Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Entrepreneurs Managing Business & Emotions, reliving KERN, touring Onsrud, Henderick Motorsports, Stewart-Haas Racing, and CAMplete's Optimize Function
249 Plays6 years ago
THIS WEEK'S TOPICS:
- Entrepreneurs Managing Business & Emotions
- Reliving KERN
- Shop Tours | Onsrud, Hendrick Motorsports, and Stewart-Haas Racing
- CAMplete | Workflows & Optimize Function
- Datron NEO & Wazer for ProvenCut Speeds & Feeds Testing
- A Message from Justin K. Courtney | Tulster
It's been 13 years and counting! Grimsmo relives how his spur-of-the-moment trip to KERN resulted in something he never thought possible.
Rear View VS Windshield Are we ever truly able to live in the present? Saunders discusses the past, present, and future as it relates to entrepreneurship. If you aren't familiar with the 1-Minute "Brazilian Fisherman" story, Read it here.
Managing Business = Managing Emotions Saunders shares a thought and behavior pattern that gives him emotional freedom during stressful events or circumstances. Learning how to control and manage emotional responses is easier said than done.
Shop Tours - FANUC, ROMER ARMS EVERYWHERE, AND SURFACE PLATES LARGER THAN CARS? Saunders visits Onsrud, Hendrick Motorsports, and Stewart-Haas Racing in Charlotte, North Carolina and shares his experience at each shop, the things that blew him away, and a story about how he ended up machining an aluminum decal squeegee tool.
CAMplete Training, Workflows, & Capabilities Grimsmo returns from a day of training with a good understanding of how to integrate Fusion 360 and CAMplete into a viable workflow for Grimsmo Knives. At this point in time, SMW uses the software to simulate, verify, and check for possible collisions but there's a feature that sounds like a game changer: OPTIMIZE FUNCTION.
DATRON NEO & WAZER ARRIVE AT SMW ProvenCut will be testing speeds and feeds on these machines and adding them to the ever-growing video database!
Click Image to Visit ProvenCut.com
CHIP RAG - WHERE ARE YOU? Unfortunately for some, the newsletter is being sent directly to the spam folder. If you've signed up but haven't received the February 7th issue, check your spam folder. If you haven't already, click here to sign up!
Last but not least, a message from Jusin K. Courtney with TULSTER.
Visit Tulster.com Follow him on IG @tulster @justinkcourtney
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Origin
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business and Machining Episode 158. My name is John Grimsmough. And my name is John Saunders. John and I both started with garage CNC machines about 13, 10, 13 years ago. And this podcast shares our story of learning and running small manufacturing companies. Yeah, mostly in the present day, but also a lot of reflecting back in time and 13 years ago. Right.
00:00:29
Speaker
That's awesome. Crazy, right? We had a
Importance of Celebrating Success
00:00:33
Speaker
snippet, was it on the podcast last week talking about, or maybe it was on an Instagram post talking about kind of rear view mirror and looking, reflecting on the past versus the future. Yeah, it was last week. And there's this sort of stereotype that the future is positive and the future is what you should focus on. And I think there's more
00:00:57
Speaker
I think we're reflecting on the past often brings up the connotations of the word dwelling, like dwell on the past, which can be a bad thing. And I think it's important to celebrate your successes and celebrate what you've done, not in a self-critical way, but in a
00:01:11
Speaker
reinforcing your story. When you come up with a plan, we've talked about this, goals are pointless. The point is not a goal. The point of a goal is rather just to identify steps to go through the byproduct of which is hitting that goal. And so if you don't have some
00:01:29
Speaker
introspective look at what you've been doing. I think you lose the ability to measure that. It sounds too contrived, but just be aware of it. I get it because you might miss the goal completely if you forgot that you made it because I think I step into that. I find myself in that position sometimes. At some point, I'll set a goal to be like, I'm going to get a five-axis machine. And then I get there,
00:01:55
Speaker
And then it's like, okay, what's next?
Acquiring the Five-Axis Machine
00:01:57
Speaker
It's not like a celebration of like, I'm done. It's like, oh darn, now the work begins. It's like the next step. But sometimes it's fun to think back and be like, I didn't even realize this was possible at a large part of my career.
00:02:15
Speaker
Yeah, I know you pretty well. I know how big you think. In some respects, a lot of what you've reached has achieved that, but I don't think you think like that when you wake up in the morning. It's kind of funny, right? When I wake up in the morning, it's like, okay, what am I doing today? Let's go do work. Yeah, exactly. But I was just thinking, I don't think I realistically thought I'd get a five-axis machine until about
00:02:43
Speaker
maybe two years ago.
Trip to Germany and Manufacturing Tours
00:02:47
Speaker
And then it started to get real. Yeah. The fact that you went from nothing to trigger on that flight to hang out at Kern last March was almost a year ago. That's one of the funnier things in life that that actually worked out. Yeah. Four days of notice on this podcast. You're like, yeah, I'm going to Germany next week. And I'm like, can I come?
00:03:12
Speaker
It was kind of a no-brainer. Walk me through decisions like that in life that you've regretted. It was one of the greatest, funnest trips like last minute. It didn't cost that much, I think a thousand or two at most.
00:03:30
Speaker
and for a flight to Europe and hotels and car and food and everything. And just the experience itself was plenty worth it. I got to see Tornos. I got to see you guys. I got to see Kern, both facilities. And I got to go skiing in the Austrian house. It's awesome.
00:03:46
Speaker
Epic, epic trip. Travel is one of the bucket list things that one day I want to have enough time to travel, enough money, time, whatever, to travel. House was another one. I've got a few other small ones. It's like I have to remind myself that I can do these things now and to be able to take those opportunities. Yeah, don't become the Brazilian fisherman.
00:04:13
Speaker
That said, I love to work and I love what I do. This is absolutely a choice where I am in life. A lot of hard decisions got us both to where we are. There's a lot of
Living in the Present and Past Reflection
00:04:27
Speaker
hard ones to make in the future, but I'm just ready. I'm preparing myself for that. I had an eloquent thought that I'm now struggling to articulate that is
00:04:39
Speaker
When you think about the rear view mirror versus the windshield it's looking into the future. It's what's funny about it is it's almost and this is gonna sound cliche it's almost impossible to live in the present because the present is.
00:04:56
Speaker
is so finite that you cannot measure it. As soon as the present occurs, it's in the past, right? True. I'm not trying to be some wise, some smarty pants here. I'm just saying like, hey, as soon as things happen, like this podcast will become, I almost certainly will think about this podcast after we hang up. I usually do, or our conversation, I should call it.
00:05:17
Speaker
And that's in some forms reflecting on the past, right? I mean, yeah, I'm not getting my point across cause I don't even remember. But the other day it kind of hit me like, oh, that's actually a good way of thinking about it. Like it's not like you're dwelling on the past. You're really the, I guess what I'm saying is that the present is some mix of past and future at all times. Interesting. Because like this morning, you know, sometimes
00:05:45
Speaker
Again, to keep this kind of raw, your mood gets affected. Sometimes something's gone wrong. Sometimes sales are slow. Sometimes you're on a high. Things
Influence of Past and Future on Present Mood
00:05:55
Speaker
like talking to you can help with that sometimes. It can be really good. It can be grounding. It can be remember to get back to your plan, not to worry about that kind of stuff. All those things that I think are probably pretty normal to most
00:06:04
Speaker
manufacturing entrepreneurs. And so when you're thinking about that, you're inevitably reflecting a little bit on what's affected you recently in the past, you know, six hours or day, and then what you're thinking is ahead of you, what's on the schedule for this day. So that is sort of the present moment is call it the past six and the next six hours. Yeah. Because it affects, you know, your mood, your, your, your present mood.
00:06:31
Speaker
is from the recent past and then what you're going to do, so what you're thinking about from the near future. Yeah. Yeah, I kind of buy that. It ties into the whole like when your computer crashes, there's no reason, there's no actual reason that you're an overreaction or a strong reaction is going to help. And remember when we were younger and like older people were like, you'll learn one day, like, you know, you'll get kind of that like somewhat condescending, like the inverse okay boomer.
00:07:01
Speaker
And that's one of those moments that's kind of hitting you where it's like, gosh, when somebody cuts you off, actually somebody cut me off last night on the road. And there's a lot of reactions that can come out of that where you're upset, you want to flick your lights, you want to just the road rage that isn't quite road rage level, just like, come on, dude. But then there's like, no, you can just let it go. There's nothing to be gained. But we don't think like that always, right?
00:07:30
Speaker
Yeah. Sometimes people are too at the moment. If you're in that rage situation and you let it get out of hand.
00:07:42
Speaker
Yep. Well, I got
Visit to Enshrood and Technology Insights
00:07:43
Speaker
to tell you about Charlotte. Yeah. So we talked last week, I was on my way to Enshrood and had an awesome time filming there. And yes, those machines are maybe a little bit out of our wheelhouse. Actually, not for you, really. 3-axis, 4-axis, 5-axis routers that are what you would think in the router world. So super awesome focus on
00:08:08
Speaker
productivity, they've got multi spindle machines, they've got large format machines, they got vacuum work holding, they've got, you know, five axis heads, they've got super accurate models with scales, you know, really solid build quality. What I thought was cool was
00:08:22
Speaker
For a small company, it actually was smaller than I for some reason was thinking in terms of their footprint. They have raw material come in, steel, sheet metal, et cetera. They've got a beautiful Trump laser. They've got a big burn table. They've got a CNC press brake. They bend up the stuff. They cut the stuff. They form it. They've got these beautiful, huge weld tables. They weld up these weldments that are these... The router tables go from as small as I think four foot by four foot to up to
00:08:52
Speaker
I want to say 30, 20 or 30 feet wide by over 100 feet long. Yeah, that was the real deal. It's going to be a good video tour because it's kind of that real world raw version of what it's like to grow a company. It's not all peaches and cream. They had to build a second facility. That facility is about
00:09:15
Speaker
I'm gonna guess 20 or 30 feet lower on their site. And so they have an overhead permanent structure, like a boom, like one of those cranes, but it's like a bridge tower thing, like a walkway. And they have a crane permanently hooked up to it and they fly the castings, not casting, sorry, the weldments from the fab shop that's down below. They pick them with this crane, they move them over, it's probably over 100 feet.
00:09:41
Speaker
So we have to film that. And then they go right into their own giant heat treat oven.
Manufacturing Process Tours
00:09:47
Speaker
I mean, you could park two trucks. What the whole casting does. Yeah. And then from there, they go into they've got three Mitsubishi
00:09:58
Speaker
huge gantry machines where they can do this machine. And it's pretty cool to talk to some of the machinists and see how they handle quality control and how they handle, they brought a lot of that process in-house and you can see they're making decisions that are for the better for the product line. And then the rest of just how you build up paint, assemble a router, they're the largest
00:10:24
Speaker
Yeah, they're the largest FANUC customer in the United States. Whoa. Which kind of makes sense, because if you think about it, Haas is not FANUC. And so who else is building huge volumes of FANUC machines? Well, I don't even think of them really much at all. What, you know? That answered. Yeah, sure, sure.
00:10:45
Speaker
Their industries, well, you'll see in the video tour, but everything from RVs to boating to aerospace to obviously woodworking is a huge one, home building, a more diverse composites, laminates, more diverse than I expected. Again, outside of the true subtractive machine shop manufacturing world, but pretty cool.
00:11:11
Speaker
But as good as that was, on a personal level, the highlight for me was actually after that. A guy
Transformative NASCAR Experience
00:11:18
Speaker
on Instagram commented, come visit, actually tagged Hendrix Racing, which is where he works. And long story short, I
00:11:28
Speaker
call him up and we met up at his place of employment. His brother came down who also works in the racing industry and spent two and a half hours walking through that facility absolutely mind-blowing. I remember talking to you like the morning of before you went there and you're like, yeah, it'll be cool like Haas Racing Factory. I think it'll be all right. Yeah.
00:11:52
Speaker
Well, so I want to share about the NASCAR because I completely have a changed perspective on that. But Yvonne actually is the one that noticed it because we took a picture together and she's like the smile on your face hanging out with those guys. It's not that I don't enjoy the factory tours. I love them, love them.
00:12:11
Speaker
These guys, uh, and I don't want to put words in their mouth, but I'm pretty sure this is what they said. They were like, yeah, uh, big followers, big fans of this podcast, big fans of your and John's story. We actually got a robo drill and put it in our garage largely because of you guys. And, uh, we just sat there and had, uh, at the racing shop and then at dinner afterward and just, just talked and like, that's, uh, that's fun. That's what it's all about. Yeah. So
Engineering Behind NASCAR
00:12:36
Speaker
enjoy that. Um, NASCAR though.
00:12:40
Speaker
is unbelievable. Yeah. First off, there are probably, so I filmed it at Stewart Haas Racing, and they have four cup, like the big boy teams, cup teams, and each team is a driver. Each driver has about 16 chassis for the year. So that's 64 cars alone that they're building. And inevitably, some get crashed or they need R&D cars. So there's a lot of cars around.
00:13:07
Speaker
There must have been, I'm going to guess, 30 or 40 roamer arms. Everywhere you turn a corner, there's another roamer arm. Explain what that is. The ferro arm, roamer arm, where you move the... It's like a CMM that is a robot arm. Gotcha.
00:13:22
Speaker
How many, like 30 of them? Yes. I mean, everywhere you turn. The amount of technology and precision that goes into this, the sheet metal guys are using them. They're touching points. They're pushing the envelope. They're using things like I've heard from talking to Hermla about five-axis machining and cam tool pass about.
00:13:41
Speaker
Hey, we have a tolerance sphere. We need to learn how we can push the envelope to stay within the tolerance sphere to meet the rules about the chassis dimensions, but then also complement the arrow. They've got a Hawkeye system in the shop to simulate other arrow. They've got a whole, they have a Cray supercomputer to do computational work as well. They have each car gets set up on a surface plate, John.
00:14:12
Speaker
Seriously? They have surface plates that are larger than each car. Each car can get rigidly bolted to the surface plate. There's datums that are calibrated with known offsets. They use the roamer arms to then pick ride heights, chassis heights, the suspension heights, the alignment, the engine heights. They can adjust this stuff down to the minuscule. They can do scales, weights, balancing. Then they can move it over to what's called a seven post lift, which attaches the frame
00:14:38
Speaker
of the chassis of the car in three points and then it attaches the other four to each of the wheels and then they have mapped every single NASCAR oval and track and they know what it's like to go over that and they reverse input that feedback into the chassis in a hydraulic simulation. The hydraulic tank had to be the size of a car alone for fluid. We got to walk underneath this thing. It was not running because apparently when it's running you can hear it like a lot of ways away and it
00:15:08
Speaker
It literally simulates everything that's going to happen to that car, the chassis, the frame, the suspension, the ride height. Unbelievable. I had no idea. Yeah. Do you think F1 is then more than that?
00:15:23
Speaker
So I don't know, because when you hear about how F1 is discussed, you would think the answer is yes. I guess my hesitation would be how you hear NASCAR discussed, in my opinion, was totally wrong. There's an element of NASCAR that ties into the history and the legacy of stock car racing, which is very much why they do what they do. It's why they have the five or six lug nuts instead of a center lock, single lug nut, and do some other stuff that maybe seems a little bit antiquated. But there's nothing antiquated about that.
00:15:53
Speaker
process. Holy cow. It's just so easy to make the joke of like, go fast turn left. It's so easy. But I've also heard like, they basically have no breaks. And they're going 200 miles an hour. It was impressive. I can't. Yeah, it'll take a while after to get the Haas footage reviewed and approved. But um, we got to film. I mean, I was blown away. It was so cool. Yeah, it was really cool.
00:16:17
Speaker
Isn't that epic to find yourself in a situation that you don't really know what to expect and to be absolutely just floored? Yeah, it was cool. So that was my high of the week.
00:16:32
Speaker
Oh, and then last fun story, and then I'll shut up. When we were touring the Haas shop, my host was kind of the machine shop manager. And we walked into the decal graphics room where they print and work on the sponsor labels and so forth. And the guy walked up to my host. It was like, hey, you're the machine shop guy, right, or something. Can you machine a aluminum version of the decal scraper tool, the kind of thing that looks like a little handheld squeegee?
00:17:02
Speaker
They're like, we wear these things out. The plastic doesn't work what we want. We think we may want one out of aluminum. And the guy was kind of like, OK, sure, wasn't not a problem. And I just said, can I chime in? I was like, can we turn that into a video? I was like, first of all, it would be super cool to make a part. This is totally my own.
00:17:22
Speaker
I'm not asking for anything in return at all for this.
Video Proposal: Aluminum Decal Scraper Tool
00:17:24
Speaker
It's literally because I'm like, hey, this is a cool part. I would love to see how to model that, how to cam it up. We're going to window machine it. We actually already made one prototype yesterday and show that workflow. We're going to do it on a five axis because it benefits from it. You don't necessarily don't totally need it. But anyway, they were like, of course, they were like, yes, totally. So we're going to put their logo on it and it'll be so cool. Yeah. Good for you.
00:17:52
Speaker
And I know, I know you, that is the kind of stuff you want to do. Like not all the time, not full time, but like to be able to do that is kind of why you've done everything you've done so far. You know, to be able to stand in a NASCAR Haas shop and be like, I can make that. Can I help you? Right, right. Yeah. Good for you. Yeah.
00:18:15
Speaker
In a world where I feel like too much stuff on, like I like that this is just, it's what I always wanted to do, which is share, pay it for, be enthusiastic. There's no behind the scenes, just keeping it real. That's what I enjoy.
00:18:30
Speaker
Yep. I would have asked for a ride in a NASCAR car. Okay, so fair enough. I don't even know if I can. I think they do have two cedars. I suspect if you get to know that's fine, but it wasn't about ... It's funny you say it because that actually was on my mind, but I wasn't going to make you a trade. Yeah, yeah. I suspect if they can do that, it's probably not that ... Yeah, you're right.
00:18:54
Speaker
That's awesome. But that's how friendships and relationships are born. Maybe in a year or two, that question might come up if you go back or whatever. But you've now created a relationship with several of the people there.
00:19:13
Speaker
not really for any ulterior motive, just because they're cool and you're cool and you want to be buddies with them and you want to help out whenever you can. That's all it takes. It's just a good life lesson. I'm saying it out loud not to profess or preach it, but rather to remind myself of the value, which is when you work with somebody
00:19:33
Speaker
And make sure you emphasize how they can get something out of this, not just what's in it for you. Yes, the value you're providing. Yeah. And I'm not perfect by any means, but I suspect a lot of people probably show up at places like that and just assume that you're the one going to give out the swag, and you're the one that's going to give me a ride, and you're a rich racing team. What can you give me for stuff? And I always say, hey, flip around. What can I do for you guys? I want to show the world.
00:20:02
Speaker
what you guys do and how cool it is and almost takes people for a, I think they're almost surprised, right? It's kind of like, you don't really want anything? It's like, well, I mean, I'm doing this because I like it. Yeah. Yeah. So cool. So what have you been up to? Yesterday, Fraser and I spent the whole day at Camp Leite and Milterra. I had a lot of fun.
00:20:26
Speaker
did a super solid multi-hour training session on Camplete. And I think I got the ropes of it. And I understand the ins and the outs and the possibilities of the software.
Camplete Software Training and Toolpath Optimization
00:20:38
Speaker
So feeling pretty comfortable about that. Now it's just time to dive in and make us some parts. Can you walk through what you think is going to be your Fusion Camplete workflow? Well, aside from the multitude of button clicks,
00:20:56
Speaker
But basically you make your toolpaths in Fusion the way you want them. And then you post either one or multiple operations. I had a little bit of trouble with the, what do you call it? Not the work coordinate system, but the fixture coordinate system. You want it drawn into Camplete and like where it puts the part on the machine. So maybe I'll bug you about that a little bit, see how you do it. But yeah, basically you post it to the Camplete post processor.
00:21:26
Speaker
And then incomplete, you got to run the simulation, you got to check for errors. Do you guys use the optimize function? No. Because they showed me how to do that. But they said a lot of people don't really use it, but it could be super valuable. What does it do?
00:21:43
Speaker
It crunches through and it tells you what's wrong. Like, oh, a longer tool length here would solve this. Really? Or a smaller, yeah, smaller tool diameter. Or if you rotate 10 degrees, it'll solve that and it'll do that for you.
00:21:57
Speaker
Can I interrupt? Yeah. I'm working on a generative collaboration with Gavin Bath, a guy from New Zealand that you may or may not have met him at some point. Really solid guy. And we're doing a generative truck for that Datron longboard, which is super awesome. And it's a really difficult five-axis part, just for the reach and the diameter and the nooks and undercuts. And so we were working on the design. And he's been toolpath-ing it up.
00:22:26
Speaker
And we did a little screen share to walk through it. And he's really struggling with some parts of the access to it. And I was like, Gavin, we don't have to hold the stock at 90 degrees. It's basically the stock would be the size of a flip-flop shoe or something like that, a little thicker. And I was like, we can just cut the bottom edge of the stock at 15 or 20 degrees, put it in the fifth axis vice at that angle. And that's going to change your
00:22:53
Speaker
like that access. Yeah. And he was kind of like, whoa. Yeah. Which is what makes me think of if camp we could even help to think about telling you tilting your origin or the part relative to your platter. That's amazing. Yep. Yep. Yeah. And that's the mindset of five axis is you're, you're kind of, I mean, you and I have been three axis for like almost 13 years.
00:23:18
Speaker
you have to train yourself to be like, no, no, if I tilt that, that changes everything. Yeah. So like in Phil's, in Phil's Autodesk class, how he talks about like the different ways to orient the part. And he's like, any of these will work, but some are better than others. Right. I believe he said many of them are wrong. When God, because, because he was right. But you don't think about that free form.
00:23:46
Speaker
Yeah, we got to get, man, if Rob can get working on this AR, VR sort of ability to, you know, holographically hold the part and then, you know, rotate it with your hands and like, that's the future of some crazy, maybe it's not crazy, you know, to be able to see the tool coming in, rotate the part on your desk that doesn't exist. Like again, it's some hologram or VR. That would be, I don't know, I think it's cool. Maybe it would end up being,
00:24:16
Speaker
not as helpful as I think. Yeah, like maybe it's the same thing you get with just the Fusion 3D view, where you can rotate around and see things. But like in Camplete too, it's kind of neat to have the entire machine model and the tool holder and the enclosure, and even though you hide the enclosure most of the time, but just to be able to see the actual reach and obstructions in the way and travel limits and all that stuff.
00:24:44
Speaker
But yeah, as far as the software goes, it makes sense. And like we filmed a video up there, it should be pretty short. And I was talking with Mike, and he's like, he was telling me about some of the, you know, I told him to explain to me what camp lead is, in his own words. And I was like, okay, I
00:25:03
Speaker
I came into this up until recently thinking that it was basically just a verification software, a software that says yes or no, it'll crash. But there's actually a lot more to it than that. And there's a lot more capability in the fact that it is its own post and can actually change
00:25:21
Speaker
if you want to go from B negative to B positive, it's one button and it just does that. And if you want to rotate instead of an X, instead of an XYZ move into a whatever, a YC or XC or whatever, C rotation, it can post that for you with like four button clicks. And I'm like, okay, this is cool.
00:25:47
Speaker
The Haas F1 shop, which we unfortunately were not allowed to film in, but we went through it. They had literally like 15 UMCs in there, and everyone was running on complete true path. We
Adjusting Parts and Toolpath Optimization
00:26:02
Speaker
literally were talking about that. They had a part for a wing, what do they call it? Like 60% scale wind tunnel wing.
00:26:08
Speaker
And it was too big for the machine travel, but with complete, they could angle it over and up. And what's amazing, this is what's mind blowing that people, I've said, I've explained this to a few people and they don't believe me until you really reiterate it. You can post the code.
00:26:23
Speaker
normally and in what, in a way that would be incorrect and would violate your machine travel and complete configure how to take that posted code and rotate it and twist it and change X motion into C what it would be like, see why motions and stuff like that, which is bananas.
00:26:44
Speaker
Yeah. And they said that at Milterra, their machining shop at Camplete, they often will rotate the part purely in Camplete because it's too big for a regular five-axis travel. But if you put it 45 degrees corner to corner of your travels, then it'll now fit. Or like you said, tilt it up as well. And you can do that all within Camplete. And it's like, whoa. So sometimes you'll want to use Camplete
00:27:13
Speaker
checker and then maybe go back to Fusion and do it right, but you don't have to if you're just making one. Unfortunately, to be honest, it is just simulation software for us. We've never really pushed the beginning of using it outside of that, just because it isn't super easy, especially if you're not going to do it a lot every day. The support has been awesome when we've reached out for it, but
00:27:40
Speaker
The only thing we had to figure out, which is I think what you were talking about is, so we build those fifth axis templates that let us pre-program all of our main workholding options and the bottom center of every, it's basically that fifth axis riser base we have. That point has to be the fusion parent components origin. Like when you're drawing a sketch, like the origin, the first
00:28:10
Speaker
Well, it doesn't matter about the sketching, because what we do is if we want to make a widget, we can just program the widget in Fusion, and it doesn't matter where it is. And then we import the fifth axis vice, like that file we have. Because that one was created and jointed at the origin when we bring it in, it's in the right place. You have to create a joint. And then you just move your part into the right vice spot or whatever. And then when you bring it into true path, it's in the right spot.
00:28:39
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I was sitting with Ivan at Camplete and we were trying to find the source of, we were looking through the Autodesk post and what exactly it's looking for, if it is that sketch origin. Oh, got it. And we didn't really find the right answer, but I think you've got the solution anyway of making sure your main model has that fixed origin where it's going to go.
00:29:05
Speaker
Well, what I didn't like, what I wish happened, I guess I should say, is under Fusion Setup, there is a, I don't have a little part open yet, but on your setup, you have to define a fixture, right, to use Camplete with the fixture, no big deal there. But the setup itself has an option called fixture attachment point. We thought it was that. It doesn't seem to work. That doesn't do anything. The only thing I could select with that was the,
00:29:35
Speaker
uh origin like yeah that's the only point you can select so anyway yeah awesome so how's the how's the current good uh i haven't done too much with it let's see thomas was here last on thursday last week did a full day of five axis probing and tilted probing and
00:29:58
Speaker
When you're tilted B90, you're probing an X physically, but it's writing to Z and all this crazy wrap your head around stuff. Um, I finally got the hang of that and then he took off and then, uh, haven't done too much with it. We had a long weekend here. So, uh, and the yesterday I was at camp lead, so I haven't touched it since then, but today should be a good day. Were you, were you ready for him to leave so you could get time on it or where is it? Oh boy, I'm on my own now. A bit of both.
00:30:29
Speaker
I think I know everything he needs to teach me. I'll have questions, but I know how to make parts. I'll get stuck, but I'll figure it out. Looking forward to that. I'm making my rask tombstones right now out of steel. It turns out the five-inch vise does not open up four inches like I had mentally assumed it would.
00:30:56
Speaker
You know, you can flip the jaws around or you can cut dovetails into it, which we've done a lot. I'm going to have to cut dovetails like little angles into my part to be able to grip with the grippers. Doesn't even have to be a dovetail. Just cut a 890 thou shoulder.
00:31:14
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You want to contact between the very top edge of the vise and the bottom of your part. So you want the boss on the underside of your part, you want the boss to be shorter than the height of the dovetail. Does that make sense? Okay. So you want the top top of the vise touching your part. Yeah. Interesting.
00:31:36
Speaker
I'll send you guys some pictures today just so you can verify my theory and my setup for holding this 22 pound chunk of steel that I do not want to drop in the Kern. Yes. Yes. Because I'm not positive that I'm
00:31:52
Speaker
happy with my solution so far. We 3D printed some linear rail covers for that turny, machiney thing we have. What's it called, a lathe? Because the B axis, I don't know how higher end machines do this, but
00:32:10
Speaker
The B-axis rails are pretty close to underneath the parts. So if you drop a part, or God forbid, a chuck, you're going to slam into your rail. So we just printed some truck covers that slide over it. So if there's any spots like that on the current, I wouldn't hesitate to print some semi-sacrificial bumper covers through. There aren't. It's just the polymer concrete base that's tapered downwards. And I'm like, that would chip if I dropped a 22-pound chunk of steel on it. Yeah.
00:32:39
Speaker
I mean, I could put rubber or something, you know, like, yeah, you don't, you want to drop it. You put it in the vice, um, and then put the vice into the, put on the, put it into the vice outside the machine. Is that better?
00:32:54
Speaker
No difference. I'm worried about the dovetails failing or something, something. Because I've already got this big cavity milled out of the inside. So if I put the dovetails on the inside of that, then I can ID clamp this piece of steel. So I'd be extending the fifth axis vice and dovetailing from the inside outward. Got it. Should be fine. But, you know, I just haven't done it yet.
00:33:22
Speaker
If you look at our, go back and look at the V8 engine block we made back when we had the trunnion, we did that. We had like a six inch piece of aluminum round stock and we just cut, just did a 2D contour with a one inch or two inch face mill or something on each side that just cut a square little section out and then dovetail onto that. I don't want to give you false confidence because it's pretty good work holding. It's pretty
Precision in Aligning Bar Feeders
00:33:47
Speaker
strong.
00:33:47
Speaker
Fun fact, if I search for Saunders on YouTube, you're not on the first page. Do I want to know what comes first? A lot of boxing stuff. Really? Yeah, Billy Joe Saunders. Oh my gosh, you're right. Growing up, it was John Saunders, the ESPN competitor. Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah, you're right. If you search for NYC, I hope you get me, because if you don't, I got better problems. Exactly.
00:34:16
Speaker
If you do NYC CNC V8. But yeah, I'm very much looking forward to digging into the current this week. We still haven't gotten the lades running yet after the move. We're kind of like slowly leveling them and aligning the bar feeder took several days. I gave that job to Angelo and he's been having fun with it. Got it.
00:34:40
Speaker
When we first installed it, we had the guy come up from North Carolina, like the L&S guy, and he installed it and aligned it with the string method and all this stuff. Is yours an L&S or is it a Haas version? It is the Bar Peters Haas.
00:34:58
Speaker
Yeah, anyway, so they gave us a quote to have the guy come back and it was like six grand to have him fly up and install this thing after the move. And I was like, we'll figure it out. So I actually bought a little $20 laser pointer on Amazon and mounted it in the spindle facing backwards to help align it. Because normally you use a string between two points. But after some research and practical machinist posts, they're like, the string works great, but a laser is just easier.
00:35:28
Speaker
We put the laser in, point it back, and it's obvious. It's so dead accurate, obvious. You spin the spindle to make sure you're concentric. It's not perfectly concentric, but you see the wobble. The laser works great, except it eats through batteries in the hours and hours it takes to align this thing. A bar feeder?
00:35:52
Speaker
Isn't it just X and Z or Y and Z? You have a twist and everything, too. Is it that fussy? Oh, yeah. And it's got to be bolted to the ground. So you get it level, and then you get it aligned, and then you get it in place, and then you get it forward and back. And then you've got to drill the holes in the floor, eight holes, and then you've got to start tightening it, and then everything moves. Sure. And then you've got to readjust, and then back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
00:36:20
Speaker
Luckily, I was totally hands off on this project. All I heard was the complaints, but they got it done and it was fine. Yours has a hand crank to raise and lower the Z to accommodate different thickness bars? No, it's always centered.
00:36:38
Speaker
Well, that doesn't make, but if you go from a half inch bar to a two inch bar, you're- Well, it's a Swiss, so I don't, but it's got a carriage holder thingy that changes per bar size.
00:36:55
Speaker
There's really only two bar sizes, either up to half-inch or up to quarter-inch. I just leave the up to half-inch one in all the time. Sorry, for some reason I was thinking that this was the knock-over of this whole time until you said Swiss, but regardless.
00:37:15
Speaker
But yeah, so we're getting a weird alarm on the Tournos that we can't figure out, haven't really diagnosed what it is. Could be the phasing of the wires, you know, the power coming in. And then I should be running Tournos today.
00:37:32
Speaker
Tomorrow max and then the Nakamura just has to be leveled quick and then turned on and done sweet. So that's that's this week and that incurring and You max are powered up they turn on but there's some errors That apparently on a hide-and-hide you can't turn the machine on with the e-stop pressed Otherwise it complains and gives you a stupid error that doesn't make any sense So we're having that. Is it as simple as just turning it off?
00:37:58
Speaker
release new stuff, turning it back on? I think so. I just haven't been at the shop yet to try that. So I'm super pumped to try that. And then also maybe the axis moved and it's bumping against the limit switch when you turn it on, which it also hates. That's annoying. So I might have to manually crank the ball screw.
00:38:15
Speaker
and move the accesses into not limit switch area, then turn it on. And that might get rid of some of the errors that I'm having. That would be phenomenal. That would be golden, because here I'm thinking it lost all the parameters and has to be re-whatever. But some guys are like, hide and hide doesn't really lose parameters. It's a hard drive. It's not like this RAM memory like a FANUC machine has. Yeah. Yeah. I feel bad for Rob losing the batteries and parameters. Oh. Yep.
00:38:45
Speaker
Have you ever seen a rotating ball screw? Excuse me, a rotating ball nut? Probably where the ball screws stay static. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Way back in the day, Grizzly X2 days when I was designing machines and thought I would build my own Tormax, I didn't want to buy one. Yeah. They have them at Ansrud for these dual, these huge routers that would have two or three heads on them. Obviously, you can't
00:39:12
Speaker
And each head needs to be able to move independently. So it's this beautiful, very, very thick long ball screw, which is static. And then the ball nut is what rotates and it allows each one to move independently along the same screw, which is just, you see it and you're like, that's amazing.
00:39:28
Speaker
The largest machine that we were playing with, I think it was 30 feet. Travel on the gantry head, like left to right, whatever you call that. That's crazy. Here's the funny thing. They were like, we're going to turn it up. We're going to show you how fast it can move. It's one of those problems because it was 3,300 inches a minute.
00:39:49
Speaker
And it was so big that it didn't look that fast. And that's like the fastest, you know, I've ever heard of, but it's so big.
00:40:00
Speaker
I mean, it was fast. Don't get me wrong. Yeah. But when you see 2,000 inch a minute on a Robo drill, you're like, whoa. Exactly. It just teleported positions. Yeah. It's because your frame of reference is tiny, and then it jumps. That's funny. Even the five-axis machines can move 2,000 or 3,000 inches per minute, but they don't move far at all. Right. Yeah. Oh, speaking of fast-moving machines, we unloaded the Datron yesterday.
00:40:29
Speaker
Yes, I saw pictures. I was like, holy crap, what's happening? Yeah, so they come, we got it already, but you can't touch it though. So they come Monday to do the install. That's actually extraordinarily exciting. And you're just, you're borrowing it for six months as a, you know, do proven cut recipes and test it out and make videos and stuff, which is just incredible.
Testing Datron Machine and Content Creation Philosophy
00:40:51
Speaker
Yeah. Good for you guys. Thank you. Yeah, I love it. We actually just did the same, effectively the same deal with Wazer, the water jet folks.
00:40:59
Speaker
Nice. Yeah. I think everybody's been wondering how that works. Yeah. Yeah. It's a perfect thing. They actually approached us, and then that's what we sort of said was, look, I'm not... Well, you can read between the lines, but I'm not a big fan of like, oh, we've got a big YouTube channel, so we should get special treatment. It just always has rubbed me the wrong way. Yeah, I get that. Maybe to my own detriment.
00:41:22
Speaker
To me, what made sense was this model, which is, look, people, I think, will be on the fence about buying a Wazer because you don't know what it can do and what it's like. And let us work with you guys to create recipes that show what it can do, how to do it, what it looks like, what the expectations are. Because that's a great example of a machine that you're going to find at a makerspace or an R&D lab, where the person that wants to make a part on it is not a seasoned
00:41:48
Speaker
machinist or water jet operator. Yeah. And it's not to be compared with a $100,000 flow water jet. It's for the maker. It's for the people. And I think you've hit the nail on the head because you and I don't run... We make basically no money off of YouTube.
00:42:07
Speaker
you know, compared to the business compared to the actual core of our business. But there's so many YouTube influencers that make like, you know, 50 to 100% of their revenues directly from YouTube and brand deals and sponsorship deals. And that's, I never want that. But, but the fact that we do have influence, and we do have an audience, and we do have cool stuff and good things to say, and
00:42:29
Speaker
access to brands because they watch our videos. I think you hit the nail on the head with how you promote that and how you do it and just be genuine and honest on the video and be like, I don't know, whatever you want to say, but this is fun. It has to be shared. You guys have to know about this and we're going to tell you. Yes. It's funny because I hate that word influencer and I realized the reason I hate it is that I'm going to talk about myself here. I was an influencer before there was a perverse incentive to be an influencer.
00:42:59
Speaker
I did it because I wanted to influence people in a good way about what we can do and the opportunities, not because it's how I put food on the table and what you said is absolutely true. We make money off of YouTube, but the lion's share of that goes straight back into what it costs us to make true YouTube videos. We couldn't do what we do unless we had the Saunders products, period. Exactly. And to a weird extent, you wouldn't have the Saunders products without the YouTube.
00:43:24
Speaker
Oh, no, for sure. We have a huge content marketing strategy. That's real. But that's not dishonest. No, exactly. In fact, that's what we're trying to do. A little bit of what we're trying to do with chip rag is connect better with our audience so that we can show how our products can help you guys.
Chip Rag Newsletter Email Issues
00:43:40
Speaker
A shameless plug for folks that subscribe to chip rag. An unfortunate number of folks is hitting their spam filters. And there's nothing we can do about it because it's really like a male chimp thing. So if you subscribe to chip rag,
00:43:55
Speaker
The first one came out on February 7th. If you never got it, please check your spam and the next one should come out the first week of March. So same thing. Once you whitelist it once, you should be good. Okay, cool. What's going on today? Oh, Tornos. Tornos, Swiss, catch up on emails from the weekend and an actual quiet weekend with the family. Nice. And I did not much. And I was like, whoa, this is what this is like. Because it's been crazy for the past six weeks.
00:44:23
Speaker
So it's been nice to do almost nothing, like work wise. And that was comfortable. So now I'm just getting back into the swing of things. So yeah, tornos, kern, some other loose ends. And yeah, that's what I'm doing today. Awesome. We are running mod vice parts on the rotating turny thing back in the corner of the shop.
00:44:45
Speaker
The way we installed a new Wi-Fi system the unify dream machine, which has been absolutely awesome What is this? Well, it's just a more robust internet router thing, but I'm a layman here unify apparently makes all the really good networking gear for like hotels or hospitals or airports and This dream machine is it's only 300 bucks, but it's a much more robust router
00:45:10
Speaker
than the Netgear piece of junk we were using. The problem was we needed a better way to handle some security stuff where we've got visitors or training students and we needed better coverage because we need to make sure the shop has good Wi-Fi. Unifi, it seemed like the right solution for
00:45:30
Speaker
a user-friendly, you can install it yourself. The higher-end Unify stuff does look like you need to be a real certified expert. But inevitably, that meant we've got to go figure out some new IP addresses and port mapping stuff. So finishing up that. Cool. Yeah. In our shop, we just went to Staples and bought a
00:45:50
Speaker
fairly cheap router. I just let Fraser take care of it. He got two. I think he got one for the front building, one for the back building. They work great. There's nothing. Cool, man. See you next week. Sounds good. Have yourself an awesome week.
00:46:09
Speaker
Each week on the Business of Machining podcast, we ask viewers to send in an audio clip of how the Business of Machining podcast has affected or helped them. Here's this
Impact on Justin Courtney's Business
00:46:20
Speaker
week's viewer. Hey, John and John. I just want to thank you guys so much for sharing your day-to-day journeys to the Business of Machining and being consistent with it.
00:46:28
Speaker
It is by far my favorite podcast that I've listened to from day one and I get something out of it every single week. My name is Justin Courtney. I'm the founder of a growing manufacturer of concealed carry holsters. And the number one reason that I like listening to the bomb is that you guys just keep it real.
00:46:45
Speaker
You guys not only share the wins, but you share the losses or the struggles of entrepreneurship. And it's always encouraging to hear other perspectives or hear about the things that you guys are going through that I may have just gone through or I'm going through at the same time. And that just brings feelings of camaraderie and
00:47:06
Speaker
It's just encouraging. A lot of what we do as entrepreneurs is kind of live and learn, which is great. It defines us. It's who we are, but a lot of times I can just bring feelings of inadequacy or loneliness and
00:47:21
Speaker
just listening to y'all stories and your journeys is just encouraging. I can't put it any other way. Another thing that I'm really grateful for is all the content that you guys have shared on YouTube. It has completely transformed my business. Back in 16, we bought our first CNC router based on
00:47:40
Speaker
you know, the content that you guys have posted out there, just building up the confidence, learning CAD and CAM, and being confident to dive down that road. Shortly after our first router, we bought a second one, which both of those quickly got moved into production. And we started looking at the need for a CNC vertical.
00:48:00
Speaker
And in May of 17, I attended one of the NYC CNC hands-on classes to just kind of get familiar with vertical machines. And in June, we bought our first one. And since then, we bought a couple more. So just in a few short years, we have moved from two CNC routers to three vertical mills that are in production every single day.
00:48:24
Speaker
And I just owe a great deal of gratitude for you guys for taking the time to share that information. I know I'm not the only one who has benefited from it, and I am very grateful.
00:48:37
Speaker
If you guys wanna check out the products that we make, you can check out our Instagram page at Tolster, which is T-U-L-S-T-E-R, or you can check out my personal page, Justin K. Courtney, where I share more of the less refined behind the scenes information like machine crashes and probe crashes and stuff like that. Again, John and John, thank you guys so much for everything that you do.