Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Business of Machining - Episode 93
252 Plays7 years ago
Welcome to Autodesk University
With a focus on Fusion and Manufacturing
Special guest for this episode: Rob Awesome Lockwood!
Here is the link of the event Grimsmo, Saunders, and Rob Lockwood were at.
It's time for Grimsmo and Saunders to head to class for four days straight of learning, inspiration, and a little bit of teaching.
In this episode, we catch Saunders, Grimsmo, and Lockwood in the thick of the event in Las Vegas, and hear their thoughts on the courses they've attended so far and what they think of popular topics of the event.
“It’s wonderful to meet the architects of [Fusion 360]” - Saunders
Featured classes:
- 101 Tips on Fusion 360 - Maximize the number of features you know about, and use, on Fusion 360 (especially helpful for the self-taught machinist)
“The self-taught Fusion experience means that we’re probably missing out on some key functions that would make our lives easier” - Grimsmo
"The most valuable stuff that I've gotten is the underpinning stuff of fusion" - Lockwood
- Under the hood of Fusion 360 - Keep your sketches light weight!
- Utilize Macro Programming and Probing to Make More Parts, Better - Taught by Grimsmo
- Speeds and Feeds - Taught by Saunders
- CAM with Generative - Overview by Lockwood
- Design Thinking with Fusion 360 - Jeff Smith (@blaster701 on Instagram). Saunders loved this class! It got him to think more about designing with intent.
Let's Talk Fusion
The three machinists discuss the changes Fusion could make, the changes they have made, and what the implications of these changes could mean for the software and the community.
“If everyone is doing it incorrectly, there's really a discussion to be had about changing the workflow” - Saunders
What's the hot topic of the conference? Generative Design
“Everyone’s talking about generative here” - Grimsmo
"Some of the designs look like when you see a whale carcass" - Lockwood
"What’s neat about [generative design] is, by definition, all of the results are manufacturable, technically” - Lockwood
"Ask me about singularity"
- A quote Lockwood's conference badge
Saunders and Lockwood both give their definitions of Generative design in manufacturing, then the three of them discuss its implications. They also discuss the definition of singularity design for manufacturing.
Psst...Miss the event but want to watch the classes anyway?
Fear not! Lots of the classes were recorded and are online.
Fusion Payment Model
Fusion continues to offer the free version, but there is only one paid version now and it’s 500 dollars a year. These three believe it's a good value, and an easy to understand model
We may be talking about Fusion and manufacturing a lot, but don't forget...
"Autodesk is a giant company, and the world is a giant place, and our manufacturing sector is a small percentage of what they do" - Grimsmo
The conference is finished, and everyone's back home, but they are feeling more inspired than ever.
What do YOU think?
- How can a design software improve buildings of the future such as hospitals and schools?
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Business of Machining, episode 90-something. Three, we're going with three. Let's assume it's 93. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. And we have a guest today. Rob Awesome Lockwood.
Autodesk University Experience
00:00:14
Speaker
Normally I say good morning, but actually it technically is morning, but we've already been hanging out at Autodesk University for a number of hours. It's 11.58 local time. Yeah, so we're at AU in Las Vegas and been here for four days or something.
00:00:31
Speaker
Talk to me about what classes you've been going to. It seems like all of our buddies are doing classes, so I'm trying to hit all of those. What was it? Lawrence did a class on Miltern, which was really good. Rob did a class on Generative. I did a class on 101 Tips on Fusion 360. That was really good.
00:00:51
Speaker
We just did one under the hood of Fusion 360,
Fusion 360 Techniques and Tips
00:00:54
Speaker
which was cool. I learned a lot of how to keep your sketches lightweight and which dimensioning to use that's easier on the processor than the other ones. Or even understanding not deleting sketches, but rather using the correct way of constraints and moving them so that you're not replacing a face or a body, but rather just modifying it, which lets Fusion do a better job of understanding the downstream stuff you've already done. So it's basically a way to avoid
00:01:21
Speaker
Something we've all probably had which is you make one Relatively minor change and you've lost all your fillets. Yeah, it breaks a lot of stuff. Right? Yeah Well, I mean all of us seem to be totally self-taught fusion learners. So it's like you just do it works You don't know what's going on. I don't think there's any I don't think there's an alternative to self-taught fusion learner I know right there's a there's self-taught or there's John Saunders question is which one was the better
00:01:47
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of that stuff's good to hear coming out here. It's stuff that definitely doesn't seem to come up very often in the Fusion environment. But if you come from another CAD tool, all of that translates really well into Fusion. So the same design intent of using planes or faces as selections rather than individual edges. A lot of that kind of stuff is pretty universal. It's the same in any software, really, where the engineer is like, oh, clearly you've got to do it like this. Whereas everybody else is like, this is easier. So this is the only way I've ever done it. Right.
00:02:16
Speaker
That's what I think is interesting is it's wonderful to meet the architects of it and they walk
Fusion's Growth and User Feedback
00:02:21
Speaker
you through how it is. I still think there's some culpability to like, if everybody is doing it incorrectly, that's really a discussion to be had about changing the workflow. I'd like to think that Fusion is young enough and nimble enough to make decisions for the long term, better, hoping that the future is brighter than the past in terms of where it grows. On the flip side, Fusion is now
00:02:40
Speaker
Big enough to where you know if they change things it will probably be disruptive and that comes in price. Yeah Especially core things that have been around forever yet the community is saying maybe it should be different, right? But then I think that what they do really well is in not breaking it downstream, but in guiding the user that there's this specific fusion thing that's whether you should use ground or whether you should produce a rigid group and
00:03:05
Speaker
Currently, I think it sort of guides you towards using ground. A rigid joint. Yeah, sorry. A rigid joint, not a rigid group. But you'll see ground and immediately you connect to that as being the thing that you're looking for. But that's something we're like, yeah, they probably want both functionalities, but they should be guiding people towards the correct answer instead of the wrong ones. And why? Yeah, exactly. But it is exciting.
00:03:26
Speaker
The one of the cool things about AU is also kind of a, I don't know if it's behind the scenes look, but they're pretty candid and pretty honest. We've had some conversations with people that are decision makers and they'll think about it and then they'll say, well, be careful what you wish for. There's some ramifications. And so that sort of tells you
00:03:44
Speaker
It's fun to be at the chess table when someone who's already thought a few moves ahead and you start to be a little sympathetic when it comes to some of the things we see folks correct about like the data management and the interface and permissions and logins and stuff that's very real, but it's the things like Google sign-in and Dropbox and Apple Family, what's it called, Apple Family accounts? Have been brought up a lot as good models, but I don't think anybody has the template yet.
00:04:12
Speaker
Yeah, and I agree that it's often they're candid, but it's easy for them sometimes to come off as there's a lot of excuses for why we have a logjam and that we're just going to stay in that logjam for a while and you as a user kind of just get stuck in that logjam. I don't care, you just need to choose something. Any solution here is better than no solution.
Generative Design Exploration
00:04:34
Speaker
They also have said that Fusion is growing up. It's actually to me, perhaps because it mimics our own businesses, it's good to see Fusion has done a really great job of dominating a movement, whatever you want to call it, a maker movement, a hacker movement, or the 3D printing movement, or the younger movement.
00:04:50
Speaker
But they're now trying to make sure it's got these capabilities to help address that next step up. And I think there's immediate knee-jerk reactions I want to have when I say, well, how are you going to do that if this, if this, like shortcomings, but it actually does have me excited about it. The direction is still very much profusion and it's good.
00:05:14
Speaker
Yeah, Fusion's been around, I think, for over 10 years, technically, like in development. But we've only heard of it for the past, what, four? Right. Right. And so I kind of relate it to our businesses, too, which are, you know, seven to 10 years old. And it's like, people have only really known about us for the past three, four years. Right. So it's like, everything's growing together. Maybe that's why we resonated with us so much. Yeah. We get to talk with the development guys, and we're like, OK, you guys are growing. We're growing. Like, it's all, it makes sense, right? Right.
00:05:43
Speaker
So can we talk about generative? Yeah, everybody's talking about generative here. So I learned a wonderful thing, which is so if you don't know what generative is, it would be if you ever seen these sort of very biological or organic shapes that wouldn't ever be something you modeled with sketches and extrusions. But again, very, very
00:06:03
Speaker
Would you guys agree? How would you describe? I mean, some of the designs look like when you see a whale carcass or something like that. They will look exactly like that, including odd little indentations that look like bone spurs or something like that on them. So organic to me is the perfect group. There's not a better word for that geometry.
00:06:23
Speaker
But usually organic, they're not always beautiful. And nature does have a good way. I was actually in a class this morning and we were talking about the golden ratio and that makes me happy. That makes me excited. I like that. And the golden ratio is not something that I see in generative design.
00:06:39
Speaker
No, but yeah, there's definitely examples of beauty. But then there's also the existence of the camel, which is not the most. But forget her. Yeah, it doesn't always get it right. Nature does not always quite get it right. But that's what's cool.
00:06:54
Speaker
I guess I want to explain what I learned, which is it is not topology optimization. So let's say you have a bracket that holds up the example that I'm going to use is one they use here, which is this jet engine. So I can't tell you what this bracket exactly looks like over a voice podcast, but it's got a couple of holes that bolt into a jet engine and then it's used to remove the jet engine on maintenance. And so it's
00:07:18
Speaker
Generative design does not take this existing Boeing or GE part or whatever and basically say let's remove subject to simulation, subject to stress analysis, subject to weight requirements or needs. If it doesn't go and remove it literally is bottoms up. So you're actually taking this
00:07:38
Speaker
I want to put a link in the description to some of the like YouTube examples of generative workflows. But basically you're saying, hey, I need to have some pins here and some screws here and then we're gonna have forces pushing left and right and up and down and there's gravity and when you're lifting off, so you apply these, what are they called, load cases? And then what it does is it literally, we'll get into the details in a second about limitations, but it basically starts from nothing and starts creating something out of nothing subject to
00:08:07
Speaker
Those limits and there's loads so you have like like let's say ten points just dots in the air basically Not connected whatsoever and then with load cases in all different directions that a generative designs and fills in between the gaps Yeah, and what you end up with is geometry that you're going to make sure passes all the way through untouched or I mean that
00:08:28
Speaker
that the synthesized geometry is allowed to touch to. That's one of your inputs. The other one is obstacle geometry, which is areas that it's not allowed to synthesize geometry into. You do those two things. You have decent level of control around physical constraints. So Rob did a class that was really good, and he showed a knife that he's working on now, but also your typical gusseted angled shelf bracket when you're hanging up the pictures in the hallway. And obviously, you need to be able to get a screwdriver
00:08:55
Speaker
Excuse me, you need to put a screw into the bracket, but you also need to be able to get a screwdriver all the way into that. So you create these physical limitations, say you can't generatively design through that passageway, but you don't start with a gusset or an angle or a piece of pizza shape and say, work around. You can set it starting shape, I guess, but it is generative in the literal sense of the word, which is crazy.
00:09:21
Speaker
So and to me at that stage it's still generative design but it's only slightly better than topology optimization. If you were working backwards from a shape to you would arrive at something really similar. It actually gets cooler to me when you're able to start.
00:09:34
Speaker
throwing design for manufacturing into that generative of synthesis as another constraint, saying that this has to be able to be manufacturable using a ball end mill from these two orientations specifically. On a three-axis machine. Yeah, on a three-axis machine or unconstrained or from specific angles or for additive is another option. What's neat about that is that by definition, all of the results are manufacturable technically.
00:10:03
Speaker
which is different. I work with a lot of very, very talented designers and engineers, and getting like DFM kind of comes at the back end of their process, typically. And so with this, it all kind of happens at the same time. To me, it's pretty powerful. It's rare that you can generate something and have it be by definition. Meet your design goals, meet your engineering goals, and have manufacturing be considered upfront in that process.
00:10:30
Speaker
And that new sort of checkbox of manufacturability constraints is very green. Literally, it just came out. So the pace of iteration here is quite soon. And Rob seemed to be pleased with those initial results, which is quite promising. But to take a step back, I mean, since the Industrial Revolution or since the wheel, we've always basically solved with generally a subtractive mindset and basically with probably massive amounts of over
00:11:00
Speaker
Levels of safety or margins of safety, you know when somebody comes to us as a job shop to make something real quick and we need to You know, they start with a basically a bunch of material and drill holes or remove stuff but you're still kind of left with a lot more material than you need maybe you could say that change with the Popularization of 3d printing where you can add it if stuff but generative is sort of as the potential to totally unwind all of that and say instead of
00:11:27
Speaker
And to basically say, what do you really need here? Which is actually a really interesting way of paralleling it to industrial design of saying, let's start with making sure we solve the problem of what we need, not just what do we have to start with. Yeah. Yeah. And I think most, especially the trendy thing in design for probably the last 50 years, but at least recently is minimalistic design, right? And really getting to the basis of what is the minimum that we need to do here to meet the design goals. So.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah, one of the things that they try to push in the keynote presentations was if you're a designer and it's your job to make a part from scratch to meet these needs, typically you have your mounting points first because it's got to fit here.
00:12:10
Speaker
One of the things they were trying to push was that it might be actually faster for the generative to come up with its own 100 different variations of the product as opposed to the designer spending 10, 20, 30 hours trying to design. I think I mentioned that in my class, which is this concept of like, yeah, I could design something that would meet these goals, but for 25 cloud credits or whatever, you can get a hundred solutions to this problem in somewhere around two hours.
00:12:37
Speaker
In some ways that seems expensive, but if you compare it to the time that it's going to take a team of engineers or designers to reach those same solutions, it's like... For John and I as basically self-taught entrepreneurs, time is becoming a lot more precious, but in the past for sure, time is fungible, it's free, it's all spent as long as it takes to do it. Now it's not quite the same, especially as we hire people and have them do stuff and pay them money to spend their time doing it.
00:13:04
Speaker
So it kind of starts to make sense the value of using generative to make your designs for you in a way. Business of machining episode 374. Hey Grimsmoke, can I borrow some cloud credits? I'm running alone. One of the things I love about Fusion is it lets me do things I'm not supposed to do. It's a big part of letting me start a YouTube channel or run this machine shop. I feel more confident
00:13:29
Speaker
about going back and doing some simulation stuff like static load stuff, FEA analysis that I've always wanted to do. And to be honest, I'm kind of running out of time in life to focus on that stuff. But I like if anything, I want to be able to tell my team and people that they can do it. And then things like I'm not a metallurgist, but to take a generative design and understand visually the differences of what this part looks like. Let's say it's a Lockwood example is a boxcar. What do you call the boxcar blades where you can break off the net?
00:13:58
Speaker
It's an old phone one, but a snap off. Snap off. Right. So it's this sort of a Wrigley chewing gum stick scale up object. But what does it need to be, what does it need to look like to have the same lack of or torsion rigidity if it was printed out of ABS, printed out of titanium, machined out of stainless, machined out of aluminum. And you'd be seeing that as a wonderful way to understand the material properties.
00:14:27
Speaker
Yeah, so I've been at IEU. There's obviously tons of machining content. John talked about going to a lot of the friends classes. I've been trying to break out and go to simulation classes, seeing the one today diving under the hood of Fusion was pretty good. And there was one similar yesterday on the API. Have you guys seen much outside of the machining stuff, or what else? Not really. I wish I would have. I wanted to go to one of the API classes, but I didn't.
00:14:54
Speaker
I didn't wake up in time. I've had a few of those too. Yeah, sleepy yet. Let me tell you, if you want to enjoy a ghost town, Vegas at six in the morning might as well be vacant. There is no line at Starbucks.
00:15:10
Speaker
So I did a class, this guy Jeff, his last name is eluding me, but he's blaster 701 or something on Instagram. So he's a pretty talented industrial designer. Seeing him sketch is just absolutely amazing and inspiring. And the class was something like, you know, design intent within Fusion 360. And so we just did this.
00:15:30
Speaker
hour and a half lab exercise of redoing the AU name badge and it's a really good example to following someone who's passionate regardless of what the subject is. I don't care about trade show event badges but when you actually go through the skill set and exercise of distilling down so we don't like the fact that it has a neck strap that it dangles that the neck strap is centered on the back of your
00:15:51
Speaker
thing like I don't really need to know your last name. It's a big marketing thing for Autodesk. What do I do with it at dinner? I don't want this big badge that I get charged for if I lose and why isn't it tied in with my room key or I'm using the app so much this thing feels superfluous. And so again I don't care about the name badge but that exercise is probably very valuable and Rob you probably deal with this a lot more as a
00:16:12
Speaker
ultimate person who's involved more in consumer electronics, right? Right. One of the things joining a design consultancy that struck me immediately was how much more a true design group, a group that's focused on a consumer's interaction with their product
00:16:27
Speaker
the considerations that they take, which are exactly things like you're describing, but even down to the point of which fabric feels right on your face, or which thing's going to cause heat to dissipate well, and how comfortable is this hat on your head, which is easy to solve for your head and your head, but not for the world of heads that exists is near and dear to my heart at this point.
00:16:51
Speaker
Right, right. Which is cool, and it's kind of one of those funny reasons to me as a person that loves to tour factories. I love to see machining in non-machining environments, but it's why Apple and Nike and Reebok or Facebook or all these people are very involved in machining and rapid prototyping and all this stuff, which is really cool. I'm crazy.
00:17:18
Speaker
Any classes left? Yours. Yours. Speeds and feets. Yeah. I'm excited. I'm nervous only about, again, the balance of you want to make sure people leave. Like I love classes that push me beyond my comfort zone, that make me see new things and like even the fusion.
00:17:37
Speaker
tips and tricks. Like when I learned a fusion, I wasn't even in class, but when you told me about the tip you learned, you feel like you were almost robbed of something by not having known about it before. Do you want to tell about that? I went to a class with Scott Moyse and
00:17:55
Speaker
he did a hundred and one tips on fusion 360 and one of the notable ones to me was on the trim command so if you have a bunch of sketches you click T and you can trim between lines and segments and stuff and he says if you just click and drag and move your mouse all over it'll trim everything you touch and I'm like that would save me a lot of time because I use this command a lot and one of those things I just never thought to try so like again the self-taught fusion experience
00:18:19
Speaker
Is missing out on probably like all of us are probably missing some key functionalities that the designer is like oh, this is a great idea Let's put it in but nobody realizes. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I'm really bummed out that I missed his class Well, so you don't need an AU badge to get access online, right? But they're not recording all of the classes. They didn't record my class. I asked him and his specifically was recording So at least feel good about that
00:18:45
Speaker
And it's actually not hard, and I say this because I wanted to look up a class from last year done by Amish Slanky, Lawrence, and Phil on Don't Fear Five Access, and I really wanted to find those slides, but I immediately had that laziness hurdle of, well, this is going to be some Google food, Autodesk website, searching through, logging in, blah, blah, blah. And I'll tell you, I found it probably in 20 seconds or 30 seconds.
00:19:12
Speaker
So I would encourage anybody who is feeling inspired, you know, carve out an hour, like just literally an hour and go scroll through some of the Autodesk University content and you can watch the old classes, you can download handouts, really good stuff.
00:19:27
Speaker
Going back to previous AU's I just want to give two shout outs for Kevin Schneider did a class I think last year or maybe the year before that was pretty fundamental to my figuring out a bunch of the annoying things with infusion and then a guy named Bill Dieter from Terrazine did one that was on
00:19:45
Speaker
Soft goods generation like making clothes within fusion and that's maybe not something that feels that Relevant, but it was a whole lot of like the process around developing a new Literally a new workflow within fusion to fit his end goals and that also Changed quite a bit of my perspective on fusion and how well it can like impress me How well it can integrate with external tools in a lot of cases? Yeah
00:20:10
Speaker
That's cool. I feel like I wish, and again, I'm not sure it's practical for me at this point, I do feel like I wish I was better at some of the patch, well not so much patch, but more of the T-spline modeling. It seems very relevant, oh, actually to tie back into generative. So generative, I'm
00:20:27
Speaker
making this brief which may come at a consequence of important stuff but generative will output this shape and that shape is optimized subject to things like manufacturing constraints but one of the things I also learned is it's it's not only okay but it's encouraged to basically then
00:20:42
Speaker
use that shape to then recreate from scratch which certainly has some implications of work but recreating it subject to symmetry or design intent or industrial designing basics but also you can then do it out of say that was a good example of a wheelchair where they made it out of sheet metal because you could get pretty darn close but now we can just stamp this or plasma cut it and once that design is done you can still go in with infusion and do
00:21:12
Speaker
Probably in that case some pretty simple Simulations which the simulation is kind of that like if a hundred pound person is sitting in it and they stop Is it going to flex too much or break something? That's really cool. Yeah Yeah, and something I learned from your class about generative is that now it'll output a t-spline model Where you can easily like just go in there and make this diameter bigger or change it or add a feature or whatever Yeah, so that that harkens back to what I was talking about with terra sign and like the the difference between
00:21:39
Speaker
Six months ago, using generative design and how well integrated it was with Fusion, and in the last month or so, they pulled it in, made it so it outputs an editable T-spline body, added some specific tools. It's like that handful of little changes, it makes it probably a thousand times easier to use today than it did a month ago. That good level of disconnect. A handful of small little pieces that fix big things.
00:22:05
Speaker
And from a housekeeping standpoint, I don't think Autodesk always realizes how little people know or frankly care about fusion licensing, but it's probably worth noting that there were some complexities about users and accounts and capabilities that related to kind of the free fusion versus fusion standard versus fusion ultimate.
Fusion 360 Licensing Changes
00:22:24
Speaker
And that's all basically gone now because they'll continue to offer the free version
00:22:28
Speaker
but they are, there's only one paid version of Fusion now. It's 500 bucks a year and that's everything and I personally don't fault Autodesk if they start kind of being a little bit more judicious about enforcing that. I would ask that they make sure they do a good job on the user account side and managing team hubs and stuff because that matters to me right now as a business but it's an awesome, it's certainly a good value and I guess
00:22:54
Speaker
I feel like I don't want it to not succeed. It's a new, clear value offering. I don't have to explain it anymore, I guess.
00:23:08
Speaker
You've done any other classes this week that are interesting, Rob? Or not? Most of the ones I've done that, like I said, I've been trying to find ones that are outside of machining a little bit and push on some of the design. I mean, you and I took the same class referencing the wheelchair and generative design and rebuilding it. That one was really valuable. I think the most valuable stuff that I've gotten have been the underpinnings of Fusion. I've taken a couple classes around that. And that's been how stuff works type.
00:23:35
Speaker
Yeah, just before we sat in under the hood class, I had like 45 minutes to kill. So I was just walking through the main hub area and there was this theater room area with the door open and a bunch of stuff playing. So I just walked in, sat down in these big, comfy chairs with everybody and watched a presentation for like 45 minutes.
00:23:54
Speaker
A couple different young speakers go up, you know, some were nervous and some were like babbling and some were really smooth and polished and good. And it was fun to see just from a human perspective, but a lot of it was towards construction and building. And one of the guys said in the next like 20, 30 years, we might have another 2 billion people on earth. And the infrastructure it's going to take to make that kind of building and like waste and all that stuff. And he's like, we need to figure this out now.
00:24:19
Speaker
And he gave all these examples and, you know, how to use something like generative to not only design a building using less material, but have a better layout and design cities and all this stuff. And it took me out of the manufacturing world and realized
00:24:33
Speaker
you know, once again that Autodesk is a giant company in the world, is a giant place and our manufacturing sector is like 10%, 5% of what they do here. There's so many software in Autodesk, BIM and Revit and all this stuff that I know nothing past the name of it and that there's a lot of people here for it.
00:24:52
Speaker
I love to use the AU example of like there's a flock of people here who do like HVAC ducting systems for hospitals and they're taking classes on that subject matter and like they could care less about my five axis like desires. It's completely irrelevant to them. And almost vice versa. Yeah, this is true.
00:25:15
Speaker
But I wonder if they're looking at generative design for layout of HVAC systems, because it probably is equally applicable. They've used it to layout office spaces and building layouts. Really? Yeah. They have an office in Toronto where the... You should check it out because the whole office was laid out with generative design, a totally different aspect. They're an application of the same underpinning algorithms, but to optimize for things like
00:25:39
Speaker
how far your walk is to the bathroom, or how much light your desk space gets, or how quiet your office space or your cubicle is. That's cool. Oh, I took a good class with Brett Kavo on, I don't know what it was called, but lean manufacturing. It's
Lean Manufacturing Innovations
00:25:55
Speaker
like agile something. Yes.
00:25:56
Speaker
I don't think it was a fan of the word lean, which is fine by me, but I definitely am going to do a follow-up video after I get my notes together, but some really simple implementable improvements on QR codes, common cards. We're going to get some, I realize we should just have like a shop tablet or iPad that we can use.
00:26:15
Speaker
Ask the thing to scan something to like watch a tutorial video because I don't know it's not always good You have personal iPhones on that kind of thing Raspberry Pi hooked up to a screen for Asana. I've been trying to figure this out and that's an obvious solution
00:26:30
Speaker
Yeah, good stuff. Yeah, he's a super cool guy. I met him at IMTS a couple months ago and I bumped him to a couple times here at the show and I mean he's from New Zealand, he's got the CNC router company and he's growing fast and hard and he's got some excellent goals to shoot for in the future and super smart guy like the kind of things, little things that he's coming up with for his own personal team that are like actual software products that he's just like, yeah, I just had a, I needed a solution. So I came up with this and I'm like, I want that.
00:26:58
Speaker
Yeah. He may be the new Jay Pearson. Jay, you hear that? You've got competition now. He's pretty good. I'm sad that I missed his class as well. But I know I've heard him talk on Instagram a few times about handling PDM, but from a really small or basic scale. What is PDM? Or just product data management. The ERP falls under that same category as well.
00:27:24
Speaker
which I'm also a pretty big fan of, which is like, I think there's tools that you can use to start implementing that stuff early that won't dead end you and then it will translate well into when you adopt something like ProShop. So I'm curious if you touched on some of that in this class. You didn't get into ERP. They are going to roll out some of their own custom software, which again, Jay Pearson has done it. The folks at S&H Machine have done it. We are not against it, but haven't gotten there yet. I mean, to some extent, I would argue you have with Shopify, Upwork,
00:27:53
Speaker
Yeah, even Google Sheets. We just finished integrating a Raspberry Pi with my Maury with Google Sheets and Google Drive automatically. And I just got a text this morning from Angelo saying, because when Barry comes in in the morning and loads the pallets, he doesn't know how to change tools yet and finalize things. But he can load the pallet and it cycles start. And if the tools are worn out, he's like,
00:28:15
Speaker
I got to wait two hours for everybody else to come in. So Angelo can now look the night before and preload any 1L tools and be like, okay, it's good to go for Barry. So it was his first time using that kind of system. And he's like, okay, I get it now. Good job, guys. That was worth the effort.
00:28:31
Speaker
But I think it's important to put that in context of not how, I don't know. I just remember a moment when you and I were at Campolite slash Milterra, what, three months ago?
5-Axis Machining Concepts
00:28:43
Speaker
And there's idea of forward look ahead scheduling conflicts of material or spindles or tooling or wear or CMM. And what you did is,
00:28:55
Speaker
Easier now that you've done it and you've chunked it down, but you were kind of staring into the this three or four months ago It's now it all started as this little idea of this crazy thing. That's like I wonder if I could do that I don't know how to do that. I just need it done right so I will make it happen awesome I did a class on two classes on five axis stuff one was more just general five axis
00:29:19
Speaker
improvements and explanations which was awesome because three minutes in I was seeing terms I wasn't familiar with which is exactly what I wanted to have which is not a regurgitation of very basic stuff. The other one was very similar but focused more on CAM side of things and I was always embarrassed to admit these things but whatever I did not know what a five axis singularity issue is.
00:29:45
Speaker
And I'm guessing you don't. I still don't know. Right, because we're so similar. And Rob Lockwood is holding up his badge. And I refuse to look at him right now. Because he says, ask me about singularities. And three days ago, I saw that. I didn't know that. And I refuse to ask him.
00:30:01
Speaker
And so sure enough, so it's actually really simple. A singularity happens when two axes, well actually I'm going to explain it and then we'll let Rob Lockwood take over. He's going to translate it for us. So when you have the z-axis become normal to or basically pointing directly at like your a or your b,
00:30:20
Speaker
there are two or potentially more solutions that the machine can do next. And machines don't know how to handle that well at all. And it also really speaks to the fact that G-code is not actually the final recipe, but rather just the instructions that the next thing down the chain, which is your controller or something within the controller is going to decide for the toolpath management. So that's one reason why sometimes you'll get really crazy flip moves or switch moves or just bad toolpaths out of a five-axis machine.
00:30:51
Speaker
Yeah, so let me tell you why you're wrong. No, actually, I think you nailed that really well. It's basically if your tool axis on, let's say, an AC 5-axis machine, it's a lot of time the easiest way to see it when you get alignment of rotary motion with your tool axis and it crosses through the center point of one or more axis.
00:31:14
Speaker
It's an incredibly common thing if you picture machining a dome. There's essentially no way to machine a dome that's aligned with the center of the table without winding up with one or more singularities at some point. Assuming you're pointing normal to it, there's stuff you can do to move away from that singularity and try and reduce it. And if you're only machining part of a hemisphere, you can probably avoid it.
00:31:39
Speaker
There's plenty of stuff you can do to mitigate it like typically what they'll do is see on the campsite try and see that there's a likely singularity and essentially correct the tilt angle slightly to just avoid it to have control over the machine motion. I think it's actually even a larger issue on something like a fan of robot.
00:31:57
Speaker
where there's multiple rotary axes and there can be like really quickly the joints themselves can have replication in the motion that they're able to produce and so oftentimes you have multiple results that multiple paths that it could take and they can be wind up passing through another rotary axis and winds up being actually really difficult to avoid in that scenario.
00:32:20
Speaker
And it was great because I had heard of, but wasn't comfortable really saying, like, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table, table
00:32:47
Speaker
general machine tool knowledge folder because if anything, it's not that you want to be better about it, but it's a really good vetting tool because you always want to find people on your quote unquote team as an entrepreneur who can help you out. And it's not to try to be like, to be rude or just size people up, but you'll find apps guys or tech guys or sales guys who are just out to push iron. And then you'll find guys that are like, so that's actually really interesting. We decided to switch this because of this issue and they're like, okay, that's a person that has a very different level of skill sets.
00:33:16
Speaker
And background and that's somebody that can be really really helpful and to me. It's kind of a filter of Who's been in this and who's you know? It's a good thing to know and I like I like fun to be smart about it's fun to learn
00:33:31
Speaker
The other one thing I learned about 5-axis was I never actually knew what A, B, C-axis, which one was which. I know C-axis because it's on my lathe, but A-axis is along the X, B is along the Y, and C is along the Z, and I just never really clicked that in my head. I never understood, but now I'm like, oh, that makes perfect sense.
00:33:50
Speaker
And it's interesting, I remember when I was starting to get into 5-axis work, I hadn't really appreciated the nuances between a head-head machine, a head-table machine, or a table-table machine, which is the difference is where the rotary axes lie, essentially. But it has real-world complications, like if you're drilling a hole, this is going to be really difficult to explain on a podcast, I suppose.
00:34:10
Speaker
If you're drilling a hole into something and you've rotated a head axis, now when you go to retract that, you've got to make sure that you're still in line with the rotation that's happened or your drill's retracting straight up and through the side of your hole, potentially.
00:34:28
Speaker
That's not a problem on a table-table machine. The z-axis only ever moves in one orientation and is never rotated. But they'd have to thread and link z and x at the same time. Right, yeah. And so you need that transformation. And the others, so now that I've since wound up using one of those machines, it's a lot more confusing when you go to jog and you have to stop and pause and think.
00:34:45
Speaker
Okay, I'm jogging. Is my Z-axis my actual Z-axis or is it my transform Z-axis? And so what does that do for my X-axis? Can you jog in both? Yeah, I mean if the machine has the option and everything to do it, I would hope everybody's selling a head machine is selling it with that option because it would be really difficult to retract a drill that's down inside of a hole otherwise.
00:35:10
Speaker
Either way, it just causes this annoying pause each time you go to do it in that state. So table, table, I think is the simpler way to go.
00:35:17
Speaker
And for the sake of learning table table is like what we used to have on our Haas. It's a trunnion where you've got both axes are in the table. So all the five axis mojo happens at the table. Head head would be what you see if you've ever seen those giant like five axis routers that are machining out like clay mold car bodies where the part is totally stable. You've got like an X, Y gantry or bridge, which everybody can understand. It's like your shape Oco. But then in the head, you've got this knuckled head that can tilt
00:35:45
Speaker
two ways in the head that's a head head and then it's weird because there's head table machines which are like like some of the DMG duo blocks where you've got like a rotary axis in the table but the head tilts like a b-axis. I think Devin had in your shop tour he has one of those right? He's got a couple because he's got the F machine yeah that like giant like it's it's cool it's fun because it's like wait a minute so when your z-axis is only
00:36:09
Speaker
When you only have a Z-axis machine, like a table table type machine, your Z-axis is intrinsically more rigid, so if we're roughing, right? So it's a bit better that way. But it's really hard to put a car body onto a table table machine and get something that's fairly dynamic. Right. It's cool. It's an interesting world. Yeah, it's been a great show. What do you have to do the rest of the week?
00:36:36
Speaker
Has a shot point, you know? I get little updates now and then, and the shop's coming along just great. Yeah, that's great. Yeah.
00:36:42
Speaker
I asked. They're basically saying, we don't miss you. It's a good feeling actually going on. I got some heat from people on last week's podcast. But I mean, it's always that balance that we've struggled with, which is John and I have become good friends. And I think our friendship probably trumps, you know, we haven't hired each other to criticize our businesses or be consultants, right? But like, if you don't,
00:37:08
Speaker
off that perspective, I think we've probably lost the original point of these conversations. It's not just supposed to be, this has been a feel good conversation to date, right? Or in today's podcast. But yeah, the core ethos of the podcast is it's our therapy session. I can't do therapy with Raph here. Unless it's a couch.
00:37:30
Speaker
No, but I don't really struggle with it. It actually makes me quite happy, but it nevertheless gives you pause. When things happen better without you, that's a good thing. That's a really good thing. But it nevertheless makes you think, man,
00:37:44
Speaker
you know, sometimes I miss being a little bit more in the action. We asked Alex to do a video on, actually it's kind of funny, it's Amish, so like he has this CAD cam, has this door time cover that we've had for a long time, and we'd asked if it was okay if we did a version on video. There's some cool things that you can do with that to show off three-axis toolpaths, to show off surfacing, to show off tooling, an aesthetic thing, and then when I mentioned that to Alex, his first thing was, and this is hilarious, and this is true, wasn't there a guy who did Mount Rainier?
00:38:15
Speaker
who is sitting here at the table. And I sort of said, yeah, like, okay, well, I don't wanna do Matt right here, because Rob literally did that video. But take an idea of like some parallel scallop, I'm not sure what he did. But I basically, and it goes back to design intent. The intent was not,
00:38:31
Speaker
For me to tell him what to do, the intent was like, let's explore 3-axis toolpaths. And so that was all I needed to give him. And I really got excited this morning because I woke up and it was in the Asana John to review. It's already been machine done, tested. And most people now in our shot machine part once before we film it, it's become a better workflow. You just learn so much and it gives a better.
00:38:53
Speaker
better end result for everybody. And so he's already done that and this card that Julie put together for the video looked awesome. I haven't watched the video yet. That's a good thing. What are you up to, Rob? Give folks a day of insight into your life. Oh boy. At work. Yeah, at work, okay.
Personal Projects and Equipment Differences
00:39:14
Speaker
That's the least cleaner. Probably shouldn't have moved that.
00:39:19
Speaker
So I run a machine shop. I kind of feel like I'm in the same position as you guys are right now, which is that I run a machine shop that I usually have a lot of involvement in. And when you take yourself out of that for a few days, first off, you're always hopefully impressed by how well things go.
00:39:34
Speaker
There's always a sick to your stomach feeling of I'm missing out on things. I hate to use the FOMO term because it's a fear of missing out. But there's definitely a little bit of that. It's like, what's going on there? What am I missing? Did that delivery come in? Yeah. Is everything going okay? Because you get, same as you, I get some little granular updates, but they don't always tell the whole picture of what's going on.
00:39:59
Speaker
So yeah, that's kind of where I'm at. I'm excited to get back, honestly. What are you looking forward to when you get back? Is there anything you can share or little things you're working on? Oh, not too much from that end. I think coming out of this, on my personal project side stuff, I've been trying to work on more house projects. I built a coffee table. I built a bench for out on my deck, and I'm working on a dinner table currently.
00:40:26
Speaker
Now leaving here, I'm really inspired by some of this stuff here. I took a class from a guy that was on the API with Infusion, and at the very end of it, he shows an add-in that he built using it that is just basically a slicer engine, but it's a much smarter slicer engine that'll take arbitrary geometry, slice it up, orient it such that it can get machined, and then be pinned back together.
00:40:50
Speaker
Yeah, so if you imagine stuff with undercuts and things like that, you'd need to figure out where to slice it and then distribute it out so you can later stack it back together and glue it. I'm really interested to try now much larger because that'll let me scale something up quite a bit because it's going to get sliced into a lot of smaller pieces.
00:41:09
Speaker
So with my dinner table project, I haven't touched the legs of the project yet. I've just been working on the top and there's a good chance they might wind up generatively designed and included together to build some stack up. The project needs legs. Yeah, project needs legs.
00:41:25
Speaker
might literally grow them with generative design. That would be cool. That's awesome. But you got some new toys at work, right? Some new equipment? Yeah, so we have a pretty advanced shop that sits on the fourth floor of an office building in Seattle and has some really high-end equipment. I was fortunate to, in about the last two months, we essentially doubled every piece of equipment that was in there. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, I mentioned in my
00:41:49
Speaker
in my class that I'm probably the only guy who runs some of the nicest machines available on earth at work and then goes home to a garage that has some of the lowest end machines on earth. I mean that's, you know, I have a shape out go and I think it's a good skill to be able to span that gamut and get work done on both ends of the spectrum.
00:42:09
Speaker
which tied exactly into what I want to talk about in my speeds and feedstock, but also my overall ethos. And it was a very deliberate decision I made a while back, which was like, would I ever like just kind of like totally ditch Tormach just to be blunt about it. And I actually fundamentally love taking some something from nothing. So for me, it was the story of garage entrepreneurship, making it happen. And that price point and whatever machine level that is, there's, you know, Rob's got to use VMC, right? As well. Yeah. Right. And so I think that's,
00:42:37
Speaker
Phenomenal to both be able to play it both ends of the spectrum like you got a dmg mori It's easier to run some things that machine because it's so rigid and capable, but being able to also work that through with More limiting factors is me exciting and very real world and to be relatable I like I like that and then I do wonder some days I kind of wish I still had a torak
00:43:00
Speaker
Some days. Some days. Not so much for production. But I mean, if we still have the Tormak, I would put Sky and Angelo on it as often as it could just to kick it around and crash it and try toolpads and play. And it could make our foam, it could make brackets and things like that. Because now we're tying up the Moray to do that. Which you shouldn't do. Which we shouldn't do. Blooper videos are way more fun on the Tormaks too.
00:43:23
Speaker
Yeah. Anyways, should we call it a wrap? We literally just stole a room at the conference center. So we've been interrupted a few times. So it was mostly successful. Yeah, a few interruptions. Yes. Well, this was great. Yeah, it's fun. Cool. I'll get you next week, bud. Sounds good. Take care. Thanks for coming around. Yeah, thanks for having me. Take care, everybody.