Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
#364 Sense of Community
379 Plays7 months ago
TOPICS:
- Latest hyperobsession - Chemistry
- Saunders yard sale!
- Local Machinist and makers group
- Grimsmo's Week in Review video
- Life hacks
- Nakamura window shattered, replacement is in.
- Torque wrenches
Interested in a Central Ohio Machinist & Makers meet up? Fill out this form - https://forms.gle/CSLjYSQshDqDCWRE6
SMW Yard Sale LINK: https://saundersmachineworks.com/collections/equipment-for-sale
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Podcasting Journey
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machining episode number 364. Is that right, John? Sorry. That's all good. My name, if you don't know by this point is John. And my name is also John. Grim Smoke. Yeah, we talk each week as friends and therapy and it's been a podcast for five years and it's a big part of our, you know, the show.
00:00:30
Speaker
How are you doing?
Exploring Chemistry: A Family Affair
00:00:31
Speaker
I'm doing good. So I'll start us off with, can I tell you about my latest hyperobsession? Ooh, all yours. As I think I said before, this is a phrase we use in our family as kind of a safe space. It's like, you know, all four of us in our family go deep on new things. And I'm certainly no exception on that. So chemistry.
00:00:56
Speaker
I haven't been not very interested in chemistry my entire life. I never took it in high school, kind of wish I might have, but Leif has shown some interest in chemistry and
00:01:09
Speaker
Still, it hasn't clicked with me. As far as a deep dive research, I need to know more about elements and chemicals and reactions and all this stuff until recently. And as things go in my life, when I have a need or a reason to learn about it, then I want to know everything, at least pertaining to this.
Adventures in Acid Etching
00:01:27
Speaker
So the need is when we acid etch our regular knife blades or our Damascus knife blades, we use two different acids, ferric chloride and hydrochloric acid.
00:01:38
Speaker
And we've been doing this for a decade now, for more than a decade, but to get better results, I think we need to filter this acid. So I've been learning about how to filter acids, how to filter the iron and all the garbage contaminants out of the acid. And I'm like, there's gotta be a way to do it. Like, it's gotta be some, have you ever heard of Nile Red on YouTube? No. He's like the Mark Ober of chemistry. Yeah, I think I, did he do a quitting video?
00:02:07
Speaker
I don't know. I don't think so. A quote unquote, like, okay. No, I don't know. Go ahead. Yeah. But he does these super amazing, although relatively dry and boring chemistry videos, but they're super engaging. Yeah, Nile read. Anyway, kids and I have been watching him for a couple of years, a now and then. Yeah, he will he will turn like a styrofoam cup into cinnamon candy. Chemically.
00:02:32
Speaker
Yeah. So like full subscribe, that is insanely awesome. It's super enjoyable. Um, so I was telling the guys at work, I was like, we need to be like the Nile red of etching knife blades. Like there's no reason we can't set up a lab and you know, do this chemically well. So anyway, went down super the deep, deeper rabbit hole. And I've been obsessed with filtration of all different kinds for many years now, air quality, coolant, things like that. Um,
00:03:01
Speaker
And now chemical filtration has added a new feather in my cap kind of thing. Well, that's what I was just going to ask. I'm guessing this is not mesh-based micron screen filtration. You can absolutely use a coffee filter type thing. Oh, yeah? And that's the easy, basic way. And then there are different ways. Like when you use muriatic acid, which is hydrochloric acid to etch a damastyl knife blade,
00:03:29
Speaker
The acid turns yellow because the iron and other chemicals are leaching into the acid and they're actually like, they're not solids anymore. You can't just filter them out, I don't think. So you need some way if you really want them out to purge them from the molecular structure of the thing. And you could distill it, basically boil it until the water separates. That's more complicated than we need.
00:03:54
Speaker
And then you know like when you do water filtration, you have RO water, which pumps it through a membrane. And then you have DI water, which pumps it through resin.
00:04:04
Speaker
Okay. That actually takes the ions and all of the impurities out of the water. Okay. That's why DI water is nearly pure, pure water. And these resins that are in a DI filter, I learned all about this. They basically are chemically made so that they take a certain metal molecule and exchange it for a hydrogen molecule. Yeah, it's a little straight off. And then a bubble comes off.
00:04:29
Speaker
Love it. And you can actually refresh these things, these little grains, and you can use a certain chemical or reagent to make them whole again. And then all the irons and all the stuff they collected fall to the bottom. I'm like, this is crazy. So theoretically, if I get the right resins, I can, I think, literally add them to the acid mixture and they will just eat
00:04:53
Speaker
the metals as they're being etched from the blade, they will suck into these resins and the acid should stay cleanish.
Solving Acid Etching Challenges
00:05:01
Speaker
Can you rewind? I'm now in this chemistry, la la land. Why do you use acid and what is the problem?
00:05:11
Speaker
that you wanted to now filter. Etching our knife blades like a regular stainless steel knife blade that we do, we etch those to get them black and they look cool. So we use ferric chloride for that and the acid gets nasty over time. So that's probably a good candidate for the coffee filter thing. Etching it black is just a color thing. It's not anodizing it. It's not to engrave it with like masking. Okay. Yeah.
00:05:40
Speaker
Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. We have the whole blade. We mask off the bearing track and the pivot hole and some critical features, mask it with plastic plugs and nail polish selectively. If that acid gets dirty or old or contaminants, it can cause blacker spots on the blade and then just leads to more rework kind of thing. Got it. That's not fun. Then for the dam steel blades, I mean, these are
00:06:07
Speaker
These are blades we sell for many hundreds of dollars more. And if the acid turns yellow, or if there's more impurities in it, then it causes a yellow spot on the blade, which then has to be polished out, which then like, yada, yada, yada. So I'm like, guys, there's got to be a better way. So I put my thinking cap on, took my Sunday, and I was like, I'm just going to dabble my toe, dip my toe in the waters of chemistry. And then a good eight hours later, I'm coming up for air. And I'm like, whoa.
00:06:36
Speaker
I thought it lasted was quote unquote, super cheap. Is it not just better to recycle it correctly? And then also possible to neutralize the acid. And this is something I learned last night to neutralize the acid we've been using baking soda, which is cheap, easy. It does bubble it fizzes and it theoretically turns it into salt and
00:06:56
Speaker
water. However, the guys were telling me that it takes a very long time to neutral, to properly neutralize like say half a gallon of this acid and like hours of just sprinkle stir, sprinkle stir, which is no, I don't want that.
00:07:16
Speaker
So what I learned last night is you can use sodium hydroxide, which is a way more on the basic scale of the pH scale, like 14 instead of 8.8 that baking soda is. So I'm going to get some of that, which is apparently like the standard for neutralizing acids and it's relatively safe to work with and all that stuff. So it should be like
00:07:37
Speaker
way better than baking soda for dissolving this acid. That's awesome.
Decluttering with a Yard Sale
00:07:42
Speaker
That might solve that. Maybe the answer is just use new acid every time, but on a Sunday at home with nothing else to do well. No, no, no. Yeah. I was like, how would Nile Red do this? How do you actually make pure acid again? Is it possible? Is it worth it? I don't know.
00:08:02
Speaker
And we do heat up the muriatic acid, which has always been super janky. Um, we have just this, this like a hot plate from Home Depot kind of thing. We use a crock pot for a while, um, double boiler set up and muriatic acid leeches all these nasty fumes and all this stuff. A couple of years ago, we bought a proper fume hood with carbon filters and like a lab set up, but we haven't been utilizing it so well. Yada, yada.
00:08:30
Speaker
Then it turns out all the mason jars we've been using for our acid etching are not good glass for etching because the steel etches it. We're like, mason jar, it should be good. They're strong, they're thick. It turns out all mason jars and most glassware is made of soda lime glass, not borosilicate glass like labware is made of.
00:08:52
Speaker
So, what did I do? I bought beakers. I bought the proper thick walled borosilicate lab grade beakers. They're not that expensive. I'm like, guys, we're doing this right. It sounds like a Walter White in the making here. Exactly.
00:09:08
Speaker
No, there's a YouTube, I don't remember if it was, I think it was practical engineering, also a great channel about civil engineering. And, um, he was talking about how, uh, hope I'm saying this right. Galvanized steel is just a zinc player that it's not really, it's not really protective so much as it is a longterm consumable. Interesting. And I love, love what you just, I love, love, love this idea that.
00:09:34
Speaker
you're basically saying, Hey, everything that walks into the room that is bad, we'll get attracted to this one little corner area and it will take the hit for the rest of the team. Like in a brick, I want to say in civil engineering bridges, they have like a, uh, I wish I could remember this. It's like, is it like a 12 volt battery on one part of one beam? And that acts as like it's not a ground, but basically everything then comes out or something.
00:09:58
Speaker
And then every like three years or whatever, they go and just replace this little, and it's freaking amazing to think that like, okay, it just attracts everything over and immediately sacrifices or immediately serves as the cleaner, the filter. Yeah. It's, if you think, I never even thought of a bridge as a battery in a way, and you have your anode and your cathode and you're creating a sacrificial, one of those two, I think. Yeah.
00:10:27
Speaker
That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I'm sure somebody will, I love touching base on what I don't know sometimes, you know, like,
00:10:37
Speaker
And like I said, I've been avoiding chemistry, just not super interested for so many years. And now, especially with Leif just turned 11 and he's expressing an interest and I'm like, well, I got to lead this charge. If we're both interested, this is going to get fun. I just have horror stories of not being good at high school chemistry of balancing equations.
00:10:59
Speaker
I just wanted my cup of tea, but overall, the YouTube content of it sounds exciting. For that matter, I'm not super interested in the math behind it, but... Yeah. There was some funny meme a long time ago, or not meme, but joke about some person was trying to be super safe, and they went up to the reseller of the acid, and they were like, hey, I bought this whatever, hydrochloric acid or something, uratic acid, and I'm really concerned about how I can store it,
00:11:28
Speaker
at home and just don't know if I should be using plastic or not. It seems like it would melt through the plastic and they're like, you bought it in a plastic jug from us. And it is kind of one of those like, oh, that's right. Yeah. I didn't think about it like that. Now in fairness, I'm sure like plastics are not all the same. Exactly. That's very true. Yeah. And that's the other thing with muriatic acid. You can buy it at home depot. People use it for their pools. People use it to etch their brick outside their concrete.
00:11:53
Speaker
but it off gases real bad and everything in your shop will turn rusty. And there's all these posts on Practical Machinist about literally small machine shops that have a jug and they're like, oh, my surface grinder just has rust all over it now. And so we've been sealing it in a metal bookshelf, whatever you call it, storage container.
00:12:16
Speaker
But the inside of that is now rusted too. So I think what I learned is the trick is the gases do actually go downwards in gravity. So you put the jug in a five gallon bucket and put something consumable in the bottom of the bucket, whether it's baking soda or even people say put a brick or a limestone or gravel or something so that any off-gassing will get eaten and could be reacted by the thing as opposed to just blowing around your entire shop.
00:12:41
Speaker
This is not in the machine shop. It's in the finishing shop? Correct. But there's still the tumbler. That's our whole heat treat cell. There's stuff around, right? But there's not a grinder or a brother. Yeah. There's our old Tormach surface grinder that's still collecting dust.
00:12:58
Speaker
Dude, I saw mine got pretty decent money for it. Yeah, good. You should sell it. I'm in the excited to be ready for this yard sale. Yes. Actually, Adam Savage just posted a video. It's a little bit of a morbidly eye catching title of like end of life plans. Like what do I do?
00:13:23
Speaker
For reasons I can't really identify, that's been more top of mind for me. Nothing has happened, healthy, and haven't lost any relatives lately. But you sort of think about that sort of stuff, I guess. And one of the reasons it feels good to be selling and cleansing this stuff is not doing that. But I really, I needed this little nudge. I didn't know I needed it from, I came from Adam in this video of like, when he has had some yard sales,
00:13:50
Speaker
just sell the stuff. At the risk of letting it sell to somebody who's going to go flip it or not be a good person, whatever. It doesn't matter. Sell the stuff. Don't sit there and be like, oh man, I think I can get 80% of what I paid for. No, just sell the stuff. And so, look, I'm not going to apologize for thinking like, man, I think I have three Heimers that are almost in great, almost brand. I mean, they're like new condition. These are $400 a piece or something, $500 a piece with the Tormach Harbor.
00:14:18
Speaker
you know, I, you know, what's a fair price to sell those that is just yep, they're not going to be there Saturday at four o'clock. Yeah.
00:14:29
Speaker
So that's my kind of mindset. Every hour, everything gets 10% cheaper kind of thing. Well, so no joking. That's actually what I had that idea at first. I'm guilty of that idea. But that's actually what I don't want to do. I don't want to have a situation where there's all this confusion around pricing.
00:14:49
Speaker
Because we actually had a little meeting here because it's like, hey, I'm going to be there. My wife's going to be there. We're going to have some Serena, I think, and Alex are going to be there helping and check out. So it's kind of like, I think I'm going to probably do something like all the prices are posted. There's no haggling. Don't come up and ask somebody else because don't put them in a position to be like, hey, can I get 10% off or 20% off? This stuff is priced
00:15:09
Speaker
to go, it is what it is, ensure it. If I'm wrong on something, let me know. If I've missed the mark, I'm not above that. But I don't want to put everybody else to see what they've got to decide. Oh my gosh, these guys are just trying to beat us up over what's already a stupid price. Yeah. Fair. Yeah. So for myself and anybody else listening who might be attending, what are we looking at? What are we expecting?
00:15:35
Speaker
Stuff to sell? No, as the event, as the day. It's what, three weeks away or so?
00:15:41
Speaker
Yeah. When we say April, I should know this April, uh, we have a site page up. Um, so we'll put that in the comment descriptions, but if you go to Saunders machine works, go all the way to the bottom, it says equipment for sale. And one of the kind of products is the machine shop yard sale. We're going to have, um, use that as a page to post new photos and, uh, doors open at nine 30 AM.
00:16:09
Speaker
And what I was super flattered by was I think last week I sort of said, hey, it'd be kind of nice to have an idea of who's going to show up, like making sure there's not four people that show up. And the first response was I got was from a gentleman in Maine who's driving down for it. So that kind of told me, okay, I don't think we're gonna have four people. Yeah.
00:16:31
Speaker
And we've got some photos up of stuff. I frankly, it needs to be reorganized, but you know, everything from an old drone I had that's personal to five C college, to six inch vices, to tooling, to tumbler, tall tumbler, to a bench grinder, to organization Acromills bins, and the list goes on. Yeah. Cool. Laptops from training classes, all that. Yeah. And I think the, there will be a blend of people coming for the yard sale and people just coming for like doors are open. I want to go see.
00:17:01
Speaker
Totally. Yeah. I didn't want to call it an open house because we're not putting together an itinerary and we're not. Display kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Frankly, I don't have the ability to hold, I think last open house, we had 500 people. I don't have the infrastructure, the bathrooms, the stuff for that. Probably 12 less machines at that time.
00:17:26
Speaker
Yeah, we're actually hosting this all at the training building though. Because that's the awkward thing too, is we don't really have a way of allowing a heavy volume of flow through Saunders side right now. We've got to figure something out there. Yeah, I was curious how, not just for myself, but for anybody else coming, will the shop be open? Will there be walkthroughs? I don't know. The point isn't to be closed about it, but we're not going to have
00:17:52
Speaker
200 people just walking around the shop, uh, open like maybe we'll do tours or maybe we'll have some tape up and you can kind of look in. I don't know. Um, gotta keep it safe and whatever. Um, so yeah.
00:18:05
Speaker
It's exciting. So speaking of this overarching topic, both your and my relationship of the sense of entrepreneurship and community, but also meetups and also how you kind of were just saying you go, what would you say like a new topic hits you and you just go? A hyper obsession. Yes. So about a week ago, maybe just after the last time you and I talked, I realized
00:18:34
Speaker
this idea of a sense of community. And this is coming from a book I've mentioned numerous times by Arthur Brooks called Strength to Strength that talks a lot about post 40 personal and work life, as well as the sense of fulfillment and what you, what matters to you. And then my wife has gotten big into blue, she's got a correctly blue zone or blue wave on Netflix. Have you seen this?
00:18:58
Speaker
Blue Zone, the living to a hundred thing? Yes. Yeah. My wife and I saw that. Yeah. Okay. I haven't watched it yet. I clearly need to because it sounds- It was wonderful. Beautiful. Yeah. It's kind of what it was like. I'm not here to drink the Kool-Aid. It's more just like, if it means something to you, that's all it needs to be.
00:19:16
Speaker
I have my extracurriculars and so forth, but I don't, it's in a weird way, don't feel like I have the sense of identity in many of those little things I do as I wish I had. And long winded way of saying, you know what I want? I want a group of local
00:19:31
Speaker
like-minded folks that are interested in making and machining. And so I am gonna put in the podcast descriptions, I'll figure out a way I can put up on elsewhere as well, but a little Google form with the idea of starting the Muskingum County makers and machinists. The tentative idea, this is very, very early, but the tentative idea would be once a month, probably Tuesday at five o'clock, people just get together.
00:20:01
Speaker
There's no obligation. There's no, this isn't for, there's no dues. This isn't just like, Hey, let's find a group of people that want to come and talk about CNC machines or 3d printers or what they're working on.
Building a Maker Community
00:20:14
Speaker
We're certainly not the first person to come up with this, but I'm not aware of a local one here. And frankly, I don't know that how I think the more stuff like this happens, the better off we all are.
00:20:24
Speaker
I don't want to be the face of it, though. This isn't about me at all. So I would actually have rather joined somebody else's, if that makes sense. I'm happy to host it, but it doesn't need to be here. It's not about me. I want to be a member, not the leader. But somebody's got to start it.
00:20:43
Speaker
Yeah, that's the thought is like, let's just see if it goes anywhere. So I recognize that this is not necessarily something for the this whole audience, which is international or certainly the US. But for folks that are, you know, here in this game county or central Ohio, take a look at that form, throw in your email. And if that makes sense, let's get together next month, like you don't have to be. So how does this differ from a maker space, let's say?
00:21:05
Speaker
Again, this is super early, so I'm not here to set guidelines, but to me, a makerspace offers a one-way relationship where you pay money or join and then you get access to something you may not have. Okay.
00:21:21
Speaker
I'm thinking about more of a group that just can get together and shoot the breeze, talk about projects, you know, share what they're doing or ask around, like, just more of a casual thing. We could meet in a random conference room in an office building. We won't, we'll probably turn around.
00:21:40
Speaker
at a Makerspace or at Saunders or at another factory if somebody else joined it locally. Yeah. I like it. I like it a lot. I only ask because just the other day I was looking up local Makerspaces for Leif and I to just go and like learn and play. And there's a couple but they're limited or it's just the library that has a 3D printer and they're calling it a Makerspace. And I'm like, well, I've got like six 3D printers and that's not the same.
00:22:05
Speaker
Yeah, right, right. It's like, if I'm going to go somewhere, it has to have value, not just the community, but that is a big thing too. Like I want to get laid for more people that are interesting, you know, and then have the bug for making things or being creative or using their brain kind of thing. And I'm struggling to find that locally, you know, group of people, young people, especially to have a manual with
00:22:32
Speaker
So in three weeks, I'm looking forward to coming down. Well, no, that's like the point is, so I want in a perfect world, this would be something that can develop some longer term relationships, like some sense of identity amongst all the people that come to know that it's a resource. It's a good place to go. You know, I don't, this is kind of how we, I don't want there to be alcohol involved for a bunch of reasons, but like kind of the come, come, quote, unquote, have a proverbial drink. Yeah.
00:22:59
Speaker
But in the same way that AA serves as a support network for all of us, does it have this to be a place where you can socialize, meet up, shoot the breeze, talk about stuff? And I'd love to have high school robotics kids come. And I'd love to have, I'd love to have Paul Diebold, who's on the other spectrum of his age and career come in and talk about what he's seen and share his wisdom. It's the Chamber of Commerce for machinists, like for makers, right? In a way, it's the meet and greet, it's the, you know,
00:23:29
Speaker
Let's sit down and have a cold drink and talk about life and work and projects and planning and I like that a lot.
00:23:39
Speaker
Thank you for letting my ear on. Absolutely. Threat tossing that idea out. In a somewhat similar vein, although different, although similar, something that Angelo here at work has been harping on for quite a while is he's like, so we have our project videos, our knife making Tuesdays.
YouTube Series on Business Insights
00:23:58
Speaker
He's like, you got your podcast. We have some more specific or starting on these product based videos. But he's like, we don't have a good form, a good way to
00:24:09
Speaker
really conversationally talk about our products and our business and what we're really thinking and all the reasons behind stuff and all that. So he's like, wouldn't it be cool if we had this YouTube series where we can just discuss these things? So last Friday, we filmed one. And it's going up today, I think Wednesday. Him and I sat down in front of the mori in the shop. Everybody's working. Everybody's busy.
00:24:35
Speaker
And we just, we had an outline, we wrote it down, four main topics to talk about. And we just talked about stuff for 40 minutes. And it was like, kind of like a podcast between me and him, but very specific to our company and what we're working on, what the plans are. So the four categories we came up with just talking about this and planning were challenges and opportunities, current product updates, new product updates, and future plans and outlooks.
00:25:03
Speaker
which gave us a really good framework to go deep on DLC coding pens and the problems with that. And then also challenges in the shop, like the window exploded on the Nakamura last week and things like that. And throughout the week, we filmed a lot of B-roll in the shop of these things without having to talk about it in the filming, which was weird and really nice. I don't normally do that, but it was actually really nice.
00:25:27
Speaker
And that's the kind of footage that everybody on our team could just pick up the camera and be like, oh, it's a big cooling flood. Let me just film something well. And then they'll talk about it at the end of the week in the video. That kind of stuff. So for a first try, I think it went amazingly well. And I think it's something we'll keep up. And it's been a really refreshing way for him and I to talk about current state of the products, tweaks we're making, things to get excited about, new products in the works kind of thing, like really for the fans kind of thing.
00:25:57
Speaker
Yeah, great. Good for you. How long is it? The first one's 40 minutes. But next ones will be a lot shorter, I think. Well, no, I was just saying I could see a conversation going on 40 minutes on one of those four times. Yeah, exactly. Oh, exactly. So yeah, good for you.
00:26:17
Speaker
I think it's great. I will watch that. Yeah. Even as Ryan was filming it and he had his headphones on just listening to it while we go and he goes, guys, that's my kind of content. He's not a machinist. He's like, that's the kind of stuff. It's like two passionate people like you and I talking, but it was very specific for our business. Yeah.
00:26:37
Speaker
and products and things like that. And it actually, I was worried that it would overlap too much with what we do here, but it went in different directions. And I was kind of impressed that him and I could peel away and it's cool. It's almost weird to think that you needed that format to maybe talk internally, even though it's a external conversation. Exactly. Yup. But it's a conversational view of our company directly from two employees of our company to each other.
00:27:06
Speaker
And then we'll rope in some other people, get Eric involved, get some of the other guys. It's gonna be cool. Awesome. That's great. Yeah, it's gonna be awesome. I think we needed that.
00:27:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of the things I find empirically disappointing is how complicated it is for us to bring a product to market at this point. And a good example, and frankly, one that I normally wouldn't share publicly, but in the spirit of what you just said, like, this is the kind of thing that perhaps if we had done something similar to what you're doing, would be part of the bigger conversation. But somebody emailed this morning who has bought a Gen 3 mod vice. They're like, love it.
00:27:41
Speaker
But I need to, I don't know why, but they like, I need to lift it up. I need to be about two inches higher. Um, I don't think it's a, a speedio sort of spindle to the table issue. I think for some reason, the way they're holding it apart, they want it higher up and they're like, do you make a riser or a thicker jaw? And, um, the simple short answer is we do not full stop. Um, are we aware of that? We have, we've thought about that internally. Um,
00:28:07
Speaker
We've actually made a taller mod vice for, we don't use them anymore, but for some of our internal production, we thought about risers, we thought about thicker jaws, but it quickly becomes more complicated because how thick, how tall, is it custom to each person? And then how are you selling it in cross compatibility? And ultimately to me, what puts a nail in the coffin for now or the
00:28:31
Speaker
temporary screw and then coffin is, it's so easy for the customer to do this on their own. A one, two, three block might work just to lift the mod vice up off of it in some longer screws. These are mostly custom solutions anyway. Yes, custom-ish. It's kind of like, I don't want to build a product line and material and workflows and QC and inventory.
00:28:55
Speaker
right now, but I also don't like the idea of not supporting the growth and modularity and flexibility of our product line. I love it. And those kind of thought processes are what Angelo and I figured out we can now discuss on the, this week in review video, because we put so much work into this company that never gets noticed and not that it needs to be noticed, but it's like,
00:29:21
Speaker
Our customers and our fans are like, why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? Yeah. And as we've thought about it, let's talk about it. You can't please everybody, John. I know. Absolutely. But, um, it gives us a way to conversationally discuss these topics. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's great. Um, I had two fun life hacks. I wanted to share one was a win. One is probably a not go, uh, no go, but, um, one is at home.
00:29:51
Speaker
Did I talk about the coffee machine last week? Uh, with the RO water direct to it or something. Okay. I already talked about it. Sorry. Working great though. Love it. Did the same thing for the dog bowl. Um, adding another ball valve to have a different ways to show it off. And I may actually add a regulator because I don't want the higher pressure on it, but it just feels good to know like, Oh, Hey, pex line tubing, ball valves, three printed drama. The other one is, um, pressing in the.
00:30:19
Speaker
Gen 3 pins has worked great in a screw vise and we're just using an extra six inch screw vise.
00:30:27
Speaker
Um, it takes about 40 foot pounds on the vice to final press. Now that will be very dependent on our interference fit, which, you know, our end mill and mills were two 10ths that will go up probably non-linear Lee, but assume 40 foot pounds for the example here. Um, I had had a quick call with the, one of the apps guys at clear path to sort of understand if we could grab one of the clear paths that we have laying around and.
00:30:54
Speaker
While we could, I don't think we will. It ends up that the, even with the 10, we have a 10 to one gearbox on one. So you have a, uh, approximately 250 ounce inch clear path motor, which is super easy to control with Arduino. I like that. The gearbox is 10 to one. You'd still want like a three to one further reduction on the chain drive between the output of the gearbox and the whatever you have on the, on the vice, um, police system hex thing. Exactly.
00:31:22
Speaker
And there's some real safety considerations, like you'd have to have it with two buttons that way you don't have a finger nearby when it's closing, because it's going to be a force. So I don't know where I'm going to go with this. I'm going to go back. Robert posted some really interesting commercial automated presses. I don't know that they'll be strong enough.
00:31:41
Speaker
and we are fine for now which is good because we don't need this we do by hand but it's bad because it means you doesn't sometimes it's better to be backed up against a wall because it forces you to solve the problem instead of just kick the can down the road but yeah the idea of automating a vice
00:31:58
Speaker
using the vices to press seems very like, oh, this is such a win. This makes sense. And you can do this these days with limit switches and auto retracts to open the vices back up. That's such a fun thought to me. Yeah, I think a pneumatic press would accomplish. Not necessarily an arbor press, but more of an overhead. I don't know what I'm thinking of.
00:32:24
Speaker
Well, like the Tormach drawbar uses that. Tormach auto drawbar is an Asian sourced pancake cylinder, like three thing that has a huge amount of. Yeah, it's like four inch diameter or more, right? And that would probably be better. The other thought I had is you could use the same system we have with the six inch vise where you use a, use a wrench on a,
00:32:51
Speaker
with a, you know, 15 inch handle on it just to make it easy. And that's how I'm doing it right now. It makes it it's not difficult at all to press in the pins that way, then you could have a and you could put that on a one way clutch and then you could have a separate I think this through
00:33:07
Speaker
I'm just embarrassed. I don't think I'm thinking outside my head. You have a separate like other way clutch that could then allow the motor to reverse the vice open automatically just to save you the time from undoing it seven turns. I think it takes to get a vice open. That's a waste. I don't mind pressing it in my hand. It's nice to feel it actually. I've got a silly, excellent idea. Put a steering wheel on the end of the vice, like a big steering wheel. Oh, sure. Like a 20 inch tractor trailer steering wheel.
00:33:38
Speaker
or a bicycle wheel or something. Then it can undo itself and you don't have... Well, then you're just rotating it just by hand. You have the leverage, you have full rotation. I don't know. No, that's great. Well, but I guess what I was thinking is that then you could also potentially have a motorized open and it's not the same safety-ish issue because you can't have a wrench handle flopping around, going backward. Okay, that's a good idea, John.
00:34:03
Speaker
I don't know if you machine it or 3d print segments that go together or I don't know something but maybe just buy a yeah buy like a 20 inch cool like yeah replica like Ferrari, Siri wheel for like 50 bucks or something. Yeah. And then just make an adapter for it. Because that would give you the leverage of a torque wrench. But also the speed of just whipping it one way or the other.
00:34:28
Speaker
Well, I'll go down to tractor supply and buy the knob, the one hand palm knob for searing. You know those? There you go. Oh, that's a good idea. Because I totally know how it goes, the rabbit hole of like, I could spend a couple grand on this, you know, whatever. Or actually, how do we simplify this if possible?
00:34:49
Speaker
Well, and that was the other thing was I thought, Hey, I've got a clear path laying around. I need to buy a power supply, but ends up that I'd really need a nuclear path, which is 600 bucks. If you're not a power supply, uh, some art, some electronic stuff, you know, like you're over a thousand bucks already, which is no problem. Like I, the press will be multiple times that expensive, but I also, it's a lot less fun to roll this on my own. If it's now that much. Exactly. Right. It's cool. Yeah.
00:35:18
Speaker
The other thing, and then I'll stop talking, is I got to give a shout out to the folks that reached out. My IoT Alexa frustrations seem to be well solved by a open source-ish thing called Home Assistant. You heard of it?
00:35:36
Speaker
I don't know. Home Assistant, solid user base, goes on a Raspberry Pi, actually can also be hosted on a Synology NAS, which we already use, and makes it easy to integrate other IoT devices without the frustrations and really frustrating quirks with like SmartThings devices, which don't pair, require 2.4 gigahertz in Wi-Fi, don't. This is just like, I'm trying to think of a good analogy, but it's just the,
00:36:05
Speaker
seems like a great thing. It does take a little bit of stuff to get up and running, so I'm kind of putting it into the days off in the shop bucket. I still wish I could just buy an Alexa switch that did this because that would be done in 10 minutes, but nevertheless, I like that opportunity. Cool.
00:36:28
Speaker
Let's see. So immediately after our podcast last week, um, on Wednesday, uh, so I'm upstairs in our shop here.
Safety Mishap with the Nakamura Machine
00:36:36
Speaker
And, um, so Angela comes upstairs and he's like, so crack the glass on the Nakamura. And I posted some pictures on Instagram, but, um,
00:36:47
Speaker
essentially this long drill shattered into a million pieces and shrapnel hit the windshield and total never had that happen before. Even Angelo and Jeff there too. None of them have, we've all seen pictures online, but it's never happened to us kind of thing. And boy, they were, they were shook for the day. Oh really?
00:37:08
Speaker
Absolutely. They were standing right there, both of them. Angela was driving and Jeff was in the line of fire pretty much and had just stepped to the side when that happened. Interestingly, the glass on the Nakamura is almost an inch thick.
00:37:25
Speaker
What? It's about three quarters of an inch of Lexan polycarbonate. And then a quarter inch of, we think, tempered glass. And we think like a windshield. It looks like it cracked like a windshield. Exactly. So I think the thin inner layer is what shattered. And then the thick outer layer is your double stop protection, your bulletproof glass kind of thing. And stepping back and looking at that blade, I'm like, OK, that thing's got, I don't even know
00:37:54
Speaker
20 horsepower main spindle. Like if a chuck lets loose or if you have a big six inch slug and like there's a reason the glass is one inch thick, right? So we bought a replacement. They had it in stock in Toronto at Elliott, $1,500, but it is what it is. And then, you know, there's the owner side of me that goes, oh, it's $1,500. Like nothing the guys could have done. It just, the drill gave brand new drill first hole.
00:38:23
Speaker
I don't know. Really? Yeah. So I'm leaning towards literally a manufacturing defect in the carbide itself. Because they set it up. They had no run out. We've done this 100 times before this setup. I think they did everything right. It just didn't work that day. You've replaced the drill numerous times as well?
00:38:47
Speaker
Yeah. Oh yeah, many times. Okay. Okay. Yeah. It's got a life. We track it for minutes. Yeah, right. And we've drilled this material before with this drill before and I don't know, just it's weird. It's weird. But anyway,
00:39:01
Speaker
looking at the shrapnel that came off of it, Jeff collected some of this carbide and it was like little shards. It wasn't big pieces, it just kind of disappeared. That is strange. It is strange. I've twisted drills before, break them and they just kind of go dink and then that's it. Anyway, one of these pieces came up and it hit the windshield and the other side of me goes, well, thank goodness for that windshield because
00:39:29
Speaker
That would have gone through somebody. Oh, no, absolutely. That had to be a pretty good chunk of drill too, because you think about chips are hitting that thing rough. You don't try to choose chips. Still, that's strange. It's super strange. One of those machinist shop owner learning lessons.
00:39:52
Speaker
Yeah, that's why safeties are in place. It's like when a fire trace goes off, you don't go, man, that's going to be $1,000 to refill that tank. You're like, thank you fire trace. Yes. Yeah, right. That's crazy that the glass is that thick. Whereas on the Speedio, it has the blue grate in front of it, the metal, the powder coated blue sheet metal, whatever. And it's just plexiglass inside. It feels like quarter inch thick, little plexiglass.
00:40:20
Speaker
And I feel like the Mori has a really thick window too. These are both Japanese kind of machines. And the Willowman, yours too, just has a little thin quarter inch plexiglass. Yeah. Oh, that's true too. I think your point's spot on though with these relatively strong lays. Chucks are three inch slug turning it.
00:40:41
Speaker
Well, if you forget a G, what is it, GE? I should know this, the max RPM command. I mean, you can turn that thing into a missile. Yeah, exactly, right. So maybe next time you're at your Okuma horizontal, just kind of put your hands on both sides of glass and try to guesstimate how thick it is. Oh, I think it's quarter inch, Sean. Do you think so? Pretty sure. Yeah. I'll just see if I can measure that. Hmm. Okay.
00:41:09
Speaker
But the NAC window is like two feet by two feet. No supports, no metal, no nothing in between. It's just a big piece of glass, right? Yes. It's got to be a heavy door then or a heavy piece of glass. It is, yeah. The whole door. We're like, so do we have to remove the whole door to do this or is somebody climbing inside to undo all these bolts? And we climbed inside.
00:41:31
Speaker
Did they let you do it yourself? Yeah. That's nice. Yeah, that's great. It was the option of spending another $1,500 for a service guy to come out and do it. And I was like, ah. Actually, Angelo decided. He's like, we got this. It's fine. It's true. It's just screws, yeah. It's screws, but it's weird because there's a divider wall where the door passes across, and you have to reach the screws on both sides. And it goes from the inside of the machine. So we interlock the machine to show off the breaker and everything, and he jumped inside. Sweet. It was cool.
00:42:02
Speaker
They got it. They got it. Good. That's good. What glider is. Okay. That's totally right. It doesn't feel great to think. Have you already replaced the drill and run a new one? As of yesterday, they put the new drill in, uh, it took about a week to really, you know, get it fully back up and running, get our confidence back up. Um, so last I saw yesterday is they put the new drill in and they were just about to do a test cut. Um, they even made a, um,
00:42:30
Speaker
acrylic sheet, like a quarter inch extra sheet on the inside that just bolts into an L bracket. And they're like, well, if it's going to happen again, at least let's destroy this before it takes some energy before it hits the regular. Yeah. So it's kind of silly, but also kind of a great idea.
00:42:47
Speaker
It's funny. Not funny. Sorry. That would be the worst if like the first, whatever the first drill again, just goes through a whatever blows up. Right. Well, hopefully it hits this sheet and then no big no harm, no foul. But, um, yeah, we've also got two brands of drills that we have used for many years. Um, and we switched to the other brand, uh, as of yesterday and we'll see.
00:43:14
Speaker
Yeah, to your point, we've broken our share of end mills over the years. And maybe once or twice I've seen an end mill where you've actually been able to like, well, usually the pieces are scattered, but rarely does it seem to break into more than two or three pieces. I've never had one quote unquote blow up, they just break. And oftentimes, Lawrence is talking about this, they break in a way that's frustrating that, no, maybe it's CJ, but we've had some horizontal
00:43:41
Speaker
issues on tool light where we do brake detect, but the end mill brakes were like half of the side at a 45. So the tool gets- Length is still good. Yeah, length is still there, but half the side is missing. Yeah. Or I've had three flutes gone and one flute's still there and it leaves a garbage floor finish, but it still touches off fine.
00:44:03
Speaker
I like CJ's solution, albeit it takes up time and obviously a tool change. But if you have a tool that's particularly prone to this and it's critical that that doesn't happen or if it does happen, you catch it to put a piece of cheap ceramic in a holder, tool change into that and have the ceramic do a 2D contour along where the area should have been machined. And if the ceramic
00:44:26
Speaker
fails the tool break detect after it's done. Then you know something happened. So under the eyes of like, hey, running that horizontal lights out automation, I don't care about adding four minutes to a second time. I do care about blowing up finishers because the rougher broke and now you created that product or that's rework. You've got two end mills that are broken. You're spending an hour checking everything in the morning, et cetera.
00:44:51
Speaker
Yep. And some of the laser tool setters, your Okuma doesn't have a laser, does it? Correct. It's touch. So some of the lasers, maybe even the touch ones, can actually detect flutes.
00:45:01
Speaker
You tell it like this is a four flute end mill and it'll slowly go dink, dink, dink, dink and feel for broken flutes or chipped out flutes or something like that. But my problem with that is it's a very specific piece of code that's used in a specific section. That's, you know, here, I need a general solution. That's just like, here's my break detect program for all programs. Otherwise I'm, you know, manually coding every little bits and piece. And I try not to do that as much as I can. I agreed for sure.
00:45:30
Speaker
That's the other thing on my 2024 to-do list is we are at a point where the horizontal deserves some readdressing how we use that machine in terms of loading and unloading more pieces in the tombstones.
Optimizing Bolt Torqueing
00:45:49
Speaker
I looked into the Area 419 Ingersoll Rand torque system. It's low to mid-low five figures, but it seems great, oddly, when that guy came out a year ago, just sharing this, not looking very sympathy. He was basically like, oh, you guys can't afford this. And it was kind of like, okay, I'm not sure what to say to that, because you just walk through this shop, whatever. Yeah, out.
00:46:19
Speaker
Yeah, kind of was just like, seriously, like, I don't get you. Milwaukee makes a $800 home, prosumer automatic torque wrench totally no good. It's just a electric
00:46:31
Speaker
I forget what they call it, two tones or something, but it's an electric ratchet that when it gets close to your torque range, it turns into a manual torque wrench. No, what I would like is a tool that's held on a tool balancer that we don't have to risk dropping it or holding it up and it can
00:46:50
Speaker
Open and close to a specific torque and I understand that tool will probably cost thousands of dollars. I'm okay. Yeah Because right now what we do is open it with a weirah tool put that tool back and then reload it and then we grab a different tool and Pre rough herbs cinch it down and then we grab a different torque wrench and cinch that down and you're going to do that On some of them at 16 times per side four sides reaching some a lot of screws. What is the
00:47:20
Speaker
automotive industry do, like think of Toyota factory. So I think the, like the Ingersoll Rand system that I saw in area 419, I think is very similar, I don't know if it's the same brand to what like Hermely used, where if you have a, this is correct, don't hold me to it. If you have a 2017 Hermely, and you point to a screw on the casting, and you know, call up your Hermely sales guy, they can tell you who the person and the point in time and the torque spec
00:47:47
Speaker
that actual specific bullet at that point on the casting was torqued. March 17th, Hans did that one to 37.2 newton meters and it was supposed to be 37 newton meters. They have all that logged. I don't need the tracking like that, but that's why I'm guessing automotive uses. I'm also saying this because if there's pneumatic tools that we're not aware of or other brands of digital systems, I'd love to learn about that.
00:48:19
Speaker
There's going to be solutions out there. I think we fall into the trap of reinventing the wheel for something that is simple as torquing a bolt, which every factory in the world has already figured out kind of thing. Yes. Yes. I agree with you that there's cool ways to do it and stuff, but you call me on this too. Sometimes we got to step back and be like, how are the pros doing it? What are we missing? What do we don't know yet?
00:48:43
Speaker
Well, thank you. That is, I think, what I'm asking is what else... Yeah, exactly. The only place I've seen this is at ARRI 419 in Herma. I'm sure other shops and hopefully people listening are doing this as well. Yeah, that's kind of what I'm... What am I not aware of? Cool.
00:48:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny because we don't do vices hardly at all. So we don't have to torque things unless we're making a one-off. Don't you torque stuff on your fixtures? Little screws, like an M6 button head screw. So yeah, we do have a small torque wrench that we use for that, but it's like nine Newton meters.
00:49:18
Speaker
But that's, so we have the same, on the horizontal, that will be another thing to tackle this for, because it's the same thing. One wrench to open it, one wrench to close it. That way the wrenches don't have to flip directions, we keep them set, the ones that open, the ones that close, and then we have the torque wrench. So you've got at least three tools to do it, and a lot of hand motion.
00:49:36
Speaker
That's true. So we have one to, well, we usually use a drill to unlock it. Um, a different drill to some of them, we just torque with the drill, you know, put on setting nine or whatever, and it just works. And then some of them we do go in with a sand make torque wrench and then click, click, click, click, click. How does true we do use three tools for that?
00:49:57
Speaker
I don't think it's worth us spending any amount of money. We've already spent, you know, the $200 torque wrenches that are great for us. Yeah. Yeah. Open to ideas. Let me know what you come up with. I will do today. Um, getting some B roll for the Friday. We can review video. Nice. I'm going to be filming and gathering my thoughts on that. Fine tuning it. I'm going to review last week's, um, right after the podcast here and then, uh, it'll go up today.
00:50:27
Speaker
and then working on some parts for the new integral knife. I'm excited for that. I'm going to send the buttons off. I made 26 buttons on the Willeman, which went slower and more difficult than I expected. Send those out for colsterizing that surface treatment process we talked about last week. So I'll send those out today.
00:50:47
Speaker
and then we'll see what else comes up. What about you? We are, I'm gonna grind some puck chucks and then we are, I just reran the Okuma tool script sheet to try to check and see what tools are used and what programs, just an update thing. And then I was right that our horizontal could be better used to balance in aluminum.
00:51:13
Speaker
It absolutely can. And we've done that for the last sort of two weeks, where one or two days a week or a month, plus the Friday night overrun can be aluminum. So it felt good to know that that could happen. I've also now learned since we've been doing that, it sucks. It's just the wrong, it's kind of hard to put your finger on it, but it's just for a whole bunch of individual reasons, none of which are hugely significant. It's disruptive. It's a pain in the butt. It means we can't be as reactive as we want.
00:51:41
Speaker
And there's that overall crash risk, which I understand. There's always crash risk. The answer to crash risk isn't just buy more machines. But switching out stuff is more. And frankly, some of the aluminum, we cranked a couple of weekends. And I came in some. I don't mind coming in. I don't want to have to come in. Yeah, I agree.
00:52:01
Speaker
So we're kind of readdressing like, okay, what would a machine that could be dedicated on aluminum help? There's no questions, the right answer. I'm just trying to make sure I'm responsible around, okay, what does that mean for the company, the financials and ROI and the expectations? And if it's a different control, or if it's a different, where does it, I'm not good at shop layout. So where do you put this machine? A lot to it there.
00:52:23
Speaker
Yeah, a lot, a lot to think about. Um, okay. I'll end on one thing. Uh, you have at least one, if not multiple may friend concept 3000 chip containers.
Handling Chip Conveyor Challenges
00:52:33
Speaker
Um, unfortunately the 2000 John. Yeah. Is there a 3000 and we're making that up. I don't know.
00:52:38
Speaker
Whatever, but it's the one with the filtering drum, right? It's like a scraper and belt conveyor at the same time. On our Mori and our Nakamura, we just have the belt drive conveyors, the LNS belt conveyors, and it absolutely sucks for the chips we make. All of the small chips bypass and fall into the coolant.
00:53:01
Speaker
and it's total trash. So I don't have regrets, but I regret not knowing about that chip conveyor eight years ago when I bought my Maury. And I think we're too far gone to actually worry about, okay, let's just buy it and replace the LNS.
00:53:20
Speaker
But next machine we get that needs a conveyor is probably getting that May friend. They're not cheap. They're not cheap. And I realized that they're what, almost double what like a basic LNS costs. I think they're like 32 grand. Yeah. LNS is like 15, 20, something like that. So yeah, that's worth considering. But I just want to put that out there. If you make small chips like we do, regular conveyors are garbage.
00:53:46
Speaker
Well, that's what we're thinking. If you're making big toenails and bigger all day, then it's fine.
00:53:53
Speaker
We have that X-Air chip trapper thingy and we use it. We use it, but there's something about it that's not like just as well good to use as I think. We also, we tend to put the coolant in it and then put it back like, quote unquote, later, like after you're done. I think I want to get maybe a Freddie, which I hear about, we'll have one, or something where take a typical 100 gallon tank, we can just have
00:54:17
Speaker
Once a week, go to one machine, you could do this in the perfect road. You could do this wearing your Sunday best outfit and put the tank, the suction in at one end and have the return go out to the other end of the tank and just cycle it through for 20 minutes. Just taking as much of that coolant out. Well, it's never going out because it's just a cycle, but you're basically adding a filter cycle, filter periodic filtering of the whole thing. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Like we have a Freddie and the guys don't use it very much.
00:54:41
Speaker
We've got other methods of actually like sucking all the coolant out of a machine because I think their big concern is leaving it dirty, leaving it bacteria to grow inside, having to wash it down inside because that's a big concern. And the Freddie anyway, I think has two pumps on it. The one for suck, one for blow, like one to push it back in. So I think it's a two stage process. You fill it and then you pump it back in separate. I don't know if it can happen at the same time. Yeah, that's what I think I want. I don't know.
00:55:11
Speaker
But yeah, just to circulate it and cycle it. But it's also all the fines that fall to the bottom of the tank that you have to empty the tank to see them. And then you suck them all. Totally. And we do, I mean, I don't know how good we are on a schedule, but maybe once a year, once every 18 months, we'll empty a tank totally. Pretty much. We just did that for the Maury last week. Well, by we, I mean, everybody else on the team, I got to watch. But there were literal gallons of chips that made it past the conveyor. Yeah. Yeah.
00:55:40
Speaker
Cool way over time here. Yeah, that's okay. Phil's driving around the parking lot. Sailing his yacht. Sailing around the bay. The marina right now. Yeah. All right. I'll see you. Oh, actually I'm off next week. So you're welcome to do this on your own. Otherwise I'll be here in two weeks. Probably skip next week then. And then in three weeks, I'll see you. Yeah. There we go. Awesome. Okay. Bye. Bye.