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#393 Fusion tips and tricks
2.7k Plays6 days ago
TOPICS:
- Google Appscripts does awesome stuff
- Notes to yourself in Fusion 360 and other Fusion tips and tricks
- Hardmilling update! Hard grindmilling too.
- Heat treating ideas
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Theme
00:00:01
johngrimsmo
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 393. My name is John Grimsmo.
00:00:06
John S
My name is Sean Saunders.
00:00:08
johngrimsmo
And this is the manufacturing podcast. We've been running for, I don't know, eight years, um, on where we talk about what's going on, what's new, what's on our brains, what's stressing us out, what's freaking us out and what, uh, hopefully I think some things we're doing right.
00:00:23
John S
How are you?
00:00:25
johngrimsmo
I'm, I'm feeling pretty, pretty on fire right now. I just had a major win and I'm excited about it.
00:00:29
John S
Okay, good. Do tell.
00:00:31
johngrimsmo
like two minutes ago, so I'll tell you about
Tool Life Tracking with Google Sheets
00:00:33
johngrimsmo
it. So I like, I'm not a very good computer programmer, but i can I can dabble and I can poke at stuff and I can hire people to do various things for me. So a couple of years ago, we we hired a lady to create a script that extracts the entire tool table from the Kern.
00:00:52
johngrimsmo
And that means it knows what program it's running and every tool life at that moment in time.
00:00:57
John S
Yeah.
00:00:58
johngrimsmo
And then it does it again on the next tool change and it goes, okay, this program, rask handle backside uses tool 90 for 1.3 minutes. And it's tracking all of this in a Google sheet.
00:01:11
johngrimsmo
And it's super cool because now we can calculate, we can look and we can say, we have scheduled four Rask palettes. It knows it needs to use tool 90 for a total of 12 minutes. And there's only 11 minutes of tool life left. So you should replace that tool. And we basically have a spreadsheet open on a dedicated computer that just has big red cells that says today you will need to replace tool 90, tool 12, tool, whatever. And, and Angela just lives and dies by it. And he.
00:01:41
johngrimsmo
Like maintaining tool life on that machine is literally a four minute process where he just pulls out three tools that it tells it to, he replaces them, sets them to touch off automatically whenever.
00:01:48
John S
yeah
00:01:50
johngrimsmo
And then it's it's amazing. Except the problem is it's exporting so much data that the spreadsheet itself becomes too big to download.
Using ChatGPT for Data Management
00:01:59
johngrimsmo
It's some Raspberry Pi yeah limit, 9.1 megabytes or something.
00:01:59
John S
Yeah. Mm hmm.
00:02:03
johngrimsmo
It just doesn't like it. So all of a sudden it just stops working. And yesterday it just stopped working and we've had this before, so I knew what it was. And so you log into the Raspberry Pi and there's this little, um, log file that has millions of records and logs, everything it did pretty much right at the bottom.
00:02:19
johngrimsmo
It says file too big. And so I was just thinking about it all night and I was able to use chat GPT to write a Google app script to automatically clear the unneeded space from this spreadsheet.
00:02:28
John S
Yes.
00:02:37
johngrimsmo
um Because it's it's exporting useful data, but it's also exporting various empty fields.
00:02:44
John S
Right, sure.
00:02:44
johngrimsmo
Like, like say that tool is 1.9 minutes, but it's also exporting a bunch of empty fields. So anything with an empty field, which is probably 60, 70% of the whole list, ah just needs to be gone.
00:02:57
johngrimsmo
And so you go to Ask ask Chat GPT, I'm like, this is what I want to do. And with maybe five, six iterations of me testing it within a half hour period, less than, uh, it works.
00:03:07
johngrimsmo
And you just see it deleting files, deleting lines of code in the spreadsheet one by one by one by one by one. And it's clearing it from the bottom to the top and it's keeping the good ones. And I'm like, this is, this is amazing.
00:03:19
John S
What language is it?
00:03:21
johngrimsmo
It's, uh, this is Google app script.
00:03:24
John S
OK.
00:03:25
johngrimsmo
And so like everybody's used Google sheets, right? But then if you go to extensions app script, it's like the programming side of a Google sheet.
00:03:30
John S
Yes. Yes. OK.
00:03:33
johngrimsmo
And we've been using that for years for all kinds of different stuff, mostly written by other programmers or now at chat GPT. Um, and it's so powerful.
00:03:42
John S
Yeah, that's really cool.
00:03:42
johngrimsmo
It's like super cool.
00:03:45
John S
Does it run? You clicked to run it then.
00:03:48
johngrimsmo
As of two minutes ago, I'm clicking the run button.
00:03:50
John S
Yeah, yeah.
00:03:50
johngrimsmo
um I could easily set it to run on a trigger. um Angelo had one concern that maybe if the Kern or the Raspberry Pi or whatever is trying to write to this while the script happens to be running on a trigger, like probably one's just going to wait for the other, but who knows?
00:04:03
John S
yeah
00:04:06
johngrimsmo
um Realistically, now that I'm clearing the whole list, I'm probably good for another year or two before it gets too big again.
00:04:13
John S
Right.
00:04:14
johngrimsmo
But how do I never think about this again? you know
00:04:17
John S
Well, I mean, one option there, how we would handle that would just be put a six month, let lacks maintenance task and
ChatGPT as a Programmer's Aid
00:04:24
johngrimsmo
Yup.
00:04:24
John S
sends you an email you've market completed.
00:04:26
John S
And then great.
00:04:27
johngrimsmo
I like that, that's a good idea.
00:04:29
John S
That's awesome.
00:04:30
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it's so cool when it just works. I was this morning, I was like thinking, oh, I should hire some upworker program Upwork programmer to like figure this out.
00:04:37
John S
Yeah.
00:04:38
johngrimsmo
I'm like, hold on, let me just, let me just try this. I can poke at it.
00:04:43
John S
I was yeah like literally just hanging out with Justin, who is the CTO at Toolpad, literally spent 20 years doing like computer programming at NASA and is a programmer.
00:04:49
johngrimsmo
Yup.
00:04:54
johngrimsmo
Nice.
00:04:56
John S
and I asked him, I was like, hey, ah sorry if this is an annoying question, but like What are your thoughts on chat GPT? like Is it helpful and useful? um And he was like, oh, 100%.
00:05:09
John S
Use it. I'll use it to write ideas. I'll use it to get different ideas, check code, find errors. So I guess hearing it from somebody who doesn't necessarily need it, like I need it. I don't know how to start from scratch.
00:05:19
johngrimsmo
yeah Yeah, totally. 100%.
00:05:20
John S
I was kind of like, man, that's ah that's interesting.
00:05:22
johngrimsmo
Yeah. And I've heard expert programmers say the same thing. They're like, it just makes it faster. It just, you know, it, it speeds up my life. I still have to know what I want to do. I have to know what's possible.
00:05:33
johngrimsmo
I have to be an expert at that.
00:05:35
John S
Yeah.
00:05:35
johngrimsmo
Um, but it just lets speed. That's all it's all it is.
00:05:39
John S
Yeah.
00:05:39
johngrimsmo
And for us, like dummies like us with programming, like here is what I want to do. And then it just goes, well, here's an option. You're like, okay, that didn't work. Let me try this. It's deleting everything, not just the ones.
00:05:48
John S
Yeah.
00:05:49
johngrimsmo
Okay. Now try this, try this, try this. So thankfully I copied the sheet and I'm testing on a dummy sheet, um but which is good because I started to lose data that I didn't want.
00:05:56
John S
um Sure.
00:06:00
johngrimsmo
So yeah, ah it's been my past 40 minutes of of excitement.
00:06:00
John S
That's awesome.
00:06:06
John S
Yeah.
00:06:07
johngrimsmo
And it it feels so dumb because it's like some programming thing and my screen is just deleting rows. And I'm like, guys, guys, come check this out. Look, look.
00:06:14
John S
It's cool, right?
00:06:14
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:06:15
John S
Did I share the Apps Script we did for the city location requirement thing?
00:06:21
johngrimsmo
No.
00:06:22
John S
It's not work related. It's on a board I'm on where scholarship recipients have to get, they have to live within a certain a city, like but city limit border.
00:06:31
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:06:31
John S
And, you know, we'll get three figures worth of applicants and somebody was going through and type in an each address. in checking it. And I'm like, that's were ridiculous. And so it's all in the applications come through in, I don't think they come through in Google Sheets, but it's one click to get them into Google Sheet. And then I hired a guy in Upwork to write a script that checks them against a he just I told him what we're trying to do. And this is what I'm not sure if um in this area, I don't know that chat GPT would have been a good use of my time because I was like, Hey, here's a couple of different ways that they're doing it manually.
00:07:06
John S
And I showed him the city websites that people use. And he found that the like water meter website has a API and he was just like, okay, yeah. And the script is can be printed out on one piece of prayer paper.
00:07:20
John S
It's not that long.
00:07:20
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah.
00:07:21
John S
And it just goes through and it checks yes or no, uh, through them. ah And I'm like, yeah, here we go. Done.
Customer Customization in Production
00:07:26
johngrimsmo
That's so cool.
00:07:27
John S
Yeah. Right.
00:07:28
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I love solutions like that. We're just like, I have a problem. I don't want to sit there for six hours and manually do this. um Yeah, that's so cool.
00:07:39
John S
What, uh, talk to me about, you said the, um, saga, uh, buyer's choice page, uh, over to take a look at a couple weeks ago.
00:07:48
johngrimsmo
Hmm.
00:07:49
John S
So it was that chat GPT.
00:07:51
johngrimsmo
Uh, I don't know. Um, I hired a programmer to do all that for me and maybe he did leverage chat TPT, but yeah, that uses a several, um,
00:07:58
John S
Okay. Sure.
00:08:06
johngrimsmo
sub subprocessors like you know Shopify builds a website like you don't have to code the website because Shopify does it for you so there's ah various programming ones one of the ones we use is render and retool I think render is the database and retool is kind of the front end um but instead of handwriting every line of code this sort of module you know
00:08:09
John S
Mm hmm.
00:08:20
John S
Okay.
00:08:29
johngrimsmo
I want a photo here. I want to drop down here so it just does it for you. But basically I had this guy Ross do all that for us. And I was like, here's what I want. And it's been good.
00:08:39
johngrimsmo
It's it's been absolutely finna have. Fantastic. So now we have we have Norseman, Rask, Saga, and soon to be Fjall on this buyer's choice system.
00:08:41
John S
Yeah, it looks great.
00:08:48
John S
Sweet.
00:08:48
johngrimsmo
And if you guys haven't seen it, first of all, make sure you're signed up to our our mailing lists on our on our website.
00:08:53
John S
There you go.
00:08:54
johngrimsmo
and And every now and then you'll get picked for one of our products. um It's a random random drawing. People can't be randomly picked too often within, a say, a 30-day period or something like that.
00:09:06
johngrimsmo
um And as as I showed you, it shows each of our options. And when you click on a dropdown to show that option, it shows a live picture of a product we've physically made um with that color option or the handle pattern or whatever.
00:09:20
John S
Yeah, that's awesome.
00:09:22
johngrimsmo
And because we thought about all these ways, we could do a rendering, we could do CGI, computer, and it's just, it's not as good. So the only downside to our photo method is you kind of have to use your imagination a little bit because you're like, okay, like say for a knife, I want an acidized blade, but I want a dragon skin pattern with pink handles.
00:09:37
John S
Hmm.
00:09:40
johngrimsmo
And we've maybe never made that exact combo before. So in the blade section, it's like, here's two blades, silver, black.
00:09:47
John S
Yeah.
00:09:47
johngrimsmo
and here's Here's the patterns. Maybe it's not the color you want. Here's the color. Maybe it's not the pattern you want, but use your imagination. And customers have been loving it. And this is awesome. So we are doing 90 plus percent of our orders are Irish Choice.
00:10:04
johngrimsmo
People fill out this form.
00:10:04
John S
Yeah that's awesome.
00:10:05
johngrimsmo
We print out the forms. They
Programming Notes in Fusion 360
00:10:08
johngrimsmo
flow through the shop. It's actually created a lot more, what do you call it? management like order management in our shop where since we're making everything to order now we have to make sure we have full inventory of made products in all patterns and all colors and not too much not too little and so there's been a lot more a lot more spreadsheets have been created to uh to track all this and flow through the shop but it's been totally worth it because it's just great
00:10:22
John S
Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:38
John S
So is that the idea with like say a buyer's choice rask with maybe rare exception of some super exotic option, by and large, you're gonna try to have the handle in stock and the blade in stock.
00:10:51
John S
So at that point, it's an assembly job to meet it to match an order.
00:10:55
johngrimsmo
In a perfect world, yes.
00:10:57
John S
Okay.
00:10:57
johngrimsmo
um Like some things we may be out of stock, but we make on a daily basis. So we we can make in the next few days, some things say like a DLC option or a damn steel blade or something, we can turn on or off of the inventory or of the buyer's choice form based on our assumed inventory to be like, okay, we have five damn steel blades.
00:11:01
John S
Yeah.
00:11:11
John S
Yeah.
00:11:18
johngrimsmo
Let's throw them into buyer's choice. They will turn it on until we get five orders and then we'll turn it off kind of thing.
00:11:20
John S
yeah Yeah.
00:11:25
johngrimsmo
But yes, by and large, we can we can make to order, which is pretty cool.
00:11:28
John S
Yeah, it's awesome.
00:11:29
johngrimsmo
and And we're keeping a low inventory, like some handle patterns we might have, you know, 10, 20 or 30 just because we made so many. and They're sitting there waiting for an order to come in. Others are more hand to mouth.
00:11:41
johngrimsmo
Like you've seen our dragon skin rask pattern. That is by far the most popular pattern on the rask. Like 80 plus percent of all rask we're making right now are dragon skin, which is cool.
00:11:53
johngrimsmo
Like it looks really cool.
00:11:53
John S
Yeah Yeah, you're right Oh move
00:11:54
johngrimsmo
And then I told that to my daughter Clara, who's 14. And she's like, well, why don't you just make a variation of that pattern? like and and offer it as another one. I was like, yeah, Clara, why don't you?
00:12:05
johngrimsmo
Like, you're an artist. Go for it. I'm happy to pay you for that. Like, she doesn't want to do it though. Yeah.
00:12:14
John S
Yeah, that's, that's really cool.
00:12:16
johngrimsmo
Yeah, so it's been going great.
00:12:18
John S
Good.
00:12:21
John S
Um, yeah, that's been my, uh, it feels good, but frustrating, uh, week is three different or really two, no, three different product lines where.
00:12:36
John S
I want to do or need to do a better job at our own internal production notes documenting like the status and the intent. um And actually, of all the things, I don't really feel bad about us being in this state, because I remember reading a PDF a while a while or two ago, and it's like, when you hit this level of, and you can call it revenue, ordership, number of employees, number of machines,
00:12:45
johngrimsmo
Good.
00:13:01
John S
you know like your world is going to be total chaos and you're going to run around with your hair head chopped off unless you have and it was and like it's not like that it's it's great but the the one that's the thorniest example right now is probably the um stem twerks valve covers because we have eight different skews of the same effective product but they're eight different fusion files different different um CAD models they can all run in the same fixture but um We're changing the style of programming on some of those because of fusion patterning choices, like how do we pattern up ones? How do we pattern the up twos? And um what I'm trying to do is now do a better job at documenting, hey, as of you know November 29th, 2024,
00:13:53
John S
the reason that there's stock to leave here is that, or like this is the status of it. And I actually got me thinking, because we do this a lot in Fusion, where we'll put in comments to ourselves. I'll put in dummy setups, where there's no operations, except the dummy setup says, see see comment below about collision risk. And then it's like, hey, you know you haven't run this since we changed this fixture. Check it for that risk. like
00:14:19
johngrimsmo
Oh yeah, okay.
00:14:20
John S
because I'm aware of that today, but we may not run that part for a while. um And I find it all very helpful and and pretty good. Right now, literally the stress point is that I've got to go through and update all eight of these and I want to do it kind of all at once so I can just bang through it and copy and paste some of these comments between the files.
00:14:37
John S
And um what I find it really helpful for, so like the other one was the Gen 3 mod vices where
00:14:38
johngrimsmo
the
00:14:47
John S
Luckily that code is pretty stable, so a lot of times we won't actually open the CAM file for for weeks or months. but sometimes we're not sure like why is this, like ah one example is why is it four different setups?
00:15:00
John S
Why didn't we just consolidate this into one setup pattern? And just simply making a note that like the Okuma doesn't like running probing across this pattern like it either glitches or there's a post error.
00:15:14
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:15:14
John S
um And so just little comments so that that relay your own intent or state of mind because we have so many products has been quite helpful.
00:15:19
johngrimsmo
he
00:15:23
John S
um
00:15:23
johngrimsmo
Good. So it's a lot to manage.
00:15:24
John S
Or is it like, hey, this works great now, but when you have time, it's worth revisiting to see if this could be done better, but like, it's also like move on, like we're running running these great, especially on a machine that runs overnight where I don't care about if it takes 12 minutes, it's set a set of six minutes, it's not worth, um worth worrying about right now.
00:15:43
johngrimsmo
Yep. Yep. Yeah. I forget the exact example, but last week I had a similar thing where I was, I was hitting this problem, making a part. I don't remember what part it was. And then I was like, why isn't it working? And then I, I finally read through my revision notes.
00:16:00
John S
Okay.
00:16:01
johngrimsmo
And I realized that back in March, so six months ago or whatever, I had the same problem. I fixed it and I wrote this note. And it turns out ah exactly like you said, I consolidated some operations because logically it makes more sense to consolidate them.
00:16:15
John S
Yeah.
00:16:16
johngrimsmo
But I had, I had separated them before because to fix this problem, whatever it was. And I didn't have that note to myself to be like, don't change these the way you think it should be. Like they need to be separated, right?
00:16:26
John S
Yeah, they write.
00:16:27
johngrimsmo
Like I. They just work better this way. Trust me. Um, so I have to make some bad parts.
00:16:33
John S
trust Trust me future, John, you do not want to go down this rabbit hole again.
00:16:35
johngrimsmo
except Exactly. Exactly. So when you say comment in fusion cam, I've seen it, but I've never used it before. Can you remind me?
00:16:43
John S
So yeah, I was going to actually ask you but what you do about this stuff. So there actually is a comment, uh, window infusion. We never use it. And I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but like full stop, we don't use it.
00:16:52
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:16:56
John S
So we're not going to start using it because it's too easy.
00:16:58
johngrimsmo
It sounded like you were using it
Managing CAM Operations in Fusion 360
00:17:00
John S
It's too easy to be, we're gonna do a video on this, I think, because, I mean, it's kind of one of those, like, I'm going back to, we've been actually doing some YouTube videos, again, for fun, because, ah full stop, I'm just doing them back to, like, the way John Saunders' Garage doesn't care, like, wants to do them.
00:17:14
John S
They're not popular videos, they're not breaking taps quality, like, awesome, crazy stuff, but they're, like, this super helpful, like, hey, like, this is where we've learned something on Fusion, and I know folks will learn something, because that's part of the community.
00:17:18
johngrimsmo
you know
00:17:27
John S
Y'all just share their breaks.
00:17:28
johngrimsmo
Exactly. like
00:17:29
John S
So the the biggest thing I'll do is I'll create a dummy setup and so that's the top of your cam tree or your list of cam setups and operations and that setup will say something like sometimes an all caps critical read note and then I'll put a single um thing in that setup, which which will be a manual NC.
00:17:55
John S
And instead of doing a comment, I'll usually do a pass-through.
00:17:58
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:17:58
John S
I'm not posting this anyways, but the pass-through window can be expanded to be as large as you want, whereas the stupid comment thing is one line.
00:18:02
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:18:05
John S
So it looks like you're typing into a, ah yeah, whatever.
00:18:06
johngrimsmo
Makes sense, okay.
00:18:10
John S
So, and then you can be as verbose as need be. you know, we can tie this in with the process bins, which we use, or the even the yellow setup sheets, which are like major red flags, but we live in fusion.
00:18:24
John S
we I want to see those notes right then and there. If I've done something, so that can be a really good way of being a red flag.
00:18:26
johngrimsmo
here
00:18:30
John S
If I also have something where I know there's a major risk, like, Hey, we are switching this drill out. We don't know how it's going to run. I don't, I'm not going to run it today. I will just kind of, uh, I don't know, amateurish, but not really.
00:18:44
John S
I will put in. a manual and see stop. And then I'll duplicate it like eight times. So it looks kind of silly.
00:18:50
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:18:51
John S
And in the middle of that, I'll kind of put the note. So there's just no way somebody's gonna hit cycle start eight times in the middle of a program. Like I'll see it or whatever that conveys the intent.
00:19:01
John S
um And there's a few more elegant ways I've done some stuff to clarify like, Hey, this is why stock the leaves here. This is why this is a critical or not critical. And, um, sometimes if we have two critical datums, I want to adjust one tool.
00:19:15
John S
I never want to adjust the other one and relaying that makes sense.
00:19:18
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:19:21
johngrimsmo
And for those, any of these products are, do you have one programmer who's responsible or do you sometimes have multiple people dipping in and out?
00:19:29
John S
We, it's not sometimes we always have multiple people and that's important to me so that we can remember our own intent or um commentary around it.
00:19:32
johngrimsmo
Got it.
00:19:36
johngrimsmo
Cause I feel like, uh, I think I might've tried the comment field like once and it's, Does it make this little blue triangle or something? that you It's very hidden, whereas I kind of like your pass-through thing, where it's like either a full setup at the top, you can never hide it or shrink it or whatever.
00:19:49
John S
Yeah.
00:19:54
John S
Yeah.
00:19:54
johngrimsmo
It's just like, read me.
00:19:56
John S
Yeah.
00:19:56
johngrimsmo
um Or a bunch of M0s, like untested go-to-head kind of thing. I do that for myself for sure.
00:20:02
John S
yeah
00:20:03
johngrimsmo
Yeah, we typically, um we've got a few more guys programming more stuff, but they tend to program their own thing, like Grayson's doing the router stuff, Jeff's doing the swiss lathe stuff, I'm doing the current and Wilhelmin and stuff like that.
00:20:15
johngrimsmo
So we don't often have multiple people in the same file at any one time or even in charge of the same file, but I could definitely see it in our future for sure, so.
00:20:25
John S
Yeah. Yeah. And I need it for myself. I don't remember.
00:20:29
johngrimsmo
Yeah, totally.
00:20:30
John S
Like, again, do I want to read?
00:20:31
johngrimsmo
Our brains are made for thinking, not remembering.
00:20:34
John S
Yeah, yeah, um yeah.
00:20:34
johngrimsmo
That's what I like.
00:20:39
John S
um The other thing I'm doing right now um is we've gotten better about linking in fixture components, you know, tables or probe but bodies, because some of our programs get really close to our table probes.
00:20:51
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:20:51
John S
um we ah We obviously use fixture plates, which I know not everybody does, but um all of the...
00:20:56
johngrimsmo
But they should.
00:20:57
John S
but
00:20:58
johngrimsmo
They should.
00:20:59
John S
All of these things can pretty significantly tax your fusion assemblies on simulation, on load time, on on stuff.
00:21:03
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:21:07
John S
And I realized um it's worth, and if you've linked them all, it's actually not that hard to do. um So we have linked back, like for example, on the VF2, we have a single, we have fusion folder that has VF2 master assets.
00:21:21
John S
And in that we have a dummy file that has our master tool library, which we've actually done a really good job of keeping up to date.
00:21:27
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:21:29
John S
um
00:21:29
johngrimsmo
Hmm.
00:21:30
John S
And so if we program a new part on the VF2, we go back and grab the tools out of that file. Works great.
00:21:36
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:21:36
John S
Well, it's like a surrogate for working great for a Fusion not having a true master tool library.
00:21:39
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:21:41
John S
And then we also have the master setup, which has all of the puck chucks on it. and But de-featuring that stuff, getting rid of the fixture plate holes, getting rid of the details around the puck chuck bodies, it does really help performance and load time.
00:21:53
johngrimsmo
Really interesting. Okay, interesting.
00:21:54
John S
Yeah.
00:21:55
johngrimsmo
Because on speedio specifically, um I've been getting pretty good at having the full table modeled with my four chunk palettes and the aroa palette and the bloom probe and everything.
00:22:02
John S
Yeah.
00:22:03
johngrimsmo
And everything's, I'll drag that whole assembly into a cam file that I'm making, a part file or whatever.
00:22:07
John S
Yeah.
00:22:10
John S
Yeah.
00:22:11
johngrimsmo
And that's my, that's my fixture. And it's nice logically to see what everything's built up as, to see how it should be set up, where, what quadrant it should go in kind of thing. but I guess I haven't put too much thought into the taxing nature of it, you know, slowing things down.
00:22:26
John S
Yeah. Like my office computer is not too bad, but my shop computer is a little older and for sure helps make a difference.
00:22:27
johngrimsmo
like
00:22:32
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:22:35
johngrimsmo
Yeah, and my shop laptop is probably going on seven years.
00:22:37
John S
Isn't that crazy?
00:22:40
johngrimsmo
Maybe eight. um And it's it's still holding on. like It's OK-ish, but it's not going to last that long. So I've definitely been thinking about replacing it with another laptop or desktop or something like that.
00:22:48
John S
Yeah.
Remote Access and Security in Programming
00:22:53
John S
Well, that was kind of the WhatsApp topic this week was who makes a good Windows laptop these days? I don't know the answer. ah and't Were you paying attention to that?
00:23:00
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I don't know.
00:23:02
John S
I guess that was Denison.
00:23:03
johngrimsmo
Briefly, the the framework 16 came up. I was just looking at that again today.
00:23:08
John S
I don't even know that brand.
00:23:08
johngrimsmo
It's sort of like a ah module plug and play. um You can move the keyboard to the other side.
00:23:12
John S
Really?
00:23:14
johngrimsmo
You can move the mouse pad to the one side.
00:23:15
John S
Whoa.
00:23:16
johngrimsmo
You can replace things. It seems kind of neat.
00:23:19
John S
Holy cow.
00:23:19
johngrimsmo
um I did just read a quick review on it, and the guy was like, it's cool, but it it gets hot, and it blew screen to death a couple times, and there's some issues.
00:23:26
John S
yeah got it interesting.
00:23:28
johngrimsmo
And do your own research, I don't know. there's lots of ah I've been an MSI fan for a bunch of years. um I think I'm on my third MSI over the past 10 plus years and very happy with them, especially for laptops.
00:23:44
johngrimsmo
They're lightweight, powerful, you know not cheap, but um probably paying $2,000 for a decent laptop.
00:23:49
John S
Yeah.
00:23:52
johngrimsmo
And then some of the guys in our shop, I got them kind of seven, $800, you know, laptops. I forget what they are. Acer or whatever. Um, and they're like, they they struggle in fusion a little bit, but they get the job done.
00:24:06
John S
Yeah. I've been doing more um kind of in a funny way, simplifying life approach of more remote desktoping on reason for certain instances.
00:24:16
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I do it a lot.
00:24:18
John S
Do you?
00:24:18
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:24:19
John S
Like even just like all the freaking two factor annoyances. So it's like now instead of having um multiple different computers that you can sign in from, which seems to retrip two factors, it's like, nope, when I wanna do anything in this genre of life, I just remote into that computer and web browsers, that's fine. Fusion over remote desktop is not terrible.
00:24:40
John S
You could get a little bit of a lag now if I'm on a really weak laptop, it's worth it because you're remoting to my my work PC, which is powerful, and then you gain, it's decent, but yeah.
00:24:47
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah.
00:24:50
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Oftentimes I'll leave Fusion open at work and then remote into it from home, especially if I'm doing a quick thing.
00:24:54
John S
Yeah, right.
00:24:56
johngrimsmo
And sometimes if it's the weekend and I'm like, I'm going to be on Fusion at home for a couple hours now, I'll close it down. I'll take the few minutes it takes to you know reopen it and stuff. So like Camplete is only on my work laptop next to the current.
00:25:10
John S
sure
00:25:11
johngrimsmo
So anything I'm flowing to the current, even though I can send it remotely, I'm remoting into Camplete from
00:25:16
John S
sure.
00:25:18
johngrimsmo
you know, my work computer. Um, speaking of Camplete, I am probably going to stop using it and, and build out a proper fusion post.
00:25:21
John S
Yeah.
00:25:29
johngrimsmo
Um, let me rephrase, have Phil build me a proper fusion post, um, in the coming, coming year sometime.
00:25:31
John S
ha
00:25:38
johngrimsmo
I just, I don't, I don't use Camplete for what it's meant to be used for. I use it as a post.
00:25:38
John S
Is that just it just makes life easier?
00:25:44
John S
Yeah.
00:25:45
johngrimsmo
I just flow through.
00:25:46
John S
Oh, you don't simulate it?
00:25:46
johngrimsmo
I don't simulate it. I don't.
00:25:48
John S
Oh.
00:25:49
johngrimsmo
I simulate in Fusion now, like and I'm good enough to avoid common mistakes.
00:25:53
John S
Yeah.
00:25:56
John S
Yeah.
00:25:57
johngrimsmo
Because it's kind of and clunky to simulate through Camplete, and it takes a while, and you just end up not doing it.
00:26:03
John S
Yeah.
00:26:04
johngrimsmo
And then what's the point? But I have tweaked the Camplete post quite a bit to my liking, so I will need to apply all those things to the Fusion post.
00:26:13
John S
yeah
00:26:14
johngrimsmo
Doable.
00:26:15
John S
I feel like that's a great like, hey, just do a video for Phil.
00:26:15
johngrimsmo
Phil can do it.
00:26:18
John S
Hey, here's all the stuff that's done. Here's the campley post.
00:26:21
johngrimsmo
Exactly.
00:26:21
John S
Yeah, rock.
00:26:22
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah happy to pay for that. so um yeah
00:26:26
John S
That's awesome. ah Well, actually, i'll I'll throw out a shameless plug for Phil and Devin and Angelo and all the guys that are now all at DSI.
00:26:34
johngrimsmo
he
00:26:34
John S
um One of the things I love that they're doing is Fusion Friday's free help. I think I got that in the wrong order words, but I don't know if they'll do it this week because of Thanksgiving, but most Fridays at two o'clock Eastern, Devin's hosting Free Fusion.
00:26:48
John S
videos where people can submit problems questions. um I asked them some gnarly setup probing coordinate system stuff and they were super helpful. And um I just like it because I have definitely, I definitely appreciate it when people are trying to be members of the community, paying it forward, sharing, helping.
00:27:09
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:27:09
John S
And you know, for them, it's a major logical chance to upsell folks into some of the real fusion support they offer.
00:27:15
johngrimsmo
For sure.
00:27:15
John S
But yeah, it's exciting stuff.
00:27:17
johngrimsmo
So is it a live chat kind of thing?
00:27:20
John S
The ones that I've seen is Devin is on video live with him, his his video of himself and of his monitor. um And you you as a viewer can only submit questions through the chat, which everybody sees.
00:27:33
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:27:34
John S
So it's not like say Spencer's web's podcast where he'll actually bring in the person on Discord or or YouTube and let them kind of talk. I give Devin credit because like, dude, solving fusion problems live real time on the flight, yeah.
00:27:45
johngrimsmo
On the fly, like, yeah, no, thank you.
00:27:47
John S
is is is definitely no no joke, yeah.
00:27:52
johngrimsmo
Yeah, that's cool. I have to check that out sometime.
00:27:57
John S
My other update slash failure, which it's okay, I'm just calling it, it's a failure, um was I had really high hopes that the deeper deeper toolpath would be my saving grace.
00:28:08
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:28:09
John S
I don't remember if I talked about this last week on the valve covers.
00:28:11
johngrimsmo
I don't think so.
00:28:12
John S
So um I'll get through it and it'll be, will be done with it and it'll be a good thing but the valve covers are real thorn in my paw right now because they're patterned there's a bunch of cam selections the pattern actually i would like to talk about the patterns here and then it separately but punch line here is there are up to 80 edges that i want to deburr on these parts and
00:28:37
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:28:39
John S
i've They've all been manually clicked, but because of the patterning complication that I'll mention, um I was having to create a secondary setup, re-click them all, and now you've got this situation where,
00:28:50
John S
um you've got duplicated cam and it it is impossible to remember to keep them the same.
00:28:57
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:28:58
John S
And I don't want to, I hate that. And I would go really far out of my way to avoid that. And I thought one of the answers was going to be the deburr toolpath, which it actually was. Like you had to play with the heights a little bit to get it to deburr the areas you wanted to.
00:29:11
John S
And it then recognizes all the edges. It uses a chamfer tool. um You can just set, it's a little bit weird. You don't set the, Technically correct spec of a chamfered edge, like it's the wrong spec. But for us, these are just edge break chamfers, so I didn't care. But the fatal flaw was that you can't control the chamfered tip offset.
00:29:33
John S
at all, at least I can figure out.
00:29:34
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:29:35
John S
So it was doing a poor job of the actual chamfer, ironically, because it was using the tip of the tool or close to the tip.
00:29:39
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:29:43
John S
And these are production parts that they put in some sweat now and will be done for a long time. So I went back.
00:29:50
johngrimsmo
Is this on the of three axis?
00:29:52
John S
Correct.
00:29:53
johngrimsmo
Maybe on a five axis it lets you tilt and tip so you get the tip of the tool kind of on center or not.
00:29:59
John S
Well, you'd be fine on a five axis because usually usually not you'd be using a bull bull or ball nose and it wouldn't really matter, but I'm just trying to do dumb three axis chamfer tool chamfers with a deeper tool path.
00:30:09
johngrimsmo
With a chamfer. Yeah.
00:30:13
johngrimsmo
With a 45 degree, 90 degree chamfer tool or whatever.
00:30:15
John S
Bingo. Yeah.
00:30:16
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:30:17
John S
And it was raising a bird because it's using the wrong portion of the tool. Like, and you can't, you can't control that really.
00:30:22
johngrimsmo
Like you can't, you can't drag that on center line and have it make a good, good chamfer.
00:30:25
John S
Yeah. Well, like generally speaking, you want to use the section of the tool as close to the diameter of the major di because you get the correct service footage is the strongest portion of the tool, blah, blah, blah.
00:30:27
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:30:32
johngrimsmo
The biggest. Yeah. Yeah.
00:30:37
John S
But then sometimes you want to vary it for other reasons of where and um so forth. So kind of bummed. um Yeah.
00:30:46
johngrimsmo
Hmm.
00:30:47
John S
Yeah.
00:30:51
johngrimsmo
You'll get it.
00:30:52
John S
Yeah, the other thing, and I'll shut up, is I, okay, I have part one here, and I have part two next to it. sarah Part one, two are identical, so.
00:31:07
John S
you can pattern them in Fusion, right? We all know that. You can also do what's it called multiple work coordinate systems where it's just, it does the first one at G54 and then it duplicates the cam for G55 and you set G55 where you want on the machine, which is really nice because then you can ah probe or dial in where that fixture or part is located and and you with me?
00:31:31
johngrimsmo
Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I could see that orientation how like 90 degrees out or.
00:31:34
John S
What Fusion doesn't let you do, and this is the fatal flaw in some of our production workflows, is you can't do that across a component pattern where the two parts are not in the same orientation.
00:31:55
John S
yeah Well, so some of our parts are rotated 180 degrees because the the valve covers, they have one edge that's a straight edge and the other edge is a complex edge, which gets mated with custom fixtures.
00:31:58
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:32:07
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:32:07
John S
So the straight edges share an inside rail on the fixture, which means that they are 180 degrees oriented from each other. A fusion component pattern will let you duplicate your cam and it will recognize that the part has been rotated 180 degrees.
00:32:22
John S
So in theory, you're good. The problem is you can't do that with a component pattern where the left one is G54 and the right one is G55.
00:32:30
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:32:31
John S
It only does that when it's like actually outputting everything is G54 and your CAD locations drive the the location of each of the two parts.
00:32:40
johngrimsmo
And in the pattern edit menu, is that where you define like once G54 the second pattern G55?
00:32:48
John S
You can't.
00:32:49
johngrimsmo
No, but normally, normally that is where it is, right?
00:32:50
John S
there's Normally what you would do in the pattern example would be, let me open up Fusion here. or got In the setup, you would double-click the setup and under the third tab post process, you would say machine WCS, you would check multiple WC offsets and you would say, I want four instances incrementing in one.
00:33:11
John S
So it would do G54, G55, 56, 57.
00:33:11
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:33:14
John S
And then as long as they're in the same orientation, you could, you just tell the control, the host or the height nine, wherever, where those four parts are and you're good.
00:33:22
johngrimsmo
Okay. Um, have you ever done multiple patterns in like stacks of pattern folders? Like deeper, deeper, deeper.
00:33:30
John S
Um, no, because I've kind of sort of haven't, and I've heard there, I get to be some really crazy flaws.
00:33:39
johngrimsmo
Yeah. I mean, I've done it quite a bit, probably three or four layers deep, because sometimes you want to rotate it 180 and then you want to shift it over two inches.
00:33:40
John S
You do. Okay.
00:33:48
johngrimsmo
Um, so that'll be two layers of pattern folders.
00:33:49
John S
Okay. Yeah.
00:33:51
johngrimsmo
And maybe isn't there like an override WCS or something like that? Maybe if you dump everything into a ah new pattern folder, maybe, um,
00:33:55
John S
I don't. Yeah.
00:33:59
John S
No, yeah I want to keep an open mind. in the In this specific instance, you could do a, you don't want to do mirror pattern because that turns climbs into conventional cuts, but you can do a circular pattern where you do two instances and they're 180 degrees offset, but right next to each other.
00:34:08
johngrimsmo
Oh, really? Yeah, I do that a lot.
00:34:15
John S
But ah yeah, I should, really?
00:34:16
johngrimsmo
Yeah, that's what I just programmed yesterday. So I programmed our new field blade. I'm making a small fixture that holds one soft blade and then 180 across the center point.
00:34:26
John S
Mm-hmm.
00:34:26
johngrimsmo
of the Aroa palette is the second blade. So I'm programming all the things and then the pattern is 180 along to that. And I have to make sure that my clearance retract heights will clear my clamps going from one blade to the next.
00:34:35
John S
Yeah, right.
00:34:39
johngrimsmo
And in in Fusion, I really like the the little buttons on the bottom that let you toggle the toolpath visibility, but leads, links, toolpath and points.
00:34:47
John S
Yes.
00:34:50
John S
It's off.
00:34:51
johngrimsmo
in the in in process, so you just click on the operation once and it shows the toolpath and you can turn or turn them off. I've been using that a lot.
00:34:58
John S
It's nice, right?
00:34:58
johngrimsmo
So turn yeahp turn off leads and links or sometimes turn them on if I want to see retracts.
00:34:59
John S
Cleans up the noise.
00:35:04
johngrimsmo
and Yeah, it's really cool.
00:35:09
John S
Philosophically though, do you agree with what I'm trying to say to myself, which is that I will do almost anything to avoid, in your case, the field blade.
00:35:19
John S
I don't want to duplicate the cam and have, let's say you have a 3D parallel for the left one and a 3D parallel for the right one. And then it's like, if I make changes to the first one, I got to remember to go and make changes to the second one.
00:35:29
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah, I hate that too.
00:35:30
John S
I freaking hate that.
00:35:32
johngrimsmo
i've I've had to do it a couple times for various reasons and I just don't like it.
00:35:36
John S
Yeah.
00:35:36
johngrimsmo
um Or sometimes I'll have the the soft blade made on one fixture and then I have the same thing on a totally different fixture like a big tombstone versus a little fixture and I'm trying to keep both active because I might use one, I might use the other and that's just, that's annoying too.
00:35:49
John S
Yeah. Yeah.
00:35:51
johngrimsmo
So I'm i'm eradicating that as much as I can. um But it just shows that cam can get messy very fast. And I'm trying to standardize my own way for myself.
00:36:04
johngrimsmo
Clean things up, name name everything, um and try to keep certain conventions with with naming. And it's hard.
00:36:14
John S
Yeah.
00:36:14
johngrimsmo
It just gets messier. Like the Fjell handle has well over 100 operations just to make the handle.
00:36:22
John S
Yeah. Yeah.
00:36:24
johngrimsmo
And if they all say 2D Contour 1, 2D Contour 2, 2D Contour 3, that's annoying. So I will rename them all and 2D Contour handle profile, 2D Contour pocket bearing, whatever, just helps.
00:36:36
John S
Yeah. um um i'm actually I'm actually excited for this video now. I want to make a note of myself, too, on that. I just ran the video. No.
00:36:50
John S
um not only renaming, well, yes, renaming the 2D contours, et cetera, is super helpful. Then you can add in things like, hey, this one's critical, this is clearance, that sort of stuff.
00:36:58
johngrimsmo
Yes.
00:37:00
John S
And then, mm-hmm.
00:37:00
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I'll do like asterisk, asterisk, big capital letters, critical tolerance, asterisk, asterisk.
00:37:06
John S
And then we do use sketches for a variety of reasons, patternings, clearances, um containment zones.
00:37:09
johngrimsmo
Yes. It's fantastic.
00:37:13
John S
And naming those sketches is huge. And and trying to get them always to live have the sketches in the parent component so you don't have to go chasing through sub-components to find them.
00:37:21
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah. There's a cool hack I've been using where if you're in CAM and you're in
00:37:23
John S
okay
00:37:26
johngrimsmo
in the thing, and you've already selected a sketch, you know, six months ago, and you don't know where that sketch is, you go to edit operation, you go edit tool, edit sketch line, whatever, like reselecting the sketch.
00:37:30
John S
Yeah.
00:37:38
johngrimsmo
And then if you go back in your menu tree, it'll underline he the dots.
00:37:42
John S
The dots, the marching ants, yes, yeah.
00:37:43
johngrimsmo
So you can go down the tree of of finding it. And I find myself doing that. And in the latest fusion update, they haven't tried it yet, but they just did. You can do folders in sketches now.
00:37:55
John S
Oh, that's nice, yeah.
00:37:57
johngrimsmo
So I think that'll be really nice. Cause sometimes I'll have 20 sketches and I'm like, they should be in groups.
00:38:03
John S
Well, that was my complaint. I've asked for for years and I've kind of given up sadly, but when you pick a sketch in some cam operation, there's a variety of different areas where you would do so.
00:38:15
John S
But when you pick a sketch, it just says sketch. And I really wish it would tell you the name of the sketch because it would really help clarify what I'm trying to do.
00:38:24
johngrimsmo
In cam.
00:38:26
John S
Yeah.
00:38:26
johngrimsmo
Yeah, that'd be cool.
00:38:30
John S
Yeah, like we do, hey so this morning I'm doing, I already have a drill called up ah for the valve covers, and so I'm adding that same drill to pre-drill a bunch of roughed pockets.
00:38:41
John S
It doesn't cost me any time per se, and it lets me blow out these holes, areas real quick, and then I can plow through with a rougher without having to ramp in.
00:38:46
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:38:49
John S
And I use a sketch with sketched points both to drive the drilling operation but then also that same sketch is used in the 2D contour pre-drill so it knows where to <unk> plunge to the tool in but it just says sketch when you click there it can't say the fact that in the CAD side in the sketch tree I named that <unk> clearance hole drill sketch yeah yeah
00:39:01
johngrimsmo
For sure.
00:39:07
johngrimsmo
You've named it, yeah. Interesting. I guess I haven't noticed that, but now I will not be able to unsee that. I like it. um In other news, so the, I posted on Instagram last week that the Willimon popped an airline.
00:39:28
John S
Yeah.
00:39:29
johngrimsmo
And I was able to replace it, no problem.
00:39:29
John S
Oh yeah.
00:39:31
johngrimsmo
But in that joint, there's five or six fixes already. um And I come in on Monday, get some work done sitting in my computer right next to the Willyman and I hear,
00:39:43
John S
Oh.
00:39:44
johngrimsmo
I'm like, that was good all weekend. There was air to it all weekend. It was fine. Oh, it sucked. And then it it pops, so I went over, turned the air off. And I was like, oh, I got to fix that again. and And maybe it's time to really think hard about replacing all of the old airlines. And there's like 50 of them. Like, it's kind of daunting. So I was like, I could get Wilhelmin to come in, but we're in Canada, and it'll be really expensive to have them come in just for a day or two, like many, many thousands of dollars.
00:40:13
johngrimsmo
I'm like, well, I know airlines not expensive and I know I could do it. Do I want to do it? Right. So I texted Florian at Willamyn and I said, like, is this easy or is it, is it really hard on the tips and tricks or is it just, you just sit down and do it and he goes, no, it's easy.
00:40:27
John S
Yeah.
00:40:27
johngrimsmo
Just do it.
00:40:29
johngrimsmo
And I was like, okay, to clarify, what, what do you do?
00:40:29
John S
Oh.
00:40:31
John S
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:40:32
johngrimsmo
Like they're all labeled, which is nice, but the labels on the machine side have worn out. So I can't read them anymore.
00:40:37
John S
Oh, no.
00:40:39
johngrimsmo
So that's kind of annoying. So I'm like, okay, do I remove all the airlines, build a new harness outside and then put it all back in? And he goes, no, no, no, like do them one by one. I was like, okay, to clarify, what does that mean? So we basically settled on snip all the zip ties.
00:40:55
johngrimsmo
and unplug one hose and and butt connector a new hose onto it and then feed it through like pull it pull it through one by one by one and then plug it in plug it in you can even feed test it with air blow air through one side get two people like and then just do them one by one and then you have each zone like the tool changer is only about 12 lines and the
00:41:00
John S
pull it through. Yeah. Mm hmm.
00:41:06
John S
Yeah. Right. As I say, easy.
00:41:14
johngrimsmo
whatever the tool said a bloom thing is two lines and you could segment it and uh i was like oh that just sounds a lot easier now than what i was trying to make it out to be um so i went to wingmaster and i bought 500 feet of six millimeter red airline um which interestingly came in five 100 feet packages i was kind of bummed by that and i was like not that i need a hundred foot lengths i need a bunch of 10 foot lengths but um
00:41:34
John S
Oh, that was kind of annoying. Yeah.
00:41:42
johngrimsmo
But yeah, so that all came in and, uh, got some more butt connectors and guts.
00:41:45
John S
Good.
00:41:46
johngrimsmo
It won't be that hard.
00:41:47
John S
Good.
00:41:48
johngrimsmo
So that'll be good. And it'll be nice piece of mind. Like these are ticking time moms, you know, and somebody was saying, because the tool changer solenoids them on off on off, like what a million tool changes on these old machines.
00:41:51
John S
Oh, yeah.
00:42:00
johngrimsmo
Like these hoses are seeing pressure spikes constantly.
00:42:05
John S
I mean, frankly, if that's the original hose, the 20-year-old plastic or rubber, that's great.
00:42:09
johngrimsmo
Can't complain, yeah.
00:42:10
John S
Yeah.
00:42:11
johngrimsmo
I mean, I'm complaining because now I have to deal with it, but you shouldn't be mad about it.
00:42:13
John S
Yeah. Yeah. Good.
00:42:17
johngrimsmo
Okay, that's good. Also finally got to try hard milling on this video, the Fjellblades.
Hard Milling Success with Fjell Blades
00:42:23
johngrimsmo
Massive win, just worked, it just did it.
00:42:26
John S
Yeah.
00:42:28
johngrimsmo
And the tools look absolutely brand new, whereas my other fairly nice tools looked trashed after one blade.
00:42:34
John S
Yeah, yeah.
00:42:35
johngrimsmo
And they look these look brand new after one blade. So I haven't made more than one blade because I'm like, check.
00:42:41
John S
Yeah.
00:42:42
johngrimsmo
I'm problem solved. Fix all the other problems now. um So very shortly I'll be able to make the other blades like without worry. And now I'm just, how long will they last? I don't know.
00:42:51
John S
Yeah.
00:42:52
johngrimsmo
So that's exciting.
00:42:52
John S
The good news, the nice thing is that, well, you and I are, the hard million that you and I are doing, we're paying so much attention to it. So we'll see the tool wear, but um yeah, I'm not worried about that right now.
00:43:05
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it'll just work, which is got getting me to think about, we do a lot of other hard milling with these nice regular tools and just dealing with the tool life, 30 minutes or whatever. um And it's getting me to think about maybe I should just convert all that stuff to to real hard mills. One of which is on our Norseman blade, because it has those milled features in the bevel, in the blade.
00:43:31
johngrimsmo
We're just literally using a Lakeshore 3.8 ball mill to finish those. And it just gets trashed after 15, 20 blades or something like that. But it's cheap. It works. It does what we want. um So I went deep dive into Union Tool, Maldino, all these other brands. And I need like a 3.8 ball with so much flute length and hard milling, yada, yada. And I found one. um And then right when I was about to hit you know order from our tool distributor, I was like, wait a minute.
00:43:58
johngrimsmo
didn't I already come up with a solution for this and I looked you know 12 inches to my right and in my little tool drawer and I'm like oh yeah I haven't tried these yet so I had these um
00:44:05
John S
Stop.
00:44:11
johngrimsmo
electroplated electroplated end mills, like electroplated CBN grain end mills made.
00:44:18
John S
Cool.
00:44:19
johngrimsmo
So it looks like a three eights ball, but there's no flutes. It's just diamonds, um like CBN particles.
00:44:22
John S
Oh, sure. Yeah.
00:44:25
johngrimsmo
So it's all sparkly with these tiny little things and they're electroplated on. And I'm calling it a grind mill because I'm like, it's grinding, but it's end milling, but it looks like an end mill. And I hadn't ever tried them.
00:44:36
johngrimsmo
So like yesterday, I was like, you know what? I'm going to dedicate half an hour and I'm going to try these things. and this The machine can't spin fast enough to give a grinding wheel the SFM that it wants.
00:44:47
John S
Okay, that's crazy.
00:44:47
johngrimsmo
Like it wants 5,000 SFM, right? I can max the spindle at 12,000 RPM, and that's still only 1,200 SFM.
00:44:55
John S
Really? Oh, wow.
00:44:56
johngrimsmo
But so that's all I can do on this machine.
00:44:58
John S
Got a beard iron tool.
00:44:59
johngrimsmo
Yeah, exactly. But I can't fit it. I was like, let's try it. Peg the machine at 12,000, feed rate at 1% kind of thing while I'm watching it, watching the dust come off using coolant on off, like just seeing it happen, right?
00:45:14
johngrimsmo
And my step overs are so small that the the tooling rep for this grinding wheel basically said, or gro grind mill, basically said, just watch your spindle load and feed it as fast as you can until your spindle load says, nope.
00:45:24
John S
Oh.
00:45:28
johngrimsmo
And then that's how you track tool life too, is like, watch your spindle load. Like, that's interesting. So at 12 grand, the Mori's taking a 7% spindle load just to sit there.
00:45:38
John S
Yeah.
00:45:39
johngrimsmo
And then I did some grinding and got it up to 10, 11% spindle load on this tool, which is nothing, but it's still scary, like PTSD to the Linda Wheel problem back in 2016, right?
00:45:49
John S
Yeah.
00:45:51
johngrimsmo
um And it just works, it just works great.
00:45:55
John S
Can you hear it in the cut?
00:45:57
johngrimsmo
You can hear that it's cutting, yeah, and that it's touching, so that helped.
00:45:58
John S
Okay. Yeah. Got it.
00:46:00
johngrimsmo
and Yeah, so I'm feeding it at, I think I settled on 24 inches per minute, which is fine. I think it's faster than we were enmilling at.
00:46:09
John S
Yeah.
00:46:10
johngrimsmo
And it needs some tweaks, maybe a different grit size eventually, but um kind of sweet.
00:46:17
John S
And that those tools will wear out, but they also don't ever, they can't be, you don't need to be dressed. Is that fair?
00:46:22
johngrimsmo
Yes, yeah, because there's one layer of ah diamonds glued to the outside, literally.
00:46:23
John S
Okay.
00:46:26
John S
Okay.
00:46:28
johngrimsmo
um So I think your spindle load will go up as you break off and kill more of the particles. And I don't know what the tool left is going to be, but after one blade, it looks brand new.
00:46:40
johngrimsmo
Like no chip loading, no.
00:46:40
John S
Good. Sweet.
00:46:41
johngrimsmo
and um So that's really cool. And then I tested one, like it's like a five minute cycle to finish mill the blade um with this grime mill. And I was like, well, what if I stepped over, you know, really small and made a very shiny, no step blade.
00:46:56
John S
no
00:46:58
johngrimsmo
It's going to take an hour, but I'm going home anyway, so let's do that. And I said it and I came back this morning and I'm like, whoa, I see rainbows in this finish.
00:47:05
John S
Nice.
00:47:06
johngrimsmo
This looks really cool.
00:47:07
John S
That's cool.
00:47:07
johngrimsmo
And you actually see the ah tessellation of your tolerance value infusion start to come into play.
00:47:12
John S
Yeah, that's cool.
00:47:14
johngrimsmo
um So I'm like, there's there's something here.
00:47:14
John S
That's cool.
00:47:17
johngrimsmo
This is pretty cool.
00:47:18
John S
Huh. Were the mills prohibitively priced?
00:47:23
johngrimsmo
70 bucks custom made.
00:47:24
John S
Oh yeah. That's nothing.
00:47:25
johngrimsmo
I'm like, that's nothing like.
00:47:26
John S
Yeah. Well, I'll say on the last, I guess, but yeah, sure.
00:47:29
johngrimsmo
Yeah, like a proper hard milling end mill was 100 ish, 150 for some of them.
00:47:33
John S
Yeah.
00:47:34
johngrimsmo
So it's a lot more, but, so I'm still on the fence, what direction I'm going to go, but now I have more options and some data to, to go on. So I'm excited for that.
00:47:42
John S
Yeah, good.
00:47:44
johngrimsmo
And like, there's a different steel we're trying MagnaCut that is just murder on hard milling tools.
00:47:48
John S
Hmm.
00:47:50
johngrimsmo
So this might be a great solution for that. Cause it shouldn't care that it's four points harder, you know?
00:47:54
John S
Right, right. That's what a really good episode Spencer had, Adam, the machinist on PFT Live. And it's worth listening to.
00:48:01
johngrimsmo
yes alone
00:48:03
John S
I also think the very quick punchline is that like below 60 and certainly below like 50, 657, not counting tapping or drilling, but like your traditional square end mills, ball end mills, et cetera, um don't like it.
00:48:19
John S
This is not a high hurdle. It's it's not that difficult.
00:48:21
johngrimsmo
Yeah, but especially under 50 RC, like just use regular end mills and it'll be fine.
00:48:25
John S
Yeah.
00:48:28
John S
I had a question for you, which is, um we're still getting along great with the hard milling. I had forgotten last week when we talked about the fact that one, we make a clocking pin slot on the puck chuck, which is an eight millimeter feature. And we need need to chamfer it. And the only chamfer tools I had in the machine are chamfered tools that we use for traditional steel parts.
00:48:53
John S
So I didn't mind borrowing it for a couple of test cuts, but I need to separate those two because just you need to have those be separate tools.
00:48:58
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:49:01
John S
And I was like, that's an interesting thought. um It's just an edge break chamfer, so five to eight now. But I'm wondering if there's not a way I can do that. Well, first off, I'm just lazy.
00:49:12
John S
I haven't looked or haven't had the chance to look to see if there are what hard mill companies make for chamfering options. I'm sure there are some.
00:49:19
johngrimsmo
I haven't noticed any, ah to be honest.
00:49:20
John S
Really?
00:49:21
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:49:22
John S
And then I was like, well, maybe it grows.
00:49:22
johngrimsmo
And i been I've been diving deep on on these you know product manuals. I haven't noticed any, but I think most people just 3D them.
00:49:29
John S
Yeah, it's such a small feature.
00:49:29
johngrimsmo
3D.
00:49:31
John S
It'd be easy to surface it in.
00:49:32
johngrimsmo
Yeah, just do that.
00:49:32
John S
wouldn't The time wouldn't be an issue. That's true. I may just do that.
00:49:34
johngrimsmo
This means you'll have to model it first, which you're not used to.
00:49:39
John S
ah Yeah, although we won't, we'll actually create a separate, we're getting really good at this, we'll create a separate ah manufacturing body for just that feature and it will not touch the main feature thing.
00:49:48
johngrimsmo
Yeah. I've done that too sometimes, or or a patch with extended, yeah, yeah.
00:49:53
John S
Yeah, right. That's a good two millimeter for eight millimeter slot. Cause I was like, I wonder if there's not a, um you're going to laugh, like a 45 degree dremble style grinding bit that I could use to just grind the chamfer in there because you're removing, you know, making a thousand of these things, the the dust would still fit in a thimble, like it's tiny amounts, but servicing is a better option, right?
00:50:07
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yep, yep.
00:50:16
johngrimsmo
I know a company that could custom make them for you.
00:50:20
John S
Is that a joke?
00:50:21
johngrimsmo
No, like the company that made my grind milk, Continental Diamond.
00:50:22
John S
Oh, okay. Kind of no doubt. I might try that out.
00:50:26
johngrimsmo
Yeah, they're great.
00:50:26
John S
Well, no, I've got the service. Then I don't even have to add a tool, which is great.
00:50:29
johngrimsmo
Just to surface it with your current hard milling tool.
00:50:30
John S
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great.
00:50:33
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:50:34
John S
um Last thing I wanted to add, shout out to a viewer who mentioned a couple of different spray or paint on like like liquid or aerosol version of that same liquid for heat treating to avoid your oxidation layer.
00:50:49
johngrimsmo
Oh.
00:50:49
John S
um That person who lived in Europe, the options to buy it seem to only be European, so I don't know if it's a issue with procuring that stuff in the US, but then I found some YouTube videos on it and like, wasn't the answer.
00:51:01
John S
Like it's not, it's definitely not as good as, now I feel bad that I can't find the name of it, it's like Condura or something.
00:51:09
johngrimsmo
Okay, as like the bags you mean.
00:51:11
John S
but and So instead of using foil bags you could spray this stuff on and it would in my scenario serve as that ah Either stops oxidation or absorbs the oxygen or does something but not it's not gonna work.
00:51:13
johngrimsmo
Hmm.
00:51:25
John S
It's not the answer I did however by a Bunch about 200 bags from VAC co I think um They were way better priced.
00:51:25
johngrimsmo
Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah.
00:51:36
John S
I think they were the big bags.
00:51:37
johngrimsmo
Is that different than what I'm using?
00:51:37
John S
I need or like six bucks. I I thought you said yours were like 10 bucks and smaller. I'm buying like 10 by 12 bags. Sorry, those are $8, but the eight by 10s that I think are several fitting was only six bucks.
00:51:50
johngrimsmo
That's pretty big. Yeah. That's good.
00:51:53
John S
Yeah.
00:51:54
johngrimsmo
Yeah, our Norseman size bags, they're like two by six or something like that. They're between 250 and $4 each.
00:52:01
John S
Oh, okay. Nevermind, that's not as bad.
00:52:03
johngrimsmo
Yeah. From Sentry or Vacco or Vac95 or whatever they're called.
00:52:06
John S
Yeah. Yeah.
00:52:08
John S
Yeah.
00:52:08
johngrimsmo
Although Sky was just showing me today that the. You basically have two flat layers of foil that are laser welded on each side, but sometimes one of the foils is crinkled.
00:52:20
johngrimsmo
So when it's laser welded, the upper one is crinkly um and the lower one's flat, which means they don't fold or seal on your open end very nicely.
00:52:24
John S
Huh.
00:52:29
johngrimsmo
So it we're going to be reaching out to them and be like, uh, no bueno.
00:52:30
John S
Who?
00:52:34
johngrimsmo
Like we can't use these.
00:52:34
John S
Yeah. Yeah.
00:52:36
johngrimsmo
So most of them are great, but some of them are bad.
00:52:38
John S
Yeah, that stinks.
00:52:39
johngrimsmo
Don't do that.
00:52:41
John S
I also got the Argon Purge kit. I need to borrow a buddy's Argon tank.
00:52:44
johngrimsmo
Mm.
00:52:45
John S
Um, I'm going to test that because I'm going to, but I don't think it's going to be a great answer either.
00:52:47
johngrimsmo
Yeah, cool.
00:52:51
John S
Just cause the, cause I'll have to do an air quench.
00:52:51
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:52:53
John S
Okay.
00:52:55
johngrimsmo
Neato.
00:52:56
John S
Well, for everyone in the US, happy Thanksgiving week. I guess this will be airing the day after Thanksgiving, but I'm certainly, we had our shop lunch yesterday and it was, i to me, I still think about this business as like walking into my garage or the early days and like, I am very grateful for where we are and the team we have and the life we get to live.
00:53:17
John S
I really am and thank you to everybody who listens.
00:53:18
johngrimsmo
Yeah, that's absolutely wonderful. Did you mill a turkey 10 years ago or whatever?
00:53:23
John S
No, no, yeah, no more. No. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. That was fine. I should repost that video. That's a good one.
00:53:30
johngrimsmo
Yeah, even the Instagram clip of it or something would be great. All right, man. Well, happy Thanksgiving and talk to you next week.
00:53:35
John S
Sounds good. I'll see you next week.
00:53:38
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:53:38
John S
Take care.
00:53:38
johngrimsmo
Bye.
00:53:38
John S
Bye.