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#366 Future Goals and Happiness
574 Plays8 months ago
TOPICS:
- Local Ohio Machinist and makers group https://forms.gle/CSLjYSQshDqDCWRE6
- Chemistry and filtration of liquids
- Future goals and Happiness
- 3 examples of the "rule of inverse Pi"
- Scissor lift sold
- Tall castle grips
- Anodizing crate
- Grimsmo grinding consistency on Speedio
- Saunders bent a probe tip
- Comparing shop cleanliness and organization
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Transcript
Camaraderie over Machines
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machine episode number 366. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmough. John and I have developed this professional and personal camaraderie about trying to
00:00:13
Speaker
Talk about what we think we're doing well and what we're not sure we should be doing differently or better as we buy machines, run machines, run businesses, wear Volvo sweatshirts to work. Heck yes. How is it? Is it the Amazon? Amazon, yeah. It's been sitting all winter, but it's warming up now.
00:00:32
Speaker
I was just at the auto shop for a different car. And I was like, you can work on this car, right? And he's like, is it carbureted? Because we don't really know how to work on carburetors. It is. But all I need is a brake job or something, right? You guys can figure it out. I'll break parts. But yeah, super pumped to start driving the Amazon to work again. 1968 Volvo Amazon wagon. Super pumped. I just love that car. It's super cool. It's just a cute little car. Yeah. That's awesome.
00:01:02
Speaker
I wanted to bring up a thank you and then sort of some personal excitement.
Building a Maker Community
00:01:09
Speaker
just had this idea of developing long-term, hopefully long-term kind of relationships in a sense of community with local folks. And so we started this form. We'll put the form again in the description today, but the idea is for folks that live near central Ohio, which I recognize may not be the majority of listeners. So forgive me. I call it the Muskingum County makers and machinists. Maybe it's not the best name because we don't have a hard, you know, don't have to live in our County. But the idea is folks that are around here and, uh,
00:01:38
Speaker
and I may be starting to show my age, but I realize Discord is a great way to have this community exist. The whole point for me was to have actual meetups every month or two, whatever, because it's in person. It's not supposed to be social media, the web, all that, but nevertheless, Discord makes sense for coordinating those stuffs, communicating, and I feel out of touch because I was like, I don't want to do Facebook groups. I don't want to do an email chain or text messaging.
00:02:07
Speaker
Discord does seem like it's a great thing, but I'm not a Discord guy. Are you? I've used it a tiny bit. I'm certainly not comfortable on it. I've used it for Voron 3D printer group. I've used it for mid-journey AI images and a tiny bit with texting other younger people. I'm like, I don't like this. I'm not used to it.
00:02:28
Speaker
Like I get it. It makes sense. I feel guilty asking other people to do like, cause I don't always like it. Like I've kind of explicitly not gotten on Slack. Like I'm in Slack. Same. Part of Slack organizations for other companies I do stuff with or not. That sounds terrible. Like Autodesk and all that, but like, I'm like, I don't want to deal with this too much. I don't think I've ever used Slack.
00:02:49
Speaker
But Discord, in fairness, does seem great. But the point really here is if you are a machinist, a maker, a hobby, woodworker, 3D printing guy, and you live in Zanesville or Columbus area, would love to have you kind of join up. I think some of the folks are going to come this weekend, AKA tomorrow. And then maybe we'll have like an actual little meet together of, you know, again, doesn't have to be at Saunders. It'd be great if it bounced around, but yeah.
00:03:16
Speaker
That's awesome. Let's see if there's one more thing on Discord. So I asked my 14-year-old daughter, I was like, if you were to share your contact with a new friend or something, what would you do? Would you give them your number? Would you give them your Instagram or your TikTok or whatever? And she goes, I'd probably give them my Discord name. Holy shit. Right? And you have to ask. You can't assume these things of kids. I thought that was really interesting.
00:03:40
Speaker
Yes, for sure. And I'm like, uh, I want to embrace my, my stage in life rather than be embarrassed by it. So it's like a balance of like, okay, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll create a discord account. I'll figure it out, but then it's also kind of like, it's time for a new generation to start working their way into the exactly. Yeah. Uh, what else go on?
Rusty Fume Hood Experiment
00:04:08
Speaker
Okay, so in preparation for cutting off more Damascus steel and etching it, I've been, like I said a couple weeks ago, total deep dive on chemistry and acids and bases. And a couple of years ago, we bought this fume hood.
00:04:24
Speaker
which is this white powder-coated hood with a big fan on the top, like a blow box or something like that, except meant for chemical fumes. It's got a two-inch thick carbon filter that is literally packed with little granules. They look like wood pellets. They're black carbon. They absorb all of the
00:04:47
Speaker
all of the fumes and nasty smells basically coming off these chemicals. Like myriotic for example is a very stinky chemical.
00:04:57
Speaker
Except the problem is we've had this now for about three years and at one point the guys in the front shop Left acid kind of open in the fume hood and it started to rust and attack all little less painted corners of this steel fume hood container and So it's like pretty rusty now
00:05:19
Speaker
I was going to take it apart and walk across the street and have them blast it and powder coat it. But even the screws are rusted out and I was like, I can't even get this thing apart anymore. I'm bummed. I neutralized all the rust as best I could and I just scrubbed it and scraped it and it's good enough for now. Maybe we'll paint it with pore 15 or some rust preventative paint and just call it good. If we really wanted to, we could probably buy a replacement sheet metal.
00:05:46
Speaker
because the fan and the filters and everything is still fine. Oh yeah, sure. But the sheet metal is kind of gross, but maybe we'll just slap some pore 15 on it and call it good. But yeah, that was part of my adventure last week, but all of my chemistry supplies have come in and I kind of take them home and do little experiments with the kids to test out the equipment. Yeah. So that's been super fun. What have you learned since last year?
00:06:13
Speaker
What have I learned since last week? So we bought, I want to be able to filter the acid to be able to reuse it sometimes. So there's a couple different ways to filter it. One of which is called a Buechner funnel. And it's this little ceramic funnel you put on top of the flask that you can suck a vacuum through the flask and suck through this filter paper. Kind of like an AeroPress if you're into coffee.
00:06:37
Speaker
Um, yeah, I'm not either. But, um, anyway, so it's a little like two inch, um, paper filter pad that goes in the top of this Buechner funnel and you pour your liquids on top and it sucks a vacuum. So it sucks all the liquid through this filter paper, um, into the flask and cleans it. Um, so the vacuum means it just has more force than gravity. Yeah. Okay. So like imagine a coffee filter just sitting there and you pour.
00:07:04
Speaker
orange juice through it or something and you expect it to just gravity to win? No. If you suck a vacuum in the bottom, it speeds it up by like 10 times, which is great. I took all this stuff home, a little tiny vacuum pump. We tried to filter orange juice down to water just to see if we could. No way. I'm like, I think we could do this. I got all kinds of different filter papers. I got powder filter mediums. There's one called Sea Light 545, which is
00:07:29
Speaker
it's actually called diatomaceous earth which is made of like crushed up skeletons of microorganisms from millions of years ago anybody who's lived in new york city should know what diatomaceous earth is yeah it's the allegedly the like only cure all to kill bed bugs really it's like the only thing fine enough i might get this wrong that it's fine enough that they will
00:07:52
Speaker
eat it and kill them, which sounds disgusting, the whole thing is disgusting. Luckily, we never had to deal with it, but you put a little perimeter strip around the base of your bed or something. That's cool. Super, super, super fine. Super fine and microporous inside, so as a filtration medium.
00:08:12
Speaker
you pour it in the top of the Buchner funnel, you filter over the water to like get all the dust out. And then you've created a patty basically, a quarter inch thick patty of this dust. Whenever you want to filter on top, you suck a vacuum through it. And all these little chunks of diatomaceous earth have micro pores that capture stuff and filter it better than a paper can.
00:08:33
Speaker
So I got that and then I got carbon powder. So you can do another patty on top of this black carbon powder, which is even more porous and can literally take color out of liquid. That's crazy. I went down this rabbit hole of like super cool. I want to be able to filter. So we tried with orange juice and orange juice is so pulpy and like thick that we just clogged every filter paper we tried.
00:09:00
Speaker
So we're like, OK, let's first try with a mesh strainer and then a loose coffee filter. And then we worked our way. We ended up getting like a little thimble's worth of a week. It was funny. We turned milk into skim milk, basically. We didn't get that filtered, but kind of ran out of patience at that point. But it was fun. It was super fun. It was fun to bring it home, do the kids, and then I still have to test with the acids. Very excited for that, though.
00:09:28
Speaker
Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, super excited. And then to be able to neutralize the acids as well. So I learned all about like acids and bases and, you know, baking soda works well, but sodium hydroxide works so much better because it's way more basic. So I'm looking forward to mixing those two together and playing with all this stuff.
Research as Therapy
00:09:49
Speaker
Cool. Yes, it's fine. Total down the rabbit hole, but for a purpose.
00:09:54
Speaker
I like it. I like it. I added to the inventory of mental knowledge and I really enjoyed that process. If you go meditate or just do some thinking and so forth, it's funny because I find myself in this feedback loop of like,
00:10:15
Speaker
What would I want to accomplish or do or have professionally in the business today and this week and this year? The really short punchline is like, sure, you want things that are probably not dissimilar from anybody else. Like sales goals and success and customer value and the customer and feedback that's fulfilling on that front. But basically, it all comes back to like, but I still
00:10:41
Speaker
just want to come back and keep doing what I'm doing. And that's not to say every day here is peaches and cream. But I feel like I and we as society grew up in this era where it's like, I want to get to retirement or this next thing. But it's like, no, I'm actually completely satiated doing what I'm right doing now. Recognizing what you said, it's great when you can
00:11:08
Speaker
How do I say this? Like responsibly go on surgeon mode or days off in the shop and everything else is taken care of. And that's something that we vacillate on how well that's happening here. Yeah, totally. The same with us is production mostly happens without me, which is fantastic. I still have a ton of responsibilities here in the business, but I don't make parts every day.
00:11:35
Speaker
which is a great place for me to be in, because that's not my strong suit. I still don't understand that, though, because you're effectively the only fusion programmer. So is it just that the product? Yeah, production is steady. We're not posting changes every day, which works. It makes it harder for new product development, which is what I'm working towards, growing the team to be able to do that with me or without me. Yeah. That's right. Yeah, so it's like a different business than
00:12:06
Speaker
other companies who are literally posting programs and camping every day and doing new stuff every day and we're kind of not. And I wish we were but we're not there yet. No, that's fine. This analogy came up when I was having a conversation with somebody yesterday about if you think about
00:12:22
Speaker
being a machinist is to be a surgeon, like a medical doctor, like everybody wants to be a surgeon. I wanted to be a surgeon. I want to be a machinist 10, 15 years ago. But the reality is running Saunders Machine Works is actually just being a hospital administrator.
00:12:40
Speaker
Like I was once a surgeon and I may still want to scrub in and do a case, but like the reality is it's that good an example of when people tell you like running a machine shop is here with a being a machinist. It's like, no, really. Yeah, it seriously is. Yeah. So I think that's why we cling to these little projects inside the hustles and like little fun things, especially me where I get to deep dive on something because I'm still clinging to that. Like, no, I'm still a technician. I'm still a, you know, I'm still machinist. I still want to invent and create, um,
00:13:14
Speaker
I'll touch on this real quick, but I realized throughout the process of this chemistry deep dive, I realized something that I never really noticed before about myself is that a couple weeks ago, I was in a, I'd say it was in a tough place. I was stressed and worried about stuff, namely work, just things.
00:13:36
Speaker
You know how some people, the joke is, you know, they have retail therapy and they go to the mall and they spend a bunch of money? I have research therapy.
00:13:45
Speaker
Once I realized that and some retail therapy because I spent a good little chunk of money on all this cool stuff, the amount of hours I spent on this research therapy really helped me. It was like a distraction from the day to day. It was fun. It was interesting. I was filling my brain with all new stuff and I was like this whole new world of chemistry is a field in the world. There is infinite amount of information.
00:14:09
Speaker
And that really helped me out. That was part of my process, my coping, whatever. And I've been in a way better place now that I got to go down that rabbit hole.
00:14:20
Speaker
That's all you need. I mean, all right. It's funny stuff, right? It works. Right. And, and I like realizing it really helps because now I'll see it. I'll see triggers coming forward. Um, and everybody's got a different thing, but to be able to analyze yourself and to realize what's happening and what stage you're in and you know, smooth and steady or I'm having trouble or, you know, helps. Yeah. I I've tried to have the discipline of not over.
00:14:49
Speaker
doing it when it comes to like, I don't, I don't, I genuinely don't have like a retail therapy issue. But like you, if I find the greatest, littlest thing, I'm like, Oh my gosh, I want to buy this Herman Schmidt gauge or like, I'd be getting a little bit back into shooting, which I haven't done in a long time. So it's like, Oh, I want to buy this. Yep.
00:15:06
Speaker
light or rail mount and it's like just put it in your shopping cart and stand up for me. Exactly. If you want it, fine. But I also very much embrace the idea that life's about more than just the stuff that you have sitting in your house. That's been a give and take.
00:15:26
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Absolutely. It's a balance. And everybody's got their own different needs. But it's muddy with work, especially like I can justify all this chemistry stuff with work. Because I'm like, I have a need. We have acids. We have to be safe. We have to neutralize them. Maybe we didn't quite need to get all the stuff that I got. But I'm also building a little chemistry lab that my son and I can come play and learn. And we need it for work, air quotes.
00:15:55
Speaker
So it's a bit of a muddy road there, but I'm going to make use of all of it. It's going to be fun. Yeah. OK, I have three. There were three things I wanted to mention, and they're actually all unintentionally good examples of the Grimsmo inverse pie, which I love because I'm also guilty of things taking three point one four times longer than they should. But
00:16:22
Speaker
I think I err too much on the side of psyching myself out and realizing I can just get these things done. So first example
Optimizing Shop Operations
00:16:28
Speaker
was we have a scissor lift and it is now not actually all that helpful and practical at our shop because we have so many machines that getting the scissor lift, weaving it through is not fun. But we need to be able to change light bulbs or access the roof or the under part side of the roof for cabling or whatnot. And I just realized, John,
00:16:48
Speaker
Go to Home Depot, 300 bucks, which was not particularly fun to buy a fiberglass ladder, but done. 300 bucks, you have a fiberglass ladder that now safely reaches the... We already had an extension ladder. I needed to buy the A-frame step ladder, because the extension ladder is not always as safe as I'd like it to be when you're leaning up against the Joyce. So done, check mark. Scissor lift's getting sold this weekend. Second one is...
00:17:14
Speaker
Caleb wanted us to make some tall castle grips. So they're just like the Saunders version of a talent grip, but we wanted some that are half inch or so tall, which is a super unusual use case. But what we have is when we're holding some of our steel products for off one,
00:17:30
Speaker
They don't even need to be nearly that tall, but we don't want them to be the typical, like whatever it is, 60 or 80 thou tall because the way we do our op one work is we want to leave whatever natural bow or warp is in the plate there. We don't want to clamp it out because it'll just come right back. Having these tall castles that grip higher up on the side of the part.
00:17:54
Speaker
makes that super easy and you don't have to worry about it. And so I bought some A2 and it was sitting on my desk and I was like, and I actually had already programmed them because I still love programming. I'll go out of my way to find an excuse to infusion to program. But I hadn't been doing it. And then I realized, John, this is not hard. You have all the tools in the horizontal already. We have the tombstone that has the puck jucks. We have vices that now slip into those so you can
00:18:17
Speaker
your work holding is done, you have to probe the part in and post the code. Like it's not like stop doing it. And so I came in on Sunday. And good news is that all proved true. Bad news is I broke a 360 10 mil, I was sliding it and it was kind of, it was actually a tool that needed to be replaced anyway. So it wasn't the perfect case of I was done in 40 minutes, but it was not a big deal. They're done. The only part I had to laugh about was that I
00:18:43
Speaker
Oh, actually, even better, we use the one of the back cutting tools that we already have for other parts to slot them off. So it was a one out part where I had just a little bit of flashing on the backside and I just put them on the Okamoto, dusted the backsides. Done. But then after that, I hit him on the scotch right because the backsides weren't chamfered. So I just scotch right wheeled them. And then I put them into ultrasonic and forgot about them.
00:19:10
Speaker
They rusted. They did flash rust a little. I got most of it off, so it won't be a big deal, but I want to heat treat those today. That's funny. The last one is this anodizing crate we spent probably, I want to say $3,000, shivers to think about that.
00:19:29
Speaker
per crate. We bought three of these wood crates built by this company that builds crates for like trade show, you know, stuff that gets moved all around the country all the time. And they are super, super well built, but the crates themselves weigh 300 pounds. And a lot of times we're only putting 400 pounds in it. And our freight milk runs to the anodizer are by weight. So we're sending 800 pounds when we could be sending half that or a little bit more than half that. And so
00:19:58
Speaker
I had this idea, sketch up infusion, kind of passed the smell test, slept on it, showed, Alex showed Serena, who is the one that fills the crate. And then I'm like, what am I doing? I just sent a quote to our plastic supplier, got quotes for the HTPE. We're going to machine some slots in it. It wasn't even that expensive. It's coming tomorrow. Like, stop over analyzing it. Like, just do it. Yeah. It's happening. And then all of a sudden, for probably like $500, $600 in supplies, we'll have replaced one of these
00:20:29
Speaker
crates that we spent nine grand on, and this new one will probably weigh 200 pounds, but it'll hold 31 plates versus our current ones that weigh 300 pounds and hold 12 plates. Sounds like all wins. Yeah, right? It's just- It's literally one of those ROI things. It's like- Yeah. Ignore some costs, move on to future, and why keep paying an exorbitant shipping bill if we don't need to?
00:20:55
Speaker
Yeah, no, and like, I, in good example of hypocrisy, because like, I'm a little bit married to the sunk cost, even though it's just like, don't forget about it, you know, we might keep them to store plates, because we have, you'll see when you're here this weekend, we store a bunch, but like, or just figure out some. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Yeah.
Improving Blade Grinding Consistency
00:21:20
Speaker
I had a kind of one of those two. It wasn't really inverse pi, but it was a thing that had to get done. The way we grind our Rask blades on the speedio, currently for the past few months, we've been getting away without dressing the wheel at all. And we're just letting it kind of self dress and self, it comes for diameter often. But
00:21:43
Speaker
It's it's it gets a little clogged up, I think, and it kind of breaks down. It's like that perfect, you know, perfect surface grinding from that book from 50 years ago is like the ideal wheel composition, you know, slowly breaks down and loses bits of grit as the material, blah, blah, blah. And it's like this this perfect scenario poetry. Yeah. And we basically had that on the speedio, except it wasn't like as consistent as I wanted it to be.
00:22:10
Speaker
I think if the wheel was loaded up with a bit of metal, then when it probes on the laser, it's measuring somewhat inaccurately. I think the results were jumping around by a thou here and there because of that. For a while now, I've been working on this dressing stick that mounts to the table. I've got this tiny little zone, so this one-inch brass rod that's basically
00:22:32
Speaker
five inches long that's bolted to a T-slot. It just sticks on five inches in the air and then mounts this little quarter inch dressing stick, molybdenum dressing stick. Then I made a macro to go over and shave a couple tenths off and probe the stick because it wears down and laser the wheel and back and forth, back and forth. I came in the other day, the other night and
00:22:54
Speaker
finished up that whole process and the results have been absolutely fantastic. Like significantly better consistency, less reworks, um, huge, huge, huge win. And I knew it would be, or I hoped it would be. Um, I still like Steven ran it all day yesterday. Um, I could see the log on this video. Like he ran 30 minute cycles for almost six hours yesterday, which is fantastic. Like a huge day. Um, and, uh,
00:23:23
Speaker
I just have to talk with him and see like, so was it as good as I think it was? Because like, I don't know. I just kind of did it and left a note for you and said, it works now. Good luck.
00:23:34
Speaker
That's awesome. I think it's good. I didn't get any panic texts. Everything seems to work and he clearly ran it for almost six hours, so that's a huge win. Yeah. Just trying to pull the variables out of the system and that was a big one and I think we're getting good now. If that is solid on one palette, then the next step is to palette change and see if we're getting consistency across multiple palettes. Yeah.
00:23:59
Speaker
Because while the palette changer fully works, we're not utilizing it for production yet. But we're ready to, which is good. We're kind of in that preparatory purchase phase of like, everything's in place. Just get the last few things in a row, and then we'll be able to run blades with the palette changer. And it's going to be great. I noticed a probing sort of thing yesterday, and I think it was
00:24:24
Speaker
It's gotten warm quick here, and we had the doors open because it was both nice out, and they were doing some masonry work done on the building that's both inside and outside, so they were in and out with the doors and all that. But the Akuma was four or five tenths higher than a value that it should be pretty dialed in. So it's like, really, it's no big deal. But it made me think about, ooh, is that Occam's razor? Is it some crazy?
00:24:53
Speaker
tool wear thing, because it went the wrong, once it went the other way. And so what we've really stopped doing is we've stopped a lot of that iterative chase your tail override tool lengths, move offsets like no, nope, nope, nope. If there's a thermal thing, we'll see over time, but like, there was too much micro back and forth, and you never do that.
00:25:15
Speaker
Um, the other, the other probing thing is, uh, uh, that I failed conveniently left out on Sunday was, uh, I soft crashed the probe tip. So good lesson learned, um, on our Akuma it, the way we have to run it is you can't override an active program.
00:25:37
Speaker
because we have to run, I don't remember what the Okuma ways are called. This has to do with like on your Maury, current loading a program from the memory, which is like super limited versus from the- Sure, DNC is on our machine, yeah. 500 gig hard. You don't even notice a difference except you can't overwrite the active program, which you could otherwise do, and we do on our hostas all the time. It's just easier when you repost. So we have to close out of the current program before you post it. Oh, yeah, yeah.
00:26:06
Speaker
It's kind of a pain in the butt. So we used to grab at the top of the list when you're kind of job shopping, if you will. We had a couple of random programs that we knew didn't really do anything. And we would just load one of those and then repost the file. I did that.
00:26:23
Speaker
And I committed the cardinal sin on a hit cycle start on one of those bogus programs. And it was the program that Okuma or Gossaker sends that is a B-axis rotation that helps purge any residual air out of the machine when it ships from Japan. So it rotated the B and this side of the piece A2 just clipped the very tip of the probe.
00:26:44
Speaker
I didn't even think anything of it, but I later realized it actually, it's weird because it's a carbon fiber probe. It's quite long. It's probably four or five inches long probe center. And it like cocked it off center, but it didn't crack it. And so we replaced it for sure. But then I looked at the old one, I'm like,
00:27:04
Speaker
I mean, it's not broken. So I put a stack of gauge blocks up and another thing on the left and I basically rolled it like a rolling pin and I stacked the gauge box higher and higher to like start walking the tip. Excuse me, the metal base back in. And somebody should probably tell me to just throw this thing away because I'm currently like, I don't know, it seems pretty good. Yeah. What moved? Did it get loose?
00:27:34
Speaker
I don't know. So like the probe, the way a probe constructed, it seems to me like it's a, it's a turned metal base that has threads in the cone to it. That's, uh, in that has a hole that a carbon fiber shaft is shoved into. And then on the tip is the Ruby, the, the somehow the thing like kind of bent or whatever between the carbon fiber and the metal base. So I'm going to.
00:28:02
Speaker
Again, it's $140 for new. I should probably throw this thing away, but it's like, I'm going to put it up in a dummy, right in a shell that we don't use right now and see if I can run it in. Cause the way we use probing, it's like, it's not gonna, unless it like bumps back off, it could be fine. Do you use probing in process all the time? Like is the machine up and running again with the new sticker?
00:28:24
Speaker
Well, we replaced it, it's currently running a brand new tip. I'm just a question, so I put this back in the like, even if it's in the like backup drawer, the good drawer. But yes, we use, most of the probing that we do is just to, so that we don't have to worry about stock, which over time we'll actually move, we've been moving 3D printed inserts that align the stock and we don't have to probe it because probing is slow. But on some of the products we do do up to G68 stock.
00:28:52
Speaker
whether the probing matters, but it's also relative there. So it's like, if I put this broken probe tip back in, and if I dial it in and it stays dialed in, unless it's good to go, as long as the glue bond didn't break or something, it's not floppy. Right. But yeah, if you dial it in properly.
00:29:16
Speaker
Yeah, and I'll just check it. Use it. Check it after a couple of days. I'll program it to do 100 probe hits. Check it afterward. If it's good, great. If it's not, throw it away. I also crunched a probe tip on the speedio. Thankfully, just a tip, not a body. Dude, there's something up with my speedio.
00:29:36
Speaker
When the probe triggers, it's supposed to send a skip signal to the machine that tells the machine it triggered. The lights turn on, the lights on the receiver turn on when you touch it. Every now and then, the signal just doesn't get to the machine. And I'm like, what the heck? I'm annoyed, extremely annoyed. Thankfully, I've learned how to do a, well,
00:30:02
Speaker
If I think I'm probing quarter inch, but sometimes it probes to fixture center, I've learned how to avoid that, which is good. And then if I think I'm probing a quarter inch, it over travels a little bit. So it might go 375, but then it retracts and goes, no, I didn't find anything, right? So I've learned how to dial those in better.
00:30:21
Speaker
So like hover a quarter inch above the stock so that it goes three, seven, five, even if it does crash, it's not going to crash the body, right? It only goes so far. So I've learned how to do that so I can avoid this broken problem, but still something's wrong. I don't know. I'm forming an email to Bloom and somebody's got to need to come here and fix this for me.
00:30:43
Speaker
What's scary to me is that you're not even doing what is giving me anxiety if I end up buying a brother, which is this whole like mixed bag of... The red shot bloom. Yeah, one has the hardware, one has the codes and everyone's like, oh, it's simple. It's just the signals. I'm like, well, let me tell you, I'm an outsider here. I don't know. So like it's a lack of knowledge that's giving me fear, but like it's not that simple because I'm hearing all these quirky things about the post and you crashing problems and like, what's what?
00:31:11
Speaker
Well, as far as I understand, the brother only has one skip signal, whereas a lot of machines have two. So you have table and spindle, two skip signals, right? They're separate. The brother, you have to add a relay to flip between them.
00:31:26
Speaker
And apparently, it automatically does this. But the guy's literally wired up a relay. I saw them do it. And maybe that relay is faulty or whatever. The funny thing is, in this situation where the probing doesn't work, and now it just alarms out instead of continues to crash, if I restart the machine, it works fine. OK. Explain to me like I know nothing what a skip signal is. I don't either, really. It's like I'm assuming it's just an interrupt. Yeah, exactly.
00:31:57
Speaker
But it's the signal that goes from the probe to the receiver to the little module box. There's a blown box in the back of the machine. Whatever leaves that blown box to the control is the skip signal. I would hope it's a solid state relay and not an actual mechanic. So that shouldn't not be working. Yeah, I don't know. The wires, they're tight.
00:32:22
Speaker
Dude, yeah, I just have this weird like, I don't trust it yet. You know, you should do the same thing. Go write a program that probes just do 100 probe touches in a row. Yeah, because it should be able to get through that all day long flying colors. And I can't figure out what triggers the failure. Like when it works, it works great.
00:32:43
Speaker
And then I think one time I let the machine sit, I came back the next day, and the first start, the machine was still on, still referenced everything. First start was a failure. And I'm like, what the heck happened? Restart the machine, works fine. This is a spindle probe, not the toolsetter. Correct. Sorry, laser toolsetter seems reliable. Everything works always. You have the Bloom-Z Nano Zero? No, I have the laser anti-something.
00:33:10
Speaker
Okay, but the spindle probe, and that is its infrared vision line of sight. It's not radio. Ours is radio, yeah. Oh, well, John, that could be it. Maybe. Because my understanding with those is they can be interfered with. Mm-hmm. Whether it's EFI or other signals. That's a good point. I hadn't thought of that.
00:33:37
Speaker
I've only ever dealt with the infrared, which requires line of sight, which is only not good if you have a weird trunnion where it could get blocked. The only reason I went with the radio was at the time, that's all they had in stock or something and everybody got impatient. I was like, fine, just send a radio one.
00:33:59
Speaker
When somebody calls your cell phone, the probe stops working. Oh my gosh. You know what? It actually reminds me of one of the funniest parenting tricks I've ever seen, which is to go buy a $20 iPhone 6 on eBay. And then when your kids are misusing their phone or misobeying, you just pull that out of your pocket and smash it with a hammer.
00:34:30
Speaker
The other horrible one I heard is to throw empty Christmas boxes in the fireplace. Yeah, right. Oh, that's so bad. Don't do that. But as a dad, funny to think about, that's all. It is funny to think about. Exactly. It's the thought that counts. Exactly. Speaking
Preparing for a Family Visit
00:34:50
Speaker
of which, in two days from us right now, kids and I are driving down to come see you guys.
00:34:57
Speaker
Looking forward to it. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Kids are stoked. Um, yeah, we're just looking forward to both doing the open house and also just hanging out with your family. Yeah. Too many years. Too been too long and knock on wood. It's supposed to rain today in our, but it's supposed to be decently clear. Cool. Riding this weekend, which will be super nice because it just will be wonderful. Yeah.
00:35:21
Speaker
Nice, nice. Looking forward to seeing the kid. I can't, I'm probably going to fall out of my chair when I see Leif and Clara because they're not. They're not. Same as you remember. Four and nine anymore or whatever. Exactly. Yup. Yup. And I remember Jane as like a three year old. Yeah. Nope. She's not three either. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah.
00:35:43
Speaker
Yeah. I want your perspective too. And I know I kind of alluded to this before we hit the record button this morning. And I'll keep this super short. But I saw a picture of somebody else's shop. And it upset me about, even though I've talked way too much about this clean, this purge, all this stuff. And I have done that. We have gotten rid of stuff. We're so much better off.
00:36:05
Speaker
our shop still looks like a shop that's had eight years of daily hard use. And it bothers me. And so I'm starting to think about, okay, what am I missing? Is it do we need to do
00:36:18
Speaker
a team effort for like a one day where we don't make any parts and we just clean. Do I need to hire a painter or a person to come in to help do a deep clean? Because it's stuff like the ceiling needs dusted or paint needs repaired. It's not just like mop the floors, although that's part of it. And then it's also like sometimes we clean the machines, but we could be doing a better job. So some of it's regular stuff, but I kind of want your perspective of am I overreacting or, you know,
00:36:46
Speaker
We can do it privately because I know you're not always somebody to be conversational, but I want you to confront me. What do you think? Yeah, I will. I will give you my perspective.
00:36:58
Speaker
And it's the combination of actual filth, need to mop the floors kind of thing, or dust in the corners. I think about dust in the rafters, and I'm like, the second you dust, that's all going to end up on every machine. That gives me anxiety. I would want to do it with a vacuum cleaner in the other hand.
00:37:19
Speaker
But the answer isn't necessarily to just ignore it either. Right, exactly. So yeah, there's actual filth and then there's organization and clutter and that lean mentality of like in our shop, any tool in here that doesn't make a knife doesn't belong in here. That's not reality, but that's like a thought that I've had.
00:37:43
Speaker
And we definitely have junk that just doesn't belong, doesn't do anything, doesn't get touched, doesn't get used. Some of it is like cool long term like, I bought that on eBay. That's like a cool vintage tool. I want like I use it twice a year. It measures two millionths like I want that. But some of it is literally like, shouldn't be there anymore. Are you happy with where your shop is?
00:38:06
Speaker
I think so. I think I'm happy from a day-to-day perspective. The guys do a really good job cleaning it. Angelo's been awesome of the guy sweep every single day, take five minutes, everybody grabs a broom and sweep it all to the big Oneida dust filter and we have a floor sweep on it. So all the dust just goes right into it.
00:38:25
Speaker
That's nice. Our floors are, there's no grit in the epoxy, so they're like slick smooth, and we never mop because we don't need to. Yeah. We spot clean the floors with Windex and paper towels around the machines often enough, but the floors are spotless. I can literally swipe my hand on the floor and it comes up mostly clean, like tiny bit of dust and not dirt at all.
00:38:51
Speaker
I'm confident to walk barefoot through the shop any day of the week. That's awesome. It's cool. The front shop is not quite the same story because there's a dog that lives in it all the time. Eric brings his dog to work and it's the grinding, tumbling, heat treating shop. There's dust everywhere. It's not bad, but there is dust everywhere. That's harder to keep spotless, but the machine shop, we work really hard. Then as far as the clutter and the junk,
00:39:20
Speaker
I could purge. I could definitely get rid of stuff and organize things better and more shelves and better tool carts around the machines, things like that. But it's that scenario where you're like, you're busy doing stuff. You're busy working. Yeah. I'm right there with you.
00:39:42
Speaker
It's going to be a priority and it feels good to do it. And some of it's actually just coming back to days off in the shop, which I kind of deliberately put on hold as we rounded off Gen 3, but then I was on spring break. And then look, to be candid, just to call myself out, like, okay, but now I'm looking at the process of buying and implementing a new aluminum machine.
00:40:05
Speaker
And right after that, the Willamond will come. And yeah, some of that can be handled by the team for sure. And that's a good thing. But the reality is I'm still going to be, I'm going to want to or have to be involved in some of that. So it's kind of like, I'm conscious of like, okay, was it really going to be July 20th by the time I get back to days off in the shop? Because that's what this is. It's like, hey, take a picture, get rid of the baking rack cart that we thought was a good idea for the horizontal. And it's not working out. Okay, that's okay. But you got to fix it.
00:40:35
Speaker
Yeah, you can ignore those things. Yeah. OK, I got to share this snippet that I thought was the coolest story I heard in a while. It was a Tom Lipton story that he was sharing over on, I think it was on Spencer's podcast. But Tom was talking about, if you guys don't know Tom, he runs Oxtools, awesome, awesome guy who's, I think, shared a lot and given a lot to the community.
00:41:05
Speaker
and he had a mentor who had made a part out of A2 and he treated it. He wanted it to be a long master reference gauge and he could only make it by
00:41:17
Speaker
you know, basement, like home level tools, where he was trying to use like a one inch gauge to make a six inch gauge, which is very difficult to do. And he was trying to do this before. And he thought he had done it. And he finally went somewhere that actually had the right tool. This is 50 years ago, finally had the right tools to measure and they measured and they're like, Oh, yeah, great job. Nice job. It's two tenths.
00:41:37
Speaker
under and like that was the end of the project because he was longer he could lap it over and so the guy put it in a drawer and 40 years later
00:41:49
Speaker
It somehow came up that A2, the material properties of A2 long-term are such that drum roll it grows. What? I guess I'm not sure I would believe this if it wasn't coming from somebody like Tom.
00:42:08
Speaker
And I actually don't really know how the story ended. I don't know if Tom offered specific conclusiveness to it other than that the guy had actually put it in a drawer, but knew where it was, dug it out 40 years later. And I don't know if it was, if it was, had grown too tense or could then be lapped down. But, uh, I dunno, that's just like, there's something magical about the thought that if I take a piece of A2 right now, put it in a drawer and come back to in 20 or 30 years that it will have on its own, just increased in length.
00:42:38
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, that's an example of a good scenario. If it's a master reference gauge, you don't want it to do that, right? Totally. Well, but everything, I mean, everything moves, like, right? Yeah, I've been telling my guys, Robin Renzetti's famous phrase, everything is rubber.
00:42:57
Speaker
Our new guy, Jeff, is an excellent machinist. I told that to him, and he's like, what are you talking about? It's like, well, even carbide bends and has a rubber property. And everything concrete is rubber. It moves. Everything can move, right? And you kind of take this extreme approach to it and mental picture of nothing is as rigid as you think it is molecularly. And when you're measuring in tens or millions, everything can move.
00:43:25
Speaker
Yep. Yeah, it's really changed the way that I view precision and rigidity and strength and things like that. When I say everything is rubber, you know, why is this tool moving? Well, it's deflecting. It's because the tool is rubber, right? Pressure, tool pressure, cutting pressure, cutting theory, all that stuff adds up. What do you see today?
00:43:50
Speaker
Today, I am calibrating the Willimon after my crash from a week ago. I'm still slowly, you know, have little bits of time here and there to re-zero everything. And it's been good because I've been consolidating all my notes and all of the calibration documents that Willimon sends into a concise procedure so that hopefully the next person who's running that machine knows how to calibrate it fully from the ground up.
00:44:17
Speaker
It's like you calibrate the probe first you do the the pivot point calibration do when you calibrate the laser.
00:44:25
Speaker
All that stuff because something shifted. The guy said my pivot point moved when I did that crash. So it's not just a G54 offset. Yeah. Right. I thought the Z slipped because it's measuring ninth out big. So I was like, sweet, comp the G54 by ninth out. And it's still not listening properly. And it's because the pivot point needs to be recalibrated. So it's like a complex machine.
00:44:51
Speaker
It really is. I assumed that had to be the case. Your B axis didn't just get pushed up. It got just somehow moved around. It can be fixed. When you say your pivot point, that's what you've referred to the B. The B axis spindle pivot. Yeah, exactly. I'm still not fully comprehending what exactly is moving and why something's working, something's don't.
00:45:15
Speaker
I even took an end mill and I milled two flats on the bar, like flip it over a million other flat and I measured it and I'm like, that's not right. That's measuring. Like something still moved. So I basically was talking to Florian at Wilhelmin and there's a step-by-step procedure for, you know, first calibrate the probes, you know, the length and diameter and concentricity is dialed. Then do your pivot point calibration, actually pulled it up here.
00:45:42
Speaker
Check the B axis using a test bar, which I bought a test bar, make sure it's tilted. I still don't know what variable I'm changing to adjust the tilt. If it's tilted side to side, that's easy. You can comp it with an angle change. If it's tilted front to back, that's mechanical. Not as great. I will test that. Calibrate the probe length and diameter. They've got a cycle for that. Run the pivot point calculation.
00:46:07
Speaker
And then establish center line to center line. So if you go like at B 90, um, tilt it down and then I, I slide a drill bushing between the two pins. Dude, that like, I love that job. That's a good lathe trick too. Yeah. I wouldn't know. I don't use it. Um, and on the Wilhelmin it's like brilliant and you can feel tense easily. And we do it on the Swiss all the time. That's how we align the drill holders on the Swiss. Um,
00:46:37
Speaker
And yeah, the first time I saw that it was on some manual laid that somebody this this old trick that some old timer taught me. And so I'm trying to keep it alive. And you know, because it's such a good trick. And drill bush drill bushings are like $8 on McMaster, whatever and the precision.
00:46:55
Speaker
It just has that satisfaction and that feel when you move it. I love test indicators. We've got that $50 million on that Sherman Schmidt stand I've been using recently. It's so great. I love test indicators. Co-ax indicators, I just don't love them. It's just setting them up. It's like one tile resolution. Yeah. When I saw that and to know that it feels different if you move it one tenth is also just like all.
00:47:22
Speaker
Yeah. And you literally, you have this feel and to be able to feel precision is one of my favorite things. So speaking of which, how, and now that you've had the Hermit Schmidt indicator, I was thinking about this last night. I was like, man, I still want to build one, one day, just as a dumb, fun project. But how is it? I can't understand. Have you used it? Family friendly podcasts. I'm not allowed to use those terms. It is on par with, I mean, it's just, it's just,
00:47:52
Speaker
Blaino. Nicely made, beautiful. Yes. I guess if I had to be hyper critical, I learned about what are those called dual pitch screws? Yeah. Inverse pitch screws where you can do a screw that has, again, coincidentally, Tom Lipton's teaching, you could make your own screw, differential screws. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:48:19
Speaker
Um, where like one can be eight 32 forward and the other side of the same screw will be eight 36 backward. And you end up with a, a four, wait, no, not four TPI, like the inverse, like a hundred pitch or something. Exactly. Without having to deal with the weakness of a screw. And, um, Adam, the machine has had an awesome video on this where he made like a stage with 3d printed parts and he had three differential screws that he could micro adjust the flatness of the station. I love it.
00:48:47
Speaker
So I guess my criticism of the Herman Schmidt would be the adjust, there's only one adjust, which is okay. And it's a nice knurled, probably one inch diameter thing. And I have no problem getting it to where I need it to on a 50 millionths, but still, I wish I wouldn't be upset if it was like four times, four times more. If you had a fine adjust.
00:49:11
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's how we're using it. Right. I've thought of a two-stage one to maybe have test two dials that has a rough adjust and then a fine adjust. You can really get in there. Then last thing I'll end on this, you follow Nicholas Hakko on Instagram. Absolutely. Four months ago or something, he posted this series of stories where he talked about his test indicator stand and he built a little adapter.
00:49:39
Speaker
to, so the indicator stand has this pivot point, right? And the closer you get your indicator to that pivot point, the closer you get your tip to that pivot point, the more resolution you have with every adjustment. And that's part of the reason is I want to build a test stand to have it like fully adjustable. So I can put the indicator tip, you know, 50 thou in front of the pivot point.
00:50:00
Speaker
That way, your your adjustment screw has four inches of leverage and you have like crazy micro adjustment from the same screw. Yeah, love that would be cool. That's that's all. Well, like I've gotten in the habit of every time I update or use the indicator, we have a master gauge block and we'll check it. And I always just tap the
00:50:24
Speaker
the Herman Schmidt or the former one just to like settle it out or see if you're saying wrong and all that and like the, you'll, you'll have to play with it. Yeah. Nice. Really nice. It's such a dumb thing, but I love precision and tight measuring. It's just, it's fun.
00:50:39
Speaker
Well, and so to that point, I took the old one and it's in the auction because it's like, this is not appropriate for us to have anymore. I'm not going to touch this anymore. Correct. It needs to be gone. Yeah, cool. All right, man. We'll see you in two days. Sounds good. Take care. Awesome. Have fun. Bye.