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Business of Machining - Episode 108
225 Plays7 years ago
When high production is vital to your business, planning ahead for down time when employees are down for the count could make or break.
Although Skye thought he escaped the illness that overpowered his co-workers...he spoke too soon. Angelo steps up to the plate.
NUANCE + PROCESS SHEETS?
After Saunders tours Superb Industries, Inc., the Moore Jig Grinder poses a challenging question. How can you incorporate skilled labor into a process sheet?
Patty Cake, Patty Cake, Baker's Man....How Many Backups Should You Have on Hand?
Having doubles of EVERYTHING is not feasible so that means careful decisions about which replacement items you keep. Lead time, cost, and cash flow are just a few!
TRUST YOUR GUT
Big Kaiser goes haywire, causing SMW to begrudgingly scrap an expensive part. While troubleshooting, Saunders has his finger on it but is none the wiser.
NOT AGAIN, TOOL #7!
Grimsmo arrives to a flashing red light and a broken 1/8" flat 4-flute end mill--and this isn't the first time. When it comes to machining the tabs off of SAGA clips, this tool isn't cutting it (pun intended).
Kyocera Insert Update:
After blowing close to one insert per part, the problem is solved. Now, GK can get 200 + parts out of one insert!
NEW TOYS
From Swissish thoughts to full Swishish, Grimsmo's zeroing in on the machine GK needs.
In addition to the UMC-750, Saunders makes another purchase that will be a game changer.
Recommended
Transcript
Episode Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the Business of Machining episode 108. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. Good morning. Good morning, buddy. How are you? I'm really good. Awesome. Yeah. How are you doing? Great, actually. Great. Yes.
Saunders' Vacation and Shop Update
00:00:19
Speaker
My wife and I took William for a little mini vacation this weekend, got away. It was nice to have some R&R, and I had a good week at the shop.
00:00:28
Speaker
Yeah, things went well, you know, sometimes when you're away and things like the guys built a little pallet table for soaring fixture plate inventory, which is a good thing.
Pallet Table and Machining Challenges
00:00:38
Speaker
And we had a couple of hiccups, which I'll tell you about too, which because they're just kind of good machining hiccups. But I mean, it was good. Yep. Yeah, how about you?
Grimsmo's Team Illness and Recovery
00:00:50
Speaker
Things are things are good and steady. And
00:00:55
Speaker
I don't know. Everything's flowing pretty smoothly. We were all extremely sick last week. Uh, so last week was a bit of a slow one because everybody was in or out or home for three days or, I mean, that totally happens. Um, but yeah, every, everybody on the team took time off. Um, everyone's better now. Yeah. Everyone seems to be 90% or better. Um,
00:01:19
Speaker
Yeah, so that's good. But it's just one of those end of winter, everybody catches the same flu or whatever. So you kind of got almost planned for that. It's like, it's going to happen. So I'm fine. Did you kind of just accept that and
Managing Workflow and Responsibilities
00:01:39
Speaker
it was OK? Or did you try to fight it by doing other people's jobs or keeping the machines running? You know that I like grasping for straws. Like, I want to make this work.
00:01:49
Speaker
We certainly weren't grasping, but we realized that the people that were here and feeling okay, there's no reason to slow down anything that we're doing up until the point when you run out of something to do because somebody before you hasn't done their thing yet. You know, like Sky is doing lapping and he was the last one to get sick. So he was like, I feel great. I feel great. I don't feel great.
00:02:13
Speaker
Um, so I had tons of it. No, not funny, but still funny. Uh, so I had tons of inventory for the mill, like to keep, you know, handles and blades machining and stuff until I didn't. And then I'm like, Oh, whoa. Okay. I guess Angelo's lapping today. And, uh, you know, a little bit slower when you're not used to it. And.
00:02:32
Speaker
Yes, we slowed down little bits here and there. But for the most part, we kept a really good flow last week. And I totally accept that everybody needs to be able to take time off. So it was a good wake up call to either share responsibility or just realize that there will be downtime every now and then for whatever reason.
Tour of Superb Industries and Moore Jig Grinder
00:02:52
Speaker
And as a business, that has to be OK. Right. So.
00:02:57
Speaker
It was funny, that tour of superb industries that I mentioned that we filmed where they make a billion parts or over a billion parts with Adam, the machinist from Instagram. We were in their, I think they call it like their second tool and die room or their little machine shop room. It's actually
00:03:15
Speaker
I don't know what they call it the basement. It's a lower floor. And they have a Moore jig grinder, which is a machine I didn't really know about until relatively recently in my otherwise still short machine career. But it's, Adam said it the best. I think I'd heard this before, that the company Moore invented the fourth decimal intolerances.
00:03:36
Speaker
What? They were based out of Bridgeport, Connecticut, which Adam was mentioning. He thinks there was some proximity to the Bridgeport milling centers and Moore wanted a better machine. Moore wrote the book, the one that's on my coffee table here called The Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy that is the Bible on machine tool building and surfaces and accuracy. They build these things called jig grinders, which they're not
00:04:03
Speaker
It's not that they're hard to describe. It's an overbuilt bridge port for sure, but then the difference, and there's many differences, but the fundamental difference is that you don't have a traditional milling spindle. It's an air-driven spindle, which the whole spindle is a boring head. So the whole spindle
Importance of Precision in Machining
00:04:20
Speaker
has an eccentric cam that's adjustable on diameter, and you don't use a traditional cutting tool, but rather a grinding stone in it.
00:04:29
Speaker
these more jig grinders can hold anything. It's as good as it gets, certainly until the modern era of machines, linear scales or other stuff, or wire EDMs. But maybe think of you because
00:04:50
Speaker
Well, number one, accuracy. Number two, they bought an EDM, which is going to help replace their more and they put their EDM in a crawl space. I'm literally like Grimms, I see you can fit machines everywhere. And the most profound statement to me was Adam was showing the Moore's operation. And it's a manual machine that requires skilled labor. No question about that. That's an obvious
00:05:17
Speaker
real is that's an obvious fact. But what wasn't an obvious fact to me was he said, you know, one of the tough things about a more is
00:05:24
Speaker
you've got all these analog dials. There's a dial that does something like the oscillation speed of the boring head or something. And he's like, the whole knob is a zero to one value. How do you create a process around that when Adam is out sick and Joe has to come in and do it, let alone how do you leverage making multiple parts? How do you adjust all these settings? So it's more significant than just moving to quote unquote CNC. It's this idea of,
00:05:51
Speaker
What you just said, when sky's not in, how does Angela run the lapping machine? Well, I think your lapping machine's pretty darn smart and sophisticated and has digital stuff, right? Right. Yeah. Has actual programs that run this RPM, this time, this pressure and all that.
00:06:09
Speaker
there's clearly operator skill and experience that, uh, you know, can absolutely be written down, but we haven't been a good job about, you know, tracking that exact, this is the current process workflow. Uh, and if you follow this recipe, you'll probably be all right. Um, so Angelo is kind of, you know, pulling from memory and from conversations and from previous experience, but it's not like the most current recipe. So he's getting slightly weirder results and he's like, man, this is, this is tough. This is annoying. Yeah.
00:06:39
Speaker
That's interesting. I would think we've written down things like that before, and I find out that those are really good things that happen once and then tend to not happen again.
00:06:55
Speaker
or get read again, or they're maybe read in, um, it's like,
Lean Processes in Business
00:07:01
Speaker
you know, a fire escape. It's like, you never use it. And then when you use it, you haven't maintained it. Right. Um, absolutely. And just not good. So I, in a, in a perfect world, in a, you know, a fast cap type environment, you'd print out, you know, all the steps and put them on the wall or in a pro shop, ERP kind of environment, you'd, you'd establish the process and you'd always update it and you'd have a date updated and,
00:07:23
Speaker
reference that every time you run the machine basically. It's easy to want to overdo all of those and let's process control everything down to like how you make a coffee and stuff. There's value and there's extremes and I don't know where the line is. But I will cross it. I see the helpfulness of it in every aspect.
00:07:48
Speaker
Yeah. That's a great example of lean gone right and lean gone wrong. It's just either when they don't... We don't need it. We have Asana, we have some resource stuff. We know what the outcome is. Even when somebody's out sick, you can usually get on a cell phone if you're worst case. Tools up at storage is important.
00:08:13
Speaker
I just haven't found unless you, you'd almost have to force like multiple people and maybe that's what it takes. You know, if you certainly, if you had multiple different people with higher turnover or multiple shifts or people sharing machines, it would maybe force a different process output, but I don't know.
Tool Management Challenges
00:08:33
Speaker
I'm not sure what you'd ever do it, right? I think the value is also what is on the lapping machine? What is?
00:08:40
Speaker
I didn't realize it was even that amazing. It can control the pressure through the down. That's amazing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the air cylinders have digital pressure regulators that the program itself can control not only the speed coming down, but the initial pressure for 60 seconds and then more pressure. And then at the end of the cycle, while it's still spinning, it'll lift up, retract the cylinders.
00:09:07
Speaker
It's pretty sweet. Yeah, it's more complicated than you think when you just look at it and you're like, oh, that's pretty sweet. That's certainly a whole other level above the smaller one you guys had.
00:09:18
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The smaller one was very manual, which was fine. But this is the full Grimsmo version. Yes. That's cool. But gosh, you would hope that it would be something where John Saunders could walk into your shop. Maybe there's a short list of how to set it up, like four or five steps, and then maybe two or three things to watch out for. Maybe you separate those or something. And then why shouldn't I? I should know I have to probably wipe off the blades.
00:09:47
Speaker
you know, they have to go in clean or something and then I should be able to load a program up and run those, right? Ideally in a perfect world. Absolutely. Um, then there's so much nuance that goes to it, like how to clean the parts before and after how to clean the plate. I mean, cleaning the plate wouldn't need its own instruction manual. Uh-huh. Cause if you do it wrong, you're going to end up with scratches in the parts. Yeah.
00:10:13
Speaker
We've spent six months establishing that process, trying to get it perfect. Interesting. The other similar vein subject that Adam brought up on that superb tour,
Achieving Precision in Machining
00:10:29
Speaker
we talked about that last week, right? Yeah, we did. I grabbed this comment when I was editing the video footage.
00:10:38
Speaker
When you think about what you're trying to do with machining, with parts, with tolerances, with prints, with drawings, with metrology equipment, the way you succeed is you have equipment, your tools, measuring tools, machine tools, et cetera, that are 10 times better than what you're trying to achieve. Yeah, I've heard that too. Yeah, I heard that when the Metatoy guys came down here to film and talk and all that, which is super fun.
00:11:06
Speaker
I kind of had... It sinks in more when you really see it. For the guys like Superb, you're watching these machines. One of the machines spits out 27,000 parts a minute. 27,000 parts a minute, John.
00:11:23
Speaker
What? It's like a stamping machine. It could be an hour, but I don't think so because it's like, it's literally like eight or 10 strokes per second. I remember thinking it's significantly faster than a machine gun because the slow machines are like three or four strokes per second. I want to say it was eight strokes per second. Well, 10 times 60 is 600 parts a minute, right? And that was, but it has four
00:11:52
Speaker
parts per, at least four parts per stroke as well, but that would only be 2,400 parts per minute. I want to look at the footage. I still think it was, well, regardless, that takes accuracy to a whole other level because you don't have this, you don't have a feedback loop where you can say, well, this pen clip I didn't like, I'm going to go tweak the camera. I'm going to go, like, it's just got to be right. And then you hit the send it button.
00:12:21
Speaker
Can you imagine making bad parts and realizing 4,000 parts later that they're bad? Oh my gosh. Hot. That's crazy. I think the Sandvik folks asked that we not highlight this when we were there, but give them a lot of credit for being the quality that they are. But they had, I think it ended up being a gas problem in the carbide insert plant, because we were looking at their digital
00:12:48
Speaker
health system. The industry, I don't remember which industry are we on. Are we still on 4.0? Bingo. I think they ended up having this huge spike and it was like 44,000, I don't know what it was, 44,000 inserts or something, but it was a hundred fold increase and it was at some point they discovered they had a bad
00:13:10
Speaker
worst things, I don't even know if it was a bad gas problem when the materials in its green state are uncintered. But it was enough of a risk where they weren't going to take that risk. And that's something, it's easy to talk about doing that, to talk about saying, Oh, well, you know, I would, of course, scrap it. But man, it's you want to think can I guys, can I make these work? Or is it going to matter? What if it doesn't matter? What if they're not all bad? That's tough.
00:13:39
Speaker
Yep, sometimes better safe than sorry, but it's going to cost you. Yeah, yeah. In lost time, lost material, rework time, et cetera. Yeah, we get that every now and then. We have something with a weird engraving or extra little scratch or dent somewhere. And we're like, oh, is it good enough? Can we fix it? Should we fix it? I don't know. And we do all versions of it, depending on the severity of the thing. But certainly, sometimes it's like, yeah, that one, we can't sell that one. So let's put it aside and not worry about it anymore. Move on.
00:14:08
Speaker
Right. But if I'm being honest, that decision is affected by external factors. My mood, our profitability, inventory, and that's not... I will stand proud in that we stand behind the stuff we show. I'm not being dishonest. Of course.
00:14:24
Speaker
But nevertheless, when you realize that, you realize, okay, that's very different than something like a system or process where you have a uninvested, this sort of third party sitting there making that decision without regard to those factors. It was just like, no, this doesn't move past my desk because I don't like it. Then you're like, oh man, that's brutal. Yeah, exactly. But then if you believe in that system, you follow that system to the T and then
00:14:54
Speaker
it might reduce the amount of emotion that you put into those decisions.
Fixture Plate Incident and Lessons Learned
00:14:59
Speaker
Which is a segue to our mishap this past week. Our fixture plate material is a very, to me, invested process. It's taken us a long time to figure out the steel side of stuff.
00:15:16
Speaker
And it's a pain in the butt is the honest answer. We're getting it down to recipe, but I'm sure you have similar things. It's just a lot of work to get material here that we like in the right condition. Yeah, for sure. And so for us to scrap a plate is a really bad outcome because it's a very expensive piece of material. It takes us a long time to get it here. And then we put a lot of money into it. You know, I think our standard like Haas fixture plate has
00:15:41
Speaker
literally over $50 of consumables allocated to it without question, like an $88 Sandvik 870 drill insert will only last for a certain number of plates. We know that, so you know how much. It's not like, oh, this end the last three months, so I'll assume it's about this much. No, it's literally like we just proactively swap them out every so often. Anyway,
00:16:04
Speaker
Um, our big Kaiser boring head, um, went, went haywire on us for a couple of holes. Um, it wasn't that many holes and I sat there and Jared and I played around with it for three hours and I wouldn't have believed it if I wasn't there myself, but it was moving. I mean, I'm going to say moving all over the place. It was moving six 10ths, but that's a mile for what we do in that tool.
00:16:34
Speaker
And you start trying to take off your frustrated hat and put on your just troubleshooting hat. So you isolate out the variables, the insert, the screw, all this stuff. Why is it doing this? The cam, the machine. And I'll be honest, I couldn't figure it out. And I'm kicking myself because the insert holder, which is the little boring, what I would call the boring part, you screw the insert to, it secures to a carbide bar that goes into the boring head.
00:17:03
Speaker
And we had taken the whole tool apart, disassembled it, cleaned it, checked everything. And when I went to put that boring bar back onto the carbide shank, and I tightened it. It was too flat, so you use wrenches to tighten it together. I looked at Jared and said, man, that lockup, it doesn't feel positive. It doesn't feel like you have all of a sudden the two faces. Yeah. I was like, that feels like if I kept going, I would just strip it through it.
00:17:27
Speaker
And that was the issue right there, but I didn't let myself realize it. So we still fought it, fought it. And then when I was away, Jared called me and he was like, that stud was broken. It was broken inside the, which is, you know, it's like a $3 part. Big Kaiser, to their credit, had us overnighted one, you know,
00:17:50
Speaker
like within 10 minutes of calling them. But I was disappointed in myself that I didn't have the self-awareness to realize I'm identifying the problem and I don't even know it. Yeah. It's like the problem is just tickling at you, but you're not kind of confident enough to just be like, yeah, of course that's it. You're like, wow, I don't know. Right?
00:18:11
Speaker
Anyway, so we scrapped that plate, which is the first large steel plate we've scrapped in a very long time. And that was a, it was a, it was funny. It was a kick in the, in the pants at first. Um, and then all of a sudden when you get over it, you know, you realize, wait, no, that was the right thing to do. I feel so much better that you made that decision and tough life goes on. Yeah.
00:18:33
Speaker
So now, what Barry would be telling me is, did you order two? Two what? Oh. Two of those replacement screws? Should have. They actually only sent one, but it's actually just an M6. We use our own M6 stud as a placeholder for the day. But I was like, let's put theirs in, just because it's actually through spindle. So we had an M6 screw with a hole drilled through it. And let's just go back to using theirs in case who knows what. Nice. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
00:19:03
Speaker
But you're right. Well, I did order an extra boring bar holder, the little tip part, which is, I don't know, $340. And they were like, hey, you can just return that if you found out the stud's the problem. And I was like, nope, we're going to keep it. It's technically a wear item. I mean, it takes a long time, but it's technically a wear item. Obviously, if you have any sort of a crash, you could easily damage that, which is why it's a quasi-modular. And I was like, nope, we're in the homemaking business. We will keep that on hand.
00:19:32
Speaker
Boom. Yep, exactly. A crash or a bump or a slip up or somebody punches it in the wrong way with their hand, then you're not making plates for now four days, at least. So it's good to have a backup.
00:19:47
Speaker
Yeah. You do that now with your, um, well, I know the, yeah, right. Yeah. Cognitive tools. So we've got a full, full, well, not an entire assembly, but all the breakable parts, uh, one backup. It's an interesting, um, point because when you hear about everything from machine tools to tooling, like carbide tooling and so forth, that I don't hear people focus on as much, which is how readily and quickly can I get.
00:20:13
Speaker
parts for them because we can't certainly afford to have double of everything here. Exactly. It's why I don't want to ... Sometimes you'll hear about something that's really cool, but it's like, man, if that's not an inventoried part or a six-week lead time, I want to use the tool that you guys keep 40 of in Columbus. Yeah, exactly. Or you're buying some fancy exotic machine tool.
00:20:39
Speaker
that they only make 30 of a year, some big thing. And you're like, well, but what service and repair parts look like? If this goes down and I rely on it and it's not going to make any money for two weeks,
00:20:55
Speaker
A lot of places might go out of business kind of thing. Yes. It gets dicey. Or I've heard of people that upgrade their air compressor, and they just keep the old one right there plugged in, plumbed in, so that if the new one ever goes down and the old one is at least there's a backup. Yeah. Do you have a second backup air compressor? No. No, we don't. But luckily, our repair company, like Kaiser, is always in the area. They've always got trucks driving around. Got it.
00:21:25
Speaker
They could probably fix anything within a day. So that's good. Yeah. I had kept our old five horsepower, polar, two stage, whatever, piston compressor for about a year. And then unless you're turning it on, running it, blah, blah, blah. My issue or concern was also that was part of our old air system back in our shop days in the farm in New York. And I just thought there's
00:21:51
Speaker
there's no way that tank is as good and clean as our new system. So I really don't want to push all that stuff in. And so if our compressor went down right now, I would literally just drive to Home Depot, buy their $1,000 one. Hopefully that would get our Haasas running without alarms and then wait till Atlas Copco could get us a new one. Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. So there's a solution. So you're down for six hours, not six days or something.
00:22:20
Speaker
Right. But yeah, it's weird to think about this theoretical possible downtime, but it's a real concern that everybody needs to be aware of.
Strategies for Machine Downtime
00:22:30
Speaker
You've only gotten bit by what, your door switch? On the machine itself, yeah, the door switch got flaky. And if we jiggled it really hard, we could get through it. And then I got a replacement and all was good. But mechanically, nothing else has gone wrong on either machine. Yeah, that's awesome.
00:22:46
Speaker
So that's good. That's actually the worst. It's one thing when you know what the part is, but it's a long lead time. It's worse when you don't know what's broken. I can't even, oh, yeah, not fun. Speaking of big Kaiser, it's actually not big Kaiser, but it's there. I don't know what they just handled the importing of it, but I don't know how to, other than just jump to the conclusion, we bought something.
Tool Presetter Purchase
00:23:13
Speaker
What'd you get?
00:23:15
Speaker
So this has been on my B-level, the very top of my B-level purchase list, but it got kind of moved to the top when I just realized, oh my gosh, number one, we're going to use this all the time. And number two, I've been looking at the possibility if we add another vertical spindle for fixture plates, which we had some good weeks of sales. We honestly might, it probably makes business sense.
00:23:40
Speaker
I'm not there personally, but if we added another one, we would actually be better off not having a table mounted Renishaw probe.
00:23:51
Speaker
So what we'd want to do is buy one of the aftermarket or other folks that can do tool break detection in the ATC carousel. So it's not measuring diameter or length. It's just flicking a thing against it to make sure within like, I don't know, within an eighth of an inch or something, the tool hasn't disappeared. Because I do care about tool break detection, but we bought a tool pre-setter.
00:24:20
Speaker
Nice. Yes. And basically for the sole focus of run out, we're doing so much work now on the quote unquote new project where I care about run out and understanding gauge length and that kind of stuff. And when you start to look at all the benefits of that, it was easy to say no to, but I'm tired of
00:24:41
Speaker
It's not enough that I'm tired of it. It's not efficient. It's not practical at this point to be using indicators and on flutes. And there's some other benefits like to the big Kaiser boring head to check the diameter and what's going on there. It has a microscope built into it. It's just like, it's super, super cool. Right. So, okay. I've got two questions. If you're comfortable sharing ballpark price range,
00:25:03
Speaker
I want to know more about the runout and how it actually measures that. Yeah. We started out looking at their newer value oriented model because that's me, which is five figures, but just over that.
00:25:22
Speaker
And they, after having a conversation about what we want and need out of this, I upgraded to kind of the next level up. It's still their magic line.
00:25:35
Speaker
but it's not a CNC Presetter. A CNC Presetter isn't something any of us would ever need. It's actually multi-axis functionality. If you wanted to build a cell that could pull tools out of a tool hive, move them in, potentially interface with a robot. That's what
00:25:54
Speaker
a quote unquote CNC presetter is. Okay. Okay. What we bought is one that just has CNC in the, I think they call it the A axis. So I wanted to measure run out without the operator rotating the base.
00:26:09
Speaker
So you could buy that just as a single axis upgrade. So you hit a button on the control panel and it will rotate the tool. It'll count the flutes. It'll check the high spots. It'll look at your geometry. It'll tell you the corner radius of end mills. It'll tell you when you've broken off chamfer tools, what the new flat spot is. So you could actually still use them if you don't care about the fact that the tip is broken. Yeah. That's pretty cool. I think it's going to be like the microscope or
00:26:37
Speaker
or loop type of thing where you're just going to be sticking the tool in it all the time. All the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It can live out on the shop floor, so we're going to put it right in that center area, I think. Yeah. Yeah. That is fantastic. So somewhere $10,000 to $20,000 range? A bit over $20,000 actually. A bit over $20,000. OK, yeah. I figured a proper preset or a Zolder or a Spironi or something like that was just looking at $20,000 US. Yeah.
00:27:08
Speaker
We bought their base, the cart for it and all that just to look nice. It was, I feel bad that I don't feel bad about it. We will use it. Exactly. We're investing. The big Kaiser boring head thing is a solution and key to us. The drills are important to us. You can do print out labels with gauge links on them. I care about gauge link. They care about tool stick out.
00:27:34
Speaker
We bought the larger base so we can have it handle HSK in the future if we ever got that sort of machine. And then we want to use it for Tormach TTS. So I think we're just going to buy a hydraulic three quarter inch cat 40 holder that we could then use. Yeah, it should be fine. That's a good idea. You'll have some increases in buildup right now, but nothing material is actually relative to what you're doing on a Tormach.
00:28:02
Speaker
Yeah, with a hydraulic holder, you'll be fine. I saw an end mill grinding machine, an older Walter, that had a CAT50 hydraulic holder. And you put the end mill in that. Oh, really? And you grind the end mill. That's funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's awesome. So the new Haas machines should come, I think they're going to be done at the factory tomorrow. And then they'll be on a truck. And then the pre-setter should come in two or three weeks.
00:28:30
Speaker
Yeah, that's very exciting. Sweet. I have my own excitement that is unofficial at this point, but I've almost bought a Swiss lathe.
Potential Swiss Lathe Purchase
00:28:42
Speaker
Really?
00:28:44
Speaker
Super excited. Okay. Um, yeah, I'm, I'm, you know, going back and forth with, uh, with the vendor right now and finalizing my options, figuring out what I'm going to need. Um, we haven't talked money yet, although I know kind of the price range I'm looking at. So I still get to kind of push them for a good deal. Um, and yeah, and just finalize everything we need financing and that, but I'm not worried. I'm not stressed. I want it on my shop floor tomorrow.
00:29:13
Speaker
You know? So yeah, there's a lot to think about, you know, what kind of oil you're going to put in it, what tools are you going to get, what inserts you want to get and all that. Right, because those don't run on coolant, they have to run on oil.
00:29:27
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. Apparently the oil lubricates all the ways and everything too. So it just, it goes everywhere. Got it. So it has to have a filtration system of some sort. I'm sure it's usually built in super good filtration. People were telling me that they, since the oil never evaporates like cooling does.
00:29:45
Speaker
it leaves with the chips, it leaves with the parts. So Christian was telling me that he's got a bunch of these, he calls them spinners, and it's like a giant colander for lettuce, you know, like in your kitchen, and it's a motor, so you put all your parts in there, put all your chips in there or whatever, and then it spins for a minute, and then it rings out all the oil, drains to the bottom, and you just put it back in the machine. Hilarious.
00:30:11
Speaker
Because otherwise, you'll steal oil with it as you pull parts out. Exactly. And you're just going to lose oil. And they're like, why would we do that? We could just dump it right back in. The machine filters the oil as it's getting sprayed. So it doesn't really care about dirty oil.
00:30:26
Speaker
So yeah, it was kind of cool. It was like, okay, things you got to think of. Sure. Right. Got it. Oh, I was like, who are you talking about? Christian, you're talking about, uh, the Swiss amazing guy. Yeah. Yeah. The guy has like a many Swiss's, um, yeah. Yeah. Over a hundred. So it's a real Swiss laid, not a swishish lathe. It is a real Swiss
Choosing the Right Swiss Lathe
00:30:45
Speaker
lathe. Yeah. So you have to decide, I assume it's like any machines where you've to decide what are options that can't be changed post purchase, right?
00:30:53
Speaker
Yep, yep. And what's critical and what you want but don't need or what you really will never use. I'm debating between the machine that basically only runs half inch or less or the machine that goes up to one inch. And I'm like, honestly, everything I make is under half inch except for the pocket clip on the pen, which I want to make on the Nakamura anyway. So I'm like, why do I need bigger than the half inch machine? It's way cheaper than the one inch machine. So I'd be paying
00:31:21
Speaker
40 grand for capacity I'm never going to use? Come on. Don't be stupid. So little things like that. I'm going back and forth. What's the best bang for your buck of options you're actually going to use? And they have this B-axis upgrade that lets you do, air quote, five-axis machining. And I'm like, ah, no, I don't need it. I don't have angled holes that I need to drill other than decorative stuff. It's not worth it. Oh, I'm not sure I agree with that. I mean, I don't know.
00:31:53
Speaker
So, the half inch to inch, I would think the easy way to rationalize that is you are most likely going to have another Swiss lathe at some point. And I love the idea of buy the one you need, spend
00:32:09
Speaker
buy everything you need on that machine, but don't buy other stuff. Get that thing running, get it making money, learn it, and then in the future you can take more risks. Maybe you buy a used machine, maybe you buy one that ends up being more versatile, but buy the machine and have a laser focus. But if you do decorative stuff, John, you do crazy stuff. But it can all be done without the B axis. It's not necessary.
00:32:36
Speaker
And it's a lot of money, you know, tens of thousands of dollars for something that's probably just going to sit there. And it kind of reduces your ability to drill and mill otherwise because it's this huge block. So there's benefits to not getting it.
00:32:51
Speaker
But yeah, and then it's like, what bar feeder do you get? And then what kind of bars are you going to get? Are you going to get centerless ground bars all the time or not? So I'm asking all my buddies. I thought Swiss always had to have ground stock unless you buy separate bushings. Yeah.
00:33:06
Speaker
Yes or no. It depends on the quality of the material coming in. If you just buy round bar from the metal store, the consistency of the cylinder city or whatever of the bar varies a lot. It might gum up or get stuck in your guide bushing. Materials like titanium or probably aluminum or things like that,
Material Impact on Machining
00:33:29
Speaker
would be super gummy in a very tight sliding guide bushing. You just got to be careful of all these things. Can you get titanium in a cylindrically ground form? Yeah.
00:33:40
Speaker
Yeah, the stuff that I normally get looks like it was centerless ground, but who knows to what tolerance. So it should be fine. But basically, somebody was telling me that the tighter tolerance you want to make your parts, like if you want to make everything to a tenth, then buy the best bar that you can, run it tight in the guide bushing, and then
00:34:03
Speaker
you are most likely to make parts crazy tight, always. And so it depends on what's important to you. You spend more money on bar to make better parts. It's like lathe level class 201, which is when you realize how much the
00:34:19
Speaker
the lack of run-out happening left of your chuck, the piece that's hanging out of the lathe massively affects the run-out on the right side of your collider chuck, even if it's only a one-inch stick-out or something short.
00:34:36
Speaker
I tend to have an easy time visualizing the layout of a system, but that didn't make sense to me. I was like, how is it, how is having a little bit of wobble there in your bar causing so much effect, affecting the tolerance or service finish or run out dimensions? Crazy.
00:34:56
Speaker
Dude, that's awesome. Um, yeah, I'm super excited. Um, like I said, I want it on my shop floor tomorrow and I'm, I'm not ready to be foolish and like arrogant with decisions, but, um, I'm ready. Yeah. Yeah. We talked about that. So what is, where are you in the process? If you don't let me share you, is it something where you just back and forth or you moving to get paperwork? I'm, uh,
00:35:21
Speaker
I got a quote for the bigger machine. I'm waiting for a quote for the smaller machine within the next day or two, just so I can see the price difference and actual stuff. I've already called around to see what's available, what's en route from other countries, where it's being made or what's in stock. So I got some ideas there. And I'm finalizing my build list, my wish list of all the parts that I need and stuff. Will it have to get built?
00:35:51
Speaker
No, there's one in stock in Chicago that I'm like, yeah, I think that's the one. Okay. Which helps. Otherwise they're weeks or months or many months away. And I'm like, ask her that. The one that they have is, I know, I know, but the one they have is perfect.
00:36:10
Speaker
At this point, I'm waiting on a price. I'm waiting to then basically agree to that or negotiate it down as hard as I can and then secure financing and then just say yes, yes,
Shipping Logistics for Swiss Lathe
00:36:24
Speaker
tomorrow. I want it now. Sweet. If it's in Chicago, is that a matter of a couple of weeks to get it up to you then? Yeah.
Shop Layout Rearrangement
00:36:31
Speaker
Thanks.
00:36:33
Speaker
I always wondered about that driving across, I mean, obviously it would be said via a trucking company, but how hard is it to move a machine between countries like that? I don't think it's hard. I feel like if I really push them and I said, pack it up now, I could probably have it within a week or so. Wow. I'm guessing. Right. So where's it going to go? It's going to go right in front of me.
00:37:00
Speaker
You know, it's funny when I watched that time lapse a month or so ago on your channel and I was like, we've done 108 of these. I had no idea you were standing up the whole time. I agree. Yeah. Okay, so it's going to go... Oh, where like... The bar is going to go... Yeah, where the microscope is. So the bar feeder is going to go beside the stairs in front of the air compressor. Wow. Right there. And then the machine is going to sit right in front of the bay door. Yeah, sure. It's like a little cell.
00:37:26
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So we'll have to rearrange the table areas a little bit. But yeah, it's, it's time. It's, it's time. I don't want to say it's past time, but it's certainly time, you know, how many tool positions will does this low level of machine have? Theoretically 30. Yeah. Oh my gosh. How many? So is it hard to sub spindle? I'm sure assuming.
00:37:54
Speaker
Yep, sub spindle live tools all around y axis on the sub side. It'll have everything everything I need everything I'm used to. I'm not past that. Yep. Yeah, a lot of leads don't have y axis on the sub spindle. So to do any fancy milling, you have to rotate the C and do x polar.
00:38:15
Speaker
Okay. Sorry. It's a little early for me on to be utilizing substantial lathe. Uh, see, okay. Got, Oh wow. So yeah. Why on the, why on the sub is cool. Okay. Yeah. That's some wind dude, for sure. Sweet. And is it easy to tool it up or sorry. Do you know what you want?
00:38:33
Speaker
Yes, I created a spreadsheet that said these are all my parts. These are all my tools. Here's where they overlap. I use this tool only 7% of the time or whatever. So it allows me to look at that and be like, okay, clearly this, this, this, and this need to be on the machine all the time. These can be flexible. They need to be able to take out easily and put back in easily. And then I'm like, is it even possible to
00:38:56
Speaker
tool it up for all my tools always. Then I just I'm just changing guide bushings or collets or whatever. That would be sweet. So I'm, I'm pretty close to that. But yeah, tooling I need like, like four or five turning tools and parting tools. Not a hard decision. Yep. I'll get good ones coolant through and to that PSI oil coolant like
00:39:20
Speaker
2,000. Stop. Are you serious? Oh, yeah. John, that's like a water jet. Yeah, that's crazy.
High-Pressure Coolant Systems
00:39:30
Speaker
cut your parts in half. That will break a chip. I don't really understand the hydrology of what makes something an oil and not a liquid or a coolant, but I think of oil, I think it's stronger. It has more ability to... Yeah, that's crazy. Wow. Holy cow. Good for you. That's cool.
00:39:56
Speaker
So I'm excited. And then like most of the stuff is drills and boring bars and, uh, you know, a couple end mills in various directions, but the turning tools, I'm like, I have five turning tools that I need, including the cutoff. Yeah, that's not a big deal. That's it. It's not like when you're tooling up a mill and you're like, okay, I need to buy 40 holders. Um, and then the end mills and then the face. Well, it's like with the Swiss, there's really not that much. And how would you hold round tools like drills, just ERS?
00:40:26
Speaker
Yeah, what basically looks like a Tormach TTS holder. Oh, that's hilarious. Okay, yeah. Yeah, it's a stick tool. It's a round bar or whatever you call it with a ER16 at the end or something. Did you see that Helical and Harvey bought Micro 100?
00:40:44
Speaker
I did notice that. Not a bad thing. Oh, that's, that's good. Bring it all in the family. Um, yeah, I use the micro 100, uh, replaceable boring bars. So I like those. I'll probably put that on the Swiss as well. Yeah. I've used a couple of their tools and I guess it's they, their reputation from what I'd heard was kind of a, we're best in class. We're really, really good at what we do here, which is something I think is cool. They do.
00:41:10
Speaker
Yeah, they've got this quick change solid carbide boring bar system that every time we put a new tool in and touch it off, we're like, that was two tenths from the old one. This is micro 100? Yeah. Oh, OK. Yeah, so they're really consistent. Any update on that titanium chiarocera service finish insert issue?
00:41:32
Speaker
Yes, I slowed it down. I used an end mill to rough out most of the material, and I leave like five thou to finish up with that Kyocera turning boring bar. And I made 200 plus parts on one insert. Oh, awesome.
00:41:48
Speaker
And it's still brand new. Wow. Okay. Yeah. So it totally works now. I used to blow and insert every part, every other part, um, obviously doing something wrong, but now it's working. Perfect. How long does the roughing and mill boring bar last? Okay. Forever. It's not like it's really replaced every three or four.
00:42:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. Nope. We made almost 200 sliders for the 10 last week. Sweet. And we were going for 50, and we're like, it is going so well, and tolerances are holding to 10ths, and let's just keep making them. We got another day or two. Sure. Let's just keep it going. That's awesome. Yeah, so we made almost 200, which is great. That's awesome. That used to be the hardest part to make. Oh, really?
00:42:37
Speaker
just due to like the chipping end mill and or in certain stuff. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So now it's that's great. Awesome. Great. So yeah, I'm kind of excited at the thought of having two layouts and then I can make parts on both layouts at the same time. Right.
00:42:55
Speaker
This week, the fixture plate cycle times are a bit long, and the VF2 is we usually set up with three or four vices. And so there's been a lot of times this week where we've had both machines, probably more so than ever, where Jared has had both machines running. And so there's not a lot to do in between then, which is good because we got two more machines coming in a week or two. Yeah, exactly. There's always stuff to do.
00:43:23
Speaker
Yeah, I will say, if you'd have asked me months ago, I would have thought that I'd get another mill before I got another lathe. But I'm very happy with the decision right now and the plan for the future. So yeah, that's exciting. I totally get that. Well, now you really are going to be tighter on space. But when you go pick up a little three-axis robo or something, it's going to be
00:43:53
Speaker
Yeah. Skye, run down to the store and pick up a robo drill for me. Pretty much. You get a speedio for 100 grand or less. That's way cheaper than any of my other machines. Yeah, it's almost like you threw on this TF2P, whatever. It's like, yeah, I'll take one of those too.
00:44:14
Speaker
I remember it wasn't that long ago when I did a little talk on entrepreneurship at the Reynolds Machinery Open House. It was a great event and the Osaka to the Parker after the event, how did it go? Do you guys sell machines? He's like, yeah, we had a special. They're the Okamoto dealer.
00:44:31
Speaker
We had a special on a Okamoto that we had on the showroom for, I think it was like a 1224. One of the guys was like, yeah, you know, I've been, we could use another manual grinder in our tool room. So you just picked it up. And I remember thinking even then like, what? This guy just bought a five figure service grinder just kind of, you know, and now I'm starting to understand that a lot more.
00:44:56
Speaker
Yeah. Well, we do so many months and years of research that it's like all of a sudden you're ready for it. It's not a surprise. You've convinced yourself over years that you're like, yeah, I do need another surface grinder.
Decision-Making for Swiss Lathe
00:45:10
Speaker
And then one comes up for a good deal. And you're like, yeah, do it. It's not a big deal anymore. Right? Totally get that. I can see you. That's kind of where I'm at with the Swiss. It's like IMTS two and a half years ago, I was looking at Swiss's.
00:45:24
Speaker
You know, and now it's just like, yeah, it's time. I know exactly what I want. It's, I got worried about it. Not worried about financing payments. Uh, these are all the options I want. Like it's clear as day to me. Yeah, that's cool. Good for you, dude.
00:45:40
Speaker
Yeah. Well, now I'm excited for next week. You should remember that I think we have an NYC article on negotiating. Negotiating is not brow beating. It is not yelling at somebody or making them hate their job. But it is a win-win. And they are going to try to keep the price high.
00:46:06
Speaker
Your job is to be in the best way to keep people honest, just to make sure you get to talk to another builder, at least one other one, if you can. Yep. Cool. That's awesome. Cool. What are you up to today?
Knife Screw Production and Machine Issues
00:46:25
Speaker
Today, we're making screws, knife screws on the lathe. Just keep that running, running, running.
00:46:32
Speaker
came into a red light on the Maury this morning, unfortunately. Tool seven broke. Oh, I hate tool seven. It's a 1.8 inch flat four flute end mill that always breaks in the same spot, cutting out the clips, cutting the tab off the clips. Oh, it pisses me off.
00:46:51
Speaker
It broke on the first pallet, so the second pallet never even machined. So like 8 p.m. last night, it breaks. It's supposed to run until past midnight. Why is it breaking? How can we fix that? Yeah, I'm trying to figure that out too. I've tried your trick of gang drilling the holes to remove material with the drill bit, make life easier on the tool. That helped, but it's still breaking. You're slotting? Are you ramping? I think I'm slotting it.
00:47:23
Speaker
I can plunge in outside material in nothing. I think I'm doing it in too depth. So switch is a 2D contour. I'm guessing. So switch go into the last half ramp and ramp it in at 10% of the tool diameter. It's going to increase the cycle time, but you don't care about that particularly. We've had a lot of luck with that. You can leave them gang drilled. You might be able to turn that off. I have really struggled with
00:47:49
Speaker
uh, chip evacuation on high flute count, one eighth inch tools for whatever reason, um, disproportionately relative to three sixteenths and so forth. So, um, I would, I don't know why the tool is breaking, but that don't turn it into a ramp.
00:48:07
Speaker
I've got to be careful not to blow out the tips of the tool, which is why I want to do a deeper depth of cut, not just use the tips and ramp it the whole way down. Because if I blow the corners, it's going to screw up other features. Because you use the tool elsewhere. And you're out of tool holders. And you can't switch it to a corner rad tool. I could. Well, it's going to change. Not else. I would still, what's the material, titanium?
00:48:37
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, you're just, you're not going to have that much time in the cut. No question about it. Um, I don't know. I would still tell you to ramp, even if it's a higher percentage, uh, than 10% give it a try. Yeah. Yeah. I might do that. Okay.
00:48:56
Speaker
Sure would be nice to have some extra tool holders. Sorry. Tool pockets. I'm trying to think if gang drilling could make it worse. I mean, you are very much changing the load on the tool. It's almost like an interrupted cut. Well, million is interrupted, but I'd be curious if somebody would tell you that's a bad idea. Well, put it this way. We've played around a lot of slotting recently, and we have found slotting in solid material with a 10% tool diameter ramp step
Troubleshooting Slotting Issues
00:49:23
Speaker
down. It's not the fastest, but it tends to work quite well.
00:49:27
Speaker
But you're putting a lot of load on the tips then. But respectfully, you're assuming that's going to be a problem. And what we do know is you have a problem right now. So let's not assume that that problem is worse than this problem. I do know from talking to the Harvey guys or helical guys that were here cutting titanium to test with, that you have like an hour in the cut or something with time. It's just not that long. So I don't know how much other cutting you do.
00:49:55
Speaker
is it something where you can machine all use that to want all four pallets for all the key features and then have that be the last thing it does at the end of go go back to the first one. Yeah, changes. But if it breaks, then when you come in the morning, then I just have to come because that there's nothing else. There's probably some deburring or corner rally, right, but nothing crazy.
00:50:23
Speaker
I see what you mean. That's interesting because it's just complete waste to break on such a last operation when everything else needs to get done too. You know, interesting. I'll consider that for sure. Sweet. I will see you next week. Awesome. Next week. Can't wait. Have a great day. Bye.