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Business of Machining - Episode 126
342 Plays6 years ago
Apollo 11. Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. 50th Anniversary. Adam Savage. Project Egress---need I say more!? SMW was given an amazing opportunity to collaborate with other makers and Adam Savage's team to make an Apollo 11 hatch door replica for the 50th anniversary of the lunar landing. If you'd like to see the assembly of the door on July 18, 2019, click here for details!
Click the Image Below For Video
TOP OF THE LINE, END OF THE ROAD: KERN Still reeling from the arrival of the Tornos, Grimsmo makes a NEW MACHINE ANNOUNCEMENT! He shares his story about visiting Kern, why it's right machine and why it's the right time! Get in on the juicy details about the machine specs and options.
Click Image Below to TOUR KERN!
Lights Out Production on the NAK! Grimsmo comes in to find his Nakamura STILL churning out delrin bearing cages for the Norseman. Once Grimsmolocks finds a new shop, a bar feeder will soon follow--just think about the production possibilities!
Slow Down For Lights Out? In the machining community, many talk about slowing down operations when the lights go out, but why? The Johns take their best guesses; process reliability, extended tool life? At this speculative stage, the benefits of slowing down are difficult to understand, especially when it comes to consistency.
WHAT'S THE WORD FOR THAT?
What we DO know is that when the toilet brush is closer....we're more likely to give the bowl a scrub. We've been there; excited about a project only to realize the tools needed aren't handy or there's a nagging, tedious task that must be completed before moving forward. It's not exactly laziness but this tangential mini-task sucks away joy and focus; resulting in either procrastination OR failure to complete the task at all.
Saunders challenges the audience to come up with a word for this!
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Transcript
Morning Greetings and Nakamura Lathe Discussion
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 126. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. How you doing, buddy? Good morning. How are you? I am stellar. I came in this morning, the lathe was still running parts. The Swishish? The Nakamura one. I don't quite trust the Swishish yet that much. Still Nakamura, that's very rare to come back in and have it keep going. Wow. What parts?
00:00:28
Speaker
It's making Delrin bearing cages for the knives. Got it. You could cut for your whole career on one insert with no tool wear. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's amazing. 224 parts per bar. I came in and it had only made 209. I
Exploring Lights Out Machining Benefits
00:00:46
Speaker
thought I did a quick math and said it would be done by now, but I must have been off by a minute or something.
00:00:52
Speaker
But yes, your lathe has adopted the rule of grim smoke. It's going to take 3.14 times longer. People, meaning me, you, whatever, we talk about lights out machining, but it's kind of like holding the first five axis part you made. I found when you actually think about the fact that you left the shop, you went home, you had dinner, you put your kids to sleep, you hung out with your wife, whatever you slept,
00:01:17
Speaker
And you came back and that whole time with no illumination in the room so the lathe can't see what it's doing, it continues to be productive. It may sound silly to some people, but I'll tell you that blows. That's amazing. Absolutely amazing. It's so exciting. And as I said, rare to happen for us because I don't have a bar feeder on the Nakamura. So I only have one bar at a time.
00:01:40
Speaker
And some parts will burn through a bar in like less than an hour. And other parts like this part takes, you know, I've been going for probably 12 and a half hours now of machining. Um, totally overnight started six 30 last night, new bar, and then, uh, still going at seven. Will it be a big deal to throw a bar feeder on it when you find
Automation and Tool Longevity Challenges
00:02:02
Speaker
a new shop?
00:02:03
Speaker
No, I don't think so. And I would like to, yeah. Yeah, right. That's kind of the interesting productivity boon because a bar feeder in that situation is so much more than just like it makes the machine just completely think about it differently. Just like automation, like when I see our friends that have automated five axis machines, like their approach to fixturing, to work holding, to duplicates, to batching stuff up. It's just
00:02:27
Speaker
It's amazing. A lot of people even run slower when lights out just because they'll turn the rapids down to 75 or something, 50. Right. But if it's good, it's good.
00:02:40
Speaker
Yeah. It's funny. We were talking about cutting Delrin. I remember Amish mentioning that in aluminum, even some of his solid carbide and insert tooling, sometimes it lasts him over a year. Yeah. And I don't know how much that means for in the cut, but I'm sure he's using the tools and perhaps not
00:03:00
Speaker
They're not cutting four or five hours a day in the cut, but still they're being used. Yeah, I've got titanium tools that I replace every day. Yes, right. That's funny. Yeah, I don't know. Honestly, sometimes as much as I love technology, I don't know
00:03:20
Speaker
that will ever, quote unquote, really get there. I'm actually pretty cynical about self-driving cars because it's that last 0.1% of technology meeting humanity and society and legality. If you look at the private injury attorney business, it's single-handedly funded by car accidents. And if you look at the risk of lighting and road and accidents and all that, I don't know if self-driving cars will ever really, and I recognize there's some that exist in certain cities right now,
00:03:48
Speaker
Just my own, I'm curious. Likewise, we've talked about some really cool things that we'd like to see in the Autodesk.
00:03:58
Speaker
CAM world and this idea that you can have a file that's programmed for different scenarios like adjusting surface footage and feed rates and linking moves and rapids so that you could increase tool life or decrease risk or decrease deflection as you go lights out. The actual complications behind implementing that
00:04:19
Speaker
Of course you could do it, but it then becomes so fussy and so much work that it's not worth. Are you really going to ... Perhaps you would, I guess. Perhaps you would for Norseman, because I don't know you would, because you'd run into the same light day, because you want consistency.
Balancing Speed and Tool Life in Machining
00:04:35
Speaker
It's going to be a different part, like they're not. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
00:04:38
Speaker
Yeah, you don't want to program differently for lights out versus well, you want to program for the part whether you're there or not. It's the same. I want the same consistency while I'm here and while I'm not here because that lets me rely on it, tool life and all that stuff. Yeah. So I'm trying to think why do our friends talk a lot about
00:04:59
Speaker
you know, slowing down if you could for lights out. So I guess it's process reliability, but that presupposes you're going to be at the shop to hit the stop button if a part gets ripped out or a tool breaks. I mean, you have break detection. You can set up load management and you could argue going slower at night is free gain of tool life, but that only assumes that you're going to run part of the night unless you can slow it down.
Investing in a New Kern Machine
00:05:27
Speaker
I mean, I think some of the people we have that running
00:05:29
Speaker
I wouldn't want to slow feed rates down because that changes everything. Well, that's what some people are doing for sure. Yeah, I don't agree with that because that changes your range for tooth, your everything. Well, no, you can slow it all. So here's the simple example. If you have a three hour operation and you can get better tool light if you just cut the feed rate and surface footage, excuse me, cut the surface footage in half, keep the feed rate the same, take six hours. That's the only thing you're doing overnight. Yeah, that makes sense. But I'm not sure that's a
00:05:59
Speaker
Surface footage is RPM though. Yeah, but keep, yeah. So if you were going 10,000 RPMs in 100 inches a minute, just drop it down to 5K and 50, same feed for tooth. I don't know. I don't have, I guess I do have a spindle override, but I never touch it.
00:06:17
Speaker
Well, and on the Haas, you can link the two so that as you jog wheel your RPM override, it slows your feed rate down. I've never used it. And that's not to me the answer because there's some operations like a drilling or tapping. I may not want to do it, but I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I could see having your rapid movement slowed down. We do that a lot. Why? Those are the ones I don't care about.
00:06:47
Speaker
the possibility of a crash at full rapid when you're not there. But if it's already, we're talking about running a job that you're never going to do this on a first run. On a brand new, yeah.
00:07:01
Speaker
Yeah, it reminds me of the Tormach white paper. It's 10 years old at this point, but it kind of talks about how, don't get me wrong, rapids matter and this is not high volume production environment, but generally speaking, the time in the cut relative to rapid time is minimal. Yeah, on a typical 30 minute part, your rapid movements might be four minutes at most or something.
00:07:26
Speaker
on a brother's video, it'd be two minutes. Yeah, brother's video, you'd sneeze and they're done. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's funny. So yeah, all this talk of automation and five axis and you getting so excited about five axis and stuff. I'm buying a current today. I'm looking at your shirt and I'm just sitting here. It's one of those moments where you wish that radio carried with it the visuals.
00:07:55
Speaker
You want to tell the story? This is amazing. Congratulations. Yeah. I've been working on this deal literally since the day we were in Germany three and a half months ago. And I should be signing paperwork today with them to make it totally official. And then they're going to ring the bell at Kern, which announces to all of their internal employees, you know, they say the name of the customer and they say, you know, um, yeah. So the,
00:08:22
Speaker
The short story is when we were there at the factory at Kern, falling in love with the machine, the place, thinking, I've been thinking about this for years, the next step of production for us. I basically slapped a sticker on one of the castings in the beginning stages of production. With the encouragement of an unnamed employee. Yes.
00:08:51
Speaker
I think he's an apps guy. Yeah, yeah. Who knows? It was sort of a joke, but it was sort of serious and like, well, let's see if we can make this happen. And it's taken me several months to make it happen on my end.
00:09:07
Speaker
But yeah, it's official. And I keep saying if it works out, but I'm at the point now where it's worked out. Because I've been up in the air for months. Like, do I get it? Do I not get it? Can I afford it? Can I not afford it? Can I get financing? Can I not get financing? Do I have a place to put it? I still haven't answered that question. However, I bought the Maury before I found this shop.
00:09:32
Speaker
Yes.
Capabilities and Integration of the Kern Machine
00:09:35
Speaker
It's funny, like you, I learned a lot about Kern in the last six months. I'll tell you, it's probably never the right machine for me because it's so specialized on parts that are under a certain
00:09:48
Speaker
range and size. I feel like I still have H branded names, call them a name, but I love the micro. The tool rack, the visuals, the automation, the mix of work holding, part holding, the intelligence, the culture, the quality, the control, the just nerd out level, the thermal. Everything about it makes me kind of
00:10:16
Speaker
in a happy way, realize you've reached the end of the road. Yeah. Yeah, it is so full Grimsmo. It's ridiculous. And the more I think about it, the more cemented I am in this decision, and I'm super duper excited and pumped. Delivery should be September to November, depending on when I can find a shop. They said they can sit on it for a little bit until I need. And then we got a six-week boat ride to get it here. Wow, it's that long? I think so. Yeah, that's it. Wow.
00:10:46
Speaker
It's interesting. Gosh, I'd love, you'd kill if somebody could put a time-lapse on the outside of the container and watch it go from Garmisch-Partenkirchen onto, I would guess, a flatbed truck, maybe rail, then a barge up a canal or a river, and then to a seafaring container. And then you think it comes through the Lake Erie Canal to get to the lake?
00:11:10
Speaker
I bet it does. There's a major port in Toronto, right? Yeah. Must do that. Yeah. I was looking out at the lake at a big barge last night. Yeah. It's like Amish's machine went through the Panama Canal. Yeah.
00:11:26
Speaker
Isn't that crazy? Because I think they originally were going to truck it from, uh, from the East coast across, you know, uh, across 3000 miles of slightly potholed roads. And, uh, he was like, no, let's smooth sail this sucker. Yeah. Yeah. Cause he's, he's like 20 minutes from the port of Vancouver. So he's like, I, that tiny stretch of road. Yep. So yeah. Congratulations.
00:11:52
Speaker
Thank you so much. It's got, well, like we said, 210 tools in the tool magazine. I'm getting the Aroa palette on it, so it will have 50 to 80 palettes depending on how I configure it.
00:12:05
Speaker
That's the sort of like vending machine style tower that lives on the left of the machine? Correct. So you will have nothing for work holding or material holding on the right side of the machine. It's just tools. Inside the tool cabinet, you mean? Correct. Correct. I will not have that because it's for like 52 millimeter parts, which is like, I don't know, two inches or something. Right.
00:12:25
Speaker
Right. Too small for anything that I do. If you're making watches all day long or something, then it makes sense, a lot of sense. Because you can put 30 of those tiny palettes in the tool rack by only removing, I don't know, 50 tools or something. You still get a lot of your tools. So that makes a lot of sense. But not for me, because my parts are just too big. Yeah. So you have max micro tools? Yeah. OK. Got it. That thing is filled then. Yeah. Sweet. Super excited. Sweet.
00:12:55
Speaker
I'll throw this out. You and I probably had two, three, four really good offline conversations about
00:13:10
Speaker
Is this the right machine for you? Is this the right time for you? Is this something you can digest? I've had my concerns. Obviously, I want it to work out and there's a part of me that knows you because this is what you do. You make these things work, but it's also a big machine. It's an expensive machine and you've grown a lot and you've now got a lot of work to do ahead of you, which is awesome, but a lot of work to do.
00:13:34
Speaker
This is the parking business where a lot of people warn you, well, don't grow too fast. And there's total validity to all of that because as you're making more money, you kind of want to spend more money. And you got to be very careful and manage all of that properly so that you don't get yourself into such a hole that you can't dig yourself out of.
00:13:56
Speaker
But no, I've gone through this so many times in my head with you and with other people that it absolutely makes sense and it's the right time and it's going to be epic. No, and I think without getting into too many details, there's the business model of you snowball. So as you are able to build out a product line or you have more confidence in your ability to generate revenue, that lets you then
00:14:24
Speaker
do what you need to do in terms of covering your overhead, covering your other obligations, making sure you pay yourself something, and then you say, okay, this is my risk factor around what it's gonna cost me to get this machine. I don't necessarily need this new machine to do anything. I'm not saying this is your scenario. I'm just saying this is, I think, a very healthy thing for any entrepreneur to think about, whether you're buying, you're upgrading from a Tormach to a VMC or whatever.
Maximizing Production Efficiency with New Technology
00:14:48
Speaker
And you can sort of say that to me is the,
00:14:51
Speaker
Really, the minimum threshold is making sure as you take on a risky new machine that you're not relying on it to have really any meaningful contribution. You can do that by not buying it with debt because then you really don't know anybody anything. Let's say you have two or three machines and they produce an extra $5,000 a month, almost every month they've done that, they've proven that. Well, now all of a sudden, if you're going to finance a machine and the payments on it are $3,000 a month, okay, now you're starting to put together a legit
00:15:20
Speaker
plan to take that risk. Yep. As opposed to getting the new machine and then assuming it's going to make money on the first day or else you go broke. And that's dangerous. And we've built that buffer into our business so that we can go for months without it really making money, which is good. However, I do think it'll be making money within weeks of training and install being finished.
00:15:49
Speaker
Yeah. And then now I've got two, three months, uh, to fully plan for it, design my fixtures, figure out what I'm going to do, what tools I'm going to buy and all that. And, uh, yeah, I think the first, like we've got Norseman going so good on the Maury right now that we'll just leave that going because don't rock the boat. Um, and then we move top and then the Maury can keep making Norseman and then we'll probably start doing rasks on the micro like first.
00:16:16
Speaker
Which makes sense because this now solves your surface finish problem. I bet you tend to one that this means you can just mill that surface, no need to grind. Yeah, I can do the 3D of the surface or I can put a grinding, several grinding wheels in the micro as well.
00:16:34
Speaker
which they have approved as far as cool infiltration and grinding. Oh, really? Yeah. I was going to ask, do people grind in micros? Yep. Okay. Yeah, it has been done. There's a couple of guys that have do it. And then one of their, I think, apps guys is also a super grinding expert and has tons of experience that. So they've talked with him about it and we've had conversations. And
00:16:56
Speaker
Yeah, and the grinding I'm doing is so light. It's just finishing. It's not like I'm hogging out anything. So as long as that dust doesn't create any issues, people worry about the dust getting in all the sideways and stuff. Well, XYZ is above the machine, and then you just have to worry about the rotating axis with the dust flowing down. Yes. Right. Yep.
00:17:21
Speaker
I'd love to see you mill them though. You are a milling guy. Like it or not, we are not grinding guys. We don't know. I've forgotten more about milling than I know about grinding. I think you probably could. How hard are those blades when you do that? 62 Rockwell.
00:17:40
Speaker
Yeah. And you don't want to sacrifice any hardness, like 58 or anything? No, of course not. I mean, we can mill it. It's just how do you hold it and what surface finish do you want? Do you want to show the lines like we do on the Norseman? Or do you want it to be perfectly smooth? Or do you want to spend four hours hard milling each blade to get a mirror finish? There's a lot of benefits and trade-offs and choices to be made there. But if any machine is going to machine the most beautiful milled blade ever, it's going to be that one.
00:18:10
Speaker
Grimsman, I both did videos at Kern on YouTube, but I think the two- Have you put yours up yet? Oh, it's not. Sorry. Excuse me. It's in editing. Sorry. That's funny. I was going to say, because I want to watch it. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Well, we changed the format of ours around because I'm excited for it now. I wasn't sure how to handle the footage for a while.
00:18:33
Speaker
But the two big takeaway, if you don't know Kern, a very small builder under 100 machines a year, incredibly accurate, incredibly thermally stable, incredibly high build quality, just absolutely primo machines. To the extent my opinion matters, I would put them at the absolute top echelon with brands like Metui, C-Key, or Hermla, or GF. It's just really one of those
00:18:59
Speaker
There's just no compromise at this level. But the interesting thing to me that I learned was it's not so much that need for insane accuracy, which they have, doing things like drilling holes in human hairs and so forth. It's the fact that the accuracy and the stability means your first part is the same as your 2000th part. And the ability for you, the second thing was the ability for you to
00:19:28
Speaker
to reduce post-processing, post-machining, work, time, labor. You're not bringing off a part that's not only more accurate, but requires less buffing, polishing, hand fitting, deburring, any of that stuff.
00:19:42
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Huge benefits for us. And the automation of not only having 210 tools, but also having a palletized system. Now, there's other machines out there, Matsura, Hermele with a pallet system. There's lots of other machines that you can palletize, Grobes.
00:19:59
Speaker
But you sort of look at the whole package and you're like, well, it's not just that it's this and that and that thermal stability and utter quality and super accuracy and full Grimsmo. And you start to look into the machines of this range and they're all basically the same price range, you know, within maybe a 10 or 20% window. And, uh, yeah, it just started to become very clear. And our factory tour made this, it was so much fun.
00:20:24
Speaker
I'm so glad I went. Oh, right. I didn't think you would come. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Rewind for folks listening or whatever. What is a Kern? What's the micro? What are the specs, spindles, travel, all that five axis?
00:20:42
Speaker
Yeah, you covered a lot of it already. Travels are like 330 mil in X and 220 in Y, something like that. So what is that? 20 inches? No, not even 18? The table itself is 13 something inches. 330 millimeters is 13 inches as well. Okay. Right. Okay. So it can travel the table basically in X and a little bit less in Y. Okay.
00:21:07
Speaker
It has a palletized system, so the pallets themselves are about six inch diameter. You can put vices, tombstones, whatever on it. Rapids are insanely fast. The machine is mostly an epoxy polymer granite case or casting, like base, if I said that right.
00:21:26
Speaker
Instead of cast iron like a lot of machines and it has coolant channels running through the casting They were cast in place to help thermally manage the whole thing and most of the upper machine is made from welded aluminum assemblies crazy
00:21:42
Speaker
so that they can, aluminum's fairly rigid, I forget exactly what they were saying, but it's also super thermally... The behavior is predictable and repeatable, period, is what you're saying. Exactly, yeah. And they have cooling channels going through the entire aluminum casting as well. And the entire machine, including the spindle, is kept to within 0.1 degrees Celsius.
00:22:08
Speaker
Right, right. I think they were saying the spindle does heat up a little bit more faster because that's where most of the heat is going to come from. But yeah, they've been calm for all of that. Yeah. What's the RPM? 42,000.
00:22:24
Speaker
It's HSK. HSK40-E. Okay. Yeah. It's incredible. They were explaining that they're, I think they're kind of more known or at one point known for the pyramid nano, which is the peculiar shaped hydrostatic machine that floats on the surface, or at least the XY
00:22:43
Speaker
Is it the Z? No, it can't be the Z, right? I don't know about the Z. Maybe. Well, it could be because the surface grinders have a hydrostatic. Anyway, our friend, Mark, who is a very legitimate engineer, not an apps guy, was for Joe, was explaining that the micro is really their
00:23:00
Speaker
is the right machine now. They still make the pinos as they call them, but the micro, I don't want to misquote because these are very important details, but I think they were saying that the performance, if not the actual spec of the micro is now exceeding the pino or something like that. I think the pyramid nano is
00:23:22
Speaker
possibly more accurate because of the hydrostatic. But the micro is, I believe, faster and stronger. Got it. And just less worry, less headache, less like delicacy, fiddliness. So if you're doing bang out production, like pretty much we're doing a micro is a clear choice. The pyramid nano is more specialized if you're making like, I don't know, super micron precision watches and crazy stuff like that.
00:23:51
Speaker
One of the guys that we were speaking with, I don't think it was Marvin though. I don't recall that the factory was mentioning, and he's a, I mean, they at their, so current has a job shop with probably the most advanced job shop in Germany, maybe in the world. I don't know what the parts they make.
00:24:06
Speaker
and they're all Kern machines. They're mostly Kern machines now, but at one point, Kern as a machine builder didn't exist, and that's what they needed more accurate machines, and that's the short version of that story. But a guy who works there, who obviously uses Kerns every day and knows them, he's like, yeah, I'm not really qualified to use the Nano. You really need to understand how to get that machine warmed up, how to do the routines, how to program. It wasn't just like our Haas where you run a program for fusion and set your coordinate system up and your
00:24:35
Speaker
You've got 80, 90% of the work done there. I'm guessing it's like a formula one car. You're going to install it and mess up the clutch and oversee it. You can't just drive a car like that.
00:24:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting, just a bit of a mentality shift. So before I knew too much about current, I was like, oh, hydrostatic waves, that sounds awesome, like yada, yada. I think there's a lot less tool capacity, like 90 tools on the pyramid as
Tool Management Strategies
00:25:04
Speaker
well. Oh, interesting. So then I see the 210 on the micro and I'm like, yeah, this is starting to make a lot more sense. Yeah.
00:25:11
Speaker
That's the one thing I will give you. Actually, we're setting up to film a video on this, which I'm really excited for. I think I mentioned that. But I would never challenge somebody for buying a high ATC capacity at this point in my life. I just wouldn't. Oh, my gosh. Even when I toured Matsura last year for that open house, I knew it, but I didn't get it. Now I get it. Yeah.
00:25:38
Speaker
Period. You can go to the IMTSs and you can see the 330 tool matrix, tool changers, and you're like, wow, that's cool. Man, it must cost 200 grand to fill it up with tools. Oh, well. It looks blunt, but it's not. Yeah, it looks like too much. Like, man, who would ever use that many tools?
00:25:57
Speaker
Your UMC has 40, right? Correct. The new ones have 50. It's better. Well, so I'm getting around it because look, we live in a world of constraints. Many people will never have those machines, maybe me included, but I'm trying to be smarter about it. And there's a pretty good compromise, which is we're doing a system of
00:26:17
Speaker
setting tools up, how we tag them. We have, we have collared tags now. We have a inspired by JP. So we've got a printed device at the machine. So the quintessential example of I don't, I probably run a 1032 tap once a month. Well, I'm tired of looking for that tap the call it for a free tool holder, all that stuff. So now it just stays set up.
00:26:41
Speaker
And so I know I have it. I can retouch it off or I can use the gauge length if it's marked on the holder. Either way, that's not a big deal. It's really that hassle factor of I'm going to dig it out of the drawer. I've got to find the right column. I've got to get the wrench to torque it down, blah, blah, blah.
00:26:57
Speaker
Yeah, if it's just throw it in and go, then you're that much more likely to do the job and do it quickly. Right. Yeah, I agree. We run aluminum maybe once a month, but I avoid it just because of the hassle of finding my aluminum tools and programming it different and setting them up and changing everything and tearing down setups and installing tools and taking out good production tools. Whereas on the current, I fully intend to dedicate, I don't know, at least 10 tools to rougher finisher, drill, tap.
00:27:27
Speaker
You know the stuff to make fixtures especially with the palletized system so i'm going to be i want to make fixtures on the fly you know exactly. What if you have a problem you want to tweak the fixer remake it you the tools are there they're set up that's the amazing thing about the current is when two hundred tools is not what is two ten.
00:27:47
Speaker
If that's not enough, you can have eight aluminum tools on one of those boards that lives outside of the machine. And if you need to run your aluminum work that, I'm assuming you can buy extra boards, whatever they call them, that hold eight tools on these little plastic snap on clips. And you just take that whole eight tools, set it in there. I'm assuming that the heights and gauge links can be stored and you just tell it you replaced a board and that is
00:28:14
Speaker
that is as close to zero effort as you will ever get in terms of being not lazy. We need a word when entrepreneurs compromise on decisions because of the time investment. It's not lazy, but we all do it. I'm challenging the audience. Come up with a word that is what we just said.
00:28:36
Speaker
Yeah, I like that because lazy is not the right like, most of us hustle so hard that lazy is not the right word. But when something takes more effort than you want to think about, then you get lazy with that you do something else that's not lazy.
00:28:52
Speaker
It's why I love having foxtail brushes and dust pans on our machine carts. I will sweep up a mess happily, not because I think I'm a good person, but because it's just what I want to do. But when it's missing and it's not there, nope. I'm done. Yeah, exactly. Well, a silly example that I keep thinking about, and my wife teases me for bringing it up more than once, but touring Switzerland and Germany, you go to every single bathroom I saw, had the toilet brush up,
00:29:21
Speaker
and close to the flusher nozzle, like the flap when you flushed one. The toilet brush is like right there. So I was that much more likely to just clean the public toilet like real quick. It was cool. And I think about that here now. So I've done that here in the shop. I've done that at home. When it's that close, you're just maybe going to do it more. I cannot wait for the next time I tour your shop, and there's going to be an Instagram photo of your bathroom. I hope so.
00:29:51
Speaker
No, it is. I say it with such enthusiasm because it's the pleasures in life. I enjoy changing the oil in my truck and my wife's car with William, my five-year-old son. And so we now have a little kit. So we have, I bought for like $4 the extra dedicated 13 millimeter wrench and we have a funnel and we have a set of latex gloves and it's all right there. So we have our little oil change kit. And it's good.
00:30:17
Speaker
Those things aren't hard to do and it's lean in the good way, not in the, I'd like you to think I'm smart and may have an MBA, lean BS. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Yep. And sometimes lean costs you that extra $4 by buying the extra thing. But when you're that much more likely to get her done, then it's so worth it. That's awesome. Wow, man. That's a lot. I know it's been in the works, but that's going to be crazy.
00:30:46
Speaker
Yep. And on top of the Swiss layer that we just received like a month ago. Yes.
00:30:51
Speaker
which is going great. I'm on my third part right now, just about to run it today. And yeah, things are going good. That's great. God, that's great. We got to get you a shop, dude. Yeah. Yeah, I'm looking hard. We went and looked at two or three last week. And one's too big and too far away. The other was a dump. And the other was empty with no heat and no nothing. So it's just like an empty warehouse. And I was like,
00:31:21
Speaker
You need heat in your area. Oh yeah. We need everything. We want heat and AC as well. AC is going to be tough, John. Yeah. It's going to be tough. Although, hey, that was another good current example. They joked about a company that spent a large amount of money to put a AC climate zone inside the middle of a huge factory, call it a 100,000 square foot factory. They built a 5,000 square foot room, put the current in there to air condition it. Do you remember Simon telling us this?
00:31:50
Speaker
I don't remember knowing. Yeah, because you buy a current, you want to do current kind of work on it. And they did all of that. And then something happened. The machine was ready before the AC went in or the AC had a problem. And then they realized the current is so independently, thermally stable, they didn't even need it. Right. Yeah. That's funny.
00:32:12
Speaker
Yes, talking about those little things, I finally have been checking stuff off my list, like little things, like I finally set up a old PC basically as a server for the shop. So we all have access to a share drive and we post to that. So all the machines point to that. I put it on a Amazon battery backup thing so that when the power goes out, if we lose power and all the computers restart at once, that one
00:32:39
Speaker
That won't happen anymore because that one won't restart. So it keeps its IP address. I also went into our router, set up an exclusion IP, just like the little quality of life thing so that our shared drives don't go down. Everyone has access. It's been on my list to do when finally doing it, which feels good. Nice.
00:32:56
Speaker
How's your AC project coming? Stalled. They were here Tuesday to do that work. So we already talked about that. It's been, I don't know why it seems like more than usual, there was a more than usual lack of work around July 4th. I don't know why it bothers me, but I bought some stuff and these companies were like, they actually finally got back to us Tuesday, yesterday. And we're like, sorry, we were out for the 4th. I'm like, well, the 4th was Thursday. I bought a product on Tuesday. I've been here for you for a full week.
00:33:25
Speaker
Didn't realize that was now a seven day, no vacation. Anyway, they are supposed to be here today to flash the roof. They can't cut the big hole in the roof unless the roofing guy can also get here to do the flashing because otherwise it'll leak. So I should know in 20 minutes whether that got coordinated, if not probably tomorrow. So it's coming.
00:33:51
Speaker
Nice. Yeah, which I'm really excited for. Yeah. Sorry. I think I interrupted you that you were saying something. I was going to ask you, I don't know, something about the AC.
00:34:03
Speaker
Yeah, I need to, similarly, I need to be a surgeon on finally finishing up my Haas UMC750 Fusion templates. I have all of the CAM operations I need for the template, because we did, I don't know, 10 or 15 parts between some job shop work and the Project egress Apollo 11 parts.
00:34:30
Speaker
So I know the tools, I have a good tool library. I know the operations, all those settings, some sketches to do the exclusion zones for adaptive containment. It's like, I know what I want. And then like last night I wanted to program a quick part for Johnny Five for Ed. And I found myself like opening up old files, trying to look for the operation I were vaguely remembered. So it's like, no, stop, be a surgeon, shut your phone off for 30 minutes, start creating that.
00:34:56
Speaker
An exciting Eureka moment that I had there is doing a better job of using folders within CAM. Do you use folders? Okay. I have like one folder. I have my Norseman, you know, everything Norseman, and then I have one for turn to parks. No, no, no. Folders within setups.
00:35:16
Speaker
Oh yeah, I use that all the time. Okay. I do some, but don't as much as I think I could. And I've never, to be honest, created a template with folders, partly because most of our three-axis templates are... Three-axis workflows are linear. Like you just tend to...
00:35:35
Speaker
face, semi rough, semi rough surface, drill tap, spot, et cetera, chamfer. But the five axis workflows are much more back and forth depending on orientation. And as you're moving down the part, et cetera. So I'm thinking folders could be a really good way of batching up like those operations, those styles makes it easier to delete the stuff you don't need. Because that's the whole way to use templates, right? Yeah. Okay. Just to overdo the template and delete what you don't need.
00:36:02
Speaker
Yes, I would much rather have one master template that I invest the time into, one place to tweak everything, because that's another. Going back to the whole like, are we ever going to get there from a technology standpoint with self-driving cars and stuff? If I have three different main five-axis templates, but I realize my 3D adaptive has the wrong tolerance setting, I've now got to open three different files, change that same setting. It's one reason why I still am pushing to get
00:36:29
Speaker
user variables within VAMF, but even that's a problem because we got to share files across people and team and we're going to put the UMC templates we'll put on NYC CNC for pro members to share those. So you've got to have it standalone. So I find I'd rather have one template file that has more stuff in it, easy to delete after you apply it. Yeah.
00:36:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think folders would be very helpful for you because you could have say one folder structure is for spot drill tap. And then you bring it apart. You're like, I don't have any holes. So I'm just going to delete that folder from this template. The naming conventions in Fusion aren't that great because if you rename an operation, you either lose the
00:37:18
Speaker
You lose the fact that it says 2D adaptive or you don't see the name or it's a folder is nameless So if I name it something I get the full descriptive Use of the real estate so I can call it what I want makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, I think I have six drills operations. It's Is that a spot drill? Is it a tap? Is it a? Yeah, whatever I Often rename operations with a description. Yeah, but don't you still lose?
00:37:47
Speaker
You just add it at the end. So it'll say like 2D contour and then I'll add like finishing Norseman handle. But then you don't see that. You do if you widen the screen. Yeah, I don't want to widen the screen. Yeah, that's right. Got it. Oh, that's what it is. I have the setting as well that shows the cam cycle time, which I love, but that also further takes up space. Yeah, I have that. Yeah, yeah.
00:38:12
Speaker
It's like right now an adaptive says T6 25 seconds, adaptive one parentheses short three-eighth inch tool. Well, the parentheses short three inch tool is pulled in automatically to the tool table. So if I rename adaptive and I call it roughing top and hit enter, I don't even see, I see adaptive ROU. Right. So I'd have to widen that browser thing. Right. Which I do when I'm trying to read it. Like normally you don't really need to see it all, but when you want to read it, I just widen it. Fair enough.
00:38:44
Speaker
long-winded way to have seen, explained all that. But yeah, what are you up to today?
00:38:49
Speaker
Uh, I am going to be a surgeon on the Swiss lathe because I believe we are dangerously out of our screws for the Norseman knife. Um, so either we tear down what we're doing on the Nakamura, which is the bearings and we need those too. Uh, but basically I'm, I'm like just a few short hours away from making them on the space. Um, this is the threading threading. So you're asking about.
00:39:17
Speaker
Like topping inserts? Yeah, I've never actually used a full profile threading insert to make a thread. Is that what you're going to be using? Not now but I might buy some.
00:39:31
Speaker
But, but yeah, so that the screw is a male 440 thread and then it turns the diameter and then it transfers and then it mills the torques pattern into the end. So I get to try out my 60,000 RPM live tool. Uh, super excited. What's the speeder on the knock 18. Okay. Yeah. So I think I'm going to, I'm going to run this one at 18,000 to start just cause that's programming is the same. Fun fact, I thankfully remembered last night is.
00:40:02
Speaker
sub-spindles are different on the two machines, my NAC and my tornos, based on the Z direction.
00:40:08
Speaker
So on the Nakamura, you cut into the part, you're cutting into Z positive. On the Swiss, you cut into the part, you're cutting into Z negative. So like the code needs to say, cut negative one inch. Whereas on the Nakamura, it's cut positive one inch. I was this close to copying and pasting the entire Torx Middling from the Nakamura and pasting it on the Swiss. And as I was doing it, I'm like, wait, it's all Z positive. Oh no.
00:40:35
Speaker
So I have, I am in the process of reposting it from fusion with I think the default, uh, FANUC template, which should get me the Z negative. So I just, I gotta watch this stuff because I can't make a mistake here. Yes. Um, I guess at worst it would just cut air. It would cut backwards.
00:40:57
Speaker
That's what I'm inclined to say. That's the famous last arrogant, like, oh, this wouldn't have been a crash. No, no, no, careful, careful. Yeah, no, exactly.
00:41:09
Speaker
So yeah, I should be cutting Torx's before lunch. Sweet. I'm thinking to crashing machines maybe think about Hermola, which Hermola has a Z crush washer system, which is really cool because you crash in Z. I'm sure there's a limit to this. You can't crash.
00:41:29
Speaker
too hard. But if you crash in Z and you crash and it crushes just that washer, which is meant to crush, it's a couple thousand bucks or you can learn to do it yourself, but it's multiple hours. I think most people that own Hermless have them then come out and it's a relatively minor repair given the scope and capability of that machine. Kern was at the Heidenhein IPS or something, or some sort of a collision detection.
00:41:55
Speaker
The the entire machine size boundaries is dynamically monitored. Okay, so not including your vice fixture and tool and tool, their body and stuff. Other than that, the machines never going to crash. It wasn't
00:42:12
Speaker
He explained that you can't even jog it into its own self because it knows it's aware of its location. You can't rotate the bee, I guess, all the way and have the spindle come down in the spindle housing. Like your first UMC project where you said the spindle housing was going to crash into the table.
00:42:32
Speaker
Fun fact, on the current, it's an option to buy that monitoring system. And it's not chief. Did you buy it? Yeah, I did send a package. But thousands of dollars. However, for the peace of mind of never really crashing would be great. And plus, I am going to run complete. Yeah, that's awesome.
00:42:52
Speaker
Probably pick your ear on that one second. Yeah, it's been... Can't... They have a current like... It's like do for them. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Canplete was shockingly quick to learn or whatever true path, the software from them to learn what I needed to learn and then I basically stopped. I've consciously chosen not to go any further into it because learning that first five or 10% gets me what I need to know about the tool path
00:43:22
Speaker
So, I was trying to modify coolant the other day in TruePath, and I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to repost it because I forget how to do this in TruePath, which I need to learn that stuff to make it a little bit more nimble. But it was, again, surprisingly easy to learn what I needed to learn to confirm. Because I'm going to go cut that part now. We're going to get within
00:43:42
Speaker
0.1 inches of tool holder and vice, which I know in the Instagram world is a mile apart. But let me tell you when it's your machine and you're running parts, that's really close. Yeah. Everyone's a hero until it's a bull. Yeah.
00:43:59
Speaker
Yeah, like on my three axis more, I never really worry about like the call, if not getting close to the part is probably my only ever like close crash, whatever. But on both the lathes, I get too close on a lot of stuff. Getting closer to buying one. Don't discourage me. Yeah.
00:44:19
Speaker
I get to go be a surgeon, which I'm actually really excited for. I've been trying to get a better scalloped toolpath on the Tormach on this part we're making. And I have been playing around with the point distribution and fusion. And then I realized I need to go play around with the PathPilot, Slice Linux, CNC, G64. It's their version of arc filtering or smoothing. So I have a couple of things programmed I want to go hit.
00:44:43
Speaker
I want to go run those in air because I think that's the kind of missing piece to getting this. I want to surface this part at like 90 inches a minute and it's just choking right in one corner and I can't get the scallop to a path. I'm probably not even supposed to be doing this, but I've got like a point
00:45:01
Speaker
I've got like a one 10,000th of an inch tolerance and a like 8,000 smoothing infusion, which throws a flag because it's like, hey, your smoothing is significantly better or bigger than the tolerance, but it gives me the fewer points, which is what I want, but I'm still not happy with it. Anyway.
00:45:23
Speaker
Interesting. Cool. I'll email you, but I think we're all leaving for Washington DC next Wednesday morning for Smithsonian. So I'll shoot you an email to figure out when we can talk or something. Okay. Do it on Thursday or something. Dude, congrats. Sweet. You got work ahead of you. And at some point, I'm not going to ease up on you. You get to get a new shop and then you got to just buckle down.
00:45:51
Speaker
Okay. Awesome. Sweet. I'll see you. Cool. Sounds good. Have a great day.