Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Increasing Customer Trust & 5 Axis Training!
182 Plays5 years ago
This week John & John talk all about "The best decision is the one that will increase the customer's trust". They raise a great discussion about making decisions while being in the public eye and trying to make sure everyone is happy. We also do a deep dive into the new Grimsmo HQ. They talk all about leveling machines, measuring tools and mastering precision. You can find the book we reference here. John Saunders also plays a slight prank on Grimsmo once he un boxes his new Kern!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, Episode 155. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. And this is the podcast where we, two of us get together every week and talk about business and life and successes and sometimes even failures. How's it going?
Transition to the New Shop
00:00:19
Speaker
It's going quite well. And the new shop is sick. I was just thinking this morning that I don't even think about the old shop anymore. Like I don't accidentally drive there. I don't think about, like I don't picture it in my mind as work anymore.
00:00:35
Speaker
Yeah, you've moved on. Yeah, I have completely. Yep. Yep. And I realized I guess I do that. It's not too difficult for me to just like, well, this is my new normal now. Okay, let's go. Yeah.
Strategic Machine Setup
00:00:49
Speaker
It looks there was a picture again, you posted
00:00:52
Speaker
instead of the kind of the machine shop floor. And I just thought, oh my gosh, like the old shop is over. Like I'm never gonna, and sometimes I'll get nostalgic. You're never gonna see, I'm never gonna talk to you when you're standing in front of the sandwich between the Swiss, the Maury and the Noc. But good for you. It looks like it's just going very, very well.
00:01:20
Speaker
Yeah, very well. It's January 29th right now, so we've had it for 29 days. All things told, we've accomplished a lot this month. A lot of it happened in a week. Last week was a big one, moving all the machines.
00:01:37
Speaker
just getting things set up. It's starting to transition to be normal. It's still a construction site and the electricians come in every day and the plumbers come in almost every day and they're wrapping up and everything. It's going to be a little weird not having an extra, I don't know, five people there most days, all the contractors because we're getting to know them.
00:02:01
Speaker
It's nice to have them around a little bit. And literally, I was walking around the other day and I'm like, Oh my gosh, we could literally have 20 people working on this shop floor and it wouldn't be too crowded. Yeah, it looks great. I like how you it looks like you've angled each one of the machines at the from the coming out from the wall.
00:02:18
Speaker
Yeah, angled them, I think, which the UMAX are facing straight in, but I think everything else is sort of angled to the center. Because I was thinking of Lawrence's octagonal, you know, programming zone, yeah, in the middle. And where he likes those thinking, we're gonna have a place for our computers, we're gonna have a place to hang out. And the shop is like narrow and long.
00:02:40
Speaker
So you can't really have two rows of stuff. Okay. Got it. Or three, I guess. You can have stuff down the left, stuff down the right, and whether I made them straight against the wall or... Yeah. You could fit a daytron in the middle. Oh, you could fit a daytron anywhere. You could fit a rope swisses in the middle. So, wait, so... Yeah, even Robo drills, like... Yeah. Do you... Actually, those... Our Robo drills are bigger than
Comparing Machine Sizes
00:03:05
Speaker
you might think. It's probably... Yeah, maybe. They're narrow but long.
00:03:10
Speaker
No, ours is kind of like a box shape. The robot doesn't really change it that much. It's kind of- I literally forgot that you had a Robo drill. It is probably bigger than our VF2. I'm trying to think about it with the chip conveyor. I could be wrong on that. Like wider? It's pretty wide. It is very deep.
00:03:38
Speaker
I have to go measure. Do you have your your machine shop shop is is clear span or their poles or support beams in the middle of the floor? That's great. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I like that.
00:03:57
Speaker
It seems like 29 days. Sounds like a long time. It's flown by, but then when you think about what you started with, with epoxying the floors in it now, it's now as a whole flock of machines getting set up and going.
00:04:12
Speaker
Yeah, it's cool.
Purchasing and Using Precision Tools
00:04:14
Speaker
Yeah, I was I was able to turn on the Maury like even late last week. But yesterday, let's see, Monday, we got it rough leveled. Okay. And then yesterday, Angelo came in and like finished leveled it got that last, you know,
00:04:30
Speaker
that, that last micron precision. Uh, we bought one of those stare at, I think it's called a one 98. No, it's the master level with the, uh, five 10ths per 12 inches. Yeah. Kind of looks blockier. Like a, yeah, it was like, like a thousand bucks versus the $150, uh, you know, regular level, which I also got. So it's, it's cool. I've never really bought a precision level before. So now I have two and I'm like, yeah, big boy club. Could you describe how he levels it?
00:05:00
Speaker
OK, so I did the rough level with Yo and Steven helping me a lot. So they got to also learn the process. And I've never really leveled a machine before. So we would super gently stone the table of any nicks and high spots, put the level on, got the rough level in, which took a lot of adjustment, actually. So the position of the flooring in this shop is a lot different than the old shop.
00:05:25
Speaker
It's like the whole back of the machine had to come up, I don't know, a lot of turns of the feet. And it's four feet. So it was actually really annoying because you'd have one foot that was like, we're like, there's no weight on this foot at all. Right. And then you go to the other one and it's super heavy. I'm like, I don't, I'm confused. Is the weight balance of the machine off or is just the level and the weight distribution like wrong right now?
00:05:54
Speaker
So we got it super close, like almost close enough to say, yeah, good enough. But then Angelo came, like he wasn't in on Monday, so he came in on Tuesday and was able to see it
Machine Leveling Techniques
00:06:04
Speaker
with fresh eyes and like fine tune it. And I think what he did, he told me what he did, but I didn't really watch him.
00:06:11
Speaker
He moved the level around the table a couple different places and then compared like because you'd move it you know to the left and then it's perfect and you move it to the right and it's not perfect. So he was like trying to average out minor differences. So he's moving the level on the table or is he jogging the axes? I don't think he jogged the axis. I don't know. But move the level on the table for sure.
00:06:39
Speaker
Right. Okay. Yeah, it's an interesting process. I've seen it. I've forgotten notes on how we did it with the Haas and actually how they did it when our dealer came out and had releveled our Okamoto grinder that we used to have. And once somebody explains it to you and shows you, you're like, Oh, that makes sense. But there's all these little tricks, like you can check the level by flipping it around. And you really have to let the level set for an awkwardly long amount of time to let it settle, which
00:07:07
Speaker
It doesn't seem like you would have to, but it's just everybody I know that knows what they're doing says you have to do that.
00:07:13
Speaker
Yeah. It's, it's weird. Those super precision levels, because when we were rough leveling it, we're like, Oh, the bubble's way off. Okay. Crank it, you know, crank both feet evenly in the back. And then I looked and I looked and keep going, keep going, keep going. And then I, I feel like I blinked for like 10 seconds and all of a sudden the level had moved to the other side. And I was like, what just happened? Like once you read that center point, it's like a, um, it's like an over-center cam or something. It just goes the other way. Yeah. It flies over. Yeah. Yeah.
Innovative Leveling Ideas
00:07:44
Speaker
We just bought a Borescope. Literally, this is like $30 off of Amazon. I bought the USB version because it seems like the Wi-Fi one would be a pain in the butt because you've got to actually join the Borescopes Wi-Fi network. And I got it because I needed it to stick a camera into a small hole to find something. And I just thought, hey, for 30 bucks, I'd like to have this thing. But what just occurred to me was it's got a really long
00:08:11
Speaker
cable to this boroscope is probably like 11 feet. Next time I ever level on a machine, especially if I'm alone, I'm going to put that boroscope on like a Noga arm pointed at the level and then I can be back on the feet with a wrench with my laptop, watching the easily, quickly watching the level as it moves. Yeah, we definitely thought about using the GoPro and just pairing it to our phone or something. Right, right.
00:08:36
Speaker
Yup. Interesting. Well, let me know. Keep me posted on that because I just want to get... It's like one of those core base skills I'd like to feel like I had a more... I'm certainly not at the point where I could offer knowledge on it. I'm more just... For sure. I know what to try.
00:08:50
Speaker
Yeah, and it comes with experience. And I'm sure there's some trainable knowledge that like if, you know, Grandmaster machine leveler took you under his wing and said, Okay, here's the four things you got to know, and then you're fine. I'm sure that would help. But it's just experience too. And it was fun, actually, like, it took us probably
00:09:08
Speaker
I don't know, an hour and a bit to rough level it, just kind of mess it around. And then it took Angelo probably about the same to fine tune it. And they leveled the current yesterday and it took them like, it probably took them 10 minutes because they had to move it a lot and they had to use a shim actually. But it took no time.
00:09:30
Speaker
Under the feet. So the current has these wedge-shaped adjustment feet. And there's three feet, not four. So leveling a three-foot machine is cakewalk easy. Because you got the two feet in the front. That's your left to right. And you got the one foot in the back. That's your tilt back and forth. And the Toronos is also a three-footer. So I'm excited to level that probably today.
00:09:52
Speaker
Have you ever seen the fundamentals of precision accuracy, precision mechanics, the more the more scraping book?
Books on Precision Mechanics
00:10:02
Speaker
No fundamentals of precision. I'm typing it in right now.
00:10:08
Speaker
more fundamentals of mechanical accuracy. This is the Bible. There's copies on eBay for hundreds of dollars, like $600,000, $800,000, but you call more the company in Bridgeport, Connecticut that built these jig boring machines, and they still have copies. They'll sell them to you. It's probably $150, $180, but it's
00:10:34
Speaker
It's effectively like a textbook hardbound very thick book and it is absolutely the Bible like they go through how if you were
00:10:42
Speaker
on the show Survivor and you were alone in a jungle and you have three, magically you have three pieces of granite, how you could take those three pieces of granite and get them into a precision metrology grade flat surface by scraping them against each other in a certain pattern. And then they go big time. This came up a lot in the Richard King scraping class that literally carries the book around with him. But three feet is the key. Three points of contact.
00:11:10
Speaker
Right, right. So our RV. I have the Mitutoyu, I don't know what it's called exactly, but it's their precision measuring book. And it's all about the history of measurement and how calipers work and how mics work and how granite surface plates work. And that is a cool book. I did read that cover to cover. So I bought three copies a year or two ago, one for me, Angelo and Sky.
00:11:33
Speaker
I'll have to look that up. And yeah, that's a good reference. History. What's it called? I don't remember what it's called exactly. Maybe I'll throw up another picture on Instagram if I see it in the unpacking. I'll find a copy. But it's like from Mitutoyo. They published it and I bought it. I think I brought it through my distributor, but from direct from Mitutoyo. Yeah. Okay, awesome. The the idea of metrology and really the idea of standards is incredibly
00:12:01
Speaker
fascinating and...
00:12:04
Speaker
Yeah, they talk about this a lot, like how standards of measurements became and how the inch or the foot of the mile or the kilometer was originally invented and measured and how they used cartography and distances between two cities and stuff to fine tune this. Yeah, or even how our Timex watches work off of the fact that you know, I think it's quartz resonates, I believe is the correct word, it oscillates at a correct
00:12:34
Speaker
you know, repeatable man at a certain voltage. Yeah, incredible. But just actually we have some folks asking on the forum, you know, how do you what do you do for for metrology calibration and confirmation and the honest answer is we we don't we
00:12:54
Speaker
We have a couple of products where we do care a lot about dimensions. And basically, we use deltronics gauge pins that we are we'll just replace because they can wear out. But they're about $11 a piece or so. So quite inexpensive. And they're aware item, you're literally pushing them in and out of boreholes on our fixture plates. And then our things like our calipers, I'm just assuming that they're basically okay. And we have one or actually we have two
00:13:22
Speaker
one inch sera blocks, the ceramic gauge blocks that number one don't really wear and number two are much less prone to temperature variations. That's good enough for me, but it probably wouldn't be a bad idea for us to start a
00:13:41
Speaker
sort of, quote unquote, quality manual and process and have a schedule where we at least go through and check the things ourselves. That's a legitimate step that is better than doing nothing. I don't think we need to be paying a company to come in, probably would be quite a few thousand dollars to come in. Yeah, exactly. But we also shouldn't just keep using these hand tools and assume they're good.
00:14:04
Speaker
For sure. And we're in pretty much the same boat, although we don't have precision gauge blocks to reference. We have some pins and things. I should buy one of those ceramic one-inch blocks. But I find that it gets especially interesting when you have more than one.
00:14:22
Speaker
of the same precision measuring tool. Like we have, I think we have two mics to mid tutorial digital mics. And I think they read exactly the same because I've used them interchangeably. But if they ever start to differ by a little bit, then you're like, Okay, which one's right, you know, right?
00:14:42
Speaker
Yeah, and there's a huge impact. I like the quantum mics with the ratchet thimble because when I close it, if it's off by 50 millionths, usually I'll just open it up, clean it on my shirt or with a lint-free rag and then fingers and then close it again and it feels good.
00:15:02
Speaker
Those are the black ones with the faster thread. They're the only ones you should have owned. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yes. Yeah. I've got the whatever color they are. I don't know. Blue, purple, gray, something like that. Digital or? You know, the cool and improved digital ones.
00:15:24
Speaker
We just needed a special mic. We're changing how we do one of the QC parts processes on our fixture plate because it'll make it a lot easier without having to basically flip the plate over and we needed a sort of anvil type mic and knew it was like 500 bucks, but I just found one on eBay used. It actually wasn't in great condition, but we bought some repair parts from it to swap them out and then
00:15:51
Speaker
We're only using it for relative measurements on a single plate, so I don't care as much about its absolute sort of value. We could still check it or calibrate it, but I think I got it on eBay for like $110 or something.
00:16:12
Speaker
Nice. I love precision and measuring. It's such a cool concept that I really had no idea about when as a kid, a tape measure is all you really know. You think that picture from Amish was real? Which picture? He posted a picture of somebody he knew who asked him, hey, I've got a tape measure on a wood block.
00:16:38
Speaker
I'm pointing at the seven, is that really seven inches? You don't want to make fun of the person because if they really don't know, then let's help them, not make fun of them, but it's also kind of like, wait, what? Yeah, it's that assumed knowledge. It's like, man, I thought everybody knew that, but if you've never held a tape measure, you're like, how does this thing work again? I do that too with various simple things that I've just never touched before.
00:17:05
Speaker
I find that when I'm in the presence of an expert, like for example, if I don't really know how to cook, but if I'm in the kitchen with my wife, I'll ask her a very stupid question like, how does this thing work? And give them the benefit of the doubt to teach me something and be okay with looking like an absolute idiot.
00:17:29
Speaker
when I when I kind of don't know where I think I know but maybe not. And hey, I remember watching a YouTube video a couple years ago on like tape measure basics and ends up there's a lot I didn't know about a tape measure, including why the ends of most tape measures have a range of motion travel. There's a little wiggly bit at the end. That is not a mistake. I did figure that out a couple years ago. Do you remember?
00:17:54
Speaker
Well, it's the thickness of itself, right? You can butt it up against something or pull it against something. Yeah, I believe that's right. But I thought we'll have to go watch this after we hang out. But I think there was, I want to say there was something a little bit more to it. Because also, I can't remember. I remember thinking, Oh, wow, that's pretty cool. Yeah. Such a basic thing that
00:18:20
Speaker
Maybe the inventor of it is like, nobody's figured this out yet. You ever heard of a pie tape? I don't think so, no. I really wanted one of these when I was getting started and they were too expensive and we didn't need them.
Understanding Measurement Tools
00:18:35
Speaker
It's not a tape measure. It would be a flexible ruler, I guess is the right word, that you can wrap around a cylindrical object and
00:18:44
Speaker
it has I believe its own built in Vernier. So let's say you walk up to a approximately eight inch diameter piece of raw material apart, you can pull your pie tape out, wrap it around the thing and get I think down to the thousandth if not finer accurate value of its diameter. So it's not a tape measure, it's more of a measuring device with a readout.
00:19:11
Speaker
No, it's a it's a think of it like a tape measure, but it doesn't have a let me see your pie tape metrology if I can find one. Think of it just like a flex. Yeah. Well, I can't find one online here real quick. Here we go. Yeah. Global Gibson pie tape. So it's just like a band of sheet metal like a band of shim stock. It's actually PI PI like 3.14 tape.
00:19:46
Speaker
Yeah. I see a digital one. It's 0.01. It's 0.25 millimeters thick spring steel has gradations in numeral for a near scale permits readings down to 1000th of an inch diameter. And they come in for measuring different ranges. And there's like 130 bucks for one that would go two to 12 inches. So it's funny. That's probably a good bookend when I was like, Oh my gosh, I could never spend $130 on that. But pretty cool. I thought it was cool.
00:20:16
Speaker
So back to the shop, what's the latest on? Oh, okay, sorry, hold on, hold on. Best trolling. You saw that, huh?
00:20:30
Speaker
best. Okay, so explain it from your your side of your perspective. I actually can't explain actually can't really say credit for it. I assure you, I wish I could. You know, a long time ago, I don't even know when but maybe late summer or fall. Marv texted me Marv was the apps guy that works occurred. Sorry, not apps guy.
00:20:53
Speaker
engineer, engineer slash amazing, actually really good dude. He was like Saunders, what do you think about putting your logo on the boot up screen of of Grimmsmows, Haydn, Hein, Kern control.
A Humorous Prank
00:21:07
Speaker
And I'm just like, oh boy, like at first I was like, I wouldn't do that. And then I'm like, Oh, I would absolutely do that.
00:21:14
Speaker
And then he wasn't sure if he would get it through. And then I guess part of the way the current goes through QC, he's like, I might get wiped. And then I'm like, well, let's make sure you can, you can take it off. Cause I mean, it's as funny as it is. That's not fair to Grimso or whatever. Just let's make sure it's not permanent. I don't think it is. But yeah, it made it there.
00:21:36
Speaker
Oh yeah. Yeah. So we were booting up the machine for the first time and Tony is the head of current precision. And then Andy, his install guy, whatever his role is, they had never seen this particular machine. So I don't think they even knew that it was there. And so we're booting up the machine and you know, it's going through all these different, you know, screens and stuff. And then all of a sudden it says Kern and like this little SMW logo in the middle. I'm like, what the heck?
00:22:03
Speaker
So I pull out my phone as fast as I can, because I don't know how long that screen is going to be visible for. And I snap a picture just in time. And I'm like, what is this? Hilarious. It was awesome. It was so funny. It was actually better it being your logo than if it were my logo, just because it was funny or not. Hilarious, right?
00:22:19
Speaker
And it's clear that I know I can fix it. I can, you know, put my own logo on there too. So yeah, it was perfect. And that's what I love about Current. They're such a fun company and they're, you know, they're not going to do this for everybody, but the fact that they can and will actually pull this off, like, DMG Mori is not going to do that, you know? Yeah, the sense of humor is awesome. It's just being a little bit, a little bit self-deprecating or just don't take, don't take things too seriously.
00:22:46
Speaker
I should actually clarify this because this is the second time I've publicly called Marv and AppSky. My defense is that, to me, AppSky is quite a compliment because they're some of the most valuable conversations that I've had with people I look up to and I find quite knowledgeable. I mean it as a compliment. I realize it's actually probably not a compliment to somebody who has, I believe, his PhD in material sciences and is quite a smart and successful guy.
00:23:15
Speaker
So I don't mean it. And he's working on another PhD on surface finish. So he can literally surface shame everybody with his PhD. Yes. So my apologies. It's intended to actually be quite a compliment, but I realize I should be more careful with my titles.
00:23:31
Speaker
But I absolutely realized the confusion because from our perspective, he makes cool stuff all day and he tests new materials. He's applicationing new theories. So from the outside visible perspective, he's testing new stuff. That's what AppsGuys do, right? But we don't know how these kind of machine tool businesses work and AppsGuys have different roles than whatever it is that he actually does. So it's going well? It's crazy how quickly it's coming together.
00:24:02
Speaker
Oh, they're fast. Like, Tony told me months ago, I was like, So what does it take to get it running? And he's like, Oh, we've had machines making parts in two days. Wow, maybe by the third day. And I'm like, All right. And yeah, it's it's take off all the shipping brackets, put oils and coolants. And there's two kinds of coolants on the machine. There's your cutting coolants, like quality cam. And then there's heat removal, cooling coolant, like antifreeze for your sharp.
00:24:33
Speaker
It's awkward to talk about coolant because which one? Cooling or coolant? It's like cutting coolant. The term I've tried to start using is cutting fluid. Yeah, that works. Because you're right. Would you have a different lubrication system that lubricates the things like the ball screws and the rails? That could be different than the thermal coolant, which could be different than your cutting fluid, which could be different than spindle way oil.
00:25:02
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. There's many different types of oil. So they're topping up all the oils, filling everything. They've been there for two full days now.
00:25:12
Speaker
Last night, we were able to palletjack the aroa into place, which was nice. And so that's in place. They're going to level it and fine-tune it today, adjust the robot grip or arm to position properly and aim it exact, and then teach it various positions and stuff. But yeah, today we're making chips.
00:25:36
Speaker
I asked them, I'm like, Do we need some material? Like, should I run to the store and buy a bunch of brass so we can see what we're doing and just cut some stuff? Like, yeah, let's do that. That'd be good brass in it. Because it could potentially stress your coolant if and when it mixes with it, even if you're not gives your cutting dry. Yeah, nothing wrong with it. But I just if you cut brass over time, your machine is going to turn into a smurf. So
00:26:06
Speaker
But I would take their advice. I guess maybe it's not a big deal. Yeah, I've cut a bit of brass in the Nakamura. And when I cut a lot of it, it doesn't go blue, but it certainly changes things a little bit. Are you going to cut brass in that machine in production? No, probably not. Yeah, cut the material you're going to cut, aluminum even.
00:26:34
Speaker
Yeah, aluminum might do. I don't have coolant in the machine yet, although that could probably happen today. So I was trying to cut some non-coolanty material. Aluminum dry? But even just steel. Steel can cut dry too. This was... I just always think of brass as like the cakewalk butter material that like is easy and shiny and looks cool and is cheap and easy to get and stuff. This machine was it, Emo, or just the Aroa? Just the Aroa. Okay, got it.
00:27:04
Speaker
The machine is still new from Kern. It was never demoed or whatever in a trade show. Correct. Yeah. It has some hours on it from testing and their initial startup procedure and all that stuff. Got it. So yeah, it's weird there were tips in it, just little dust and stuff around. And I'm like, I thought this thing was brand new. Oh, of course. They go through hours of testing on it. And that's just what they do. That's awesome. That's cool. Your bureau has 80 positions.
00:27:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's got 25 big pallets and 55 smaller pallets. Good grief, I couldn't. And that can be configured as however I want over time. Yeah, right. And the little pallets are only three inches though? Yeah, it's basically three and six inches. Okay. Yeah. So and what are your thoughts on the three inch pallets?
00:27:55
Speaker
I've got some product ideas for the near future that are going to fit perfectly on there, but it'll also be just the perfect position to put a tiny vise and do all the random little stuff like, oh, I got to make 20 clamps for this new fixture. So let's just load up material in these tiny vices and hit go, basically.
00:28:16
Speaker
But yeah, I'm still fine tuning the exact plan for those, but 25 big pallets is plenty for now. Put my tombstones on there and make knives. That's the bread and butters, that. Cool.
00:28:32
Speaker
But yeah, very exciting. So yeah, the install is almost done. We're going to make a couple goofy parts today just to learn the machine. And Tony's going to teach me how Heidenhein. So I'm looking forward to that. That's going to be an exhausting day. I'm just doing a lot of information. Yep, yep. What is stopping you from turning on the mori and running parts?
00:28:58
Speaker
Nothing. We should be running parts by tonight. Oh, wow. Levels done. It just needs coolant. And then Angelo is going to come in with the touch probe, and he's going to touch the table in a whole bunch of spots and just see where it's at. Compare many spots on the table, because when they first installed the mori, they did that as well. And I don't remember the exact value, but the guy was like, holy crap, this is really, really close in all spots across the table.
00:29:26
Speaker
So we'll see what we get tomorrow. And then it just needs cooling. Are you switching it to the, was it 450?
00:29:34
Speaker
Yeah, the 450 eco pure 450. And then today, both my coolant reps are coming in today, this morning. So I'm looking forward to that. So my local rep Mary, and then the US guy, john Wiley is awesome. And super looking forward to that. We'll film what we can like conversationally.
00:29:57
Speaker
actually going back to the probing the table and leveling our VM three has six feet actually has eight but two of them are just outrigger feet for the sheet metal that don't do they just stabilize sheet metal so they're not okay what would you call it they're not structural feet if that makes sense and so if I remember the way you you level it you
00:30:21
Speaker
And again, three points makes a plane. So three points is the way to go, but big machines can't have three points often.
00:30:30
Speaker
they need more. So if I remember, we do the outside four feet, and you do end up going for earth level, not because it needs to have earth level, but because it's just simply it's kind of like sending your indicator is zero, it just makes it easier to have a reference point as you're going through this. And then, you know, it's a C frame machine. So you jog the table left to right. And that's,
00:30:56
Speaker
pretty simple to see does the level move as the table moves left to right because that's obviously means you've got some amount of warp in your table or the casting, but the trick I think or the harder one is then you move the table in Y because if your indicator moves in Y, you then use the middle two feet. So you bring after the outside four feet are kind of rough leveled or close to semi-rough leveled.
00:31:25
Speaker
You bring the center two feet down to touch the floor, but not really much pressure, and then you jog it in Y, and then you can use those two to impart stress in the casting, which is very similar to sort of how you do this with a lathe moving across the bed, and you can impart twist or really it's not imparting twist, it's straightening the twist out with that pressure.
00:31:51
Speaker
Yeah. And I think the Maury is similar because there's actually eight feet. So we leveled it with four. And then I don't know what happened with the other four. Like I know the guys put them in and use them to level, but I'm not sure if somebody was telling me just bring them up until they're touching, but not so tight that they actually move the bubble on the level.
00:32:11
Speaker
Whereas the Kern is not a C frame. It has the Y axis is in to the Z. The X axis is above is it like eye level, right? And then the Y and Y comes off of that. It's like the UMC 750 kind of. So we saw the things torn apart.
00:32:33
Speaker
I think of it as like classic DMG, like old school DMG, where the whole spindle head moves forward and back. Yeah, exactly. That's your Y. It's like everything moves forward and back. So the machine casting is kind of shaped like an office chair.
Kern Machine Design
00:32:50
Speaker
It's got a back to it, and then that back has where your mounts, your Z collar, or your Y-axis that moves in and out, and then the Z moves off of that, right?
00:33:01
Speaker
So it's kind of a C. Well, no, it's not a C frame because you don't have X in the, in the casting base, the lower down, but you, you.
00:33:11
Speaker
The smaller footprint, and I assume probably also because it's that mineral granite type material, the level is probably not as important. If I remember like a herma, I believe, don't quote me on this, can actually go on a pretty poor floor, like even wood floors or a less level floor or a less stable floor because the machine doesn't care as much.
00:33:35
Speaker
Right. Are all hermalese granite bases? I believe all of them except the largest one, which is massive, which is either C62 or C650 or both. It's just too big, so those are cast iron. It's awesome. But by and large most are that same mineral concrete type stuff. Nice.
00:34:02
Speaker
I got a question for you or the audience, which is we got our air fuse in I mentioned these last week, right? Oh, yeah. And I need somebody who understands how these work to explain them. I would like somebody to explain them to me, please, because it is just a piece of brass pipe with female threads on each end. And in the middle of it is a
00:34:25
Speaker
is a hemispherical diaphragm. So think like a cap of a piston engine, just a little wafer. And it's on a shaft that allows it to move left to right. And there's nothing else. There's a whole single hole through that wafer. So literally think about a piece of
00:34:49
Speaker
pipe and just in it is a penny. The penny happens to be hemispherical on one side, but just a penny. For the penny to stay aligned in that piece of pipe, it has to be on a little shaft, but I don't think there's any other role to that. I've got my fingers in it right now and I can push it both directions.
00:35:09
Speaker
These are these are directionally sensitive. You have to mount them a specific way and air normally flows and it flows over that hemisphere and then is able to basically escape or get through the piece. But then what happens is when you're
00:35:24
Speaker
airflow exceeds a certain threshold, meaning you say how to cut line and the air compressor is just dumping all the air at max pressure, max flow. The airflow overcomes whatever resistance is built into this, and it forces that penny or hemispherical object shut. That much I get. That's quite simple. What I don't understand is it's self resetting.
00:35:52
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know, man, I'd have to see it or watch a video on how it works or something. Ed was explaining that, and I just don't, he's just not clicking with me, that when you, so when your air pressure, when you stop having a blowout condition and you say go back to normal shop air pressure and you connect something on the end of it, it would create back pressure. And I just can't visualize it
00:36:19
Speaker
And it's like going back to your days in school, it's like, do you just nod and say, yeah, okay, I get it. It's like, no, I want to understand this. And I don't and I don't. So if anybody has any insights, there's a YouTube video on it, but it doesn't really explain why it's self resetting. Like, that's I don't know, it's so it's not an overpressure valve, which is what I thought it
00:36:45
Speaker
What's an overpressure valve? Oh, like a leak valve? Yeah, like over 150 PSI, it'll blow off or something. So obviously it's not that. So what is its purpose? If you cut a line, what does this do then instead? Does it blow off from here instead of the line? So you would put this right out of your, so like right now, let's say we have a flexible line.
00:37:10
Speaker
that goes from our compressor to the start of our rigid airlines, which is a good idea because I'm told you don't ever want the rigid airlines to be connected to your compressor that vibrates a little bit. So if somebody cut that with a knife or something fell or got damaged, it got dry rotted over time and it
00:37:31
Speaker
for some reason severed, which is exactly what happened in the other place where we have this, which is the far opposite corner of our shop. We have a 200 gallon battery tank, and it also has a flex line, and that flex line, the barb fitting with the crimped connection just came loose, and that's what caused a 200 gallon tank at 100 and whatever, 30 PSI, to basically go full dump.
00:37:58
Speaker
So if you had one of these threat, you would thread this directly into the tank before the soft line that connects it to the air system. So if that tank started to do its dump, this would stop it. Sounds good. Super cool. I don't I don't get it, though.
00:38:20
Speaker
Well, if you get it, make a YouTube video about it because that could be really interesting. I'll throw a link into the YouTube video that we saw on it and also include a link to the company. This is Hansen Flow Sensor because the one that we bought off McMaster is not the YouTube video that we're going to link to. It's a separate company, I believe, but same thing. Yeah. Interesting.
00:38:44
Speaker
So what else is going on in the world of disorders?
Launching a New Newsletter
00:38:47
Speaker
I am really excited on this newsletter that I mentioned.
00:38:53
Speaker
We've got the first one written. We're going to try to launch it on February 7th, so a week from today, and we're covering stuff. Hold on, let me pull up my little list of what's in the first newsletter. For sure, there'll be updates about our world, what we've got going on, videos, new stuff on content, new stuff with ProvenCut, but what I like about it is that
00:39:16
Speaker
We're treating ourselves as what we're doing that we think is newsworthy that you would care about. Meaning, we're just treating ourselves as another member of this community. We've got some commentary on the metals tariffs. We've got some stuff on Industry 4.0 and IoT in the CNC machine world. We've got some stuff on what's happening on the online part sourcing world.
00:39:38
Speaker
Somebody in major player in this industry just passed away. So we've got a little tribute and shout out to that person. A talking article that we saw in runout that's really good. Some news that's happening in the CAD CAM world that I thought was surprising.
00:39:53
Speaker
And what else? Starting to talk about IMTS, which is kind of crazy. A little blurb on the manufacturing entrepreneurship article. I've got a Did You Know? And a really cool link to one of those mesmerizing awesome YouTube videos that's kind of fun. That I sort of comment and chatter on a piece of vaporware out of Kickstarter that's still kind of kicking around. I'll be curious to see what people think of that. And then
00:40:20
Speaker
that's the kind of thing. For now, it'll be every two weeks, I think, but what's going on in the industry? What kind of stuff do I want to know about, hear about, see about, that kind of thing. Nice. I like it. I'm looking forward to that runout article.
00:40:36
Speaker
So we'll throw a link in the description or for now you can just go to nyccnt.com. There's a signup link right on the homepage, but we're actually going to create a new little website for the signup process just to keep it. I don't want the newsletter to just appear that it's about us. I want it to kind of be this industry trade rag, if you will.
00:40:56
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That's perfect. And I mean, no secrets that it's by you guys as well. But yeah, if you have a broad ranging topics, then we'll put a blurb in the bottom about, Hey, this was written by John Saunders and the team at SMW. And, you know, we need to make sure we're above the board. If we're commenting on something, that's our own product. We'll mention that to make sure it's explicit.
00:41:18
Speaker
But I very much enjoy, actually it ties back into, I've been looking for a good segue here, a good podcast takeaway I heard, which is never sell something you wouldn't buy.
00:41:33
Speaker
And I would absolutely, quote unquote, buy this, buying it, meaning I continue my whole professional life. I've enjoyed reading folks that have had good curated news or articles or stuff like that. And I absolutely will spend the time subscribing to a newsletter that talks about what's happening in the CNC machining world. Love it.
00:41:59
Speaker
Well, how about you? And you should absolutely put like 14 ads purely for SMW products in it as a joke. We will tastefully mention when I think we've got good news, but it's not going to be. I love good newsletters and articles. I dislike companies where
00:42:20
Speaker
When you buy something, you've all of a sudden signed up for 17 different spammy mailing lists, surveys, reviews, updates, products, announcements. No, that's not what this is. Because that becomes the business of the newsletter. That's not what that is for you guys. The simple way to put it, the newsletter is about you, not about us. How can it help you in your life being part of this community and knowing what's going on?
00:42:49
Speaker
Um, on that note, another really good podcast thing I wanted to share that I heard was, um, also, I believe on the guy Raz, how I built this, um, talking about how to handle those questionable or difficult situations that everybody faces as an entrepreneur or a business owner and the simple, uh, simple ground rule to always keep in mind is the best decision is a decision that will increase your customer's trust.
Building Customer Trust
00:43:19
Speaker
Ooh, that's solid. May not be the cheapest one. It may not be the one that you even like, but if it makes it, you will not regret it if it helps increase your customer's trust. I'm going to write that down. That's a good one. Huh. Yeah, because sometimes you're totally on the fence. You're like, well, what should I do?
00:43:48
Speaker
even if it comes down to refund the guy or not, or I've already shipped it or something. There's all these little microbes. It's not always black and white. It's not always customer centric too. It could be internally within the corporation. It could be
00:44:06
Speaker
you know, a friendship, it could be all kinds of things. Parenting your kids, you know. There's so many decisions that are made on a daily basis that I remember a couple of years ago, we were talking about, I think it was like why Steve Jobs only wore black and white to reduce his decision requirement. So like, like, I like the theory of, you know, hypothetically, you only have 100 good decisions in a day. And
00:44:36
Speaker
why waste them on what am I going to wear today? What am I going to have for breakfast? Which way am I going to go to work? Standardize all that so you save your good decisions for actual impactful stuff. Wholeheartedly agree. It becomes part of the process now to spend the time on higher level thinking. Yeah.
00:44:55
Speaker
It strips a lot of the emotion out of it. There's no question that you think differently when sales have gone really well or when everything's working well. If everything's falling apart or really frustrating or a really tough day, that impacts how you might treat a random new event that happens.
00:45:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
5-Axis Training Class Promotion
00:45:18
Speaker
Last thing I'll throw out is we have a couple spots left for our February 5-axis training class, which is, I'm hoping we get a couple more folks signed up because we had a really good first class and most of our other class training classes have sell out and the 5-axis class is new, but if anyone is interested, we have a two-day class that focuses on using Fusion 360 and outrunning parts on the Haas UMC 750.
00:45:42
Speaker
everything from fixturing to tooling to setups, you're making a V8 engine block, really good class that runs February 27th and 28th. Love it. Yeah, it sounds like the first one went to really well. It goes back to that same thing of don't sell something you wouldn't buy. This class is exactly what the class I wish I could have taken 10 years ago when I was in New York without a machine or even 15 months ago when I was looking at buying our first 5Xs.
00:46:12
Speaker
Oh yeah, if you took that course early in your machining career, you would have had a five axis six years ago. I don't know about that, but I definitely... You know what I mean though?
00:46:25
Speaker
Like for you and I have always known about 5-axis, but up until like two, three years ago, it was always this never reachable thing that was like, yeah, that's awesome. I thought it was for other people. Like I didn't think it was for us and it's totally for... Saying every machine is a clear exaggeration, but there are a lot of situations where I would tell somebody to look at a machine like a UMC 500 instead of a VF2, if you're getting started.
00:46:52
Speaker
now that we've done it. You wouldn't have said that a year ago, year and a half ago. I'm looking forward to being able to say that too, now that my five axis is up and running. Awesome. We'll keep those Insta stories up. They're kind of fun to see what's going on in the shop. Yeah, I realized I haven't posted anything in the main feed in a while, two weeks probably, but I've been dumping the stories, which is really fun. We're filming quite a bit for YouTube as well. Awesome. We'll have a good day, bud. I'll see you next week. Take care.
00:47:46
Speaker
Awesome. You too, bud. Thanks.