Breaking on through....to the other side!

Aimee, Charlie (at our feet) and I at Matthiessen State Park this past weekend, about 1.5hrs SW of home.

 Another loop around the sun, complete!

This was certainly a memorable year for me.  I'm grateful for years that stand out from the rest, even if some of the things that make it stand out are not particularly excellent (domestic threats to Muslims, immigrants, same-sex couples, and international relations with the rest of the world being the ones that have me the most concerned, not to mention BLM/Policing issues).

In no particular order, things in my life that jump to mind from 2016:

- Our Wedding: freaking brilliant - well done Aimee! (and everyone that helped out).
- Moving to Chicago: Road trippin' in a 20' Uhaul, sleeping in Walmart parking lots.
- Trip with dad in Alaska: 4 days of coffee, whiskey, whales, wilderness, and bonding.  Misty eyes.
- Trip with Christian in Alaska: 10 days of bushwacking, rock-rolling, and photographasizing awesomeness.
- Making Chicago our new home: nesting, and slowly meeting people/places.
- Ecuador/Peru/Amazon: business tag-along with dad: we glamped in the jungle, fed pink river dolphins by hand in the wild, and socialized with good travel companions (Chuck and Troy).
- Getting a job at Cascade Designs: great people, excellent environment, good pay, lots of learning.
- Getting a job at A-1 Tool Corporation in Chicago: sweet job, friendly people, AWESOME machines, and exhausting levels of learning (but I love it).
- Spent Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years by myself (but with Charlie as my companion).
- Joined a makerspace in Chicago for a couple months and learned about hobby CNC machines, and all the weird politics that come with community workshops.
- Went to my first caucus, and attended a political rally (Bernie) with my god-daughter and sister.
- Spent my first winter in the Midwest, walked the dog in sub-zero weather, and survived.
- I also turned 30, and finally left "home."

Other things happened, for sure, but these are the big ones that will likely stick out for years to come.

In more recent news, these things happened:

- When Aimee was visiting family over Christmas I nearly emptied out my hobby room, purchased a 46" ball-bearing toolbox, and re-organized everying.  It is SOOOOO much better than before.  I also had purchased a 46" workbench about a month prior for $5 at the local Goodwill, and between the new tool box and workbench, my available space has skyrocketed.  I removed some of the shelving that was underutilized, shoehorned a bunch of storage bins together, and even made my own custom shelving units out of artisan Swedish Pine (aka, cheap big-box hardware store 1x4's) to store photography gear.  And since I mentioned it, I got into woodworking a bit!
Since I did such an excellent job of cramming my toolboxes into a small space against two walls, there was little room left between the wall and the edges of the toolbox drawers when they were slid fully open (about 4", to be exact)....but there was nearly 30" of bare, underutilized wall and it was driving me mad.

The hobby room: with new shelves, pegboard, toolbox, a selfie GoPro and monitor, and overly powerful LED bulbs.

So I wanted a shelving unit that was shallow enough to allow for the toolbox drawers to open fully, but also utilize the bare wall space.  Since I've always fantasized about my camera gear actually living outside of a Pelican case, I figured it was time to make that dream a reality.  I found 6-foot finish-cut 1x4's at Home Depot for $1.98/each, bought a new, not-in-box Ryobi 10" laser miter saw for $60 at a pawn shop ($120 new), and then went to town setting up a woodshop on our back porch (enclosed, but not insulated).  We never use our back porch, and neither does our upstairs neighbor, so it works out AWESOME!  Speaking of things we never use, just inside the door from the back porch is our bedroom and "master" bathroom.  I put the quotes there because while it is attached to our bedroom and has a clawfoot bath/shower, we never use the tub/shower, and rarely use the bathroom.  So the clawfoot tub just became a corded power tool storage platform, after I consulted the Port Captain for approval.  So now I have all my big corded tools like the scroll saw, miter saw, worm-gear circular saw, etc hanging out on boards I placed across the top of the tub, an epic hobby room, and a budding wood-workshop in a semi-protected outdoor space!!!  I'm loving life.

Speaking of loving life, work resumes tomorrow, but we're only working five 10's!  So hopefully we don't see 12's again, and no Saturdays, which will allow me to feel a bit more like a human during the work-week (update since original draft: we're back to working 5-hr Saturdays...wahwahwah...).

Our finances continue to be extremely tight, but we're keeping our heads above water, even if it's a bit of a struggle.  On the up-side, Aimee will hopefully have found work in her field by late summer of 2018....so that means only 18 more months of lean living!  Also, I qualify for 100% employer-covered medical/dental/life insurance for both Aimee and I in February, so our healthcare expenses each month should approach zero, allowing us a little bit more breathing room financially.

Also, in order to afford said saw, toolbox, and lumber for my hobby room, I finally sold my Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 lens on Ebay, which (when the dust settles) will hopefully allow me to purchase an 18v cordless dewalt jigsaw and most of a CNC machine (update: I bought said jigsaw, and it's great!  I found it at the same pawn shop I bought the miter saw, new-in-box, for $80 out the door (new is $130+tax)).  I captured many beautiful moments with that lens, but for the past few years it has pretty much sat dormant and depreciated itself (2 newer version of the lens were released since I purchased it in 2009).  So on to new hobbies and interests!

Speaking of which, that 70-200mm lens was worth a *bit* more than a jigsaw, and I decided that building a CNC machine before a new computer is putting the cart before the horse (I need to get better with Fusion 360, Premier Elements, etc).  So after a week of nightly research and back-and-forth emails with an online refurbisher, I ordered a new (to me) PC.

Said beastie is going to replace my 2005-model HP laptop, which has served me well for many years.  I purchased it with a 2.0Ghz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, a 32-bit OS, the better screen option of two available, and a single *tiny* hard drive.  About 7 years later it was upgraded from XP to Windows 7 (still 32-bit, as the processor doesn't support 64-bit), a 2nd internal hard drive was added, and I upgraded the RAM to 2GB, the largest it can handle.  About a year ago the screen became more dead than alive, and I just hacked it off and used it with an external 22" monitor.  Then the WiFi adapter started not working, so I bought an external WiFi adapter.  Then the CPU fan started making noise due to accumulated dust (but you can't access the fan without cutting the computer case apart a bit....so I did).

So it had a good ride, but the final thing that put the nail in the coffin for me are my CAD/CAM and video editing desires, which are some of the most intense things you can try to make a computer.  Software for those applications now utilize 4+ core processors, hyperthreading, epic amounts of RAM, and GPU video cards, while the file sizes from "HD" still and video cameras have grown exponentially, compounding the bottleneck at my laptop to the point where it just says "no."

So being a bit of a scavenger (thanks Mom, and Christian), I sought out ways to skin this particular cat on a budget.  My solution seems to be to purchase a lease-return industrial PC or "Workstation" - a machine whose sole purpose is to perform well and reliably 24/7 with very little chance of costing the company leasing it any downtime.  Aka, this PC is like an A-10 Warthog, for you aviation nerds.  As ordered (refurbished), it will be kicking out 3.2Ghz on 6 cores if they're all in use, but it also has a cool setting that monitors core temp and will auto-over-clock a single core to 3.8Ghz if it is doing a single-core job and the temp is within limits.  Pretty snazzy: thanks Intel!  But the fun doesn't stop at the processor.  This critter can handle up to 64GB of ECC RAM (very reliable, error-correcting RAM), so I went ahead and optioned it out with the full monty, hoping to not to upgrade it anytime soon.  I also wanted a computer that could handle hard-drive failure issues by implementing a RAID array (basically, a grouping of hard drives connected via a controller that will - depending on configuration - allow you to automatically mirror/copy data to multiple sets of drives to protect against failed/exploded/erased/accidentally-magnetized drives).  On the video card side, I chose a 2GB Nvidia K2000 GPU graphics card, which will speed up video and CAD/CAM renderings, while also allowing for up to 4(!!!) monitor support.  Lastly, it has USB 3.0, and perhaps in the future I'll add either a PCIe SSD (so so so fast!!) or a standard SATA SSD (so fast!) to increase my rendering and previewing while editing videos.  As configured in 2013, this thing would have likely cost somewhere around $5000, but I'm getting it delivered to my door (refurbished) with a new install of Windows 7 Pro for $617.  We'll see how it turns out.

Oh, and I also ordered a small Arduino CNC electronics kit off Ebay, which includes 3 stepper motors, a driver board, drivers, limit switches, and a knock-off Arduino UNO.  I'm planning on taking this $50 el-cheapo setup and installing it on a Lego and aluminum-extrusion CNC machine I'm building....so maybe I'll have made some progress in another month or so...time will tell.

Anwho, that is all for now: I hope this helps fill in some of the gaps in what life in the midwest has been like!

Danny

I've survived at A1 Tool for a month!

So my last post was about stress, but in hindsight it hadn't even gotten bad yet.  Pressure at work became ridiculous and almost laughable.  Some things that were said by my supervisor seriously made me think he was being super sarcastic or joking....yet he wasn't.  After what I would call "hell week" there was a sudden calm, much like when an epic storm front passes and leaves everything quiet and, and many a sailor dazed and confused (yet certainly relieved).

My guess is that some of the pressure was genuine, but some of it was also just amplified as some sort of rigor test. This past week has been nothing like the one that preceded it.  Perhaps Thanksgiving served to drip some oil on the seas, or maybe there was more behind-the-scenes stuff at work that pushed things into temporary chaos: I may never know.  What I can say is that the boss man has pulled off the pressure to a level where I now actually enjoy being at work again, and I dare say I actually enjoy having him stop by my machine (although there is an ever-present air of "work faster" that comes with his presence, but hey, we're in the manufacturing industry in the United States).

But let me tell you about the landscape left behind after the storm.

After my week of hell at work, I theorize that it was decided by my supervisor that I was no longer worth pressure-testing to see if I'd quit or freak out.  So instead of "kicking me to the curb" he must have resigned to not firing me, and instead moved me to a different CNC machine: the Makino v56.

Japanese-made Makino v56 3-axis CNC mill with 20,000RPM spindle, HSK-A63 tool holder, and a 25-tool horizontal automatic tool changer.  My 2nd machine at A1 Tool Corporation.

Until this week, I had never heard of such a machine, or knew what made it special.  Makino is a Japanese manufacturer that has been making CNC machines since the beginning (established in 1937, first NC machine produced in 1958), and from what I hear they are very nice machines.  The things about it that blow my mind are this: the entire frame, ballscrews & nuts, and spindle are all thermally stabilized with fluid lines ran throughout and the temperature closely regulated by a chiller/heater.  This means very repeatable movements, and with the 20,000RPM direct-drive spindle it has movement resolution to 0.00001, and repeatable accuracy to around 0.0002.  For those who don't like decimals, that is accuracy within two TEN-THOUSANDTHS of an inch.  For perspective, this machine could accurately machine 10 evenly spaced lines across a thick human hair (around 0.002"), assuming appropriate tooling, work-holding, and that hair is a decent material to machine.  But rest assured, I will not be working on human hair anytime soon.

Most of what I'm machining are small moving parts for the plastic injection molds we build at A1 Tool Corporation.  They have complex geometry that is based off of a digital 3D model that is then programmed with various "toolpaths" for the CNC machine to cut.  But don't think of "cut" like a turkey knife or a razor blade: this is more like scooping ice cream with a very fast wrist, between 4,000-80,000 per minute (but very small scoops, and instead of ice cream I'm scooping various grades of steel).

See, my entire perspective on how cutting works has changed, or matured, since I started machining metal at Cascade Designs in Seattle, Washington.  There were a number of very kind and skilled men (The Tom's, Nate, Tyler, Ed, Geoff, Brad, Garrett, Grant, Casey) who were very willing to share their knowledge, mistakes, and lessons learned with me.  This is NOT the case everywhere you go in life, and I was very fortunate to have landed there, even if it was only for a short time.

But I digress: my perspective on how material is removed is ever-evolving, and the science and innovation behind it is fascinating to me.  See, there are a vast array of tools and techniques for performing different tasks.....and A1 Tool has most of those tools under one roof.  About 24 machines in total, ranging from the huge twin Kuraki KBT-13DX roughers (K1 was my 1st machine), to the mid-size 3-axis Sigma triplets, to the fine detail Makino/FPT/Hermle machines, ending with the various EDM's and their tool-making graphite mills (with rotary part crib and robot).  So I have the potential to learn from the masters of all these machines, and that is what keeps me from falling asleep at night.  I have a notebook of questions that I keep with me, and almost every day I find something else I'm curious about and I earmark that subject for home research or for bending a colleague's ear at work.  I.e., why is graphite used in EDM machining?  What is an "electro" spindle?  How do you select multiple CNC program files at once with a Fanuc Pro5 controller that has a touch-screen?

Japanese-made Kuraki KBT-13DX Horizontal Boring Machine with a 4th-axis rotary table and 60-class taper tool holder.  My 1st machine at A1 Tool Corporation.  Computer desk and tool area just out of frame to the right.  The plate being held probably weighs in around 1000lbs, with some larger ones reaching upwards of 10,000lbs.


(this is the Lego Version of the Kuraki I built last weekend when I was sick and overly-caffeinated at home... : )

So when I'm not feeling demoralizing pressure at work, I'm a kid in a candy shop, making parts on a machine that costs between $250,000-$400,000 depending on age and equipped options.  (side note: two squirrels just chased each other across a snowy power line out my hobby-room window = smile.)

But how about the other things happening in life?  Well, there are none.  : )  We started working 12hr days last week, and we're also coming in for 5 hours on Saturday (or 5.5, if you're like me and forget what time it is because you're having so much fun learning how to run your machine), all in an effort to NOT work over Christmas (which is the current threat/risk, as there is a lot of tooling that needs to be finished up before the New Year).  But while I do cherish my free-time, I'm kind of getting an epic dose of awesome learning at work, and also getting paid for it.  Speak of pay, A1 Tool pays 100% of you medical/dental/life after 90 days of employment, and also pays overtime for hours that exceed 8 per day (as opposed to only paying for hours that exceed 40 in a given week).  This means a lot to me, because it says that they are putting their money where their mouth is in regards to honoring the ideal of a 40hr work-week (and don't worry, they're not compensating for the OT rate by paying us a lower-than-standard hourly rate: I'm getting paid well by a 40-hr week standard for this job and my skill level, compared to the other 20-something companies I interviewed with in the Chicago area).  So the benefits and pay alone make it a great place for employment, but the people, shop, learning opportunities and short commute are also glaringly wonderful elements that make the long hours worth it.

So yes, I get up at 3:50am every morning, work my ass off until 5pm, come home and shower, then crawl into bed at 7:30pm without much more than a couple hours for food prep, a dog walk, and a chance to say hello to Aimee.  But it's not forever, I'm only 30, and we're kicking ass.

So there's that. : )