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Business of Machining - Episode 125
238 Plays6 years ago
The Elements of a Machine Shop: Coffee, Coolant, Oil, and FIRE!
Swiss Lathe Update?
“I have both crashed it and set it on fire” - Grimsmo
About the fire…it wasn’t THAT bad
Folks from the manufacturer of Grimsmo’s Mist Collector reassure Grimsmo that the machine is usually completely fine after a small fire like that.
Regardless...GRIMSMO PARKING LOT TEST OF THE FLAMMABILITY OF OIL COMING SOON
“You don’t want to talk about crashing your machine, but this is a safe place” - Grimsmo
Is a Swiss worth the risk?
Despite the fire, Grimsmo still thinks he might have been better off if he got the Swiss before his conventional lathe.
Breaking down the pros and cons to buying a Swiss before a conventional lathe
“The swiss is a little more complicated” - Grimsmo
“But when has that ever stopped you” - Saunders
Grimsmo moves onto the second part he’ll have made on his Swiss lathe: spacers for the knives
How do I get started as a machine shop?
Saunders answers this question by differentiating between simply selling a product, and running a business.
“Think about how your work affects your customers!” - Saunders
Making your services more convenient, and improving customer service, pushes you PAST the competition.
“It’s easy to do, but it’s easier not to do. That’s why so many people don’t do it” - Grimsmo
“If you have to have an excuse, that’s your problem. Not your customer’s problem” - Saunders
Learn more about this topic in the book How to Win Friends and Influence People
Saunders thanks the audience; his wife is doing great! And is even back to work!
Check out the NYC CNC Hermle video
And it was ALL a dream
You can be a machinist and a dreamer at the same time. You just might dream about different things. Saunders, for example, gets a killer deal at an auction on a machine!!...in his dream
In the DC area on July 18? Come to the Air and Space Museum!
Saunders will be there hanging out and watching a demonstration. More details in this episode.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the business of machining episode 125. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. Good morning. Good morning, my friend. How are you? Excellent. Yeah? Pumped for a busy day. Yeah? What's been
Grimsmo's Machine Management
00:00:18
Speaker
going on? Always busy. I'm having a lot of fun with the Swiss Laid.
00:00:22
Speaker
Okay. Which is great. Also keeping the Moria and the Nakamura like busy all day every day, which is excellent. So with the Swiss lathe, I've had some interesting experiences. I will explain in full detail, but I have both crashed it and caught it on fire.
00:01:02
Speaker
It was during a slow rapid with our hand on the rapid override switch, just moving out of position to the home position and then into the cut after that. And one of the drill holders collided with the stock material and we saw it, you know, bending the material a little bit and then we stopped it just in time, but it did, you know, it made contact slowly, which was good, better than like full rapid.
00:01:02
Speaker
I like where this is headed.
00:01:30
Speaker
A tool holder, a drill holder, just made contact with your piece of material? Yes, but it bent the three-eighths rod of material. It didn't hold the bend because it's titanium, so it just bounced back. However, we go to make the cut and everything is like, I don't know, 400 thou off, like every tool. Whoa. Yeah. So we did a bunch of searching and
00:01:58
Speaker
our guy called Tornos and looked into it and apparently like remember
00:02:07
Speaker
with like when you're building the cheap CNC machines and even working
Swiss Lathe Safety and Adjustments
00:02:11
Speaker
on the Tormax, like getting the ball screws out and everything. You know how the ball screw coupler has like the set screws on the flat and it doesn't spin? Like it's basically- It's static. Yeah, it's a static rigid joint. Apparently on the Swiss, it's like imagine if you have your finger and you wrap your other hand around the finger, it's just a grippy friction fit.
00:02:32
Speaker
I think that's how I understand it. So it slipped on purpose. It's like the safety valve that allows it to slip. So the end of the story is it's fine. We just had to reset the home position. So we had to go in and do a bunch of parameters and we knew how far it was out based on the numbers we were seeing.
00:02:53
Speaker
and then we could just reset it whatever it was, 400 thou, and that resets all the X tools, and that was the only axis that moved. So it was weird and stressful for a few hours, trying to understand this, but at the end of the day, it's like there's nothing, nothing's wrong. All right, go? Yeah, fine, let's do this.
00:03:12
Speaker
That's interesting because you would think if it really was 400 thou, what is that like 10 millimeters or something? That's a lot of rotations of a typical pitched ball screw. Yeah. I thought it would have alarmed out or the servo would have something something or I don't know. Maybe it was interesting beyond the encoder. So the encoder didn't know anything was wrong. And just rehoming it alone wouldn't have worked.
00:03:39
Speaker
No, we have to physically or programmatically change the home position to a different value. Yeah, right. Oh, man. Which is not something you do lightly, but it worked, and it's great. Yeah. Yeah. That's when I'm starting these text files in my folder for the machine. It's like, do not erase this file. And then it's like, on this date, I used to have this value. I attach a picture of the thing because you're like, I should not be doing this, but I'm going to do it because
00:04:09
Speaker
Yeah, screenshot everything, copy and paste on different files. Yeah. Was it a hand code issue?
Challenges with Machining Operations
00:04:18
Speaker
Because the machine is so busy. You're not helping right now. No, I know. What am I trying to say?
00:04:29
Speaker
I think the drill holder just moved in a different direction in the home, in like the G28 X0, like homing operation than we thought it would. Got it. Got it. Yeah. So you need like a retract plane or equivalent type of movement first before it does the G28? Yeah, sort of. And it was just in the way. We should have retracted the Z first, like get the material out of the way first, and then it can do whatever it wants. So little learning steps. Thankfully, no big deal.
00:04:58
Speaker
Yeah, glad it wasn't actual like cast on casting on casting or true like that's like a full speed bang or anything like that like that would suck but man is it is it terrifying to run code that you don't understand yet because
00:05:13
Speaker
Uh, not just in that example, but in some other times it's like with coolant running full blast 2000 PSI. You can't see. Oh my God. And it's like, I don't know what it's doing right now. I think I know what it's doing, but I can't see. So I'm wondering if I should just buy some like precision ground brass so I can throw it in, cut it dry and then like, see what's happening. Um, Oh, totally. That can muck up your tools. I don't think so. Oh, I would totally do that. Yeah.
00:05:40
Speaker
Because I was like, you could cut air, I guess. You can, actually. I forgot about that. There's like one button that keeps the material out of the way so that you could just cut air. And it does everything else. I should do that more. I don't know why. Nothing. What happens if you load the file into Zander's NCViewer.com thing?
00:06:03
Speaker
I don't know. I assume it's gibberish, right? Sometimes. I know the Nakamura code can be gibberish in that reader. It does read lead. It does read lathe stuff. So maybe I should do that a bit more. But there's all these like weird Swiss, you know, middle codes that make the code look like gibberish in the reader. And codes, though, because I don't care about those.
00:06:27
Speaker
Yeah. Put it in there. I'm curious to see what it looks like. Yeah, I should. But even some of the G codes, like in a mill, I'm forgetting the exact numbers here. But say in a mill, it's G95 you would normally do, or G96 for a certain constant surface speed or whatever it is. It should be a G96. In the Swiss, it's G92. And there's some weird shifts.
00:06:53
Speaker
Yes, sure. Of regular parameters like that. But anyway. Well, you might, don't laugh, I wonder...
00:06:59
Speaker
If you could even take your code and just push it to a standard lathe, like Infusion, you can choose different posts. I'm trying to think if this really helps, but let's say NC Viewer worked quite well if you just posted to a traditional FANUC turret, like a chucker lathe code. That may help you even though you're actually posting to your specialty. What post are you using?
00:07:23
Speaker
The Nakamura post, I'm using the code from the Nakamura, I'm just copy and pasting into a new file. Are you serious? From your AS200L post? Hilarious. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the toolpaths themselves work fine, like perfect. You got to be careful of all the retracts and all the spindle-ons and everything that's all different. Yeah. It's not M3 for spindle-on, it's like M43 and M403 and M503 and all this weird stuff. That's true.
00:07:52
Speaker
Um, but it's cool. And then, okay. So yeah. Oh, good.
Investment Decisions in Machinery
00:07:57
Speaker
Good. Ask me a question.
00:08:02
Speaker
I always struggle with re-evaluating life decisions because to some extent, is there something to be gained for it? On the flip side, it's kind of like move on, don't worry about the past, don't live in the past, but you've had the Swiss for a couple of weeks now, maybe it's still too new to make this call, but do you wish you had done it in the opposite order? Swiss first? Yeah. I think about this a lot and sometimes for sure. I think especially with the parts that I make, had I gotten the Swiss first,
00:08:32
Speaker
it would have been harder because it's so complicated to run, although I know guys that their first machine was a brand new citizen. And with no machining experience.
00:08:44
Speaker
And when has that ever stopped you? No, exactly. So it would have been totally, it would be totally doable. I think if I had gotten the Swiss first, I would have made a lot more parts by now than I have on the neck. Oh, like by a lot, by a factor of five or 10, if necessary.
00:09:02
Speaker
Because the Swiss will have less changeover. Less changeover and bar feeder, unattended running. That's a good lesson. They're close enough in the same price. This was a bit more expensive, but 10% or less more expensive. That they're similar class.
00:09:23
Speaker
Um, I think it's, it's always hard to put yourself back in. It is. You're like, think about John Grissom, a pre-Nakomura. I mean, there was a time where you and I were on this conversation. I'm not sure it was a podcast yet where you had bought the raw material to convert your Torlock slant pro into a linear rail blade. And you were, you were down that path. You had told yourself yes to that path. And then we talked it through. And I don't remember how influential I was in it, but we ended up, or you ended up with the Nakomura. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. A lot of thinking, a lot of, uh, you know,
00:09:53
Speaker
I was like, oh, it'll cost me whatever thousands of dollars. I want to put clear paths on it, linear rails, make it like a beast. And you and me and a bunch of other people kind of, not talked me out of it, but just got me to see like, we're in this to make parts, not machines, you know? Yeah.
00:10:14
Speaker
You know, there's no question I think you benefited from the ability of the sub spindle, the live tooling, the capability, I mean good grief. But it was not, my point I guess was that it wasn't, the Nakamura was a big, it was your second VMC, your second machine center, or whatever you'll call it, your second big purchase.
Balancing Automation and Manual Labor
00:10:35
Speaker
was it the right machine? And I think it was, I think from an outside perspective, it's always easier to buy a quote unquote normal machine, like a twin spindle lathe is not an unusual machine. It's a, you know, you can do a lot of things with it and frankly, you can find a lot of people to buy it. And what you bought now with that Tornos is a lot more of a specialty type machine. Yes, yes, absolutely. At this point, I'm glad to have both.
00:11:01
Speaker
put it this way because now I have work that is specialized for each machine and each machine can crush at those particular jobs. So great. And now I have two layouts at the same time that I can be running, which is sweet.
00:11:19
Speaker
We were editing the big Kaiser factory tour footage from Switzerland, and it's something I didn't realize when I was on the tour, but I realized it kind of hit me when I was watching the footage.
00:11:34
Speaker
They sort of left side of their factory has multiple different five axis machines or B-axis style mill turn type machines as an automated cell that has multiple machines with a robot and one of those vertical aroa like file cabinet and material things like it's really impressive but it's
00:11:52
Speaker
basically still very relatively few machines or few spindles and huge amounts of output across a variety of products. They make chip fans, they make boring heads, they make holders, different types of stuff there. So again, very few machines, lots of variation of material and product and output, high automation, lights out. And then you take a step over to the other side of the factory and it's the exact
00:12:17
Speaker
opposite. They have like studer thread mill grinders that grind only incredibly accurate threads and then they have hones that do just one little operation and they have another surface grinder that only does one thing. I kind of thought wow I've never seen such a contrast of this left side of this factory is like total versatility across the capabilities of the machines and the right side is like the most specialized equipment in the world.
00:12:44
Speaker
That's awesome. I was just talking about that with somebody the other day about how a lot of factories in the US and even up in here in Canada, the default, like the cheapest way to go is to just buy a lot of cheap machines and put an operator at each machine and just keep pushing buttons all day long.
00:13:02
Speaker
I've seen that a lot before and you know, I think about versus the automation route is you buy a really expensive machine with a palette changer and automation and Just run it, you know one operator lights out kind of thing And I guess the Benefit of the other one is it's cheaper to buy cheap machines and just put an operator in front of it and just keep it going keeping making parts But it's not as fun
00:13:29
Speaker
Yeah, I don't understand that. I remember before I knew much about machining when we were making the go pro strike bar, go pro mounts. We, I don't know, we probably made the first few thousand on my tormach in my basement. And then as soon as we were comfortable issuing a PO to a machine shop for a quantity of one thousand, which was crazy at the time, we got a quote in the shop.
00:13:52
Speaker
that made them, when we visited, we expected to see automation, palettes, fixtures, hell I was making them on, excuse my language, I was making them on a 32 position fixture on my Tormach. And we show up, you ready for this? Don't tell me they're in a vice one by one. Two Kurt vices, op one, op two, set of soft jaws, one at a time.
00:14:18
Speaker
I'm thinking, are you kidding me? And the price was good. I'm like, how, I just, to this day, good reminder of like, don't think that multi-generational shops that have huge amounts of machines and equipment and people are always doing things in innovative ways.
00:14:39
Speaker
Different parts on the Swiss? Sorry, go ahead,
Addressing Fire Risks in Machining
00:14:42
Speaker
go ahead. Yeah, I've switched to the second part, the spacer of our knives. I think I might have been still working on that last week. Yeah, I'm at the point now where today I'll be running them, getting it perfect. Like hopefully making good finished parts today. And so about this fire,
00:15:03
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Sorry. Forgot. Do tell. So we were running. Francois had handwritten this roughing code.
00:15:13
Speaker
Because who? Francois, the apps guy that was here. Oh. Sorry, yeah. I was like, if you've gotten to the point where you're hiring people and not telling me, we need to have a side conversation. Yeah, our 17th employee. Yeah, no, the applications guy last week had handwritten this piece of code that worked fine, that basically rough grooves the material down to a smaller size. But I didn't.
00:15:37
Speaker
I didn't visualize it, you know, so I didn't know exactly what was going on. So we ran titanium dry and very slowly and Angelo and I were watching it yesterday. And I mean, those are the two bad things you don't do with titanium. We're going to dry and slowly.
00:15:53
Speaker
And then we saw it get red real fast. And then the chips caught on fire, not the oil, but the chip curling off. Wow. Got red. And then there was a small flame coming off and we're freaking out for half a second. So I stopped the machine and then it just extinguished itself. The coolant was off. And yeah, at that moment, I had this like panic of the fire suppression is going to kick on any second.
00:16:20
Speaker
And I was like, oh my god, this is butt clenching. And then like at that same time, Eric asks the question from upstairs and I'm just like, I was just about to yell at him like not right now, but I didn't even get that far. And
00:16:35
Speaker
Luckily, it just self extinguished and everything's fine. But it was it was nerve wracking for a second there because the oil is flammable. So our next question to ourselves is, well, how flammable is it? Let's get a cup, take it outside and let's see how flammable this is because I need to know. Yes.
00:16:54
Speaker
Oh my God. Yes. So there's this, the fire suppression works because there's this red, um, meltable, uh, line, like an, like a little airline that is pressurized 200 PSI with gas, whatever. And that melts at 400 degrees. So.
00:17:10
Speaker
When that melts and loses pressure, the fire extinguisher blows off. But for that to melt at 400, you need way more heat and flame than our little candlelight at the tool.
00:17:26
Speaker
Sounds like that was more like you just lit a big lighter beneath the piece of material for a second. Yeah, it was probably... That's like no big deal. Five or ten times bigger flame than a big lighter, which is still fairly small. That's actually kind of... That's pucker-worthy. That's fire. Wow. Wow. What would the consequence have been, though? Isn't that... It doesn't ruin the machine at all. I don't think so. I think the ruining is...
00:17:52
Speaker
The fire suppression doesn't ruin anything. The flame before it kicks off could melt stuff, depending on how big. Because after seeing that, it's got to get pretty hot for the fire suppression to get off. But then I was talking with the mist collector guy. And he said, because it draws so much CFM, all flame and all smoke will just go up the mist collector. And he said, I've seen machines that have definitely caught fire that
00:18:19
Speaker
the inside of the miss collector is trashed like the plastic blade has melted but he's like i just send people a new blade and you know i ask them if they want their unit repainted and they're like meh no it's fine and that's it they just replaced the blade and it's miss collector's working again and the machine's fine even without fire suppression he said so uh i think we're in a good place if it does ever happen hopefully it never does but
00:18:49
Speaker
Do people ever machine in an inert environment? Do they ever have a way of sealing the machine with nitrogen in it or something? I don't know. You'd have to constantly purge the machine with nitrogen or whatever gas. Why? Wouldn't have to. Leaks. It was somehow sealed. Yeah, right. Okay. You'd have a positive pressure of nitrogen. Yeah, even the bar is coming out of somewhere. I guess you could put the whole machine inside a box.
00:19:16
Speaker
No, I'm I'm sure there's some nuclear laboratory somewhere underground that does this, you know, for whatever reason. We were actually we had a student at our one of our classes who
00:19:30
Speaker
put his mark forged because the material absorbs moisture. I can never think of that word, the scientific word. No, it's- Hydrophobic, hydroscopic. No, that avoids moisture. Hydrophobic is here. Anyway, he just built a enclosure around his whole printer and the material and has a vacuum on it. Anaerobic. No.
00:19:54
Speaker
Yeah, anaerobic means that means you are lack of oxygen. Yes. Anyway, it was a it was a relatively cheap, hacky, yet wonderfully elegant solution to improve that. So obviously, that's a little bit different than building a whole cage around your it. Did he did he purge it with some or fill it with the gas? I think he just pulled a vacuum. I don't really know what that means when you pull a vacuum in terms of
00:20:22
Speaker
If you remove the oxygen, I guess you're left with oxygen, or whatever atmospheric gases, but just at a much lower density. Because you're not replacing it that I could think of. Right? Anyway, it was cool. Nice. So no more crashes and no more fires, please. Yeah, I'll work on that.
00:20:44
Speaker
If you do launch the fire expression system, you then have to call them to have them come in, I guess. Have it recharged anyway. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's all that. But yeah. You're not going to be making parts later that same day, I guess is the point. Yeah, I would assume so.
00:21:01
Speaker
Well, I saw some crazy videos on YouTube of it's like advertising videos for this fire suppression system, the fire trace, and it's security camera footage of a Swiss ladies shop. And it looks like the machine explodes. I'm serious, like poof and a flame, you know, just read inside the enclosure and then smoke coming out and then the fire suppression goes off. And it's like, oh, my gosh.
00:21:26
Speaker
Is that oil? Yeah. That must be the oil. Like all the mist and everything. No, thank you. You got to film that parking lot oil test. That's going to be awesome. Yeah. That's going to be funny. Yeah. It's one of those things like you don't want to talk about crashing your machine. You don't want to talk about catching it on fire, but whatever. This is a safe place. Yeah. Anything but that. Good grief. So anyway, what are you up to?
Saunders' Air Conditioning Install Saga
00:21:55
Speaker
We actually was really ticked off Monday morning, and I think it's worth sharing as a positive outcome as a lesson learned We are starting the air conditioner here for the shop yes, and it was
00:22:13
Speaker
so hot last week for here that made me remind me why we're doing this. Because when it's nice and spring temperatures on you're like, should I really do this? Is that really worth it? And then it gets to that point and you're like, yes, this is why. I wish you did it two weeks earlier kind of thing.
00:22:30
Speaker
So the first thing that had to happen was some roof reinforcements and that was being done by a local kind of company, not the HVC company, somebody else. And we had met with him, got a quote, got him on the schedule. He was a little bit delayed on getting us on the schedule, but you know, okay, just roll with it. But we had him on the schedule for Monday. And at eight o'clock he calls me and he cancels.
00:22:54
Speaker
And there was an excuse, and the excuse certainly had some legitimacy to it, but it was just, you know, this happened, I swear I ordered a material, man, and I don't know if you could call, like, there's another company in town,
00:23:11
Speaker
and this and blah, blah, blah. And I just told him, I said, I need you to do this. You're asking me to now call another company or industry, like I don't have relationships with these people, I'm just cold calling. And to get on the calendar or schedule, I mean, that could be three weeks out, it could be six weeks out.
00:23:33
Speaker
And long story short, we talked it through and he came the next day and got it done, which I very much appreciate. But I think the takeaway is ties into probably one of the most popular questions that I get, which is, how do I get started as
Importance of Customer Service
00:23:48
Speaker
a job shop? How do I get started as a machine shop? How do I get started in this industry? And darn it, that is the answer.
00:23:54
Speaker
you are not selling a machined product. Your machined part is not going to probably be any different or better than other shops. Yeah, sure, you might hit a couple of good tolerances or a couple of good finishes, but most people also goof here there, make a little mistake or whatnot. That's not really the differentiator. I mean, yes, you need to make the part to the print tolerances, but what changes is that element of service. And don't just say customer service, mean it.
00:24:21
Speaker
When I read Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and you think about the lessons that he talks about, the problem, to be critical of what happened Monday, was he only put himself in his own shoes. He never thought, how does this impact the customer that I've agreed to?
00:24:39
Speaker
the crane company lined up, the HVAC company lined up, the roofing company lined up. It's also incredibly hot out here. I have machines scheduled downtime because they have to be tarped and covered because you're coming in here to do a bunch of welding work. It's an inconvenience factor that is beyond a normal scenario and they were aware of that. So when you're in these situations, you've got to think ahead and call and communicate that. So he never thought to say, hey, I called two of my contacts or people I work with or know of and
00:25:09
Speaker
I'm going to get them to take care of it for you. It's going to be three days later or something. There's no effort to put yourself in the other person's shoes. And I'm not saying he owed it to me, but that's the difference is be on time with your part to communicate with your customer. Don't make excuses. And if you have to have an excuse, that's your problem, not your customer's problem. They don't care. I know he was telling me he ordered all the material to make it sound like he was not being
00:25:35
Speaker
absentee, but I'm like, of course you order the material. What do you want, a cookie?
00:25:41
Speaker
But the good news is, it's so easy to do this well. You have to make it a priority to you, but if you wanna succeed long-term, done, right there. Literally, just do that. Yeah, it's easy to do, but it's even easier not to do, which is why most people don't. And you have to care about the customer more than you care about yourself, basically. If you want the work, you're asking the customer for money in exchange for your time and effort. So yeah, I totally agree.
00:26:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's a good little business lesson I think too for folks that are thinking about it because I think again it's like the difference between a product and a business or a machine shop and running a machine shop is you know when you're brand new you're gonna think hey man I'm gonna just make these awesome awesome awesome parts. Your customers don't care they're just expecting the parts to be that good. They care about the stuff that you may not be thinking about which is can you package them up correctly? Can you get them shipped on time? Can you communicate with them on the process and so forth?
00:26:38
Speaker
It felt good to get that resolved, but darn it, that was frustrating. And it's frustrating because I'm like, what could I have done better, right? Like, how do you evolve, isolate those?
00:26:50
Speaker
Anyway, the other thing I wanted to mention is just a general thank you to everybody. I posted a picture with Yvonne in the background the other day and people started asking in the comments, how was she doing? And that's when it kind of hit me like, I appreciate everybody listening as we went through that a few months ago and I now feel guilty for not having updated everybody, but she is doing phenomenal.
00:27:14
Speaker
back to work, 95, whatever you call it, 98% better, totally normal life. Just couldn't ask for it to be better. So I just wanna say thank you to everybody for commenting and chiming in on that. That's perfect. Good, it's awesome to hear, because it was a stressful time. Yeah, it's funny because even seeing that made me kind of jump back into that mode and you,
00:27:43
Speaker
It changes you, and you become grateful, and it just changes you, but then you also, in some respects, we've moved on. We know she has a follow-up appointment, and I think it's October or something, but I give her a hard time, because I was like, do you want me to get one of those cancer survivor stickers? And she's like, absolutely not. Nothing against them, but we don't, we are, it's great to move on from it. I'll put it that way. Perfect, yeah.
00:28:10
Speaker
Yes. The other thing I want to say, oh, this is really fun.
Automation in the Workshop
00:28:16
Speaker
We did the Hermlow video. It took a while to get it edited and approved, which usually means the better off the video is because that was pretty unusual that we got to film in there. And so we did this premiere function on YouTube. So we did it kind of like as a live debut at three o'clock yesterday.
00:28:34
Speaker
where you got to comment, like I was basically in the chat room with people watching it as we went through the video. And it was really fun. Like I legitimately enjoyed talking with people and kind of watching the video again with everybody else. That's awesome. I can't wait to watch that video.
00:28:53
Speaker
Someone was asking too about like what were the takeaways and the thing that made me really sink in at Hermla was seeing automation systems next to each other and being able to sort of like live and breathe the different variants of them and it made me realize I think
00:29:16
Speaker
I am better suited to focus on automation where you're just swapping out the raw material and not the palletized whole part. If you think about there's different potential and you could still have the ability to swap out of course your work holding method between a different size vices or style of vices, et cetera. But I like the idea of having
00:29:43
Speaker
like you would see in Jay's you are robot, Jay Pearson's you are robot where he's pulling the raw material or some of the harmless systems or other systems because frankly, the first thing that jumps to mind is I don't think I can afford when I do get to automation, buying 10 fifth axis vices or 50 fifth axis vices, that's a whole lot of vices. You could have 50 or 100 grand tied up now just in vices.
00:30:08
Speaker
And there's some benefits to it as well of going the vice way for no question. I'm not negating it, but I'm just thinking for what we're doing, both as a baby stepped automation and flexibility, I'm trying to think about how that could work. But it's just good to start realizing, being forced to think through these things, it feels like it's part of the process to get into there. If that makes sense.
00:30:35
Speaker
I think, I guess another way you could do it is like on your UMC, if you put a UR robot in front of it and you had, can you air operate the rock lock system? They are two things. One, they are coming out with one because you and I played with it at IMTS.
00:30:55
Speaker
I actually should reach out to them or figure out if that's coming. The second thing is there's a guy on LinkedIn who did the air through the table mod on his UMC. I like Bookmark. It's right next to my, don't change this very important or delete this file text within my UMC folder. So I want to figure out...
00:31:14
Speaker
And if he did it, I'm guessing that means it's, it's, I know it's doable. Yeah. Yeah. Cause if you had a repeat job would say like, you know, a couple inch squared cubed block and you wanted to tighten it in the vice, like really tight, not just air vice tight. Um, and you had a few vices lined up, you could tighten the stock offline and then the, the, your robot grabs the mini vice and plunks it into the, um, uh, rock lock system. You know what I mean? Oh, yes. I don't know if you're.
00:31:44
Speaker
Oh, good question. I don't remember what we saw for RockLock. They just came out with a fan of robot arm system that we were showing on the WhatsApp thing. They did it at the Hozday. I don't know if the U.R. robots are strong enough because... The one can hold 10 kilograms, 20 grams, 22 pounds.
00:32:08
Speaker
Yeah, it might be heavy enough. I don't know if ice is 10 pounds. I don't know what to think about it.
00:32:16
Speaker
I thought there were some air, what do you call like air over pneumatic or other, there's a way to get a force multiplier through a pneumatic system so that you can actually hold down on a part. Perhaps similar to like what we did at Milterra where we had those, you and I were just pushing with one hand and putting like 7,000 pounds of pressure on that hydraulic. The chunk vise, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
00:32:42
Speaker
Yeah, we don't have a product right now that needs it. I'd love to get to a point with ModVices where we could be running them lights out, but we just, you don't need it, so don't force it. How much does a knife pallet, Norseman pallet with loaded up? I think it's 20 something pounds empty, probably 30 pounds loaded. Really?
00:33:06
Speaker
An aluminum piece like that? Is that heavy? Darn. Okay, interesting. It's fine to load manually by hand, but I wouldn't want to lift anything heavier on a daily basis. Oh, yeah. For sure. No, that's a lot. Yeah, it's the upper limit of what is strenuously comfortable. And I'm sure there's all kinds of OSHA safeties you can't lift more than whatever. Have you thought about automation in terms of
00:33:36
Speaker
I guess you would have to be loading fixtures because the way you hold your parts, you're never putting in big squares. I can't just take a handle and have a robot like place it in the machine, which is fine. So which is why I'm super excited about the thought of palletized, you know, and then I'll just make these mini tombstone pallets.
00:33:56
Speaker
and load them offline with all of our blades and handles and clips and then have multiples of those loaded offline and then they just get palletized and swapped in and the machine runs non-stop and prints money.
00:34:08
Speaker
Yes. No, that's seriously the answer. And now that you say that, cost alone shouldn't stop you from making the right decision. I mean, cost is part of that decision. Upfront cost is just scary, you know? Yes. But even on the rock lock system, we've already made our own rock lock custom fixtures and
00:34:30
Speaker
You could, I mean, a piece of aluminum to build a mini tombstone if you're going to do them out of aluminum is not that expensive. Throw some rock-lox studs in it and now all of a sudden, that's not a big deal at all. So maybe I am wrong. I don't know.
00:34:45
Speaker
Yeah, it depends on if you're going to tombstone parts or if you need 50 vices, which would cost, I don't even know how much, like a five axis vise cost, 500 bucks. I don't even know, but that's, it's a lot. Yeah, I don't, I think it's, it depends on what size. I think a lot of that, you know, five, fifth axis or a lot of that workholding world is four figure stuff.
00:35:08
Speaker
maybe a little bit less. But I mean, if you had like, we've seen on one of our friends who has got a bunch of automation, I mean, literally some of these machines have 50 vices in their cell. Yeah.
00:35:20
Speaker
I had a dream, I was thinking of Phil's Matsura, I had a dream last night, wickedly the dream, that I bought a perfect conditioned Matsura MX330 at auction at the factory next door for $1,000 and all I had to do was fix like one thing on it. This is like an amalgamation of your UMAX and I don't know what, but I'll probably have a Hermo debut video for some reason. And I think you're wearing a Matsura t-shirt right now as well.
00:35:45
Speaker
I thought I had to wear this one and then like Tyler Bond came out to our facility and was helping me figure out and the way you turn the machine on was actually with like a like an oven dial that was on the bottom right that you just did like the temperature and then the machine then the fan it came to life it was really yeah man for a couple hours last night I had a Metzor 5-axis
00:36:07
Speaker
Is that one of those dreams where you wake up in the middle of the night and you just keep thinking about it for like two hours? Because I've had those. Which is funny because dreams are so real when you're in them. That's awesome.
00:36:21
Speaker
What are we up to today? I'm working on a Johnny Five part on the UMC, which is super fun. I just freaking love it. I'm trying a, I have a deep slot to do. And in the past I've done them by just kind of cheating with traditional end mills, sometimes even at the risk of slightly rubbing. But I found a helical quarter inch end mill that's back relieved. It was like,
00:36:45
Speaker
33 bucks or something not not even expensive and so I'm hoping that arrives today. I may have just lost you. Nope and So that should be a better way to do that slot And then what else am I doing tomorrow's the July 4th here, so obviously a quiet day or off day and
00:37:09
Speaker
The other thing I'm working on is some, I think I talked about it last week, but that corner pick video style of like working in there. I'm having,
00:37:20
Speaker
trouble getting the, well, I'm working on it. I want to kind of refine it more before I film it, but it's, it's coming. It's going to be such valuable content, like all the five axis things as you're going through them, you're learning them. Um, you're not the expert yet, which is great. You get to film the learning experience and, uh, kind of document this point in time for you and then share it with other people. Like when I get a five axis, then I'll just watch those videos and I'll be like so further ahead as it is.
00:37:48
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. In fact, it occurred to me yesterday that I'm going to just do a quick casual video on some of the tool holders because we've already learned a ton about that, like what tool holders are buying, what lengths, why we're buying them, what are the nice things about them. Definitely.
00:38:05
Speaker
Nothing's gonna rock your world, but it's helpful. And I think that's the thing I remind myself is there's a lot of people on the internet who, you know, it's great to see some folks that are insanely knowledgeable, like absolute experts, but that's never been our story. I wanna be smart about it, but it's a lot more about the journey of the mistakes we've made, but how we're also, where we're doing well. Awesome, I am looking forward to that video, so don't stall too long on that. Because I was thinking about... Oh, okay.
00:38:35
Speaker
Is there something you want to share? I was thinking about five axes yesterday and I was like, if I were to tool it up, what do I even, what do I quote? What do I look up? How, how do I, how do I make this mental list in my head? Well, you need a face mill. You need, you know, if I got the current and it has 200 tool spots, I'm like, well, what do I, what do I get? Like, would I just get a hundred of the same thing? And that's, that's obviously insane money, but, um,
00:39:02
Speaker
If you're gonna use it, you gotta use it, like tool it up. And then, do I need long reach, short reach? I don't know. One of the spoilers is I have got two hydraulics now and we're loving them.
00:39:19
Speaker
It's just nice because you have, and compared to an ER system where you have to find the right collet, you have the body, the collet, the nut, the different wrenches, the hydraulic is just so slick to swap out, and it screams grimsmo in that accuracy and concentricity issue. If you do end up with a machine that's of that caliber, then you're gonna care a lot about tool
00:39:48
Speaker
I think the Rego PG system would be high on my list. Maybe not for every holder, but for a big handful of them. I can't argue with that at all from what I've heard. I mean it's kind of a cry once. It's not even that bad, especially if it becomes kind of your main system.
00:40:06
Speaker
So, yeah, that's all. A couple, doing some couple video editing things, the Johnny Five part. We're shipping the parts to the Smithsonian on Friday, which is just, that kind of hit me. I was like, yes, I was, it's cool. And we're all, we all, and Alex and I are gonna go down on,
00:40:26
Speaker
We're gonna be there on Thursday the 18th, and I don't know if I'm allowed to share, but one of the other YouTubers involved from the West Coast, I don't wanna share his story, sorry, but he's gonna be there, which is gonna be awesome. So again, if anyone's in the DC area or wants to make the trip, we're gonna be at Air and Space Museum on that, I guess on Thursday.
00:40:44
Speaker
Yeah, Thursday, July 18th, just hanging out, watching Adam Savage, Jen Schachter, Andrew Barth build this hatch door that we and others have eight parts for. Microsoft is making the like actual, whatever it is, like four foot wide hatch door itself. And I saw some pictures from their shop with these Okuma five axis machines and Datrons. Like it is phenomenal. Like it's really.
00:41:11
Speaker
That's one of those things. You don't think of Microsoft as having a giant machine shop, but of course, why not? Yes. It's literally, I've seen pictures, it's literally...
00:41:21
Speaker
like a sea of Okumas with Datron sprinkled around it. It is phenomenal. Well, it didn't, I know you've been talking about it for a week or two, this Smithsonian project. It didn't fully hit me until in our WhatsApp chat, Lockwood said, I am so jealous of you right now that you will have parts displayed in the Smithsonian. I was like, whoa, yeah, you will like forever or for a long time.
00:41:50
Speaker
So that's actually the big question. Yes, it will be on display and by all means that checks the box for me. I am content. The question is, I guess, whether the Smithsonian then chooses to accept this into their permanent collection.
00:42:08
Speaker
which I don't know, obviously no control over it. If they do, that's certainly even cooler, but I am happy. It's kind of one of those things, the only person I need to look at and tell this to is my wife, son, and daughter, is just a moment of pride. That's it, that's all I need. Are they coming with you to the exhibit?
00:42:31
Speaker
So they're not going to come on the 18th because I think that's going to be kind of hectic and chaotic with all the people there. And I'm going to want to sit that thing out. And that's not what kids want to do. So I'm going to go down there, see it, learn it, feel it out. And then we'll just, it's a five and a half hour drive for us. So we'll then go back down as a family, like the next weekend or something. For sure.
00:42:57
Speaker
What do you have to do today? Today, I got to get those spacers on the Swiss not to catch on fire and to make perfect. Because Eric is all out, and he's like, I can't finish knives without space or something. All right. It's in the works. Yep. Yeah, I think they work. It is nerve wracking running the Swiss. What are you having problems with, though, on the spacers? It was the threading.
00:43:23
Speaker
having trouble finding the right threading routine that wasn't breaking inserts. Apparently, you can't, at the moment, I can't thread faster than 950 RPM. Otherwise, the machine has this weird velocity error, which is a known issue that Tornos is aware of and is fixing. It's like a parameter or something, something, whatever. I don't really care.
00:43:47
Speaker
That's a really low surface finish. Yeah, I guess it is. But I'm cutting titanium, so I don't really care. As long as I can make parts, I'm happy. So we figured out that threshold, and then it should work now. I think my Y offset of the tool is off. I figured that out last night. So it's rubbing. I lined up the hole where it should be, and I loosened the boring bar, and I tried to just slide it into the hole.
00:44:12
Speaker
and it was hitting where it should be clearance. So I was like, oh, there's a problem right there. So I got to clock everything in today. Also, I'll do that first. And then I should be making parts. I decided that when we purchase our blade turning center, I'm going to time its arrival with your visit here so that you can just set the whole thing up. I would be happy to. Half token.
00:44:40
Speaker
Yeah, full truth, I'd be happy to. Awesome. It'll be fun. No, we'll get it set up, but then I want you to come down and give me some... That'll be fun. And I'll be like, this is different. Oh, my Nakamura does like this. Why did they do it like that? That's cool. Yeah, I'm excited. No, nothing. We haven't bought it yet, but I think we'll pull the trigger later this summer. So you're going no sub spindle?
00:45:07
Speaker
Well, I don't know. I'm happy to not do the sub spindle, but my HFO guy was pushing me on the, their new like, the one like the poor man's. Yeah, right. It's not a, it's not a dual spindle, but it's, it is a powered sub spindle for just like part off and backside quick ops, no clocking, no C action on it.
00:45:30
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I kind of think I could see the value of having a, what would you call it? Like a hydraulic tail stock, like a tail stock that moves in and out. And so this sub spindle thing would have that and it can hold a live center. So it's kind of, it checks a lot of boxes. It's more than just having a quote unquote dual spindle laid. But then it's kind of like, I guess it makes more sense because
00:45:59
Speaker
If you're only doing something to work with a couple of tools, VNMG or something for backside finishing, I think it's a lot different mentality from a programming standpoint, whereas you've got almost every tool block has backside finishing. Yeah, basically we've got two layouts.
00:46:18
Speaker
Right. And having parts come off, clearances, drills, all that. Having parts come off one and done is the greatest thing ever, especially running production work. You know, we make thousands of parts at a time. Yeah. It's just the best. I think I would go with that royal collet system that's kind of the fist-sized collets with a gun-dripper thing. The C, whatever they call it, yeah.
00:46:44
Speaker
Yeah. They're not cheap, but it just seems like, yes. Yeah. When you need bigger than one inch bar, like I have five C on my, on my Nakamura, so I can only use one inch bar and under. It's fine for me cause I make small stuff, but if you ever want to run a two inch bar, that, that would suck. So that could be a good solution for you. Yeah.
00:47:05
Speaker
Yeah, I don't want to deal with pulling soft jaws out for all these different things or hard jaws. And I like this idea that we can then just, they have like a gripper gun. It kind of looks like a hot glue gun and you stick it in there and you can swap out the collets because that's what we're going to do. We're going to do parts or widgets or stuff where I need to go from two and a quarter inches down to one and three sixteenths and then you just flip out your collet and you've got an accurate, precise way of holding it for the next thing for the big deal.
00:47:31
Speaker
Biggest complaint I've heard about those is access, like reach for your tools because they're so huge. You know, they're like two or three inch diameters. So for you to get an end mill in there and engrave something along the outside of the part, you need such a long extension to make that work. All possible. Just if you're making big parts, great. If you're making, you know, quarter inch rod in those huge collets, it's hard to reach everything tight.
00:47:59
Speaker
So I wonder how much Z, well, you're gonna laugh, what we do on the Tormach is we have a big chuck in there and we don't wanna, yeah, we actually have a 5C, a bison 5C chuck and we put the bison 5C chuck inside in a three or four jaw sometimes. Now you lose rigidity and you obviously sacrifice a lot of your Z height, but it's actually fine sometimes. It has a smaller spindle nose, so. Neck and down like that. Yeah, that's a good idea actually, sweet.
00:48:29
Speaker
Yeah, awesome. Well, have a good week. Don't burn your shop down. No. I will do my best. Awesome. I'll see you next week. Take care. Bye.