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#277 - Being A Self Taught Machinist
364 Plays3 years ago
TOPCIS:
- John & John chat about what it is like to be a self taught machinist.
- Saunders made a little bit of a mistake on the horizontal.
- The boys chat about having no manager only roles inside their company.
- Grimsmo got the Zeiss CMM installed to help measure EVERYTHING!
- The benefits of using glass materials for accuracy.
- Chip thinning and rubbing on endmills.
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Transcript
Introduction and Manufacturing Journey
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, Episode 277. My name is John Grimsmo.
00:00:06
Speaker
And my name is John Saunders. And this is the podcast where John and John chat every week about our manufacturing journey and growing our businesses and getting cool tools and solving problems and hiring people and just the joys of running a business that I don't know if most people really know about. Like I didn't know about all of this back then, you know? Oh yeah, for sure. So yeah, it's really fun. Every week we just chat about
00:00:35
Speaker
What's going on? What's going on? So much. Yeah. So much
Challenges in Moving and Setup
00:00:42
Speaker
for us. I mean, last week we moved the Kern. Okay. Um, installed, like retaught the Aroa, which I nailed. Um, it was trickier than I thought it was going to be. Awesome. But totally worked out. Um, and then I was talking with, uh, one of the texts from Kern and,
00:01:01
Speaker
She was like, I don't know if I feel comfortable like teaching this over the phone. Cause normally like we send a tech to do this. And I was like, okay, I'll just figure it out. So we figured it out. Yeah, it's not hard. It's just messy and it's complicated. And you have to do like through the little handheld pendant, you have to go through every menu. I had to write down every single value into a big written grid so that it made sense. And I'm like, okay, those numbers have to change. Those numbers have to change. And then, uh,
00:01:29
Speaker
Yeah,
Learning Machine Processes
00:01:30
Speaker
we did it. And it works. It was a Rola settings, not current. Correct. Yeah.
00:01:36
Speaker
It's the teach points of like, okay, so it grabs a pallet, lifts up, moves over here to a safe zone, rotates, puts it in the machine safe zone. It rapids to here, it feeds to here, it drops it down, it senses for clamping or air pressure or whatever, and there's all these points, points, points, points. It's really neat actually how they do it. It's just so old school, it feels like.
00:02:00
Speaker
because it's so manual and there's 11 different points that it set in mind. You can have up to 25. Once I figured it out and wrapped my head around it, I'm like, oh, this is not hard. It's just complicated. It's just finite. That system was never built to be like customer facing. Exactly. I think that's the point. But it feels pretty good to be able to do it and know what's going on now.
Customer Service and Self-Reliance
00:02:26
Speaker
It's funny you say that because I feel like there's this change from the user standpoint of our age and the era of empowerment with folks like us that have grown up with YouTube. And I don't really say that I'm a self-taught machinist anymore because it's kind of irrelevant. You know what I mean? It was cool. It was kind of interesting in the beginning, partly because I was so humble because I knew anything. And at this point, it's kind of like,
00:02:56
Speaker
Anyway, we had a couple of similar conversations with Gossager when we had like minor hiccups with the horizontal because the thing is like an incredibly complicated machinery with the pout system and the tool matrix. I was on the phone support with them and they were great. Like I really have nothing but good things to say except they weren't in the mindset of we will help
00:03:22
Speaker
this guy figured out because that's this scrappy, we'll do it. We have a couple of things that we can try. Otherwise, we're just going to send a service tech. Right. I don't know if it's a liability thing or if it's a
00:03:39
Speaker
fear of the customer screwing it up, which is legit for sure. Yes. And that's what the current person was saying. They're like, it's, it's very easy to ruin it or to crash the aroa or something like
Risks and Responsibilities of Machine Operation
00:03:50
Speaker
that. If you type a wrong number and it's like, okay, I understand the risks. This is my machine. I'm going to do it anyway. Um, yeah. So I, it's like you wouldn't hand over the keys of that much power to just anybody, but I don't know. We're careful.
00:04:07
Speaker
Yeah. And I think it's just going to be interesting to see if any of the philosophies at the machine tool builder level or support level change to where they embrace some of the desire.
Empowerment through Teach Points
00:04:19
Speaker
Trying to. Like the you are robots. I've never touched one in real life. But the teach points are like you hold the button and you move it with your hand to your point and click a thing. And then that's brilliant. A four-year-old could figure that out. And they can. I've seen them do it on the Instagram.
00:04:37
Speaker
Um, so that's evolving towards the user, you know, empowerment, which is cool.
Advancements in Machine Control Systems
00:04:44
Speaker
Actually, now that we're talking about this, I remember at emo in Italy last year, the Walter, that grinding company, um, which I would say is even hyper specialized relative just to the number of, you know,
00:04:56
Speaker
No, well, I think they are more big just like cam grinders and OD grinders and cylindrical grinders and surface grinder. Their new control, I don't remember if it was the whole controller, but there was just like an overlay as just like
00:05:12
Speaker
Oh, what is the C loss for DMG? Anyway, it offered this next level support integration, which is what I'd like to see. I'd like to see companies saying, look, we live in a world where everybody has access to Android or iPhone. So why can't we just start doing a video chat
00:05:34
Speaker
with no friction, like within two seconds, anybody should be able to have on a video to video feed and or having them remote into the machine.
Problem-Solving and Support
00:05:43
Speaker
We were in a similar situation. We had a tool broke, it put the tool back in an NG, no good position, and then the tool matrix stopped. It stopped with the tool spider, like the actual robot, very similar to your Kern.
00:05:58
Speaker
on the taper of the tool, and Gossiger was rightfully like, look, we're not totally sure why this happened, but if you go to try to rip or to come off of that tool and the stud is being held in, I mean, you could rip that whole rack or tree out.
00:06:13
Speaker
And they're not wrong. I'm also like, look, we didn't do anything wrong. Literally, we didn't do anything. It just happened. Yeah. It just happened. So my view as a small business owner is like, look, under a warranty machine, I'm not super excited about arguing over whether or not I have to incur this service cost because it would be probably $1,000 to $2,000. Yeah. And sure.
00:06:35
Speaker
It's a lose-lose if they show up and they hit one button and they're like, it's fixed. And sure enough, I was able to get on the phone with an apps guy who helped me turn down, behind the scenes, turn down the program feed rate for that right to like 1% so that we could start to see it move and stop it before it. And that was awesome. And so it ended up going well, but I felt like we're swimming upstream right now.
Self-Reliance in Technical Understanding
00:07:01
Speaker
of like this attitude of like the grimace of the world, the saunters of the world where it's like, hey, let's solve this as if I'm on a remote desert island. Exactly. The path that leads resistance of just hopping for us in a car for two hours at a pretty high travel rate is a lose-lose. I don't think anybody actually wants to be in a car for two hours or enjoy billing $200 an hour for travel time or whatever it is. Yeah.
00:07:26
Speaker
Well, like doing the Wilhelmin spindle replacement and getting that all tuned in. I spent probably 20 hours on the phone with one of the guys over months and months and months.
00:07:38
Speaker
Is that a loose, like should I have sent the guy up to do it in like four days? Maybe, but the fact that they were willing to do that with me was just phenomenal. We'd send, we run WhatsApp the whole time. We'd just send pictures back and forth and video and he's got that other 408 MT, the old one, like in his showroom. So he's like, oh yeah, I see on mine the blue wire right here. Oh yeah, I see it too. Okay. It's fantastic. The fact that they're willing to do that was amazing. And then same with Kern, like you said, they can remote into my,
00:08:07
Speaker
machine and then see the error and like pull data files and service files and logs and all that stuff and like even control it to a certain extent while I'm on the phone while we're doing video chat while we're like they've seen enough of these issues that it's like oh yeah do that here get into the service menu there's a special menu in the curtain where you if you e-stop the machine a little service button pops up you click that take the e-stop off and then it gets you like you can't machine things but you can
00:08:37
Speaker
Open the flap door you can open your row and you can do a manual tool change you can save yourself from a bunch of stuff so That's cool to know you know and they don't they don't teach you that on day one and they probably don't want to teach you that But I've been in there enough times that I
Balancing Technical and Leadership Roles
00:08:53
Speaker
need to know it. You know yeah, yeah Well, I've heard about this too like was it her my I think was saying that some as part of the purchase process some companies will literally send a
00:09:04
Speaker
They'll send a guy there whose job is to come up to speed on certain amounts of maintenance. We don't have a full-time internal industrial maintenance technician. We all just wear those hats in a basic capacity. But I do really like that. I want to be able to fix some of the stuff that is fixable. Yeah, exactly.
00:09:33
Speaker
I was just going to finish. For one, the timeframe, I want it done now.
Machine Crash and Rapid Response
00:09:39
Speaker
If it's a 10-minute phone call and I work hard to figure it out, then it's done in an hour. Speaking of which, I goofed on the horizontal
00:09:53
Speaker
I wasn't even upset about it because in a thousand years wouldn't have anticipated or thought of this, even though I had actually heard folks mention it before, actually not really a crash, but I hit the sheet metal. So we were facing, for everyone that wants to throw some sharp or whatever, some humoristic criticism my way about the DIY tombstone, this is your opportunity.
00:10:21
Speaker
I actually still don't regret them whatsoever. What stinks was we used a five-inch face mill to deck the tombstone face. We had to use a large face mill because the tombstone is taller and wider than the machine's travel, so the five-inch face mill allowed us to stay within the travel limits but reach the top and bottom portion. Got it.
00:10:44
Speaker
What I didn't anticipate is the very bottom most pass moving in X. When it goes to X positive, which is closest to the tool changer door or further away from the operator, there is a nice little tool setter hidden inside of a little R2D2 pop-up. It pops up through like a little antenna. All it did was it hit the sheet metal lid.
00:11:13
Speaker
Right. So no, no, like really no big deal, except, you know, sounded horrible. And of course it's, you know, it nevertheless was, uh, um, you know, I was really upset, uh, and so forth, but I give him credit. The probe was fine. Didn't even touch the probe. The sheet metal was all gnarled up, but then it was great. Um, Vince is a pretty good TIG welder. So I disassembled the lid. We hammered it back into place and TIG welded back shut and repainted it within five hours. It looks 90, 95% as good as new.
00:11:43
Speaker
I honestly might still try to buy one from Mokuma because I'd like for it to be perfect, but this is fine. Then where I was potentially stuck was it uses a pneumatic actuator to raise and lower the Renishaw probe. When it was raising and lowering it, instead of going smoothly up and down, it was binding about halfway through the travel.
00:12:05
Speaker
And I thought, OK, that's not good. And I wasn't sure if we had a real big problem and got in there, disassembled some sheet metal
Learning from Crises
00:12:13
Speaker
parts, got better access to it and took a look. And all it was was there's the way it
00:12:18
Speaker
pivots up and down to open the door involves a kind of like a cam or a dog piece that has a slot and a pin pivot point. And when the tool face mill hit that sheet metal part, it just, because it's a five inch face mill and it was rotating at 700 RPMs, it's enough that it was like, don't, don't, don't, don't for two seconds, which caused the two brackets that hold that dog in place just to get bent maybe 20 thou or 30 thou.
00:12:47
Speaker
As soon as I disassembled it, I saw that it was not aligned. We've seen those NIPEX pliers. We have some. The smooth jaw, it's like a crescent wrench, but it opens up.
00:13:04
Speaker
And the jaws stay parallel as they open and close. Those things are great. And they were perfect for this application. I bent it back. And I'll tell you, when I first had the crash and saw that the thing was opening up in a weird way, I thought, boy, I've really done it Saunders. And I thought, just call, get a service guy on the schedule, be a couple of days. And I thought, man,
00:13:28
Speaker
I checked the probe with a tool height and the probe was within 2,000. It was not out at all and it visibly wasn't damaged. Just like you said, I really want to fix this. I want to keep this machine running. It was actually one of the best repairs I've gone through to feel like we ended as good as we did on it. Nice. That's fantastic. But still, I got my
Managerial Roles and Technical Expertise
00:13:51
Speaker
face. Yeah, exactly.
00:13:53
Speaker
Under normal circumstances, the machine can't crash itself. It can't move into that position, but because your tool was so giant in diameter that at your max x-travel, the tool's bigger than the Okuma thinks it normally would be, right? You just hit the sheet metal because of that? Not true.
00:14:11
Speaker
No. It's actually a known sort of bug or it's a known circumstance that I've been advised of by multiple people and multiple times, which is be careful about the table probe type of thing because you can have tools get in the way, you can have B-axis
00:14:31
Speaker
It doesn't rotate with the B, obviously, but it's a known thing. You got to pay attention to where that thing is. Now we purchased the collision avoidance software, which I believe would have, I'm sure would have caught this. And so that's really egg on my face. It's kind of like buying complete and not using it and then crashing. It's kind of like, what were you doing? Yeah, exactly.
00:14:49
Speaker
But it's kind of one of those i can only share is it as a fallible human being i was so focused on on. This large face well taking it easy my datums how i was loading the tool i was so focused on that it was going great it will come to the last pass it was on the kind of dark side of the moon i couldn't i mean it's like i almost watched it happen because it was so slow it was back there so anyone. Yeah when there's a point of.
00:15:16
Speaker
manually watching a test program run, you gain confidence the deeper it goes into it. You're like, yeah, it's good. It's good. It's good. Until that one variable you didn't expect. Yeah. So anyway, it happens. I mean, it's that whole tell me a machinist who says he's never crashed a machine. I remember that. They're good. It hasn't machined a lot of things. Yeah.
00:15:45
Speaker
On the flip side, it reminded me of my ethos around recognizing risk exists in ways you may know but don't want to acknowledge. And I told everyone here, like, hey, I want to get these tombstones brought online. But even if I'm acknowledging the risk, you can't mitigate it totally because
00:16:07
Speaker
The last thing I wanted to do was crash a machine trying to bring a new optional type product online when it's really important to us right now what that machine is producing. And it's kind of proving my own fear, if you will, or recognition of like, hey, you've got to be really careful. I've got a proven process on two tombstones that run for probably 13 to 14 hours a day. And I almost mucked that anyway. Yeah, exactly.
00:16:34
Speaker
You've ruined your whole production flow just for a test. I've been there. I've been there for sure. It's one of the hesitations with me training more machinists and programmers and things like that in our shop because those risks are real. We have such finite production processes that it's like, I can't afford to be down.
00:16:59
Speaker
Yeah, but I also very much recognize, you know, you got to let go stuff happens. Um, yeah. Yeah, it happens.
Kern Machine Calibration
00:17:08
Speaker
How's, so the current it's running again. Yeah, it was running Thursday.
00:17:12
Speaker
Um, last week and it's been running ever since. Perfect. Did a kinematic calibration where you put the tooling ball on the table, like on a pallet. And then the probe comes in, it rotates, it rotates the B and the C and does like a million points and it tells you your volumetric, you know, calibration change. Um, and it was pretty tight this time actually, even after moving the machine and it tracks it every time you run the calibration. So, uh, it was good. And then it just runs. It's great now.
00:17:40
Speaker
I was going to ask, I know you had that built-in kinematics. Do you also like touch off a tool to make sure... Yeah, what you do is you run the kinematic calibration first and then you run the laser tool setter calibration with a calibrating tool holder. So it's an actual HSK40 with a little precision cylinder at the end of it.
00:18:03
Speaker
And if you run the kinematic first and then the tool calibration, then all your tools are in line and touched off perfectly. Otherwise they are going to be off. And I noticed this. And if you don't do that, then the next tool you touch off is going to be off by the correction factor. And now you have a tool table with half are old and half are new. And so a year or two ago, I wrote a program to.
00:18:27
Speaker
look at the entire tool table, notice what's installed and touch off every single one. Every tool. That's awesome. And it took like half an hour, but that was cool. Yeah, that's really cool. With that all behind us, the DIY Teamstone does appear to be phenomenal. I'm drilling and tapping it. I've got the fixture ready to mount onto it. So
00:18:50
Speaker
I changed the CAM program to not crash and then reran it and yeah, we're good. Epic. Yes. Yeah.
00:19:05
Speaker
So you're going to model that sheet metal into fusion now so that you can manually simulate yourself? Too soon. That's a good point. I don't know. I'm not really, you know, so this is kind of an interesting segue into something I was talking about this morning in our manager meeting was I don't ever want to have our company, like I'm explicitly stating, playing my flag around. I don't ever want to have a company that's
00:19:29
Speaker
Large enough to have kind of manager only type roles like a middle management or management only. I really enjoy what I do being a technician and so I think what's really hard about that is it's just very hard for me. I don't know if it's true for other people to to wear both hats.
00:19:48
Speaker
Because you have a responsibility to your customers and to your employees and to the business to be a manager. But I like being a technician. And the John Saunders technician that crashed that machine, you can only pretend to think of what this was like. But had anybody else in our shop done that? Again, it wasn't actually a big deal in the end. But I just can't sign fault for that. It was such a whatever.
00:20:16
Speaker
I don't know how I got into that. I can imagine that perception amongst the staff could be like, oh, it's okay because the boss did it. You know what I mean? But if I as an employee did it. Oh, yeah. Double standard. Right? Yeah. Unfortunately, I mean, same thing here. It's okay if John does it.
00:20:35
Speaker
but don't you go do it. And you know, I'm very flexible and I know stuff happens and problems happen and things break. I'm very okay with that as long as it was never malicious or incompetent or like, you know, you're on your phone and you should have been watching it kind of thing. Like those are basically inexcusable things. But I mean, if you're trying and you're aware and you're paying attention, then it's, it happens. We all do it. I'm okay with that.
00:21:04
Speaker
Yeah. It felt like it felt really good. I wanted to share it with everybody to share the pain in the lesson. And then it was actually really cool. Like Grant helped me. Oh, that's what was funny too. I had to like figure out what the M code was to raise and lower the program manually so that I could sit there and check it without having to touch the tool off every time. And then he helped me raise and lower to get that dialed in. And then Vince helped re-weld the top thing. Like it was, it was kind of fun in a terrible way. It was kind of fun. Yeah.
00:21:33
Speaker
but you learn more about your machine now. There is a beautiful benefit to working on such nice machines that are, you know, very quality built and sometimes meant to be worked on and, you know, quality components. And when it's right, you know, it's right. Everything moves smooth and nice and the wiring is follow, there's M codes, there's good documentation. I enjoy that about nice machines.
00:21:59
Speaker
Speaking of nice machines, I saw some Instagrams.
Zeiss CMM Setup and Use
00:22:03
Speaker
There is a CMM finalizing the calibration process right now. It's functional. It works. It's amazing. Awesome. Awesome. So cool. So yeah, tell that story. So the, um, it came last week and the rigors offloaded it. Um,
00:22:20
Speaker
and then placed it in the shop. And this was after we recorded the podcast last week. I think Thursday it came. All kind of last minute, I got a phone call at home in the morning. And the truck driver's like, I'm here with the machine. Oh my gosh. What to do with it? I'm like, I'll be right in. I'm like, am I going to have to offload this with a forklift? Or are the riggers actually showing up? Because I haven't had a confirmation. Anyway, they were here. Actually, everybody was sent to the old shop across the street.
00:22:46
Speaker
Hilarious. Which is just dumb. Come on. People should know this by now.
00:22:52
Speaker
But, uh, yeah, so then there were stickers all over it that said like, don't open the machine. You know, it has to be installed by a service tech, even to, to remove the wrapper or to inspect the boxes or whatever. So the big crate with the machine and then two crates as well, two pallets. Um, so we just kind of stored everything in the shop, let it, you know, chill out for the weekend, let it acclimatize, um, cracked into it Monday, Tuesday. And then we moved it because the base that we purchased with it was super backordered. Right.
00:23:22
Speaker
And they tried to say we're gonna back order the whole machine for you and I was like no no I'll find a table I want the machine now and the base can come whenever I don't care. So they they as far as I knew they did that they sent the machine and there were two crates I didn't know what was in them computers and accessories and all that stuff so we bought a table from you line metal well the table.
00:23:46
Speaker
mounted the CMM on top of it, put it into place and the service tech walks in and he said, you guys screwed up. Like the base is right there in that crate that you haven't opened up yet. No. And on the manifest, the shipping manifest, it literally says base zero backordered.
00:24:04
Speaker
So like, I don't know, weird, whatever. But so then we got the forklift, we lifted it up onto the thing and got it installed. And then, yeah, the Zeiss technician came in yesterday and today. Greg, he's amazing. Put it all together because it comes kind of in pieces. Like you got to put the vast head on, you got to put your sheet metal panels on, you got to
00:24:24
Speaker
he's got to do a lot of work. But it didn't take him long. And then by the end of the day, he's already got it moving and calibrating. And he's got this big 45 degree
00:24:39
Speaker
What those precision granite or something? Yeah, exactly. With a whole bunch of points on it that he's calibrating and measuring and everything. And he's just running through all these machines, these routines and the machines flying around. And here I am working programming on the current and I look over and the machines just moving. I'm like, Oh, sweet. That's awesome. So yeah, at this point, um, he should be done in an hour or two and then hopefully I can catch them just to do a little wrap up and like,
00:25:09
Speaker
He said he wasn't even really trained on operating the machine so much, but he can do the calibrations and he can run all the routines, but his first programming parts and like,
00:25:19
Speaker
Running it. He said I'm not really the guy for that, but I'm still gonna push him to like show me a couple things Yeah, and at this point like later today tomorrow over the weekend. I just I'm gonna play with it Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna there's some really good YouTube videos on how to run Calypso and how to like run the Duramax Specifically there's one guy that has some actual training videos. So I'm gonna dig into those I'm gonna read the manual and I'm just gonna play and
00:25:45
Speaker
And then Elliot is going to send a training technician sometime soon to do some basic like, cause they're just an hour away. And then they also offer a training class where you can go there for days, five days, I think, and then do like full thing and we'll.
00:26:05
Speaker
probably do
Formal Training vs. Self-Learning
00:26:06
Speaker
that. Maybe. I think you're just going to get run around with on your own, right? I know. I like that. Figure out what questions you need. Yeah, exactly. Honestly, me personally, I can't speak for the rest of my guys or people in general, but I'm not looking forward to sitting in the classroom for five days and learning about CMM. Nothing wrong with it. It is wonderful training, but me personally, I got other stuff to do.
00:26:29
Speaker
Yeah. But it is a complex, complicated machine and I've heard that metrology and CMMing and all that, it's not easy. We hear from Lawrence and other guys that if you measure from A to B and you measure from B to A, you're going to get different results. I'm like, what?
00:26:48
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know how much of that is like the next level of not even metrology, but like procedural stuff, which it's not that it's not important or matters, but I'm just going to try to get basic measurement stuff that's way more accurate than hand tools or something.
00:27:10
Speaker
It's like, is there a basic tier entry level, this is all I need for now? Right. We're hearing about a German five-axis builder arguing about why their method of arc filtering and smoothing was better than the Japanese method about how when you think about
00:27:25
Speaker
the sphericity of filtering when it's a five axis movement. Basically a point A and point B can be within two ten thousandths of an inch radius sphere, but are you just still doing a direct line between the two or are you trying to interpolate a spline between the two and you start to realize, wow, this could be really different. And then you sort of realize like, these are both insanely incredible machines that would be a step up. I'm sure it matters to someone. I'm not sure it matters to me.
00:27:51
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the guy was saying when they calibrate the machine at the factory, they have laser calibration whatevers that calibrate the entire working envelope of the machine and there's millions of points and it uses those points, you know, ball screw correction and tilt and all that stuff. It uses all of those points all of the time for every movement of the machine.
00:28:15
Speaker
And it's specific to each individual build. And it just uses that in the background to move and know itself. And it's got glass scales, and it's got all kinds of stuff. I don't know. For the longest time, I didn't even know what glass scales were. I didn't understand it. I knew it was a fancy way to measure. But then a bunch of years ago, I mean, the current has them. The Willimon has them. The CMM has them now. They've become a part of my life. I'm like, oh, I get it now.
00:28:44
Speaker
Well, okay, I'd like to...
00:28:46
Speaker
I propose, I'm going to tell you what I think they are and then you fill in what you think. My understanding is that they are glass because glass has low or no coefficient of thermal expansion. It's really, really stable over time. They're generally mounted. They have to be mounted to the machine in some sense because they can't just float in air, but you try to mount them in a way that they aren't thermally connected and stretched and compressed. You don't bolt them directly to the cast iron. You'll spacer them off with
00:29:16
Speaker
various different ways of again, shock absorbing them and so forth. And the glass scales themselves, I believe are either chemically etched or done so in a very, very fine way. And they give you these tick marks that are incredibly consistent, precise so that your servo PID loop, no, I guess this is where I don't really know what I'm saying. The servo PID loop that would normally say rotate the encoder x number, it's now
00:29:43
Speaker
actually only looking at the glass scale to move the scale amount because that's what you wanted to do. That makes sense. That's more accurate. I'm sure different builders have different combinations of how they do that, whether the scale is the master, everything moves to the scale or the scale is the backup for correction factor. But yeah, I think the guy was saying yesterday that the scales are etched every two-tenths.
00:30:09
Speaker
or something, which is like, how do you make a line every two-tenths on glass? I've seen this scale. Our Mitutoyo LH600 has a glass scale, and I've seen it, and it's very cool. It's kind of simple. It looks just like a comb or even like a precision scale, like just a steel ruler, like a six-inch ruler that has those tick marks in it, but they're just very, very fine. Yeah, because I remember back in the day,
00:30:39
Speaker
going to the Elliott trade shows basically, looking at machines, they're like, you can add glass scales to machines to make them more accurate. It's like an option. And in my head, I'm like, how does that, I didn't even, you know, early on, remember back in like,
00:30:55
Speaker
On a manual CMM machine to add a DRO you basically cannibalize a caliper and you stick it to the side It's the same theory really. Yeah, you're just creating a measurement point You know a rod that mounts to the casting or whatever and then the slidey thingy that is does the measuring and moves with your axis and they have them for rotational accesses and linear and all that stuff and
00:31:21
Speaker
It's cool. Yes. Heidenhein, you'll see the current and the Wilhelmin both have Heidenhein scales. The Zeiss has something else. I didn't see them, but he said the name, the name I'd never heard of before. What they said when we toured Heidenhein, which blew my mind of how huge that facility is, like really was amazing.
00:31:46
Speaker
Like, what are the national treasures of Germany and modern manufacturing? Oh, yeah. Very secretive for good reason. I would say in North America, like, what's the marketer of Heidenhain? Like, how many people even understand Heidenhain? Almost none. So that's what's funny is, sure, there's Heidenhain for machine controls. They're not prolific. Like, you walk into your regular machine shop, probably not going to see Heidenhain. My understanding is they make almost every DRO and glass scale
00:32:15
Speaker
components inside. Even the off-brand ones, I believe, like Acupro, not Acupro, that's the MSE tool brand. But like, Hydenheim is actually still cranking them out. Yeah, that's awesome. They showed architectural drawings, but wouldn't let us get near the building that has like a multi sub-floor area with thermally isolated. It is the like NIST, you know, not NIST, NIST as a government lab, but this is private sector, but it's where they do the masters and so forth. And it was pretty
00:32:44
Speaker
Cool. And then they told a story about how 15, 20 years ago they had a far east visitor and someone's phone got really hot and some nefarious IT activities occurred. And so I think that's one reason why they were
00:33:01
Speaker
I've been through a lot of facility at this point and that was one of the most... When you go to US military facilities or DOD or ITAR, they have this song and dance about security and it's real, but this was different. This was like we know what it's like to have been on the not fun end of something and that's not happened here anymore. That's awesome.
00:33:30
Speaker
Is that your understanding of glass scales? Yeah, basically. I don't know how they interact, how they feedback other than that they do. And that if there is a servo error and the glass scale catches it.
00:33:43
Speaker
It's basically like back on the tormach days or even the hobby mill days, you put a stepper motor on it. And if you crash the machine, the stepper motor keeps going. It thinks you're still moving, but the physical movement is not happening because you're crashing. So the scale basically tells the motor like, no, you didn't move at all. I know you're spinning, but nothing happened. So that's the layman's way to say it.
00:34:10
Speaker
I've enjoyed hearing some really educated rebuttals around certain things like the new Tormox that have clear path servos, much nicer. The speed, the fluidity of the motion is wonderful, but the idea that steppers are inherently bad is kind of a misnomer because the servo can't just power through something that the stepper loses steps on. That's probably going to be a bad event. The interesting discussion around, well, if your encoder or your stepper or your glass scale, if it misses steps,
00:34:40
Speaker
You can't, it's not like you're walking with a group of friends down the street and you can just run and catch back up with them. Like, did you turn a corner or are you surfacing? Like how do you correct that error? Yep.
00:34:51
Speaker
And I bet you some machines just stop if there's too much error. Like, you're not going to catch up. Yeah. That's true. And a properly designed stepper motor just works great. Well, there's awesome examples of incredible metrology tools or other things that use, I mean, separates are wonderfully accurate. There's just not, like I get it, like I'm. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I've got ClearPath servos for the router that I'm building in CNC router. I'm super excited for that.
00:35:19
Speaker
Is that that avid box that you posted? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Avid CNC bench top pro. What's that going to be for? Cutting our foam and a bunch of other stuff. That's right. Man, we haven't talked about the humox in a long time. Yeah. So I've got a guy who says he's super interested, wants to put a deposit down. I haven't heard back in about a week, but that's okay. And in both machines. And so we've talked about shipping and things like that. So if that works out, we're golden. Sweet.
00:35:49
Speaker
We can start building the router now. I'm still waiting on my buddy versus CNC to build and finish the electronics enclosure. I think I've seen our stuff on Insta. Yeah. He's just really good at wiring and building control boxes. And he's actually designing and building his own CNC router to compete with the avid one, possibly even better. So yeah, he's been great to have on board to do this.
00:36:17
Speaker
So it's coming together. Sweet. Yeah, it's going to be sick. What's the size? It's two foot by three foot, 24 to 36. Tool changer? It doesn't come with one, but it's super easy to add one. So I'm obviously planning like at least eight tools. What's the spindle taper? I think it's ISO 30. So not, not BT 30, but similar. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's pretty legit. That's cool. Okay. Yeah.
00:36:45
Speaker
I wanted to give a shout out to Rob Lockwood. We were talking to a group of us on your streaking issue and robbery is a really good point when you and I were bantering about chip thinning and rubbing and I was kind of indifferent or ambivalent about should you go.
00:37:05
Speaker
reduced, what did I say? Reduced RPM or higher feed rate. And Rob made the point, you are, I'll just read his words. You're likely better to take an increased depth of cut at a decreased feed rate with the end result being a chip with more mass and thus ability to act as a heat sink and allow the flute to have more material to bite into, but without the result of also having feed forward bark. So I thought that was a really good point. I didn't really think about the
00:37:32
Speaker
idea that you want the chip itself to, it's important that it carries the heat away. And therefore you need the chip big enough to actually like, have any mass makes a lot of sense. Yeah, so I played with it yesterday for quite a long time, using
00:37:47
Speaker
I haven't used Provencut in a long time, but I still have the subscription. Happy to pay it. But when it's there, and when you go in, you're like, damn, this is so good. Language, son, this is a family-friendly club. Dang. Yeah.
00:38:03
Speaker
Yeah, it's fantastic. It's just a beautiful resource to have. I was watching through all the videos, I'm like stainless. Okay, small animals. Okay, yes. Watching videos, I'm like, okay, I see. Look at the chips. You're like, man, I love the consistency of... Every recipe has the same 10 media things. You got your video, you got your picture, you got your chips, you got your tool holder, you got the machine. I'm like,
00:38:27
Speaker
This is just right. Good. This is so cool. And the calculator with the effective chip load was fascinating. I played with that a lot and it got me to learn to understand effective chip load. And if you ever want to make a video explaining that better, that would be fantastic. Okay. That's a good point. Even like reference the calculator. Is the calculator publicly available or do you need a login to do it? If I'm honest, I can't answer that. Yeah.
00:38:57
Speaker
Yeah, so I play with like chip load and SFM and Inch for tooth and stock to leave was the big one because I'd never fully understood the relationship between stock to leave and chip load and effective chip load and all that. And it's all making more sense to me now. So I ran a bunch of tests yesterday.
00:39:15
Speaker
I took our current standard recipe which is causing problems and then I stoned it and then I saw the two high spots on the side and then I did new speeds and feeds with the old end mills better and then new speeds and feeds with brand new end mills best.
00:39:33
Speaker
Okay. I don't know if it's the brand new end mills, if it's going to hold over time, but I'll keep an eye through the tool life. But I think we're getting better. I think I'm getting a more even cut and more even wear. And if rubbing is the cause and we eliminate that, then I think we're winning here. Okay. That's great.
00:39:51
Speaker
Rob had mentioned another good point about the idea that when you're cutting with such a thin step over, you might just be burnishing or you might be, I don't know if this is like halfway to burnishing, but where you have, let's say there's four flutes on the tool, two of the flutes might be rubbing and the other two may be cutting, which can cause some bouncing. And that can create its own form of chatter, vibration, and so forth. And then what else did he say that I wanted to mention? I don't remember.
00:40:20
Speaker
But the other point was ultimately for this sort of thing, you probably are going to need a really sharp tool with no... I had never really understood why Edge Prep was called Edge Prep. Edge Prep, I guess, really just means like...
00:40:33
Speaker
dulling the edge intentionally so that it lasts a lot longer, even though it's not perfectly sharp. But I don't think you have a solution. If you need a sharp tool, it's just going to have a really finite time. Yeah. Yeah. Which I currently have. Like right now, I'm replacing that finishing and melt every 36 minutes. Okay. Just not all. And it's finishing. It's just like it's doing nothing. But maybe I can get longer tool. I don't really care about the tool life. I just need to finish. I need it to be amazing right now.
00:41:02
Speaker
I hesitate with a very sharp tool because it's not going to stay very sharp for very long, but I don't know. Maybe I need to reach out to Fraser about the multi-cut end mills. We'll see.
00:41:17
Speaker
I just bought some diamond cutoff wheels for, I think for a Dremel. If they do work, I might move them to a four-inch grinder, but we use a thread mill to cut some serrations. It has nothing to do with thread milling. It just works perfectly for it, but thread mills are expensive, and we cut enough where we wear them out. I have this Lake Shore three-quarter inch long flute.
00:41:37
Speaker
There's three quarter inch of thread mill, but I only use the bottom quarter inch. And so what I'm going to try, fail fast fail sheet, is I'm going to try after it's worn out to use a diamond saw to cut off the bottom quarter inch of the thread mill, because now I have another. So it's almost like with your Frasier type tool, it's like, hey, use the, you're probably not gonna use all the flute length. So if you could trim it off and then use the next axial section of the flute,
00:42:05
Speaker
Probably, I recognize it could be a terrible idea, but if I can, you can cut carbide. They make a little CJ sent over some little like, kind of looks like a rock tumbler meets a mini lathe that has this diamond grinding wheel that you can use to trim end mills or relieve them and so forth. It's like $700 bucks. I don't think, yeah, this arguably from an ROI standpoint might be worth it because there'll be other benefits to it, but you can cut carbide. You just have the right tools and setup.
00:42:35
Speaker
And your thread mill is a multi, multi-flute, like multi-cut thread mill. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, nice. Yeah. Most of the ones I use are single. We call it single point. Um, we do have a couple of multi-flute ones, multi-point whatever, but yeah. Nice. Yeah. What's, what are you up to today?
00:42:56
Speaker
Get some tires put on my car. I still got winter tires on. Did you know that tires for an electric vehicle, especially the Tesla tires for this one, they have foam on the inside. There's a glued on band of just gray squishy foam. Why? On the side of the tire, it says acoustic because the electric car is so quiet that the foam helps absorb some of the tire noise of rolling
00:43:23
Speaker
It's kind of neat. I was like, what is this? I've never seen that before. Interesting. Are they different tires? I mean, I guess that they are different because of the acoustic foam, but. Oh, it's molded on the side acoustic, but I think it's just a Michelin P zero or something. I forget. Okay. I was like, I don't know. The factory tire. Yeah. Why would an EV need different wheels? But maybe there's a reason. Yeah. Like weight loading and things like that. I don't know.
00:43:48
Speaker
Interesting. So doing that, um, catch up with the Zeiss guy, finish that up, do some programming. What else? Cool. We're installing a Spanco bridge crane over the Okuma, uh, the Genos vertical so that we can replace one of our Scott sky hooks with, uh, that it'll be just be easier and better. And then we are moving into the new building. Ooh.
00:44:17
Speaker
Yeah. What's going in first? What's the plan? Tables and chairs or? We already have some Uline tables bought. We bought all new computers for the training classes, and then we're moving a bunch of the machines over starting this week to set up the training lab, which would be awesome. I ordered a bunch of really cool, nice machining prints and artwork for the walls. Nice. Yeah. Getting going. Like your stuff or?
00:44:43
Speaker
Like your designs. Yeah, I think I'm trying to think I think all the pictures were pictures that we had taken It wasn't necessarily the point but we have we have a lot of good photos and there's that's awesome I order those canvas prints. There's one you've seen the one above. Yeah. Yeah here. It's fantastic. So yeah
00:44:59
Speaker
Yeah. Most of those are between 70 and 100 bucks, so by no means free, but not crazy. It adds so much character to the building and the hallways. Your hallway in the shop has some good artwork up on the walls. It's so legit. It's really cool to see. One of our customers sent us a print, a big canvas print of a Timascus Dama steel knife.
00:45:25
Speaker
That's awesome. He owns a printing company and he owns that knife. So he just printed one of his Instagram pictures and sent it to us and we've got it on the wall. And it's like, so choice. Yeah, like a lot more of that. And honestly, our customers take better photos of our gear than we do. It's so cool. And like, like how Pearson has the lean thing of the month or whatever, he's got the wall of cool. That's cool. Yeah, it's good stuff.
00:45:54
Speaker
Good. I'm off. I'll see you next week. All right, take care. Bye.