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#378 Venturi coolant sucker upper image

#378 Venturi coolant sucker upper

Business of Machining
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TOPICS:

  • Book recommendation: 6 Types Of Working Genius
  • Venturi coolant sucker upper
  • Normalizing steel for flatness
  • Solar power for a shop?
  • E-paper display:
    "#17 Using e-ink (epaper) Price Tags (Shelf Labels) for everyday needs"
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCkMu57S_YA
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Transcript

Introduction and Value Focus

00:00:01
John S
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machining episode 378. My name is John Saunders.
00:00:06
johngrimsmo
And my name is John Grimsmo.
00:00:08
John S
And John and I think about, uh, what are we doing? That's adding from that.

Optimizing Manufacturing Steps

00:00:13
John S
This sounds cheesy, adding value to our companies, but no, like I'm reading a book on, uh, from recommended by Al on six, what's it called? Like the six sites of work and.
00:00:23
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I heard him talk about that in a podcast.
00:00:26
John S
Yep. Reading that, which I'm fully honest is my first book I've read all year. And I'm also, uh, looking at how I can reduce an op three on a part because I really, really, really, really want to do it in two ops. Uh, I'll explain more about that later if

Shop Updates and Machine Adjustments

00:00:42
John S
you want.
00:00:42
johngrimsmo
Yeah, of course.
00:00:42
John S
Um, yeah. Yeah. That's what's going on.
00:00:46
johngrimsmo
Excellent. um Yeah, what's going on here?
00:00:49
John S
How are you?
00:00:50
johngrimsmo
Overview is things are flowing pretty good. We've got a couple of new processes in the shop. I will add one to the list for today. um Yeah, a couple updates to the lapping system, to our blade grinding on this VO, to current's been solid.
00:01:06
John S
Say it said again.
00:01:07
johngrimsmo
The current has been solid.
00:01:09
John S
Nice. Oh, that's great. Good. Good. Good. All the machines, like everything's running good.
00:01:14
johngrimsmo
I think so. Let me think, let me think. Yeah, this video is going great. The bloom, um what do they call it? Infrared probes have been perfect.
00:01:23
John S
Yeah. Yeah. Great.
00:01:25
johngrimsmo
And I'm using them more and more and more now that I like trust them and it's good. And it's like, oh yeah, let's measure everything. So that's good.
00:01:31
John S
Yeah.
00:01:32
johngrimsmo
That's really good. um Yeah, everything's going good.
00:01:36
John S
Good. Yes, same. I mean, the Genos has been, I don't know, approximately a month ah back up with the new spindle and it's great.
00:01:43
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:01:46
John S
Horizontal is great.
00:01:46
johngrimsmo
Just works.
00:01:47
John S
Everything else is fine. The VF2 is, I wouldn't even say it's a setback by any means. It's just as we're putting new fixtures and products on that. I think I already mentioned this, but you know, we're remembering how tough volume metric or material removal on aluminum is.

Chip Evacuation Challenges and Solutions

00:02:08
John S
um And in particular, it's just things like even if we evacuate the chips well, ah the Haas chip evacuation like isn't as good as a horizontal or or higher end machine perhaps, but um even just blowing or cleaning off chips can sometimes just blow chips from part A to part B and and thinking about, actually, this is a great potential, great win.
00:02:25
johngrimsmo
You can.
00:02:29
John S
If it works, I'll for sure make a video or something out of it. but We make our 12 by 8 fixture pallets on that machine now. Used to be on the horizontal. And that's the only really quote unquote fixture plate product we make with blind holes. And the problem with having a product seen approximately the size of a sheet of paper with, I don't know what it is, 100 holes, 300 holes, some amount of holes, half inch holes in it, is that actually holds a fairly large amount of coolant. And there isn't a great way to blow it off because blowing it off
00:03:07
John S
Even what we've done the extreme, which is using a small through spindle coolant drill, or even a we sometimes have little brass pipes in a tool holder that we'll use for blow offs, that tends to just blow coolant into the next hole or create such an amount of mist.
00:03:19
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:03:21
John S
It just doesn't but' work great. Not a great answer, simulating the fan. There just isn't a way to to get the coolant out of those holes, but we figure something out.
00:03:30
johngrimsmo
Hmm.
00:03:31
John S
Any guesses?
00:03:34
johngrimsmo
Five axis machine tilted up upside down.
00:03:36
John S
Yeah, true that. No. That is a great answer.
00:03:38
johngrimsmo
I don't know. Yeah, yeah.
00:03:38
John S
No. Venturi.
00:03:42
johngrimsmo
Suck them out.
00:03:44
John S
Suck them out.
00:03:45
johngrimsmo
yeah So on that machine, you have through spindle coolant and through spindle air switchable, which is choice, by the way, if anybody's thinking about getting a machine, it's great to have both those options.
00:03:49
John S
Correct. Yep.
00:03:55
John S
Yep.
00:03:56
johngrimsmo
Um, like on this video, we have through spindle coolant, but not through spindle air. And there's like a mod you can do to do it, but I just haven't done it yet.
00:04:01
John S
Go ahead.
00:04:03
johngrimsmo
But on the current, we use both a lot.
00:04:03
John S
Yeah. Yeah.
00:04:05
johngrimsmo
Okay. So you've made or bought a little venturi thing that just goes in the tool holder and.
00:04:10
John S
Yeah, so honestly, ah probably a decent example of trying to share some of mine my mindset.
00:04:14
johngrimsmo
I like that.
00:04:17
John S
um If anybody doesn't know, Venturi uses positive air pressure to create suction somewhere. So a great example of Venturi is if you are spraying fertilizer onto a garden, with a garden hose, you can put a Venturi pickup tube right behind your garden nozzle with some some chemical in it or something. And as you spray the water out, it will pull up some amount of the stuff that's in your little mason jar below the Venturi. That's exactly what I wanted to do, except instead of a mason jar of garden chemicals, I wanted to suck up the coolant and I wanted to use the Venturi to sort of stream it away from the product.
00:04:54
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah.
00:04:56
John S
So i I sort of thought, okay, this could work, but there's lots of little like gotchas and TDM stuff.
00:05:02
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:05:03
John S
And we have um Scott has been back for his second or third summer internship year. He's an engineering student, actually was just overseas working on a drone Arduino project with data stuff like super cool. um Before I thought, because I have this sort of mindset where sometimes I don't ah aggressively enough, you know, offload. So one of the thingy-verse found a garden hose venturi, 3D printed it, that took 10 minutes of my time. um But then I had it in my hand, I was like, no, this is a great moment to realize, stop. And so it's actually right before I was heading out to, I think the Canada trip, and I gave it to Scott, and I said, hey, actually, we had I think I mentioned this, because I had a couple of viewers
00:05:45
John S
reach out with some some tips on it. um And I said, hey, here's what I wanted to do. Here's a Thingiverse example. Just run with it. 3D print stuff. Do whatever you want. So he 3D printed a Another version got it adapted up for just a regular on air hose, fail fast fail cheap. So this was kind of just holding your hand Venturi. And we proved that it worked, which isn't really, you know, I knew it would work. Then I said, okay, great. This thing works. That's not what we want. What we want now is we want it to be in a tool changeable tool holder.
00:06:17
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:06:18
John S
And I'll post an Instagram today. I'll make a note here. um It looks like IG of Venturi. it looks like a P-trap um that's about two inches square. And you need the P-trap to kind of reorient the thing. And it has a little pickup tube below it, all 3D printed. It has an outlet valve. We put an inline regulator because the Haas through air blast is your shot pressure. And we want to actually reg it down, stops the Venturi from being an aerosol spray and it turns it into a actual liquid stream.
00:06:52
johngrimsmo
Oh. No way.
00:06:56
John S
And John. It's awesome. And so now all we have to do, we've not done this yet, is you know kind of fine fine tune some testing and then set it up as a drilling cycle
00:07:00
johngrimsmo
What?

Balancing Content Consumption and Creation

00:07:07
John S
infusion.
00:07:07
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:07:07
John S
It'll it'll take two minutes probably to drill, quote, quote, drill every hole. And we can pull most of the fluid out and then I don't mind doing a a blow off or fan cycle as well.
00:07:19
johngrimsmo
Yeah, you could even do like a reaming cycle with a dwell at the bottom or something if needed, right?
00:07:24
John S
Yeah, right.
00:07:26
johngrimsmo
Cool.
00:07:26
John S
Oh my gosh, that's a good point. You could even spring load. Well, a CNC machine could be accurate enough to hit the bottom.
00:07:29
johngrimsmo
Hmm. I think so.
00:07:32
John S
You could even spring load it. That way it could come down, touch the bottom, pick up all the coolant. Yeah, i probably overkill, but yeah.
00:07:39
johngrimsmo
Although if it touches the bottom, it might seal the bottom and not fully suck up like the little bathtub around it.
00:07:43
John S
Just pull this.
00:07:45
johngrimsmo
Yeah, slots on the side.
00:07:45
John S
I already think it's silent. Yeah, bingo.
00:07:47
johngrimsmo
Yeah, you're right. Cool.
00:07:49
John S
It is 3D printed, so it's like, oh, this is awesome.
00:07:49
johngrimsmo
Fail fast, fail cheap. Yeah. If you crash it, whatever. So now that it's 3D printed, the actual Venturi part of it, is that a separate object or is it in the print?
00:07:59
John S
No, it's one print.
00:08:00
johngrimsmo
Really?
00:08:01
John S
You just put it into a holder.
00:08:02
johngrimsmo
Wow.
00:08:03
John S
ah I think Grant turned some metal thread metal pipes are an adapter to adapt it into a tool holder. I don't even know.
00:08:11
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah.
00:08:11
John S
Actually, I do know that because Grant said, hey, in Fusion, I see that I can model
00:08:21
John S
external NPT threads, but I can't model internal NPT threads.
00:08:23
johngrimsmo
Mm.
00:08:24
John S
I don't quote me on this. I'm pretty sure that's what he said. So I thought, and he wanted to have internal NPT threads for the purpose of the 3D print. And so my first thought was we'll just go find something I'm like, grab CAD. And I was like, wait, no, McMaster. So sure enough, McMaster has half inch NPT fittings. They're all CAD modeled. And then you just do a fusion combined done.
00:08:42
johngrimsmo
Yep. Yep, yep. That's awesome. I would, if you're willing to share it, love to see a section view.
00:08:51
John S
Okay, yeah, yeah.
00:08:52
johngrimsmo
of of the thing, just you know to help wrap the brain around it. um and Especially things like this. It's not like you're trying to sell it. Maybe you are trying to sell it eventually, but you know it's like, this is what I did. Show the world.
00:09:06
John S
So let's talk about that, because...

Product Focus and Marketing Strategies

00:09:07
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:09:08
John S
I'm at a point where I still have a lot of passion, but I've also really, and I think this is probably to the extent anybody that cares, probably somewhat externally obvious, but like we've really focused in on what saw what overall our little manufacturing empires aggressive for but You know, what we do, you know, it's proven cutting is sold.
00:09:27
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:09:29
John S
We are handed off the NYC CNC website to DSI. They're handling the forum responses, the fusion help stuff, because they're at the forefront of that stuff, you know, what Devin and Phil say.
00:09:38
johngrimsmo
Cool.
00:09:40
John S
Unfortunately, training classes ended. that That's not what I actually wanted to happen, but Vince moved to Arizona, and that's just the way that cookie crumbled. um And so I have all these other ideas that come up sometimes like this, or even like stuff like people have been like, hey, do you want to sell Lex's ERP software? Do you want to sell this 3D print thing as a, it could be a product, but um no.
00:09:56
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:10:03
johngrimsmo
Yeah. yeah
00:10:03
John S
like I don't know. Maybe that's not the right answer, but I am both fortunate and grateful to be a point where Saunders ki is what we needed to be focused on and and it pays the bills, et cetera, et cetera. But also I think there's something to be said for focusing in on um you know, continuing to focus on that and not getting distracted by, you know, could we make, good so so take the home run scenario. These are, if it's a 3D printed part, it's going not gonna sell for much more than 10 bucks or something like that.
00:10:35
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:36
John S
And let's say I sell a thousand of it, which would be, I think a home run scenario. We could make $10,000 a year. That immediately reminds me, no.
00:10:46
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:10:46
John S
Sorry, like no.
00:10:48
johngrimsmo
That's not worth the hassle of of doing and dealing.
00:10:48
John S
um
00:10:51
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:10:51
John S
Yeah. Now, should we do something, and I have mixed feelings on it, should we put it up as a downloadable object on our Saunders website where to get the file for free, you have to give us your email, and then we can mark it to you? I don't know. A marketing person would would say yes.
00:11:03
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:11:05
John S
I, again, have mixed feelings about that.
00:11:08
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah. Or just throw it up on Thingiverse and say go nuts.
00:11:12
John S
yeah Exactly, which is like what most so often is the spirit of stuff.
00:11:14
johngrimsmo
You know?
00:11:17
johngrimsmo
Exactly. and And we as consumers of those kind of objects, that's what we want. It's like, yeah, let's see if anybody else has made it.
00:11:22
John S
Right.
00:11:23
johngrimsmo
Oh yeah, cool. Okay. Now I'll hack it up and make it my own.
00:11:24
John S
You're right. Yeah, and and do I think somebody on Thingiverse is going to then take that, modify it as needed, and turn it into a product, and it's gonna make me angry if I see somebody else succeeding with it? Number one, I don't think that's gonna happen with this. Number two, whatever. like Yeah, but it is like it does actually solve what I think is an interesting problem, which is three axis coolant handling on parts where you don't want to sit there and blow them off of that air compressor by hand.
00:11:40
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:11:52
johngrimsmo
And it's, it's literally, it doesn't care about the volume in total, just time. Like you could have a bathtub that you could empty and suck with this eventually, right?
00:11:59
John S
yeah Yeah. Yeah. It's not, so I mean the volume in a half inch diameter hole points seven inches deep is not that much. I suspect that, I suspect it'll take a couple of seconds to clear out each hole. A bathtub would take a minute, but you could make a bigger venturi actually.
00:12:15
johngrimsmo
But yeah, I imagine somebody clearing out a huge ISO grid aerospace thing, right?
00:12:22
John S
Yeah.
00:12:23
johngrimsmo
A bunch of big triangles that this would solve that.
00:12:28
John S
Yeah.
00:12:28
johngrimsmo
And how cool would it be for that machinist listening to this podcast, working at some big aerospace shop to like 3D print this and show up to work the next day and be like, boss, I solved this problem.
00:12:36
John S
Mm-hmm There were there were some cool it's kind of unintuitive relationships of of the negative pressure of venturi tell us so like lowering I Can't remember what it is about how venturi works.
00:12:39
johngrimsmo
Thanks to Saunders.
00:12:52
John S
There's a YouTube video that is kind of what? made me edify this, but um lowering the pressure is what created a more, I guess that makes sense intuitively to me, but lowering the pressure significantly didn't really compromise the suction, but turned it into a stream away from a blast, that which is, sorry, again, that's pretty obvious.
00:13:09
johngrimsmo
Mm-hmm. Not necessarily, more more is better, you know, but doesn't always play out, right?
00:13:16
John S
Yeah.
00:13:17
johngrimsmo
And if you really wanted to get mathy with it, you could, you know, fill a beaker or graduated cylinder with a liter of coolant or whatever and see, but cool.
00:13:22
John S
Yeah.
00:13:25
John S
Yeah, it was good.
00:13:28
johngrimsmo
That's really cool, man.
00:13:30
johngrimsmo
I can just see this plastic print tool change going down and then peeing out the side and you're...
00:13:37
John S
Well, the other idea of you were setting in, and which was tip of the hat was, ah you know, when you would go to like a nine year olds birthday party and you would blow the party favor thing that would unroll and roll back into your mouth.
00:13:48
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:13:50
John S
um They were saying, hey, if you need to evacuate the coolant over the side of the part, figure out something like that to where the air pressure would cause it to extend out. And then it would still retract up to be a small tool.
00:14:02
johngrimsmo
True. Very true. Like that.
00:14:04
John S
Which yeah, which is it kind of speaks like the overall thing of like, I am happy that this podcast frankly has become as popular as it has because it's just one small part of the many ah folks that are sharing stuff on Instagram, social media, LinkedIn here.
00:14:19
johngrimsmo
yeah Yeah.
00:14:20
John S
Like I'm so much better off because of all the sort of wisdom that other folks have shared. And and I hope, that I hope that never goes unappreciated because it's, it's all fun.
00:14:30
johngrimsmo
For sure. And I feel like lately, the past few years anyway, I've been more of a consumer than of a producer of this kind of content.

Deep Dive into Heat Treatment Techniques

00:14:38
John S
yeah but but john Yeah.
00:14:38
johngrimsmo
And I do have those thoughts. I was like, you know, I see like a great little one minute video on Instagram or something like that. I could do that like in my own way with my own challenge. I could make that kind of video, but I don't.
00:14:49
John S
Yeah.
00:14:50
johngrimsmo
Even like Robin Renzetti just sits in a shop and talks about a cool thing and his brilliant brain, you know, explains a new topic. And I'm like, whoa, that was great.
00:14:57
John S
Yeah.
00:14:58
johngrimsmo
Like pretty easy for him to do that, turn on the phone and just start talking.
00:15:02
John S
Yeah.
00:15:02
johngrimsmo
But it's like really in content. And I, you know, I do kind of kick myself sometimes. I'm like, why don't you do more of that? It'd be great.
00:15:09
John S
Well, but we do in the, I mean, first off, tip of the hat to Robin, keep doing what you're doing, Robin.
00:15:10
johngrimsmo
Yeah. We doing this. Mm-hmm.
00:15:14
John S
We, it it also is much appreciated, but, uh, yeah.
00:15:18
johngrimsmo
Actually, I had a great phone call with him last week um because I mentioned the Vanaman Micro Blaster to you last week, and I know he has one.
00:15:20
John S
Oh yeah.
00:15:25
John S
Oh yes.
00:15:26
johngrimsmo
And, you know, I stalked his Instagram and I i read his thing and I watched his like unboxing video and he's like, this is my setup. I'll do an update later. And he never did an update later. So he emailed me and he's like, call me. and know I want to talk to you about that blaster. So we had a great chat about all kinds of stuff, and I got to dig into his brain about you know warp and lapping and heat treat and flatness and metallurgy and normalizing steel and blasting, obviously. And it was really cool. It just helped tie a couple things together with his experience and my theories.
00:15:58
johngrimsmo
um for what's happening to our blades not only in this blasting process but also throughout heat treat.
00:16:03
John S
Yeah.
00:16:04
johngrimsmo
The big one he suggested which we've thought about but haven't really pushed the boundary is normalizing our blades before doing anything to them which is a it's a type of heat treat so there's stress relieving normalizing and annealing
00:16:14
John S
Okay.
00:16:22
johngrimsmo
which are three apparently separate things you can do to steal. Annealing is like pulling the hardness back and making it as soft as possible. to make it easier to machine or whatever.
00:16:33
John S
Mm hmm.
00:16:33
johngrimsmo
normal Normalizing is a type of heat treat that brings it up pretty hot, like almost critical temperatures, like 1500 degrees or whatever, depending on the steel. And it just kind of relaxes all the micro stresses and ah grain boundaries and carbide distribution and all this stuff throughout the steel and just makes it more homogenous.
00:16:50
John S
Good.
00:16:52
johngrimsmo
And it doesn't have any built in stresses because imagine during the cold rolling process where you're taking a thicker chunk of steel, big steel companies, you know, and they're rolling it to eighth inch thick or whatever steel we're buying. um They're putting stresses into the material and Theory goes, normalizing this heat treat first step process should equalize all those internal stresses because we are still getting warp throughout the heat treat process. And then warp going into lapping, it's it's hard to lap out warp.
00:17:25
John S
Sure.
00:17:25
johngrimsmo
um So yeah, I'm going to be experimenting with this.
00:17:28
John S
What's. So what's the difference between normalizing and stress relieving.
00:17:34
johngrimsmo
I don't know enough. I've read a couple articles.
00:17:37
johngrimsmo
um You can do a couple different types of stress relieving, even blasting for one is too, you know.
00:17:37
John S
Okay.
00:17:41
John S
Mm hmm.
00:17:44
johngrimsmo
um Yeah, I don't know. Stress relief, heat treat cycle, I don't know enough about to really speak. um But annealing, like you could take a hard part and anneal it back to soft.
00:17:55
John S
Yeah, sure.
00:17:56
johngrimsmo
That's different. Normalizing is literally, it doesn't change the hardness ah really, it might depending, um but it's just kind of like stress-free.
00:18:05
John S
Okay.
00:18:05
johngrimsmo
And as Pearson says, I live a stress-free life. like yeah Yeah, exactly.
00:18:10
John S
Put me in the oven. Yeah, okay.
00:18:12
johngrimsmo
um
00:18:12
John S
Yeah, that is interesting.
00:18:13
johngrimsmo
And, and I, apparently it's a could be a long cycle, like several hours or more, and you got to cool it down slowly and you got to do it right. So we do have a heat treat company two blocks down the street that we've used every now and then for weird stuff. So we might bring them like. 10 to 100 blades. and And I want to sit down and talk with them about normalizing and be like, let's come up with a recipe.
00:18:31
John S
Yeah.
00:18:33
johngrimsmo
This is our challenge is what we want at the end. They have a microscopy lab where they can do like the, the grain crystal analysis of a piece of steel throughout the heat treat process and see the grain formations and carbide, all this stuff that basically they heat treat it and then they put it in a specimen, then they lap it.
00:18:48
John S
That's cool.
00:18:52
johngrimsmo
And then they, microscope it under thousands of times, whatever. And you can see every grain of carbide, every grain of whatever and how they're distributed.
00:18:59
John S
Yeah.
00:19:01
johngrimsmo
Um, so yeah, I want Angela and I to go there and sit down with them and be like, okay, normalizing explain. I'll explain. Let's come up with a plan and let's do this.
00:19:11
John S
There's nothing about a normalizing or even stress relieving cycle that you couldn't do with your own heat treat ovens, right?
00:19:17
johngrimsmo
True.
00:19:17
John S
It's just a different soak time and temperature, et cetera, et cetera, right?
00:19:18
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:19:21
johngrimsmo
Exactly. And ah we're busy enough that I don't know for this experiment and a batch is $150 or whatever for heat treat.
00:19:23
John S
Oh, I just meant more like it's not like this is some new process or new equipment or whatever yet.
00:19:27
johngrimsmo
I'm like, let's just try it.
00:19:32
johngrimsmo
True. Totally. You're literally heating the steel up, although because it's at that temperature, you might have to vacuum bag every part, um, like using the foil bags, which we don't need to do twice for every blade because they do cost like $4 each or something.
00:19:40
John S
Got it.
00:19:48
johngrimsmo
Um.
00:19:49
John S
You couldn't, couldn't keep them in the baggie.
00:19:52
johngrimsmo
No, because I'm, well, that I'm thinking normalize from a water jet blank.
00:19:52
John S
Oh, cause you take them out to quench them.
00:19:59
johngrimsmo
So normalize first, then surface grind, then machine, then heat treat.
00:20:07
johngrimsmo
You know what I mean?
00:20:08
John S
Interesting. My very unqualified, uneducated hypothesis is that you'll have to normalize post heat treat.
00:20:19
johngrimsmo
No, that'll change hardness. I think we can't. I think you can do that.
00:20:23
John S
Okay. Interesting. Well, or rather the benefits of normalizing are irrelevant after you've gone through a heat treat cycle that takes it through with the martensite, austenite, like it's all the atoms get the chance to do what they want to do, but heat treating and quenching is not like after you quench, you've re put instability for sure into it.
00:20:41
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:20:43
John S
And that's what a stress relieving does. It takes out without compromising the hardness.
00:20:47
johngrimsmo
Mm.
00:20:48
John S
It takes out the quench stress from the part
00:20:52
johngrimsmo
Mm-hmm, and that's where my my limit of knowledge kind of hits like I've heard all those terms and I kind of agree with some of that and I know some of that um I don't know I don't know so Wasn't gonna say Like the quick research I've done said normalizing is is usually a first step before machining before anything which can homogenize Whatever grain distribution
00:20:57
John S
Yeah.
00:21:15
John S
yeah
00:21:17
johngrimsmo
um and And yeah, so I kind of want to go down the street and talk to the guys.
00:21:24
John S
We ah did a really interesting thing during Richard King's scraping class, and some of the whole scraping stuff is in art, meaning I don't know how scientific every single aspect of it is, but the proof is in the pudding, and and these are kind of the... OG wise folks that are they're doing this stuff, but we would take like I was working on a 24 inch cast iron parallel courtesy of corporate patterns. He made the casting.
00:21:51
johngrimsmo
Yeah, John here.
00:21:52
John S
Yeah. And once we i think we I think I rough ground it or like surface ground it to get it in. But basically we hung it and you would tap it with a, it wasn't a dead blow, but it wasn't like you were hitting it with metal and deforming a hammer. Basically you wanted to kind of sort of peen it and tap it a bunch to let it, um it's almost like if there were, maybe a terrible example, if there were microscopic springs inside the part. Tapping it would cause those springs to like pop or unengage.
00:22:21
johngrimsmo
No way.
00:22:23
John S
And I can't prove that that was valuable or worthwhile, but it was kind of one of those like, hey, before you set up to blue it and scrape it and do all this work, let's make sure there isn't any stress that would come out from as simple an action as setting it down too hard when you're actually using it and causes it to twist on you.
00:22:40
johngrimsmo
I could buy that. That's, that's interesting. And that's one of those like, like, you know, old man been doing this for 40 years kind of experience things. It's like, it's not written about in textbooks.
00:22:49
John S
Yeah.
00:22:51
johngrimsmo
Like, trust me, this is the thing to do. And yeah, that's, that's really cool.

Blade Warping and Process Tracking

00:22:56
John S
Yeah. There's also a really good, I think it's a modern marvels or how it's made on the, I want to say it's how they recondition the Abrams tanks. Like there's either a cycle for them or or tour of duty or lifespan. And there's a facility, I think it's in Northern Ohio that has a like 50 foot building like it's a pretty tall little siloed building they take the shell of the tank which weighs like the frame which weighs some a godly amount like 70 tons or something and they pick it up with a crane they close the doors and this thing ah shoots what are effectively BB gun pellets like be it like bead blast it but with like
00:23:25
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Should I be in?
00:23:37
John S
shot beans that would like annihilate human tissue. like It's insane. And it rotates it and it does that. And the whole thing comes out like perfectly clean and they talked about it stress relief.
00:23:47
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Interesting. Hmm.
00:23:52
John S
Yeah.
00:23:53
johngrimsmo
Yeah, all this to say, as I did talk about warp through lapping, it's something we're tracking. We set up a little dial test or dial indicator at 10th increments on a little stand that I got from you for $4 at the open house.
00:24:06
John S
ah
00:24:06
johngrimsmo
Thank you very much.
00:24:06
John S
Great. Good.
00:24:08
johngrimsmo
ah We're actually using it. and So that now at every step to the process, the guys have a spreadsheet written down and they're like, okay, the blade before he treat has a thou of warp. And they just put it here and they push down on it and the indicator feels.
00:24:22
John S
Got it.
00:24:22
johngrimsmo
And then, you know, after, after the hot cycle, there's this much work and after cryo, there's this much. And after temper, there's this much. And they're tracking it and building a picture in their head of, of what every blade is doing. Are there trends? Does it get worse throughout the day? Is it always after this cycle? Um, And I haven't seen the results yet, but I know the guys are on top of it and I'll take a look and Angela and so I can kind of assess what's going on. But, um, cause there's a lot of steps that we're doing too, that might be introducing some more pitch, but we're really trying to minimize it.
00:24:51
John S
sure
00:24:54
johngrimsmo
And war is warp is the enemy. But something Robin was saying is that imagine you have this sheet, three foot by four foot sheet or whatever, a blade steel that has been rolled. Maybe the blade on the end is going to have different internal stresses than the blade in the middle as it gets water jet cut.
00:25:08
John S
Yes.
00:25:09
johngrimsmo
So the normalizing equalizes all that.
00:25:12
John S
Do you mandate that all your blades are cut in the same orientation?
00:25:13
johngrimsmo
And that theory.
00:25:17
johngrimsmo
No, and I wouldn't know.
00:25:19
John S
Oh, we do, on our fixture plates, absolutely.
00:25:20
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:25:21
John S
Yeah, we we are very specific on the grain direction of the orientation of the plate.
00:25:22
johngrimsmo
Interesting.
00:25:27
johngrimsmo
Interesting. Um.
00:25:29
John S
I don't know your, what's the material, St. Elizabeth?
00:25:32
johngrimsmo
Standless. Yeah. High carbon stainless.
00:25:34
John S
Yeah, I don't know, I assume it has a grain direction, but...
00:25:37
johngrimsmo
Sure. It's a powdered metallurgy steel. So I don't know if that changes that answer.
00:25:41
John S
Yeah, exactly, that's way outside of my knowledge, but...
00:25:43
johngrimsmo
Yeah. But still, and and like.
00:25:45
John S
I could see a nest, I could see a nesting pattern if it's not only nineties, but if they have something like 45, they've used like net fab to create some crazy nesting. And then that's totally screwing you on consistency.
00:25:52
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:25:55
johngrimsmo
And maybe normalizing would eliminate that, or maybe I have the water jet shop do them all in this orientation so that they're all the same, or we do both. I feel like we're chasing that level of unsure-edness, because I'm like, our process is pretty dialed, and we still have variation.
00:26:07
John S
Yeah.
00:26:10
johngrimsmo
like If we do the same thing every time we get different results, I don't think it's the thing we're doing, necessarily. And now we're looking at like grain structure of steel, which is a somewhat unmeasurable difference between blade to blade, I think.
00:26:17
John S
right
00:26:24
johngrimsmo
um So yeah, maybe maybe this will try itself. I think we're going to run some experiments, and I think we need to do more than like 10 blades. Maybe we'll do a batch of 100 or something. I don't think there's any downside to it. So I kind of want to just do it for a little bit. Run them through the machining, through the heat treat, and see if the results are noticeable.
00:26:40
John S
Right. What's the end goal, just to stop the downstream warp?
00:26:44
johngrimsmo
Flatter blades. Yeah.
00:26:47
John S
Yeah.
00:26:48
johngrimsmo
Because that will... A heat treat won't be affected, but that will save lapping a significant time in worry and stress and redos and scrap parts and things like that.
00:26:58
John S
Yeah.
00:27:00
johngrimsmo
So huge.
00:27:02
John S
I had a note at the end of last week to talk about changing how you're making blades.
00:27:02
johngrimsmo
um
00:27:07
John S
Is that what that topic was?
00:27:08
johngrimsmo
Not at all.
00:27:11
John S
Okay.
00:27:13
johngrimsmo
I don't remember.
00:27:15
John S
Was it something about the brother and grinding, or speed, like the cycle time of a blade? Change how you make blades.
00:27:22
johngrimsmo
I mean, on that topic, I have been working a probably similar thing. um The way I'm grinding the blades on this video now, and now that the probe works, I can actually, we use an end mill to rough machine the blade.
00:27:33
John S
Okay.
00:27:36
johngrimsmo
Imagine the blade is sitting on the side of a fixture edge, cutting edge, pointing at the sky.
00:27:41
John S
right
00:27:42
johngrimsmo
And it's also tilted at a four degree angle.
00:27:45
John S
Okay.
00:27:45
johngrimsmo
So now the bevel on the outside is vertical, like perfectly vertical.
00:27:48
John S
Yes.
00:27:49
johngrimsmo
So I can come in with an end mill and I can rough mill the 62 Rockwell blade. um Yeah, hard milling it.
00:27:55
John S
Yes, Gracie.
00:27:59
johngrimsmo
And that leaves you know a certain amount, but as the tool dulls, it leaves more or less or whatever that does change. And then we have this little one inch grinding wheel.
00:28:06
John S
Hmm.
00:28:07
johngrimsmo
that comes in and does chop grinding where it goes down, over, up, over, down, and it finishes that. And I have a roughing cycle and a finish cycle, and the wheel wears over time, but by how much and where and stuff. So now I'm using the probe to measure the side of the blade after rough milling, after rough grinding, after finish grinding, and I'm de-printing that information was to a USB stick, but then I finally set up an FTP server so I can actually de-print it directly to FTP.
00:28:36
John S
Nice, nice.
00:28:37
johngrimsmo
I did that Monday and that's been total game changer. Like USBs are dead to me

Tech Implementations and Production Challenges

00:28:42
johngrimsmo
now. um I set up a server on ah one of the Raspberry Pis that we use for a lot of stuff and chat GPT walked me through the process and held my hand.
00:28:50
John S
Stop!
00:28:51
johngrimsmo
It was great.
00:28:51
John S
Oh, that's awesome.
00:28:53
johngrimsmo
How do I set up an FTP server on a Raspberry Pi? And they're like, well, step one, do this, step two. And it was beautiful. And I was like, this isn't working well. And we figured out my username and password are case sensitive and the speedio only writes in all caps.
00:29:04
John S
oh Oh, sure.
00:29:06
johngrimsmo
And I, you know, on the Pi, I set up the server and I'm like FTP user lowercase. And right.
00:29:10
John S
That's insane.
00:29:11
johngrimsmo
So little things like that. And it was like, you had a conversation with chat GPT like this isn't working. Try it. And it's great.
00:29:17
John S
Oh my God, that's amazing.
00:29:18
johngrimsmo
So yeah, now I'm de-printing all this probe results. I have the laser on the machine so I can laser the diameter of the wheel as it wears. I can de-print that information too. And then we also have a manual comp in the program that can shift by an hour or whatever we need to get the bevel to where the guys need it to be to measure properly, tracking that too.
00:29:34
John S
Yeah.
00:29:38
johngrimsmo
So now I'm collecting data, which feels great.
00:29:40
John S
Dude, that would be insane to look at a chart and see how correlated the probing results of the blade actually are to the laser measured wheel wear.
00:29:49
johngrimsmo
That's where I'm at.
00:29:50
John S
Okay. Oh, that's cool.
00:29:51
johngrimsmo
Yep. And I don't have a smoking gun answer right now, but basically the bevel position is changing by a thou or two every now and then. And we don't know why, we don't know where, we don't know how to stop it. And it's driving me crazy, but I'm like, I might be collecting all the data stage right now and then I can start to review.
00:30:09
John S
Yeah.
00:30:11
johngrimsmo
And it feels good because I think we'll nail this. Basically I want to be able to palette change blades and just walk away and have it make 10 grind 10 blades and have them all be within tolerance and we're not there yet.
00:30:24
John S
I feel like the out of left field lob I need it to lob your way is you need to go find a used anchor to a grinder, like a CNC.
00:30:34
johngrimsmo
in Like an end mill grinder.
00:30:37
John S
Yes.
00:30:39
johngrimsmo
We've thought about it and we've talked to a couple of the end mill companies around here. I don't i don't know. I mean, there are blade grinding machines that the big factories use.
00:30:47
John S
Oh, really?
00:30:48
johngrimsmo
Oh yeah. Um, and they grind both sides of the bevel at the same time.
00:30:50
John S
OK.
00:30:52
johngrimsmo
And I talked to, and when I was at blade show, I talked to two friends of mine who have like a, I think it's called a burger. Um, German, uh, have blade grinding machines. They're like. I don't know, $400,000 or something. And they have problems. And they're like, the scrap rate's pretty high, but you just keep throwing blades at it and eventually you'll get good blades.
00:31:14
John S
But that's why I'm almost like, you know, I don't know anything about the burgers or knife-grinding machines, but the the scrap rate on a Anka or Walter CNC tool grinder or Robe, but what's the other one that blew Rollo? There's a Swiss.
00:31:27
johngrimsmo
Roll-o-matic, is it?
00:31:28
John S
Yeah, I think so.
00:31:29
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:31:30
John S
The the scrap rate is... is low, like those things are good.
00:31:34
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah.
00:31:34
John S
And I feel like that's the grimstone approach of like, hey, I'm using a carbide cutting wheel pack thing to to do it this way. Not not like a old school double disc like World War II machine that's, so you know, I don't know.
00:31:47
johngrimsmo
Yep. Yeah, it's all about support and the way it's supported, like those end mill grinders are made to grind round objects.
00:31:57
John S
Yeah.
00:31:58
johngrimsmo
A blade's not. I mean, you can make fixtures and complicated stuff. You can do anything if you're clever enough. But is that ah is that a road I want to go down? I don't know.
00:32:07
John S
yeah fair
00:32:08
johngrimsmo
Yeah. I think we're close with our method. The method works. I just have variation that I'm tracking down, you know? And it's to the point where I'm like, is the speedio not repeating well enough?
00:32:18
John S
Yeah.
00:32:20
johngrimsmo
And I don't think so. I think it's repeating perfectly. So the variant is somewhere.
00:32:23
John S
yeah
00:32:27
johngrimsmo
We're close.
00:32:31
John S
How's the integral clip going?
00:32:33
johngrimsmo
Uh, honestly, no progress.
00:32:35
John S
Got it.
00:32:36
johngrimsmo
This is last week and I feel bad about it, but, um, everything else jumps up at me and I'm like, Ooh, I'll tackle that.
00:32:46
John S
But John.
00:32:46
johngrimsmo
I know, I know. And that's the constant battle that I face is like, do I solve today's problems that help with current production or do I work on upcoming production to introduce a new product into the line? And I've been stuck on, um, you know, current. issues and challenges and, um, trying to make the current product line work better. And also this blade grinding will 100% apply to the new field blades.
00:33:10
John S
Yeah.
00:33:11
johngrimsmo
So I want to nail it on the rask, which is in steady flow so that I can be ready to nail it for the integral when it comes out. Um, but yeah, just excuses. I'm telling myself basically, I totally agree.
00:33:21
John S
Yeah, I just don't want to see you lose, like, yeah we had some good, I got some good ribbing from folks that were like, you know, you know, you, Grinswold proved you wrong.
00:33:24
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:33:31
John S
He took blades to blade show, which great, but yeah.
00:33:35
johngrimsmo
And now it's been almost two months and I've made little progress. And yeah, it's the flow of cycles of, I don't know, soon though.
00:33:43
John S
Yeah.
00:33:45
johngrimsmo
Hashtag soon.
00:33:46
John S
Yeah. Yeah.
00:33:50
johngrimsmo
um I did make a personal record this morning.
00:33:56
John S
Do tell.
00:33:57
johngrimsmo
Drove my Amazon to work on the highway. I probably hit like 60, 65 miles an hour, baby.
00:34:00
John S
No.
00:34:03
John S
That's awesome.
00:34:04
johngrimsmo
Never taken it on the highway before.
00:34:06
John S
Did you get any looks or honks?
00:34:08
johngrimsmo
ah Yeah, a couple people looked. it It's an old, beat up, but cool looking car that people are like, what?
00:34:10
John S
Yeah.
00:34:16
John S
Right.
00:34:16
johngrimsmo
Or definitely older guys are like, whoa, that's cool.
00:34:20
John S
And remind me, it's standard transmission.
00:34:22
johngrimsmo
it's a minute It's an automatic.
00:34:24
John S
Oh, it is. That's crazy.
00:34:25
johngrimsmo
Yeah, which I am not super happy about, but it's whatever, it's fine.
00:34:28
John S
Yeah, sure. And the break, it works out like I figured you were right. You had it in the shop for breaks or something.
00:34:33
johngrimsmo
Yeah, they replaced some of the brakes and then the master cylinder went out. um So now you just kind of pump the brakes twice for it to build up enough pressure. And like, like Lafe's been driving it in parking lots.
00:34:43
John S
Oh, my God.
00:34:44
johngrimsmo
And he knows now he's just got to pump it twice. And now almost every time when I'm about to take it for a spin, I throw the keys at Lafe and he starts it for me.
00:34:52
John S
That's cool.
00:34:52
johngrimsmo
Because it's like an older carburetor, like he really got to play with the gas and like get it started. So I have him do it. And he's like, good to go, dad.
00:35:00
John S
do you When you pump the brakes, is that then good for a period of time? or
00:35:05
johngrimsmo
Imagine you come to a stop, say you gotta make a panic stop or something, pump the brakes twice, come to a stop, and then you're holding the brakes, and they slowly bleed.
00:35:12
John S
Yeah. Oh, so you yeah so if you have to stop again in in five minutes, you have to keep pumping.
00:35:14
johngrimsmo
And you gotta pump them again.
00:35:17
johngrimsmo
If you have to stay at a light, I'm probably pumping every 20 seconds or something, it's fine for now.
00:35:22
John S
That's hilarious.
00:35:23
johngrimsmo
And a master cylinder is like 100 bucks, and even to get a shop to install it's probably another 100 bucks.
00:35:28
John S
Okay.
00:35:29
johngrimsmo
I don't know, it's not much, I just haven't done it yet. But yeah.
00:35:33
John S
That's fun. Williams' go-kart. He got one for Christmas. used Yeah, used one.
00:35:37
johngrimsmo
Got a go-kart? Sick!
00:35:39
John S
Yeah, he loved and he loved it. And it's awesome because the people we bought it off of, it's the classic, like, oh, we got this three years ago. They drove it twice and it was just sat in the garage.
00:35:47
johngrimsmo
No way.
00:35:47
John S
So, Williams using it, which I love. And the steering got screwed up. where it would steer way more left than right. And so I'm like, wait, let's just dive in.
00:35:56
johngrimsmo
It's a NASCAR.
00:35:57
John S
And he had already had a, what was it called, a tie rod, I think, come off. And so we'd fixed that a couple months ago. No big deal. And so this one, I'm like, that's weird, because that's not a tie rod. And so I was like, I honestly don't know. So we took some of the panels off. And it ends up that the whole steering linkage was in two effectively pipe clamps, if you will, and the whole thing had just shifted one way, which is why it was steering more.
00:36:20
johngrimsmo
Jeez. Okay.
00:36:22
John S
So that was actually an easy fix, but we had these panels off and it was just like lime green color.

Side Projects and Energy Efficiency

00:36:27
John S
And he's like, dad, I really want to paint it. That's what I've been wanting to do all summer, which I've never heard of this. Of course, I've ever heard of this, but like all that's all I ever wanted to do. So I was like, well, dude let's do it. So it actually is sick. We painted the the green body panels flat black, and then we 3D printed a McLaren F1 team logo, and we stencil painted orange McLaren logos onto it.
00:36:47
johngrimsmo
No way.
00:36:48
John S
So it's now an illegal sponsored or whatever branded go-kart, but he it's so much fun.
00:36:51
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:36:55
John S
and he's
00:36:55
johngrimsmo
I, I can only imagine, uh, that you guys take it to work on the weekends and just rip circles around the whole building. Like I don't, I'm trying to think of where he drives it.
00:37:03
John S
Yeah. Oh, neighborhood. So he's allowed to go cross into the other subdivision that we live in.
00:37:06
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:37:08
John S
So that's like a pretty big area with some some friends that ride the bus.
00:37:09
johngrimsmo
No way.
00:37:12
John S
and
00:37:13
johngrimsmo
And he can just drive the subdivision streets.
00:37:13
John S
yeah he's
00:37:16
John S
Yeah. Uh, first time last week. And so literally we got like a photo, a text message photo from one of our parents friends. They were like, yeah, we just saw William driving down the street. He went, he went knocks on another buddy's house. Thank he got his go-kart out. I'm like, ah this is great because you know, you see so much about childhood.
00:37:27
johngrimsmo
Oh my gosh.
00:37:32
John S
Today's aren't what they were for us growing up.
00:37:33
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:37:34
John S
And I'm like, I'm really glad that he's out Alex boring.
00:37:36
johngrimsmo
That's cool. Okay, we'll be down next weekend.
00:37:39
John S
Yeah. Right. Yeah.
00:37:41
johngrimsmo
Yeah, Leif and I have been go-karting at the place, like the indoor place in Hamilton a bunch of times, and he loves it. He totally loves it.
00:37:47
John S
That's awesome. Are those, are those electric?
00:37:50
johngrimsmo
No, they this these ones are gas.
00:37:52
John S
Nice.
00:37:52
johngrimsmo
And they're the kitty carts, so I'm like stuffed into a kitty cart until he's a certain height or whatever. um But he loves it, it's fun.
00:38:00
John S
That's fun.
00:38:01
johngrimsmo
Well, that's cool, man.
00:38:02
John S
Yeah. That's good. um Worth mentioning, because I think it's probably a start and stop project. But we had our roof replaced here. And when I was talking to the roofer, this the subject of solar came up. And he's like, hey, I've got a really good solar guy. I was like, well, put me in touch. I'd love to learn. And so we just got the um preliminary like quote last yesterday. And um your um it's it's you know it's not inexpensive. It would be the cost of, you know, two VF2s and it would only reduce our electric bill 75%. So the r ROI, actually from a true ah ROI standpoint, that could be close to 10%, but the break-even is also like eight years um and
00:38:52
John S
I mean, I'll have a follow-up call. My questions are like, hey, what's your what's the lifespan? What's the warranty? Are there more electrical costs? A lot of it would be predicated on tax breaks. And I just don't know how much effort and time I want to figure out if I qualify or the business qualifies, et cetera, et cetera. We do more and more work at night where you're not going to have solar and I'm not going to put a battery in.
00:39:10
johngrimsmo
Hmm.
00:39:15
John S
um And so I'm good.
00:39:17
johngrimsmo
Is it it's not going to be off grade, you're going to feed into the power grid kind of thing.
00:39:20
John S
maybe on the roof, we wouldn't, I don't think we would ever be generating more than we use. Well, I guess you could, ah but my understanding is here, they they definitely don't pay you to put it back into the grid.
00:39:35
johngrimsmo
Hmm.
00:39:36
John S
So I don't know how it works, but the the numbers aren't great is kind of the full answer. And then there's a, you know, a humanitarian aspect and a coolness factor of like, hey, could we do this and not rely, but I'm not there yet.
00:39:46
johngrimsmo
yeah Yeah, it's good to get your feet wet, you know, wrap your head around it.
00:39:51
John S
Yeah.
00:39:52
johngrimsmo
um Yeah, there's some huge tax incentives around here for both home and business, I think.
00:39:53
John S
Yeah.
00:39:57
John S
Yeah.
00:39:58
johngrimsmo
um And I haven't looked into it, but I know some shops and schools and houses that have have gotten it. And yeah, you look at the ah ROI and it still costs money. And it's like, well, maybe not right now.
00:40:13
John S
yeah i don't I wish I had. I guess I wish it was more clear cut.
00:40:23
John S
First off, on a personal level, I have very mixed feelings about like the government going so far out of its way to create false markets around like, hey, we'll pay for 40% of your solar. It's like, well, how about we figure out how to make solar economical period instead of it just being um ah false a false subsidy?
00:40:38
johngrimsmo
It's up to that instant.
00:40:39
John S
Yeah.
00:40:39
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah.
00:40:41
John S
But you know it's also like, look, things break. like Solar panels get dusty. They're messing with the roof. If you have a roof leak, that changes things. So I just don't know. But I figured I'd share to see. Yeah.
00:40:59
John S
yeah The other one that's a quick yes and probably a no for now is I saw those E-ink price tags at Willamint.
00:41:06
johngrimsmo
I was going to make a note of that.
00:41:07
John S
OK.
00:41:07
johngrimsmo
Okay. So you saw them at Wilhelmin because we talked about it last week, briefly.
00:41:10
John S
Yup, they were tied into so what appeared to be some sort of a overall ERP or some sort of a system at Willyman. And then Rob Lockwood sent some WhatsApp comments about both the video, the guy who's kind of repurposed them of AliExpress.
00:41:24
johngrimsmo
Mm-hmm.
00:41:29
John S
They're like 12 bucks a piece. And Alex and I were talking about this morning. I think and we're we're much quicker these days to like, strikes the link to explore something and then immediately kill it. So the idea that we could have price tags or our e-ink tags on our products that would update inventory levels or or numbers or stuff like that is great, except we sort of like, well, what would we want to do it on? And we quickly realize we don't need this. Like it's cool, we don't need it.
00:41:55
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:41:56
John S
So, okay.
00:41:57
johngrimsmo
I did the same last night. I watched the video. It was really cool. It's like 15 minute video of this guy. I'll put a link in the description. I've got it right here.
00:42:04
John S
Okay.
00:42:05
johngrimsmo
um that You know, I bought these things and he wrote his own software and firmware for the thing, which is really cool how he did it.
00:42:11
John S
I don't know.
00:42:12
johngrimsmo
You can download it. And it's as simple as installing his program. And then it's like taking a screenshot of whatever website you want to display.
00:42:20
John S
Yes.
00:42:21
johngrimsmo
Uh, so like the weather, you go to weather dot.com for your location and you just screenshot the temperature and it, you set it to refresh every 60 seconds and it just does it that that's like.
00:42:30
John S
So cool.
00:42:31
johngrimsmo
very easy and very doable and would take you know two minutes to install.
00:42:33
John S
All right.
00:42:35
johngrimsmo
um That's kind of tempting. But then I did think, I'm like, okay, so I can, with his system, I can display certain information from a website. um Super valuable, could be a Google Sheet with a little dashboard of something, because we track tons of stuff in Google Sheets.
00:42:46
John S
Mm hmm.
00:42:51
johngrimsmo
um So I did think of a couple uses um that I could use it at work, and I'm just going to let it kind of percolate and
00:42:58
John S
Yeah.
00:42:59
johngrimsmo
sit in my brain and walk around the shop and like if I had a little display here showing that information that nobody looks at because it's hidden in some sheet that I can never find that might be valuable.
00:43:10
John S
Yes.
00:43:11
johngrimsmo
And then I got to thinking it'd be really cool if it had like two buttons on it and that's a whole different stream of technology.
00:43:18
John S
Well, yeah, I don't, buttons aren't going to make sense on E-ink, but the QR code that you then just scan and that creates the action turns your phone into the button.
00:43:26
johngrimsmo
Yeah. And you could E-ink a QR code easily.
00:43:30
John S
Yes.
00:43:30
johngrimsmo
Um, so that could be cool too.
00:43:32
John S
Yeah.
00:43:34
johngrimsmo
So yeah, there, there, there's something there.
00:43:34
John S
but Um, but I'm this right. Agreed.
00:43:36
johngrimsmo
Right.
00:43:37
John S
There's something there.
00:43:38
johngrimsmo
I don't know. It's probably worth spending, you know, 50, a hundred bucks and getting a handful of them. And at some point, but let's, let's develop the need first stone it.
00:43:46
John S
No. so So no. That's where I'm saying no. Because I've, number one, learned that buying something doesn't have any correlation to me actually doing it.
00:43:49
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:43:54
johngrimsmo
Doing it. Yeah.
00:43:55
John S
And we don't need it.
00:43:55
johngrimsmo
I'm with you.
00:43:57
John S
Like, what does Sauna's MachineWorks need from me or from Alex or from Grant today? What we need is actually to focus because tomorrow our Wilhelmin arrives.
00:44:06
johngrimsmo
Oh, baby.
00:44:06
John S
um but ah So so i just there's something to be said for, I don't know if we ever like verbalize this, but for you and me, we're kind of these like vacuums of information and nuggets, and you look forward to the day where you can draw it back on that, and which means I'll be like searching through WhatsApp to find the video that Rob posted of the Ian guy.
00:44:19
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:44:25
John S
But like when we need that, I want to be in a place to execute on it.
00:44:25
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:44:29
johngrimsmo
I agree. And that's kind of why I collect information is so that when it's ready, I'm like, yeah I've looked into that. That's cool.
00:44:36
John S
Right.
00:44:36
johngrimsmo
I'm ready for that. um And I like that, like this eating thing, you could be like standing at a machine going, man, it'd be really nice if it displayed that spreadsheet right here.
00:44:37
John S
yeah
00:44:44
johngrimsmo
And I feel like I will have that need.
00:44:46
John S
Oh my God, somebody, not me or not you, or or somebody come up with like a master fusion tool a library that also then ties to E Ink tags on the front of your machines that you see all the tools that are right there in your machine. Oh my God. That's, that's real. Somebody do that.
00:45:03
johngrimsmo
it there's There's something.
00:45:04
John S
Like seriously. Yeah.
00:45:06
johngrimsmo
CJ will have it done tomorrow.
00:45:08
John S
yeah Yeah. What do you see today?
00:45:12
johngrimsmo
um Checking through the data of blaing grinding blades and seeing if I can spot any trends. The guy's been running it all day yesterday, all day today, and getting all those dprint
00:45:26
johngrimsmo
variables and probings and laserings and all that information into a readable format has been over the past week of playing with So I think I'm there.
00:45:35
John S
yeah
00:45:36
johngrimsmo
I think I'm at the tracking information stage and then I have to cam the clip which I probably said last week as well, but I'm Meant to do it yesterday.
00:45:42
John S
Yeah.
00:45:47
johngrimsmo
I think I'll do it today
00:45:48
John S
Sweet. Oh, so you have a design. You just have to program it?
00:45:51
johngrimsmo
Yep, I have the new design.
00:45:51
John S
Oh, good.
00:45:52
johngrimsmo
Yep, I just have to tweak all the toolpaths because I changed enough that it's all going to be broken.
00:45:52
John S
Yeah.
00:45:57
John S
Yeah. You're right.
00:45:58
johngrimsmo
It won't take that long.
00:45:59
John S
You're right.
00:45:59
johngrimsmo
It'll take me like an hour.
00:46:00
John S
Yeah. Sweet.
00:46:02
johngrimsmo
So yeah, what are you up to?
00:46:03
John S
Sweet. I'm 3D printing a fixture. Like I mentioned in the beginning, I want to avoid an OP3 and it has to do with counter board holes that we need to use because the OP2 I really like.
00:46:09
johngrimsmo
a Yeah.
00:46:16
John S
using the in situ counterbores to clamp it not too because it works really really well but I can't machine those counterbores from the back side of the part we actually can we do it on the aluminum product not for a whole bunch of reasons I'm not going on the steel product so um I can change the way we hold it so long as it can sit
00:46:20
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:46:27
johngrimsmo
Mmm.
00:46:38
John S
flatter than a normal clamping fixture would do. This is actually a good, like Robin Renzetti, like, okay, so think about how the clamping forces are applied to the part. And so using ID expansion pan, expanding pins is a great way to not push a force vector, basically squeezing the parts that are either bows or tips up. And then you could do a manual process of, certainly while we're getting Comfortable with it of using feeler gauges to check if it's sitting flat

Innovative Fixture and Tooling Ideas

00:47:09
johngrimsmo
Mm.
00:47:09
John S
um But I'm also going to try a couple of magnets and look I hate magnet I i love magnets, but I hate magnets and um But my thought is if a magnet can help it confirm and ensure the parts sitting correctly And I'm also what I'm printing is a more of a an over
00:47:26
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:47:30
John S
an over-constrained fixture, meaning more constrained than I normally like to make fixtures, but that plus the magnets I think could help. I'm also considering, um you know those mag bases that we use for indicators?
00:47:42
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:47:43
John S
You know those work.
00:47:45
johngrimsmo
I assume it's sliding a magnet in place.
00:47:47
John S
Yeah, it's just a cam. Like when you rotate the handle, just the cam lifts the magnet up off the part.
00:47:48
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:47:52
John S
Something like that that causes the magnet to back away would mean it's easy to free but are the inevitable chips that build up around the magnet that ruin the exact purpose of holding it flat.
00:48:00
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah.
00:48:04
John S
um
00:48:04
johngrimsmo
hacker yeah
00:48:05
John S
So something like that, whether so I don't really want to do an electromagnet, but even a little cam that you could rotate with a cam screw, actually now that I talked through my head, this could work, that just pulls it back a hundred thou, then you can wipe the part off and then you can reseat the magnet back flush, could be really interesting.
00:48:21
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I wonder what depends on the size of the magnet, but how far you have to go to have a negligible amount of...
00:48:26
John S
Not much, not much, and I don't need a magnet
00:48:27
johngrimsmo
Really?
00:48:30
John S
that's the very strong. I basically i need a magnet to help the part from just gently tipping off. You don't need it to like hold on like a mag base that really grips onto.
00:48:39
johngrimsmo
As you're tightening the the ID clamps, you just need like a finger, you know?
00:48:42
John S
This is yes. yeah Honestly, yes, it's more like a finger. It's not like, because the ID clamps, the way we make our own, they have a little bit of downward pressure to them.
00:48:54
johngrimsmo
Do they?
00:48:55
John S
Yes, I mean,
00:48:57
johngrimsmo
Taper or something?
00:48:58
John S
They're not going to, they're not going to flatten down a part that's tipped up. But like when you, when, when you tighten down a part in a vice, it's going to tip up always every time.
00:49:01
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:49:07
John S
It's just no issue. It's going to do it. Um, these don't do that, but you need to kind of make sure it's flat.
00:49:12
johngrimsmo
Sure, yeah.
00:49:12
John S
And I don't want to necessarily rely on the operator's hand holding, blah, blah, blah. That's what I'm playing with.
00:49:17
johngrimsmo
What about like one of the big Noga indicators that have a bit more mass to them and like use it as a finger?
00:49:24
John S
Too much hassle.
00:49:25
johngrimsmo
yeah well
00:49:26
John S
Yeah, no, it's a good idea. We've actually built a 3D printed like spider that you would set over the part that would apply pressure. It would like clip in and apply pressure, and then you just lift it off with like little leaf spring leafring spring fingers. Kinda worked, and then it's kinda like, this is just a pain in the butt.
00:49:42
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you'll get something simple is better, you know, as I tell myself, what is the actual end goal here?
00:49:47
John S
Yeah. Yeah.
00:49:50
johngrimsmo
The end goal is to not make sure the parts seated while I'm tightening it, not to like, reinvent how magnets work.
00:49:58
John S
Yes. No, no, you're right. And I, yeah. All this goes next week.
00:50:02
johngrimsmo
Yeah, cool. Cool.
00:50:02
John S
Cool.
00:50:02
johngrimsmo
You'll get it.
00:50:03
John S
Sweet.
00:50:04
johngrimsmo
All right, man.
00:50:04
John S
I'll see you.
00:50:05
johngrimsmo
Have a great day.
00:50:06
John S
You too, bye.
00:50:06
johngrimsmo
Bye.