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#258 - "Like any machine tool nerd, I was thinking about tool changers in the shower." - Saunders
192 Plays3 years ago
TOPICS:
- Don't ignore Windows 7 & Fusion 360 Incompatibility Warning! Windows 7 causes CAM kernel errors.
- Visual Studio Code: Hot Exit = Hot Mess. Disable hot exit to prevent VS code from reposting older versions of code!
- Greenshot for PC screenshots
- Optimal Printer Location and Rubber Stamps?
- Fiber Laser Engravers: RAYCUS, Mactron-Tech, + Cloudray
- Tool Matrix Options
- Finding Joy: Sometimes it looks like pushing cycle start
- Rigid Tapping Load Limit: Stopping too soon or not soon enough.
- UC Berkley Tour Video: Genius Spring Mechanism
- Measuring an Arbor Press with a Hydraulic Cylinder
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to The Business of Machining
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 258. My name is John Grimsmo. And my name is John Saunders. And this is the manufacturing podcast where John and John just kind of keep up to date on all the stuff that's going on in our businesses. Try to hash things out and grow.
Resolving CAM Kernel Errors on Windows
00:00:18
Speaker
Can I open with two public service announcements? Please. One might be super specific to me, but I think it bit me pretty hard. Windows 7 has given me two of our computers here. One was mine, also Windows 7. Fusion for over a year has told me that it's not Windows 7 compatible.
00:00:40
Speaker
reasonable person, you completely disregard and ignore any such warnings, which wasn't an issue for a long time. And then two weeks ago, a week ago, I started getting CAM kernel errors on regenerating 2D contours, like simple, already proven out program
00:00:59
Speaker
And I've seen those cam kernel errors before, but usually they're on something that's much more quirkier specific or beta and so forth. Like just a regular 2D contour, which doesn't make sense. And then about 10 minutes later, Garrett came over and said, he was having this problem. And I thought, okay, that's really strange. No one else was. And then I took the same file that was a proven out file and program that I was getting a cam kernel error on, on my Win7 computer. I didn't realize Win7 was the problem at this point in time.
00:01:29
Speaker
came into my office, which happens to be Windows 10, wasn't giving me an error. So after about a half an hour of trying to figure out what was going on, I realized, wait a minute here, the only two computers that are doing this are Windows 7. And rather than spend another ounce of time or energy, I just, and I even for a hot second Googled, like upgrading to Windows 10. And I was just like, they don't make it easy anymore for the 38 year old John.
00:01:53
Speaker
I have a great computer guy in town. I dropped him off at 4 o'clock. He had them done by 8 a.m. the next morning. Honestly, I'm kind of perplexed as to why the Windows OS would influence the CAM kernel with Infusion. Not that I presume to know, but it just seems a little bit odd. Anyway, all I can tell you is that fixed it. That's awesome.
00:02:15
Speaker
So I guess you really have to bail on Windows 7.
Visual Studio Code's Hot Exit Issue
00:02:17
Speaker
The other PSA is a pretty crazy catastrophic potential thing, which is Visual Studio Code. We love it. Yeah. Okay. So there's this really weird behavior sometimes where Visual Studio Code seems to not open the latest version, but rather reopen kind of an old version. Okay. And that has to do with this term.
00:02:38
Speaker
Google it here because we just updated it. We have an NYC CNC page on Visual Studio walking through the settings and setting up. Not particularly difficult, but there's a couple. It's good to know. Yeah, it gives us a good workflow. What plugins you want to use, why it's useful. There's this thing called hot exit, I think is what it's called. By default, VS Code tries to remember past versions of files, which means sometimes if you repost a new program,
00:03:01
Speaker
For reasons I can't explain, VS actually pulls up the prior version of your code. Interesting. Which you can understand how catastrophic that can be. Sure. Luckily, it's an easy fix with a little video showing how to do it, but if you just want to Google or under visual studio code, if you just go to settings and type in hot exit, you'll quickly see you can disable that altogether. I can't say I've seen that problem happen to me.
00:03:26
Speaker
Same thing though, it's happened to us and we've heard about it from other folks. That's all it tells me. It's enough that it's potential, which means we need to nip it in the bud. Yeah.
00:03:38
Speaker
Yeah, I'm using it right now to track the notes on our podcast. I do all the time because it auto saves. So it's amazing. Oh, now in fairness, that might actually mess with auto save. I don't know. I didn't look into it. I just know I have no tolerance for that kind of behavior. I'm just looking it up right now. Would you call it a hot exit? Yeah. See that coming here. I can open it too.
00:04:01
Speaker
Mine says on exit. Yeah. So I turned it to disabled. Okay. I'll look into that just cause like I've had, if I delete a file, it'll still stay in VS code, but there'll be like brackets on the file name or something. Um, I use it all the time for all my programs. So I don't know.
00:04:18
Speaker
Yeah. If you have not had an issue, that's great. Easy to replicate behavior for us where you repost it and it pulls up old code. Interesting. Yeah. Good to know. How are you doing? I'm actually upgraded one of my laptops to Windows 11.
00:04:36
Speaker
Oh, did I choose to do it or did it force me? I can't remember. It was like a week ago and it's, it's fine. It's mostly the same. There's a couple of things that are different and weird, like the, um, you know, all your task menus at the bottom, like all the programs, um, they're centered by default.
00:04:53
Speaker
Oh, they're not kicked to the left. They're like in the center. I'm like, that's weird. I don't know if I like that. But I found a setting it can kick it to the left. I mean, otherwise, it's mostly the same. The menus are a little weirder. And, you know, I can't blame them for trying to update it and tweak things a little bit. But
00:05:09
Speaker
Don't change stuff. Yeah, I say I can. I mean, we're succumbing to the whole, we just don't like change as much as we used to, but it's also kind of a, you're trying to iterate on something that doesn't really matter the way we use computers these days. I used to keep a list of programs I'd need to reinstall because I used to be more proactive about wiping my computer once a year.
The Joy of Hands-On Machine Work
00:05:30
Speaker
And you'd think like, oh man, I need to reinstall Photoshop and the screenshot program or whatever. And now it's like, there's like six programs.
00:05:39
Speaker
Speaking of screenshot, is it green shot? I do use green shot. Public service announcement again. If you're not using green shot to screenshot your anything, it's the greatest thing. You told me about it like a year or two ago. It's the greatest thing ever. Because now when you hit print screen, you can select a box around the thing and then automatically save it or export it or copy it or whatever. It's just so simple and so obvious.
00:06:08
Speaker
Yeah, the one I use probably the most, I either put it into like PowerPoint just to print it real quick. I like printing from PowerPoint for some reason better than just as a picture, but or they have their own little basic graphics editor. So like when we're trying to send something back to somebody, you just put a red circle around what you're trying to draw their attention to. I would love if
00:06:28
Speaker
you know, you're printing an invoice or something. If in the printing app, the default app, you could write you could do a circle, you could write a little note saying this is the thing. This is like when I'm giving instructions to Barry on how to file this thing, like that's a 3d printer part, you know, file it under miscellaneous or whatever. So he knows how to categorize an invoice. Sounds like sounds like you need some rubber stamps. Oh,
00:06:53
Speaker
Yeah. Amazon, I don't know, 10 bucks, 12 bucks, the custom, custom texts. So I have our return address. I have our deposit info for banks. And when you need to, you could, people do them for like the paid or received bond. Right, right. Interesting. But that, that forces you to stand by the printer, which I don't. Ah, too shy. Yep. Like from when I print in the, in the shop floor, our printer is far enough away that I usually don't like to go. Really?
00:07:21
Speaker
No, but it's better to be here in the office with everybody else. Yeah. I can't believe we're talking about printer locations on a podcast, but I have a printer in my main office and then we have a similar printer out in the middle of the shop floor for everybody to use. And do you print almost always to your printer right there?
00:07:39
Speaker
So great segue. At the risk of kind of explaining something that nobody would have any reason to know, I effectively spent the last year working at Saunders Machine Works in my office. I may have brought this up kind of anecdotally. And it's been a good year. I have no complaints per se. We got a lot done on marketing, website stuff, WEX, fresh desks. I spent a lot of time on all that stuff.
00:08:07
Speaker
But the last few weeks, I kind of inadvertently transitioned back out to my mobile desk and I was running machines and posting more out of Fusion. And it was just this complete rejuvenation of energy, so much that it makes me realize maybe a recurring theme on our discussions. But like, I don't, there's part of me that wants to run a machine shop, not run a business, just to be honest. Yep.
00:08:33
Speaker
So I'm back in my office for this podcast, but I really have been trying to actively stay out of it. I like being on the shop floor. I like running machines. I like don't want to say I like.
00:08:46
Speaker
having a pulse on things because I actually like the fact that I don't need to have a pulse on things. Like we've got that people and systems in place. That's really important. And I think it would be a error to say that I need to interject myself in that stuff. I don't want to, but I also like, I like, I like just being like just doing my own thing on my own machine. Great. You know? Yep. Yep. I'm totally the same way. I find myself, I go through cycles. I go through a creative cycle where I'm just like, leave me alone. I want to design things for the next little like few weeks or whatever.
00:09:15
Speaker
Or I go through very hands-on phase where I want to know everything is going on in every part of business I want to add value And then sometimes it's one of hands off and you know, let the business run and plan for the future or something Yeah, yeah, but it's been good. Like I said, I love running machines. I love taking a program and thinking wait a year
00:09:35
Speaker
Can we tweak speeds and fees? Can we think about changing a flow? If and why are we probing something this way?
Enhancing Customer Education and Marketing
00:09:43
Speaker
Truly, I mean, to all those that are listening that feel like you have a calling or a passion, don't ignore it. It has to reconcile with how you make money. I'm a big believer in that Mike Rowe philosophy of like,
00:09:52
Speaker
you don't do the job you love, do the job that you love, I define identity and provides the means you need to do what you want. But yeah, to be blunt, it almost got me down. But like, it's kind of made me realize like, I would rather be
00:10:09
Speaker
designing fixtures and code than I would looking at our marketing automation conversion rates, which we could probably make more money. And we should. I mean, I believe in our product to showing people why it's a good product that I get passionate about.
00:10:26
Speaker
I just don't want to do it. I'm with you there. As the business grows to the point where it is now where you have multiple people working on different facets of the business. Like I said yesterday in a meeting, I was like, I don't really need anything to do with sales. I want to know what's going on, but I don't want to do the work. That's what Fraser is here for.
00:10:46
Speaker
You know, we have all these people in place to do all of the work and have the responsibility for those things. Yeah. And it lets everybody kind of specialize and get it all done concurrently at the same time, as long as we all communicate and do our jobs. I'm asking this genuinely not to interrogate. What do you think is of that stuff the thing you do least well? Or is Grimsman knowledge doing least well? Oh, the company-wise. Yeah.
00:11:16
Speaker
or has the most opportunity to improve if you want to be more like PC about.
00:11:21
Speaker
Positivity. Yeah. I mean, we're constantly improving the systems with which we use to sell our products. Got a lot of great ideas in the pipeline there for that. But I do feel that our marketing efforts like promotional could get turned up like 10 notches. If we want to, we don't need it from a sales promotion perspective. But I see you guys and I see a lot of other companies in our niche just putting out all these
00:11:49
Speaker
banger photos of product shots in use. I'm like, why are we doing that? That'd be so cool. I wouldn't give that answer about you though, John. Well, we certainly have an active, very passionate community of people who post our stuff and we repost it and it's great. But as far as us doing
00:12:09
Speaker
educating the customer more on the product. You know, if a new guy sees us and he looks up a couple of videos, it doesn't really answer a lot of questions. You know, we need that content like either quickly available on our Instagram or constantly pushing it out or a YouTube video. That's just like, here's everything about what we do. Um, here's the product. Here's the sales pitch. You know, we don't have that.
00:12:30
Speaker
And we've done very well without that. But part of me wishes as a company, as a brand, now that we're established and we're like a big deal, we don't have that. Totally agree. It's funny. It's like you forget as an entrepreneur that there's lots of people that don't.
00:12:46
Speaker
know who you are, like have no clue. And I think we all could do a better job of realizing that there's the people who call or hit on your website that are like, who is Saunders? What is a fixture? Why? Why should I have a fixture plate? The first thing I'm going to go do is see who else makes fixture plates, like giving them, you know, taking the opportunity to tell them what they should think about. You need to get backed up by the facts of it as well. But nevertheless, you want to tell them this is why we do what we do and why you should look at our stuff is
00:13:16
Speaker
Something I don't think I do a good enough job of. Yeah. You probably went through it just now looking up your horizontal machine. You go through this binge of research and you're like, OK, I need a chip conveyor. What do you look at all the options for the chip conveyor? And you and I have gotten very good about sourcing all this information and distilling it and like, OK, look up that brand, look up that brand. And we need to be able to do it fast and nimble and get the answer we need, get the information we need quickly, even for all these companies we'd never heard of before.
00:13:45
Speaker
So it's like the first exposure to that company. And the companies that are doing very well answer my questions easily, quickly. And I don't feel like we have that available to our customers, you know, you go to our website, there's a bunch of product pages, you can buy an horseman, but it doesn't tell you much. There's not like a sexy sales pitch, not that there has to be, but you know what I mean? Like,
00:14:05
Speaker
Yeah, but I think I'm too biased. I know you too well in your products to be objective, but I feel like if I saw all the other people that are talking about the Norseman, that answers the question in a much more wholesome way than hearing it from you. But it takes some deeper research for a new customer to go to Instagram and search Grimms Well Knives Tag. You wouldn't do that naturally in the first five minutes.
00:14:31
Speaker
Think about this. I heard a machine tool builder recently get asked by somebody, why don't you publish more customer testimonial videos? Which is kind of like, yeah, because part of me feels like there's a lot of builders that should do that more often. And the answer was immediate and with full conviction.
00:14:53
Speaker
And the answer was we don't publish them because they all sound like the same thing. Regardless of the person, the experience, the market, or the builder. They all say, I love this machine. They all say, I love the service. They all say, I love what it does for me. They all say, I love having it in my shop. And it does.
00:15:09
Speaker
effectively means nothing. And I actually immediately thought, I love this response because it is true when you go watch and it's unfortunate because there's all, I mean, there's machines from shape ochos to Kerns and you're going to have people say genuinely whitewashed answers that don't
00:15:26
Speaker
They really give you like, man, in that horizontal, it's like what I really needed to figure out is the fact that Okuma and Makino have a very different y-axis minimum travel area from the top of the APC pallet to the minimum of your spindle. Like that ain't coming up in the like, you know, not even, yeah, you get my point. Yep, yep. That's hilarious. But I like that answer.
00:15:51
Speaker
And you see it in, especially with machine tools, you watch all the videos on YouTube and everybody's like, yeah, it's provided great revenues for our company and the service has been great. And you know, we like it. End of story. And people are asking me all the time. They're like, dude, I'm thinking about buying a current. Like, do you like it? What's my answer going to be? Like,
00:16:10
Speaker
you know, it's got little nitpicky things like maybe I'll add in there like, you know, I've had some coolant issues, but every machine has coolant issues, period. You know, like, I don't know, but yes, I love it. It's amazing. Well, I think it's it's a self evident answer, you wouldn't be putting out the content you're making products with it if it didn't, like, ultimately, if it were really not the right fit, it'd be kind of gone, I guess. Anyway,
00:16:37
Speaker
So speaking of which, uh, last week we had a good run. Oh, hours, 149.5 hours out of 168 total hours in like a seven day week. So that's incredible. It's 89% for us. Incredible. Now you're not, you're not padding your surfacing routines here, John.
00:17:01
Speaker
I didn't put the feed rate to 50% or anything like that. No, that is legit because we had two more rask pallets we've been working on. So we added that to the rotation. We've got five rask pallets in now. So that added another like 10 hours of weekend run for us. And it ran, I think it stopped Saturday evening due to a little issue, but I caught it within a couple hours and I came in Saturday evening, fixed it. And then it ran deep into Sunday or something. And yeah, so it took less than a day off in the entire week.
00:17:30
Speaker
which was like Sunday, basically. And you still have power capacity in the machine. Much capacity. We have nothing ready. You know, if we made another five pallets, like it would run till Monday and I would, I would be confident it would do it. Oh my God. It's amazing, John. Yep. I am enthusiastic.
00:17:51
Speaker
I want to throw my hat in the ring. I don't actually think we will be a contender because we just don't do the surfacing stuff you do. So we don't have these long cycle times per se. But when I did that initial math on the horizontal and the tombstone, I'm realizing, oh my gosh, like it'll be easy to have this thing be.
00:18:08
Speaker
productively busy. And I had this wonderful moment, like just this, just sense of relief fell over me. I was in the shower. It was no other morning. I kind of hadn't fully like woken up yet. And of course, like any machine nerd, I was thinking about tool changers in the shower. And I kind of had this thought where I was like, did I order the 64 like built in chain? And I was like, no, I got the matrix. And it just like felt so, so stinking happy. Like, yeah, like, I don't know if you
00:18:37
Speaker
If it showed up on our floor with the 64, I know we would have made it work. But let me tell you, I am so happy that we're going to have the flexibility to keep jobs set up, keep tools set up, sister tooling. I like the way it's laid out. I'm just really happy about that. Don't put it this way. I have the current tooled up the way I like it. I've got fixture tools in there. I've got all the production tools in there. I've got a few sister tools. We don't need them that much with our tool management that we use.
00:19:07
Speaker
But I was running a fixture, I haven't made this kind of fixture in quite a little while, and it's drilling and thread milling an M8 threaded hole. And this was running deep into Saturday or something like that, like nobody's here and it stopped. And it was like, the machine was like a tool not found.
00:19:28
Speaker
The tool is not loaded in the machine carousel because I didn't even think to load it. I must have pulled it out six months ago for some reason or whatever. But that's the first time that's happened in so long. I can program any fixture I need and any production part, and the tools are just there. Yes. They're just in there. And this was a laughing moment where it's like, oh, wow, I must have pulled that tool out. And that's dumb, but I can't feel bad about it.
00:19:55
Speaker
Have you thought about, I know you have a 3D printed, like a flag, right? You have a tool that's not been touched off or is temporarily out.
00:20:06
Speaker
So with the magazine rack, the bookshelf of all the tool holders, you open the door and they're just all right there. You could pull 50 out and you could, and the machine wouldn't know. But we only pull out one at a time. In your left hand, you pick up the yellow 3D printed HSK taper. Yes.
00:20:27
Speaker
And then with your right hand, you pull out the tool and you immediately put the yellow 3D printed thing where it goes. That way, two minutes later, when you got to put it back, there is no thinking, no worry whatsoever as to where it went. Because that happened so many times. I'd be giving a tour and I'd be like, yeah, here's a tool. I was like, crap, where does it go again? Within five seconds, you kind of forget. Yeah, so the 3D printed thing eliminated all of that. And it's fantastic.
00:20:54
Speaker
Uh, so I'm wondering with the matrix, maybe not relevant, but I wouldn't hesitate to 3d print a dummy cat 40 tool. If for some reason I, like if I needed to keep running the machine and it's like, okay, I want to work on this sister tap, like extra tap tool. Like you could throw a dummy back in. They may not be a good idea, but
00:21:14
Speaker
I want to explore that. I also, we're thinking sort of for other reasons, we're thinking about picking up one of the Ray Brapton. Who makes it? The fiber lasers that are a little bit better than the cheapo. It's still Chinese, but they're probably between 4 and 8K, 50 watt, and that would let us laser mark.
00:21:34
Speaker
Our two holders. You can get a 50 watt laser for 8K. Yes. I should really pull it. I did some research when you're going in that rabbit hole. We were actually just talking about fiber lasers in the shop. Like I've wanted one for years, but- Yeah, there's a good video. Yeah, Rakus or JPT, but Rakus sounds acceptable. You do not want a max. I didn't spell it.
00:21:58
Speaker
R-A-Y-C-U-S. That's just who makes the laser within it. The notes I have are to look at buying them as a vendor or machine from Cloudray, one word, or MACTRON, M-A-C-T-R-O-N. I have not researched that just based on kind of what I was finding on online reviews and discussions.
00:22:19
Speaker
But when you were regardless of where you purchase it, whether it's those are Amazon or Aloe Express, you want to probably look for the unit itself to have a rakus laser. OK, interesting.
00:22:31
Speaker
Sounds like 30 watts can work, 50 is better. Yeah, some of the guys in the EDC industry, they'll get like a 50 watt or a 70 watt or 80 or whatever. I forget all the brains, Laser Star, I don't know, a bunch of brands, but they're more like 50 to $80,000 for a serious, well-built.
00:22:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think from memory that once you go over 50, you start to move outside of the price efficient hobby, prosumer world. I have not really stumbled across folks that sell these that offer higher than 50 watts. And I don't think for anything I'm seeing, we would do 50 is sufficient. 30, frankly, might be. 30 might be. It's when you want to do deep engraving on titanium that you want the power. Otherwise, it's going to take 12 hours to do it.
00:23:19
Speaker
Yeah, I think a buddy of mine, Brad Southerd, knife maker, bought a 30 watt... I can't remember the brand right now. And it was still like 20 grand or something, like really good laser, but 30 watt. And for him to do deep engraving takes like 12 hours. But he's like, it's a light bulb, so I don't really care. Like the laser, it's like a light bulb.
00:23:38
Speaker
Last forever, you mean? Yeah, last forever, power wise, who cares, whatever, just set it and go to sleep. Okay. But that way he could basically cut through a titanium handle, like do a really deep engraving. Oh, okay. Wow. Not just marking, but when you want texture, when you want some depth, when you want to play with it. And if I get one, like marking is cool, but it'd be really cool to go deep and have some fun with it. You always go deep, John. Oh yeah.
00:24:04
Speaker
No, but I keep thinking, and I told the guys two days ago, if we get a laser, I almost want an artist hired with it to create the art and to use it and to run it, because it's a ripe tool for artistry, especially on our artistic products. You put some crazy pattern on the handle. It's got to be cool.
00:24:25
Speaker
So that's what the, I think it's a combination of the higher wattage and there's another laser property that I'm not remembering the acronym that allows you to effectively do coloring through heat zones, which is not so. Especially on titanium where you can anodize it with heat. And yeah, so Keybar, Keybar Mike does that a lot and he's gotten very good at that. So you can do deep engraving, but also light coloring. And he'll actually like,
00:24:53
Speaker
he's learned how to polish titanium with the laser. No kidding. Yep. Huh. Oh, that's cool. Going back to tool changers. The other reason I think we're going to benefit from having the higher ATC is we I was running the machines over the weekend and I noticed a tap tripped a load limit alarm and I looked at the form tap and I'm like, this is effectively fine. Like it had worn an almost irrelevant amount, but it changed the torque
00:25:22
Speaker
change the spindle load beyond our band, which is a good thing as we're trying to learn and dial these in. With sister tooling, I think what it would let us do is spend six months learning those bands without really compromising production because it could grab the sister tool, flag the expired tool, we could look at it, and then we could realize, okay,
00:25:44
Speaker
No, it's okay. We can bump it up from 45% to 50% spindle load, rather than say, oh boy, we quote, unquote, broke a tool or something. We need to go look and see, you know, it's just a lot more disruptive. Does it stop in the hole when it does that? I don't know if I can talk about it. Yeah. No, so it does, which is only annoying because
00:26:10
Speaker
And I don't, I only really have experience with tool Haas tool management. And what really gets me is when a tap load limit is exceeded, it just stops in the middle of the hole. Now it's actually not a big deal because the Haas tap recovery is phenomenal. We have never broken a tap. You enter into recovery mode, jog it out. It works flawlessly. Shout out to them. But what ticks me off is
00:26:36
Speaker
So we have big issues with how we run this on hole limits with drilling and tapping on our fixture plates to where if you have a 2000 hole tap limit, making that up, and you're about to hit cycle start on an operation that's going to tap 500 holes. If you're at 1999 holes, it will tap the next 500 holes. And at the end of that cycle, it will look back and say, did I sometime during that violate
00:27:04
Speaker
number, total number of tapped holes. And if it does, it'll end of life, the tool at the end of the operation. But it needs to do that either before or during the tapping. And it's kind of like, wait a minute here, you can stop me when you violate a spin, a limit, but you won't stop me when I'm on account. Because it's the way the programming works is when the tool is called, that's the only time it's looking for the limit.
00:27:29
Speaker
No, it's at the end. Well, I'm saying it passes when the tool is called. It qualifies. It's like, yeah, I can grab this tool. It's not out of life.
00:27:40
Speaker
Right. It doesn't have a way of saying, I'm about to do this many can cycles. I get that. On the Kern, for a little bit, I stopped doing it, but I put, there's like an overtime column in the tool table where I can put, this tool typically runs for 20 minutes. So use that as the buffer zone of the tool life to make sure that I never want to hit the limit and call a tool that's over time.
00:28:05
Speaker
but I ended up just predictably calculating all the tool lives anyway. But yeah, you kind of need something like that. You need some buffer built in. Right, right.
00:28:16
Speaker
Well, the way we do it is we just break up the fusion cam into sections to say, and so it's checks every say hundred holes instead of 500 holes. And that's been fine. It more just there's a there could be actually if there's one theme over the last few weeks now that I've been back out in the shop, I really enjoy fixing things like this should be done better. So let's modify the post or let's 3D print apart for the machine because it's wonderfully satisfying to make things better. So would you.
00:28:43
Speaker
Let's say you're close to the limit, it calls the tool, you tap 100 holes, then do you just call another tool change for the same tool again to activate that tool life?
00:28:52
Speaker
If you have them in Fusion, at least if they're posted as separate CAM operations, I don't even think we have to do a forced tool change. That is enough to have the machine tool, like the next-gen control, check the number of holes relative to the tool life, and it'll stop. Yeah, that could work. And then in that case, if you had a sister tool built in, it would just call the next tool. You would just grab the sister tool, yeah. Right, which is pretty cool for you guys. Yeah. So you'd probably keep that workflow.
00:29:22
Speaker
And honestly, we don't generally use sister tools, especially in this case, we're here at the shop. So if it does that, we just replace out this existing holder with a new tap. That's fine. That's assuming you're standing there watching it. When the machine's waiting for you to swap out that tool because it hit the limit, that time adds up. You're not necessarily wrong, but relative to adding another, we just haven't done it. Could we, will we maybe?
00:29:50
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like it'll be one of those things. Tap 100 holes at a time. Call the same tool again. See if it's good. Otherwise, go to sister tool. That could be like the new standard for you guys. Yes. Especially when we're not limited. I don't know. We won't work in big place. Fix your place on the horizontal, so it probably won't come up there. But when you have tool change or capacity, if that truly were the bottleneck, yeah.
00:30:14
Speaker
We just did a video on this, which will come out in a few weeks, but we modified the background, like the Haas VPS template code behind the scenes. Not hard to modify it, but it's a little, you want to be focused. You want to be a surgeon while you're doing this work, but we changed the over-travel
00:30:32
Speaker
to make the HAZ probing routines just a lot more user friendly to basically not have to have your probe centered on the part nearly as close as they want you to. And it is a wonderful quality of life improvement to just get it close, hit cycle start, and then let it go do its thing while you do something else rather than thinking, oh man, I was a quarter inch off and throws the probe alarm. Yeah. Do you guys probe for work piece orientation a lot, like a location, I guess?
00:30:59
Speaker
What I'm talking about there has mostly to do with when we're setting up a new product flow fixture. So if we're switching over from jaws to pallets, and we do also probe basically every single op-1 fixture plate. Now, we make a steel plate takes almost a day to work to do it. So we're not probing all the time, per se.
00:31:25
Speaker
That's what I spent this week doing was that and lots of modeling tombstones, which has been fun. I'm a plan on putting in a PO today for three tombstones. They're all very different size and my confidence keeps increasing every time I spend a day working on it, sleep on it, revisit it.
00:31:49
Speaker
So I'm excited that I keep getting better at it in at least the CAD CAM side of it makes me nervous that like last night I thought I had a design down that I was way too big here. I'm going to switch from a small square column tombstone to a big flat slab tombstone. It's going to be way better to rotate the parts 90 and then get creative with the OP2 on it.
00:32:08
Speaker
So you're super excited that you figured that out, but then it's also kind of like what else am I not? I was playing with a theory yesterday that, you know, when you're, when you're learning something or especially when you're young and arrogant.
00:32:23
Speaker
The information you know is 100% of what you know, whereas the world is a million percent bigger than that, knowledge-wise. But sometimes we get so barrel-headed, you're like, yep, I know what's going on. I know it all. But really, your scope of knowledge is kind of narrow. So like you said with the tombstones, you're like, oh, I just figured that out. Wait, what else am I not figuring out yet?
00:32:44
Speaker
Yeah, there's some wonderful Mark Twain quote of, you know, don't be scared of the guy who says he doesn't know something, be scared of the guy who knows everything and says it, but it's kind of like, yeah. But if anything, I also think sometimes I suffer from too much
00:33:01
Speaker
Like you got to have conviction. You got to have confidence. You got to say, you know what? No, we're going to make this work. We have to change it later. No big deal. But let's go to hop on the ship because we're going to make this thing work. Absolutely. And you figure it out on the way. Which I actually like. It's kind of funny. We realized the best way to run that slab style tombstone. So think of one that literally looks like a graveyard tombstone. So it's kind of like a wide and thin versus a square column. So you're using two sides of it instead of four, basically.
00:33:31
Speaker
Oh no, we're using all four. How thick is it? Yeah, six inches, but oh wow. Okay. That's where we're creative. So six inch thick by how wide? 15, 18. Okay. Yeah. So you can play a lot with that. You can put an orange vice on the side, like six inches. Jeez.
00:33:47
Speaker
Yeah, so rather than building custom fixtures for the front side, which is kind of what I've been thinking, I was like, oh my gosh, this is such a better setup for dual station mod vices, which number one, we know, and number two, we'll just we use them on fixture plates, which is simple to
00:34:02
Speaker
build, adhere those, or fasten them to the tombstones with minimal kind of commitment, if you will. Lots of downstream flexibility. And it solves it. One of the biggest reasons we initially started making mod vices was as great as things like pit bull clamps are, they have a relatively small throw distance. I'm 20, 30 foul. And the mod vice doesn't
00:34:22
Speaker
force you into a narrow throw range because whether your part changes, whether your stock size from your vendor changes, whether the fixture wears over time, that's what I want is that ability to say, well, you know what? We're not going to do this out of plate, saw cut plate. We're going to do it out of a bar or it's going to, you know, I need to make sure I'm holding onto the stuff well. This totally solves that problem.
00:34:42
Speaker
Yeah, I remember I used to use pit bull clamps a lot on the tarmac and I'd have to like put metal shims underneath them to get them dialed in perfect because the stock size is always a little bit different and I don't miss that. But yeah, the mod vice solves that. That's amazing. Yeah. So yeah, that's what's going on with me. What do you been up to?
00:35:02
Speaker
Yesterday was kind of fun. Technically, we're doing kind of a coolant tank clean out on the Nakamura, and we bumped the temperature sensor that measures the coolant temperature in the little tank. And I think we broke it because it has zero continuity across the sensor.
00:35:20
Speaker
Man, you're just killing it on these wires lately. Yeah, exactly. So we pulled all that out, and there's no part number on it, so we're trying to look at all the electrical diagrams to find the replacement. Anyway, eventually found it, called LA of Metzura. They're like, yeah, we got one in stock. It's $250. We can have it your way. And I'm like, fine, do it. But yeah, so that should be here today, tomorrow.
00:35:43
Speaker
The current is having a little bit of a tool changer issue. There's, they call it a damper. It's like a little shock absorber. So when that crazy tool arm comes out, it comes out with a lot of force and a lot of power and against a hard stop. But there's a damper in there that just kind of cushions the blow as it closes down. I think ours is worn out. It might be like an annual replacement thing.
00:36:05
Speaker
Interesting. Because the tool changer bounces at the end, and that is causing a missed tool change. Sensors kind of miscalibrate, and they're like, I want to clamp, but I can't because I'm not in position. So almost no damage or downside. It just kind of alarms out and says, I'm confused.
00:36:24
Speaker
And the tool change recovery is brilliant. You just E-stop the machine and un-E-stop the machine and it recovers from any tool change situation. So that's pretty cool. But it is scary when you have the grinding wheel in one position and the probe in the other position and you're like, if one of these drops, I'm not happy right now.
00:36:42
Speaker
Right, because the Kern is, to me, a very unique tool changer because instead of a swing arm or carousel of any sort, it actually moves as two, two sets of fingers, one grabs the old two and then it shifts over and puts the new one in. Exactly. It's kind of carrying two tools, if you will. Yeah. So it throws the new tool out and then it drops the spindle tool in the, you know, spot number two lifts up and grabs the spot number one, the new tool and then retracts and then the
00:37:10
Speaker
I already called the gripper in the, uh, there's a word for it. I don't know. In the tool magazine, like puts it all away. Yeah.
00:37:19
Speaker
Does your feed rate override or any other mechanism on the hide-and-hide, does it slow down the tool change speed? The tool change, like the arm coming out is pneumatic, so no, it doesn't. But it does slow down the Z spindle moving up, over, and down. But that won't change anything. It doesn't solve anything, yeah. Exactly. It reminds me of new dampers coming in today, basically. Got it. Another 250.
00:37:45
Speaker
They were three, 370 each. So I bought two because I'm like one's going in the machine and one's going on the shelf. Yeah. And this will probably just be an annual thing. But what I really want to find out when it comes in is I want to squish the old one, which feels like a spring right now. And I want to squish the new one. And I bet you it'll feel very dead like and the new one's bouncy. So I'll find that out today. But put that up on inside. I want to see that. OK.
00:38:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's a neat little part, but it's like we're losing time because of tool change issues, you know, and it's frustrating. Oh yeah. Sure, sure. So how many tool changes? We actually, did you say this on the podcast once? I know. Was that a WhatsApp? I forget. Looking up for next week. I don't know. I don't know if I have an easy way to calculate. On the Willamans, they tell you exactly how many tool changes. I just look on the menu, but the current, I don't think so, but I'm easily changing hundreds of tools a day.
00:38:38
Speaker
Yeah, right. It's got to be tens of thousands already. Yeah, baby. But it reminds me of a phenomenal tour video kind of from way back in the day for us when we went out to Lawrence Berkeley, and Tom blipped and showed us everything they do there that he does there. And it's just wonderful, filled with nerdiness and engineering and machine tools and so many smart people in that organization, just really cool. They had modified a an old
00:39:06
Speaker
manual lathe to serve, if I recall, as a cable braiding machine that would braid, if I remember correctly, copper wires that would turn into these electrical conductor things that when they're cooled to like one Kelvin could carry like 16,000 amps. I mean, it totally blows the mind. And so there was a kind of a, you know, when they weave like ribbon or metal together and it's like twisting as it overlaid.
00:39:33
Speaker
and they need to cut it in certain increments, but it was too... The machine couldn't kind of kinematically respond quick enough to go from a dead stop to moving forward at the pace that the stuff was coming off. So Tom, I think Tom was explaining it, I think he was involved in designing and building it, had built this spring mechanism that when it releases, the spring assist just pushes it forward enough so that the electromechanical thing can more easily sync up
00:40:01
Speaker
and cut it correctly. And I was just like, oh, it's such a genius. Kind of the opposite of your damper, but nevertheless, kind of that mix of a driven system with a passive system, if you will. Yup. And sometimes you need that to solve the problem. That's cool.
00:40:16
Speaker
What else do you see today? I'll tell you something I did last week was I got the, remember we talked about heat treating the knife blades and the arbor press, squishing them flat. And then we had all these ideas for how to measure the load, basically. So I ended up machining a hydraulic cylinder to get mounted to the end of the arbor press.
00:40:40
Speaker
tuned it and I tested it against the pneumatic cylinder I have and like pressure gauge and all that stuff. I did all the math and calculations and it's bang on. It's like totally accurate. So the cylinder size is one square inch, which is like 1.12 diameter, something like that is the hydraulic piston size. So then the gauge I got is a zero to 3000 PSI gauge. So it means every PSI it reads is a pound of pressure you're applying to it. Okay, sure.
00:41:07
Speaker
The first number on the gauge is 500 PSI. There's a couple of graduations before it. So I went and I stood on this little cylinder just to see if 170 pounds will make the needle move. And it kind of does, because it's kind of dead in the low part. But anyway, I put it on an arbor press, a small arbor press. And I'm just moving it with my thumb. And I got 500 pounds of force through the arbor press just with the force. And I'm like, this thing is awesome. Holy cow. So then we put it on the big arbor press by the heat treat cell. And I had Skye.
00:41:37
Speaker
I was like, OK, you got to do this blind. Don't look at the gauge. Don't affect the way you normally do this. But I want you to mock, like, do your routine. Pull the blade out. Pretend it's red hot. Do it just like you normally would. I'll watch the gauge. You don't look at it. And do that three times in a row. And the first time was 1,250 pounds. And the second time was 1,500. And the third time was 1,500. So I'm like, OK. 1,500 is our standard. But that's 250 pounds of load just in various, you know, I'm trying different
00:42:07
Speaker
doing it again, right? But now that he can watch the gauge while he's pushing, he can hold 1500 consistently, no problem. And then we had one of our other guys that does it sometimes do it and he got 1250 all three times. So we're like, okay, 1500 is the answer.
00:42:24
Speaker
But the guy who did it at 1250, he just watches the gauge and pushes a little harder. He could achieve 1500 no problem? No problem. But what's your natural, like what are we actually doing was the answer I wanted right now. Because if you're going to build a pneumatic press or something like that, I don't know what the pressure is. We can make it up, but like what are we doing? And now I have exactly that answer and it's fantastic.
00:42:47
Speaker
But if, if you know, this guy's distracted, or he's not his phone or whatever, and he's like, not pushing hard enough, just not thinking about it. The gauge now tells you you're doing it wrong. You know, we did a vice clamping pressure video a couple years ago, where we had everybody in the shop, you know, different bills, and so forth, come up with both vice handles, as well as the torque wrenches, because it was kind of the other question of like,
00:43:13
Speaker
Are torque wrenches any good? Do they repeat? Is it one click or two clicks? And we kind of went through this whole video showing the consistency across operators or vice operators, as well as a really awesome explanation of the simplicity behind clamping force versus clamping pressure.
00:43:29
Speaker
Um, and so if you're fascinated by that, I would encourage folks to rewatch the vice that video. Um, but that's awesome. Is it an analog gauge or digital analog? Okay. You could make it digital and like actually graph the thing, but it doesn't matter right now. Um, but it was kind of fun making a hydraulic cylinder and you know, make everything to spec the O ring specs and it's got to hold 3000 PSI. So there's no screwing around here. Oh yeah. And sky was saying they pushed on it as hard as they could. And they got 2,500 pounds.
00:43:58
Speaker
Sorry, it's an arbor press that I think of like the benchtop that has the handle, right? And it's a C-frame arbor presser. What role does the hydraulic piston you made play? So the RAM that comes down, the black square thing, I mounted it to the end of that. And then the plates that we have these aluminum water cooled plates are mounted to the end of the RAM. So the top plate goes up and down. So the pressure cylinders between the top plate and the RAM.
00:44:25
Speaker
The hydraulic pressure is not used to increase your clamping. It's just used to measure it. Correct. Got it. Okay. I'm with you. Cool. I got to do a video on this because it's too cool not to share. Oh, yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, it's fun. It was a big project. A lot of machining, but I loved it. I had fun. It totally gave me the answer. I wanted the way I wanted it.
00:44:48
Speaker
I know you can do some calculations in math and leverage and tooth ratio, and you should be able to calculate how much pressure an arbor press does, but the one variable I couldn't figure out is how hard are you pushing? I don't care what the mechanical advantage is. How hard are you pushing? A 400-pound guy is going to be able to push harder than a 100-pound guy. You could have put a torque wrench instead of replaced the handle with a torque wrench.
00:45:11
Speaker
But only if it's set to the click of where you think it needs to be, right? Yeah. Well, that would make it repeatable. True. Not necessarily accurate. That makes sense. But a buddy of mine suggested if you stood on a weigh scale and as you're pushing, you get lighter because you're pushing into the table.
00:45:31
Speaker
and you're lifting yourself off the table ever so slightly. So you can then use that calculation to figure out how much force you're putting into the gauge. And I was like, that is kind of brilliant. That could work if you wanted to do all that math. I think so. Yeah, right. But I don't want to do all that math. So I'd rather just machine something intricate and awesome and do it that way. Right. Interesting. Yeah. Any update on the woman?
00:45:55
Speaker
I haven't touched it. It's literally been meaning to be touched. Hopefully I can get some time on it today, but it's on my list. By the end of the week, I want to at least have put a lot of work into it. So I got three days left. Awesome. I was not asking to antagonize you genuinely curious. I'm guilty. You know, like I wish it were done by now, but
00:46:18
Speaker
Getting there. And it's like Johnny five, anybody control me all you want. Yes. Two or three years ago, we were going to try to do it in one year. The reality is, you know, stuff happens, COVID happens, our business grew. We are still doing it. And it is awesome. Now that the heads on and the shoulders are on, you really start to see him become a relatable object. And it's, it is wonderful.
00:46:40
Speaker
That's fantastic. I think some people don't have these long-term projects and multiple, many of them, like you and I do. I love it. I love having so many things on the go and long-term projects I can pick away at. Some people don't have that. It's easy to troll when you don't really understand. If you're working on a car for a long time and it doesn't sound important, but it's still fun and you do it anyway. It's just a big money pit, but I'm still going to do it.
00:47:06
Speaker
What do you think the customs officer would say if Johnny Five is in the bed of my truck and I explain that I'm just going up to have him machine-tend the Willamans?
00:47:16
Speaker
He'd be like, wait, what? I don't understand. I don't think that's going to go. The laser probably isn't going to help either. It's the rocket launcher still on his back. They're dummy rockets. They're just cardboard. 3D printed. If anybody knows a Canadian customs officer who's willing to turn a blind eye to a robot being passed across to international borders, give me a shout. As long as Johnny Five drives across the truck crossing.
00:47:40
Speaker
Well, speaking of the 1980s, an off-topic way to wrap up today's episode is I have a Porsche 944 that is on the road. Oh, yeah. I was super happy. Anybody who knows these cars will understand what I'm saying, or knows cars in general, replace the water pump that involved all the timing belts, huge amount of risk.
00:47:59
Speaker
because it's a 1985 car that has a lot of original things like fuel lines. I was like, oh man, if these crack and it could go bad, just trying to do the minimum repairs, I need to make sure the car can run before I put more money and time into it. And last weekend I finished that repair up, got the timing reset, did a new fuel strainer, put gas in it, new battery, and the whole family came out.
00:48:21
Speaker
And all I had to didn't start the first time. And then there's a bunch of tricks, things you can do. I tapped on the fuel injectors with a metric crescent wrench and tapping on each one of them a few times just can help unseason for lack of a better description and rolled her over again. And she started in William and I went for a half an hour drive. Actually, oddly enough, ran great that morning the next day.
00:48:46
Speaker
When it starts off, it's really rough, and then it kind of settles in. So I may still have an injector issue or something else. I love it. It was hugely rewarding, like literally on life goal, to take a car that doesn't run and get it running. Yep, yep. That's so fantastic. And I mean, injectors are not that expensive if you wanted to just go replace them all. But you don't know until it's, you don't know what's wrong. You can't just throw money at the whole machine, at the whole car. So yeah, I love what you did. Just like figure it out, get it running, bang on stuff.
00:49:12
Speaker
Like I've absolutely tapped on the starter to get the starter to work a bunch of times. And, uh, and then you figure it out from there. It needs a break bleed, like I needed to break it eight years ago. It's so long. It's like pushing into a sponge, but it does stop. Good for you, man. That's, that's super exciting. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Take care. I'll see you later. Bye.