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#361 Grimsmo's new knife
534 Plays1 year ago
TOPICS:
- Grimsmo's new knife
- I love heat treating!
- Should I get a Brother Speedio R650?
- Crashed the Speedio probe
- Quality of life improvements
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 361. My name is John Grimsmo. And my name is John Saunders. And this is the weekly manufacturing podcast where we get to chat about the things going on in our business, what's on our brains, what's on our minds, plans for the future, reminiscing on the past and generally trying to keep our heads on straight. How
New Knife Projects
00:00:23
Speaker
are you doing? I'm doing really good. My head is on straight at the moment, which is really good.
00:00:29
Speaker
Your head's always on, to me it seemed like your head's always on straight. I'm good at hiding things. No, things are good. We're progressing, we're making good progress on some projects. The new knife is coming together, seeing really good progress on that, so that's fun. It's actually fun. It's breathing new life into the creativity and the
00:00:51
Speaker
new project and I can see it in the customers and the fans too. They're excited about it. It's good. I need more of that. Good. Yeah, it's good. That's awesome. It's funny when you first talked about this knife, I don't remember if you use the word integral if there was another description, but you're going to laugh. I at
Knife Making Classes and Family History
00:01:11
Speaker
first thought you were making a fixed blade, like a traditional hunting knife.
00:01:18
Speaker
Is that ever something Grimaceau would make? We did in 2014, 12 to 14. We made 20 of them, 24, something like that. Interesting. And I actually taught a tormac machining class. We went to tormac, Eric and I. Okay. Right? And we had students there and we taught them how to make this fixed blade knife. And everybody made their own and the guys still have them. Like I see posts every now and then they're like, I made this myself in the tormac class. Yeah. And that was,
00:01:44
Speaker
Awesome. The only 20 that exist were from that Tormach class? No. We went home. We made 24-ish. We broke a couple, and then plus whatever the guys made in the class for themselves. Yeah. I think everybody engraved their own name on it. Okay. Making a knife in the class and heat treating it, nobody knows what they're doing. I think it was our first time heat treating too. They're not perfect, but it's still super fun and rewarding.
00:02:10
Speaker
Did you heat treat during the actual Tormach class? Yeah, I had an oven shipped to Tormach. The oven we still have. I had it first shipped to Tormach, we drove it back. That's hilarious. Well, good transition to...
00:02:25
Speaker
John, I don't know why. I really don't. Never in a thousand years would have thought this would be checking the box for me. I love heat treating. Yeah? I don't know why. You've had the oven for a long time, right? You finally start heating up some stuff? Yes. We've had for years. Actually, kind of a funny story. My grandfather, the one I've talked about so often, was actually a knife maker.
00:02:50
Speaker
And I had his, yeah, when you're here, I'll have to show you his, he obviously passed away by having his whole collection of what he, his father was a knife maker, so my great grandfather, and he was, and I have all their knives. Wow, that's awesome. So as a kid on the farm, we had, he would cut the blanks out of
00:03:11
Speaker
flat bar steel, and we would do all of the shaping on a belt grinder, like the bevel, the contour. As kids, you did this as a child? Yes, I made these. Do you remember this? I'll show you the knives.
00:03:28
Speaker
Then we would, we get two pieces of wood often from the farm, which hindsight is kind of cool. We drill holes through him. We, he liked to do, I love this trick. Um, probably a common knife maker thing, but to me as a kid, this is super cool. We would go to like Joanne fabrics or he had stuff laying around like red or green
Professional Knife Making?
00:03:45
Speaker
felt like a really thin felt and you'd put it between the tang and the wood handle.
00:03:50
Speaker
you'd hammer a brass pin through there, sand it all flush, and then he mixed up two part epoxy. And that's how we kind of potted the whole handle in place or whatever. And oh, sorry, one winded story around, he had a heat treat out of it down at the farm. Now, I don't think it was very good. But you know, I had a ton of fun as a kid to make a knife. You're like, this is awesome. That's amazing.
00:04:15
Speaker
full circle. Now you have this big machine shop. So when's the first Saunders knife coming out? No, not my, I would make, I would get a license and make firehouse fried meat knives. Yeah. Well, not for production necessarily, but I mean, you have a legacy, you have a son to pass this down to. I don't know, just think about it. Make one.
00:04:38
Speaker
Well, so the heat treating thing is we had bought a tabletop furnace, which, fun fact, we're going to be selling in April because it's great, but the one that we now have is the hotshot oven that is
00:04:53
Speaker
It is so much better. Now I've never had the, you've got the even. Even heat. Even heat, okay. Yep. The hot shot oven that we have now has a digital touchscreen where you can program in cycles like you use an iPhone app. Like it's so easy. Yeah.
00:05:11
Speaker
And so that was my frustration before was how little that little oven you had to program it like you're programming a touch tone phone like it was just so and so yeah, I've made now three different a two parts and I yesterday the second batch I
00:05:28
Speaker
I quenched them with two pieces of aluminum and a fan over them. I kept keeping them in the bags and they took them out this morning, threw up on Instagram. They stayed perfectly flat. Having these hardened fixtures just feels so good.
00:05:50
Speaker
What material was that? Were they again? A2. Yeah, A2 is easy to machine, pretty easy to heat treat, consistent. We've machined and heat treated some, you know, fixtures and things like that. Super nice material. So you, the bags, are they actual bags or are you folding every side from sheet?
00:06:09
Speaker
We bought the, so we only have to go to 1750 so we could buy the cheaper 321 foil. Okay. And we just bought a roll. I think McMaster was the cheapest source below, believe it or not. And we got a 10 inch wide roll because our parts are awkwardly large and we're not, well, this is, I actually had like a split second thought about this and realized I was over analyzing it. We're not in a production process, which to me meant like, I don't care about the cost of what we're doing.
00:06:39
Speaker
which could actually argue you should just buy the bags and not waste your time with it. But the foil just seemed easier because whatever part size we have, I can make the foil. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. The bags are great, especially in the production environment. That's what we use. We actually get a custom size made for us and we go through, I don't know, 200 a month. Yeah, tons.
00:06:58
Speaker
and they work great. The thing with the foil is you now have four seams, so maybe three if you're lucky, to seal. So you can get in if you don't like seal it, super, super good. And our guy, our team that does it, they've gotten really good at like triple folding all the seams and they have like a caster basically that they roll the seam. Careful not to poke anything.
00:07:24
Speaker
Basically, if your part comes out purple in corners, then you got air in there. It doesn't matter. It's so hard. Yeah. I should have four seams. I probably had like seven. Yeah, totally.
00:07:38
Speaker
They came with a little roller. I'm rolling the crap out of it. I approached this kind of like I approach hunters that don't worry about scent. Like, let me tell you, I have had deer walk up like seven feet away from me, and I don't do anything for scent control. I'm not going to sit here and worry about the oxygen contamination. The parts we've done, they're discolored for sure some, but there's no oxidation whatsoever on them. If they come out black, that's bad-ish. If they come out purple, bronze, whatever, then it doesn't matter.
00:08:09
Speaker
Some people put a piece of paper inside the foil to eat up the oxygen or a piece of wood or something I've heard. We tried that but we found, maybe this needs more experimentation, but we found it left a char mark on the part and I didn't like it.
00:08:24
Speaker
So I did that yesterday based on the exact same urban wives tale. And I didn't see a difference. And then sure enough, Spencer Webb and I were texting and he was like, yeah, he's done some more, I think scientific testing, not vouchy for it. He just mentioned this text. And he's like, doesn't do anything. And my thought is, actually, I'll read you what he said. My
00:08:43
Speaker
unscientific thought is like, wait a minute. There's no way a little piece of paper could consume all of the potential oxygen in that foil bag. Our bags are inefficient because we have thicker parts. So it's actually hard. And there's holes all over them. His
Materials and Methods in Knife Manufacturing
00:08:56
Speaker
response was, I did experiments and found that the piece of paper trick didn't help. You can tell by the vacuum packing look of the envelope, indicating oxygen scavenging, best results I had were correct stainless steel foil and nothing good seal. Yeah, whatever.
00:09:10
Speaker
Yeah, and our parts are literally vacuum sealed shut. Every ounce of oxygen is eaten out of that bag. And the foil is like, you can see every shape of the knife and engraving and everything through the foil when it's done. You actually use a vacuum to pull a vacuum on the bag? Nope, nope. Oh, OK. We squish it flat, I think, when the last foil is done. I don't know how. I think just by hand or whatever. And our parts are thin and flat, right?
00:09:37
Speaker
And then the other thing I was going to say was, oh, some people will fill the bag with argon or some inert gas. So even if it puffs up, it doesn't matter. But I don't know if you have any argon kicking around, TIG welder or something. Maybe try it. With as much heat treating as you do, why don't you buy a vacuum gas furnace? And then you wouldn't need bags. Well, a vacuum furnace, because everyone I've looked at is minimum $200,000.
00:10:07
Speaker
Question stands. That's way too much money. Yeah, no, for sure. We've looked at it. We've looked and looked and I'm like, I just can't justify that kind of money. Yeah. And the bags are a few bucks or five bucks a piece or something like that. Yeah, something like that. And it's still a cost for sure. But even the bag and labor
00:10:26
Speaker
translated into the cost of the oven. What's the ROI on the oven? It's still so many years. Got it. Interesting. Now, maybe the quality is better. Maybe we can do higher volume, things like that. At some point, it might start to make sense, but every time I look, I'm like, seriously, nobody makes one for less than a quarter million dollars? If it was 50 grand, I'd be looking hard.
00:10:48
Speaker
Hashtag tangent, but all of our mutual heroes, who's the Israeli guy that I can never remember is Dan Gilbert. He made his own. Yes, and he had it so that you pull the parts. Somehow you pull them into a different chamber that could do the chamber and you never expose it. It's on his YouTube video, the shock tour. It's just one. I did see that. Yeah.
00:11:14
Speaker
And I saw that and I was like, hold on. I watched it a couple of times. I'm like, how? What? And then I stopped thinking about it, but that's cool. It doesn't seem as a layman, it doesn't seem like, especially when you look at how TIG welders will do.
00:11:30
Speaker
It's not argon, is it argon? When they weld titanium, they put a hood over the part and then they open a valve and that's a heavier gas that displaces all the oxygen. Yeah, sometimes they'll make a little bathtub too that actually like
00:11:45
Speaker
holds the gas, holds that heavier gas, right? Doesn't seem like it should be all that crazy to do a gas purge out of your oven. Well, there's, as far as I understand, there's vacuum where it actually sucks all the oxygen out, so it's an actual vacuum, which heat does something weird in a vacuum because now you're not heating the air inside.
00:12:04
Speaker
I saw a video on it and I forget how it works, but or you can have an inert atmosphere. So like the whole chamber is full of argon and then you're heating that instead. But then purging all that gas and getting the heat out very quickly because the real tanks will quench your parts in the oven itself. Like shove in cold air or something. And I think that's where it starts to get really expensive and like why they're so complicated. But
00:12:31
Speaker
But yeah, like our local
Machinery and Production Optimization
00:12:32
Speaker
place down the street where we usually send bigger A2 parts or whatever, they have a vacuum oven and they do a vacuum heat treat, but a open atmosphere temper. So that's what colors the part, makes it color. They're like, we can do a vacuum temper, but it's, you know, you're paying for two hours of oven. I'm not 20 minutes for the hot cycle. So do you want to spend that? Yeah.
00:12:58
Speaker
When I figured I'd address it, I guess kind of publicly here, the DIY versus sending it out. So when we started doing these, I had all of intentions. We have two heat treat vendors that we use regularly. I had all the intentions of sending these parts out because I'm fully in the like, we're not in the heat treat business.
00:13:17
Speaker
And actually, I plan on selling both of our ovens in April, but then I realized, wait a minute here. Our guys have been using the oven to do some testing on full studs for the puck chuck. And then I sort of just gave it the old inverse pie college try of like, wait a minute here. This is super easy. I only need foil, bought foil, that was super easy. And then I've now shifted from the, you're not in the heat free business, just send out to like, wait a minute here. No, no, no, no. This is so easy and- There's another tool in the toolbox.
00:13:46
Speaker
Yeah, and we are going to make a bunch of these pictures. And there is something to be said for the one to two week turnaround, $150 minimum lot charge, instructions, shipping, hassle, risk, damage, risk, cost. Like now, I can experiment with these. And it's great. Yeah, you get that turnaround. Sometimes you're not sure if 55 Rockwell is the right number, or 60, or if it makes a difference, and you can now iterate and test.
00:14:17
Speaker
Hm. Speaking of heat treat, that was actually on my mind last night. So as I'm making this new integral knife, it's going to be a button lock. And the button itself is your locking surface. It keeps the blade both closed and open. And I've been curious what metal to make that button out of. I made a couple on the Willeman last night, yesterday, past couple days, in brass just to prove out the program. Brass is not a good material for the button. It's too soft.
00:14:45
Speaker
You can almost scratch it with your fingernail kind of thing. And then, so I made some out of 17 for pH H900, so it's 45 Rockwell. That's where we make all of our pivots, all of our stop pins from. We run a lot of that material and we machine it at 45 Rockwell. So I was like, okay, that's probably going to be hard enough and it's still machineable in that state. So I made some of those last night and I think they're still too soft.
00:15:11
Speaker
So I don't know what the next step is from here. Um, I don't really want to turn like 60 Rockwell bars and try to hold 10th tolerance. That sounds, that sounds annoying. Not at all. CBN. Never really used CBN. Oh, you're gonna, you're gonna love it. Not expensive inserts last for my recollection. Um, super consistent. Like it's beautifully. No big deal. Interesting.
00:15:42
Speaker
Cause this part is all turning except for I'm milling a tiny little pocket in op two and the vice. Um, I'm just doing a bore cycle with an end mill and I'm not even afraid of hard milling that. Oh, that was what gave me pause right now. Okay. Yeah. But I think it'd be fine. Interesting. I'm going to do that then. Cause then I just need like one, maybe two CBN inserts. Okay. I'll think about that. Willy or knock. Willy.
00:16:11
Speaker
Oh yeah. So like the Willy tool holders, the usual ones. The other thought was to pick a steel for 4DC, A2, whatever. Pick a good hard steel and then make them soft and then heat treat them. And then they're going to be like discolored and weird. And do I polish them? Do I, you know, hard turn the face? Do I do something like that?
00:16:34
Speaker
So they don't have to be discolored. You can do a vacuum temper that will result in them being bright. It's more expensive. This is what I've been learning in the past month. They will grow, and don't quote me on this, but approximately 1%. And sure enough, we sent some test parts out that were S7. Ooh, A2, sorry, we're moving to S7. But sure enough, we turned them to, I believe, 990. No, excuse me, 999, foul under, and they grew. Wait, does that make sense?
00:17:03
Speaker
I want to say it was what we expected, but it's not, we were kind of hoping they would all grow quote unquote perfectly. And they, when you're trying to hold tents, you're going to do it for now. So we kind of made that classic preach what you are practicing, what you preach like, okay, long-term, I actually still want to find a way that we might be able to pre-machines in such a way that post-C-treat they don't need mess with, but we don't have that. That's not a home
Technology and Shop Efficiency
00:17:28
Speaker
run yet. So we're going to parallel process it and.
00:17:31
Speaker
Humbly suggesting the same for you. Do it the right way right now. Make them out of a tool, steel harden it, post harden, turn it, and then that gets you a product to market. Meanwhile, you could be testing and improving that while you're selling a product. Yeah. How hard are you going on your post ads and things? High fifties. Not to 60, but I'm not sure there's a market difference in what you're trying to do at 58 versus 60. Interesting.
00:18:00
Speaker
And shout out to Jay Pearson. I mean, when that first shop tour I did at his place, G7 years ago, he was turning one of his pins with CBN on his lathe. We did a video on our old Tormach show, and it kind of looks really cool with the sparks. Actually, might be a bad idea for oil machine. Oil. Language. Shoot. That's a good point. I don't know. Is that really an issue?
00:18:28
Speaker
Is it non-starter to do it in a knock? You could experiment. Yeah. I'm in Willeman experimentation mode at the moment. Yeah. Not like knack thinking. I actually haven't run that machine in quite a while. Actually, if you do it dry, I don't even remember. I don't know. A lot of people like to hard build dry. It's more milling than turning.
00:18:57
Speaker
I don't know. Yeah. I'll keep that oil thing in mind. Yeah. Don't burn the shop down. No, exactly.
00:19:07
Speaker
Okay, here's some insights into where I'm at on, well, on the outcome was to buy a Brother R650. We talked about this last week, right? But not, I think I've gone through more. And so, good. No, it's just because you've been doing a lot more thinking since last week.
00:19:29
Speaker
I haven't knowing that in the past I overanalyze. So what I like to do is I sort of pretend, okay, find the machine in your head, like done, like, you know, okay, great. It's just, it's just a machine. Sure. It's just money by the machine. We're profitable business. We make products. This helps us do this. And then it's like, okay, what's the argument not to do it? Because now you're kind of like, for me, I've mentally made the decision. It's okay to do it. You got it right now. But like, wait a minute. What, what, what could you, could you, is it appropriate, healthy to say no and look at it a different way? So sure enough,
00:19:59
Speaker
it would make a lot of different aluminum products, but most of them are, when I say lower volume, it's just, it's easier to make what we need to make intermittently and not with the caveat of soft jaws and soft jaws we run a lot of. So I used the data we have in the Lex, this may look like a five minute exercise. Data in Lex showed me how many of those we need. I know the cycle time. And then we need some other products as well. And I realized, wait a minute here.
00:20:29
Speaker
We have a total different way of solving this problem today, which is every Friday night, we can run an aluminum overnight run because that is free. And the machine can be reloaded for steel, but because we need to keep the chip separate for Friday night, we run the aluminum only run. And then sometime on Saturday or Sunday, I pop into the shop, I live right by, and all I've got to do is swap out the bin, hit cycle start, and the steel will run, which means come Monday morning,
00:20:57
Speaker
for quote unquote for free, we were able to get, you know, an extra 12 hours plus of cycle time. So that was a win. And then the second thing was
00:21:07
Speaker
We can easily afford two to four days a month of daytime aluminum only work on the horizontal. And we could do that for right now with no problem. Even if we had more stress on production demands, all we need to do is add a little bit more fixtures to run certain steel products overnight, which there's extra capacity overnight so that we have saved more time during the day. Yeah. And that's your short-term problem solve.
00:21:35
Speaker
Yeah, in fact, it's probably medium term problem solved. Now the argument to get the brother is it's a new machine, a new control, you know, plan for growth. And if it's the right time, because you've got, you know, time to capacity to learn, and you want to get people up to speed on it and, and put that machine into place without pressure and stress.
00:21:55
Speaker
Or, you know, hey, tax reasons. You want to buy a machine this year? Okay, great. But we don't need to buy a machine. We bought a Willem and that checks that box of spending some money. And I don't think we're that I'm not that nervous about the control and the fixturing and all that. So it is going to be something I probably put on hold just
00:22:15
Speaker
for now because I realized, okay, this is healthy, even though it's kind of fun to think like, Ooh, sure. We're going to have that machine sometime and it may still end up being this year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. It takes the pressure off. It gives you more time to, to slowly think it through plan in your head. Okay. We've got to do this for fixturing that for tooling. This person's going to run it. We're going to run these parts on it. Um, you've probably already done a bunch of that, but let it sink in, you know?
00:22:39
Speaker
And you have basically a this week solution to that problem.
Overcoming Challenges in the Shop
00:22:44
Speaker
You've reorganized your schedule to be able to find time to run separate batches of material.
00:22:53
Speaker
Which is sweet. Yeah. The other argument that I think does hold water is it would be foolish and stupid and disappointing if we had a problem, like a crash or a spindle problem, because we are making $17 soft jaws on a horizontal like that. But we've been doing that for two years, doing it again. That alone isn't enough reason to
00:23:19
Speaker
to make a move today. But I do like that idea of like, you know, don't buy a Ferrari to race in the Specciata series. Like those soft jaws could be made on a very inexpensive machine that can go fast and has a cheap spindle.
00:23:34
Speaker
But it's another machine you got to buy and maintain and run, right? Yeah. That's where we're at kind of too is, is, you know, the current is amazing and we run everything on it, all kinds of stuff. And I'm slowly pulling things off of it and putting it on other machines and it's work. It's easy to run on the current and the current is just, we have the scheduled dial pad, down pad. We have the tool life. Everything is just straightforward. It takes very little human intervention to run that machine.
00:24:00
Speaker
but it fills the day, right? It fills the night, fills the weekend. Like to be able to do more, it has to be spread more onto the other machines. And that's, that's, we're going through. So yeah, I get it. I get it. And some of these parts, I'm like, why am I using the current to make this part, you know, it can be done on any machine. Well, it's just, it's easier on the current less effort.
00:24:23
Speaker
And that was the key criteria, the brother that I was not willing to compromise on was I want all of our aluminum tools permanently set up in that machine. There's going to be no change over. And the R650 has the larger 40 tool ATC, the verticals don't. The other thing is having the asynchronous reloading. So you can, anytime during the cycle time when the idle pallet is in the idle station, you can reload it. You don't have to stop what you're doing right when it finishes in order to keep production numbers up. That is,
00:24:53
Speaker
those two factors make it here. There's other machines that do that, but that's the key. Yeah. It's a palette changing machine, even if it's only two pallets. Yeah. Yep. As you've learned on the horizontal and kind of on the Wilhelmin being a barfed lathe, but automation is- Yeah. One of the Wilhelmin absolutely is that between the bar feeder and the fact that it holds enough tools that there's no
00:25:17
Speaker
There's no tool setup period. What's the boar max bar size in a new Wilman 408? I think it's just what you have, 30 same. Yeah, just one and three eights or something. Yeah. Okay.
00:25:31
Speaker
You got to go big bucks to go to a 508, which isn't that much bigger. The Chiron
Community and Current Projects
00:25:38
Speaker
and the Starag make much bigger through more machines, but they're different machines. Yeah, yeah. But I haven't really priced out a 508, but I think it's a lot more expensive, right? It's definitely north of... It's into seven figures, I believe. Yeah. Yeah. If you want to run
00:25:55
Speaker
Um, two inch bar to an, I don't know what the max is, but one in three eights is great, but it's even limiting for a couple of things. So yeah, it's cool. Yeah. Speaking of speedios. Um, I crashed the bloom probe last week. I'm sorry. I saw a sad face. Um,
00:26:20
Speaker
And new ones on the way should be here soonish, which is fine, but a painful lesson. The problem is, I mean, yes, it was late at night. Yes, I was kind of rushing. Yes, I was doing an unimportant test. But could I have solved it? Could I have stopped it?
00:26:41
Speaker
Keep going back and forth. You know how some machines have one knob is feed rate and another knob is rapid, and you can adjust both? I think all of our machines are that way. Yeah, and some of our machines are single knob for do both, like the Willowman. That's one knob that does feed rate and rapids. Oh, really? Yeah. Never used it. Anyway, this video has the two knobs. I had the feed rate at 100% and the
00:27:06
Speaker
I like to control the rapids when I'm doing a test or whatever. Like feed hold and rapid is my two hands. But probing cycles are weird and they don't listen to your rapid moves. They will feed at their feed. Sometimes even if the feed rate knob is low. And I think that's what happened is that the knobs did not slow down the probing routine, at least on this machine. But isn't your probing at like 40 inches a minute?
00:27:29
Speaker
Like it's quite a bit slow. Yeah, it was still fast enough to not be able to stop it and move my hands. And I'm slapping the control trying to find the E-stop. It just sucks. I mean, once the probe collides in the E-stop, like it's... Yeah, it's too late. It's too late. And it was probably a solid one to two seconds after that I finally found the E-stop and it's way too late, right?
00:27:56
Speaker
Did your E-stop, is that what actually stopped the machine or did something else cause? I think it bumped and alarmed out in Z. Okay. I think by the time I got to the E-stop or hit the feet hold or something.
00:28:09
Speaker
But yeah, I'm trying to figure out what the lesson is there and how to teach my team like to avoid something like that. Like I don't want it to be like, well, John's the owner and he can do whatever he wants. Like it's okay for him. It's not okay for me. And it's not okay for any of us to do that kind of stuff. And I really had a tough night Friday night, like really beat myself up over it. Um, and I'm trying to figure out how could I have avoided it? Like,
00:28:33
Speaker
I'll probably end up getting one of those probe halos. Have you seen those? I think that would have solved this. That would have not made this happen, this crash. I think it would have stopped the probe. That's the whole purpose of it. If the move was in a protected move, which probably was. Probably was.
00:28:52
Speaker
Because it was an inner cycle. I was going to say, why did you have a wrong Z value or wrong coordinate system? I must have had a wrong Z value. I think I thought it would go down 0.1 inch, but it went down to the bottom of the fixture, the bottom of the part to 0.1 Z, I think. And I can't test that until I get a new probe in. Oh, good grief. Be careful. And I think what I was actually trying to do a test where I was like an inch above the part.
00:29:20
Speaker
And I wanted to see the point one move, but it just, it kept dropping and dropping past that. I didn't catch fast enough. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. It happens. I'm kind of mostly over it now, which is good, but yeah. Yeah. Hey, what was it? It wasn't, yeah. Could be worse. Could be worse. Could be worse. Just it's just tools.
00:29:44
Speaker
Just my pride, my ego, you know? No, I take to heart what you said. It's like, really, what was the lesson learned? And you're admitting it, but it's probably like, look, we are both age. And I'm not as sharp as I used to be, especially late at night. I really do not. Yeah, right. And I wonder if that was it.
00:30:06
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. But like, I don't think that's gonna, even if you, even if that's sure you admit that I don't think it's gonna stop you from working at night. Totally. So it's kind of like, what's the point? Like, are they, you know, yeah, whatever. Yeah.
00:30:25
Speaker
We had a huge, huge quality of life win on the horizontal by installing, I call it a CCTV, which I don't even know if that's really the right term. Is that like the 1980s term? Yeah, betraying my age here. I got tired of walking around the horizontal. You want to know if there's a tombstone in the idle station or
00:30:47
Speaker
It's empty or if there's too so what to do so it is cuz sometimes if I want to like let's say I want three up next we don't want to call three up if it's already there and you'd walk around and have to look through it all that yeah, I didn't want like a webcam because I want to log into an app and permissions and blah blah blah I just want I just want to feed like I wanted a straight video feed and so it's literally the cameras plug directly into a monitor and no internet no nothing bingo that's cool and we throw it up on Instagram and
00:31:15
Speaker
I actually kind of a separate story went to a photo store in Columbus on Friday after work to talk about the photo rig setup, which I'll come back to that later if you want. But I asked them and they're like, not really our thing, but like, just go find an HDMI.
00:31:31
Speaker
webcam or something. I was like, Oh, that's a great term. I don't know why I wasn't going to Amazon HDMI webcam or camera. There's a bunch of, they're like security cameras, but they're a hundred bucks. And, um, it's literally a 12 volt in and an HDMI out.
00:31:46
Speaker
monitor like one of those five, eight or six inch video monitors that you can mount on a DSLR type of thing. Put that on a little Noga arm that's next to the machine, angle right where you want it. Did a real nice job tucking the HDMI cord with some cable stays along the inside of the sheet metal so you don't even see it. Man, I forgot that Noga makes like camera mounts. Yeah, great. Cool.
00:32:13
Speaker
So what's the idle position? I don't know much about horizontals really. So you have a lazy Susan, just like the R650. Yeah. So it's actually funny. All horizontals that I know of are made like this. So they have the active palette and then they have the opposite palette or tombstone. OK. Then when you bolt on a automation system,
00:32:35
Speaker
it has to interface with that idle palette, but it's frankly redundant. Like it shouldn't even like if you designed an automated horizontal from the ground up, you wouldn't have the road lazy Susan because it just adds an extra unnecessary thing. Yeah, like our current doesn't have that it's exactly grabs a pallet puts it in. There's no backup palette anything. Okay, so
00:32:56
Speaker
as opposed to the R650 that has two fixed pallets like that table basically that just rotates. That's what our horizontal has. But you can load a pallet into it or onto it on top of? They shuffle in and out.
00:33:12
Speaker
The R650, from a machine tool sales standpoint, what they claim is interesting is that it doesn't lift up as it rotates. It avoids the risk of Z chips or change or whatever. It's able to have some sort of a pancake thing that just pivots it with no lift. Our horizontal is, I mean, frankly, no different than your aroa. The tombstones sit on four ground hardened cones.
00:33:34
Speaker
And when they rotate, this thing lifts up, clears the cones, it rotates 180 degrees, sets it back down, and that 180 switch flips the active in the idle tombstone. Yeah, okay. Interesting.
00:33:49
Speaker
So the webcam tells you what's lined up next? Yes. So it won't rotate if you want to manually rotate the power out. So let's say I'm working on tombstone one and I'm done making a part and I want to pull that tombstone all the way out to the load station, which is like six feet away because it's way easier to work on a tombstone at the load station. You want to pull parts off or inspect a fixture. Well,
00:34:11
Speaker
you do a G code command to rotate the lazy Susan, and then you have to go over the automation console and pull this thing out. Well, you can't rotate the lazy Susan if the opposite side is empty. Okay, it will just sit there. Yeah, which kind of makes like it can't load an empty thing.
00:34:30
Speaker
So that's one problem that this camera solves. The other thing is like, okay, I want to work on tombstone three next. Do I need to tell it to shuffle tombstone three into the idle station or is tombstone three already there? Got it. Shuffling them around is quite slow. Yeah. So you want to, it's just quite helpful to know. And this, all these commands have to come from the control, which you can't see anything from the control. For the most part. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of weird. Yeah, that's cool.
00:34:59
Speaker
We were good. I told the team, if we want to do this elsewhere, let's do it. There was a day point in time where I really wanted to have a camera pointed at the Haas tool changers so that you could see stuff in the tool changer. This sort of camera wouldn't work great for that because
00:35:15
Speaker
When you're looking at a tool changer, like a side mount, you want to move your head around to look at the sides of tools and all that. But that idea of just like a console, like a pilot, give me all the information I want right here where I'm working. Yeah. And let me decide how to use it. Yeah. Actually, now that I say that, I should put one. I'm going to do this. I should put one back in the ATC because
00:35:39
Speaker
just to know if something goes wrong, or if there's a bird's nest building up back there. That's a no-brainer, actually. Cool. I like it. We had a lightning storm yesterday, and our new guy, Jeff, I saw the lightning outside. I'm like, let me go over and just talk to Jeff about machines shutting off during the lightning storm, because we haven't had that conversation yet. What do you do kind of thing? Because we had a lighter staff yesterday.
00:36:07
Speaker
And so I was like, well, in case it happens, let's at least have that conversation. So we did. And lo and behold, an hour later, the NAC and the Kern both paused. It was like a blip in the power or something. And those two machines are very sensitive. So the Kerns literally mid tool change, like the tomahawk tool changer is halfway through, but the Kern recovers super easily. I was actually able to pick up middle of the program and just keep going.
00:36:30
Speaker
the knack however was making our pocket clip so like sub spindle in clamped twist it up like really complicated and there's all these commands and codes that you have to cancel in the knack to get out of a synchronous mode and stuff and so I was helping Jeff get through it and I'm like do you think we can pick it up from here and like finish this part because it's 95% done or should we just you know break it off and
00:36:57
Speaker
thrown away and start over. And he's like, I'd feel way more comfortable if we just threw it away. And I was like, okay, let's go your way. That's fine. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I literally had that moment where I was like, I could force this and do it my way, or I could let him have a win and like go his way. And he's probably right anyway. So I'm just going to back away and let him do his thing. It feels good, right? It feels really good. Yeah. The speedio kept running. The tornos kept running. The more he kept running.
00:37:25
Speaker
They didn't care. Huh. That's interesting. Well, I'll hear the quick story of that photo booth set up and why I went to the camera store was that an acquaintance mentioned, I was asking somebody else that runs a nonprofit that had a bunch of video work and I was like, hey, do you know anybody that can help us with a video set up like a permanent booth in our shop?
00:37:49
Speaker
And one of their employees' husbands, spouses is, Run does this for a sportswear company, like a nationwide sportswear company. He's like, and I met him, he's like, I've spent millions of dollars in the past year on this exact sort of thing. I was like, great, I'd like to hire you if you're interested to help us buy the equipment. Like, I don't need your help filming, I just want your help setting up a photo booth, the light and all that. Great conversation, super nice guy. But
00:38:10
Speaker
It's not what he does. He doesn't do this for third party. And sure enough, a week later, I really hadn't heard from him. And I was just shouting him an email. I was like, hey, I saw this. What do you think about this? This is an idea. And then he gave me the disappointing answer that I at least appreciate him saying, which is like, hey, I'm not going to be able to help you with this. Go to the store and see if they can help you.
00:38:28
Speaker
but reminded me of the perils that I've been through, you've been through, I know Amish just went through it, where it's like, you have people that may mean well, or friends that it's not what they do, and then all of a sudden, that project doesn't work out, or because it was free or subsidized, they don't, you know, it's just like, I've continued to
00:38:46
Speaker
love the idea of that, but it often just doesn't work out. Yeah. And so I was super happy to be like, okay, hey, really appreciate the help. Uh, you know, thanks. Good, great meeting you and move on. Yeah, exactly. That's the solution there. It's just be like, I see it for what it is and just move on. Yeah. Yeah. I tend to have far more hope for far too long in those situations. And then everybody's just waiting. Um, yeah. Yep. Yep. So you want a,
00:39:17
Speaker
little photo booth studio like in the corner with just cameras and lights all tripoded up. So you can put a product in there, do your product photography and then.
00:39:26
Speaker
leave it. For the most part, although product photography is not that difficult for us, where I really want it is one of my goals for 2024. It's kind of going to be the second half at this point, because the first half is going to be days off in the shop and organizing all that, but is if we want to do an instructional video on the mod vice or a market. Yeah. We were just talking about that. We were talking about that yesterday. Yeah.
00:39:49
Speaker
And that's awkward because you're filming, you want the mic, you don't want the shadows of your hands, you don't want your hands in the way. So I want three to four cameras permanently. The lighting to be done, I want monitors so that you can, if you're gonna, your hands are gonna block the view, at least you see it when you're filming it and not when you sit down at your computer to edit it. Yeah, so that's what we're doing. Exactly. Ryan was just saying we should update our maintenance videos because they're like five years old. And we're like, okay, we need a top down and I want a front facing,
00:40:20
Speaker
like me or whoever the person is. And then I need the monitor so I can see myself, see my hands, know that I'm in frame, and then let's do it, set it up, and I'm happy to show up and do a maintenance video, but build it for me. And he's like, where do we do it? We need the good lighting, we need good space. In the past, we've even talked about having a mobile top-down rig in the shop.
00:40:43
Speaker
on wheels kind of thing with like a battery backup so that it could just be totally cordless. Never really did it, but could be cool. Yes, we don't have that solution yet, but I like where you're going.
00:40:57
Speaker
Yeah, check out what we've got already. It'll be better by the time you get here in April. But there's this half of it's like, I'm willing to buy and invest in whatever we need. Part of it's also like bootstrapper. So we're using Costco or a Sam's Club wire rack as our frame that leaves it on wheels, but it's going to be toggle clipped into the wall. So it's steady under normal use. But if we want to wheel it over to a machine, it's there. And you buy AC adapters for the camera. So there's no batteries to deal with that kind of stuff. Makes it nice.
00:41:25
Speaker
And I got to say, the people who take YouTube seriously, they have their setup, their room with the lights in the background and the wooden table or whatever, and they do all their videos there. And it looks amazing. It looks easy, right? Because they've made all the setup. Yeah, I think we need a place like that. I feel like if we had a place like that, we would make a lot more of that kind of content because it would be easy at that point.
00:41:52
Speaker
Bingo. Hey guys, I'm just going to show you this new thing we just made. You know, I'm going to explain it. Zoom in, top down, macro, everything at the same time. Send it. It's totally the manifestation of that whole like, it's easy for Grimsmode to be a techno nerd that can do crazy filming setup stuff. And it's easy for Grimsmode to be like a expert on the knives, but it's really hard to wear both hats at the same power. Yeah, exactly.
00:42:17
Speaker
And then to spread those tasks throughout the team too has its own challenges. And okay, you do that, you do that, I'll do that. I'll show up, just get it all done. I'll show up and say what I gotta say. I'll be the actor coming out of my trailer. Right, right. That's funny.
00:42:35
Speaker
We're gonna put up a page, actually it should be up today, on our Saunders site that'll have the info on the April 13th yard sale. We'll start throwing up some pictures of stuff. We already did also on Instagram. And we got lots of questions from folks. The plan is to have everything be an in-sale person. So I know people might be bummed, but we're not doing online. The whole point of this is yard sale, come buy it, come take it away, not shipping stuff. Yep, yep, yep, exactly.
00:43:02
Speaker
I'm trying to compel Grimsmo to bring shirts and then maybe I can try to compel you to bring a limited edition Norseman or the signed socket. Bring some pens that you're going to make and sell in person or something. Nice. Yeah, I'll see what I can do. Okay. Make sure you put two of those targets aside for my guys because
00:43:26
Speaker
So I bought new batteries and plugged one in yesterday. It has not moved in 10 years. This is an electromechanical device, the circuit board. I mean, they're rugged, but I was like, man, 10 years popped a new battery in. Works great. Yep. And it reloads a lot faster than I thought, than my brain remembers. It's like a one second, one and a half second reload or something. Like, that was great. It's really fast. Yeah. So definitely.
00:43:54
Speaker
I'll set a couple aside for you guys. Yeah, that'd be awesome. Yeah, two of the guys might come down, not with me, but concurrently. Got it. On their own and hanging out, see the shop. Sweet. They're very excited. Good. Good. Yeah. Yeah. What do you see today? Today, I keep working on that button, trying to figure out, I'm going to think about hard turning, although like you said, the oil is a real concern.
00:44:21
Speaker
Yeah, I'll crunch on that for a little bit, see what options. I'll keep playing with the 17-4. I got some minor design tweaks to make to this to see how it goes together, but it's coming. It's coming together real good. Have you passed that like, I know this is going to work test or are you still not sure on the button? I was here till two o'clock last night and I put it together and I was like,
00:44:41
Speaker
It kind of works. The whole design of it, of the button and everything and the tolerances and clearances and stuff. It's nowhere near where it needs to be, but I think I'm a lot closer. It answered a question. Functionally, it works. Tolerances are way off. It's still loose and floppy, but can I make it smooth and snappy and clean and not stick? That's what I got to answer next. Got it. That's cool. That's exciting, which makes me kind of want a button that's like 60 Rockwell that's just not going to
00:45:11
Speaker
band or move or dent or, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So I'll figure that out. That's a foregone conclusion. Yeah, probably. Yeah. So we can close. Yeah, great. Good. I will see you next week. All right, man.