My life is in 5th gear.... WFO... hold on....

 I don't even really know what to say and how thankful for the great people in my life that are making sure everything is happening and lending a hand!  I have been having the time of my life building for the greater good and enjoying everyday of life to the fullest.

I want to share the last months in photos because I could talk all day about whats happening in my life but we will save that for another day.. so here it goes.

Welcome to the new home of Monkey Likes Shiny

I teamed up with Carl Bass the CEO of Autodesk to build and share one of the most badass concept development shops on the west coast!

I can't believe I get to share a shop with such a rad dude, plus hes a very skilled craftsman and a great business man that runs Autodesk the amazing company that's changing the future of builders alike by stepping deeply in to the manufacturing side of things with powerful computer software.

First it took a lot of cleaning....

10,000 square feet of craziness in the heart of the Bay area.

Alexis, Gabe, Betz, Johnathan and I wire wheeling the walls clean to ready for paint!

 

The move started and behind the wheel leading the show was none other then 20 year old Gabe.

Hes been with me 4 years and hes taking over!

He drives the forklift and I strap up the machines, we work well together moving.

While all the madness of moving was happening I kept on building and moving. It was a race to finish jobs on machines so they could be loaded.

I was doing some second operations milling work on an aerospace flight part using the Autodesk Fusion 360. I have been able to work with the Autodesk development crew since the start of the machining program and I have been stoked to see my improvement get added all the time.

Christian even made a swing thru to help finish up concept projects for a software company.

He helped putting the finishing touches on prototype wiring before they had to be shipped.

As soon as that order went out we broke this room down and hauled it out.  

Without my crew of friends I don't know where I would be.

Jesse, Matt, Alexis, Liam, Austin, Gabe, Steve, Carl, Betz, Al, Anthony  and the many more...

My dog Mr. Poe isn't so stoked on the madness....

 

As machines started to arrive the pressure started to turn up to make sure the layout I planned was perfect.

This is a little 1991 Mori Seki SL-0h CNC lathe, the smallest Mori lathe ever made. It can run 24 hours a day and make near perfect parts, I got it for the Gabe and Austin to learn CNC on.

Louise is not only my best friend but an amazing painter that turned a concept we had in to an amazing colorful wall all freehand in 1 day, you will see below why she is so amazing.

 

Everyday we hauled more over..

 

Fuck it... why wouldn't I do a burnout in front of my old shop...

its like a dog marking its territory

Louise Chen also painted my wall in my old shop with the Bees if you remember from older post.

I called her and told her... I want Airplanes and Flower!!!

I said lets make it a Boeing 787 and I want it amazing...

With that she made magic

MLS02 was born....

As soon as some of the machines were put in the new building we did temp power to them and started making parts to keep the customers happy. Gabe running parts for Boosted Skateboards.

 

To all the pretty ladies out there... Hes Single and can be booked for dates! Call him!

17 year old Austin has joined the MLS team a few months ago.

If he isn't at High School learning, at the science museum, at MythBusters TV show then you will find him at my shop building madness with all of us. Hes got a bright future ahead as a very skilled prototype machinist as long as he cuts that rats nest off his head.

I flew out to Chicago and Detroit to see some amazing history being made.

The first 3d Printed drivable car happened before my eyes in this Cincinnati machine behind me.

So amazing... So much for clay... the future is NOW!!

You will see more action from Cincinnati at our shop in the next months as our big sheet metal press brake shows up.

 

I was so stoked to get to drink beers with the crew from Deckel DMG and Porsche beside the 919 that raced at Le Mans. Such an amazing piece of engineering.

I was shocked to load up the new Autodesk Fusion 360 and to my surprise was the leg that Bill and I designed for Catherin who was injured in war is the load screen putting MLS on the map for madness. Some amazing hydraulic mastermining inside that little ankle... damping, rebound and travel adjustments all with the turn of knobs !!! 

 

A pallet showed up - Surprise !!!

Wilton Tools - makers of the USA built Bullet Vise and other great tools like C clamps and F clamps for welding, decided I needed some fresh tools to make the madness happen. So stoked to be working with them and the R&D team to make more amazing products in the future.

 

Photo shootin with the High Speed track bike.

This bike has been a project between my brother and I for a while now, every time I start working on it I get the idea to make it crazier and crazier. I got the front steering all machined out of titanium you will see in my older blog post.  

 

Then the beast showed up from Omax Waterjet up in Kent,WA !!

Lawson rigging making the move happen safely.

 

The 6 axis Omax is in !

The crew from Omax is as excited about the madness as I am.

This bad boy can cut almost 10 inches thick aluminum using 50,000psi of water pressure and sand.

Now we just gotta wait for it got get set up.

Fresh in from Baileigh tools is a tube roller and bender to make some tubing madness!

I am hooked on Easy Cheese again...

I love it as much as Mt. Dew....

 

When Red Bull heard that we were working hard... they made sure we were well refreshed with cold drinks.

 

Gabe working on parts for the Childrens Hospital and Austin working on parts for the Exploratorium Science center in San Francisco. A good shot of the Boeing 787 on the wall that Louise painted.

While all this madness was happening I had to go to Italy to work on stuff for Red Bull.

Because they treaded me like gold while I was there I freestyle built them a chair using all the left over steel from building the BMX starting gate pictured below.

I could get use to this Italy thing.... Coffee and Pizza everyday...

 

Having Greg Minnaar for a next door neighbor is complete comedy...

Gabe and Greg trying to weld together...

Gabe running the torch and Greg feeding in filler to the weld.

Keys to the city...

The two place I love in San Francisco with some of the most amazing people and amazing tools and skills.

Every few weeks I mentor groups of High School kids around to local machine shops to show them where their parts come from and how the journey of simple things can be complex.

Here they are learning about Dremel tools that are produced then shipped all around the USA.

So amazing the people that open their shops to the next generations, I want to help in any way I can and I don't mind being the messenger.

Testing some of the Autodesk's Fusion 360 stuff for machining.

I am virtually Machining the small black plastic part to see if its going to cut the part correctly.

I have been traveling non stop...

Europe a few times this year...

Detroit..

Chicago...

The list keeps going

I haven't even had much time to enjoy time with my lady and my little Scout truck.

We had to take it out for a cruz a while back.

Thanks everyone for allowing me to eat donuts everyday, make amazing projects and meet rad people... I hope it continues and everyone can be inspired to build madness themselves.

 

Enjoy

JT

Trying is dying

Well.... I made it another year older and if you don't know I am 72 years old.... or maybe its 27.... either way I feel old in the bones...

Thanks for the birthday wishes...

I was standing around and I said to Gabe, lets build something really really rad that no one seems to think is a good idea or safe, something we can build in a day or two and take to Salton Sea to have fun with for my birthday and with all the friends from LA.

We thought about if for a few and we came up with a crazy idea to build a new flame thrower but making it powered by people to keep it more of a team builder and involvement...

Well, How would we tackle such a thing....

The more I stood there thinking the more I realized why not go backwards and build something that's suppose to put out the fire.... Like a fire pumper truck.... to shoot flames... now were talking....

But its just toooo easy just hooking up a motor to it and sitting back and shooting flames, one person can do that, and the idea was a team builder so the more I thought...

Got it!

Build something like a 1800s Fire pumper

With the fuel taking the place of the water

Some different examples of styles

It would take a full crew to make it happen back in the day, pretty neat to think of this beast throwing flames....

 

So we started with a new style of the hand pumper just freestyling...

I can't just build what has been built... that's no fun...

 

We decided what would be cooler then making it kinda like a engine and making the people the pistons and have it hand cranked as opposed to hand pumping vertically...

Heres what we tried...

First we did some sketches of what madness was in the brain...

Using some stuff laying around we made a fixture and started making a hand crank.

We used some laser drops from Seaport Stainless  = Free

 

Gabe is welding up some of the Brown and Sharp Cams we got from Edward Koehn Swiss Machining , these would be links to the tube we had left over from the Oakley Project = Both Free

Action shot for the ladies

We had these vertical steel tubes from a old Red Bull prototype ramp we built that never worked..

Free !!!!

Gabe did a sweet job cutting these holes in line...

Did you know hes in school to become a machinist now?

And is now CERTIFIED as a level 1 Machinist

I think I am a level 2 so I will watch the level 1 and ask questions....

Tacked up some sweet bearings and holders we got from

Performance Machine that get put in their motorcycle wheels, these were some leftovers from R&D

Ok... Well I didn't take many photos that afternoon because my camera went dead so heres where it went to next... A swiveling gunner seat and the Hawl Pump mounted..

Hes been waiting all year for photos like these so he can put them on facebook

He should have been a gunner in the Army...

That chair was in the trash.... so we welded it to a giant lazy Suzan bearing left over from a bar stool..

Both free 

Having a good stop for the swiveling seat I used the axle sticking out.  

Heres a side view...

 

Ok so that night I made some stuff on the gunner seat...

I was on one of the possessed fabrication nights where all I wanted to do is build... Wait... that's every night...  

 

That's some old garage door bearing rollers I cut apart and just welded the bearings on to make the gun have movement in 360 degs.

That pressure washer gun I found in the recycling at the Exploratorium because it had cracks in it...

FREE!!!

This is a shot of the wood chain guard which was a backup for a exhibit at the Exploratorium called Echo-Tube and the pump was found during the move out of the old museum, Dave Fleming and I found some really good stuff while packing up.

Close up of the brown and sharp gears that I got from the Koehn Machine shop and the big monster #50 sprocket was from when I did R&D work for Clorox, it got the wrong bore in it...

FREEEEEEEEE!!!!

Close up of that sweet pain job and pump....

Sweet 1" aluminum pipe over 1" steel tubing...

Perfect for a handle grip.

 

As you will see that's some left overs from Greg Minnaar's Bike Shop racks...

The propane tanks are held by a sample of an aluminum sail boat mass

You can see the sweet bearings in the gunner swivel at the top left of the photo.

both ----   FREEEEEEE

The seat was mounted on this giant Stainless Steel Gate Valve I found in the recycling at the Exploratorium.

I cut the back and shaped it so it didn't hang over - custom & FREEEEEE

Those are engine puller ( cherry picker ) legs at the bottom with wheels, Some one stole my cherry picker from my shop ( classic Oakland style ) but they forgot the legs.. so that week we decided it wasn't going to return so we welded the leg on the bottom, That engine puller was free so I can't complain... Making those Legs FREE too

Overall shes a sweet piece of scrap metal all welded together...

I can't say it was the best idea....

Gabe even painted his truck to get ready for the flame thrower... !

 

Then... I got a hernia and my intestines dropped in to my ball sack...

Fuck that.... I had to go get surgery for my birthday...

So much for going to desert...

and the dream of blowing minds shooting flames...

The healing process in California is styling... My titanium hand made pipe got used for a few days...

 

Well... I am resting these days but it was a bummer we didn't get to go to the desert and test.... Maybe soon...

Check out these videos to get a good idea of what we built.. 

 

This video shows us running the pump at full speed, its bypassing pressure and is not easy to pump...




We didn't have any water left in the tank for testing...

Enjoy - and don't get burned.... Until next time....