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Ep. 5: (Not) Staying on Topic
55 Plays1 month ago
Curt and Jamie start off talking about material prep and go rogue.
Jamie:
http://instagram.com/jspec_engineering
Curt:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Solo Machining
00:00:07
Speaker
Welcome to The Loan Machine's podcast, the podcast where it's just you, your tools and the work. No team, no backup. I'm Jamie from JSpec Engineering and every episode we're tackling the highs and lows of flying solo in the machining world. And I'm Kurt from Compounder Machine, here to chat about everything it takes to make it as a one-man show in the shop. From grinding and turning to the struggles of running a one-person operation, we're sharing the stories, the tricks and the challenges that come with going it alone.
00:00:33
Speaker
If you're out there in the shop grinding away by yourself or just thinking about taking a solo plunge, this shows for you. So throw in your ear protection and let's talk about life behind the machine. How are you doing today, Kurt? I'm doing good, man. How are you doing today?
Material Delays and Production Challenges
00:00:47
Speaker
Yeah, I'm doing well. So we're recording a bit early because we had a bit of a snafu with material. So it's evening yeah Sunday evening for me.
00:00:57
Speaker
And Sunday midday for me. So yeah, nice. And yeah, you can have a nice busy tomorrow. Yeah. So tomorrow morning, I've got to get the machine running some stuff that I haven't wanted to do since de December while I wait for material to be delivered. The material was meant to be here on Friday and my plan was to run it today. Like I had stuff on yesterday. My plan was to set up run or 500 parts today and I could get them to heat treat tomorrow. But yeah, now they got around tomorrow afternoon and evening. Yeah.
00:01:27
Speaker
Are those all laid parts or are they mill parts or are they kind of a combo of both? So we used to bandsaw the material to length and then it used to be mill. Now we run, we cut it to half meter lengths, run it through the ENCO to blank the parts off and chamfer the one side. And then they just go for a single up in the mill. So I used to do two ops in the middle to put a chamfer on the backside and then it was it was just the quickest way to do it. So now they go into the mill takes like seven minutes to do 10 parts. Hmm.
00:01:57
Speaker
That's cool. Nice, I suppose. Are those those long pipes I've seen your pop up in the stores once in a while? No, no, this is the so some different.
Producing and Pricing Torx Bits
00:02:05
Speaker
Yeah, this is Torx bit for tightening. It's for fences, actually. We've got a company locally. They do like it. It's a wire fence product. And they use a security Torx screw to screw it in. So we make Torx bits with what can only be described as aim assists. So you can't go skew into the into the screw. You have to come square on. It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of.
00:02:30
Speaker
but uh, make a dollar on each one. So I'm happy. That's, is that why they don't use like a standard Torx bit or is this it is' known as a standard? So it's a standard Torx bit, but it's extra length. So it's a 80 millimeters long. Let's use the Imperializer 80 millimeter millimeter, 3.1496 inches long.
00:02:50
Speaker
um I love that. Yeah, that's brilliant. It's got a banana it to make it go into inches. Perfect, perfect. um Yeah, so they're 80 millimeter long talks but so they're a bit longer than they could buy from China. um Gotcha. And they've the security ones. So they were buying them in and I was putting them in the manual, they've been just drilling a hole in the end so it could be a security talks but and then I quoted on manufacturing them and I was manufacturing them for like I think not even 50 US cents per talks, but the material would arrive and I would run off a thousand of them in two days. And I've crept the price up ever so slightly as I've gone along because I don't actually want to be making them, but it's easy money. Like tomorrow I'm going to run 500 of them. And now with the aim assist, it's just, I think it's
00:03:37
Speaker
I don't know if the Imperializer doing ran dollars yet. um It's like $2.20 per assembly, including material. So we'll run those off in like and a day. We can do 500 of those. Did you say you sent them out for hardening or are they just as is? Yeah. So the customer actually takes them for hardening. So I buy material. I manufacture 510 usually.
00:03:59
Speaker
Sorry, usually. I like to overproduce a bit, so when the heat treaters lose parts, it's not a problem. And then they go to heat treat, they get case hardened, and then they come back and I, on my little one ton arbor press, I put a one and a half meter cheetah bar, and I press the, it's literally an interference fit. I press, it's a 20 millimeter piece of bright mild steel with an eight and a half hole through it, and then we push that onto an eight mill hex.
00:04:24
Speaker
So don't two or so tons of force to put it together and then you'll I'll assemble 500 of them back in an hour. And then they just absolutely massacre them because they're ordering hundreds and hundreds from you. Well, yeah. but So I think I know that the previous end customer, so obviously the end users, the installer, then the customer before that is the reseller of the fence products. They were, if you bought 500 screws, you got a free driver kind of stuff. Oh, okay. So they were throwing them in as a value add.
00:04:56
Speaker
Okay. It's not just one customer just burning through Torx bits. Okay. i got the next yeah I mean, they, they've been quiet. I hadn't made them. And since I had got the LK, I hadn't made any. So just shy of a year or probably over a year, I hadn't made any. I was making a thousand a month for about two years. I remember always seeing those on your stories and the Alex said, I haven't seen it in a while. So yeah, I've i've probably made 30,000 of them at this point.
00:05:20
Speaker
Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, my poor band saw. It used to band saw these parts. Danage used to stand there. I put a pneumatic cylinder on the band saw, so it would automatically lift enough, and then I had a pneumatic cylinder clamping, so you could just feed it into the stop, and the saw would drop down. Feed into the stop, and it should cut 1,000 of them in an afternoon, and then I would run the production over like two days.
00:05:41
Speaker
Yeah, I saw you monitoring that bandsaw with all this like relatively, you know, like automating. I'm like, why is he doing this? said but That makes sense. If you're cutting like tens of thousands yeah right thousands of cuts at that point. Yeah, we did another thing where we made a T nuts effectively with an angled hole and we were buying 25 by five flat bar and cutting it like 10 or 12 millimeters long and also automated, but we did like five or 6,000 of those in a very short time span.
00:06:08
Speaker
Like we would cut 700 of them and I would change the bandsaw blade. The blade was still okay. It was just cutting slowly, put a new blade on it would go from it. A new blade was like 15 seconds per cut to like 40 seconds per cut by 700 points. Just cause the blade was getting blunt. So these things you start to find problems when your quantity start to go up. Well, mad respect for that little bandsaw. Like that's a lot of work you push the rest. So that when I bought that bandsaw, I bought it.
00:06:37
Speaker
What did I pay for? I think I paid like a hundred dollars for it. ah the motormo It was brand new, but the motor mounts had cracked because it was a cast iron motor mounts. And at the time I had a plasma cutter. So I'm like, cool. Good deal. Laser or plasma cutter motor mounts. Got it running. And then the whole frame of it was doing this every time the wheels rotated.
00:06:59
Speaker
because the wheels were out of round by like an eighth of an inch. So I put them, I held them on their bearing, on the bearing seat and I skimmed them to be true. And then that thing ran. I killed the brass gear in it so on one of the production jobs, all of a sudden bandsaw stops, open it up, whole lot of brass looking oil, pulled the gear up, there's no teeth left.
00:07:21
Speaker
So I phoned our local, uh, guys, odd and off. It's a cob afraid or princess order. Like one of those kinds of stores that resource from phoned their head off. So I'm like, Hey, have you got spares? They're like, Oh no, we got this thing. Sent my missus go bower now. So she went off and bought it. The bandsaw was running an hour later, but that thing is cut so many pieces of material. It's it's insane. I love that. Like I have one of those, I bought, I don't know, a couple of years ago, but it was like quarter band. Yeah. I bought one recently.
00:07:50
Speaker
Yeah, I just need to defer like just knocking up some titanium pieces. Cause I'm like, I'm tired of like throwing them in the lathe to part them or like
Maintenance and Workshop Organization
00:07:56
Speaker
using a hacksaw at the worst case. I'm like, I'll, I'll, this'll be just my inter I've used that thing for like a couple of years now. And just, it just goes through blades and I just keep putting new blades on it and smiles every day. It just keeps cutting. All right. Now I bought three, I bought a battery operated one. Yeah, I know they, they, well, those, but I think, yeah, mine was about $350. I bought it in like July last year. I bought a battery powered one.
00:08:20
Speaker
because okay yeah yeah the guys deliver material into my driveway. But now to use the bandsaw, I've got to wheel it out and around, pick up a six meter length of material and chop it. It's like, no. So I bought a port of band in the driveway, mark a meter, chop it, mark another meter, chop it, that I can break the material down in the driveway as I need it. so And that job that's just me being lazy, but I've always wanted one. Like I've wanted one of those for the last probably decade and they are not available yet.
00:08:50
Speaker
Like you don't find them. It's like a sawzall. You don't find a sawzall, yeah. Oh, really? No, they're not a thing in South Africa. Like you will not find one readily. My one friend has one. They were doing a, it was a really big, I mean like steel construction job. Angle grinder trying to cut his mate comes over with the sawzall, zips through the corners. He's like, this is unlocked to cheat mode. But yeah no one has no one has them here. They really not super common.
00:09:20
Speaker
Wow, you can get them at like 7-11 up here. They're everywhere. I bet you I'll find one on the side of the road walking around tonight. Like everybody has one and they're all just yeah clapped out, but they last for a billion years because they're just demolishing tools.
00:09:31
Speaker
No, they are really, really sweet tools. are We don't get them. I actually went so, because the material didn't arrive, I was like, okay, I am still going to do something productive today. So I went and bought a whole lot of storage, like tote things. So I could put all of my dead tree fondling stuff into one and my welding stuff into another. Cause I don't generally play with dead trees and I'm not a fabrication shop. And like my welder sits.
00:09:57
Speaker
in the way with my TIG torch in the way, my helmets in the way. So I bought a box, threw it all in the box. It's not under the workbench out of the way. Like it's there if I need it, so but it's not in my way because I'm trying, I'm trying to clean the workshop up. It's not an easy task.
00:10:13
Speaker
No, I have a bunch of boxes behind me. That's the same thing I do. I fill it with stuff. I'm like, I'm not going to use jack stands for a vehicle. Let's put them in there. I hate visual clutter. So if I move it out of my way, I'm like, oh, I can think so much better. Yeah. Well, I'm trying now to get a handle on organizing the workshop. It's not easy. Last year, this time, I had two skips delivered. Well, I had one delivered, filled it, and had another one delivered. And I just turfed stuff. I had stuff in there. My father-in-law's been dead for 15 years. I'm turfing his shit. I'm like, I don't need it.
00:10:43
Speaker
like old tins of paint don't need it i kept one or two that were relevant everything else out like now my brother-in-law his jack is here i'm like hey brooke i'm fetch this thing fetch it all it's going on the side of the road like i don't want it because it's taking up valuable real estate so Oh yeah. There's tons of stuff like that. That's one of my favorite things to do. Like when we moved into this place, we, same thing. We rented a big dumpster park in the garage and it's amazing the amount of trash we just had. It's like, okay, some of this, we can give away some of this. We can donate whatever yeah most of it's just like, how did we have this? Like, why are we storing this? We don't need this. And it's just, I stayed in a 50 square meter flat. We filled up like your, the wheelie bins. We filled up like eight of them when we moved out of there.
00:11:25
Speaker
Oh wow. It was a 50 square meter flat. Okay, I built a CNC machine in there, but not the point. um No, totally. no like I mean, I've got stuff sitting downstairs. I've got a jewelers lathe that is a family heirloom that was handed down to me by my uncle when he died. It's like, I have no use for it, but I'm not going to get rid of it.
00:11:42
Speaker
I've got a box of tools and things of my dad's dead tree fondling stuff. I used one of the chisels the other day Danica was doing book binding. So I was helping her just like, yeah, have a chisel. I'm never ever going to use it as a wood chisel. I actually went to my neighbor across the road, got him to sharpen it to give it a decent edge. Cause he does math making. He was on like on a Sunday. So I'm like, Hey, just put an edge on this for me. Cause I'm really not equipped to do so. I don't like, I've got all that stuff that just, it doesn't need to be in the workspace.
00:12:11
Speaker
No, I know we briefly briefly talked about a last week is my like my CNC router. It sat up here for a year and I just use it as a table. And now it's downstairs and kind of a big sandblasting room, but it's like, I don't have the heart to like throw it out. Cause it like, it works really well if I need it, but I'm not, I'm not going to use it. So it's just, boom good what do I do with this? That's what I did last year. I had the machine from before the Slowio. The other one I built in my flat, the little router. And I mean, that thing made a couple thousand pieces of aluminum. Like I was getting an aluminum extrusion in, dropping a six millimeter end mill into it at like three meters a minute. it was It was absolutely silly the stuff I was doing on there, but it was no longer a necessary part of my workflow once the LK arrived. And it sat there and sat there and
00:12:59
Speaker
the customer that I was doing the alley work for are actually the last batch I did on the LK. It was just easier. And then I said to my mate, Roger, I'm like, Hey, come fetch, pay me when you've got money. Just come take it away. Pay me what you think it's worth and give me money when, when you have spare money. Like I just need it not in my space right now. So he's now got it. He's got one of those little Roland routers, which he's done yeah amazing work on that wet noodle. Like That little router of mine was a wet noodle. This thing is like, yeah, I don't even know. It's like silly string, his little router. That thing is, it's stupid, but he's done some amazing stuff with it being as, as noodly as it is.
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah. Well, like even that router, that router is a, it's a moment's router. If anybody's curious, you can look it up. They sell plans. It's actually a stout little router for its design. And I built a bunch of like, I did a brass engraving on a ton of my pens at the start, but I think the last thing I did with it is I had a pen with a click cap and I just use it to like click a cap on and off a pen, like as an emotion system. And I click, I remember that a time. Yeah.
00:14:01
Speaker
That's the last thing it ever did. And or sorry, it did machine a heat sink for the, for the big lathe, but like, I just don't use it. I'm like, if I'm going to use it, I'm just going to run it one, one of the mills. Like, and I don't do any woodworking. So I'm like, ah, it's just taking up space. Yep.
00:14:14
Speaker
No, that's ah this little router of mine was used for cross drilling holes on those tubes that I made, what I make. The previous version had pop rivets. So I was using it with a fourth axis to put six holes in it. And it did that on like a few thousand pots, but then I changed the design and we started swaging them together. So all of a sudden the machine became redundant and just eating up space that can be used for something else. Like, yeah, it's sad to see it go, but it's going to a better place.
00:14:43
Speaker
which is going to be appreciated because like yeah running stuff, I don't even run the slow because it's just easier to get good parts off of the LK. Yeah. I know. I feel that's what's going to happen with my little grizzly just sitting here. It's like, okay, I probably not going to run a ton on it, especially once I get the fourth axis running on this aisle here. I'm like, I don't, it's not going to have a ton right now. It's only job is fourth axis work, but like, and a few more weeks, I don't think it's going to do that. I mean, I'll probably just keep it here just as a backup, like you said, but.
00:15:10
Speaker
Yeah. Even for prototyping, I'm like, you know what? I thought I was going to use it for prototyping, but I think I'm just going to go prototyping on the big machine because it's just so much faster and everything is tooled up for it. And like, yeah, just convenient plus tool change. No, that's life changing. Tool change is totally life changing. Yeah. I did a job. I did a tough little job. I didn't want to put it in the, uh, in the LK because it's resonant paper. Um,
00:15:35
Speaker
So I ended up running that in the and the slow yard. It did a friggin' bang up job, but I had to manually change to a drill bit, and that was a bit unpleasant. I actually need to rerun the pot. I lost it. I was washing the pot. I washed it, was sanding it with a sanding sponge, and it shot out of my hand and is gone into the ether.
00:15:55
Speaker
I've pulled tables out. I've cleaned out under tables. I cannot find the spot. So I've got to chop another piece of machine, another one at some point for the guy. Like they don't need it right now. They'll only need it in like three or four weeks because they're waiting on the lens to come in from England for the assembly. So I'm like, okay yeah, no, no rush. Oh yes. I got a phone call regarding those camera pots that I did.
00:16:19
Speaker
Oh, no, no, no, a good phone call. Oh, good phone call? Okay, good. No, the guy's like, this is amazing. Like, look, the chamfer, it goes up to the edge. I'm like, yes, that's how it was modeled. And if it was modeled, stupidly, I think I prefer, I'm like, hey, Rog, fix it. So, no, they were, they are blown away by the machining on that. I'm like, eh, it's so-so. Could have been a bit better, but I wasn't gonna make three of everything to dial it in perfectly. Once the whole assembly is tested, there's another three of them in the works.
00:16:50
Speaker
ah do You have three more to make for that. You have three more full sets of everything to make once they ah have assembled the first one and tested it. Oh, nice. Well, that's awesome that they're happy with it because that looked like a pretty so pretty decent job.
00:17:03
Speaker
It was lots of fun, like probably going to put the price up just a little bit. um But now again, running three of them as opposed to running one of them, all the programming is done. like i'm I'm pushing very hard for a design freeze. Unless there's something catastrophically wrong, they mustn't change that model at all. Because it's all programmed and ready to go. Yeah, the same price. Don't mess with it.
00:17:25
Speaker
So this is where it works out, yeah. My friend phoned me to just make sure our models tired. He's like, what did you change? Because I tweaked a few things um where you had like missed holes, put the wrong size, things like that. um Because I'm looking at how it's being assembled and making sure if all the bits are going to go together, just giving that second set of R's. And he phoned me to, I was actually about to go into a meeting when he phoned me just to check what I had changed, that everything between our two sets of models all tired up properly.
00:17:56
Speaker
Yeah, but thoughts that's ah that's the hot tip kids, design for manufacturing.
Product Design and Manufacturing Efficiency
00:18:00
Speaker
It's a big, it's an important thing. Or speak to somebody who can help you design. like I had a yeah discussion with Roger. He's designing these things. He's an industrial designer. And we had a chat a while ago. I'm like, okay, anything you send me, 3.2 corner radius.
00:18:15
Speaker
Cause then I can drop in with a six millimeter cutter or 2.1. I can drop in with a four millimeter cutter. Don't come with some arbitrary little stupid size. I mean, I had a job that had half millimeter fillets on things. So now I've got to run a one millimeter ball nose, just hit your stupid little fillets. So I ended up having to surface the whole parts and there were no blend lines.
00:18:36
Speaker
Oh yeah, and a cat in CAD software, the like fill it all button should have, you should have to pay like a thousand dollars every time you click that. It's the worst button that exists. Have you seen the Adam Demuth video?
00:18:47
Speaker
yeah calling it the most expensive button in CAD, and it is. A hundred percent, it yeah, absolutely, yeah. No, I had, love so um my friend Dave, he designs drones for a living, well, kind of. he's He built out a really, really good craft, and then he's also a one man, he was a one-man show, ran into the situation, he couldn't sell the craft because no one would buy it because it was a one-man show, and he couldn't grow because he couldn't sell the craft because he was a one-man show.
00:19:13
Speaker
So he ended up scrapping it. Yeah. I'm going and getting a job as an engineer. Um, and now he's building the version two and he sent me files. And I said to him like, you do not, I don't have a five axis, right? Yes. Um, he's, uh, he's like, what do you mean? I'm like, dude, this part requires seven operations simplify. Yeah.
00:19:32
Speaker
Like take your done fillets out of this thing. like A stress riser on that is not gonna cause a break. We know we're near the material limits, just put a flipping square corner. And then he changed his design, optimized for manufacturing, but also he knows. He knows what what I want, if he wants me to manufacture it. Like he's designing a heat sink, everything is designed to be run with a three millimeter cutter. Because he knows I can run that and if he goes to allowing me to run a four mill cutter, price drops because I can run it nearly twice as fast.
00:20:00
Speaker
exactly No, yeah rigidity is everything. and he He understands that at least. look I've had some guys, like that's the way it's drawn, that's the way it must be. I'm like, here's your price, friend. right Exactly. Okay, you're going to pay for it then. That seems super common. I had a customer come and drop a part off. it's a a pattern for sand casting for a foundry cast wheel. So this is the the master. They want their logo engraved. So they send the drawing through. I've looked at my capability. This thing's got a 0.4 radius. It's getting a 0.5 ball nose in there because that's what I have in my drawer.
00:20:40
Speaker
No, no, that'll be fine. Then I'm like, listen, where they want this, there's a bolt. So I took a picture sensor and said, please find out. This is super urgent. Two days later, I get a new drawing. Now now it's a half millimeter deep deboss. So drop the profile down. So I have a look and 0.7 clearance between letters.
00:21:02
Speaker
um I don't have a .7 enamel. That's a stupid bloody size. So check I modified it for them and made it sort of one mil enamel wood fit. And then I let it run and went and went up the road and had a couple beers while my machine ran for an hour. Came back, rotated the pot, probed it, let it run while I went to bed. Because I mean, it it went from being a five minute job to being a two hour job. It was an hour per little pocket. Like ah can I can only go so fast with a one millimeter enamel.
00:21:30
Speaker
and I had to stick it out an inch from the collets anyway, because I had to clear into the pocket. Like, yeah, but that oaks gonna get the bull and he'll just pass it on so he doesn't really care. Like, if he has a problem, then yeah. I said to him when he was here. Sorry. Good. Not good. Okay, so he was here dropping the thing off and I'm like, no, no, my policy this year is he has the price, there's the gate, pick one.
00:21:56
Speaker
Like that is it. There's no negotiation. You either want the work or you don't. The work comes with a certain quality usually, and that's what you're paying for. You're not necessarily paying for for the cheapest part. Because hes he's got himself in a bit of trouble where he's taking on super low margin work, super weird stuff, and it's just it's eating up all of his time. So he's not able to actually get to the the work he's meant to be getting to, and his staff,
00:22:26
Speaker
They knock off at 4.30, like they don't own the business. 4.30, they leave. And if he's not there to do the higher level stuff, nothing gets done. No. If he's not there to chase them, then nothing gets done.
Focusing on Profitable Work
00:22:41
Speaker
So yeah, I told him about that. I'm like, you need to just, you need to say no. Like that that is the most powerful thing you can do is say no to the dumb stuff. Oh, absolutely. And also say no to the smart stuff.
00:22:53
Speaker
mean Well, and I think that's the one thing that pushed me like so hard to like want to just like build my own products. Because the only person that I have to say no to is me. And most of the time, it's like, should I do that? And then, I mean, I'm lucky in a world that I can live where it's ah it's a luxury good. So like if i want to if I want to take a ball and mill and chamfer something, and it takes 30 times longer than just running a chamfer mill, people are like, yeah, it looks pretty. like I'll pay for pretty. It's like, OK, cool.
00:23:18
Speaker
But yeah, like the other, the job shop world, I mean, even my, my old job, I, we did a bunch of that stuff too. And it's like, well, I could, I could, you know, do a nice roughing cut on this and nice finishing cut and make you a beautiful part. And it's like, it's going into a, you know, blank industrial machine. It's like, we don't care. Just make it so it's like, Oh, okay. ma I get that too. Yeah. Make it so it fits. We don't care what it looks like. Precisely. Yeah. Yeah. No, I do. I do a lot of that where it's, if it's the right size, we don't care what it really looks like. I like to make nice finishes, but.
00:23:43
Speaker
If the customer doesn't require it, don't do it. Like it's just putting extra time and money in that doesn't need to be put in. Cause that young, I do a bunch of stuff. And I was like, Oh, it's so pretty. It's a rivet. I'm like, yeah, something's, something's rotating on it. I want it to be smooth. Cause if it's not smooth, it's going to wear you other parts out, but they like, I look at some of the work. These guys turn out shorts on size, but I can literally see the valleys because they feeding at like point two to get a, to get a ah surface finish. me Hang on, point two. Imperializer, they're going at 80 thou per rev. I'm sorry, eight thou, eight thou chunking away material pretty quick. Yeah. yeah they're They're not interested in getting a super smooth surface finish. I'm like, I want it to be nice and pretty and shiny. Yeah. Well, that was the fun thing about like all my DMs when I was posting pictures of like how I want to machine my own torques. And I think they're T.
00:24:38
Speaker
T8, I think. for Fairly tiny torques and, or maybe T6, I remember. um Anyways, so oh gee tons of people, like all the machinists are like,
Aesthetic vs Functional Machining
00:24:46
Speaker
broach it. Just like, why are you machining that broach it? And everybody in like the other community, like the high end knife community, whenever they're like, oh yeah, of course, use ball mills, make it all pretty. Because like, people will look at it under a microscope and be like, oh cool, it's got neat patterns on the bottom where it's like, yeah, if you're making that for whatever, a plastic electronics case, people are like, I don't care, broach it, make me screws. but like Yeah. But you want it to be pretty. Also, you could get really, really into it and align all your threads. So all your hexes all get dressed when you tighten them. Or you've only got one other thing. But yeah. Oh yeah. but That's what it's going to do. Like, that's what I want. I like, I mean, a hex is pretty good. You got six chances to make it, make it line up. But exactly. Why not? Like that's the dumb stuff I love doing. It's like, okay, let's clock this. Like, why not?
00:25:28
Speaker
I get super frustrated looking at things out in the wild and screws aren't clocked. I'm like, guys, this isn't that much more effort and it's going to look like 20 times better. Like even on high end furniture, you see the stuff, you're like, guys, why aren't the screws clocked? Like it just come on.
00:25:43
Speaker
not the as a studly, studly tool case, tool chest, that big woodworking guy. I think it was an organ organist, organ piano, organ, organ tuner. I don't know. He built one of those, this absolutely beautiful tool chest and same thing. It's all flat heads, which that's a different story, but they're all clocked. They're all like yeah perfectly in line. Like, Oh, that pleases me. Or going to someone's house and I see all their like their light switch screws are clocked. It's like, ha ha someone cared when they did this.
00:26:08
Speaker
oh yeah my My dad was a boat builder and you dressed all your, screw they called it dressing, you dress all your screws and they all face the same direction because right it looks proper. Like that little bit of extra effort, just it looks the way, I don't know, I'm pedancing about really dumb stuff like that.
00:26:27
Speaker
Uh, a hundred, same man. It's a hundred percent and it's wood. Like you can, you can clock a screw in wood. Pretty exactly. Yeah. You're not going to break it off. Yeah. right Even if you loosen it, just wait till the seasons change and the wood playing with wood is not a fun experience. That stuff's all over the show.
00:26:47
Speaker
If it wasn't so dusty, I would, I'd be more into it, but I just, I, I finally got this place like dust free. And now it's like, anytime I have to come in here and like cut something with wood, I'm like, Oh, I'll just do it outside. Like it's cold outside. I'll do it outside. I just don't want dust in here.
00:26:59
Speaker
Yeah, I run into big issues with leaves in my workshop because I still haven't, because it's not cold. I don't need to put a little like seal on the bottom of my door or on the top of my door. So as soon as we get a windy patch, it just blows straight under the door, right under the machine i and then sweeping and vacuuming it out. it's yeah It's one of the frustrations I have. But the dust up in Joburg is something else. Like where I used to, when I moved up here, I'd wipe the top of the toilet of the system.
00:27:27
Speaker
You would turn around, walk out the room, walk back in and it's covered in dust. Cause we've got all the old mind dumps here. So there's a hell of a lot of dust in there. Like everything is perpetually covered in dust. Do you guys, do you get like a ton of rain there or is it like fairly dry or? Um, it's been a dry year. We had like two weeks where it just rained constantly. Um, this is our rainy season. Now we should be getting rain like every afternoon, but okay.
00:27:57
Speaker
the last the last week or so it hasn't rained. My equipment system's looking a bit low. I've drained it. I opened the valve and then something got stuck in the main drain valve. So I ended up dumping out like half the water by accident. Um, and now I'm waiting for it to rain. It fills up in like 20 minutes of drains, but we just haven't had any rain, but generally, uh, generally summer's wet. Yeah. Winter is so dry. Like our grass just it's Brown. You have a dirt patch, like straight up just a dirt patch. And then as soon as we get our first rain, it's green again.
00:28:28
Speaker
Oh, okay. I know I saw some pictures of your, like, I'm assuming backyard when I'm like, Oh, that's way more lush than I thought it would be. Like, i thought Oh yeah. When I was sitting in the jungle. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I bought and serviced and pitch up for a month. So it got a little overgrown and I don't, I literally don't have a lawnmower cause I pay someone to mow my lawn because Africa.
00:28:45
Speaker
um sure And then, yeah, they took a month off. So it got, some of the stuff was like two foot high. It was silly. It took them like four hours. Normally they're in an idea in about 40 minutes, two and a half hours to mow the lawn. They'd push the mower like a foot forward, back up so it could get revs up again, then push it back up so it could get revs. It was great. I was having the best time watching them. I'm like, this is what you get for taking a month off.
00:29:11
Speaker
No, cause you're going to go attack. So you got to tackle like a big scythe or something. Yeah. Jeez. No. And then their lawn mower broke. They were here today. They normally come on Thursdays, but jeff for some reason they came on a Sunday because they're trying to catch up. Um, and then their lawn mower broke and the guy's got a weed whacker in the middle of my lawn. I'm like, dude, just leave it for next week. When your mower is working, please don't stuff my grass up because they'll mow it to the dirt. And then it's yeah struggling for another year.
00:29:37
Speaker
So weird. I'm looking at my window. I got like two feet of snow and you have two feet of grass. Just like, yeah, it's cool. It's wild. I can't, I don't understand how you guys live where it's that cold. I don't either, man. I have the full ton me to move wherever I want. I don't know why I stay here. It keeps the big snakes away. Yeah, fair enough. We don't actually have, yeah, I've had one or two encounters, but nothing in black. I think I saw a house snake in the yard two or three years ago, not the local brown house snake.
Wildlife Encounters and Workshop Life
00:30:04
Speaker
And then I have seen other than that, I've seen one snake in the what's it now in the 13 years I've been in Johannesburg.
00:30:12
Speaker
And that was when I was flying a plane out in the field on a Sunday morning and lost orientation and had an aggressive landing and was running, yeah, running through the field to go find my plane. And and all of a sudden a rung course, which is, uh, kind of like a Cobra type efforts, but yeah this thing was long, like a meter and a half, two weeks long.
00:30:35
Speaker
I went into the air and ran like a cartoon character in the air, hit the ground at full sprints and ran away to fetch my airplane and came back along the road. Like, yeah, that's the only encounter I've really had with the wildlife here. It's pretty, pretty tame. Although one of the guys he used to fly was saying he was driving down the road, thought he saw a pole on the side of the road. So he stopped, reversed to go pick up the this pole. It wasn't a pole, it was a snake. ah And in that same ah field where we used to where we used to fly.
00:31:05
Speaker
Well, I think that's the thing that wrote both of you and me. probably Well, maybe not you, but I can know for me for sure. Rope me into machining was RC like planes, squads, all that stuff. Like I got, that's what really started to sink me into machining. It's just like, okay, I broke this. Now I want to make a new one. It's like, well, I could make a new one if I had a blank. And then it seems like anywhere they solve that hobby. Yeah. So i'll see explorer here's the reason our program CNC machines, because I wanted to cut a truck up to frame.
00:31:30
Speaker
All right on. Yeah. So I built, I started with a, with tricopters and then tricopters and model planes and boats, and then moved on to quad copters and then drone racing. When it became a thing in the beginning, I was cutting my own frames. My mate Dave ran Friday FPV was having, he was making his frames. He was making his carbon, making the frames. And then he started getting stuff cut in China because he just couldn't compete on price. But I mean, his drone, you could drive over it with a car.
00:31:59
Speaker
Like over the main, the main yeah really clever design. i And he's got pictures of them stuck into trees. We're out to racing and literally pegged it into a tree. You go break it out the tree and carry on flying. Wow. no Yeah. His car's got a few dings from guys trying to fly through his windows. Like have the two windows open and a guys trying to fly through.
00:32:19
Speaker
That world has been just like the 3D printing world. It's just how fast it advanced, like going from, same thing, tricopters where you were just using like rate gyros and mixing them with like swash mixing and now like to just crazy like, yeah you know. I remember when the KK2 came out, that thing was awesome. I mean, my mate still got his drone that's got a KK2 on it. I built him a drone in like 2014. It's with them in England now. I think he flew it like, he's flown it like four times since.
00:32:45
Speaker
um ah yeah and then the nays came out and yeah yeah it evolved so quickly and I couldn't I literally couldn't afford to keep up ah with the competition stuff guys were spending like a thousand two thousand dollars a month buying the latest everything so they could be competitive And then I dropped out, I got back into it, but then the guys I was flying with were being irresponsible. They were diving buildings and things like that. And I'm like, dude, I wouldn't trust you to hover above me. Never want to dive a building and trust that your drone would pull out at the bottom. Like, come on.
00:33:17
Speaker
Yeah, I know I was the same way. I got up to like a, I have a nays 32 in one of my quads and I got some fat shark goggles and I'm like, you know what? I'm happier. I go to the yeah field beside my house. I buzz the trees around just, you know, kind of freestyle a little bit there. That's all I want to do. I've got, I mean, competing. I've still, I've still got my three inch quad. That's the only one that's still running and I rip around the yard.
00:33:37
Speaker
once every like two years. I'll go get my remote. My neighbor's kids got my remote. It's still got it all linked up and then I'll turn it on and I'll go buzz their palm tree and zoom around a bit for two minutes and then land. ah But yeah, that's, but yeah, on that that note, we had a robot tournament yesterday.
00:33:56
Speaker
Oh, and I say your ant weights? Yes. Fairy weights. So yeah, it depends where you, yeah. US ant weights is one pound. Everywhere else ant weights is 150 grams. So technically, it is an ant weights class. Yeah, I don't know. It's really small. Yeah. So we had our non-destructive and our destructive tournament run. And I ran my winning robot, Groper, in the non-destructive. And I ran Froggo in the destructive. And Froggo got dismantled.
00:34:26
Speaker
titanium armor ripped off the back, motor mount shattered. Like it was who ever got the first good hit was gonna win the match. We both knew it going in and I got unlucky. My weapon was unbalanced and I just didn't have enough control. So I ended up tapping out and then in the non-destructive, I just walked through the tournaments again. I was actually a bit mean to a kid. So the one the one kid, he hasn't touched his robots since October last year, I think.
00:34:54
Speaker
ah and came to the tournament and walked through with two robots. He absolutely destroyed everyone. And then he ran into me with his one robot and I fought him in December um with this robot and it was a bit touch and go. So I was just a total dick. I smothered him the whole fight. The match started. I was just on him and just smothered him until I could get a grip and throw him. And then he, that was in the semi-finals. He had already got into the finals with his other robots. So I got to fight him again.
00:35:24
Speaker
And when I fought him again, same story, just put the pressure on until he made a driving mistake. And then he went, he drove himself into the pits so that I could win. It was quite pass nice. Nice. Growing man was taking a child weep. A hundred percent. we So that that is actually something Dannick and I were discussing this. The whole thing with the league is, oh, you're a child. You win because you're good, not because you're a child. And that is something yeah totally yeah we focused on that in the league. It's you don't win just because you're a child and you're attending. You either be good or you don't win. And yeah, like I want to retire this robot because it's just, it's overpowered.
00:35:59
Speaker
it's a pointoff I mean, that's respectful. I would say like if you downplay yourself, you what do you you're solving no issues here. Exactly. yeah And i agree like after the match, handshake, well done. That was a good fight. You had me going through it. And that's what it is. It's a fair fight every fight. Absolutely.
00:36:16
Speaker
and beyond the the come on the Like, yeah, the guys are super helpful with everybody. We had a couple of new guys join. But yeah, that that also, the machining stuff. ah My new robot, after Froggo got destroyed, my new robot's gonna have a bullet alley core.
00:36:33
Speaker
Yeah, I'm so staying far away from battle robots, because that's the thing. Once you have all the tools, you're like, OK, I got lays. I got mills. like I can build any part I would want. I have knowledge in RC. like That's all I want to do, is build giant robots. And I'm like, you know what? I got to pick my hobbies. I yeah i just end up turning them into businesses. So the thing is, like we started this when we weren't super busy.
00:36:55
Speaker
And since we started the league, we've gotten a hell of a lot busier. So like, generally speaking, I will, we've got, if we have a tournament on Saturday from about Thursday afternoon, like I'll start looking at what I'm going to do for the tournament, either put what I have on charge or build an entirely new robot on the Friday. So I'll design it on Thursday night, build it Friday, compete Saturday. But yeah, a lot of the guys work on their robots for weeks and then come and finish building them at the tournament. I was soldering guys, robots together for them at the tournament.
00:37:25
Speaker
Yeah. Too many interesting, too many interesting things in the world. It's just like between electronics and robots and telescopes. Well, that's, yeah, I have way too many hobbies. Same, man. Same. It's a bit of a problem, but like there's very few where I can actually go and switch my brain off. And one of them is fishing. So when I get a chance, I go fishing because then it's, I'm focusing on fishing. I'm not focusing on anything else. Yeah. When I think that's anybody.
00:37:51
Speaker
Anybody that runs kind of their own their own jig, they're the same thing. they get You get so passionate and involved in it, just you can't turn it off. like yeah i can't turn I can't turn my machining brain off. like There's very little at few activities where I'm like, oh, I'm not thinking about, I bet you I could do that, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like hard to find them.
00:38:07
Speaker
yeah no hundred percent If you can find a hobby that does that, that's critical because it's it's a way to just turn the brain off. Because I mean my brain, it doesn't turn off. I'm forever thinking about how I can optimize this, how I can optimize that. What about trying this? There's always something you're thinking about.
00:38:24
Speaker
Totally. yeah Yeah. I know last summer I got into ah skateboarding again, because like when I was little, I never learned how to do a kickflip. And I'm like, you know what? I'm going to learn how to do a kickflip. And that's like the one thing where I'm like, if I'm skateboarding, like I can't think of anything else, because you're like, to me, it's a lot of focus for me anyways. and yeah But yeah, it's other than that, it's like everything else is just like, you're always a little pitcher and pitcher in your brain of thinking of something else. You're just like. Yeah, even watching TV, you're thinking about how you can make something better, something easier.
00:38:50
Speaker
Uh, yeah, forever. I got, yeah, the, the whole robot in my CNC machine plan has changed a little bit. Oh yeah. You're like, uh, your part material loader. Yep. I was going to build a score on and then I don't know. They're really sweet, but then it dawned on me. Why don't I just make an X, Y gantry with a gripper that pivots. So I just grip station, pivot, pivot away, drop down, come over, pivot to where I need to put it in the chuck, put it in the chuck and then pivots it back in. So three axis machines, super easy. Well, relatively easy to build.
00:39:25
Speaker
So that's the new thing. I'm assuming you've seen like Haas's application for their their new material loader or vice loader or whatever it is. Yeah, I have seen it. I'm not the biggest fan of it. I want mine to be in the machine, like in the enclosure of the machine. Obviously, I'll set it off. I've got so much wasted space in my enclosure, I may as well use it. Like I'll take the door off and put the robot in so I can load through where the door was and then have a separate cover.
00:39:53
Speaker
that the robot literally drops down below and then loads it onto my vase. That way I'm not too worried about our chip management and stuff. if you if you haven't ah If you haven't checked it out, um I think it's Warner Barry on YouTube. ah Barry bought, he built like a big Delta printer and back in the day, but he has a beautiful Tormach. He's a beautiful basement workshop. He had a Tormach and a I think it's a, oh, who makes the arm? um It's this it's just an open source arm made by another YouTuber. Fantastic design.
00:40:26
Speaker
He has the AR-3 or 4 or something. Yeah, yeah yeah the AR-3. Anyways, he built one of these and has it on like a little gantry that shifts back and forth. and I guess he was machining these Delrin parts, but like he has videos of it picking up these parts off like a stack and putting it in the machine, the door closing on the tormach, and then like a machine in this part. It's like, oh, that is so pretty.
00:40:44
Speaker
Yeah, the issue there is like you've got to be doing such high quantity to justify that. Absolutely, so yeah. Like I went, I was i to go drop off tubes this week. So actually, wait, hang on, before we google go into stories, let's get back on topic. yeah So, okay, we're going to go into what we've been up to this last week. so So I'll start us off because I was starting a story, but I figured let's get us on topic. I went to go deliver those tubes I was making that Danica ran for me on Monday.
00:41:13
Speaker
Got those all assembled, and I want to build a power pack for that, but that's a story for another day. ah Went to deliver and spoke to the guys about all the other projects that we've got on the go, because I'm busy with a design project with them for a container tracking unit. And then we busy, that is now in front of the sensor that they want to build, and I'm making the sensor housings. So they're like, nah, that'll only be end of February, maybe beginning of March.
00:41:40
Speaker
And then they are releasing their one product, but they want to install 100 units before the product release. So that when they go try to sell it, and the customer says, oh, who's running this? They can say, oh, no, there's 100 units here. Or there's 50 units there and 50 units there. People are are using it. It's being tested, kind of story. So I had another look at my fixturing for that. And turns out I can fit in. So I had a little bit of the parts moving, because I had a single uni-force clamp with an M4 bolt.
00:42:08
Speaker
And it just, it wasn't quite enough holding force. So when our pockets at the one side, the pot tilted. And I noticed that when I was tumbling them and it doesn't matter for the application, but I want it to be right. It turns out Mardi Barts sell things in packs of eight. I need 10. So I don't have enough. Of course. I've got an, yeah, I can spend another a hundred dollars on another pack of Mardi Barts just so that I have in, I can get another two of the things. But yeah, luckily my fixture that runs, uh,
00:42:38
Speaker
It runs 10 parts at a time. I can just pocket out and put more holes and I can run two clamps on each one. So that is at least yeah and 400 parts, it's yeah, i I'll just run it. It's going to take me two hours to run off all the parts.
00:42:53
Speaker
So you can just use your existing fixture, but just modify it a little bit to work. Okay. That's nice. Yeah. So I'll tweak the design and then I bought a, I bought a tool this evening. Actually, I sent off a RFQ to one of the local guys got a, got a quote back at like seven o'clock on a Sunday night.
00:43:09
Speaker
So I paid them and it'll but'll arrive tomorrow afternoon. I ordered a VCGT holder, so a neutral holder, so I can reach everywhere I need on the parts. And I want to try and do it in two passes, not like 17 passes, because I need to cut cycle time on these, like something silly. They're taking, I think, four minutes apart. They need to be down in the one to one and a half minute area if I plan on being cost effective on them. like Especially if we need to make a thousand of them. I can't have it taking multiple minutes per pot for a pot that's going to get tumbled. So I'm trying to just dial in my process. And then during the week I went and picked up 800 pots from powder coating and had a chat to them because I got a quote to anodize these pots and the guys wanted to charge me just under a dollar racking fee per pot.
00:43:59
Speaker
and they just straight up isn't there isn't budget for it. So I spoke to the powder coaters and they were like, no, no, they build it in. So I'm waiting for a quote, I should get it tomorrow. And I was like, no, no, I'll supply racking. That way right the parts can screw on our control way all the where all the racking marks are.
00:44:16
Speaker
And I go, no, that's fine. I'm like, cool. I'll supply a hundred racks for my hundred assemblies for now. And then it will come back black, powder coated, and I'll throw it in the laser and laser off the powder coat to put all their branding on. Because then the guy, one of, yeah, one of their concerns was the unit's black, then it's got the silver thing.
00:44:37
Speaker
Aesthetically, it doesn't really match. So they're asking what options they've got. So I was like, no, no, we can probably powder coat them and, and do it cost effectively. Cause I think we're going to be in for like 50 us cents to powder coat these three pots. I can't see it being super expensive. Are you lasering it with your CO2 or with your little fiber there? I'll do it with the fiber. It's way faster.
00:44:59
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I tried to fiber laser the keys for the Imperializer, but I got bored and annoyed. So I just printed them on paper and put them under the caps. Oh, nice. like i was I was trying to dial it in, but the ABS was melting and then it was skew. And I was like, you know what? Let me just print this. These things have clear caps. Cut them out and cap them.
00:45:18
Speaker
nice But yeah, what did you get up to this week? Oh, other than the fancy green, that green looks amazing. Oh, thank you, man. Thank you. Yeah. Green is always a highly, highly requested. Tons of people request it. No one does titanium in green because it'll make you want to walk off a bridge. It's just so sensitive to absolutely, like, and I'm a fairly like,
00:45:37
Speaker
Um, particularly, is that where that's polite? I'm very particular person when it comes to things. And like, I am crazy particular about cleaning and prep for titanium anodizing. Cause that's the only thing that makes difference. I mean, pretty much for any kind of finishing, like prep work is the key work. And, uh, yeah, to get, to get titanium clean enough to get a, like a clean repeatable green has just been a.
00:45:57
Speaker
the bane of my existence. Anyways, finally nailed it. So I'm super happy about that. um So I was able to punch of those in the batch, which will be coming out. Actually, it might be, you depends how fast we upload this episode, but it'll probably be, ah it's Wednesday this week um is when the batch is dropping. So I sell, I do everything by a lottery.
00:46:15
Speaker
And then after 24 hours, it goes to first come, first serve on my website. So usually they sell out fairly quickly. But anyways, yeah, the green are going to go quick, I think, because that was a fun one to do. And what is that website for anyone who doesn't know? Oh, it's confoundedmachine dot.com. Yes. Thank you. Thank you kindly. No worries.
00:46:32
Speaker
So yeah, that's what I've been up to. And then just a crap ton of entropic anodizing, which is like that kind of spirally blue crazy anodizing, which is tedious. Yeah, I chatted to you about that a while ago. i wanted i I've got a tub of ferrochloride for doing that. ah just I did it once or twice and it just never went back to actually doing it. I actually have questions about your cleaning process for anodizing, if you don't mind sharing some of this stuff. no What is your course process for titanium?
00:47:00
Speaker
So for titanium, my favorite, the one I liked the most right now is, uh, I take it most, and I have to go like extra bad because my lathe is oil and oil is just so much harder to get off parts than coolant. Um, so I take it out and I put it into a tank of, uh, it's a.
00:47:15
Speaker
I use Alconox, but Alconox is just a alkaline cleaner. So you can, if you search alkaline cleaner, there's all kinds of sources. I think you have, uh, I know, um, uh, Stefan Gottsvinter. I can never pronounce his name. that's what we all Yeah, no kidding. Um, and stan g um Yes. he He turned me on to like ah alkaline cleaners for removing oil because he said they're just so fantastic. um and I found Alconox, which is kind of a laboratory grade cleaner. I can get it here. um It's relatively expensive, but it works so well. like It cuts through oil amazingly well. so I run one ultrasonic tank of hot Alconox.
00:47:50
Speaker
ah to knock all the oil off. And then once I do a rough clean, it goes into another ultrasonic tank with kind of like a fine cleaning solution of alkanox again. And then it goes into another ultrasonic tank of just hot distilled water, um just so that when they dry, there's zero water spots.
00:48:07
Speaker
And then basically after that it's good for most anodizing and to hit like green anodizing That's when I just kind of go crazy and just basically a bunch of manual cleaning that I have to do um With degreasers to get into all the little crannies that ultrasonic just for some reason I think if I had a higher quality ultrasonic Cress unit or something like that. It would probably just do it in tank, but I just don't have the, uh, the wattage, I think to shake the part well enough to get all the oil off it. So it's just manual cleaning, which is tedious, but it's the only way I found to make it work. Okay. Interesting. Cause for, for anodizing aluminum, I was having random stuff. I actually got parts now that need to get burned. Um, turns out when you scotch brought this specific batch, I get spots in my.
00:48:53
Speaker
Can't figure it out. The only thing I can tie it down to is the Scotch-Brite wheel, or this batch of aluminum, one of the two, because I Scotch-Brite all of my mag bases that are anodized, but this specific batch of CZPO7 bases, every single one gets white spots. I don't know. C. Scotch-Brite, and then you go through your cleaning still?
00:49:14
Speaker
Then I still go through, so it gets scorched breath, gets blown off, goes into an acetone bath to break down any oil. Then it goes into, it then gets hand scrubbed with simple green, was clean green here at 40 degrees. Then from there it gets rinsed with RO water, got reverse osmosis, with a little hose, I wash it at quite high pressure. Then it gets etched in caustic soda,
00:49:45
Speaker
Then it gets rinsed, put back in the hot clean green, gets soaked for a minute, then gets rinsed again and then ends up in the acid tank. And it works flawlessly for everything else. Just this batch of pots, I get white spots. So the only thing I can think is it's the aluminum itself that's got something in it because it happens on my blue dye especially. And I've literally swapped out the batch of blue dye and that hasn't fixed it.
00:50:11
Speaker
But if I run tumbled bots and throw them in, or I run the other mag bases I make, I don't get but i get these spots. OK, so spot the spots are tied to the the scotch braiding.
00:50:22
Speaker
either tied to, I think it's an old, it's not that old, the batch. um Yeah, it's either tied to the Scotch briding or it's tied to the material itself. I haven't tried to just run, tumbled, because i the machines come off, the the parts come off the machine, they go into the tumbler, they just take break, break any internal sharp edges, and then they get racked, and then from there, they get Scotch brided just before they get anodized, just to give a uniform finish from when I had the slow yo where everything had chatter marks everywhere.
00:50:51
Speaker
Now the scotch, right? It used to take like a minute or two on each one. Now it's like 20 seconds. Just literally rub the face so that it looks uniform. Yeah. so the The exact same thing I've been doing with these clips now. Same thing, like I had to put so much finishing in it when they were coming off the little Kurt CNC mill. But now that they're coming off the X5, it's like, oh, now my finishing is like 30 seconds as opposed to like yeah six minutes. Especially the AR15 mag bases that I make.
00:51:19
Speaker
Jeez, those things. So I put a 12 millimeter cutter in the slow yo, which not the best plan in the world, but I'd rough the, I'd rough the pot up with a long stick out six mil. And then I would just take off the last, uh, hang on imperialism time. Uh, 0.25. There we go. The last, uh, by your own.
00:51:42
Speaker
I'll just say yeah buy your own Imperializer. Starts the last 10 thou. Well, I'll get the boards audit and then I'll send one to you and I'll send that pallet system over. I also ran into a problem with that this week. So the last thou, I used to just clean up, do two passes around, but the end will used to chatter because it was on a wet noodle. Now I rough the thing out. I come in, I get a really good, I could tumble it and anodize it. And the black anodize actually comes out better if you do that.
00:52:12
Speaker
Nice. I've noticed the, the Scotch bratting actually makes the black anodize a bit lighter in color. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Like batched man. Like anodizing is so finicky. I do it because, because I do it. I'm not my favorite thing in the world. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah. It's one of those processes that I do in house because I don't want a hundred scrap bots coming in from the anodizes.
00:52:35
Speaker
One thing and I would try, and I don't know if it'll, I don't know if it'll apply to you or not, but I find, so I use RO water for like most of my cleaning, but my last clean is always done in distilled water. I did like a TDS measure of both my RO water and my distilled, and they're both like zero or like one part per million. yeah But for some reason, RO water will still leave like slice water marks, but distilled won't.
00:53:00
Speaker
So so my I was buying, I was buying distilled and I was getting 12 TDS. I get zero out of mine. okay So I switched over to entirely RO because I was spending a fortune buying bloody water. So yeah we're not did when I did the bolt belt Kickstarter, the some of the money from that went to upgrading the Anno setup, putting bigger tanks, putting ah our RO system and all those little things to just make anodizing pleasant.
00:53:29
Speaker
And yeah, that, I mean, I've done thousands of parts at this point. Uh, but again, all my anodizes just cosmetic, like there's no guaranteed thicknesses, any of that cock. It's literally just a cosmetic anodize that I do two things. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, even the knives or the, yeah, there's knives that overseas now, like I was doing a two tone and that took a little bit of figuring out, turns out you shouldn't use a clear spray paint to mask things because you can't see it.
00:53:58
Speaker
Oh, yeah, fair. Turns out my orange and black is mostly yeah is mostly orange because I couldn't see where I was masking. So I ended up switching it up to white spray paints. Because what you do is you acid,
00:54:14
Speaker
acid then you come out of the acid, you go into your first dye, pull it out of there, dry it with a hairdryer so that there's no water left on it. spray paint where you want the orange or whatever the color, of the light color is to stay, then you heat gun that to cure it into the caustic soda, basically bleach the part back again. So anything that isn't, uh, isn't covered by the paint will get bleached off.
00:54:38
Speaker
Then rinse it, you rinse it, you shake it off in the acid again, just no power, just in the acid, rinse it again, and then into your dark color. And then when it's done, you soak it in an acetone and it's, you get your your two tones. And it works pretty well. It's just labor intensive. Totally.
00:54:58
Speaker
ah one of the things yeah One of the things on the docket for this year is new racking. I just need to sit and actually design it. I've got someone who will throw a sheet of titanium on their laser for me and actually chop it up for me.
00:55:10
Speaker
Yeah. That's one thing I'd like to do better too, is racking for my, for my anodizing. Cause like right now the titanium is weird too. Cause if you have like, I mean, I'm assuming the same with aluminum, like if your part volume changes, everything changes. Like the speed at which you hit your color changes, the voltage can vary. Like everything changes a little bit in my world anyways.
00:55:29
Speaker
No, no, in titanium it does. In LE, I've got a spreadsheet I made. Don't know where I got the numbers, but they work. Apparently they're not correct, but it works. So we don't argue with it. um we Yeah. I've got, I've got a list of all the parts that I do regularly. And if I'm doing a new part in fusion, I'll just go get the surface area. I plugged that into my spreadsheet. It tells me how many amps I need. And then that's a pretty good, pretty good, uh, ruler to go by. Like I run some stuff that requires 15 amps. I've only got five.
00:55:57
Speaker
But I did a test pot, similar size, measured the layer thickness, and then I could compensate for it when I machined it, because those eyes hold are to hold a pretty tall tolerance on. But most of the stuff goes in and out of it, and I don't care about tolerance on it. Like what the anodizer is going to do to it makes no difference. but But yeah, there are a lot of factors that change aluminium anodizing. Temperature, whether you stir the dial or not, that took me a while to learn.
00:56:24
Speaker
like your dye needs to be at the right temperature. You need to stir it ahead of time. Like there's all these little things. And then the red, the red, especially, uh, was anodizing. It was like a dull maroon color, put it in the laser to laser markets and it would go bright red because it got hot while it was being lasered. And then the color would change like really weird stuff. Like the most absurd things would happen. Yeah. ah jar The, the racking. Um, so I i was trying to go.
00:56:55
Speaker
further south than me, somewhere down in the sticks, and he was setting up an anode set up, and he just, he couldn't get it right. And eventually I asked him, what are you racking your parts with? He's like, oh no, stainless steel wire. I'm like, there's your problem. oh yeah You can have lead, aluminum, titanium, that's it. Those are your options that you can have in your anode tank with your parts, nothing else. And as soon as you switch to aluminum racking wire, problem went away.
00:57:22
Speaker
yeah So I want to design, so like my racking is beginning to fail badly now. I guillotined a whole lot of it at a friend's shop and then I was TIG welding racks together and cutting it with tin snips. So I want to send off to laser or design a whole sheet, get a laser cut, cut some armor for my robots while I'm at it. I was chatting to my mates, he's got a friend who runs a laser shop. So I was like, can I bring my material and will you put it on your laser? Because a lot of guys aren't really interested in that.
00:57:50
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, you thought you can get from 10 cuts end at least if you want to make titanium rack. Oh yeah. I know that's, that's my, yeah, exactly. All my parts are around too. So yeah it's easy just to lay my own rack. Yeah. I was, uh, I was lazy when I went to the U S I should have ordered racking luck a month ahead of time. And then I could have got it delivered to AJ and, and brought it home, but I only thought about it like two days before leaving. Yeah. And then that wasn't going to fly.
00:58:18
Speaker
yeah because Yeah. Yeah. Getting titanium here is a bit of a challenge. I bet. Yeah. I bet that'd be difficult or more difficult. Yeah. The, the NAF shops do it. Like all the NAF making suppliers, they all sell bits of titanium. Um, but like my NAFs, I was making them out of four millimeter titanium. The NAF is four millimeter thick because the next size up I could buy was like eight millimeters. And then the price just goes through the roof.
00:58:43
Speaker
yeah So I ended up just going with grade two, four millimeter, but then I had to stand and sand through the mill scale or through the mill fence, like not my deer or fudge. Yeah, that's the same reason I oversized all my titanium is just like the tubes, like, yeah, I know loads of people that build pens at size, like the order, whatever, three eighths tube and make their pen. That's like, yeah you never get super clean surfaces. Like you're better to turn it perfect. That way you're, you you know, get through the scale. and Yeah, it looks pretty. and But I think titanium is, as far as I understand, that's driven by aerospace. So like, basically the only thing that's on the market for us, you know, small companies is just like surplus from aerospace. So if you're close to aerospace, you get easy access to titanium. I the aerospace and medical yeah for the round stuff especially. ah But no, like we, I can get, there's a couple of shops around here, like Nerf making in Joburg is quite big. ah We also apparently have a reputation for making pretty smooth knives in South Africa.
00:59:38
Speaker
Oh, no yeah. We have a reputation around the world for making really good quality knives. Uh, my neighbor across the road makes knives. Um, up yeah I have enough that I haven't glued the scales on for like three years sitting on my desk. I traded a guard belt for a knife. He was like, no, you'll finish it. I'm like, no, no, send it to me. Just sharpen it. Send it to me. I will put my own scales on it. Cause I want to do that part of it. And then it just, I never got around to it.
01:00:04
Speaker
Like it's still sitting there. I was like, don't worry. I've got, um, Cardex I'll make a sheath and I'll make the, I'll put the scales on. And it's just it's sitting on my desk. It's not the highest priority in the world. So it doesn't get attention. All right. So, uh, turning through our topics, what problems did you did you solve last week? What did you, what, what lessons did you learn?
01:00:26
Speaker
I learned that I need a hydraulic power pack. So I've got a, at the moment for my crimping thing, I've got a pneumatic foot pedal hydraulic pump thing. So you push down, it goes brrr makes hydraulic pressure. Um, but it's slow and my compressor doesn't really enjoy the experience.
01:00:45
Speaker
So I want to, I'm going to go visit one of my friends out in night, actually behind where I used to work. He bars up old machines and they got a whole lot of stuff kicking around. I'm going to go see if I can pick up a gear pump from him. And then I've got a motor kicking around. I'm going to build a 2.2 kilowatts hydraulic power pack that runs my crimping thing. So I can literally put the tube in crimp it, index crimp, and I can turn the model.
01:01:09
Speaker
a little bit faster, not that I need to do it faster, I just I'm trying to optimize the process.
Coolant Replacement and Maintenance
01:01:14
Speaker
ah My goal is every time we do it, it needs to be better. That's good. Yeah, everything needs to be better every time we do it. And yeah, the flexi lube coolant seems to be working. I need to tomorrow I need to order more so I can change out my other two machines because the coolant in the LK is looking a bit on the brown side.
01:01:33
Speaker
It's not smelling or anything, but I'm not happy. It needs to go out of the machine. It's a year old, so it can get out of my machine now and go somewhere else. Yeah, I saw that in your, because you swapped the new coolant to Bertha, right? ah Yeah, I swapped Bertha out and then, yeah, that was ah was less than a present experience.
01:01:52
Speaker
like an inch of solid whey oil on the top of the, well, not solid, slimy whey oil on top of the coolant, because I don't have a skimmer on there, yeah it was disgusting. um So yeah, that that's switched over to Flexi Lube and thoroughly enjoying that coolant. It smells nice, it's got a, they claim it has a detergent in it, so it doesn't leave a residue. It actually cleans your machine and my machine is the cleanest it's ever been. Like even cleaner than what I got, it's like,
01:02:20
Speaker
I was surprised it was clear. I was like, Oh, clear. Usually I only see that on like, uh, what are not, uh, not solubles, but like whatever hybrids are like that synergy ads to run. And I'm like, Oh, I've heard nothing but terrible things about it yeah as well. I've only heard bad stories about it. And it's also apparently very expensive.
01:02:36
Speaker
um yeah This stuff is one of the, it's one of the more expensive coolants that Flexi Loop do. I was actually chatting to another customer about it and they used they tried it. They didn't see a ah marked increase in life or anything. So they went back to the cheaper one, but I run a lot of brass and this is specifically made to not have a bad effect with yellow metals. yeah So like it's not going to go green in my, in my lathe. Cause that's the, yeah I don't want that.
01:03:07
Speaker
Yeah, what did you solve? Well, you solved green. What else did you solve this week? Yeah, solved green.
Automation in Backend Processes
01:03:12
Speaker
Solved probably just a lot of kind of boring backend stuff, but to sales, like the lottery system I use, like I have a script that basically auto generates, auto pulls names off a large selection of people that sign up for the lottery, and then it parses it into an email so I can mass send out passwords to people. So I did a bunch of backend work on that just to try to streamline that a little bit.
01:03:33
Speaker
Cause its t like it was easy when you're doing like, when you only have to sort through, you know, whatever, let's say yeah a few hundred names, it gets easy. But like, as soon as the numbers get to like thousands and you're doing things like over and over, you're like, Oh, this is the most T like robots are built to do this kind of work. So exactly.
01:03:48
Speaker
Yeah, just did a bunch of that stuff and parsing it better so that when orders come in, I use shipping software that can just like take all the addresses and you know be like, oh, these are all worldwide shipping. These are all in the US. These are all Canadians and put the right carriers to everything. Just dumb stuff that I should have set up forever ago and just kind of slowly piecing my way through it. Yeah, stuff that wasn't necessarily a problem until now.
01:04:10
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Stuff that just slowly grows to become a pain until it's a point where you're like, okay, I got to do something about this because every time I'm doing that, it's just taken away from something else I can do. And it's like, this is dumb, dumb work. Like this is work that a robot can easily do.
Improving Production Efficiency
01:04:22
Speaker
Yeah, no, exactly. And now you're going to look at it and be like, damn, I should have done this earlier. Oh, that's always how it works, right? That is exactly how it works. You want to kick yourself because you should have done it a lot earlier.
01:04:34
Speaker
Yeah. Well, even like cutting the, uh, cutting all the fixtures for the style to like switch the parts over. So I could put like soft jaws and whatnot for this. Like it took me one soft jaw. It took me three hours to like design machine, get in the machine, update the code. So it would run on that and then run the parts. So it took me three hours, but then I calculated it saved me. It saved me three hours and 45 minutes on the entire batch. So I'm like, it literally cost me nothing to stop for almost four hours and do that. Like I'm ahead, which is like, not exactly. It's insane.
01:05:03
Speaker
And then you just reap the benefits now. Yeah, onwards. I designed a new fixture today to put the torque spits onto the anchor points pallet system so that I don't have to undo two bolts. I can just push the solenoid valve, take the thing out, put it in, release the valve and And I'm not doing 10, I'm doing 18 at a time now. So putting the quantity up just a little bit and making it easy to load that I don't have to pull my vases off the machine to run production. Unfortunately,
01:05:32
Speaker
It won't be used on this 500 parts. It'll be on the next 500. Cause I've got all the material and actually make for things. But I think I can do dodgy things and not have to put the parts in the lathe. Cause it's got a bit of an undercut, but I've got a 32 diameter, about four T-slot cutter that I'm going to drop down next to the parts and just chop the material out that way. It's just it' the easiest way to do it. Like, yeah, I try, I try to do things efficiently.
01:06:01
Speaker
Yeah, not totally. That makes sense. But yeah, cool.
Product Promotion and Pricing Strategies
01:06:05
Speaker
Let's do the calls to action quickly. So yeah, you guys can check out my website. We've got a few products on there, including the Framelock utility knife. That's at jspeceng.com. Links are in the descriptions.
01:06:19
Speaker
and mine is confoundedmachine dot.com. Like I said, I have a batch coming out this Wednesday, so if you'd like to try your hand at the first come first serve, or actually if you sign up on my site, I think under either under the lottery page, you can sign up for either pen that you like, um and then I send out passwords to people, so if you get lucky, that's one way to get them, or then just wait for the first come first serve sale, because whatever lottery things aren't claimed, I put up on my site, and it's just whoever gets there first, the sale goes out. so They tend, they tend to go quick. Um, but yeah, that's my world. Yeah. You're in the fortunate position where you put things for sale and they sell. It's the best it's, I can't like, yeah, it's so nice. yeah That's a very fortunate position to be about. Doesn't happen overnight. No. And I think it's probably because I'm underpriced from what I'm offering is kind of what I assume. Cause as I said, like if you're selling out instantly, your product is valued more than you're charging for it. So I'm like, yeah. yeah
01:07:15
Speaker
I don't mind being in that position right now. It's way better than being in the other side. Oh, no, definitely. I mean, yeah, my, I'm sitting with a couple, I think I'm sitting with nearly a hundred knobs in the UK at the moment. so Okay. So yeah, that I need to move at some point, but also they're not costing me anything to sit there. Like when they sell, I don't like, I used to push Instagram ads, turns out you can't use the word knife. Uh, if you want, yeah.
01:07:41
Speaker
I learned all the words you can't use. Like I used to use the abbreviation, so I used to use Fluck. And then yeah i you couldn't use the word blade. And that there's a whole bunch of words you can't use that will not approve your advert if you're using those those words. oh i know yeah ah know i like I love social media, but there's some things that are like, this is silly. No, exactly. Like there's some really dumb stuff that happens there.
01:08:07
Speaker
but ah I've stopped doing that. I was actually listening to the, uh, the gimbal automation podcast. I really should look what what that is called because I keep just calling it that. Uh, and they were chatting about how much they spend on ad revenue every month. It is an exorbitant amount of money. Like, obviously it's driving sales. Oh no, it's, it's like, I think you were saying it was like $20,000.
01:08:29
Speaker
Whoa. I mean, scales, but still, yeah. Yeah. It's like, wow. But that's also, he's trying to drive sales, trying to get it in front of people. Cause if you don't know it exists, then you're not going to sell it. Like that's the thing. Yeah. It's the thing we run into the robots guys. Oh, this is so cool. We didn't even know it existed and no one's going to join a thing. If they don't know, buy a thing. If they don't know it exists.
01:08:53
Speaker
No, totally. Yeah. that's yeah So it's you can either do it the social media way, which I think is the way you went about it with the YouTube channel and whatnot.
Social Media Advertising Challenges
01:09:01
Speaker
Yeah. but donald sos that's a great That's not free. Yeah, that's not free. No, not at all. i Yeah, as AJ put it with ah when he got his tormach, he did a video addressing the fact that he has a free tormach. And he's like,
01:09:15
Speaker
if someone Someone posted a comment to the effect of, oh, don't you think it's unfair that you got a free machine and now other guys running a job shop have to compete against you? He's like, this machine wasn't free. I grant to put up the YouTube videos. It's not an easy thing, especially with the production value that is required these days. It's not an easy feat to put a good YouTube video that's going to do well.
01:09:38
Speaker
Like, people take it for granted. Like even my neighbor, he's going to post on YouTube, but you'll get rich. I'm like, no, you won't. You can post something on YouTube. No one's going to watch it. You're going to get three views. That's going to be your mom, your wife, and you. That's it. Like it's, yeah and it's a grind. Like and I don't know. I don't think appreciate it.
01:09:59
Speaker
And I got lucky like ah way back in the day like when I was, but so we talked about it, posting on Instructables. I posted a ah video of my concrete lathe project and like that got me a crap ton of views. like I made it to the front page, a hack a day. like I got all kinds and that helped a ton and then just like yeah you get a few of those and that's the only way I developed like a big enough audience where I can not pay for ads.
01:10:21
Speaker
I mean, I've got to either get lucky
Content Creation on Digital Platforms
01:10:23
Speaker
or grind. Yeah. on them too I've got a couple of videos on my YouTube channel from flip back in the day, flat test. Uh, I was very active on the flat test forum in the flat test websites. I've got a couple of videos that hit like five or 6,000 views, reviewing cameras, reviewing random stuff like, and, but that I've got 200 subscribers on YouTube.
01:10:44
Speaker
of thousands of views but there's no subscriptions and that even though i was looking the other day at the series i did on building the slowio that's got like a hundred views here a hundred views there it's not It's not hard trafficked. I think the, one of the highest viewed things was my tumbler that I built. Like that's got quite, well, that was also very cleverly named. Since this is meant to be PG, I won't call it out yet. Although speaking of tumblers, I am building a new tumbler. Oh, nice. Yeah. I bought a vibrating motor off of a concrete vibrator or something, ah things like.
01:11:22
Speaker
It's only 200 watts, but it's huge. So I'm gonna hook it up to a VFD and actually turn it on. I was working on the design tonight. I actually think I sent it off this evening ah to get a quote for laser cutting. I'm gonna make the tub out of stainless and then all the other laser cut bits and bobs and then my mate can just weld it together for me instead of having him plasma cut everything and fabricate it. So I'm building a bigger tumbler, but now I'm trying to source media. So I'm gonna message some guys tomorrow locally, their websites.
01:11:52
Speaker
Makes me not want to live in South Africa. Um, they've got a not horrible South African websites, but you can't buy online. It's contact us. And then I think I emailed them and I didn't get a response.
Innovations in Workshop Tools
01:12:03
Speaker
I'm going to WhatsApp them tomorrow because they said, don't try phone us just WhatsApp us. Our phone lines are broken. So I'll WhatsApp them tomorrow and arrest them about buying tumbling media because I'm making tumbling media, but it's going to take me another week or two doing a couple batches every day. And it's like, yeah, yeah I'd rather just buy it if I can.
01:12:21
Speaker
Lots of people don't understand too. it's not like It's not like buying whatever, you know, paperclips. Like media is heavy. So when you're shipping it around the world, like it gets spendy fast. If you can't even ship it. Yeah, you can. at AliExpress. They do one pound bags. You can buy a maximum of five bags. Right. Okay. Yeah. And then the shipping was shipping was about $50 and the media was like 10.
01:12:47
Speaker
Oh, okay. Well, that's, that's not horrible. The problem is yeah you got to do multiple orders. So I was looking as a place in Cape town that I've bought media from before. It's just, a yeah, I need to get smaller media and I need to get bigger media because right now my media fits exactly in the parts I've got to run this week.
01:13:04
Speaker
It gets jammed. It's really infuriating. I've got my old media, I might actually just try my old media. It's just my old media takes a lot longer to tumble ah um out these parts. So I'll mess around with it this week. um But yeah, their stuff is, ah it's about $12 a kg. And I think I'm gonna need like 20 of them. So it's gonna get spendy pretty quickly. But I'll see, i'll I'll chat to them and see if they'll do a bulk deal for me.
01:13:32
Speaker
It's just, it's like it's a random 600 grits green plastic pyramids that the size varies every time you order it, so which is a little annoying. So it's for jewelry stuff. It's a jewelry supply place, but it's the only place I could find to buy it online because South Africa online markets, not really.
01:13:50
Speaker
that right yeah yeah yeah doctor Yeah, the tooling guys, there's a couple that have popped up that you can order. Like I broke my 10 millimeter rougher for, for roughing steel. I broke that last week and it's one from these guys Midway Tools. I'm like, cool.
Tool Sourcing and Cost Considerations
01:14:06
Speaker
Went on their website, loaded a new finisher, a new rougher.
01:14:10
Speaker
a corner radiusing tool for a job that comes around every now and again, um that VCGT and audit pull studs for the pallet systems. Because I don't want to order 100 from China, although ordering six cost me a fifth of what ordering 100 would have cost me. yeah I just yeah didn't want to order 100 yet. So I ordered six for the for the five samples and for my pallets I need this week.
01:14:37
Speaker
Um, and yeah, that got back to me this evening because you send ah RFQ and then he sends you a quote and you make payments and he ships it out the next day. So I like, he's pretty, he's pretty quick on it. Uh, there's also this Taurus tooling as well. I've got from them. ah There's a bunch of cars available, but a lot of the stuff is still distributors and tooling reps and stuff like that, which is a bit, a bit annoying to deal with. I also think I'm going to risk it with Chinese roughers.
01:15:05
Speaker
So I need to do a tooling order from China, because I only have one spare slitting saw of both of the ones I use commonly, which is a little risky. So I want to order another three. So I was looking through their website, like there's a bunch of stuff, just like odds and ends I need to get from them. I get my cardboard center drills from there, and I get but i get inserts for um for bertha and for the mco from there like a little two millimeter the angled parting ones that's the only place i can seem to get them can't get them locally um and then the roughing tool i was running was a 120ish dollar roughing tool mom i want to order two so i have spares i can get three roughing tools my slitting saws all the stuff i need for less than i was going to pay for the two roughing tools
01:15:54
Speaker
Yeah, I bet. It's just got to wait two weeks. So that's the route I've chosen to go. We're going to, I mean, worst case, I take the three roughers, break them quickly or throw them in the bin and bar from the, from the expensive guys again. But I'm willing to roll the dice. I mean, I'm only cutting aluminium with them.
01:16:11
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And you can say it's a rough result. You can have a nice finishing. Exactly. Even there, I use their finishing tools and their finishing tools work really well. Like I have no problems with their tooling um and cost-effective. Even with shipping being $50, it's still cost-effective. Yeah. Because yeah, the shipping's a bit brutal.
01:16:31
Speaker
I'm lucky that I got like, uh, I got a Canadian, uh, like to board tooling. Like I love their tooling. I use it forever. My, my local vendor carries it so I could just drive across town and be like, oh that's like give them a call and be like, I want all this or like, yeah, it'll be in here in three days and just go and pick it all up. So okay it's decent quality. It's not painlessly expensive. and Yeah. YG1 were meant to visit me this week as well and they didn't. Uh, I'll harass the guy and see when he's coming past a drop of catalogs. Um, I don't know where they got my details, but on a month free catalogs convinced him to give me free inserts to see if they work. What they don't realize is I'll make 3000 parts on their test insert.
01:17:06
Speaker
Yeah, not exactly. Then then I'll buy one insert, please. Because that that's one that's one thing with the like buying having to buy a pack of 10 inserts is a bit annoying when you use one a month. um Totally. Yeah, like a lot of the the the online guys locally, even my my normal tooling guys, they'll sell you one insert.
01:17:26
Speaker
which is yeah convenient. Like now I ordered the VC, VCGT or VCMT holder comes with a steel insert and then I ordered a single VCGT. That way, if the process doesn't work, I'm out like 80 bucks, whatever, $4 for one insert. I'm not out back $40 for a pack of inserts.
01:17:50
Speaker
No, totally. Yeah. Those things add up very, very quickly in the small. Just, uh, just start making everything out of titanium and stainless and you'll never have that problem. Just burn through inserts. yeah No, I'll burn through inserts when I run 303 as it is. Yeah, that stuff sucks. Yeah. 303 is not bad. You pretend it's steel and you just go full send, but like 316 is horrid. Yeah.
01:18:14
Speaker
Yeah, I try not to try not to do that. But yeah, the poor M co is going to run steel tomorrow. It's going to be great. And I bought an eight millimeter hex collet and eight mill hex bar doesn't fit in it. Oh no. It's a little bit oversize. So it doesn't, doesn't fit the college. I use a 10 millimeter collet. I said, can you do the trick of just like putting O rings but or sorry what kind like is it a five C collet
Dealing with Equipment Limitations
01:18:37
Speaker
or? Uh, yeah, five C.
01:18:39
Speaker
Okay. Can you just jam all rings in the slots? Like that's what I do. I jammed a screwdriver in it and it still wouldn't open up. Oh no. Okay. Yeah. I bought it for this job. Like when I, when I ordered my original set of collets for the Emco, I ordered an eight millimeter hex for this job.
01:18:55
Speaker
and it doesn't work. So I put it in, it turns out a eight millimeter hex, the nominal across the tips is like 9.8. So I just run in a 10 mil collet. I'm literally just parting. I'm parting it off to length, putting a chamfer and parting it off to length. So ah good enough. Yeah. um I also discovered that, uh, the guys I normally bar my collets for Bertha from now stock five C. They never stopped him before.
01:19:22
Speaker
ah convenient ah I was having to order from China and then I wasn't going to order one collet and pay, ah I think they were like $150 shipping. So then you make a list and you make it a $250 order because the collets are $4 each. So you just load up your order, but now I can get them locally so it's not's not too big of a deal. And they're pretty cheap. I think they're $15 a collet.
01:19:46
Speaker
That's, yeah, that's, that's pretty cheap. Yeah. And if it's got runouts for what I do, I don't mind because most of the stuff I do, I'll turn the OD. So if there's runouts, there isn't when I'm done. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So that's the way I like to do things. ah jar Did we, I'm trying to remember if we discussed the tool and our work that the guy wanted me to, to do again.
01:20:12
Speaker
I think you were just saying last time that you turned it away, because you find it a hassle. Yes. Yeah, it's a ball ache. I don't want to do it. ah straight I straight up told him, nope. No, I told him, go somewhere else. ah so I told him, straight, go somewhere else. Like, yeah, I was going to charge you last time, because you can get it for that price. I'm not interested. Like, I don't want your money. Your money is not worth the euros of my life. I'm going to lose to distress, because that that job was so stressful. So that's now gone away. I still came and dropped off a bunch of other work for me this week. like He was a bit angry with me, but I don't really care.
01:20:42
Speaker
He came out like you're running too lean policy is this is price. That is door pick one. Like you can't be, you can't be doing all these little stupid jobs that end up just wasting your day away. Like you need to say no at some point or you're going to put yourself out of business. Oh yeah, yeah absolutely. Like now this job, he's got to remake half the job on his own dime because the customer rejected it six months later. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me.
01:21:10
Speaker
Now you're saying now, his his new policy on any two any press tooling he makes, it's 50% up front. He'll come there, put it in your machine, run it, take it out your machine and take it with you until you paid in full. Because if you leave it there, the guys will run it, crash it, and then until you know, we're not paying you until it's fixed. yeah So he's like, nothing. Yeah, it comes out and goes home with him.
01:21:36
Speaker
I'm like, no, you have to. Seems kind of fair. Yeah. No, he's gotten burnt like so many times with that stuff where guys will go and they'll run the wrong gauge material or do something stupid, crack the tool, and then he must rebuild the tool or they're not going to pay him. I'm like, no, dude, you need to fix what you're doing. Yeah. No, totally. ah Yeah. Oh, what's happening? What's happening with your fourth axis?
Machine Setup and Customer Service
01:22:02
Speaker
Oh, that's a fun story. So like,
01:22:07
Speaker
So everything is wired in. um it's all Everything is ready to go. ah I powered it up because I got the OK. They checked all my wiring. They checked everything. like Connections are not difficult. It's all like no ethernet cables, like nothing but it's not the default. Those S700 drives are really nice.
01:22:23
Speaker
Yeah, they're beautiful. And like i so I powered it up, and I got an alarm basically saying, topology error. It doesn't recognize these. It's kind of like a computer networking to multiple computers. That's how these drives work, um from what I understand anyways. So it it it knows the drive is there. It just doesn't know how to communicate with it. And unfortunately,
01:22:40
Speaker
The fix for it is kind of scary. It's like a factory machine reset. And if you make any mistake, you can kind of like brick the machine. So ah my distributor was basically like, this is the steps. Don't do it yet. He's like, I want to confirm that all the steps work on my end. He's like, and then when I want to have a procedures that I know is perfect. I'll give it to you. You can follow that. He's like, because obviously that could be a potential problem. So yeah I don't need it for the next probably a couple of weeks yet. And honestly, I could do the next few months of production without the fourth running. So it's not.
01:23:10
Speaker
critical, I would like it to work, yeah but I would much rather have the machine functioning. So yeah, it's kind of, right now I'm reading a bunch of about like Siemens just drive commissioning, just kind of for my own knowledge. It can't be that difficult. No, it's not. We used to use those exact drives. um So okay we used to use their 700s on the machines we used to build, and then we used to communicate to them over Profibus.
01:23:34
Speaker
And then they would communicate into drive with EtherCAT or whatever their the ethernet protocol is that they're using. And we skipped all sorts of fun stuff for those, but we didn't have the, there's a the little memory card thing that goes in it unlocks the performance, like synchronous motion things. We never had that because we didn't need it. I know we try to use it once and then we're told, no, you need to have this really expensive upgrade, but those drives are like bulletproof. proofof they rear mine's got the same Mine's got the same big one multi-drive, which terrifies me. Sematics or whatever they are? Yeah. yeah that's there I think it's the S700 module. ah But I mean, we used to stack those things like a meter wide. You just keep stacking modules onto them, like you'd slap on three or four drives, then another power module, then three or four more drives, and like we'd have a stack up on those things. And they work really, really well.
01:24:25
Speaker
But yeah, they're very smart. I remember having topology errors where we would add a drive, and then you could do nothing until that was resolved. Yeah. Or yeah someone would flick a breaker on one of the external drives, and then all of a sudden, the thing's having a shit fit because the drive isn't there. Yeah, no, totally. And that's kind of why I wanted a little bit of baseline knowledge on it. Not so much for just fixing this. you but i'm like If it ever happens in the future, I want to know, like this is roughly how I have to fix it before I have to go through the channels to fix it. Yeah. you know with the agents. yeah That's a problem. Having a machine that's essentially built overseas is like you're communicating. I mean, the customer service has been quite good, ah yeah but it hasn't been fantastic either. So it's like, yeah. Yeah, that's customer service in general. I mean, even doubly doing. They're down in Cape Town. The guy was made to come past this week. I haven't heard from him. I'll harass him next week and say, hey, what happened? You were visiting me. I've been trying to get you to visit me for a year, but also I'm not paying for the visits. So kind of an awesome thing.
01:25:24
Speaker
I mean, in their defense, like Sile did contact me. They said, hey, we'll refund you like $10,000 for your, for your fourth axis option because it's not working. And I'm like, please don't like keep my money. Cause then I feel like you're more, you're, you're going to work on the issue if you know you're yeah somewhat indebted to me. So I'm like, I appreciate the offer, but keep the cash. Um, I want it working more than I want the cash back. Yeah. so I'm sure once it's working, it's going to work. Well, it's just, Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So.
01:25:51
Speaker
But yeah, I think the, the Siemens switch there has been a little bit, a little bit hilly for them. Like I've, I think they've had some issues because it is by far better controller than the Cintech or the Allen C. Oh, I'm so happy. Like they quoted me on the, uh, the Cintech controller. And then they said, Oh, we can only get Siemens into Canada. That's the only thing that's approved as Siemens. So I was like, yeah, bonus. Like I'm totally pumped to have a Siemens control. Yeah. I actually saw an old Cintech, uh, this week, these guys.
01:26:20
Speaker
I don't know if I mentioned to you that they had a links, do send links that ah rats got into the wiring or something. And they had this other mill. Yeah. They had this other milling machine. It's got a synthetic controller, but it's half a pot. And the guard's like, why is it half a pot? Then code is off of the back of the drives.
01:26:37
Speaker
oh no I'm like, why? That's potentially a huge issue. I know the Siemens motors, you take that encoder off the back, you throw the motor away because the the encoder is clocked to the windings in the factory. Oh, wow. Okay. It's pre-configured and clocked to the windings. And if you take it off and put it back on, it's not exactly clocked. And since you've got some absurd number of lines per evolution, like even just the play in the bolts is enough for it to not work anymore.
01:27:07
Speaker
we had a We had an encoder, someone hit a shaft with a hammer um and cracked the glass in the encoder. And we had an old motor, oh, we'll just swap it. And the scene was like, don't even waste your time. No, it's not going to work. I think we had blown a motor's windings. I don't know. There was some shenanigans going on. And they're like, no, no, that's set in the factory. it It's not a thing you can just do. Wow. Interesting.
01:27:35
Speaker
That kind of makes sense. Cause I was looking at the topology report on the machine and it did have the encoder output. And I was expecting like your standard, like, you know, 2000 position
Understanding High Precision Machinery
01:27:43
Speaker
in code or 4,000 position in code. And I look at him like, Oh, that's a lot of numbers. It's like yeah into the hundreds of thousands. I was like, that is so much more precise than I thought. Yeah. It's more than that. Cause it's, uh, hang on. Where's my.
01:27:57
Speaker
Oh, no, jeez, I can't even... I remember seeing six digits. Oh, no, they're they're insane. No, no, they're absolutely insane. It's like no wonder. Yeah, yeah it's either 17-bit or 23-bit encoders, and it's a stupid number of bits. That's nuts. That's incredible. It's absolutely insane the level of accuracy these machines theoretically can achieve.
01:28:20
Speaker
Well, when you consider that has to be, like that has to be a physical red, like, I mean, physical is a loose term, but like that is a, like a, essentially a disc with holes in it. You can think of it yeah down to the electronic term, but it's like, it's still something that's physically made, which is longer. It's insane. It's absolutely insane when you look at the, and and the quantity of these things that they churn out as well.
01:28:43
Speaker
like the mud goggles and how they do it. like i So I was looking, I was trolling AliExpress this afternoon and I found a servo drive to put on my lathe spindle on Bertha. 1.8 kilowatt servo drive for $300 delivered.
01:29:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. That's ridiculous. That's for free. I'm considering it, but I'm also like, Bertha's working. Why poke it with a stick if it's working? Like yeah what I have works. I mean, I can always roll back to what I but i have, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Don't do what I did to my life's car. It wasn't broke, so I fixed it till it was. ah No, it's proper, yeah. No, it was overheating, so I made it overheat worse.
01:29:29
Speaker
Oh, right on. Yeah, skills. That's why you pay a mechanic. Yeah. Oh, we're coming up on the hour and a half, Mark. What are you up to today? Today, I'm going to finish my Sunday, play with my little rats. And then tomorrow, Monday, I am going to feverishly finish all the finishing on pens and then just start boxing stuff up and get ready to get out of here so that I can quickly pack them up, take them all to the various drop-off places, and move along with the next batch. Because yeah, this one's been kind of dragging on and causing oh it. is one of the What is the biggest batch you've ever done?
01:30:05
Speaker
Absolutely. And like when I sell it, it's going to, yeah, it's, it's lovely. It pays for multiple, multiple months of work, which is killer, but it's just the point before it. You're just like, Oh, it's getting to that. Like, yeah, we've got a customer 30 days and I'm worried next, next month they're going to place a nice big order. And then it's like, okay, cool. When are in the hole until they pay? Cause we're doing yeah mostly on our own dime until they pay.
01:30:31
Speaker
Oh, in the last few months, I've been like, I spent just a crap, like I was, what I like. more money than I would have thought I'd ever spend. in like just Because ah I'm outfitting this big machine. And then i ah for Christmas, I was worried about we had a big postal strike. So I just bought a crap ton of material and a crap ton of tooling and just blew a bunch of money that way. Then a month before that, I bought a big manual lathe, straight cash, and then the machine. And then I put a huge deposit on that. And then like the forklifts and just like ah yeah spending money like crazy and yeah selling nothing. So it is like burning through cash. So yeah, I'm kind of excited to ah to stop that. Yeah, to recoup that a bit.
01:31:07
Speaker
You bet. Yeah. How about you? What's your, what's your week looking like? Uh, hopefully I get material tomorrow and then tomorrow I've got auto material to machine 200 little early parts, um, out of 70, 75, that'll hopefully be in by Wednesday. And then it turns out I can actually probably run that job in like one whole day. Um, I think it's 13 ish minutes to run two parts so I can burn through the a hundred big parts in a day if I work late. And then the little parts I run off.
01:31:37
Speaker
20 parts every hour, so five hours, and I've got 100 of those done. And then it's just tumbling and shipping. So I burnt through those quickly. And then got the Torx bits hopefully on tomorrow. Hopefully material arrives. And then before that, I'm making the Afrikaans side hinges. It's a stupid job that I keep doing and I shouldn't. Some little hinges for some woodworking project or something. The gold is like 20 of them two or three times a year. And it's just, it's annoying to do. It's not hard to do. It's just annoying.
01:32:05
Speaker
um And then, you know, just pottering around and getting, I need to get that wire chopper done. It's now running somewhat reliably, but the server overheats about seven or eight meters of wire in because that giant servo still overheats or did you? It's a little, uh,
01:32:23
Speaker
on the wire chopper, it's a little 400 watt server with a four to one gearbox. This thing sitting at like 4,000 RPM continuously. It hates it. Oh, okay. Okay. again of Yeah. So I kind of need to scrounge up some money to buy a, uh,
01:32:41
Speaker
a just a 12 newton meter stepper to run it and just run that thing at a thousand rpm and just let it to to and chop wire um but i've got that running somewhat reliably it's cutting a millimeter shorter than it should but the customer said that's fine so if it runs it runs like i just want that project finished now um yeah and then you're busy cleaning the workshop up a bit to try and make it a bit more pleasant to be in there That always helps. Oh, yes. And then I ran into an issue with the anchor points, but I think we'll leave that for for next week once I have actually resolved resolve the problem.
01:33:16
Speaker
Cool. I'm excited for that. Yeah, it should be interesting. Leave us a topic for next week. All right, guys. I think we're going to call it there. Thank you everyone for listening. Please give us a thumbs up or a five-star review on Spotify and a thumbs up on YouTube. Feel free to share it with anyone you think will enjoy our ramblings. And yeah, have a good one. We will see you guys next week.
01:33:43
Speaker
Yeah, and if you have things that you want to mention to the show, like hit up either of our, we don't have a show channel or anything, but he ah hit up either of our Instagrams or emails and let us know. I know a ton of people from the last episode kind of let me know what's what. So ah yeah, I'm eager to hear your feedback. Sweet. Have a good one, guys. Take care.