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Business of Machining - Episode 24
233 Plays8 years ago
Orange Vise TourMachine ROI Delivering Happiness Grimsmo + Vacation = Worry/Anxiety? Normally, the idea of vacation should produce feelings of excitement and relaxation but for Grimsmo, it's a different story. "What is the end goal?" The guys are in a constant state of defining and refining goals. How do you know you've made it if you don't know where you want to end up? In his quest to pay it forward and build a positive community for machinists,Saunders often connects to his audience by showing lessons learned the hard way. No matter how thick the skin, the internet trolls get under it by using petty and destructive comments to assert themselves. Grimsmo "discovers" EDM --Not Electronic Dance Music, wire EDM for knife making!Mitutoyo comes to SMW to do a Measurelink Demo. When it comes to business partnerships, personal connections can add weight to business decisions. At the end of the day, it's still a business needing to thrive.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode number 24. My name is John. My name is John as well. Morning bud. How are you? Good morning. I am doing pretty awesome. What's good word.
Family Time and Tech-Free Camp
00:00:14
Speaker
So today's Friday, uh, Sunday. I'm taking the family up to a week of YMCA family camp. Wait, wait, wait, wait. What? Oh yeah. An entrepreneur has actually taken a week off.
00:00:26
Speaker
You did this, or you're going to do this? I'm going to do this in a few days, and we'll be gone all next week. Oh, good for you. Yeah, it's like summer camp. It reminds me a lot of Boy Scout summer camp that I used to go to as a teenager. And I'm really looking forward to going up there with the kids. So it's all four of you? Yes. That's awesome. And I'm going to say, I'm going to ask the obnoxious question, no Wi-Fi?
00:00:52
Speaker
No, no Wi-Fi, no computers, no math, and there's power. But yeah, it's going to be great. Kids are going to be in for a shock. Wow. There's no Netflix? What do you mean the kids are going to be in for a shock? Yeah, exactly. There's no work. Are you going to do OK? Yeah, I'm really excited to immerse myself in a week of family time and fun activities. And there's rock climbing and boating and archery and everything, right? Yeah.
00:01:21
Speaker
I'm nervous to leave work for a week. I'm just not ready. You'll do fine. And tomorrow, of course, I'll do fine. But I wish I was so much farther ahead so that I could go with a clear conscience. And now I'm going to have to force myself to have a clear conscience, as opposed to it being natural. But I don't know.
Defining Business Goals
00:01:40
Speaker
But that goes back to something I struggled with this week. It's why I texted you the other day. I was like,
00:01:46
Speaker
I need to and I didn't get to do my I go to a coffee shop yesterday and just kind of think which I should have but darn it I didn't I will today which is kind of what are we what are we what is the end goal because I think if I don't define those better to myself I'm gonna just keep chasing
00:02:04
Speaker
That's something I don't know about. I will proudly tell you that I'm not just interested in growth. That's not what I'm interested in at all, frankly. In fact, I'm kind of thinking about contracting some of the areas of the business a little.
00:02:20
Speaker
I think what was hard for me this week was a lot of what I, when you talk about that goal, a lot of what I do, I try to do to pay it forward to share, share what I've learned, share the mistakes, share the failures, share the successes, share the passion.
00:02:35
Speaker
In some respects, I've met that goal, but I'm going to keep doing
Handling Criticism and Stress
00:02:39
Speaker
it. But I think what I've had a hard time with is to be blunt, the trolls. To be blunt, it's the people on Facebook or the people on YouTube who just want to criticize or just want to complain. And I've been the one to tell other people, you've got to grow some thick skin.
00:02:56
Speaker
I don't know, it's just been, I need to think bigger. I think if I had a clear definition of my goals, then it would be easier to be resilient. It's just like when I was talking about, we were talking about the other day and it was like, you know, when it comes to certain decisions, it's not you making the decision, it's the business making those decisions, you know?
00:03:14
Speaker
separation between the two yeah like it's not these criticisms aren't just a criticism at me personally which again I don't that bothers me but it's it's like no this is what we do if you don't like this as a viewer or or person then go find another channel or another thing like that's fine it's not I don't know hard feelings right
00:03:37
Speaker
But I want to build this community of people that are passionate and generally positive. I have no problem with criticism, but generally people that are interested in being more, let's figure it out and let's just complain and say negative things.
00:03:53
Speaker
Right. I often find that criticism hurts most when there is a grain of truth in it, when you can see the other argument and be like, well, okay, you know, they're, they're half right and they have just mean, but sometimes when they're like totally off the deep end, you just laugh at it. Like it doesn't hurt at all because you're like, what are you talking about?
00:04:10
Speaker
Right. Well, but even when there's some truth to it, sometimes it's like, OK, that's a good lesson learned. Sometimes it's like, you know, I've gotten emails from people that have criticized typographical errors on videos. And they're emailed to me literally complaining about typos. They have typos. Yeah. OK. That's silly. Anyway.
00:04:35
Speaker
The point is not that, the point is I feel like I need to be able to better think about what I'm trying to get to because, like okay so why are you stressed about leaving next week I guess? Are you stressed because, well why are you stressed?
00:04:51
Speaker
I was hoping to have a few more parts made and certainly have some more revenue come in before I'm gone for a week. Even have more ready for Eric and Barry. Barry's going to take a few days off next week. Eric's probably going to take a day or two off. I'm gone like seven days.
00:05:11
Speaker
I feel like I'm not prepared enough for them to have enough work while they're here next week. Yeah, so there's cash flow problems, right? Because this is what's so interesting. And it goes back to that book, Delivering Happiness, which I really like.
Cash Flow and Business Growth
00:05:27
Speaker
I actually might reread it right now. And I just finished it. Good. I will have to get that.
00:05:32
Speaker
Because it's kind of like, well, why? Well, look, I know you pretty well, but you're not a money person. You're not looking to go buy a Lamborghini. So it's not actually profit. It's not actually money. For you, it's just cash flow. It's just literally making sure there's money to pay the bills. There's money to reinvest in the business. And that's what I think is so interesting is that you are not greedy.
00:05:55
Speaker
You have high expectations of yourself and you also want to be responsible toward the obligations you've got as a business person, right? Right. Yeah, exactly. It's just the stress involved around.
00:06:10
Speaker
cashflow around money, around catching up, keeping up, getting ahead. And as you said, not to be a bazillionaire, but to actually feel like you're in a position of power with regards to the business and the money and everything like that, as opposed to just chasing your tail all the time. It's like you were talking about defining your goals better, otherwise you're just chasing the end of the rainbow, which you're never going to find, right?
00:06:32
Speaker
Right, right. You live in the present. I was laughing. We talked about this before, but people that are either successful or celebrities or whatever who say, it's not all you think it's cracked up to be.
00:06:48
Speaker
And it's kind of like, John, what do I want to do today? And this past week, I've sort of said, I want to go play with some Arduino stuff. Why don't I do that more? And so yesterday, I actually sat down with Ed, who's working on some of these Arduino projects now, which has been perfect. Like, it's great.
00:07:05
Speaker
Because it lets me get involved in it, but it lets those projects keep working while I'm getting pulled in different directions. So it's kind of funny. It's like if you have a business and you have
00:07:23
Speaker
Don't complain. The lesson to myself is don't complain if you don't get to do what you don't want to do under your own free will. That's way too mumble jumble. You know what I mean? I get what you mean. Like you and I now have a shop with
00:07:37
Speaker
more or less every tool that we want today at our disposal, except we can't play with them all at the same time and work still needs to be done. And you have five or six people that allows work to be done. I've got two people here that allow some work to be done. I need a machinist or four. And then I can start to step back and I can focus on what I'm really good at, which is not production, it's playing and it's growing the business.
00:08:01
Speaker
And you and I are such personality types that playing to us is hard work to everybody else. And it's growth and future and potential. You know what I mean? Yeah. No, you hit the nail on the head. I kind of want to... It's weird, but I do want to go...
00:08:19
Speaker
We'll talk next week. I want to do some more thinking myself before I say it out loud about some of the things we're thinking on goals. I'm really proud of how we've done our
00:08:33
Speaker
quality control process on the Tormach fixture plates and how we churn, we just finished a big order, which is great. And we've got these sheets and we have got the QC and I'm still nervous because I think anytime you do something that's still relatively new and you do it in quantity, it's kind of like, just like you, like if you go make 75 Norseman parts and you're not gonna know if they're bad or not until a little bit later, but you QC it along the way, there's still some residual concern.
Quality Control and Hiring Process
00:09:00
Speaker
But what was awesome was we had the Mitsu Toyu sales guy. He came by this week and did like a three hour demo of this. Have you ever heard of their MeasureLink software? No.
00:09:13
Speaker
So it's not free. It's like $1,200. But once you buy it, you own it. You don't have to pay for maintenance. But if you get the USB cables for the various tools, the indicators, the calipers, micrometers, our height gauge, the measure link is the database. So you build up this program. And we did it. They do it for you, I think, for free as part of the training. But we built up.
00:09:36
Speaker
a whole QC program for the 440, in this case we started with the 440 model fixture plates and when you open it up it asks you for the serial number and then we took pictures, put them in the database and it shows you what points to measure with what tool
00:09:54
Speaker
And then it gives you the, you punch in the number, it tells you whether that's within tolerance or not, then it asks you for the quality control check, it asks you which anodizer it's going to, or what customer, if it's a wholesaler or direct to a customer. You built this whole database, and now I've got all this information set up on paper, which I knew was stupid, but it was a necessary step.
00:10:14
Speaker
In a searchable database, you can pull it up. It's not stuck in a piece of paper in one place. I can go pull up by customer name, by serial number. And we do QC in three steps. We do it before anodized, we do it after anodized, and then we're going to effectively do it upon ship. And so now I've got a way to pull up whichever serial number without having to sort through paper.
00:10:37
Speaker
the yeses here are mind-blowing. Absolutely. So it's a dedicated digital version of the QC sheets that you saw. And by the way, the YouTube video that you put up when you had Jay in it was really fantastic. Yeah, that was awesome.
00:10:52
Speaker
And that was still the right step, because I think, for me, going straight to the measure link would be a mistake, because you need to paper it out like we did and use it. Yes. But what made me think of this was, when you go to Boy Scout camp, or YMC camp with your family, knowing that you're leaving behind the tools, the processes, the systems that is done well, we keep revising these QC sheets on paper, so I keep having to re
00:11:20
Speaker
reengage my graphics designer to tweak it, reprint new ones. Of course, I don't have to do that now, because you can just make a digital change. And I'm not advocating logging in remotely when you're gone, but nevertheless, you could. I can literally pull up, and I can say, what was the max deviation of the bore size on the last 10 plates that we ran? Nice. Right? That is so powerful, yeah. That's amazing. Yes. Nice. And all the calipers and stuff that you have plug right into it, eh?
00:11:49
Speaker
Now, unfortunately, the quantum mics that we bought were not the, whatever they call it, SPC version. But I need a second set of those anyways, because we have one set of quantum mics, and the rest of ours are shards. So we keep stealing the quantum mics in the shop. So it's fine. I just need to buy a second set. There are like 200 and SPC ones are, I think, like 250 or 260. So whatever. And everything else already has the ports on it.
00:12:13
Speaker
In fact, the eBay ones I bought, the throat mic for like 80 bucks is 15 years old. Mitutoyo still sells you the old school cable, which I thought was cool. Yes, that's awesome. Anyway, so that was, that feels good. That took work on my end, but it's front-loaded work that lets me then go play. I now can be... That is your play. Like, that was total play for you, but it's... Well, well, yes.
00:12:41
Speaker
But what I mean is now I can go play with Arduino stuff, because that system's done in place. You know what I mean? True, yeah, I get it. But things like that, lean improvements, process improvements, defining everything, coming up with new products, that's where we need to spend our time, because that's fun. Right. Well, and again, you can, if you hire, remember in
00:13:06
Speaker
Well, is it, yeah, it was the E-Myth, where they talk about, and then again, this is, this kind of puts, is up there with Tim Ferriss' level of BS in terms of, you know, what you write in a book and on paper doesn't match reality sometimes, but the E-Myth talks about hiring unskilled labor, because if you have processes and systems in place, you shouldn't need super high-end skilled labor, and I think the point there is not so much to not appreciate and value skill, it's more the fact that,
00:13:32
Speaker
It can be hard to retain skill and you don't want a business to be based on skill sets of people that are hard or impossible to replace. Right. And I see that now. You hear people say all the time that it's so hard to find good people and they take years to train and then they leave with all your information and you can't worry about that because people are going to have their own agendas.
00:13:55
Speaker
If you create a good culture and they want to stick around, that's one thing, but you can't force them to or expect them to. And the other thing we try to come up with as well, we're coming up with these process sheets. Hypothetically, what would it take, how would we write it out, to have my seven-year-old daughter, Clara, do this job satisfactorily? Or to have Meg come in and
00:14:17
Speaker
and do it without any really prior knowledge, whether or not that's ever going to happen. The point is to keep it simple enough and straightforward enough. We've figured it out already. The employment thing isn't even as cynical as you make it sound. All of the points you raise are fair, but it's also like the better a person is, the more likely they're going to want to better themselves, which means they're going to want to grow within the company or potentially move to another company.
00:14:40
Speaker
If you look at the stats across the nation today, it's not the same as it was 30 years ago where you had a career at a company. People jump around. Or you want to let people grow. So yeah, I think the idea of, like Warren Buffett used to joke, that don't ever hit his team and his colleagues, you don't ever send me an investment idea unless you can draw it on a single sheet of paper with a crayon.
00:15:07
Speaker
Yeah, tell me tell me how this company makes money with one piece of paper and a crayon Yeah, and if you can't simplify it like that, then it's not not for me, right? That's great though So this week I
00:15:28
Speaker
I found a new technology that I've known about for 10 years.
Exploring Wire EDM Precision
00:15:33
Speaker
Okay. Okay. So I dove into the deep end of research. You know how you get when you're like, you can't stop thinking about it. You stay up late. You do all the research. You watch every YouTube video you can possibly find. You start reading four posts. Why your EDM? Oh, no way.
00:15:50
Speaker
Yeah, so I've known about it for 10 years and I've been, you know, I figured I understood it and I was like, I understand the applications. I know some people use it for knife making. It's not for me. I use water jet, I use CNC machining. I'm good.
00:16:04
Speaker
And then a couple applications clicked in my head and I was like, Oh my God, I could like, wow, this is awesome. So then I dove in and I learned all this stuff. And now I feel like I have a really strong grasp on it. And, uh, eventually I need that in my life. That's funny because, and I've never put these two together, but when I think John Grimso and I think EDM, I think match made in heaven.
00:16:28
Speaker
Yeah. I actually explained it. To be able to hold one tenth tolerance all day long. Right, with no tool wear, deflection, radial load, blah, blah, blah. Exactly. No curve like water jet has. I mean, I'll still be using water jet because titanium comes in gigantic sheets. But yeah, there are some applications in mind that... Titanium's conductive, right?
00:16:53
Speaker
Yes, it can wire any conductive material, period. So long story short, I found out you can get, I've known this for a while, but you can get a good quality used machine for like five to $20,000. I saw one go at auctions right in front of me for $800 once because nobody wanted it. I don't know if that's true, John.
00:17:18
Speaker
to which part? Well, I've had some similar conversations. We used to have parts of wire EDM for a product we made. And I want to say you've got to be careful about, well, I don't know what I'm talking about, to be honest. But I want to say it wasn't that easy. I was aware that you could get one for that cheap, I guess, is what I'm saying. That would work. The power supplies and the controllers are incredibly important on those things. True.
00:17:48
Speaker
That's great if you can, though. Holy cow. Right, yeah. I mean, I don't have a lot of faith in this $800 one that nobody wanted. This was seven years ago, probably six years ago that I saw it. But there's a shop two blocks away from me. They actually bought a tormach. And they have a 1988 Japanese SODIC EDM machine from 1988. And they use it often. And basically, I'm going to hire them to do some test work for me to see if my theories are correct.
00:18:17
Speaker
And if a 1988 machine can do it to my satisfactory levels, then I'm golden, because that's a $10,000 machine. You know, maybe you're right. I bought a list of cabinet last summer at a mold company, and they had some, was it Charmeil or something, which I think is the high-end machines. And they maybe went for, they were in working condition, and they went for maybe 2025? Yeah, and those are at the upper end of quality. Like, they're really good.
00:18:42
Speaker
Yeah, that was the event where I wish I could remember what. Well, I'm sure you're very good at getting smart. Somebody had mentioned the one thing you've got to be careful with on those. OK. Can't remember what it is. Yeah, that you can remember it. Text me. Yeah, explain to the people that are listening what EDM is. Sure.
00:19:03
Speaker
And I feel like I can explain it very well because I've seen about 40 YouTube videos of just explaining what it is. So imagine a bandsaw where there's a metal cutting blade that moves, you move the material through the blade, except it's now a four thou diameter piece of brass wire. So the thickness of a human hair
00:19:19
Speaker
is able to electrically spark erode the material. So imagine this thing stretched out 10 inches across, and you can push it through a 10 inch piece of material, steel, hardened tool steel, aluminum, hardness doesn't matter. And the wire actually doesn't touch the part, it's the electricity, it's the spark erosion that is creating little molecules of steel that fly off. And the wire is rotating through, so it's always using fresh wire.
00:19:47
Speaker
And it can do a 10 inch block of hardened tool steel like it's not even there. Now it goes extremely slowly. Like we're talking 60 thou per minute. Right. Like not 200 inches per minute, but 0.06 inches per minute.
00:20:04
Speaker
But it's an unattended operation. You can run it 24-7. You don't have to be there. It's relatively hands-off and reliable. Even this 1988 machine, they're like, yeah, we can run it for 24 hours, and it's fine. And there is maintenance, but it's not crazy. Me and my lathe and my mill have more upkeep.
00:20:23
Speaker
than that machine has. So within the next six months, if my plans play out, I could see us getting one. And there are plenty of them around here. Well, and you don't do those. You've got to have a you've got to flood the work envelope with the dielectric fluid. So you it's basically it does all the work submerged, but you have small parts. So if you could find a smaller travel machine, I suspect that'd be fine. Exactly. Exactly.
00:20:46
Speaker
Do you mean? Yeah, there are submerged machines, but then there's also flushed machines that just have the water around the wire. Oh, really? I think submerged is better. So. Are you going to have to get a hole popper?
00:21:00
Speaker
which is to drill holes so that you can enter the wire through the hole. No, I don't think so. I've seen, if you have a hole, I've seen the, actually I think it's pretty common on the newer ones, where if the wire will break or you can run out of wire, so that's the other issue with unintended machining, if you don't have enough spool.
00:21:19
Speaker
but they literally start a straw-shaped stream of water. So it's a hollow tube of water and the brass wire is fed down through that hollow straw tube of water and it self-refeeds.
00:21:37
Speaker
I know, it's so cool. So it finds its way to the lower head and re-feeds again. So the fancier machines can actually break a wire, go back to a safe starting position, re-thread, and cut again. And you can set it to like after five breaks, obviously something's wrong, so you can stop there, but up to five breaks, just keep going.
00:21:57
Speaker
Insane. It's so cool. So, I mean, it'll be a fine balancing act. How much do we want to spend for these extra features, even in a used machine? You know, new, I'm sure they're 200,000 or something, but I have no business spending that kind of money on this machine. But I think a used machine would do exactly what we want. So we're going to test out over the next few months and very, very excited.
00:22:18
Speaker
That's really cool. There have been a couple books. I bought one, actually. And AVE was trying to do it. But I don't think he couldn't figure out the power supply. He had this post-German pop-electric inventor guy helping out with the power supply. And they, I think, just hung up on the project a year ago, trying to make a home version or a DIY sinker EDM. So instead of doing the wire, you have this graphite electrode.
00:22:45
Speaker
And that's really cool because you can do fancy injection with your machine, the graphite, and then the graphite acts like your wire. So if you think about it, you could make some shoe mold, you machine the graphite, and then it becomes your electric shape and you just plunge it straight down. And so again, you can take 65 Rockwell hardened D2 and quote unquote machine into it via the spark erosion, this intricate pattern.
00:23:11
Speaker
Yep. Amazing. So cool. Yes. That's awesome. Technology is awesome. I mean, I've been seeing these machines at shows for going on 10 years now and they're always cool and they're always impressive, but I don't know why it never clicked to me until literally this week. And then I was like, oh my goodness. And now I have specific applications in mind and broad applications and
00:23:33
Speaker
There's no tool where it's you're always using fresh wire So it's always fourth out diameter and your tolerances are always gonna be dead nuts and you can take subsequent skimming passes to get the surface finish really good Rough sandblasted finish and then you can oh my god, it's just so cool
00:23:49
Speaker
The demo I saw at East Tech years ago was they had two stair-cept type parts that meshed in with each other and they wire EDM'd out of separate material because the kerf would cause a problem if you tried to do it the same. But they wire EM'd two separate parts and they slid them together and when they were sitting on a granite block,
00:24:09
Speaker
such that they were meshed together and flush, you could not see the part lines. Yes. Oh my god. And of course I've already planned, I've already planned to do that with my logo. So a big block of steel outside is, you know, the carrier material and then inside is the logo and their surface ground flush and then they slip together with a, I don't know, half a tenth clearance or whatever. I don't know what it needs, but. Yeah, 50 million.
00:24:36
Speaker
Yeah, at one of these tool shows, probably six years ago, they had one of these demos. It looks like waves put together. And there's these two little pieces, like one inch cubed, that slide together with these crazy tolerances. It was done on a Makino wire EDM. And I asked the guy if I could take it, and he reluctantly said yes. So now I've had this at my desk playing with it for six years. And now, of course, I'm looking at it again, going, oh, yes, I need this. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's cool.
00:25:05
Speaker
I'll throw out another one, which is funny. If you've ever been to the trade show and you see the parts cleaning section and you're just like, well, that's super boring. I want to go look at more five-axis mills. Let me tell you, when I was at Orange Vice, I'm waiting on Eric to approve the video that we did of the tour there.
00:25:22
Speaker
they have a cell of, I think, three parts cleaning stations.
Part Cleaning and Finishing Challenges
00:25:27
Speaker
And of course, now that I'm with a guy that I look up to who makes a really cool product, I'm of course, now I'm captive, I'm interested. And he showed how they go through and clean their parts, and now all of a sudden, I'm like, oh my gosh. I don't say I need one of these, but now all of a sudden, I'm like, oh my gosh. All those years of poo-pooing that whole thing is like, no, this is amazing.
00:25:50
Speaker
Yep, yep. Absolutely. And the same thing as I make more lathe parts and they come off all oily and grimy and I wash them in the sink. I think in like some sort of better ultrasonic clean air, some, you know, stations, rinse water, et cetera, et cetera. I can totally see it.
00:26:07
Speaker
It's a process. Obviously, the orange vices are heavy, which introduces the weight problem. But think about hiring the new employee, telling someone to go clean in the sink versus having a process with a chemical, with a temperature, with a way that keeps it from getting dinged up and scratched up. It's just, yes, amazing. Absolutely. So what have you been up to otherwise lately?
00:26:33
Speaker
Good question. Finishing up the repeat-o-meter, which turned out pretty well. I was a little bummed. We bought the Caswell Home Black Oxide Kit. And the short version is, it works better than I thought, but it's even harder than I thought to get the parts clean enough to have the black oxide look perfect. And that's kind of like anything with painting, anodizing, finishing. The better prep you do, the better it turns out. But this is...
00:26:59
Speaker
I would say hypersensitive. So you'll see a video. But the project itself, I thought, turned out really well. And Ed has this technique here of actually these plates. And we did that. And they turned out awesome. So I think in the end, when I take a step back, I'm like, no, this is pretty cool. This turned out well.
00:27:17
Speaker
We have been editing the other footage from that California trip, which is exciting. We did a chip break yesterday on sort of like an intro to Excel and measuring return on investment, which was, was weird. I couldn't, I hadn't done a video on announcing that we bought a VF2 and it kind of bothered me. I was like, why haven't we done a formal video?
00:27:39
Speaker
announcing this and I was you know when we bought the VM3 it was a year-long process I felt like it was part of our story and it was a big step for us and the VF2 was much more of a business tool decision it was much less exciting in the sense that this was just helping solve two problems one we need more throughput and two the way we are now understanding about
00:28:02
Speaker
writing a machine shop is one person really needs to be running more than one machine for practical reasons of operations and payroll and so forth. So I'm excited. It's just a very different process, a very different machine. So getting that electrician tooled up, we did end up buying Pearson
00:28:22
Speaker
pallet systems, which I'm excited for.
New Machine Prep and Drilling Efficiency
00:28:25
Speaker
Oh, I've been working a lot on fixturing and designing new stuff to run. I'm trying to get it so that when a machine gets here, we can kind of hit the ground running with it. When is the ETA for delivery? Probably, it should ship within 10 days. So two weeks. Nice. Yeah.
00:28:44
Speaker
I don't know what else, it's funny, it's been, oh, I've been frustrated for sure, and it's not worth complaining about, but the tendonitis in my arm is brutal, so I've actually now, I'm basically now about 90% good using my left hand as a mouse, my mouse hand, which is hilarious. Yeah.
00:29:04
Speaker
Oh, that's what it is, yeah. We had July 4th off. Mitsutoyo came to do the MeasureLink demo, bounced around the shop on various projects. I need to do a little rehuddle this week on the goals and the focus. Oh, we've got a video we're going to film on drilling.
00:29:25
Speaker
And it's pretty cool. We figured out the manual formula to calculate drill horsepower and how that relates to material removal. And it's proving what I thought, which is that drills are really efficient at removing material. Yeah, that's what everybody says. Yeah, we've got the data now, which I'm excited about. Yeah, totally. That's awesome. You can take an $8 drill and a tormach and remove a pretty high material removal rate.
00:29:51
Speaker
Mm-hmm. So on the Tormack, a drill would be the highest removal rate tool you could put on it. I think you can get higher with a shear hog, I think. I got to go look at the numbers again. But it's different. Obviously, the difference, too, is drills don't load up radially. So you can remove material axially, where normally when you go into deep holes, you've got issues of chapter or load.
00:30:18
Speaker
Have you ever plunge milled with a shear hog? I try not to. Yeah. Yeah, we have. I remember I remember Alf saying you could and I saw a video I think on Instagram where the guys just pounding holes down with the shear hog. We've actually modified one of ours to use as a boring tool on the lathe. Okay. Yeah, totally.
00:30:45
Speaker
Nice. What have you been up to? What's been going on in the shop? It's been one of those weeks where you get to the end and you're like, it's Friday already? Yeah. I know I was busy every day, but I can't believe it's Friday already. Well, you guys had Monday off, right? What did you call it, Canada Day?
00:31:07
Speaker
Most of Canada had Monday off. Oh, seriously? Yeah, we had a solid Saturday Sunday, you know, I think Canada Day was on Sunday on the first Saturday, sorry. It was on Saturday. So, you know, we had a really good family time Saturday Sunday and get to Monday and it's like, yeah, we're working.
00:31:26
Speaker
You know, it's cool. I asked everybody on, so our July 4th holiday was Tuesday on Monday. I was just kind of like, who's working tomorrow or who wants to work or whatever. And everybody was like, yeah, we'll come in. And I was like, that's cool. So we ended up calling it a day at about a neuter one o'clock. But I was like, that's right.
00:31:44
Speaker
It makes you, you want to be, it's funny because it's a job, it's a business, there's no, I won't apologize for that on the flip side. You want it to be a place where people, you want to be around people that want to be doing what they're doing and love what they're doing and are passionate about it. And that was cool. That's fantastic, yeah.
00:32:02
Speaker
Yeah, so I've been milling a lot of parts. We've been grinding blades. Oh my goodness. I broke my grinding wheel again. No. The Lindo wheel? My Lindo, yeah. Come on. So I ordered two a few months ago. I cracked one of them on assembly because I'm dumb. And then the other one, I don't know how it could...
00:32:24
Speaker
Yeah, it it so it's an aluminum core with the grinding wheel in the outside and as I was tightening it the outside was hitting the shell mill arbor So I was basically punching the aluminum core through it And I just heard it crack a little bit and I stopped and I put it on the shelf and then I started using the other one and the other one lasted for quite a long time until it was it wouldn't dress right and it was smearing and looking weird and then the abrasive material on the outside is now rattling on the core so I stopped using that and
00:32:54
Speaker
So I was freaking out with like, I don't have four weeks to order another one. And we have literally like 40 rask blades left to grind. How many? We're done. 40. OK. And then that was two days ago. Now it's more like 20. So I put the first cracked wheel back on, and it's working OK right now. And I don't have a lot of expectations for it long term, but it's going to get us through.
00:33:21
Speaker
Do you have a way to do these by hand or on the Tormach grinder or anything? Yeah, we do have other ways to do it that just take a lot longer. Yeah. We could use an end mill instead of the grinding wheel. Right. And we tried that. It just leaves such an uneven, terrible, not super flat finish.
00:33:40
Speaker
Do you still like this, or do you need someone to tell you to take a step back and maybe say, this isn't the right way to do it? You're right. And I realized that this week. And I don't know if the grinding wheel is performing up to my level of expectations. And I don't know how much time I'm willing to invest in further developing it. So I've got some other ideas. And the good thing is, once we're clear of the Rask pre-order,
00:34:08
Speaker
We don't have to make them. We can go back to Norseman for a while until we figure out a better method for making the blades. So there's no obligation anymore. Right, right. Yeah, that's going to tear you, though. I mean, I know that. Yeah, well, of course, of course. But the pressure will be off. That's a good, like, it sounds like this woman, Linda, has been super helpful in. Absolutely. Not complaining there.
00:34:29
Speaker
No, I know, but that's what's tough. So I've built a, I think, a pretty darn good working relationship with Alro, who we buy our aluminum from. And it's just been a good relationship. I know the sales guy. I know the inside and outside sales people. They've stopped by the shop. Like, I'm happy. And they usually have seemed to have been good on price. And the pricing is so much better than if you go to like a
00:34:50
Speaker
Even a local metal supply. I mean the price when we buy larger quantities, and it's good pricing well yard metals approached me at a trade show or Maybe I'm sorry regardless. I approached them, and I was like you know I should just have them bid one and John oh my gosh
00:35:06
Speaker
I was blown away. And this is a commodity. This is just getting aluminum bar. It's not as though there's value added to it. And their price was shockingly better. And I called my outro person. I just said, look, I like you guys. I want to have this relationship with you. Are you really telling me this is the best price you can do? I mean, this is a commodity. You guys are probably buying it from the same upstream provider mill.
00:35:33
Speaker
And they haven't had a good response yet, but I feel embarrassed because I sort of thought, I had this attitude of where if I'm nice and I kind of tell them I'll give you guys, quote, unquote, exclusive, that you'll give me good pricing. And you know, that was stupid of me. Just because you like somebody, it's a business. And it reminds me of Jay Pearson, who on his Kanban cards, when they go to reorder a certain thing, they just send out the same
00:36:00
Speaker
RFQ to three different suppliers and it's who's back on price and who's back on terms and delivery.
00:36:09
Speaker
Yeah, that really surprised me on your latest tour video where you said that and it was like, wow, that's really awesome. Right. And what I've realized is I can still, I can ask them to be competitive is not mean, it just means they need to be competitive. I can still treat them well. I can still, we still pay our vendors right away. I pay invoices the day they arrive, which I think buys us some goodwill if there's ever a problem or a hiccup. You can still all do that and just say, but hey, you need to do better on price period.
00:36:35
Speaker
Totally, you're running a business, you're not running a charity. Right, but it's like the living thing. You shouldn't keep using that weird just because she's helped you. I hate that it stinks, but if it's not the right tool, it's not the right tool. Exactly, like she's helped me so far and we could keep her finding this to the nth degree, but at what time and cost and lead time and all that.
Material Sourcing and Pricing
00:36:57
Speaker
But yeah, I was talking with Jay about because I've got his MPS pallet system, but I want to make fixtures for it. I only got one fixture from him. And, you know, being in Canada, the shipping costs a lot more to get across. But so we were talking about the difference between having him make pallets and ship them to me.
00:37:16
Speaker
versus me buying the material locally and I priced it out locally and he can get material for so much cheaper than I can. Really? Because, like you said, he's buying it in bulk. He's buying long bars and bandsawing it together. I don't have a bandsaw, so I'm buying it from the metal store chopped up into various sections, right? Good grief, yeah. So for a pallet, which could be $100 for me, is like $38 for him or something. I forget what they were, but big difference.
00:37:43
Speaker
Well, like, I'll give you one example. The orange vise tops, if I fix your tops. So those are, we should know what this is. It's six inches by 20 inches by two inches, right? Right, right. I have a few of them from him. We might have bought two and a quarter when we bought, but we bought a skid of them. So I think it was...
00:38:06
Speaker
maybe two sticks that were cut up and put on a pallet. So they were cut to a quarter inch oversize so we could finish machine all ends of them. But I don't want to deal with band sawing or DeWalt chopping up that big of material. So from Alro, which by the way, probably wasn't the best pricing in the end anyways, I bought, I don't remember the quantity, but maybe 12 of them for $45 a piece. Wow.
00:38:33
Speaker
So, okay, so $45 a piece. US would be maybe 60 Canadian. And I pay about $100 Canadian for the same thing. How much? $100. That's not crazy, Pat. For one, though? That's 40% more. But you're just buying one, right? Yeah, I don't know if I get a quantity discount at the metal store. I probably do if I order a lot, but... Got it.
00:38:57
Speaker
But yeah, you're ordering from the supplier, not from the local grocery store of metals. Right, right. I just order so little bulk material from local places that. And look, another great lesson there, don't worry about it. I used to get so hung up on little pricey, and then it's like, wait a minute here. Over the next 365 days, fighting this will save me how much? It's like a little, we buy peanuts.
00:39:24
Speaker
for the Tormach fixture place that we have to sell, included with the kit. And I'm like, well, where do I get these T-nuts the cheapest? And it's like, I could go through some direct crazy channel overseas or something, or find them and source them, and you're gonna save 47 cents, but extrapolate that out. It's like, over the course of a year, I'm gonna do all this work to save $300. Don't worry, good grief. I can go buy them off the shelf somewhere and have them when I need them tomorrow.
00:39:51
Speaker
Yep, exactly. Wait, so this man I don't get to talk to you next week? Right. So we're going to have to bump it till Monday. OK. Let me put that mic out. That's a bummer. I don't like this camp anymore.
00:40:10
Speaker
I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Okay, so Monday they said, dude, have a good time. Take a break, you'll be fine. The business will clear. Yep. It's just gonna delay, you know, but that's fine. Take a notebook and a journal, dude.
00:40:29
Speaker
That's a really good idea. No, I'm not going to feel bad about spending a week with my family, because obviously that's super important. Right. Yeah. Awesome. Dude, have fun. Say hi to Megan and the kids. I'll see you on Monday the 17th. Sounds great. Take care. Take care. Bye. Goodbye.