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#447 Shop layout in CAD
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Topics:
- Shop layout in CAD
- Slip roll?
- UR robot on Speedio
- Haas machine for sale
- White Light interferometer
- Non contact measurement
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:00
johngrimsmo
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 447. My name is John Grimsmo.
00:00:06
John Saunders
My name is John Sonners.
00:00:08
johngrimsmo
And this is your weekly dose of John and John talking about manufacturing and business and tools and tips and tricks and just things we're struggling with and things we're winning at in our manufacturing businesses.
00:00:21
John Saunders
What's on your list?
Machining Topics and Techniques
00:00:23
johngrimsmo
On my list today, progress on the white light interferometer,
00:00:27
John Saunders
Yes, awesome.
00:00:28
johngrimsmo
um vibration sensing,
00:00:33
johngrimsmo
still struggling with field bevels, although I think I got hard milling the critical features down. So we'll talk about that. And then i want to ask you about sheet metal.
00:00:40
John Saunders
Okay.
00:00:43
John Saunders
Okay, sure.
00:00:45
johngrimsmo
What's on your list?
00:00:46
John Saunders
That's like, like barely one step above lathes, but I'll allow it.
00:00:49
johngrimsmo
ah don't get know. the Same, but
00:00:52
John Saunders
I have a bunch of stuff. Some of it's pretty quick. um Customs and tariffs, Stimptworks, full Grimsmo. You're going love that one. um Some more activity on our side around buying and selling machines, air gauging, ai with Claude, and three d printing, our whole shop layout, and some questions about best practices and comments on what we're doing.
00:01:07
johngrimsmo
a
00:01:15
johngrimsmo
Amazing. I just had a friend ah show me his 3D printed layout or his, he had an infusion of design.
00:01:16
John Saunders
Yeah, right? This is a good
00:01:22
John Saunders
who
00:01:23
johngrimsmo
He's like, new big machine coming in. Like it was so good that I designed the whole shop infusion. It was great.
CAD and Shop Layout Strategies
00:01:28
John Saunders
In CAD.
00:01:29
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:01:30
John Saunders
Interesting. i
00:01:32
johngrimsmo
I have my shop in CAD.
00:01:32
John Saunders
um
00:01:35
John Saunders
In two d or three
00:01:36
johngrimsmo
3D with like rectangles representing a machine, but but i yeah, like i embossed the name, the Kern on the top of the thing.
00:01:38
John Saunders
in Yeah, sure. Well, but that's what's funny is...
00:01:46
johngrimsmo
So when I'm looking top view in CAD, I can see like which one's which, but.
00:01:51
John Saunders
So I have the opposite problem, which is I will download a brother or Doosan or current, doesn't matter. And i don't want even the dumbed to down sheet metal body that you can find on from the OEM or from make a GrabCAD still has like 72 bodies or 372 bodies.
00:02:08
johngrimsmo
Sure. Yep.
00:02:09
John Saunders
So um What I tend to do, because this this is not this is not the time to go full Grimso, we need to come back to that, is I will create a new component.
00:02:16
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:02:19
John Saunders
I will use the project command. On the project command, you can switch from lines to the whole body.
00:02:25
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:02:26
John Saunders
That didn't exist ten five years ago, infusion or 10 years ago, but now it does.
00:02:28
johngrimsmo
Yeah. yeah
00:02:30
John Saunders
So I project basically the outermost shape and then I extrude it up to the height of the machine, which gives me a pretty crappy looking rectangular-ish or prismatic blob, which, go ahead.
00:02:43
johngrimsmo
ye Which is all you care about. you know Maybe chip conveyor sticking out. Yeah.
00:02:48
John Saunders
But no, in this sense, i I do want more because there's an emotional response when you see...
00:02:51
johngrimsmo
Yeah,
00:02:55
John Saunders
a rectangle versus, it's not sorry, I'm failing my like fourth grade geometry. What's the, it's like a, it's not a rectangle, but it's a faceted, like basic dumb shape. It's extruded up in one.
00:03:04
johngrimsmo
don't know. Yeah, yeah.
00:03:06
John Saunders
So what I then do, in fact, i'll here I'll grab a part. So, um,
00:03:12
John Saunders
This is a Doosan DNM 6700. I did that this morning. I probably did it about 15 minutes, which is about 10 minutes longer than I wish it took. But I had the conveyor on it, extruded the bottom shape, extruded it up.
00:03:27
John Saunders
Then I went to a side view and projected the door windows. And by doing that, giving just giving you the angle of the door window really helps you relate to the...
00:03:38
John Saunders
machine more than it just being a straight. if This has nothing to do with clearances.
00:03:41
johngrimsmo
i got but yeah that's beautiful.
00:03:41
John Saunders
um And then we label them on the top that way.
00:03:45
johngrimsmo
Two color print.
00:03:45
John Saunders
You just want to look at it and not think what it is.
00:03:47
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:03:51
johngrimsmo
And you have the conveyor designed in that and the conveyor is only half the height of the whole thing. Cause that represents kind of reality.
00:03:57
John Saunders
Right, right.
00:03:57
johngrimsmo
And that does matter because imagine if you had, you know, maybe you want two machines conveying into the same bucket or maybe you don't, or maybe it's a wall or maybe it's something, you know?
00:04:04
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:04:06
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:04:07
John Saunders
Yeah, this doesn't account for door swings like maintenance door swings. and It doesn't account for getting a coolant tank out, which ah not surprisingly we've been been bitten by both of those, but.
00:04:13
johngrimsmo
It's the thing.
00:04:17
johngrimsmo
For sure. Like the current coolant tank is so long. It's like, i don't know, 20 feet long. It's just a long rectangle. And thankfully we've positioned it so we can open the bay door and pull it outside to remove it.
00:04:28
johngrimsmo
But if the current backs up against a wall, you got to move the machine to get the coolant tank out, which is dumb.
00:04:28
John Saunders
Oh, that's genius.
00:04:34
John Saunders
Oh yeah, stupid.
00:04:34
johngrimsmo
it's just It's just unfortunate. So that does affect our machine placement for sure.
Tools and Techniques for Metalworking
00:04:40
John Saunders
That's a. Shin, what way?
00:04:48
John Saunders
Um, I'm going to bounce around a bunch, but I started this wiki list internal of like all the things we're going to ask machine tool vendors when we buy our next machine.
00:04:56
johngrimsmo
Nice.
00:04:56
John Saunders
And the list is not fun. Like I'll be honest, it's a very, like, it starts to feel like you're now turning into one of those companies and it's nothing. There isn't a single normal question on it. Um, but it's stuff that I, we've been burned by or bit by or not.
00:05:10
John Saunders
Like I just wanted answered.
00:05:11
johngrimsmo
Yeah. yeah On topic, is it like, which way does the coolant tank come out?
00:05:12
John Saunders
Um,
00:05:15
John Saunders
Well, that's what I just added. Like, how do you get the coolant hangout?
00:05:16
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:05:17
John Saunders
Cause it's like, why on a current, why can't you pull it out sideways or front?
00:05:18
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:05:20
John Saunders
You know?
00:05:21
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Cause there's three feet in the way.
00:05:23
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:05:24
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:05:25
John Saunders
So do you have ah a trick or a way if you get current CAD model and it has a hundred bodies and you want to three d print it, how would you do that?
00:05:34
johngrimsmo
I do what you do. i just Either I'll just draw like a representative top-down rectangle, just quick and dirty, and then just extrude up and don't care.
00:05:36
John Saunders
Okay.
00:05:41
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:05:42
johngrimsmo
i I do have various, like i have a full speedio model, but you're right, it slows down the whole assembly when you have too many things going on. um You can go in, you can delete a bunch of stuff, like it I don't know, as simple as possible because it's just representative. You're just trying to like, does it fit here?
00:05:59
johngrimsmo
What does two beside beside look like? like I don't know.
00:06:03
John Saunders
I want, this is funny. i I love it because you're always better at this than me, John. You're always, you have the eye and the vision and the care and I'm more cut the corner, get it done.
00:06:14
John Saunders
But like here, I like want, so like take a brother.
00:06:16
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:06:17
John Saunders
I don't need the internal cavity. I don't need the doors to move open and close, but like I want the doors to look like the doors and the,
00:06:23
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:06:23
John Saunders
I want like, and i don't know what I'm exactly I'm looking for. Sometimes infusion, you can do a bunch of combines and get a lot of things combined, if you will.
00:06:31
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:06:31
John Saunders
But I want something that like fills it up with water is a solid or stitches anything that's like one inch in the real world apart. We then, everything we do is on a one 30 second scale. But um before we scale it down, I do all this work. I just wish there was a, if it's so many nodes, I'd love to hear about it.
00:06:48
johngrimsmo
Yeah, well, I certainly, i do love having the Speedio model um for when I'm working for like, when I'm, is this part going to fit?
00:06:48
John Saunders
But what we have for now is a,
00:06:56
johngrimsmo
Is how much spindle clearance do I have?
00:06:57
John Saunders
Sure.
00:06:58
johngrimsmo
Like having a full CAD model is fantastic for that kind of stuff. And I have my, my fixtures and my vices and my shunk pallets and my bloom laser and everything like modeled in every file because it's in the table file of the Speedio.
00:07:10
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:07:11
johngrimsmo
So it's great.
00:07:13
John Saunders
Yeah. Maybe that's the me that's the inspiration I need is I like playing called dollhouse with the printed model because it has the four joints expansion joints on it and we've used it for years now.
00:07:19
johngrimsmo
Nice.
00:07:24
johngrimsmo
Of your shop.
00:07:24
John Saunders
But yeah, I think you're right though because we have catmails everything.
00:07:24
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah.
00:07:28
John Saunders
I think I should then dump this into fusion and create a, create a render that would allow, me I think now in VR, this is like a great Phil or Rob question. I think somebody said you can walk through it or if somebody is listening the podcast and wants to get paid to do this work, to help out as a collab or whatever, let me know. Cause I'm happy to like get the answer.
00:07:50
John Saunders
Have somebody else handle this.
00:07:50
johngrimsmo
i've been a I've been ignoring any link between VR and Fusion, but I guess there is. like You can VR Fusion stuff. I don't know.
00:08:00
John Saunders
That's what i want to do. I want to put on my son's Oculus set. Well, you just bought an Oculus and walk, walk through my new shop.
00:08:02
johngrimsmo
Yeah. I just bought an Oculus 3S and gave it... Life got it this morning. um Yeah, that would be crazy.
00:08:11
John Saunders
It's not John.
00:08:11
johngrimsmo
Now that I think about it. No, but it would be insane.
00:08:13
John Saunders
It's not. we're We're living in the future.
00:08:13
johngrimsmo
It would wonderful. It would be wonderful. Wow, that'd be cool. Okay, let me know how that goes. Okay.
00:08:18
John Saunders
Yeah. Okay. On the list. Okay. Back to you. What's going on
00:08:22
johngrimsmo
Okay, I'll start with the sheet metal question. So I don't, you might know the answer. Somebody listening might know the answer. So I bought a sheet of 6 by 12 inch thin bronze to make inlays from.
00:08:34
John Saunders
Okay.
00:08:36
johngrimsmo
And I bought it from McMaster and it was not cheap, it was like 100 bucks, but it's kind of warpy.
00:08:37
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:08:42
John Saunders
Oh.
00:08:42
johngrimsmo
And i want to glue it or attach it down to the fixture, but I don't want to constrain it. i I want it to be flat, like unconstrained flat. It's kind of a new obsession of mine is unconstrained flatness.
00:08:55
johngrimsmo
And I learned of a sheet metal tool called the slip roll that has three rollers and you roll the one and it kind of puts it through and you can make arcs and circles and things like that.
00:08:59
John Saunders
so Sure. Mm-hmm.
00:09:06
johngrimsmo
But I don't see why you couldn't use it to flatten an object and make it like flatter by just adjusting it properly. i just I've never touched one. If you or anybody listening like can answer, if i can I think it's like 90 thou thick bronze. so It's a little thicker than 20 gauge sheet metal, which is only 40 thou thick or something like that.
00:09:27
John Saunders
Yeah. It's 90 thou you said?
00:09:28
johngrimsmo
But I'm not trying to, yeah, I'm not, and it's bronze, but it's like copper kind of mostly material.
00:09:30
John Saunders
Yeah. that's That's not nothing. Yeah.
00:09:33
johngrimsmo
So it's not steel. um I just want it flat or as flat as possible. And is it worth investing, you know, two to $500 on a slip roll, cheap good, um to accomplish this?
00:09:42
John Saunders
Sure.
00:09:46
johngrimsmo
And will it accomplish this or will it still not be flat? So that's my question.
00:09:52
John Saunders
I will happily yield to anybody who wants to lob in an emailed answer to John, but the answer is yes, that's how you do it. It's the same thing as when you look at stamping machines, how they process the infeed or whether it's flat flat stock or wire.
00:10:04
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:10:05
John Saunders
It ends up, it's not so much rolled as it is like it's moved over and below humps and valleys and it just caused it to undulate up and down.
00:10:09
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:10:11
John Saunders
um
00:10:11
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah.
00:10:13
John Saunders
I used to have like a little Harbor Freight slip roll back in New York. Um, I, you'd have to have, so you'd have, you'd have it such a gentle angle from one side and then another side. I think you're going to get it quite parallel, but I think you're going to struggle on, especially, I think you're going to struggle to get it unconstrained flat.
00:10:31
johngrimsmo
Right.
00:10:31
John Saunders
Um, Now, what you might be able to, you might be able to, and it might be acceptable. You also though, could pretty easily print or machine um one mold and flip it over a few times in that and, and potentially get there.
00:10:47
johngrimsmo
Yeah, we wondered about that too.
00:10:47
John Saunders
And then, go
00:10:49
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I don't know
00:10:51
John Saunders
ahead. 90,000, if it was like half that, I would also say you could take the the tool that comes with the foil bags, the heat seat, the heat bags, the like roller and roll over it over um up on a surface plate or something that could back bend it a little bit and you'd get it really close.
00:11:02
johngrimsmo
know.
00:11:04
johngrimsmo
OK.
00:11:09
johngrimsmo
OK.
00:11:12
John Saunders
That's all i got.
00:11:12
johngrimsmo
Yeah, to be fair, I haven't actually tried to research this exact question yet. um But I have looked into slip rolls. I watched a bunch of videos. I'm like, I think it would do it. But the corners is where I'm wondering, because you have to be securely within the three rolls to like do anything.
00:11:28
John Saunders
Yeah, won't.
00:11:28
johngrimsmo
and
00:11:28
John Saunders
You'll lose the ends.
00:11:29
johngrimsmo
Will the ends still be up or down?
00:11:31
John Saunders
You'll lose it. Actually, Google or chat, look up.
00:11:33
johngrimsmo
It's interesting.
00:11:36
John Saunders
I mean, you got a plethora of heat treat ovens. I think your better answer is to actually put it at whatever temp it needs to be, 483 degrees or something, pull it out and and put it between your quench plates, John.
00:11:47
johngrimsmo
That's not a bad idea at all.
00:11:50
John Saunders
because you've got those in a press already. And when it's heated, you won't need to, what do you call it, backbend it or overflex it to correct it.
00:11:57
johngrimsmo
Interesting.
00:11:58
John Saunders
That's going to be good.
00:11:59
johngrimsmo
i will The sheet is six by 12. I think our heat treat plates are like six by six. But if I cut the sheet in half, I don't need it to be full size. I could just do that twice.
00:12:08
John Saunders
Also tell McMaster you want a better piece. They'll send it to you. Seriously.
00:12:10
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah.
00:12:11
John Saunders
No, seriously.
00:12:13
johngrimsmo
Interesting.
00:12:13
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:12:14
johngrimsmo
um Yeah, it's not terrible, but it's probably got, if I had to say, maybe an eighth of an inch warp or more to it.
Insights on Large-Scale Production
00:12:20
johngrimsmo
Like, it's not going to just glue flat. You'd have to bend it to sit to to tape flat or to glue flat or something like that.
00:12:26
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:12:27
johngrimsmo
And I just don't want that.
00:12:29
John Saunders
ah The other unsolicited advice would be next time buy one inch rolls of this material. Cause then you can slip roll it or fix it. You could even three d print rollers.
00:12:40
John Saunders
Like this is not hard. It's one inch wide.
00:12:42
johngrimsmo
Yeah,
00:12:42
John Saunders
So you don't have the near pressure requirement. And then you're going to lose an inch on each end, but who cares if it's a 50 foot roll, you just roll it into strips that are one inch wide and then put those down in your fixture or tape and you're good.
00:12:54
johngrimsmo
Interesting. Yeah, that's how um Swiss Army Knife makes their blades out of a huge roll of material. It's like really cool to see. And it goes through the three roller thing or five or whatever.
00:13:05
johngrimsmo
And then it just gets punched. And then, yeah, fun, fun fact, I might have mentioned it.
00:13:09
John Saunders
Yeah. Cool. Right.
00:13:11
johngrimsmo
But, um you know, we make, you know, five to eight knives a day, give or take. um Do you know how many knives a day Swiss Army Knife makes Victorinox?
00:13:20
John Saunders
Oh, you mean blades or like ship knives?
00:13:22
johngrimsmo
Apparently it's like all products, including scissors, stuff like that.
00:13:25
John Saunders
Oh, 8,000 a day.
00:13:25
johngrimsmo
It's a rough number, but a hundred thousand.
00:13:29
John Saunders
but
00:13:31
johngrimsmo
A hundred thousand products a day.
00:13:32
John Saunders
Yes. It's crazy.
00:13:33
johngrimsmo
It's, I can't even comprehend that amount of, and that number is probably old.
00:13:34
John Saunders
It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Right. wait um Even Haas um just celebrated that they've just shipped their 300,000 CNC machine.
00:13:47
John Saunders
John, like CNC machine, like 300,000 of anything is insane.
00:13:52
johngrimsmo
That's insane.
00:13:53
John Saunders
When you fetch it and you can figure it out, it's a pretty large electromechanical thing.
00:13:57
johngrimsmo
mar us Yep. Well, we've sold close to 10,000 pens and maybe I'm guessing 15,000 knives.
00:14:04
John Saunders
No kidding.
00:14:07
John Saunders
Interesting. yeah um Other random suggestion, do you ever order from sendkets Send, Cut, Send?
00:14:13
johngrimsmo
I have not yet, but I'm getting there.
00:14:14
John Saunders
If they have your material, I would also consider asking them about the condition they'll arrive in, but because I bet you, I've never been disappointed what I've received.
00:14:25
John Saunders
And like the two or three times I got something for Johnny five that I, one time they did it wrong.
00:14:25
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:14:30
John Saunders
Oh no. One time it was actually ironically bent. um
00:14:33
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:14:34
John Saunders
And the bending was a by-product of a process I don't recall. And they were like, yep, that shouldn't be bent. We'll fix it like immediately. The other time I just picked the edges bent the wrong way.
00:14:45
John Saunders
it was my fault. and they're like, yeah, but the fact that it was your fault tells us we need to do a better job with our renderings and proofs and like super solid.
00:14:51
johngrimsmo
It's incredible.
00:14:52
John Saunders
But like,
00:14:52
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah.
00:14:53
John Saunders
but literally ordering that way
00:14:55
johngrimsmo
Cool. Yeah. the The whole concept, obviously I have this piece of bronze I want to use, but I want to get into making more inlays, more intricate inlays, whether they're titanium inlays or things like that. And I want to be able to buy a thinner sheet stock and I want to use these unconstrained methods to hold it down. And I just, I need to establish a process that it allows me to control it. I like the heat treat idea. I didn't consider that. That's really good idea. um You know,
00:15:21
John Saunders
yeah ah totally
00:15:25
John Saunders
Totally. Okay.
Commitment to Excellence in Machining
00:15:26
John Saunders
um Somebody emailed, I don't know whether whether it was our business of machining Gmail or just me, but they're like, could you please have somebody explain, especially for the new folks, what full Grimsmoke means?
00:15:40
johngrimsmo
um Should I do the actual explanation?
00:15:43
John Saunders
I don't know. Well, I thought I knew, but maybe I don't.
00:15:45
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah. Well, the the joke, I feel like this happened on the podcast. The joke is from Tropic Thunder.
00:15:53
John Saunders
I'm all the years, because clearly I'm not, I've never seen Tropic Thunder, so maybe that's why I'm not in the know.
00:15:54
johngrimsmo
if You haven't seen the Tropic Thunder movie?
00:15:58
John Saunders
I've not.
00:16:00
johngrimsmo
2004 or 2008 or whatever it is. ah Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr.,
00:16:05
John Saunders
Okay. It's like the parody action movie, right?
00:16:08
johngrimsmo
Exactly. It's a parody action movie.
00:16:09
John Saunders
Okay.
00:16:10
johngrimsmo
And ah it's it's funny.
00:16:12
John Saunders
put on the list.
00:16:14
johngrimsmo
Anyway, one of the characters does a bunch of movies where he goes full um mentally disabled, but the other word.
00:16:23
John Saunders
Ah, I see.
00:16:23
johngrimsmo
and And the joke in the movie is you never you never go full R word.
00:16:27
John Saunders
Yes.
00:16:28
johngrimsmo
um And somebody you somebody said full Grimmsmo.
00:16:32
John Saunders
Things.
00:16:33
johngrimsmo
And was like, it just stuck.
00:16:36
John Saunders
Hilarious.
00:16:36
johngrimsmo
Because we go full Grimmsmo.
00:16:38
John Saunders
You, it's one of those things like to me now, the movie so is subservient to your definition. Cause it's like, it's you like, it's just like, I'm going to do this.
00:16:44
johngrimsmo
Sure. Yeah. Yeah, that was just silly. But now it's like, I'm going to lean into everything, everything to the nines when it matters.
00:16:47
John Saunders
Yeah. Yeah. Right.
00:16:51
johngrimsmo
It doesn't always matter. and We definitely have standards and we definitely i don't want to say cut corners, but, you know, we know when to when to not care when necessary.
00:16:53
John Saunders
Right.
00:17:00
John Saunders
Yeah, yeah,
00:17:00
johngrimsmo
But but when it does matter, me especially, I'm leading that charge of like, i don't care how long it takes i don't care i mean within a reason how much it costs like i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do it my way i'm gonna get it right um and that's what i think of as full grims most like it's just going full nerd on it and be like i have a vision i have an idea i have a theory it's going to work and i'm going to make it work and i'm not going to be happy until it does and when it does i'm like happy for five seconds and then i move on to the next project but
00:17:17
John Saunders
yeah.
00:17:27
John Saunders
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:17:29
johngrimsmo
In my case, I'm establishing processes that the team can run with, and now the whole team is producing full-grams, more quality parts because they helped me make the process to like do that. And now we all have standards and we all... like It's ah kind of unexpectedly bled through the entire company of like this is just how we operate now. And it's honestly not a term that we use in our company. like much at all sometimes but it's not like we're you know pumping our fists up in the air be like vulgar although maybe we should um yeah so does that answer the the asker's question think so
00:17:55
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:17:59
John Saunders
Sure.
00:18:04
John Saunders
i like it.
00:18:08
John Saunders
Yeah. There's a funny tie in to something that I've. still love, which is the idea of like sort of be a surgeon of like, just if you need to do something, set ah you can set a timer if you need to, an hour, I'm gonna do this to the best of my ability. Like I'm gonna, we joke, like even if it's clean the s sink or I'm cleaning the Freddy right now or or design this part. And it's just like, instead of feeling the,
00:18:35
John Saunders
There's a lot of words, overwhelmed, anxiety, overloaded sense of like, I just need to get this off my plate. It's like, Nope, do this.
00:18:42
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:18:42
John Saunders
Even if it's the last thing you do before you retire and like, I'm going to do this so freaking well. Now, of course, to your point, you can't spend 17 days designing a five minute fixture, but like, yeah, like go full Grinzor.
00:18:47
johngrimsmo
Yeah. and
00:18:52
johngrimsmo
Exactly. Yep.
00:18:53
John Saunders
Don't compromise, make it good. Be smart about it. Be proud about it. Do it well.
00:18:58
johngrimsmo
Yep. Yeah. A lot of people will say, you know, how you do one thing is how you do everything. And that works to a point.
00:19:02
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:19:03
johngrimsmo
It doesn't work for everything. But um I was talking with a very famous knife maker at Blade Show one year, and he said, literally, it comes down to how well do you clean the dishes?
00:19:14
John Saunders
Yeah, right.
00:19:15
johngrimsmo
And I'm talking to him.
00:19:15
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:19:16
johngrimsmo
I'm like, you know, when I clean the dishes, they're freaking clean. Like I do a good job. I don't, I don't, you know, i don't do a bad job.
00:19:23
John Saunders
You're totally right. You're totally right. Yep.
00:19:25
johngrimsmo
And that that's why our floors are so clean in this shop. And that's why, you know, things matter and and precision requires cleanliness and all this stuff.
00:19:31
John Saunders
Yeah. really
00:19:33
johngrimsmo
And that's how it comes down to.
00:19:33
John Saunders
I like that. What was that quote you said but second ago? Like, not just do the dishes.
00:19:39
johngrimsmo
It was how how you do one thing is how you do everything.
00:19:42
John Saunders
Yeah, I like that.
00:19:43
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:19:46
John Saunders
writing that down.
00:19:47
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it's great. Yeah, fairly common quote in the in the success field.
00:19:49
John Saunders
of
00:19:52
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:19:53
johngrimsmo
But
00:19:53
John Saunders
No, I've heard other versions of it. Like, you know, how somebody treats the waitstaff is, tells you and like what kind of person they are going to be.
00:19:58
johngrimsmo
yeah yeah, totally.
00:20:01
John Saunders
And um it is true.
00:20:01
johngrimsmo
Yep, and that's true.
00:20:03
John Saunders
I mean, look, we've all had our, but yeah, agree. It is true. um
00:20:06
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:20:09
John Saunders
Okay.
00:20:11
John Saunders
Um, okay. This actually wasn't even on my list, but it's too good to not
Machine Upgrades and Strategic Investments
00:20:16
John Saunders
share. The UR robot with the brother is just the the the best thing we've ever done.
00:20:22
John Saunders
Full stop.
00:20:22
johngrimsmo
Oh, it's so good to hear.
00:20:23
John Saunders
Yes, like incredible. So we're switching from the same machine, the same like everything. There's a couple like minor changes, but from large rectangular, when I say large, mod vice parts that are longer than a plain card box, but like that thickness or size, six inches by four by whatever. We're switching to 5 8 round bar.
00:20:46
John Saunders
Now, the long-term goal will be to switch this over to a bar-fed mill, which we're in the process of designing. But for now, i want to prove this out with saw cuts. We ordered a saw cut. But we don't want to add steps. So the machine has all the same tools. it has the same work holding. We have ah Ed and Grant designed vise jaws where they have like a little modular insert. So we're just switching those out real quick into that, like more hassle.
00:21:08
John Saunders
And then I didn't want to change the infeed table on the robot. But one of the... things that we would have had to overcome that we didn't want to um this is all grant by the way, was we didn't want to do a pattern of patterns.
00:21:22
John Saunders
So the infeed table in the UR, so right now it picks up material in those L brackets.
00:21:23
johngrimsmo
in In fusion or in real life? Okay. Okay.
00:21:31
johngrimsmo
okay
00:21:32
John Saunders
So we would have like five high just stacked in a little angle bracket. Fine. We could have put like seven round parts in that one bracket, but then you would have to teach the UR to pick seven up to pi seven up, to pick seven pieces from one area. And then when you're done, move over and pick seven sequentially from that next area. So it's a pattern of a pattern.
00:21:54
John Saunders
And for whatever reason, that's more work. So Grant and Alex, and I don't, I'm not actually even sure if Ed was of all this, but ri regardless, came up with this idea, proof of concept. We laser cut some cardboard and nests over the existing l brackets.
00:22:11
John Saunders
So there's no changes, like nothing's removed. We just add it on there.
00:22:14
johngrimsmo
Okay. Okay.
00:22:15
John Saunders
And does it, is it making sense to hear?
00:22:17
johngrimsmo
ah Maybe. Hard to tell.
00:22:20
John Saunders
Oh, sorry.
00:22:20
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:22:22
John Saunders
Yeah, I'm hoping the light bulb goes off.
00:22:22
johngrimsmo
So you have you have an L bracket fixture that can hold square stuff, but you're adding a strip of holes to hold round stuff.
00:22:30
John Saunders
Just on top of it. Yep.
00:22:32
johngrimsmo
Love it.
00:22:32
John Saunders
And that's like, i don't know, that's 20. We could stack up four more of those easy.
00:22:35
johngrimsmo
Right.
00:22:36
John Saunders
This will be either machined or printed or send it, but like cardboard works for now. And now you
00:22:41
johngrimsmo
So you're creating a modular stock holding solution because you you are the work holding solution people.
00:22:46
John Saunders
drop.
00:22:48
johngrimsmo
So you put your brains together, right?
00:22:48
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:22:50
johngrimsmo
And that is good okay.
00:22:52
John Saunders
but you want to switch from rectangle it around. You drop one, two, three, four on there. Maybe it hand tighten a few thumb nuts, but were talking three minutes.
00:22:56
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:23:00
John Saunders
Then you load the part, you do lay the parts in.
00:23:00
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:23:02
John Saunders
So that takes some time, like, but it's probably, i don't know, it's two seconds per piece.
00:23:03
johngrimsmo
Sure. You can't fake that. like Yeah. Yeah.
00:23:07
John Saunders
So you're going to do hundred pieces in three minutes. So it's whatever. And we're off to the races.
00:23:12
johngrimsmo
you're kind of taking the Willamette approach where you just have to, you know, it's got a lot of tools. So everything's in there and you just replace a college and some soft jaws and hit go theoretically.
00:23:20
John Saunders
A hundred percent.
00:23:21
johngrimsmo
um Yeah, that's cool, man.
00:23:23
John Saunders
I love it.
00:23:27
johngrimsmo
That's going full Saunders right there.
00:23:28
John Saunders
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. um Well, so on that note, that's led us to now we have have really have had the confidence to run. We run two different part families for the same machine. We know this will work. We're comfortable with a lot of this.
00:23:43
John Saunders
Confident, I should say, is like we do have some confidence now, which is great. So we're starting the process to look at the next set of machine tools around that. um So what that also led to was that we need more capacity to make steel plates. So we're going to sell our Haas VF6A.
00:24:01
John Saunders
We have two VF6s, we call them eight.
00:24:02
johngrimsmo
Two, right? theyre Yeah, they're two identical machines. have that You never talk about it. Has that worked well, like having two machines? Do you need two machines? who identify like How does this work?
00:24:11
John Saunders
Yeah, it works great. um
00:24:13
johngrimsmo
ah Actually, when I was there last and I only had like one minute to walk through your whole shop because the kids were there and everything. I saw the weirdest fixtures inside to hold your fixture plates. And I'm like, I know it's secret sauce, but why don't you talk about it?
00:24:23
John Saunders
o who
00:24:26
johngrimsmo
I don't know. I don't know what's going on here. So anyway, yeah you have two houses.
00:24:28
John Saunders
yeah Yeah, and that continues to evolve, but um we don't need to anymore.
00:24:30
johngrimsmo
Go.
00:24:34
John Saunders
Aluminum prices have have doubled or more and and aluminum costs a lot more for us because of the anodizing lead times and hassle. So more of our businesses pushing towards steel, which is a better for most aspects of better material anyway.
00:24:49
John Saunders
And we need another machine to do steel. And so we're going to look at a Doosan DNM 6700.
00:24:56
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:24:56
John Saunders
um And the thought is if it works, it could potentially be a machine that we have more than one of. And I like that idea of it being standardized. um
00:25:05
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:25:06
John Saunders
But the simple answer is like, okay, sell the VF6, buy one of those, put it on the floor, have a chance to really learn and see, put it through its paces and see what it can do.
00:25:13
johngrimsmo
Same size.
00:25:16
John Saunders
So that's what's nice. It's slightly smaller travels than a VF6, which is perfectly acceptable for what we need. And it's it's like three feet.
00:25:22
johngrimsmo
VF6 is a big machine. Yeah.
00:25:24
John Saunders
It's a big machine. And this the Doosan's like three feet smaller. um
00:25:28
johngrimsmo
like footprint.
00:25:28
John Saunders
which is no joke. Correct.
00:25:30
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:25:30
John Saunders
So, and that matters. Like we're, or we we are much, we quickly went from like not caring to like being really tight on space.
00:25:37
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:25:38
John Saunders
Um, and so now we're, so we're selling the VF6. We might sell our DT2, but we also might just keep it as a Op1, Op2 machine for hobby plates. Uh, and then we are still trying to sell the horizontal.
00:25:48
John Saunders
We had two real good bites, but hadn't come through. So, um, all yeah, the VF6 and the horizontal are up on our website with pricing and info if anyone's interested.
00:25:52
johngrimsmo
It'll happen.
00:25:56
johngrimsmo
Hmm.
00:25:58
John Saunders
Um, yeah, that's my big update there.
00:26:08
johngrimsmo
Interesting. Love to hear that this video is working for you.
00:26:12
John Saunders
Yeah, I will say it's a we knew it was a 30 taper kind of like real tap.
00:26:13
johngrimsmo
um
00:26:17
John Saunders
It's actually a little lighter duty than we thought to be fair.
00:26:20
johngrimsmo
Really?
00:26:20
John Saunders
Yeah. But we also fairly quickly learned how to make some pretty darn good parts on it. Like it's doing, I don't think there's a choice about is big plus has to be.
00:26:25
johngrimsmo
Did you get Big Plus?
00:26:31
johngrimsmo
think there is a choice. I don't know. Mine is Big Plus.
00:26:34
John Saunders
Interesting.
00:26:34
johngrimsmo
Pretty sure it's a choice.
00:26:34
John Saunders
Yeah, for absolutely we do.
00:26:35
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:26:36
John Saunders
And like we're using a lot of Rego holders for the critical stuff.
00:26:39
johngrimsmo
Good.
00:26:40
John Saunders
And we're doing this, we did the hardest part first where, you know, we're facing a two inch 4140 seal part and we're getting just phenomenal finishes off of it.
00:26:47
johngrimsmo
Good.
00:26:48
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:26:49
johngrimsmo
Great, man. Well, can segue that into my speedio adventures the past few weeks. um still fine-tuning the bevel grinding process on the speedio um focusing on fjells rasks work but kind of slowly um focusing on the fjells i got palletizing working very well i've run you know all five pallets uh several nights in a row now and getting almost perfect results with like two outliers every now and then that's like oh those are way wrong
00:27:01
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:27:16
John Saunders
Oh. Hmm.
00:27:23
johngrimsmo
where's my math going wrong? So I've got this complicated subroutine that, um, you know, probe stuff and measure stuff and comps the wheel size and comps the wheel by the deviation from the probe results and all that stuff.
Precision in Grinding Processes
00:27:37
johngrimsmo
And I, I trust the probe results. I don't trust the laser results and I have data to back that up, but, um,
00:27:45
johngrimsmo
Either I'm missing something or something in my math is invariably causing erratic behavior because it's not working perfectly every time the full Grimmsmo way that I envision it to work.
00:27:57
johngrimsmo
And it's frustrating. um and Now the grinding wheel wears down after cutting one blade, but... After a day's worth, it probably gets smaller by less than a thou.
00:28:11
johngrimsmo
So that's not that much to really care um after making a whole bunch of blades.
00:28:12
John Saunders
Oh, wow, not much.
00:28:16
johngrimsmo
So what I just tried now is I'm going to continue to probe, continue to log. I'm deprinting everything. continue to log the results, but not update the wheel size and just let the wheel naturally wear.
00:28:28
John Saunders
Yeah, sure.
00:28:29
johngrimsmo
And that way we can, I can monitor what the programming thinks it needs to comp, but not actually let it comp. And then I can see those comps.
00:28:38
John Saunders
Yeah, that's a good idea.
00:28:38
johngrimsmo
So I should be making good parts. And then literally once a day, we just comp the wheel a little bit smaller based on actual results, which will work.
00:28:46
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:28:47
johngrimsmo
I'm pretty confident that will work and get us good parts like now. Because I've had a couple scrap parts and a couple like where the bevel grinds too much, and or there's a mismatch and things like that.
00:28:58
johngrimsmo
and I'm trying to match the depth of the grinding on side one versus the depth of the grinding on side two when we move the blade to the other side of the fixture.
00:29:03
John Saunders
Right.
00:29:06
johngrimsmo
And it's complex. And it's...
00:29:08
John Saunders
Matching it to what tolerance?
00:29:10
johngrimsmo
um
00:29:13
johngrimsmo
How do I... I mean, bevel width to about a thou...
00:29:19
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:29:20
johngrimsmo
I'm trying to match a thou on each side, which the speedy is super accurate and the grinding is super fairly accurate.
00:29:23
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:29:27
johngrimsmo
It's my math and the comps and different fixtures are different thicknesses depending. And is there repeatability issue in the EROA putting it in There isn't, but there's all these questions and the thermal growth of the machine definitely plays a role, but that's all compensated for now with my artifacts that I'm probing, which has been amazing.
00:29:32
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:29:48
johngrimsmo
um
00:29:49
John Saunders
When you deep print, does it log the what fixtures it's doing at the time?
00:29:49
johngrimsmo
Every single day.
00:29:53
johngrimsmo
It does. Yeah, it does now.
00:29:53
John Saunders
Okay, so you know which one even which one.
00:29:55
johngrimsmo
Yep. Yep. And I, I'm probing the side of the fixture in two places because it can rotate a little bit, not really, but a little bit. So I'm probing the two corners and I'm averaging to find the center point of that plane.
00:30:05
John Saunders
Here.
00:30:11
John Saunders
Oh, you can't do a G60, like a coordinate plane rotation.
00:30:12
johngrimsmo
Um,
00:30:14
johngrimsmo
You can, but i don't I don't want to, I don't really care, but I don't want to probe the tip and have it be a little bit tilted.
00:30:22
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:30:22
johngrimsmo
So I want to probe both sides, average it, because that's kind of the center of rotation of the fixture of the Auroa. And that's where the critical feature needs to be measured from. So that's like a good place, but I can't fit the probe in there to probe the fixture at that spot.
00:30:36
John Saunders
It's funny.
00:30:36
johngrimsmo
So anyway, that's working good. And I can see with my results that, you know, palette 59 and 61 are about the same, but palette 63 and 67 are bigger um by 2000 or something like that, which as long as I'm comping for it, doesn't matter.
00:30:50
John Saunders
who
00:30:53
johngrimsmo
Let them do what they're going to do ah
00:30:53
John Saunders
Yeah, right, right, right.
00:30:56
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:30:57
John Saunders
You don't dress the wheel?
00:30:59
johngrimsmo
We don't anymore because it's self-wares very, very nicely.
00:31:02
John Saunders
Okay. Right, let's just he
00:31:03
johngrimsmo
Because i'm I'm grinding, like this is vertical chop grinding, jig grinding.
00:31:09
John Saunders
gro
00:31:09
johngrimsmo
So little tiny, looks like a machine washer, like a like a screw washer, right?
00:31:15
John Saunders
just say... Yeah, like a Dremel cutoff wheel.
00:31:17
johngrimsmo
Like a Dremel cutoff wheel, exactly. So imagine you're holding your Dremel vertically, like pointing down at the ground, and your cutoff wheel is spinning horizontally around, and I'm going up and down and up and down and chop grinding the blade.
00:31:23
John Saunders
Yes.
00:31:29
johngrimsmo
It works fantastic. And since I'm grinding below the blade and then above the blade and moving over and then below, and i'm I'm constantly dressing. If you think of the wheel, I'm dressing from left to right or I'm grinding from left to right and then from right to left.
00:31:43
johngrimsmo
So I'm constantly sweeping both sides of the wheel.
00:31:44
John Saunders
Okay.
00:31:47
johngrimsmo
So the wheel doesn't develop a taper at all, which is fantastic. And just wears super consistently and super evenly.
00:31:56
John Saunders
What this wheel starts at like one inch diameter.
00:31:58
johngrimsmo
One inch and we we kill it at 0.8 inch.
00:32:01
John Saunders
Oh yeah. Because that's answered question. You, you literally use 200,000 of this wheel.
00:32:06
johngrimsmo
Yep. Yep.
00:32:07
John Saunders
That's crazy.
00:32:07
johngrimsmo
And the rest of it's held up by Arbor, by a three quarter inch Arbor.
00:32:07
John Saunders
john
00:32:10
johngrimsmo
um
00:32:11
John Saunders
Okay.
Advanced Programming and AI in Machining
00:32:12
John Saunders
Interesting.
00:32:13
johngrimsmo
And the the weird thing is because as the wheel gets smaller, I can't i can't do cutter comp with this program. It doesn't work.
00:32:22
John Saunders
On geodesic or.
00:32:23
johngrimsmo
um I'm not doing a geodesic program. I'm doing my own
00:32:26
John Saunders
Ooh, I thought, oh, this is the chat. but That's right.
00:32:28
johngrimsmo
my own JetGPT Python program.
00:32:29
John Saunders
Oh yeah, it's sick.
00:32:31
johngrimsmo
So I have to know the wheel size, I have to know the fixture deviation, and I have to compensate the G54.1P9 or whatever I'm using, fixture offset to shift based on actual wheel diameter.
00:32:46
johngrimsmo
And as the wheel gets smaller, my G54, 59, whatever, moves to compensate that every single time, every single blade.
00:32:47
John Saunders
Okay.
00:32:52
John Saunders
Got Interesting.
00:32:56
johngrimsmo
So there's like a lot of math going on and it's i've made it very complicated like this is where i went full grimsmo to get a result and i'm still not getting the results and it's very frustrating
00:33:07
John Saunders
Can you dump the whole thing into Claude and be like, could you find problems in my math or say anything?
00:33:09
johngrimsmo
agree
00:33:13
johngrimsmo
maybe that's a good question um i haven't tried that i have done some successful macro programming with um who did i use cursor or chat, I can't remember, but I got some pretty cool arc tangent calculations
00:33:24
John Saunders
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:33:30
johngrimsmo
with pure macro, like FANUC macro logic.
00:33:33
John Saunders
yeah
00:33:33
johngrimsmo
And it worked. It took a couple of tweaks, but it worked.
00:33:36
John Saunders
yeah
00:33:36
johngrimsmo
It's like probe three points on a radius and tell me how big the radius is.
00:33:40
John Saunders
Yeah, incredible.
00:33:42
johngrimsmo
And that's like fairly complicated math to like hand write in macro programming, but it works, it works great.
00:33:46
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:33:51
John Saunders
Ed was, we are cutting dovetails into those round parts in the brother and we use a dovetail tool, inserted dovetail tool and it started to wear and Ed wanted add break detect and the brother, backers that we have from just the tool that didn't have face mill break detect. i I'm like out of the loop a little bit. And so he literally fed what we had in some other stuff into Claude and it was like,
00:34:12
John Saunders
perfect. It's insane. John, I know we keep saying that, but it's just great.
00:34:15
johngrimsmo
Yep, yep.
00:34:16
John Saunders
Wrote this like UI for go, no go gauging on pins and like this whole interface and web app thing. It's just like unbelievable.
00:34:24
johngrimsmo
No way.
00:34:25
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:34:26
johngrimsmo
That's so powerful. Yep.
00:34:27
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:34:29
johngrimsmo
Both of those two guys and yourself and me are nerdy enough to really wrap our heads around it. The more I think about it, the more I'm like, oh, everybody's going to be doing this custom programming stuff. They're not.
00:34:40
johngrimsmo
I think a lot of, even in in our industry, machine shops, they just want to machine parts.
00:34:44
John Saunders
It's true.
00:34:44
johngrimsmo
they They don't want to be a computer programmer nerd, want to be pretending to know what they're doing.
00:34:45
John Saunders
Yeah, it's her.
00:34:50
johngrimsmo
Like like we do. like I love all this stuff. But I think most manufacturers won't care to spend the time that we're spending to do these cool things.
00:35:03
johngrimsmo
Anyway, that's just a thought I had the other day, but they just want to make parts.
00:35:06
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:35:06
johngrimsmo
or They just have to make parts.
00:35:06
John Saunders
You're not wrong, but I think more people will come in
00:35:10
johngrimsmo
100%. Hmm. Hmm.
00:35:11
John Saunders
And like the, what was it? This whole drama that would happened over the past month, which with what is now called Open Claw, I think. um It started as Open Claw, and then they went to something stupid and they ai sued them. Anthropik did now it's Open Claw. But it's like an agent thing that you can install and it becomes like your personal hosted thing with no subscription. But the video I watched on it, which is like five minutes, talked about how like,
00:35:35
John Saunders
You can now, in layman's terms, ask it to build a piece of software and it will build the software and then it will actually build its own test users and it'll start using its own software, finding the flaws and the bugs and the things that needs to improve and it'll iterate itself. And it, like they gave two two different examples where it handed over a fully baked, fully functional so piece of software.
00:35:56
John Saunders
Like, which just tells me, i don't know what I don't know about how capable it already is.
00:36:01
johngrimsmo
Yeah, absolutely.
00:36:04
John Saunders
Um, interferometer
Innovations in Measurement Tools
00:36:07
John Saunders
spill.
00:36:07
johngrimsmo
Yeah, so evenings and weekends, I've been absolutely enjoying that. I'm finally making my first flashlight for for the interferometer.
00:36:17
John Saunders
ah
00:36:18
johngrimsmo
I need a light source. I bought another order from Thor Labs where I have a precision pinhole. I might have talked about this couple weeks ago.
00:36:23
John Saunders
Yeah, you did.
00:36:24
johngrimsmo
um So I have that. So it's basically going to be an inch and a half aluminum tube. um
00:36:31
John Saunders
Okay.
00:36:31
johngrimsmo
that is gonna glue the lens at the end. It's an acromatic lens, acromat. So it's like curved curved on the front, flat on the back. That gets put in the front and then the pinhole goes at an exact length from the lens. And then an LED, um like a good flashlight LED,
00:36:49
johngrimsmo
goes right behind the pinhole. And then that's going to be bolted to a piece of aluminum that I can slide for length so I can focus the light pretty much. So it's basically heat sink, LED, pinhole, space, and then lens.
00:37:01
johngrimsmo
And then you adjust the length of this to create what's called a collimated light beam.
00:37:02
John Saunders
Uh-huh.
00:37:06
johngrimsmo
Like if it's a one inch lens, you should have a one inch circle of light at any distance, more or less.
00:37:07
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:37:11
John Saunders
Crazy cool.
00:37:12
johngrimsmo
And one inch or 10 inches or a hundred inches or whatever.
00:37:12
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:37:15
johngrimsmo
So you adjust the length of the lens to led d pinhole combo, um, to get this perfect. And I've kind of played with this on my desk at home with just a piece of aluminum foil and a pinprick and I can get it to work, but this is going to be really nice.
00:37:27
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:37:29
johngrimsmo
So I machine the housing. I just need to machine the the pill that will hold the led, um, next. And then my flashlight is pretty much done.
00:37:37
John Saunders
Sweet.
00:37:38
johngrimsmo
And I've always wanted to make a flashlight. So it's kind of funny that I get to like make one for the interferometer.
00:37:44
John Saunders
you have to buy a board to control the create the LED?
00:37:48
johngrimsmo
I bought a tiny little constant current voltage driver from Amazon for like dollars.
00:37:51
John Saunders
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
00:37:53
johngrimsmo
And the Raspberry Pi will control that so that in my program I can adjust brightness and keep the constant current to the light.
00:37:57
John Saunders
Okay.
00:38:03
johngrimsmo
Because um sometimes I'll want brighter, sometimes I'll want dimmer.
00:38:03
John Saunders
Got it.
00:38:06
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:38:06
johngrimsmo
um And apparently the a reflected light off one of my mirrors needs to be similar intensity to the reflectivity of the part that I'm scanning. So if you're scanning a mirror, it's a mirror, and you can use a mirror as a reflector.
00:38:16
John Saunders
Interesting.
00:38:19
johngrimsmo
Now they match. If you're scanning a piece of felt, i don't know if you can, but exactly, it yeah, yeah.
00:38:25
John Saunders
ah DLC knife, coded black.
00:38:28
johngrimsmo
It will be a lot duller than your shiny mirror, so you're going to overpower with the mirror arm of the interferometer. So you need... um ah you need to dull the light signal without interfering with your perfectly collimated light beams and all that stuff.
00:38:39
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:38:42
johngrimsmo
So I bought a pack of ND filters, neutral density filters, which is like a camera thing. One inch pieces of glass that are green in different darknesses pretty much.
00:38:55
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:38:55
johngrimsmo
And that will go on the reference side before that mirror. Um, and I can, I want to design this so that I can just pop in like, Oh, the 90% will match my thing or oo the 10% for this one. So the ND filter, i bought a 10 pack or something like that. And, uh, waiting for that to come in from Ali express this week, I hope.
00:39:15
johngrimsmo
And so that'll be cool. That will let me, measure vastly different shiny things. Um, from a mirror to like a penny to, uh, I want to see how dull I can scan.
00:39:28
johngrimsmo
That's, it's a big question.
00:39:29
John Saunders
Is this, does this require your sort of like operator or tribal skill to adjust it or can it auto read it in comp?
00:39:29
johngrimsmo
ryan
00:39:37
johngrimsmo
That's a good question. I don't know. Well, cause I'm, I found designing it. I have 10 different ND filters. I will be putting in the one that matches the best, but I'm sure the software could probably know like,
00:39:45
John Saunders
Okay.
00:39:49
johngrimsmo
I don't know. don't have an answer for you, but I'm building in enough tune ability that I can mess with it. And then maybe over time you can make it like good or, um,
00:39:56
John Saunders
Yeah, sure.
00:40:00
johngrimsmo
So that and then the reference mirror needs to be on a motorized slider. So a step promoter with ideally an encoder so I can know the exact distance that it's moving and the speed that it's moving and all that stuff.
00:40:05
John Saunders
Okay.
00:40:13
johngrimsmo
So that that will give me very precise actual nanometer height readings in the software. And if I don't have an encoder, I'm mostly just guessing and hoping that it's right. But with an encoder that is tuned properly, I'll have like literal nanometer, like height accuracy in my part.
00:40:34
John Saunders
Is it Diffraction Unlimited, the guy who made the micromanipulator?
00:40:36
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:40:37
John Saunders
Did you see his newest video on the, oh, John, I'm like, this is insane.
00:40:38
johngrimsmo
Yep. I did. i did. isn
00:40:42
John Saunders
And he built that at the end. He's like, this isn't necessary, but to swage dimple the rods, I built this stage.
00:40:46
johngrimsmo
yep To the exact perfect length. Yep.
00:40:50
John Saunders
but i'm I'm like, this is screaming Grimmsmo here.
00:40:52
johngrimsmo
Well, i'm I'm copying him 100%.
00:40:54
John Saunders
Okay, yeah.
00:40:55
johngrimsmo
The circuit board that he designed and open sourced for the micromiploader project, I bought five of them from JLCPCB.
00:41:01
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:41:02
johngrimsmo
And I started soldering them together. So now I can, I plugged it all in the other day and I tried to control a stepper motor, you know, like the piece of flag tape that you put on it.
00:41:11
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:41:11
johngrimsmo
You try to do that. And I couldn't get it to move because... He, Diffraction Limited, is controlling the step promoters with like two H-bridge drivers or something like that.
00:41:21
John Saunders
Dual H-bridges, I think, yeah.
00:41:22
johngrimsmo
Yeah, which I don't really understand yet, but as opposed to the classic step and direction like we're all used to for most hoppy CNC setups. So I need to figure out what that actually means is and and get that.
00:41:34
johngrimsmo
But that gives you way higher resolution, way higher performance. torque maybe probably i don't know but then what's genius is his magnetic um encoder that he created which i have been playing with and it is actually insane i don't know if you've seen my stories the past week or so um have you oh you missed a good one that's okay
00:41:45
John Saunders
Encoder is insane. Yeah.
00:41:54
John Saunders
No, I need to forget. sir I know, no, it's I'm like, I need to, i don't even want to hear myself talk about it, but like, it's been a good thing to be off social media.
00:42:01
johngrimsmo
well then
00:42:02
John Saunders
I miss you though. Like I miss that stuff.
00:42:04
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I'll explain it to you. So basically imagine a strip of magnets side by side. So they're all like elbow to elbow kind of thing, like circles.
00:42:10
John Saunders
Yes.
00:42:11
johngrimsmo
So now you have north, south, north, south, or maybe it's north, north, south, south, whatever it is. um And I did this on my desk at home, strip of magnets stuck to an Allen key to keep them straight.
00:42:25
johngrimsmo
And then this magnetic sensor, MT6835, whatever sensor that diffraction limited suggested, measures the pole distance from one magnet to the next in every other magnet as 360 degrees, but like 21 bits resolution, which 2.1 million counts between two magnets.
00:42:36
John Saunders
Yes.
00:42:44
John Saunders
Insane.
00:42:44
johngrimsmo
to two point one million counts between two magnets And I'm playing with this and I wrote a software that shows me the resolution and the angular thing and the distance traveled.
00:42:58
johngrimsmo
So if each magnet is eight millimeters, then every 16 millimeters, two magnets, I get 360 degrees rotation. And I tell my software, I have a little bit that says each magnets eight millimeters.
00:43:08
johngrimsmo
So give me a distance measurement. And now I can literally slide these two things together and I'm seeing nanometer level distance movement.
00:43:15
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:43:16
johngrimsmo
It's not calibrated. It's not perfect, but it could be one day. Um,
00:43:19
John Saunders
Is this a PID loop where it's actually using the encoder to not validate, but rather drive the motion?
00:43:24
johngrimsmo
It can be.
00:43:25
John Saunders
you know?
00:43:25
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yep.
00:43:25
John Saunders
Okay. Yeah. John, this is insane.
00:43:27
johngrimsmo
It's insane. And it's, it's literally put not, not only nanometer measurement into my hands, but nanometer movement into my hands.
00:43:35
John Saunders
Yeah. Right.
00:43:36
johngrimsmo
which is like less than one millionth of an inch of trackable. Now the real, my next stage after all this is done, although I'm trying hard not to do it now is okay. So now I can measure nanometers, but I don't trust it. It's not accurate.
00:43:50
johngrimsmo
Every magnet's different size. It's not like really true.
00:43:51
John Saunders
Oh my
00:43:53
johngrimsmo
So you need to build a laser interferometer in order to, in order to calibrate these magnetic encoders.
00:43:56
John Saunders
God.
00:44:01
John Saunders
In St. John.
00:44:01
johngrimsmo
And I've already got all that planned out basically based on diffraction limiteds, other videos, um, where he did that. And I'm just tweaking it to my own needs kind of thing. It's so fantastic. And the world of precision has just opened up to me in such weird ways. And it's like fun side projects at home that will benefit everything at work.
00:44:19
John Saunders
insane john
00:44:20
johngrimsmo
Yeah. So I'm, I'm having a lot of fun on this and
00:44:21
John Saunders
Until it is so cool. I'm speaking of precision. Okay.
00:44:27
johngrimsmo
last thing, just to make it clear why I'm building white light interferometer is because everything we do is surface finish. Everything we do is micro. And this lets me literally zoom in and see both of those things.
00:44:37
johngrimsmo
Like nobody else can see it's, it's not quite scanning electron microscope, like I see a microscope level stuff, but I don't need that.
00:44:39
John Saunders
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:44:44
johngrimsmo
And this is cooler anyway.
00:44:47
John Saunders
so Like this is one of those things where like every single person that runs a shop would use one of these if it was, if it was a hundred bucks.
00:44:52
johngrimsmo
If it was easy and cheap enough and yeah.
00:44:54
John Saunders
Yeah, exactly. There's like nobody that would ever be like, I don't need that. I don't want that.
00:44:57
johngrimsmo
No, but I'm probably going to you know, five to 10 grand into it and 200 hours of time, but it's, it's my Johnny five for the moment.
00:44:57
John Saunders
it's still freaking cool.
00:45:02
John Saunders
Yeah. Yeah.
00:45:04
johngrimsmo
Like my short-term Johnny five, I know you've been at it for 10 years, but, but it's my, it's my thing. Right.
00:45:10
John Saunders
Sure.
00:45:11
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:45:11
John Saunders
Sure. Um, air gauging. Have you ever done it? Any familiarity with it?
00:45:14
johngrimsmo
I I've looked into it a lot, uh, many years ago, but I've never done it.
00:45:16
John Saunders
Okay.
00:45:19
johngrimsmo
I never trusted it or it tested it. Sorry.
00:45:21
John Saunders
to Okay. Is it, am I crazy? Is it Sonnen that made those? I need to just look this up.
00:45:25
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:45:25
John Saunders
i
00:45:25
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:45:26
John Saunders
Okay. um we I need to figure.
00:45:27
johngrimsmo
because they were big on honing machines.
00:45:29
John Saunders
Exactly. Which makes sense. But I was like, am I conflating the two? Okay. We just, we do so much precision measurement of um like half inch round parts. was like, we need to look at a non-contact way of doing it.
00:45:41
johngrimsmo
ID or OD?
00:45:41
John Saunders
week
00:45:42
johngrimsmo
Like, are you measuring a hole or a boss?
00:45:44
John Saunders
Boss.
00:45:45
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:45:46
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:45:47
johngrimsmo
he Yeah, I seem to remember...
00:45:47
John Saunders
Not possible.
00:45:48
johngrimsmo
No, I think it's totally possible. I seem to remember it being finicky. Yeah. Like you gotta, you gotta angle it just right.
00:45:53
John Saunders
Okay.
00:45:54
johngrimsmo
You gotta, they'll often make fixtures where the part, you know, the washer sits flat. So it's got a contact face and now you're, you're square for sure. And your air gauge does the thing.
00:46:03
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:46:06
John Saunders
That makes sense. The part that is particularly more difficult right now has threads in a but and a shoulder. So it's like, it's not the same thing as a round part where you can just lay on two traditional metrology best practices. This was a little bit quirkier.
00:46:22
John Saunders
And so now that we talk out loud about it, this is maybe another example where it's like, well, maybe we just need to look at the, uh, you know miss toyota or kientz style non-contact laser they're like 10 grand though i don't think i'm at that point but um it'd be nice to be able to measure it without having to necessarily rely on contact alignment of the part being say perpendicular to the instrument
00:46:41
johngrimsmo
Is this a pin or a machine feature on a square thing?
00:46:45
John Saunders
it is the part that in particular right now would be Measuring, this is a fixturing pin, this is a 3D printed version of it.
00:46:56
John Saunders
So it's actually this sense here. So you could mic this easily, but we have found that the threads either interfere or tip it down.
00:46:59
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:47:03
John Saunders
And you just really want to stick this into an air gauge or something to have it just tell you where it's at.
00:47:08
johngrimsmo
OK.
00:47:08
John Saunders
quicken
00:47:09
johngrimsmo
And you don't want to just mic it, call it good?
00:47:12
John Saunders
I think we've done that for years and we want something better.
00:47:13
johngrimsmo
Yeah. You want something better?
00:47:15
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:47:15
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah.
00:47:15
John Saunders
Yeah. And potentially also able to be tied in with automation.
00:47:20
johngrimsmo
Yeah. I saw a, um ah there's a watchmaker out in California, Jay Shapiro um watch company.
00:47:28
John Saunders
Yeah, see the stuff.
00:47:29
johngrimsmo
um You know, their watches are like probably 20 to $50,000, just stunningly amazing stuff. I will actually be touring his shop when I'm in California.
00:47:38
John Saunders
Cool.
00:47:38
johngrimsmo
Super excited for that.
00:47:39
John Saunders
Oh, awesome.
00:47:41
johngrimsmo
So I was talking with one of his, um, one of his guys, one of his watchmakers, who's kind of electronics nerd on the side, I guess. And he showed me this gauging fixture that has a little flip lever.
00:47:52
johngrimsmo
And imagine it's like a big tabletop micrometer. So there's two blades that go together with a little cradle underneath that can hold your part.
00:47:58
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:48:00
johngrimsmo
And there's a little flip lever that opens the micrometer, the two blades flip lever, and then spring loaded goes back.
00:48:03
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:48:07
johngrimsmo
And he said the stock gauge really sucked on it. So he ah programmed his own, like readout gauge and he hacked the the readout sensors and made his own display with like way faster refresh numbers and way better
00:48:16
John Saunders
Oh. and Okay. Sick.
00:48:20
John Saunders
Sick.
00:48:22
johngrimsmo
you know He put a number pad on it because he's like, so many times I want to start at two millimeter and measure from there. So I type in two millimeter zero, or I want to switch from inch to metric or whatever.
00:48:33
johngrimsmo
And he's like, i even said, when i when I'm on inch, I want five digits. When I'm on metric, I want four digits. So he programmed that in and all this little stuff.
00:48:38
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:48:40
johngrimsmo
And he showed me a little video of it I'm like, oh my gosh, that is so sick. And that is exactly what I want to do as well. And the magnetic encoders, the diffraction limited ones that I'm building,
00:48:52
johngrimsmo
are so accurate. i i could I could confidently, if I can calibrate them, I could confidently make like insane height gauges, pin, out all this stuff.
00:48:53
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:48:56
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:49:01
johngrimsmo
So anyway, his his little machine is a watchmaker's tool. He said they sell for about eight grand, but he bought it eBay for cheap. It was unlist mislisted or something like that.
00:49:13
John Saunders
Interesting.
00:49:13
johngrimsmo
But it has this little cradle that sits underneath that holds your part.
00:49:17
John Saunders
he
00:49:18
johngrimsmo
And then to add to that, I saw Danny Rudolph picked up a used um laser mic.
00:49:25
John Saunders
Oh, is that right?
00:49:26
johngrimsmo
So similar thing, little cradle holds your part. And then there's a a laser curtain, I believe it is, that measures the part. I don't exactly know how it works, but it sounds awesome.
00:49:38
John Saunders
Well, that's what Mitsutoyo has. And one of them is two grand and one of them is 10 grand. And there's a difference in in accuracy, but um non-contact and it's like, maybe that is just the answer there.
00:49:47
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:49:48
John Saunders
I do a two grand version.
00:49:50
johngrimsmo
Yeah. If it does the thing, you know.
00:49:52
John Saunders
who Yeah. Okay. Sweet.
00:50:01
John Saunders
Anything else?
00:50:02
johngrimsmo
what else I got. um Well, if you haven't seen my latest stories from the past few nights, I'll just tell you.
Improving Stability for Filming and Social Media Impact
00:50:08
johngrimsmo
ah the We have a turntable for filming.
00:50:13
John Saunders
Okay.
00:50:14
johngrimsmo
that's like a motorized, you know, you turn it on and it spins and you put your, put your thing on there and it spins around, looks cool.
00:50:16
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:50:19
johngrimsmo
um It's got different speeds. It's got a remote, but it jitters a little bit.
00:50:24
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:50:24
johngrimsmo
So if we put our knife on a little piece of foam as it's spinning, you can see the knife kind of like jittering because it's balancing on this little piece of foam and We don't like that. And especially like Ryan says, if he films in slow-mo so that he can really like get a cool angle shot, something like that, you can see the jitter, it makes it unusable.
00:50:43
johngrimsmo
And especially because a lot of our surfaces are so reflective and we have studio lights and everything, like you see the jitter of the reflection and it's just terrible.
00:50:51
John Saunders
Oh,
00:50:52
johngrimsmo
So it got me thinking, A, we were talking about it, either we need to just buy a really expensive one and call it good, or I've already have all this magnetic sensing stuff at home. I'm just going to bring this home and I'm going to play with it.
00:51:05
johngrimsmo
So the next time you are on Instagram, I posted these as like actual reels, not just stories. So you can check you can check out my latest posts.
00:51:10
John Saunders
OK. OK.
00:51:12
johngrimsmo
But it's ah I was able to, I couldn't get the magnetic sensor to read me much, but the um I put a piezo vibration sensor underneath one of the feet and I could measure the very, very accurate vibration.
00:51:23
John Saunders
Oh, yeah, yeah.
00:51:28
johngrimsmo
And I found speed settings that worked and speed settings that didn't work. I i found the smoothest speed setting.
00:51:32
John Saunders
oh interesting. works. Yeah.
00:51:35
johngrimsmo
And it's like, okay, so now I gave it back to Ryan and i was like, here are my findings, film and see if I'm right. Like, give me the real world. Like my theory says this, but you know, tell me if you agree with me or not.
00:51:43
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:51:46
johngrimsmo
So that was super fun. And it was cool, like concurrent projects at the same time to bring it home be like, i can actually tell you the smoothest speed setting right now.
00:51:48
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:51:56
John Saunders
right that's awesome
00:51:56
johngrimsmo
So, I mean, vibration sensing is something I really want to incorporate into our company, whether it's tool balance or spindle vibration or machine dynamic accuracy, or like when I'm surfacing a surface, there's definitely ah an RPM and a feed rate that gives you the cleanest finish.
00:52:12
johngrimsmo
which is the least vibration usually. um Not necessarily chatter, but more like machine dynamics.
00:52:14
John Saunders
mm-hmm
00:52:18
johngrimsmo
Like on the current, you have the oscilloscope and you can see similar vibrations. um And I have tuned some of our finishes and some of our tools using that. And it's the greatest thing ever because I'm like, oh, that finish that used to be kind of chattery.
00:52:31
johngrimsmo
Now it's amazing. Every time, always.
00:52:34
John Saunders
Yeah, it's awesome.
00:52:34
johngrimsmo
So I want incorporate some of that into the speedio, into other stuff. And so this was like the perfect first quick and dirty, like application of that vibration sensing. And i was like, yeah, it's real. and This is amazing.
00:52:47
John Saunders
It's full grip though.
00:52:47
johngrimsmo
Yeah, exactly. to To answer your question, that's full group smoke.
00:52:53
John Saunders
Oh my God. Insane. That's awesome. that's a good reason. I will go, i will go check all that out. Thanks for making them real so I can rewatch them.
00:52:59
johngrimsmo
Yeah, i'm I'm getting more into that.
00:53:00
John Saunders
I appreciate that.
00:53:01
johngrimsmo
Like, and I get way more views on a reel than I do on a story. So I'm like, you know what?
00:53:06
John Saunders
um Humble brag that Johnny five video we did put up on Instagram, which I did it. It's not like I'm, I, cause I can't stand the thought of like we benefit from social media, but I've recused myself. Like that just feels, but I'm not on it often anymore.
00:53:18
John Saunders
But that Johnny five video, I think the most likes I've ever had before was like 2000. This has like 15,000 likes right now, which is just fun.
00:53:22
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Oh, good for you, dude. It's such a good video. Yeah.
00:53:26
John Saunders
Yeah. I don't want to get drunk off the social media like addiction, but like, it's pretty cool to see that how many people are like, Oh my God, it's amazing.
00:53:28
johngrimsmo
No.
00:53:32
johngrimsmo
Yep, yep. Yeah, it came ah up again.
00:53:33
John Saunders
So,
00:53:34
johngrimsmo
So I clicked on it and I was like, wow, that's a lot of views and likes and stuff. Like, holy, good for you, man. That's great.
00:53:39
John Saunders
Yeah, it's fun. Sweet. I'll see you next week. Take care.
00:53:43
johngrimsmo
Sounds good, dude. Okay, bye.