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Does A 5 Axis Machine Make You Money?
199 Plays5 years ago
This weeks episode is about smart business decisions. Sometimes it is easy to get caught up in the race of buying new equipment. But its always a good idea to take a step back and make sure it is the right decision. Make sure you are the best tool in your shop and that the machines you purchase will be a good fit.
Saunders gives some great info on zero point fixturing and how to mange fixture offsets. While Grimsmo is on the edge of getting their Eumach machines running.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode one hundred and eighty three my name is john rims mo and my name is john saunters john and i both run the machine shops and have documented this weekly conversation where we just said hey let's have a.
Reflecting on 183 Episodes
00:00:14
Speaker
All topics are fair game conversation about what it's like to be a genius but also to be running our spot shops.
00:00:22
Speaker
Yeah, and it's been 183 episodes. Holy cow. Three years, yeah. Yeah. Right. Crazy. It's good. How are you doing? I'm good. You? Very good. I am refreshed and pumped, ready to go after my vacation last week. Good. How was the rest of vacation?
Post-Vacation Insights and Balancing Work
00:00:41
Speaker
It was nice. So we rented the RV. We were up at Barry's property.
00:00:48
Speaker
up in the middle of nowhere for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. By Wednesday night, the kids were getting a little squirrely, and we were like, yeah, it'd be nice to be home. So we came home, spent Thursday, Friday at home. I didn't go back to work Thursday, Friday. I totally could have, but I'm like, you know what? I'm on vacation. So I stayed the time home, spent a lot of time with the family, spent some good focus time in Fusion and got some projects done that I needed to do while at home. Like what? Rask stuff.
00:01:14
Speaker
Ah, well, that's work. It's work, but it's like my work. It's like on my
Importance of Focused Work
00:01:20
Speaker
terms. I'm not checking email. I'm not demanded by anything. It's like it's on my terms. You know what this is? What? Days off in the shop. There you go. Seriously? It's days off at home.
00:01:33
Speaker
Yeah. But you know what I mean? It's incredible. And I actually have a major regression on that, which I'll share in a minute. But I think it goes back to whatever you want to say, being the surgeon, being able to focus on what you want. I've never done that and regretted it.
00:01:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's critical. We need to build that into our lives so that we do our best quality work.
Personal Projects and Weekend Work
00:01:57
Speaker
Otherwise, we're just running around like chickens with their heads cut off, trying to keep a handle on everything, and nothing major gets done well. A lot of little stuff has to get done, but you have to be able to separate the two to get it all done. Yeah, agree.
00:02:14
Speaker
To no work Thursday, Friday, but good times. Yeah, and then Saturday, Sunday, I sort of spent days off in the shop doing the same thing. Oh. Making parts on the Kern, which was epic. I ran the Kern for probably like four hours each day, which is awesome. Doing prototyping and little parts and rask handles got made. Lock bar inserts got progress. I started making all the fixtures I need for that.
00:02:42
Speaker
So, yeah, it was really, really nice.
Transitioning Back to Busy Workdays
00:02:44
Speaker
And then I come back to work on Monday. Everybody's here. You know, Saturday, Sunday was like, I'm relaxed, I'm calm. It's like, you know, get to do whatever I want and focus. And then Monday, Tuesday, it's like busy, busy, busy. There's people here. There's people coming in and out. There's like projects on the go and craziness. But it's all good. How did that networking, ethernet, internet thing go?
00:03:07
Speaker
Epic. I'm in my office right now. On Wi-Fi, I'm getting 272 megabytes down. What? Yes. John, that's insane. I know. Do you have fiber? What do we have to the shop? I think we just have cable. I think we have a 300 megabyte service to the shop. Got it. On Wi-Fi, I used to get 50.
00:03:32
Speaker
with the old router, like a little cheap staples router. But, but yeah, we had my buddy Ryan come in and install, um, access points and a proper hub and switch and all this stuff. And, uh, it's about five grand to have him come in and deck out both buildings on the same network with like five APs access points. Um, but it was, it was like, it's a little bit tough to swallow, but I'm like, you know what? We're never going to regret it. We're never going to think about it again. It's always going to be perfect. It's always going to work.
00:04:02
Speaker
Done. Do you wire all your machines? I did wire them all in. Hardwire. Yes. They're not actually plugged in yet, but there's plugs now. There's dedicated network cables at each machine going back to the central whatever server room thing. Switch thing, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It would just have to plug them in and then figure out what we're going to do, how to transfer files and all that stuff.
00:04:28
Speaker
You still thumb drive or sneaker net? Everything? Yeah, thumb drive everything. I have the Kern plugged right into my computer at the Kern, which is nice. How does that work?
00:04:39
Speaker
The network cable just plugs directly from the current directly into my laptop. And there's a program called TNC Remo that's like a Heidenhain kind of program that lets me drag and drop files, which can also be done over the network. So the two UMAX and the current are all three on Heidenhain. So once they're all plugged in a network, then I can use TNC Remo for all of them. And then for the three FANUC machines, I can use FANUC transfer tool to be able to transfer files and everything.
00:05:05
Speaker
I'm slightly disappointed. I'd really hope to hear that there was a USB connection on the current, and when you plugged it in, Windows just said, new machine tool detected. Ooh, a current. That would be epic. That's awesome. Oh my gosh, so much to catch up on. How are the U-MOCs? Awesome. When I was gone all last week, two service guys came in, spent almost the entire week here.
00:05:32
Speaker
stripped them down or replaced any hoses, any sensors, the little LED or not LED incandescent stack light on top, green, red, whatever. That has to be replaced because it's just broken over, but they're only like $99 to replace it. And I'm like, that's nothing.
00:05:48
Speaker
And I got a bill for the parts that they need. And it's like $700 in parts for both machines. It's nothing. I was expecting like, oh, you need new pumps. You need a spindle rebuild. You need all this stuff. It's like $700 is peanuts. And then plus their labor, it'll be probably a few thousand, several thousand probably in their labor. But like done. In my head, I'm like, if I went into these for under $10,000 in maintenance and repairs, I'm happy. And I think it'll be quite a bit under that. Yeah.
00:06:18
Speaker
So I heard the spindle turn on of one of them two days ago. And it sounds glorious. It sounds like the Kern. It's very high RPM. There's a problem with the VFD. So it sounded like 20,000 or 30,000 RPM. But the readout only said like 2,000. So he said, there's a problem with the VFD. And I got to configure this thing.
00:06:42
Speaker
But so that's fine tuning there. I saw it do a tool change. Oh, that's cool. I'm pretty sure they confirmed that there's lube going to all the accesses. That was a big one that they wanted to know. And otherwise, they're coming together. Each one has a spindle chiller, like an external chilling unit.
00:07:03
Speaker
One of them had a problem, so they took that apart and fixed it. I think at least one machine should be running by Friday, and we're hoping to run foam on it on Friday. Awesome. Which is like this pump in the air kind of win. Yes. So excited. Yeah, that's great. Good for you. Yeah.
00:07:24
Speaker
We had to laugh. Jared had been saying, hey, I don't think the new, we have the VF6s we call A and B. He's like, I don't think the B machine is draining coolant. And it's kind of one of those things where you're like, oh, I mean, we'll figure it out. Or we'll figure it out, right? I don't know what to tell you. It seems odd. They're brand new. Let's see if there's not a clog somewhere or filter or something weird. And then it's kind of one of those dope moments.
00:07:53
Speaker
We like super crazy lesson learned. I can't imagine anyone will ever have the foresight to think of this because it just seems so uh, nichy thing, but you can reverse the direction of the belt conveyors on, I think all certainly the hospital machines that we have that have the actual belt belt conveyor. So not the auger screw, but the actual like treadmill.
00:08:18
Speaker
And when our sixes arrived, they both had the augers pointed left, which I think is the default orientation from cost. And they're facing each other. And so we wanted both of them going the same way, which meant the main machine was the right. And the service tech who was installing it was like, well, yeah, you can flip them. He's like, he wasn't totally sure. I don't think he had done it, but we kind of
00:08:43
Speaker
made a phone call or just realized, okay, it's actually not that hard. It's just a complicated part is the fact that it's, I'm going to guess a 15 to 20 foot long machine, now maybe 10, 15 feet. And then to pull the auger out, you need double that distance. So you got to have a heck of a runway to get it out. So we pulled it out, moved it to the other side, put it back in. It's heavy and you got to do it with like a pallet jack, but honestly, it took us an hour. Well,
00:09:05
Speaker
And then it's spinning the wrong way. No, I thought the same thing. No, because the auger is self-contained. So that part of it was fine. I thought we'd have to reverse the forward and backward control. Oh, I guess you're right. Yeah, OK. Yeah, I did. I made the same mistake. The mistake that we made, apparently, was that there's some other plate inside the machine because when it draws left, it is allowing the coolant to drain at that last second.
00:09:31
Speaker
down into the return shoot. And apparently we forgot to move that plate. So not the end of the world, we'll have to pull the auger out and remove that plate and move it to the other side. God, I think I know what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. Those silly little things you can't have the foresight for, but you need to be nimble enough to take care of and debug. Well, if anybody's ever thinking about
00:09:54
Speaker
about like a Haas machine in a really specific situation of like machine placement or layout or orientation. Talk to your, well, it doesn't need to be Haas, any machine tool. Think about, add that to your list of paranoia things to try to remember.
00:10:10
Speaker
Exactly. Well, it's like, what's different? What did you change? It's almost always a me problem. Right. Well, but I don't follow that own logic. I totally agree with you, but I don't know. I didn't think, hey, that makes sense. The coolant's not draining. Oh, we moved the chip auger. Great. Yeah. Cool.
00:10:31
Speaker
Glad you got that figured out. Yeah. Nice. Man, I'm still so happily envious of that, not only the CURB, but the ROA. So we're working on some five-axis stuff now, which is awesome. But oh my gosh, the thought of being able to just not only have automation to run stuff, but just be able to say, you know what, I need to work on something different right now, or I'm going to op one it, and I've got op two set up, and I need to op one and a second one, and just being able to pallet. The fifth-axis stuff is it's not hard to do it. But to be able to hit a button and have it happen, whoo.
00:11:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's nice. And so I've got my mini pallets, my three inch pallets. And I sort of combined the Raptor system and the fifth axis dovetail system into one package that I machined into these little pallets. It's a dovetail clamping system, but with an indicating pin. OK.
00:11:22
Speaker
So I've machined that right into the top of my little three inch pallets. So my little top fixtures now can click in and out repeatedly and everything with two little screws on them. And so I'm making my lock bar insert fixtures. And I'm like, you know what? I don't have time to finish that one today, but I want to get started on this next little piece. Let me throw another piece in.
00:11:41
Speaker
with this basically zero point, you know, dovetail system. And and then just hit go. And it's like everything else is perfect. And there's nothing to probe nothing to do anything. And it's like, man, I said this before a couple weeks ago, like zero point is the greatest thing ever. You know, just having some repeatable thing where you can pull a job off and throw a new one on. And now my work coordinate system, my major one is
00:12:04
Speaker
at the bottom of my pallets and in the center. So it never changes between the big pallets, the small pallets, vice, anything. It's always, always, always at the bottom locating face.
00:12:16
Speaker
And yeah, I just use fixture offset 10 for everything now. And it's like I just don't think about it anymore. I don't speak Heidenhine, sorry. Yeah. They call it preset number 10. That's like G55 or G54? 54 would be 0 or 1. OK. So it's like the G59 or something higher.
00:12:38
Speaker
Got it. Because yeah, like a default program will go to zero or to one. And that's also the same. But I just I wanted this like other one, you know, 10 is going to be my my standard, but it's not zero. Right.
00:12:54
Speaker
No, I totally agree. So in the FANUC world, 54 is the default. And as part of days off in the shop and a project we just started, we're going to be spending the next, well, not this month. I'm going to do it in September. Really refining and then sharing a lot of the fifth axis. The one I talked about last week, like kind of merging in the Lockwood and other influences we've had. And same thing with the beauty of the zero point system. But I don't think I can have that be
00:13:24
Speaker
I don't think I can have that be my GT4 because so often you're going to change GT4 if you had to do something real quick and that would be a huge, huge break. Although, you know what I could do actually, John? This would be really smart. You can write to offsets in G code and manual and C. So I guess I...
00:13:42
Speaker
could do is put in a yes, no parameter that would allow you when you run something to repush the, because that worked subject to kinematics over time, like the machine moving a little, that offset certainly won't move by more than five thou or 10 thou. So you won't crash. And so that's actually a decent idea that I just repush that offset each time. From where to where? From which?
00:14:07
Speaker
Well, so let's say I'm going to do G59 as the master origin on my zero point. And so I need to find remote programming from home. And I program a dovetail or a self-centering vice operation. And I'm not probing. I'm just assuming it's good to go. Well, there's still a chance that somehow somebody updated G59.
00:14:30
Speaker
because you can't protect an offset so far as I know. You can in Hide 9. Oh, my God. Really? Yeah. Oh, that's cool. I'll have to look that up. Can you lock it in offset? Not that I know of in Fanuc, but there's like a little checkbox in Hide 9. Okay.
00:14:47
Speaker
But this would do the same thing, which is just to have a... Now, the fallacy would be if you do have a small change, you'd have to potentially update that in multiple fields or multiple programs, I should say, which is no good. But anyway. I like it because it gets it out of the way. I think the FANUC machines boot up to G54. It's like you turn the machine on for the first time and it's
00:15:11
Speaker
I think it always defaults to do before the Heidenhein, I'm pretty sure stays what you left to that. But it's sort of that like, I want to, my main one, I want to put it out of the way so that nobody accidentally overwrites it. Yeah. Although I can lock it, which is cool. Actually, what I could do is make a quick note of what the G54
00:15:30
Speaker
the G59Z value is, and then to say if it's off by more than 30,000, throw an alarm and don't run the program, which means I'll never have to worry about storing the location in every single program, but it could just be a quick fail safe to make sure it hasn't moved by too much. So to do that, you'd back up
00:15:52
Speaker
Like, say you said G59, you love it. You don't think it's ever going to change by more than a few thou. You copy the same offset to G59 P20, or one of the highest ones. And then you can reference that. And you can do your math that says, if G59 is different than G59 P20 by five thou, then something's wrong.
00:16:14
Speaker
Yeah, you could do that. I was actually thinking just, it's a hard code machine position. So let's say the Z0 is negative 13.22 inches. You could just store that in every fusion program and say, hey, measure, grab the value for G59 Z0. And if it's not, if it's more than 20,000 different than this hard coded value, then throw an alarm. Yeah. Do it right in your post.
00:16:39
Speaker
Yeah, I thought about that. I really want to see what Autodesk comes up with for, and I think the groundwork is there because they had that option now called cascading posts where you can have your own stuff merged with the factory or Autodesk post.
00:16:55
Speaker
I haven't heard of that. They talked about it a while back because there's things we want to do, but it's that classic dilemma. If you go modify your own post, then you can't easily or practically embrace updates. And there's been some awesome updates with like probing routines that I care about and want to have. And then you end up with a bunch of different posts. And like the lathe scares me because I know my lathe post works for some complicated sub-spindle programs. And so moving to a new post, they may treat
00:17:24
Speaker
For good reason, they make updates. Like I told them that they need to change how you call in a parting tool when their sub spindle is active via the sub spindle transfer. The parting tool shouldn't come in from a safe Z because it's almost always going to crash. And these are super niche complicated situations. But my point is if they update that in the post, inadvertently, I think it could potentially introduce a crash risk. Right. Yep. Scary.
00:17:54
Speaker
I guess in the past what I've done is I just, in Visual Studio Code, I just side-by-side the two, like the new one and mine, and I highlight all differences and then I'll port them over as necessary.
00:18:08
Speaker
Oh, you woke up both posts? Yeah, if I have to compare and change something. And that works, but it's very manual. But it gives you that kind of internal feel, like, OK, I know what's going on. I know what I changed. I've tagged all of my changes in my name in brackets at the end of it and the date.
00:18:29
Speaker
That's a lot harder when there's at least me, Jared, and if not also people like Alex or Jeffrey all relying or using this. But like, I mean, I haven't even paid attention to post updates in years because my Maury post is the FANUC default posts from like five years ago, four years ago, and it just works. And I just use it. And I've done my tweaks to it, just a few. And my Nakamura posts are like,
00:18:56
Speaker
I heavily made those. I remember that three or four years ago and I'm not updating those because they work fine.
00:19:03
Speaker
But a Haas post, in your example, I'm sure that updates. That's probably the most updated one, often. And you probably want to stay on top of updates for those. So yeah, I get it. Yeah, and if folks haven't seen the video we did on the generative longboard truck, we turned it into like, hey, here are the takeaways and the lessons that we learned from this pretty cool project that pushed the envelope. Five-axis machining, new toolpaths, extension options, generative design.
00:19:30
Speaker
the saving grace at the end was the part alignment functionality, which can let you drop in a multi-dimensional part, like a complicated part. Think of a casting or a 3D printed part or a forging or even an op, you know, a secondary op after it's been anodized and fusion will kind of map the three dimensional orientation of that part. It has to be five axis for this to work for all three dimensions. If you, well, you could probably surface it. Yeah. So like if you took a, um,
00:19:59
Speaker
if you took a almost flat part that had been anodized, but it's not perfectly flat and it wasn't. So, okay, take like a Norseman handle and you just drop it into a vise on a little fixture plate. It could probe it all and recognize that it's tipped at 0.2 degrees across the three inches and it would engrave along that surface at the perfect depth despite the fact that it's not correct in X, Y, or Z. Amazing. That's awesome because the G68 thing,
00:20:30
Speaker
I've never really used it too much, but I assumed it only worked in like one axis at a time kind of thing. It's just XY shift, yeah. Right, right. Because I know on Heidenhain, especially with five axis, you can probe a crooked surface and it'll reorient your whole plane, your work plane in the computer, like in the, in the Kern. But if that can also be done.
00:20:52
Speaker
Yeah, so that's what's nice about this is it is a little bit less relying on the control. It's actually just taking multiple data points of the part and then it deep prints what it needs to know and then you re-import that deep print infusion. Watch the video and it actually just updates your WCS infusion. So the code is good to go. The code doesn't rely on a controller shift like G68 does. That sounds really cool.
00:21:23
Speaker
Yeah. Hey, speaking of lathe, did I update you or the audience on lining the turret? I don't think so. No. So ends up it was really easy. I use easy in air quotes. We really struggled. A couple of weeks ago, you bumped it a little bit.
00:21:43
Speaker
Yeah, and lesson learned, basically a tap to hold it where the tap wasn't turning, my own fault. And again, briefly, I believe the design philosophy on the Haas lathe, and I think they're not alone in this, is that the turret is meant to be moved versus a box weight, super, super, super rigid machine. The downside is that if it moves, you got to realign it.
00:22:06
Speaker
Again, I don't think it's crazy to think over some period of time you may want to check or realign it just because of normal use. Anyways, I'm not complimenting or criticizing. It is what it is. Well, we made the four jack screw blocks super easy, just two tapped holes and some steel. It took a little bit of figuring out why and how the turret kind of shifts or moves. That's what kind of threw me for a while.
00:22:31
Speaker
But then it's, I would say it's almost as easy as dialing in a vice on a machine table. Like it's not hard. And then the hardest part on the Haas is getting the sheet metal off to expose the screws that you, areas where you need to put in the jack screws. And so I have it back together. I believe it's aligned well. Proof will be in the pudding. But my honestly advice would be almost
00:22:59
Speaker
not to plan on needing to do it. You're an example of somebody who hasn't had to do it, but I should do a video on it because people said it wasn't hard, but sometimes when some people say that, it actually is pretty tricky and there's some kind of secret sauce and it's not hard if you're able to watch someone do it, that sort of thing. This really was pretty simple once you saw what you had to do.
00:23:22
Speaker
Yeah, and just like you went through, it's the fear of the unknown. I mean, you and I aren't afraid to jump in and like do almost anything in a machine shop, but it's still, it's that unknown. It's like, I don't want to screw it up. You know, I could pay somebody to do it, but I think we can handle it ourselves. I think it'll be fairly easy, but I still don't really know until I've done it. And then after you do it, you're like, that was actually very easy. You know, it's work, but it's...
00:23:44
Speaker
Yeah, it wasn't complicated. It's like leveling machine. It's like you see the experts come in and do it, and you're like, yeah, I could do that. But until you actually do it, you don't say, oh, that was easy. Right, right. Well, so here's where I'm now struggling. And I only spent some time yesterday on it, and then I said, nope, time to take a break.
00:24:07
Speaker
Because we effectively relocated the turret in space, like the turret is in a totally new location. It's off. It's different by like three pal. But nevertheless, you treat it like the turret has been relocated. You got to retouch off your tools. Every tool. Yeah, exactly. No big deal did that.
00:24:26
Speaker
What is odd is I went to make our mod vice washer, which is like the coolest part ever that we make on the lathe, and it transfers it to the sub spindle for a final op. And the sub spindle final op cut was off. It was too heavy of a cut.
00:24:46
Speaker
and like a facing cut. I checked my B-axis location. I checked the sub-spindle turret tool and it's good code. We just ran these a month ago and I can't figure out why it's taking too much of a cut. You did touch off the sub-spindle tool? I did.
00:25:13
Speaker
Because that would definitely have changed. The sub-spindle itself isn't going to change.
00:25:18
Speaker
Yeah, correct. But again, the turret as best I can tell tracking prior and revised tool, uh, locations, they, they really only moved about 3000. This is taking a 2d of a cut by more than that. I think that's weird. I think, um, like you wonder if, if not the transfer itself, like the transfer grab distance would be the same, but the reference.
00:25:45
Speaker
between your main spindle, the new cut surface, like your G0 might have changed? So I reset. No, exactly. So I reset my G54 Z0 on the main. And then what's super confusing to me, I've made some notes, which I had to go revisit, is what is your subspindle
00:26:06
Speaker
Z-Zero because when the sub spindle cuts, the sub spindle is not home. It's moved away from home because the Haas sub spindle can go further back than the turret can reach with a sick tool. Now, if you had a drill of some kind, it may actually be useful to have it go back that far. But I have to bring the sub spindle B-axis out about two inches to reach it with a stubby facing tool.
00:26:33
Speaker
It's a little bit of a weird situation because your Z zero is between two moving surfaces. Right, right. That's different. It's different on my Nakamura because my turret home position is actually way the heck to the left. It would chop the sub-spin the entire spindle in half kind of thing. It's that far over. I don't know why. You mean the right? Sorry, yeah, to the right. Okay, okay.
00:27:04
Speaker
Yeah, so I could reach anything on that side. I always machine the sub spindle at home, but okay. Yeah. So I need to, I got a couple other measurements to take just to try to figure out what, what threw me off is the backside chamfer wasn't there on the part. And I thought, huh, something's wrong with my chamfer tool. And then I realized, ah, that's not the chamfer is there. It's just getting machined away. Um, when the facing cut takes too deep of a cut, um, I got a couple more measurements that I can, that'll help unsolved this mystery.
00:27:35
Speaker
Luckily, you're not smashed into your collet or something. What do you mean? Because it's a washer. It's a thin part. Oh, sorry. No, totally. Yeah. Could you have had a crash because something was off here? For sure. But that's the beauty of the zero point system. This is what you and I have a fun philosophical difference is using the zero point system on the lathe with Z0 at your chuck faces is amazing. Yeah. Because it never changes, really.
00:28:04
Speaker
doesn't change and you can see my, the Z value is still positive, which means it wasn't going to, in fairness, it is really close, but it's not, if the Z value is positive, short, it's not gonna crash. Yeah, cool. Anyway. Yeah. Nice. The other thing we, oh, go ahead. You finished.
00:28:29
Speaker
I was just changing the subject, but it's quick, which is that we had an idea and executed on it and it's live, which is on Provencut. We did something we didn't think we would do, which we have a traditional feeds and speeds calculator. So the sort of thing where you just- I saw that the other day. It was really nice. Oh, cool.
00:28:49
Speaker
So yeah, you input whatever you want, the RPM or the tool diameter, the number of flutes, and it'll give you whatever output based on your inputs. What's cool is you can also say, no, I want to pull in, say, recipe 522, and that'll pre-populate it, and then you can change any of those things as you see fit.
00:29:12
Speaker
Yes. Um, that was the big to do there. And we've now started a lot of folks have asked for it. So I wanted to let folks know we're working on it, which is turning. Oh, nice. Yeah. So I'm excited for that. It'll require earning. It's going to be easier, like less variables, less, less recipes in total. Or do you think it's going to be similar?
00:29:34
Speaker
Well, I think turning could have a much deeper abyss of possibilities and proven cut can't be everything to everyone at all times for sure. I mean, you could have, think of the number of micro 100 or pH horn or Sandvik ID, you know, blind ID, chamfer, threading, boring tools, good grief. You could have permutations into the hundreds of trillions.
00:30:00
Speaker
It's just turning is different. So the first thing we do is work with the software team on the architecture. For instance, there is basically no RPM because generally speaking with CNC turning, you will rely on constant service speed. But there are situations like tapping where, or excuse me, threading where you may instead use an RPM. So treating the override there is very different than it is on the milling side where
00:30:29
Speaker
you can have RPM or CSS as the input, but they stay the same whereas with turning they don't. Right.
00:30:38
Speaker
Hmm. Yeah. I think for turning, because we really only machine two materials, 17, four pH at age 900 and titanium. And I probably have two or three different SFMs that I use for everything. I have maybe two different inch per rev numbers that I use for everything and it works. It works great on Swiss and Mac for the most part. Yeah. So it'll be fun. Yeah. That's awesome.
00:31:05
Speaker
You were going to say, though. I was going to update a couple weeks ago. I think his name was Andrew Strok. Yes. Stork, I think. Stork. I think it was, I forget. I've got a customer, a knife customer with a very similar name, and I keep mixing them up.
00:31:20
Speaker
Oh, that's funny. Yeah. I get emails from both, and I'm like, wait, which one is this? But anyway, a couple weeks ago, he suggested I use this gas cylinder to eject as an ejector for our pen tubes. Holy cow. Greatest thing ever. Angelo got it all set up last week. I had my buddy Matt make the little adapters that we needed. They came in. Perfect. Yeah, Angelo set it up last week. And the sub spindle won't go all the way forward while it's clamped.
00:31:50
Speaker
So you can't kiss the two spindles together while it's clamped because there's some internal Nakamura safety thing that says you would never do that. But when you want to do that, you're like, heck. How close can you get them? Seven inches. What?
00:32:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous. How would you do my mod vice part where I'm bringing the two up within 50 thou to grab the part off, the pick off? You can transfer for sure, but the collet is open while you're transferring. Got it. A transfer is fine, but if a part is clamped, it stops you seven inches away. What we're doing is the
00:32:29
Speaker
The tube is clamped with spring pressure behind it. We want to move it to the parts catcher and then release it, or even up against a hard stop, like we talked about, and then slowly release the sub spindle and let the part fall. But we couldn't do that. So we were on the phone with Elliott Matsura, our Nakamura guys, and there's a bunch of deep parameters. They still couldn't figure it out. This is all while I was gone. But then Angelo's like, you know, it's actually a decent distance, like at the limit.
00:32:57
Speaker
it might be able to make the parts catcher, the basket. So he tried it and he just released it. And because it's a gas spring, it doesn't fly out like a spring does. It's actually slow. Yeah. So the part takes probably just under a second to spit its way out. And it's perfect.
00:33:15
Speaker
And now he's running, you get 10 tubes per bar, and he just runs a bar at a time, puts a new bar in, 10 more tubes. And he's like, this is great. It just worked. You didn't even have to... Exactly. It's awesome. So he's like, I'm making like 80 to 100 tubes a day. And this is awesome. So now we're thinking like, should we get a bar feeder for this lathe? Maybe we should. Oh, yeah. Because the whole reason you didn't was the old shop. Yeah. Oh, John.
00:33:43
Speaker
And here we don't have like 12 feet of room, but we could put a three or four foot bar feeder in there. And I planned it. There is room. Yeah, so we might do that sometime.
00:33:54
Speaker
I submitted my class for AU, which just got accepted, which is something like the title, something like dual spindle barfed lays, the cheapest form of shop automation, because it really is true. We're making a lot of mill parts or milled feature parts on that system, and it's arguably the only form of automation we have in the shop right now.
00:34:17
Speaker
I mean, the Haas bar feeder, I want to say is like 15 grand. I mean, you can't touch, it's half of a UR. And again, the number of UR's that I see that aren't used relative to the ones that, I mean, sorry, I shouldn't say that they're a bad workflow, but they're difficult.
00:34:36
Speaker
Yeah, and there's a lot of integration with the bar feeder. I mean, you got to level it and set it up and line it up and all that stuff, but other than that, it just runs. If you have the quantity, like on the Swiss, it's amazing. I load up 10 bars and I come back in the morning and I have a thousand parts. Yeah, that's amazing.
00:34:54
Speaker
It's interesting too, though, like the John over at Area 419 has talked about, they do a lot, they just do a lot of production period on their firearms parts. And he has, I don't know if I want to say word struggle, but whether it's aluminum, which is stringy, or steel, where you've got tool wear issues and tolerancing issues, he kind of has the mindset that a bar feeder
00:35:15
Speaker
He has them, but it's difficult. It's not like you can just let the thing run for two or three days. Agreed. Yeah. Just things go wrong. Chip evacuation. Same on the Swiss. Because we're cutting stainless and titanium tools where tolerances go out.
00:35:34
Speaker
lathe runs out of oil, you know, like, things happen. And everybody has this false knowledge, myself included, as you're buying a lathe, an automated lathe like that, you're like, Oh, man, I can just run it for like four days straight, and I'd have my month's production. And it'd be awesome. And while that can be theoretically possible,
00:35:54
Speaker
Like if you're cutting brass or some plastic material, tools barely wear at all. You can manage things like that. But I talk to other machinists, Danny Rudolph or otherwise, they're like, yeah, we got 500 to 1,000 parts per insert edge, and then it has to be changed. And I'm like, yeah, but that's like eight hours of machining. And then you've got to be there to change the insert. This is not as perfect scenario as you wish it were.
00:36:27
Speaker
I wonder when you'll get your first mill turn. I don't know. I go back and forth if I even want one.
00:36:37
Speaker
Yeti man, that guy that Jeff Tiedecan that just seems to always live a crazy, crazy life. He just got one of those giant Okumas like Lawrence has, but I think Jeff's is even bigger. I mean, they're big machines. I'll just never forget that Mari tool tour when the light bulb went off and I was like, oh my God, it's just a lathe with infinite tool holders. Yeah. With the milling spindle. Yeah, like a real milling spindle.
00:37:03
Speaker
Like a fourth axis milling spindle that rotates around that does like 20,000 RPM with big bearings and like good run out and all that stuff and like cat 40 holders. Capto baby, capto. There you go. Speaking of capto, we're actually, Angelo and I are wondering if we should put capto on the Nakamura. The answer to that question is yes. Is yes. Yeah. So can you spend one minute and sell me on it? Yeah, sure.
00:37:31
Speaker
It is a quick change interface that is industry class, best in class. I don't think anybody argues about that. It's definitely not inexpensive. We bought it new with our machine so you get the benefit of that new machine pricing discount. And I believe ours is all C3, which is just the size. And what it lets us do is buy anything from stick tool holders that are Kapto to drills, to ER holders, live tools, radial axial, et cetera.
00:37:59
Speaker
And we can save that tool offsets and information. So it means we don't have to risk the complication of a missing and offset update. And some tools are also really hard to set the offsets on. So if you do it once, you're kind of good to go. And then I know folks like Lawrence, they use Capito.
00:38:22
Speaker
on just regular old CNMG stick type tools because when insert needs changed, they just swap out the CapToHead in a number of seconds and then can take the time offline while the machine's running to inspect the insert, inspect the pocket, look at where it is.
00:38:40
Speaker
don't right now, but plan on also doing that so that we can mark different, like I only have one turret position for say a CNMG, but I have different grades of inserts for different materials. And that can be a really big task to figure out what grade is in there. But different capital holders means I can just say, Hey, this one was for titanium. This one's for stainless. This one's for aluminum, et cetera. Right. And even for proven cut, you can
00:39:05
Speaker
I mean, you could do it with just an insert too, but you could run 400 parts, take out the whole holder, throw a new one in, run another 400 and you're comparing insert grades or something. Right. Yeah.
00:39:17
Speaker
cool. The Nakamura right now is only running tubes, currently still running pocket clips for the pen and then the slider, the little ring that slides down on the pen. Those three components, but they all require different amounts of drills and boring bars and things like that. There are
00:39:37
Speaker
not a lot, but a few tool setups that are annoying. The long drills, we got to dial them in, make sure they're perfect. So we're just thinking if they were Kapto, it's a quick change interface and it's perfect. Then you just leave it mounted and you pull out the Kapto and you put it in the shelf and you write down the tool offset, and then you put the new one in, you're running the new job in minutes.
00:39:58
Speaker
It's like the mental burden of setting up a lathe sometimes. It gets both me and Angelo. It's like, I need time. I don't want to be bothered. That means I'm not going to do it today or probably tomorrow, you know?
00:40:09
Speaker
John, 100%. Absolutely. I mean, what you'll do is create, like this is what we're doing here. We have these Uline bins that are the setup parts for a new job, mill or lathe. Inside of that's a landed QC sheet, any part specific measuring tools, any other comments and notes, and then you can have the CapDo holders that have the certain drills. A CapDo stick to holder is like 150 bucks. Not the cheapest thing out there, but that part of it's not insanely expensive.
00:40:39
Speaker
It's in the live tools that are expensive. Well, again, the tool holder is not so crazy. The Kapto live tool blocks are very expensive. Yes. Right. Thousands probably. But just like any live tool block, like for the Nakamura, I think it's like 1500 for just a regular holder, like a straight
00:41:02
Speaker
And then the angled is like double that 3000 or something. But I mean, ours came with all that we need really. So it kind of sucked to have to replace a few of them with cap toe, but you begin the benefit of cap toe. So it's like, is it worth it? Yeah.
00:41:14
Speaker
That I look up as a capital purchase of what's this do for me and the ability to save, set up time, save operator, just that fatigue of being, oh my gosh, I got to tear down this whole lathe that set it up. We just switched to those mod vice parts yesterday and I was like, oh, no big deal. I got to throw the 472 drill in T8, just two wrenches, boom, boom, it's in, done, easy.
00:41:39
Speaker
Love it. Next time you're at the lathe, can you snap a picture of just the Uline bins with the little QC cards? I'm just curious to see how you've done that. Let me know. It'll be cool. We started filming. We've never done a video this way, but when we decided to nuke the shop, I was like, Julie, we got to somehow document this. Every week she grabs a camera and films like
00:42:01
Speaker
Yes. Two or three minutes, so it's going to be a weird video because it's kind of like... Who cares? Okay, yeah. Even intro the video like that. This might be a little different than our normal format, but we had to document it over the past three months, and here it is. Yeah.
00:42:16
Speaker
Well, and so on that, I'll keep this short because of time, but I accepted an opportunity to do a project on the five axis that when I can share more about it, you'll realize why I couldn't have said no, but I had kind of a rough
00:42:33
Speaker
couple of days because it's taking me away from what I need to be focused on here at the shop with implementing Lex and inventory and ordering and all that stuff. But I couldn't say no to this once in a lifetime. So that is a mental compromise I had to make.
00:42:55
Speaker
Awesome. Can I ask you a weird question? I was thinking about this last week. Of course. I no mean any disrespect or offense by this, but have you made a lot of money on your five axis machine? Oh, that's not a bad question. You buy the three axis, they're production machines, they make money. You know what I mean?
00:43:19
Speaker
So the answer is, I would say yes. And the answer would be, but on the flip side, we could sell that machine and still have
00:43:32
Speaker
Saunders do what it needs to do over the next 12 months. It's no longer. So we did do a lot of prototyping in R&D. It's a spindle that's available to use for anything. We'd actually made more money on a job shopping. From an ROI standpoint, that machine probably paid for about half of itself in the last 18 months just on. Nice. Now, I have done a hard no. In fact, one of those customers came back for a repeat of an already existing job three weeks ago, and I actually said no.
00:44:02
Speaker
So that ship has sailed. And honestly, I would, we were actually just playing with the fifth axis 3D configurator tool and looking at what it would be like on a UMC 500 with the, I'm looking at the Haas pallet pool, which is not, I'd much rather have a compact 80 like you do, but
00:44:24
Speaker
So and we thought about moving some Modvite stuff over to it. We've got Modvite stuff dialed in now with new fixtures. So that is your question? I think so, yeah. And more than I expected, because I didn't know how much job shop work you've actually taken on it. Because to be honest, for the current, I haven't sold a single thing off of it yet. And that's a me thing. That's me being slow.
00:44:49
Speaker
I know they are, they can be super productive, especially with the palette changer. I know they should be and they will be, but I see you doing a lot of playing and prototyping and fixtures and things like that, and they're awesome for that, but that doesn't make money. It's support.
00:45:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of a weird mental place for that. I don't totally agree with that statement. I mean, I know what you're saying. It's not the spindle that goes the part into the box that goes to the customer, but it is still an absolute key tool for us.
00:45:22
Speaker
I know I will never live without another five axis. It's the thing now. Maybe I'm just lamenting, or if that's the right word, I'm looking forward to the day where it's printing money for me. But that's just a timing issue. Anything other than that. Yeah. So that's probably just where I'm coming from on that point.
00:45:42
Speaker
It's close. It's so, so, so close. Yes. Good. And I had my buddy Matt make me 25 tombstones. Nice. I'm going to load up the aroa over time. But he's roughed them out for me. And they're impressive. They're work that I did not want to do. So I'm glad I could spend, give him good money to do that. And then he should be dropping them off this week sometime. And now I'm just getting that much closer to actually running production rasks.
00:46:12
Speaker
which is so good. Good. Let's talk more about rasks next week. Sweet. Have a good one. Everybody I'll see you. Take care. Bye. Bye.