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How to Name Products & Businesses, Process Scalability, Datron NEO, 5-C Collets, Rask Blades on the KERN
242 Plays6 years ago
Business of Machining: It may be simple and direct, but it's not forced or uncomfortable. BoM also happens to be a "subtle acronym" for Bill of Materials.
TOPICS:
- Naming businesses and products
- Asking For Advice: The Student Mindset
- Processes - Scalability & Sustainability
- Datron NEO - Sneeze Guards & ProvenCut
- Parting Off: CNC Lathes
- SAGA ON KERN?
Grimsmo and Saunders discuss what it's like to name products and companies. The next time you hear Bashing Strawberries, you'll know exactly what they mean.
Discord Group Chat Provokes Good Conversation & Deeper Musings We're all hardwired to find information that validates our belief system and discount anything that contradicts it.
However, when asking for advice, we must learn to put our biases aside. On that note, Saunders shares a fitting and humbling book excerpt about maintaining a student mindset.
How To Get Things Done Well - Sustainable & Scalable Are you the technician focused on specific day-to-day tasks, the slightly unhinged company visionary, or somewhere in between? Determining where you are along this spectrum can help you determine the next steps in your business.
Datron NEO - How You Doin'? Saunders discusses what it's been like the past few months with a Datron NEO. Everything from the work envelope compared to machine footprint, spindle speed, and an intuitive control, Datron NEO gets two thumbs up from SMW. Hey Marv, if you're listening, can a Datron outpace a KERN?
Should You Increase SFM Just Because? Grimsmo wants to leverage a higher SFM but there is never free lunch.
PARTING IS SUCH SWEET SORROW... Saunders shoulda got a 5-C. Holding 1/4" thick mod vise washer between the main and subspindle for parting off doesn't leave any room. Having to take an additional finishing pass on the part isn't ideal. Although a 20 second pass seems like no big deal is it scalable and sustainable? NO.
Speaking of Sustainable... Grimsmo kicks around the idea of making the one-and done SAGA part on the KERN instead of the NAK and other ways improve production.
HELP! It's Too Simple for Technology! Saunders needs help from YOU! If you know what would work best to solve his camera + monitor woes, he's all ears.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Hosts
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 170. My name is John Grimsmo. And my name is John Saunders and this podcast is about business and machining. I actually really like our name. Yeah, I do too. I was thinking about that the other day. There's a couple other machining podcasts that are coming up now, which is awesome. And they've all got sweet names too, like with Intolerance podcast, et cetera. And I still like ours. I like it a lot. Yep.
00:00:26
Speaker
It suits you and me, like what we do. Business is a huge part of it. Machining is a huge part of it and everything else we talk
Origins of the Podcast
00:00:34
Speaker
about. I like the fact that we didn't say let's start a podcast. We were already doing something and it morphed into that. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. It makes me happy.
00:00:48
Speaker
I remember us coming up with the name and we're like, well, why don't we just call it the business of machining? It was not like a well thought out process. It just sort of happened. We're like, yeah, that's fine. Let's go. Move on.
Naming Products and Companies
00:01:03
Speaker
I always, always remember the smashing pumpkins. That is my example because
00:01:09
Speaker
I've named quite a few companies or things like strike mark to chip rag to Saunders machine works. And oftentimes things don't sound comfortable or they don't sound colloquial. They don't sound normal. And I always remind myself smashing pumpkins. I mean, if you said, if you said bashing strawberries, you would think that's a super weird name. You're not going, you're going nowhere with that move on. But smashing pumpkins, you know,
00:01:34
Speaker
slamming gourds, no. So anyway, the business of machining is now a very comfortable thing. And I like the fact that it has that kind of subtle acronym symbolism of a bill of materials. Yeah, exactly. The bomb. Yeah.
00:01:51
Speaker
Yeah, I forget that sometimes. No, that's a really good point about naming products. Whether we're naming a knife, calling it the rask, which is a Norwegian word for fast or quick or something. But it sounds, everything sounds weird until it just becomes normal. And then you don't even think about it again. It's just normal. But it's this awkward thing, whether you're naming a company or whether you're naming a product or a kid or whatever.
00:02:20
Speaker
Well, I like rasp as an outsider because it sounds crisp. It's one syllable. It sounds sharp. And then it kind of reminds me of a rasp, which I don't call files rasps. Like I don't really use the word rasp in a household or regular basis, but I still kind of sort of know that it, you know, a rasp isn't something you're going to hand your kid. I don't really know what it is, but I'm definitely not giving it to like a six year old. Oh, so sort of a tangential thing, but
Openness to Advice and Learning
00:02:46
Speaker
We have a pretty cool Discord conversation going on on the NYC CNC site. We talked about tips on efficiency and getting stuff done. I was doing some thinking about, okay, what do I think matters? What's important? What have I learned? What do I see in the people that I look up to? If there's one overarching theme that I think
00:03:09
Speaker
is awesome to embrace and I think some folks won't and that's in and of itself kind of telling is when you're looking to learn or you're asking for advice, you've got to be willing to stop and put down your own biases, your own convictions and actually listen and it's a very
00:03:28
Speaker
What made me think of it was I've had some folks propose or ask for advice on names. And one of the first things you do nowadays, assuming that it's going to be a business that has some relevance to the internet, is look at domain availability, social media availability, searchability.
Confirmation Bias in Business
00:03:45
Speaker
And if you bring those things up, oftentimes the first thing I've seen back is this knee-jerk kind of, well, I understand that, but I'm going to make it different, or I'm just going to have to deal with it. It's kind of like, well, listen, you got to take advice.
00:03:58
Speaker
Yeah, you asked for it, so let me actually give it before you shut it down immediately. Right. And I struggle with that too sometimes, I think, because I have my own preconceived notions. And when I ask somebody for advice, I'm like, yeah, but not like that. Right? Right. I have to just check myself to be like, OK, shut up in my head and just listen and take some advice and then process instead of immediately denying it or whatever.
00:04:27
Speaker
But we are not alone. There's human studies. I was reading an article talking about the world we're in with this COVID stuff, and it was mentioning some really good clinical and psychological type studies that were done, psychology studies that were done around the fact that we, as in companies, board of directors, leaders, politicians, you actively embrace
00:04:51
Speaker
papers, theses, peer groups, policies that support your views, and then you disavow or discredit things that offer contrasting views. It's just like a survival mechanism, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it's dangerous, kind of.
00:05:07
Speaker
I don't know, because you want to be right, and you want to surround yourself with people that align with you. And you want to read information and learn things that align with your views on the world. But you know, they always say like, like, learn just as much about the opposing side so that you are even stronger in your own side, like you understand where they're coming from. And it's very tough to do.
00:05:26
Speaker
Yeah.
Maintaining a Student's Mindset
00:05:27
Speaker
So I got a free section from a book that I'm going to read to you that I think because I read this and I liked it and I was like, Grimms was going to love this too. It's from Nick Offerman's book called Paddle Your Own Canoe or something like that. The guy from Parks and Dragons. The actor? Yeah.
00:05:45
Speaker
It's not a book I'm going to overall recommend. There's a couple of good excerpts, but it's more just kind of fun, brainless reading. But there's a section that reads, my favorite rule from Sensei was always maintain the attitude of a student. When a person thinks that they have finished learning, that is when bitterness and disappointment can set in, as that person will wake up every morning wondering when someone is going to throw a parade in their honor for being so smart.
00:06:11
Speaker
Yes. Right? It's good. Yeah. Yeah. That's beautiful. Yeah. And it's that mindset of being a forever student and never kind of toot in your own horn. It's like the more I learn, the more I need to learn, the more I realize how uneducated I am.
00:06:28
Speaker
or just how much more there is to learn, you know? Right.
Balancing Business Needs with Visionary Thinking
00:06:32
Speaker
Yeah, and it ties back into this theme that you and I have been talking about, and struggling is not the right word, but certainly conscious of, which is balancing the practical needs of a daily business, a growing business with that ability to be a dreamer and a thinker and a visionary that isn't necessarily – that is a little bit detached from the constraints of reality.
00:06:55
Speaker
Yeah, the visionaries job is, is to be detached is to, is to create things that don't exist is to see the world in a way that it's not yet. But you also have to maintain the world that is, you know, you got to pay your bills and you got to, you know, keep everybody happy and etc, like so much just day to day stuff. That doesn't exactly fall into the visionary role. But
00:07:20
Speaker
I like both. I like some things better than others. I love being the visionary and coming up with new stuff, but I also like taking care of everything. Yeah. I vacillate for sure based on my mood and my day and successes, but without having sales, like without the success that comes from
00:07:43
Speaker
selling, which it's a weird thing to articulate, but it's not just making money. I don't really know anybody who intrinsically just gets happy looking at bank accounts or cash dollar bills. That doesn't mean anything. It's the byproduct of the fact that when you sell something, that's a
00:08:01
Speaker
It validates your hard work. Yeah, exactly. So like that matters. And that's pretty darn cool. You build something and someone's willing to exchange their fiat currency for your productive output. Yeah, like check one in the wind box. But without that, I find that I have a little bit less interest these days on the business building side. And don't misread that as I'm
00:08:24
Speaker
Disinterested it's just I wouldn't I would I would build I would see and see machine stuff for no pay under Under all circumstances and continue to learn and nerd out. I love that. I don't necessarily I don't relish at the idea. We're actually at an awkward point right now. I'm happy to talk about about scheduling and inventory and accounting where
00:08:48
Speaker
There are people out there who would literally enjoy the act of building the business infrastructure at this point. Just like Warren Buffett's different, because when Warren Buffett was in high school, he starts reading through SEC filings. No one does that. And that's just how he's wired.
00:09:09
Speaker
Well, it's making me pause for thinking about, okay, how do I get things done? Well, do I do it myself? Do I learn? Do I insource, outsource, ignore it? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Do you find that in like the past month or so, it's been fairly easy to ignore a few key aspects that used to be more important a couple months ago? What do you mean? Like in business, like whether it's email or whether it's, um,
00:09:36
Speaker
you know, business development or things like that, product development, like I'm spending a lot of time now in product development, which is eating into my time spent, you know, on just maintaining the business. And with everything being kind of quieter now, business wise and staff wise and everything, there's just less, less businessy stuff for me to do. But some of it's falling apart, not apart, but yeah, not get done, like it should have been done. You know, yeah, but certainly, I'm having a lot of fun doing R&D.
Delegation and Focus in Business
00:10:05
Speaker
Which is, to be clear, awesome. I think, I know you and I are wired differently. And I'm not saying I'm wired the right way, but it's just how I'm wired. I can't not let that stuff get done. It's just not going to happen. I'll make the conscious decision to say not respond to an email because we get some emails that don't get a response.
00:10:28
Speaker
A good example being high school students asking me to do their Arduino code for them. That does not get a response, sorry. But I won't not read it. I won't not process invoices or payments or accounting reconciliations. I can't exist in that world.
00:10:48
Speaker
And so what I'm seeing is I'm pretty proud of how we've built out the systems. Like I can get through our daily accounting and reconciliation, bill paying. I'm pretty darn efficient with it, but it's still now taking me, like we may have anywhere from two to 10 bills and two to 10 inbound stuff that I've got to process. And now all of a sudden it may take me 20, 30 minutes, but I don't,
00:11:18
Speaker
What I refuse to do is the, I refuse to become bloated. So I got to do some more thinking about it, but you know, one extreme would be to justify hiring a full-time in-house accounting sort of administrative person. Yeah. And boy, I just, when I see companies and tour shops, I don't think I'm at the point yet where I want to incur that. I just don't, but we'll see.
00:11:46
Speaker
There's some other middle ground stuff. It's a hard thing to outsource because you are potentially giving access to some pretty critical and secure type stuff. Just the security but the holistic nature of a good admin person knows a lot about the business.
00:12:03
Speaker
In a way, I have that a lot with Barry and even Fraser taking care of a lot of the smaller admin stuff and then Barry taking care of quite a bit of the bigger stuff and then me taking care of the rest. It's nice for me to be able to spread it out.
00:12:19
Speaker
basically not have to talk to the banks all the time and not have to pay every invoice because Barry takes care of it and, you know, etc. allowing me to focus more on my stuff. So in a way, I do have some admin people here at the shop, which is kind of nice. Oh, no, for sure. And sometimes it's not even a trust issue. It's like, you know, the fact that some of these sites now require two factor or authentication or text messaging. And it's kind of like, you know, it's just a strange place to be in.
00:12:47
Speaker
quite a few times, I'll get a phone call or a text from either one of them going, what's the password that was just texted to your phone? Right, right. Or did the thing, can you you got two minutes to tell me please? Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, there's the trust issue, but also just the access issue. Because a lot of those sites, unless internally, you're just like, free and open, like, okay, guys, here are the passwords for everything, or, you know, selectively, whatever.
00:13:15
Speaker
thing. But a lot of those sites are basically built for the purpose of like, well, there's there's one admin, and his phone gets texted with the security code, like every time you log in, and you can't have three people doing that. Right, right. I don't know how to get around that. But
Creating Sustainable Business Strategies
00:13:33
Speaker
The phrase sustainable and scalable, I think I made it up. I honestly don't remember, but it's one of the phrases that I've continued to come back to because it's so clear and concise when you think about if we're going to launch a product, if we're going to keep doing a service. Is our accounting going to go from 20 minutes to three hours a day? No, I don't think so.
00:13:58
Speaker
think about what problem are you trying to solve? What's the gain of doing it? Is it something like you said, a family member can help take care of or somebody who may have maybe has your phone? Yeah. Over the two words, sustainable and scalable.
00:14:16
Speaker
Yeah, of course. Because it's like, I love, again, if there's one thing I've had the chance to do during some of this strangeness of COVID times, it's thinking about what makes you happy? What do you want to, if this all ends, it's not going to all end. But what decisions did you not pursue or opportunities did you not pursue? And
00:14:38
Speaker
if I just lost my train of thought. I can't think of it anymore. Sorry. It gives you time to pause and step back and be like, well, now's the time to think about stuff. Okay. Make sure I'm thinking about some worthwhile stuff during this time. I spent a lot of time doing that.
00:15:00
Speaker
And while I've been quite busy the past month or so, I've still found more time in my brain to crunch through ideas and thoughts and plans for the future. And I've quite enjoyed that because it's allowed me to unpack some things that I just haven't had time to think about much lately, what direction of the company or even specific products like tangible nitty gritty toolpath things.
00:15:29
Speaker
that I just have been glossing over for a long time, but it's been nice. Good. Don't lose that then. No, exactly. And I'm finding the importance of it. So I'm going to make sure I keep it in my life. Obviously, I've always had a bit of it, but just more now.
00:15:45
Speaker
I remembered where my train went. Hear me out because when I heard, I'll explain the source of inspiration and what's clicking here. I worry that it comes off the wrong way.
00:16:01
Speaker
So hear me out. But what I was mentioning at the time of the think and reflection of COVID and what made me think about sustainable and scalable has to do with hustling and working hard and sweat equity and the entrepreneur just working hard.
Hard Work and Determination
00:16:19
Speaker
What I like about that is I believe in work ethic. I believe in just absolute hustling. But there's a nuanced point, and this is what I'm trying to be clear about, is it doesn't mean that I'm working harder than you by judging you. It's not about you. It's about me. It's about the fact that I work into what I
00:16:40
Speaker
I was already kind of thinking about this and then total coincidence started watching the last dance with Mike about Michael Jordan. And if you have not watched this, you are going to be required to watch it as soon as you finish watching the founder about McDonald's.
00:16:58
Speaker
That was an excellent movie. But no, I haven't seen the Michael Jordan one because I'm like, man, basketball, I don't do basketball. Doesn't matter, John. And maybe it won't click with you, but I will. I've heard some killer quotes and stories about Michael Jordan before from like Tony Robbins and other people that if this is anything like that, then I'm in.
00:17:19
Speaker
Yeah, and so his phrase is, I will win at all costs. Now, in this day and age, to me, there's an implication of ethics and cheating and bending the rules.
00:17:36
Speaker
cross. Michael Jordan, at least how he's portrayed in this documentary, which he was involved with, but I think it passes the muster test. He seems like he is actually a fairly humble guy for his financial success, for his basketball success. He's pretty down to earth, especially relative to some of the modern day athletes that
00:17:56
Speaker
You see the news but he his simple answer is I am going to work harder than Anybody else I am at every practice working harder than anybody else. I'm at every game. I'm thinking I'm playing and to me That's the thing. I love like I I got here It's pure hard work period you got to be decently smart and you got to be focused and some other things that matter But there's not much makes up for hard work. I
00:18:23
Speaker
Yeah, and that's very similar to what I've heard before is about him and even Will Smith says it too and he's like, I will outwork everybody. It's not a competition, it's just I am in control of my own work ethic and I'm going to maximize that to the absolute nth degree because I can control that and I know that most people aren't conscious of that.
00:18:46
Speaker
therefore, I'm just going to work everybody. Yeah. Yeah. But there's just a way he can does it that I have a lot of respect for where it's not, you know, he's not saying to Scottie Pippen or BJ Armstrong or these other players that they're, they're weaker or they're less motivated or they're bad people. It's not about that. It's just I am going to work harder.
00:19:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's such a difference between saying I'm better than you versus I'm going to work harder than you. It's almost it's almost a competition. It's almost like, like, try me, like, prove you wrong. Yeah, I don't I mean, I'm saying this out loud, because I'm hoping that if it resonates with one person listening, I'm happy with that. And if it upsets more people, and so be it because, like, we were making sneeze guards again, for a local,
00:19:32
Speaker
we're not partnering with, we're just making them for a place that's selling these retail stores or working with these retail stores. And they ended up saying, we need a hundred more, and they dropped the material off. And I don't have to work on a night at this point. I could easily say, hey, it fits into our job flow, and this is what needs to happen, and it'll get done when they get done. It's like, no, man, I'm sitting there. I actually ran them on the Datron, which ended up being phenomenal. And just sitting there, running them on a Thursday night.
00:20:00
Speaker
you know, we ended up having them done the next day. And that's to me, that's part of success, like the your counterpart, the vendor with whom is a new relationship is like, wait a minute here, you guys did that, like, just it completely rewrites the book of how folks think of you and work with you and can lean on you and just I love it. So let's take away from that into the Datron. We haven't talked too much about it on the podcast. So you've had it for a couple months now. Yep.
00:20:29
Speaker
What, uh, is it as great as I think it is like for what it is.
Experience with Datron Machine
00:20:35
Speaker
Yes. So, so with that, like wanting one, like almost getting one, but a year or two ago, I definitely understand the machine a lot better. Um, I will, I will.
00:20:50
Speaker
Going back to folks that if you want to listen, listen, if not, okay, I can't do anything about it. The most number one thing I hear people say is, well, it's the same price as insert middle drill machine here, Robo drill, speedio, et cetera. Totally different machines. Some of those features may not be important to you. The fact that it will fit through a man door is important to a lot of people, maybe not to you.
00:21:15
Speaker
XY travel, and don't quote me on this, but I believe it's approximately 14 inches by 19 inches, is incredible for the footprint of the machine. It's like a full footprint. It's literally, yeah, there's like no lost. The footprint of the machine and the work envelope are almost the same. Yeah, yeah. Or much more so than any other design machine. And here's what's amazing. We're machining
00:21:44
Speaker
the parts with the like plastic parts that have that adhesive protective layer, not adhesive, but the, do you know what I'm talking about? You just peel it off. Yeah. We have the Z height set on the machine to where it machines partway through that.
00:22:02
Speaker
I haven't miked that stuff up, but I'd be shocked if it was more than a few thou. And we're doing this across. We're actually making those fixture plate protective covers. So it's the outside profile plus, I don't know, probably 80 holes. So in the machine moves blindingly fast and it is literally holding vacuum through the whole thing by machining partway through that protective cover layer. That's incredible.
00:22:30
Speaker
Good. So it's insanely fast and it's very accurate and it's light and they've designed it obviously not to be a 40 horsepower workhorse, but to be a light, fast, quick moving. I guess it's gantry style. Yep.
00:22:47
Speaker
Yeah, so for sure, the control is probably the shining spot. I think that's always a harder thing to sell until you've really used it or seen it or seen bad controls. But it's the trade show demo that means more when it's in your shop of just how easy it is to probe it, how easy it is.
00:23:07
Speaker
We have a problem with the machine. It's logical about letting you open the door or park the machine or fix this or give you errors. It's just very well thought out. I have a lot of respect for that. I don't want to say that's surprising, but it is surprising because it's a custom control that no other machine has. They invented it themselves. To hear that it's user-friendly and good and intuitive and effective is just perfect. Yeah.
00:23:36
Speaker
Yeah, they're definitely way ahead on a lot of things. They start over. Say again? They start over. They're not basing it off a fannic. Well, but it's different too, because I have a lot of respect for the brother machines. I mean, those are impressive machines. Lots of good things about them. But I've also heard a fair number of folks that have struggled with the lack of support or commonality or probing routine complications. And maybe some of that's because
00:24:01
Speaker
you need an large enough user base for say Fusion or a third party development site to create content around it. The day trial, we haven't hit those yet. It just all works.
00:24:11
Speaker
Awesome. Yeah. It's impressive. The spindle RPM gets used. It sounds great. Most everything we've done today is plastic or aluminum, but the purpose of that machine is for proven cut. The world kind of got turned on its head with COVID and Datron was awesome in that they said absolutely use it for
00:24:34
Speaker
making PPV stuff. But our next step was want to tackle some kind of tool steel and some of the materials you might not think that machine would be well suited for, but can do. Fun. So what's the RPM? It's like 40, right? Or 36 or something? 1,000? Again, don't quote me. I want to say it might be 40 or 42, but the continuous recommendation is just don't run it past 36 continuously.
00:25:03
Speaker
It's running right now in the background.
Improving Machining Efficiency
00:25:05
Speaker
I doubt you can hear it on the podcast, but it is awesome. That brings me up. My next question for you is, I've got the current now and it's got up to 42,000 RPM. I guess I'm uneducated enough about surface footage, about SFM, to understand how to leverage that to get into some RPM.
00:25:30
Speaker
you know, standard recipe, titanium 150, SFM. And it's like, well, that gives me like, like 4000 RPM on some tools, you know, like 12,000 on smaller tools. And how do I leverage, you know, smaller step over smaller with the cut depth, the cut, etc, and increase SFM, because you're allowed to like, what do you know about that? Well, so what's your goal, higher removal roommates, roommates, better finish? Well, no, that's better.
00:25:59
Speaker
I don't know. So there's lots of caveats and exceptions to this, but for the sake of being blunt, increasing service footage generally correlates to a decrease into a life. It's a curve, but it's a quote unquote no free lunch. The reason to have a higher RPM generally is going to be really helpful for small tools or tools where you're cutting on center line where
00:26:23
Speaker
you're still effectively swaging or pushing the material at the center point of the tool. But having higher RPMs really helps. In your case, obviously, tipping the part over, presenting it at a slight angle negates that concern. But for small tools, those 20,000 end mills, that's where you're finally going to be able to get the correct, even if it's only 300 surface feet. Like, here, let's pull it up. If you look at a tool diameter 0.02,
00:26:48
Speaker
and you want to run, so 20,000, you want to run that 300 service fee, that's 57,000 RPM. Yeah, for 20,000 mill. So it's not going to help you on 316s, quarter inch, six millimeter, 10 millimeter, et cetera. Yeah, there might be something to be said for higher RPM, really thin, really fast cuts, but I would
00:27:13
Speaker
make a generalization that there's quite a bit of diminishing return of value there. Some trade-offs that can go bad. I mean, for sure, high-efficiency machining and adaptive cuts are great, and thinner cuts going faster is great, but that's generally more like, can your machine accelerate and move at the required inch per minute, which your current is still amazing at? Not so much I need to jack the RPM up.
00:27:36
Speaker
even the Datron is light and fast enough that it can move at some pretty silly, it can actually hold a feed rate that's pretty fast. I want to say that actually, if Marv is listening, Marv, what do you think? Can a Datron outrace outpace a Kern? I'm going to guess it might be able to because it's just got a lot less mass to move around. Yeah, probably.
00:28:03
Speaker
It's a showdown. It's a German machine tool showdown. Interesting. I don't know. You'd standardize it. You'd be like, how fast can you machine a one inch hole, one inch circle or something, and hold the feed rate or so? I don't know. Oh, the Datron's got to smoke. I mean, we did a part of this Insta machinist
00:28:23
Speaker
YouTube pass around thing like Blondie Hacks had it, AV had it, ABOM had it and we had it and we're sending it on out of the next person and we machined a micro fixture plate with like a bunch of I think 440 or 256 tack holes and that thing just lies through there. That's cool. It's been good. Interesting. Yeah. I'm loving the lathe. Yeah.
00:28:48
Speaker
Dude, I almost had to ask advice and then figured it out, but we're partying.
00:28:55
Speaker
really close to the chuck, because it's a small, that's what an obvious point, but those Mod Vise washers are only a quarter inch thick and trying to hold onto that part with both the main and the sub spindle is not a good idea because you don't have any room in there. And so in hindsight, I probably would have gotten a 5C on the sub spindle. I didn't even think about it.
00:29:20
Speaker
downside is you wouldn't have cross-compatible collets, but upside is 5C collets are way cheaper and we're not doing sub-spindle work that's bigger than the max 5C diameter anyways. Yeah, so 5C having a smaller, I believe a smaller
00:29:38
Speaker
chuck body would have meant we could have chucked up the parting tool blade closer and gotten better finishes and tool life out of our parting blade and also a little bit less pucker factor. So the compromise is I got the parting blade extended, it works, but it's a now unacceptable surface finish. It would have been acceptable when it was really choked up.
00:30:04
Speaker
So I do have to come in and do a finishing skim pass on the sub spindle. Not a big deal, but that means I've got to move the sub spindle back, rotate the turret, do an operation, bring the sub spindle back forward and drop it in the parts catcher. Whereas before, if the parting had worked, I would have just parted it, parts catcher, next part.
00:30:22
Speaker
Yeah, you save some complication in like 20 seconds of machining or something. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. I mean, I care about cycle time in that I'm watching it so closely, especially on length parts, but I don't care about cycle time because I will do the operations that I want to do no matter what. Yeah, exactly.
00:30:42
Speaker
If I have to face the other side, just great. I'm facing the other side. I don't care if it takes an extra 20 seconds. But go back to the sustainable and scalable, John. It's like, OK, well, what if instead of making 60 of these for a week, I need to make 50 a day? Well, if it's a four-minute cycle time, you think, ah, it's not so slow, and it's automated barfed. But then you're like, that's only 15 an hour. Do you think about that sometimes? Yeah.
00:31:09
Speaker
We've got one part that the clip for the pen is, I think, a 22-minute cycle, 20 or 22, so that's like three an hour. Yeah. It's like, oh man, that's not that productive. Right, right. Do you think about improvements to tooling, improvements to CAM, adding a second machine, better focus on lights out so you can run them 24 hours? There's lots of fruit, some of it's low hanging, some of it's not.
00:31:35
Speaker
in thinking that I want to experiment with I haven't I'm not sold on it yet but I think it could be epic. Right now we're making the part one and done on the Nakamura lathe and it comes off and there's a little tab we have to blend off and the surface finish on the rest of it the 3d machining is like passable. It needs some blending for sure but it's not great.
00:31:54
Speaker
So I'm thinking to myself, what if we from, what is it? Five eighths round bar. What if we drill it, do some boring and then dovetail it and then part it off. And then it goes on the Kern on a little Christmas tree fixture or something. And the Kern does all the rest of the milling. And I'm like, Hmm, this is interesting. I might be able to do that.
00:32:15
Speaker
you're onto something, if you can add value in an op one, that means you don't have to come back and do more work. And it still provides a decent work holding solution that then a current machine like the current, because you could Christmas tree 50 of those on one little tombstone, John or something like that, you know?
00:32:33
Speaker
Realistically, I would use the smaller tombstones and only put a couple on each one, but I have 55 small tombstones, like small pallets. And it can be the job that runs when nothing else needs to be run. You know what I mean? It's just loaded up. Oh, let's make some more of those. Oh, let's make some more of those. Oh, I don't need the current right now. Let's make some more of those. Because it's palletized and there's so many tools and everything, I need to get into those production jobs that it's like,
00:33:02
Speaker
Okay. I need to play with the current right now. Leave me alone. Don't run anything or I don't need to play with the current. So let's put these parts on. Let's just run it. Let's run it overnight. Let's do that. And I need to get there very soon. Um, but that would take the Nakamura down to like a, I don't know, five minutes cycle time would be able to bust out clip length in, in time.
00:33:21
Speaker
And it's not great at 3D machining and surfacing and things like that. It's heavy and slow and doesn't have good movement profiles. And it's OK, but it's no current. And I'm like, well, I've got this current that's not sitting here. Let's put it to work. Well, and that's an example. I know you use some small tooling on that clip. So instead of doing 6,000 or even the speeder, 6,000 is what we're doing. Yeah, dude, that's a current part. Yeah.
00:33:50
Speaker
So I kind of got excited about that. I got to work hold it, interestingly.
00:33:56
Speaker
And then I was thinking of what we were talking about a couple of weeks ago of how you add a clamp for a second op. So like you machine it once, and then instead of breaking it off and remounting it somewhere else, you add some other fixture, some other clamping device to cut that tab off. And I've been thinking a lot about that, and that's actually brilliant. And if applied creatively and productively,
00:34:23
Speaker
then your part doesn't move. So your datums and everything, your alignment is the same and you cut the tab off and you're 98% perfect. You know, it doesn't lend itself to lights out, but it's still a really good tool. It does, especially with us with so many palettes, like op ones come in and then you come in in the morning and you put the clampy on and you just scheduled for op two or you altered it.
00:34:50
Speaker
John, for those of us that don't have aroas, I was thinking about how the machine is hostage to you add that clamp. But you don't. You can just pull it out, wait, add the clamp, and then resume. So I now officially am jealous.
00:35:04
Speaker
Yep. And I was talking with Tony at Kern about pallet scheduling and how to actually manage which pallets run next and which code runs to which pallet. And I still have more learning, like a lot more learning to do on that. I can do it basically right now by writing a text file that says, pallet one, code 1001, pallet two, code 1002, whatever.
00:35:28
Speaker
but Heidenhine has an upgrade that's a couple thousand dollars that allows you to much better schedule palettes and it looks ahead for tool life
Enhancing Shop Floor Efficiency
00:35:38
Speaker
and it squeezes palettes in when there's time and it tells you all kinds of stuff. So I need to look more into that, but it could be pretty awesome.
00:35:48
Speaker
The lathe thing that got me just absolutely, I've been having a good week. We finished that daytrond longboard generative truck, most complicated part I've ever made. I'll save that for another episode or story because that was its own amazement. But that was felt great. And then Ed was like, hey, we need more diamond pins. And I had the lathe set up for mod vice washers.
00:36:12
Speaker
And it was just one of those wind moments because the diamond pins, we try to hold a very, very tight tolerance on the nominal diameter because it's what interfaces with the fixture plate. And this was the first test because we already ran them, but the last time we ran them was really the first batch. And I made all my notes about the warm up, the thermal stability, how I touch the tools off, how I comp it, how I think about it.
00:36:40
Speaker
And we wrote down note, like paper or digital? Absolutely not paper. That is verboten along with manually editing G code. It's manual NC comments in the Fusion file. They're right there. You can't miss them. And then I ran the warmup routine.
00:36:56
Speaker
or using per Rob Lockwood, the coordinate systems on our chuck faces. So nothing changed. I literally pulled out two Royal Collets, put in two different Royal Collets, fed the piece of material in there, let it do a lengthy warmup, which is, I'm going to do a video on thermallness and lathes because we've learned a lot and it's awesome how
00:37:15
Speaker
our lathe, which is on the low end of the value spare, or whatever you'll call it, low end of the price spectrum for turning centers is just bang on. And the first part, the first 10 parts, the first 30 parts have all been, I'm going to say perfect. Really? I mean, there's a minor variations, but we're chasing subtenths.
00:37:37
Speaker
And for anyone who's new to this, I troll people who say my machine holds tents all day long. Things move, things change, tools wear, thermal stuff happens. Is it absolutely perfect? No. But the first part was absolutely well within what I wanted it to be, which is awesome. We have a recipe, we have a workflow, there was no risk of crashing, there was no updating stuff, there was no retouching off, there was no manually changing work offsets, just works.
00:38:04
Speaker
Beautiful. Yeah, you're making it fun by standardizing and simplifying and making it easy to jump between jobs, which I need to spend some time on. But that's what I've always wondered. The Matt Sur is the first time I understood this idea with having a MAM, which your current is effectively a MAM style machine. You've got plenty of power capacity, plenty of tool capacity. So yeah, you're right. If you want to go work for two hours on a complicated cam part, just tell the current to go do other work.
00:38:33
Speaker
the current run easy work that is like known, you know, trouble free, don't even have to worry about it for that period of time. And then I'll be back in two hours and your jobs will be done. You know what I mean? I need a way to schedule that because that'll just be perfect.
00:38:48
Speaker
I'm making a note because I'm not in any way challenging you, but I'm curious to see firsthand from somebody I trust, how realistic is that to implement? Are you going to end up with material that's always sitting on the current, ready to go? Can I ask you and our audience a quick question? I would like a way in our shop to set up
00:39:09
Speaker
I don't know the right term, whether it's a live feed or closed circuit. Basically I want, and obviously typical bootstrapper, nothing lavish here in terms of video quality, but I want a video camera somewhere and I want a small monitor, like one of those four or five inch, you know,
00:39:26
Speaker
once you get on Amazon or whatever for 30 bucks, 50 bucks, whatever. So I can put a video cut somewhere and then preferably something like ethernet certainly will need to be longer than a typical USB cable. But some way that I can then see what that camera's pointing at on a small, very small monitor. And I'd prefer not to do like, oh, you have to establish a connection or to reset it all up. Like I kind of just want it hardwired in that sense of what I see on the monitors is what the camera's pointing at.
00:39:54
Speaker
If anybody has any suggestions on that, I would very much appreciate it.
00:39:59
Speaker
What's the purpose? What do you want to do? Two different things. One is that we have a battery air tank, like an extra 200 gallon air tank in the far corner of our shop. And it needs to be shut off at night when we leave and shut the system off because we do have minor leaks and you don't want to drain that tank. But it's silly when you're leaving to have to walk all the way to the far corner of the shop to look and see if the ball valve is open or closed. So that's one example.
00:40:27
Speaker
The other example that I've always had this thought in mind is I want one pointed at the tool changer on our vertical machine centers so that you can see what the tool changer is at. This may not be perfect because of the angle view of the camera, but we'll play with it. You can basically see the tool changer from the operator position.
00:40:51
Speaker
So these don't have to be online. They don't have to be phone accessible. It's just a camera and a screen and that's it. Correct. Interesting. Because I was gonna say just get like the wise security cameras or whatever they are. Nope. I have to open an app. I have to wait for it to connect. I don't really want it on my phone. I want it mounted on a one of those
00:41:11
Speaker
cheap four inch screens. You just want a giant mirror so you can see around the corner basically. It's literally like if you see a security system at a business or prison or something where it's just like there's a feed and the security guard's watching the feed and it's always showing where it's pointing at. Yeah, I don't have any suggestions, but there's got to be something super simple. It's like- It was too simple.
00:41:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's too simple for technology. Right. I'm hoping in a case based on the feedback we've gotten before, which has been solid, you guys are awesome that listen to this podcast. I'm betting we'll get some good suggestions and I'll be sure to share that. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Cool. What's on tap today? I got a ton of stuff I got.
00:41:53
Speaker
A couple more meetings today. I got current parts to make. I'm getting super duper close to having a Rask blade finished on the current and at least ready for heat treat. And hopefully today's the day for that. A couple more toolpaths to make, one or two more tools to load, and then I'm ready to rock. That's because Champer InstaPost was all sick.
00:42:16
Speaker
That's insane. I was filming it for YouTube and I was like, oh man, I got to Instagram this. I literally said that on the video. Yeah, it's amazing. It was cool. Sweet.
00:42:27
Speaker
Um, about that, cause you saw that on Instagram where it, it does a lot of movements to do that 90 degree arc, because I think in fusion, there's some little tipping motions, like just a couple of degrees here and there. Um, you know what I mean? So it's like some jiggly. So the B and the C have to do some weird stuff to be able to do that extra little twist. How do I get rid of that?
00:42:50
Speaker
I cannot answer that correctly live on air. You got the zero to 90 range or whatever. There's one of those you lock, I assume. Maybe. There's another thing that has to do with the point density and the vector fan spread. Basically, I think what you're saying is you want a form of smoothing where just ignore motion if it's smaller than a certain amount. Or lock it to only one axis kind of thing.
00:43:19
Speaker
Yeah, I don't remember offhand if multi-axis contour will let you do that. I've gotten decent at troubleshooting these, but it's a fair amount of work. Rob and Lauren's and those guys can answer these questions just on the fly. Phil as well. Sorry, Phil, I didn't mean to leave you out there. I didn't mean to leave you out. Sorry, Amish. Awesome. On time for you today.
00:43:44
Speaker
What does that have for me? We are running diamond pins as we speak. I am dealing with some order stuff. It's a good problem to have. I will always throw time at helping orders get placed, but we had more PO type orders or orders that just can't be run through the normal Shopify. Finishing up a couple of YouTube videos.
Selling Non-Core Equipment
00:44:09
Speaker
And then, oh, this has been on my, this has been a victim of my procrastination, but we've got some stuff we just need to sell. And it's some of us even been sitting in a pile. And so I just need to really get going with that because we are, uh, continuing to clean house on just stuff that's not part of our story anymore. Right. You know, a little like it's a diacro finger break. It's kind of cool, but nope. Got to go. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Not going to use it. Cool. Yep. See you next week. You got it, man. Take care.
00:45:03
Speaker
I take care, bye.