Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Business of Machining - Episode 10
300 Plays8 years ago
Outsourcing parts. Business relationships. A snow storm. Process improvements. Saunders and Grimsmo discuss the importance of ensuring that drawings contain all necessary information when outsourcing parts and resolving conflicts in a way that results in a win-win outcome to foster good business partnerships. Grimsmo recounts getting stuck at the shop in a snow-storm and the benefits of his new Renishaw Turret Probe. Finally, they hash out ways to improve processes. Grimsmo's snow storm video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDLeF-Ec-Os
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Theme
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome, everybody, to the business of machining. I am one of your hosts, John Grimsmough. And my name is John Saunders. How you going today? You know, it's funny. Yesterday was not a fun day, and I think it actually ties really well into the title of this podcast, which is the business of machining.
The Importance of Accurate Drawings
00:00:25
Speaker
So when I first got started, I really liked this plan that we had. And we kind of knew it was the plan. It worked out even better than we had thought, which was learn, model, prototype, in-house, and then get smart, get comfortable. And then that helps you do a better job of growing the business as we dealt with other people at the time.
00:00:47
Speaker
At the original start, I didn't even have my tormach. I had that tag, and I was in New York City. I had a job, so owning real manufacturer code was out of the question. So what happened was we started outsourcing. We did actually a pretty good job of doing that, of getting parts machined, because we learned trial by fire. So we learned from the mistakes that we made on
00:01:11
Speaker
And all this basically comes back to drawings that's kind of my punchline of what what's stuck about yesterday. But making good drawings making sure that the parts the part is what you want making sure the drawing is not under or over constrained or tolerance and then working with people that understand how to read the prints and drawings and so forth and.
Managing Vendor Mistakes
00:01:32
Speaker
So we got, I think, pretty good at that, and I've come to really appreciate how you have to have everything in the drawings. It doesn't matter. Don't do it over the phone call. Don't do it in separate emails. Don't have duplicate sets of drawings, some of which have different information.
00:01:50
Speaker
the drawing is the key and so what happened yesterday was we are working on sort of a contract manufacturing job where we had 2500 parts that were out to get run, 500 of them were done incorrectly. So this is the part you designed and had a drawing for and somebody else made it?
00:02:11
Speaker
I did not design it. I was involved in the design, but it's sort of somebody else's. I'm just, for lack of a better word, a consultant on the project.
00:02:21
Speaker
And actually it's kind of funny, now that you asked me that question, what the customer here is doing is basically using me as a consultant, because I've done this and it's exactly the kind of hurdle that you don't want to go through when you, this particular part and job is not conducive to low runts, it's very difficult to make 10 of them. I won't go into more details, but we made a few in-house and now we're doing the first batch of them.
00:02:50
Speaker
And the problem is it was called out specifically on the print or the issue that happened. It was a post machining finishing application.
00:03:04
Speaker
And so the shop called and basically said these were done wrong. And there was a little bit at first of the whole like kind of a, we're not sure we're going to say it was our mistake. And then they quickly fessed up that look, it was their oversight. They have to take responsibility for it. And we're actually going to film a chip break on this because I think it's such a good topic, but.
00:03:25
Speaker
I think the two takeaways were one, you have to have everything in the print. It's so important to have that information there because that's what matters. But on the flip side, you've also got to remember it has to stay a win-win.
00:03:42
Speaker
Sure, people should fix their mistakes or pay for their mistakes, but that's not really always how the world works, especially when the numbers get bigger and 500 isn't
Training Suppliers and Building Partnerships
00:03:51
Speaker
that big. We're not talking about huge amounts of money here, thousands of dollars, not tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, but nevertheless,
00:03:57
Speaker
You know, so to sort of put that example on pause and just go into the theoretical here, you could tell the shop we're not accepting the parts or you could tell the shop where we want you to rerun them. I don't think they have an obligation to rerun them. They could just now decline the job if they didn't like it because they misquoted it or misunderstood the application or something.
00:04:16
Speaker
But it doesn't do anybody any good. I'm frustrated because I actually spoke with them about the whole thing, including this specific thing they screwed up. And I know some of the folks listening may be saying, we are never going to use that shop again. And I would say, well,
00:04:29
Speaker
First of all, they didn't maliciously think, let's botch these. Very few, if any, companies ever actually maliciously intend to do that. And frankly, very few are even so sloppy as to let things happen systematically. The reality is, goofs happen, things happen. So what do you do about it? How do you go forward? And again, it kind of stinks, but that's what I'm dealing with. That's also kind of like training your supplier, your partner, whoever you're working with.
00:04:55
Speaker
We're going through the same thing with DLC. If they send parts bad one time, you could easily say, well, screw you. We're never going to work with you again. But you're going to have the same sort of problems with the next guy, right? Right. You'll be out of DLC applicators before you know it. Exactly. So it's kind of forming a partnership. And as long as everybody's kind of working happily together, then you can hopefully overcome these hurdles and create a good friendship going down.
Entrepreneurial Challenges and Quality Control
00:05:22
Speaker
That sucks. Exactly.
00:05:24
Speaker
It's a relationship thing at the end of the day. It really is. We're in this boat together. It needs to be a win-win. Sure. I could cram down a fix, but the reality is you don't treat somebody like, even when it's their mistake, and then use them again. So I've now got to build a new relationship with a new chef. This is a specific part that is a little bit of a quirky thing to make. Anyway.
00:05:46
Speaker
Yeah, John, you've kind of run the gamut. I know you brought a lot of your stuff in-house because you've been frustrated with this and you have this sort of phenomenal obsession with quality. And I respect you for it, but you've been through the stresses of dealing with vendors, right? Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, I once had some lathe parts made a couple of years ago.
00:06:07
Speaker
from a well-known knife maker with a very nice machine, you know, probably as good as my Nakamura almost. And the parts came back plus or minus 2,000. And I was like, what? What? Are you kidding me? Right. Yeah, I got to use like 20% of the parts. And at that point, I was just like, well, screw you. I'm not going to use you again.
00:06:26
Speaker
Right. I used to have this, an old boss who was really good about framing the context of these conversations. And he used to make fun of MBA students for like, basically, you know, you take the textbook approach to like, well, these are out of spec and you just all of a sudden pound your fist and start yelling and demand, you know, nonpayment or whatever. And it's like, well, that's not, it's not, it's just not how the world works. You got to, you know, that machinist that you sent them out to obviously is successful. He probably didn't
00:06:56
Speaker
It probably didn't mean to have that as the outcome. It's like you said, you've got to be smart enough about your parts to explain what's important, what's not important. That's the same reason why I mentioned not over-tolerancing drawings. If you put so much noise on there, if there's 27 callouts but three of them are super important, sure, the drawings are the drawings and blah, blah, blah, it's important that they're right.
00:07:23
Speaker
At the end of the day, you've got to give somebody something to work with. Exactly. And there's realistic tolerance, and then there's unrealistic tolerance. Like you. And I'm finding that too, just making my own parts. Like some diameters are super critical, but not everything.
00:07:39
Speaker
And like yesterday I made 50 pivot screw heads and the thickness of the head is supposed to be about 30 thou. And I realized this morning I woke up and I thought about it first thing and I was like, I don't know if I measured the thickness of that head on any of the screws.
Personal Anecdotes: Snowed in at the Shop
00:07:55
Speaker
Because it's not that critical? It's got a range. It's a pretty sloppy range. Maybe a thou, a thou and a half. You're funny. But if it's out of spec, then they're garbage. And I realized I made all of them without even thinking of measuring, because I don't have a print here for this part, because I don't think about it. I just kind of know in my head, oh, it's supposed to be about 30 thou.
00:08:16
Speaker
I don't consciously measure this kind of stuff. Like, I don't have a checklist to say, measure this, measure this, measure this. And it's something I need to move to. Because, you know, the process needs to be the expert, not the John Grimsmough, because John Grimsmough likes to forget things. No, totally. I did that too. I pulled off some parts and I can't remember what they were two days ago, but I was like, how did I forget to check that?
00:08:38
Speaker
You just not only does everybody but I think as entrepreneurs I am always It's a comedy of errors sometimes how I'll be I'll be like six things deep I'll be doing something I get distracted to something which which then goes six times deep and I'm like wait was I What was I doing in the real line?
00:08:56
Speaker
I get that all the time. I had to laugh. I was like, what shenanigans was John into that he actually got stuck at the shop in a snowstorm overnight? Yeah, I did that. What? Well, I came home and then I was like, okay, let's just go back to the shop and put on another pallet. I'll be there for 25 minutes and then I can go home.
00:09:19
Speaker
I love that conversation to the wives when it's like, I just got to go swap out parts. I'll be right back. Exactly. And then the next day I come home. You've been cheating on me with my Maury. I've got work to do.
00:09:37
Speaker
Was that fun? I mean, it sounded like you didn't
Vendor Relationships: Financial Losses for Long-term Gains
00:09:40
Speaker
sleep very well. I did not sleep very well. So for those of you listening, I put up a YouTube video about this. And basically, I got snowed in at the shop and stayed here all night. Couldn't sleep, so I just worked all night. Kept both the Maury and the lathe running nonstop, which was fun. It was really cool, actually. And I wasn't working as hard as I do during the day because I have the machines running and then I'm doing other stuff.
00:10:05
Speaker
you know i was i was trying to relax i was trying to get some sleep while the machines were running right just on my computer watching netflix you know while between pallet changes and things like that but yeah i couldn't sleep and it was yeah both fun and stressful at the same time but are you do you have it in you like the stamina or whatever to function the next day like can you pull all nighters
00:10:26
Speaker
Not anymore. I stayed at the shop till about 12 or 1 o'clock and then I went home and slept for 3 hours. And then it's like 2-3 days later and I'm still not back on schedule. Right, it's not worth it in the end unless you have some crazy deadline to meet. Exactly.
00:10:46
Speaker
I can work till midnight for sure like no problem go home go right to bed But I can't the whole overnight thing just does I don't even take red-eye flights anymore. Yes, no good It just adds a lot of unnecessary. We're getting too old man, right? No, the other thing I wanted to mention which is something I think I
00:11:07
Speaker
Well, something that we've done well about is kind of goes back to the whole vendor thing and building out that entrepreneurship thing of opportunity resources in the team and the resources or team, either one kind of being, including the people that are around you to help you, including vendors. Because like we've talked about so many times before, you don't do it alone.
Communication Challenges with Vendors
00:11:29
Speaker
Even you have to get stuff, water jet or certain post-applications, DLC, tumbling.
00:11:35
Speaker
And what I've always done over the years when I've moved from the east coast to here and started the different things that I've sent out, smaller runs of things that are effectively break even at best. Maybe we even lose a little bit of money just to start building relationships. So we've sent out things to different laser shops. We sent out things to different 3D printers. We sent out things to different tumblers, to anodizers.
00:11:59
Speaker
Because it lets you get a chance to see who's good to work with and sometimes it's not even who's the best It's just who's the good fit for you I happen to be the kind of person like right now I'm working with a vendor that I'm thinking about leaving because they get so annoyed when I call them
00:12:14
Speaker
And I don't nag them, but I do have to know, I do need to know some form of scheduling. I need to know, are these parts gonna run this week or next week? Just some general idea of that, and that's something that they clearly aren't good at working with. They're more of a, get us the parts, we'll get them back to you, no, it's not gonna be three or four weeks or whatever, but don't bother us. I hate that, you know? Yeah, you and I, we're such kind of friendly guys that we want to make a relationship with people we're gonna work with.
00:12:41
Speaker
And I feel that way, too. And I have that with my lathe dealer, Elliot Misera, and I don't have that with the MG Mori. So I'm talking to the Nakamura dealership a couple times a week, constantly, just to keep in touch.
Investing in Technology for Quality Control
00:12:57
Speaker
And they're always stopping by and hanging out and help me and teaching me stuff. And it's a great relationship. But every time I call Mori guys for questions, I get a short terse answer and doesn't even fully answer it.
00:13:09
Speaker
And again, it's because there is no such thing as DMG more. There's only people that work for them and and Did you buy your worry before they oh, I guess you're in Canada because in the US there's this big Hubbub about when they dropped Ellison and went direct. Yeah, I was right about the same time. Maybe just before Okay, how did that work in Canada though? Did was it I forget? I don't know
00:13:33
Speaker
But you don't have a reseller. Your paperwork and everything was direct to the DMG? It was DMG Morrie Ellison is what the paperwork said. Oh, it was Ellison? OK. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, I forgot.
00:13:48
Speaker
Maybe that's, well, regardless. Yeah. Yeah, it was a big hubbub right about the same time. Right. But it's funny, too, because that's different for our friend on the west coast of Canada who has a DMG who does have a pretty good working relationship. Yeah. Right? And maybe it's how he is dealing with them and contacting them versus how I do it. Right. I just kind of stay away. And I ask my Nakamura guys how to run my Maury.
00:14:17
Speaker
Hilarious because the lancer I know I know the lancer, right? Right. So yeah, that's funny Are you are you willing to share what you texted me last night about your new so on the lathe in order to hold grims? Motolerances and just to be able to do what I want to do to compensate for tool wear and thermal growth and things like that I just ordered a Renishaw turret probe for the lathe so that I can inspect parts mid machining mid turning
00:14:47
Speaker
which I'm super excited about. I've been on the fence for a couple months now and I finally pulled the trigger and got it done. Should be here in about two weeks. And basically that'll allow me to rough turn the diameter, probe it, measure it, and then finish turn after compensating for some offsets. And then the goal is to make, you know, hold one or two tenths all day long.
00:15:09
Speaker
So is that just like the Renishok probe that you see in Myha's Yermori, like the OMP40, or just got a stem with a Ruby? Yeah, exactly the same, except it's called an OLP for lathe. Got it. So it's a bit stronger duty because the turret on the lathe is quite violent.
00:15:27
Speaker
Dude, that thing, your turret whips around. It really does. That's crazy. Yep. So the probe is designed to run production environment on this kind of machine. So I actually talked to a guy named Clinton at Renishaw yesterday for 20 minutes or so. And he just kind of confirmed all my questions and answered all my fears about using it and all that. And it sounds like it'll do exactly what I want.
00:15:53
Speaker
So you have to stick a gauge pin in the spindle collet and use that to calibrate it and then you're basically good to go? I would turn a diameter. Okay, then mic it? Yeah, and then mic it so you know what size it is and you know that a turn diameter is concentric and you can measure the size and then you dial it in. So it's going to take apparently one and a half to two days to install it and train me on it. Holy cow.
00:16:18
Speaker
So like a half day to install and then maybe up to a day to train. And there's all kinds of little macros, just like on your Haas. Probably the same macros.
00:16:29
Speaker
So are you just going to end up using Fusion to post your code, but then inserting by hand midstream macros that do the probing and rest machine or final machining? Or actually it's not even that hard because all you have to do is update your offsets. That's all it's going to do. And so it's not actually like you have to run variable based code.
00:16:49
Speaker
Yeah, you don't have to, but you could. What they were saying is one thing you can do is when you do your semi-finishing pass, you set the offset to like plus 10,000 from the start. And then you semi-finish, you know it's going to be 10,000 big, and then probe it, and then you can finish pass to zero once it's set the offset back to 0.01 or whatever it needs to be. But yeah. That's going to be super cool. Very excited.
Automated Part Inspection Processes
00:17:13
Speaker
Yeah, so the downside is obviously it's not free and you lose a turret position. And it adds cycle time. It's funny talking with the applications engineers because that's like their biggest concern. Yeah, right. It's like, well, it's going to add cycle time. I'm like, I really don't care. Yeah, you say that. You will care. But if it takes a five minute part to five and a half minutes, but makes perfect parts every time, I don't care.
00:17:37
Speaker
Can you do it every fifth? I mean, if it's truly something where you're trying to deal with like tool wear or thermal expansion, then it doesn't have to be every part, right? Yeah. You can set up a looping function to basically count up every part. And you can set that to five parts, 10 parts, 50 parts, whatever. And then it won't probe until that macro hits 50 or whatever you call it. Yeah. That's so cool. So I'm really excited about that. It's going to be awesome.
00:18:04
Speaker
It reminds me, sort of, of the workflow of that robo-drill setup at IMTS, where they had two robo-drills with, oh, there were more, but maybe, but robot arms that were loading, transferring, and unloading. And one of the, between two of them, there was a CMM that was taking the part out of the first robo-drill, measuring it, and feeding real-time wear offsets back to the machine. Yeah, I remember that. That was amazing. Right? Seeing those kind of cells is like, what?
00:18:34
Speaker
Well, but that's what you're doing. You're just doing it in a contained environment, which costs you some spindle time. But obviously, that's a lot cheaper than a $100,000 external CMM plus robo arm.
Daily Production Challenges and Process Improvements
00:18:48
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Yeah, this keeps it all in cycle, in machine. And then the goal is perfect parts coming out. And then you can also track. You can have a dprint function where it actually exports all the probe data.
00:19:04
Speaker
That's amazing. It's awesome. That's cool. Yeah, it was cool to see Jay Pearson. I keep bringing him up again, but he was doing some interesting lathe stuff. They're hard turning, so they've actually gotten rid of grinding by hard turning on their Dusan lathe, and they're holding very, very tight. It's funny that as a non-machinist, I always thought it was funny when I've learned that sometimes, oftentimes, harder materials actually turn better.
00:19:32
Speaker
when you have the right tooling and feeds and speeds. So they've gotten rid of grinding by hard turning and then same thing, they have a little parts catcher that dumps out to a conveyor and it dumps so often. They were making these little Venturis that weren't much bigger than some of your parts, but they weren't doing the pill bottle thing. Somehow they were able to successfully get them to go into the parts catcher.
00:19:56
Speaker
I was actually thinking about buying one of their Venturis for a surface grinder vacuum plate. Oh, interesting. Because you have non-ferrous? Yeah, to hold titanium parts. Right. And yeah, it's hard to block them in, huh? Yeah, because they don't stay down. Right. Double-sided sticky tape works, but it's time-consuming and not super perfect. Yeah, so I thought about making a vacuum fixture for that surface grinder, the Tormach one.
00:20:25
Speaker
Didn't you have a Mighty Bite plate? I do still have the Vac Magic, and it's just kind of sitting around, but it's a lot bigger than the Surface Grinder. It's like a 12 by 12 or 14 by 14 or something, not 66 by 12. We did a Wednesday widget.
00:20:42
Speaker
It'll air next week, I think, but where we tried to use the Pearson Venturi pump or adapter thing. But instead of using the Pearson plate, we actually custom made a fixture and just threw a 1 eighth inch NPT tap underneath it with no gasket.
00:21:00
Speaker
and it failed, but I think it failed not because of the fact that we made it, it failed because we weren't, we were intentionally trying to see if we could make it work without a gasket, seal, and the tolerances that you would have to have between the part and the fixture are grimsmo level. Like lapped perfect. Right, right. So I kind of knew it would fail, but I still wanted to try it. Nice. It's like what you said in your video on spending the night in the shop. You're like, it's my business, I'll do what I want.
Exploring Hard Milling Techniques
00:21:32
Speaker
So true. So what's going on today? What's on tap? Today, I'm going to keep making more of these screws on the lathe. And then I was going to switch it to, oh yeah, I got to make our little 440 titanium screws as well. Keep the Maury running, making rasks. I actually got to do more grinding today. The cup wheel stuff? Yeah, the cup wheel, which is actually going really well until about two, three days ago. Eric asked me to dress the wheel again. And then it all screwed up.
00:22:02
Speaker
Is this the new one yet for Linda or still waiting? No, but it's in transit from the manufacturer to Linda and then she's going to send it to me. Sweet. So I should hopefully see that in like a week. Yeah, that's great. What happened? You just dressed it and they just got wonky? Yeah, I dressed it and then the size went out and I compensated the control for the size, but I didn't mess with the code because what happened was I was doing 35 passes
00:22:27
Speaker
With cutter comp off yeah, so the fusion knows what size it is right and then a 15 finish passes with cutter comp on Okay But there was a there was a variance between the two so that the first cut where cutter comes comes on it was taking a heavier cut oh and so we were burning some blades and all kinds of problems and
00:22:46
Speaker
That sounds like a bad process. Yes. It took me forever to figure it out. So now I'm just doing 50 passes with cutter comp on the whole time. And now it works great. Got it. Well, that's, I guess, good. You use wear comp or total cutter comp? Total cutter comp.
00:23:06
Speaker
You do? Yeah. Interesting. I don't use wear very often unless I'm just tweaking. Why not? A size. I don't know. I feel like I'm still new-ish to this and we haven't... I'm realizing that it's very difficult, I think, it seems to be very difficult to mix the two in your CAM library because it's easy to forget what you're doing and
00:23:28
Speaker
continuity between your tool library and the machine and fusion and so forth, but I like this idea of just adjusting off of the nominal, i.e. using wear. Okay. Makes sense? But in your control you still need to say it's a quarter inch end mill. Sure, but that's easy to do. Right. Well don't you measure the diameter of the end mill on your Haas, like with the tool probe?
00:23:53
Speaker
Yeah, and you know, it's funny, something that's been on my list to try to do a better job of figuring it out, but it's not very accurate. Often I'm getting readout tool diameters that are bigger than the nominal size of the end mill, and I think that's pretty unlikely given that the carbide, like a three-eighth inch end mill, should be less because it started, I believe, started right. And of course it could be more if you had run out, but there's no way
00:24:21
Speaker
There's no way I'm having that much run out in brand new holders of the quality that I'm buying, so forth. Short answer is I don't know, but rather than sit there and academically worry about it forever, I've just been kind of ignoring it. Because we can hold great tolerances, so it's not that.
00:24:41
Speaker
It's one of the things I was telling, who was I telling somebody yesterday about, we're in the middle of a training class this week and it's like, unfortunately you don't just buy these machines and they're perfect. It just doesn't happen. There's a YouTube video right there. Right? It's funny.
00:24:57
Speaker
Rob Lockwood did one of those HSM webinars last Friday, and it was a totally eye-opening. It actually made me really want to go back to IMTS and look at machines again from a more educated standpoint, because he was talking about this triangle of speed, accuracy, and surface finish. And one of the great examples he gave is most people would think surface finish and accuracy are the same thing. And he sort of explains that they're not, because if you want to hit every geometrical
00:25:26
Speaker
perfect datum point accuracy, that's probably not gonna give you the right surface finish, because surface finish has to do with the smoothness of the control and the nature of the toolpath as it sweeps over the part. And he's basically talking about machines that are beyond even the ones that, certainly ones I own, and probably even beyond yours. I think, sadly, you know, Dura Vertical is a great high, low, high-end machine, maybe? How do you say that? You know what I mean? Yeah, it's no superstar, it's a workhorse.
00:25:55
Speaker
Right, it's a phenomenal machine, but he's talking about these, you know, Grobs or GFs or Hermes that have just crazy, and how they have two different, I think they were GFs, whatever, George Fishers that have the same controller, but one has linear motors and is super high speed, low drag, and the other one is more of a workhorse, beefy, and these are both simultaneous five-axis machines, and how one of them handles code totally different than the other.
00:26:22
Speaker
Like from what you want to get, what you want to put in your smoothing parameters and tolerancing and how you want that, basically how you want that code to be digested and processed by the controller. Yeah, I saw a picture he put up on Instagram showing like five different parts and he said something like the trouble with, what was it, with playing with surface finishes, they're all just different levels of shiny.
00:26:47
Speaker
That was amazing that picture was redonkulous. Yeah, you can't even tell the difference between them all but And they all look like they were a surface lapped like they're they were there's little like mound things Have you tried to do much 3d surfacing on your house?
00:27:05
Speaker
No, but it's something I really want to do soon. Yeah, like machine a sphere or something, just to see how close you can get it. And I've seen some mold work done on those, my exact machine. It's a mold machine, right? It could do some good work. Yeah. You know, I've tried hard to get some really solid surface finishes from my Maury, and I struggle with it. I don't know if it's me or if it's the machine, but I haven't even talked to Lockwood about it before.
00:27:34
Speaker
I think a lot of it is in, it's kind of at a pedestrian level, ties back to Arbor Widnes Day widget this week where we actually did a cam off with Rob where I cammed up a part and then he kind of fixed my cam and we showed how different the parts looked after we machined them and how much at that level of importance cam has in terms of, like I said, the smoothing and the tolerancing, the tool path and the tool itself and how you present it to the work and it's crazy.
00:28:03
Speaker
Yeah, I want to do that, and I also want to try hard milling. Yep, that's pretty fun. You ever done? Yeah, I do. You done? A lot of that. OK. I mean, I'm doing it with my blades right now. They're 60 Rockwell, and I'm. Are you serious? Oh, yeah. And I'm destroying, or not destroying, but tearing into the bevel with an end mill. With just a regular carbide end mill? Yep, yep. Six flute, not even a special end mill. It's just off the shelf, six flute, Lakeshore carbide. OK. And it's going great. I'm getting, like, really long tool life out of it.
00:28:33
Speaker
Isn't that crazy? A regular carbide lakeshore. Well, I love lakeshore. We use them all the time, but they're not Imcos. They're not helicals. They're not the highest end tool in the world. And you're cutting into 60 Rockwell.
00:28:46
Speaker
That's crazy. I don't know if they're any worse than Imco. I don't tell any difference. I've tried a lot of Imco stuff. I've used a ton of Lakeshore stuff, and I think they're the same. Sorry. Thank you for saying that. What I mean is more, they're not the pricing of those higher end ones. Very good point. Yeah. They're certainly a budget-conscious end mill, and they're great. I use them 90% of my stuff. But yeah, it is crazy that you can cut 60 Rockwell with whatever carbide is, 70 Rockwell or something like that.
00:29:15
Speaker
Because a 60 Rockwell steel part, you cannot file it, right? A file just skates over it. Yeah, a file's going to be, I don't know, 50 or 55 or something. No joke. If our Haas weren't running a job right now, I would walk out there after this podcast and try to hard mill something. Yeah. Do you have anything hard? I've got case hardened stuff. Hardest thing I can think of would be metrology stuff, which I don't really want to mill and do all about this. Exactly. What about a parallel or something? I don't know how hard they are.
00:29:44
Speaker
That's crazy. I've got some ball screws laying around somewhere that I don't care about that I could take a edge off of or something. No, it's funny. If I'm cutting, say, a quarter inch end mill and I'm just going down, you don't want to go too deep. You want to take very light axial passes, but go down 10,000.
00:30:05
Speaker
So sorry, light radial or light? Light and Z. Yeah, light axial, but you can do more of a bigger width of cut? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, like I've got, when I cut a tab off of the blade, I take an eighth inch end mill and I just step down like 10 or 15 thou or something like that. You're hard milling with an eighth inch end mill? Oh yeah.
00:30:27
Speaker
It's fine. And it leaves some pretty crazy good surface finishes. Right. Because the material just takes a cut so nicely and it's shiny. Is it a true square end, a square corner, or does it have a slight radius on the end mill? It certainly eats up the end mills quickly. And actually, now I am using a radius end mill for that same job. Radius will last a lot longer. Like a 3,000 radius, or 15,000, 20,000? 30,000. OK, so bull nose. Yeah, exactly.
00:30:57
Speaker
Just because I have some slightly dull bull noses that now kick up a burr in titanium, but now I can use them for hard milling.
00:31:05
Speaker
Oh, no kidding. That's funny. That's so cool. What do the chips look like? Very small. Golden if you're doing good. Blue if you're doing really aggressive. But it makes a chip. You get a real chip. It's not like a grinding dust. Yes, absolutely. You get fine, small chips. Although when I'm doing the bevels, I'm cutting almost one inch depth of cut at like 10 or 20,000 step over. Is that hardened? Yep.
00:31:34
Speaker
Holy cow. So that's your traditional high-speed type cut where you're... And I'm going at 70 inches per minute, something like that. Which is fast. It's pretty fast, really fast. And the tips, you know, they're one-inch long spirals. They look like corkscrews. What's RPM-ish?
00:31:54
Speaker
5,000, I don't know. OK. Nothing. Actually, for steel, that's a good surface footage. I assume it's like a half inch end mill or something? Yeah, it's three eights. Three eights, yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Because for that length, you need the strength. The core, right. Do you do any crazy seven or nine footers? I've bought some sevens, but I don't think I use them very much. I'd like to, for sure, especially for this application.
00:32:24
Speaker
M code dealer said just gave me a couple of six fluter That they are just it's just they're sort of what they call it. They're Omega. Yeah regular old, you know some of those. Yeah, they're supposed to be pretty good. Mm-hmm. They're variable and Good stuff kind of cool Awesome
00:32:46
Speaker
Well, good luck crushing on the, this is like boring now. You've just got everything dialed in and locked down. I know. Now it's just keeping everything running and not forgetting to do certain jobs and got to figure out a process flow like an actual written down. I guess that's something I'd like to do more of is start to track and manage and process control this kind of stuff so that you don't forget to measure this one tolerance.
00:33:12
Speaker
Why don't you do, I don't know if this is cheesy, but one processed thing a day? That's a very good idea.
00:33:21
Speaker
It sounds like today you probably have a little bit of free time, just in the sense you've got machines running. So I started, we bought a $30 Amazon Basics laminator. And so I've been starting to print out workflows and setup sheets for repeat jobs and stuff that we make. And I just, even though I know we're going to change them, I don't care. I laminate it and I put them over on the rack with those parts.
00:33:46
Speaker
And it's cheap, and it's something that doesn't get coolant on it, and the guys, when it's laminated, you tend to respect it more than just a piece of paper. Interesting. Yeah, I would say that, yeah.
00:33:57
Speaker
And as soon as we need to update it, we throw it away, print out a new one, and re-laminate it. Who cares? So I go through an extra 30 bucks of laminated sheets a year. Doesn't matter. Right. That's funny. Because with stuff like this, I talk myself out of it so easily. Because you tell yourself things like, oh, well, I change it, or I want the ability to add to it, or write to it. So you just end up not doing it, which is kind of stupid.
00:34:21
Speaker
It's like Kaizen foam. Just cut it. Who cares? Exactly. Tell yourself. Yeah, exactly. Although I'm actually guilty. I want to redo my Kaizen from my desk and I keep not doing that. I'll do that this weekend. That's interesting because yeah, all these little setup sheets and measurement and prints and all that and then you keep it with the material.
00:34:43
Speaker
Well, we're doing, for the products that we make where we have a better lockdown workflow, we're doing these Sam's Club rolling carts. So it lets us store, there are six shelves and they're pretty rugged. They'll let us wheel around so we can move them, which I think is important. Is it a toolbox? Nope, no, it's just a stainless steel, it looks like a retail rack. Okay. A shelf. Yeah, okay.
00:35:08
Speaker
But I think the whole thing will hold like 500 pounds. And so we can have fasteners and little bins of red, we have the little red shallower bins on them. And then we can have some of the boxes are packaging and we can have work in progress. I don't store a lot of finished inventory on them because usually that gets too heavy. And then you can store those cards on there as well. And are yours full size 8.5 by 11 or smaller?
00:35:36
Speaker
Right now, yes, but I think I want to start laminating the smaller card sizes and then you can staple them or tape them or something to a shower bin or a little product or whatever. Yeah, that could really help us out actually because even the heat treat process, we're doing these damastile pocket clips.
00:35:59
Speaker
The pocket clip takes a different recipe than the blades do for heat treating. Different temperature, different time. My father-in-law was doing the heat treat and he picked up a packet and he didn't know the clips were in it. He thought it was just a blade, so it got heat treated wrong.
00:36:17
Speaker
and then that led to problems downstream downstream and all these things like you think you got it you think you know it you know you think you know the recipe in your head but in fact it's just numbers in your head and you can't always trust them so having little process sheets it's got to be done
00:36:35
Speaker
Yeah, and then just, I don't know, paperclip or clamp it or somehow magnet it or something. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Easy. Yep. Do it. I will. I like the one-a-day thing. That's a very good idea. Yeah, awesome. Sweet. Crush it, bud. I'll see you. You too. Have a great day. Bye. Bye.