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#257 - CNC Training Classes!
171 Plays3 years ago
TOPICS:
- Grimsmo removed a spindle on their Willemin.
- Saunders is bringing back CNC training classes. Click me for more.
- Grimsmo is building a new CNC router.
- Saunders has passed a fixture plate off to a different shop.
- Saunders has ordered his horizontal machine!
- Grimsmo scrapped a part on the Kern.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Hosts
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machine episode number 257. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. Invoicing,
Business Management and Learning
00:00:09
Speaker
purchase orders, accounting, buying machines, building up our team. I never felt like I had all the answers. I have a lot of curiosity. And those are the things John and I try to talk candidly about for jeez, four or five years. Yep. And he never had all the answers.
00:00:27
Speaker
You never have all the answers.
Confidence in Business
00:00:29
Speaker
Today I actually have more answers than questions though, which is awesome. But yeah, that's awesome. Way to just knock me back down, John. Sorry, I hate to say it. But it's the truth. Business is ups and downs, right? Some days you're on top of the world and you're like, I got this. And other days you're like, I have no idea what I'm doing.
Managing Bad Days and Positivity
00:00:52
Speaker
Yes, that is true. And actually on a pretty raw note, I'll tell you.
00:00:56
Speaker
There are days where, I wouldn't take it down, but luckily they're few and far between, but when you have a low day,
00:01:07
Speaker
the it's low. Like, does that make sense? Sorry, I don't mean to be like some Debbie downer. But well, we have lots of great things to talk about later. So let's get this out of the way first. Okay, that's fair. But just it's weird, because I made some notes to myself, like, hey, when you're struggling, when you're stressed, when you're maybe lacking that conviction or self confidence, or whatever it is, I have like notes, I kind of look back to and they don't really work. And I don't I just mean, like, you can't fake, I don't know, whatever.
00:01:37
Speaker
All's well, all's great. I just mean, it's funny how you wish you could reach in and while on those good days, you wish you could bank a little bit of that energy in Mojo. And I at least haven't found that it works like that. Yeah, no, it's so true.
00:01:52
Speaker
It's like you can't talk yourself out of a bad mood sometimes as much logic and as much, you know, good quotes and memories and even gratitude and just being appreciative of what you have, which is wonderful. And that often works, but sometimes it just doesn't. Sometimes you just got to ride it out and kind of sleep on it. And then, you know, tomorrow's a fresh day. That said, I haven't felt like that lately. I've been generally in a great mood lately, but I'm saying those days absolutely happen.
00:02:21
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that cliche of just sleep on it needs to be emphasized because it's not just the same. Like we were last, like 10 days ago or something, I was just getting punched a few different ways. And one of them was super frustrating with like a vendor that was just all of a sudden
00:02:39
Speaker
kind of just not being nice and just kind of take I think I mentioned taking on the chin and you know it's interesting you sleep on it and it is true the whole like I don't want to say tempest in a teapot because some of them were legitimate issues but the next day you can think more objectively about them and realize we're okay.
00:02:57
Speaker
Yeah exactly it's not that these problems go away after asleep it's that you have a different perspective like your brain has calmed down a little bit you know it's like it's so easy to jump on the problem or the stress or the worry in the moment and you're kind of blinded by the whatever fear or rage or whatever.
00:03:18
Speaker
but just give it some time. I find that after a couple of days, you think about it completely different. Your brain has stressed out about it enough that you can see it clearly. Yeah, agreed. Anyway, no need to dwell further on that. No, exactly. On Friday,
Spindle Replacement Process
00:03:37
Speaker
I think it was, I pulled the spindle on the willoman.
00:03:41
Speaker
Oh, so I was on the phone with, uh, one of the tech guys at, at Wilhelmin Marcus. And, uh, for a couple hours, I just had my AirPods in and he was stepping me through bit by bit. He was like, okay, I'm bolt that I'm bolt that. Okay. Now pull it out. And I'm like, do I have to like use an engine hoist or crane this thing or what? And he's like, nah, it's only like 40, 50 pounds. Just throw it on your shoulder and pull it out. Okay. And it was not that heavy. Um,
00:04:08
Speaker
but still super awkward. And the weirdest thing was like, it's a B axis, right? So it's a spindle and all the junk goes through the column, all the wires and cables and hoses and water chillers and hydraulic lines for the tool changer and all this stuff. So I'm disconnecting everything in the back panel of the machine and he's instructing me like everyone.
00:04:28
Speaker
And then, and he's like, okay, it should be loose now. So start just pulling it out. And it's like, it's like those sci-fi movies where, you know, the head gets ripped off and the whole spine comes out and all the guts and everything. It felt like that. It was just like three feet of cables and hoses and just pulling these out. And I'm like, how on earth am I going to get these back in? And hopefully there was no blood. Yeah, no, no, it was great. Um, but yeah, all just to replace, uh, a cable.
00:04:58
Speaker
because we're having an intermittent sensor, rotation sensor, something, error. But basically, I ordered everything that goes in there. I'm replacing it. Yeah. Because I don't want to do this again. It was fine. Oh, yeah. So anyway, I asked the guy, I was like, so how many customers have you walked through this with on the phone? He goes, you're the first.
00:05:21
Speaker
Because most of our service guys don't even go this deep. It's like me and two other guys that just travel all around and if this has to be done, we do it. But I was like, okay. It's so weird because the definition of a spindle is this kind of like unspecific thing of like, I think of a spindle as bearings and precision shafts, but sometimes they're cartridge spindles where it's
00:05:41
Speaker
a step removed from that in terms of like, like you hear folks, I think Dennis talks about, oh, I can replace a brother Speedy, a spindle in four hours myself, like four bolts, lower the Z, like pop it out. I think that's kind of the quote unquote cartridge style. Tormach are like that. We replaced the Tormach spindle once, really not a huge deal. This is even further though, because it's the whole axis with a spindle inside of it.
00:06:04
Speaker
There's a lot going on. What is the risk behind remounting it shrewd and trammed and all that jazz? I bought a test bar, an HSK40 test bar, which is like eight inch super square cylinder kind of thing. It's like a tool holder, goes in the spindle, and then you use your indicator and you square it up. It's $1,000, but I was like, yeah, I need it for the current anyway. It'll be good to have. It's an investment.
00:06:34
Speaker
So I got that. And then all the cables and everything and hoses and replacement stuff was like another $2,000. I'm like, Holy cow. Yeah. But yeah. So trimming it. I mean, the B rotates like, like clockwise, counterclockwise. Um, so trimming that is just a parameter change or something. No big deal. And then your nod front to back. Uh, I don't know how you adjust that, but shims, but it should repeat. I mean, maybe. Yeah. Yeah.
00:07:01
Speaker
And what's really cool is there's a, I think you called it a transfer plate, so that where the spindle housing mounts to the machine housing, it like rigid bolts there with two dowel pins, but there's all these spring connectors to pass all the power through. Oh, that's awesome. So there's not a hard cable. Yeah.
00:07:19
Speaker
That's genius and then there's o-rings and seals for the hydraulic and the cooling chiller as well So everything kind of transfers there except for these two silly little white hoses that are not You know Remove like it's hoses that go all the way through and you have to be careful not to break them or something Yeah, I'm like, yeah, you kind of missed the ball on that one. Like everything else is amazing. Except why are these two hoses like an afterthought? Well, I've been dealing with this
00:07:47
Speaker
It's not a tangent, but not a tangent on working on this old Porsche. It's interesting when you read that Porsche, and they're probably not alone in this, made some decisions in the 80s or 90s on using plastics or different materials that ended up not being a great decision long run. It's hard to simulate 20, 25, 30 years of heat cycles, hot and cold, salt, corrosion, auto environment.
00:08:13
Speaker
We're good at engineering in the world, but we're not perfect. And one of the things that's hard to figure out is what does 30 years of that kind of use look like on these material properties when plastics or some types were quote unquote new. I don't know if that's sure that's what your issue was here, but it's not like they thought let's put in a crappy piece of metal here.
00:08:34
Speaker
Yeah, so I currently haven't touched it since last Friday, but now I have this spindle with a bunch of hoses and wires. I got to remove all the hoses and wires. I actually have to machine that transfer plate for a little O-ring countersink because the new style hydraulic fitting is changed and they need a mod on the thing.
00:08:56
Speaker
And I'm like, it's not that hard, but I got to strip the whole thing down, do the mod, replace all the hoses, all the cables, put it all back in, and then figure out how to snake it back into the machine and then put it all back together. Sweet. And because, yeah, I was having this alarm where the machine just wouldn't do anything. It was, I forget what it said, but some sort of proximity encoder alarm that was just not happy. So.
00:09:21
Speaker
It doesn't sound like you're too nervous about the scope of work left to be done. No, it's putting all back together. PSA, we've actually done this a few times recently, especially on a flat plate, like it sounds like that is. If you need to get a quick fusion model, maybe they provided you one. God bless them if they did.
00:09:44
Speaker
get a flatbed scanner, put a six inch scale on there and then put the part on there, scan the part with the scale that lets you calibrate it in fusion. The flatbed scanner is generally devoid of the issues that you get from taking a picture where you've got perspective distortion and you can build it. It's
In-Person Training Classes Resumption
00:10:01
Speaker
certainly a two dimensional style, which should be fine for what you're doing here, just adding a counter board to a hole.
00:10:06
Speaker
Cool. I've done that like seven years ago or something. I think I scanned a couple things. I forgot about that trick. Yeah. Yeah. The camera works too, frankly, and maybe plenty accurate for the part at hand here. What I'm doing here is I probe the hole and then I have my X, Y, and then I'm just making it deeper, basically.
00:10:27
Speaker
Oh, sorry. Way to overthink it, Saunders. Yeah, of course. Got it. Yeah, sorry about that. That's your solution. Exactly. Well, in their documentation, they literally used a bridge port and some manual countersink. And they're just like, yeah, pop the hole a little bit deeper. Do not go deeper than this. Otherwise, the o-ring won't seal. And I'm like, I got this. Yeah, yeah. Good. Awesome. So yeah, it's progress.
00:10:57
Speaker
I do wish it was just running though. Yeah. Well, there's no point in talking about or thinking about it because based on what I can surmise, there's no tenfold delta in price that would have... It's not like at this point, you'd wish you'd done a PO for brand new. It's just that, no. So it's almost done. Good. Yep. Very much still looking forward to it. Still excited about it.
00:11:25
Speaker
The longer I have it, the more parts I want to make on it. I can make that bushing. I can make that thing on it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Agree. What's new in the Saunders world? I'll throw out a teaser. We did sign a PO.
00:11:48
Speaker
Actually, I've got two pieces of news. I'm going to save the machine for the end of the podcast. I'm looking forward to that. The other really exciting news is, I think, knock on wood, I've got a
00:12:04
Speaker
actionable plan to bring back in-person hands-on training classes. So we have a wait list or not a wait list but a email sign-up list but our answer to date for folks that have directly reached out has sort of been I don't know
00:12:19
Speaker
sign up for the list. I'll keep you posted. And I haven't sent out a formal email response to the folks, but if you want to be apprised of the schedule or so forth, by all means, we'll put a link in the podcast description. I am guessing we're going to have a relatively few number of seats and I'm guessing that they'll sell out pretty quick just based on what I've heard from folks looking to do it. But
00:12:43
Speaker
Short answer is I think we've got the ability to lease a small space adjacent to our shop, not in a different building, but right next door. And that gives us the ability to set up a dedicated training classroom that solves some of the quirks and issues that we had of both space, but also keeping kind of those worlds separated for, that was kind of one of the things that was an issue with COVID and so forth. So I am super excited for that more to come, but just wanted to share.
00:13:09
Speaker
That's fantastic. So how long has it been since you, I mean before COVID, basically since you did a training class? I think we ran such a crummy thing. We ran one class. We were like right toward the end of the class when the Ohio governor put out the like
00:13:25
Speaker
the world is ending like you need to emergency business stuff. And okay, again, back then, we didn't know if this was going to be different. And this is a divisive topic and blah, blah, blah. The reality is, this is not smallpox or Ebola or, you know, whatever. So I didn't totally understand that at the time. So that was the last class that we had. But man, I love being able to offer that. I love showing off
00:13:49
Speaker
We're going to have probably the same mix of Tormach and Haas machines. I want to figure out if we can get a little five axis or a couple so we can offer a five axis class. I want to add a turning class, but we're going to start with just the traditional milling class that frankly was, I mean, we had like, I forget, like 700 students or something over the years that have come to Zanesville and taken that class. And that's like a huge,
00:14:13
Speaker
point of pride. It's such a win-win because we love doing it. We are able to make some money on it, but it's also just such a great experience for folks that want to come and get three days of actual really good learn time on a Tormach, a Haas, whatever to, you know, you're making soft jaws, you're making parts, you're running the machine, you're running your code. Yeah. That's incredible.
00:14:35
Speaker
Yeah, I have no idea. 700 people is a lot. Isn't that crazy, John? Yeah. That's the kind of number that should be on the website and keep counting because it's impressive now. It's not like 13. That's awesome. Yeah, we should. I should do a little more like, I don't know, marketing. Yeah, you've been doing it so long and so much. You're allowed to be proud of it now. Yeah, that's true.
00:15:04
Speaker
So yeah, the other really fun thing is I have been back kind of taking off my, to use the EMIF, taking off my entrepreneur or even technician hat or manager hat and putting on my technician hat. I've been running machines
00:15:20
Speaker
the past few days, both during the day, I've been staying a little bit later at night and on the weekends, which is honestly not something I've done in a long time. Number one, I freaking love it. I'm doing it because of two reasons. Number one, we just need to get caught up over this hurdle. Number two, we do have some varying staffing stuff right now with sickness. So I love stepping in. It's not necessarily great long-term. I get that, but boy, I'm loving it. And you know, it's actually wonderful to like step back in
00:15:52
Speaker
reintegrate myself with like, hey, this is how we make stuff, this is how we run stuff. I love tweaking speeds and fees. I love looking at processes. I really do. But the thing I want to share that just made me smile.
00:16:04
Speaker
is I was running our hobby mod vice top jaws. I have never once run them in my life, literally. And Garrett showed me a couple of things that he had like on, hey, I use the torque gun here, I use the torque wrench here, or impact gun here, torque wrench here.
00:16:23
Speaker
But otherwise, Ed was like, hey, it's the yellow plugs. I knew what the fixture was because it's on the fixture rack. The fixture had operator stuff about, hey, this is the point, the direction it goes, like the holes in the orientation. I used the Saunders fixture plate with had the yellow plugs in the right location. I dropped the fixture on there.
00:16:41
Speaker
And then the code was in a labeled file structure that we have for our product lines segregated by machine. So I didn't have to talk to anybody. The offsets are stored for that product line on a custom work offset. And so I was running this stuff on my own. The fixture changeover was like five minutes. And then when we were done,
00:17:00
Speaker
We needed to make more Saunders pallets. I was like, hey, I had one of the pallets. He's like, those are the red plugs. And we just used Mod Vise to run those. It was self-evident how to run them, pulled that stuff up. And one or two verbal questions, but I changed over from top jaws to Mod Vises. And I really should time it. It was probably six to seven minutes. Yeah.
00:17:23
Speaker
That's incredible. To jump in and follow the process that the company has created and know that it works. Yeah, absolutely. But that's what we need to do is show that from an explicit sales and marketing standpoint behind what a fixture plate can do. And I was going to throw this out, not to put you on the spot, but if you are looking at another vertical, if it doesn't make sense, I have no interest in
00:17:50
Speaker
you know, forcing you to adopt one, especially just because we're friends or whatever. But like, I would love for you to use a fixture plate if you get a speedio. I may not work actually, if you're doing the palette type stuff. But man, if you have one where you want to swap between a vise, between foam, between a different setup, I'd love to use that as like a case study or photos to show off. I honestly think you'd love it.
Machinery Purchase Decisions
00:18:12
Speaker
Yeah, I've absolutely considered it.
00:18:15
Speaker
Either with our current machines or with future machines, I'm thinking about how can incorporate a fixture plate and even the mod vices and things like that. Yeah, so I'm open to it. Okay.
00:18:26
Speaker
Where are you at on that? So it's interesting sharing it on the podcast and even talking about it more because normally all this stuff lives in my head. So nobody gets to see how much I change camps. But at the moment I'm thinking one speedio attached to the Kern and then the Palette Changer can feed into it. I love that idea.
00:18:52
Speaker
Don't get a second one and I'm going to build a CNC router, pretty sweet CNC router that I've wanted to build for a long time to do all the foam.
00:19:01
Speaker
Oh, so when you say build, you mean like buy a kit? It's a kit. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And it's, it's funny. It's, um, made by avid CNC, which used to be CNC router parts.com. Um, and so I, it's the benchtop pro two by three. So two foot by three foot. And, uh, it's funny cause I actually went through the website to check out and I was like, I was thinking about it for a week or so and I was like, yeah, that's the one I want. Um, it's time to go. Let's just order the kit. And, uh,
00:19:30
Speaker
I go through the checkout, I have to create an account, and I couldn't because there's already an account there, so I'm like, okay, we'll log in. The same exact build was in my cart from three years ago.
00:19:42
Speaker
No. Yeah. Oh, that is hilarious. Exactly. And then I look at it and I'm like, okay, I don't need that thing, so I'm going to do it different. But otherwise, everything's the same. Okay. So yeah, I wanted to build this thing three years ago. And then I think that's about when the UMAX came up. So I went that direction instead of this. And now I'm kind of switching back to that. But yeah, it's going to be
00:20:07
Speaker
You can build the kit as is, but I'm like, but this is my chance to build a cool CNC machine, which I've wanted to do for a long time and have some fun with it. So I'm going to put ClearPath servos on it, a tool changing BT30 spindle, the S30 ceramic bearings, 24,000 RPM, get like 5 to 10 tools on the table, and yeah. So can you explain more, the tool changer is
00:20:35
Speaker
an option from Avid and what's the style? It's nothing to do with Avid. The spindle itself is built to be a tool changer. It's going to draw a bar and pneumatic cylinder and stuff like that. And then just whatever macros are on whatever control software you use to tell it to unclamp and all that stuff. But yeah, it's a kind of a table mounted
00:20:59
Speaker
You slide the tool in, you let go, move to the next one kind of thing. So you can figure it out wherever you want. But there's a rail in the back I can put up. Kind of like the new tool changer we just bought.
00:21:11
Speaker
I'll tell you at the end of the podcast. I'm actually partly laughing because in a wonderful way, I was like, that name machine sounds familiar. And we actually, I'm not, well, I suppose part of me is bringing this up for a sales point. It's also just kind of more comical. We make and sell fixture plates for that. Average benchtop pro 203, aluminum fixture tooling plate. But I also have a photo of the machine right now, which I'm kind of chuckling at.
00:21:40
Speaker
Dude, what's the ballpark budget on a build like that? Like decking it out with the full spindle and the clear path and everything under 20 grand. Oh, okay. Well, that's still more than I thought. It's up there. You can build the same thing for 10 grand, but I'm like, okay, I'm not going to screw around here. I want to have some fun with it.
00:22:01
Speaker
probably go with a proper vacuum table, build an 80-20 enclosure. There's room in that budget for doing whatever I want, basically. So I could probably do it for 15, but yeah, so I'm playing it.
00:22:15
Speaker
Well, it's interesting because I know Ryan, the Seneca woodworking Ryan had thrown out a photo of how he runs foam on his... He's got a 4x8 industrial router. 5x10. Oh, sorry. Thank you. It was huge. Yeah, he's got like a Laguna huge router. But yeah, he cuts the same kind of foam that we do and he's got a tool changer and he's got sucking the dust up from the dust boot around the thing and he's like, it's amazing.
00:22:40
Speaker
The foam looked great. Yeah, exactly. The more I think about it, the more I'm like, putting this on a proper CNC machine is not the right choice on a mill. Then somebody DM me some pictures. They've got a speedio running foam and wood and other dry stuff.
00:23:01
Speaker
Not to be rude, but it's disgusting inside. John, I love this. Again, my opinion doesn't matter except that's what the point of this podcast is. It's a challenge. I would much rather see you get a second speedio and use it as your own tool room or machine, but good grief. Run the foam on this router, dude. Yeah. No, it makes a lot of sense. That's the deciding process that I go through.
00:23:26
Speaker
I get stuck on the idea, I want to do it on a speed, I want to do it on a good machine and then it's a versatile machine, you can do whatever on it. At the end of the day, I'm like, no, a dedicated router just to do foam and wood and plastic and things like that would just be so sick. Okay, you're ready for the look? Go ahead. If I can build it to be fast and nice tool changer and not a slow, noisy POS, then I'll enjoy it.
00:23:52
Speaker
Yeah, but foam is a marathon on a sprint. You could let that thing run all the time, and it just needs to keep chucking along. Yeah, but I still want a fun machine. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to have a speedio, John. Oh, I know. OK. Are you ready? I know you're sitting down, but are you ready for your mind to be blown? Blow it. Like, could not set expectations higher right now for this. OK.
00:24:17
Speaker
We have a customer, I don't know what, I think it may have been a custom machine, but it's for all intents and purposes quite similar to what you're talking about. His is mounted on the wall. Oh.
00:24:31
Speaker
You got to do this, Sean. Think about it. It aids in chip evacuation. It takes up less real estate. If you don't want it on a wall, you could put it on an A-frame style cart thing to move it around. It's moved around all the time or move it around only when needed. It's easier to load. You just think about it. You store the sheet right there. You just lift it up, put it straight on there. And he sent us pictures of... We built these fixture plates for it for him. It's amazing. I want to see these pictures.
00:25:00
Speaker
Okay, I'll have to ask you for a lot of sharing. But yeah, it is. Think about putting your avid on a wall or putting it perpendicular to the interesting floor. Interesting. Yeah. And also, it's just like, someone's gonna walk your shop. What is that? And you're gonna be like, Oh, yeah.
00:25:18
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Especially with vacuum work holding, because it won't care. Yes. And two by three is not so big. A four by eight would be quite odd to have on the wall. But you see it at Home Depot and stuff, the big plywood sheet cutters, they're up and down sometimes, aren't they?
00:25:35
Speaker
Yeah, totally. There's panel saws, but those are not movable. I would see having this machine on some sort of a... Even if it's a locking caster, it's just nice to be able to move it if you need to. It probably takes 110 power, right? So it's not like it's... I think the spindle needs to be 220 single phase.
00:25:53
Speaker
Okay, still no big deal. But yes, exactly. Yeah, I was thinking about that. So I might build an 8020 base for it. And I think I want it to be on hard rubber wheel or mounts normally, but maybe I can flop in some wheels, like rotate them in and lift it up a hair and then I can wheel it around and then you flop them out. You know what I mean?
00:26:12
Speaker
There's a name for a wheel. Somebody can please email this in as a submission if you know of it. There's a style of a wheel that's an integral, like a urethane caster where it has a locking bar that you kick down. It's all one unit. It looks like a, like almost like a, the ones I've seen look like almost like a horse's foot. So there's a wheel inside of it, but when you push down, it lifts the whole machine up a quarter inch or anything. And they're industrial. Yeah. Okay.
00:26:41
Speaker
Cool. That's best of both worlds. Right. Right. But from a real, you know, you're not swimming, neither of us, frankly, are swimming in real estate. And so this will help take up less space. You mean mounting it vertically or wheeling it? Yep. I meant not only vertically, but both. Right. Right. Yep. If you build on a little slightly tapered A-frame, then you could even have material stored on the backside. I might consider that. Yeah.
00:27:07
Speaker
And then segwaying into that, probably time to sell the 2U Mac machines. Oh, I thought that was underway.
00:27:14
Speaker
No, I had a guy that was interested, a good friend of mine, but he declined. If anybody out there is interested in some very potentially sweet CNC machines, send me an email, DM me, talk to me, whatever. Awesome. Man, I want to love those machines so much. It's just not the right fit for our business. They need somebody with time and energy. Yes. They could be so sweet though.
00:27:42
Speaker
Are you willing to share an email on the podcast for folks to reach out to you directly? Yeah, sure. It's my name, JohnGrimsmo at gmail.com. Awesome. Done. Thank you. On that note, I want to thank our audience. I was pleasantly surprised and blown away at the response to selling the DeWalt product line. That is done. How did that go? I had set up what I thought would be the process before we reached out
00:28:11
Speaker
think what I
Successful Product Line Sale
00:28:12
Speaker
wanted out of it and how it was going to work. I started that process with the first person that reached out to me. So far, so good. I've explained to him what it is and the basic info. Naka Wood is driving out tomorrow. He lives in the Midwest as well to pick everything up.
00:28:32
Speaker
I mean, it couldn't have gone better. That's awesome. And I hope it's, uh, it's, it's, I have no seller's remorse. Like I, I want to see somebody, uh, one of the things I want to do is share him a list of things with him that I know we could have done not better, but like things we aren't doing. Cause it's just not where my head is. Um, and I'd love to see somebody run with it, but you know, it's his, it's, uh, his to do what he wants with it. That's fantastic. Good. So thank you to everybody that reached out though. Must be a good peace of mind for you to know it's,
00:29:01
Speaker
moving on, you know? You don't have to feel bad about it anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe there's a tinge of like, you know, it's kind of that recognition that we're all human. Like I can't do everything. Yep. Yep. But it's a good thing. Oh, and you have other new ideas and projects and growth and things that you need to focus your time on. That, John. And to this person, the Dewalt line is that for him, right? It's new and exciting and profitable and yeah.
00:29:29
Speaker
Yeah. I'd love to see it be like the genesis of somebody who can springboard it into like, that would be awesome. That's exactly how it feels about the U-Mac machines. Like I'm going to sell them for a cheap price and I would love for them to grow a business, you know? Yeah. I would love to be, uh, regret it. I would love to regret that I sold it because a house, I mean, this is maybe a small cliche, silly talk, but like I'd love for them to succeed with it. Yeah. Anyway.
00:29:57
Speaker
And real quick, the DeWalt things, are there fixture plates, or what is it again? So DeWalt makes a saw called a DW872, which uses a 14-inch blade that can cut aluminum. It can also cut steel. I always cringe at it, but you can and they do. Solid tubing, whatever. But the surface footage is just bananas for steel. We cut aluminum on them all the time. And when I got one years ago,
00:30:24
Speaker
It came with a flimsy sheet metal base with a piece of not nice vice. And I thought, oh man, I was already using fixture plates on our machines. I was like, we got to make a better thing for this. And we did more fab and welding work at the time. So I was familiar with more of the welding. Acorn style, 16 millimeter holes and platforms and work holding. So we built a
00:30:47
Speaker
fixture play system around that. It's totally like nothing is really shared with the Saunders machine works CNC fixture plate line, even though it's a quote unquote fixture plate. And so it's been great. I mean, we've had awesome responses from folks over the years. It's kind of one of those we've literally never had a single person asked to return it or a refund. And it's just been, it's kind of
00:31:12
Speaker
own little thing, but there's more you could do with it. I'm not going to share that because that's up to the new guy. Yeah. But accessories, product lines, marketing, use case, all that. Very cool. Very cool. Yeah.
00:31:24
Speaker
Okay, can I make my segue? Do it. Okay, so we've had this, we've had a little bit stronger sales than I expected post holidays. And we looked up a couple products that just seemed like we weren't kind of getting a head on. And some of that cycle time on the product itself, some of it's the fact that we do still share machines for certain products. So we've got to stop making A to make B.
00:31:50
Speaker
And then it was just this moment of Julie pulled up this product. I don't remember what it was, soft jaws or something. And she pulled it up in Lex and right away it showed me how many we've sold in the trailing 90.
00:32:03
Speaker
And this is what I wanted to do, John. Um, so Lex is providing that data. Every day. Lex knows exactly. We sold trailing 90 and that was what I wanted this year. You heard me say it. I want to use our systems to give us better decisions. It's
New Horizontal Machine Purchase
00:32:19
Speaker
as basic as it comes, except it's not like it's kind of taken us a while to get here. Um, and I saw that number and it made me realize, you know, we not only need a new spindle, but we need a machine that can lend itself to.
00:32:33
Speaker
not having to change over setups at all. It can manufacture, quote unquote, on demand. And we start to detach production time and spendal time from our shop hours, which, you know, John, you've you've done wonderfully and you rub it in my face every week with the hundred and some odd hours of Kern time. Yeah.
00:32:55
Speaker
And so we immediately, look, this is, this is the horizontal, you know, it's not a new conversation to our audience, but what happened was I realized now is the time I got serious lead times and inventory was not looking great. Like literally like May, June of machines becoming available, which means by the time they get delivered, rigged, installed, tooled up, like tooling up is no joke. I'm like, we're going to have one in like, it's gonna be like July before this thing's doing what it needs to do.
00:33:27
Speaker
My gosseger rep said, I found one. It's in stock. This is last Friday morning, literally, so a week ago from the date of this podcast. I wanted the 146 tool matrix. This one, unfortunately, did not have that. It had a 218 tool matrix. The currents only got 210. You just had to do that.
00:33:52
Speaker
Yes. Awesome. And I'll tell you, it was the easiest in the craziest way. It was the easiest decision ever. I know exactly how we want to, what we want to make on it, how we want to make it. I'd already been modeling up, uh, tune zones, just thinking about what can it do for us. And that was what, um, I over, uh, overthought it, but I realized, okay, how long will this machine run?
00:34:13
Speaker
I took our cycle, I think I said this on the podcast, and I realized, oh my gosh, we have 24 hours worth of work already on this. And so it will hit our floor on March 2nd.
00:34:28
Speaker
That's like a month away. I delayed it a week because of stuff we've got going on here as well. Look, it's no joke. It'll take them, I think, two weeks to install the machine. Six pallet APC is the other big thing. 400 to 500 millimeter. 400. Yeah, it's a good choice. Yeah.
00:34:48
Speaker
I'll publicly stake my claim, though. I would have happily gone with the bigger one. It kind of would have been more money, but I would have. But I do not. I'm not nervous or nor do I expect this is a regret. The only thing I will admit will stink is some really good advice that you want standardization across if you buy more of them, which means if we wanted the next one to be 500, that would be a check against having different sizes.
00:35:17
Speaker
Because your tombstones and all your workholding would be different. Would be laid out different. Yeah. We'll see. So yeah. That's fantastic. Good for you, man. Thank you. Like we talked about a couple weeks ago, it finally clicked for you. Thousand percent, John. Right? Like you've been pining over this. You've been thinking about it. I could do this. I could do that. I don't know. And then Julie brings you this information that's like, look at how many things we've sold. The system we created, Lex, just told us your click.
00:35:46
Speaker
And that led to a cascade of clicks. And then you're like, dude, we got 24 hours of work on this thing already. Yeah, why don't we have it yet?
00:35:54
Speaker
Well, it just saw, it clicks on levels I didn't expect. So we need a Haas machine that doesn't have spendable time booked on it, because we need to use it to R&D, to fixture, to test stuff, to play with stuff. I frankly need
Horizontal Machines' Benefits
00:36:08
Speaker
another machine that will move into the training classroom, which will also let us do proven cut testing on a machine that's not, doesn't have background noise, whatever we want to do. Like sometimes I want to go play with a macro and I want a free machine.
00:36:21
Speaker
We can't afford to have one machine just for that, but this will fit that whole puzzle. And boy, we've kind of joked here before that horizontals have this kind of dinosaur reputation, but I call no. It's getting exciting now.
00:36:37
Speaker
We're talking to Scott Harms over at Metal Quest who has nine Akuma horizontals, talking to Chris Fox over at Ignite Digi, talking to Arijana, Ariy419. The way they're running horizontal is the productivity, the capability, the process reliability, the inherent fourth axis, the size of the tool changer. I literally texted Ed the other night because Chris Fox showed me this button on the Akuma where
00:37:01
Speaker
You probably have this on your current, but let me join my moment where if you want to do something, you switch a rotary button in it. As soon as it can stop or finish up what it does, it gives you the ability to go run like your own. We're going to probably have one tombstone that has our fifth axis spices on it that we can just use for whatever we want.
00:37:20
Speaker
It'll let you go do what you need to do. And then if you are like, okay, I need to go play with this for an hour. You just literally rotate the button back and it just resumes back on the next tombstone. It's like, okay, you want a little break? I'm going to go back to making all of the parts that are already on the tombstones APCs ready to go. Can it, does it have to do that after that tombstone is finished? It can't do it like mid tombstone around, can it?
00:37:45
Speaker
Uh, great question. I don't know the answer. I suspect it will want to finish a full tombstone. You're interrupting the schedule in order to play and then resume the schedule afterwards, but the individual off has to be finished, which makes perfect sense.
00:38:02
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it's not going to stop in the middle of a surfacing routine. Could it stop at the equivalent of an M1? I doubt it because I don't know that it could, but we'll figure it out. Yeah, it's super cool. Yeah, I did write that into the logic behind the way I do the Kern. So I can have 20 pallets scheduled and I can put an M0 or stop the cycle or whatever, schedule it whenever I want. I did that yesterday. I told Angela, I was like, okay, I need to play for like an hour.
00:38:32
Speaker
Do a couple things so you know let it finish up this thing put an M0 next and then I'll play and then I'll continue resume
00:38:40
Speaker
And I have a question, and if you can answer this great, if there's folks out there that are listening to have an opinion, I want to hear it. So let's take, it's not a theoretical example, but for the sake of this example, let's say we have six, we do have six pallets or tombstones, but let's say they're full, and we don't want to swap, we can swap them out externally, but if one of them is for top jaws and one of them is for reversible inserts, rather than have
00:39:10
Speaker
Palette 1B top jaws and Palette 2B reversible inserts. I'm wondering if it makes sense. And let's say these are both six-sided tombstones. I'm wondering if it makes sense for Palette 1 to be half top jaws, half reversibles, and then Palette 2 to be the same half and half. That way, if we, let's say we really need to make reversibles, we can let it run the three sides on Palette 1 while we're reloading Palette 2 in back and forth. Because look, loading up a Palette, a tombstone can literally take an hour in some situation.
00:39:40
Speaker
What do you think about that? One piece flow as much as you can. What's that mean here though? Well, you want everything to create a product in as few pallet changes as possible. You don't want to load up pallet one with 50 op ones, pallet two with 50 op twos or something like that because then it'll take you two days before you have a finished product.
00:40:04
Speaker
Sorry. No, in this case, even if we had three sides of the tombstone, like if we split the tombstone in half by product, you would still, when it's done, you would get finished product off. Yeah. That makes sense. Then what exactly is the question?
00:40:21
Speaker
So do you, instead of loading up a, these do take two ops. So you'd actually on the three sides, you'd have up one up to within the same three sides, but assume it's just one up for the sake of this rather than have one tombstone loaded up with, um,
00:40:37
Speaker
a hundred top jaws, have Tombstone A loaded up with 50 top jaws, 50 reversibles, and then the same with the next Tombstone. That way, if you really need to focus on reversibles, you can be reloading Tombstone 1 while Tombstone 2 is running and really crank production on a specific product. Otherwise, I've got to wait for Pallet 1 to run all the way through. It may be done at 8 p.m., not an ideal time, and then
00:41:03
Speaker
It's going to take an hour to reload it in the morning and you can't be making more of the product you need to make while you reload it. Yeah, and that just comes down to your needs, how you need the product to flow through the shop. Yeah. Yeah.
00:41:24
Speaker
I guess the point is also we only have six palettes. If you had infinite palettes, you would not have to worry about this. The nice thing about the way we're going to run it is you're not having to tool change. Like on our reversible inserts, we make them four at a time now.
00:41:40
Speaker
There's op one and two, and I think it may be op three, but you get a complete batch of four off, but there's 12 parts on the table, if that makes sense. This new workflow, we can go to two ops, better process reliability, and we're going to make like literally 15 times that number, which means you're not having to do as many tool changes because it's going to speed things up, it's less wear, like it's just awesome. It's kind of a different way to think about workflow, isn't it?
00:42:08
Speaker
Oh my gosh, right? Like, it's just awesome. And that's what we want. I did a video, which we're going to air release pretty soon, kind of like a raw, Hey, this is the process I just went through and hope it helps people who may be thinking about the same thing.
Future Plans for New Machine
00:42:24
Speaker
Because it's not just about buying a spindle. It's like, hey, this is going to be part of our story about how we grow. I want our team to learn. I want our team to be able to do kind of fun stuff. I don't want to shop full of operators. So the way we even think about how we have to load material in and the fixtures, I want to be as easy as I mean, everybody does, right? But like, yeah, I'm fired up.
00:42:44
Speaker
That's awesome. The tombstones themselves, like let's say you buy an off-the-shelf steel tombstone or cast iron, whatever they are. How are you attaching stuff to it? Are you putting your fixture plates on it and everything goes on your fixture plates? Is it modular? Is everything going to be
00:43:00
Speaker
you know, changeable. Yeah. Much like the grooms of a process of Datron, Frouder, Speedo, Kern, I've been going through a lot of iterations over the past week. What's clear though is we're going to literally maybe today by probably one or two tombstone cities that I know we'll be able to use.
00:43:20
Speaker
I like this idea of making our own. We probably will, even if it's just out of aluminum round bar. I went down the rabbit hole of thinking about a mineral granite epoxy casting, blah, blah, blah. But no, to answer your question, nothing will really happen directly on the tombstone. It'll all be either aluminum or steel fixtures, subplates, or Saunders kind of clarifying type stuff, both for wear and comp and adjustability reasons. And some of them may be quick change or modular, et cetera.
00:43:50
Speaker
Yeah, I guess the tombstones are what, $2,000 to $5,000 or more? They're no joke. You don't want to drill dedicated one op bolt patterns into them, right? Correct. But yeah, if you create a standardized bolt pattern for your fixture plates that are going on it, then you're popping 50 holes into each pallet, into each tombstone that are all the same. And then if you need to change things out, you can, which is very cool.
00:44:16
Speaker
To be clear though, I don't envision changing it out. Like we would, I would plan on rather buying or building more tombstones than swimmers trying to like hotswap fixtures per se. But like, if you've never built a run fixtures before, in my experience, the one thing that's true is they wear, they change, they have developed their own little personalities. And so if, if side five out of the six sided tombstone, we just don't like it. I'm going to just pull it off and make a new one. Very cool. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah.
00:44:45
Speaker
So I got super exciting. Um, okay. I'll leave us on a part I was making last night. I was making a fixture to Mount a chunk. Um,
00:44:58
Speaker
air vise, what do you call it, not a vise, a pallet, a pneumatically operated pallet system. Sure. I want to mount one of them onto the current so that I can make pallets for the other machine. So anyway, I'm making this thing so that the shunk round thing can slide right into it. I wanted a really good fit, like I wanted a two-tenth clearance kind of thing. And so I had this like four and a half inch bore and I was creeping up on it with the end mill, go back in, probe it with the current,
00:45:24
Speaker
I'm like, okay, I gotta go a few more tents, cut it again. Okay, I need a few more tents. And I was down to like, I needed another 78 millionths of room to be perfect. And I was like, okay, should I do it one more time? Yeah, okay, I'll do it one more time. And in Fusion, I had probably a 2D contour and it was like, there's a multiple passes checkbox. Sure. And I had that checked, it was checked the whole time, but it was only actually doing one pass.
00:45:52
Speaker
because it was finished pass and repeat pass was checked, but it was not doing a repeat pass. So it was, it would only go in, lead in, go around the circle once and then come out, even though multiple pass and repeat pass was checked. So for this final, final check, I uncheck that and then my hole with three thou too big. Yeah. Wait, on the current?
00:46:16
Speaker
Yeah. The toolpath infusion changed by three thou bigger diameter because I unchecked multiple passes. Something is weird. Yeah. I scrap that part after like four hours of machining into it. I'm sorry. It sucks. But yeah, that's a fusion thing. I don't know, man.
00:46:36
Speaker
It's weird. Something is weird there too because I am only, I would have wagered that finishing when it's only going to finish pass multiple passes or spring passes will still repeat. That's weird. Sorry. At that point, I just resumed production on the current. This was last night. I was like, I'm done here. I just opened up palletmanagement.h. That's my program file and then hit go and then went home.
00:47:04
Speaker
I don't remember the making a Johnny five wrist part on our five axis. And I goofed at the very end with a gouge on a chamfer. And it was wonderful because it was, you know, I was hours into this part, but, um, I realized, okay, well, I'll just stick in a new piece of material hit cycle. Start. I'll come back in 45 minutes. I had been, um, option stopping it while I was learning at the time. And literally I came back for a head of minutes and I was right back where I left off, uh, to resume to check that chamfer again. It was great. It's like, it's like an erase button.
00:47:34
Speaker
Yep. All right. I got to run. All right, man. Good day. Okay. Take care.