Here at Tormach, we want to share your customer stories. So here's Daniel
Hinzsch, who's working out some high-end innovation at SupplyFrame.
tink
Hi, I'm Daniel Hinzsch, and I'm the
Resident Engineer at SupplyFrame Design Lab in Pasadena, and
we're the proud owners of the Tormach PCNC, 1101. When SupplyFrame was
talking to me about taking over at the design lab, they they kept talking about
the different equipment that they had there, but they kept talking about this
thing called the Tormach. The Tormach. The Tormach.
But I really didn't know it
until I looked on the website. I was like okay so Tormach that must be the
machining equipment that they purchased, and when I finally went there I walked
into the workshop the motion detector sensed that I was in there and the
lights all come on like this and they all light up. ..The Tormach, which is
sitting like that slab from 2001, just in the middle of the room. And I walked up to
it and it says, Personal CNC, but what is personal about this? This thing is huge
and it was you know within two or three days I'd signed up for the for the
Tormach mill class. I got it to .you know.. I'm not just going to let that thing
sit there, you got to start beating on it somehow.
So, the design lab exists for,
a number of purposes. The area work where the where the Tormach really
comes in, is in where we're fostering engineering teams. So we bring in teams in
to develop their projects, and part of that project will will inevitably
always involve some sort of enclosure, or fabrication, of a housing, or some
structural element with it. I have a good fortune, with the full backing of the
company that I work for, to be able to make a lot of mistakes and it's turned
out that the Tormach is very forgiving in that regard, so I regularly crash the
end mills, fortunately I haven't crashed it too hard. But
apparently I'm one of the few people that's ever snapped a TTS holder right
at the spindle. But you know you have to make mistakes in order to gain the
experience. And that's good, because a lot of the engineers that you wind
working with have have some brilliant ideas in terms of what they want to
build but don't necessarily have that experience in fabrication, or in
manufacturing. or in machining.
The design lab functions as a place to take all the
stuff that we do in the virtual world, which is hackaday. Hackaday.io in that
much larger community, and give it a physical reality. A place where we
can actually take the ideas that these people are having, that these engineers
are developing and give them a place to grow. So consequently for those teams
that we invite into the design lab. We have all this fabrication equipment, of which
the Tormach is an essential part. One of the teams that we recently had in was
working on a four month residency. Was called the Perceptoscope, and that's a
coin operated binocular system, except it's augmented reality. So he's able to
overlay computer graphics on top of the real world, within his enclosure.
The bearing blocks in there had to be a substantial size and it's not the sort
of thing that you just get away with through 3d printing. We take it to
the Tormach and then you actually fabricate it out of aluminum, that we got
that at a wholesaler in town. So another project that we worked on at
the lab, was a camera mounting system that had Canon 5D's mounted at 120
degrees from each other. But also canted at 30 degree angles, and then with one
camera pointing straight up so a four cameras system. And also, can you have
some prototype within 24 hours, and if we like the prototype, can you build it
for us within a week. And foolishly I said, "of course."
So just to test it out, I prototyped everything with MDF, but they said you
know what we stitched the photos together, it worked, so go ahead we need it. So over
the course of Labor Day weekend, I three days, about 28 hours worth of work, and
Once everything was machined, to hit everything with the
superfly. So you know they got this just mirror polished object back.
Apparently they told me that it worked great in the desert, but it got them over
that sort of like this is it a piece of junk this isn't like some hacked together thing.
So Supplyframe sponsors a design and
engineering challenge each year, and the winner of that prize gets $100,000,
and then a residency at the design lab. And for that endeavor I was asked to
actually build the trophy. I wanted it to be a weighty
trophy so I thought maybe a 4-inch block of aluminum would be cool. And I wound up
recessing the trophy logo onto each of the faces, which sort of looks like a
little space invader. Right? So that was that was a lot of fun to
fabricate. I got to say the Tormach support and, and, I don't want this to
sound like on the sales pitch for Tormach, but the Tormach support! I've
talked with John, for an hour and a half. and it would be a matter of okay I'm
gonna go take the motor up, and I put my phone down for 20 minutes, and sit there
and get the motor out, and then I picked the phone back up, and "are you still there
John?", "oh yeah I'm still here." You know? That, that was...that
to me that shows tenacity on the part of support. That's very satisfying. To be
able to talk with somebody that is willing to spend the time to make sure
that the problem actually gets fixed. Thanks for watching. Check out all of our
latest videos here, and for more metalworking tips tricks and stories
subscribe to our YouTube channel.