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Grimsmo's Addiction to Raspberry Pi for ERP, Hiring Employees, Fighting the Inner Bootstrapper, Tornos Production, Cogsdill Diamond Burnishing the SAGA, New Machine to Replace RoboDrill, and MORE!
269 Plays5 years ago
MANUFACTURING ENTREPRENEURS--THIS IS FOR YOU!
This podcast has 186 episodes about the experience of two entrepreneurs improving their skills in their trade and learning how to create successful businesses.
"The day I stop learning is the day I fall asleep and never wake up." - Grimsmo
DELUSION & HONESTY Entrepreneurship is a constant battle between delusion and self honesty. Justifying decisions is easy. Playing Devil's advocate is not. Knowing when to ride the wave of delusion and when to snap out of it? Now, that takes real skill.
Looking For A Few Good Employees... Both Saunders and Grimsmo are ready to bulk up their respective teams again! Grimsmo Knives Careers
Saunders Machine Works Careers
Speaking of a few good employees, the latest addition to SMW is no longer a secret! @vince.fab is the new hobby machinist extrordinaire.
Click Image Below For Full Post!
Time to Buy more Pis. This is goin' down. Grimsmo's got a case of GERP mode and Pi addiction. At least it's not a case of the Mondays...
Bar code scanning guns, charging stations, Raspberry Pi's, Linux, monitors, purchase orders, inventory, maintenance, making sure processes are anti-lazy, you name it, Grimsmo and Saunders discuss all things ERP and solutions to the new challenges they're facing.
IT'S OKAY TO TAKE OFF THE BOOTS. Saunders shares a story about a chipped lathe insert, 23 bad parts, the bootstrapper mentality, and the struggle to challenge default thinking patterns.
CLIFF HANGER... Grimsmo leaves us hanging with a story about the 1/8" drill. Now we're all dying to know....WHERE IS IT!?
Other Topics
- Tornos and Production
- Cogsdill Diamond Burnisher on the SAGA button
- SANDVIK QS Holder System
- Micro 100 on CNC Lathe
- New Machine To Replace RoboDrill
- Haas DT-2 VS. Haas DM-2
- Robots and Payload Problems
- RASK progress on the KERN
- Grinding Wheels & Swarf
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Manufacturing Entrepreneurship
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 186. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. And this is the podcast for the manufacturing entrepreneur. And if that's you, we want to provide as much value as we can by sharing our experiences in business over the last like dozen years. Yeah. And we're still learning. Every day. Man, the day I stop learning is the day I'll just like fall asleep and not wake up.
00:00:27
Speaker
It is fun.
Honesty and Complexity in CAM Software
00:00:30
Speaker
Being a surgeon, though, is the price you pay. I've been able to do it, but it takes a lot of, I have to be honest with myself. This is a great example where entrepreneurs tend to not be honest. We have that sense of disillusion, but the ability to truly carve out, like take the pencil toolpath. I've been trying to get it to do things. Well, first off, it's just a very finicky toolpath, and it's not one of those things where
00:00:55
Speaker
There's a direct correlation always between what you expect will happen in CAM when you change a bi-tangency angle or the threshold for step over or something.
Raspberry Pi in Shop Applications
00:01:05
Speaker
Boy, I would love to be able to spend more time on that, but I remind myself what I'm better off doing is spending more time finishing up the hiring page that we're doing. Very much influenced. Thank you. The way you did it was great, so we're piggybacking off of that.
00:01:22
Speaker
and getting somebody else that I can help inspire them on or teach them on or say, hey, this is the goal now. Now you go play with it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We need the base knowledge to be good at most things in our business, but we don't need to be like spend a hundred thousand hours on pencil toolpath kind of thing. It's just, it's past the reality of logic anymore. However,
00:01:49
Speaker
But it's fun. It's fun. Yeah. You know, I find that too. Like lately I've been diving hard and getting addicted into raspberry pies. Cool. I'm using it in the GURP gun and I've got one driving our TV monitor downstairs and I've got another one that I'm not using and I just ordered five more last night. And I'm like, honey, I have a problem.
00:02:11
Speaker
But it's, it's cool. I'm going to use, um, kind of like how you're using the compute sticks for your little computer workstations. Uh, I'm going to use a pie as our, like one on the Maury, one on the Swiss as like a little computer for breeding PDFs and our ERP system. And that's about it. Yeah. I think that makes a ton of sense. You really don't need the cost and complexity or capability of a computer sticks and water pies, 30 bucks.
00:02:37
Speaker
Yeah, 30 to 60, something like that. And then you need the adapter, and you need the SD card, and you need like a monitor, and mouse, and all that stuff. So I'm under $200, easy for a computer. Preach one, though. Yeah. Oh, but with the monitor. With the monitor, yeah. But like, whatever. I'm ready to do that, finally, and very happy to do that.
ERP Systems and Inventory Challenges
00:03:00
Speaker
They run on Linux, which I'm okay-ish at, but all you got to do is run the internet browser. Linux is great. I'm not some Linux fanboy nerd or anything like that, but I know it well enough. I can run the terminal. I can Google how to do anything. It's simple and it's fast and it's easy.
00:03:18
Speaker
Do they come with a Linux install on them, or do you buy the SD card that has it ready to go? Depends on where you buy it from, but yeah, you can buy the SD card with the Raspbian right on it, or it's super easy to flash an image of a Raspbian on it, and it's all open source and free, and there's no Windows installer license or anything like that.
00:03:40
Speaker
It's cool. But if I bought the little LCD monitor, and the cable, and the SD card, and the Raspberry Pi, and it just showed up in the packaging, you could unbox it and have it on a web browser within 30 minutes? Four minutes. Okay. Yeah. So there's no more hassle. Because it's the same thing. I can poke my way through Linux, but I don't want to deal with that. Yeah. Okay.
00:04:02
Speaker
Especially nowadays, with technology and information being so relevant, there's install guides that will walk you through it in two minutes. It's that easy now. And you want to Google how to install the different web browser, and it's easy. You go into terminal, you type sudo apt something, something, name, and that's it. You don't have to download it. It does it all for you. So it's cool. It's cool. So I've been having a lot of fun with that.
00:04:27
Speaker
And so we started using, we're using our ERP system now. We're tracking a couple things in inventory. We're using the GURP gun, the barcode scanner. And it's already to the point, like the first day, I took the scanner to do something else and to charge it. And Angelo is like missing it already. Yeah. You're charging it. OK, I'm going to have to write the inventory down and like catch up later or something. And I'm like, time to buy more pies. This is going down. Awesome.
The Double-Edged Sword of Automation
00:04:55
Speaker
Yeah, super excited.
00:04:56
Speaker
It's too funny you mentioned that because I'm running my advice washers on the lathe and they, I mean, literally I'm only running 20 at a time because I want to just have the chance to go inspect the parts and the tools. And in fact we did, I chipped an insert on a grooving tool that plays a pretty important role in pre relieving an area before the live tooling works. So it helps avoid the end mill having to cut on the floor of the part.
00:05:23
Speaker
Because it gets machined away anyway, so the grooving tool kind of cuts that clearance and it shipped Which isn't catastrophic in and of itself except that when it shipped it changed materially changed the tool pressure and Caused it to slightly gouge like 20
00:05:40
Speaker
two parts, 23 parts probably. Yeah. And it's kind of funny because I was kind of upset because it's that catch 22 of the ability to run automation is you can also make bad parts really fast lights out. But then it was kind of like, okay, great. Like the material cost is not significant here. I've got 22 bad parts, just sweep them into the trash. And we just, we ran more and
00:06:07
Speaker
That's a problem I probably could, it's not a problem I'm too worried about catching in the future. It wasn't a gotcha. You just need to switch that insert out every so often. And it literally is running hundreds of them. It's phenomenal.
00:06:23
Speaker
Oh, what's the downside of losing 22 because you stepped away for too long or something? It's fine. Well, to be totally raw and honest with you, it did. I had to draw quickly on
00:06:39
Speaker
What is it that you have these intrinsic desires and passions and things that you fall back on because sometimes when decisions aren't easy, you got to think back to that. Part of me is like, can I save these parts? I think that's just the bootstrapper and problem solver in me.
00:06:57
Speaker
not the like, dude, just move on. And you quickly realize like even this was yesterday, like today, I'm like, Oh my God, I'm so glad. So I'm actually upset that I spent more than 20 seconds debating it. Yeah, exactly. And we look at it from a complexity of the part, like if we're making a Norseman handle and we, you know, there's a broken screw off inside on the inside of it, like we'll try to get it out because there's a lot of invested already into those handles, but little lathe stuff like oops, next.
Shop Organization and Raspberry Pi Scanning
00:07:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:23
Speaker
Well, so the reason I brought that up is that we have a vertical lathe vertical storage rack over by the vertical lathe coming. Oh, yeah. No, I like them, but not that much. OK, vertical storage rack. And it's great because we have a material rack in the sort of inventory side of the shop, which we're actually weaning down because we don't really want to store as much as we even have.
00:07:49
Speaker
But the stuff on the material rack is really a numbered stuff in the lack of stuff that we actually use to turn into product So it's great because that's kind of its own segregated area and we had a numbers there and this morning I wanted to just rescan an a number and I was like man we're so close to we lost a lot of momentum because of The change in work here with with school having started up for some of the folks like Alex who's building Lex Which is okay, but I want that
00:08:17
Speaker
Raspberry Pi or whatever scanning ability. We'll do wireless too, but I think we're going to have a couple of
00:08:27
Speaker
at least two or three fixed-point computers. That way, if you can't find the wireless one, you're just like, oh, I can walk over to that post there. And there's always one there that I can just hit, and I'm good. For sure. Yeah. And initially, I was like, oh, man, I want these wireless mobile GURP guns everywhere. And the more we're actually using it, the more we're realizing, OK, we actually want a desktop here, and we want a desktop here. So it'll be probably a 50-50 split by the end of it of an actual station and a mobile solution as well.
Simplifying Shop Technology
00:08:56
Speaker
So you play with it over time. And I'm glad we have the option for both abilities now. Yeah, I get excited about things when they work. But then I always try to remember, look, even if it's seamless and it works great, it's still another battery. It's still another computer. It's still something where I absolutely don't ever want to grow to the point where we have an IT department. You know what I mean? That's not internal, I guess. So if you can get by with fewer, great.
00:09:25
Speaker
Yeah, although we had the ridiculous idea of there's an add-on I'm getting for the Pi called Sleepy Pi, which is a power management device. It puts it into hypersleep. Oh, cool. So it trickles the battery. And apparently, it takes a battery from a day, let's say, to a week or a month, depending on how you're using it.
00:09:45
Speaker
And since we're looking at a 10-second operation 10 times a day, it doesn't need to run for 24 hours a day.
Innovative Battery Management Solutions
00:09:53
Speaker
You know what I mean? It'll hypersleep most of the time. And then I'll put a little vibration sensor on it. So the second you pick it up is the trigger to wake it up out of sleep. Yeah. Sure, sure, sure. I'm having so much fun with this. Those are cool ideas. And then Angelo had the idea. He's like,
00:10:09
Speaker
Wait, you said the Sleepy Pie monitors battery. And I'm like, yeah. And he's like, can we have a dashboard that shows the battery level of all the GURP guns in the shop? And I'm like, yeah, you totally could. Well, yeah. Or you could just have it beep. Yeah. Or every time it wakes up, it flashes a display for half a second of its own battery level.
00:10:29
Speaker
so that you with the operator know, yeah, there's lots of ways to do it. But it's cool. I would build, I would totally figure out a way, if it's not already one, to have a quick cradle, like the rechargeable drill batteries, where when you need recharge, it just drops in. Totally. I've thought about that. I haven't found an elegant solution yet. Because right now, it's USB charged. It's literally a battery bank on the bottom of the device.
00:10:54
Speaker
So you plug a USB in there. You know how there's like phone, you looked into this, the phone wireless chargers, you set the phone on it, and it wirelessly charged. I was wondering, is that NFC? No, it's not NFC, it's whatever it's called. If there's
00:11:11
Speaker
a way I can integrate that into charging the battery bank. So you set it down in this location, and it trickle charges overnight, like there's there needs to be no speed involved. But it's, it doesn't need to wirelessly hit the batteries, I want it to hit like a little pack at the bottom of my stack that sucks the power and then there's a cable that plugs USB into the battery bank. I briefly looked I didn't see that because all the ones out there are for charging your phone.
00:11:38
Speaker
Yeah. You're onto something. Yeah. For sure. Because then you'd never have to think about it. You just put it back in the general area. And most of the time, it will charge. Or we used to use these for strike marks, these little 12 volt gel cell batteries. And I know pies are not 12 volt. I think they're 3.3, I remember. Five. They are five? OK. Well, that's not so bad. So easy to do a regulator transformer there, but a reg, I guess.
00:12:08
Speaker
you could get a, uh, how, how big would it be? Like it's a size like two golf balls. So it may be an awkward form five size format. Uh, and there may be others, but a 12 volt gel cell battery that will probably power a PI for a year. I think so. Yeah. We ran like a battery bank has whatever lithium batteries in it, which are good. Like
00:12:30
Speaker
it's different. And I'm not, look, I'm not a, I could be totally wrong, but what we, the lesson that we learned with strike mark was ironically strange. It was a, it was a larger 12 volt gel cell than that. It was about the size of
00:12:47
Speaker
I don't know. It was probably seven inches by three inches by three inches. And this was lifting a steel plate with a gear motor. I mean, this is like what consumes battery power for sure. And the problem that we had was the batteries were lasting like
00:13:02
Speaker
five months of use, like thousands upon thousands of resets. People were like, oh, we never have to charge these. You're like, oh, you actually want to force a regiment where they actually pay a consequence and they have to be charged. That's awesome. It's a weird thing. Do you actually want a handheld device that doesn't have to get charged for a year? No. Or just have an extra so when you charge one, you just pick up the other. Yeah, you could.
00:13:30
Speaker
But if it charges on a wireless mat, then you can just pick it up again. You don't have to be like, oh, it's charging. You just go grab it. Yeah, there's cool options. And if we had a quick charge solution, the battery doesn't have to be as big. Right. Are you trying to keep them light? Yeah. I mean, it's light enough right now. It's a little bulky. But it's fine. It's great. Yeah, that's super cool. And yeah. Yeah.
00:13:56
Speaker
It's coming together. Good. Awesome. Lex still is not on autonomous Skynet mode, but Alex is working on a couple of, not so much bugs, but workflows of the way we're batching it. So we'll have different vendors will be set to default. So like McMaster will be defaulted to, I think every Wednesday and Friday. And so you can just add stuff to the McMaster queue or add stuff to Lex, which happens to be from McMaster. And then it just pushes the PO
00:14:26
Speaker
every Wednesday, it'll see see me on it. So I know it went out if I or somebody can be informed. And, and then the rest is just it just, it just happens. It's amazing.
00:14:41
Speaker
I forget if I mentioned it last week, but from GURP, I was able to see the inventory. I was able to issue a PO, email it to Datron to buy some end mills. They received the PO and they filled it and they're like, yeah, this looks great. I'm like, no way, that's cool. Then the end mills came in and I was looking through our software and I'm like, how do I close a PO?
00:15:03
Speaker
So my dad came by yesterday. I'm like, I don't know how to close a PO. I've gotten this stuff. Where's the button to do that? And he's like, oh, it's just in here. Oh, okay. Can we rename that? So it makes a bit more sense. So that's, you're saying like basically how you book it in is received. Yeah, exactly. Got it. Yeah, that was one of the more interesting workflows that we went through, which was most of the time it's simple, like a PO was sent, a PO is received, but sometimes
00:15:31
Speaker
we get partials, or sometimes they split the shipment. So we had to have a way of tying in continuity. If you order 10 and only seven come, three remain. Yeah, and then the PO remains open. So we've got a text box where you can type in seven instead of 10. It shows that they're supposed to be 10. Or you can click the completed button that just says they're all there per line item. And then if they're all completed, then it disappears and automatically becomes received, otherwise partially received.
00:16:01
Speaker
Yeah, so we were talking yesterday about what the receiving computer is going to look like and what the receiving screen is going to look like, because we're going to have different logins for each location in the shop, basically. So there'll be a receiving login that shows a certain portal to the website, gives certain access, and defaults to this receiving screen. Yeah. So a package from Lakeshore comes in, and anybody near the door can run through that and receive it. And then it goes into the inventory, and then it gets distributed throughout the shop.
00:16:31
Speaker
So we had this debate and we have a architecture issue with having different user logins because of the way we built the front end in WordPress, which could be a problem, but it is what it is.
Streamlining Operations with Technology
00:16:42
Speaker
But more importantly, I didn't want to deal with logins because logins mean different people have to be logged into a different computer or whatever. So the plan, and this is more for things like maintenance where I want there to be some process check. So if somebody, if a maintenance test,
00:17:01
Speaker
task is sent out through Lex, whoever does that, and also needs to provide identification. So the plan is that we'll effectively have ID cards. So when you scan a maintenance, when a maintenance task comes, let's say probe, Calibrate, Renishaw probe, and the VF2, you'll do that. There'll be a barcode to scan that it's done, but when you scan that barcode, it's then going to prompt you for your barcode. Yeah.
00:17:27
Speaker
And I could do that, or Jared could do that, or Ed could do that, or Garrett could do that. So it's not an upfront scan to enter the system. It's a scan to complete a job, basically, to say who you were. Yeah, I like that, actually. And the way we're doing it is we're having the internet browser auto-remember the login.
00:17:49
Speaker
Just so it remembers, you click login and we're good to go. Just to simplify some things. But, you know, initially my dad was because he built it for a much bigger company and where they want each user to log in with their credentials every time. And I'm like, that just seems like such a pain in the butt. I don't want that here.
00:18:10
Speaker
I get it, but. I'm taking the attitude that, and not to be cynical, but I recognize it's a cynical attitude, but I'm taking the approach that everyone will cheat at every point in time possible. So if it's logged in as receiving, but I need to log in as John, nope, not going to do it. Or if the whole PO didn't come in, but I'm assuming it'll come in tomorrow because it's a reliable vendor. So I'm just going to check it's all here. We're doing everything to stop that in a convenient way.
00:18:39
Speaker
Yeah. On one hand, it's kind of a cynical way to look at it, but on the other hand, it's a reality. You're trying to avoid mistakes upfront. You're trying to simplify the system so that nobody can get lazy, whether you call it cheating or lazy. I'll get lazy doing it. I'm not going to cheat it, but I'll definitely get lazy.
00:19:01
Speaker
Well, and the answer is just make sure it's easy and the idea that, hey, you've got your own barcode. Well, that's easy. And then just go scan it. Yeah. Yeah. You make it easy enough and just establish the process and then make sure everybody does it. And if they're not doing it, it's because it's too hard. And that's a point for improvement. Yep. Cool.
Swiss Machine Operations and Surface Finishing
00:19:20
Speaker
Cool. Man, I spent 20 minutes this morning looking for an eighth inch drill. And I felt so good. No.
00:19:28
Speaker
Yeah, I threw coolant one for the Swiss. And I'm like, OK, I must have used it within the past few weeks. And I must have taken it out and put it in the Swiss tool cart. And it's not here. And it was driving me crazy. And then I went over to the Maury to where we keep most of our end mills. And I found a new pack of four. So I'm like, OK, I can take a new one. But where the heck is the used one? Maybe I broke it and just was done with the job. And I don't know. It was driving me crazy. Oh, there's no resolution to this story? And then the podcast happened.
00:19:58
Speaker
Oh, so I found four new ones, but I don't know where the used one is. I'm assuming I must've broken it and then been done and then moved on. But maybe somebody else did. Nope. Got it. I don't think so. Interesting. How is that Swiss?
00:20:20
Speaker
Good. It doesn't run that often, but we don't need it to run that often at this moment in time. I need to run it now, for sure, making Norseman pivots. I thought that machine would be a 24-7 workhorse, like pivots, screws, saga parts. No? Time effort requirement. We make $500 to $1,000 at a time of each part, and we're good for a while.
00:20:48
Speaker
I ran it probably three or four days last week doing a fairly easy job. So it was easy to come in and just turn it on and make parts. You know, you check them 20 minutes later and you tweak some offsets and then it's good all day. So when things are good, it's amazing. But when it takes, you know, setup or maintenance or, you know, like fine tuning a part and a part's really finicky, then it takes hours. It takes someone to be there. And we don't always have that right now.
00:21:17
Speaker
Right now, it's just me running it. Have you played with any OD roller burnishing? Not OD roller burnishing. I've done a lot of ID roller burnishing. I am about to try OD diamond burnishing with a fixed point tool. Sweet. Yeah, I'm very excited about that. On the saga pen, where's my pen? There it is. The button that you push down.
00:21:47
Speaker
there's three little ceramic ball bearings digging into that button. That is the resistance you feel and a little bit of scratchiness you feel. Sure. And that scratchiness is the turn to finish, you know, the peaks and valleys of the turn finish. So I want to dive and burnish that finish. I want to make it a mirror so that you just get that smoother.
00:22:07
Speaker
finish. So when I make saga buttons, which will be coming up in the next few weeks, I've got a Cogstill diamond burnisher that I'll be trying. Oh, awesome. Same cup. Okay. Cool. Here, see how that works. Yeah. And I was talking with a Sandvik guy came by yesterday and he says, I've done a lot of diamond burnishing over my days.
Tool Systems for Swiss Machines
00:22:24
Speaker
And he said, don't burnish the same surface twice because it just, it won't be as accurate. So if you can, if you do it wrong, scrap the part, make another one.
00:22:36
Speaker
Instead of fine tuning on the same part and like, oh, let me check, let me make another pass, let me check. He's like, just scrap it, make a new one with the new offsets. Because it'll actually wear the diamond in a bad way if you burnish a burnished surface. Are you burnishing for surface finish or diameter? Surface finish and trying to hold the diameter as well, but for surface finish. Right. I mean, I assuming you can hold the diameter. For sure, with turning. Yeah.
00:23:03
Speaker
That's what I thought I was always a not counterintuitive, but a peculiar situation with the burnishing is you actually want to increase your feed per rev to give it a little bit more peaks and valleys potentially before here. Well, if you're hitting diameter,
00:23:18
Speaker
If you were trying to hit diameter, you need material to be displaced. If you have too fine of a thread, because that's really what you're doing when you're turning, then there isn't as much mountains and valleys to flow. Interesting. You're really looking for finish, so it's a little bit less about
00:23:42
Speaker
truly moving material and more of, well, I mean, it is, but maybe just add a zero to the decimal scale if that makes sense. That's interesting because I have no idea at the moment what really to do for speeds and feeds or for preload, like how much material to leave to get my final size, but I'll play with it. I'll write down my notes as I go.
00:24:04
Speaker
say the diameter, whatever, is 250 turned, and then I burnish it, and it comes out at 249, or whatever ends up being, and it's perfect, then okay, I burnished a thou down, and then it seems to work, so go with that.
00:24:19
Speaker
Are you, uh, so it's a stick tool that just has a diamond and just, you just program it like a OD turning tool, huh? You just run across it. And a lot of them are spring loaded and the one I happen to receive is not. And I'm like, I was kind of surprised actually. I might've ordered the wrong one because it's a round stick tool, not a square stick tool. Like I, in my head was expecting.
00:24:42
Speaker
Um, so I don't know if I rushed through that purchase or not, but, uh, I'll either try to make it work or I'll get in, uh, the square stick one. Got it. Did, was the same guy in talking about capital?
00:24:55
Speaker
A little bit about Kapto and also about for the Swiss, they have quick change tool holders for through coolant. So changing a turning insert on a Swiss is not the funnest thing in the world because the whole holder has to come out attached to a coolant line. It's messy. It's awkward. And then you got to put it back. Now your Z is close, but it's never perfect. And your X is completely wrong.
00:25:19
Speaker
Whereas this has two tapered ground faces with a coolant tube through the middle, so it should repeat very well. So they brought in a demo, their QS tooling system. And I was like, yep, I want one. Just give me a quote. I want to buy this. So that's pretty easy.
00:25:36
Speaker
I'm just like a hilarious irony. I set up the micro 100 this week in the ST and I just posted it yesterday about it and everyone's like, oh, it's like the same VQS. I was like, it's so funny because I've seen it in the same catalog, but they kind of pitch it as a Swiss thing and I was like, I know that wouldn't be applied to me, but looking at it, it's like, oh, that is similar. Although I don't know
00:26:01
Speaker
Well, the Micro 100, the rear end has some threads of the adapter, so I'm guessing that would be to throw a coolant thing in there. So they probably do it as well.
00:26:08
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. The Micro100 ones, we use that as well for our ID threading. And with their tapered, what do they call it? QT? Yeah. They work amazing. And they repeat with intents. I've checked. So when I throw a new insert in, I don't touch it off or anything like that. I'll check the next part and make sure my thread is good. But they're great. Well, how is it now that you've seen the QS system, how are they different?
00:26:31
Speaker
They're similar because they have the same kind of taper, backstop sort of thing. One is just a physical holder, and the other is a little piece of carbide that goes in, a stick tool, or whatever you call it. Yeah. OK. Got it.
00:26:48
Speaker
What was I going to say about that? The improvements just keep coming, which is awesome. We make steel fixture plates, we make anodized aluminum, and we make raw aluminum. We spend a fair amount of time adjusting for those different diameters.
Fixture Plate Production Improvements
00:27:06
Speaker
We're now making fixture plates
00:27:08
Speaker
on two different A machines and one B machine, so for op one, op two. And so we have basically started buying boring heads so that way we're not ... Because aluminum usually will hold quite well. Steel, totally different gain, but we'll have a pair of boring heads in one of each machine for anodized diameter, one for unanodized diameter, and then
00:27:31
Speaker
steel. And it's such an obvious improvement. So we don't have to take them out. We don't have to adjust them. We don't have to worry as much about it. What would the diameter difference be between a hole that is going to be anodized and a hole that is not going to be anodized? Quite a bit.
00:27:48
Speaker
Really? Yeah. Like if you foul? No, not that much, but relative to what we're trying to do and hold, it's for sure. If you put an anodized diameter, but never anodized the plate, it would be way too big. Yeah. Yeah. So that's good. And then we just realized yesterday, we need a bigger forklift. We bought a 4,000 pound forklift last year. It's been great. There's not a single thing wrong with it, but we need a 6,000 pound forklift. And so I got a couple of quotes from some used dealers.
00:28:16
Speaker
yesterday. I'll probably try to wrap that up this week. We sold a Robo drill. Nice. Congrats. Thank you. Then we're replacing it. I was going to wait and then it just completely makes sense. We're replacing it with a DT2.
00:28:35
Speaker
So it's kind of the same machine and arguably the Robo drill is better iron or better quality components, but I wanted to ask you last week, why the DT and why not a DM? Is there a big price difference or a big like?
00:28:50
Speaker
Yeah. So when I did that, it's like one of those memories that just stands out. When I did the Haas factory tour video two or three years ago, we were talking to the guys there about it. And the answer that they said, and I hope this is true because I'm saying it and repeating it, but they literally only made the DM because people were looking at the DTs and saying, but I want
00:29:14
Speaker
I want to use my 40 taper tooling. It's not a machine that can otherwise justify having the 40 taper diameter. And at first I didn't sink in, then you kind of realized, oh yeah, you wouldn't put cat 60 in a tormach. Like a machine frame and its rigidity and its column size and so forth correlates to the needs of its spindle and how you're running it. And it is $10,000 more, which at the base price is like 20%. Right. So we have 30 taper tooling from the Robo.
00:29:44
Speaker
Right. So one of the only differences maybe is the taper itself is literally is the only difference. Really? Literally. Yeah, I was under the loose impression that it was a more rigid machine or that it was, you know, bigger in some way or more for milling. But if it's BT 30 to cat 40, and it's, it's destined to be a light duty machine, go nuts, like
00:30:09
Speaker
Yeah, it'll be completely comfortable that it's capable of everything it needs to do. We needed probing on it. We needed a higher spindle speed. We needed a higher capacity tool changer. And then the big one is we absolutely, we're using through spindle cooling and air now all the time with those new holders that have it. We're using air for cleaning parts. So it's funny because it's kind of a downgrade slash subtle change, but it's not at all. It's a completely different beast.
00:30:38
Speaker
Yeah. It depends on how you analyze the situation, but for you guys, it makes a lot more sense because now you have the same control, the same machine over the whole shop and you actually get to utilize it. The robot just was probably sitting more than you wanted it to. Well, it was more than to have that robot, which we just weren't using. I'd rather roll some of the money from that into getting a pallet pool, which is, like I said, what I really ultimately think is better.
00:31:05
Speaker
Yeah. I was watching Jay Pearson's latest robot videos and they're so much fun to watch. They're awesome. I love what he's doing. Have you guys ever, I'm sure you've considered like a hundred times, but have you ever seriously thought about doing kind of what he's doing and the UR robot and setting up a little like outside sell load parts in and out? We thought about it.
00:31:26
Speaker
almost certain that our first foray into automation will include workholding and not just material loading. A lot more complications. You could do the same thing with how the Aroa mounts a pallet. You could have the UR robot grab a pallet with a pull stud and mount it into the machine. Not strong enough.
00:31:48
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Their payload is incredibly light. Actually, so Fifth Access just put out a video. They have an interesting solution in the works. Well, we saw it in ITS two years ago with the pneumatic member. You and I were together in their booth. And they're putting a little like a cleat on the side of the vise. And so a robot can pick up anything with the cleat on it. It could be a pallet, it could be a dovetail, it could be a vise. But what's cool in the video they show is they show how
00:32:17
Speaker
when you push on a FANUC robot, different amounts of pushing deflects to the different amount, like you can move it a quarter inch. And that's the kind of complications behind all of those articulating robots. Whereas the compact 80 solution like you have, where you've got a sled that just shuffles around like a lazy Susan, almost weight is relatively indifferent, like has a guide dog that gets it there.
00:32:43
Speaker
80 kilos or something like a lot of weight. I could sit on the end of it and it would have zero problem. It's not an articulating arm, it's a sled that moves forward and backwards and just rotates. It's always motion every time. It's not articulating in some weird way.
00:33:04
Speaker
Yeah. So Forklift will solve that problem. We need to load the RoboDrill to sell it, to load it out, and then get a DT in. And it's like, by the time I get a Forklift rented for both of those, unless I could somehow get those two to happen on the same day, which isn't going to happen,
00:33:21
Speaker
Um, I have to rent a forklift twice or rigors twice. And then it's like, this is, we're totally comfortable handling that stuff ourselves or the ability to do that. Um, and that, and you can still keep the forklift footprint the same. We don't want a huge forklift here. Um, and then the sky hooks come today, which will get mounted next to the VF sixes, which will be a huge improvement. Are they going to be on wheels or on bolted to the ground? Bolted into the ground. Yeah.
Material Handling and Efficiency
00:33:49
Speaker
Have to be.
00:33:51
Speaker
Are they bigger than the last one you had? Because I saw the first one you got. Twice the size. Yeah. I mean, the VF6s are huge machines. They have stairs. We took the stairs out. It actually works really well with how we have our fixture and how the operator wants to be presented at the machine to be a little bit lower. Kind of like how you see bridge mills, they're like sometimes put into the foundation. So that actually works well for us.
00:34:17
Speaker
here, but having the skyhooks be able to articulate into it and lower the playdown will be pretty well.
00:34:23
Speaker
You've got to robotize the sky hook, man. Yeah, so we actually had to take it off. They have an option to put a cordless drill to lower and raise it without a load on it, just to get it up and down. But we value engineered it down. It wasn't that important. And it's also like, what's the problem you're trying to solve? Well, the problem we're trying to solve is what if the material's on the ground? Well, if it's already at chest level somewhere else in the shop,
00:34:50
Speaker
keep it at chest level as you transport it to the machine. So build a dolly that leaves it at that height. That's cool. When it comes to material handling and moving it around the shop, especially because you're making bigger and bigger and bigger fixture plates that probably weigh much more than anybody wants to pick up. Do you have metal racks with wheels on them, like dollies, and you roll them all around? Do you have sky hooks everywhere?
00:35:16
Speaker
So we have, um, we have the forklift and then we have the portable sky hook. And then we have another stacker lift coming. And that's definitely part of the process of standardizing that. Um, you know, these are not little job shop, just throw one on and pull it off. Like it's a process and that's okay. So I want to make it safe, uh, make it efficient, you know, minimize the wasted motion. Like don't, again, don't take a 200 plate that's 30 inches off the ground, lower down, only the lower, but raise it back up. Um, how do you grab the plate?
00:35:47
Speaker
We have a 2000 pound capacity magnet. I was wondering, yeah.
00:35:52
Speaker
for op one and then op two has holes in it, so we're able to use hooks into the threaded holes. And so we have racking next to the machine. So again, it's like, hey, don't store the material elsewhere. And we're doing that right now with a mod vice. We haven't gotten yet to maybe that phase four of like, hey, are we going to actually take inbound material, process it, clean it, do whatever, and separate it into bins? That's just a lot of
00:36:19
Speaker
busy work. For now, we're just moving it in whatever container the vendor ships it in, box crate, whatever, and then moving it over the machine. Cool. Yeah, that's good to hear. Everything's getting smooth.
00:36:37
Speaker
We keep talking about that here. As great as things get, there's always new challenges. There's always new problems. It's like the amount of hassle never stops, but the field changes all the time. There's so many things we just don't worry about anymore because we've gotten them to the point where they just run. They just work. It's just every day. It's no big deal, but still every day there are interesting and fun challenges that I love that keeps us driven and creative.
00:37:06
Speaker
Yeah, sometimes you step back and you're like, it's still not easy. But that's what we do. I'm not complaining. Hey, speaking of challenges, where are we on the Kern Rask? I don't want to talk about it. I do. Yeah. I made some good progress on the blade, which is kind of the last big hassle. I made my clamps.
00:37:30
Speaker
almost got the Swarf toolpath to do what I want. I realized I have to time the guide curves so they match properly in an archy whatever way. So once I do that, I think it'll actually look good and make a lot of sense. And then
00:37:46
Speaker
Yeah, and then I'll be milling that and grinding that with, I've got three different grits of grinding wheels, so I might go in and use all three, like rough semi-finish and finish grind. Wow. Depending on what's needed. Yeah, sure, sure. Right with the rough grit and see how it looks. Because it's like a one-inch disc that's 100 thou thick.
00:38:07
Speaker
So it's like a little quarter, two quarters stacked on top of each other, whatever. And we're side milling with that grinding wheel. So we're stepping up a whole bunch of times. So I need to get the finished product to have zero step lines. And we'll have to play with our step over and our stock to leave and all that per pass. Is that getting programmed as a swarf as well? If it works. I haven't tried that yet. That's so cool.
Optimizing Machining with Custom 3D Sketches
00:38:31
Speaker
Have you watched Dan Pacific's? I think he did it with Marty Deans as well.
00:38:37
Speaker
the last year's Academy presentation where he shows custom 3D sketches to drive Swarf.
00:38:45
Speaker
I remember watching it, but I will absolutely watch it again right now. Yeah. We'll make sure to put a link in the description. But if anybody ever wants to do Swarp, he gives some examples that are just amazing. And the one was a riflescope mount where you needed to come in the side and then you needed to kind of tip over and roll over a barrel and then reorient. You just weren't going to get it without
00:39:10
Speaker
We've all done that selection stuff in Fusion where you're trying to click the right chain and the right location. He shows how you could do a project with 3D sketch and then basically create the upper and the lower curves. It's so simple and beautiful. That's what I had to do. It has to be a 3D sketch in order to do what I wanted to do. Because at first, it was just a 2D sketch. I'm like, that doesn't look right. I figured out the 3D sketch, but now,
00:39:39
Speaker
The end mill wants to go all the way around to the other side of the part and machine a bit to the other side of the part because I got my sketch leads wrong or something. So I just got to keep playing with that. But I think Swarf, as you suggested, will do what I want to do. You could also do the trim toolpath if you're hacking it just to get it going. Right. Yeah, I'll play with that if I have to. OK.
New Grinding Wheel Designs
00:40:01
Speaker
But yeah, I think today, tomorrow, I'll be playing with that once I get the Swiss rockin'. That's my big thing next, doing that. Awesome. What else?
00:40:12
Speaker
The other thing I'm starting on the Swiss for the first time is I got these custom-made grinding wheels made from the same company that's doing the Kern ones for the Rask blades. But it's like a cone with a cupped grinding wheel at the end. So there's nothing in the middle. And I'm going to use
Future Plans and Projects
00:40:29
Speaker
that. What am I grinding? The head of our Norseman pivots. Like when you look at it and there's the logo. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:40:38
Speaker
the liking guy. That surface, we've talked about this before, I've never been able to turn the most beautiful finish on that surface. So I've got these grinding wheels made, and I'll be grinding that surface to be like, same. Yeah, sure. I'm doing it a different way. And it works well, but this way will work better. So so today, I'll be programming that and getting it going. And then
00:41:03
Speaker
Huh? That's my day. The RAS grinding thing makes me just chuckle, because it's like, dude, just go find some used Walter, or Rollamatic, or Anka, because guess what? That, like, yes. But then you could do it in the current, right? Exactly. That's why I got the current, you know, to be able to do these swarthy five-axis, like, they're full of five-axis simultaneous toolpath to do what this needs to be. And that's why I got it. Awesome. Cool.
00:41:32
Speaker
Well, have fun. I'll see you next week. Sounds good, buddy. Have a great day. Bye.