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

if you think your in control... your going to slow....

Over the last weeks my life has been shifting in to 5 gear... or maybe I was already in 5th gear and now for some reason I am just noticing it?

Between bouncing off the walls working on projects for Google X, Oakley, Make magazine, getting ready to go to Italy for Red Bull and one of the main things happening to me -  MOVING TO A NEW SHOP IN BERKELEY !!!!

I will have more info about all this madness when I take a breath of air in less then a month.... I mean as an example of my life lately - its like 4 am right now and I am waiting for the CNC to finish cutting so I can take a quick nap while it runs the next parts, this is becoming more normal the more I do prototyping work, I feel like I haven't slept in years because theres too much stuff to do.

Peace and quite at 4am... well maybe... the streets of Oakland always have some odd activity going on 24/7, you hear some noises that kinda resemble a animal but it is clearly a human making those noises, I think you can figure out the rest.


One of the cool projects I forgot about that I did last month because I kicked it out so fast was these trophies for Red Bull Ride N' Style a bicycle race event they were putting on in San Francisco, the call came in to make something quick, cheap and cool looking so I fired up the computer and put my brain in to Sheet metal mode, by the time I finished that call I had a concept modeled up and emailed to Clayton at Red Bull.

Some times I get in to Autodesk Inventor and go crazy with the sheet metal...

Don't ask how my brain lays stuff out or anything like that....

I had Ryan over at SeaportStainless.com cut it up about an hour later after I had modeled it and it was on to bending up this puzzle

 

I love sheet metal, did I say that?

That next day... 

I decided to cut up one of the Velocity prototype rims Matt had sent me long time ago because really it was my only 700c rim laying around... I may regret that later 

 

First place with some San Francisco Action happening in the back and a mini chain in the front

Custom bent sheet metal Hub!

My mad skills with the 24k gold spray pain has hit an all time High - insert joke here

Check out that cross profile for the tech nerds !

 

 

CAM Mania... The 10 hour rush job....

When the phone rings most of the time for rush work there is normally a time line to get the work done like 2+ days or so... Like normal it was Anthony from HSMworks on the phone with the request to design and build a quick trophy to give away at the event the next day for the launch party of Autodesk Inventor HSM 3D ( the intergrated CAD/CAM for designing and then machining parts in the same program).... I just laughed and said " you got to be serious Anthony, you can't call me the day before, your crazy!"

So like normal I said let me give it a shot and lets see what I can kick out by tomorrow....

I really owe HSMworks, Autodesk and NextGen and all the kids tied in a bunch of favors, really when I look back, meeting this crew has truly changed the shape of my business, skills and built a good amount of my reputation in the concept world because of the ability to kick out crazy 3D machined masterpieces in hours not days or weeks, I can't even imagine what I would be doing, who I would know, and where I would be had I not run in to Anthony while filming a TV show in LA, oh yea, plus I stilled owed Anthony like 50 bucks from Autodesk University in Las Vegas when I ran out of money and needed to eat, so I kinda owed him some favors....

With the clock ticking and less then 20 hours to complete.... I started to round up materials at the same time as my brain was trying to process what I was actually going to build.

Here goes nothing....

This was laying on the floor in my shop...

3x6x12 block of aluminum

I did a quick model of the idea in Inventor and did all the tool paths for it

Roughing with a 3ft 3/4 endmill

Making "Roaster Tail chips"

Time for the 1/2 3ft ball endmill and a lot of surfacing

When making a trophy for a contest that involves toolpaths and the idea of machining you know "EVERYONE IS LOOKING AT THE MACHINING"

The flip to side 2... I tried to only have to use 2 tools

My design really could have been done with a 1/2 endmill but I figured to rough it with the 3/4 to save a ton of time.

I used a 4-5-6 block as my stop for side 2

Almost done then on to the other parts.

I like to do all the 3D contouring then make one final pass around the part with a trace to make sure all the faces look perfect.

Because I had no time to make anything special or time to send anything to anodizing and with the event less then 8 hours away, I searched my shop for anything that was black anodized. The only thing I found was... A test piece for Red Bull Rampage trophies, another HSMworks project a few months back around August.  

Before I cut out the circle on the backside I engraved the Autodesk logo, I knew that I could keep moving all over the part until I got the logo just right. Once I got the logo just right, I cut it out roughly on the K&T horz. mill and then turned it perfectly round on the lathe.

As you can see the sun is coming up and the event was at 2pm so my time was ticking.

I put the logo in with a .001 press fit and did some locking nicks with a small chisel to really lock it in without any visible hardware or glue.  I also put on the little feet that I had laying around from an only Exploratorium project.

 

I needed some blue Acrylic, then I looked up on the wall and seen a left over piece from the Americas Cup Red Bull's Youth Cup trophy I had used HSMworks on as well about 8 months ago.

Ghetto machinist style I put a 2x4 wood board in the vise on the CNC and made a quick 3D sketch of the cut out it needed to fit, screwed down the oddly shaped piece to the board and cut it out. Quick and dirty

This photo is at about 10:30am... Completely smoked... but it was done..

Truly the software and my drive are the only reasons this thing can get done in that amount of time.

Its a advanced piece of machining you can throw a calipers on and measure if you don't believe me, with a turnaround of less then 15 hours from start to finish...

 

I arrived at the contest...

3 people that had held the fastest time at Autodesk University in Vegas for doing Cam Mania, a timed contest to see who could cnc program on HSM the fastest. All 3 of these guys happened not to be machinist or even have any background in machining, they all were Autodesk users in someway but not really on the manufacturing side of things. Think that made the story way better!

 

Then I jumped in on the photo and photo bombed it...

Because I don't care....

 

Enjoy