Being an Engineer
Being an Engineer
S7E33 Sam Thomason | The Black Magic of Nano-Machining
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Sam Thomason’s career sits at the intersection of technical sales, manufacturing automation, Japanese business culture, and advanced machining. With more than 14 years of experience in CNC machinery, factory automation, and industrial robotics, Sam has worked across the U.S., Japan, and Australia helping manufacturers evaluate and adopt technologies that improve productivity, safety, and competitiveness.
He is currently National Sales Manager for Shibaura Machine Company, America’s Nano Processing division, where he is responsible for U.S. sales strategy and customer development around the UVM Series ultra-precision machining platforms. His work involves helping engineering, R&D, tooling, and executive teams define applications, validate processes, and qualify advanced nano-machining capabilities for industries such as optics, photonics, medical devices, semiconductor-adjacent manufacturing, and high-precision moldmaking. Shibaura describes the UVM Series as high-precision machining centers built around high-speed, high-quality machining with high-precision aerostatic bearing spindles, with applications in precision molds, automotive lighting, lenses, smartphone frames, LED packaging molds, and precision parts machining.
Before joining Shibaura Machine, Sam held roles in automation, robotics, machine tools, and business development with organizations including Workr Labs, Yuasa International, Konica Minolta Australia, SE4, and TAKAMAZ. His early career included working in Japan as an application engineer and technical sales/cutting engineer at TAKAMAZ, giving him a practical foundation in CNC programming, machining applications, and communicating technical details across cultures.
Sam’s background also includes robotics and teleoperation, including work with SE4 in Tokyo, where he helped demonstrate latency-resilient robotic teleoperation software and even supported a live international demo operating a dual-arm robot in Tokyo from Abu Dhabi despite more than 30 seconds of video lag. That experience gives him a broad perspective on where automation is headed, from industrial robotics to ultra-precision machining.
For this conversation, Sam wants to focus on non-traditional machining topics such as non-machining, diamond turning, and hard milling. His perspective should be especially valuable for engineers who want to understand where conventional manufacturing assumptions break down, when ultra-precision equipment changes the process equation, and how technologies like diamond turning and hard milling can open new possibilities in optics, tooling, molds, medical components, and advanced manufacturing.
LINKS:
Sam Thomason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-thomason/
Aaron Moncur, host
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I asked ChatGPT. I was like, "Hey, so 100 picometers. How many elements on the periodic table have like an atomic diameter of less than that? And it said there were about five. So, for reference, like I was thinking, okay, with diamond, perhaps we're not machining iron, but when I think of machining, I think of metal, so I just asked, okay, what is what is the diametric size of an iron, like an Fe atom, and it said it was about 250 or so picometers. So we're literally
Aaron Moncur:capable of moving atoms off,
Sam Thomason:basically.
Aaron Moncur:Hello and welcome to the Being an Engineer podcast. Today we've got Sam Thomason, a bilingual sales and engineering professional with over 14 years of experience in CNC machinery, factory automation, robotics, and ultra precision machining across the U.S. Japan, and Australia, he is currently national sales manager for Shibaura Machines Nano Processing Division, where he helps customers apply advanced machining platforms to demanding nano and micro precision applications. Sam is super passionate about helping manufacturers automate dull, dirty, and dangerous work, so people can focus on higher value tasks. Sam, welcome to the show. Oh,
Sam Thomason:thank you very much, Aaron. Happy to be here.
Aaron Moncur:So we we didn't talk about this during the pre-show, but it just-it just-I know it was a question I wanted to ask, and I kind of forgot. So you're you're bilingual. One of your languages is Australian, obviously. What's the other
Sam Thomason:one? The other one would probably be well, apart from sarcasm, which is kind of a dialect of Australian would have to be Japanese, so I speak Japanese as well. Use it every day at work. Yeah, yeah. Where, where in Japan? Did did you learn Japanese?
Aaron Moncur:I was in Hiroshima for a couple of years, way way back in the day. It was, yeah, back in my my early 20s back there. But I don't get a chance to speak Japanese very often, so that's fun. Thanks for learning, like
Sam Thomason:the jet program or something like that.
Aaron Moncur:No, no, I was a missionary actually. Oh wow! Okay,
Sam Thomason:interesting. The
Aaron Moncur:gospel. That's right. Back in the day.
Sam Thomason:That's that's interesting.
Aaron Moncur:How did you learn Japanese?
Sam Thomason:Well, I guess the start of it actually starts with missionaries on my side too. My parents were missionaries in Japan.
Aaron Moncur:Oh, interesting! So I was
Sam Thomason:actually born in Japan. Wow! Funnily enough, so my parents were missionaries living in. I think they were living in Tokyo at the time. My dad was ex U.S. Navy, so I was actually born in a U.S. naval base in Yokosuka because it was cheaper than you know the private hospitals, and that's not really. I guess I was kind of lying a bit there because that wasn't actually where I learnt my Japanese. We left when I was one, so my Japanese at the time was probably more like Gugu Gaga, but hadn't hadn't gotten to Quinitiwa yet. But we moved to the states when I was about one, where my dad is from in Orlando, lived there for about five years, and then moved off to Australia, where I spent the rest of my upbringing. and And I guess that's where the accent stuck as well, because believe it or not, I used to actually have a Southern, like an American accent when I was really
Aaron Moncur:yes, fascinating.
Sam Thomason:Yeah, my my mum used to babysit a kid from Tennessee, and even though Florida isn't really synonymous with Southern accents, I picked up a Tennessee accent and saw the the home video of me from when I'm five is like, "Hey, mother, mama, go take bath, and you know that sort of thing. And about a year later, it's like,"G'day, mate, you know. It's it's sort of viable
Aaron Moncur:when we're young, huh?
Sam Thomason:I I think so. Yeah. Unfortunately, I I don't know if I can really change back. My my dad, you know, has been in Australia since then, and he still sounds roughly as American as as the day you know he arrived in '94. Yeah, he does use some Australian words. You know, he he does try to say g'day and and whoop whoop and you know things like that here and there, but the accent hasn't really come, and so I don't really have hope hope for myself there either.
Aaron Moncur:Well, I I grew up in Hawaii, and there's definitely a particular accent there that I I am so sad to say I've I've pretty much lost. At this point, however, when I go back home, it does come out for sure. Or when I'm when I'm talking with other people from Hawaii, it it tends to come back out. But otherwise, sadly, it is it is long gone at this point. Okay, but but the Japanese, you you did not learn it as a baby, as an infant. No, there. Yeah, sorry. The
Sam Thomason:story continues. So I guess I, I learnt little bits and pieces growing up because as a child, like my parents, they both neither of them are Japanese, as you can probably tell by my complexion. But mum and dad learnt, you know, enough Japanese to be roughly fluent. You know, when they were doing missionary work over there, and so that was kind of their secret code. When I was a kid, when they wanted to speak in private in front of me, they would switch to Nihongo, and I would be there saying, "What are you saying? What are you saying? And they'd kind of just giggle. And so it became sort of a curiosity growing up. You know, I I want to know my parents' secret code. And so when I got into grade six in elementary school, they started. Well, it was available at school. I started studying there and basically continued all the way through high school. That kind of got the basics down for me. But it wasn't really until I'd finished high school and I did a gap year in Japan with the Rotary Club, with Rotary International. They sent me over as a youth exchange student for a year, and I went to a Japanese high school in a semi-rural area named Ishikawa, out towards if anybody knows Komatsu trucks. Well, Komatsu is you know right next door to the city of Kanazawa, which is near where I was on the west side of Japan. Beautiful area, and lucky for me, not too many English speakers around, which was great because
Aaron Moncur:immersion. I'm
Sam Thomason:fairly lazy. Yeah, you know, if if I had been surrounded by English speakers, I probably wouldn't have picked up Japanese as I did. But lucky for me, nobody or very few people around me spoke English, which was fantastic. So yeah, had the best year of my life. Went to a high school over there. Came back to Australia after that. Went back to college, and then I did my third year of uni college on exchange in Tokyo as well. And
Aaron Moncur:okay,
Sam Thomason:and after that, I was kind of desperate to find a job in Japan. I was kind of dead set. Okay, I want to find a job in Japan in that little sort of semi-rural area, and so at the end of college, I started shopping around for jobs, and just so happened that the best employer in town happened to be a Japanese machinery company called Takamatsu Machinery, which is a lathe manufacturer that specializes in factory automation. I I had studied communication and arts, so I was, you know, on the exact opposite side of the planet from anything engineering related. Although I'd always been interested, like I, it's interesting because from a young age, you know, my favorite toy or toys, I should say, were always Legos. I love to build things, make things tear them apart. But unfortunately, I just I was never any good at the math side of things, and I was to find out later in life that wasn't so much. I mean, I don't think I have a high natural aptitude, but I just didn't have any interest. There was never any sort of do this equation because it has this real effect in life, so I still remember, for example, when I was in in high school and we had to do trig, and I remember doing my homework. My mum, you know, as usual, doing your homework, and I was like, Mum, this is stupid. You know, I'm not going to be an engineer, and and you know, this trig stuff. It's useless. It's just theoretical. I'm never going to use this in my life. You know, little did I know that further in life I'd end up as an applications engineer. And you know, trig, for example, I needed to do nose R calculations. When you're you know running a lathe, you need to make compensation for the fact that the nose of your tool is not actually, you know, a perfect edge. It's it's round. You know, if you look at it microscopically, and you need to compensate for that when you're making chamfers and things like that. And so, yeah, I remember when my boss was teaching me, you know, this math using just you know basic sine contagion calculations. I vividly remembered, you know, me, you know, yelling at mum, saying,"I'm not going to need this in the future. But all of a sudden, it was exciting. It was like,"Wow, I do this, you know, formula, and the numbers come out, and I put it in the machine, and then it works. I press the button, and it actually does what I want it to. This is awesome, and I I kind of think perhaps if if in my formative years, math and and and science in general had have been as sort of hands on, and you know you do this to get this. If it had been set up in that way, I. Might have gone in a different direction, but yeah, I guess I had the assumption that that I was more of a humanities guy. You know, I liked you know history and and you know language and you know aside from the fact that I always you know nerded out over the science fiction and you know the sciencey sort of stuff and and thought well I better play to my strengths, study that stuff, and then, yeah, ended up getting a job for a CNC lathe manufacturer. And in the beginning, I I naively, because I'd done sales all throughout college, I thought, okay, this is going to be easy. They're going to hand me a catalog, and you know, I'll learn the catalog, learn the products up, and you know, three months later, I'm going to be sling CNC machines to you know the Japanese, like it's nothing. And fortunately for me, the company I was working for had different plans for me. They knew that you can't do that. You need to actually understand the product from the ground up, and so they started me off in the assembly line, building the machines. I worked on the factory floor assembling machines for about a year, and then they said, "Okay, well, now you know how to build the machines. And I was like,"Great! Can I go into sales? And like, no,
Aaron Moncur:for a full year. So this wasn't like a superficial, you know, figure out where a few bolts go. Like you really understand from the ground up how these machines are built.
Sam Thomason:It was everything, like, and I am so grateful. You know, I will be grateful to Takama's machinery for that experience till the day I die, because it really gave me a very hands-on and very grounded understanding of these, you know, critical concepts that would, you know, serve me well for the rest of my life, the rest of my career, I should say. You know, it all started out. I remember my first job was just leveling machines. You know, we'd have the machine bed with nothing on it before we put, you know, the the saddle and the slides on, and and have to just get down there with the spirit level and the wrench, and you know, make sure it's perfectly level and pick, you know, flecks of paint, you know, off the the moving slides, and very very menial sort of stuff. Before we moved on to the more complex sort of stuff, very kind of you know karate kid, you know, washing the windows sort of thing. Part of it, I think, was wax on wax, but it was good because I think it also it it created some humility as well, and some appreciation for the little things. Like you know, I'll mention cleaning the slides. Like I'll never forget one day, I because before we put, for example, the x-axis motor and z-axis motor on top of the slides on the lathe, you had this sort of mirror finish. You know, very nicely ground surface, and you need to make sure before any of that goes on, or for example, the ball screw that goes sort of underneath it. Before those get clamped down, it must be spotless because we had to ensure that ball screw was through, you know, along its sharp to within about five micron, and if even so much as a fleck of dust, you know, got under that unit that you bolted down, you need to use a torque wrench and get it perfectly torqued down. It wouldn't work. And I remember one day spending hours, you know, I'm sort of clamping down, you know, with the torque wrench, and you have to adjust it because you know you you tighten it too much, and you know the ball screw goes this way or that way, and no matter what I did, I could not get it right. And my boss at the time, he was like, "Sam, just rip it up, start again. And I was like, "No, I've spent hours on this. He's like, "Do it, and you know, I was kind of grumbling, you know, under my boyfriend, you know, took it off, and lo and behold, that it seems there was a speck of dust. You know, clean it off, work like a charm. And I think I finished that job at about 1030 at night. You know, the only lights in the factory left on were the ones you know over my little workstation. Yeah, but it was it was amazing character building stuff, and and also it it really it forced that sort of attention to detail, particularly when precision is concerned. That you know they would not accept if they said it needed to be below five micron, it couldn't be five and a half, it couldn't be six, you know couldn't be 5.1. It had to be like 4.9 or less, and even that was really pushing it, and but that's how you end up with fantastic machines. And so after a year of that, I wanted to do sales. They're like, no, no, you know how to make the machines. You don't how how to use them. And so I was like, no
Aaron Moncur:way,
Sam Thomason:okay, and so that's they put me into application
Aaron Moncur:program.
Sam Thomason:Yeah, and the crazy thing was
Aaron Moncur:speaks huge into the company, right? Like, I mean, most companies, you're you're a sales guy. They want to get you selling. That's the revenue that you're going to bring in. They just want to throw you into sales real quick. That they spent, I guess, years or or at least over a year training you so so deeply that that just. Says a lot about the company. The Product Development Expo is back october 20 and 21st in Phoenix, Arizona. PDX is a hands-on training event for engineers who develop physical products. Exhibitors teach practical sessions on design, GD&T, manufacturing, automation, testing, simulation, inspection, and more. From August 3rd through August 7th, attendee tickets are 50% off. After August 7th, prices return to normal. Mark your calendar for august 3 to get your discounted ticket. See you at PDX.
Sam Thomason:And most most good Japanese machine builders, like I know Shibaura, who I work for right now, they do the same thing. The amazing thing is, a lot of these companies in Japan, even if they intend to send you into a non-related field, like you know. I knew guys that ended up in marketing that they probably wouldn't have spent a year, but they had them in on the floor for at least six months because they wanted them to have a real, you know, nuts and bolts sort of understanding of what they were working with, you know, at a very deep level. I was fantastic,
Aaron Moncur:yeah. And I love the fact that a speck of dust caused that many problems because it just speaks to the level of precision that is inherent in these machines.
Sam Thomason:It's it's amazing how, and that that'll maybe tie in later when we start talking about nano machining, which is even another level on top of that. How the the world of of microns is mind blowing enough, you know, where a speck of dust can throw you off, and then you get into nano machining and just let's
Aaron Moncur:dive into that. Yeah, let's get into it. So, nano machining. I don't know anything about nano machining. I'm really excited to learn about that from you. There are a couple of other terms that I have written down here: diamond turning and hard milling. That I'm also not familiar with. Diamond turning. I can kind of guess maybe what that is, but hard milling-I'm not really sure what that means. If you could talk a little bit about those terms and and what they mean in the world of precision manufacturing,
Sam Thomason:absolutely. So these are-you know-I'm I'm fairly new to this as well. I started this position in January, but I'm oh, I absolutely love it. You know, having having been sort of a machinery nerd before, this is like the creme de la creme of precision. So diamond turning, maybe I'll start out with that, and probably also good to mention asperit grinding because they both kind of go together. They're generally machining methods used for creating optical surfaces. So, and when I say optical surfaces, I'm generally relate referring to like lenses, so camera lenses, you know, and like your DSLR or maybe the molds to make those lenses. So, for example, we make the ULC and ULG line of diamond turning and aspheric grinding machines. The reason they call it diamond turning is typically, well, very simply, you have a monocrystalline diamond tool that you use to machine typically like a like a nickel plating plated surface or another usually nonferric metal if it's if it's a diamond tool, although you can actually machine ferric materials if you're using ultrasound-based tooling, but usually you
Aaron Moncur:said diamond ferric materials.
Sam Thomason:So things with iron in them, so steel, iron, anything that's related to iron typically doesn't go too well with diamond tools. So because there is carbon in steel, or, or you know, even even you know, low low carbon steels, and obviously diamond is effectively a you know compressed carbon, you get issues machining wise when you try to machine one with the other. So, a lot of the time, when you look at diamond turning, you're looking at materials that are non-ferrous. One of the most common ones we would see on our side would be like nickel-plated materials. So we'll take like a stainless steel, we'll cover it like a nickel plating, and then we will use a very special lathe, so a diamond turning lathe to turn the the shape that you want for the lens mold, and where diamond turning, I suppose there are probably elements of it out in the world that are less precise, but at least what we do at Shiba Ora, and this is this is the mind blowing part. So I was. Build up to this, but I think I'll just jump jump straight into the the the crazy side of it. So our ULG machine, we were talking about five micron before with with my background in Takamas. So the ULG, it's programmed in 100 picometer increments. So I
Aaron Moncur:can't even conceptualize what that what that means.
Sam Thomason:It's funny. My first week on the job, they're telling me about this, and I'm like, "Wait, am I? Because my colleagues are Japanese, and so you know, we we mainly converse in Japanese, and and that works out well most of the time. But I remember stopping and thinking,"Wait, am I translating this wrong in my head? Am I off by like a zero or two? And then I got them to write it down on paper, and I'm like, "You serious? You you can actually program a machine to move at this level because a picometer to put it because I I had to look it up afterwards. Like you know I'd never gone anywhere close to that. So to put it in reference, and I apologize to our imperial folks out there. I'm going to be talking in metric, but effectively, a micron is if you take a millimeter, because we can probably all imagine, you know, millimeter. We we put our thumbs together, and it's you know, hold your your thumbs about as as close together as you can without touching them, and you're roughly at a millimeter there. You divide that in 1000 pieces, and you've got a micron. Now, if we take that micron, we divide it in another 1000 pieces. We've got a nanometer. For reference, like a strand of DNA is about one nanometer. Most bacteria are about one to five microns in diameter. So once you go down to that, you know, single micron level, we're talking about like literally the microbial, like bacteria level size of stuff. So microns are not to be snuffed at at all. You know, we're talking very very small. So when we get into nanometers, you know, one nanometer is about the size of a you know strand of DNA. Our our UVM mill, which is a milling machine, actually moves in 10 nanometer increments, which is still like you know levels of magnitude above anything I'd ever you know laid my eyes on before. And then our diamond turning and ULG machine, 100 picometers. So basically, a picometer is 1/1000 of a nanometer. So I guess you know, 100 picometers is 0.1 nanometers. So it's a fraction, you know, a 10th of a nanometer. And for reference, because I was like, how do I reference picometers? Like, it doesn't even make sense. And down to an atom or something. So actually, that's that's exactly where I went. I I asked ChatGPT. I was like, hey, so 100 picometers. How many elements on the periodic table have like an atomic diameter of less than that, and it said there were about five. So, for reference, like I was thinking, okay, with diamond, perhaps we're not machining iron, but when I think of machining, I think of metal. So I just asked, okay, what is what is the diametric size of an iron, like an Fe atom? And it said it was about 250 or so picometers, so we're literally
Aaron Moncur:capable of moving atoms off,
Sam Thomason:basically. So obviously, that's the level of precision that we can move things in. The tooling is obviously going to be bigger than that, and when you introduce things like you know compounding error from you know tool holders or you know, work holding and all that. You're not actually, you know, as as any machinist would know. Just because a machine is capable of indexing in a particular, you know, level of precision doesn't mean you're going to be able to machine to that level. But probably the best example I can give is if you've got one of these in your pocket, an iPhone. We made the lens molds for your iPhone camera on that machine, and the molds have a form accuracy of 30 nanometers on those. So there are a few things out there that are more more precise than that. Like the only thing I can think of as like, like ASML lithography, where you you know, currently I think Nvidia and others are making you know two nanometer with you know chips and and things like that. So they're using light in that case. We're doing things you know managing to actually create surfaces to within 30 nanometers mechanically,
Aaron Moncur:yeah, yeah.
Sam Thomason:Which that's why I love this job. I remember, you know, just first couple of weeks, I just had this like, you know, I thought my jaw was going to dislocate because, you know, I was learning more and more about this world that. Had existed around me. I mean, we all have you know a mobile phone in our pocket. We all live amongst technologies that really rely on this sort of thing, especially when it comes to optics. You know, our cars all have cameras in them. You know, our phones have cameras. You know, all of this stuff is is very critical in the world we live In nowadays, but I had no idea that that that level of machining was possible until I started this job in January. So,
Aaron Moncur:tell me tell me a little bit about the control system in these machines. I mean, it it can't just be any off the shelf motor and PLC code to run this thing-it's got to be a pretty unique control system, right?
Sam Thomason:That's that's a very good question. That's I can tell you-you have an engineering background because that was one of the first questions I asked. Like, how is this possible? Like, you know, how how do you do this? What I think the first question I asked was like, "What sort of ball screws are you using? And my boss, because I guess he's he's you know being in this this world for about 30 years, he looked at me almost with disgust. He's like ball screws, ball screws. You know what sort of a peasant thing is that you know we're not
Aaron Moncur:animals here. And then
Sam Thomason:I I came to learn about how you know the control mechanism. So we don't use ball screws; we use linear motors, and I guess Shiboura has been developing this technology over decades. So I'm part of a team called the Nano Processing Division, and we specialize in generally, you know, these super precise machines-not just lathes and machining centers, but also like glass molding presses, so you know we'll we'll make the the molds your glass lenses on one of those you know diamond turning machines or spirit grinding machines, and then those molds will go into glass mold press or you know injection molding machine if it's plastic. We sell all that stuff as well, as well as specialty machines for making polygon mirrors that you use in lidar slices that are used for like fiber guides for well very very useful in data centers now that they want to move you know those fiber optical signals closer to the chips so semiconductor stuff as well. Our team was actually basically started up in 1978 in Japan to support Toshiba's semiconductor business because Shiba Ura is basically the Shiba part of the Toshiba name. So we all know Toshiba. Okay. Yeah. And we're the Shiba in Toshiba, Basically, so the machine arm, I guess you could say, and the nano processing team kind of came about when Toshiba's semiconductor business was starting to grow, and there were all these machines that you know the eggheads, you know, designing the semiconductors wanted that just did not exist in the world, and so they started our team to basically create a whole bunch of technology to support the semiconductor industry. Initially, now we're you know much broader. We support you know everything from headlamp molds and automotive to you know aerospace parts, you know rocket nozzles and and other sort of parts that require high precision, but initially created to support the semiconductor industry for Toshiba. That's kind of how I suppose we ended up in this space.
Aaron Moncur:Pipeline now offers procurement of custom machined parts at significantly lower costs without sacrificing speed or quality. We design and build custom machines ourselves, so we consume a lot of precision machined components. Over the past several years, we developed a proven overseas supply chain to support that work, and in 2025 we successfully piloted that capability with select customers. Now we're opening it up more broadly. If you'd like to see how our prices and lead times compare, send us a drawing or two for quote. Visit teampipeline.us or message me directly on LinkedIn. So, what what industries or or applications are most common for nano machining? We talked about optics, right? Lenses primarily, semiconductor. You just mentioned. Are there are there any other very common applications where this technology is used,
Sam Thomason:so I think the one I mentioned briefly before, like headlamp molds. So our UVM machining center is very popular, especially in Asia, for creating headlamp molds. The reason being that headlamp molds, even though they're you know not quite as. Maybe sexy as a camera mold, still require a very very well finished surface for the mold. Any imperfection in that molded surface is going to end up, you know, on the plastic part that is molded, and you're going to end up with headlamps that aren't quite as shiny, or you know, don't don't throw the light as well. And so, where we get a lot of our business there is the fact that a lot of, I mean, there are obviously lots of other ways to to machine these with more conventional machining centers, but they usually require a lot of polishing. So after everything gets machined out, you know, some poor bugger with a rag, or you know, Scotch Brite basically has to go to town, you know, rubbing, you know, this this mold until it's you know has a a perfect mirror finish, and in some cases, like we we recently did a job for very very large automotive company, second tier supplier, where they were using a pretty high-end machining center, but it was a standard ball-bearing sort of linear, you know, ball screw style machine, and they had to spend eight hours per mold just manually polishing, and we managed to get that down to about 40 minutes. So in that particular case, we didn't eliminate it completely, but you know we got bit of over seven hours of of manual work.
Aaron Moncur:That's huge. Yeah,
Sam Thomason:it's it's interesting because that's actually where I think a lot of the business is for us now. Like it's very rare that you actually have a customer that says you know on their drawing we need something that you know requires like a positional tolerance of, you know, half a micron or you know something like that. It exists, but it's it's very rare, very few and far between. One of the biggest advantages we get by having extreme control over our tools is we can machine a part with such a good finish that you end up with a mirror finish. You don't have to do any you know post production work or very little, and it kind of rolls into. You mentioned earlier one of the things that I'm passionate about is relieving or reducing you know dull, dirty, and dangerous work. And manual polish is just an insanely tedious job. Not only tedious, and you know, results in all sorts of RSI, you know, carpal tunnel injuries and things like that. But it's very hard to find because it's funny. You think of polishing, you think that's a low skill job to do it properly and consistently, where you're not over polishing here and there, especially if you're trying to hold very very tight tolerances, very hard to polish it without actually over polishing and ruining what you're making. And so it's a very highly skilled position, but very tedious at the same time. And those two things together mean very very hard to find people that actually want to do the job?
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, I can imagine like sitting there trying to polish something for for eight hours every day. That would be a really, I mean, physically demanding job, right? Oh yeah, having to apply some amount of pressure the whole time, evenly, consistently across whatever this surface is. I think that would actually be a really difficult job.
Sam Thomason:Oh, definitely, and sometimes dangerous too. You know, depending on what you're polishing, you're obviously creating small particles. You're probably breathing them in. If you're doing it once or twice, it might not be a big deal. But if that's your day job, it's probably not great for your lungs either, depending on what you happen to be polishing. So, it's one of those jobs where I think you know everybody I think is is better off if we can automate you know the the lion's share of that away yeah you know humans are better off doing more human tasks right I think you know not to diminish the importance but yeah
Aaron Moncur:of course yeah if I were to walk onto a factory floor with some of these, you know, ultra precision machines, would would I recognize them? Like, would I walk up and say,"Yeah, this is a lathe. This is a CNC machining center. Or does the form factor of these ultra precision machines are they very different from more traditional machines.
Sam Thomason:So at least our machines, they look very similar to you know many machines, especially for example our UVM mill, the one that we use you know for making those headlamp molds and things like that. Just looks like a vertical mill. Okay. That's why I remember when I first you know before I started the job, you know I looked on the website and I was like, "Oh, it's just a vertical mill, boring. You know,
Aaron Moncur:sounds like a marketing opportunity there.
Sam Thomason:Well, I'm actually still trying to figure that one out because it's a machine that doesn't really pop out at you, you know, visually. Yeah. Like prior to this, I also did a lot of work with robotics, and when you have robots at a trade. You know they're jumping around all over the. You know you've got movement, and you know movement catches the eye. You know as humans, we're kind of just designed to pick up on on movement, and our machines, you know, by their very nature, they don't move a whole lot. You know they're very very small movements by definition, typically, and so at a glance, nothing sexy is really going on. But if you know what's going on under the hood, it's quite incredible because you know we're using linear motors, as you said, very special ones that we make in house that we've developed technology for. You know, particularly through the semiconductor industry for a long time, as well as you have a spindle. You know that's the other important part of the the. You know if we talk about a mill, you have a spindle, you have slides. That all looks very similar at a glance, but the spindle. This is one that blew me away when I started the job too. We use aerostatic spindles, so there's no ball bearings in the spindle. So the spindle shaft, you know, the bit that actually does the spinning part of the spindle, levitates in air.
Aaron Moncur:So this is black magic.
Sam Thomason:A kind of yeah. It's funny. Now you don't. The crazy thing is you don't even notice it because it's it's basically aerostatically held. If you can imagine the inside of the spindle unit has pores, tiny little pores, almost like your your skin that has air blasted, you know, in equilibrium to hold that spindle shaft perfectly, you know, in the center. It sounds like an up air bearing. That's exactly what it is. It's an air bearing.
Aaron Moncur:Okay. Okay.
Sam Thomason:It's an aerostatic spindle, so it's an air bearing based spindle. has like a 10 micron film of air that sort of encompasses the tool, and then we use induction magnets to rotate it. So there's no physical contact apart from the actual workpiece that's being machined. Okay. Same goes with our diamond turning machines. They use aerostatic spindles as well, and for example, with the mill, we get a run out on that spindle of less than 10 nanometers.
Aaron Moncur:Cool.
Sam Thomason:And you end up with a profile. Yeah, that is so
Aaron Moncur:cool.
Sam Thomason:When it runs, you can't see it. Like when I first, my first week on the job, I went to have a look at the machine, and we had our applications guy Casey out by the machine. I was like, Casey, okay, can you rev the spindle up for me? You know, I want to see this thing. You said it goes up to 60,000. Let's see it. And he's like, Oh, Sam, it's already on. I'm like, What? Because I I'd never encountered a machine that went up to 60,000 RPM before, but I imagine it would be like rip roaring loud. And when I got there, it was already at 40. You know, he had it idling at 40,000, and I'm kind of like, "Can you turn it on? He's like, "It's already running at 40, and I look closely, and the funny thing is, you know, I could see a tool, and then I looked closely, and I realized that I couldn't make out any flutes. Usually, if you've got an end mill or a drill, you can sort of see the individual flutes. I realized that it was just like a cylinder, wasn't even really a blur because it was rotating so, you know, perfectly that your eye doesn't even really pick up on the fact that it's rotating. Kind of dangerous, and it also makes almost no noise when when he jacks it up to 60. You could kind of hear the air purge, you know, that that holds it does you know go up, and you can hear a hiss of air. But because there's no physical contact, it's almost silent, and just blew me away. It it it really did. It's interesting. When I started this job, prior to that, I'd been working in sort of AI robotics for a little while, and I was kind of concerned that oh, you know, is is regular machining really going to sort of you know scratch the itch, the nerd itch, and it it just it floored me. You know, in the first week, that you know we have spindles without bearings, we have slides without ball screws. You know, we're moving in 10 nanometer increments on the mill, and then you know point one nanometer increments on the the lathe, and I guess my next challenge was yeah, how do you actually use this in the real world? Which was your question earlier? Optics, lenses, things like that are probably the the main one that comes to mind. But with machining, there are a lot of molds out there. So just about you know a lot of the plastic stuff, you know plastic stuff, metal stuff. A lot of it originates in a mold of some sort if it's being as produced, and the molding process. Well, you know you generally have to use very very hard metal of some sort, you know. Sort of hardened tool steel, or in some cases carbide, like tungsten carbide, which is you know much harder still. And you don't only have the precision aspect to contend with; you also have the fact that it's really hard to machine those sorts of things. And where this machine and and the tolerances really come into play. Like if we use carbide as an example, if you want to make, let's say, you want to make bevel gears, or you want to make powdered metal, you know, mass produce, you know, planetary gears, things like that, you generally are going to need a carbide mold or dye for that. And carbide, well, is already you know a very expensive material, gone up in price quite a lot this year. But usually, it's so damn hard that, and this is where hard milling comes into play. People usually just assume you don't mill this. You know, you don't turn it. It's like cutting with an eraser. We have to use EDM, electronic discharge machining, for that. And nothing wrong with EDM, but EDM is a very laborious and time-consuming process. Where you literally, if we're talking about syncer EDM, for example, you have to basically machine out a graphite probe of the shape that you want, so you have to you know put that in a mill, put your graphite in a mill, mill it all out, you know in the opposite shape that you want basically, and then you put that in your EDM machine, and then you put the material that you want to machine in there, and it basically just zaps it until you end up with the shape that you want. So you've got multiple processes there, and then after you've zapped it into the shape you want, there's usually this white layer left over that you have to then go and polish off afterwards, and that can sometimes take quite a bit of time to get rid of. And then there's the fact that EDM, by its very nature, you're basically using lightning to machine something. So those little, you know, lightning forks occasionally will go deep into the mold that you're creating and create a microfracture. And sometimes it won't be in a critical location. You'll be fine. The mold will last as long as you expect it to. Other times, your your mold is going to die, you know, much sooner than you would expect if you machine something. Then you don't have those little forks of lightning going through the pot, and you don't end up with that that fracturing, provided you machine it properly. The problem is with something like carbide, where it's like super super hard and brittle. If you take too deep a depth of cut, and when I say too deep, I mean like if you take more than a micron at a time off of that that material as your end mill, you know, a tool is is rotating towards it, you're going to crack it instead of cut it. We have something called the plastic deformation line, where basically anything below that, you know, you're cutting it as as you would imagine, you know, cutting through you know butter or something like that at the microscopic level, and then anything over that, you're basically just fracturing it off, which is you know obviously not good for the material and not good for your tools either, because that that you know everything has an equal and opposite reaction. You're going to damage those tools, and that's why usually people would not mill materials like that. So, by having a machine that you can move in increments of 10 nanometers, we can actually hit that sweet spot. You know that Goldilocks zone for machining things like carbide, and that allows us to hard mill things that you usually wouldn't be able to, and so that's so the term.
Aaron Moncur:Sorry to interrupt. The term hard milling simply refers to machining a very hard material like carbide. Is that accurate? That's right. Okay.
Sam Thomason:Yes, and also because it's it's hard to do. I think that's that's the joke. But yeah, it refers to hardened materials. Okay, great. So carbide, you know, tool steels, things like that.
Aaron Moncur:How about designing for these processes? I mean, I've put together a lot of drawings in my time, and a drawing is second nature at this point, right? I put my dimensions on there, put some tolerances on there. Material call out, maybe a surface finish. Is it basically the same thing to design for like a nano precision machining process, or are there like specific DFM principles that need to be followed when designing for for these things and calling them out on the manufacturing documentation.
Sam Thomason:So I think, in essence, I guess you could say it sort of scales, but there are some big differences. So, for example, and these are probably more on the machinist side than the design side. Like, obviously, design. Should obviously keep in mind the fact that every time you increase those tolerances on that drawing, it's going to add cost because you know if if you don't need those tolerances, then you know maybe the the job shop you job it out to can do it on a Harz instead of a a Yasta something like that. Depending on the tolerances, you know, you don't need as expensive a machine for that task. And the same goes with nano machining. I guess the first question is, do you really need it to be this accurate? And a lot of the time, at least for our machines, that that that answer is usually there are obviously some some applications where positional accuracy or things like that need to be very tight. You know anything optical, for example, and and that's where we win business just on the pure accuracy side. But I think when it comes to hardened materials, you know, and this is where we're not necessarily talking about the dimensional accuracy as much as just the nature of the material itself that you're requesting to be worked with. You need to take a lot of extra things into account. You know, obviously, if a material was hardened, like if let's say you gave me a a part with type tolerance that was in regular carbon steel, I'm likely going to be able to put that on a you know a more standard mill, you know, do a rough cut and then a finished cut with fairly standard tools, and and that's going to be the end of the process. I'm not going to have
to worry about things like:is the tool out of the box? You know, a new tool. Is it actually dimensionally accurate? You know, within you know a micron or two. If you're trying to hold, say, you know, 50 micron or you know, like two or 3000. Those things are less important. If you are trying to hold very tight tolerances, and also you're trying to hold those tolerances, especially in hard material, everything is your enemy. So heat, for example, you know, as things heat up, you know, if things elongate by a few micron or like a 10th or so, yeah, if you're trying to hold a few thou, probably not the end of the world. If you're trying to hold, you know, half a 10th or you know a micron or two, that's your entire tolerance put on. So, I guess you could say that the things that do need to be considered tend to lean more towards I less less from the design. I guess the question is, do you need it? You know, once you've gone beyond that, that and you're like, yes, I do need these tolerances for whatever reason. The question then goes to, okay, well, do I have the right tools? Well, the right you know machine for this, and do I have the right tools for this as well? And do I have the right software to to write the paths and the passes correctly for this? Have I considered things like heat tool wear? As you can imagine, as a tool wears as well, you know, if if it's wearing by a few micron, no big deal if you're holding you know a few thou. You're holding a few tenths. That's you know game over. So, does the tooling look the same as you would see in traditional CNC machining? Is it or is the tooling very very specialized as well? So usually the tools that that we use in our machines, they look similar. They're just smaller. They look a bit like dental tools, the most part. For us, usually a large tool would be, you know, six mil diameter or something like that. You're like a about you know quarter inch would be on the large side. I mean, we we're actually releasing a machine at the end of the year that's that's you know good to about 1212 mil or so, but usually we work in the realm of finishing. So you know we're not doing rough work or you know rough tasks. There are plenty of machines out there for that. We're usually working with smaller tools at very high RPM. The tools themselves, though, they look similar, but they're usually incorporating materials that you usually wouldn't use. So, for example, if we're machining carbide, we need to use a diamond-coated carbide tool, for example, for that. Or in some cases, we might be using Not CVM. I'm just trying her brain fart. Sorry, PCD. Sorry. So PCD tooling, polycrystalline diamond composite tool for that, and those are tools you probably wouldn't use to. And just doing regular sort of machining, or like you know polycrystalline diamond tools as well. I think we're all familiar with diamond, but probably not too many machinists work with you know like single edge you know diamond turning holders and and end mills and things like that. So they don't look crazy, but yeah, you know they they're usually a bit more specialist.
Aaron Moncur:So the I imagine the machining is very expensive because you're using a very expensive machine, and it's not removing much material. Probably not very big parts, also. But is it are are these machines commonly used on like finishing single parts, or is it almost universally they're finishing molds that then end up making you know hundreds of 1000s or or millions of parts?
Sam Thomason:That's a really really valid question. A lot of the time, it is molding and tooling and things that are used to make other things, if you catch my trip, so it'll be maybe a press stamp for a press, you know, that is then used to to you know mass produce things, plastic or glass mold for making lenses. But we do occasionally make individual parts, like one application that comes to mind, like in aerospace, sometimes there are certain types of nozzles for, say, you know, rockets or you know, jets that require extremely hard substances like Inconel to have very very tiny angled holes put into them for you know fuel injection that sort of thing. Same in semiconductor. There's a a part called a showerhead, which is well not a particularly inventive name because it it looks like a shower. It's literally like a a round disc that just has like you know a few 1000 very very small holes drilled in usually some sort of silicone carbonate or like a hard silicon substance, and usually we're talking like you know like point two mil or you know very very very small but you know relatively long drills going through those, so they require a very stable machining process to work, so you don't you know snap the drill instantly, sort of thing.
Aaron Moncur:This is fascinating stuff. I've I've learned a lot here, and I can just imagine when you started this job, just like a kid in a candy store, right? Oh yeah, it's still amazing. Yeah, right. Still, I'm sure. I'm sure. I've I've one more question for you, and then we'll we'll kind of wrap things up here. I'm always curious about about cost. So you go out and you buy, you know, a Bridgeport manual CNC, not CNC, just a milling machine, right? Maybe it's I don't know, 20 grand or something like that, 1020 grand. Maybe it's used. Whatever, you get a a CNC machine. Maybe you're up at you know 100, 150,000, somewhere in that range. What what does it cost for one of these nano CNC machining machines? Like, I imagine they're pretty. They're not affordable.
Sam Thomason:No. Well, I mean,
Aaron Moncur:that's not the right step. Yeah, it always depends on what commercially they justify themselves, of course.
Sam Thomason:If if you're just looking to make some hubcaps, you know, for for your car or something like that, yeah, probably not the best idea. Stick with a bridge port or you know something something like that. But usually we'd be starting around the 450k mark or somewhere thereabouts. Okay. Yeah. It's interesting because obviously it all depends on what the the job you have, you know, is. But if we go back to say the example of polishing, if you're making molds or you know you you require molds, sometimes it's a mold shop, they make molds, or it might be a place that does a lot of molding and they want to actually do molding in house. You could say, Sam, I can buy you know a really good mill for three, 400k for like a really you know high end mill. That's a lot more. But if you consider the fact that they're probably buying a mill and an EDM machine, and they're hiring a guy to polish as well. If we can eliminate those things, or even you know two of those three things, yeah, it actually turns out to be a bargain. Not to mention that one of the things that the machine we recently released does is, as I mentioned before, when you're doing things, especially with things like carbide, you need to hold very tight tolerances. Everything is your enemy. You know, seat is your enemy, tool wear is your enemy. You know, it's all all fighting against you. We actually have a camera built into our machine that gages the tool before it goes into the cut, and so even if you buy a really good tool, it's probably going to be off by you know. Temp or so, and your CAD CAM software is going to assume that it's just this perfect semicircle. You know, if it's like a ball-nosed end mill, in reality, it's kind of this old, you know, raspy-looking thing under a microscope. And so our machine has this this system called Formi, which is another one of those things that just blew my my mind, having done a lot of manual offsets in my life because what it does is it puts the tool in front of this this special camera. It rotates the tool. It takes 91 different pictures of that tool, and it creates a topography of that tool, and then it offsets all of your tool vectors based on the exact topography of your tool down to the 10 nanometer level, so
Aaron Moncur:cool. You know that
Sam Thomason:nose knows compensation I mentioned before. You know that I I had to do. It's like that times 91, except accurate to you know about 10 nanometers. And so no matter which way you attack with, it knows the optimal compensation to give to that tool. And the same goes with toolware, heat. So we're trying to automate that really difficult part, which means that you know a regular average machinist can you know with a bit of training do things that were usually reserved for like a godlike machinist in the past that had to have all of that going in his head, and a lot of that happened to be guesswork anyway. So it it is actually a bargain. I'm sorry, the sales salesman side of me is coming out, but 450k when we actually have those things going on is because it's it's basically it's a it's a mill, it's an EDM, it's a CMM,
Aaron Moncur:yeah, kind of all in one machines and and the time for all those yeah
Sam Thomason:exactly so.
Aaron Moncur:yep. No, I get it.
Sam Thomason:It's it's it's a not not a cheap cheap machine, but when you consider what it's doing, it's it's actually a a bargain. Yeah. If you have the right application, obviously, you know, need to have that application to justify it. Well, Sam, thank
Aaron Moncur:you again so much for for coming on the show here. I think I think I I actually used at least I read from my list one question and and everything else just that's I think that's the sign of a really great interview, right? Because I didn't have to go back and refer to my notes. The the conversation and the information that you were sharing was just so so interesting, so fascinating that the like the questions just kind of automatically came out. So this was great. Thank you so much again for being on the show and sharing all this. I think everyone listening to it is going to be fascinated by just the the the level of precision that you can achieve with these nano machines, spectacular. Thank you again. Thanks So we'll we'll wrap things up here, I guess. But and any like final comments or anything? I'm sure there's plenty more that we could talk talk about. But and anything else that you want to make sure gets into this episode before we we wind this down?
Sam Thomason:Just if anybody out there is interested in giving this a try, you know, especially if you're doing anything with mold dye, or even if you have just a really tricky part that you you're just wondering, like, hey, I wonder if we could do this. Give me a yell, you know. I'm I'm always happy to nerd out over this stuff, and you know, if it looks like it's something worth pursuing, we usually do pre-test cuts, so we're willing to put our money where our mouth is. We don't expect you to believe us at face value. We'll actually, you give us the materials and the drawings. We'll make your part for you and and take it from there. So do the
Aaron Moncur:black magic for proof.
Sam Thomason:We'd love to love to yeah you know nerd out with anybody who wants to reach out over LinkedIn or or email or anything else.
Aaron Moncur:What's what's the best way for people to reach out to you?
Sam Thomason:I'd say like LinkedIn. Just look me up, Sam Thomason on LinkedIn, or free to email me at shomason. That's s S T H O M A S O N at Shiba Aura. That's S H I B A U R A dash machine M A C H I N e.com. And yeah, like I said, happy to just if you have a question, I'm not going to pander you for a machine or anything like that. I'm always happy to just geek out if if you've got some questions or proposal, you know a what if sort of scenario, I love those as well. So awesome! Yeah, give me a yell.
Aaron Moncur:Super interesting, fascinating stuff, Sam. Thank you again so much for sharing with us today.
Sam Thomason:Thank you. Oh, my pleasure. Appreciate it, Aaron.
Aaron Moncur:I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of Pipeline Design and Engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please share the episode. To learn how your team can leverage our team's expertise developing advanced manufacturing processes, automated machines, and custom fixtures, complemented with product design and R&D services, visit us at Team. Pipeline. Us to join a vibrant community of engineers online, visit thewave. Engineer. Thank you for listening. Being an engineer has more than 300 episodes, and you don't have to listen to them in order. If you're dealing with a specific challenge right now, there's a good chance we've already interviewed an engineer who's been through it. You can jump around, search by topic, and listen to what's most relevant to you. See you on the next episode.
