Okay, time for a DFM roast so all you engineers can see how machinists think.
@emm0sh
volunteered this part, I don't have the time to do a full write up so I'm just gonna live tweet me going through it, exposing the sins, and optimizing it
(1 of ?)
@peteoxenham
@jack24dd30
It's great on the track, but that's not the same as tasteful. Engineering rarely has great taste, because it's a seperate skill.
Much like the most over-engineered running shoes used by professionals generally look bad, supercars rarely look good anywhere but max out on a track.
The boys in the group chat and I have been working on identifying all the machines in this video for about 30 minutes so far. Will update with progress.
Machining Apple's Vision Pro Headset
Apple's manufacturing processes are some of the best in the world, and shrouded in secrecy with the exception of their occasional manufacturing videos. Based on the clips, let's break down the machining shown in the latest video step by step.
Hot take, the engineering resources put into making these devices ever thinner would be better spent elsewhere. Seems like putting arbitrary (maybe marketing?) constraints on super talented engineers.
give em an extra MM and see what they can do!
I want to start a factory nerd tour group:
- Regional chapters
- Arrange monthly insider tours of cool factories via the connections of the folks in the group
- Get food/beers after, since manufacturing nerds are the most fun to hang out with
- Annual overseas trip to tour an
CNC detective breakthrough! Looks like Apple is using Haas DC-1 machines to make the Vision Pro. This machine was just announced on 1/16/24, and it was a bit of a mystery why they would replace their DT/DM line with a machine whose main difference is just the chips coming out the
Yup, you’re totally right. The only reason industry is not fully automated is because we’re all a bunch of dumb hillbillies who have never heard of GPUs. My bad.
This is a real thing. I am completely unable to use alibaba and many Chinese sites for the past 3 years. The DNS servers don’t resolve.
In 2021 I made a WeChat account with the password “fucktheccp” My hunch was that they were scraping supposedly encrypted data, and I was right.
It’s genuinely heartwarming to see all the enthusiasm for CNC machining on Twitter lately. Our industry is facing a huge skill gap, but it’s not going to be solved by training new machinists in the old ways.
It’s going be solved by new blood diving in, learning, and innovating.
Feelin a bit burnt lately out on all the long term business stuff so I decided to spend the last 36 hours banging out a real feature, and testing on a real CNC machine.
No offense to anybody, but making factory machines think is way cooler than writing billing notification logic
I am calling for a total and complete shutdown of Chinese CNC tiktok videos entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on
I guess we're doing this! Introducing Factory Walks
I'm currently putting together our first event together for SF / Bay area, then we will roll out to other regions. Link in tweet below to get plugged in.
Also, if you want to be an organizer in your region, check the box!
I want to start a factory nerd tour group:
- Regional chapters
- Arrange monthly insider tours of cool factories via the connections of the folks in the group
- Get food/beers after, since manufacturing nerds are the most fun to hang out with
- Annual overseas trip to tour an
At this point every possible dunk has already been made on Bird, so I'll just say that being a machining supplier to them was one of the most incredible and challenging adventures of my life so far!
Collaborating on design, engineering, and manufacturing at breakneck speed -
Happy Father’s Day to the man who taught me how to build a computer at 6, took me to Barnes & Noble every week to browse Linux magazines. Set up his own father’s mill and lathe in our garage for me to learn to machine. Took me to church each Sunday to learn to serve others and
It's worth paying attention to the workholding trick they use to get a full profile around the part. The program starts with the four corners clamped and the center two clamps open. During the program, the machine swaps the clamps around to allow access to machine a "pad" for
Fusion haters have no leg to stand on. Multi axis cam for $40 a month with FULL MACHINE SIMULATION as a standard feature. The sim alone would cost you $10k+ less than 5 years ago but thanks to amazing product people (shoutout to Al) this is on your computer in a few clicks.
Finally got a chance to dig into some of the new CAM features in Fusion, specifically the geodesic strategy and full machine sim. They've come a long way in just a yr
Geodesic is nuts, only took me about 5 clicks to get a perfect surfacing strategy, and they didn't neglect 4ax!
In 2012, I graduated from Fordham Law School with $180,000 is student loan debt.
I’ve been paying loans for 11 years. Even paid two of them off completely.
In 2023, my balance is $206,000.
@15Redstones
For sure, but I think that bolsters my point. The shape of it is purely driven by a chosen set of functional requirements, and it’s freaking gorgeous.
Engineers - send me your parts to get DFM roasted by machinists on live stream!
We’re calling it: Out of Spec, presented by
@WithinTolerance
and Chatter
@JackRhysider
@elonmusk
Big fan, happy to! putting the culture war bs aside - many believe that a loving, caring, and engaged parent is best equipped to guide their child through their personal growth, and that the school should communicate to the parents any personal challenges they’ve observed going
The CNC industry has been plagued by a bunch of B2B SaaS trying to sell shit to machine shops, but nobody has really closed that loop to make a real platform that empowers the inevitable future - autonomous machines shops.
Extrusion - The vision pro headset starts as an extrusion which we see in the opening shot. Molten aluminum is pushed through a custom die to create bars (usually 12ft) of the outside profile.
From there, an automated saw cuts each bar to proper length for machining.
My thoughts on the big shift in the machining industry - the "instamachinist" generation is coming in, the older generation is phasing out, and PE firms getting in on the action. Most work in this $200bn+ market ultimately is done by small/mid businesses today.
(thread)
@emm0sh
Screw it, let’s make this a thing. If you want your parts roasted send them in. I’ll get the boys together on live stream and we’ll make fun of you.
Engineers - send me your parts to get DFM roasted by machinists on live stream!
We’re calling it: Out of Spec, presented by
@WithinTolerance
and Chatter
Off the bat, we have the cardinal sin of zero radius internal pocket corners. A round tool can't get into a corner. Some of the others are radiused so I'm just assuming it's a mistake and i'm going to note that I'm making this change for later
Machining - Op 10 - 3 Axis Mill
The blank is loaded into a fixture with six pneumatic clamps, and four of them are secured at the beginning of the program. The machine here is a 30 taper compact footprint mill similar to Fanuc Robodrill or a Brother Speedio. These things are all
Chris Power has raised $180 million to manufacture metal parts at warp speeds at his California factory. Now he’s got plans to build a network of them across the country to make more parts better, faster and cheaper.
#BillionDollarStartups
First part of open source python package for CNCs “chattertools” drops tomorrow!
This industry has been held back for too long by proprietary, poorly documented, and ill-maintained software tools for folks who just want to make great stuff.
Chatter is here to change that :)
Here's a hot tip - your floor radii should be "nominal" because they are determined by the tool geometry, but your internal wall radii should not be. That's because for a 1/2" tool to get into a 1/4" radius, it has to make a straight corner which is not good, because you are
Other arguably bigger problem here is that the wall radius is the same as the floor radius. Floor radii are fine, actually good, but we want to machine those with a bull nose endmill not have to jam a ball nose in there. the results will be ugly and bad if we do that
Ball nose
Man, seeing
@JeffBezos
standing in his own machine shop nerding out about details really warms my heart. You can always tell when somebody is genuinely involved and excited. We are so back
Join
@JeffBezos
for a tour inside
@blueorigin
's New Glenn Production Facility at Cape Canaveral, Florida. This video was shot on May 30th, 2024.
00:00 - Intro
00:40 - Interview Starts [Lobby]
05:20 - Recovering Saturn V Engines
08:35 - Tank Production
16:40 - Second Stage
@emm0sh
I'm just busting balls here, but this is supposed to be a dfm roast right. Prints are important! That is your contract with the machinist! You can leave the tolerances as open as you like, but they must be defined.
Which brings us to the final and most grave sin that
@emm0sh
committed - NO DRAWING!
I don't know what material I'm supposed to be machining. The tolerances? The finish? I don't know anything about this part besides its shape.
VERDICT: This part is not ready for manufacturing.
Our new open source python package ChatterTools is the quickest way to start interacting with CNC machines via programming, ever.
Demoed it to my coworker and he said "wtf this is even better than our internal tools"
Machining - Op 20 - 5 axis
The part, in flipped orientation, goes into a compact 5 axis mill to machine the outside curvature and the other side of the part which was faced down on op 10. The machine here appears to be very close to a JingDiao GRA100.
Here’s ChatterSync! Free and open source sftp file transfer for your CNC machines. Compatible with our VSCode extension of course.
Total BOM cost is ~$30. Hardware list, SD card image, and STEP files for the enclosure are all in the repo.
We build this
Second, we have this ridiculous radius on the floor that I am certain is completely arbitrary because it's nominal 6mm. I have my stuff set to inch but I've seen the number 0.236in on radii enough to know when engineers are up to these games
Hot take: If a manufacturing facility strikes you as complex when you tour it, they’re doing something wrong
The world class factories I’ve toured all look too simple, bc the hard work to create a great operation is done under the hood, so that the operation itself looks boring
Hot take:
Boeing is an incredible company.
I toured their Charleston facility in 2019 and it was like witnessing a miracle on earth.
The complexity of it all is on another level.
100’s of thousands of pieces put together to build 787s.
Destroying aerospace supply
Last, a robot holds up the part and presents it to a fiber laser for some final engraving. Also worth noting here - Apple is known to use fiber lasers for not just engraving, but also deburring, which is awesome. Unclear if they are doing any deburring with this laser, but it's
Shout out to
@gak_pdx
for inspiring this, check out his post on the Apple watch (archive link since the original site seems to be down)
Also shout out to
@BreakingTaps
for spitballing ideas in discord and the group chat boys for helping ID machines.
Delusional take. If China is eating your lunch, poor QC is not the issue. They have simply been able to optimize better towards what the market requires.
Better mech engineers and better process engineers will give us an advantage. Getting mad at the Chinese will get you nowhere
@GruenwaldK
Yes, exporting production to China has been a huge disaster for quality control.
Same thing I've heard about seals in multiple car brands, Porsche, Honda, BMW.
I guess increased profitability makes up for increased short-term warranty costs, and screw the customer long-term.
There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on 𝕏. Working on shutting it down.
Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later.
Russ Hanneman really was the smartest person on “Silicon Valley”.
RICHARD: We can offset a lot of [expenses] once we get a few customers and start a
subscription revenue model.
RUSS: Revenue? No no no no. Why would you go after revenue? If you show people revenue, they’ll ask
"Manufacturing twitter" is on the move, so
@emm0sh
and I are doing a little work behind the scenes to make our spaces better:
- Better mics through the computer so that you can relisten without being tortured by airpods quality audio. Thanks to
@andrewmccalip
for this tip. game
Ever wonder what the difference is between additive and subtractive manufacturing? The answer might surprise you! Learn more over at the Autodesk Fusion blog:
REQUEST: Of my 5k+ followers on here, most of whom are in engineering or manufacturing, has ANYONE successfully used MBD for a project that:
- involves 2 or more organizations
- has successfully produced production parts (no demos)
If so, I’d love to talk to you!