks, that makes Porsche parts. And the the one of the driving things behind that was an informal partnership with a long-time, lifelong air-cooled mechanic in the Midwest here that we've gotten to know. And he had had us a question for us a while back about when you do oil change on these air-cooled Porsches,
00:08:31
John Saunders
they take like 3.6 liter engine takes 11 quarts of oil because they're air coolers. So they use the oil as effectively a heat exchanger.
00:08:41
John Saunders
And so you can put the first eight quarts in really easily, but the last two usually take a long time for them to kind of trickle in. And there's fun tricks you can do, like you can disconnect the fuel pump and you can roll the engine via the starter to help help it suck more in. But what he wanted was a funnel to help do this.
00:09:00
John Saunders
So we designed this funnel and we got a little sticker on there. It it is 3D printed and I've had kind of a like, i don't know if you feel the same way, but like if I buy something, i don't expect something that shows up to be 3D printed.
00:09:05
johngrimsmo
Nice.
00:09:14
johngrimsmo
Right. Sure.
00:09:15
John Saunders
Um, so, but Alex did a great job. There's a lot of little devil in the details ingenuity. There's O-rings that help it fit in the tube.
00:09:21
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:09:22
John Saunders
But the real key is this, um, grooved rail off to the side of the funnel actually kind of notches into the frame and this keeps it very rigid.
00:09:33
John Saunders
That way you can dump a full quart oil in the funnel and let it take its time and not worry about it spilling or tipping it over.
00:09:34
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:09:41
John Saunders
There's also an air weep hole to come back out. And so what's fun is, and this totally goes back to, um you know, I think Saunders being a 10 year overnight success and Shimptworks is being kind of a slow burn, um is these went mini viral.
00:09:57
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:09:58
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:09:59
johngrimsmo
They look amazing.
00:09:59
John Saunders
And they look amazing. They're they're a totally functional product to to share.
00:10:03
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:10:04
John Saunders
You know, the printing cost is somewhere between three and six dollars a filament. And they take like seven hours to print. So there's the concern of like, hey, I don't want to actually sell a thousand of these.
00:10:14
John Saunders
But um the first day, I think we sell them for thirty five bucks. Yeah.
00:10:19
johngrimsmo
Totally reasonable.
00:10:20
John Saunders
Right. It's kind of, a's it's weird.
00:10:21
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:10:22
John Saunders
Cause some respects it's like a $30 margin on the flip side. It's like, ah, it's a lot of, you know, but, um, we like at one point last week, were like, oh my gosh, we like, we need to stop.
00:10:27
johngrimsmo
Yeah. yeah
00:10:32
John Saunders
Like these are just, they kept selling and it was really fun. Uh, somebody had posted it and seen it and then shared it and shared it. And it's just like, you know, the numbers are still small compared to Saunders, but it was fun.
00:10:38
johngrimsmo
Yeah. yeah
00:10:43
John Saunders
It was a big win.
00:10:44
johngrimsmo
That's cool, man. And ah I'm sure you spent a bit of time figuring out which filament is best and does it absorb the oil?
00:10:46
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:10:51
johngrimsmo
Does it, how do you clean it up?
00:10:53
John Saunders
Right.
00:10:54
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:10:54
John Saunders
Yeah. And we, you know, this is worse.
00:10:56
johngrimsmo
Like, could you spray the whole thing to make it waterproof? I don't know.
00:10:59
John Saunders
No, we're not willing to contaminate if you will. So we do a rinse on them to make sure that they're clean before there's no, um, stuff in them before you get there and look, you're going to give us your grandkids.
00:11:03
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:11:11
John Saunders
Like, um, should last a while, but, um, yeah.
00:11:11
johngrimsmo
Yeah, no.
00:11:14
johngrimsmo
like any plastic funnel, like it's not, it's last forever.
00:11:16
John Saunders
Yeah. Yeah.
00:11:17
johngrimsmo
forever
00:11:18
John Saunders
Right.
00:11:19
johngrimsmo
That's cool, man. That's a really cool product.
00:11:19
John Saunders
Yeah. It's fine.
00:11:20
johngrimsmo
Yeah. That is, I often think about 3d printed things as not really being like sellable, like producty things.
00:11:26
John Saunders
Right.
00:11:27
johngrimsmo
Um, but that is toe in the line of like, you know, you did really well there.
Blade Grinding Challenges and Solutions
00:11:32
John Saunders
that's good.
00:11:33
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:11:34
John Saunders
All right, what's going with the other guys?
00:11:36
johngrimsmo
Okay. Big update. Um, So I've been complaining about this on the podcast for months now, basically, mostly blaming the machine and the code and the the strategies of grinding. Because as we grind the first op on one side of the fixture and then the second op on the second side of the fixture, that's two separate offsets, we are getting significantly varying width of cut kind of thing on the grinding op, on the chop grinding.
00:12:05
johngrimsmo
And is it machine thermal growth? Is it repeatability of the machine? Is it the program jumping around? Is it lasering the wheel too often and the wheel diameter changing around? um So I've been deprinting tons of information, wrote my own Python script to analyze it and decode it and like actual EXE program that can like show me all this stuff.
00:12:25
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:12:26
johngrimsmo
super cool. um And then i wanted somebody to um go over the go over my code and just look at it with their eyes. And so I've got a friend, Donnie, who so who like is really good at macro stuff. And he's posted a lot of macro videos. And he's like he would understand the code easily.
00:12:48
johngrimsmo
So I wanted to send the code to him. And he reached out. And he's like, yeah, no problem. Just send me the code. So with the code, I wanted to send him an explainer video just he can like see whatever. So I filmed this five-minute video.
00:12:59
johngrimsmo
And as I'm filming the video, it's interesting, but it could it caused me to do tests that I hadn't done yet because I'm trying to conceptualize it and like like explain it in a way that a new person will understand fully, even if he is really good at machining. um And it caused me to do some tests that I was like, okay, hold on.
00:13:21
johngrimsmo
That's that's pointing the finger in a different direction here.
00:13:21
John Saunders
mind.
00:13:24
johngrimsmo
Maybe it's not the code. And he watches the video and he goes, dude, you have work holding problem, not a code problem. And i was like, yeah, the video makes that pretty obvious, doesn't it? Um, so what's interesting is with a fjell blade, imagine a four and a half inch long, eighth inch thick rectangle, maybe an inch tall.
00:13:41
John Saunders
Yep. Yep.
00:13:44
johngrimsmo
That is our blade, our water jet heat treated surface ground lapped pretty darn flat blade that is clamped to the side of a tilted fixture with a five and a half degree angle.
00:13:49
John Saunders
Okay.
00:13:56
John Saunders
Okay.
00:13:57
johngrimsmo
Um,
00:14:00
johngrimsmo
What we're seeing is the tip of the blade has a circle for clamping hole. It's like a water jet tab that we that we use that for op one and for later grinding and holding and stuff. It gets cut off before the final knife is done. So it's just a tab at the end.
00:14:18
johngrimsmo
What's happening is because that tab is so skinny, when surface grinding the soft blades, the tab likes to be wonky and kick up and do weird things. So soft grinding is tapering that tab, making it thinner.
00:14:32
johngrimsmo
So if the blade is one, two, five across, the tab might be one, two, one at the tab.
00:14:33
John Saunders
Okay.
00:14:36
John Saunders
Okay.
00:14:38
johngrimsmo
And this whole time we've been going, oh, we don't care. It gets cut off. doesn't become part of the final knife, nobody cares. And that tab being weird, sometimes it bends in heat treat. So then when we go to lap the blades, the tab is high. Oh, we don't care about the tab, let's grind it down, get it out of the way for lapping so that we can lap the meat of the blade.
00:14:56
johngrimsmo
Now we have a tapered end tab, tapered part of the blade that we go to fixture and that is pulling down and it's twisting the blade and buckling the blade, causing the center of the blade to bow up.
00:15:03
John Saunders
It's twisting. Yeah, sure. Sure.
00:15:09
John Saunders
but sure
00:15:10
johngrimsmo
By you know one to four thou, one to three thou, which is absolutely causing variance. And as I hold a stack of blades in this video, I'm showing to Donny, there's like eight blades there. Some have the taper, some don't have the taper, and it's pretty obvious and some have, you know, one thou, some have three thou, some have whatever.
00:15:27
johngrimsmo
and It's not really one-to-one, but as you put them on the fixture and you clamp and you measure bow with an indicator and you watch it do what it does, it's absolutely a contributing factor.
00:15:37
johngrimsmo
So it's like, it's this outside force that I wasn't thinking of, the material, the the current state of the material that is introducing a lot more variation than my tenths of code tweak and like like wheel wear and thermal comp of the machine and all this crazy stuff um and actually on that point on thursday sat down with my um leadership team and afterwards i was like know angelo he's been with us for eight years he's my manufacturing guru i was like dude i'm really struggling with these blades like i
00:15:51
John Saunders
Yeah, right, right, wherever right, right.
00:16:12
johngrimsmo
I've been at this for months. I don't really have enough answers. I'm not getting good results. It's it's not doing what I want it to do. And he goes, okay, let's do a fishbone diagram. And I was like, what's a fishbone diagram?
00:16:23
johngrimsmo
have you worked here for eight years? And I'll told me what a fishbone diagram is.
00:16:26
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:16:26
johngrimsmo
So we looked it up. It's a relatively common Japanese conceptual topic that if I look, I'm going to look it up real quick. Just like all the words, right?
00:16:33
John Saunders
Yeah. I'm going to Google this too now.
00:16:35
johngrimsmo
Fishbone diagram. It is often used in manufacturing. And it has, okay, it has, it's like a fish with a spine and then ribs or whatever fish have.
00:16:48
John Saunders
Okay.
00:16:49
johngrimsmo
um This example shows, ah and so it shows like six things. So environment, material, method, manpower, machine, and measurement. And these are all possible causes, like big categories. So in environment, you can go, okay, humidity, temperature,
00:17:11
johngrimsmo
thermal growth, blah, blah, in material, which is where I found this problem. You can go method. How we clamping it? How are we installing it?
00:17:16
John Saunders
Sure.
00:17:17
johngrimsmo
however You can go manpower. Is the person doing it screwing up? is Is there variability in that? Is it the machine or is it the way we're measuring it? So it gives six causes for manufacturing that gave us kind of six areas to dig into specifically and literally write down every variable whether we think it's a problem or not, we we could write them all down and be like, okay, it's definitely not that air quotes.
00:17:40
John Saunders
true
00:17:44
johngrimsmo
Definitely.
00:17:45
John Saunders
Yeah, sure, sure.
00:17:46
johngrimsmo
It's, it's probably not that I fixed that. I fixed that. It's maybe here. So we wrote down maybe 15 or 20 things on this fishbone diagram. And, um, it was extraordinarily helpful and it brought up interest in that quick meeting.
00:18:01
johngrimsmo
Um, I've been comping the machine thermally, but then Angela said, is there some built in thermal comp of the machine that's maybe fighting your thermal comp?
00:18:08
John Saunders
Yeah, sure.
00:18:08
johngrimsmo
And I was like, I didn't think about that. Um, there is for sure. i think even if it is fighting my thermal comp, I think mine will overpower it and do what it needs to do anyway.
00:18:18
John Saunders
Cool wind, yeah.
00:18:19
johngrimsmo
But it was totally a variable that I hadn't thought of or considered. Um, And like, could I turn that off? Do I need to turn it off? Whatever. So, and then we're like, is the material? Well, no, they're lapped. They're perfect.
00:18:31
johngrimsmo
But let's, let's go look anyway. And then we found these thinner tabs. So that was super fascinating. And then shortly after that, the next day, i literally showed that five minute video to the four people involved in this process. Angelo, Jeff Jeff, and Steven. Steven runs it.
00:18:51
johngrimsmo
Jeff does all the surface grinding. So like everybody has a stake in it. So we all sat down in the meeting. I showed them the five minute video. And now we're all on the same page.
00:18:59
John Saunders
the
00:18:59
johngrimsmo
Now let's discuss. And we discussed for an hour. It was really, really helpful, really fantastic. a lot of you know yeah buts like it'd be great to do that yeah but the material is is bowing here or i can't do that or because of that and i'm like okay let's you know unemotionally analyze this what can we do what what stage of the process can we try to solve this can we improve can we whatever what if we did it like that crazy ideas on the table like what if what if what if what if um and it's been super helpful so
00:19:12
John Saunders
But
00:19:33
johngrimsmo
We don't have a smoking gun yet of like a solution. um
00:19:38
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:19:39
johngrimsmo
However, it's caused us to look a lot closer into the soft surface grinding, into the heat treat method, into the distortion maybe after heat treat, into maybe our quench plates, our little, when's last time we checked our quench plates for flatness?
00:19:51
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:19:51
johngrimsmo
um Because we've been using them for two years.
00:19:54
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:19:54
johngrimsmo
And it's like, oh, we're taking for granted a lot of this stuff and we're not really thinking about it. And clearly it's causing a problem.
Advanced Surface Grinding Techniques
00:20:00
johngrimsmo
So clearly it's something that needs to be analyzed and kind of maintained and managed a little bit. um And then even with that knowledge in mind, we could put on some blades that don't taper off at the tip.
00:20:13
johngrimsmo
And we were still still getting some weird results.
00:20:14
John Saunders
Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
00:20:16
johngrimsmo
And we're like, oh, man. OK, so that's not the only thing. What else could it be? Which led me on a deep rabbit hole the other night of clamping induced distortion.
00:20:27
John Saunders
Yes.
00:20:28
johngrimsmo
And did a bunch of research, actually did some FEA analysis infusion on my clamps, which I've never really done. And while it's not difficult, it's complicated because there's like so many steps to get a good FEA and to get any meaningful data.
00:20:41
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:20:44
johngrimsmo
But there's some great tutorials online that just kind of walk you through how to do it in Fusion. And I was able to get helpful results that visually showed me where forces are going from the clamp to the blade to the fixture, and then what the clamp is doing in maximal, you know, exaggerated distortion.
00:21:01
johngrimsmo
um And with many long conversations with ChatGPT and also further research, both YouTube and papers and stuff like that, led me to realize the clamps that I made from titanium have half the Young's modulus stiffness of steel.
00:21:19
John Saunders
Interesting.
00:21:20
johngrimsmo
And so now I have a small little clamp that is deflecting twice as much as a steel clamp would. And I kind of made them from tie because I had material in the machine and it was easy and it was like,
00:21:31
John Saunders
Sure.
00:21:32
johngrimsmo
It was great. And I always knew, yeah, maybe it's a thing, but maybe it's not a thing. I think it's a thing. So like yesterday I made ah a clamp from seventeen four stainless H900.
00:21:43
johngrimsmo
So it's like 45 Rockwell.
00:21:44
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:21:45
johngrimsmo
Ideally it would be like a two and then you heat treat it to 60, but I don't have 5.8s A2 bar in stock right now. I have 17-4.
00:21:52
John Saunders
I don't think so Rockwell makes something stiffer.
00:21:55
johngrimsmo
You're right, um which I learned all about too and actually got wrong for a little bit. So in bending loads, imagine if you had a bar, a steel bar will bend roughly the same amount, soft or hard, but the yield strength, the you know when you bend it and it stays kinked, that that gets significantly better with harder.
00:22:03
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:22:09
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:22:15
John Saunders
Okay.
00:22:19
John Saunders
It resists the yield more.
00:22:20
johngrimsmo
It resists. Yeah. Yeah.
00:22:21
John Saunders
Interesting.
00:22:21
johngrimsmo
it It won't reach plastic deformation and stay bent when it's harder.
00:22:24
John Saunders
Okay. Yeah.
00:22:25
johngrimsmo
Now, where I was always confused is that bending loads versus denting or localized compression zones.
00:22:32
John Saunders
Sure.
00:22:33
johngrimsmo
And they are kind of different things. Apparently heat treating absolutely helps localized plastic deformation. Yeah. um Even if elastic deformation stays, this or like bending loads stay the same.
00:22:47
johngrimsmo
But as far as clamps on fixtures and screws and dents and chips under the clamp and all that stuff, a hardened fixture, hardened clamp, hardened everything will just last longer and deform like way, way less.
00:22:59
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:22:59
johngrimsmo
So I'm not quite at the route of making like A2 hardened fixtures, but I'm not that far away from it.
00:23:05
John Saunders
Yeah, they are. We've done that on the horizontal and i I actually reloaded the horizontal myself last week for the first time in a long time.
00:23:09
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah.
00:23:15
John Saunders
And those A2 fixtures look like i finished them this morning with a brand new NS tool. Like they just look incredible.
00:23:21
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Amazing.
00:23:23
John Saunders
But in that we we needed them, so it's a good thing we did them.
00:23:23
johngrimsmo
um
00:23:29
John Saunders
On the flip side, it sounds like you're already onto something, which is that like, you know, the best picture in the world in terms of the hardness and and creation. When you're putting a part into that and your clamp causes the part to twist, might as well make the figure out of Play-Doh.
00:23:39
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Exactly.
00:23:43
John Saunders
It doesn't matter. Yeah.
00:23:44
johngrimsmo
Yep, yep. So it's super interesting to see all the variables involved. And that's what I've come away with this as. Like thermal thermal distortion is a real thing of the machine. um
00:23:53
John Saunders
yeah
00:23:53
johngrimsmo
The way it's probe, the way it's programmed, the deviances from blade to blade, the as the wheel wear, the machine knowing the wheel wear, like all these things are real aspects. But then also the fixture, I noticed differences between different fixtures and I have like five of them.
00:24:08
johngrimsmo
um And they're all gonna be different by 10ths or more.
00:24:11
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:24:11
johngrimsmo
unless they're like unless you really really shoot to make them these tapered features within tents of each other um might not be worth the effort but so you got to come for all this stuff but then also the material condition the the blade the stress is inside the blade yeah
00:24:18
John Saunders
Yeah. Yeah.
00:24:26
John Saunders
But don't John, hold on. I like as your friend, I can already hear you. You're doing what you do, which is you think and you think a lot.
00:24:35
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:24:36
John Saunders
Take a deep breath. Like maybe it's not just the tab being thinner, but sure feels like the smoking gun, the Occam's razor.
00:24:43
johngrimsmo
I, Oh, totally. Totally. I'm what I'm saying is I'm at the, I feel like I'm at the end of the road here in a good way. Um, cause I've done all that rant I just had, I've done all those things. And now I'm looking at the clamps and the bending of the blades, like the tabs being thinner kind of thing.
00:24:53
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:24:58
johngrimsmo
Um, so between those two things, I think, and it doesn't need to be like perfect, perfect.
00:24:58
John Saunders
yeah
00:25:04
johngrimsmo
It just needs to give us repeatable, consistent results within, within our tolerance band, which is something, um,
00:25:06
John Saunders
Yes, sure, sure, sure, sure.
00:25:11
John Saunders
Well, it almost sounds like what you want to do is just get rid of this wild variability.
00:25:15
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:25:15
John Saunders
Like you're trying to you're trying to get rid of a negative, not hone in on something that's insanely perfect. That makes sense.
00:25:20
johngrimsmo
Exactly, exactly. And this is such a variable, like the tabs could be like one to five thou thinner, which is absolutely going to bow the blade in weird ways.
00:25:30
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:25:31
johngrimsmo
So I told the guys, i was like, I know this is going to be hard. i know surface grinding is going to be harder here because parts come from laser or water jet, like cupped a little bit. So you got to choose, are you putting it cup up or cup down on the surface grinder first?
00:25:42
John Saunders
Oh, sure.
00:25:46
johngrimsmo
Um, And then are you shimming it underneath? Are you letting the magnets suck it down? Are you, you know, and then if the tabs are kinked off the end of the part, like they're just going to get ground thinner because they're sticking up in the air kind of thing.
00:25:51
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:26:04
johngrimsmo
So I don't know.
00:26:04
John Saunders
You're trying to hit on the surface grinder. is it Is it to achieve a nominal or is it to achieve an unconstrained flatness?
00:26:11
johngrimsmo
A bit of both.
00:26:12
John Saunders
Okay.
00:26:12
johngrimsmo
yep
00:26:13
John Saunders
I'm not really qualified to really give advice on the flip side. We've run a service grinder a fair amount now. A trick that I have heard from somebody who's, ah I would say knows what they're talking about on the flip side, everything on service grinding, when it starts to get into precarious work holding is very much caveat emptor, but um using different types of um paper towels underneath a part, like, ah okay, you've heard this too.
00:26:37
John Saunders
So, Well, so let's say your blade, which looks like a oversized stick of chewing gum, just for the sake of the picture.
00:26:37
johngrimsmo
I've definitely heard this, but explain.
00:26:44
johngrimsmo
Yep. Yep.
00:26:46
John Saunders
Let's say it has like a three thou, I call it a lake. So the two ends are high and the center's low.
00:26:50
johngrimsmo
Yep. Very likely.
00:26:52
John Saunders
um It's like not so much that you're like, you know when you see a part and you're like, oh, this steel's warped like crazy, throw it away. But it's probably there. So if you were to, I believe in this example, set the part on a thicker, nicer, i don't know, making this up now.
00:27:08
John Saunders
paper towel and then turn the magnet on the somehow, I guess the magnetism that maybe you need to have the paper towel wet. I don't know. Somebody needs to do more research into this.
00:27:18
johngrimsmo
Cooling for sure.
00:27:19
John Saunders
Cool. he Basically it's going to pressure the, push the paper towel away in the thin areas and it's going to so help um fill the void on the high spots because what you want to do in that first grind and maybe when you flip it over the next grind is you want to have it not have the magnet suck it flat.
00:27:34
John Saunders
Cause then when you undo the magnet, it is the same or even worse.
00:27:35
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yep. um I don't, I think I might've mentioned it to Angela a while ago, but both Angela and Jeff are kind of purist surface grinders and these kind of wooey ideas are a little weird to them.
00:27:44
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:27:47
johngrimsmo
So i have to deliver it and in a, in a way I've definitely heard that. I know Spencer raves about it. He's like, dude, it just works. Yeah. so So, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:27:56
John Saunders
web. Yeah, i sure.
00:27:57
johngrimsmo
So we haven't actually tried it yet. um But I do like the idea. And as I talked about last week, this theory of unconstrained flatness is is very interesting. And here's a ah good example of that. um We've definitely used shims, either pieces of paper or thin like one thou piece of paper um under the the high spots of the blade.
00:28:18
johngrimsmo
they definitely play with reduced magnetism to not suck it down. I saw Jeff yesterday with the indicator on a part as he's turning on the magnet and he watches and is measuring how much it's sucking down. Not something he does every time. He was just learning, but it was fun to watch him learn. And what was really cool, is as you know, because you have the same surface grinder as we do, the Okamoto SA-24, whatever it's called, um as he turned the magnet off with an indicator on it. Have you ever seen this?
00:28:49
johngrimsmo
on a bowie part, the the demagnetizing feature, i kind of knew conceptually how it worked, but watching the indicator, so say there's a thou of bow on this part.
00:28:49
John Saunders
Oh, I never looked. No, I never watched.
00:28:59
johngrimsmo
So you suck suckck it down, indicator goes up by a thou, and then as it demagnetizes, as it releases itself, clearly it's flickering the power
00:29:00
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:29:07
johngrimsmo
ah from like, you know, 90, 0, 80, 0, 50, 0, 10, 0.
00:29:09
John Saunders
Oh, interesting.
00:29:11
johngrimsmo
And you watch the indicator go boink, boink, boink, boink.
00:29:14
John Saunders
No kidding.
00:29:16
johngrimsmo
It was super cool. So I highly recommend you try that.
00:29:17
John Saunders
Oh, that is really cool.
00:29:19
johngrimsmo
If, if you're next time you're maging something that you know is a little bit Bowie, throw an indicator on it and just watch it.
00:29:23
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:29:25
johngrimsmo
It's like, cool. I should shoot a video of it actually. That was really cool. Um,
00:29:29
John Saunders
That's awesome.
00:29:30
johngrimsmo
Because I've heard that with a manual chuck, mag chuck, you can like turn the handle off, on, off, on, off, on, off, on to demagnetize it apparently. Yep.
00:29:39
John Saunders
Really?
00:29:40
johngrimsmo
Yep. Because you're creating a... I don't know what the proper words are, but you're messing with the magnetic field, just like how a demagnetizer works, creates a magnetic field that like distorts all the molecules, whatever it does.
00:29:52
John Saunders
Scrambles it. Okay.
00:29:55
johngrimsmo
And these fancy electronic mag chucks, electro mags do this naturally on their D mag off cycle.
00:29:55
John Saunders
Hmm.
00:29:59
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:30:01
johngrimsmo
And it was just cool to see.
00:30:02
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:30:02
johngrimsmo
it was cool to see the indicator.
00:30:03
John Saunders
Yeah. That's really cool. I love the like the physical manifestation of things that we can't otherwise see.
00:30:10
johngrimsmo
Yes.
00:30:10
John Saunders
It's like, oh, that gets real. That's cool.
00:30:13
johngrimsmo
Yep. On that.
00:30:14
John Saunders
but So what are next steps? Sorry. I'm Fjall.
00:30:16
johngrimsmo
No, it's good. ah Next steps. So I made one stainless clamp, but up to on the Williman wasn't um like the G55 wasn't probed right for these jaws or something like that. don't know. So I made it like wrong.
00:30:30
johngrimsmo
So I need to today I'll be making a couple more parts. I just need a couple of steel clamps. That gives me that. Now I have. blades that the guys didn't lap, but they surface ground with shims and everything.
00:30:41
John Saunders
Okay.
00:30:41
johngrimsmo
They made me like five perfectly flat, perfectly parallel blades, not lapped, but they are surface ground as good as they can.
00:30:43
John Saunders
Yeah, right.
00:30:48
johngrimsmo
And i was like, how was it?
00:30:48
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:30:49
johngrimsmo
And he goes, it a pain in the butt. It took a lot of massaging and like flipping and flipping and flipping and flipping.
00:30:55
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:30:55
johngrimsmo
Maybe the paper travel trick would be great. um But the next step, so once I have steel clamps, now that I have flat blades today, i will be just put an indicator on the fixture, clamp, test, clamp, test, see if I can make sense of what's happening.
00:31:09
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:31:11
johngrimsmo
Because I definitely feel like between those two things, there's there's consistency here. So... Yeah, and to be fair, the way I designed these clamps and the way I designed the blade and the way I designed the fixture and the amount of clearance I need in the center of the blade for the grinding wheel to come in
00:31:31
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:31:32
johngrimsmo
It's like just a bad combination of of things.
00:31:33
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:31:35
johngrimsmo
And you're basically, imagine you have this stick of chewing gum and you're just pinching it on the corners.
00:31:41
John Saunders
who
00:31:41
johngrimsmo
I'm exaggerating, but like one side actually has some good contact, but the other side is just pinching it on the tip.
00:31:46
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:31:47
johngrimsmo
And literally the act of doing that, the FEA analysis showed it, it puts, even if you're clamping straight down on the on the tip, it puts a 45 degree load into the part.
00:31:59
johngrimsmo
And that was really cool to see in the FEA. And that 45 degree load, plus some fixture distortion, elastic deformation, plus the clamp bending, titanium clamp, definitely causes the center of the stick of chewing gum to bow upwards.
00:32:11
johngrimsmo
Just physics.
00:32:11
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:32:13
johngrimsmo
That's just nature.
00:32:14
John Saunders
Can you super glue a blade on the fixture? I know it's not a good production process, but that'll help you test the not having any clamping force vectors through your material.
00:32:19
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:32:26
johngrimsmo
a good idea, actually.
Problem-Solving with Fishbone Diagrams
00:32:27
johngrimsmo
i I knew I didn't want to do it for production, but I hadn't thought about doing it for like testing, just to see if that solves it.
00:32:35
John Saunders
That's why I'm glad you mentioned that fish thing.
00:32:36
johngrimsmo
Interesting.
00:32:37
John Saunders
I've never heard of it. It feels like it's number one. It feels like it actually doesn't have to take that long to at least brainstorm, which is awesome.
00:32:41
johngrimsmo
Yeah. yeah
00:32:43
John Saunders
But number two, it kind of, we all have a sense of pride and stubbornness or just blindness when you're in a process. And I feel like it sounds like a good way to sort of take a step back and be like okay, is it the roll-up door being open with the gust of wind coming through?
00:32:57
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:32:57
John Saunders
Is it a post-process or rounding error?
00:32:57
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:32:59
John Saunders
or Or is it the fact that I've just got a clamp that I'm bending the... crap out of this part on, you know what I mean?
00:33:05
johngrimsmo
Right.
00:33:05
John Saunders
Sometimes it's ah totally random. I heard a somebody else make a comment about somebody who was a big mentor to me and they were sort of saying this person who's since not with us, but mentioning how he was always just like, stop making it so complex.
00:33:23
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:33:23
John Saunders
Keep it simple. In kind of a like, not so, but more colorful language, but it was a good reminder of like, just keep it simple.
00:33:35
johngrimsmo
Yep, exactly.
00:33:35
John Saunders
What's going on here
00:33:36
johngrimsmo
And as as simple as I'm trying to make it, it's still not doing it. So it's something else.
00:33:40
John Saunders
here?
00:33:41
johngrimsmo
so
00:33:42
John Saunders
yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:33:43
johngrimsmo
And there's something I can't see. and And my brain just goes, God, I know it's something because I'm getting a bad result. Like the problem is somewhere got to find it.
00:33:52
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:33:53
johngrimsmo
So I think I'm getting really close. very happy with how it's coming. i was pretty, pretty down about it, like on Sunday or something like that.
00:34:00
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:34:00
johngrimsmo
was like, i was telling a friend, I was like, I'm, i'm pretty annoyed at this right now like it was fun for a while it's getting to be fun again because i feel like we're making some good traction we're like so close to having a near perfect solution um so that's good
00:34:05
John Saunders
Yeah. Yeah.
00:34:11
John Saunders
yeah
00:34:16
John Saunders
This is my soapbox rant, but it's a concern for me, and this is please not directed at you whatsoever, but it's a concern for me about the perils of AI. Because it's like what our generation and the next generation needs to be able to do is stop and think like you did with that fish scale and not say, I can write a Python script to parse data that I can collect over.
00:34:30
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:34:35
John Saunders
It's like, stop. Like just cause you have a tool doesn't mean you should use it, especially since AI has reduced the friction cost, turtle time to create these tools.
00:34:39
johngrimsmo
okay
00:34:44
John Saunders
It's like, no stop.
AI and Human Insight in Manufacturing
00:34:45
John Saunders
Humans are pretty good at this. um That makes sense. Like I, yeah.
00:34:49
johngrimsmo
It does because AI gives you the tech or advice, air quotes, answer, but the fishbone diagram just brought it back to reality.
00:35:00
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:35:00
johngrimsmo
And it it it was really helpful. I hope like we had a pizza box in front of us and we drew it on a pizza box and we still have the pizza box.
00:35:05
John Saunders
That's great.
00:35:07
johngrimsmo
Like, yeah,
00:35:09
John Saunders
You should frame that.
00:35:10
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:35:10
John Saunders
Now, in fairness to AI, asking it to help guide you through a fishbowl might actually be a great process.
00:35:16
johngrimsmo
Exactly.
00:35:16
John Saunders
And if you can start, you know, I have a comment to make on AI later that blew me away again, but like, if it can take pictures of your setup and help you identify the stuff that you're blind to, like that clamping issue whatever, like, oh oh yeah.
00:35:28
johngrimsmo
Oh, I showed a picture of my clamp, side side profile of the clamp to ChatGPT. And they said, oh, I see what's going on here. And and you got to really massage it and ask a lot of back and forth.
00:35:37
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:35:37
johngrimsmo
You can't just trust everything it says. But it helped guide me in many directions that taught me about clamping.
00:35:39
John Saunders
Sure, sure.
00:35:43
johngrimsmo
I'm like, I literally, my first paragraph was, I know there's this phenomenon. I need to know what it's called, clamping induced distortion.
00:35:50
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:35:50
johngrimsmo
When clamp does this and material moves and things, met but but but but and and what are we talking about here? And then let's discuss.
00:35:56
John Saunders
Yeah. Yeah.
00:35:57
johngrimsmo
And it was great.
00:35:59
John Saunders
Well, i'll I'll make a rare sales pitch for Saunders or Sheenworks products. And I did this probably six months ago when we sort of released them, but we love using expanding pins, ID expanding pins when we can, because so often you're doing two things.
00:36:10
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:36:14
John Saunders
You're clamping on the interior of a part. This of course presupposes you have a hole to do this with, but if you do, you now have access to the full periphery, which is almost always helpful, whether it's probing, chamfering, finishing, profiling.
00:36:28
John Saunders
But number two, you almost always have an improved clamping situation in terms of force vectors because you're not clamping across the whole part.
00:36:37
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah.
00:36:37
John Saunders
And even on a stout small piece of steel, when you put it in a curt vise or orange vise and you clamp down, you're going to flex and bend it. And certainly if you're going to use a sheet of paper, you know, that's a quarter inch thick plate across a vise, that thing's going to be
00:36:51
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:36:53
John Saunders
bouncing around like a ah musical instrument.
00:36:55
johngrimsmo
Yeah, on that note, I highly recommend everybody put indicators on their material when they're clamping it, even just for funsies, like to to learn what's what's happening.
00:36:55
John Saunders
And those ID...
00:37:02
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:37:04
johngrimsmo
Not every time, but to learn these lessons because it's always surprising.
00:37:05
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:37:08
johngrimsmo
You know you put a six by six chunks of whatever steel, aluminum in a vice, like you said, it holy crap, it bows.
00:37:15
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:37:16
johngrimsmo
um so on that note one of the guys had the question about id expanding clamps because we do have two holes on our blade um one precision pivot hole and one laser cut not super round um tip hole um as i understand i've used them a little bit but i haven't used them a lot they're great for xy but they have zero pull down force correct
00:37:23
John Saunders
Sure.
00:37:40
John Saunders
Uh, I wouldn't say there's zero pull down force because the way the, the tapers interface is it is the, it is not going to do what most traditional screw vices do, which is cause a force vector that implies jaw lift.
00:37:54
John Saunders
So they're actually better, but you're correct. They are not actively. In fact, what you could almost do is you could almost suspend a part where you wanted to in a good or bad way with something like an ID explaining clamp.
00:37:58
johngrimsmo
i
00:38:04
johngrimsmo
Right.
00:38:06
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:38:06
johngrimsmo
Exactly. So if you wanted perfect tight fixture contact with no no chance of it lifting or anything like that, you might want a second ah top clamp or something like that.
00:38:19
John Saunders
Potentially, yeah. So...
00:38:20
johngrimsmo
even just for setup or something like that. Okay. I just wanted to be sure on that. um And then ideally you want a fairly accurate
00:38:30
John Saunders
so Everything in the world is is triangles or angles. Like there is no such thing. Threads are triangles, clamps, you know, everything is triangle. So when an ID expanding clamp works, you have a tapered screw into a tapered wall and it's pushing those walls out. So you're now creating and an angle.
00:38:50
John Saunders
So again, by virtue of that, you do have some amount of downward force vector, which again is important. If it's minimal, it's certainly not what a traditional vice does. I should probably explain this better.
00:39:01
John Saunders
for on a You go pick up a... Kurtz are better because of the angle lock mechanism, which if you don't know, go Google it. It's a pretty ingenious design. It has two triangles that help minimize jaw lift. But if you take a self-centering vise from any brand, those are not able to have...
00:39:18
John Saunders
um any sort of an angle lock. So when you squeeze part in between those jaws, those jaws are absolutely going to flex backward.
00:39:27
johngrimsmo
yep
00:39:28
John Saunders
And when they flex backward, that is that is lift of the part. So expanding clamps, i'm going to argue are better than than than that.
00:39:36
johngrimsmo
yep got it got it yeah interesting okay
00:39:36
John Saunders
um Now you're you're, I don't know exactly what your blade fixtures look like, but they probably aren't susceptible to what the screw vice problem I'm describing.
00:39:50
johngrimsmo
That's great.
00:39:51
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:39:54
johngrimsmo
All right, your turn.
00:39:54
John Saunders
What's your, what's your whole diameter on the knife blade?
00:39:55
johngrimsmo
3125. Yep, yep.
00:39:59
John Saunders
Oh, five eighths or five sixteenths.
00:40:01
johngrimsmo
yep yep
00:40:01
John Saunders
Yeah. um We have half inch. I don't know if we have three eighths. We just made the test jig for the quarter inch range. So um I mean, we talk about this offline, but like, we'd love to get you some, if it makes sense, some,
00:40:15
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it it would add significant complexity to the way we insert the blade. Because right now we just slide them down and screw the clamps down.
00:40:21
John Saunders
Yeah, sure.
00:40:24
johngrimsmo
You'd have to like remove some clamps, slide it on from the end, put the clamps back on. It's more screwing to do. But it could solve something.
00:40:32
John Saunders
But that's where I want to like scream at the top of my
00:40:35
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:40:36
John Saunders
Fine. Figure out the problem, isolate it then you're smart. I guarantee you, you will figure out then how to modify or change it, but like isolate a problem.
00:40:41
johngrimsmo
Totally.
00:40:46
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I like it.
00:40:47
John Saunders
Which Superglue is probably even easier.
00:40:49
johngrimsmo
That's interesting.
00:40:50
John Saunders
It's a quick test.
00:40:51
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:40:56
John Saunders
um Okay, Kai, can I pick your brain?
00:40:58
johngrimsmo
Your turn.
Acquiring New Machines: Stress and Decision-Making
00:41:00
John Saunders
Well, so I mentioned this very briefly before we hit record last week, but in a very fortunate way, we are now, um for the really the first time in Saunders um history, really actually being conscious about managing our growth.
00:41:00
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:41:12
John Saunders
were we're We're very fortunate to have had a really strong start to the year, knock on wood, hope that continues. And, yeah, we need another machine vertical machining center for steel dedicated to steel plate production um and i've already it's funny how quickly you know we can learn both because we're passionate the internet uh chat our friends distributors so i've already been around the block in a good way to go through this process Um, we, we love the Genos m six sixty machine. It's a, it's a lot more expensive than the M560. And I think they sell far fewer of the big 660s. And so I wanted to look at a Doosan DNM 6700, which I think is a strong, or I think it's a very good machine. Um, that's not a scientific answer, but, um,
00:42:01
John Saunders
And it's still a C frame though, whereas the Okuma is effectively a bridge mill. I'm go to call it that. It's a dual support gantry style.
00:42:08
johngrimsmo
Which has a lot of benefits, right?
00:42:10
John Saunders
It does. Yeah, yeah for sure.
00:42:11
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:42:11
John Saunders
um And then a friend, Dennis turned us on to the Takumi, which is kind of, going to say no name brand, certainly in the U S it's a,
00:42:16
johngrimsmo
Mm-hmm.
00:42:20
John Saunders
there's a some There's some major relationship with Herco, like they own Herco or Herco owns them, they're the same castings. Don't quote me on any of that, but it's a so real relationship.
00:42:28
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:42:30
John Saunders
And obviously most of us know Herco. So it's not I would say it's not the same as buying some no-name overseas brand that you just don't know about, but it's also, you know, there's questions about long-term support and user base and quirks you never know.
00:42:37
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:42:42
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:42:43
John Saunders
But the kinematics of this one machine, the H12, look awesome. Like you have two doors so you can access your parts on on two sides and 60 tools, linear scales, really looks interesting.
00:42:48
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:42:55
John Saunders
Dennis has three of them and he speaks very highly of them.
00:42:57
johngrimsmo
Wow. does, yeah.
00:42:59
John Saunders
um
00:42:59
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:43:00
John Saunders
So I guess i don't really have a question other than It has been, I'm being honest and keeping this as a private conversation between me and you, like I've been stressed this week about recognizing we need to buy this machine. we need make decisions now on on thinking about this machine. And that means moving something out, getting it in, getting it onboarded and fixtured up.
00:43:22
John Saunders
um And you want to make the right decisions. You want to move other machines around while you're doing that. it's ah It's been a lot.
00:43:30
johngrimsmo
Yeah, and the ordering process will take months you know to get here unless they happen to have stock somewhere.
00:43:36
John Saunders
Well, I mean, this is its funny. I don't want to compromise in the sense of like, there's certain things we do want on the flip side.
00:43:40
johngrimsmo
Yeah, no.
00:43:43
John Saunders
something that we like is in stock and something else is six months out, I'm not waiting six months. So, um, I wouldn't even blame, not that it's worth anything, I wouldn't even blame myself because um we just, I don't know why, but we've just seen a a massive increase in the last last eight weeks.
00:43:55
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:44:02
John Saunders
So, you know, youre the yeah, no, great, but you know, that's your job as a owner is to so to go with it, roll with it.
00:44:04
johngrimsmo
Good. first
00:44:11
John Saunders
So, yeah.
00:44:11
johngrimsmo
Yep. Yep. Well, I will bring back a classic business of machining quote from you.
00:44:16
John Saunders
ah
00:44:16
johngrimsmo
Growth eats cash for breakfast. i just want to remind everybody of that that quote.
00:44:21
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:44:21
johngrimsmo
And you're in that position right now.
00:44:23
John Saunders
yeah
00:44:24
johngrimsmo
You're like, it's not, it sounds like you're not actively standing on your soapbox going, okay, company, we need to grow.
00:44:24
John Saunders
what
00:44:31
johngrimsmo
We need to do these initiatives. You're just like, uh, orders are coming in and we're just, we're fine. Let's, let's go.
00:44:38
John Saunders
Yeah. Well, no, we've got some internal conversations about like, okay, we don't necessarily want this level of growth. So, um, what's the right thing to do in terms of focusing things in on, um, my default isn't to raise prices because it just feels like a not fun thing to do, but we need to also make sure our margins are appropriate and, um, and look, those, you know, is the ROI there to justify the machine.
00:44:44
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:44:53
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:45:03
John Saunders
they're Like, oh, it is great. So let's not get smart on it and get going.
00:45:06
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah.
00:45:08
John Saunders
The nice thing too, it's like such a quality of life thing. um On some of the machines, the coolant tank comes out the front and on the, on the geno sits in the back.
00:45:14
johngrimsmo
Cool.
00:45:16
John Saunders
And I've been on a thing this, this past few weeks about both cleaning the coolant tanks, but also shop layout. And it's like, why are every machine, why isn't every machine designed this way?
00:45:27
John Saunders
Because you always need space in front of a machine for the operator and carts and stuff. And it's like, why do the,
00:45:33
johngrimsmo
And you always want to put it against the wall.
00:45:36
John Saunders
Yeah, so like these Okuma's and Haas's, why the heck is the tank accessible through the back?
00:45:36
johngrimsmo
Not always, but...
00:45:40
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:45:41
John Saunders
um Yeah, yeah.
00:45:43
johngrimsmo
Yeah, the Mori comes out the front and side kind of thing.
00:45:47
John Saunders
Okay.
00:45:47
johngrimsmo
Yep. It's been great.
00:45:49
John Saunders
Yeah. Yeah. ah What else on your phone call from a mutual friend?
Measuring Spindle Vibration and Grinding Wheel Insights
00:45:57
johngrimsmo
So after our podcast last week, so Friday in the morning, he had obviously listened to it in the morning. um Robin sends me an email, Robin Renzetti, and he goes, call me.
00:46:07
John Saunders
Uh-huh.
00:46:08
johngrimsmo
I got some ideas for you. So I immediately called him and 45 minutes later, we had the greatest chat about vibration.
00:46:16
John Saunders
Interesting.
00:46:17
johngrimsmo
and vibration sensing because his job forever has been make spindles. Like he is very, very good at making spindles.
00:46:21
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:46:23
johngrimsmo
And he has both used, I assume professional systems and also kind of DIY systems for measuring this vibration.
00:46:23
John Saunders
Yep.
00:46:29
johngrimsmo
And he knows a lot of stuff that I've only read about and like, don't really fully understand yet. um One big takeaway that he had. So we're talking about balancing this tiny little grinding wheel in my speedio spindle.
00:46:41
John Saunders
Uh-huh.
00:46:41
johngrimsmo
And whether the imbalance is coming from the wheel itself or the arbor or the tool holder or the spindle itself. Like, I don't know balanced the spindle is from factory, but I'm seeing something in the finish.
00:46:53
johngrimsmo
A big thing he told me, which totally makes sense now that I think about it. If you put a vibration sensor on the side of the spindle, my thinking is, oh, you'll see all the vibration. It'll be cool. And he says ah something about parasitic mass.
00:47:07
johngrimsmo
the the thousands of pounds of weight of that spindle or hundreds are absorbing all of that vibration before it even gets to the center.
00:47:15
John Saunders
yeah
00:47:15
johngrimsmo
And that's why these balancing rigs have the thing you want to measure and nothing else. and and the balancing rig is like floating on either bearings or bushings or can can jiggle around so that any imbalance is like ultra sensitive.
00:47:22
John Saunders
interesting sure
00:47:31
johngrimsmo
It's just moving itself out of balance. Whereas in a machine tool in the spindle, hundreds of pounds of casting all around it That vibration is dampened and deadened and your sensor won't pick it up nearly as well as it will on a thing.
00:47:44
johngrimsmo
And as I told him on the phone, I'm still going try it because I need to see this myself. And he goes, oh, absolutely. Like, yeah, I get that.
00:47:49
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:47:51
johngrimsmo
But I'm just telling you. So consider balancing it offline if you can, as well as seeing the results online.
00:47:57
John Saunders
Oh yeah. Can you, that's interesting. Oh, okay. I want to talk, want to hear more about this. I'm sure you're, sounds like you're.
00:48:06
johngrimsmo
Yeah, there's not probably not too much more to talk about, but it was just great information to chew on with Robin.
00:48:09
John Saunders
Okay.
00:48:11
johngrimsmo
um Absolutely love his opinion and advice. And, you know, feel kind of honored sometimes when he wants to shoot some advice my way and and let me eat up his time.
00:48:22
johngrimsmo
Very happy to do that.
00:48:24
John Saunders
I feel the same way about Robin and he doesn't seem to care that we feel that way and kindly ah in a humble way.
00:48:29
johngrimsmo
Yep, yep.
00:48:29
John Saunders
But um Robin, I'm guessing you are listening. You're a good dude. And I hope in the same guise as people don't often tell the supermodel that she's beautiful.
00:48:40
John Saunders
Robin, you're an incredibly intelligent person.
00:48:41
johngrimsmo
You're beautiful.
00:48:42
John Saunders
Yes, you're beautiful, Robin. you know you're He's incredibly intelligent. He's incredibly humble. He's helped out so many people and and deserves the public recognition. for Even though he doesn't want it, he deserves the recognition for that.
00:48:52
johngrimsmo
Absolutely. and And just a wealth of resource. And even any quotes we attribute to him are probably from elsewhere. But the fact is he has consolidated them all and he speak speaks them so freely.
00:49:03
johngrimsmo
like Like everything is rubber.
00:49:03
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:49:05
johngrimsmo
That's probably my number one Renzetti quote that I literally tell my kids I live by. I tell my neighbors like everything is rubber and they go, huh, I get it. And in what we're doing with precision and vibration and measurement and clamps distorting and everything, dude, everything is rubber.
00:49:18
John Saunders
Yep. Yep.
00:49:21
johngrimsmo
So, yeah.
00:49:23
John Saunders
um What was going to say? The, I lost my train thought. Yeah. Awesome. That's great.
00:49:28
johngrimsmo
Oh, I do actually have, I have one more Robin thing.
00:49:28
John Saunders
Oh, oh that's,
00:49:31
johngrimsmo
Um, I, because under the microscope, I can see grinding variation once per rev as I'm chop grinding down and I can calculate it every six thou it's, there's a ah tick in the grind in the chop grind and at 16,000 RPM at 106 inches per minute, that's exactly six thou of travel.
00:49:38
John Saunders
Okay.
00:49:52
johngrimsmo
It like, there's like a, swirl.
00:49:54
John Saunders
Really?
00:49:54
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:49:55
John Saunders
You're moving that fast up and down?
00:49:56
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:49:57
John Saunders
Holy cow. That's, no, that's, wait, what speed rate? Feed rate?
00:50:01
johngrimsmo
16, 106 inches per minute at 16,000 RPM.
00:50:01
John Saunders
100? So it's going like
00:50:05
johngrimsmo
Yep, pretty much.
00:50:06
John Saunders
ah It's like oscillating. I'm assuming it's grinding, like just creep, like,
00:50:10
johngrimsmo
ah that would take forever. But as I described this to him, in my head, there's oscillation, there's eccentricity and vibration in the spindle. Like once per rev, it's it's you know going around in a circle and vibrating and and digging every once per rev at the heavy side of the load. And he goes, hold on, hold on.
00:50:28
johngrimsmo
You tell me you're chop grinding down over and then up again. So you're evenly wearing the wheel top to bottom. I'm like, yeah, great. It's great. The wheel self wears. And he goes, you're wearing a toroid into your wheel.
00:50:40
johngrimsmo
a cusp. So your square wheel, which is one sixteenth inch thick, like a Dremel cutoff blade, like you said, is no longer truly square on the cutting portion.
00:50:50
johngrimsmo
You're wearing a big radius into it very large radius.
00:50:53
John Saunders
Okay.
00:50:53
johngrimsmo
And i'm like, Yeah, it's self-wearing. I don't have to dress it. I'm at that perfect equilibrium of surface grinding where the grits pop out when they're too dull and everything seems to work.
00:51:03
johngrimsmo
And he said, well, the the cusps or the little lines you're seeing might be at the center of your wheel where it is biggest because now it's a radius on the end.
00:51:12
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:51:13
johngrimsmo
And he goes, maybe that's more your problem, like feed slower than actual vibration. And I was like, you have given me a lot to think about.
00:51:22
John Saunders
about Yeah, dang. I think you need a phantom camera, John.
00:51:26
johngrimsmo
Meaning, oh, like slow motion. Yeah.
00:51:28
John Saunders
Yeah, we're like 2 million frames a second.
00:51:29
johngrimsmo
Yeah, exactly.
00:51:29
John Saunders
and Just watch it.
00:51:31
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:51:32
John Saunders
um I don't think Ed listens to the podcast, that Ed that works here at Saunders. If he does, he maybe he does, but I don't think he does. Either way, he sent me an Amazon link four days ago. He's like, hey, will you please buy this Pi and Raspberry Pi, the Pi Ezo sensor and these power supplies and this other thing because I'm building a vibration sensor for the brother.
00:51:50
John Saunders
So I won't just want to say I have nothing to do with it. I don't know if he's like what inspired the idea, but I'm also kind and I'm like kind of staying out of it, but I'm like, this is awesome.
00:51:55
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:51:58
johngrimsmo
i'm I'm very curious. Maybe we could share notes and save some time, but yeah.
00:52:01
John Saunders
Sure.
00:52:02
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:52:03
John Saunders
Yeah. I'll let you know what he's, I think he's doing it more for tool life and like load detection and more like, Hey, let's figure out if if we're at a point where we want to stop the machine. I think I'll ask him though.
00:52:13
johngrimsmo
Yeah. i'd I'd love to see for me, I'd love to see things like chatter, finding the perfect RPM that like resonates less, things like that.
00:52:21
John Saunders
Yeah, sure, sure.
00:52:21
johngrimsmo
So these are the things I really want and I kind of have on the current and I want on this video and it's fun.
00:52:21
John Saunders
Yep. All right,
00:52:29
John Saunders
I'm copying bismuth wax in the next week's notes.
00:52:33
johngrimsmo
Yes, I might have more data for there anyway. Okay.
00:52:36
John Saunders
Perfect.
00:52:39
John Saunders
See next week.
00:52:40
johngrimsmo
See you next week, buddy.
00:52:41
John Saunders
Thanks, bud. Good talk.
00:52:42
johngrimsmo
Okay, yeah, good talk.
00:52:43
John Saunders
Bye.
00:52:43
johngrimsmo
Bye.