The Like Butter Pencil Sharpener genesis story is told, power chaos ensues at PDX CNC. CNC crashes, and good old fashioned Robot Talk.
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The Pencil Sharpener Genesis
4-axis, 5-spindle custom CNC machine
Machine Tool Talk
Brass Pulls by DKL Custom Furniture
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Show Info
HOSTS
Jem Freeman
Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia
Like Butter | Instagram | More Links
Justin Brouillette
Portland, Oregon, USA
Hey, Hey so unfortunately those fuses hold on back orders.
Justin:So I can't get one
Justin:well, yeah, jumping into the chaos of the day.
Justin:I've been rushing to finish this job that I was talking about last week, that
Justin:brass parts kind of snuck up on me as I was trying to get the mill figured out.
Justin:So I could run larger files.
Justin:On Monday I woke up and I was like, Oh, dang, gotta finish those parts.
Justin:And I've been crunching on that.
Justin:In the same time we had our electrician installed the Kaeser.
Justin:I think I've heard, said it.
Justin:It said, and that happened yesterday real quick.
Justin:And I was like, all right, great.
Justin:We'll call them, have them come, start it up.
Justin:They came this morning as far as I can tell what happened was wires were
Justin:touching and the breaker went on and it.
Jem:oh,
Justin:My lighting might look a little better today because I'm
Justin:currently using a video light and extension cords to power my office,
Jem:oh shit.
Jem:You're on extension cards.
Jem:Wow.
Jem:Okay.
Justin:stressful, but everything seems to be fine.
Justin:Aside from the waiting on the electrician to come.
Justin:Yeah, just, just somewhat humorous, I suppose, at the moment, assuming
Justin:it didn't fry the compressor.
Justin:I don't think it did, Potentially the fuse outside of our building
Justin:where the power comes in may be messed up because one of the legs
Justin:of the three-phase gets four volts.
Justin:Right now it's supposed to be at least a hundred something.
Justin:So like somehow my office is on that.
Jem:Oh, wow.
Justin:the bathroom doesn't work or fridges turned off.
Justin:It's like this weird series of things, so it's not gone excellent.
Justin:Just a little
Jem:Crazy.
Justin:it's
Jem:Where, where were the, where was the short-circuit at the termination?
Justin:so like the wires were dangling out of the compressor.
Justin:The three-phase like some high amperage, higher voltage, and
Justin:apparently are touching when you turned the breaker on accidentally.
Jem:Oh,
Justin:So actually they might not have been touching the
Justin:compressor at all, which is great.
Justin:Just somehow I didn't know this was possible, but there's a, it seems like
Justin:the fuse outside took the brunt of it.
Justin:I don't know if those are expensive, but I don't think I'll have
Justin:to pay for it, which is nice.
Jem:yeah.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:Power is when power goes wrong.
Jem:It really goes wrong.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:I'm glad this is exactly why I don't attempt to mess
Justin:with the three-phase stuff.
Justin:Myself and panel is confusing.
Justin:do you have multi-phase stuff there like that?
Justin:Yeah,
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:How's your
Justin:week been
Jem:I
Jem:don't, think I should talk about my electrical history on the podcast.
Justin:too damning.
Jem:Much do damning.
Jem:It's been a bit challenging, a couple of people away this week.
Jem:We one isolating close contact and another one with symptoms
Jem:and isolating just to be safe.
Jem:One of those people who's Johnny and machinist, which means, yours
Jem:truly as on the machines this week.
Jem:Which is cool.
Jem:Like I love getting on the machines.
Jem:But it's also really stressful because I'm just running behind
Jem:on all the other things that I'm supposed to be doing, but that's okay.
Jem:I just have to sort of stop long enough to appreciate it.
Justin:Yeah, no, I know that feeling exactly
Jem:I can really enjoy this, you know, if I, if I, yeah.
Jem:If I, and I appreciate it, then that's great fun getting to run three machines
Jem:and try and keep them ticking all day.
Jem:But yeah,
Justin:Do you feel rusty at all when that happened?
Jem:um, I Do a little bit,
Justin:same,
Jem:it didn't take me too long to get back into it yesterday or this week,
Jem:but yeah, there's definitely rusty bits.
Jem:toolpaths Particularly, got my fusion template and, you know, making you
Jem:set up and I drop in John and I keep separate operate like toolpath templates,
Jem:But John's is going to be way more up to date, but it's very, you know, customs
Jem:to him cause he's made, made them.
Jem:So I don't bother trying to use his template.
Jem:I'd just pull in my old one.
Jem:And it's a bit of an updating, cause he's made changes to the
Jem:tool register and that sort of, it's definitely a bit of a change.
Jem:We've like what John's got a new roughing and finishing cutter and making sure that
Jem:I'm employing those, my strategies and updating my templates and stuff like that.
Jem:But once I'm sort of up and running, that's great.
Jem:I
Justin:That's that's one of the harder things I've found growing
Justin:into this new machine, as a 20 tool changer, just like double what we're
Justin:used to, you know, for the router.
Justin:And it's kind of obscured to, with or routers, head up.
Justin:It's just, they're all just sitting there, you know, you can go look at
Justin:them, which one's in which spot, but the, the mill, I think it's pretty
Justin:common that it puts them away.
Justin:it seems arbitrary, but it puts them away into whatever's available inside.
Justin:So there's numbers that are pockets, but you can look in the window and they
Justin:mean nothing because that's not the tool
Justin:number
Jem:Ah, So it knows where the total is,
Jem:but it doesn't match what you think it is necessarily.
Justin:I was told at one point you can match them, but it, the amount
Justin:of stress to make that work was not worth it to basically like when
Justin:I call a tool or, you know, like the cam G-code does it on its own.
Justin:it always is right.
Justin:Assuming you've loaded the tool in the right tool number, just,
Justin:you know, called that tool.
Justin:the challenge exactly what you're describing and I haven't mastered
Justin:this we're, we're working on tool tags that would need to be accurate.
Justin:But when you change machinists, like when Andy was running it prior, it's not
Justin:necessarily what's in fusion anymore.
Justin:So I got set up cam and then I'm like uh, oh, I've got to go
Justin:check every tool I'm going to use.
Justin:Cause they're just arbitrarily in this machine.
Justin:You know, I can't just look at it and say, oh, they're all right.
Jem:Yeah,
Justin:It's a bit of a ch Yeah,
Justin:I don't love that right now.
Jem:yeah, I was doing a lot of sort of prototyping work yesterday.
Jem:And so lots of tool changes, lots of tools that aren't necessarily
Jem:in regular production or weren't in the machine already.
Jem:And then I find, I found myself wanting like, you know, a tool
Jem:matrix or just like a, really, either a machine with heaps of tools.
Jem:So you can just keep everything in the machine and just draw on it as you need
Jem:it, or having way more tools outside the machine with manual tool numbers on them.
Jem:And you just like call tool 16, which is external to the tool changer.
Jem:And it just it asks for tool 16 and you manually put it in.
Jem:But yeah, we've started using tool tags a little bit.
Jem:John rolled that out a few months ago, made little plastic tool tags, and now our
Jem:system is still pretty basic, but at least on the newer, yeah, like that exactly
Jem:on our newer machine on Trinity as.
Jem:because she's got knives, she's got a rotary tool changer.
Jem:And so you can't see what's in there.
Jem:It's got seven tools in this rotary carousel, and you have to like,
Jem:basically put M codes into the control that to pull that one tool at a time
Jem:and go, oh, what's a, what is that?
Jem:Oh, that one.
Jem:Okay, cool.
Jem:And then pull another M code to pull up
Jem:another
Jem:tool.
Jem:It's really slow.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:Whereas our original multicam machine you just like open the
Jem:flap And just oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jem:Like, cause you have to changes by app on
Jem:the
Justin:just out there.
Justin:Yeah.
Jem:Yeah.
Justin:Yeah, which feels a little like, um, simple now after, you know,
Justin:digging into more machines over time and we've upgraded ours cause it used
Justin:to have five, but now we're at 10.
Jem:and you just physically, physically, added more spots.
Jem:Did you have to teach the machine, the new position?
Justin:sorry, we have 12.
Justin:I forgot.
Justin:Yes.
Justin:So we had five or five and you could upgrade to 10 with
Justin:the, basically the same setup.
Justin:You just duplicate it So we're going to have to move the five, in the first place.
Justin:It's a long story, but the machine we have doesn't have great dust
Justin:collection stock, which I think is pretty common with a lot of routers.
Justin:They're not, know, it's either been really considered or
Justin:it's kind of a kind of works.
Justin:This just never has had a great part of it's the way that the tool changes.
Justin:And so there was this limitation in the way that the dust boot that
Justin:it goes around, the spindle could come down and still tool change.
Jem:Yeah.
Justin:So part of that solution, which we haven't solved the dust collection
Justin:aspect yet, but was to change the way that the tool posts stand so that it could
Justin:go over top of it with the dust boot.
Justin:we had duties that awhile back and wanted to have more tools.
Justin:So we actually managed to get 12 spots instead of the S the manufacturer only
Justin:allows 10 and made that was our first major project with the mill, which was
Justin:fun, but we use the mill to actually make those with the router parts.
Justin:And so now the last part of that is we needed to redesign our dust boot and.
Justin:Spindle a dust collection and stuff like that.
Justin:So we can get better dust collection, but yeah, they're all just sitting
Justin:out on top of the machine, which really has never been a problem.
Justin:it's never really in the way, the tables oversized for what you need to cut on.
Justin:So it works.
Jem:so when you added two more tools to your ATC, into the
Jem:control And teach it those two new positions?
Justin:I had to teach every position.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:And part of that,
Jem:nothing yet.
Justin:part of that challenge really wasn't a challenge because all
Justin:they're just basically text files.
Justin:When CNC controller space.
Justin:So I just had to go like add T 11 T 12 to 13, and then that
Justin:was in a few different spots.
Justin:And then you kind of train the spots by literally just moving
Justin:to them and then saying, this is where you should tool change at.
Justin:So it's pretty easy.
Justin:You can put them wherever, which is kind of interesting.
Justin:We talked about all
Justin:these different ways to my dream version of this is a bicycle chain
Justin:turret that spins around in the
Justin:back so that you could always change in the same spot, but
Justin:that thing would change around.
Justin:You'd have like 50 spots.
Justin:There's a little bit
Jem:that'd be cool.
Jem:That'd be cool.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:I, I thought about this before we build the pencil and I was doing all the dowel
Jem:threading on our flatbed CNC, and I'd cut that big hole into the table to
Jem:Mount the chuck And I'd pulled one of the 80 ATC spots out to put a little
Jem:slitting saw in to do the cutoff cycle.
Jem:And then I was thinking, I was like, cool, can I just start cutting more
Jem:holes in the table and Mount like a, another tool holder with a biggest
Jem:sole blade on it, which doesn't fit in the IDC and teach the machine to come
Jem:over here and pick up the sole blade.
Jem:And I am ashamed a little bit locked up in terms of the control.
Jem:So I had to sort of sweet talk one of the technicians at multicam into
Jem:sending me this like dump file with all the M codes for the machine in it.
Jem:And it looks like it's got the ability to train it, into obviously
Jem:it does because they have to do that when they build the machine.
Justin:Yeah, what I would think
Jem:it's probably possible.
Justin:I think it would be challenging in our setup would be no, that's not.
Justin:You can totally do that.
Justin:What would be challenging is if you needed a different movement to dock
Justin:different than all the other spots, but you could tell, we can tell it to go.
Justin:Way highway low X Y different spots, because that's technically how
Justin:the touch probe for Z Heights is like 13 then I think, it goes and
Justin:uses that spot as a saved position where it does it's touching.
Justin:So,
Jem:measure the tow heights Yeah.
Jem:Right.
Jem:Okay.
Justin:had to move to.
Justin:that's interesting.
Justin:You brought that up.
Justin:All right.
Justin:It's been on the list for a few times.
Justin:I think, we should talk about the pencil sharpener.
Justin:Cause it's one of the coolest machines I've seen in awhile and a I want to
Justin:know the backstory B I'll tell you.
Justin:it's basically how I came to know you was.
Justin:I think I got recommended your Instagram and it was you standing at your kitchen
Justin:sink doing maybe your partner had filmed.
Justin:And You were doing this mental process of what looked like,
Justin:probably holding your dowels and then trying to access different aspects.
Justin:And I think he had longer hair at the time and I was.
Justin:just like, I think I read the caption.
Justin:I was like, oh, I've done this so many times.
Justin:And I followed you at that point and didn't know that you were eventually
Justin:building this crazy machine, but you were doing your router version of it.
Justin:I think you had figured out how to thread through the table.
Justin:I very much connected to that same feeling of like, oh, I'll be on a hike sometimes.
Justin:And I'm doing, doing some mental cam.
Jem:Yeah, that was, that was mental cam.
Jem:Trying to nut out the backside machining logic or these parts.
Jem:Cause they're double ended and the female thread
Jem:on one side and a male thread on the other end.
Jem:And
Jem:I wanted to machine it all in one.
Jem:So I was kind of, yeah.
Jem:Trying to
Jem:not out sort of the
Jem:Swiss lathe version of that logic of like
Jem:sub spindle main spindle transfer.
Jem:The pencil is probably a fairly long tail, but I can cover off a bit of it.
Jem:Basically.
Jem:We started threading dowels on our flatbed router, just with a
Jem:really janky fixture that kind of hung out over the tool changer.
Jem:And I had to turn the machine limits off to get the machine out off the bed far
Jem:enough to be able to access these dowels and this like dodgy like jig that I'd made
Jem:out of MDF But that kind of started day.
Jem:And like the 2019 I think started mucking around with it basically
Jem:inspired by Saunders stuff and he's thread milling videos.
Jem:I was like, oh, I wonder if I can thread mail know I bought a thread single point
Jem:thread cutter and just worked it out.
Jem:and then, cause that was around the same time that I was really getting into fusion
Jem:as a cam package and fusion makes thread milling so easy by there's lots of little
Jem:bits and pieces to work out, but compared to what we were trying to do at, in, I
Jem:think you mentioned Vcarve last week, we don't use VCarve but we've got en-route,
Jem:which is a very similar 2d cam package, but sort of cabinet making, which would
Jem:have never allowed us to thread mill.
Jem:So yeah, moving through into fusion, that became an option and I was
Jem:just, exploratory thing that I was coming in early and muck around with.
Jem:And that led into what is now our flagship product of KittaParts the
Jem:threaded down modular shelving that sold really well for about a year.
Jem:And then a friend, two friends, both of whom employees.
Jem:One of them, Tom was watching what I was doing on the machines.
Jem:And then he jumped in rhino one day and he'd like sketched
Jem:up this multi-spindle machine.
Jem:He was like, why do you want, you can get rid of all the tool changes if
Jem:you had just had both tools accessible at all times, and you moved the work
Jem:instead of moving the tool and that kind of planted to seed of this, you know,
Jem:maybe we could custom make a machine.
Jem:And then another ex-employee John, who has a little company
Jem:called Laundromat manufacturing.
Jem:He went out on his own about five years ago and started this little,
Jem:machining engineering business.
Jem:We got John and Tom and myself in a room about eighteen months ago
Jem:And just hatched this plan to like, make this multi-spindle machine.
Jem:So that video, you saw that Laura shot of me cooking dinner, try
Jem:and have like hatch out the logic.
Jem:I think that was the night after we'd had that meeting and I was still like,
Jem:just had all these ideas about like tool access and how we're going to do it.
Jem:and then yeah, over the course of about six months, John basically designed
Jem:and built this multi-spindle CNC machine that uses a Masso touch screen
Jem:controller, which is a really cool system.
Jem:If anyone's building CNC machines, we've got this mental four
Jem:axis, five spindle CNC machine.
Jem:That's dedicated to processing 35 mill dowel and it's Jill it's effectively,
Jem:it's sort of borrowing the logic of a Swiss lathe or not a Swiss, but like a
Jem:dual spindle lathe of having opposing chucks And being out to part transfer
Jem:between the two and machine in both the main spindle If that makes sense,
Justin:Yeah, it makes sense.
Justin:Cause I've seen it enough times.
Justin:It's hard.
Justin:It's hard to describe.
Justin:I definitely think I did throw a photo in a previous chapter, but
Justin:we'll put some photos of it, too.
Justin:It's just check out.
Justin:Like butter's Instagram, there's a lot of fantastic videos of this thing.
Justin:It's it's definitely some CNC porn to watch.
Jem:Yeah,
Jem:but it's
Jem:been a pretty fantastic tool, really programming.
Jem:it was a real
Jem:challenge,
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:Was that's another story I wanted to hear is it's basically custom, right?
Justin:Like you're just hand coding it.
Jem:pretty much hand coding.
Jem:So I'm
Jem:doing the toolpaths are coming out of fusion, then basically everything else
Jem:is copy and paste to get that program together, putting the M codes for,
Jem:you know, starting and stopping the spindles opening and closing the checks
Jem:and all the, the, positional stuff that happens between the actual
Jem:machining operations is all hand coded.
Jem:So the, risk of crashing it is really high because your hand cutting
Jem:basically rapids with no stimulation
Justin:Yeah,
Justin:man.
Jem:and I've crashed it so
Jem:many times.
Justin:do you single block it then when you first run something?
Jem:I do single block it but it still moves.
Jem:It's such a small compact machine and the rapids aren't crazy, but relative to
Jem:its scale, the, rapids are quite quick and say, you have to match that a stop.
Jem:So fast, this stuff just slamming into itself does assign many points of contact.
Jem:Like you got two chucks that move independently, X, Y axis the saw
Jem:blade hanging off the front of it.
Jem:There's just like so much that can go wrong.
Justin:Remember when you first set it up.
Justin:I mean, I get this totally.
Justin:And I would do the same.
Justin:It was a first set up, I think it had been delivered and
Justin:you're like, I gotta run this.
Justin:And there's just this five or six inch saw blade that does cutoff just
Justin:kind of hanging out there and like, get to the safety aspects at some
Justin:point And you keep your arms back for a while, but it was It was a
Justin:finger chopping machine, maybe arm chopping machine for awhile.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:And in a
Jem:sense it's still in that sort of, R D mode, like it, he's running
Jem:production parts and has been
Jem:for the last year and
Jem:we haven't had a year less than a year but it's been running production
Jem:parts for a
Jem:while now.
Jem:there's still like, I still haven't commissioned
Jem:the backside spindles
Jem:I've barely used them.
Jem:once it's fully set up, it will be able to feed bar stock in machine one end
Jem:cut it off, transfer the the back of the part And spit it out all in sort
Jem:of hands-off autonomous operation.
Jem:But programming, that is just something that I need, like, uh, just a day of quiet
Jem:time to myself to just workout the sub spindles and get that all dialed in and
Jem:position and get the code worked out and.
Justin:so the problem you guys have going on is you blew a fuse in the
Justin:main disconnect there, but in order for me to pull it and go get one to
Justin:fix it, I have to shut everything down.
Justin:Okay.
Justin:So they're working on the fuse currently.
Justin:I think that's the problem.
Justin:So our entire building power is currently pulled out.
Justin:I think at the most.
Jem:Oh,
Justin:how long that lasts.
Jem:is it the building shared or just you guys?
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:Well, our neighbors are close, but they're separate.
Justin:So
Jem:Okay.
Justin:anyway, I forget you, you're saying something about
Justin:probably the sharpener, I think.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:Look,
Jem:I think we kind of wrapped up the pencil shot in the backstory.
Justin:Yeah.
Jem:yeah, the next step with it is
Jem:commissioning those sub spindles on the back side and getting that
Jem:cooking.
Jem:But at the moment it's smashing away,
Jem:it's probably made,
Jem:I dunno, 600 parts in the last day and a half.
Justin:Do you have to sit and watch for the end of the dowel
Justin:or does it stop on its own?
Jem:I've done a really agricultural solution.
Jem:We've just got a T-bar bar that threads into the end of the
Jem:Dow and cause it's gravity.
Jem:The T-bar just hit to physical stuff and wind load.
Jem:Prior to that, we had a few situations where it fed fed fed fed until those
Jem:tiny little bit of dowel hanging out of the chuck and it came to
Jem:do, it's like cut off sequence.
Jem:And this bit of dowel just went flying across the room.
Justin:Yeah, I was going to say, I got to put in some kind of weird
Justin:sensor, otherwise I bet I like the
Justin:T-bar that's that's a good solution
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:Otherwise it's unite sensor and the name of colored and
Jem:the,
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:Yeah.
Jem:like the, I like the hacky solutions.
Justin:It's pretty great.
Justin:I can totally relate to the needing to solve products like core feature
Justin:and making that otherwise probably dedicating a weird, it was good to
Justin:prototype with, but your, your flatbed router probably can be used differently.
Justin:And this is a much better use of a machine.
Justin:Well, maybe costly it It's going to produce a lot for you, especially
Justin:now is it's automated in a certain
Justin:sense.
Jem:That's all right.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:I like that chuck on the flatbed router was tying up the machine sort
Jem:of four or five days a month just to
Jem:make production parts pencil Sharpener Then now does that in
Jem:about a day whilst, whilst in its production schedule.
Jem:So yeah, it was a bit of a game
Jem:changer.
Justin:did you happen to look around at all to see if there
Justin:was machines that could do this?
Justin:Or was it just like, we're going to have to make a custom one?
Jem:I did look around I as a Spanish company and I'll have to look up
Jem:name of it but they make amazing five-axis timber turning machines.
Jem:like a lathe with a five-axis spindle mounted above a And S incredible machines.
Jem:I got
Jem:it.
Jem:I got a price of one of those.
Jem:I think it was 350,000 Euro so that was
Jem:out of budget.
Jem:and I looked at, I looked at like a Haas dual spindle lathe but I
Jem:couldn't find any references to people running timber parts on them.
Jem:And I remember
Jem:Jay Pierson and saying once, like you, that you should never put timber through.
Jem:I think I had the opportunity to ask you once about running timber parts
Jem:on a, a five-axis Haas mill And he was just so disgusted by the thought.
Jem:but you know, that was 250, you know, quarter of a million dollars
Jem:to get a dual axis lathe like that.
Jem:and so it was all just such big money that doing a DIY solution using Makita trimmers
Jem:spindles, which just was a bit of a no-brainer at that point, I was like, yep.
Jem:Let's do this.
Justin:So I would
Justin:assume without digging into the numbers, it's significantly less costly to make
Justin:your own machine with a local partner like this than it was any of those
Justin:solutions.
Justin:That's cool.
Jem:Correct.
Jem:Significantly less.
Jem:Yeah.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:I love that thing.
Justin:It's fun.
Justin:It should just set up a live stream of it and just let people watch it because
Justin:everywhere you've posted about it, I've noticed it's definitely done really well.
Justin:I saw Tik TOK, even it had good
Justin:numbers.
Jem:It went nuts and tick tock.
Jem:Yeah,
Jem:that was funny.
Justin:I need some googly eyes probably.
Jem:that definitely needs googly
Jem:eyes.
Jem:Old machines now.
Jem:Yes.
Jem:What are they going on?
Justin:I think the Kaesers getting some, it looks too much, it looks
Justin:too much like a little minion.
Justin:And I just was, I was always just kind of sitting there waiting,
Justin:like, it's got to get some eyes on?
Justin:it at some point.
Justin:Maybe if it
Justin:works,
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:I'm sorry.
Jem:Your fresh air is causing such trouble right now.
Justin:what have never thought.
Justin:I mean, honestly, I'm just kind of glad it wasn't me that did any of this because
Justin:I could have easily done that.
Justin:And I would feel way worse right now about it.
Jem:Yep.
Justin:I've got other people fixing stuff.
Justin:I guess my other bit that's happened, mil BIN card was working great.
Justin:That kind of like extended memory thing I was running parts.
Justin:I ran this fixture to cut my little brass pulls so it was a second op fixture.
Justin:as you would have.
Justin:Pull for a, like a drawer on a cabinet and needs threaded in the
Justin:backside of the pole so that you can actually connect to the drawer.
Justin:So I use that to fixture so you can get the second ops.
Justin:The whole thing is except for one face is that goes against the drawer
Justin:is completely like a 3d shape.
Justin:I was like, how the heck am I going to hold this thing?
Justin:So it worked out perfectly.
Justin:All of that.
Justin:I kind of had figured out to some degree, the memory card just corrupted at some
Justin:point in the middle of all of this.
Justin:So luckily I could still transfer files like I had in the past and all
Justin:the files fit on The controller just had to be careful about it, when
Justin:fantastically, I would say I have a new it's a different feeling I've ever
Justin:had before and similar, like you're describing getting to run the machines.
Justin:Like I hadn't really run it that much for myself.
Justin:Only one other project.
Justin:And I was here late a couple of nights.
Justin:last night when I got it to work, to run some production beyond testing,
Justin:beyond single blocking, beyond, you know, stopping every tool change.
Justin:and I just let it run.
Justin:It was like one of the more satisfying feelings I've ever had
Justin:of like, oh, I can breathe again.
Justin:It's been like two days of trying to get to this point.
Justin:man, that's a good feeling.
Jem:Yeah, I was going to, when you said you were running the mill I was
Jem:going to check that the running lights out already.
Jem:That would be curl to suggest that you're at that point already,
Justin:Oh boy, well today could be lights out.
Jem:How you're putting the threads in those parts.
Jem:He tapping
Justin:hand, because I was scared of that part.
Justin:Andy had figured out how to do that on the machine previous, I
Justin:already had enough new things to learn, which one other fun thing is.
Justin:I figured out how to both set up the cam and set up the offset.
Justin:So I can have a G 54 and a G 55 on two vices, and I didn't have to
Justin:trade them back and forth every time I wanted to run off one and two.
Justin:So that was that felt like a huge win, but just enough.
Justin:I mean, my other, admission is I did crash it for my first time ever.
Justin:Not super great.
Justin:I got really lucky in that it crashed into aluminum and it was hanging off the vice.
Justin:So it just pulled out of the vise and ground the nut and the.
Justin:But that felt pretty terrible.
Justin:and I would definitely learn the lesson of not ignoring when the machine says, it's
Justin:like a red text that said like do you want to restart in the middle of a program?
Justin:And I was like, yeah, why Not And every other, you know, like our ShopSabre is
Justin:always like, it it's resolves, its state for you and brings it up to Z, max, and
Justin:this does not, and I heard other people tell me that before and ignored it.
Justin:Cause it didn't work a couple of times I think.
Justin:And I got it just rapid plunged into the stock and then it wasn't good,
Justin:but luckily I think everything's fine.
Justin:It was cutting really great.
Justin:After that, I just had my first scare.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:Did that sinking feeling when he crashed the machine?
Justin:I mean, I've crashed the router handful of different ways.
Justin:feels different.
Justin:It's less dramatic and maybe it's just less costly or something, but there's
Justin:a lot of metal involved inside a mill.
Jem:Oh, this is way more metal.
Jem:What am a weight on in there?
Justin:Yeah, And it it's got like one G acceleration too.
Justin:So like even slowed down.
Justin:It's like, I can't react fast enough.
Jem:Yeah, that's right.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:I feel like crashing a timber router
Jem:as much low stakes.
Jem:on our new machine on Trinity.
Jem:So we got two machines, two flatbeds, Cameron and Trinity.
Jem:So I'll refer to them by their names.
Jem:Henceforth.
Jem:We had Trinity Trinity
Jem:took a while to come online last year after she was commissioned,
Jem:I got all sorts of issues.
Jem:Finally got it.
Jem:Online and commissioned.
Jem:And then we bumped the tool changer with the forklift because it's got
Jem:this big rotary tool changer that sticks out the side has a really light,
Jem:light bump.
Jem:and but it put the whole gantry out of square and the technicians
Jem:could get out to us in time.
Jem:And we had, you know, it was up and running to the point that we
Jem:had production stuff to run on it.
Jem:And so I've always been scared of sort of pulling machines apart.
Jem:You know, I was happy to cut a hole in Cameron for the chuck but in terms of
Jem:actually mechanically fiddling, but like I've got friends with similar machines
Jem:and I, you know, I take the spindle off and they re breaching like the what's it
Jem:called the Tran of the spindle and change bearings themselves and stuff like that.
Jem:I've never been super confident with those sorts of changes to those machines.
Jem:Anyway, this time I just sort of bit the bullet and I went out, took the
Jem:covers off the gantry and basically loosened all the bolts that were holding.
Jem:Trinity's gantry square and to give a and just loosened everything and
Jem:then manually re squared the machine.
Jem:So the gantry was like the sloppy, like plus the same
Jem:thing
Justin:Yeah,
Jem:and tried to get it straight and built it back up and did a whole
Jem:lot of test cuts and then unbolted it and do another test and just trying
Jem:to get it as square as possible.
Jem:that was kind of nice to get to a point where I felt comfortable doing that.
Jem:So I know the next time we need to raise where machine it's just a matter
Jem:of undoing, bolts and fiddling with it.
Jem:and that's totally doable.
Justin:That's interesting.
Justin:one of the things that even when I was, I went to a show in Vegas to buy.
Justin:which sounds crazy.
Justin:Cause I don't even go to Vegas really had, that was my first time was, to
Justin:buy a CNC router and I'm talking to all the different manufacturers and
Justin:I was really impressed by ShopSabres A they have lifetime tech support
Justin:for the first buyer and then B you can fix a lot of those things.
Justin:I literally asked somebody, I I was like, so what happens if you crash it?
Justin:I had enough experience crashing, I think in school the router that I
Justin:had that thought and he's like, well, all you do is just unbolt gantry
Justin:and just bring it back to home.
Justin:basically like rights itself and I was like, no, that's way too easy.
Justin:And we've done that a half dozen times because at some point the
Justin:sensors and the servers it, starts to twist itself over time.
Justin:Or if you do happen to we've bumped into weird stuff.
Justin:I actually rammed a piece of plywood into my garage wall, but I had it at
Justin:home through the gantry and into the
Justin:gantry not through had to do it then too.
Justin:And I've just been really impressed at how kind of resilient it is.
Justin:And maybe that's part of that same thought of how different the router
Justin:is versus the mill of like a feed it, any of that with the mill.
Justin:I think I'd be calling somebody and it'd be very expensive, but we've
Justin:never had anybody come fix it.
Justin:It's always been something we've done.
Justin:We've replaced some bearings, but I don't love doing that stuff either.
Justin:I really it's.
Justin:One of the reasons I really wanted the tech support was like, I don't want
Justin:to also be tech support for a machine.
Justin:I want to be good at this one side of it and not also a mechanic it,
Justin:seemingly is a pretty common thing with the gantry based machine that you can
Justin:kind of write themselves in a certain
Justin:sense.
Jem:that's cool.
Jem:Does that mean the timing sensors on
Jem:both sides of the gantry?
Jem:And so when you loosen it off, It can re-home itself at two
Jem:points.
Justin:It always does.
Justin:Every time you home, it'll home, both sides independently.
Jem:Cool.
Justin:I don't, I couldn't speak to like how the timing and all that
Justin:works, but it's also ball screw.
Justin:So it doesn't jump on like opinion or anything, which is pretty ideal.
Justin:Anyway, it's been Britain really reliable, which is nice
Jem:How long have you had that
Jem:machine?
Justin:2017.
Jem:Yeah.
Justin:my one continuous fear.
Justin:I'm sure.
Justin:Machine shop owner of some sort has this as is our only machine for quite a while.
Justin:So I always just like, what if the spindle dies someday?
Justin:You're like, what if some major thing?
Justin:And it was like all of our revenue at some point.
Justin:I just saw there's a Facebook group for shop saber owners and people are
Justin:saying that the spindles usually last about seven years and I was like, oh,
Justin:we're getting way too close to that.
Justin:No, thank you.
Jem:is it the HSD spindle.
Justin:Yeah.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:I crashed, I crashed Cameron really bad.
Jem:Last year I
Jem:plunged a 50 mil facing cutter into aluminum Like just Z crashed with the
Jem:spindle running and it's still the
Jem:spindle.
Jem:And I've always heard that, like, if you stole those HSD spindles,
Jem:it's like game over, like the
Jem:bettering
Justin:yeah.
Jem:And I was like, it was a half second before I mashed the up,
Jem:but still I did definitely still.
Jem:a booted, like this was at like 2:00 AM.
Jem:I was running this stupid job where the aloe minium cycle time was going forever.
Jem:And.
Jem:That's like, seven hours into the job.
Jem:I just have to keep going.
Jem:So I booted the machine back up, again, reset the spindle inverter.
Jem:It ran, but it made an ugly noise.
Jem:I was like oh, those bearings don't sound good.
Jem:ran the job fine.
Jem:The cup, those cutting fund called the technicians the next day.
Jem:And.
Jem:they were like oh yeah, fine happens all the time.
Jem:Just run it until it does, could die next week.
Jem:Could last another two years.
Jem:Like there's no way of knowing without pulling it apart.
Jem:So like, cool.
Jem:All right, carry on.
Jem:So Is, it is nice having a second flatbed machine for now, if
Jem:you run it sort of over 15,000 RPM, you hear this high pitched
Jem:whine, just to remind, remind me of thing, that crash.
Jem:but it is, nice having a second flatbed machine for that reason.
Jem:Just contingency.
Justin:no kidding.
Jem:If one goes down,
Jem:that back up.
Justin:Our second machine was technically a Shapeoko desktop router and boy, we
Justin:would joke often about, well, at least we have two spindles now, you know,
Justin:can swap, swap our jobs onto there.
Justin:And so one goes down, not really reasonable, your
Justin:riders are multicam brand?
Jem:eh, multicam this, the
Jem:Australian breed of multi cams.
Jem:If any relationship there is to the American multicam machines.
Jem:Cause I think there's a machines by the same name over there, but
Justin:Yeah, no, there is Texas, I think.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:I think they're unrelated.
Jem:These ones are built on the A X, Y Z platform, which is a Canadian
Justin:Oh, weird.
Justin:It's like they bought the rights something and then,
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:They use their controllers and build the machines here basically.
Jem:Well, the
Jem:Trinity
Jem:is
Jem:a Canadian machine assembled here obviously, but it's got the
Jem:oscillating and tangential knives.
Jem:So it's kind of this sort of, oh, and a camera
Jem:on it.
Jem:It's this weird sort of multi-purpose machine
Jem:that
Jem:we picked up secondhand.
Justin:That's a pretty
Jem:very low.
Jem:Yeah, it had really low hours.
Jem:We picked it up from a Makerspace that was shutting down and I would have
Jem:never bought a machine with those knives on it, but it was definitely a bonus
Jem:and it's been awesome.
Jem:Being able to make our own packaging and start to cut felt and foam
Jem:and
Jem:stuff like that.
Justin:to be
Justin:honest.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:When you did start talking about it and I hadn't really asked you privately,
Justin:but I was thinking like, pan, you supposed to be making a lot of packaging
Justin:to make that machine make sense.
Justin:We've talked about how we wanted that kind of features, but I mean, we'd
Justin:use it like three days a month, maybe.
Jem:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jem:no, that was just bonus We really just wanted the second spindle primary.
Justin:Yeah, that'd be great.
Justin:I've talked a lot about doing like a four by four size machine router and
Justin:having dedicated to certain setups, you know, even to the point where it's
Justin:like, we, we really rely on vacuum, hold down on our current router.
Justin:We've expanded into, you know, over time, different ways to fixture
Justin:mechanically, because it's ideal.
Justin:If you can.
Justin:And I could see that having a four by four, that's just really
Justin:dedicated to different, unique setups that don't need full sized sheets.
Justin:And often that's like 3d machines prototypes for people, which we do
Justin:quite a bit of, but there's really no reason to have this, 48 by 96 table.
Justin:Actually it's like, 60 by a hundred and you're just
Justin:traveling up and down it, right.
Justin:A lot tool doing tool change and you don't really need all of it often.
Justin:But, you know, space is always a constraint And I would also love to put
Justin:like a fourth axis on that too someday.
Justin:I don't know.
Justin:That's, that's kind of one dream machine that we don't necessarily need, but it
Justin:would be kind of nice to, be able to have that second spindle that has a totally
Justin:different per router sends anyway.
Justin:Totally different, capability.
Jem:Yeah, I've thought about that too.
Jem:but then I always get hung up on wanting like a big ATC.
Jem:So you've kind of got this same level of machine potentially quite expensive
Jem:with at least eight tool pockets and then just a smaller format bed.
Jem:So it's like, oh, why not
Jem:just get back if
Jem:you've got space, why
Jem:not just get enough?
Jem:Machine, like, I, I
Jem:would
Jem:say your
Jem:mill is more like in that category of like specialists work.
Jem:I don't know.
Jem:if you'd ever consider putting
Jem:timber on it, but like you could get a fourth I imagine you could get a
Jem:full effects of this on that, right?
Justin:Yeah, no, that's honestly it, the bed is I'm I'm coming to
Justin:it as I always say, like naive.
Justin:it feels really small.
Justin:I think it's 26.
Justin:I don't know the millimeters 26 by 15.
Justin:And the actual serviceable areas, maybe two inches inside of that.
Justin:even yesterday trying to set up these parts and kept it in soft
Justin:limits with like the face mail going outside the zone and be like,
Justin:damn, I gotta move the part again.
Justin:I can totally see you.
Justin:We've been talking a lot about, I think it's just probably a proximity effect of
Justin:you know see Saunders is fixture plates.
Justin:Everybody uses them on Instagram.
Justin:They seem like an awesome thing.
Justin:And I just happened to start out with two, six inch vices and.
Justin:I kind of hate them in a certain, you know, like th they work, they
Justin:hold parts really well, but they're also just, they feel unflexible.
Justin:and I think that's probably, blasphemy in the machining world.
Justin:like, advice is really versatile, but I think coming from routers and seeing
Justin:those, the universality of a fixture plate and of setting up however you want, I just
Justin:am constantly like, if I could have run those parts yesterday that I was making
Justin:that are nine inches long, if I would have run them the other direction on a fixture
Justin:plate, I could have run like 10 at a time.
Justin:But in this case I could only do one because they'd hang
Justin:off into the other device.
Justin:I think about that all the time.
Jem:Can you get the mill to machine its own fixed, to play?
Jem:Like when you get the confidence, the thread mill or rigid tap,
Jem:kind of, you just throw a
Jem:slab of
Jem:something on there and
Jem:deck it and
Jem:tap it.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:I dunno.
Justin:Why not?
Justin:I I know very little about.
Justin:I think, I, I really lack the metrology skills to really validate
Justin:those things at this point and just tools yeah, that's a great idea.
Justin:We did, look at buying a signers machine, works palette or a, not a pallet, but a
Justin:fixture plate, at one point they quoted us one and we just decided to hold off
Justin:until we really figured out how we're actually going to use the machine.
Justin:And we still may do that.
Justin:But Yeah.
Justin:no, that was the other discussion was can we make one, with our basically full R and
Justin:D process for what they're selling it for?
Justin:they have a, they have a nice price for their product and it's it all the time we
Justin:would spend probably multiple weeks trying to figure it out and then making it.
Justin:And it's like, I don't know.
Jem:nah, I don't think
Jem:it's worth it trying to DOI, but, um, on
Jem:camera and
Jem:on our original flatbed, we've got this funny little vacuum
Jem:zone up the top and just kind of
Jem:excess to the standard sheet.
Jem:So the machine's a little bit wider than a standard shape.
Jem:We've got sort of 300 mil, 12 inches of travel there and that's where I
Jem:put the check, but it's also where I
Jem:put, like I just bolted a bit of 25
Jem:mil Allen
Jem:minium
Jem:down there one day.
Jem:and I faced it and then I grilled it on the machine and then pan tapped
Jem:a bunch of holes in it as just this
Jem:little spot in the corner of the machine, which is flat relative to the
Jem:machine because the machine is dicta.
Jem:So it's not, you know, the plight itself wouldn't be parallel to itself, but
Jem:it's kind of parallel to the surface
Justin:Yeah.
Jem:travel.
Jem:And it's a little spot where I can bolt, you know, put bolts in there and I've
Jem:used it on timber jobs where I just want like a repeat small fixture for
Jem:doing like a dovetail or something in the end of a small bit of solid timber.
Jem:And it's a great little
Justin:Yeah.
Jem:fixture zone on the machine.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:That's, I've definitely thought about using, we have that same
Justin:excess space, which, which was great.
Justin:It was a selling point for me to have, like, we can technically
Justin:cut a 60 inch sheet and the standard here is like 48 wide.
Justin:that was a pretty big selling point for me.
Justin:Cause it's like, when it's tight, you just always feel like you need more space.
Justin:And that always seemed like a great place to like, I've definitely thought
Justin:about doing what you did with cutting through and putting some type of
Justin:lathe chuck in to be able to do and milling on like longer parts or, you
Justin:know, putting a lathe metal lays.
Justin:But at fourth accessible.
Justin:But going back, you asked me about the mill and fourth axis, if we ever
Justin:stumbled upon parts products that were small enough, that could be put on
Justin:some type of tombstone, like a Pearson for what he calls those things, pro
Justin:something, that would be that's that's like the dream for that machine to me
Justin:is it just has such a small table area that, effectively what quadruple your
Justin:space by being able to turn a little indexing fourth axis kind of situation.
Justin:It sounds like a dream.
Jem:They're amazing light things.
Jem:That's
Jem:I think that's what I love most about multi-axis work.
Jem:It's not like I'm not actually interested in like five-axis
Jem:contouring stuff, but my attraction to
Jem:four and five axis machines is just about that work, holding
Jem:that position of just being able to
Jem:go, access this face and then flip it and get to this face.
Jem:yeah, that really excites me all those possibilities
Jem:around
Jem:those.
Jem:I would love to get to a
Jem:point where we can get a five-axis timber
Justin:Oh, man,
Jem:machine.
Justin:there's a robot for sale currently in town that a friend sent me like a
Justin:FANUC, I guess, like $1,200 right now.
Justin:And I was just like it, ah, really want that, but I don't know what I'm going
Justin:to do with it, but it's just like so appealing to be able to just, I know
Justin:they take a lot of, you know, set up time and figuring out how to run them.
Justin:So it's definitely not smart, but it's always been a, uh,
Justin:one of those dream projects.
Jem:very appealing.
Jem:There's a guy here in Melbourne Twig and Bot but he's got
Jem:a one of those big KUKA robot arms.
Jem:And he's got a great, oh.
Justin:all the distractions today.
Jem:Yeah, this guy who's got
Jem:a, one of those big, proper, I don't know, six or seven access Kuka industrial arms,
Jem:and he's built a tool changer for it.
Jem:So it can pick up an HSD spindle and do all this machining work,
Jem:but then it picks up this enormous
Jem:bandsaw
Jem:attachment.
Jem:And so it can like do like timber slabs.
Jem:you gets hold of trees reclaimed, what's a code, you know, trades
Jem:it a full and I've run the POC,
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:Urban bourbon.
Jem:S yeah, open salvage or whatever, and puts it on this big sliding bed.
Jem:And then this huge KUKA robot picks up the bands are on like decks it down.
Jem:It does amazing work.
Jem:It's really cool.
Jem:I'll put the link in the.
Justin:there's a great company here.
Justin:Kind of a friend David has called Loupe and they do automation
Justin:solutions for manufacturers.
Justin:And I think they do a lot of other stuff in that, but they, they have a
Justin:big, I think KUKA is one of theirs.
Justin:They also have ABB robots.
Justin:They just have to have one in their office and they just do random stuff with
Justin:it, you know, partially for marketing.
Justin:And they did take that.
Justin:Somebody asked him if you could put a chainsaw on one.
Justin:And so they made a video putting a chain saw on end and just like
Justin:chopping logs with it in their office.
Justin:There's a pretty good video of that too.
Justin:I can put in.
Jem:Awesome.
Jem:Yeah, I
Jem:think
Jem:there's one of those in my dream workshop for show.
Justin:Yeah, right.
Justin:they take up so much space safe zones And all that, though.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:Or even just a Cobot like a UR 10 or
Jem:something that I could
Jem:wheel around the workshop and attach a welding torch to it,
Jem:or a sander to it, the next day.
Jem:And just
Jem:have all
Jem:these little programs dial.
Justin:I just wanted as a little friend, just bring it around the shop with Yana.
Jem:Nice.
Jem:How are you going?
Jem:Do you want to
Jem:wrap, wrap
Jem:up?
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:I think so It makes sense.
Justin:You got enough things seems like my shop side is just kind of
Justin:slowly devolving into chaos, so probably should head back out there.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:Go and deal with that.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:What are you up to the rest of the day
Jem:back on the machines this morning,
Jem:just ignoring the courts.
Jem:And I will try to
Jem:enjoy.
Jem:And let it be a stressful experience today, so we'll see how we go.
Justin:That's, I'm glad you do the same thing.
Justin:Cause at some point I just can't handle making in the shop and the
Justin:computer stuff and I ended up doing the same thing where I'm like, well,
Justin:quotes will happen this week sometime.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:about the same.
Justin:I need to ship these brass parts get those in the box?
Justin:I'll I'll definitely post some photos.
Justin:They turned out super cool.
Jem:Yeah.
Justin:we made them.
Justin:Cause they're, I mean, they're a great design.
Justin:I I'll put a link to the guy's Instagram, if he wants to share them and they're
Justin:just really cool brass handles for
Justin:Hey, Hey so unfortunately those fuses hold on back orders.
Justin:So I can't get one and I go to our shops if we have one, if we don't,
Justin:we're going to order it so we can get it first thing in the morning, Great.
Justin:Okay.
Justin:Thanks.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:Well, I'm Glad there's potentially a solution to that, but
Jem:I think he just got the audio for the end of the show,
Jem:all the start potentially there.
Jem:That was pretty good.
Justin:so great.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:first.
Justin:I was going to say like indefinitely, you know, everything else.
Justin:Six months later, you might have power back because of a fuse.
Justin:Yeah.
Jem:Good luck man.
Jem:I have that gets resolved quickly.
Justin:Yeah, for sure.
Justin:All right.
Justin:I'll catch you next week.
Jem:Cool.
Jem:Thanks Justin.
Jem:So
Justin:See,
Jem:might
Justin:I can't see you anymore.
Justin:Like stop working mid show and I don't know what is going on.
Justin:I legit, like the last few days have just been pretty ridiculous.
Justin:I didn't even get into like a pen exploded in my pocket yesterday.
Justin:I dumped cooling on my foot, oh, fusion on my middle computer room the manufacturing
Justin:workspace disappeared, like in the middle of trying to set up these parts.
Justin:And I was just like, I don't think I'm supposed to do this anymore.
Justin:Like, I don't know what's happening, but it's kind of continuing at this point.
Justin:So.
Justin:Hello, Justin here.
Justin:If you've enjoyed the show and want to help us out, would you take
Justin:30 seconds to rate and review us?
Justin:I mean, don't rate it.
Justin:If you're going to view less than a five star rating, that's just rude.
Justin:Anyway you can do that by going to the link in this chapter or just search
Justin:parts department on apple podcasts.