7-Axis CNC Machining Robot at ZOOX - Vlog #39

Hey what's up everybody this is Titan with Titans of CNC over here at our facility. We are getting ready to actually film my personal first power mill program. So now we're taking it up a notch for the DMG Morris. 1600 inches a minute. We're gonna see if the machine can take it and that's a future video so make sure you check that out. But a couple days ago I was down at Zooks, an amazing company that came out of nowhere. It's like the new style Uber but it's an autonomous vehicle. A robot comes and picks you up and basically takes you where you want to go and it is amazing. So just in four years this company Zooks has already created 700 jobs. There's 700 people working down there at Zooks and one of them like blew my mind. He programs his 7-axis KUKA robot. Boom! Check him out. It's a beast of a robot over there. It is a beast. So this is Bethany. Bethany is our 7-axis milling robot. She gets her name from Bethany Hamilton who's a professional surfer from Hawaii as you know. Hawaii right? Yeah exactly. So she can do amazing things with one arm so can our Bethany. Right? So good. Mainly what we do with Bethany is mill all different kinds of foam whether it be for engineering models, design intent models, or even just fixing elements of the design as they come in. So you're a full CNC machinist, CNC programmer and then you have to add like a lot of different expertise right? So now it's like you're bringing in different types of bits for actually cutting foam. Yeah. You're holding like work holding is like it's a lot different. How do you hold something that's so soft right? So we have a bunch of different methods. One method is basically just spray adhesive right? A lightweight spray adhesive that will hold the piece in place while we machine it but we can we can remove that. We've also made you know more in-depth fixtures. What's the software that you're using? So I'm using PowerMill which is an auto test software. What's really nice about PowerMill is it's got a robot plug-in right here. Many other softwares that you use basically run through a third-party software to do all the simulation and post-processing from the robot. What's really nice about PowerMill is that it's all internal. That way if I've got a problem with a tool path or something like that it's not going back to another program, reposting that, and then re-simulating. It's all one iteration loop. Another thing that is really helpful for me is PowerShape which is basically Autodesk's CAD solution that basically plugs right into PowerMill. What's really great about PowerShape too is that it's basically an all-encompassing kind of modeling solution. So it'll take files from basically any format and then I can output them into a file that will work for my milling. That's awesome. So how long have you been programming? So I've been programming robots for about four years now. About four years? Yeah. And you're killing it. Thank you man. So good man, you're killing it. Yeah it's a very niche profession. There's maybe 10 or 15 of us on the west coast. I'd say there's a little bit more throughout the country but it's definitely an emerging technology and now that robots are becoming more accurate, more repeatable. Are they stealing our jobs? Well the problem is that it's not going to steal your job because you still have to have someone to program it. Exactly right. And now you can actually make things that you never could have made here in the states through automation and you've got technicians that have to take care of that robot and stuff. Exactly. And what's really nice about the robot too is as opposed to like a large volume gantry machine which is how a lot of this material is normally handled. We have a much smaller footprint it's also much more nimble. A lot of times when you come down with a big vertical gantry getting to the side of a part can be very difficult and it can take multiple operations to get that. With the robot it can basically flip onto any axis and be able to machine that. I've seen a lot of experienced programmers kind of just beat their head against the wall when it comes to machining with a robot. There's multiple reasons for that. I think it's getting around basically how the robot operates in a turbulence. When I pull up a code from here it's 18 characters long and it's 500,000 lines long. So it's a different world. So yeah it's it's taken a bit. It's taken four years to get to where I'm at. Four years is quick though. Yeah and that's what I was kind of like getting to is like now that with automation just like soaring and like companies like this they can be in existence now right. You're making autonomous cars with robots right. Exactly. It's like me like we were talking about Hawaii a little bit you know I came there I had no hope in life and then all of a sudden I didn't even know what a CNC was. I didn't know and then I walked in I was like you're gonna pay me to like do this like you know I didn't even have a car like you're gonna pay me to do this and it just changed my life. So now in probably in a similar fashion there's a lot of people that can come in and actually learn what you're doing and just end up on this journey to actually change how manufacturing builds aerospace. How manufacturing builds everything. Exactly. And just hit that niche right and then all of a sudden it's an opportunity they get paid well money. Like if you walk out the door people are gonna be sad they're gonna be like oh man give the boy a raise right like you got a little bit of. Well to get the people that you need these days it's it's really difficult and so I really appreciate what you're doing because I think that that's a that's an untapped talent pool right. A lot of people that really want to give back and contribute right and now you're giving them an opportunity I think that's wonderful. It's great I mean and for what it's worth. Who knew one of the greatest country the greatest country in the world like there's no standard for multi-axis in existence there's no like you know what I mean nobody figured out education everybody tries to make money off it and they don't do R&D because they would lose money and therefore the whole thing suffers man you know. And that's what's really great about here right is that they definitely give me a little bit of freedom to experiment and push the machine to limits that I didn't know were possible right. Dude he's got Aloha Friday going on he's got the hula girl up on the top like dancing when the robot's like moving like yeah that's keeping it real right here. Yeah that's Leilani that's our low-tech accelerometer if you will. Accelerometer. So yeah I know when she's shaking a little too much that it's time to slow it down a little bit. That's your chatter control. It's chatter control yeah exactly. Nice man. If you have an attitude that I'm going to hone my skills like I'm going to be the best I'm going to make the craziest programs I'm going to look at all the little inner workings and just master it and I say that because this guy has it like you are like you just had a great attitude man. Right on. Because he hung out in Hawaii with my boys like for a while. But exactly yeah catch surf you know what I mean. That's it man. Yeah this is my biggest tool this my favorite tool. This is a styrotech milling tool it's hollow actually so we've got a disc that sits on top of this and can actually suck the material out as it's machining. So it's just like a vacuum as the material comes out it just sucks into the tool. Exactly. When do you ever see that? That's crazy. Yeah so what's really nice about that is it removes dust and particulate from the room it also looks really cool. We have a lot of names for this tool none of them I can repeat on camera. This is one of my favorite tools actually I just got it this is a Kenna metal so this is an interchangeable tool tip right. Duo lock. Exactly so so not not not like I'm just saying like we're in sync right there duo lock is awesome. It is yeah and it's great for me especially because you know a lot of times I need the reach on the on the machine to overcome the axes and a little bit of the limitations there right. And then you basically just switch out that switch out that tip if I need a if I need a end mill if I need a ball nose whatever it's great. A lot of guys are spending all this money for all this carbide when you could like buy that much carbide and save a huge amount of money and they don't even know. Exactly. Duo lock by Kenna metal that's a good commercial. Yeah exactly it's it's a great tool I've loved using their tools. This is what I was describing earlier so this is a part we got from our supplier they've changed the design since since these parts were made by the supplier now if we were to send them back to the supplier it's a four to six week lead time right yeah we're building vehicles over there so instead I made a jig for Bethany right over here plop them in and then you can see we we cut these down right so that they'll actually fit in the vehicle. Again this is something that doesn't take me a whole lot of time but saved us six weeks shipping headaches with suppliers all that kind of stuff so get it done exactly and this is another kind of example too so this is like a model of our compute structure and this is a model of our floor for the vehicle what we made this for was at first we were testing different compute modules to make sure that they fit in into this model now we're using the model of the compute with this model to do fit checks for everything from electrical to you know HVAC wiring all that kind of stuff it's very tight in our vehicle so being able to use this is you know saving the harness team a lot of time and money especially when you know this is a thousand dollars worth of material as opposed to multiple thousands of dollars for the actual parts that we need so you just you machine this whole thing out yeah definitely and the great part about Bethany is this is a few hours you know what I mean so she's really quick at getting it done yeah a little temperamental at times but yeah she's pretty great that's awesome and then we've got uh this is coming up uh this is my next iteration this is uh this is baby kooka or so this is yeah so this is Rick named after Rick Allen the uh one-armed drummer from uh Def Leppard okay we're gonna use this robot for scanning and picking place and a lot of smaller operations that Bethany is just too big for um this is this is coming soon so maybe the next time you come by we'll have this guy doing some cool stuff awesome