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Ep. 18: The Anchor Point
111 Plays10 days ago
Join Curt and Jamie as they discuss their week, including topics such as Launching the Anchor Point, Automating processes, and the trials and tribulations of being an “Influencer”.
Links Discussed:
- Off da bench
https://youtu.be/b4AK7i8Xo40?si=7OZafMhgDNDGYQ-Z - Within tolerance
- https://open.spotify.com/episode/4zcehJsKE8a8HxVV9vT3DX?si=bVkTlPgOQhW_-H1qbyQ1DQ
- DC Tool Holder
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006324925577.
The Lone Machinist:
- Website: https://thelonemachinists.com/
- Merch: https://www.jspeceng.com/online-store
- Patreon: https://patreon.com/TheLoneMachinists
Jamie:
Curt:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:08
Speaker
Welcome to the Lone Machinist podcast, a podcast where it's just you, your tools, and the work. No team, no backup. I'm Jamie from JSpec Engineering, and every episode we're tackling the highs and lows of flying solo in the machining world.
00:00:21
Speaker
And I'm Kurt from Confound a Machine, here to chat about everything it takes to make it as a one-man show in the shop. From grinding and turning to the struggles of running a one-person operation, we're sharing the stories, the tricks, and the challenges that come with going it alone.
00:00:33
Speaker
If you're out there in the shop grinding away by yourself or just thinking about taking a solo plunge, this show's for you.
Personal Catch-Up and Daily Anecdotes
00:00:39
Speaker
So throw in your ear protection and let's talk about life behind the machine.
00:00:47
Speaker
How's good? are you doing today? I'm doing fantastic. How are you doing, Master Jamie? Yeah, I'm doing well. I had a bit of an interesting day doing all sorts of odds and ends.
00:01:00
Speaker
Speaking from the future where you've already finished your day. Yes, in the future. I'm on Monday evening and you're back in Monday morning. Yeah, I know. we We got the day start off. Danica and I actually went for breakfast to just sit and do a planning session because if we don't, we tend to just farty ass around and get nothing done.
00:01:20
Speaker
So we've got quite a lot to get done today and this week. So we went and sat and planned for what has to get achieved. It's also a public holiday.
Challenges in Anodizing
00:01:30
Speaker
yeah So nothing's open because every day is a public holiday in South Africa.
00:01:35
Speaker
well It's freedom day. Freedom day was yesterday, which just so happened to be my winning anniversary. um nice But because it's on a Sunday, we have to take Monday off. Thank you. Yeah, i made it six whole years so far.
00:01:46
Speaker
i dont Yeah, so... So we went this morning, had breakfast, discussed our plans, then climbed in the roof of the garage to put in an extractor for the anodizing setup, which turns out the two and a half liters of acid I bought, I required two tablespoons.
00:02:04
Speaker
Oh, nice. Literally two tablespoons. You tell have some extra. To get my system. I've little bit of extra, but enough to change it up twice more. ah But yeah, I ran anode today. That is something that is definitely not going to stay in my workshop in the long term.
Anchor Points Sales Strategy
00:02:20
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. Especially the quality. Yeah. If it does stay, it's not going to be high volume. Right, right, right. Well, I mean, for the price you're getting at it outs outside sourced. And it looks like it's pretty decent. 100%. Oh, yeah. No, that's really good. There was one or two minor issues, but yeah that that's kind of to be expected from Anodizers.
00:02:43
Speaker
ah They scrapped one part because they had a run and... a There was one part that the bores for the Lang studs, that was the first one I made was my setup part.
00:02:54
Speaker
ah The bores for the studs were 30 microns big. So that one I just scratched the S on the inside as sample part. And then that will get assembled and put in a little, um those little hard cases.
00:03:07
Speaker
And that I'll take around and that'll be my sample unit. Oh, cool. sure If you're like door-to-door salesman of Anchor Point systems. 100%. Well, there are a couple guys in South Africa that I want to go visit with it and just say, hey, this is what I've got to offer.
00:03:22
Speaker
How many of them do have to buy?
Tool Holder Options and Automation Plans
00:03:24
Speaker
I think you should just cold call like vacuum salesman in the past and just knock on every single person's door. That seems like a waste of time. A hundred percent it would be. Yeah. yeah Because that's the thing you said to me a few weeks ago where you work out how much your hourly rate is if you actually do what you're supposed to be doing.
00:03:42
Speaker
That's hitting hard right now because shaking it out on what we can actually do with the anchor point, it makes it a bit easier to say no to people. Yeah, no fair. No, because there are so mean only so many hours in the in the day and the week.
00:03:59
Speaker
So the million-dollar anodizing question is – What you planned for the day? Well, first I want to ask you. So if you're anodizing for the anchor point, are you doing only purple are you going to be doing other colors as well?
00:04:12
Speaker
Only purple. Only purple? Only purple until the purple da da's and then it'll probably go blue. Oh, I gotcha. Yeah, so they they actually mentioned to me that they don't have that supply. It doesn't sp supply the da anymore.
00:04:26
Speaker
The purple. So one day they may just say, oh, there's no more purple. They may not rep replace the da. Gotcha, gotcha. But yeah, I spoke to the guys there. and We can do, like, looking at their color swatches, they said don't don't touch green.
00:04:38
Speaker
um But they've got, like, their color selection is not great. It's red, green, red, blue, orange, black. They don't do gray. They had a hot pink, which maybe.
00:04:50
Speaker
um But, yeah, I like the purple because stands out on the machine. The purple does punch really nicely, yeah. There's a little bit of inconsistency in this batch, like color-wise, but it's also it's it's insignificant. I will just sell them.
00:05:07
Speaker
It's anodizing. to be color mismatches through the batches. So it is what it is. I'll try and send people out color-matched ones when they buy a pair. Yeah. Speaking of buying pairs, our new Patreon, Luke from Fabtastic, just picked up two anchor points.
00:05:25
Speaker
Well, he picked up one and a t-shirt, a chip fan t-shirt, and accidentally got charged double shipping. So emailed him, like, listen, sorry, we had a bug there. Can we refund? He's like, was thinking of buying another one. i'm like cool, here's a coupon for the shipping.
00:05:39
Speaker
So because the anchor points. Oh, nice. For every anchor point you buy, you pay another $70 shipping. So we can ship them to you separately and you can avoid paying duties.
00:05:50
Speaker
Nice. Because under $800. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. yeah but the shina you Anyway, yeah. Thought I'd just shout them out there quickly. We'll shout them out again later in the podcast as well. Oh, that's cool.
00:06:02
Speaker
Yeah. That's cool. so Yeah, I got to bend your ear. What a schlep. I got to bend your ear and see how many pallets you can ship because, yeah, it is not it is not cost effective for me to buy pallets here and machine them. It is like way more cost effective for me just to buy pallets from you. Oh, okay. Yeah, well, ah the maximum you can buy with an anchor point is 10.
Outsourcing Anodizing and Machining Consistency
00:06:20
Speaker
Currently. Oh, wow. That's a few. that that's So it's actually 12 because it's a starter kit plus 10. Oh, wow. Yeah. So we making, I've got to run, that's my plan for tomorrow morning. Set up and run ah blank pallets while I grind the pads because that takes freaking an eternity because some illiterate decided to leave like between comma three and comma five of a millimeter on his parts and now gets to grind that off at 1,000 step downs.
00:06:51
Speaker
which is a bird tedious. Yeah. So I'm going to, I've actually got blister on my finger from doing two of them. So I'm going to probably put a bit of time and effort into automating the back and forth on my machine so that I can just back and forward. i don't have to spin the thing by hand.
00:07:06
Speaker
And then the next batch, I'm going to hold a much tighter tolerance. I'm going to hold it at a comma one of a mill and then just take that comma one off. Nice. ah john Oh, that's cool. We're learning things as we're making more and more of them.
00:07:19
Speaker
Yeah, but like said, that's how it works. you just You never know until you start cranking through. Yeah, so I'm looking at ways to try and... We haven't had reliable yeah reliability issues while making 16 units, but I think when we go to 50, we may end up having some reliability issues.
00:07:38
Speaker
Just on the precision balls, so I'm looking at tiny boring heads. Okay, okay. And then just like leave it set up as a tool or something?
00:07:51
Speaker
Yeah, so they, yeah, i'm just busy dying in the background here. ah So I found one that does nine to 10 millimeter. So it's like one millimeter range, and then 14 to 17 millimeter.
00:08:01
Speaker
So then they'll be set up in a tool holder, they live there. And once it's dialed in, you shouldn't need to really adjust it. Ever. I mean, we're cutting 11. So I was thinking of getting a 9 to 10, a 10 to 11, and a 14 to 17.
00:08:18
Speaker
So the pallets can be done with the 10 to 11 or 10 to 12. The bodies can get done with the 9 to 10, and the laying studs can be done with the 14 to 17. Cool, cool. Yeah, like interpolating is working.
00:08:35
Speaker
The problem is it works right up until it doesn't. So I'm just trying to... trying to get out ahead of that. And that one's super expensive either. They're like $60 a boring head.
00:08:47
Speaker
Oh, that's reasonable. Yeah, that's totally reasonable. That's with two inserts. So basically a lifetime supply of inserts because I'm cutting aluminum. Like realistically, it's a lifetime supply of inserts.
00:08:59
Speaker
So yeah, I've been shopping around for those and just starting to plan and line up everything for the the second batch of anchor points. Sick. so Cool. Cool.
00:09:11
Speaker
So yeah that's, uh, oh yeah. So tell well, why do you have anchor point video in the, and Oh, that's basically what I worked on as your, I just shot the video for your anchor point on my machine, which is, yeah, I was i was quite impressed as a ah third party person who is, I mean, technically I did get the beta unit, um but ah i was I was happy to like test it and see if it worked properly. And I was super impressed with the repeatability of it. So yeah, shot a video of it, which is actually doing quite well. So I'm quite pleased with that. And ah yeah, it's kind of worked lovely for my purposes.
00:09:46
Speaker
ah Interest form literally doubled. Oh, sos you cool, man. like no ah I was literally sitting with the family on on Saturday night. We had a quiz night. I was with them.
00:09:58
Speaker
And every time a new person signed up, I was just shouting out a number.
Influencer Experiences and CNC Programming Tips
00:10:02
Speaker
And it was just incrementing. I was like, sweet. So that seems to have really pushed a lot of people to the interest form.
00:10:10
Speaker
We'll see how many of how much of that translates to sales over the next few hours. Nice. Yeah, exactly. Different camera. My cameras are switching around on me. I don't know what's going on here.
00:10:23
Speaker
Your computer's possessed, Kurt. ah Something is not happy today. There's all kinds of gremlins. Anyway, you can still see me, I guess. Or hear me anyways. I can hear you, so it's fine. ah yeah so like You said to me that video was going live in two hours. i'm like, hmm, well, I'm not going to be able to go to bed now because in my mind, the thing is going to like you gotta measure and it's going to spin on the freaking spot or something.
00:10:46
Speaker
like In my mind, I'm assuming it's going to be worst case scenario. But yeah, like my testing my testing gave pretty similar results to what you experienced. Yeah. With the equipment I have, I couldn't measure any deviations.
00:11:01
Speaker
Right, yeah, yeah. And I was, what the fuck, don't want to put, sorry, fixing cameras. um Yeah, like i I was assuming if I could get less than five tenths of repeatability, um that was that was golden. And yeah, I was seeing like one tenth, which is, I mean, so um and that might just be, but yeah, and that was that was both palettes. So it wasn't just like I fluked out.
00:11:20
Speaker
And that was me just dropping them on and like not tweaking them or, you know, loading them. Any of yeah any of the dirty tricks you can build to make them more accurate. Right. Yeah. I assume that I'd have to play that. Yeah.
00:11:33
Speaker
Yeah. And even pallet to pallet, I had a one 10th. I mean, they were machined in place. So that would just be, that would probably just be related to the machine, not related to the pallet, but yeah. See like a one 10th deviation from pallet to pallet. So yeah, super, super pleased with that. That'll work well. That's an insanely small amount of,
00:11:48
Speaker
Yeah. dv not Like way better than what it's listed to be. Yeah. Well, and like one 10th, like you have a bore that's like, you put, ah make a pin in a bore and make the bore one 10th over. It's hard to get the pin in. So like it's, yeah, I was, I was impressed.
00:12:03
Speaker
So yeah, i I noticed on your, I watched your video and then I saw your fixture. You're actually, you've got th through holes in the nut is, I thought you had threaded the fixture and put in a lock nut, but it's just the nuts holding the screw in.
00:12:16
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, and like I was just worried if I torque that screw too much, it's going to undo. but I was like, I'll just try this, and worse come to worse, and it works fine. so Okay. Have you made any screws since or not?
00:12:28
Speaker
I have six of the little tiny end mills that I just picked up this morning. When we're done with this podcast, I'm going to put them in the shrink fit holder, and I'm going to run the new tool pass and see how many of my expensive tools I can blow up.
00:12:41
Speaker
Nice. Yeah. Hopefully ah not very many of them. I would like to not blow up that many. Yeah, they're like not they're not heinously expensive, but I think they're 30 bucks a pop or yeah, 30-ish bucks a pop. So it kind of sucks to kill them.
00:12:54
Speaker
I don't actually know what my ball and mills cost me. I'm going to assume it's somewhere in the range of $10. ten dollars I'll go through three of them in five minutes.
00:13:06
Speaker
who Turns out linear shafts are hell of a lot harder than a dowel pin. Oh, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Three of them in a row. And then i went to my 20 millimeter half feeder and that just chugged through everything.
00:13:19
Speaker
No problem. Nice. Yeah. Like not the best surface finish, but guess what? It's on a non-contact face. It doesn't matter. So yeah, no tough but that's on the list for tomorrow is to go get a EDM stone to just break all the edges on those and then they can get pressed in.
00:13:36
Speaker
So we are literally pressing together anchor points. Probably as you listen to this podcast, we're starting to assemble because that is the agenda for tomorrow. ah So we are plowing through those and then we've got to go have meeting with the guys who supply the springs because I need to know that I can have a steady supply of springs.
00:13:56
Speaker
Because I can't. ah What's happening with your springs? ah so I have to follow up with my spring people. So yeah, thanks for the reminder. No worries. So yeah, i got to we discussed that chunk.
00:14:07
Speaker
um Yes. Six millimeter shrink fit. ah Was it shrink or hydro? Oh, sorry, hydro. Hydro. Yeah, yeah. um so that was $529 excluding sales tax.
00:14:21
Speaker
Ooh, that's up there. Yeah. A little bit rough. Like literally double the price of the 12-mall. e so i'm like thank you what was the gauge length on it like was it a big long taper like slim nose it was uh 70 70 okay like a three inch
Tool Touch-Off and Machine Setup Improvements
00:14:40
Speaker
oh yeah two point two point something it was fucking stubby so i'm like okay no screw that shit uh for that i can literally buy 20 holders from china and yeah just dedicate them to different things so that's what i'm gonna do
00:14:54
Speaker
Cool. um And if I go the boring bar route, I'm then going to use the world's worst holders. I'm going to use side lock holders.
00:15:06
Speaker
I know. Side lock holders? Yeah, why not? It's a boring bar. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, you're fine with it. So who gives a shit if it spins out? um So yeah, they're available locally and pretty cheap. And good quality for the price.
00:15:20
Speaker
So i think I might just go buy three dedicated side locks for that and then go from there. Nice. Yeah, that might be the way. for percent yeah For something like that word it doesn't matter, for sure. Yeah, where it doesn't really matter. Like I'm also trying not to, there's like there's a bunch of stuff I need to order for the next batch of the anchor point, but I'm trying to just, I don't want to be waiting to machine bodies for two weeks while I wait for tools to come in.
00:15:45
Speaker
So I'm trying to just find a balance of how going to tackle it. Cause I do want more tool holders mostly so that I can leave certain things set up like all my thread mills and all my common drills. Like today I spent 40 minutes looking for a 5.5 drill.
00:16:02
Speaker
Cannot find the drill, cannot find the tool tag. I'm like, what the hell? I used it three or four days ago. ah cannot find that tool in my workshop. And it was taken out of the holder to put something into that holder, but I can't find the tool tag and I can't find the drill.
00:16:17
Speaker
So I don't know. I don't know what happened. Like I ended up using a 5.7 mil drill. I just won't tell the customer.
00:16:28
Speaker
No, like they're putting a pop of it through the hole. They're not going to notice. They don't even have a Vernier in that place. So it's really, yeah, they're not going know. So yeah, tomorrow I've got to assemble that because that's got to be delivered tomorrow so I can invoice them because month end.
00:16:43
Speaker
And Danica broke my lathe for me. I was machining those parts. I was on the fifth part. I'm like, keep an eye on the lathe just in case it stalls because we're running a relatively big U-drill and I don't like leaving them unattended, but I was busy doing what I pay my bean counter to do.
00:16:58
Speaker
i was having to recon invoices. I'm like, dude, they were like, oh no, um, This payment is from UDS, but the invoice is for unmanned and drone solutions.
00:17:10
Speaker
They couldn't tie these together. They're for the same fucking amount, and they couldn't tie this together. Now, ended up spending like six hours dealing with bean counting that I shouldn't be doing. My VAT bill went from… i'm just gonna do it in rands because easier from like 32,000 rands down to 24,000 rand because they're double captured things. And I'm like, okay, cool.
00:17:32
Speaker
He's away this week. When you get back, we need a meeting. I need to be, I'm going to be linking my payments going forward because yours are clearly not capable of doing it. So we will do it on a weekly basis now that It'll also, what tends to happen is I'll get a payment from a customer paying on a quote and then forget to invoice them.
00:17:50
Speaker
Cause they don't ask for an invoice and then I'll just forget. And then come. Right, right, right. Come the end of the two month VAT period, the guy's like, there's this payment. What's it for? I'm like, oh, go look, oh shit, forgot to invoice it.
00:18:02
Speaker
So I'm gonna try be a little better at that. But yeah, it was a bit annoying. Like, anyway, she broke my lathe. So she stalled the spindle. so what was the push i'm like i'm gonna escape it's linux you just hit escape instead of the e-stop because you hit the e-stop you lose your motor position right yeah yeah so escape first got there hit escape the z-axis drove i drove the z out um thought okay maybe i've tripped the x-axis so e-stop Re-enabled the drives.
00:18:34
Speaker
Nope, X won't work. so Okay. Leave it for now. Hit the e-stop, went and did some other stuff. Came back, pulled the back cover off the machine so I could get to the X motor. Put my head and I'm like, hey, there's no lights.
00:18:47
Speaker
It's an integrated drive on the motor. One of those okay okay closed loop steppers with the integrated drive on it. So like, ooh, no lights. That's not great. Grab the multimeter, check the power in.
00:18:59
Speaker
There's power. So the motor's dead. And on top of that, I powered the machine up. So the Z-axis home switch was fine for five years.
00:19:10
Speaker
And then it shut the bed like two weeks ago so, three weeks ago. And I had to swap it out. so it shut the bed again. So I went into like into the HAL file in the INR and just disabled all the homing so I could just till the machine QI at home now and run it because I didn't feel like fixing it.
00:19:27
Speaker
So yeah yeah while I was in there, i fixed it and made a little hat for it so it doesn't get full of coolant. um But yeah, I ordered a 12 Newton meter step. So it had a 7.5 Newton meter closed loop. So I was a bit limited on the X axis speed.
00:19:40
Speaker
So I put in a 12 Newton meter. Now I've got 4.2 meters instead of 3 meters a minute, which doesn't sound like much, But when you're running close, that's like close to things, that's a lot of speed.
00:19:52
Speaker
It is truly terrible. Yeah, no no doubt. So yeah, I had a drive in the top of the machine because I had one of the electrical connectors on the NEMA drive. one of the wires got loose and frigging melted the connector.
00:20:07
Speaker
So I just put another drive in and let it run. So then I needed, they didn't have stock of the motor and drive. So I just ordered a motor locally and then opened that drive up, desoldered the pins and soldered the wires directly to it. so
00:20:22
Speaker
So it's running. Bertha is running again. That's good. I say, as it is it living now? So that's good. yeah Bertha made another 12 parts. And I finished machining them this morning, so they get to be assembled in the morning.
00:20:34
Speaker
I've got to put in 32 poprovits and draw some holes, and then those things you can go to the customer at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning. like As soon as traffic is over, I'll go through, because they're in Sanson, which is a total utter shit show at any time other than 11 o'clock in the morning.
00:20:55
Speaker
Like I go there at 11, it takes me 30 minutes to drive there, 30 minutes to drive back. If you go any other time, you're looking at like 45 to two hours. Oh, brutal. Yeah, that's not fun.
00:21:07
Speaker
Yeah, no, I don't i don't like traffic. i try to I try to time all my traveling so that I'm way outside of peak hours because, yeah, nothing feels worse than sitting in traffic. Yeah, totally. No, because you can. That's why you don't sit in traffic.
00:21:20
Speaker
cause you don't have absolutely. Like, that is the whole point. Like, I have no desire to ever commute to work again. Hey, hey. jeez. I know. I love my three stairs. there are four anchor points left.
00:21:32
Speaker
Sick. Yep. Cool. Well, that's on the first match. There's another four being released in, like, a week's time. That's awesome. Yeah. That's awesome. The sprint supplier screwed me.
00:21:46
Speaker
yeah You don't need springs. Don't worry about those. Not important.
00:21:51
Speaker
I'm just busy reading here what... Okay, interesting. Just the bases. No pull studs, no nothing. Interesting. I'll send them a message. They'll be like, oh, you want drugs?
00:22:05
Speaker
think they want to make um a mooring point. So I'll be like, you want the mooring point file? You can have it. I don't mind. yeah Shipping that block of aluminum around the world is going to be a schlep. Like I need to actually do the costing on it.
00:22:18
Speaker
Yeah. Well, with, so with tunnel, it literally, I sent the three beta units out on Thursday afternoon. They arrived Monday morning in the U S it cost me less than it cost me to ship your parcel.
00:22:32
Speaker
That's awesome. You said a 12 kilogram parcel, like it, There's a little bit of back and forth getting to know what the FedEx guys need from me because currently we're shipping on my personal capacity, not with my export ah importer exporter code.
00:22:47
Speaker
So again, going to jump on the bean counter because I spoke to him like a month ago about this. When he gets back and we're like, hey, friend, I kind of need that because I can ship yeah this batch and I can't ship anymore.
00:22:58
Speaker
I can only do 150,000 personal capacity. on my personal capacity So yeah, I'm have to get this. okay. Yeah. There's a limit. Okay. Although my mother-in-law has a, my mother-in-law has an ID number. My mom has an ID number.
00:23:12
Speaker
My brother has an ID number. My wife has an ID number. But yeah, I'd like to just get it all above board and sorted. No doubt. it Yeah, no doubt. It's the things you don't think of. Like, oh, I'll just export all these things. Actually, hang on. The government wants their cut.
00:23:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I remember way back in the day when I would order from like Hobby King when they were like a much smaller company. And then I would always get like a package be like, it's from Chen Filipowski. And I'm like, I don't know. And it's like, happy birthday, Kurt. I'm like, oh, you guys are greasy. This is how you're getting around all that. So like every package was a birthday present. And i was like,
00:23:49
Speaker
how Okay, whatever. I'm like, I'm not on the hook for this, so I don't care, but like, that's greasy. I got schneid on that one once um where the parcel came in and then they wanted a copy of the invoice and proof of the payment.
00:24:03
Speaker
And then I'm like, I didn't ask them to do this. I ended up having to pay the fine anyway to get my stuff. yeah Like, yeah, we got a little bit. Okay, cool. It's just Justin liking messages. Okay.
00:24:17
Speaker
Oh, before we get too far off the topic of tool holders, ah someone reached out because I think you had mentioned ah but but but but they're called, um I think they're called SDC or DC, call it tool holders. Yes, DC.
00:24:31
Speaker
DC, the ones with like, it's essentially like ah like think it like a 5C and it pulls from the the way back end. have to take the whole tool out to pull it from the back end. um Yes. So Bill Strathen, who runs a company called ah Bruce Charles Designs, he makes like little fidget toys and like jewelry and kind of cool stuff.
00:24:48
Speaker
um he reached out to me on youtube and he said he has a few of those because he's on my heat shrink escapades yes uh and he said they repeat super well like putting tools and he said for how inexpensive they are he's like i have a gang of them and he's like yeah the run out is insane on those so i was like oh okay you're the first person know that actually has bought some and tested them so um i might buy a few just to play with they say three macrons run out is what they say yeah which is yeah there's a local place cnc supports they do the collets their collets are their colors aren't expensive like as far as collets like fancy collets go um just putting this in the paralyzer they're 27 dollars a collet which isn't horrible but they only so they only keep stock of um bt40 or cat 40 holders oh okay which is a bit annoying but yeah ive so yeah the
00:25:39
Speaker
the little boring bars I found, they are actually on the same store that I was looking at those, those two holders from. So might just end up picking some up. don't know. We'll see. I'm trying not to just go full, full money spending at the moment.
00:25:54
Speaker
Yeah. i kind of want, I kind of want to buy some just cause they're so like, they're so long necked and they're so tiny at the end, like for five, like fifth access kind of stuff that were beautiful. The reason I found those was we were quoting a job where we had to reach down 130 millimeters and we had super close wall clearances.
00:26:12
Speaker
So I was going to use I think a C10, 10 diameter shank with a DC six in it. So I can hold a six millimeter end mill so that I could get within two mils of the walls.
00:26:26
Speaker
Like it was silly, silly tight. So I was looking at buying extensions to do that. and then i found the tool holders and all the other paraphernalia yeah but i'm now looking so i'm going to pick up a 12 millimeter hydro from uh shunk to see how that's going to affect my wall finishes and then i mean the wall finishes is fine i just think they can be finer like yeah fair as well may as well try make it better because there's going to be a mirroring point on my machine in the next few days Nice.
00:26:58
Speaker
Because I now have enough bases to actually do that. So I've the material, I'll sort of the material for the bridging plates underneath. So I ended up, i was like, I don't want to hold a six millimeter piece of material and try and machine it. Like it's 130 mils long, 180 mils long. but It's awkward to try and work on this piece.
00:27:17
Speaker
So I'm like, screw that slitting saw. I'm going to machine the thing, machine the O-ring groove into it. Backside chamfer, slitting saw 15 mil in this side, 15 mil in that side because it's 30 mil wide. Done. One off.
00:27:29
Speaker
Part finished. like don't Don't do two ops if you don't have to. So that I've still got to make the bridged the bridging plate for under my anchor point. And the the anchor point that's on the machine now doesn't have the new version of the backer plate.
00:27:45
Speaker
So I can't use the through porting yet, but I will as soon as I put it in, then I can. Yeah, that's, I like that method. And was basically putting QR codes on the backup plates today. Oh, yeah?
00:27:57
Speaker
Yeah, to the quick start guide, which currently takes you to webpage that says, we're getting started. Because haven't got the quick start guide together yet, but it basically points it away. I got done, I could just spin up a page on our website for it so so that I could engrave them and know that it's done and I don't have to think about it anymore. That's yeah weird that's a ticket.
00:28:17
Speaker
Like putting QR codes that are like dynamically accessible or like so you can you can just like update pages. And then I think I think actually AJ back in the day, he put QR codes on all his packaging. I think he got burnt by that because he had like a static QR and it didn't link to another to the like page you wanted or something.
00:28:34
Speaker
I remember that being an issue way back when he was doing the carabiners. Yeah. yeah Yeah, not to call him out, but like, just, i like yeah ah I've been there. I get that. Danica made a spread. She did something for dog tags.
00:28:48
Speaker
do or donte literally for fucking dog where it's got the name of the dog and a QR code. And you scan the QR code and it gives you which vet you must take the dog to, your contact information, and you can go and update it because it's just on a Google sheet.
00:29:05
Speaker
So you can perpetually update it. It's not just baked into the QR code. So right yeah for whatever reason you want to update it, you can. I don't know. Nothing ever happened with that. But yeah, I mean, we were sitting this morning discussing commandeering one of the bedrooms in our house to be the packaging and assembly room.
00:29:23
Speaker
Because the garage, there's just, there's not enough space. I can't, I can't store the boxes in They're going to get ruined. So we are commandeering one of the bedrooms because I mean, this is a four bedroom house.
00:29:37
Speaker
Um, my wife and her two siblings grew up in it. So yeah, like it's not a small house. And, uh, as it's going with children, don't need the rooms. It's fine. Um, so I'm going commandeer the one and make it the assembly room, but then it's okay. Now it's another impact driver and a compressor because I want to be able to test the units as I assemble them.
00:29:56
Speaker
So it's like all these things start to add up, but I think in the long run, it'll be worth very, very worthwhile. Because we also assembly on other products. So it'll be nice to have a dedicated assembly space that has all the required tools.
00:30:11
Speaker
And I'm not, oh shit, I need the impact driver in the garage to to change a job over or something. There's one for that. No, no doubt. yeah I mean, that's, that's something I waffle with too, is like, I have, I don't, I technically have like a dedicated shipping area, but like, I just put all the stuff and then put on a shelf, but like just even taking it off the shelf and putting on the ground and then like packing orders and putting it back. I'm just like, Oh, just like to leave this set up. And I'm like, I don't want to devote that. Like I use it like two hours every few weeks. So I'm like, I don't want to, like, don't want to use up the space for like all that other time. But it's always like when I'm doing it, like, Oh, I would just love to just leave this set up and not think about it. But yeah. you'll have to then my ocd kicks in and i it's yeah it's just so it's just like i don't know yeah it's a bit of a so we i mean we've got a room that literally the vacuum cleaner gets stored in it that's all that's perfect like it's got it's got a table and some other crap in it but it literally we don't use the room so i'm like nope that's going to be used now it's going to be the assembly room it looks over the garden nicely so
00:31:12
Speaker
bonus oh and then you can assemble and prep orders and then we know that the boxes aren't getting covered in schmoo from the garage so yeah yeah that's plans for batch two Nice. And I found a super cute little impact driver. Um, only does a hundred Newton meters, which is still a shitload of talk.
00:31:32
Speaker
Um, it's a 12 volts. It's the same brand that I use, but it's a 12 volts set, not the 20 volts. So I'm going to probably pick one up and just for doing small mighty bots, it's probably going to be perfect as well.
00:31:45
Speaker
Nice. So I might end up buying more than one because I like things. And I was trying to, so I was at I was at our local Harbor Freighty type store. I was trying to look at the table I want to buy for the, for the packing room.
00:31:57
Speaker
Uh, but they didn't have a demo unit, but I saw they had long Allen, uh, Allen key drivers for a quarter inch drive. So like for an impact driver, but they were probably four inches long.
00:32:11
Speaker
and skinny. I'm like, I need that in my life. Today I was having to tighten Martibots for the toe clamps with a fricking Allen wrench because I couldn't fit my impact driver in there because they sit.
00:32:24
Speaker
It's one of the M4 Uniforces and the parts are so close together with the top hats you can just get Allen key in. Nice. Yeah, but it machined all the toe clamps today.
00:32:35
Speaker
They came out really nicely. They look pretty. yeah no I say I like the little pallet you made for them. Just bloop. So like that's where I see the value in the anchor point is when you've got stuff like that that needs to be repeated. your Sure, I could do it in soft jaws.
00:32:48
Speaker
Minor issue. Machinist set of soft jaws every time I want to do it, but why? Then I'm doing one or two at a time. Now I'm doing four at a time. When I need to do it again, I throw it on, I hit go. There's no reset It's done.
00:33:00
Speaker
It's a no brainer. Like I'll probably build a second pallet for that. And I've got build second pallet for the backer and for the piston. Like there's a bunch of pallets i have to build, but, uh, I wanted to prove out all the systems making one of each pallets.
00:33:13
Speaker
And that pallet was made on a one inch material because I accidentally ordered a bunch of one inch material to make pallets when they're meant to be made out of 30 mil material. So they're a bit skinny. Like you gotta be careful. You don't drill through the bottom kind of story.
00:33:30
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's that's part of the reason I also like your pallets is because if I buy the stock here, like when I machine your pallets that you sent me raw, I can machine them to four inch by four inch by like just over an inch because they're like whatever, a hundred and something millimeters. 102 by 29.
00:33:45
Speaker
Right. And then, yeah, exactly. So it's it's all oversized for like my imperial stuff. I'm like, oh it's perfect. But if I go buy bar stock, I'm like, well, now I have to either get like four and a half if I want to machine it to four or like something like four.
00:33:59
Speaker
It is very much so. And like once I have one pallet, I'm going to want them all to be the same. And like, yeah, so I'm just like, you know what? I could just order a bunch these from Jamie and let him buy all the metric material. and So yeah, I'm going to, what I'm going to do now is I think I might make one more tweak to the pallets where our machine, so it's got that step machined on it.
00:34:18
Speaker
I'm thinking of pushing that step right down to the, to like four millimeter from the edge. so they you go So you don't have to take such a long cut around the side to clean it up.
00:34:31
Speaker
Okay. And it's going to be 100 by 100. So maybe I'll be nice and make it 101 for you. I don't care. I'll just make it the next. I'll it the next. because that i'll make it the next I'll make it the next increment down if I have to. I'll make it 3.9.
00:34:46
Speaker
i'll make two three point nine Exactly. Just a little micro pallets. Yeah, mini pallets. The per pallet cost there is act the price on the pallets is insane.
00:34:59
Speaker
Even at $28, we're still making money on them. I can't believe that that is cost effective, but that's fine. I'm not going to complain. No, totally. Yeah. The pulls I've had, I've had to make a change to the design of the pallets because the pull studs that I bought, which were literally the cheapest ones I could buy because it doesn't need any more than that.
00:35:19
Speaker
Um, right the relief on the back of the threads isn't nice. So I've had to tweak the pallet design just a little bit to give clearance for that. But I mean, that's yeah it's one more, that's a little bit deeper. It's not the end of the world.
00:35:31
Speaker
Yeah. So that's, that's my day tomorrow is making 50 pallets. Fun, fun, fun, fun. Well, it's not too bad because I'm goingnna run two at a time. So because I've got the two vases, I'm going to set them both up on G54 and G55 and just let them run while I grind and grind and grind and grind and grind the pads because I left way too much bloody material.
00:35:55
Speaker
I said, I'll to buy you a box of Band-Aids for your little fingies. Yeah, I can't actually, yeah, my finger was sore. like, oh shit, there's a blister. Because I'm literally standing there with the wheel going, yeah. every time going back and forth.
00:36:08
Speaker
So I think I might just take a little bit of time tomorrow morning and get that, get that automation up and running. Like all the bits are there. I figured out how I'm going to do it. um Basically an inductive sensor with ah that triggers with magnets and then a toggle relay unit.
00:36:26
Speaker
So a latching relay unit. So then every time it triggers, it just alternates which direction. So i'm literally on the direction pin. of the stepper drive, I'm just going to put it high or and that nice And then I've got a thing that'll generate at a pulse so I can adjust the speed at which it's grinding. Simplest is better. better yeah Even if it runs a little bit slower, ah don't mind if I'm not having to crank the blade.
00:36:50
Speaker
Absolutely, yeah. I could run 10 times slower. yeah I did consider, like I'm considering for the next batch to actually just build a fixture that takes five or 10 of the pads, take it to my one customer, say, yeah, lick the top, bolt the things on, grind them to the size, please.
00:37:04
Speaker
Because they've got proper grinders that they can just literally set it, say, increment this many down, spark out five times, it goes ching, ching, ching, does it by itself. And right it's not my problem, but I don't know that the surface finish will be what I want.
00:37:18
Speaker
And apparently I'm pedantic. Pedantic is good.
00:37:25
Speaker
Apparently I like to have things the way I want them. So yeah, yeah we'll we'll see as we ramp ramp up production and figure out all of those fun logistical things, like how to squeeze more machines into my little space.
00:37:42
Speaker
Although I was actually, i was trying to stand against my mate Phil's an architect. He designed the work, well, he do ah did a quick sketch of the workshop for me, the new shop that i want to build. So I actually want to get that from him, make a model infusion and start throwing machines in there to see exactly how much space there is.
00:38:01
Speaker
Because there will not be an anodizing setup in there. Yeah, fair. i would It'll be in this garage still. Because I'm never parking a car in my garage ever again. but That's not a thing.
00:38:13
Speaker
No, cars don't go in garages. Yeah, no, that's what tell people. Garages aren't meant for cars. Exactly. Like, they're meant for fancy equipment and things. Yeah. Your car will never pay for your for for itself. Exactly. It's pointless.
00:38:24
Speaker
ah Exactly. Like, oh, you want to buy another CNC machine? We need a car. No, we don't. Car doesn't make me money. CNC makes me money. Priorities here.
00:38:35
Speaker
Be realistic. So, yeah. Oh, I got my gun tape. Oh, yeah, Yep. Just like the water activated tape. Yep. That shit's fucking cool. It's kind of neat stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I kind kind of want a proper machine now, but I will use the cheap one for the interim because the cheap one was like, I got it off of our equivalent.
00:38:55
Speaker
Well, actually we have Amazon. Yeah. Except Amazon is three times more expensive than anything else. Um, So we've got take a lot, which is basically the same thing. Same like next day delivery and all that thing. It was $35 for a dispenser. So I picked one up. Oh yeah.
00:39:09
Speaker
It's just a little bit tedious to use, but it's fine. We're not packing a thousand boxes, so I'll make due. Yeah. um And then I got all my boxes and I got my paper. I bought 26 kilograms of paper. Yeah.
00:39:23
Speaker
i saw that went to a customer put it in his band saw and sorted in his band saw to uh 400 millimeters wide and 200 millimeters wide so the pallets will go out now wrapped in brown paper and that that's how they're going to be protected in their little box cool so that should do the should do the packaging trick for the for those so being fancy making everything recyclable That's nice.
00:39:48
Speaker
Actually, i came across a YouTube channel. like I don't use packing paper. I kind of do want to use packing paper just because how simple it is. But for my packaging, it doesn't work out. um But anyways, this YouTube channel, I think it's called Off the Bench, like DA a Bench.
00:40:01
Speaker
ah He's a 3D printing guy. Runs like a super tiny little 3D printing thing out of his basement. um I've been following his channel because it's kind of vloggy and it's interesting. um But he found like this, I'm sure it's very common. um It's just like cardboard. It's a big reel. It's like yours paper, like a big reel of paper, but it's been pre-cut so that as soon as you start pulling it, it kind of accordions out into like airspace. It's silly, silly expensive.
00:40:23
Speaker
Is it? Okay. Because I'm like, that is so cool. i just kind of like pull it like paper towel and brute it's already like add volume. You have a laser coat. oh yeah I'm not gonna make it but I just like and I'm not gonna use it i thought put a for excuse six six but but afford that's my plan screw that shit I'm not paying for that I know Danica wants me to buy that because it looks really cool it does cool yeah but just like what I paid for my roll my 26 kilogram roll is what you pay for like a two kilogram roll of that paper Okay. yeah it's kind of okay
00:40:56
Speaker
13 X the price. It's silly. So well, and like your product is also like, or like they're heavy. Like the thing he's shipping is little plastic parts that can just easily be suspended. Whereas like you put a pallet in that, it's just going to smash the shit out of it. I've got, I've got boxes. I found boxes. I actually had bought some already, but I bought them in white, which is a bad idea.
00:41:16
Speaker
So I bought brown ones. Basically the 200 mm wide roll of paper, you fold the pallet three times, cut it off, fold the ends in, and then those go on the single side of the box.
00:41:27
Speaker
So the boxes are fold over the box. So it's literally got three layers of cardboard on two of the sides and one layer on the others. And then the the scrunched up ends go to the one side of the one layer so that it's nice and padded.
00:41:40
Speaker
And then each box gets two pallets in it. so And then those get stacked inside a double wall stock box. So I have a system. It's not as pretty and elegant as what I had, but it'll do the trick.
00:41:53
Speaker
If it protects it and gets it to the person and it doesn't look like a bag of sticks, yeah, I'm sure it's ample. It's a box of boxes now, but it'll be yeah adequate a good luck. That should be fine. Nice.
00:42:05
Speaker
So tell me about being an influencer. So I have no like in the past, ah like on YouTube, I you always have companies that reach out to you and try to sling their whatever baloney product. and they're like, hey, do you want to do a YouTube video on this? And it's usually something that's like, at least for me with a small, small ish channel.
00:42:27
Speaker
um It's never something that's like super relatable to your content. But as of late, I don't know it's if it's because of the reduced sales to the US or if it's because my channel's grown a little bit or or what's going on.
00:42:40
Speaker
But I had a bunch of people reach out, um like a whole gang of them, which is kind of rare for me. And it was really cool products where i was like, oh, these are super related to what I want to do. So i'm like, am I going to sell my soul to all these people? Like, of course I am.
00:42:52
Speaker
So... I reached out to like every one of them. They're like, here, do you want our like low end little product here? I'm like, no, I want your highest end product because I will make use of this, but I will do an, like I will do an honest video of it because it's going to be useful to me.
00:43:05
Speaker
But if it's shit, i'm going to tell people it's shit. If you agree with that, yeah let's, let's go. And everyone's like, yeah, we're willing to do that. So I'm like, I think they're only doing it just basically to get like the algorithm to pull up their name. Like, I don't think they actually care about what the content of the video is. They just want more eyeballs. They just want more eyeballs on a job.
00:43:23
Speaker
Yeah, like search algorithm optimization. They want that name to come up more often. um But yeah, so I think, ah I don't know, every every single one of them I just reached back to. And like one was ah like a fiber laser company. I'm like, yeah, send me your best fiber laser. Another one was a big CO2 laser. I'm like, send me your biggest CO2 laser.
00:43:37
Speaker
And ah another one was a vacuum cleaner. What I'm hearing is you can build a new workshop just to hold all the YouTuber things. Yeah. No, and I'm going to have like a bunch of banners of all the companies that I've sold my soul to. um And then there's going to be about like an 18-minute intro to every one of my videos where I have to thank every single sponsor.
00:43:56
Speaker
And in a driveway, everybody that's interested in my content. So like, no, I'm not doing that. um But yeah, just a bunch of... Like one one was a robotic vacuum cleaner slash mop. And I was like, hey, I'll use that always mop the floor in here. I'm like, I want a robot mop. and it was like really expensive. So i was like, yeah, let's, and it has like little legs that can like stand up and walk over cables and then sit back down and keep mopping. So i was like, sure. I'm like, if you don't care if I tear this thing apart and be like, this is absolute crap, don't buy this or like, no, it's really cool. It's useful. So anyways, so falling down that rabbit hole.
00:44:27
Speaker
So it's kind of been, it's kind of been fun. Yeah, no, that's interesting that they, they reaching out now that all the fun stuff is happening. i think I think that's why. It's the only reason I can kind of think because, like, i don't know.
00:44:41
Speaker
Maybe. I don't know. i'm just busy ah Justin is busy shipping off the other two anchor points. So I just want to quickly respond to him. Yeah. Just throw it in a bag.
00:44:56
Speaker
ah Considering what I did to those boxes, I think it'll be fine. He's taking it to FedEx, so it's also FedEx. They're not... they're not going to go full Ace Ventura on it.
00:45:10
Speaker
Yeah, no, exactly. so And it can. I Ace Ventura did it in my kitchen. And the one talent had a thing on the corner that hads be that was going to be machined away anyway. That was after I kicked it around the kitchen for a while and dropped it from like this high multiple times. yeah So yeah, I'm not too phased. And they're beta units, so if they are arrive in a damaged box, I'm not really phased.
00:45:33
Speaker
It's not a custom No, I think... so Mine arrived here minty. I think one of them when I went to actually machine it, I noticed like the top corner of one had like the tiniest micro ding, but I'm like, I don't know if I honestly dropped that in here. It could also be my material supply just throwing shit around.
00:45:48
Speaker
Could have been because it was like, it's a saw cut edge and I'm like, it was like 10th hour and I'm like, that's going to be machined off anyways. But I was like, that's the only piece of damage I could find. yeah So my cousin, I was giving her shit over the weekend because I bought round aluminum from her.
00:46:00
Speaker
And I'm like, what happened to the one piece that had been crushed? I think it had got put in a vase or something. i don't really care. I was machining it all away, but I was giving her bit of, and I'm like, whoever's running your cutting, you just need to get that ah to not drink at work.
00:46:15
Speaker
she's like a car My 16 mil material, I ordered a 90 diameter, 16 thick, came in between 25 and 15 millimeters across the 18 pots.
00:46:27
Speaker
I'm like, you're going to drink less. So I had to program everything at 25 mil thick just so that I wouldn't all of a sudden take a 10 mil cut. Right. Yeah. So next time she said, no, next time complain. I'm like, okay, next time I'll take a picture. Good luck to you because this one was 16.1 and this one was 16.2.
00:46:45
Speaker
I'll give them my full on. Like there's a permanent note on my account there that I will not accept material that is oversized on my tubing because they've screwed me twice with that. So no, it won't happen again.
00:46:58
Speaker
Yeah. yeah So yeah, I got my Anno set up running again. That little Zoll fan I bought really isn't as sucky as I was hoping. I bought one last Tuesday morning.
00:47:09
Speaker
I think I'm going to to bigger, a more sucky one. But it's moving air. Like I could see the, because I made a little, i don't if you saw the Instagram story. I made a little shroud above the ceiling tank and the acid tank.
00:47:21
Speaker
Just rise and suck it, push it through the roof. which had like two inches of dust between the plastic and the roof. Cause I had to cut it to like duct it out of the side of the roof, like 40 years worth of dust.
00:47:34
Speaker
Um, yeah. yeah So I got the anode up and running has used like a whole two tablespoons of my two and a liters of acid. And then when I was in there, I'm like, hang on, I've got a piece of titanium. Let me just make a titanium crossbar.
00:47:47
Speaker
So if you use a titanium crossbar across your acid and you have titanium racking, you don't have to connect a wire. You connect it to the crossbar and you just drop it on and can it connects. yep the greatest thing I have ever done in my life.
00:48:00
Speaker
I ran eight runs today. Normally I'm fiddling with wires. i just grab it off the rack and I'm done. doe yeah amazing Like it's those small things that I should have done two years ago and did now. And I'm like, damn it. I should done this two years ago.
00:48:13
Speaker
So I know that was like a but black out of my ano setup and it's new acid. The pH is correct on my dars. I'm like, I'm kind of getting over the snout.
00:48:26
Speaker
So I mentioned to my customer last week, i'm like, listen, I'm going to start sending this stuff out for anodized. I'm going to manufacture 100 of each, and I'm going to have 33 of each of them anodized in the three different colors, and that is the color options you'll have. I'll send you some samples just so you know what to expect on the new process, but we're not going to anodizing in-house anymore on these because it's just not it's not worth the time.
00:48:51
Speaker
It's straight up not worth the time. Like it was my entire day today. Anodizing. I ran a seven or eight and I runs at 45 minutes in the acid tank. It eats up your day.
00:49:03
Speaker
Yeah. TDS. Yeah. yeah Like, yes, I can leave it alone for like 35 minutes at a time, but that's 35 minutes. It's not a lot of time to do other stuff. Well, yeah, and it's just, it's kind of one of those things where it's always, it's just like a little bit of mental load on your brain. It's just like, it's always using a little bit of CPU to be like, okay, that, I got to come back in 30 minutes.
00:49:22
Speaker
I programmed that pallet for the toe clamps and then I missed prepping the next batch of anode. The last batch had run, I'm just prepping it. So then I had to shift my cycles around and get it into the tank like 20 minutes later than I wanted to. So i ended up running 20 minutes later than I planned, but I mean, that's just what it is. um yeah So yeah, that that's something im and I think I'm just going to order material, make a hundred of each of the models of mag bases, have them anodized. And when they want to order, I say, this is what I have in stock, pick what you want.
00:49:53
Speaker
but And when I sell out, I make more kind of story. Cause I mean, we move maybe a hundred mag bases a year. It's not like we move a lot of them. Okay. so And the cost of it is like of the, the material cost and anode cost is not significant. Like I can have, I can swallow that and have it sitting on my shelf for two years.
00:50:13
Speaker
Right. right right It's not the end of the world, but yeah, that was, that was that. And then nice using a,
00:50:26
Speaker
jesus Oh, you've got some interesting topics here this week. good First, let's find out why tool names are the best. And then we'll get into the one below that. So this is you, once again, showing me the light, reading the gospel of Jamie and Jamie telling me that on Siemens, you can use words. And then I just listened to, I think the latest with Intolerance with ah Zap and um ah Justin. she said Why do I always forget that guy's poor name? I talk to him all the time.
00:50:54
Speaker
Sorry, Justin. Anyways, that was a really good one. ah Highly suggest that one. was super entertaining. um Yeah, I already listened to it. Yeah, everyone have to we have to spam Zap to get him to ah yeah rage on on Titan because he got into it a little bit and I was like, oh let's go, let's go. and the he So I was thinking of trying to get him in here so that we could let him rage about Titan.
00:51:15
Speaker
yeah ah Besides the point, they were talking about tool naming and how people have all kinds of like messed up libraries and use different numbers and people that use the same number for different tools. Just all kinds of madness. And then... ah ah they were saying like Heidenhine and um Siemens as well is just like names.
00:51:32
Speaker
And that is the way, like, I didn't realize how amazing that is. Like I infusion now, like whenever I add a new tool, I just, whatever number of fusion says my next tool is going to be, it's like, okay, 17, like I don't care, 22, whatever it doesn't, for me, it doesn't matter.
00:51:45
Speaker
And all my tools are names. Oh, that is amazing. Cause I go in the carousel wherever doesn't matter. The machine knows where they are. And like, I can look at the number and I don't have to be like, okay, 42 is always a face mill. It's like, nope, I can see this one is called face mill. Like it works for my brain. I don't have to like try to learn machine.
00:52:02
Speaker
Like the machine can learn my language and yeah. Killer. It's so good. yeah It's so good. I'm still on numbers. My tools are just, have um I know most of my numbers. I don't want to go and rework my whole library. That's the only reason I'm still using numbers.
00:52:17
Speaker
fuck I get it. And the problem is like if I ever buy another machine, it's either going to have to be like Siemens or Heidenhain it's going to have to be a control that can support names because I'm like, I'm not going back to numbers. like its Numbers are just tedious.
00:52:31
Speaker
machines i'm looking at our own siemens is the only acceptable controller in my mind yeah yeah i like my siemens a lot so yeah i was uh i need to i think i think dylan's off this week my mate dylan who works wd hern because i tried to phone him last week and he wasn't there um or he didn't answer and then didn't respond so i think he turned his phone off so he doesn't get bugged um i want to get some information on that sino drill tap center Right, right, right, right.
00:53:00
Speaker
I found a little bit of info. It's a 600 millimeter travel machine on X. Okay. So like somewhere between the 510 and the 720. 10 KVA, so I'll probably put it on its own phase converter just to be safe.
00:53:12
Speaker
And then, yeah, I'm looking to, how can I make lots of anchor points? That is what's that is what's on the on the mind at the moment. Like, I can't tell my current customer base to just go fly a cart, unfortunately. Yeah.
00:53:28
Speaker
like so i have to try and squeeze it in between but that's where the anchor point comes in where it's a zero point system i can just switch in in and out the whole point of zero point system yeah yeah okay before before we get into your warranty let's quickly shout out our patreon so we have a patreon where you can support the podcast uh the patreons get the after show which is where kurtz and i are usually very um tame and family friendly about everyone's favorite boomtastic youtuber um gonna shout out our top tier patreons here we got a new one this week so we've got jade from benchmark 20 and we've got luke from fabtastic thank you guys very much then we've also got some other lower end or lower tier patrons and they are all uh greatly appreciated they literally make the show happen these days uh like now the patreons now paying for the show which is awesome
00:54:24
Speaker
So yeah, thanks, patrons. You can also pick up some merch for the for the podcast on our online store. There's a link on the podcast webpage, which is theloanemachinists.com.
00:54:36
Speaker
There's also a companion guide, which goes Jamie to English. um And a wall of fame where you can see the fancy Patreons' names. But yeah it's yeah, let's see what what Kurt is using up all the warranty on.
00:54:51
Speaker
Oh, so um normally like I like to try to figure out things if there's like a error or an alarm or something weird with my machine. But right now, since it's under warranty, I just like every single error. If it's even even if I think I could probably figure it out, I'm just like, nope.
00:55:04
Speaker
I just like talk to my distributor and'm like, hey, I'm getting this thing. I don't know what it is. Help me. um I don't think I'm his favorite person, but he's also like kind of slightly ah like he knows that I kind of got a a ah bum deal when we ran this machine. So he's pretty like willing to help out. um So anyways, I've been shaking this tree a bunch lately, but it's just kind of one of those fun things where it's just like, yeah, I can leverage someone else's time right now. And it's just, yeah, lots of little minor, nothing actually all that interesting. I shouldn't even put it in here because it's all nothing interesting to talk about, but just like leverage other people's time if you can, because you're paying for it. So you might as well i might as well capitalize on it.
00:55:42
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. um But to follow up on that, um so they're sending me, yeah, my tool, like my tool touch off thing was slightly sticking. I know I can open it out and like wash it and that's probably going to fix I think it's just some like dried coolant there that's kind of jamming up the little um yeah mechanism.
00:55:57
Speaker
But I don't like i don't want to it's under a warranty. Like, just give me a brand new one. I'm not going to mess with it. And then and then worse kind worse. so I clean It doesn't work. and then they're like, well, you opened it. So now it's yours. So they're sending me a brand new one. um But speaking of Titan, what I think I might do since... So there's two things I'm going to do One thing I'm going to... Because you told me like to spin the tool holder so it's basically not just getting inundated with coolant, like right on the open side where the little kinematic coupling is.
00:56:25
Speaker
Yeah, so... um ah Just one thing. Do make sure you put it in enough that you can actually touch off your bloody tools. So, man, I can't touch 50 millimeter tool. Mine isn't into my table enough.
00:56:37
Speaker
So I've got to tell it that my face mill is not 50 mils. My face mill is 46 millimeters and then it'll be able to touch it off. Yeah, yeah, no doubt. um yeah I'm just lazy. I don't want to recalibrate so Yeah, and that's like i same thing. I have mine running the absolute edge of the travel. So it's like, okay, well, I don't want to eat up anything, which got me thinking.
00:56:57
Speaker
First thing I'm going to do is, yeah, I'm going to turn it, obviously. And then I'm going to print a little bracket to help deflect the coolant so it's not like blasting into the one area where there's a... Exactly, a penis shield for it. And it's the Renishaw thing for the people that... 100% I have, yeah. um yeah For the people that don't know what you're talking about, it's ah ah reny shield that a that AVE fixed to make it say penis shield. Yeah.
00:57:19
Speaker
Well, and the difference from the Renishield is like that one covers the whole thing so you can't actually use it. I'm going to make it so it covers... You can straight in, can't you? Oh, I don't know. I thought... Yeah, I think so. think it's got a small dingus that you can come in with like a half-inch tool and still fondle the probe. Gotcha.
00:57:35
Speaker
yeah That's exactly what I want. It's just a little itty bitty hole so I can just boop get a tool in there for tool touch off. And then what I think I'm going to do since I only use tool break on like, I'm probably only going to use it on like one or two of my like production things.
00:57:47
Speaker
ah I think I'm going to go the route of Titan and build a, they had like a magnetic. Yeah, to the kinematic coupling. Yeah. Yeah, a big kinematic coupling for the actual setter. So on the table, you just have a little mount base of magnets in it, and it just goes click.
00:58:00
Speaker
And then when you don't need it, you click it to the side of the machine. On your machine, doesn't matter. Not an issue. On an X5, I have no freaking table space. So like I want to use up all the table space I possibly can. um So yeah, I'm thinking about doing that. I'm not certain on it yet, but it kind of seems fun. I don't know that I would... yeah I guess if you're only checking in Z, sure.
00:58:19
Speaker
But if you're checking diameter on it, then I would i would want to but i only comp I only comp diameter for fit on a couple of things and I don't ah don't measure it. I yeah i mean you've done i could, I guess. I like the results I got, so I just ignore it.
00:58:34
Speaker
like that That's one of the things on the list to do for the anchor point now. So generally speaking, I don't program with where comp, like ever. I use stop to leave. I'm now going to go through and dedicate, so obviously boring heads,
00:58:49
Speaker
If that, if I decide not to go that route, I'm going to dedicate a six millimeter tool in a holder with a different number that gets a where comp. So all the, all the finishing will be done like on the boards will be done with that tool.
00:59:00
Speaker
It's a different number. yeah And they're all programmed with where comp so that I can competent on the machine. And then I'll probably do my favorite thing and add a, if statement with a go to. So in the beginning of the program, I can say jump to redo ball.
00:59:14
Speaker
yet one enable it it then looks at the statement jumps all the way down to that part part of the code and starts running from there just so that at it's it's stable production code i'm not reposting just because i need to open up a ball yep no reposting is the devil that's the reason i use where comp ah repost all the time like i'm coming out of fusion no no coming out of fusion my code is stable as hell like my workflow between fusion and the lk I have near a hundred percent trust on it. If the first tool doesn't crash, the rest aren't crashing.
00:59:45
Speaker
Like unless I've done something really stupid, but like if I'm running, if I'm running a job where I need halfway through, oh shit, the chamfer is the wrong size, go post from the chamfer down, run that finish. Then I'll repost the whole program, hit go. And I know it's fine.
01:00:00
Speaker
Um, I know i think blocks, block search and where comps faster. think. Hmm.
01:00:08
Speaker
I don't know. It depends. Like on production, yes, i'll agree with you. But on one-off side, no, on one-off side, I just post what I need. like went I need to add in my post to add a G599, G0, X0, Y0 at the end of my code by default.
01:00:24
Speaker
But I just couldn't be bothered. It's like... 20 seconds to type it in. So I just add that to my code by hand. Usually it also lets me add in some sneaky stuff there so I can see which version of the code I'm running because I'll post and then not sure if the new one's pulled in.
01:00:40
Speaker
So that lets me just tell it go to like X one and then I know, okay, cool. That's pulled in the latest version. Although I should probably just go to the timestamp mod to my post.
01:00:52
Speaker
on that ah On that post I send you, it has ah I think it has an option right in Fusion that just auto, ah like X0, Y0, to bring your table to wherever the hell you want. Oh, okay. I must have a look. I haven't even pulled my post in.
01:01:03
Speaker
takeck Yeah, take a Gander, because i i'm running I use that all the time. I modded my post so that my coolant turned on earlier. yeah So my coolant would turn on when the tool was down.
01:01:15
Speaker
The machines are bloody fast. It was halfway through the cut and melts. I was stir welding. So now as soon as it starts to spindle, it turns coolants on. And then today, before I turned my machine on, I cleaned out the um there a sprinkler valve on my main coolant line that when you use the wash down gun, the main nozzles don't turn on.
01:01:36
Speaker
That thing gets jammed up constantly, jammed up on the on position. So this morning before i ran the machine, I put a bucket under it, opened it, took all the shavings out, closed it, and it's working again, which is really nice to have washed out and not have to hide the head of the machine behind the vases so that the coolant doesn't spill out. Yeah, I played that game, yeah.
01:01:56
Speaker
yeah I was playing that game last week I'm like I need to do this but it's something I can't do because the check valve is also not super checky so yeah it drains most of the cooler but not all of it and it's more than the bucket I have that fits under there yeah so if I forget to do it in the morning I can't do it during the day because I can't get rid of enough of the coolant fast enough like yeah it's the joys of big machines I kind of want to do something. I don't know. just spitballing this idea. um I thought about like printing. Because since like the nozzles on our machines are A, like on the head like yours that you rebuilt, which I'll eventually do here. And then the static nozzles that are just mounted in the machine. So they kind of point to a fixed Z position, which works good for most of my tooling.
01:02:37
Speaker
But what i kind of want to do is I want to 3D print for essential, for what it is. ah Call it a slinger and put it in like, ah put it in a tool holder so that when I'm done a cycle, assuming I don't need to use all the tools in my carousel. Yeah.
01:02:50
Speaker
I'll have this like slinger um so it can change change to that, which you'll just put it right in the position of the coolant flow and then it'll turn the coolant on and then turn at like 10 RPM or like 100 or something like that. way yeah And then just drive the machine around the enclosure and just completely wash down the enclosure for me. i Like I think at the end of the day, that would be, I would like that. I'm kind of totally with that idea.
01:03:09
Speaker
It's less of an issue on the X5 because the X5 is so so narrow. But mine's got these quite shallow sides. And if I'm running a face mill, I end up with shavings that interlock.
01:03:21
Speaker
And then you've got to literally just scrape them down with a stick or use the the water gun, break them up, and then use the wash down to wash them down. But I've got a spot in the one corner that I just, I cannot get the flow right on my wash down to get all the shavers.
01:03:37
Speaker
I've got splits and all sorts of shit going on. I just can't get it right. It's a bit annoying. I should caveat this with um like when I was machining your pallet, it's like the first time I ran a quarter inch tool in the X5. For me, that's a big tool.
01:03:50
Speaker
And I took a full depth of cut of like one inch. So I had big shavings for once. And I was like, yeah I opened the doors and I'm like, oh, there's shavings on the table. What is this? I'm like, oh, this is what regular people have. Like my shavings are like, you know, tiny, tiny, tiny. They just go away.
01:04:05
Speaker
So I ran into that recently. Well, with the anchor point bodies, because I'm doing a 45 length of cuts with a normal long end mill. Normally everything's done with a roughing end mill. Since I've had the roughing end mill, shavings haven't been a problem.
01:04:18
Speaker
Like did a job. I had to stop every five minutes to literally grab handfuls of shavings out of the machine before they jammed up the Y axis. And now with the with the roughing end mill, it makes tiny shavings.
01:04:30
Speaker
Although my eight millimeter rougher, if I'm slotting, it makes shavings that are long enough to interlock. ah So they then, and so I can make these bushels around my machine, which is really, and they also stick up and go into your finger really well.
01:04:45
Speaker
Nice. Yeah. like of an edge you fucking Like this curly thing in your finger. It's really unpleasant. but Yeah, shaving. Chip management's a big thing.
Chip Management and DIY Solutions
01:04:55
Speaker
I kind of want to make a chip conveyor out the back of my machine because I'm tired of going in and scraping it with the with a little flat rake thing I made. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:05:06
Speaker
Especially with running anchor point bodies. I kind of want to get a bit better at running those. The problem is my machine's against the door. So either i cut a hole in the door and have the conveyor going out or have it that i can change the conveyor in and out.
01:05:17
Speaker
So have it that because it's like the same as your machine you've got the two troughs that run out the back. My thought was to make two troughs that come from that to a central one and then take that whole chip pan out.
01:05:28
Speaker
And so if you want to run with the chip pan, you put the chip pan back in. If you don't want the conveyor, if you want to convey the conveyor, put the chip pan, push the conveyor in, and then you can run and not worry during the day. But yeah, we'll see yeah see how much of a problem that actually is in the near future.
01:05:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Chip management is an issue when you're making 100 kilos in four days. Yeah, no doubt. Yeah. Yeah. I need to actually, i need to pump my tank out because I'm fairly certain it's 30, like 30 to 40% shavings in that tank right now. Because I keep running low coolant and it's full.
01:05:59
Speaker
So yeah, most the volume is taken up by shavings. So Monica will get to do her thing. I think after I run the pallets, I'll run Monica. Nice. Although, mean, it's literally half an hour and the tank is cleaned out. It's just, yeah, finding half an hour where actually want to work.
01:06:19
Speaker
so um I'm super lucky. I just make no chips. So my little my little filter paper is in the chip trays. like I'm sure I could eat. all the like not eat I'm sure I could empty my coolant tray or my sump and eat out of it. like I don't think there's a single chip in there just because i make so few chips. I can hold a lot of chips I make in my mouth.
01:06:38
Speaker
The...
01:06:41
Speaker
the chip tray fills up with chips and then overflows the back. So i've actually got mine pulled forward, so it overflows into my tank. Because if it's all the way back and it does that, it overflows over the tank. So mine flows into the tank, but where it overflows is where I've got secondary filters.
01:06:57
Speaker
But then those fill up and they overflow. So yeah, it's a bit of a thing. Because yeah I've got to take shavings the first week of next month, and taking all my all my shavings, get a... get some beer money because there there's quite a bit of shavings.
Supply Challenges and Production Optimization
01:07:11
Speaker
Like I've got half of one of those IPC totes again.
01:07:14
Speaker
I've got a gallon bucket full of drops, aluminium drops and one of steel drops. I don't have that much brass, which is weird, but yeah. Normally I have a lot of brass, but the brass customer has been slacking and they were told in no uncertain terms, order 500 or don't order again of the of the one project.
01:07:34
Speaker
like Sorry. Fine. getting paid on promises ain't working anymore. Yeah, no, it's like I said, hard to pay anybody else. Yeah. Oh, so I'm making gripper rails.
01:07:45
Speaker
I was at, uh, AJ sales, they all gauge plate center. They sell gauge plate. So I bought some three by 10 millimeter gauge plate to make a hard and gripper rails for my soft jaw, my new set of soft jaws for holding all my stuff.
01:08:02
Speaker
But I am very much I'm trying to get Joshua who listens from firm works. I want two of his bosses. He does the firm VAS. Yeah, I want two of them.
01:08:13
Speaker
ah Basically going to put one put them each one onto a mirroring point that I can swap them in and out for doing bodies and doing palettes. Okay. Yeah, but he's out of stock at the moment.
01:08:26
Speaker
The ones in this batch are spoken for already. Because I was looking, I'd rather support him than buy another Chinese or buy a big Chinese self-centric. probably buy another two of the cheap Chinese self-centrings that I have, the smaller ones, yeah because those are end up on a mirroring pointer as well.
01:08:43
Speaker
But then I can hot swap them out, which is what I'm actually looking forward to doing. Like everything needs to be changed outside the machine now. Yep. Like it's the way. Exactly. It is. So I need to, there's a flippant list of things I have to do. I have to make the dry dock, the two station dry dock, the four station dry dock,
01:09:04
Speaker
the mooring points that the harbor, i there's a list of things I'm working on to, build out the product line. Also build up my own work holding line.
01:09:15
Speaker
I need the stuff for my own internal use because I want to start doing the anchor point bodies on the mooring point. So I'll get a bit more rigidity, but I'm marked be diamond run two on a single mooring point pallet.
01:09:29
Speaker
It'll fit. I may as well. ah yeah i still get I still get the benefit of having the extra hold down force. So, yeah, production. ah That means my cycle time is going to climb, but that's okay. I can live with that.
01:09:43
Speaker
Yeah.
Workaround Strategies for Software Limitations
01:09:44
Speaker
Yeah, like the tool count on that is getting a bit out of hand. i'm going have to have really have a closer look at my tool count there because... It was at 14. And I want to end yeah yall want to add a boring head to that.
01:09:56
Speaker
And there was something else I also wanted to add, like yeah running out of tool spots. that was ah That was the one thing that frosted me about Fusion. Unless maybe you know of a fix, but I don't. So some of my tools, I use ah like a drill mill, like a chamfer tool, but it's got flutes at the side. So you can use a side, and you can use it for chamfering.
01:10:15
Speaker
And i usually I only usually use it for chamfering just because I particularly like this tool. But in this case, for your palettes, I'm like, oh, I'll run around the edges with it to clean up the edges. And then I'll come up, and I'll just chamfer it. I'm like, boom, one tool. Don't have to mess around.
01:10:26
Speaker
But Fusion doesn't support using a chamfer tool to do like, even if you tell it the flutes are up the side, even if you model it perfectly, it's like, well, no, we can't do that. I'm like, well, just use this side of the tool. Yeah, so I had to duplicate it. Same thing with a thread mill.
01:10:41
Speaker
You can't do a contour with a thread mill. I was using a thread mill to put grooves on a grip. And right wouldn't it allow, so i just duplicated the tool made an end mill that was the right, the 7.7 diameter, and then programmed it like that.
01:10:53
Speaker
Same tool number, just... I can see that with a thread mill because it's like, ah, that's a little esoteric. But like a gang of people are probably using drill mills to just like but do like use views both edges.
01:11:04
Speaker
Yeah, they duplicate it and then just run it lower. that's Yeah, and that's what I did. That's what I did, but it was like, i just it was a kludge. A bit of a workaround.
01:11:17
Speaker
Yeah, I was like, oh, I'm sure I just don't know how to do this. So I Google it and it's like, Fusion doesn't support this yet, so you have to do the workaround. I'm like, oh, that's lame. I'm like, okay, well, I'll do something i'll do the workaround. but What did Fusion not support the other day that was annoying?
01:11:30
Speaker
It was something that, like, it really should have been able to do, but it didn't want to. um Oh, backside chamfered source. So, or double chamfered source, so where it's a A 45-degree treadmill.
Tool Procurement and Material Delivery
01:11:44
Speaker
um Getting that program as a T-slot and then figure out your offsets. It's a little bit yeah annoying. Got to do that again. That's one of the tools that's on order for the anchor point.
01:11:54
Speaker
There's a bigger one of those so I can chamfer both sides of the T-slot grooves while it's in the machine and not have to handy-burr anything. That is the way. Handy-burring is for peasants.
01:12:07
Speaker
Exactly. No, no, we... Oh yeah, making a bunch of those is going to be entertaining. It's going to be a lot of material like, Hey, what the hell?
01:12:18
Speaker
Oh, okay. Sorry. I just looked my cameras and they look the same, but they're not. It's just cause there's some, uh, pots sitting in view of both of them kind of in the similar area of the frame.
01:12:31
Speaker
Sorry, getting distracted. um yeah, i think it's going to be like a hundred kilograms of aluminum that arrives for just the bodies. nice and 50 kilograms of that goes out the door as scrap Nice.
01:12:45
Speaker
Just order half as much. with There we go. Tell them I want it with these bits removed. Problem solved. Yeah, exactly. Please send me like this. Yeah. yeah was like They were impressive last week. Holy cow.
01:12:57
Speaker
I ordered material on Wednesday. Yeah, Wednesday morning. I paid for my order. Emailed them on Thursday to just check it was going to be delivered on Friday. Like, hey, I just want to confirm it's going to be on the truck tomorrow. The guy's like, no, no, it's on the truck today.
01:13:12
Speaker
Delivered the following afternoon, 50 pieces of, uh, aluminum. Oh, it was, it was a hundred pieces. It was 50 pallets, 32 toe clamps and 20 of another piece.
01:13:23
Speaker
Nice. i'm like, geez, that is impressive. But obviously everyone is on holiday right now in South Africa with all the public holidays. So like everyone's quiet. So if you do put an order in, you get really, really good service.
Recent Searches and Sourcing Challenges
01:13:38
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Cool. cool PC holders. Shweek, you want to wrap it up there, Kurt? What have you been doing? think so Yeah. I have been Googling nothing of too much fun because I got all the orders out and then have to clean my quagmire of a shop here. Got the printer all put back together. So ah I literally have nothing fun in my, ah I'll see what I have. Yeah. not Like nothing of interest in my in my Google search. It's all super boring worry.
01:14:07
Speaker
I've got enough for both of us. Perfect. Let rip. so i wrong Let's back to the top, as usual, word and strands, because I want 24 days of word on now.
01:14:21
Speaker
have Then workbench. Just looking at the workbench I want to get for the assembly room. Trying to find push-type grease guns. Really hard to find locally. I managed to find one in person at a shop and bought it quickly for a customer.
01:14:36
Speaker
Then looking at closed-loop stepper motors to unbreak my lathe and looking up the wiring on those.
01:14:44
Speaker
EDM stones from a place up the road. I need to go pick some up tomorrow. And then I found who sells the tiny boring bars locally. And they're basically the same process buying them from China. They're all from China.
01:14:55
Speaker
They're basically the same process buying them from China. So I'm going to place order with them this week from whole tooling solutions down in Cape town. Um, Then apparently I was looking at that desk again, or that assembly table, and looking at a dial indicator from the same place, looking at the firm vase, the 150 mil one, the one that I want to buy two of to run my production. um Revenge of the Sith got re-released in the US this weekend.
01:15:22
Speaker
Unfortunately, not in sunny South Africa, because I would have gone to watch it. Well, gone to see it. Then I was looking up our analytics. according to Zencaster.
01:15:33
Speaker
We're averaging just on 100 downloads through Zencaster. Spotify gives very different results, but yeah, just seeing how we're doing, we're steadily growing there. um I was trying to find inserts for the tiny boring bars on Midway Tools.
01:15:51
Speaker
And then I've got three tabs open for the little impact driver that I want to get.
Innovative Shop Tools and Efficiency Alternatives
01:15:56
Speaker
It's a little 12 volt impact driver. And then yet again,
01:16:02
Speaker
what do I was looking at compressors by the looks of it. Yeah, little compressors for the assembly room. So yeah, it was a busy one. There's like 25 tabs open. Oh, okay. yeah Those are super cool.
01:16:13
Speaker
I did come across something rather interesting in a totally weird way. ah So I went and got a haircut finally so I don't look like such a bushman. Yeah, I need to go with Yeah, my barber has this like, ah like, it's like, ah you've probably seen him on like Amazon or like TikTok or like Instagram or whatever. There's like those little like turbine blowers, like handheld blowers.
01:16:35
Speaker
And ah so he had one just to like blow the hair off me. And I was incredibly impressed with how powerful it was. And it was like super tiny hand, like a little looking power. It's like, sure. Yeah, a little EDF fan in there. And just like, I'm like, you know what?
01:16:47
Speaker
That would be sick to have on the machine just to like blow coolant off parts instead of having like, because it wasn't all that loud. And the volume was lovely. And like, it was, ah was like, I bet you that'd be great for just blowing coolant off everything without just like blasting shit into all the nooks and crannies on your mill with an air gun.
01:17:04
Speaker
So i was like, chip I might pick one of those up. Yeah, I probably should do. Yeah. i like i thought but you Okay, but you don't have a side holder to put it in. You don't have a side lock holder already to put it in.
01:17:16
Speaker
ah Yeah, no. It's just the cost of the chip fan. It's not the cost of all the freaking paraphernalia to hold it. Because let's face it, you're not going to use an ER25 ER32 holder in your machine.
01:17:28
Speaker
Definitely not. No, that's that's for big boy work. I do little itty bitty work, little toy work. um And I still don't think a chip fan has near the kind of flow and like force that one of these little itty bitty get. and they're like, i don't know you can get them for 100 bucks or something. Like they're not crazy expensive. So I was very impressed with those. I was like, oh, I want one of
Shipping Management and Product Promotion
01:17:45
Speaker
these. But yeah, if you want a side lock holder, Kurtz, I might be able to send you one.
01:17:51
Speaker
I think that way you don't have to buy one for your chip fan. So I know you want a chip fan. I know you do. i want that I want the chip fan shirt. um And that's the thing as far as i'm going to go down that but rabbit hole.
01:18:04
Speaker
I think our Patreon bought one. um Luke, someone bought one with a pallet system today. And then we accidentally double charged them for shipping because the anchor points are set up that for everyone you buy, you get charged for shipping so we can ship them separately.
01:18:18
Speaker
Um, but Danica set the threshold up that if it's anything over the four kilograms of the pallet system, then it goes to adding another $70. So I was like, uh, hang on. So she emailed him today. Listen, and sorry, I found a bug.
01:18:31
Speaker
um can we refund you for the shipping? And he's like, I was thinking of buying another unit. like, cool. He has a coupon code for you for the balance. and uh you then ordered and a second back point nice so this is your this is your secret way to get people to buy more i see what you're doing you're manipulating people skills i'm very impressed with tunnels so far like wow that's awesome like the paperwork once you've got it all sorted out literally i load so i load all my products onto the onto the website
01:19:03
Speaker
And then I say, cool, I'm shipping this product, this product, and this product, and it generates a commercial invoice and all the paperwork that's required. So I don't have to deal with any of that crap in theory.
01:19:15
Speaker
So like I had to just tweak it so that it didn't have Jspec engineering on the on the invoice, it said private with my name, and my ID number, and then the documentation is correct. And then a copy of my ID and all that.
01:19:26
Speaker
and I mustn't attach the waybills there's a whole pile of things that like was I i'll just taped the waybills of the thing the like no no it needs it loose because then they put it in a in a thingy so it's like all these little things you figure out on the first couple shipments so we will yeah we'll be shipping out a bunch this week it's going to be exciting cool so where can uh where can people find you Kurt You can find me at confoundedmachine.com. That'll point you to pretty much anywhere you want to look for media junk or pens I'm selling or 777.
01:19:59
Speaker
seven seven seven We're going to sell that. I think this Wednesday it's going to go up. So if by the time you listen to this, if you speed over to my site, I think I'll have a special lottery open for it. um And we'll we'll be slinging it on Wednesday. yeah Next batch of pens in a few weeks. That one seems to be troublesome.
01:20:15
Speaker
It's going to everybody that doesn't want it and then everyone else is beating down my door and I'm tired of answering DMs and I appreciate the DMs. It's just yeah I'm getting a lot them. So i'm like, I gotta get rid of this thing. It's just eating up my time. So. yeah that's a bit How about you?
01:20:27
Speaker
Where can people find the Anchor Point? You guys can find the Anchor Point at jspeceng.com. So that's where you will find information on the Anchor Point and on the Flux at the moment. i might pull those off a bit in a little But anyway, Anchor Point is now live and probably sold out, hopefully.
01:20:46
Speaker
um There will be another four units being available in the next like week or so. And then we're going to go into batch two. There is also a pre-order for batch two, which will effectively just buy you a spot in the in the batch.
01:20:58
Speaker
And then you'll get a coupon for the value of the pre-order when the batch is available. So you can get you can basically get $50 or pay $50 now and get $50 discount when the units go sale.
01:21:09
Speaker
get fifty dollars dollar discount when the units gone sail um and then youve We've also got a bunch of fancy shirts, including the Chip Fans shirt on the web store as well, as well as the shirts for the podcast.
01:21:24
Speaker
There's a bunch of Loan Machinist shirts and i think water bottles and jerseys and a whole bunch of stuff. Danica keeps adding things. a guy that's uh that's all on Danica so yeah you can check us out you can check us out there and then also the loan machinists podcast uh loan machinist.com is the website for the podcast which has our wall of fame for all our patrons thank you very much patreons oh yeah so what are you what are you up to today clean up my quagmire shop because I've just been...
Shop Cleaning and Next Day Planning
01:21:57
Speaker
Sorry, lost you in the windows here. Clean up everything and yeah, get this back to a situation where I can work in, warm up the machine, start running screws. That's about what I have on the queue for today.
01:22:07
Speaker
How about you? What do you have on the queue for tomorrow, I guess? ah Tomorrow is going to be a fun one. Tomorrow I need to assemble 11 very long diesel sensors and just pack up that order. That's got to go be delivered at around 11.
01:22:20
Speaker
And then um grind I'm in the process of grinding all the anchor point pads. That'll be done tomorrow. And while I'm doing that, I'm going to be running the blank pallets, all 50 of them.
01:22:31
Speaker
And then we're going to put stuff in boxes and get tunnel to come and pick up because nice yeah, that's, that's what's going to happen because PayPal will only give you so much money and until you start delivering things.
01:22:44
Speaker
So discovered that this evening. So we're going to yeah we're gonna get stuff shipped out so that we can start start getting some of that out of the PayPal account.
01:22:55
Speaker
Because unfortunately, I can't pay my bills with PayPal account. yeah i know that's just That's just general businessy things. But yeah, that's planned for tomorrow. And also, laser mark and ship out all the mag bases.
01:23:10
Speaker
Because need to do that so I can pay that. Like that was meant to be done a week ago. But anyway, and then ya one of the customers that was meant to place well, They were processing the order and then i ordered material, but I haven't got a PO yet. And I sure as hell don't have money in my account yet.
01:23:27
Speaker
So their stuff's going to go on the back burner until I do have money in my account and then rapidly do their work in like a day.
Proposing Solutions and Podcast Engagement
01:23:33
Speaker
um But yeah, doing drone landing gear, they want a solution. They were gluing a carbon tube into an aluminum part, but the coefficient of expansion is so wildly different that the tube and aluminum were breaking the glue.
01:23:50
Speaker
And if the glue broke on the aluminum side, it was fine because it was ribbed for her pleasure. um But the carbon tube, if it breaks on that side, then the tube just slips out.
01:24:00
Speaker
So they're now having me make replaceable aluminum tube legs. So I need to... Settle that up, do some testing, basically build one of them and hit it with a hammer and see what happens.
01:24:13
Speaker
See what the failure mode is and on it. Because ideally, it needs to snap off just past the threads so that they can put an Allen key into the grab screw, turn the grab screw i'll turn a new one in and spin a new leg on.
01:24:25
Speaker
um But yeah, that's that's like that is not important problems right now. know made i've made 400 of these landing gears for them and uh i'm going to be able to rework 100 of them because i think 100 of them the most recent batch they haven't glued the tube in so i'm like no if you haven't glued the tube in i can if this plan works i can rework them for you that you don't have to replace all 400 because they need about 600 in total to fit up fit out their whole fleet
01:24:58
Speaker
so cool but yeah anyway cool cool thank you everybody for listening a words you can find us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well as YouTube so if you're on the one you can find us on the other please give us a glowing review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts give us a like and subscribe or comment on YouTube it would be greatly appreciated and until next time Have a good one.
01:25:30
Speaker
Take care, all.