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#234 Tool Time! Endmills, Process Reliability, Cost Per Edge, and Hardmilling
232 Plays4 years ago
Topics:
- Accountabilibuddies & Truth
- Relentless by Tim Grover
- Hardmilling Speeds & Feeds
- CBN Endmills for Norseman
- Variable Feedrate & CNC Acceleration/Deceleration
- Adam the Machinist: Carbide for Hardmilling
- Zedaro Cutting Tools (WNT, Ceratizit, etc.)
- De Boer Tool in Toronto, Canada
- Weird Alarm on KERN
- Saunders considers custom drills
- LSC, Sandvik, Magical McMaster
- Process Reliability Disciples
- Cost Per Edge
- Dobson Pipe Organ Fire & Pipe Organ Tuning Tools
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Episode Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 234. My name is John Grimsmough. And my name is John Saunders. And this is the podcast where for a lot of years, like years and years, Saunders and I have been talking every week about our businesses and our lives and the trials and tribulations of running a machine shop. That it is. And I value your friendship, but also what we get out of this seriously. Me too. Yeah. I was thinking, um,
00:00:29
Speaker
This might be one of the secrets of our success. I say that in the air quotes, but just to be able to have a close friend to consistently, continually bounce ideas off of, like almost in a forced way.
Impact of Tim Grover's 'Relentless' on Work Ethic
00:00:44
Speaker
We have to talk every week just because out of habit we have. It's good. It's been really beneficial. Yes. I keep going back.
00:00:56
Speaker
to Relentless, that Tim Grover book. I've actually listened to it basically a complete second time now, but in chunks, which I don't get as much out of in the five-minute drive interval chunks, but that doesn't mean it's still not okay. Is the audio book narrated by the author?
00:01:18
Speaker
No, it is narrated by a third party. But what they did was Tim Grover and his agent do a little informal discussion before each chapter. Hmm.
00:01:30
Speaker
Interesting. And again, I would I would recommend it without hesitation. It's kind of up there for me now with the contextual advice. But nevertheless, you mean books and things help you at different points in your journey. But I do think he's got a lot of good things that are a little bit contrarian to values today. Like I very much resonate with what Tim Grover says and Michael Jordan says, which is not
00:01:57
Speaker
Um, not sort of what's in it for me or what can other people do for me, but rather I am a leader. I'm going to work harder than everybody. You know, he's got the, he has natural talent, but it's not natural talent that made him the subject of this prize. The fact that, you know, after, uh, after the championship game, he's getting the gym at six AM the next day, not celebrating like, um, doesn't mean he can't have fun, but, uh, work. But, uh, the reason I brought that up right now is now lost on me.
00:02:24
Speaker
Sorry, rambling, rambling too much. It'll come back to me. Good. No, I'm glad you enjoyed that. He's got the second book winning, which is the same, but more. Yeah, it's excellent too.
00:02:39
Speaker
I don't know if you want to read them back to back or listen to them or just give it some time to let this one sink in and make sure to hit up winning eventually. Okay, I will. The second time through, I've had a different reaction. If folks have followed this podcast or our story, you know that for years, I really resonated with
00:02:57
Speaker
Dale Carnegie, how to win friends and influence people, like very much so. And then the third time I read it after some period of not having read it, I was kind of like, this guy's full of, you know what? And there's a complete counterpoint to it, which I looked up, I think like Goodreads or some website that kind of has book reviews in it.
00:03:16
Speaker
totally hit the nail on my head, which is that there's one side of Dale Carnegie that's positive, which is like, Hey, let other people talk. You'd be amazed at how somebody else can talk for 40 minutes straight and be like, Hey, I really enjoy talking to you. And you're kind of like, Oh yeah. And that's kind of one of the keys to being a salesman, if you will. But then there's the counterpoint, which is kind of like, I don't want to fill my life with friends that aren't real friends because they just do all of the talking. Oh my goodness. A hundred million percent.
00:03:46
Speaker
I got to read that book there. Yeah. Well, it's like for perspective. I did read his book a couple months ago called How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. That's who's that? Dale Carnegie as well. Really? Yep. Yep. And that was fantastic. Very good psychological like, why are you stuck in your head kind of kind of book, I really enjoyed it and written in the, I don't know, 30s, 40s, 50s, something like that, like,
00:04:12
Speaker
It's like, oh, you know, nearly a hundred years ago, people still have the same thought patterns that we have now. Um, okay. I'm not crazy. Right. I love that joke. I have no idea how true this is. It doesn't matter, uh, this rambling quote that it's like this, this next generation, I find to have a complete lack of work ethic, a sense of self entitlement, you know, no discipline or value in the future. You know, we are doomed and it's like Socrates to 40 BC or something.
00:04:43
Speaker
Yeah, literally, said by literally every generation since. Right. Actually, that did remind me why I brought up Relentless, which is,
00:04:53
Speaker
which is Tim Grover when he sort of first got in a relationship working and training Michael Jordan in a very probably bold way said, look, Michael, I'm not here to be your, Michael is a celebrity at this point already.
Honesty in Podcasting and Business Challenges
00:05:06
Speaker
I'm not here to be your friend. You know, if you want somebody to be nice to you and tell you nice things, you know, there's a million trainers that can go do that for you. You know, if you work with me,
00:05:14
Speaker
It's my schedule. It's my rules. I control your diet. I control your workouts. I want the most out of you. Um, that's what this is. And, uh, it reminds me of what we need to make sure we keep this, this podcast, even though it's our conversation, even though it is being a podcast, which is, um, we're not here just to congratulate each other, but rather, you know, call, call it, you know, it's the whole,
00:05:34
Speaker
Sometimes you need to hear the truth from somebody. On that note, how are you? Pretty good. I was thinking I wanted to bring it up yesterday or yesterday, pretty much, and a little bit today before. I was in this weird ho-hum mental state. Sure. I guess the kids nowadays would call it meh.
00:05:58
Speaker
Yes. But I was just not super excited or passionate about anything. And I was letting it get to my head and let me feel like it was slowing me down physically. And by the end of the day, I was like, screw this. I don't have time for this. I don't like this at all. You let all the negative thoughts get into your head. And then you start to have these mental conversations. And that certainly happens a lot. But I was letting it really kind of
00:06:27
Speaker
just push me down a little bit. And I was like, no, no, come on. It's fine for a little bit, but I'm over it. Is it work stuff? Yeah, mostly. Okay. Anything you want to talk about?
00:06:40
Speaker
I don't know. We've had some production issues. I think I told you off the podcast. We've had some consistency issues making our Norseman knives for the past few weeks. And I think I got it figured out. But that's been a, it's been a burden, you know? Yeah. Both fixing it, but also just dealing with the lack of revenue from not making as many knives as we normally do. Yeah. So that's not fun. But we got it fixed.
00:07:07
Speaker
But now I have the solution. I just need to fine tune that solution, which brings me to the CBN end mill that I got literally as we closed the podcast last week. So CBN end mills, as I've learned after using them, I did all my research before I did my speeds and feeds exactly like the website says and everything, but there was still more to learn.
00:07:28
Speaker
as i found out because they started chipping pretty quickly this two hundred dollar and mill starts wearing a little bit faster than i think it should
00:07:40
Speaker
One of the tricks, I think, is I was using flood coolant, and it says pretty much everywhere to use an air oil mist. I'm like, I don't have an air oil mist, or even a good air blast on the currents. I'm just going to run flood coolant, whatever. So maybe that's part of it. But also, they are extremely picky to stock to leave, and how much cut engagement it has, and how much especially I'm doing these tiny, tiny little features, and it's asking for a really fast feed rate.
00:08:08
Speaker
and the current can even accelerate that fast in that short of an area. We have found a weakness. I know. Like try to hold 70 inches per minute on an eighth inch radius circle. Right.
00:08:21
Speaker
So I think the shock load of trying to ramp up to that speed and come down and make these features, it's a variable feed rate, because it's faster, slower, faster, slower in the cut. And I think that's probably what killed it. It was still functioning and still abrading material away, but tolerances started to go a little bit out.
00:08:47
Speaker
Yeah. So I'm talking with Adam, the machinist actually had some really good quick tips for me on, he's like, don't be afraid to use like good quality carbide meant for hard milling. Like they are different than a regular end mill. The core is thicker. The flute shape is different. The coatings are different. Cause I was using regular carbide and it works, but it kind of chips away. Yeah.
00:09:16
Speaker
So I've been fine tuning speeds and feeds and recipe with regular carbide. And just today I've got some fancier end mills coming in fancier. Yeah. Oh, wow. Some, some meant for hard milling. Okay. Yep. Where, where, who from where, um, Zadaro is hooking me up with not ones that they make, but they're
00:09:36
Speaker
I don't know, European somewhere. I think they're WNT or Sarah Tissett or one of those European brands that Laurence keeps talking about. Yeah, yeah. I just put all of them into one bucket. Exactly. Those brands? Yeah, yeah. They have a blue coating on them and Mike at Sadaro said they use that for hard milling all the time and that works good. And then Dibor tools, have you ever heard of them?
00:10:01
Speaker
No. They're a Toronto end mill manufacturer. I've been buying more and more stuff from them. They have their basic line that is just like Lakeshore stuff. That's where I get all my stubbed square end mills. I used to get all from Lakeshore and I still do mostly, but I've been buying
Exploring Tooling Options for Hard Milling
00:10:18
Speaker
more and more from Deboer. So all you Canadians out there, definitely look at their lineup. But they also have a line of hard milling end mills that I'm super excited to try out.
00:10:29
Speaker
Boy, lots of parallels here, including we've done, we're looking at end mills to get through hot rolled heat affected zone right now. We're looking at our cost per edges on some of our tools because it kind of does matter at this point. So let's not ignore it. It doesn't mean we're, it's not the difference between a good and a bad year, but it matters. I'm happy to go into that conversation. But then,
00:10:56
Speaker
And more specifically, we had a friend who's, he is in the pipe organ world and another company called Dobson in Iowa. Unfortunately, earlier this year, maybe a few months ago, their whole factory burned to the ground. Super tragic and sad. Nobody was killed. I don't even believe anybody was hurt, but total loss of their whole facility.
00:11:24
Speaker
And so he asked if we'd be willing to help them out by remanufacturing these pipe organ tuning tools that are like kind of like the shape of a stick of gum, you know, that profile, but 24 inches long. So it's like one inch thick, five eighths inch wide or 13 millimeters or so, but 24 inches long. So quite long out of hardened steel.
00:11:47
Speaker
and we're not a job shop anymore, but I wanted to find a way to make this a yes. I thought, you know what? We were going to make them period because it's just one of those checking all the right boxes. I just can't imagine what it would be like.
00:12:03
Speaker
doing it will help, but also just the gesture that this company is going to start getting. So there's only, they had like all the tools left of this in the world. This might be, I know had one right now. It's not like it's a pretty simple tool. It's not crazy, but nevertheless, he's like, I really have the only one left that we know about. So he sent it to us. We modeled it up.
00:12:21
Speaker
Um, actually he made the model, but he sent it to us so we could kind of take a closer look at the metallurgy and the shape. And, uh, so we ordered some McMaster car. Oh, two flat stock, I believe, which funny enough when it showed up, it was just in stare it.
00:12:36
Speaker
And I was like, I was thinking about stare, but then I was like, I had so much easier to order from McMaster. And then it shows up in the stare box, which is actually great because I'm like, okay, it's good stuff. I keep being surprised by what comes from McMaster because they tell you the brand, like those CBN end mills were NS tool, the Japanese CBN company. Like if I had my top choice, I would have picked that. And my mystery box from McMaster comes this.
00:13:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's perfect. Actually, we had a debate. Do we machine them and then send them off to heat treat? But knowing that once you send them to heat treat, they're going to move and warp and change on you. Or do we just get them hardened first? And ultimately, we thought about the workflow. And I thought, look, I'd much rather hard mill them, frankly,
00:13:24
Speaker
hard milling is is great for finishes and it's that can wear through some tooling but there's only 10 of them to make so it's not a tooling it's not a particularly big deal and I just I feel like I know what we'll be able to control the outcome versus
00:13:40
Speaker
the risk that they move on us in heat treat, which is something you're well aware of. Heat treat changes. Vince is tackling this right now. Material just came back yesterday or two years ago and he machined the first one and it looks beautiful.
00:13:57
Speaker
The reason I brought all that up is we have done and had a really good experience with some of the Lakeshore hard-coding end builds is what made me think of it. And they look really funny. They have a huge core, very shallow gullet. They look very strange.
00:14:12
Speaker
and they have what I believe they call a nano-coding, and they're not particularly expensive. I don't recall how small they go, but... That's a little better right now. Yeah, I wouldn't hesitate to try them, and perhaps you'll have a similarly good experience with the Zenaros. Eighth inch, six flute. Yeah. Wow. And the eighth inch is going to be a lot stronger than what you and I think of as a normal eighth inch because it's got that gold equivalent of like a three sixteenths. Yeah, right.
00:14:37
Speaker
And that's always kind of my threshold 316. So I'm like, we can wail one eighth inch. We got to start thinking about going a little bit more diligent with the speeds and feeds. But we were talking about, Vince and I were talking about the tooling. I was like, I'd rather not use a hard mill for this. It's 60, oh no, excuse me. We had him heat treated to 50 Rockwell. It doesn't actually need to be that hard.
00:15:00
Speaker
And I was like, I think it's a much cooler exercise to show you can do this. You can use a regular tool to machine some pretty hard stuff. And 50 Rockwell is not 60, but it ain't soft either. Exactly. So that's it. So we're going to turn it into a little Wednesday widget kind of showing the workflow of speeds and feeds and success, but just hard milling. Yeah. Yeah. I've definitely machined hardened blades. I mean, we machine the blade bevels on the Norseman.
00:15:26
Speaker
all day, every day hard with just regular lakeshore end mills. They do get destroyed after so many blades, but they work fine. I have other knife makers to like, oh, how do I hard mill a blade? I just have this tiny little feature to do. I'm like, you just do it. If you destroy an $8 end mill, then okay, but it'll work for one.
00:15:48
Speaker
But what I'm tackling, I want a consistent process that gives me tense repeatability and consistent tool life. So I'm trying to build that system into my workflow right now. But to do it one piece or 10 pieces or whatever,
Machining Hot-Rolled Steel: Challenges and Techniques
00:16:01
Speaker
just go ham on it, go nuts, right? Right. No big deal.
00:16:05
Speaker
But it is, I mean, it's funny because I've told that to many people and then here I am the past week kind of stressing and over-analyzing every aspect of hard milling, trying to understand it, trying to understand the coatings and the tool and geometry and all this stuff. And sometimes I have to step back and I have to be like, hold on, you tell everybody else to just send it and here you are like babying every aspect of it. I'm like, because I want to understand. I want to know what's happening.
00:16:30
Speaker
so that I can set a process in motion that everybody else on the team can just continue and not worry about anymore, you know? Well, it's also a $214 end mill. Exactly. Yeah. The carbide ones are $30 to $70 depending. Yeah. So we're having this debate now of do we use an end mill that say $90 but better or $40 to get through that hot rolled finish?
00:16:55
Speaker
Yeah. And I'm generally a fan of the cheaper one because the good one doesn't always get the good results. And the bad one usually meets that minimum, sometimes does a little better. And what about like a corn cob rougher? It's funny. Just looked at that. And I actually didn't realize the Sandvik 390 comes in that corn cob version where the inserts stack up the flute body. Kind of like an inserted end mill, like helical end mill deal.
00:17:25
Speaker
I don't think we'll do that. First off, the 390 inserts are a bit expensive and I'm guessing, uneducated guess, but I'm guessing that there's a fair amount of tool pressure with that style cutter. Certainly, it's not going to be a larger diameter. Those would be like an inch and a half, inch and a quarter.
00:17:41
Speaker
But the other thing I've seen with those is they're actually not that cheap because if you look at the number of inserts you've got to buy, the risk potentially that you had a really bad hard spot blow up inserts over the body, but ultimately it's also way too time consuming to switch all the inserts, period. That's a big no go. How big is this piece of hot rolled? Fixer plate. Just going around the edge. On the outside.
00:18:06
Speaker
Yeah. Fair amount of service area. We're changing up potentially a few things that would mean we want to do this differently, which is why we're- Have you always used hot rolled or always used cold rolled? No, normally it's been saw cut, so there's not a heat zone. This could be a plain cut. Still hot rolled, but saw cut. Yeah, all 4140 plate is a hot rolled product. Always in general? That's what I'm told.
00:18:35
Speaker
Yeah, because I've been using quite a bit of it for fixturing here. That's great. I haven't seen the heat affected the edges, because it's all socket. Yeah, exactly. OK. You'll know. I mean, obviously, it's flame cut. It'll have that flame edge. So first off, don't overthink it. Don't worry about it. We've already machined through some of it. Not a particularly big deal. As you get underneath that heat affected zone, shouldn't be that bad. So I'm not going to make a problem where there isn't one. But I'm just thinking about what's
00:19:04
Speaker
what's the right tool. We even thought about taking one of our finishing tools and just downgrading it when it's done finishing to that rougher side. Yeah, something Adam, the machine has suggested for the CBN or even just for a carbide process for hard milling. He's like, don't be afraid to use a rougher finisher strategy or even a rougher semi-finish and then a finished strategy, like three end mills. I was like,
00:19:27
Speaker
Of course, that's a good idea like the default want me wants to just one and done kind of the one tool does it all kind of thing but I tried with regular carbide I used a regular one to rough it I left like a foul and then I used a different and mill to finish it.
00:19:44
Speaker
that has very little to take off and the finisher lasts very long time. So it's like let the rougher die, let the finisher leave a great finish and be able to take up any small inaccuracies of the rougher dying. I might end up with like a three end mill solution or something like that. With the five axis, I actually found with the ball mill, I can tilt it and use different sides of the ball. Yeah, it's awesome. Love it. That's awesome. So like I'm using the side flutes to rough.
00:20:13
Speaker
and then almost at the tip to semi-finish and then about halfway up the radius to finish. So that's my current strategy. Well, that's the thing you could do. Assuming you have more flute length than the feature you're cutting, which a lot of your Norsa products are relatively thin, you could just use a end mill that has three different sections or you could do the axial. Yeah. It's cool to think about. And as you move up toward the shank, that's getting stiffer. Yes. Yeah.
00:20:43
Speaker
I really enjoy thinking about the usability of the flutes. When you use a ball mill for doing contouring, you're only touching the ball. You've got all these side flutes that do nothing. Try to use them for something else. That's cool. Does a curtain not have through air spindle? I think it does.
00:21:02
Speaker
Oh, okay. Why can't you use that? I didn't think about that. Okay. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. I mean, not air, air oil, but trying to evacuate the ships. You have to go through the call it or through a slitted call it or something, but of course.
00:21:17
Speaker
I didn't even think about that. Yeah, it's great. Air works way better through a collet than flood coolant sometimes. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, I'm falling in love with the slotted collets through coolant. Like today on my list, I'm converting one of my tools and a bunch of toolpaths and a couple of programs to that.
00:21:37
Speaker
to a through coolant collet. And it's just makes so much sense. Like, like you're, you're, you're opening up a blind hole with a tiny end mill and the tips keep chipping. Like, duh, you're recutting chips in that tiny hole. You blast coolant directly in there at hundreds of PSI problem solved. Right. And they're more expensive and who cares?
Process Reliability in Machining
00:22:00
Speaker
Oh, but it's not a consumable to speak of. No, exactly. Right. Yeah. But like the PG collets are $180 each.
00:22:08
Speaker
Whereas this coolant through ones are 250 or 240 or something. So an extra of $50, $60, but it's a one-time solution. Right. That's a pretty easy ROI though. If you start talking about materially improving process reliability and the life. Yeah.
00:22:24
Speaker
Yeah, when you toured Orange Vice years ago and he talked about process reliability as if it was a Bible, I was like, oh my God, that word has stuck in my head because he said it and because he said how important it was and I love it. It's everything.
00:22:42
Speaker
That's the other thing we're looking at is kind of the cost per edge on these face mills that we use for roughing and finishing. Not because we're some big auto place that has crazy statistical process costing charts, but just simply because some of our inserts have two edges, some have four, some have six and eight. And more so than ever, I value when an insert gets four or six edges, that's that piece of carbide divided by six as the cost and not
00:23:11
Speaker
two and the two, the twos are trying to kind of phase out because that's just really expensive. Yeah. So a lot of your inserts are then square. Like you could flip it over and use the other side. So the sand at 390 is a 90 degree insert that is just two. So you just can rotate it 180. The 490 that we just got is four sides of that same geometry, but it's square. So you can rotate it four ways. The
00:23:36
Speaker
245 and similar is four edges. Actually, that one that Lawrence posted this morning on WhatsApp is the Mitsubishi version, the ASX 445, which is a cool because it's a positive insert, but they cheat it into a negative style body so that you can have two sides. You actually have eight edges, four on one side, flip it four on the other. They're fatter inserts, so they're a bit more expensive.
00:24:04
Speaker
But the other one that I want to try is the Sandvik 745, because it is actually very similar to that ASX 445. It is, I believe, seven edges per side. So whatever octagon minus one is called hek, hek, hek, hek, hek. But also reversible. Oh, do you have 14? Yeah, you have 14.
00:24:27
Speaker
But it's a 45 degree. It looks like it's a 90, but it's 45 because the flat where you're cutting, there's an angle that doesn't cut, but would keep you away from getting up against the sidewall.
00:24:38
Speaker
Nice. Yeah, in the past I've used a toroid cutter, like a button cutter with the round inserts. And those were kind of fun to look at under the loop or the microscope and just rotate, you know, 20 degrees until the wear is gone. Clamp it, hit go again. You get a lot of cutting edges out of those, depending on how you're using it. Yeah. We use so little indexable here, like right on the lathes. Yeah, but that's, that's about it. Right.
00:25:06
Speaker
So what are next steps just waiting to get those hard mills in to try out? I think they were just delivered. I saw FedEx truck and then a UPS truck immediately after it. We might have to change our podcast time because I had the same thing here. Delivery's just rolling in. Yeah. So I'll try those out. I have a process now with regular carbide that seems to work. Yeah.
00:25:28
Speaker
I made a tombstone that has two sides to do the hard milling of these blades. Sorry, one side holds two blades, and that's all I've made so far. So I need to pattern that on size two, three and four. So I can fix your eight blades at once. Got it. So I'll be doing that today. And then I just need to make sure the tool can last for eight blades or hopefully 16 blades, or more should
00:25:53
Speaker
So far, regular carbide wasn't. But with my new strategy, roughing and finishing, it probably will. But Adam was saying that you should be able to get many, many tens of hours out of an end mill if you use it right. And maybe I'm just not using it right. That's what I'm glad you talked to, because I remember him saying that he does some crazy stuff with not crazy tooling, where it's
00:26:20
Speaker
You're you're cutting a what a couple of linear inches per blade or something right so to do.
00:26:26
Speaker
eight blades is a foot of cutting or something. I mean, it should not be an issue. Yeah. And speeds and feeds of hard mills are weird. Like depending on where you look, they're all over the place. You look on, on Harvey's website, which is great that they have so many speeds and feeds, but they're like really slow. Yeah. Like 60 SFM, 80 SFM, and, uh, 20 millionths of an inch, inch per tooth or something like rubbing a lot of zeros. Um,
00:26:54
Speaker
And then Union Tool is a Swiss tool company that I've had a couple of recommendations for. They're more like 200, 300 SFM and five tenths per tooth. Kind of normal-ish. Kind of normal, like slow normal, but it's hardened, right? And you can get some pretty good speed with that kind of stuff.
00:27:14
Speaker
And I really appreciate the websites that recommend a depth and a width of cut for hard milling. It just makes it so easy. I actually remember Lakeshore and Harvey, frankly, both of whom I think have great products, having very different advice. And I just pulled up the Lakeshore. So when they're talking about a true hardened steel, so 60 plus Rockwell,
00:27:38
Speaker
pick a quarter inch or six millimeter cutter. Their advice is 150 to 300 surface feet at two to 2.4 thou per tooth. So that is a normal or even be a, like there's a very normal feed rate of high, high for the hobbyists maybe, but one or two thou per tooth is
00:27:56
Speaker
what you would not uncommon to see for finishing type strategy, but they want you to take for a 60 Rockwell plus two and a half percent depth. So if you're taking on a quarter inch cutter, that means 0.25 times 0.025. You're taking a six thou radial path. So there's actually a huge chip thinning effect to that chip load. So maybe they actually do come out the same because I want to say that
00:28:24
Speaker
Harvey's was more of a normal step over, but way, way, way lower feed rate. Well, that's the thing too. I mean, I have, I have 5,000 material to remove total. It's almost nothing. Um, but I think some of the speed, you know, but I think some of the speeds and feeds are like slotting or, you know, like huge step over. Um, so of course you got to go super slow, but I'm like, okay, if I'm only stepping over a thou at a time and zipping it away.
00:28:53
Speaker
one of my speeds and feeds for that, you know? Right. Can you not leave less? I can, but I want to make sure I cut everything. Okay. Because the parts are moving in heat treat and I need to make sure there's meat to remove always. So I mean, not much, but it's, you still got to treat it delicately.
00:29:13
Speaker
Have you thought about machining yourself or EDMing, outsource EDMing, like go-no-go gauges? I made one. OK. Yep. So we can check. It's like it's a block of stainless that I made with a pivot and a bearing into it. So you put the blade on it. Yeah. And you rotate open and closed position. And there's hash marks, little tick marks that say where the tip height is open and closed. And that's been gold for us. We've had it for a couple of years now.
00:29:42
Speaker
I was thinking of a go, no go profile that actually fits in or doesn't fit in though. But this tells us, I don't know, like that could work. That could work too. This tells us positionally, like how much the stop point stop and end points are moving individually. I see what you're saying. Okay.
00:30:04
Speaker
I'm just thinking about how you would reliably take a look. We're talking about that arced profile, right? Yep. Yep. I was just trying to think about how you would easily and easily over time measure whether material has been removed. You could dyke them or Sharpie it as a one off to see if it's cutting away. Yeah, I do that all the time.
00:30:27
Speaker
Actually to rewind though 20 minutes here, you had mentioned kind of fighting some internal production type stuff. I give you a lot of credit. I mean, what you're talking about isn't really an issue that would
00:30:36
Speaker
maybe even ever be visible to a customer. And it reminds me sometimes when we make a fixture plate that has a thousand holes, we have a process where we break those holes up and we check them before we continue the boring. And the truth is that the holes are not all the same. It's like not possible, but sometimes we are fighting ourselves because when we start, we bump it out a 10th or two at some point. And so you've got some holes that are five, oh, oh,
00:31:00
Speaker
and some that are 50035, you're talking about 150 million difference, but like we don't like that. And we've actually thought about ways to make sure it's not always left to right where like you don't necessarily want that to be the case. And it's also a question of we want to do our best, but I'm also, it's not, if you need a product that has sub 50 million circularity and
Tolerances and Machine Alarms
00:31:30
Speaker
and diameter that this isn't the right product. Like I'm totally fine passing on that sale. Yeah.
00:31:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's like I've talked to, um, machinists before, people who work in a machine shop and work from a print and they're like, I have the tolerance band on the print and I will work anywhere within that tolerance band, which is fine. But me as the product creator and the tolerance creator, I'm like, no, no, I want to hit nominal always because I can maybe, you know, that's what drives me nuts when I'm at the outer reaches of my made up tolerance zone. Right. Cause I'm just, yeah.
00:32:06
Speaker
When you're creating it, you're like, I don't know what my tolerance is, plus one, minus one, I don't know, plus a 10th, minus a 10th. Some things are more critical than others. I understand that. But for the most part, let's just try to hit a bang on and have our upper limit. We talked about this a while back. We made these new setup sheets for some of the Saanis products that are
00:32:26
Speaker
Like this isn't crazy revolutionary to me, but I haven't seen it, which is a, it's kind of a hybrid setup sheet, QC drawing and dimensional drawing of a product that doesn't look like anything I've ever seen because it's not just dimensions and it's not just QC and it's not just attributes. It's like kind of merging them all into one to talk about what really matters and to talk about, like you said, I don't want to tolerance range. Sometimes there may be a range, but darn it, this is what it should be. And if it's not that let's fix it.
00:32:55
Speaker
It doesn't necessarily mean that the one that you just made needs to be scrapped. There is a criteria for that, but to me, that's the way to go. Yeah. I remember your series with Jay Pearson on making setup sheets, your YouTube series from a couple of these two, three years ago, just great to watch. I've watched a couple of times.
00:33:18
Speaker
It's fun to get into it in the moment, and then like six months later, you kind of forget about it. Right, right. What else you been up to? I had a weird alarm on the current this morning. Another one. What does it say? Check the depth sign. What? I don't even know. I just came in and saw that. The cycle can only run in negative direction, positive in cycle 204, because the configuration datum display depth error is set to on.
00:33:44
Speaker
I don't know. This is an established program. I don't know what's going on. That's true. He has to say new part, new file. Nope. Hasn't changed in months. Weird. I don't know. I'll figure that out later, but fun little challenges. Since we're on a tooling theme today, we spent some time
00:34:05
Speaker
getting quotes for a couple of different custom drills. Long story short, I don't think it makes sense for us, but right now we use Sandvik drills and we tested some others and keep coming back to Sandvik because we've just had a great experience with both the
00:34:21
Speaker
Let's see if I get this right. The 860s, which are the solid carbide, and the 870s, which are the tip style drills. But we end up step drilling. Well, most of our fixture plates have a drilled section before it's threaded and then a separately drilled section before it's reamed and occurred to me, hey, we're going in with two separate drills and actually three because we're chamfering the top.
00:34:47
Speaker
Can we combine that into the two or even three of those operations into one? Well, chamfering didn't work out because you can do it, but we want to chamfer after some other stuff is done, including the tapping and the boring. So there's no point to chamfer it ahead of time if you're going to re-chamfer it.
00:35:07
Speaker
knowing that it also adds to the complexity and cost of the step drill, as well as if you're chamfering, you have to have it even wider because you don't want to chamfer up to the very edge of the chamfer, or else you'll end up raising a burr. Kind of like when you do corner rounders, you can't worry about that intersection line.
00:35:22
Speaker
So then we just looked at a simple two to that diameter step drill. Um, and the good news is it's not crazy. I mean, if, if you have a workflow that could use it, I would encourage folks to take a look at it. They had a couple of different options of, I think they call it their tailor made program where you could do kind of like an 80 60 that step drilled to have some custom, totally different design drills and straight flute drills. Um, the friction on it was you generally need to order a couple, like more than one. So the price per drill wasn't insane relative to what the normal drills cost, but.
00:35:52
Speaker
So you kind of need to order, I'm making this up, but three of them. So now you're like, oh wait here, I'm spending almost a thousand dollars maybe on larger diameter carbide drills for three of them that are custom that have a longer lead time. And if you have enough volume where you can work them into a regrind program, that can make a lot of sense. We generally don't do regrinds because you need to be doing higher volumes than we do. And it ultimately was just too much.
00:36:18
Speaker
Oh, so some of them had reduced speeds and feeds, which I would rather not go through the holes a second time. But it wasn't enough of a slam dunk, clear cut, time savings, money savings, et cetera. So for now, we're just leaving it as
Improving Production with Custom Tooling
00:36:33
Speaker
is. But I'm glad I went through the process.
00:36:37
Speaker
Yeah, sometimes you have to go down that rabbit hole and understand every aspect from cost to feasibility to speeds and feeds to everything. I really enjoy that process of business. Sometimes it's difficult and frustrating, but I love digging in deep and learning a new thing as I'm doing now with hard milling. It's like I'm always finding the new little feature of the business to learn everything about.
00:37:03
Speaker
It really wasn't, I mean, I had some phone calls for sure and did some thinking, but all the heavy lifting was our tooling rep. I mean, they did the studies, they did the analysis, the prints. So I think a good example of a force multiplier where you're letting vendors, I mean, that's their job, even though we didn't order it. I think it's part of their job is to kind of show that they're working with customers, come up with ideas.
00:37:26
Speaker
Yeah. So this is for drilling your thousands of holes per fixture plate. Exactly. What's your current tool that you use right now for drilling? So it depends on aluminum or steel. Aluminum is the 870 drill. There's two different diameters. So it's the tipped ceramic drill. The little tip that screws in a little bit. Exactly. Cool. So you get to keep the soft body forever.
00:37:51
Speaker
No, it's a consumable. And we track it. Well, it's probably a little bit of an exaggeration. We don't perfectly track it. But in the past, like if somebody says, hey, that softbuddy's worn out, and I think we've had 15 or 20 insert changes. OK, time to get into it. Cool. Is it through coolant?
00:38:13
Speaker
Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean an aluminum with the solid carbide, we actually kind of laugh because we don't actually know if we're hitting this feed rate. We probably are not because it's only about a one inch hole, but it's programmed at like
00:38:28
Speaker
I'm sending some stupid surface footage. RPMs are probably north of 10,000 for almost half inch drill and at like 32,000 feet per rev. Oh my goodness. Yeah, so it's like 300 inches a minute. You're punching the steel. You are punching the aluminum holes through there. The chips materially wear away the plexiglass on the enclosures. You would not want to be inside that thing. Which machine is that on?
00:38:56
Speaker
I mean, the Haas we've done on the VM three, the VF two, the VF three, the VF six is yeah. And on the little DT now, we only do the smaller plates, but the quarter inch holes in the tapping, it's just like, it's a machine gun. Yeah. That's a good way to put it. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. I mean, I'm drilling through coolant carbide, um, titanium at, I don't know what my, my introvert tooth is, but
00:39:24
Speaker
five to 10 or something, which to me is flying. It's hammering the titanium. It's cool to watch. I can't imagine going way faster than that. Right? That's what we were laughing at. I was like, I wonder if we're getting to that feed rate because if we ever ran this in a different machine or different control that has different acceleration parameters, there's a chance that that would blow up the tool because we think it works, but it's actually never hitting 300 inches a minute.
00:39:53
Speaker
Well, maybe that's what I was finding with the CBN tool, where you're variably hitting that feed rate. Like the deeper you go, the faster it goes, and then it has to slow down and retract at the bottom. So, I mean, on Haas, I'm sure you can watch the feed rate as it's cutting, but the hold is so short, it's not accurate enough.
00:40:15
Speaker
But yeah, I wonder if, I mean, it's aluminum, so tool life is probably not the biggest issue in your world right now. Tool life is not the biggest issue. There's aluminum drills last. Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. Steel wears through them now for sure. Yeah.
00:40:29
Speaker
Next week, I am on vacation. And I know we briefly mentioned this before we hit record, but my pitch, this is kind of funny because this podcast with UME is the closest thing I have to a partnership these days.
Considering a Break from Podcasting
00:40:49
Speaker
And the benefit of not having partnerships is you don't have to make joint decisions. And I value it. I feel like I wouldn't want to let you down. But I also feel like, hey, we've had 234 straight recorded conversations where we've never skipped a week. I have internet next week. I can make time. But if it doesn't upset you, I would pitch that I'd like to take a week off. Let's do it. I'm happy to do that.
00:41:17
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, we've both recorded from hotel rooms and from basements and from beds and patios and pool sides. Right. And we've done it all and that's fine, but no, enjoy your time off. Awesome. Yeah. Going up to Michigan with the family. Just, just relax. Yeah. Yeah.
00:41:40
Speaker
Awesome. What's on tap for you today and this week? Well, I guess the tooling. Yeah, the tool pretty much tooling process reliability, everything. Um, I'm, I'm working on a system to use the morey more. Cause I took work off it and put it on the current because current, um, but I need to get.
00:41:58
Speaker
I need to push work back onto the Mori and onto the U-Mac for regular work as well. Because I have four mills and the crane is the busiest of them, which is great. It's also the most expensive. It's also the most expensive. So I need to figure out what work I can push onto the other machines reliably, repeatedly with the right tooling and the right coolant set up and all that. Because neither of the other ones have three spindle coolant.
00:42:21
Speaker
I might put it on the mori eventually. Yeah, right. I just need to buy a pump apparently, but yeah, thought process, like future planning kind of thing. That's what I'm really working on lately. Yeah. Trying to figure out how to scale, how to... I think there's not a lot of friction to scale well.
00:42:42
Speaker
We just got to utilize our equipment fully. Yeah. Don't think it. No, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there will be friction, but of course, but exactly. I mean, as opposed to the grand gestures of like, Oh, it's time to buy a second current. I'm like, well, no, there's, there's a lot of work that can be done with what we have now. If we just restrategize how we look at everything for sure. So that's, it's fun.
00:43:07
Speaker
We have a, oh, so it's funny because the whole like taking a week off next week on the podcast also ties into the change we made, which is we had done NYC CNC YouTube videos every Wednesday for seven years. I mean, it was my personal goal when I moved from back to Ohio, which was to have that be a disciplined part of it. And so last week, I think we started taking some Wednesdays off.
00:43:32
Speaker
It's not good for the algorithm, but I watch YouTube and I make YouTube videos for a specific reason of sharing and helping and so forth, not to ask people to click the like button. You're supposed to, and perhaps it's a mistake to not ask people to engage.
00:43:48
Speaker
you get to choose your own path in life and I'm there for the folks that want to listen and so forth. On that note, we do a video coming out next week, which I'm super excited for. I had the chance to sit down with John from Area 419 and he shared part of his story, I don't think I've ever heard before, which is the actual process behind when he started the company and what he specifically went through around when to quit his day job.
00:44:15
Speaker
Yes. And talking to that story, it was a great kind of fireside chat conversation. So I appreciate him being willing to share that. And he gets into some pretty darn good specifics about decisions and family and life and work and numbers. So that's coming up next week.
00:44:30
Speaker
I just recorded a video that'll come out in a month or two on things to think about when you're pricing a product, which is relevant for this conversation because one of the things we're trying to make sure we do is really understand the numbers.
00:44:45
Speaker
what we buy materials for, but what are all the other product costs that go into making this product and shipping it, what goes out the door and knowing where we make money and where we have margins, where we don't, and thinking about how to make the best decisions with data and not just, well, I think this is how much we pay and this is how much we sell it for.
00:45:04
Speaker
a great example of how a lot of entrepreneurs think they make money at the end of the day, but my bank account never grows. Exactly. That's cool. Awesome. Well, I would not see you next week. Awesome. Enjoy your trip and I'll see you in two weeks. Sounds good. Take care. Bye.