Since I transitioned from media/film/audio production to a job in manufacturing/engineering, I’ve noticed some neat re-purposing from the film industry to the manufacturing industry. The robustness demanded by the film industry has made certain specilized products very useful in manufacturing tooling.

Mogami W2901

I had a need for a high-strength, lightweight, cheap, and small high-flex-cycle cable. Sourcing something that meets a bunch of contradicting demands (strong and lightweight? flexible and durable? cheap at the same time?) makes for an interesting day at work. Luckily, I knew that an appropriate type of wire existed. I ended up with Mogami W2901:

177,000 flex cycles rated, Polypropylene filler thread for strength, 176 N breaking strength (about 40 pounds)…It was everything I wanted, at about $0.50/foot. It’s typically found in professional audio as a lavalier or microphone cable. If it’s good enough for daily use in a TV studio or on a rainy film set, it’s good enough for daily use in a manufacturing environment.

The Mafer Clamp

The day before my adventures in re-purposing lav cables, a sales rep comes in to demonstrate a product of theirs. What does he use to clamp it to the table, but a Mafer clamp. I chuckle:

The Matthews Studio Equipment Mafer Clamp

Next, the Manfrotto Magic Arm comes out. I laugh. Too bad the demonstrated product didn’t fit our needs.

Gaffer’s Tape

Not duct tape, not Duck tape, but a Gaffer’s tape. From temporary fixturing to guarding fingers while deburring, I use the stuff almost daily…Just as I would on set.

It’s neat to be able to use mainstays from one industry in another…At some point in the future, I will be able to talk a little about how film industry know-how benefits work with industrial vision systems.

It’s been a while since my last post. Life has been busy, but I can always find time to ramble about tools.

At work, I’m lucky enough to have access to high quality tools. Quality tools make me more efficient, and given the value of my time to my employer, paying for said tools is a no brainer.

As an example, the hex keys I use at work are Bondhus Goldguard ball-ends. They run double the cost of other, cheaper sets, but the rarely break, and I very rarely strip stainless screw heads. At $14 for a 9 piece metric set, they pay for themselves if I avoid stripping/breaking, then wasting time extracting a single screw. That’s a good deal. $14? That’s nothing for a tool I use every day. They would be a good deal at ten times that cost.

It’s all about value, cost is a secondary metric for tools.

Amusingly, Bondhus, the maker of the aforementioned hex set says this on their website:

Bondus doesn’t manufacture junk.

I guess that’s one short way of saying value is more important than cost. It’s an often-forgotten metric…a lens through which more purchase decisions should be made.

Machining Resingrave

When engraving printing blocks for relief printing, it is often laborious to cut out large, unused areas of blocks. Some artists have turned to Dremels (or equivalent) for expedience. This carries some risk, as a single slip can send the cutting tool skidding across a whole block, ruining it.

I wanted to help my better half out and clear some large areas of a block she was carving. She carves using a material called Resingrave. This material was developed by Richard Woodman as wood engraving medium intended to replace expensive and increasingly depleted end-grain hardwoods, traditionally used for woodblock printing. After corresponding with the helpful folks at McClain’s Printmaking Supplies, I had enough information to try machining the material.

Our goal was to mill away large unused areas of the block to save significant hand-carving time. The picture to the right shows the block in the vise, before we set the cut depth and started machining. There are parallels supporting the block in the vise. Note that the design outline  has already been hand-carved, and the rest will be hand-carved once the larger, unused areas are milled down.

Setup:

I used a 1/4″ two flute HHS endmill a geometry typically used to cut aluminum. HSS is probably preferable to carbide, as it will hold a better edge.

Note the compressed air

I used a Sharp LMV mill at my employer’s extensive machine shop (with permission, of course).

I machined the resingrave at a .055 inch depth, 1000 RPMs, feeding about 12 inches per minute (.006 inches per tooth). We took a .1″ cut with each pass, except for initial full-width cuts into sections of the block, as seen at right. This was a conservative and slower method, but there was no reason to rush. Those familiar with Bridgeports, clones, and many manual domestic mills will recognize that distance as a half turn of the crank, making the math easy on me.

Results:

The block turned out well, and made quite the mess of small, louse-like, clingy chips. The uniformity of these chips was important, as it indicated that my milling was fairly consistent. I took advantage of the X-axis power feed for the long cuts along the bottom of the block. One of the critical things was keeping the cutter and block free of chips. I used light compressed air, and occasionally brushed the cutter off.

Best of all, the artist was happy. The block suffered no damage, and hours of removing unused material was saved. Her take on the process is here. For those who want more machining details, read on.

More Numbers:

Taking my speeds and feeds, I could reverse the usual calculations and find the surface feet per minute.
You can try it here, or use the widget below:
Milling Speed and Feed Calculator

Calculating this out, my SFM is about 65…I assume the theoretical maximum SFM of the material is significantly higher, but I didn’t want to recklessly hog out something that was on it’s way to becoming a really cool piece of art.

There was no difference between climb milling and conventional milling. I took passes in both directions without worry. Given the softness of the material, the slow feed, the shallow cuts, and the relatively tiny end mill, I felt climb milling was safe.

The Final Result

Coming soon: An actual print pulled from the block. See it at Folio CIII.

Last year, I transitioned from freelancing to a salaried position. This involved some amount of job hunting, and thus some interaction with the worst web interface I have ever seen.

Taleo is a company that makes talent management and recruitment software. Their backend, I’m sure, is a cleanly written system to manage personnel/HR needs. I’m sure. Peachy, for anyone working in HR. It’s a good thing HR doesn’t have to struggle through the pile of —- their applicants do. The Taleo internet-facing interface is sad…Perhaps ‘make’ was too strong a word there. “Cobbles together like 3rd graders mixing farts” is more apt.

Months ago, I didn’t save screencaps of the worst interface offenses, but they are so plentiful that a mere minute yielded this:

Notice something wrong? Taleo serves jobs for Memphis when the criteria specified Vancouver, WA. Now, perhaps this company isn’t entering locations when posting jobs. OK. So why does the software have cities listed where the company doesn’t even have operations? I mean, Joseph, OR is a beautiful place with some cool bronze foundries, but the Fortune 100 IT company I grabbed that from isn’t going to be hiring there.

Next, we get to the horrible javascript mess of Taleo. Click on a job on page 2+ of results and select a job. When you click “Return to Previous Page”, you get sent back to page 1. Nice.  So, I could just open a bunch of job posts in new tabs as I go through the multiple pages of postings, right? Not so much. Every job is opened via a script, meaning tabs are effectively disabled.

I could spend hours ranting beyond the small sampling of above problems, which range from the sad search interface to the actual application process. The fundamental problem with Taleo is simple: The front end sucks, and given the application process, it saps qualities from an individual and transforms the individual into a set of quantities that give little indication of real potential.

How hard does Taleo want to make it to search jobs? Taleo was such a tremendous waste of time that companies using Taleo fell to the bottom of the pile. I would apply only if time permitted, because Taleo applications could take ten times longer than an emailed cover letter and resume.

Many companies are losing talented applicants to the rancid fart that is Taleo’s web-facing interface. The competition probably thanks you. I do, because Taleo served as a good way to judge the quality of management decisionmaking I would have to live with at a company.

/rant

I feel guilty. Kind of. Because of this:

Browsing Goodwill recently, I bought the above sewing machine for $20…They typically show up for ten times that price on eBay. I feel like I absconded with a treasure. At any rate, this Singer 401a (1956 vintage, made in South Carolina) is mine, and after a tune-up, it will be ready for another 50 years of use. The machine is in remarkably good condition, with a clean looking cam stack:

The underside even looked clean and lint-free, which is rare for a 1956 machine. It had been maintained well.

As tempting as it was, I wasn’t going to sew a single stitch without getting the machine looked over. See, the 401a is a special machine…The proverbial Bentley of sewing machines. That machine originally sold for hundreds of (1950s) dollars, or thousands of 2011 dollars. Price-wise, that puts the 401a on par with industrial machines from Juki or Brother. I daresay on par quality-wise as well, though without the power of the bifurcated head-motor arrangement, which allows for a multiple-horsepower motor.

Singer Sewing quality went significantly downhill in the 1970s, as they started building machines largely of plastic. In the 1980s, they started outsourcing. Singer didn’t design good machines and contract manufacturers didn’t maintain quality. With Singer, older is (much) better. New machines are disappointing and lack the rigidity or power to work well with many fabrics. Another legend destroyed for short-term profit.

I again digress. The 401a was one of the last slant needle aluminum-bodied Singer models, and has a very large metal cam stack enabling a variety of stitches. The slant-needle machines were special in that they allow much more visibility when sewing than a vertical needle machine. It is also a direct drive machine with no belts, and gorgeously cut beveled helical involute gears. Those expensive gears are why the machine purrs, instead of grinds. Take a look:

The timing, adjustment, greasing and oiling of this machine is something that I will leave to a professional, so I know it is well-tuned when I do minor maintenance myself in the future. In Portland, Rooster Roc Sewco (3427 NE 72nd Ave) came highly recommended, and when I visited last year, the owner was nice enough to chat with me about some industrial machines when I was contemplating tooling up for some freelance work. When I get this machine back, I will post pictures of the first project I use it on, probably a set of gaiters (patterns to be drafted in February).

As a last piece of trivia, the Singer 400 class (401, 402, 403) sewing machines use a double-contact bayonet base lightbulb in a short T7 formfactor. The recommended bulb is typically known as a 15T7DC. As incandescent bulbs are being phased out, stocking up might not be a bad idea. Just don’t pay over $5/bulb.

It is with much excitement and some (well, maybe a tiny bit) trepidation that I’m moving from freelancing to a full-time position. This is a completely self-indulgent couple paragraphs on the vagaries of the past couple years.

After freelancing in audio and video production (and tech support and web development, and etc.) for the past 7 years (amongst school), I’m looking forward to the break from the complexities of self-employment and the constant drive to expand one’s client list. The economy didn’t bode well for the latter, and the former became downright tiring. Between health insurance, equipment and other overhead, the numbers were looking OK, but not great.

A rough economy means taking clients one wouldn’t usually touch. That leads to fun (in a profoundly sarcastic way) situations like maintaining media production computers that doubled as the client’s surfing platform for his prurient interests, or trying to explain simple waveform edits to someone who is too insecure to accept help. My favorite though, was a client who told me he needed a wife, because his competitors all had wives who did the ‘other stuff’ (bookkeeping, shipping, etc.).

I also took on some wonderful jobs, including some work for large multi-continent traveling exhibits, and some touching documentary production work. As those projects see circulation and distribution, I will try and share.

Now, I’m at an engineering consulting firm with a world-class client list that yields a constant stream of fascinating work. What do I do? Well, I work in the company lab. I make stuff that makes stuff. I don’t know what the position will grow into, but I do know I will enjoy it.

So long, freelancing. I might be back someday far away, but thanks for all the stories.

It first appeared last year. Time to show it again:

The -55, -57, and -58 in all their cooking glory.

On a more personal nature today:

For the past week, I’d been neglecting my car. The driver’s side lock cylinder was loose, and I wasn’t looking forward to disassembling all the interior body paneling and removing the window mechanism and glass to fix it. Unfortunately, it all came to a head last night, as the bolt holding the lock cylinder in place made a resonant clanging as it fell into the depths of the door.

Fortunately, I drive a moderately antediluvian Subaru Impreza. Upon removing three retaining screws, the interior paneling came off easily. Then, when I recovered the bolt and rolled down the window in anticipation of removing it, I realized something neat: The window comes down it’s tracks and moves slightly towards the front of the door, uncovering the interior side of the door handle/lock cylinder. 10 minutes later, I had the lock mechanism tight, the interior paneling back on, and an operating lock.

Some mechanics say that there isn’t a bad wrench position on a Subaru. I would tend to agree.