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Business of Machining - Episode 41
215 Plays7 years ago
"Grimsmo's frowning at me with disdain--"
"I'm THINKING!" With Thanksgiving rounding the corner, this episode of Business of Machining offers a lot of food for thought. After a night of tossing and turning, Saunders uses his inability to sleep to his advantage. How's that Norseman pallet coming, Grimsmo? Finishing the much improved pallet while keeping up on production is a challenge. HUBRIS VS HUMILITY: The Johns are definitely not fans of arrogance but is it possible to be too humble? Saunders contemplates the biggest business decision he's had to make thus far and it's all about ERP (enterprise resource planning). While no holy grail of systems exists, one in particular catches his eye. Check out ODOO here. The Grimsmo Knives roster is set to gain some new names. When hiring someone you know, it's not a question of their knowledge or ability. The real question might surprise you. "Don't forget, you're the boss." - Saunders ROBIN RENZETTI INSTAGRAM POST The guys talk tooling, chip formation problems, and solutions. If you're getting some SCUFFS, you aren't alone! When you hear the phrase, "custom tooling," what comes to mind? Dollar signs and hassle? Put your mind at ease because it's much easier than you think! Saunders and his team take Turkey Day to the extreme in a new, must-see video soon to air.Recommended
Transcript
Starting the Day Productively
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machining episode 41. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmough.
00:00:08
Speaker
Good morning. Good morning. How are you? I'm doing really good. Sweet. I pulled a John Grimsmode this morning. I could not sleep. And so I came in, I normally get in at like 6, 6, 15, but I came in at 5, 20 and got an op done on the machine and then came in here and just waking up, I guess.
Balancing Work and Personal Life
00:00:32
Speaker
Nice. I wanted to do that, but my wife woke me up at 6.30 and she's like, you're doing your podcast, right?
00:00:37
Speaker
I was going to wake up at five. Oh man, I slept straight through. Yeah. Do you set an alarm or do you just get up these days? I set an alarm usually. Okay. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. It's a funny feeling. My alarm goes off when you're already at the shop and you're like, Oh, that's right. I got up. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. It does bother me though. Um, I used to get up early in New York and I'd try to play tennis sometimes in the morning and I was like, Oh, it's so more tired. It's so rough now. It's like,
00:01:04
Speaker
Right. Let's go. Let's get cracking. Yeah. I actually think I'm going to go. My in-laws are in town. I think I'm going to go back home after this podcast and like join them for breakfast, which is just funny because I've got like three hours of the work done. Yeah, exactly. You feel good about it.
Norseman Knives Production Challenges
00:01:20
Speaker
Yeah. How was your week? My week was one of the most productive weeks we've had in a long time.
00:01:25
Speaker
Really? Yeah. We've just been cranking knives every single day. Norseman knives, although the hard way with small fixtures, old fixtures. I'm working on this new palette. It's almost done. You said that last week. Exactly. I haven't had much time. Either you stop everything and slow down, parts coming out, and then Eric slows down, then Barry slows down.
00:01:51
Speaker
or I make parts. So this is the problem because to be blunt, you have one machine. And one person operating it. I mean, Barry can load fixtures and push buttons, but that's the extent of it. But if you had two machines, I'm not saying you should get two machines, but if you had two machines, one could be running. You're right. And the other could be making a pallet. You're absolutely right. Because the times when I want two machines is when one is busy making parts and I need to do something else.
00:02:20
Speaker
And so I would utilize another machine eventually. No, I'm just trying to understand. I've noticed this in a different way with any of the folks here in the shop. If anyone from Jared to Zach or Noah
00:02:39
Speaker
are out of something to do. And it's great. They're like, hey, what can I do? Which is something I very much respect. I like that attitude. If I don't have anything for them to do, I have learned. I just have to say I don't have anything right now. Because for me to usually, well, a lot of times it works out that that means I'm really busy trying to do stuff on my end. And I can't let their lack of stuff
00:03:08
Speaker
influence and drive, like I have to be the driver of what's going on like that. Now, I need to do a better job of making sure I've got stuff in the queue and making sure I've got stuff to do. And there's always work, little jobs, cleaning, inventory, sort of. But you forget at that moment when they're asking questions. Yeah. Right. And I guess what I'm trying to say is like with your pallets,
00:03:25
Speaker
you're always going to have an excuse to make product because that keeps Barry busy, keeps Eric busy, keeps money coming in the door. I get that, but sometimes you've also got to say, no. What Grimsman eyes rate needs right now is this workflow 2.0 on the Norseman pallets. They need to happen. You've been saying it for three weeks now. Totally. I've been working on it for months, you know, bits and pieces. So all that's left is I got to make some clamps and then I got to come up with the cam for the handles on the pallet and then we're good to go.
00:03:53
Speaker
You have to copy it from a Fusion file to a new one? Yeah. And do the tweaks that I've been wanting to do forever. Right, right. But yeah, I am picking away at it, which is really good. It's looking really sweet, too. Do you think you'll have a goal? I mean, is it something you'll get done by next week? I think so. Well, we'll see when we talk next week. Conviction.
Balancing Technician and Manager Roles
00:04:23
Speaker
That's a tough one, because I mean, hey, your spindles are running, you're making knives. Exactly. You can't argue with that. Really can't, because we've had a good output week. We're at the point now when we need to prove to ourselves what our consistent output is and prove that we can hold it. You are reliable on the existing Norseman fixtures, even though they're 1.0, even though they're kind of smaller piecemeal, et cetera. Yeah, for the most part, they work great.
00:04:53
Speaker
So why don't you say, let's say you work from six to four or something. Why don't you say from six to 1 PM, we run Norseman 1.0, and then the last three hours into the day, I'm not to be interrupted. I have to focus only on this period. And I kind of do that just not so officially. I certainly take a chunk of each day to make a small pallet for it or a clamp or something like that. Got it. I do. I pick away. OK.
00:05:22
Speaker
Cool. But it sure is nice seeing X many knives come off the machine complete. We're making blades, handles, clips in all separate operations. Each one has its own various operations. But make sure we have this many of every part every day. And then I leave them on my table. And when I come back in the morning, they're gone because Eric's taking them already. So cool. And it feels good to leave with so many knives on the table. But then it comes back in the morning and they're not there. And I'm like, hey, where'd all my hard work go? Right.
00:05:52
Speaker
But it's great. We had a, I don't really think this way, but nevertheless, we had like a record month in October. I just kind of closed our books. Nice. And I was like, how did we, we had a record month in earnings and we had a record month in spending. Well, you bought the two new computers.
00:06:13
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I don't feel bad about it, but holy cow. And I think that is the right way to look at it, which is you've got to be a technician and you've got to be a manager. Daily, I'm a technician. I'm making decisions about running our books. Sorry, I'm running our books correctly. I'm making decisions about small purchases. I'm investing in our company, things like the computer that were the right call. But then you've also got to be that manager to take a step off at the end of the month and say, hey,
00:06:42
Speaker
You can get carried away. You can say, should I have held off? What was R&D? What was just necessary stuff? It's an important thing that I think a lot of people probably don't have a background in understanding, which is this thing called working capital.
00:06:58
Speaker
$3,000 or $10,000 of the steel, you do this probably more than I do, John. That's not an investment in the sense of an asset that depreciates or an asset that you have to return a profit on, an ROI on. That's just working capital. It's just money that's tied up on your shelf that's going to generate a two to tenfold return once it gets sold.
00:07:21
Speaker
Yeah, when I look at your numbers, whether you spent $2,000, $20,000 or $200,000 a month, how much of that was a computer, which depreciates, which is just a tool, versus, hey, I've got money, it's just tied up in inventory. Yeah, a computer doesn't directly bring you cash back like material does.
00:07:39
Speaker
Yeah, I was thinking just yesterday, I think. We probably spend more on inventory now than we made in a year. Like monthly inventory now costs us more than we made in our first year of business. Like it's crazy.
00:07:54
Speaker
But it's all working out. Right, right. I was trying to think of the same analogy for us. It's all stupid stuff. But if you add up what we earned and you add the negative of what we spent, which is stupid, it's more than all revenue in the first four years of what I did as a small business in one month. But then it's funny because it's like, why would I say that? I don't grow for the sake of growing. I grow because I do what we do because it's right.
00:08:24
Speaker
I am very happy with how our business is running right now. Yeah, good. And me too. With that, the teaser I think I dropped last week on the ERP system was
00:08:40
Speaker
such a world rocking moment that I had to just stop everything and take a step back. So this is it. I caveat this by saying I need to learn more, I need to talk to people. This will be the biggest decision I've ever made in my life because
00:09:02
Speaker
for now, for the foreseeable future, Saunders is my focus, this business. And this is the biggest thing that will drive every element of that business. So the consequences are huge. But when I talk about the perfect system, the thing that can do everything from your barcodes of your end mills to
Implementing an ERP System
00:09:23
Speaker
confirming that when somebody places an order, the order that gets picked off the racks is scanned with a barcode. That way it confirms if somebody picked the wrong item. And if it's low, it can generate automatic POs for outside products, or it can generate internal manufacturing tickets for internal products.
00:09:41
Speaker
which can then bring them into a manufacturing dashboard where we can reorder or triage based on past sales. And then it can tie in with email marketing campaigns, with discounts, with the web store, with our shipping system, with customer management, with the jobs. I mean, everything. This is an ERP system. I think it's enterprise resource planning. So this is the stuff that Larry Ellison, the Oracle CEO, SAP, PeopleSoft, these are like these big companies
00:10:10
Speaker
This is what, you know, the gap uses to manage the whole clothing company. You know what I mean? Or DMG Morey uses for it. So PeopleSoft, oh, is it PeopleSoft? Has one called One. I don't want to look it up right now. But there's one that's like that that's more small business oriented, which I haven't looked into much yet. The one that caught my eye is called Odoo. Odoo. You mentioned that last week.
00:10:35
Speaker
Yeah, and it's funny, they call it open source. I'm not really sure why that's even relevant because I think people confuse open source with free. There's nothing free about it. Apparently, some of the code is made public, which I could care less about.
00:10:53
Speaker
What I like about it is it has that feeling of our generation. It's a modern, cloud-based, clean start. It got started as an ERP system 10, 15 years ago. It's apparently more popular in Europe. It used to be called Open ERP. They renamed it to Odoo because it does, I guess, quote unquote, more than just some strict ERPs do. This is, by the way, so this is accounting. This is like everything, invoicing. It can do payroll, although I think Odoo has a weak
00:11:21
Speaker
So you would still interface with another one.
00:11:27
Speaker
The short answer is these things are awesome. The bad side and their downside is they are either or both expensive and incredibly complicated. And the best thing I can think of is it's like if you ever built, you used to build websites, right? Like, you know when you get frustrated on that one page and so you're like, eh, screw it. Instead of inheriting the parent style sheet from the whole site, I'm just going to overwrite some manual code on this one page. And then you pay for that for the rest of your life because you,
00:11:53
Speaker
Like, that's what an ERP system is. It's awesome when it's smooth sailing, but I don't know in my very limited experience I've ever heard of somebody who said, we have the perfect, flawless, you know, database. Well, it sounds very multifaceted and complicated just because there's so many things you want to do with it. Right. So of course it would be complicated to set up, but hopefully worth the payoff.
00:12:17
Speaker
So you can go to, again, ODOO, and you can get all their pricing, which I think is kind of nice and cool. You can just see what it costs. It's all basically per month. There's a ton of plug-ins. I mean, literally, I think we picked like 27 plug-ins, which was going to bring the price to something like, what was it, $4,000 a year? Which to me, that's fine. That's like a no-brainer. Am I thinking about that right? Yeah.
00:12:49
Speaker
But then the ringer is you can use one of their implementation people. They call it like success packs or starter packs. And talking to the guy briefly, they would recommend the 100 hours. So that's basically 10 grand. And I don't doubt that that's...
00:13:03
Speaker
a legitimate thing. You have somebody come in and they do it. Like literally, this is barcodes, this is end mill, end mill tool storage. This is setting up your accounting and your invoicing. Cause it doesn't, if you can't use it and like it and know how to do it, then it's all worthless. So I don't, we may not be ready for it just yet. What it, what it did was it made me realize I need to spend
00:13:28
Speaker
I thought about, do I want to do this for a January 1st rollover? We're recording this on November 3rd. Way too soon. Way too soon. Really? I think this is actually now like a next year thing. Like a year from this January 1st. 2019, kind of. Right.
00:13:43
Speaker
So spend the next year streamlining, get rid of all the fluff, focus our business down. We pulled out all of our inventory and all of our racks. We're even redoing our Kanban cars. We're redoing how we sort and store. That way when the time comes, if we choose to implement an ERP, an ERP doesn't mask or make up purposes. Thank you.
00:14:10
Speaker
Once you're ready for it, you can just jump right in and you're already halfway set up, right? Right. It'll be funny because at that point you might not need it. No, you will. You want it. Literally, this is what's so cool. You scan a tool when you pull it out. It can cost it to that job, which does matter to some extent.
00:14:29
Speaker
and it can trigger the reorder to Lakeshore or to whoever, that's really cool. It can cue all of that stuff out. I think there's something to be said for implementing it when you're ready but not waiting too long because I think you should look at this the next year or two because I think it's
00:14:50
Speaker
As much as it's expensive, it's nothing compared to payroll. There's nothing compared to a full-time procurement person or a full-time supplies manager. It's so brilliant. It's in the cloud. It would let me manage my business more on the road. It's very cool.
00:15:07
Speaker
Yeah, because it'd be about $330 a month based on your four grand. And you're going to pay a person 10 times that a month. Yeah, correct. That's what I don't get. The cost numbers there are a boob, because they're nothing. But the trick is to do it right. But that's exciting. I mean, it was cool. It was cool. Yeah.
00:15:31
Speaker
Yeah, because all those things, all those managing inventory, all this has to get done, and we do it, and we have our own ways of doing it right now. It has to get managed, but it's time consuming.
00:15:42
Speaker
And I actually have a box of end mills here on my desk right in front of me to remind me to order more Lakeshore carbide end mills, which I was supposed to do yesterday, but I couldn't do today because it's right in front of my face. But you'd be amazed at how much time to order some end mills like that takes you a lot of time. And it's not something that you can scale up. It's difficult to buy.
00:16:06
Speaker
keep track of all that. We already waste money placing extra MSC or McMaster orders because we need the stuff in and I don't have the time to deal with figuring it out. Could it wait? Should we queue it for the next day? So it's exciting, but scary too. But you have time.
Shop Expansion Plans
00:16:28
Speaker
You're not in any rush to do it, right? So that's good. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
00:16:35
Speaker
I'd love to hear, I would love for somebody else to do this first. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of people who had experience with ERPs, but I'd love to talk to a small manufacturing company that's actually gone through implementing one recently. I don't know that that'll be easy to find. But they must exist.
00:16:54
Speaker
They do. I do think this is something where people throw labor in efficiencies instead of making the commitment though. Like I think a lot of people who should have done this probably haven't. Right. That makes sense. Yeah, it could be good. And like, you'll get to the point, like, groomsman eyes in five or 10 years, you're going to have to do more
00:17:14
Speaker
practice marketing. You're gonna have to do things where you follow up with customers and you do a more vetted sales process and this can help you with that sort of a system as well. Like we don't do abandoned cart stuff on our Shopify and we should. We really should. Yeah, because I noticed those stats too, but what do you do with it, right? You could, yeah. Or when you get a person who can help you with that, they've got the tools and the info is there to run with it.
00:17:42
Speaker
Every company gets there, and it would be foolish for us to think that we're not going to be plagued by those same problems or limitations. So speaking of people, I think I'm finally been talking about this for like a year, but finally comfortable and moving forward with hiring some people and expanding the shop.
00:18:08
Speaker
Yes. I already have two people in mind that have, you know, just either people that I've known for a long time or people that I've come across recently that would fit two roles that we have here in the shop that I need people for. A machinist and a media person. Really? Yeah.
00:18:28
Speaker
So this next coming week, I'll be meeting with both of them more seriously with interview basically to see if they'll be good fit, to see if I can provide what they want, if they can provide what I want. And the more I think about it, the more exciting it gets and the more just right it feels.
00:18:47
Speaker
We're finally in a better place financially. Three months ago, four months ago, this was a crazy thought to be even thinking about. But now we can manage it. And the goal is, obviously, they bring in more output, more business. So very exciting. So next steps are interviewing. What's that? What are next steps? Interviewing? Yeah, next week, basically. Dude. Yeah.
00:19:15
Speaker
Good for you. So very excited. Yeah, the machinist, I've known him, you know, acquaintance-wise for 10 years now. Okay. And he is now an aerospace machinist making big boy stuff, and he is considering, like, willing to leave his job there to come work here, which is crazy. Right. But amazing.
00:19:38
Speaker
Yeah, super nice guy. We get along, smart. He's always telling me about stories. He works at a hundred person machine shop now and he tries to suggest improvements and practices and tools and they won't listen. So it could be a good person to have here because I would want him to do stuff like that, to suggest things and to have a voice.
00:20:02
Speaker
That could be awesome. I feel like the value of this podcast is being able to share candidly and share that I was mortified the first time. In some respects, it was a similar situation. The first person that I hired was a person that I had known and a person who was leaving a Fortune 1000 company with more stability, especially that we offered at the time.
00:20:32
Speaker
I was nervous. I mean, I was, I must have thought about it for two, three weeks. And he had worked part time and nights weekends type of thing, which is good because it gave both of us a chance to make sure this is right. But holy cow. I mean, that was just gut wrenching. Did it not work out? Is that what you're getting at?
00:20:49
Speaker
It worked out great. But John, I will say it worked out great, partly because he was able to spend time at the shop. There are things I'm good at. I am not good at, in my opinion, I am not good at, I'm not an inspirational leader, if that makes sense. I will say though, even if I come off a little crash, that you need to be
00:21:14
Speaker
You know, find great people, like this sounds like if he's an aerospace machinist, he's obviously talented. So find great people and let them do great things. Let him implement all that stuff, that's awesome. On the flip side, you're the boss. And you need to be okay with that. And John, this stinks, you need to be able to fire somebody. And that's brutal, because you're like, wait a minute, here, I'm hiring him, I'm seeking him out, he's my friend, he's good at his job. You need to, don't hire someone you're not able and willing to fire.
00:21:42
Speaker
That's sticks. That's just the crappiest thing to say, but I believe it.
00:21:48
Speaker
Yeah, and having never really hired anybody outside of family, and certainly never fired anybody, this is all new and scary to me, but I think a necessary step in Grimsman Ives history. Totally. But you bring up good points, because Barry keeps saying the same thing, like, don't forget you're the boss. So I'm asking Eric and Barry, we're having long meetings about him and us and other people.
00:22:12
Speaker
So I'm like, guys, what's going to be the problem here? Like, tell me, be the devil's advocate. Tell me what the mistakes are going to be. Tell me what I'm going to do wrong. Tell me what's going to be annoying about it. And one concern is that him and I are going to butt heads as machinists, either in methodologies, want to do it different ways, or these two machines are my babies, to let somebody else own them, basically. Not own them.
00:22:42
Speaker
But that's what I want. I want somebody who I can trust to like you're making parts. That's that's your job You're making parts, right? And I'll do all the CAD CAM if need be but if you can keep the machines running and make good parts and inspect and change Like that's your job and then I can run the business because right now I can't write I was gonna say that's what's gonna be funny is you're gonna really be You're gonna be relinquishing your machine. Yeah. Yeah Which you the little delay so I wouldn't there's definitely that
00:23:12
Speaker
That it's not like you he could be on one of but yeah, but it's different. Yeah Well, you think it's hard now being able to find time to make a fixture or something like that But if he's running the machines more than I ever did there's gonna be less time for me to play
00:23:28
Speaker
Right. I'm worried about that. It'll change the way you think about it all, too. And hey, maybe you make that a goal for next year. I know you love world-class equipment, but go buy a, maybe you go find a $25,000 used robo-drilled rod. Seriously,
Employee Training and Continuous Improvement
00:23:48
Speaker
maybe that's the next move. Yeah, no, I hear you.
00:23:54
Speaker
grim's most frowning at me with disdain. I'm thinking. I understand your point completely, because having another spindle to have and to play on and to do real work on would be huge. And to spend another $150,000 on another machine is a loss. Yeah, right. Well, and look, I mean, it's different when you have employees. I find it's easy to have a double standard of being judgmental when a machinist breaks a tool.
00:24:24
Speaker
Oh, I wouldn't have broken that. Saunders, you still break tools, bud. It's a culture of being smart, but 99 out of 100 times that something breaks or goes wrong, I want to have a conversation about what happened and why so we can understand it and avoid it.
00:24:44
Speaker
And I almost never get mad. I don't raise my voice. I don't hold it against them, with the rare exception of if they were really being stupid. And they know it. They just do. And that's tough, too, because usually we're not a culture here of stress and
00:25:04
Speaker
bad attitudes. But, you know, I'll lay into somebody if they're, you know, one example is somebody who knew better was running sandpaper over a part over a surface plate that the week before had been calibrated. And they knew all of that. And I was like, you know better. I hold you to a higher standard than that.
00:25:29
Speaker
Right. But they don't always follow through, like, think of their ramifications and the reasons. It's just like, ooh, flat plate, let's use it. And no employee will, and frankly, no employee should think like an owner. Yeah, you shouldn't expect that of them. Yeah, right.
00:25:47
Speaker
But mistakes have to be pointed out. Like they have to be. Or else that will happen again, right? Like one of our suppliers sent us some parts that had a bunch of blemishes. Nothing major, nothing bad, but unacceptable blemishes. So I sent a bunch of pictures, sent them to the boss there, and he goes, you know, good or bad, I need feedback. And this will help us get better. And I feel kind of bad complaining, but on the other hand,
00:26:14
Speaker
Every time Barry picks up a part and it's got a blemish He points it out to me as he should and then I need to point it out to the source and right That's a good point. It may be easier Sounds weird, but maybe easier for you because you accept nothing other than perfectionism
00:26:30
Speaker
Because like you know this morning Jared had a hole that was it was tapped. I don't know 45,000 job shop job. It was it's a deep hole. It was like 40,000 longer. I know what the parts were I'm like Oh, they won't care about that. That doesn't matter like it's not a big deal But like you have a very strict set of parameters. Yeah, but I do have my things that doesn't matter don't care that'll work fine, right? Yeah
00:26:55
Speaker
Good for you. Yeah, so I'm excited, nervous. Don't hire both. Just hire one at first. OK.
00:27:03
Speaker
Explain, because just timing is working out to be talking to both of them now. I don't know their timeline yet. Like, I really don't. They both have jobs, you know? Right. Well, I'll put it this way. I'm not saying you can't, but take it slow. I mean, this is going to be a massive change for you financially. You don't have a huge shop. You're going to have more bodies in the shop. You're going to spend so much time
00:27:30
Speaker
And you want to spend so much time with them, shadowing them, them shadowing you. I just wouldn't bring on. I would never go from zero to two employees, unless, I mean, I just wouldn't. And the question I'm trying to think of is, which one would you hire first? Because one's going to basically be a Julie, like your media person. And then one's going to be the expert machinist.
00:27:58
Speaker
I would probably try to hire the machinist first. I think so. It's the more ROI. The media person, I mean, like we take pictures of all the knives so we can put them on the website and Eric is taking a tremendous amount of time out of his day to do that. That's just one small thing that the media person could do. And he could like literally finish another knife in the time it takes him to take pictures of said knife. And the ROI of that ramification is huge.
00:28:24
Speaker
So, you know, one might be part-time. Yeah, that's true. Right, like the media person especially. It could be freelance, part-time, or full-time. And we can ease into it. Mm-hmm. So. Yeah. You're thinking about all the right stuff. And don't, I mean, I don't want to say don't overthink it, but don't ignore your gut or instinct just because you want to force it to happen. Okay.
00:28:47
Speaker
Like, you know. No, very good advice. Because I want the result, but if the person's not right, or if the deal is not right, or the timing, like, I need to follow my gut on that, you're right. Right.
00:29:02
Speaker
Good. Dude. But yeah, excited. I'm still nervous, but I'm comfortable about it. I've been contemplating hiring people for a year and a half now, seriously. And I haven't made any action because we haven't been comfortable. Didn't have the money, didn't have the work, didn't have the time. But now I feel like we're crushing it and we have the potential to grow quickly.
00:29:27
Speaker
Right. And like there's so many things I want to do and I want to do all of the things, all of the time. Yeah, but control, I mean, devil's advocate, controlled growth. I mean, here's the problem, John. You could need two more machines and you're going to need more space. Now all of a sudden you're relocating, which is more disruptive than just
00:29:47
Speaker
I mean, it's everything. It's a different commute. It's a different shop. Is there utilities? It's different space. It's setting up. It's the cost of rigging. Good grief. Don't tell me that. My dad just said he found a shop two minutes from my house. And I'm like, it looks cool, but this is not the time. I appreciate it, but this is not the time. After thinking about it for three days, and I'm like, hmm, we could do that. I'm like, no, no, this is not what we need right now.
00:30:11
Speaker
It's funny though, cause I, if I could give one piece of advice to myself, it's that the best thing I've done since I moved back was move my shop close to where I live. That is the free, a free 50 minutes I just found each day. Going from a 30 minute commute each way to a four minute commute each way. Right. Yeah. Right now I'm at 12 minutes each way and it's, it's okay. It's not bad. No, it's not bad. Yeah.
00:30:38
Speaker
Dude, exciting. What's on tap? Well, I don't have to ask what's on tap today. You're going to make those pallets. Yep. I got to make four or five knives, and I got to make pallet parts, clamps. I worked on the CAD till about 12.30 last night. So I'm ready to rock for clamps, which is good. Cool. These are just custom hold-down clamps that you make? Yeah. Do they wear out? No. OK. So they're long-term stuff. It's a one-time thing.
00:31:07
Speaker
Do you ever heat treat fixtures and stuff for wear? No, I don't. I've thought about it, but often just using a steel insert or a steel piece or a steel clamp is much better than an aluminum thing, so it works. So much more wear.
00:31:24
Speaker
I've thought about that on a few things. It's not even so much like crazy heat treating, but it's more like, you know, I'd like to have it smooth so it doesn't mar it, which means surface grinded. It grinds nicer if it's a little bit hard. It's gonna last, like it's kind of like, sounds nice, but I've done it. Robin Renzetti, I think he posted this on Instagram. Super, super smart idea of, oh, I'm gonna, I don't want to misstate it, partly because Robin is so perfect, but
00:31:49
Speaker
regular old socket head cap screws or maybe it was set screws, darn it, I'll have to go find it. We'll put a link in the podcast description. They have a semi-heat treated or a higher tensile strength. So they're like the equivalent of you're halfway there or something. So like taking an existing one and doing work on a machine unit or turning it down is a lot better than just starting with, I don't know what it was, all thread or just a kneeled cold rolled or something. A higher quality metal, got it.
00:32:17
Speaker
I like this creative little, I feel like it's like a life hack, like a machinist hack. Right, right. So, sweet. Excellent. And you, you're up to everything today? We are, oh, it feels
Machining Production Updates
00:32:29
Speaker
so good. We're like, this is kind of what I wanted to get back into was production. It is, as much as I'm in, what did Elon Musk say about the Series 3? It's like,
00:32:42
Speaker
the s curve hell or something yeah like ramping up the series three they're really struggling with it um so it's funny because i have a lot of little headaches and stresses right now but it's because of that like i love getting back into you know we've saved up a hundred versions of a fusion file in the last three days he's making all of these little tweaks you know where do we use where comp where do we not
00:33:05
Speaker
I'm actually making a funny, unexpected change. We're moving away from some insert tooling back to solid carbide. Based on, especially for some of the roughing ops where I thought insert tooling would be better to swap the inserts out.
00:33:21
Speaker
We're just finding that solid carbide is either better or we can handle it with wear offsets or I don't care if the tool gets a little bit worn out because it's just roughing and we've been struggling with some of the insert grades and insert tooling is great when it's all dialed in but it's freaking expensive if you
00:33:40
Speaker
or start cracking inserts. And boy, like those tool bodies are $200, $300 and you start losing your shirt real quick if you damage them. So, which we only damaged one and I filed the little corner out. But anyway, we're tweaking that, which is exciting. Good.
00:33:59
Speaker
I'm trying to find a through spindle chamfer tool, which I think I found. I was actually looking at the 99. Do you know those? I don't use them, no. OK. They have a really cool engraving tool. We saw them at emo. They're not super common in the US, I think.
00:34:18
Speaker
But I looked up, so they had a really cool insert engraving tool, which is like this gnarly looking carbide insert. It's like something I've never seen. They also make an inserted chamfer tool, but then I looked at the price, and then I looked up, my go-to was just to look at what's the Sandvik make one, what's the difference? And I looked at the Sandvik one, I'm like, well, this is like the same price.
00:34:37
Speaker
And it's through spindle, and I know the rep, and they'll bring it in on tests. So I've got to email them. We're having a problem with the chamfer tool. The chip formation is sometimes rolling the chip over and scuffing the surface. And you can only see it if you look at the plate in a certain angle for the light. But it bothers me.
00:34:57
Speaker
Yeah, no I'm having almost the exact same problem on our pocket clips now. Oh really? Like we've got a little fixture that makes five clips and every five clip has this weird scuff right in the middle and we're like it's got to be when we're loading them it's got to be somebody's no and it's like it's the corner rounding tool that is carrying a chip and scuffing and it's like I've never seen this before what's going on?
00:35:19
Speaker
So Blockwood, I asked Rob, and his suggestion was, you gotta use through-spindle coolant either through the tool, which can help flush the chips up, or even running it on a non-in through-spindle tool, like using it through one of those tool holders, or even through an ER collet, which is not how it's meant to run, to help create pressure to break the chip before it gets long enough to carry around a swirl scuff.
00:35:50
Speaker
You don't have to respond, although, do you? No, I don't. The machine is prepped for it, but I don't have the pumps or anything like that. Right, right, right. Is yours very loud or no? It definitely makes more noise than the flood, but it's not a problem. OK. I've heard of, like, the 1,000 PSI units that are really loud. Oh, our VF2 has 1,000. Oh, yeah. And it's definitely louder. Yeah, but it's not like, oh, boy, it's not like our tumbler, even, or it's not a problem. OK. Yeah.
00:36:19
Speaker
But it's funny, you have that problem too. I'm like, how do I? Or what I'm really trying to do is figure out if I can get a different style chip. And that's one of the benefits of insert tooling is maybe I'll be able to get different grades or different chip breakers. Or sometimes you just got to push it harder, John, to break the chip better to prevent that chip from curling up into a helix that's allowing it to actually swipe around it. But I can't push it harder when surface finish is so important.
00:36:46
Speaker
Well, so switch it between a roughing and a finishing option. Yeah, I've thought about that. Drive it as hard as you can, break the chip, leave five thou or something, and then come in and kiss it. I could probably, I could chamfer it first, and then I could corner round it, which would probably make the corner rounder last longer.
00:37:01
Speaker
Yes, I would totally do that. Yeah, maybe I should do that. I had Lakeshore Carbide a year or two ago make me a custom double corner rounder tool that will corner round both the top and the bottom of the thing. Sure. And it flares out five degrees on the top and the bottom. And they were expensive because they're custom made and I only got three made and I just retired the first one after like a year and a half.
00:37:25
Speaker
serious yeah and and like I realized this is made all 300 of our rasks basically and a bunch of Norsemen and I felt bad about retiring and I'm like no no no no no no this this paid for itself a hundred times yeah right and then I put the new one on and I showed Eric the difference in the part quality and he's like why didn't you do this a year ago
00:37:45
Speaker
I've been fighting with that finish for a while. OK, order three more right now. So I have an awesome way to maybe wrap it up. But we asked AB Tools to write an article for the new NYCCNC website on making custom tools.
Benefits of Custom Tooling
00:38:01
Speaker
And AB Tools will do it for you. Lakeshore Carbide will do it for you. What I want to encourage people to do is it's not
00:38:07
Speaker
Yes, it's expensive, but it's often worth it. And so if you need a custom step drill that can drill and add a chamfer or counterbore, or you need a custom angle or form tool or radius tool, talk to them. It's super cool. Yeah, it's easier than you think.
00:38:23
Speaker
A regular small end mill would be $50 to $30 for a regular one, and that custom could be $70. But it's fine. You get about three usually, though, or something to make it worthwhile. But if it solves your problem, it's worth the expense of getting it done.
00:38:40
Speaker
Yeah. Because I can't imagine doing it any other way now. This double corner rounder is amazing. Just because it saves you the second op and flipping it? Yeah, I don't flip the parts anymore. Right, right. And it maintains a perfect corner round, as long as your height is right. If you're down by a thour, up by a thour, it undercuts, and it's terrible. But hence, Morrie. No pressure. Hashtag DMG Morrie.
00:39:05
Speaker
Welcome to Grimsman Knives, new employee. If you're off by more than a fowl, it's completely trash. Yeah, you're fired. No, that's the other thing too. We're trying to think about, I can save a really frustrating op that I do right now if I can undercut Champer, which I can easily do. I don't know why I'm freaking out about it. It's super easy to do. I just don't do it.
00:39:27
Speaker
Because we don't clean up this outside edge until we flip it, but I need to have it chamfered as well. So we rough cut just a little bit so that we can put a chamfer on it. And then we flip it, and then we finish it up, and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, oh, man, what a better workflow. Yeah, if you can do it on the first stop, it's better. I found it for an undercutting chamfer, especially with a dovetail cutter or a little thread mill sometimes I'll use, like a single point thread mill. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You kind of got to fake the math for the under chamfer. And you just got to test and look and test.
00:39:56
Speaker
I think they're, did it get better? Actually, Jared just did it. And Jared is not someone who usually, it's awesome to see him succeeded because sometimes it's stuff like that's tricky. And he did a great job on it. I'll love to share that file on this new site because that's, yes. Oh, that's why I started looking at 9.9 is I wanted, and I still haven't found, well, they make one, but I'm trying to look at a few options. I need a inserted tamper tool.
00:40:25
Speaker
because we walk around a lot of linear inches and solid carbide is expensive. And if you hit a little hard spot or something and it chips, you've wasted this whole thing. So inserts rotate them three, if not six times. I want a bigger diameter tool so I get better surface footage, more inserts. There's no chip, there's no chip size, right? So I would, I want like a nine insert chamfered tool, right?
00:40:53
Speaker
Yeah, I guess for the outside of your fixture plates, but it won't get the holes. No, we do those differently. Yeah, just walking around the outsides. Cool. Process reliability. Yeah, exactly.
00:41:06
Speaker
This will actually be good because this podcast will come out much closer to the time, but we kind of took a day off yesterday in the shop and everybody filmed a parody Thanksgiving dinner. So it's Thanksgiving in a machine shop. I can't wait. And it was completely over the top.
00:41:28
Speaker
I mean, we Kaizen foamed our place settings. We cooked a turkey. We used a Norseman was involved. Oxy-acetylene torches were involved. The plasma machine was involved. The Tormach was involved. The Haas fifth axis was involved. It was over the top. It was fun.
00:41:51
Speaker
Good. I can't wait. That's exciting. Awesome. It's good that you can play. Yeah. Yeah, sorry. No, it's good. All right. I'll see you next week. Yeah, have a good day. Take care. Bye.