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#372 Do I need a "reset"?
4.3k Plays5 months ago
TOPICS:
- Do I need a "reset"?
- Al Whatmough and Carl Bass leadership skills
- Grimsmo prepping for blade show
- Hardness testing
- UMC350 5 axis machine
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 372
00:00:01
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of a machining episode number 372. My name is John Saunders. My name is John Grimsmo. John and I talk each week about life as a small business leader and what we're doing well and what we got questions on. What are you doing well
Stress Management and Mental Resets
00:00:21
Speaker
this week? Let's start there.
00:00:24
Speaker
It's interesting. I don't know if you even know this, but a lot of times I use our talks, which we do record on Wednesday mornings as a reset, if I need a reset. Now, if I'm having to need a reset often, then I think I owe it to myself to be like, why?
00:00:43
Speaker
because I will never forget Jay Pearson, shout out to you Jay, standing in front of his dishwasher that he used to clean the product parts and sort of saying, stress is a choice and I get stressed about twice a year.
00:01:01
Speaker
So I really have taken that to heart. And that's one of those contextual comments that continues to resonate. But I don't want to be stressed.
Balancing Work and Family
00:01:11
Speaker
I don't want to be around people that are stressed. I don't want to have that as a culture.
00:01:16
Speaker
the the I just had a frustrating Monday, frankly, and just for no reason, like move on. And so yes, he was much better today. He's going great. And sometimes I think about like, oh, I could really, you know, I could really share all that and commiserate or complain to john and then like, no,
00:01:34
Speaker
move on. Like, this is great. Like, life's good. So life's a good job. And I say that because I hate people that fake happy, like fake good. Like, I had a tough couple days for those some some work reasons that are mostly self imposed. And, you know, look, frankly, our life was life with two kids and activities like we had four, we had to like double book things and you want to do it all and balance it and and just a lot going on.
00:02:04
Speaker
Yeah, I've, I've come to realize I can't be all things to all people at all times. Yeah. And that hurts to say, but it's fact, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's like you want to be there for everybody. You want to be fully present at work. You want to do your best stuff. You want to be fully present for your family. You want to be available for every kid event and doctor's appointment and everything. But at some point, something's got to be flexible and give. So you try to build that flexibility into everything you can. And in your own mind too, what's what your
00:02:35
Speaker
capable of and, you know, step back and go, no, I'm, I'm working really hard. I'm being a great dad. I'm, you know, I can't do it all, but I'm literally trying.
Managing Business Stress
00:02:44
Speaker
Yeah. And, um, but yeah, it's very easy to get tied up in the, the downs and the negatives of the busyness and then not realize like step back, you know, how, how good do I have it? Like things, things are pretty awesome right now.
00:02:57
Speaker
It's a wonderful life for yourself. Of course, that comes with some tension and busyness and all that. Look, we had a computer break. We had a major tool that we use here at the shop break. In isolation, one of the things that we deal, the summation of all of them, you're like, oh man, it feels like you're taking it on the chin.
00:03:21
Speaker
with the benefit of even a days of hindsight, you realize just just buy a new one. It's no big deal. Like, just move on. It's not funny, a day of hindsight gets you over it. Like, but in the day, you're like, there's so many choices. And I could do it this way. And I want I don't want to make the wrong decision. I don't want to spend the wrong money. Yeah. And then the next day, like, by three, four days later, I've forgotten about it. Like, if it's been solved, it's out of my brain. Yeah. Yeah.
00:03:47
Speaker
I mean, I guess this is the most I'll probably share and then maybe you want to move on. I think what I have found as a small business owner is that the act of being the glue that can hold things together, and look, to be clear, I don't think, maybe I wouldn't know if we are, but I don't think we're like some crazy haphazard thing where wheels are falling. It just was a bad set of circumstances around wherever, but the act of
00:04:14
Speaker
of being the glue that holds things together in the act of like, Hey, we just had this thing break. Okay. Just by doing like, it takes some energy and effort to not let that stuff affect you. So like sometimes I said to my wife, like, Hey, I'm really struggling right now. And she'll be like, Oh, you don't look at, which I think I'm proud. I think I'm proud of that. But on the flip side, um, it takes effort to
Leadership Styles and Adaptability
00:04:33
Speaker
do. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. My wife says I'm hard to read sometimes because I, you are hard to read. Yeah.
00:04:41
Speaker
I feel like I complain being candid. I think I complain a lot compared to you. You seem to be rock solid. No, you do, John. Yeah, interesting. Not always the case. Yeah, right? It's OK. OK, this is the good segue. I've been listening to, well, I was listening to Al Watmos interview on with Intolerance. Shout out to Dylan in that podcast. And Al has.
00:05:11
Speaker
Clearly, and I don't blame him for one second, inherited some of his management and leadership techniques and beliefs from Carl Bass, who was for a long time the CEO of Autodesk. And I just found, and I'm only about halfway through it, the Max Guy, who's the Form Labs founder, do you know what I'm talking about?
00:05:27
Speaker
No, I don't know his last name, but he's I've seen him around before. He had a sit down like an hour long YouTube video with Carl. And I get kind of the whole like, advice is contextual or books are contextual or this sort of leadership stuff is contextual. I think what I see more from from Al and Carl is causing me to rethink some of my leadership stuff in a good way. So interesting.
00:05:55
Speaker
Well, to be frank, one of my concerns is I'm not Al. I don't have that.
00:06:00
Speaker
sense of, I think Al, I don't want to talk about Al because it feels like I'm judging him. He has a way of bringing people together. He's a much gentler person. I'm a little bit more sharp-elbowed, opinionated. I do get stressed too easily. But you think about these things and you're like, well, don't worry about whether you
Receiving Feedback and Employee Opinions
00:06:20
Speaker
think you can change. Just change and then figure it out from there. Switching away from leadership and more into
00:06:30
Speaker
Sort of like the soft leadership and into more of the hard leadership like the more Day-to-day leadership something's I was like having I like this phrase strongly Sorry strong convictions loosely held Interesting so like I believe in this but that doesn't mean I'm not willing to listen to peers mentors employees teammates when they say hey, let's let's make sure
00:07:00
Speaker
that you're willing to think about this. Mm-hmm. That's fascinating. Because with strong convictions, it gives you direction. It gives you purpose. It gives you decision-making power. But it being loosely held allows you to be flexible and still listen to your team and evolve and grow and shift, right? Yeah.
00:07:25
Speaker
Yeah, like Carl was talking about on this YouTube about how, you know, debate is healthy and people different people have different aptitudes or tolerance for confrontational sort of debate, but it's not personal. And one way to do it is, you know, you know, you and I debate something, and then we flip it around. Yeah, that's kind of the on paper book, you know, if you can argue the other side's point better than they can, then then go nuts. Yeah, I
00:07:52
Speaker
I think you're much more comfortable at debate than I am. It's just my personality. Not just debate, but arguments specifically. But I like the theory of having a playful debate. I just don't get to do it very much. But we should. We do sometimes, I guess. I feel like when you say that I'm...
00:08:12
Speaker
what you said about me, that I don't disagree. I also don't necessarily think that that makes me good or better. Like it's absolutely, it's just, it's just, I don't know. It's always, look, I can, there are sometimes people can say things that do hit me and hurt or whatever. But like, generally speaking, it's kind of like, uh, like I don't as oddly, uh, opinionate as I might be. I'm also like, Oh yeah, I was, I screwed that one up. Like, I don't really care. Like, okay. Um, yeah. That's cool.
00:08:43
Speaker
Yeah. Interesting. Any other takeaways from these two legends in the Autodesk community? I started making some notes.
00:08:55
Speaker
Yeah. Carl was talking about, it also plays right into it. It is really hard to get unfiltered honest opinions from folks in an organization when you become the CEO, the leader, the writer of paychecks, like whatever you want to say. And I'm a little embarrassed to say that. I think that's something that may be true at our level. And Carl was talking about it when there's $4 billion of revenue and 80,000 people or whatever.
00:09:26
Speaker
This tragic part is you care and want to make good decisions. And I think when I think of companies that have absentee owners or owners that have frankly poor motives of just like squeeze the business, whatever, like, no, I love it. I want to be here. I want to make the right decisions.
Delegation and Strategic Focus
00:09:44
Speaker
I want to be a good steward of it. I want to be told when I'm wrong.
00:09:48
Speaker
I think kind of the whole like, I can't fix what I don't know about. Now, I guess I already know that it's not going to be common for folks to say stuff. So maybe that's on me a bit to listen better and be more perceptive to that stuff. But on the flip side, it's kind of like, that's where I'm weak because to me, it's just like, well, just say something. Yeah, it's super clear to you, but to somebody else, you're the boss, you're the big band, you're the
00:10:16
Speaker
You're the one who's going to judge this idea. And same here. Every now and then I'll hear about a thing, an issue, a problem, a customer, whatever that I didn't know was a problem. And it's like, why didn't you say something sooner? I could have solved this months ago. Why are we still struggling with that? Don't be afraid to bring it up if somebody has a problem with a thing. And I'm trying to take that logical
00:10:46
Speaker
Be clear, be open, tell me anything. It's fine. And again, like you said, I want to be able to grow that skill and that communication throughout the company to me, from me. I want to not only be a good listener, but be a good someone who's receptive and approachable.
00:11:09
Speaker
Yeah, the real doozy. And this is another moment where I wish this wasn't a public conversation. But the real doozy is I believe I would be better at that if I was also in more of the days off in the shot mode of like, my job here is to take a step back. And, you know, I can be here, I can be doing things here that are improving or working. But like, if I'm being very frank, right now, my plate is overloaded with stuff to do against some of that self imposed. But
00:11:39
Speaker
Like this is what you and I have to do for each other is recognize why is that, why are you there and how are you fixing that? And I think for both of us, this is where I'm starting to give my opinion to you that you didn't ask for, but like both of us would be better off if we were optionally far less involved in a lot of things. Yeah. And I'm, I'm agreeing with you. Absolutely. Um, it's sort of, you know, the, in the email that they talk about, um, maybe it's an email, but,
00:12:06
Speaker
You kind of replace yourself or you level up and you hire your old role kind of thing. And you as the owner, me as the owner have a hundred different roles within the
Preparing for a Knife Show: Challenges and Perfectionism
00:12:17
Speaker
company. You know, everything from technician to manager to machinist to inventor designer.
00:12:24
Speaker
facilities maintenance, like all this stuff. And eventually as you grow, you start to hire bits and pieces that, okay, now you are Mr. Facilities Maintenance, I'm not anymore. And you spread, you elevate and delegate, that's the phrase. And you and I need to realize what's taking the most of our time and what could benefit most from elevating ourselves and delegating that task as well. And, you know,
00:12:53
Speaker
things like having precision machinists on your team to take off more of your technical like expert craft. You don't want to let it go. But also, it's really nice when the work gets done. And you don't have to be the one doing it. Yes. Yes.
00:13:12
Speaker
Remember I gave that sort of mediocre analogy of a life. You and I teamed up and spent $10 million to buy an asphalt paving company. Neither one of us are going to learn how to run a road paper. Right. I might learn about it, but I'm not going to do it. Yeah. Or I do it for afternoon because it'd be freaking awesome. Yeah, because I want to know how it works. But yeah, I'm not going to be the one getting sweaty every day.
00:13:38
Speaker
Hearing Al talk a little bit about Toolpath and his new role, Al was a machinist. Al obviously knows Cam incredibly well, but it is interesting. Al doesn't write code. He's not the test user. It's almost like
00:13:58
Speaker
that example of what you are you and I what you and I don't have which is Al was brought in at a level like I would actually love that example I don't
00:14:09
Speaker
I think our business can afford it. And I think there's some other quirky complications about long-term sustainability of the position, blah, blah, blah. Basically, it would be like somebody else hiring somebody else to be the CEO of one of our companies. And then you or I become whatever we want to do. It's like what the pocket and see guy did. Like, I think it's Matt is like the chief innovation officer. And he does not run the company. Yeah. It's fascinating. Yeah, right.
00:14:38
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Al went into certainly toolpath and in Autodesk too. It was a leadership position. You know, it's his job not to write code, not to be the technician, but his job is to manage and lead and vision and interpret what Carl Glass wants and what the team needs and what the company needs and execute. Yeah. Like he's probably the expert at prioritizing execute.
00:15:01
Speaker
Did you listen to the with intolerance? No, I haven't. But should I? I would humbly encourage you to. Because one of the things that this is like, I mean, I'm falling out of my chair laughing because I was talking about how he used to, he used to take administrative work off of his team's plate, because he felt like as a boss, he was taking one for the team figuratively and literally, even though he did not like it.
00:15:31
Speaker
only to later sort of find out or realize, and again, I've probably just listened to Al say this, not my read, read each other. Um, even though only to find out that the people he was taking it from actually liked that sort of work and are, are better able to do it. And it's their job to do it. Yes. And that's kind of one of those, like, I appreciate Al's candor and humility around this because it's kind of like, Oh man, like I was way wrong on this one. Yeah. Yep. That is, I've been there. That is absolutely the case.
00:15:59
Speaker
And it's like, oh, I'll just do it. I know they're too busy. I'll just get this done. No, no, let the team do their work. That's what they were hired for. That's their job. That's their purpose in this company. Why would I take that from them? I have other things to do. Just because I see it on my plate doesn't mean I need to be the one to do it right now. Yeah. Yeah.
00:16:27
Speaker
Pretty cool. How are you doing? What's new on your mind plate? Starting to feel the pressure of blade show, which the show starts in two weeks. Okay. We're shipping products in a week and a bit. Um, so whatever we're, whatever we're bringing, shipping in eight days. Um, no pressure, maybe nine days if I push it. Um,
00:16:55
Speaker
So it's good. The new knife is coming together real nice. By the end of the day today, I will have the bevels cut at least the first version. Oh, sweet. Yep. So that'll be that'll be huge. And then the guys can go ahead and finish and like, figure out the, you know, polishing techniques and get the bevels to be nice and tumbling and things like that sharpen the blade. Because we haven't even got to a sharp, sharpened knife yet. Funny. And so that'll be really good. And then hopefully by the end of the weekend, yeah,
00:17:25
Speaker
By Sunday, I'll have to have the clip made and everything else that needs to happen. So then, yeah, next week we can produce parts, which the blade through heat treat and everything, it's a multi-day process. That's going to be the time consuming part. As far as like, I mean, if we can bring five knives, five of these to blade show, I'll be thrilled. You know, in my brain I want to bring,
00:17:55
Speaker
more, but reality is. Can we debate this? Sure. Recognizing that, of course. The thing I love about you, you will make your own decision. As much as I love to debate you, I also know that I'm not disillusioned about my ability to influence you, if that makes sense. But what if I told you, you're not going to get the clip made, John, and you're not going to get five knives made, and that's OK.
Technical Challenges in Manufacturing
00:18:24
Speaker
finish, finish the blade bevels, have one, maybe two that you can take and have with pride. Like I'm not a knife guy, but I mean, I know your products. I love your products. Like the clips not done. That's okay, John. And if you, if you, I guess one of the reasons I'm saying this is to also say focus on what you need to focus on for the next two or three days. And if you crush that and you kill it and you're done and you've got four days of nothingness in front of you, then go tackle the clip. Which is kind of why I'm leaving the clip till the end.
00:18:54
Speaker
Yeah, it also has has to be done. Oh, is that right? Yeah. Okay. Even the guys in the shop are like, I can't like, if I don't feel the clip, it's how you hold the knife. It's how you like add some traction to it. They're like, I can't fully judge it until that clip is on there. Okay. But it'll get them. Okay. I'm actually not like the Wilhelmin is so cool and powerful and allows you to rotate and I'm not worried about it. Like,
00:19:21
Speaker
I know the design in my head of what it needs to be and it'll go fine. The only last thing I'll say is, is I said, I want you to crash a machine. Dude, I was close the other day on the Kern. I was making a fixture for the blade to cut the bevels. And, uh, so it's like this rectangle, um, on a small pallet and the tool goes in and I ran it through camp lead, although sometimes I just, yeah, I know.
00:19:49
Speaker
Ignore Camplete, I just use it as a post. And then so I'm jogging the machine in and I see the spindle get extremely close to the trunnion. As it's coming down, I'm close, I'm ready. And I'm like, that's close. That's going to hit. And this is a one hour plus program. And the first stop kind of gets that close. It's at the extreme end of the travel. So I'm like, hold on, just take a break. This is in the evening. Go back to Camplete.
00:20:20
Speaker
I trust that Camplete knows what the machine is going to do. It's going to visualize it and show me everything. So let me scrub through the whole program in Camplete, which takes a long time to crunch and render and all that. Yes. And then you can just run it and walk away and go back and look through the error log and see all the overcuts and all the things. It doesn't like threadmilling. It thinks you're crashing the tool into the part. So whatever, you ignore those sections.
00:20:50
Speaker
Also engraving texture, a feature that's not actually embossed into the part. Right. Because the tool's crashing. Yeah, the chamfer's the same way. So it's like error, cutter and fixture collision, whatever. Right. Like, okay, that block of red is, ignore that, it's girl's girl's girl. No crashes, probably have a good half inch of clearance between spindle housing and table. A good half inch. A half inch is like terrifying on the backside of the thing. So
00:21:17
Speaker
That built my confidence. That took me about an hour to just let that crunch. So there was no mistake. It just was close as you thought. Yeah. Oh, my God. I'm thinking that you had the wrong coordinates and picked and you caught it. Oh, my God. Good question, right? But I was thinking that it's like 9, 10, 11 o'clock. And I'm like, crashing the machine is completely not an option right now. I will take as long as it takes to simulate this and build my confidence to know that this will work great. Yeah. And it did. And it was fine.
00:21:46
Speaker
It was nice to be able to step back and be like, well, complete crunches. I'm going to play on the Willyman and I'm going to make these parts. Yeah. And that worked. It worked great. Good. Good. Glad to hear. So that was good. So let's see what I do. I made some. Oh, the buttons. So the button for this knife has been challenging us for a while now.
00:22:11
Speaker
I told you last week we blew up a couple of buttons. Yeah, they cracked. They crashed and shattered. We ended up breaking three of them, three out of the four that we had. And the fourth one we're just being delicate with. And it turns out to be two reasons. One is the heat treat that we put on them was imprecise and ended up they were way hard. They were like 63 Rockwell, which is for that steel is brittle. It's bad. It's like no good.
00:22:42
Speaker
And then the walls were much too thin because we were able to thicken up the walls and still get away with all the tolerances and everything. And even just looking at the section of you in CAD, you're like, Oh yeah, thicker wall. Like it's going to be five times stronger, like 10 times stronger. Um, and with the better heat treat, it's all good. So we're heat treating them out to about 59 Rockwell, which is perfect for that steel. And then, uh, polishing them up under the microscope with the, um, little bristle brush.
00:23:11
Speaker
allows me to get the perfect surface finish on them. And that's the recipe. That's the magic. It's the right hardness, the right polish, and the buttons work perfectly. Oh, good. Yeah. How do you test Rockwell on such a small part? Good question. Sky saw this coming from a mile away when I told him we need to heat treat this part, figure it out.
00:23:35
Speaker
And he goes, first question, I won't be able to hardness test it. I need a little slug, a little pancake of the same material. So for every batch of buttons coming off the Swiss, Jeff is also making a little sliver of the material that can be heat treated with everything.
Prototyping and Machine Workflow Efficiency
00:23:51
Speaker
And then it's a little pancake to hardness test really well. Do you have like the big stamping press hardness tester or the little? We've got both. We've got the little Ames
00:24:02
Speaker
little like sea clamp shaped thing. Okay. And it looks like a little micrometer, basically. Oh, yeah, it's zero to one inch. And that works well, although the calibration of it is somewhat, it might be off by a point or two. But we also have the big harbor press stamping press kind of thing. We bought a couple hundred bucks on Craigslist kind of thing. Had it certified and tested and it's great. Good. So we use that as the final say the backup
00:24:32
Speaker
the qualification, but the day-to-day, this guy's using the little Ames hardness tester that we also got on eBay.
00:24:40
Speaker
Do you guys have a herd of testosterone? We have the one, it's a kind of like a pen light on a microscope tube that's just like a bigger fit in your pocket clip. It's from PTC Instruments. They're a California, super nice guy. Is that the one where you poke the spring punch into it? Correct. They have a spring punch. What were you talking about, though? It comes with a master you can reference it against. It's great, especially for what we need. The two things.
00:25:08
Speaker
I don't like about it. One is just like saying I can optical comparator, you can kind of have some judgment or lack of consistency about where you're putting the lines on the you so basically you use a spring punch that makes a dip on your part, then you measure the dimple between two to sort of like rifle scope lines. Well, where does that crater really start? It's not a perfect. It's not just
00:25:32
Speaker
Two different people can get two different opinions on the tangency of the line to that. But that's really not a huge issue because we're not trying to measure. This isn't the sort of thing you'd use to measure one point period. It's kind of like, is this 32 Rockwell or is this 45 Rockwell? Easy for that. The other thing I don't like about it, which is very easily overcomeable, but
00:25:53
Speaker
I think is a lane that is counterintuitive. If I take a block, like say a one, two, three block, and I put it on my shot bench here, my desk here, which is a perfectly sturdy bench, like I could stand on top of this bench and jump on down on it, that's fine. Well, no.
00:26:08
Speaker
this bench definitely has some give and so forth to it. And so when you push it makes total sense when somebody explains it to you, when you push the spring punch into the part on a anything that's not perfectly stable, which there's nothing there's no such thing as perfectly stable. Everything is rubber Robin Renzetti.
00:26:27
Speaker
Then, yeah, what happens is the part moves away. Some of that energy dissipates elsewhere. And so the crater or the dimple you're making ends up being smaller than you would think. And thus your part will read as being harder because it was able to indent less. So when we use ours now, we're very conscious of usually going up to an open machine table because
00:26:51
Speaker
You know, the VF two table is better. The floor is okay. Except our floors have that chip on us. They're not perfectly, um, flat, like, like as fine as you'd want. And we don't have like a welding table anymore, but, um, you really, so you really want to have solid vacuum surface. Like surface plate kind of. I'm careful to our surface plates on a wheel dolly. So that's probably okay. That's my question is so the surface plate itself is fairly rigid, the granite. Um, but if it's on a movable surface.
00:27:21
Speaker
What's, how would it affect the reading? I mean, look, if it has any, think about putting your surface plate on a pair of car shocks. I mean, as you hammer down or punch down, then some of that energy is going to be absorbed by the shocks. It's going to do its job and give away. Yeah, I think I see what you're saying. Yeah.
00:27:43
Speaker
Now, if you put a service plate on the floor, or if it was on a, like, I'm making this out to be a bigger deal than it is, it's not, but you just don't want to grab a, like, you don't want to grab a rolling U-line assembly cart, a dolly that's a hundred bucks, and just all of a sudden start getting, taking, reading on it, you'll get, and I guess I don't like it because I wish it aired the other way. It's a little bit scary if you're going to air that you air hard, because usually we're trying to get things, but,
00:28:09
Speaker
I know in this case you overcooked them, but usually I feel like most people are heat treating to go higher, whatever. Sure, yeah. As hard as you can kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. Whereas in this case, it's like, you know, when you heat treat for the first heat treat and then it's like super hard and then you temper it to pull the hardness back a little bit, we basically, the temper did nothing.
00:28:32
Speaker
in our case. Oh, really? Yeah. That's funny. Yeah. Rockwell is another thing of a good example. And this just may be a quirky thing for me. Like I have no respect for minor changes in Rockwell. And I know that I'm probably wrong. I just know so little about it. But like, if somebody tells me, like you said, I really want these parts at 59, not 62. I'm like, close enough. That's like probably horrible, but
00:28:58
Speaker
So every steel will have a chart that has hardness graphs and I don't know what it's called exactly, but it's like a little Excel spreadsheet graph kind of thing where if you go outside the zone like past 62 or something like that, things drop off. It becomes brittle. It becomes whatever. All the carbides inside are bad. I don't know. So there is a sweet spot for every steel for do you want flexibility? Do you want stiffness? Do you want hardness? Do you want whatever?
00:29:27
Speaker
I leave that up to Angelo and Skye, but they tell me every now and then. I think it reminds me too of what Rob Lockwood once said, when you're doing really small tools or micro machining or stuff like, going from two tenths to three tenths chip load per tooth, if that happens to be- Sounds like nothing. Yeah, and it is nothing empirically, but it's also a 50% increase. Just because it's all small doesn't mean that that may not matter.
00:29:55
Speaker
I literally used that quote to Jeff Jeff last week. And it reminded me, it's like, that is such good advice. It's like two tenths of three tenths. It's only a tenth, whatever. But it's 50 percent increase. It's huge. You think what a micro machining end mill is going to deal with that? Yeah. You know, it's like, you know, almost twice the load.
00:30:20
Speaker
Well, speaking of almost crashing 5-axis machines, we didn't. But what I did do over the weekend, which was super fun, was I started setting up our new foundational workflow for drum roll, the UMC 350.
00:30:39
Speaker
OK. We plan to sell it. Not going to bother going into the details, but we're keeping it. And I'm actually now happy about it. I needed some other external factor to push me one way or the other. It's semi-public. I don't know anything, but I've heard it from Chadder and other folks in the Instant Machines world. Sounds like there might be a new variant coming out on IMTS.
New Machine Setup and Tool Libraries
00:31:02
Speaker
I don't care. We moved it over to our shop from the training building. We're actually switching, if you remember. I don't know if you remember when you were here. We had the VF2 behind one of the big VF6s. Over near the Wilhelmin. We swung that 90 degrees, so it's next to the DT now.
00:31:20
Speaker
So Garrett kind of has like these two aluminum smaller aluminum machines, which will work great. And then the UMC 350s went where the VF two was so it's kind of going to be right next to 90 degrees adjacent to the new element. So we'll kind of have our kind of just work out this way. We'll have our kind of like prototyping high five axis little corner. Yeah. So it has been a while since I started
00:31:47
Speaker
looking at a ground up fusion workflow for a machine that were happy, not just the training classes. And it was great. Fusion has come a long way. So we were pulling in the machine models that got there as a UMC 350, even though they discontinued the machine. Autodesk has the manufacturing model. Nice. And they could do a better job at like, it took some, it took more effort than it showed up to figure out, okay, do I put my fixtures in the machine model or do I put them in my,
00:32:15
Speaker
part CAD model or what's this container-ish thing look like. Again, shout out to Rob on that. And then for us, we'll be doing puck chucks plus vices, but we'll have different vices ready to go. This is a pallet changing machine, right? No, that's the 500. Okay. Which is still for sale, price reduced, UMC 500 with pallet pool. If anybody wants to buy it, it needs to get sold. Perfect.
00:32:40
Speaker
The new security 50 is built on a DT to platform. It's quite small, only 18 tools. That's the big knock. And, but yeah, so I dumped a sample part in there, put a couple to pass on it and like there's.
00:32:56
Speaker
Uh, hashtag caveat coming up here in a second. There's really good simulation. Like I don't have any desire to go back to complete here, but I don't believe it's today handling linking moves. I know that's on that roadmap. I should probably check it to see where that sat, but total for the positional stuff we're going to do, it was really cool within.
00:33:15
Speaker
So now that I know the right clicks and so forth, I could recreate this in under 10 minutes and it's awesome to see, okay, I want to tip this part over. I want to hit this part. What do I look like for platter and sheet metal housing clearances? Yep. Cool. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. As a, as the five axis prototyping machine with puck chucks and some good vice, uh, you know, workflow.
00:33:41
Speaker
I think it's going to be good for you. What I need to do, so the machines actually literally, we just moved them this morning. There was a little bit of a two ships passing the night about what goes where and which machine has the skates on it. They're literally in place as of this morning. We just need to hook the power up.
Exploring Five-Axis Machining
00:33:59
Speaker
What I want to do on the UMC 350, which I've never done on a Haas machine, if anybody's listening and wants to steer me, I'd appreciate any input. I believe you can store up to 100 or even 200 tool offsets.
00:34:10
Speaker
take like a 1024 tap. That's not gonna live in the machine, but I'd like it to be tool 65, and it has a gauge length, and it has a tool tag, and it lives in a cart next to the machine. So when I'm programming a part, I have my fusion library, I can grab tool 65 out of there, and when the part needs that tool, the machine just stops. It's put away the tool that lives in the ATC, it spindles empty, waits for me to load that tool in, taps the hole, I'm taking it back out. I don't care about that for the way this machine is going to be used.
00:34:40
Speaker
In the Tor Mac, that's how I used to do a manual tool change. Remember? Sorry, but before I installed the ATC. That's really funny that you just explained it much simpler than I did. Yes. But sleeping tool setup and leaving the gauge length with an assigned tool number in the machine, that's my goal. I don't know
00:35:01
Speaker
I can't say for certain that Haas is going to let me do that. I think Bill might actually need some post edits to kind of deal with a hybrid tool library where some are in the ATC and some are not, but that's what I want to figure out. I know on the speedio, if you run a program where the tool is not in the turret,
00:35:21
Speaker
Um, it won't let you start the program. It says like, Hey, you're missing a tool. Even if it's the first tool or the last tool in that cycle, it warns you. Maybe you can turn that off. I don't know. Um, but that kind of helps us because, Oh, not all the tools. Okay. Yeah. So whatever. Um, on the DT five axis, the three 50, um, everything loads through the spindle.
00:35:44
Speaker
Yes, there's no other way. On the speedio, it's at four o'clock. You got to tilt the one out. I don't think there's any hoss that doesn't load through this middle. Good question. That's the other way to think about this. Basically, assume that ATC is not even on the machine. Assume I just want to load every tool manually. That's my goal. But then, I'll put the most common ones in the ATC and then hybrid it. Great. It's not like a speedio, right? It's a side mount. What is the tool changer?
00:36:12
Speaker
we have is a side mount. What the gimbal guys just got is the DC one, which is the, which is the somewhat controversial China Haas that they're, they're rebatching. And, uh, it has the umbrella and the gimbal guys, the only one to know that in the wild and they seem to say, okay, you've seen that had some stuff up on Instagram. They seem to say it's rock and rolling. Cool. Three axis though. Yeah. Cool. So what,
00:36:44
Speaker
What's kind of the first part you want to make on it? What are you excited about making on a five axis right now?
00:36:50
Speaker
I will make, if it were running this morning and I didn't have to do my day job here or whatever, like if I was just free to do something, there's six fixtures for the horizontal that I would just make on the 350 because I can make them on the horizontal, but I've always told myself I prefer not to because it's tying up a good machine and there's just more crash risk when you're doing that kind of stuff. Some of it's Johnny Five, which is,
00:37:20
Speaker
which is interesting. There's a lot of the Johnny Five parts that I'm realizing I needed don't necessarily have to be machined, but some of it's also like I really, it just feels right to have a in-house prototyping and I want it to be five axis because that's how I want to make these sort of parts where we want to do a test. Alex is making a puck chuck thing on it or will be. So there's lots of stuff and stuff I care about, but nothing that's like,
00:37:48
Speaker
critical, you know, are you going to have to.
00:37:55
Speaker
three at a 50 millimeter table platter kind of thing. Are you going to have to space work up like vices to get enough clearance and reach when things are tilted over? It's a small enough machine that like I was looking at a Johnny five part that is smaller than a deck of playing cards and it was on a puck chuck and then it was in one of, we'd been using those EDM vices, the eBay ones that Dennis turned us on to.
00:38:21
Speaker
I think where this machine would struggle was it's not going to machine a shoebox. That's probably that would be too big. I think. You run out of Z height real quick. Real fast, yeah. If you had, say, a mod vice clamped directly to the table and you wanted to go at 90 degrees and reach it.
00:38:47
Speaker
I can't speak about how far it goes. This window goes down past 90. We have a small fixture plate that has modified by side that goes on top of a puck chuck that we're going to use on this for quick three-axis simple stuff. It's mostly getting the... It is kind of small now that I think about it.
00:39:11
Speaker
I bet you the platter is similar, and don't hang up on me for saying this, similar to your kern. So I measured it the other day. It's 10 or 11 inches. Yeah. Diameter? I was going to say eight is ours. I actually might go to pull the model up when we're talking.
Fume Hood Setup and Equipment Investment
00:39:29
Speaker
Yeah. Because if I have one of our small 72 millimeter pallets and I rotate the beat to 90 degrees,
00:39:38
Speaker
and I'm getting down there, the spindle housing is getting very close to the machine platter, like scary close. So I have to space my work out a little bit or up on vices and things. Yeah, it didn't seem like that was going to be as much of an issue here.
00:39:56
Speaker
And are you using Fusion's machine sim? Here I am. I've started with it a little bit, but I'm not really using it, and I'd like to be able to use it. I have a current model for it, and I want to try with other machines as well. I just haven't had time to play with it much yet.
00:40:13
Speaker
I'll, today meaning Friday when this episode airs, I'll put up an Instagram, because I kind of wanted to do this anyways, just quickly showing what it looks like. That'd be cool. It's kind of one of the problems you and I have, because we're OG Fusion users. I don't use it for our horizontal, I don't use it for our lathe, because we've got workflows at work. Yeah. Adding that machine thing in is just a different, but if you're starting from scratch, 1,000% the way to go. I like it.
00:40:44
Speaker
Okay, what's your plan today on Blade Show or not? What else is stopping you from Blade Show?
00:40:56
Speaker
The guys are working on some other knives that we want to bring to Blade Show, some Norsemen of Rasks, Sagas. We have a little bit of inventory we can pick from and bring to the show, which will be nice. I've already distributed a bunch of tasks to the team. Ryan's getting t-shirts made. We're getting them shipped to a UPS store in Atlanta. We can pick them up there.
00:41:19
Speaker
We're trying to figure out what exactly parts we're bringing because there's some customs issues with bringing our parts across the border We've got to technically work with that so Spencer's on that Eric's etching some damaged steel So we can bring some of that which is really fun speaking of which he texted me last night We were both the last guys here and he texted me he goes so the the fan on the fume hood Just stopped working. Yeah when I have myriatic acid at almost boiling
00:41:47
Speaker
What do I do? Yeah. So I walked over to the front shop and I was like, Oh, okay. Well, this sucks. Like we've put a lot of time and money into the fume hood that we bought a couple of years ago into increasing the stability of it, whatever. And it's just not that good. Oh, really?
00:42:09
Speaker
And we've got thousands of dollars into it and many, many hours so far. Modifying it? Both buying it, it costs several thousand dollars and then modifying it, bought new filters for it, new carbon filter, all this stuff. I ended up venting it outside. So I bought a bunch of PVC, vented outside, a hole in the wall, et cetera, et cetera. And I kind of had the thought yesterday, we just need to move on.
00:42:36
Speaker
It's that sunk cost thing, right? It's like we should just buy a better one. Again, the point I think of us getting value out of this conversation is being willing to bring up the stuff that's not going well. That doesn't mean that everything's not going well in our lives.
00:42:53
Speaker
Carl Bass was talking about an early lesson you learned where it's like you just get too deep in something and you need somebody to smack some sense into you. Yep. Yep. I love you, John. Sometimes I feel like you do go down rabbit holes. A hundred percent. Even on this fume hood, I've spent dozens of hours researching chemicals. It's part of the whole chemistry thing. It's been really exciting for me and fun. But I slapped myself yesterday and I was like, I have a friend, Sean.
00:43:21
Speaker
who's a wonderful business owner doing extremely well locally and then like Mike and Miltara. And these guys are, they would not build a new fume hood. They're in a different financial position than I am, but I want to be there at some point.
00:43:40
Speaker
Would Mike be thinking about building a new one from scratch or would he just call up an expert company and have them installed? Yeah, exactly. Right. This is something we need. We're willing to spend some money on it, not a lot of money. And I'm worried about it costing 10 grand. I don't want to spend 10 grand on it. But I got to find that balance and just do it and move on. And you're like, I want us to etch.
00:44:04
Speaker
dam and steel every day. I want this to be a staple product line for us. We need to make this system as easy as possible. And if that costs us $5,000 to $10,000, maybe it just does. Maybe we just do it and move on. And like we said, three days later, not think about it anymore.
Ongoing Business Improvements and Strategic Focus
00:44:20
Speaker
As opposed to me spending two weeks researching and building one and like stupid or trying to get this stupid one to work and it's just not working.
00:44:31
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot of my, uh, my Monday mishap version as well. And I'm disappointed in myself. It's like, no, just, um, you need to be more like Mike and military. Yeah. Yeah. Massive respect. Um, so today bevels today, I'm not going to sleep until bevels are done, which won't take that long. I worked on it, uh, last night quite a bit. The cam side of it, um, exactly the same way we're doing the rasp bevels.
00:44:58
Speaker
So I know how to do it, all the speeds and fees, toolpaths, everything. I actually have to create a fake model of the bevels that is shaped in a specific way. Instead of using the blade itself as the machining surface for the geodesic toolpath, I'm creating a fake surface which works better. I can control the heights. Oh, interesting. I love that. That's cool.
00:45:24
Speaker
So it's like using a sketch as a constraint for a toolpath, except I'm using a new surface that I'm creating, which lets me extend it beyond like lower than the blade, exactly 170 thou. Yeah, right. So I figured that out on the, on the rasp blade and then just applying it to this. So I will absolutely have some bevels cut by the end of the day. And then
00:45:46
Speaker
matching the side to side, like how far in you're cutting and matching the other side so that the board is centered. It's been the bane of my existence for a while, but I kind of...
00:45:56
Speaker
know how to do it now from the Rask experience. So we'll get it. It's funny you mentioned that stuff because, and I don't mean to make this sound like I'm talking about toolpaths all the time, but it's been top of mind with this idea of all the buzz around AI and automation intelligence and blah, blah, blah. And it's kind of like, first off, I'd like to have
00:46:17
Speaker
click savers. I don't need to click through all this adaptive stuff anymore. It's so seemingly low fruit basic stuff. I know there's some quirky things to it, but that would be great. But then it's like, no, artificial intelligence is supposed to be intelligent. Create surfaces that extend beyond to overcome
00:46:38
Speaker
fusion's weakness of not really having a good way of extending surfaces. I'm going to do it myself through a bunch of work, but aren't you supposed to be intelligent? That's what I want out of something that's intelligent, not just a click saver. Yes. It's complete. Yeah.
00:46:55
Speaker
Or if you're going to do 2D contours that have a hole that's stopping part of the 2D contour continue, don't extend and retract. Be intelligent enough to realize, just keep going right over that instead of collating lead ends, blah, blah, blah.
00:47:11
Speaker
Good. What are you up to today? I finished hooking up those machines. And then I need to, it's been on kind of my list with you, but like, I still am passionate about days off in the shop, but for a bunch of good reasons, it hasn't happened. And so I want some accountability around getting back to like, it forces me to make improvements here that I want to make it forces me to be like, if you can't do it, because you're involved in the day to day stuff, then that's
00:47:39
Speaker
itself something we need to talk about. But I also wrote a note to myself this morning, and this is super weird, but I wrote a note to myself in my little journal about congratulating myself, I should be proud of how much selling and purging and mentors of mine who are far more successful and friendly had more stuff talked about like at one point they were one of these guys realized like this is ridiculous. And he's like, it took me three years and a lot of work to get rid of stuff.
00:48:07
Speaker
These people have like car collections and like basements of toy like, but like, you know, last night at 815, I met a guy to buy something off of Facebook marketplace that wasn't our stuff of selling. And it's been that time 75 things of like, of the negotiations, the back and forth. And we're not quite done. But we're so close to being done. And I actually, I'm okay saying, hey, that was a that was good. You got the shop cleaned up a lot. And
00:48:32
Speaker
Serena and the team did a bunch of awesome job. Clint, it's a shame to you guys. Right after you guys left and like cleaned up that side, it looks so good. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, it feels good. Excellent, man. Good. I'll see you next week. Okay. Later. Bye.