If soft jaws drive you nuts!

Soft jaws always frustrated me, so I've made an application to control them.
If the stuff below rings any bells please have a look at our website. I hope it can be of use to someone else.

Soft jaws can be a pain in the proverbial!
Piles of the things under benches in no particular order. Weird numbers on the side that seem to bear no relation the way they have been cut. No info about where to mount them, what was gripped on to cut them so they can be easily skimmed. No idea what chuck pressure to use.... etc.

Well, you know the story.

We have published a database application that is designed to give you control of soft jaws so that you know what size they have been cut to, what job they are for, what chuck pressure to use and any other info you care to add. It also enables you to find them immediately on the shop floor no matter how many sets you have.

It lets the guys at the sharp end, so to speak, take notes on job setups, tooling etc. Each time you do a repeat job you can add info that you missed last time until you can stop scratching your head trying to work out why the job was done this way or re-discovering what you learned last time. In short it’s designed to reduce waste.

The application can run over a network so the database can be centralised and is visible from the office as well as the machine shop. The details can be printed for complex jobs and be sent out with route cards and prints.

We realise that many shops will have this stuff tied down (maybe). But especially for smaller sub contract machine shops where there is no dedicated backroom staff, we believe it can be a big help towards improving efficiency, maintaining quality and reducing frustration.

We’ve made a video to give you an idea of how it works and if you think it looks interesting there is a 60 day trial you can download at Get a grip on soft jaws! - JAW-CAT

It would be interesting to know what you guys think, even if it’s just to tell me it can’t work in your shop. It may be I’m the only person who has a problem with soft jaws & set-ups.

PS JAW-CAT is short for soft jaw catalogue. The cost is USD100 for a perpetual licence. It runs on Windows desktop and does not require an internet connection other than to download it.
Thanks
Andy Scholey

Your ONLY posts so far, are spamming for your program...

If it smells like pork shoulder and ham... it maybe is..

Monty Python - Spam - YouTube

Most people will hang out here a while, join in the conversations, and contribute what they can BEFORE they advertise. I mean >Mention< their product.
No matter how great the product or great the bargain... You might expect some backlash.

Others do advertise here, but Pay for the advertisements.
Others here are major vendors but you would not guess it from their posts.

I went to the link and immediately scaned down the page
and read the same thing as mentioned above, nothing to intrigue
me keep reading.
I don't have a problem keeping track of my soft jaws.

I sure don't need another computer program to keep track of soft jaws.

JAW-CAT said:

Soft jaws always frustrated me, so I've made an application to control them.

Click to expand...

Awsome! I've lost one jaw to a set I really need, please come over right away with your "application" to help me find it. This problem is really holding me up.

PS Bring a flashlight, it may be under the lathe! Thanks.

3t3d,
Well, you’re right of course.
I did think about creating an account and making some contribution as you said.
But actually I thought it better to be just upfront instead of basically being deceitful.
As far as advertising I just can’t justify it until I can see if there is any interest.
A couple of others have said they have no problem with soft jaws and that’s fine. That’s what I need to know.
Anyway, I never liked the spam sketch. I much preferred the Spanish inquisition!

Look CAT-JAW, We for the most part understand. It's just we get pretty tired of spamming so anyone posting something even remotely looking like spam, especially their first few postings, is going to be fair game. A better approach may have been to ask for comments about a product idea your working on. You could have gotten a bunch of feedback and not have come across as trying to get a product marketing freebe.

I also have a few products I’d like to sell on PM. It’s a tough crowd here but is a great place to do a “trial by fire from”. So you can see I’m just trying to help you. And, yes we understand it's a big dollar layout for the little guy to advertise here and elsewhere. But that is how business works and how the owner of PM makes his money to keep this site up.

We get these great (we think and it may be) ideas for a product but don't really understand all the cost involved in producing and SELLING a product. That's where you sit down with a pen and pencil, spreadsheet, or whatever and learn just what it’s going to cost you to produce and sell that product.

I’ve spent 3 yrs on my products and you know what the biggest holdup has been and still is for me? Sales and advertising. I never realized it would take me the amount of time it has to just LEARN how to sell a product and the cost to do so.

So… good luck to you.

Your program will not help the shop where that vid was taken, at least not as for as I watched it. If you toss your soft jaws over your shoulder into a pile with other jaws like in the pic then you are a slob. Can't fix stupid. How hard is it to at the very least put the set of 3 back into the box they shipped in. The box with the top cut of nested in a drawer next to the other sets in boxes with their tops cut off.
Take your program and make it share ware. Take a leap of faith that some will pay you. More people will try it and after 100 downloads you will know how much your program is worth.

is good to keep a record for the jaws

i engrave them with an id, and on a list i keep track of them

but to buy a software for that ? i looked at it : there is the " link jaws to jobs " option

this link is good, but its place is not inside this jaw register, because there should be a main register :
... part + technical drawing / skecth / phote
... material
... operations + tools + control
...... operations involves fixtures
...... fixtures involves jaws
...... jaws involves hydraulic pressure
...... jaws id involves the link to the jaws

thus the link should not be inside that software

in my opinion you should create a general_setup_register instead of jaw_register, but this involves more work

also, you may keep that application simple, and only share the jaw id and some observations

in reality is only a list on a piece of paper ... on a PC would be 2-3 columns in excel

what i mean is that the application should suit the behaviour that is common, and not force it

however, few keep main registers, thus that aplication may be heaven for them, but still

so is ok, is a start point ... and there is room for more

take that program

make a facelift

change its name, so to focus a general setup, not the jaws

is too much for "only jaws"

14:31 for a tutorial video ? try 2 slides

it gets people bored and is not profesional ... you can not see the highlights of it ...

scadvice said:

Look CAT-JAW, We for the most part understand. It's just we get pretty tired of spamming so anyone posting something even remotely looking like spam, especially their first few postings, is going to be fair game. A better approach may have been to ask for comments about a product idea your working on. You could have gotten a bunch of feedback and not have come across as trying to get a product marketing freebe.

I also have a few products I’d like to sell on PM. It’s a tough crowd here but is a great place to do a “trial by fire from”. So you can see I’m just trying to help you. And, yes we understand it's a big dollar layout for the little guy to advertise here and elsewhere. But that is how business works and how the owner of PM makes his money to keep this site up.

We get these great (we think and it may be) ideas for a product but don't really understand all the cost involved in producing and SELLING a product. That's where you sit down with a pen and pencil, spreadsheet, or whatever and learn just what it’s going to cost you to produce and sell that product.

I’ve spent 3 yrs on my products and you know what the biggest holdup has been and still is for me? Sales and advertising. I never realized it would take me the amount of time it has to just LEARN how to sell a product and the cost to do so.

So… good luck to you.

Click to expand...

Hi scadvice,
Thanks for your post.
I actually hated making this post but having done as you said, looking at the costs of marketing, the numbers don’t even remotely stack up. Advertising isn’t a one shot thing. To make any sort of impression would be just way out of my budget and it could easily be for nothing.
To everyone I apologise for the spam like nature of my post. I came to the conclusion I either do something or forget the whole thing. Maybe people prefer the latter.
But scadvice, what are your products? If you have something useful then you have to tell others. What marketing have you done. I at least would be interested.

deadlykitten said:

take that program

make a facelift

change its name, so to focus a general setup, not the jaws

is too much for "only jaws"

14:31 for a tutorial video ? try 2 slides

it gets people bored and is not profesional ... you can not see the highlights of it ...

Click to expand...

Thanks for taking the time to comment. I appreciate it.
I worried about the focus on soft jaws too. Maybe you're right it's a rubbish name and misses the point.
The video is way too long. I just thought the only way anyone is going to understand the point of this app is to see how it is used. I'm having to do this with basically no budget and I found it really difficult to do, hats off to these you tubers! I figured if there is any interest I can get a professional to do it later.
I tried to keep the application as simple as possible. It's designed to be used by the guys on the shop floor. All the sample data is real (with the job numbers changed) so it is useful to someone, even if it's only me
I'll get back on your program structure comments a bit later if it's ok.
Thanks again.

hy about that focus for jaws :

... in some shops, each operator has it's own jaws inside a cabinet, and knows them pretty well
... sometimes a need for special jaw appears, but this need does not appear on it's own, but toghether with fixtures, etc
...... in this case, once the setup is ready, a box is made with these special jaws, fixtures, custom control calibers, a label on it, and it goes on a shell, available for next time use
... if same team is there, than next time will pick the box
... otherwise, someonelse comes and may redesign the entire setup

Well, at least he didn't dig up a 10 year old thread to tack his spam onto. That seems to be real popular these days.

You know how I organize my soft jaws? I put them in a box.

I'm sure there are some people that would like software to keep their jaws organized, but the vast majority probably wouldn't need/use it.
Not saying this is a bad idea, but I think it's a small market.

deadlykitten said:

is good to keep a record for the jaws

i engrave them with an id, and on a list i keep track of them

but to buy a software for that ? i looked at it : there is the " link jaws to jobs " option

this link is good, but its place is not inside this jaw register, because there should be a main register :
... part + technical drawing / skecth / phote
... material
... operations + tools + control
...... operations involves fixtures
...... fixtures involves jaws
...... jaws involves hydraulic pressure
...... jaws id involves the link to the jaws

thus the link should not be inside that software

in my opinion you should create a general_setup_register instead of jaw_register, but this involves more work

also, you may keep that application simple, and only share the jaw id and some observations

in reality is only a list on a piece of paper ... on a PC would be 2-3 columns in excel

what i mean is that the application should suit the behaviour that is common, and not force it

however, few keep main registers, thus that aplication may be heaven for them, but still

so is ok, is a start point ... and there is room for more

Click to expand...

I’m not sure what you mean by main register etc.
The software is simple, there are just three main tables.
Jaws
Jobs
Link data
The Link data just stores the relationship between the jaws and the jobs. This is where all the notes go, the size internal/external etc. We found it easier to just put that info in the notes
We do actually have a version that includes a toolsheet but to be honest it defeats the object. It’s too complicated to be doing that stuff on the shopfloor. There are dropdowns for tool, category, tip, grade……. We found it easier to just put that info in the notes.
As you said this could be done on a spreadsheet (That’s how this started) but spreadsheets are better for data analysis and calculations than for actually managing data. Also it’s more difficult to display the data. Our spreadsheet solution just became a mess after a while. Maybe we just don’t have the discipline :-/
I did consider adding the facility to add photos which I realise can be very useful but the database was going to end up being enormous so we just store them in the product folder on the computer. Still not sure about that one. Same with prints. Got to try and keep things simple.
I’m sure it could be better though.

Mtndew said:

I'm sure there are some people that would like software to keep their jaws organized, but the vast majority probably wouldn't need/use it.
Not saying this is a bad idea, but I think it's a small market.

Click to expand...

What he said........................very small market.....................

Each job has a bin on the shelf here. When the job is finished, jaws, tooling, fixtures, etc go in the bin. Any important info is on a set up sheet and written at the top of the program.

It’s ok putting them in a box with all the tooling etc, but what do you do with jaws that are used in multiple jobs? Unless you have a way of cross referencing them you’re going to end up making another set of jaws that do the same thing or waste a load of time trying to figure out which ones they are.
We have one machine in particular that has 60 sets of jaws (They are the ones under the bench at the beginning of the video). But these 60 sets are referenced to over 300 different operations. If you use jaw-cat it’s as simple as typing in the job number and it tells you what jaws to use even if that set is used for ten different jobs.
Similarly if you want to machine some jaws for a new job it’s simply a case of checking to see if the jaws are referenced to any jobs already and if not you can re-cut them or if they are, make a decision on whether that job is likely to come back.
You can write the jaws to use at the beginning of the nc program but then the only way to find out where else these jaws are used is to do a text search through all you programs.
Same with setup notes. There are always minor, or major problems. One guy here recently had a problem with thread chatter, I hope he managed to solve it, but all you have to do is add a note to the system about how you fixed it then next time you, or the next guy, knows what to do. This sort information often doesn’t get fed back to the programmer. I’ve worked in a few places where the works instructions amount to nothing more than ‘Machine to drawing’.
I realise the usefulness of this program depends greatly on the product mix, how many soft jaws you need and how the shop is set up. It may well be a small market.
Anyway, all I’m saying is it’s there if anybody wants it. I don’t expect anyone to waste time on something that’s no use to them.

So what does this do that an excel or google spreadsheet doesn't?

I have all our soft jaws on shelves and gridded out. Then the location of the jaws and what parts and ops the jaws are used for in the spreadsheet. On top of this, all jaws are engraved with the part number and op. I have these on a google spreadsheet so anyone can access it at any point in the company, but it's locked out so only two people can make edits to it.

I iwsh you luck on this, but I have a hard time imagining people paying for something that they can do for free.

but I have a hard time imagining people paying for something that they can do for free

Click to expand...

this may be the future