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#371 Saunders pushed the PuckChuck to failure
4.1k Plays6 months ago
TOPICS:
- Grimsmo exploded a 440c button
- Saunders pushed the PuckChuck to failure
- Building the shop to be easy
- Adding a bubbler to a coolant tweaking
- Puck chuck fixtures on the VF2
- Building the dream machine from scratch
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Manufacturing Challenges
00:00:01
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining, episode 371. My name is John Grimsmo. My name is John Saunders. And this is our weekly chat therapy session, manufacturing rant about our businesses and growing and ups and downs and problems and good things and bad things and broken tools and broken parts and progress. It's all in the name of progress.
Knife Material Issues and Solutions
00:00:25
Speaker
Sounds like there's a lot going on there. I've had a busy week. It's been good.
00:00:30
Speaker
The first one on my mind is, uh, I'll start at the end of the story and I'll go back. But so our new knife going together, the integral, um, it's a button lock and, uh, we're trying a new material for the button and I was playing with it yesterday and I flipped it like a good flip, hard open. And I looked down and the button's gone. I'm like, where'd it go? And it broke in half and flew and landed.
00:00:56
Speaker
10 feet away on the ground. And you found it? And I found it, yeah. And I found all your pieces. Yeah. And so put it on the microscope and you go, hmm, lo and behold, it's a super thin wall and kind of a stress fracture. And I'm like, okay, that's, that's a result. You know, that's like, it's kind of funny looking at it. And you're like, okay, how do I fix this? What's, what's going on? So
00:01:21
Speaker
we started with 17 for buttons, and then we have them close to rise, which hardened them pretty impressively. But the substrate is still soft. So we're seeing some denting. Okay, so I was like, Okay, let's try different steel. So we tried 440 C machine soft heat treated them ourselves. Tested them, they were still super grippy, because our heat treat process adds not
00:01:47
Speaker
It just looks different. Well, they'll kind of yellow and they have some fuzz to the heat treat. Um, once I polished them, they turned out amazing. They worked really good. How'd you polish them? Uh, so I have these, what are they called? Bristle discs from Scotch, right? And they look like a little, uh, finger fans around the outside. Yeah. They're like rubber and they have, um,
00:02:11
Speaker
They're not like nylon brushes. They're like radial, um, discs of, uh, ceramic media in this rubber resin, whatever. They work awesome. I've had them for years and there's another like 3M Scotch bread makes them. And then, uh, Delco something, they make one called sudden burst, um, which is a very similar competing product. And I actually had like a sample pack that I got at some trade show like eight years ago.
00:02:38
Speaker
It would like marketing material in the sample packs. I ripped it open, tested out all their brushes yesterday, and I was like, this is great. And so you put those in a hand tool or drywall? Drywall, yeah. OK. Yep. OK. Interesting. They're fantastic. I'm like, why aren't we using these way more? These are awesome. And you don't need ruse to test the compound and the buffing compound right into it. It comes in all different grits from 30 grit or 50 grit or whatever down to one micron.
00:03:09
Speaker
Oh, wow. Grids are so like, because like growing up woodworking, man, if you grab some 80 grit sandpaper, that's like you're going to tear into the wood or whatever you're doing. But then you go to like, the surface grinding world in like 220 is a coarse wheel, like, or whatever. It's all it's so weird how it seems like it's not I don't even know what the term grit really is it a first is it a density per I think it's the size of object peaks and valleys like an RA.
00:03:39
Speaker
That's actually a good question. What is the definition of grit? Because in looking at abrasives, there's grit, there's mesh, and there's micron. And those are three types, like when you buy sandpaper or polish and compound or whatever.
00:03:51
Speaker
It could be in grit, it could be in mesh, or it could be in micron sizes. Interesting. And there are conversion charts online that I have to look at a lot to be able to know, okay, well, it's a 72 mesh. I don't know what that means. Yeah. How does that compare? Tell me in something I know, like in sandpaper sizes. Oh, 2000 grit, whatever. I don't know if those are right.
00:04:14
Speaker
But yeah, so I polished just the critical features on the button using those little rotary tools. They're epic. And then the button feels great. And
Design Iteration and Stress Testing
00:04:24
Speaker
the hardness is really good. They don't wear in, they don't, they don't dent, they don't anything. So a 60 Rockwell 440C button, I think is the answer. The sidewalls are just so thin. Yeah, with the way it's designed and everything. So okay, back to the drawing board, how do I make this stronger? And then
00:04:42
Speaker
We'll tweak some, we'll make some, we'll heat treat them, we'll test them again. And I think even just a little bit of sidewall thickness will make a huge difference in a slight redesign. So it shouldn't be. Okay. You're hypothesizing that the required hardness to avoid denting also then makes it the part, it does make it more brittle. Yeah. I mean, you can temper it back. Okay. And the thinness of it is also a huge issue. So it's, it's a bunch of different things happening at once. Yeah.
00:05:10
Speaker
And I opened the knife, not even as hard as I could, but it was a solid like, ha, you know, like, like flipped it open and that's what broke it. And I'm like, okay, I, I'm glad it happened to me and not to like the seventh customer, you know? Okay. I'm certainly chuckling because.
00:05:27
Speaker
I kid you not 20 minutes ago, we were doing heat treat thin wall stress testing on small round parts as well. No way, no way. So we are, we keep, uh, we keep changing the puck chuck pull set design. And there's a whole bunch of weird reasons why we want to change it for convenience, for clocking, for manufacturability, for heat treating, for mechanical project versus pneumatic. It's good, but like we're.
00:05:53
Speaker
We want to iterate faster. You want it to be done. No, it's all good. We had a great month. What we did was we changed something this morning. We wanted to do a stress test. I will go into all the details, but we appear to have snapped a grade 12 volt.
00:06:17
Speaker
Okay. Which is great because we were basically trying to push the pull stud to failure. Interesting. Because look, it's always weird to talk about this when you're the manufacturer, but like things go great. You can push something too hard. And if you think about a full stud that's holding on a vice,
00:06:33
Speaker
In this case, we're stressing it by using a single, one small vice and a single puck chuck, which is this versus with the way we use our, the way we're using puck chucks at Saunders is generally four of them from fixtures or even actually six of them now on the VF2.
00:06:48
Speaker
But if you have one part in a vise on a single puck chuck, that's the most extreme load case. And if you have a, we have a six inch wide chunk of 4140. So it's stacked up on top of the vise and we're wailing on it. Interesting. And we intentionally use a worn out tool to... What kind of tool?
00:07:09
Speaker
It was a YG138 stubby that we were running at four cubic inches a minute. So it was 550 service feet, 3,000 per tooth, 0.1 inch step over 0.5 step down. That's pretty decent. Yeah, it was moving. Yeah. And it was a legit B2S tool. Yeah.
00:07:28
Speaker
Because we thought we want to make sure we can't cause Problems and so we had a little high-speed camera set up to if it did fail we could try to better understand What could happen blah blah blah and went great, but I was not so I was surprised kind of a different test where we Have a through stud it looks like a grade whatever And it snapped over the
00:07:50
Speaker
over the part we make. I'm like, oh, that's great. Because like- Like the 12 volt? Yeah. 12.9 volt? Yeah. I wish I knew which Alex was the, we were talking about this. He's got, he's been ordering all the specs on this stuff. What size of the bolt is it like? 88 or 10 millimeter? Eight millimeter, I think. Yeah. So decent. Oh yeah. The bolts note, I mean, it's the three fifth inch. It's to snap a three inch bolt is no small
00:08:15
Speaker
That's good. And were you concerned at all about any like machine damage or something like pushing the vice to failure and then it breaks, right? It falls off.
00:08:26
Speaker
Well, that's obviously what we care about. Ripping, the more common thing, like this isn't really an issue with screw vices, your typical orange vise or curved vise, because the vise is like bolted down to the table. But there you rip out. If you rip parts out of the vise, it stinks. Like you can break windows, you can break tools, you can just bad news bears. Spindle, yeah, something. Here we want to make sure you can't,
00:08:51
Speaker
You know, put it this way. I don't know this. I don't really want to test it, but if you took a face mill and didn't turn it on and just a full lateral rapid ear part, I suspect you would break the full stud. Um, but like, I mean, that's not a case. Like at some point it will be the weakest link.
00:09:08
Speaker
Yeah,
Preparation for Blade Show
00:09:09
Speaker
the Shunk devices or Vero pallets that I use have an option to use either an M10 or an M12 bolt for the single pole stuff. And those are often used in a single station setup, but significantly like 10 or 12 millimeter bolts, quite a bit bigger than an M8. Alex has done the FEA and calculations, but I'm a dumb
00:09:34
Speaker
I'm a dumb machinist. To me, I want to test it. Sure. Good to see the factor of safety is there. But in this case, it's a thinner walled pull stud. You want to know what's happening here. Because your bolt is now going all the way through the pull stud. So it's a hollow pull stud, right? Bingo. Well, that's kind of nice to know that your tube that you're making and heat treating is
00:10:03
Speaker
stronger than the screw that holds it down. That's awesome. Can you colsterize the 440? Did you figure that out? I don't think so. I didn't look into it, but from memory, I don't think that's an option. Got it. Did you see those guys emailed us? No.
00:10:22
Speaker
Yeah, they emailed you. You were on it. Really? Yeah. Pretty sure you were. Oh, maybe this one just went to me. But yeah, thanks for that. Let me know if you have any questions from Scott Roberts. I'm looking forward to you here. Yeah, I dealt with Matthew something. Yeah. So they're listening. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, that's cool.
00:10:50
Speaker
Okay. So how, wait, you're not going to tell me that you're not going to tell me the name on the podcast. I'm sure of what of the integral of the knife. Not yet. Okay. What's the, are you sharing what platform it will be announced on? Um, I'll probably do Instagram. I don't know. Maybe, maybe one of our weekend review videos, just share it everywhere. It's just ready. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not like I'm hiding it. I'm just kind of want to make a big deal out of it. You know, people that they're asking, right? I'm excited. Yeah. It's cool. Um,
00:11:20
Speaker
So yeah, it's coming. I mean, Blade Show's a couple weeks away and probably three weeks away. I'll have a knife done by Blade Show. How's it going? It's going really good. I made a P3 handle a couple days ago. Turned out
00:11:35
Speaker
really, really nice, really beautiful. I still have to make a new design of the stop pin to match this new handle. So I'll be doing that today. And then I'll be able to put it together. I made new versions of the blades, soft blade, so I made two of them the other day, they were in heat treat yesterday, so I should have them back today. So we'll lap them up real quick. And then once I have the new stop pin, then I can put P3 together and I can have that full knife like
00:12:01
Speaker
with all my new tweaks and changes and all these little, you know, fine little details that have been tweaked. Um, I tweaked the shape of the flipper tab for your finger. Um, a bit more grip or a ramp. We'll see if I like it or not. Um, a couple of little geometry changes, a bunch of little chamfers and tweaks and things like that. And yeah, put it together. So I was thinking this morning, one of those first thing I woke up, okay, what's left on the integral? Um,
00:12:31
Speaker
I got to make that stop pin that'll be easy today. Bevels on the blade, I got to finish designing that and machine the cam for that, and then the clip. Those kind of things are all that's left, which is not too hard. The clip has not been made yet? Right. I haven't even designed it yet, but I've designed the mounting method. The way it mounts on the handle, the handle side's done. I know in my head how to design the clip on the Wilhelmin.
00:12:59
Speaker
And, uh, it'd be really cool. I feel like that could be last or like, you get the clip, like, yeah, rather have a good knife more about the clip later. That's exactly where I'm at. You know, it'd be nice to like solve that problem now, but I'd rather solve all the other problems and deal with that by itself. Cause it's a solo thing. Yeah. Like I've said before, the button, the stop pins, they affect the blade, the handle, each other, like everything, those four items, the blades handle stop in button.
00:13:27
Speaker
so interrelated that I kind of, past two months, I've been just playing with all those, which has been fun, but it's go time, baby. I am out of time, and I'm out of patience, and I need to get this done. Good, I'm happy about it though. Are you getting frustrated? When I step back and I realize how long it's taking, that's frustrating. I thought it would have been further by now.
00:13:56
Speaker
I'm not getting frustrated with the build or anything like that. I don't think, but
Machine Investment Considerations
00:14:00
Speaker
I just want it done. Yeah. The closer I get, the more I realize like how good this is going to be for us and for a knife and the community is going to love it. And I'm going to love it. You know, I'm starting to plan at blade show. I need to have one in my pocket. That's like my number one, my first one. And I'm like, okay, how do I make it special? Like, like real nice. So come together. Go.
00:14:27
Speaker
What, uh, do you guys do the table of blade show or you just walk? Table. Yep. Nice. Yeah. It's actually, uh, against blade show rules to walk with product. Oh.
00:14:39
Speaker
Yeah. If you have something to sell, you'd need a table, which is fine. I totally understand. If you have a table, you can walk around. Of course. Of course. But they just don't want people showing up and not paying the $1,000 table price or whatever. Oh, yeah. So we got two tables this year, which we've never had two before. So we have a 10 by 20 booth, which is pretty decent size. Holy nuts. Yeah. Usually we've got a 10 by 10. So we're bringing down, I think six of us are going.
00:15:10
Speaker
Yeah. So Eric's organizing tables and tablecloths and displays and banners and things like that. Yeah. It's always Atlanta. Yep. Nice. And, and past couple of years, they've started blade show West blade show, Texas, all these other like smaller offshoots, which, and there's a lot more smaller knife shows going on, which is really interesting. The community seems to love it. It used to be just big blade show or bust. And now, now blade shows, like the,
00:15:37
Speaker
The big, boring one, you know? Oh, interesting. I don't know. So I've heard. I haven't been to Blade Zone in five years, man. 2019. It's crazy, right? Right. So it's crazy. But yeah, I'm super excited. The Blade is made on the Kern, or is that right? Or the handle? Speedio. Okay. The handle's made on the Kern. The handle's made on the Kern. Blade's made on the Speedio. Stop in. Or, um, what have we got? Button's now made on the Tornos. Stop pins are still in the Wilhelmin. Clip's going to be on the Wilhelmin.
00:16:05
Speaker
Okay. And then there's still pivot bearings. I think that's it.
00:16:11
Speaker
I've been focusing in on a mindset around what I want us to have at this shop for figurative and literal tools. And what I love and want to integrate without compromise is when you want to make another handle on your Kern, I'm guessing the tools are set up. I'm guessing you have the vice on the Aroa. You do have to add, put the material in the vice. Correct.
00:16:41
Speaker
and then you just hit, you post out of Fusion and go. I had to add two tools for this P3 handle because it's just a different drill and different thread mill that I needed. Sure. Everything else is loaded. Everything else is there. You're right. I post and go. I'll let you continue, but this is exactly what I was thinking yesterday because we have a lot of cool machines and most of them are really hard to jump in and work like our CMM, our surface grinder, any of the mills. You can't just like, I just want to make a part.
00:17:09
Speaker
It's not that easy. And I want it to be that easy. Totally. And so we...
00:17:18
Speaker
If I say this before, everything's coming together here. UMC 350 sold. SC20Y training sold. We still have to sell the UMC 500. It's really odd to me that that machine is struggled to sell. I asked our broker like, hey, am I wrong on the price? He's like, nope, you're not wrong on the price. Because I'm like, I'm not going to be that guy who just sitting here like, I need more money than it's worth.
00:17:42
Speaker
that machine is not the right machine for us here, and so it's not the machine I'm gonna bring over to this shop, period, it's just not, but what I want for
00:17:54
Speaker
R&D projects for fixturing creation of stuff at Saunders for, frankly, for Johnny 5 and stuff like that. I want another 5-axis with a large tool table. We will use the puck chuck so it doesn't need automation because we'll just swap out
00:18:15
Speaker
to whatever we have needed on the puck chuck. And I want it to be, it doesn't have to be a Kern, or not gonna be a Kern. It doesn't have to be that accurate. Like I make Kern in terms of like, we're not you in terms of this crazy insane fulcrum. So like a Haas level quality would probably be fine. And I will be curious to see if they replace the UMC 350, maybe even an IMTS and it has a larger tool changer. The you, was it the brother? You- Yeah, I was just thinking the brother U500.
00:18:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's a little lower than I'd like for tool changing because it's a 2028. Yeah. I don't want to try and get on a vertical for sure. And I don't this, this isn't a machine I need today. The U500 is kind of a trunnion, isn't it on like my machine S500.
00:19:03
Speaker
It might be from a built-in one, and I don't know that machine super well. What I mean is I'm not going to take a vertical that has, you know, hostage these crazy 70 tools and put a vertical on it. Totally. And I don't really want, like, there's the kinemura in my center. I don't, I would probably be willing to look at a brother control, don't really want to get into the kinemura or other weird, I frankly would love a hide and hide.
00:19:30
Speaker
Herma C250 is, well, more than I want to spend and that's the thing I struggle with Herma is they only have 30 tools to buy their tower, but that's spooky box. What about the Okuma, whatever, five axis? Maybe, I never see them. I see one at the tool show we went to last week. I forget what it's called, but actually speaking of which, so Jeff, Jeff and I went to the tool show on Thursday last week.
00:19:59
Speaker
So just after the podcast and we went to the Okuma dealer and they had your machine, MBH 400 or whatever, 4000. And he did a pallet change for us and I couldn't believe how like loud the pallet change was. It's like 2000 pounds. It's like a chunk. Like you feel it in the floor. I'm like, holy cow. My little current doesn't do that. Yeah. Yeah. I know it's a big machine. Yeah. I mean, how much does a pallet weigh? Like a whole tombstone.
00:20:30
Speaker
Oh, so it's picking up two at once, and each one could easily weigh, I think the max weight on a tombstone is, don't quote me on this, seven, 800 pounds plus the whole casting that it's moving, so it's probably 2,000 pounds. Yeah, our palettes are 20 pounds. We lift them every day. We lift them by hand, put them on the bench, put parts on them, put them back in. Yeah.
00:20:53
Speaker
The robo drill, I should look into that, but I don't want that. Remember that crazy like $450,000 robo drill that had the IRM8 that could do extra tools and pallets? I saw one yesterday, the Harboli. Yes. Amazing. Silly expensive, but a really, really, really cool setup. The demo was, I was telling Jeff, I was like, check this, this is like the robo drill with the Harboli thingy and
00:21:17
Speaker
And apparently it changes tools and we saw it change a vice and then immediately change the tool afterwards. And we're like, okay, that's pretty sick. Yeah. And I mean the whole, but the, the five axis package with the five axis trunnion and the tool changing robot and everything was like $450,000 or something like that. It's a lot of money for, for Robo drill. Um, but it's still pretty sick. Yeah. And I know, I think I know at least one shop that has it and they seem very happy with it. It's just running.
00:21:46
Speaker
Yeah, I don't have anything really negative to say about the price if you're building out that platform. But I want a tool room. I want a modern tool room. What would you want to build when you want to do prototypes, light production? I don't want it to be run on the Saunders machines that are critical to our daily business. So I'm chewing on.
00:22:10
Speaker
But it's fun. I was like, oh, I didn't really have a, I was going to go to IMTS, but I didn't really have an agenda or a goal. Now I'm like, okay, I'm going to try to put my head down for one day and just try to see what I'm not learning. I'm sure there's, what a good. I mean, we've talked about this for years now. It's like, what's the entry level five axis? That's actually like good. That's not just kind of a toy. But it's also not $300,000. So like,
00:22:36
Speaker
You know, like, why can't a company build $120,000 five axis that doesn't suck and has enough tools and whatever? The tool part is, yeah, that's the big one. Yeah. And as the operator, as the business owner, like you said, why can't it just have a hundred tools? Like Kern got it figured out, you know, Kern did put your darn right on that. Right. The price tag comes with it. But I mean, Kern is building a machine.
00:23:04
Speaker
ultra precision, like granite base, and you're like, not everybody needs all of that. They just need the design elements that Kern chose to use, like the rack tool changer and the five axis table and a decent high speed spindle, like a
Machine Reliability and Maintenance
00:23:19
Speaker
baby Kern, a cheap Kern entry level.
00:23:23
Speaker
That would be a preference, but I also would practically speaking prefer to even go or realistically would go downstream. Like I don't know the, I don't know the silo five axis. And frankly, I don't really want to buy it with what's going on with support and the distributorships all about the like, I would almost rather go that route knowing, Hey, look, I don't need, I'm trying to
00:23:47
Speaker
impress anybody with this, like a useful tool or like Tormock, the 1500, it looks awesome, but it's not going to be a five axis now or anytime soon. Best I can tell. So, yeah. That's fun to think about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The U500 is kind of on my someday wish list because I think it will do really well for us, especially if you put a, you are robot or something in front of it and was able to load it. Um, I know a guy doing that. Yeah. I know what I do on that. And, uh,
00:24:16
Speaker
He seems to be doing it very well, so that's fun. I'm taking notes. Yeah. Have you seen one? A U500. No, I've just seen all the demo videos. Okay.
00:24:28
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, I, uh, I touched an S 500 for the first time this weekend. Yeah. Where'd you go? Visiting, uh, uh, acquaintance friend, the tool pack.com guy. I was there shops in Cleveland. We went up to Cleveland for, um, with the kids this weekend. And I was like, Hey, do you mind if we swing by and say hi? And, um, he actually had a, Oh, I was actually a two-fer. I saw my first style X seven and next to an S 500. Yeah. He said he's got both of them. Cool. Yeah.
00:24:56
Speaker
The build quality in this S set one, both of them look great, really did. Cool. Yeah. I've never seen a Sile, Seal, Seal in person, but super happy with the Spedios. Oh, is your probing stuff? Yeah, I was just going to say, it was nice to go to the open house because I got to see the, you know, manager of Bloom and have a nice conversation. They hooked me up. Basically, we,
00:25:27
Speaker
We, I forgot if I told you, we did a test where it's like turn the probe on, move it 15 inches at one inch per minute. And it, it should make that 15 inch move without any interruptions. Like it doesn't hit anything, right? It's just, it's on, but it's moving in air looking for a signal and it would alarm out. Like it would stop before reaching the full 15 inches. Um, so I'm like, something's interfering with something, something. Um, so the bloom guy came in and we,
00:25:55
Speaker
Both basically agreed like, okay, something's weird with the probe. Let's get another probe in here. Um, so the probe arrived a couple of days ago. I haven't put it in yet, but I will be putting it in. Today would be a good job for that. And then I'll do that test immediately and then see if it can go for 15 minutes without interfering, without hitting anything like that. And then if that's the case, that it was just a warranty return, no big deal. Huh.
00:26:18
Speaker
OK. I mean, big deal for me because I've been without a probe for a while. But yeah, so that is hopefully the solution to that. It's just the probe itself being weird. Well, if that doesn't solve it, then we look further and figure out the next steps from there. But yeah, I mean, we've been able to run the machine without the probe. I basically de-featured a bunch of my programs to do it. So that's good. So we're not down, but it's just a bit more manual fiddling, especially with the grinding.
00:26:49
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's no fun either. Make a part, comp it a little bit. Next one's better. So that's good. I was going to ask you too, how's the coolant? I know it's been a long time since we talked about foamy. I feel bad. I don't know. Oh, okay. Well, the fact that you don't know is probably a good thing. Yeah, I haven't heard complaints in a while.
00:27:15
Speaker
So I think it's been decent lately. So remember we talked about the algae that I'm seeing in the big RO tank. Oh yeah. Right. Like just a little bit, just a bit of green right at the bottom. And I heard from, from one of the blazer guys and from other listeners of the podcast and they're like a little bit of green means there's a lot of green you're not seeing. That's okay. We haven't solved that. I don't care right now. You could solve it with a,
00:27:43
Speaker
recirculating UV filter, something like that, that keeps it like there's ways to solve it. I haven't done anything yet. But I don't think we are over foaming any of the machines right now. I don't know how much deformer the guys are adding, because I know for a while they were adding a decent amount. And then in the mori, which used to foam quite a bit, we tried the new geocool 890, whatever it's called. And aside from the first week of smelling like paint thinner, it seems to dissipate and now it doesn't really smell anymore.
00:28:13
Speaker
And that seems to be going great. It's like a bit thinner, a bit whiter fluid. It seems to cut great. I don't know. Working. Okay. Yeah. No news of goodness. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's funny. We bought one of those Freddie vacuums a couple of years ago and loved it for a while. And then
00:28:37
Speaker
I don't think I've ever used it actually, but I think the guys kind of stopped using it as much because they were worried about cleaning it out and mold and bacteria growing within it. If it's not like fully, you know, hyper cleaned between uses. Um, so it's kind of been sitting there for awhile and I'm like, can we use this please? Like, I just want to see it get used because I think it's better. So anyway, I saw the guys using it a couple of days ago.
Optimizing Production Processes
00:29:00
Speaker
Sweet. And they said it was great. They, they used it to clean out the Nakamura and it's got like,
00:29:06
Speaker
basically a five gallon bag at the top to catch chips. And they said that that five gallons was full of chips, like, like full and in the tube was full. And like, we pulled a lot of chips out of there. So that's great.
00:29:21
Speaker
We just added, I actually don't even really know if this is a perfect long-term answer. I hope it is. It's just one of those Amazon aquarium bubblers, not an Alexa timer for the grinder tank, because our grinder will sit for three weeks without being used. And so it just turns on for, I think, five hours in the middle of every day, which I'm hoping that
00:29:43
Speaker
I think from my limited knowledge that the idea is that by blowing air bubbles in the bottom and having them go to the top and first open, then that stops any layer of oil or other. So my understanding is the way you get skank, is that the word note? What's the bad word for a colon when it turns on you? Not skank, sorry.
00:30:04
Speaker
When you get, when you're, there's a word, I can't think of it, but when your coolant goes bad, you know it. It's like variety of bad stuff. Let's call it stank. There you go. Like soured milk to worse and so forth. And so if you have a layer of oil, which our grinder does have oil that will mix in with the coolant some, then it can form a oxygen layer, like an anaerobic layer that will stop, it'll allow that environment below it to be a Petri dish of, yeah.
00:30:30
Speaker
Yeah. So by blowing air bubbles and popping into the surface, I think that's supposed to be a big mitigator to stop that from going bad. I like it. Yeah. We put a bubbler, an aquarium bubbler in the Nakamura, which I think is just plugged into a power bar we have on the NAC. And so it's on whenever the NAC is on. It's like eight hours a day, whatever. And that seemed to help a lot of the stinkiness over time. And it's been in for years. I almost forgot about it.
00:30:57
Speaker
Yeah. And you got that ceramic puck at the bottom that makes all the bubbles, right? Yeah. That's great. Put a couple tadpoles in there to let them swim around, too. Yeah, exactly. They'll be fine. Yeah. So generally, you run like 250 in all the machines, or 251 or something? The only thing we have in the shop. Is? Which one? One.
00:31:24
Speaker
to 51. Yes. Yeah, that's what we have now as well as the new one. Generally, I love it. So what is your current coolant situation? Like you good with it? Like all the machines are fine. You don't have only you don't like
00:31:39
Speaker
No, so okay, but I would answer that yes, like totally good. The two exceptions, one, we just overhauled the VF2, technically it's a YT, but we just call it VF2. It's the aluminum dedicated machine. It used to also sit sometimes because it was kind of our R&D, use it when we need it machine. I don't know how old the coolant was in it, but I'm guessing it was two years and it started to go bad.
00:32:03
Speaker
It wasn't that bad, except if you really started to look for it and smell it the right way, you could be like, oh, this is this is not going to get better. So we we purged all that coolant. But I'm guessing that's just because it sat more than any of our other machines. And then we used to have some foaming issues on the DT two. But I think that was probably because we were running a lot of
00:32:28
Speaker
combination of through spindle while we're also running flood a lot with a smaller tank that recirculates a lot. Yeah. But basically it's not, it's never, it's never flooded the floor. It's ever been an issue. It was more just like it would build some bubbles up inside of it. So we don't have any issues. Sweet. Good to hear. Yeah. Good to hear. Yeah.
00:32:49
Speaker
On that note, that's kind of like what I've been working on. It's a funny cascade effect. We have the first aluminum parts being run on the VF2, and it's awesome. It's Puck Chuck fixtures. We redesigned the fixtures knowing everything that we've learned about surfacing in angles so that chips wash away and 3D printed features to fill pockets that you don't want chips to build up in, but you don't want them to have to be there for whatever reason. You have to be able to pull them out to do maintenance.
00:33:18
Speaker
New metal 3D printed ID clamps for their custom for products we want with torque tool like it's all so awesome and but then what's funny now is it opens up this kind of can of worms of when our I was wrong on one thing which is not insignificant when we were going to move aluminum from the horizontal to the vf2 which is that
00:33:42
Speaker
In my head, I knew we were going to phase it in, so start running stuff on the VF2. I knew we were going to make new fixtures. It's just stupid oversight. I didn't think about the fact that I'm not willing to pull the aluminum tools out of the horizontal because we're still running some aluminum in it as needed. I also like that redundancy of not having pressure like if somebody wants a product that we haven't
00:34:03
Speaker
gotten up yet we just make on the horse off. So I had to set up new tools which is it's not a big deal but was wasn't as seamless as I sort of thought of like stop here go here and then now it's like okay well now we're gonna read we have new tombstone faces we are going to which products are we putting where are we doing new fixtures we're doing more I really love these 3d printed part stoppers and alignment things and visual guides because
00:34:29
Speaker
if you have a problem or crash into them or whatever, like you can design them, especially with our fixture plates on there, to be exactly how you want them to look and fit and feel. Just all, there's a ton of work to do in a good way on that, all that.
00:34:44
Speaker
But you didn't have to buy
Future of Machine Tools
00:34:45
Speaker
a new machine to be a dedicated aluminum machine. Well, ironically, this will end up driving us to buy a new machine, but it'll be the five axis I suspect. Yeah, exactly. But it frees up potential capital to do something like that, which drives you forward, not just like a linear move. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. What do you spend on your mind? I mean, that's about all I got for notes so far.
00:35:14
Speaker
Yeah. Today, if I can do the probe and make those stop ends, then, uh, that's the beginning of my list for the day, but I liked it. Yeah. I was talking with an acquaintance and he had been involved in making a kind of a big life decision and he said something and I'm not, to be honest, I'm not a hundred percent sure that I heard him correctly. I think I did. Um,
00:35:42
Speaker
But the paraphrase summary was when you're willing to be fired for a position or opinion that you take, like you feel so strongly about it that it just is what it is and you understand if the point isn't to be controversial here or to create discord rather, but if you just believe so firmly or so forth, that's representative of a huge value add to a company.
00:36:11
Speaker
It's a comment that sort of caught me off guard and it reminded me of a problem that I deal with and I'm suspecting you do, which is that you reach a point where people don't want to tell you stuff or they don't want to tell you stuff unless it's stuff you agree with. There's not an incentive, there's not a reason to, blah, blah, blah. And that's not good.
00:36:34
Speaker
I don't know if I have the answer for it other than reminds me of when people talk about being a good listener, it's listening just isn't not talking. Does that make sense? It's really trying to understand and encourage the perspective. Yeah, exactly. It's hearing and analyzing and trying to provide helpful context, not just your own opinion. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's being willing to die on your sword, whether that's,
00:37:03
Speaker
me with an idea that I'm hot on and need to get done and I'm willing to, you know, uh, go down with the ship to make it happen kind of thing. Um, do you do anything to make it happen? Or like you said, anybody else in the company who's feel so strongly about a thing that they're willing to take the consequence if it goes wrong or whatever. And the point isn't really that, but it's more like, I respect that a lot of like, this is,
00:37:30
Speaker
Yeah. And that takes a level of confidence to be able to do that. It's interesting. Yeah.
00:37:38
Speaker
Okay, so I've had this idea and I don't wanna share a ton of details yet because it's just such an idea-ish thing. And I caveat this as the like. I'm well aware that we have a lot on our plate and we will stay focused. And Gen 3 rollout, puck chuck rollout, shop improvements, going back to days on the shop. Building Johnny Five, which has been so much fun the past week. These are all almost full-time jobs in every individual bucket.
00:38:08
Speaker
It was kind of fueled by this passion, or what's the right verb, desire to have this machine that's just like what I want. Remember Tyler Bond from, we used to be at Mature, now he's at Mature. He was doing an Ohio
00:38:27
Speaker
sales trip or whatever and swung by we were hanging out last night or last week had a good time. And we're talking about like the dream machine like what do you want out of stuff. And there is part of me that has this fire in me to think about
00:38:44
Speaker
just how horribly, not how horribly bad, but spin it a different way, how much disruption opportunity there would be to do a ground up rebuild of a modern mission tool. And this part of this will stem from like how difficult and clunky things are because you've got such a disconnect between the builder, the controller, the camp system,
00:39:10
Speaker
And the only way to tackle something like this, first of all, would be to raise like eight figures in venture money or something and like build an insane team. That's not my cup of tea. I'm not the right leader for that. But I do think there's the way I'm thinking of tackling it is just chewing on it more.
00:39:28
Speaker
building some hacky prototypes, might be functional, might be some 3D printed. And I'm inspired by the people like Kern. And I say that humbly because Kern has got a lot of really smart people in a very legit job shop, but they didn't build Kerns to create a machine tool company.
00:39:48
Speaker
They built curtains because they were doing job shop work and the machines didn't work for them. They needed it themselves. I have a pretty strong idea of how I would want it to look and what I would want it to do. It's not just a change of an existing mill or lathe.
00:40:08
Speaker
Yeah, I want it to have eight or nine or 10 pieces of material in the bar form already in the machine that could be automatically loaded in without anything. Like you just, you want to switch from half inch round stainless to one inch square aluminum. Done. It just happens. And then there's some B-axis thoughts to how it's built. Some, yeah, I don't know, I'm just, yeah.
00:40:39
Speaker
I like it. Well, I mean, we see Pocket and Sea Guy, or Penta. You know, doing that, living that dream, building the solo, right? Yeah, I mean, the more I learn about them, the more I'm like, it's humbling how daunting of an experience that would be. So I think I'm not even thinking about, would this ever be a marketable product? I'm thinking about more of like, if I were at home,
00:41:09
Speaker
home machine or if I'm retired and I want a machine, obviously there's limitations. This format of a machine might have limitations on part size or so forth, but it has a hundred tools. It has the ability to do five axis. It has the ability to do some vision system stuff that should be a machine tools and just isn't, which is really why can't
00:41:32
Speaker
a pretty inexpensive camera, start comparing your fusion setup and your fusion stock to what's happening on the part. That's something that could happen. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, and that's the kind of thing you got to crunch on and think about for months, years, you know, start playing, thinking, design things, see what you like. I like it. Yeah. You know, fun with that.
00:42:00
Speaker
Yeah, everyone who's brought a machine to the market or so forth will tell you not to. And I respect that because it's insane. It's like building a car company. It's like, eh. Totally. And there's so much more to it in terms of post-sale support, warranty, repairs. That's not me. And so I'm not even thinking about that stuff right now. I'm just thinking about, could we build something where it's like, oh my god, that's like, think about what you want out of your dream machine. Is there a way to do?
00:42:26
Speaker
crash detection sucks on every machine right now. It just does. Or is there a way to do shear pins and
Current Projects and Business Insights
00:42:32
Speaker
have them are adjustable things that you can go to different modes where if you break something, okay, you sheared off and you can buy a replacement or like it just... Yeah. Yeah. I like how you're thinking of it more from a technical aspect, not just like, I want a Willeman and a Kern put together in this with this many tools. You're thinking more granular as if like, why can't this happen? And why can't we integrate
00:42:55
Speaker
vision system with all that. Make probing easy, not 14 layers of sub-macros. Right. Yeah. Which is actually weird, because I think if we ever got to the point where we actually built enough parts to have something need a controller, we would buy an off-the-shelf controller for now. But I think long term, you've got to have pretty tight control over how it works, what it does.
00:43:24
Speaker
Which again, anyone who knows, Haydn, Haydn, or Fanak is going to tell me, you don't understand how, I get it, like I'm not, but oh, I'm looking back to when we built, we built a completely DIY clear path turret lay that made our fixture plate plugs out of, I think it was Delrin, because we weren't sure if we were going to be able to get an ejection mold made. We ended up getting that made and it's made millions of them, which is awesome. We built this thing in it,
00:43:52
Speaker
When I say it worked, like we never sold the products that came off of it, but it was pretty darn legit. Cool. Yeah. I like it. What are you up to today? Taking down some.
00:44:09
Speaker
That was great. Use the VF2 with buck chucks to do that stress test. So just got to go. We actually literally brought some safety wire and tied the drill hole through the part. We were going to try to rip the part out. So we tied it down, drove a hole through the corner of the part and literally cabled it to the table. That way the fluid wasn't going to go through the window.
00:44:31
Speaker
So I got to go take that stuff off, and then I have not spent some time this week on J5. I spent some time this weekend, and I'm spending some time at home, but I'm trying to carve out a half an hour out at the shop. But that's partly because we finished two of the last smaller Gen 3 parts that we hadn't been running in volume, and I've got them building out workflows for them, which is, I really enjoyed that. How about you? Good.
00:45:01
Speaker
What do you, oh, you're doing the, get the, get the throw bins video integral stop pins. Um, I'll have the new blades from heat treats. I'll be able to, I'll get them lapped and we'll put them together. So maybe I can have P three like in my hand by the end of the day. That'd be awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. Good. Sweet. Have a good day. I'll see you later.