Carpenter running local models on a Mac Mini beside a 6x12 CNC. Helping shops own their stack instead of renting it. Named machines, named failures.
Boston, MA
- Tweets 1,556
- Following 966
- Followers 1,631
- Likes 3,814
Nine cutters in my catalog can be settled by walking to the machine, pulling the drawer and counting them with a hand. The rest are paper that agrees with itself. Those are two different levels of knowing, and only one of them survives a Monday morning when the question is whether the tool you need is actually in the rack.
nitter.net/AugmentedPath/article/…
11
Twelve pockets in the rack on the 6x12. Ten of them are named in the map before the sheet goes on: 1/2, 3/8 and 1/4 compression, a downcut pair for laminate, a 60 degree V-point, two brad-points for shelf pins. T11 and T12 stay open so a job can bring its own cutter. That map follows the operations this shop runs, not the order the vendor lists them in.
15
In my catalog a number goes in with the paper behind it, or it does not go in, and the grade stays written next to it. What turns a catalog number into a cutting number is one measured cut in our own stock with the feed and depth written down. Nine of the forty-four have that. The other thirty-five are waiting on a cut.
nitter.net/AugmentedPath/article/…
2
25
The Augmented Path retweeted
AI is a big W for 40-somethings. Old enough to have learned how to do things the right way, young enough to learn some new tricks.
360
645
10,835
784,812
A feed chart printed for a router was run on somebody else's stock, their hold-down, their spindle bearings. Same cutter, different shop. Push a compression bit past the depth where it does its job and the sheet you were cutting becomes a template for the sheet you have to cut again.
nitter.net/AugmentedPath/article/…
1
29
Dimensions are the easy half. A part can measure right and still be scrap if the grain runs the wrong way, so every cut sheet my software writes carries the grain the part wants next to the grain axis of the actual board, and until somebody confirms the board it prints unconfirmed rather than a guess. Cheap to write down once. Expensive to find out after the cut.
🧵1/2-The Presentation Board-Drawings
I just made the presentation board, then I made the drawings for it. I do that a lot.
Here are the drawings-have at it, and give a shout if there is dimension missing.
To make the legs efficiently and safely
I find myself thinking about the process of making woodworking parts and pieces when things quiet down. I don't have a lot of patience, so I want to figure out how to do it quickly and safely.
Here is how I made the legs for the floating boards.
1-Started with a 3/8" x 1 3/8" board that was 18" long
2-To make the tenon I ran them on a table saw to a width of 1/4". I then ripped the pieces to 1" wide (the feet are 3/4" and tenon 1/4"
3-I taped them together and traced the pattern on them.
2
49
The shop ticket for a slat wall tells the operator to write each part ID on the concealed rear edge by hand, because the software will not engrave one on the face. A part number cut into the show face is permanent, so it is a mark the customer has to look at for the life of the wall. The number lives on the card and the edge, and the face stays clean.
23
This shop's tool catalog is not allowed to hold a speed or a feed. A test in the software fails if an entry ever grows a chip load, a cutting data record or a confirmed flag. What that buys is an honest answer: ask it for a feed and it names what is missing and hands the decision back, instead of producing a confident number out of whatever was lying around.
nitter.net/AugmentedPath/article/…
15
Nine of the 44 cutters in this shop's catalog came off a paid invoice. Twenty-six came off a machine quotation, and a quotation is not a delivery, so the entry says which it was. Nine I cannot trace past a third party's sheet, and those stay marked as inferred until calipers touch the tool. A cutter list with no provenance is a wish list.
nitter.net/AugmentedPath/article/…
25
A deployment and a fix are different purchases. Most of the ones I have watched never made it past the office door: the crew picks up another set of numbers to keep current, the setup is unchanged, and the part gets re-run the way it always did. Nothing at the machine moved, so the gap is exactly where it was, and it is still the crew closing it by hand.
Over half of U.S. CPG manufacturers have deployed AI across multiple sites, nearly double the global average. Yet they lose 20% of revenue to production inefficiencies, five percentage points worse than the global average. More AI deployments alone are not closing the gap. @SchneiderElec #schneiderelectric_ai #cpg_ai
39
A 3/4 sheet that measures 0.719 is not 3/4, and the machine cuts the board in front of it, not the number on the print. Set a toolpath from the nominal and the dado comes out loose, or the seam sits proud and you sand the whole panel back to hide it. My export will not write a production file until somebody measures the stock and records it, because no drawing can tell you which board you actually pulled.
1
2
49
The Augmented Path retweeted
A Flock of Altruists - Hit The Breaks Except For Me
178
274
1,788
569,502
A toolpath is an operator decision, so my software stops at the DXF and hands the cutting back to the shop. What crosses over is the layer names, and those are the contract with the Aspire templates already sitting on the machine. Rename one layer and the template has nothing to attach to, so an operator rebuilds by hand an operation that was ready this morning. That is the half I do not automate.
23
The drawing a customer approves and the file the machine cuts are two different gates. The concept sheet goes out while the nesting is still unsolved and the stock is still unmeasured, because neither of those changes whether the wall looks right. Where nobody measured the stock, the page says nominal, so a guess never passes as a measurement.
40
Owned or rented is the part a shop actually feels. The customer's drawings are the thing I will not upload, so the models run on hardware in the building and the job stays in the room. That costs me electricity and a box on the shelf. Renting the same capability costs a seat that renews every month, plus somebody else's rules about what you are allowed to send.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent: The US needs more open-source AI models.
"We can't let these large labs have regulatory capture because that will stop innovation."
He also said that stronger US open models are a strategic weapon against China, whose models are heavily built by distilling capabilities from American models.
---
(full video on 'GOPFinancialServices' YT channel, link in comment)
2
27
Every cut sheet my software writes carries its stock thickness in the file name, written the way a file system will take it: 0p719IN instead of 0.719 inches. If nobody measured the board, the name says NOMINAL instead, and the export will not write a measured name until a real number is entered. Two sheets can sit in the same folder, and the name alone tells you which one came off the calipers and which one came off a guess. That is the cheapest check I have against cutting a whole job from a number nobody checked.
17
A job name with a character the font cannot draw used to take the whole packet down with it. The ticket, the print, the release record, all of it stopped at the last step, because the customer's name goes on the paperwork and the paperwork is a PDF. The ticket now falls back one character at a time and the release record still carries the name the customer wrote, spelling and all. A shop should not have to rename a job to get its own paperwork out.
19