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#347 We did not crash the Okuma...
282 Plays1 year ago
TOPICS
- Haas power usage correction
- Erik is getting married
- We did not crash the Okuma...
- hiring
- Okamoto surface grinding
- Puck Chuks in stock!
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction & Weekly Updates
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 347. My name is John Grimsmo. My name is John Saunders. This is the weekly dose of manufacturing where we talk about what's going on in businesses and some of the mistakes that we make and some of the fixes that need to happen. Just a nice little check-in update between us.
Energy Calculation Error & Maintenance Improvements
00:00:20
Speaker
So thank you for the segue, which is I was wrong last week on my energy calculators. One I was wrong in many ways, one of which is embarrassing, one of which I didn't know. So the reason I was wrong, which is obvious, is
00:00:36
Speaker
in hindsight is I was sticking an amp meter, amp clamp meter that you buy on Amazon or Home Depot, putting it around one leg and measuring the amps. Well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that you aren't feeding one leg into the machine, you're feeding three legs.
00:00:54
Speaker
Beyond that, there's also a load factor on three-phase power. I'm actually going to not talk about that because I've already proven myself to be wrong and outside of my wheelhouse. The good news is that the load factor would reduce, not increase the usage, if you will.
00:01:09
Speaker
I think, and again, I'm really going cautiously here. It's not three times what I said, it's less. And the good news is also that for the examples of the Haas idle unit, say like sub two amps for an hour, maybe the cost goes from five cents to 10 cents, which is bad because it doubled good because it's still true. Still nothing, yeah.
00:01:32
Speaker
Um, but so on that note, if you clamp one leg of the three legs and you measure five amps or whatever, can you triple it? Is that the math?
00:01:43
Speaker
I don't want to answer that because I'm just, rarely do you and I, I'm conscious of spreading misinformation. Sure. Yeah, fair. There are three phase AMP clamps that have three clamps. I guess they're pretty expensive. I don't know if I need one. There's probably other ways to do this calculation, but I was just taking them out. I think the point is, yeah, Google it at this point. Needs more information. But that's interesting, yeah. Yeah.
00:02:11
Speaker
Still good that we figured out ballpark-ish what things cost. The other thing that this all led to, which I'm really happy about, was we were not doing enough attention to detail on some of our
00:02:29
Speaker
Well, maintenance stuff. Maybe I'm being hard on ourselves, but we use Lex to schedule maintenance around the compressors for the filters that we buy from CNC repair guy and then for the actual oil filters and air oil separators. That's maintenance that happens less often around schedule.
00:02:49
Speaker
But the auto drains that we have, I think we talked, oh, did I talk about, I talked about this last week that I put the Alexa's on them or the smart plugs. What I found out is that one of our auto drains was malfunctioning.
00:03:03
Speaker
and I took it apart real quick and to notice that a just tiny piece of debris had gotten lodged in the solenoid closed action and it was actually leaking open. Only a few PSI, but it was a bleed. It was a leak in the system. It was super simple to fix. My threshold was very low though to toss it in the trash and buy a new one for 20, 30 bucks, but it was easy to fix.
00:03:31
Speaker
And then having those on Alexa's that shut them off when we're not running means the drains only need to run say eight hours a day, not 24 hours a day. And just checking, you know, there's, we've talked about this a year or two ago. Like you can build automated systems and IOT and sensors, but sometimes it's just as simple as like, Hey, on the auto drain, disconnect your output line and run it into a bucket or something and just make sure it's working. Like just do it the double simple way.
00:03:59
Speaker
Yep, yep. Trust but verify, right? The best phrases in business. Yeah.
00:04:05
Speaker
So that felt
Importance of Lex System in Operations
00:04:06
Speaker
good. I like where that ended up. And it also made a good note for, you know, we use Lex maintenance kind of like, I get not like a wiki, but it reminds me of like, that's the go to dump. So every year, or every six months, a maintenance task comes up, it gets assigned to somebody emailed to them, and it tells you what to do in the list. And then you just respond to that, which is wonderful. Love it. Yeah.
00:04:33
Speaker
Is there a way in Lex to verify that it got done, to track that it got done, or is it just an email notification that says, hey, you should do this? Yeah, there is.
00:04:43
Speaker
So it becomes a maintenance ticket, which is kind of like a work order, but it's on its maintenance screen. It's been assigned to somebody. And then after, I think, a couple of days, it becomes overdue. And the dashboard shows that it's overdone. We're not going beyond that. So it could stay overdue and no consequence would happen. And somebody could also check it off.
00:05:09
Speaker
and not have done the task. We're not building systems around. Avoiding that or any like, hey, person, Joe does it, but Steve has to check off on it. We're not doing that.
Wedding Preparations & Shop Management
00:05:20
Speaker
But as long as you have a way for the message to be slightly annoying where it's persistent until it's checked off kind of thing. That's good because it's, when I get an email notification, like I use my calendar, Google calendar for quite a bit, you know, in six months do the thing and I get an email.
00:05:36
Speaker
You might see the email. You might acknowledge the email, but that's no guarantee you've got it done. Well, I've moved away from that to separate church or state, if you will, although I have more email too.
00:05:49
Speaker
I'm a zero inboxer, so if I leave it starred, it will get done. That works for me. I don't like the Google calendar thing because even as good as Google is with search, it's a little bit too difficult for, for example, home maintenance. I have a spring and a fall home maintenance checklist.
00:06:10
Speaker
It's too hard for me to find where that is or what day I got scheduled on. And it did get scheduled on a Sunday morning or a Monday evening and how recurring is it. And if I want to edit, like, oh, check the gutters, I got to find it. I just don't like it. I want to go look. I like Lex better because I can go to the maintenance screen. And I know all the maintenance tasks Saunders has in there in one spot. You need a Lex for home. No, no, no, no.
00:06:38
Speaker
Yeah. How have you been? Been good, been busy this week. So my brother is getting married tomorrow. Oh yeah, congratulations. Congratulations. Absolutely, will do. So he's been off all week prepping and just family, friends, everybody's coming over to visit. So our mom's staying with us and it's been busy. It's been awesome. The shop is running fantastic without us, without both of us, which is good.
00:07:06
Speaker
Yeah, I checked in with his team this morning. And the guys are like, yeah, we're trying to pick up some of Eric's tasks without him being here, like that he hasn't fully taught us yet. We're just trying to see if we can do them. And some of them are challenging. Yeah, it'd be nice. Oh, really? Yeah. But it's good. Everybody's
00:07:26
Speaker
There's a couple things that we are best or only at, but for the most part, the company is super strong without us for many days. So that's awesome. Super awesome. So the team decided to put together a knife for Eric and for his wedding.
00:07:45
Speaker
Eric has been playing with knife patterns for the past couple weeks and he'll 3D print like a fake handle with a pattern, like an engraving pattern into it as a quick iteration, quick test, whatever. It's been awesome. Having him get the bamboo for himself has gotten him back into fusion, playing around, making things, print, test, whatever. He's got like a dozen handles with different patterns on it. I asked him the other day, I was like, what's your favorite one? He's like, that one.
00:08:10
Speaker
And it's just got a bunch of dimples all over it in a really interesting pattern. And so I wanted to make the rask that the guys put together with that pattern in it. No big deal. Slightly complicated on a curved handle because I wanted to rotate the C axis on the machine so that you're perpendicular. Normal too.
00:08:31
Speaker
Yeah, normal to the surface on every angle, rotation. So that added some challenge, but not too much. So I came in last night, Skye put this knife together. It's all good to go. It's all anodized already. And I'm just engraving through the anodizing. So give me a set of scrap handles that I can screw up. So he did. And then I tested, got it all dialed in perfectly.
00:08:56
Speaker
and then I engraved their initials and then the date of the wedding onto it, finished it all up, went beautifully, went home about 10.30, had the knife, came home, showed my mom, because she's staying with us, and I was like, check it out. And then I explained the engraving to her, and I'm like, wait a minute. That's Wednesday's date. Their wedding's on Thursday. Oh, no. I engraved one day off. Engraved the 15th, not the 16th. And I was like, what?
00:09:25
Speaker
So this morning, I'm in the shop, rushing around, trying to find another set of handles. No. Oh, it's just a good story at this point, John. No. I know. Leave it. So anyway, during the podcast right now, Angelo is engraving that second set of handles with the new date. Should be good to go, and then we'll throw it together, and it'll be good.
00:09:47
Speaker
Fair enough. That's funny. That's funny. But yeah, it's beautiful. It's cool. It's nice to have a new first off pattern that he designed and he gets to carry
Weather Impacts on F1 Race in Vegas
00:09:56
Speaker
in. That's his wedding knife. His best man, Eric gave him a rask for his wedding in 2016 or so. Literally, we hung out and I saw rask in his pocket and it's black DLC coated. It's all beat up because he's carrying seven years. I was like, oh, let me see your rask.
00:10:17
Speaker
And then later we were talking like him and his wife. I was like, when do you guys get married? And he pulled out his knife and he looked at the engraving and he's like, I got married now. That's funny. So yeah, Eric needs that too. That's funny. It's awesome.
00:10:34
Speaker
wedding, traveling or in town? It's in town, yep. It's just nice. So everybody's coming here, which is cool. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. So our uncle and cousins are coming out from British Columbia and mom's coming out from Seattle. She's here. His friends are coming out from Seattle and then we've got a bunch of local family and friends. Awesome. That's great. And his fiance, her family's from around here too, so it's good.
00:10:59
Speaker
a relatively small wedding, like 40 people or so. It's good. Enjoy. That's awesome. Wish them the best in good weather and festivities. Yeah, weather looks good. For mid-November, it's pretty decent right now.
00:11:14
Speaker
We've, it's wonderful here. Like it's beautiful. It's oddly warm. Like it's in the mid fifties or even sixties, but then as soon as it gets dark at four or five o'clock, it gets 15, 20 degrees cooler and it gets relatively cold. So yeah.
00:11:31
Speaker
It's been top of mind because of the F1 race in Vegas this weekend. And that's been a whole saga. We were all excited about it. Then the prices came out a year ago. And I was like, that's ridiculous. And then AU is there going on right now. And I thought, oh, I could do both and then ended up doing neither.
Machine Mishap & Learning From Mistakes
00:11:50
Speaker
And then it came out apparently five, six days ago that is it Ross Braun, who's the
00:11:57
Speaker
former Ferrari team principal, but now runs when I can't keep track of the entities. Like does he run FIA or the Formula One or I don't know, whatever. Some decision maker with an F1. They didn't realize Vegas gets cold at night.
00:12:13
Speaker
Oh, they literally thought that he admitted on record like we just thought it was a desert like hot and it's a night race. It's 11 p.m. local time in the traffic. Yeah, the track was going to be like four degrees C and it's
00:12:29
Speaker
There was one Montreal race 30 years ago, I think that was colder because Montreal. So I don't know, like, so much people are rooting against it. And frankly, I'm kind of on the boat of like, how commercialized and how they tried to gouge and, you know, I don't know. But it'll be interesting to see. Wow. Interesting. Sorry. Did every team bring tires for cold road?
00:12:54
Speaker
Yeah, a new track and it's not the best track design and there's exit. I could go on. It'll be interesting. I will be interested to watch the highlight reel. A lot of the team's machine shops may have some work to do come Monday morning. Yeah, yeah. Well, speaking of crashes, we did not crash the Okua, but we came closer than we have for what I think is a pretty crummy reason.
00:13:23
Speaker
So we do adjust offsets periodically, copying them by a tenth or so. I don't think that's crazy uncommon. And we accidentally hit a button to the right of the add button. It says Cal, C-A-L, which I would sort of mean calculate, which isn't crazy. I think it's like an add, subtract, whatever. Well,
00:13:48
Speaker
and sort of momentary detour. One of the funny things to me about the Akuma horizontal is I'm super proud of how we've run it and how productive we are and the parts that come off it, but we have not nerded out on that machine. I have not gone deep. I have not
00:14:05
Speaker
embraced it in the sense that there's kind of like part of me that enjoys it. And I think you as well, I very much have treated that like a tool to like, we've gotten it to do everything we needed to do it does it wonderfully. And end of story move on like, you know, not Yeah, like I'm not an expert on the control. Yeah, certainly know a lot more than I did when I got it. But yep. Rest my case there.
00:14:28
Speaker
ends up that the CAL button is similar to the Haas world of part zero set, which takes the offset value that you have highlighted. And instead of adding, in this case, one 10,000, it changes that offset to the current position.
00:14:46
Speaker
Huh, this sounds scary. So we were adjusting Z and we were trying to move Z by a tenth and Z would be obviously, quote unquote, in the part like way where the spindle quite close to the tombstone. And when we were doing that, it's in the home position. So the tombstone is 20 inches away from the spindle. So it changed this value from call it negative three to positive 18.
00:15:11
Speaker
There is a way as well in the Okuma to go view a key logger so you can actually see everything you stroked into the machine. And we got lucky because we actually ran the program the next time. It threw a B-axis over travel or something. Bingo, yeah. And so we were kind of like, okay, pencils down, stop, something will happen.
00:15:31
Speaker
And we did some quick searching and talked to an app sky at Costiger. And unfortunately, you can't disable that button, which I would prefer to. Haas has a setting that also allows you to set a range threshold. So if you, okay, ours are all set at a hundred pal. So if you adjust it, part zero set or any change on offset more than hundred pallet prompts you, are you sure you want to do this? Which I have mixed feelings about because it sounds great, but then the behaviors often that you always just click yes through it and you don't even realize you did it.
00:16:00
Speaker
So, anyways, that's the end of that story. We got lucky, we know to learn our lesson, but, whew. 3D print a little cover that super glues over top of it.
00:16:12
Speaker
No, it's a soft key touchscreen. Still? I don't know. Yeah, you can't. Get creative. Interesting. One of the ways that we, after we figured out what we did, we knew how to fix it. But the other thing that I did, you're going to kind of laugh, is I have every six month a Lex maintenance reminder, and I take an iPhone video of the Akuma offsets.
00:16:41
Speaker
Because offsets are so imperative to how we run that machine. Because you have about 24 different tombstone faces. Some of them have up to eight offsets per tombstone. And we keep a Google sheet that tracks current usage and assignments, if you will, and they're sectioned out. And that's worked well.
00:17:02
Speaker
I, this validated my joy because you can create all the databases and exports and CSVs and all that. Having an iPhone video that's updated some interval is a surrogate for your eyes. And it helped me look through and see, ah, yes, good. I know what that was. I remember what it was for me looking at it. And that was very validated that that I'll be doing to continue to do that. Nice. And do you store that video somewhere? Yep.
00:17:32
Speaker
It's technically in a folder that only I have access to right now, but there's a note to it and a reference to it. The team knows about it. It's not just hidden in your phone six months ago, right? No, it gets uploaded to an Okuma folder for sure.
Hiring Challenges & Strategies
00:17:49
Speaker
That's good. I like that. It's checks and balances, right? It's logging current. Even when everything's going great right now, to log going great is super valuable, but not when you think about it, right? You think about it the day after you needed it. Right. Yeah.
00:18:09
Speaker
Yeah, we're noticing that now with Pierre because his clock is ticking before he's moving back to France. A month and a half, pretty much. We are trying to download all the information from his brain as possible into set-up sheets and organizations. What are the tips and tricks for this part? Because for the past three years, he's run those two layouts hands off.
00:18:38
Speaker
So if we don't find a lay of the machinist in time in the next month and a half, then I'll be jumping on there for the short term until we do find somebody. But we put up the job posting last week and we've gotten tons of response so far. Oh, good. Which is good. A lot of completely non-qualified people that just get dismissed immediately. But yeah, there's definitely some strong leads in there that we're going to follow up with and see where that leads us.
00:19:06
Speaker
Good. Awesome. Yeah. So you're, you did an Instagram post and a YouTube video. Yep. Yep. Does that all lead to indeed though? It all leads to direct, uh, well, our website and then to indeed. So yeah, we're, we're, I don't think we're getting any direct, um, you know, resumes in our email kind of thing. Um, but yeah, I want everybody to go through indeed. So if anybody in the Ontario area is, uh, you know, looking to work at a suite machine shop, we are hiring. Awesome.
00:19:35
Speaker
And like the careers page on the website, I'm kind of wondering if we should just leave it up, even, I don't know. Look, I'm talking out loud here. I certainly don't mean to tell you what to do, but I would have no problem taking both Indeed candidates, but also just a career page PDF, like a reform that you could submit because I don't know, path of leadership resistance, like I don't. Yeah, like direct applicants kind of thing. Yeah, yeah.
00:20:05
Speaker
But even in the future, even after we fill these roles, I'm wondering if it depends on if we're hiring or growing or not, we will in the, in the future. But it's like having a careers page on your website tells the visitor, whether it's a customer or a potential machinist or whatever, that's like, Oh, they're, they're a growing company. They, you know, are looking for people. And there's this weird, when you're hiring somebody, there's this weird kind of Venn diagram of like, right job, right person, right position, right pay, right time.
00:20:35
Speaker
that if it all doesn't come together, you know, the right person might be two months down the road, not now kind of thing. Yeah.
00:20:46
Speaker
I've rained myself in around in the past sort of thinking like, hey, we found a great person. Let's get them on the team and we'll make it work. And I've kind of realized that's not the company we are. True. And that's not the company we've been, but I'm wondering just thinking out loud if that's more the company we need to be. I don't know.
00:21:06
Speaker
Well, I'll be but we are, I don't think we're not financially that role, but like we're not we're not a friend sister works for effectively a lobby company. So this is like endowed by uber ultra high net worth foundations where it's just like, hey, I got some super smart person that was looking to join in. Yeah, the money's not a limit. For me, I've realized the best way to focus as a leader is to know
00:21:34
Speaker
with laser sharp focus, the equipment that we need, the processes. I hate saying this, it sounds so whatever, but it's true. Processes we need and then the team that we need. I'll re-say what came up in the WhatsApp months, if not years ago of that idea when you're interviewing, do you just pick
00:21:54
Speaker
My thought, cause it's kind of how I got hired at my first job was they got, they did their best to land a pool of 50 people or a hundred people. They put them all in a room. They interview all of them across the team. And then you just pick the best 10 out of that group of a hundred. Whereas what I heard from other peers, and I think is actually better and more appropriate in our situations is no, you know exactly what you want in the role. And if, if it's the first person that meets that you're done. And if it's a hundred person and none have,
00:22:24
Speaker
You got to find more applicants. You know what you need here, John? We do in this role. Obviously, we need a lathe machinist to come and crush those two slash three machines with the Wilhelmin.
00:22:42
Speaker
And then I will also need more help on the programming design, milling machines, operating prototyping side of things too. So that's kind of, it's like a slightly different role, but it's still kind of a qualified person kind of thing.
00:22:59
Speaker
Yeah, sure. Have you thought about switching that around and hiring somebody to take over the company and instead you be that person? The machinist programmer? I have thought about it. I don't want to be. Really? I like it as fun, but I wouldn't want to do it. Like, I don't know, I do wish I had more time to do it.
Focus on Business Operations & Talent Development
00:23:25
Speaker
I don't know if I would want that to be the entirety of my role, my position. I like the hectic hustle of running the company, but that on top of trying to be a prototype machinist or a full-time programmer or something like that is a bit too much for me.
00:23:43
Speaker
So I do want to spread that out, but, um, but no, I guess I haven't put too much thought into having somebody come in to replace the higher level business operation side of the company. Maybe that thought will come to me at some point, but not right now. Yeah.
00:24:02
Speaker
Yeah, I just think of all the projects that I want to do all the products that we want to create all the I do want to grow the company, you know, I do want to hire some more people and I don't want to be able to do more stuff and provide more cool stuff for our customers and make more money like we all do. And make that happen. And I think that's in our near future near to distant future is what that looks like. As the as your peer
00:24:30
Speaker
I want to push you to not just talk about that. Yeah, this hiring round has and will continue to be illuminating to see like who's out there and what kind of talent is around and it's getting me to
00:24:47
Speaker
The one thought of only hire rock stars, that's all great and all if there's a lot of rock stars in your area that you can afford to keep paying versus training people from the ground up, whether you got university students or high school students and you teach them the basic skills. I think it's clear to me that our future will be a combination of the two.
00:25:11
Speaker
And I certainly don't want to turn down amazing talent because I can just put them to work immediately. We have so much work to do. And then also to build people up is really fun, too. I was telling my mom this morning we were chatting about it. And I'm like, yes, I'm very younger, guys. It's been really cool the past few years to see them grow and learn. And you see their confidence develop and the skills develop. That is really, really cool. And I don't want to lose that. That is fun.
00:25:36
Speaker
I a thousand percent agree but have realized that is a form of good but nevertheless
00:25:48
Speaker
Philanthropic is not the right word, but it's the best analogy that comes to mind of like you can't afford to donate to charity if you can't make your own bills. I'm not right. I can give you stats about how many interns we've had and that's a point of pride, but then I think about why is it a point of pride for me?
00:26:07
Speaker
But is it because we have genuinely given people exposure? For sure, like 100% absolute. There's also the whole like, hey, kind of trying to be competitive about like showing how good we are by how many people we've helped. That's a little bit more self-serving, I guess.
00:26:23
Speaker
I've also realized I can only justify doing that going forward if we've got our house in order here. Good grief. We're going fine.
Precision in Manufacturing Techniques
00:26:32
Speaker
But I'm also realizing that the way we do better starting today going forward involves contracting a little bit. Focusing on what we do and not realizing that part of my job is to try to be a lot of things, a lot of different people.
00:26:49
Speaker
And if that means we don't have, I'm making this up on the spot, if we don't hire more interns, okay. I actually really like where we're at right now. We've got a wonderful person that's stepped into our shipping operations role and doing an excellent job, not only at order fulfillment side, but stepping up with QC. I think I mentioned it in the past, but it's been a wonderful start to where we're
00:27:17
Speaker
It's been a wonderful start to the end of our year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Makes sense. Just the transition to the future you want, like the future you're building kind of thing. And that's what happens when you hire. They don't have to be rock stars, but just good people that are like, you know, want to come in, hustle, they're reliable, they show up, they do their work, they're trustworthy, all that stuff. When you have those kind of people come in, it's like, it's amazing. It's like, whoa, yes, yes, yes, I want more of this. Okay, yes, yes, I like this. Yes.
00:27:47
Speaker
Yeah, I've been grinding some on the Okamoto and grind on. I really have an appreciation for trying to think about ways to measure parts in small intervals. And we've got.
00:28:06
Speaker
a set of Mitutoyu quantum mics and next to it a Mitutoyu LH600E, which is a pretty decent digital height gauge. I think the one you've had forever. Yes, yes. But quite accurate. If you take a known like a ceramic Sarah block, gauge block, it repeats quite well and is resolution wise quite accurate.
00:28:29
Speaker
Then you start realizing there are all these other factors of temperature, of ambient, the fact that our service plate, to be honest, is not a double A lab ground plate. It's just easy to get different values when you want to get different values out of stuff. The way I settled on yesterday was
00:28:49
Speaker
kind of the old school, but I like it way of taking a Brown and Sharp 50 millionths test indicator, sweeping it against the gauge block to establish a zero and then using that on the part, partly also because if I take, this is for puck chucks, it's a roughly three inch circle. If I just start
00:29:10
Speaker
measuring with the height gauge along the circumference by rotating the part, you're going to get variations that are sometimes one or two tenths. And it's a question of like, is that really
00:29:22
Speaker
there, or is it just something to do with the other factors at play? And when you have the height gauge, you can move it in a constant contact linear manner. And it lets you see, like, are you actually going down a ski slope? Or is it just the fact that when you rotated it, there's a different something or else going on? It's just more analog in a good way, if you will, which I like. So dial test indicator on a height gauge, what's it called?
00:29:53
Speaker
height gauge or surface gauge. Actually, I need to find, I've seen some on Instagram, I don't know who makes them, but we have a used stear it thing, which is fine, except I want one that's just a little... Actually, I want to buy the Rolls-Royce one. I'm also assuming for a few hundred dollars, I could probably buy the best height gauge made these days. Because the one we have
00:30:17
Speaker
is ever so slightly jittery. And this just goes into like, Hey, yeah, I want to sweep my, my artifact, my master walk away, come back 10 minutes later, and it shouldn't have moved like I should be able to sweep it again. Of course, we always do check it, but ours will sometimes bump a 10th. And I, I think it's just because it's a 50 year old eBay one that's in fine condition, but not. Yeah, exactly. I need to get in there. Yeah, as
00:30:43
Speaker
I forget if it was Rinzetti or Tom Lipton that's like, they tap it with a wooden popsicle stick or something to get the resonance out of it or whatever. Just a little slop, like the joints will settle over time and it's that last fine tune that's super cool. I've seen a lot of tool makers build their own, like from scratch, which is super cool. And it's, you know, maybe one of my, if I had infinite time, I'd love to spend some time and build one of those out of like bronze or something really cool brass.
00:31:11
Speaker
I don't know if it'll ever get to it, but that would be fun to do as like a fun tool maker project. Because there's some ideas that I have for a height gauge that I'd like to see in one. It'd be just fun to do. But yeah, ours is, I think it's just an eBay, old, relatively cheap thing.
00:31:32
Speaker
Is it Lipton? I think either built one or showed a video one where and I want to say it was some sort of a flexure, which totally makes sense because I don't need that adjustment. Yeah, he did. But I want to get away from ours has the like fine pitch screw that just articulates a crane boom up and down. Exactly.
Future Business Goals & Automation
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah. And something
00:31:53
Speaker
Josh Hakko put up on the NH Micro where he has, I think he's got a fancy one, like a Herman Schmidt, some super fancy expensive one. He was able to position it the way where he pulled the indicator very close to the pivot point and his adjustment knob got
00:32:15
Speaker
a hundred times more resolution, which is super cool when you think about it. It's like the old dial cross slide on a manual lathe trick of like, yeah, it's a compound to be like sub-tenths diameter at the sacrifice of losing some Z position. Because of basic trigonometry. Yeah, it's so cool.
00:32:40
Speaker
Oh, yeah, they do. Yeah. Shirmish. Boom. John, here you go. How much though? That's 395 bucks. Really? That's not bad. Yeah.
00:32:48
Speaker
It's kind of one of those funny things where like, no, that's actually, I still think that's a lot of money, John, but it's Herman Schmidt and it's the end of the road. Like I get to buy the best one. I get the Kern, Willeman, Yazda, whatever, Mitsui Ziki of dial gauges for 400 bucks. Yeah, 395 bucks. Okay. I'm looking at it now. It looks that spring plate reminds me of what I saw. Yep. That's what Tom Lipton made. But it still has that.
00:33:13
Speaker
So, hermachment surface gauge capacity 12 inches MG-1 is still on $395, you know. But like, that's not that hard to make, but it would cost at least $395 in time to get that made, I know. But that goes back to like the... That's cool though, that's beautiful. Oh man, if you could really fast forward to 20 years down the road.
00:33:38
Speaker
if there was a CEO of Crimson Knives. The same applies to here. And there was a machinist person and there was a COO and all that like where your job could be, hey, every morning I spend two, three hours with our new intern and mentoring him and then the afternoon I spend time playing. I'm not
00:34:00
Speaker
anywhere near that John. That's a nice vision. It doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be what you want. For sure. Obviously, we want our companies to run smoothly. We want to be profitable. We want to do well, do good in the world, make an impact, things like that. Right now, you and I feel like we're doing a lot of running around to make that happen because we're in ultimate control. We have
00:34:30
Speaker
We're in charge of that ship.
Marketing Challenges for New Product
00:34:33
Speaker
But that position that you just mentioned, we're like, no, the company's smooth sailing pretty much without me. I got to spend some time guiding everybody and teaching new people and training and offloading information to make sure everything runs smooth. But I don't do much on a daily basis. So you have time to play and things like that. I think I'd like to get there one day.
00:34:54
Speaker
Yeah. I'm probably a lot closer to that than I let on because we've got a financial controller, we've got shipping department, we've got machinists, we've got finishing guys. I don't do much of the day-to-day, but I'm still ultimately responsible for all of it, right? I've been... Oh, actually, I should say this about Puck Chucks. They are available for sale. We have them in inventory.
00:35:24
Speaker
Um, what we need to do because it's kind of that like classic entrepreneurs, disillusion of like, if you put a product on your website, people aren't necessarily going to bang down your doors to get it. You have to show what it is. We have not shown them off much. Very limited like Instagram teaser. So, um, we don't want to let perfection get in the way of great, good, whatever you want to call it. But we have,
00:35:54
Speaker
a very simple video script done that would involve showing how we're already using them on our horizontal as well as how we're using them on our VF2. But a couple of things that we're like, ah, we really want to change it or fix that or update that because one of them is an older version, blah, blah, blah. And so it made me realize, okay, let's fix these three things, which look, it just takes time. And then it's not going to be a video that is my normal, just John Saunders grabs the GoPro and wash it on the shop. It'll be a little bit more,
00:36:22
Speaker
The audience will not be people who are aware of our history in the NYC side of it. It'll be more of like, hey, I'm a visual person or an apps engineer or automation guy. I need to understand the sales, marketing, and technical attributes of this product. All that coming in with what we've got on their plate for the next six weeks makes me realize, okay,
00:36:47
Speaker
The realistic goal is going to be to have that video filmed in December and then edited it up in January. It syncs to say that, but that's just the truth of it. If we continue to sell some in the interim to folks that get zero points and don't necessarily need that push, great. But that's where we're at.
00:37:07
Speaker
It's such a beautiful product because you do use it in your shop. You're not making dumb little demos on a folding table. You're like, no, come to our Okuma where we use this part to make this part. That's cool. That's full circle.
00:37:23
Speaker
No, it's great. One of the things I insisted on doing that is obviously to make sure we weren't missing product, feature attributes, problems, et cetera. I really haven't had anything like that. The biggest thing we've done is just continue to tweak some of the manufacturing stuff, assembly stuff, but that's not...
00:37:44
Speaker
We've built enough confidence at this point to be like, okay, we're good with the design, if you will. As we both noticed from Instagram, I don't want to call it marketing, but just social awareness over the past six, seven years, the more you post it, the more people are going to want it, just period. That takes some effort on your part and it doesn't have to be polished.
00:38:09
Speaker
quick little videos literally every day. If you really want to sell them, like a quick video every day of like, hey, we're used to it. Pop, pop, pop, pop. Done. And it just keeps people remembering. It keeps them engaged. It keeps them like, oh yeah, I do need that. And then eventually they're going to have the application and they're going to know who to go to and they're going to like.
00:38:25
Speaker
just got to be around. But you've been playing it, I don't blame you at all, as the like somewhat silent development for the past year. You know, we mentioned on the podcast, you might post the odd picture here and there, but it's not quite at the loud and proud state yet. And it's the kind of product that could be, right? It could be your
00:38:45
Speaker
It could be your shining star over time, right? Oh, no, absolutely. I mean, that's the thing I remind myself of is like, oh, no, John, this is going to be awesome. Like, it's going to be great. I'm also conscious of like, hey, it's a more complicated product and it's a different price point and so forth. And like, say, the mod vice, but no, it's going to, it will be great. Oh, the other one is like, we don't want to release the automatic version video until we have the manual down. We've actually had a harder time
00:39:13
Speaker
with a simpler manual version around some of the design and manufacturing aspects, but we're working on it. Like a lever, tall glue clamp kind of thing? It'll be just a screw, actuated, fun, but we for the most part have decided to want them to be fairly cross compatible, similar heights, similar sizes and so forth.
00:39:37
Speaker
It won't be the case if you will be swapping them although but like for a cat even just for for fixturing in programming workflows. And frankly i think the manual version is good if not better for a lot of the single axis like putting on an hrt 210 you don't need the automatic you don't even want the automatic right with an airline. Yeah it's interesting.
00:39:58
Speaker
Yeah. If somebody has a workflow where they take it off their machine, they put it on the CMM, they get scanned, you'd have a manual version on your CMM. I'm sure.
Merchandise & Project Updates
00:40:07
Speaker
Could have a pneumatic one, but yeah. That's all right. But then it's also got me thinking like, okay, we're making them this way. Would I ever want to
00:40:17
Speaker
you know, literally change out to a multis. Like I don't think openly, I have a B axis, like a big version of a will that a term melts out. And the truth is, that's not something I need to be focused on today. But I don't, it's freeing to realize that you could do that. Like, yeah, just do it if that's what needs to happen. Yeah, it's kind of a weird point in business right now where it's like,
00:40:42
Speaker
It's almost too easy to make those big decisions in a way. You can justify your way into a lot of things. Oh, sure. Why we have dozens of machines.
00:40:58
Speaker
It's good you're thinking about that because it's like this is the way we currently do it, but is this the optimal way? We could shift things around. We could sell these machines, get this machine instead and consolidate and change. I flip back and forth all the time because I like consistency. When I have a process, I like to just run with it and micro fine tune that working process.
00:41:21
Speaker
I do step back sometimes and go, no, you can change the whole system and you could do it on different machines and do it differently and consolidate things like that. And then I probably get frustrated with the amount of time and money that that would take to do and I keep doing it the way I'm doing it.
00:41:38
Speaker
Well, the big driver that I'm thinking of is the fact that I have never loved the limitations of driven tool turret lathes. Yeah, me too. The number of tools, the lower RPMs, the gear driven nature of them. And I'm like, if you could just switch it out for a proper milling spindle, you would now have 60 tools or whatever, and better RPMs, better QC control. It's like what sort of through bore are we talking here?
00:42:09
Speaker
So I think that's what I stupidly realize is that when you're getting into the larger diameter stuff, which by large, I mean, three to four inches, not that big in the grand scheme of turning center huge for me. Well, yeah, sure. I don't think you're going to ever do barfed stuff, partly because look, you got it, you're not going to put a six foot or 12 foot three inch bar up. Yeah. Or that a hoist. And so that leads you to think about
00:42:35
Speaker
And there's too many options these days of robot-fed lathes. There's OEM options. There's Bingo. Yeah. Yeah. But that does make sense. Like, wait a minute. You just order it, saw cut, shows up, load it, go. Like, I've seen this demo at DMG. And every floor one guy's got one. And both of them has got the Armroid version, whatever. Yeah. And again, a lathe like the Malthus or a milling spindle lathe just make amazing parts.
00:43:05
Speaker
Yes. You have your big Wilhelmin and your little Wilhelmin. Well, and if anybody wants to help support our efforts toward these new machines, we just released new black t-shirts. Nice. I think our cumulative t-shirt sales in the history of Saunders Machine Works is probably like
00:43:27
Speaker
I don't even know, not even a cap toe holder for a cap toe holder. Exactly. No, but we actually did sell some yesterday when we put up the Instagram post. They're great, super comfortable, and anybody that wants to rep the brand, we appreciate it. Excellent. You've got some awesome swag, right? Is it for sale or is it? Yeah, our T-shirts are for sale on our website. We've got the
00:43:52
Speaker
What do you call it? It's like our Viking logo on the front, but it's a face. It's like a humanized state, like a Viking. And then the three products on the back, the Norseman Rask saga. And then we have, I think today, we're launching hoodies. Oh, awesome. With a new circular logo on the front, which looks really cool. So we got gray and black hoodies, ones that pull over, ones that zip up launching today. So they should be up by the time this podcast comes up. Cool.
00:44:18
Speaker
So if anybody out there is looking for a new t-shirt or a new hoodie, head up both of our websites and see what you got. Sweet. What are you up to today? Today, I'm checking to see if Angela finished that engraving by the time this podcast is over, and then I'll throw that knife together or just bring the parts home. And then we're having a rehearsal brunch for the wedding. Nice. So I'm out in 10 minutes here. Sweet. What are you up to?
00:44:47
Speaker
I am going to go check a new fixture to see how that ran last night. Actually, I don't know if I'm going to get to it today or not, but we never filmed a Wilhelmin video, partly because we've just been using the darn thing.
00:45:02
Speaker
That's a video right there though. But no, I actually want to because I enjoy it. So I might, I've got my little like notes ready. I might go just bang that out. That would be much appreciated. Don't overthink it. Just show us what you got. Yeah, right. We all love those videos.
00:45:18
Speaker
And then actually, just before we hit record on this, I saw Job Shopper's Instagram post on the jig grinding. Did you see that? No. I think you liked it. You were the one that showed up in my likes. It was like a little grinding tool that was walking around. Job underscore shopper underscore. Maybe. TN. Oh, was it a story? No. It wasn't a story because I wanted to.
00:45:46
Speaker
Is it full? No, it's a post. Yeah, liked by John Grimsman. So he has a, it looks like almost like a spindle hub on a 246 block. Show me in the video. Just start.
00:46:02
Speaker
Oh yeah, I do remember that one. I want to figure out what wheel he was using, and many other people ask him in the comments, so I don't really bug him yet. We built workflows around not having to do that, but it's always been intriguing, and his results look great, so it's been in the back of my mind. Grinding is so interesting.
00:46:25
Speaker
Yeah, I haven't actually I have used our CBN grinding wheels. It's more like a like a like a disc. You know, there's 16 inch thick one inch diameter. I have done that sort of outside OD circular go down grinding actually did in carbon fiber and it looked amazing. Cool. How much is your good?
00:46:51
Speaker
Yeah, go ahead. How much material are you removing? I mean, you need enough to get through the surface. So a few thou depending on the.
00:47:00
Speaker
depending on the part. The carbon fiber example, for example, it's a carbon fiber tube that has, they basically wrap it in Saran Wrap as they're forming it. Once they unroll the Saran Wrap, the cello wrap, it's got resin spiraled around the outside. There's a solid three to five thou of junk on the outside that I had to grind through. With metal, it's, I don't know, depends on what you need.
00:47:27
Speaker
Cause I'm just, we have, with some of these Sandvik tools we put, they're like kind of oddball tooling. It works great in that we're holding the tonnage as we want. But part of me is wondering if I couldn't say, just take, try to take an extra 10th or two. And even if it was like, let's say that that surface was not perfectly flat, if it's just almost, instead of roller burnishing, it's grinding, but it's just knocking off the few high spots along that. Ooh, that's interesting. Like I don't really want to grind much at all. I just want it as a,
00:47:55
Speaker
Non wear. Yeah. Yeah. And then you get into the tricks though of like, it kind of wear comp exact diameter matching two tools together, like, you know, and then you grind the next. And I've noticed annoying variation in that stack up, you know? Yeah, that's where I'm out. You're right. Yeah. That's right. Not to say it's undoable. Like you talking for a OD or an ID? What would you do? OD flat feature.
00:48:24
Speaker
Yeah. I think the grinding would work. I always forget this. And then I immediately remember why I don't like it because I don't want to dress and I don't want to measure and I don't want to deal with where. So no. Yeah. Yeah. Done. For a flat feature, like a million along a jaw edge, a jaw lip. Interesting. We solve this. Like I have to remind myself, pick the battles you need to pick. We have solved this. It is working. Excellent. So done. Move on.
00:48:54
Speaker
Yeah. Good stuff. Well, for the fellow US listeners, I'm going to wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving today because I am on the road next week and thus we'll be missing our talk. Nice. Well, that works for me. And then I will see you in two weeks. Two weeks? Sounds good. All right. Sounds good, man. Hey, everyone. Have a good day. Bye.