This Threading Program Is Absolutely Insane

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]Today you are going to get a behind-the-scenes look at all of the weird and wonderful jobs that drillers bring in for us to fix. Good day guys.

[00:00:07]Matt from Howal Heavy Duty. We're an Aussie machine shop that specializes in the drilling industry. And in this video, I'm just going to show you all the kinds of jobs that are going on in here on a random Friday that's pretty well pandemonium. We are busting it in here trying to get everything done in time for next week's Australian Manufacturing Week. So, I don't have one specific job that I'm focusing on for you. It's just all of the things in the different lathes so you can see just what goes on in here. I'm going to show you what I think is the coolest threading program I have ever seen for these gigantic tool joints. We had a lot of problems with chatter and a macro has been written for it. It is This is my ideal day is just when everything's humming, there's jobs coming in and out and it's a whole truckload of fun. If you stay tuned to the end, I'm going to share with you for for those of you that have been with the channel, you might be new, some of the most exciting news that we've ever been able to share on this channel. You are not going to believe it. Anyway, let's get cracking. You'll see Willie is actually recreating a water swivel inner tube here. So, we took the old one out, machined that off, and you'll you'll see Willie today actually working on this.

[00:01:24]Thor the Mega Boore has been busy.

[00:01:28]You're going to see a a threading cycle that I'll have fired up on the We are now on to the what are called box tool joints. So, that there is the female connection. And this when we tried it under normal circumstances, I'll show you what they look like in a little minute. Holy criy, did it chatter. Um, none of the can cycles would work. Just it's just too big of a thread. But we had some luck. And I'll show you what it was. Anyway, you're going to see one of these get knocked out. Bits and pieces of it. It's loud, too. So, I probably can't catch all of it. We'll see. I'm on to number 15, I think, now out of 40, but they're pumping. All of the pins are done. We didn't have any dramas doing these with essentially a canned cycle.

[00:02:20]Came up really nice. They're sitting there waiting to get screwed on. We did have some issues with the boxes. Here's one that I mounted.

[00:02:29]Not great.

[00:02:31]Embarrassingly bad. And this one chattered like that is a chatter box. I am going to do a video on this. But I'll explain to you why and then I'll show you how we fixed it. I'll do an entire video on this, but I just want you to see it. It's freaking awesome. That is horrendous. That one screws up. It'll be used as a spare rod.

[00:02:53]Oh, there's cars at the gate. Time to open up. I agree. Let's do it.

[00:03:01]It begins.

[00:03:04]Hello, beautiful. And I'll leave her alone. Oh, she's gonna whoop you, mate.

[00:03:09]You're nuts. She's not to be trifled with. Oh, mate, you're gonna get flogged. Get him, Penny.

[00:03:20]She's so tolerant of him.

[00:03:24]Nope.

[00:03:26]You're the boss, Penny. You make sure he knows.

[00:03:30]Oh, well, don't say she didn't warn you, mate.

[00:03:37]All right.

[00:03:52]Nuts.

[00:04:14]It's on.

[00:04:43]Oh yeah.

[00:05:20]So, inside of FanX manu eye, you have a bunch of options for how you can do a thread like single single point thread where the first cut's bigger and then they get smaller. That did not work.

[00:05:32]That because the last cut is essentially it's 8 mil depth of cut here. Like 8 mil depth. So it's huge and it just did not like it. That you definitely couldn't use. That was no good. We did try this.

[00:05:45]Same deal. Just too big a cut at the end.

[00:05:50]That would not work. And this it kind of worked, but it was more ripping the material than actually cutting it. What you're about to see here is this is what's called a macro. So, it's a program that runs a cycle that will come in and take out a cut here and then it'll go to the edge. I think this is the method. Goes to the edge and then it'll come and nibble out. Not in this many cuts, but it does it one at a time and then comes down and goes like this.

[00:06:19]It means that when we're threading this, it actually chips off. Does it center side and then fills in this right down to the bottom and so that it doesn't do a huge cut at the bottom. It pulls off just a little bit from there and comes out. It's working pretty darn well at the moment. I'm just going to fire him up and you can watch how it goes. It is magic. So, we increased the RPM doing it from the can cycles at like 50 RPM to 150. So, it's quick. This is freaking awesome. Um, it's not perfect yet, but it actually works for the intended purposes. Spot on. So, it's good.

[00:07:13]Oh, yeah. Let's go.

[00:07:16]It's a wild claw set up this Heat. Heat.

[00:08:10]Heat. Heat.

[00:08:18]Heat.

[00:08:35]Heat.

[00:08:55]Heat.

[00:09:02]Heat.

[00:09:36]That It's just beautiful.

[00:09:43]Good job, buddy. Good job. It's a wild setup, but it gets the job done. And when I do the full video on how we make these boxes, I'll go through the programming a bit more and show you how we set up a triple threat of bars without them banging into the chuck. All right, I'll show you what else is going on.

[00:10:02]So Willie is over in the manual section here doing an awesome job. He's already cranking this part out I told you about.

[00:10:10]What are you doing to this Willie?

[00:10:12]>> 45 >> little weld prep.

[00:10:14]>> So weld prep front and back on this part that was parted off that we're then going to go and press that other piece into.

[00:10:23]So in the shop for those of you that are new to the channel, we have two little lathes. These are Taiwanese built machines. They're a good little mid-ranger for the kind of work that we do. We have the Hulk, which is our 12-in Mega Bore. This thing weighs about 11 tons, and it's a big old Spanish Garut's pay lathe, a true Mega Boore. Then we got Thor, the Mega Boore, which you just saw that part get knocked out on. So Thor's a 15 ton branded meabore. This thing's Taiwanese built as well. So Spaniard and Taiwanese. Thor freaking beautiful bit of gear. this. There's a couple of videos on the channel about it. And young Nick here is beavering away in the Alpha Lab. So, we have the Colchester Alpha 1550, the little of the two. That was the first of the Colchester CNC's. And I'm just about to head over here into How the Alpha. So, these were named after my grandparents, Howal and Jean.

[00:11:21]This is my favorite spot to be in the entire shop. Show you how this is working.

[00:11:27]Nick is busy designing here the replacement to these.

[00:11:33]So, nothing is ever It's always mowled and destroyed, but he's doing a bloody good job. So, >> we're trying.

[00:11:38]>> We're trying. It's good. Clean workspace of mine.

[00:11:44]All right. So, the steady has been set up along pretty well the only true surface I can get the bearings on. I've never had a steady set up this close, but I'm hoping it doesn't howl. We're just going to nibble out the inside of here now so that it's light enough these guys can manage it in the field cuz they have to lift and move this thing around by hand. So, I've got to take out as much material as humanly possible Beautiful.

[00:12:36]Lovely.

[00:12:41]>> Yeah. So, we'll get them to beat a weld here and on the other side and then we'll machine him. Hey, >> do you want to take that over >> to the fab shop and get Ash to do that?

[00:12:53]>> Lovely.

[00:12:55]>> Yeah. So, I just tried that and it was sh.

[00:13:00]It just wanted to vibrate again. I'm going to move the steady from here. I'm going to recut a race here and see if we can get it to run along this.

[00:13:08]It's not ideal, but kind of out of options anyway.

[00:13:14]Let's do this.

[00:13:41]Heat.

[00:14:03]Heat.

[00:14:07]Heat.

[00:14:31]Heat.

[00:14:59]That occasional sound that you can hear is actually stuff getting on the bearings. I'm doing my best to blast it away, but I don't have a lot of options here.

[00:15:15]Got brand new bearings, so it's not the bearings going.

[00:15:21]That seems to be the sweet spot.

[00:15:29]Real pain in the butt.

[00:15:33]What would you do different? I'm very curious.

[00:15:37]Look at that.

[00:15:41]Oh, beautiful.

[00:15:45]This is why I send things over to the fab shop. Look at that.

[00:15:50]Oh, put a horn in a jellyfish.

[00:15:55]Look at that. Nice.

[00:16:00]That's That's two days in Thor.

[00:16:46]This is as close to good as I've managed to get it. No coolant because when I do it flushes the chips into the bearings.

[00:16:54]So, not ideal, but even a little bit seems to flush it into there. So, it's running a lot smoother without coolant.

[00:17:05]Very slow RPM. That's tends to be my go-to when things start to chatter and vibrate. Just slow it down. It's only a 1 mil depth of cut, but I'm just going to let this poke along while I go and work on some of the other lathes. So Thor's going to be now going in the background and I'm going to work on the little alpha on another project. So let's crack on and just sometimes you got to go low and slow. God Tried pulling again. [ __ ] no good.

[00:17:53]Drags them up. See, it's developed a bit of a hum towards the end.

[00:18:12]I have a little sneaky solution that may help, but at least it's not vibrating, which is kind coming along.

[00:18:23]Come on.

[00:18:36]My original plan was to actually have this radius in the bottom there. I'm gonna remove that because I think I'm gonna have to finish that back wall off by hand.

[00:18:48]So, I'm gonna remove that. I'd like to ideally it's still going to be strong enough. I'm not worried about it breaking. It's just a habit of putting radiuses in, but I'm going to remove that.

[00:19:02]Breaking all the rules.

[00:19:07]Heat. Heat.

[00:19:36]See how Willy's going.

[00:19:41]Already cleaned up that shoulder. Looks great.

[00:19:49]Good work.

[00:20:01]That will continue on.

[00:20:04]And just before I fire up Thor the Mega Boore, I'll show you what I'm putting in the little Alfra at the same time. Got multiple ones going here. So, this is a large water swivel.

[00:20:15]This is the outer casing, a smaller version to the ones you've seen me do on the channel.

[00:20:22]We're going to machine this back to exactly 8 in. Willie was going to do it in the little lathe, but it was just starting to vibrate because the bars aren't big enough. So, I'm going to use one of the CNC's in manual mode, and we'll tickle that out. The way they work is this is actually going to go in here.

[00:20:41]This part is stationary. This part actually rotates. It's an inner tube inside the rod. And these Vpackers here, these are some damaged ones, but they actually go in the inside of here, 7 in on the inside, 8 in on the outside, and when they apply downward pressure, they smush out, and that's what actually stops water leaking out. So, this will rotate, and that allows rotation whilst it to still have water and cutings going up the middle. So, that's what we got to do.

[00:21:17]Tickle all that out.

[00:21:20]The big fella ready to roll.

[00:21:37]Righty.

[00:22:00]And away he goes in the background.

[00:22:05]Just flying everywhere.

[00:22:10]Heat.

[00:22:24]Heat.

[00:22:32]Away he goes. All right.

[00:23:10]This is running pretty well spot on.

[00:23:12]Hadn't been too beaten up. So, it's actually not too bad. That's in there hard up. And this chuck runs quite true.

[00:23:24]So, I'm going to give this a little tickle off the outside because it has jaw marks and all that sort of stuff, which means it won't run through. So, I'm going to run this little buzz off the outside. Tiny little face cleanup cut. Just a tickle like 0.1 just so that it's nice. When I flip it over, it'll run true to this face here. So, let's do it.

[00:24:10]the left hand thread.

[00:24:18]Bloody beautiful. That's good to go.

[00:24:21]>> Should be. Yep.

[00:24:21]>> All done.

[00:24:24]Lovely.

[00:24:26]Left hand threads drive you nuts.

[00:24:30]>> It's obviously loose now.

[00:24:35]>> Mate.

[00:24:36]>> Yeah.

[00:24:40]>> Spectacular magic.

[00:24:45]Well done.

[00:24:48]Bloody lovely.

[00:25:06]Uh uh. Houston, we have a problem.

[00:25:11]So, I'm just not going to have enough length with a 40 mil bar. I'm already hanging out like four times diameter.

[00:25:19]So, if I go any longer than that, meaning, you know, hanging out any further, it'll chatter and vibrate, which I definitely don't want. So, that cleaned up nice. The back looks really good. It's running nice and true. Still see it's ugly as hell in there. I'll see if I can show you the finished product, but I'm actually going to have to pull it out of this lathe.

[00:25:45]Wait till we finish in here. We're almost done. And then I'm going to use probably I'll use the same boring bar, I actually think. Maybe Kong. Haven't decided. This will get a better finish.

[00:26:01]Having a little bit of chatter, but I'll do a finish pass and we'll have a look at how that finishes up.

[00:26:07]Old Thor the Mega Boore is on tool joint number four for the day. There was one before this. These two, they just come up absolutely mint. So, he just smashes along in the background there.

[00:26:25]Good job, big fella. Good job.

[00:26:29]Have a look at what Willy's finished off.

[00:26:32]Oh, and for those who are non-machinists, we always want to avoid I call them nope ropes, but the long stringy stuff. It's really no good cuz it's dangerous.

[00:26:44]Whereas the more of these beautiful chips that we can get and that's just looking spectacular, the better. Easier to handle much less dangerous from start to finish. Willie has got this done.

[00:26:58]He has got the ring sorted to go on it as well. That's all done and finished cuz that's got to go out ASAP.

[00:27:08]So, good job to Willie. There's two more little parts we got to get tickled up.

[00:27:12]That's what we get up to on the average day in an Aussie machine shop for drillers.

[00:27:19]So, this looks like crap.

[00:27:23]It's going to have to go out to site now to do a job. We just ran out of time, which happened. So, I'm going to get this out of the lathe. They'll go and use it and it'll come back. And I'll probably do this on a future video.

[00:27:34]Like, it'll work for what it's got to do. It's just a bit heavy. I still wanted to take out another 10 mil and make this nice and cleaned up. This really is the wrong tool for the job, the WMG.

[00:27:47]Reason being is that as it's cutting this lazy edge here behind the cutting point, that contributes to the vibration. So, I thought I could get away with it. Clearly, judging by the finish on that, I did not. So, the solution I'm going to use is overkill bar with a DNMG insert because you can see here there's no trailing edge. So, in a future video, if you subscribe to the channel when this comes back from site, I am going to throw it back in the lathe and clean all of that out. I'd hope to do it in this one, but ran out of time and they absolutely desperately need it.

[00:28:24]So, these things happen. Anyway, just thought you'd like to know that.

[00:28:30]Heat. Heat.

[00:28:53]Heat.

[00:29:11]Heat.

[00:29:36]Heat. Heat.

[00:29:44]Heat. Heat.

[00:30:07]It was not meant to do that. I'm sitting here like crazy going how you can't really see it on camera, but it's sort of gone the wrong direction thinking how has it done that? Check the programming. That's what it should look like. I've just got it doing a clean up along here and then it comes down to the desired size. So there's no like groove looking at it right in front of my eye. So this is just managed to the interruptions are just jarred it loose. You probably saw that before I did, but anyway, I'm going to reset him and we'll go again.

[00:30:46]Shouldn't have done that. I'm going to slow the slow it down a little.

[00:30:51]Let's have another crack, eh?

[00:30:54]Come on, buddy.

[00:31:14]That's actually a port for grease, so that's fine.

[00:31:17]I just did a finish pass here, but left it until we're a mill under. So that's come in, it's going to be 8 in, which is 203.2.

[00:31:28]That's come in at 202.2. So it's cutting perfectly to size. Now, as I adjust the tool wear, it'll be 203.2.

[00:31:47]Beautiful.

[00:31:58]So, the grease port is open. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good.

[00:32:03]This little locking nut, the way it works is when this is on the rig, it's actually this is sitting upside down.

[00:32:10]But the way they adjust it is by using essentially a a swivel or a chisel and banging that to tighten the packers that live in this section here. So that's how the water swivel works on the second largest rig and we'll get another whole life out of that which is good. Come up nice. Got there eventually.

[00:32:37]No worries. And that would put a horn on a jellyfish.

[00:32:42]Ready to go. That was a cracker of a day. Just that's what I love about this profession is the fact that there's so much going on. You've got to be thinking on the fly and solving problems outside of the box. I don't know about you, but that threading program is just magic.

[00:33:03]150 RPM, blasting it out, chips coming out. It's funny. I'm constantly learning in this profession. It's I'm I'm not a font of all knowledge. I'm not an expert. I'm just a guy out there having a crack to get the jobs done and I'm sharing it all with you as I learn. Um, now I promised you some exciting news and I guarantee you I'm not going to disappoint. So, if you've been following the channel, we've been going for just on two years now. The growth of the channel has been mind-blowing from me.

[00:33:33]Like, I thought we might get to a,000 subscribers. I think we're at 120. It just my grandfather who started the whole company Hal hence how heavy duty he would just be tickled pink as to as to how this has all come along. Our the business here started as a you know it was a drilling company started in 1963 that had a 1acre yard. Then they bought the yard beside them twoacre yard. This was I grew up in this shed here. It's like this shed is 2 years older than me.

[00:34:07]It then grew to 5 acre yard which felt massive at the time. Now a 10 acre yard and we're full and everyone is falling over each other. So, as of very recently, the decision was made, it's crazy, is to take the entire 10acre yard here, the machine shop, how heavy duty, the fab shop, the mechanic side of things, like the paint site, everything is going to over the next 2 years be moving out to a brand new purpose-built compound just outside of town on over 500 acres. So, we're not 10xing this.

[00:34:48]We're going to be close to 100xing.

[00:34:51]It's It's mindblowing what the plan is for the future. And you guys are going to get to come along for the ride. So, that is going to be happening.

[00:35:02]The location is awesome. Beautiful big flat area and it's going to very much revolutionize what we are doing. you know, rather we got so little space here. We're like squishing in between machines. It's going to allow us to do stuff that we've never imagined. Things like having an overhead crane. Oh, thank you, Lord. Um, being able to set out the machine shop exactly how we want, having it all work in together. It's We're sort of in the planning phases now, but it's very exciting. I'm going to be asking you guys if you particularly if you work in, you know, the engineering industry or machine shops, what sort of things in the sheds that you've worked in are awesome? Like what machines do you like? What sort of uh layouts, swarf removal, uh tooling setups like tool cribs, all that kind of stuff. We're finally getting a chance to from scratch, not just ad hoc, but from scratch make something for the next 50 years. So, you know, it this next chapter is really going to be set up for Teddy and that future generation just like it was. It's just it excites me so much. I'm struggling to get it into words, but that's what's going to be happening. You guys are going to get to be part of it. Now, if you currently work in a machine shop or something where you're just like, "This is an awesome part of what we do." How engineering Australia atgmail was the best email to just flick me stuff because I'm going to be asking for your suggestions. I don't know everything. I don't get out of here enough to know everything, but I know that with this channel, which has become a great resource, at least for me, and I hope for some of you, uh we're going to make this the most kickass awesome facility that you could ever imagine. And I just I just can't wait for it to all come together. So, you're going to get to see us pack up and move a 10acre yard.

[00:37:05]Imagine moving house, a heavy engineering house that's been there for 60 years. It's wild. But anyway, that's the news. So, big things are coming for how heavy duty, the drilling side of it as well and everything. It It's, you know, when this first was put here, we were sort of out in the boonies, like out in the sticks, as we'd say, but the town has grown around us, so we can't even get the big rig down the road for repairs. Like, that's how squished in we are here at the moment. So, it's just exciting times. Guys, hope you enjoyed a little day in the shed. Chatting at the end a lot longer than I normally would, but I know that there's a lot of people who have been in the channel for a while who just want to be kept in the loop as to what's going on. So, there you have it. Anyway, I will catch you in the comments and I will catch you on the next one.

[00:37:58]>> Hello.

[00:37:59]>> Hello.

[00:37:59]>> Hello.

[00:38:00]>> Hello.

[00:38:06]I got to walk on them.

[00:38:08]>> You got to walk on them?

[00:38:09]>> Yeah.

[00:38:10]>> All by yourself.

[00:38:13]Such a big boy. Your safety boots on.

[00:38:15]Are they your crocodiles?

[00:38:19]>> Upby.

[00:38:20]>> One big jump.

[00:38:21]>> Okay.

[00:38:23]Very serious.

[00:38:24]>> Put a belt.

[00:38:26]>> No. Sit.

[00:38:28]>> Sit. Diesel.

[00:38:29]>> Sit diesel.

[00:38:30]>> Sit diesel. Can we fix it? All right, let's try. Hey, daddy will have a go.