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#305 Machining copper tips and tricks
234 Plays2 years ago
Topics:
- Grimsmo's CNC Router
- Saunders got a Saga pen for Christmas
- Machining copper tips and tricks
- process bins
Recommended
Transcript
Episode Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 305. My name is John Grimsman. My name is John Saunders. It's like I forget how to do this. This being the podcast where we talk about manufacturing and engineering and the projects we are working on and the businesses we're growing and trying to do our absolute best to maximize. Agreed. How you doing? How's the time off?
Renewed Energy and Project Passion
00:00:28
Speaker
The time off was wonderful. It hit the ground running, coming back in. Everybody's got some passion, some juice, some energy, and so many things on the go. It's fun. Good. Awesome.
Router Adventures and Learning
00:00:41
Speaker
Dude, the router runs. It's freaking amazing.
00:00:45
Speaker
I've seen the stories on Insta. Yeah, I posted some yesterday. It's like fast, it's zippy, it's decently accurate as far as I can tell cutting foam. Yeah, it's like meeting expectations, which is pretty high praise.
00:01:02
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. It doesn't sound. It's like the joke of we were joking at this with some friends when you say it was fine. Does that mean like you're wildly disappointed, but not going to further complain about it? Or it was fine? Like, Oh, no, it's fine. Like it? Yeah, like it's exactly what I wanted. Like, exactly. So, um, yeah, it's funny. I was
00:01:23
Speaker
I've been playing with it over the holidays. I came in. I played with it for a bit. We got it all level. Had some friends come in and help me. It was really fun. A 16-year-old kid, 15, I think, came in and a good family friend. So he came in and helped us. He learned all about level. We used my cheap stare at level and my really nice stare at level. And I was like, this is a $200 level. This is a $1,200 level. Let's learn the difference. And I told him about your story that you mentioned a long time ago where
00:01:53
Speaker
some open house, your scraping class or something where you said if you put an indicator on the table and like four guys stand in one corner, you'll see it move kind of thing. So I kind of mentioned that story and they were like, no way, that's the craziest thing ever.
00:02:08
Speaker
Yeah. The other good one is to take an indicator on a mag base, like a Noga mag base, and put it on something that's steel that you can pick up, like a 246 block or a little piece of steel beam. It doesn't have anything that you can hold in your hand and put the indicator on. Preload it to zero the normal way, and then carefully roll the product over. And you'll watch gravity affect the indicator preload. The Noga itself kind of thing.
00:02:38
Speaker
Not so much the steel bar moving, but... Sorry. Yes, the whole Noga slash DTI assembly. Yes. Oh, I haven't tried that. That's interesting. It's a little bit awkward to roll it over and also look at it. But obviously, if you have a couple of people, you can. But that's a good one too. Like, whole gosh.
00:02:59
Speaker
That's cool. Yeah.
Indicator Mishaps and Corrections
00:03:01
Speaker
We had a frustration, I'll leave it at that, that we had some service stuff being checked and the person was using a, oh, like one of the highest resolution dial test indicators. It was a Mitutoyu and I want to say it was a
00:03:23
Speaker
Oh, don't quote me on this, one micron, 10 micron, like one of the, even below, I believe below the 50 millionths brown and sharp that I keep in a drawer. Anyway, and that individual had the indicator at over a 45 degree angle to the surface being measured, which is massive cosine error. And I just bit my tongue because it wasn't the right time to comment on that, but it didn't sit well with me. Yeah.
00:03:52
Speaker
You're getting very erroneous numbers there. Right, and is he looking for an absolute number or like a relative number, like a sweep across a whole surface or I don't know. Depends, right? Yeah, it's a fair point. It was more relative than absolute except even the relative ranges.
00:04:09
Speaker
Oh, I should make sure that's an accurate statement. The relative range is still wrong because cosine error still affects the relative high and low of what that tool is reading. Yeah. Yeah. But it's like expert comes in to fix your problem and you don't want to be like, you're doing it wrong.
00:04:27
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't know I was trying to think of like, you know, somebody I look up to. Yeah, what's that? You know, because no one wants to be the know at all. You want to, you know, bring, bring people and let them do their job, but it really made it really didn't sit well with me. So I was like, do I talk to, you know, do you move over to the sales? You don't want to emasculate somebody, but man, it wasn't
Handling Expert Mistakes
00:04:50
Speaker
Right now, it's irrelevant because nothing's being pursued on the topic. But if it resulted in changes or conversations, that would be the time to bring it up, to be like, I don't think these numbers are right. They would say, why are they not right? Well, I believe that would be the tactical way, actually, now that I think about it. Yeah, there you go. So smile. So you just found a friend who was a kid who just wanted to learn more and brought him in?
00:05:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. We've been friends for a long time. He's in the high school robotics club, like just playing around, and he knows about our shop.
Shop Setup and Young Help
00:05:22
Speaker
I gave him a bunch of notebooks for Christmas kind of thing, like really good kid. His dad, we're good friends. So I was like, hey, the shop's empty on Thursday, but I got to be there waiting for a delivery that never showed up. You guys want to come help me? We're just going to play around. So it was awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, so they helped me level it.
00:05:43
Speaker
Mount the tool rack properly and like add the tool holder racks. And then I think that's about as far as we got. And then I was playing with it later on the weekend and what was it? Jogging the machine. I was like, something feels weird about this. Like Z is fine. XY is fine. Y feels backwards.
00:06:05
Speaker
And it's a fresh build. We put the servos on ourselves. It's all configured with our settings and everything. So it's very likely that one of the axes is inverted. It's just going the wrong way. So I'm turning the handwheel. I'm like, normally on my other machines, when you turn it clockwise, it goes this direction. And maybe it's because the table is fixed and the head is moving like a gantry. So maybe I'm thinking about it wrong. I'm like, no.
00:06:32
Speaker
It's actually backwards. When you go Y negative, it's moving Y positive. Y positive is away from you. Right, but it was backwards. It was coming towards me. As I'm about to program my first part and run something, I'm like, no, no, this is legit backwards. I go into the settings in the Maso control panel and there's a button on the Y axis setting that says invert Y axis. Click, no problem, save.
00:06:59
Speaker
didn't even think too much about it. I start jogging the axis and because it's a gantry with two Y motors, um, it starts twisting like, like hugely twisting like an inch or two out. And I'm like, Oh crap. How, how far did I go? Okay. The number said 0.9 to seven, whatever before. So I just went back to that and I'm like, Oh no, I only inverted one axis or something. Um, and then I figured it out
Resolving Shop Issues with Autodesk's Help
00:07:25
Speaker
yesterday. I had a visitor came in.
00:07:28
Speaker
When you were working with Camplete, did you ever talk to Ivan? Oh, Ivan is solid. Yeah, Ivan's super cool. So he works for Autodesk now because Autodesk bought Camplete. He came by for a little shop tour visit. He hung out all day. I picked his brain about everything and the dude helped me solve like four issues across the entire shop that we've just been like playing with or was on my list for the day or whatever, including this y-axis thing. And I was like, hey, you want to help me play on the router? He's like, yes, I do.
00:07:56
Speaker
And it turns out, I mean, his observation was I inverted just the Y axis, but there's also the, what they call the B axis, which is the second Y axis that's slaved. So in my head, they're slaved. You click the one and it does both, but it doesn't. You have to also invert the B axis. Weird. And right. But he was like, try that. I did it. And I was like, Oh my gosh, it works great. Awesome. You know, perfect. Yeah. Um, so that's, that's inverted. That's great now.
00:08:24
Speaker
And then we tune the ClearPath servos again using their kind of onboard tuning process where you plug your laptop into the USB on the motor itself. And they make all kinds of noise and whining and clunking and stuff and self-tune. And then so we put a piece of foam on on our mighty bite vacuum table, which is temporary. And then we're engraving the foam like we always do. And we're engraving. And I'm like,
00:08:50
Speaker
That engraving looks like it's taking forever. This piece of foam is going to take 35 minutes, whereas on this video, it took 16 minutes. Why is it so slow? So we're going through all the options. Maybe it can't eat code fast enough. Maybe our tolerance setting in Fusion is too low. So it's like not being able to process all these arcs and lines in the engraving. So we try that. Didn't do anything. And I'm watching the screen. I'm like, it's eight inches per minute engraving. Eight inches is pretty slow in general.
00:09:21
Speaker
Then we turn on this video and air cut the same foam program. And it looks like it's moving way faster. Thinking back and forth, I'm like, it's cutting eight inches because I dragged the tool from the tool library, which the default is eight. But on this video file, I had, I watched it engraved the foam and I'm like, that's dumb. Let's crank it up to 24 inches per minute. That's why it was so much faster. Cause I had modified that final project files, tools, beads,
00:09:49
Speaker
and not the main library. This goes back to the whole linked libraries conversation. I was going to say, you know, you're triggering me right now. I know. I know. Which was so funny because Ivan being an Autodesk employee now, it's like, dude. And he's like, I know. Yeah. Linked libraries is a must. And here's the perfect example of how, you know,
00:10:10
Speaker
I fell victim to it kind of thing, whatever. It's not a big deal, but it would have been nice if that went backwards, at least to a certain extent. But anyway, so we cranked it up to 24 inches per minute, ran it again. It's smooth. It's fast. We got the machine running at 900 inches per minute. Which still doesn't look like that. Is it usually on big routers, right?
00:10:32
Speaker
Right, right, but it's it's iffy and even the Instagram stories that I posted had a certain acceleration deceleration settings. I think it was like 50 whatever it is inches per second squared.
00:10:45
Speaker
And you still, you could watch the axis ramp up and ramp down if you're doing a couple inches of move. And we were wondering if the slow engraving air quotes was because it was all in XLD cell motions like ramp up, ramp down, not actually hitting full speed. That was not the case necessarily, but
00:11:05
Speaker
Well, it needs to be 24 inches per minute was the answer.
Naming the Router
00:11:09
Speaker
But anyway, so we jacked up the Excel settings from 50 to 100, then 150. And it's zippy now. It's like zipped, zipped, zipped, perfect. Yes. It's crazy. It's actually scary to watch, like. Yeah. So I'm trying to come up with names like Little Speedio or Roudio or something like that. I kind of like Roudio. I thought of that this morning.
00:11:36
Speaker
It's all about the shortened syllables though, like Roudio, three syllables. I think they stick better when it's one or two. Yeah, well, Speedio is three as well. That's true, but that's like, so this is super weird, but like I always think about the band smashing pumpkins, super weird name, but like it's so household. At least if you grew up in the eighties and nineties, Speedio is just so easy. Robodrail, three syllables, you're right. Okuma, three syllables.
00:12:01
Speaker
Rowdy, rowdy. Throw it on rowdy. I don't know. Rowdy, rowdy, the rowdy router. The rowdy, yeah. But yeah, so I'm quite, quite tickled with it at this point. It's good. You said something early on about the accuracy or the tolerances are what you expected. I mean, is there? I have no idea. Oh, okay. Like I cut a piece of foam and I put a knife in it and I'm like, yeah, it's great. Yeah. Okay. Right.
00:12:30
Speaker
It's definitely not trammed properly. With the two Y-axis ball screws, the starting point has to be the same. Otherwise, your gantry is crooked the whole time. I don't know yet. I haven't tested trim or square this or perpendicularity or any of that jargon. At this point, I don't really care. But at some point, I'm going to have to go in and square it up.
00:12:53
Speaker
Yeah. As much as you're going to use it, that will matter for wear. Absolutely. Do you not have the ability to home both the y-axis screws separately? I'm not sure. I think having adjustable home switches with a screw thread, or you can micro adjust one of them, I think will be the answer. Right now, our
00:13:19
Speaker
Y-axis home switches, they're inductive switches, so any piece of metal getting close to them will trigger them. And our pieces of metal were just glued to the top of the gantry. And yesterday, one of them disappeared, I think, when one of the guys was vacuuming the machine up. So it only had one Y-axis switch which crashed, like light crash on homing kind of thing. Oh, because it kept looking for the second switch. So I just glued another piece back on. But yes, we've got to upgrade that a little bit.
00:13:50
Speaker
It's sort of like we're throwing fuel on the fire and just trying to get this machine working and then we'll finalize button up as
The Saga of the Lost Pen
00:13:58
Speaker
we go. Is it able to make shiphole cases? I think so. I think so right now. That's awesome. Today, I'm going to do that. Yeah. Can I share about this? Yeah, go for it. Are you cool? I need the full story.
00:14:14
Speaker
I'll tell what I think is a full story, including the old one and stuff. Yeah. I was really sad. I genuinely, well, I wasn't sad because life's not worth living in the past and being sorrowful for unnecessary reasons, but I loved my saga. It was number 47, which I'd asked John if he'd be willing to make for me back when it was able to be number 47. Like 2018 probably.
00:14:37
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I carried it for years. I had lost it twice and both times had gone and re-found it. Once was in a field when I was hunting the other time, I don't recall, but I found it. And then, I don't know, six, eight months ago, I left it in the center aisle of the Southwest Plain. I put it in my book, a paperback book is a bookmark, pulled the book out when we were done leaving the plane and the pen ripped out.
00:15:00
Speaker
Um, and I called, actually it was really fun. I give credit to both Columbus airport and Southwest airlines. They both appeared to make a concerted effort with their like lost and found system and tickets and checking in. But, uh, alas, I hope somebody else owns the saga. I'd like to think that rather than it being, uh, you know, in the trash, but nevertheless, my saga was no more. Um, and, uh, just after Christmas, was it before after Christmas day that arrived, um, I saw a box pop in here from Grizzo knives and, uh, John replaced my saga.
00:15:29
Speaker
And it's a copper, you could probably describe it better, copper tube, blue anode, or blue titanium cap.
00:15:36
Speaker
Yep. Silver clip and the instant I had used an old, oh shoot, who's the pen guy in Texas? Urban survival gear? No. Or tactile turn. Thank you, tactile turn. I use an old tactile turn pen in the interim and like within five minutes of having the saga back in my pocket and the clip mechanism, I realized it was a mistake to have not replaced it myself right away, John.
00:16:02
Speaker
Seriously. That means a lot. That's cool. Yeah, it's awesome. I appreciate it. Can I ask why the serial number is bogus? Is it a scrap pen? 00000. In the Nakamura that we make the clips on, we have an auto counting serial number macro.
00:16:21
Speaker
that, uh, it's like five, 10 or whatever that will automatically plus one every clip. So we don't have to think about the serial numbers anymore. It's great. But if we're doing, um, a first article set up, like when we're changing the machine over, um, or for warming the machine up or something like that, we'll just copy that number down. I think we're at 4,000 something, almost 5,000 pens. Yeah.
00:16:45
Speaker
Oh my gosh. And so we'll write that down and we'll make it 0, 0, 0, 0 and then we'll make a clip or two. So we've got a good pile of these friends and family clips that we'll use for gifts, for giveaways, for good family, friends, um, for ourselves, things like that. So is there anybody with a 0, 0, 0 pen is a, uh, is a special person. Yeah. We don't give them away freely.
00:17:07
Speaker
I appreciate that. That's awesome. That's awesome. You keep talking about it. I'm like, bro, you need one. I'm going to fix this. Yeah. Thank you. Seriously, John. That was awesome. Good. Enjoy it. Yes. Although when I was picking the one to send you, I'm like, oh, this one's beautiful. It's all copper and stuff. And I'm like, is Saunders one of those guys that's told me he can't stand copper because it smells like pennies? Because there's some people in my life that are like, I can't stand it. And I can't remember if you were that person or not.
00:17:37
Speaker
So I am and I had an urban survival gear.
00:17:42
Speaker
pen, I believe. Yeah, wasn't tactile. It was urban survival. That was copper. And I actually stopped using it, but no discredit to Oh, shoot, what's his name? Kelvin. Thank you, Kelvin. Solid guy. I just didn't love copper. Yeah, whatever reason, john, I've been carrying this one every day for I don't know, over 10 days now.
Machining Copper Challenges
00:17:59
Speaker
It doesn't do the same thing. Sweet. So I'm, I mean, I'm very grateful for this, but it doesn't seem to bother me at all. Awesome. Yeah.
00:18:09
Speaker
Funny thing with copper, if you use pure copper, it's a pain in the butt to machine. It's very gummy, very stringy, very difficult on your tools. You'll blow drill this kind of thing. We use, I think it's called tellurium copper, which has a bit of something alloyed into it, which is much more machineable. It's like C145, I think is what the technical name for it is.
00:18:32
Speaker
It's just more machineable. It's a little bit harder to get. You can't just go to your metal store and buy it, but specialty metal places have it. We buy that fancy copper and then have it settle as ground and then process it through our stuff. I wonder what grinding copper is like. Yeah, I'm sure it's a pain in the butt too, right?
00:18:51
Speaker
Well, it just seems like it's kind of one of those things like you're never supposed to put a loom, like use a regular old grinding wheel, like a vitrified grinding wheel to grind aluminum because it apparently loads up like instantly and can blow up. But I can't imagine coppers fun to grind.
00:19:08
Speaker
Yeah. And even machining it, if our, when we, we buy it a solid rod and we drill through for the ink to go through the middle. So we have this, I think it's a seven millimeter drill that we blow through all the way pretty long. You know, it'd be like 10 or 20 times D kind of thing, um, through coolant, OSG tool. And that tool gets dull eventually. And with copper specifically, when that tool gets dull, it actually swells the copper bigger.
00:19:33
Speaker
Oh, interesting. I think more than once the guys have gotten a drill bit stuck in the copper because it swelled and it gummed up and caused problems. You're removing the drill bit and the piece of copper at the same time. Okay, so what is your process? Do you solve that or how would you like to solve that? I give a $200 drill that lasts for five months. That's super awkward. What do you think about that?
00:20:01
Speaker
I mean, if that's the case, you just remove the problem child, you try to count. I think what they've done is they only do copper on fresh drill bits, and then other materials like titanium is a bit more forgiving. Yeah, because Angelo's had this problem with dull drill bits. So he's like, fine, copper just gets new drill bits. We do a batch of copper, and then we continue to titanium after that.
00:20:30
Speaker
Okay. So sorry, brand new drill bit, copper tie, and the tie will dull the drill bit and then it gets. Yeah. And then you start to notice it's, it sounds funny too. When it in tie, when it starts to get dull. So I think they kind of replace it by that. I don't know if they have a good, uh, timer on it, like minutes or pieces or something. I don't think so. No. And I think about it. Um, but yeah, they've, they've made thousands of them. So they, they have a kind of decent and we did some Marie grinds of that drill bit because it's hundreds of dollars for, for a drill bit.
00:20:58
Speaker
but the regrains apparently were not as consistent, as good as like, it's not the same thing anymore as a brand new tool. So unfortunately we're like, fine, we'll just replace it brand new.
00:21:09
Speaker
I'm right there with you. We drill a lot of holes. We don't do any regrinds anymore. It's both a little bit about the quality and the difference, but also the way to get regrinds to make anything close to economical sense.
Drill Bit Regrinding vs Replacement
00:21:24
Speaker
You had to send five at a time, which means you're having like 10 drills in a cycle or more. And the regrind savings that we were doing through the OEM weren't that much to make it work. It was just, nope, nope.
00:21:35
Speaker
Yep. It's like a fine line. I bet you for a one inch drill bit, like something that's $1,000 in carbide kind of thing might be worth it, but our drill bits are like quarter inch. There's no return. Yeah.
00:21:50
Speaker
Yeah, I hear you. So on that note, I feel kind of like what you said, rejuvenated, refreshed, new year, new focus.
Who Owns the Business?
00:22:02
Speaker
We are kind of wrapped up the year in a great place, great way in a lot of ways. And then now having Alex here has really been great to start formalize some things that we've had on the back burner.
00:22:14
Speaker
for a while, just more manpower and his ability to be here now full-time has been great. But I also am really bringing to the front and center this kind of concept around, do you know, does your business own you or do you own your business? I want to, you know, you and I talked about this idea of being able to be out for multiple weeks as the barometer and I think that's,
00:22:38
Speaker
That's worth chewing on, but I think a better example would be I could be out, or frankly, almost any employee could be out any day for one day with almost no stress or disruption. Whether that be somebody else can do their job or their job doesn't have to be done on that day. Totally, or at least we even know. Is it an issue? What would happen? What would be an issue?
00:23:04
Speaker
And that can be because you're sick, it can be because you have PTO, or it can be because I'm on a sales call, I'm in meetings, or you know what? Part of me feels like I want to know that I've earned the right to just not go one day, which just... I'm the same. Yeah, I love what I do. But no, that's going to happen. It's going to happen because I'm going to get to that point. So these process bins, I've talked about them with you, right? You said they were coming and you were waiting for them, you're excited.
00:23:34
Speaker
John, top five things I've done in my life for many of our customers. Yeah. So explain. So they're simple. Don't say what's on this, please. But this happens to be an example of a vendor relationship. So we buy these great. I'm going to do a video on this. We buy gray Uline bins. And they look like they're 12 by 12.
00:23:55
Speaker
12 by 18. Okay. Yeah, so they will easily fit a piece of laminated printer. Got it helpful.
Process Bins and Organization
00:24:04
Speaker
And so we're putting this green painters, it's not painters tape. It's like a kind of a hybrid between painters tape and duct tape. Super cheap. Honestly, I did that as a
00:24:15
Speaker
what initially seemed like a compromise to get the bins uniquely looked uniquely marked. But it's not, you know, it takes a second to put the tape around it nice and neat. But I actually realized it's great because it keeps them visually unique, regardless of any other bins, because they only make these bins a few colors.
00:24:36
Speaker
And it's just super visually unique, which is very helpful. But also it means we could also make other bins or containers process bins if we have to. I'd like to keep most of them this shape and size, but inevitably there might be something where we want to do it on a five gallon bucket or whatever it may be. And you're still color coding it. Yeah.
00:24:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's basically if you walk into Saunders Machine Works, you're going to see a bin and it's going to have the green tape around it and it's going to have a label printed label. And this one happens to have a lot of specifics around how we interact with one of our distributors. So we have to print certain skew labels for them. There's shipping instructions for them. There's who we coordinate with.
00:25:15
Speaker
And the funny thing about these process bins is we do try to live in a digital world. So we have emails. We have fresh desks. We have PDF assets. We have all kinds of digital files and resources. But sometimes it's nice to have a physical thing. So I printed this out. This is a laminated sheet that shows here is an example of a product label that we have to use with this person. Here's where the PDFs are located on a network drive. Here's how you print them.
00:25:43
Speaker
it's your consolidated kind of all the information or access to the information is from this thing. Yes. So now anybody who has any basic knowledge of our business, like super basic number one can find that bin because they'll either be on product storage racks that are dedicated for process bins or they'll be appropriately placed throughout the shop. So this will be over in shipping and receiving. And if
00:26:10
Speaker
The bin should give them enough information to do it on their own worst case If they have to call me or call somebody else to get help Oh my gosh shot to be on the phone with somebody and if I'm on the road and to say, okay example international shipping huge pain in the butt because Canada is different than Australia FedEx is different than FedEx or FedEx ground is different than FedEx or actually International ground is different than freight which is different than customers that went on their own we have in the process been for international shipping we have subfolders that are
00:26:40
Speaker
Put together for every country with the examples with the customs forms with the commercial invoices with the instructions of how you get those papers made at a ship station or a Shopify or out of our accounting software we have gotchas because we've had i guess really sad about this we've had for some reason australia
00:26:57
Speaker
FedEx has called us have been like, we're going to return your shipment in 48 hours, unless you call us back immediately, wait on hold through a calling tree and give us the person's phone number. And I want to be like, you bleep, bleep, bleep. The phone number is on the packet.
00:27:12
Speaker
So now we're going out of our way to make sure it's obvious that the phone number is on the package, which will give us some ammo to throw it back in their face, because these are sometimes hundreds of dollars of shipment costs. And for a carrier to say that is frustrating. So and then products, it's great. We have examples of the we have only we only ever leave a good product in the bin. We don't put anything in there that could be accidentally
00:27:41
Speaker
moved into a shipped product or customer facing product. But we have one fixture where we've known if something happens, it could cause chatter. So we have a photo laminated showing that, that way it doesn't get, I don't actually want to have the chatter product in the bin. Or if we did, I would literally put it in like Lucite or something so that it's totally obvious that this is not. Oh, is that clear?
00:28:08
Speaker
You can send stuff out and have business cards put in this clear. It looks like the business card is suspended in a clear substance. Yeah. Okay. I don't have one on my desk, but yeah. Like a brick of acrylic kind of thing, but... Yeah. Okay. And then the other thing, and this is amazing. Oh my God, this is... Oh, shut up.
00:28:27
Speaker
We wrote a new program that takes a face mill that has five inserts.
Face Mill Programming
00:28:33
Speaker
It puts it in when it is loaded into our Kuma. We have noticed that the inserts will vary by up to a foul across all five. I want to know the highest insert.
00:28:47
Speaker
and our machine could do this, but there's no way built in for it to do it. I know I've seen a hide and hide control that can do this turnkey, but we can't. With our Kuma software and the Renishaw software, there's no cycle for that, that I know. You don't have a laser, you have a touch sensor. Correct. Tool setter. Yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, and we are not, I guess if you were rotating the tool backward, it would inevitably find that, but we're touching off, we can only, so far as I know, touch off individual flutes.
00:29:17
Speaker
So when you're touching off the length of a face mill, you're rotating it backwards though, right? No. To touch off a face mill, you use a separate, a different code than you would for a solid cutting, center cutting tool. So it happens to be G111 on our machine. You would put G111A for the angle that you want to rotate the tool to, and then Y1.25 to offset it by the 1.25 inch radius of a 2.5 inch face mill.
00:29:46
Speaker
And so obviously you find that first angle and then the other five angles are at 72 degree intervals. So I wrote a code that does that and stores all five heights as variables and then it picks the highest one and sets that as the tool length. Yes. That's done. But what I next want to do is add code that confirms it can never move it more than say 20,000 from the like, quote unquote, known gauge length.
00:30:12
Speaker
That way, we're never accidentally overwriting big time. And I also want to write it to make sure that the deviation from the highest and the lowest insert isn't more than like 2,000 because that would tell us we just rotated an insert a little bit wrong, which you can do.
00:30:27
Speaker
What's even better, this is the bunch line. We 3D printed an insert box that has a tray that holds packs of the inserts, and in the top is a hinged flap, and on the top of that flap is a 3D printed label that pivots out of the way that says, every time you rotate or install inserts, run this program, and then it has a pocket for a label maker, and that way we could replace the name more easily. And the program name on the machine is on that.
00:30:54
Speaker
Okay, so anybody an intern me Garrett if you're tired if you're just anytime you grab new inserts You'll see oh, I need to run. I think it's called T 22 height offset min Now in fairness. Yes, if you're just rotating the inserts you may not see that
00:31:13
Speaker
you wouldn't grab new inserts from the box, so that is sort of a fail point. But this is so much better and such a great way to know that we're always updating to the correct gauge length every time. It makes me happy. That's so cool. Yeah, I like that you have the kind of safeties in there too, the Min-Max
00:31:33
Speaker
20,000. If it's trying to adjust more than this, something's wrong. Yeah, I don't have those in there yet, but I will. Yeah, they should. Yeah, I've done some stuff like that. That's almost frustrating to know that you have to define your initial angle to find the tool length. I guess a laser makes that irrelevant.
00:31:53
Speaker
Even on my Maury, it just runs backwards. Your Haas is too probably. Correct. Now that we say this, I'm embarrassed to say I never thought about seeing if that's an option. That would be egg on my face if that was an easier way. There is something about me that now that this is done that I like,
00:32:11
Speaker
you're getting the value of, we have two face mills, this one from Mitsubishi and another one from Sandvik that are super peculiar. You can actually slightly incorrectly clock the insert on the pad and you can actually get it out.
00:32:26
Speaker
Yeah. So I actually like this. But maybe I'm just defending myself because you're right, if there was a way to run it backward and just be done with it, that's probably. So on your Akuma, every time you replace any cutting tool and mill drill, whatever, are you manually typing in and touching off the tool one by one?
00:32:46
Speaker
No. Give your spironi too. Most of the stuff that we do on the spironi, and most of the stuff is fine within a four too. That doesn't mean the spironi can't be more accurate, but it's not a great workflow to have different things set in your master gauge.
00:33:08
Speaker
We do a mix of in-process updates on the Akuma, but also using the Sprony. Here, we are holding the tenths. And so we build a process where you want to make sure that you're always respecting
00:33:24
Speaker
the same tree of update. So we're always touching off, in this case, on the Akuma. But that machine, being the quality it is and the newness that it is, actually does not have a problem holding the tolerances that we want. So long as you're always finding the cutting length. Yeah. Awesome. That's good to know.
00:33:42
Speaker
Yes, it's been great. So I'm going to do a video on these process bins because it has been just bueno. And it's like the easiest thing. Nothing's particularly expensive. You could do cardboard boxes if you don't want to buy the Uline bins. But there is a professionalism, both internally and externally, to having dedicated bins that are all uniform, that are all the same size, same color, color coded. We use cardboard boxes every now and then, especially at home, just to store my junk.
00:34:11
Speaker
you don't have the same care for it when it's just in a cardboard box as you do when it's in a professional device. Everyone around the shop has enthusiastically bought in and it's like, hey, we're all putting our tribal knowledge on paper or on, I really like 3D printed things because I don't know, there's just something nice about picking up a 3D printed, so we have a problem with our,
00:34:40
Speaker
when we pull out the chip bins on the horizontal, the guys he stopped the conveyor twice, they have forgotten to untie conveyor, which doesn't stop the machine from running. Yeah, which is good because you can swap the bin out while the machines running. But really, when I stopped the Maury, the machine he stops as well.
00:35:00
Speaker
Yeah, agreed. I would have expected that behavior, too, to be honest. But they forget to restart it. Once that caused a flood, the second time, it just was built up. Ship's not good. So now I 3D printed a, this isn't a process bin explicitly thing, but 3D printed a stick that's magnetized. It goes right in front of the conveyor where you're looking at it. And it's a giant 3D printed red stick that says, pocket reminder to un-e-stop conveyor.
00:35:29
Speaker
You can't force everybody to do this, but the idea is when you pull the bin out, throw that in your pocket, and that's a pretty good upgrade. You won't forget that within the next hour. You know that it's in there kind of thing. I like that idea. Yeah, we do post the notes on the window of the machine when we do some weird like that. Miscollector turned off, turn it back on kind of thing.
00:35:55
Speaker
We do that we do this on the host of the horizontal so darn big you're like, yeah, many feet away from the window when you're at the chair. Yeah, and the Akuma has no magnetic metal in the visual area. It's a plastic control in the glass or poly carb door. So there's not actually a good magnet spot. Really?
00:36:16
Speaker
It's like, it's like on the router, it's all made of 80 20 and aluminum everywhere. I can't even stick a flashlight magnet to it. Like the jog pendant has a magnet on the back. There's nowhere to stick it on the machine. So I've got the U-Mac right beside. I just stick it to the machine. That will be you back. Don't, don't tempt me with, with throwing you on the, on the U-MOCs being now magnet pendant orders. I need it because of that. Oh man. Yeah.
00:36:44
Speaker
Good. That felt great. I know we joked, but seriously, I don't want to say mental health because that's digging a little bit too deep here, but from a sustainability standpoint of forcing myself to let go and not micromanage.
Documenting Processes
00:36:58
Speaker
I don't think I micromanage, but I suppose
00:37:01
Speaker
Most people that do don't, you know what I mean? So it's kind of how do you know, but really like stepping out and being able to look back in letting go of so much stuff. These processes are going to help with Alex doing formal revs of products that get laminated into dimensional drawings that have QC gauges. So that we know and we're now I don't think I told you this, but we're
00:37:22
Speaker
We're not allowing some of the manufacturing team to make as many CAM updates or chamfer updates or little CAD changes because it's too disruptive to the flow of our product line. It feels like a step backwards to take a responsibility and capability away from them, but we need to have a flow that works for, how does this get changed across similar products?
00:37:48
Speaker
that are different files or it being in the know and it's just great. Awesome. It goes into the whole, I mean even the e-myth book talked about this, documenting your processes, everything so that a new person can walk in and pretty much figure it out with enough minor guidance. I want to spend a good amount of this year working on that as well because every individual in our company knows how to do their job very well but
00:38:19
Speaker
I need that information out of their heads and into a system so that if I have to jump in and do their job or if anybody else has to jump in and do their job or if something goes terribly wrong and they are not here anymore, they quit or they whatever. All that information cannot be living in their head because it's
00:38:39
Speaker
At the end of the day, it's not even that proprietary, that valuable to the person. It's valuable to the company. It's like the company owns that information even though it's stuck in your head. The current process is this. Our heat treat process. Our guy Sky is the expert. He's the one who does heat treat. There's one other guy that can do it in a pinch and did it quite a bit.
00:39:07
Speaker
I personally, I need to know what the process is. What's the temperature? What's the time? What are you doing? How are you doing this?
00:39:14
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's the funny thing. So creating FedEx Freight LTL Bill of Latings is a simple process when you know how to do it, but it's not simple. And ironically, we had somebody recreate a second screencast video showing how to do it because they didn't know the video existed in the first place. And that's that we're going back to that whole like, we love digital assets, but sometimes nobody knows they exist in
00:39:38
Speaker
Yes. And you're not even going to go look through that. We have a shared drive that has a Saunders machine works resources and it has a shipping folder in it. And it has a video. You're just not going to go look through that. But if there's a bin that has LTL freight written on it, and it has the labels in it, and it has a 3d printed thing with a QR code that's like scan here for freight video. Okay.
00:40:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's all about having a dashboard with like, where's the source of all of the information I need for this job? Not everything else. Don't send me to Google Drive and make me click through a bunch of folders. But yeah, at the location, at the job, at the shipping station, at the heat treat cell, at the lapping station, here's all of the information and where it's located. Yeah.
00:40:23
Speaker
And then it can be located in any manner of folder structure sub levels, different, you know, YouTube, you got your Google Drive, he got
00:40:34
Speaker
the file cabinet in the office, you know? Yeah. Oh yeah. And like the air compressor has a process bin has extra fuses in it. It has the manual in it. It has the information on the last printout of the invoice of when we lost about the filters for it. Like, like this is so stupidly simple when you realize it, but then it's just like, Oh yeah. That's excellent. Yeah. I'm looking forward to that video. Yes.
00:41:02
Speaker
Sorry, I've been hogging the time. What have you been up to? So when Ivan was here yesterday, we went over some camp leet stuff, some fusion stuff at first. Pretty basic. He liked my workflow, which was nice to hear. I'm like, OK, so I'm not doing it wrong. And I was like, hey, I'm having an issue with the Wilhelmin. Do you want to poke at it for a minute? And he's like, yeah, let's turn it on. I think I told you last week, it's still got the error where it says,
00:41:31
Speaker
C-axis commanded in spindle mode. Did I talk about this? Still got that error. I've been talking with Wilhelmin. They're not really sure. The one guy who I deal with a lot, Marcus, is on vacation overseas for another week, whatever. Enjoy your time. But I've been questioned whether
00:41:54
Speaker
When we updated the machine from metric to inch, if something is now looking for a C-axis homing as opposed to an A-axis homing, which is what my machine calls it, an A-axis, the turning spindle. Dude, what is it if you have any machines that have weird- I don't know. But on my machine, on the control panel, when you jog all the buttons like XYZ, the buttons to jog, it says C as your turning spindle, rotational axis. Whereas in the machine, you program it for A.
00:42:25
Speaker
Oh. So Willeman at some point switched from calling that axis C to A to whatever. And my machine's like a hybrid of the two. So we were questioning if it's calling the wrong ARC value after this update, this kind of FANUC software update that we did. And I was like, that's a really smart possibility. I don't know. So I sent it to Willeman and we're kind of waiting to hear back, but that could be the answer right now. Because I'm like, I don't think I have actually machined anything fully since
00:42:54
Speaker
updating the inch, um, like a month ago, whenever it was. Oh, interesting. Okay. Cause this did obviously did work before that. Yeah. Yeah. It was fine before that. So everything I was trying to do, like home, home, the turning spindle, put it into milling mode and jog it with hand wheel. I can't do that anymore. So I worked closer. Yeah. I think within a week or so we'll, we'll have that wrapped up, which is good.
00:43:18
Speaker
You know that Ivan's like a world-class guitarist? He mentioned that he likes music and that he liked to buy locally made guitars and stuff. That is the most modest understatement I've heard in 2023. Yeah. Ivan is an incredible... I mean, I don't know if he gigs... I think he does gig regularly in the Toronto area, but shout out to Ivan, dude. He played at that Birmingham event. Al had asked him to play as a pre-warmup music and I was blown away. It was beautiful.
00:43:49
Speaker
It's amazing. Such a good dude. Yeah. What else do you guys do? Um, so we played on, I mean, we just kind of, he just shadowed me. Like I had to update some engraving dates on the current. So I was posting from fusion to, um, through complete to the current and he's got to watch that whole workflow. Cause it's 2023. So I had to update the dates to that. Um, that's funny. Yeah. And then we turned on this video just to watch the feed rate.
00:44:19
Speaker
confirm all that played on the router quite a lot actually probably the majority of our day was on the router and then the Wilhelmin and just kind of tour around the shop and show them the process and chat it with the guys and it was just a wonderful day and he's such a smart guy it was like
00:44:33
Speaker
really amazing having him, his brain, and just his observational skills for the day. I felt spoiled. We got a lot of stuff done, and he just had such good suggestions, like switching the y-axis and things like that. Things that I would have come to eventually, but for somebody else to jump to it much faster than I did is like, nice, nice, so good.
00:44:55
Speaker
Well, I remember when you and I visited military and complete years ago and he was showing us stuff and you kind of realized this is the kind of guy that gets for better or worse, all the worst hardest problems that other people couldn't solve in this like where cam meets code meets post meets the actual kinematics of the machine and they get brought to him. And so yeah, you see, you see stuff that you're like, you're like the special ops guy around this crazy manufacturing stuff.
00:45:23
Speaker
Yeah, my wife was like, so who visited? You said you had a visitor. And I was like, you know, Ivan, but I'm trying to describe what he is. He's like, it's like a machinist software developer. Like, I don't know exactly. But he's definitely more on the software side, especially lately being an Autodesk employee. But he's not afraid to run a machine either. Oh, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I see him at trade show demos running a Grove five axis machine showing complete. Yeah, right. It's such a good dude.
00:45:55
Speaker
That's about time. Sweet. I'll see you next week. All right, man. Sounds good. Take care. Take care. Bye.