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#333 Growing your company
263 Plays1 year ago
TOPICS:
- Grimsmo grinding blades on the Speedio!
- Growing your company
- metal 3d printing, costs?
- Downcut endmills
- AI image creation and how it relates to machining
- Heat treating SMW Puck Chuck parts
- SMW bought the Okamoto grinder!
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Good
Introduction of Hosts
00:00:00
Speaker
morning and welcome to the Business and Machining episode 333. My name is John Grimsmo. My name is John Saunders. And this is the weekly manufacturing podcast where two Johns talk about kind of what's going on in the day-to-day of running their manufacturing empires. Yes. Yeah. How are you doing? I'm fantastic. Yeah? Yeah. Good. Things
Assessing Blade Grinding & Carbon Fiber Machining
00:00:23
Speaker
rocking. Speedio is going really good.
00:00:27
Speaker
Grinding blades I did a test yesterday where I ground half the blade on the speed on the other half on the current and I gave it to sky to to Oh Drew and like polish up with the stones and everything Yeah, and the Grinding wheel that happened to be on the current at the time was kind of nearing end of life before it gets dressed So it was a little um, it gave a bit of an orange peeled finish
00:00:51
Speaker
It's a little just bumpy. He said the Speedio actually gave a better finish than the Kern did in that scenario with a fresh dress. But he's like, both of them are significantly better than what they're getting every day normally, because I reprofiled the Rask blade, and I made a new fixture for it, and I improved everything. So he says, yes, more of that, please, more of that.
00:01:12
Speaker
Yeah, that's great. So it kind of like speedio with that submicron option is the greatest thing ever get my five digits. And it's it grinds blades like to satisfaction. Yeah, that's phenomenal. Yes. So I'm thrilled with that. That's awesome. And then I also machine a bunch of carbon fiber yesterday from the speedio and I've got a lot more to do today.
00:01:39
Speaker
So that's pretty sweet. We can make inlays for our knives again. And that's all against a post. Yeah, that's cool. Sorry, what machine do you do the carbon on? Now we're doing it on this video. Okay, that's great.
00:01:52
Speaker
Yeah. And we haven't really done it much in the past like five years. You know, we used to make them on the Maury, but it gets in the coolant and it's like nasty and dirty and stuff. So yeah. Yeah. On this video, I put a lot of effort into the filtration and everything. So it's, uh, it's good. It's good now. It's a good machine. It'll be great for making lots of composite materials, G10 and carbon fiber and stuff like that. So.
00:02:15
Speaker
It feels feels great to take a step back and look at the allocation of machine I'm trying to be fancier. But like, yeah, like, don't do don't do carbon fiber and they work on a curtain. Yeah, no, exactly. There's an aspect to of like, balancing technical quirkiness that you and I love with the leadership.
Business Challenges and Growth Strategies
00:02:37
Speaker
I think back to all of the
00:02:40
Speaker
problems that you and I have, and anybody going through this journey will have to deal with, like speeds and feeds problems, tolerance questions, surface finishes, machine capability.
00:02:53
Speaker
what feels like a mountain of things that we've tackled over the years to where like, like I would be hard pressed to think I could say I could do it again. You know, you're just like, I remember walking into the Haas factory in Oxnard, this is probably six years ago and just thinking, don't understand how you, where you start with a, what, a thousand person facility where they've got, I don't even know how many hundreds of spindles
00:03:22
Speaker
you know, from everything from giant bridge mills to tiny Swiss lathes or whatever, like, where do you start? And looking at that's the wrong way. That's not how it happened. But like, holy cow. But even that that's from your six years ago perspective from the today perspective, maybe it's a little bit more clear of how you get to that level of size of factory.
00:03:45
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's not. I mean, for sure, you start to appreciate what mentors have said about when they found folks to put onto their team and look to be blunt, that's not a step that you and I have remotely come close to taking like truly
00:04:01
Speaker
to creating independent, we're not big enough. I don't think they'll ever be like independent departments with heads, with their own budgets, with their own metrics and buying equipment and bringing staffing things on. But I am proud yet also
00:04:19
Speaker
confused at where we're at because, you know, we have so much going on now that so like Yvonne sends out the Monday morning newsletter, and it has what's in it's what's coming up this week. So like anything like hey, is the machine coming or is anybody out or do we have training class going on other kind of big events and then
00:04:40
Speaker
some other housekeeping things about, hey, here's a reminder. We have a new PTO form. Here's a link to it. And then at the bottom, she lists outstanding orders. And I have almost no direct visibility to what those outstanding orders are. Some of them may be custom plates. Some of them are just
00:04:56
Speaker
plates that we don't carry in stock and need to make. And that's a good thing. Everything's happening without me being in the know, but I'm quickly realizing that we need that awkward level of reporting of like, okay, but like how much capacity does that represent? And you have a quick, Alex, I have a quick way. We're thinking of building in some, not forecasting, but just while it is forecasting, but just, hey, this is the current amount of work booked for looking on these four machines that are often the bottlenecks.
00:05:25
Speaker
Yeah, that way you don't over commit yourself or get into a sticky situation where somebody says yes and the team says no kind of thing.
00:05:35
Speaker
No, totally. We use fresh desks. When we get either emailing queries or formal quote requests, we flag them in fresh desks as sales follow-ups. And we can use that to some extent to try to throttle our own internal, like we're not going to follow up on sales right now because we've got a lot of work on the books, which is good. Right. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, what you said earlier about creating like self-sufficient departments, we're actually getting closer to that than I ever would have thought.
00:06:04
Speaker
Yeah. Because we do, we got our manufacturing department, we got our finishing department, we got the office guys upstairs and the three kind of run somewhat independently and together obviously but a lot of which without my
00:06:20
Speaker
understanding or approval or I'm not too involved with individual work, things like that. They each have their own heads of department and they make their own decisions. When it comes to big things like purchasing, it still usually comes down to me. I can start to see now the evolution of the company. There's 13 of us here.
00:06:43
Speaker
A friend of mine in Texas, Will from tactile turn. Sure. He's got like 50 employees. That's crazy. And that's like the jump from 10 ish.
00:06:53
Speaker
to 50 is like, I don't know everybody anymore. It's like you're not in charge of every person anymore at that level. You can't be. So you need the other reporting structure. So I'm actually hoping to visit there at the end of the summer just to steep myself in the culture and the feel of what that could look like. A friend of mine that I've been supporting and following and being friends with since 2015.
00:07:17
Speaker
Who started out in the tiny little shop with a Kia machine he bought from eBay or whatever and to now have 50 employees like it's so cool. Yes Very very happy for him
00:07:29
Speaker
and they're crushing it. They're doing a great job and I want to go there and just soak it up and be like, do I want this? There's a path if I want to get to that level. Do I want it? I don't know yet. I want to see more of it. I totally hear you and more power to them.
00:07:49
Speaker
And to keep to the spirit of this being a super personal conversation, like I commend those folks and I'm truly not jealous. I'm actually very proud and happy with what we've got here. But I think
00:08:06
Speaker
there's a key to be just unapologetically honest with yourself. I don't have that desire or capability in terms of leadership. In fact, the appetite for growth. We're a good place. I think the biggest thing I want to continue doing is making sure Saunders Machine Works isn't reliant on
00:08:30
Speaker
me. So I can say, yeah, so like, it's whether, whether I die, or whether
00:08:40
Speaker
you know, do you own your business or does it own you? And it's also just the byproduct of, you know, it's kind of like that, the idea of the guy that invented Jiffy Lube went to our college and he was like a little legend for like, you know, what is it to make, to build a franchise? And even if you don't want to franchise a business, creating these processes, I could go on forever about this stuff, it's fascinating, but like, so that there's not this, the,
00:09:07
Speaker
that key man tribal knowledge level. Yeah, like the E-Myth book talks about this in depth and about everything from tribal knowledge to what is it, entrepreneur, manager, technician, the three roles, the three hats, which we all wear. But like you said, I do think about that. If I die, will the company cease to exist? Everybody here doesn't have a job anymore.
00:09:34
Speaker
Everybody doesn't get our products anymore. Like it's just over. There's no warranty. There's no service. Like
Sustainability and Exit Strategies
00:09:39
Speaker
that's worst case scenario. And I need to build the company into a place where it could survive without me. Do I want that? Yeah, probably I do. I do. I want the strength and the longevity to do that. So it's everything from, you know, will planning to actually making the company, you know,
00:09:57
Speaker
Stable. Yeah, totally. It's funny, we had a indirect, not one of my family members, but somebody else unfortunately passed away at quite a young age last week and kind of made me think like, okay, no, like we're good. Like I have the stuff in place for the correct transition stuff to happen in terms of my personal stuff. And the absolute honest opinion is that
00:10:25
Speaker
if my wife now knows enough about this business to be competent to look to be blunt, you hear about these stories where like, you know, the the maybe good intention, maybe not good intention to partner spouse, etc. Like just just does the wrong stuff. I'm comfortable that that wouldn't happen here. But then we've got the team here. Now, including Alex and so forth. Like this is this is not the plan. But it's for sure it exists like they're in contingency.
00:10:52
Speaker
There would be no problem, frankly, running the business or even doing a controlled adjustment. Maybe things get pulled in and we focus in on just certain things. Anyway, to me, it's an interesting topic that, again, to be blunt, do I want to do this for five more years, for 10 more years, for 20 more years? I don't know. There's a lot of days I love a lot of what I do.
00:11:15
Speaker
I think some byproduct of our generation or maybe humans in general is knowing you don't have to do it. Knowing that you've created that opportunity to not have to be a slave to your own business. I remember talking briefly with Danny Rudolph super briefly on Insta.
00:11:35
Speaker
that there's a pretty interesting argument that most small manufacturing company or job shops, and I'll pick a number here, under $5 million or under $3 million of revenue. And that includes, by definition, the limited number of employees, a team of staff that you have if you're that small.
00:11:56
Speaker
I'm not making this statement because I believe it. I think I do, but I'm more of just regurgitating something that at that level, it's just an equipment sale. It's just an asset sale. There's almost no enterprise value or in other words, like somebody's going to purchase this, which is kind of ridiculous because frankly, you have a phenomenal brand and we have a great
00:12:17
Speaker
You do, absolutely. That I have no problem defending, but is somebody going to come in and purchase a company in Zanesville, Ohio with assets, with brands, I mean, for sure, a cash flow stream that's quite strong, or is it just a, hey, no, it gets sold off? I don't know the answer to that. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I've heard of bigger tooling companies buying small mom and shop tooling companies to expand their
00:12:46
Speaker
their capability or their just cash flow revenue.
00:12:51
Speaker
They get absorbed into seemingly small, like $1 million or less. Oh, really? Pop shops sometimes. Yeah, I've heard of that a little bit here in Canada. And I'm like, why? But it's cash flow. It's just like they have our capabilities that we don't have. So we're going to utilize their capabilities under our brand. We're going to influx some money and help them grow with our knowledge and more cash flow. Interesting. That's one way to grow the business.
00:13:19
Speaker
Like Mike at Zadaro was telling me, he's seen this happen too around here. And so he said it was cash flow.
00:13:27
Speaker
Yes, the three things that jumped out to me as what makes somebody an acquisition target would be the just true like business cash flow, revenue stream, like customer base, that sort of is one bucket. The second bucket would be truly the equipment, which would be not only just the iron, but like you've got this stuff that's set up and running from an infrastructure iron standpoint. And then the third, which is maybe the most
00:13:50
Speaker
interesting is kind of a talent acquisition. There's some phrase for it. I can't remember the cute name like talent acquisition or something, but you're buying the company to also bring on that, that, you know, everyone from high to low level employees because, you know, if you think about trying to spend the money with recruiters and the time it would take to find four, 10, 20 people by the whole company and have those folks to balance it. I think
00:14:16
Speaker
that probably is easier in a frankly pretty industrial heavy focus area like your part of Toronto. I think the more remote you are, which I would put myself in that bucket, it's more complicated because there is a geography question.
00:14:36
Speaker
Then again, you've also overcome that geography by developing a talent pool and a profitable business, and it's already settled. I don't know. Yeah, but I think about, look, there's lots of other household names in the workholding industry. Are we in any way on their radar to scoop us up? No. I just don't even- I don't know. It could happen one day. You could just get an offer in the mail and be like, what is this? Honey, look at this. That's hilarious.
00:15:05
Speaker
Yeah, which isn't what I want, but I also want to, let's say it's a 10-year timeline. What is, you know, ESOPs are really interesting. You have to be bigger than we are to justify the five figures a year in ongoing costs. Is this an American thing?
00:15:24
Speaker
Yeah, employee stock ownership plan. So it's not options, it's ownership. So basically, super brief summary, a small company. Let's just pick a random company. Didn't Tormach do this? Correct. Tormach did this. Great example. So let's say that everybody agrees. There's evaluation process. The company's worth $5 million. And let's say there's only one owner, and that's Paul. Paul's retiring. So Paul gets paid $5 million by somebody like a bank. Yeah.
00:15:54
Speaker
Employees are then become owners, full 100% owners of the company, how that's split up is a separate conversation. And then there's a $5 million loan from the bank to those employees. So this ESOP has to pay off the interest of that loan. And then over time, you grow into the equity form. There may be an equity buy in basically long-term. Employees own the company and obviously get a dividend of some sorts, et cetera. Yeah.
00:16:21
Speaker
So we're too soft, but that's to me, it's that or you sell to a global mega Corp or you sell to an investor that just wants to park his money in a cash positive business.
00:16:36
Speaker
So the latter, I'm genuinely curious about this. And if the folks are listening that have had proximity to this, just from an intellectual standpoint, I'm kind of curious like, because look, there's a lot of us out there. And frankly, I think it's important to when you entice people into industries like this or entrepreneurship, you know, what's the exit? Maybe the exit is just, hey, it was a great run at the end. You wind it down. But I remember Adam Demuth sitting down with him one day and
00:17:02
Speaker
very mature and sort of saying, I recognize, you know, the residual depreciated value of my CNC machines is not a retirement plan. I cannot plan on selling. He's got a really cool, more easy DCG, whatever. But like, what that thing's gonna be worth in seven years or 27 years is not retirement. So what do you do? Yeah, it's just an interesting conversation.
00:17:28
Speaker
I think your business is much more teed up for better options, which is a compliment to you, but the brand, the product line, understanding what it is. I know you're not looking at that. Maybe you don't know which one it is right now. No, no, no. I do think about it intellectually, not like I ever want to do it or sell or anything like that.
00:17:53
Speaker
Like you said, selling to the employees could be one distant option. I kind of like that theory. Selling to some outside person that has their own influence on the company seems weird. I can't even think about that, but it's not something I ever consider.
00:18:10
Speaker
I do wonder if it kind of all ties into how we grow the company. If we grow to the next building, a bigger building, we buy something, we build something, whatever. I want it to be large enough to sustain. That's the forever place probably. How big do you want it? It takes a lot of planning. How many employees do you want? Where's the limit? Do you have extra land so you can grow into it? Et cetera, et cetera. And then as that company grows past the 10, 15 employees to wheel size, 50 employees.
00:18:40
Speaker
Then you start to need to pull up your pants a little bit and be a big boy about this and you know plan either not measures exit strategy but wills and you know if you die what happens all like all the stuff we're talking about.
00:18:56
Speaker
I don't know, just a lot of thoughts bouncing around right now. I think that all ties back into, I enjoy having, really enjoyed having Alex grow into the role he has of, he's an engineer at heart, he can run machines, he understands that, but also a guy like that is very well teed up to
00:19:19
Speaker
make decisions. And ultimately, you know, that's that kind of question of these, do you do shops like ours, they find those kind of right hand man that gets up to those roles and all that stuff. It's good. Yep. It's fun to watch the employees grow into their capabilities and their skills. Angelo came in with a lot of experience and I've seen him grow significantly over the past five years. And even more so in the past year, like I've told him this, it's like,
00:19:46
Speaker
it's really cool to see. I've been able to step back my direct responsibilities and he's taken them on. I'm like, yeah, go nuts. Just he touches base. He doesn't ask questions and like, you know, yeah, it kind of tells me what's going on. And I go, great. Sounds awesome. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah. It is. It is awesome. Agreed. Yeah. Well, that was, that was a wonderful conversation that had nothing to do with anything on my list. Um,
00:20:16
Speaker
I'll go back to this video for a second. So with the submicron chip, I was doing, and I've got the laser toolsetter on it. So I found it was measuring weird. Like my grinding wheel was measuring several thou smaller than it actually is. I'm like, that's a problem.
00:20:32
Speaker
I recalibrated the laser with a little calibration pin, which is a cylinder with a reduced shank and ground surfaces on the OD and top and bottom of the pill at the bottom, whatever, so that the laser can touch the bottom of it and also the top of it and get that exact factory calibrated length and diameter of the thing.
00:20:56
Speaker
And so I calibrated once, and it got closer, and then I messed with it a whole bunch, calibrated a whole bunch of times. And it was repeating to 10 millionth diameter.
Precision and Tooling Innovations
00:21:07
Speaker
Sweet. Like, I was like, yes. That's cool. And then it was off by like 10 or 20 millionths. It was off by 20 millionths. And I'm like, I can do better. So I kind of draw and tweak a little bit. I was just playing with it. I was like, see if I can do it. And then I did it, and then I repeated, and it was like, yes, this is amazing. This is exactly.
00:21:24
Speaker
And then I measured a half inch shank and it was like $4,999.95 or something like that's exactly what I wanted to see. That's awesome. So that was fun.
00:21:38
Speaker
Yeah, we had that laugh at lunch yesterday where I have a monthly note in my calendar to randomly spot check outside of our normal QC processes to just go spot check inventory bins for some critical dimensions on my devices. I've done that three months now and every time I've walked over with the mid to mid quantum mic, they've all been perfect, like phenomenal. You're talking
00:21:58
Speaker
measurements in the few tenths, which is phenomenal. And it makes me, we've talked about this at lunch, it's like, oh my gosh, to be back at a place where it's like, okay, plus or minus five thou, or even plus or minus three thou. Now, that's all relative. I understand hearing some of the guys do these parts where the 27 inches deep, like that's different. But like just the whole idea of like, this needs to be a whole or a boss feature within plus or minus 10 thou, or five thou, you're just kind of like, oh, yeah.
00:22:27
Speaker
Yeah, I could do it on the saw, you know? Yeah. Do you guys have a chop saw, like a dedicated? What do you do for that?
00:22:39
Speaker
It's kind of funny you asked that. We have a DeWalt VWA72 aluminum capable chop saw. Just spinning the chop saw with the wheel. 14 inch wheel. Not a friction saw, though. It's a tooth saw. That's the thing we actually used to make the fixture plates for. Yeah, I remember. Sold that product line off.
00:22:59
Speaker
It was hard to do, to be honest, but we were already selling product lines. Great call-off. Well, we sold it off. Just to be clear, we sold it basically for the inventory on hand.
00:23:15
Speaker
That's great. We have a lot of trick tools. I don't remember the brand. Ellis, I think band saw, which gets used to some, but like a horizontal kind of stand in front of it. Bandsaw is horizontal. Yes. I mean, it has the pivots down on your part. Yeah. If I had.
00:23:33
Speaker
I don't know, if I set up a, you know, what's that guy's name again? Dan Gilbert, like if I set up my own, you know, dream little retirement shop, having one of the vertical infy band saws would be awesome, but they're so big. Anyway, everything else we have Sawcut delivered. Yeah, yeah, interesting. We don't saw much. No.
00:23:54
Speaker
Yeah, we don't saw much. We just have one of those little porta bands on a swag off road stand, which keeps it upright and stuff. It sucks, but it does what the tiny bit of bandsawing we need. Like if I have a piece of Delrin, I need to cut in half. I just go there. I think Pierre actually uses it to cut through like five eights titanium bar sometimes.
00:24:13
Speaker
And it takes a while and it's rickety and it's not great, but it gets the job done. And we've talked so much about buying like a horizontal, you know, infeed band saw with the arm that comes down, but it's like many thousands of dollars that we just never get around to buying it. We don't need it that bad yet.
00:24:31
Speaker
I don't think there's any wrong with what you're doing. We have the Milwaukee portable bandsaw thing. And the great thing about that too is you don't care if the blade gets a little beat up or abused or hacked around. Like those are big bandsaw, the blades are a hundred bucks and you really should switch it between different material thicknesses. There's some skill to running that thing correctly. And frankly, we also have a DeWalt Sawzall with metal blades, even more hacky, but again, desk at hand, fine.
00:25:01
Speaker
Sometimes. Okay. Have you done any, I'm sure it would have been outsourced metal 3D printing? Metal 3D printing. Nope. I don't think I have done any metal 3D printing, just the samples you get at shows. Yeah, right. I'll hold these up on the camera. I have these little clamps and for folks that are just listening, think of them
00:25:27
Speaker
kind of like a spreader clamp for an ID hole that like an ID thing that opens outward but it's just two halves instead of it being like six pie pieces. Okay, bolt through it and as the bolt tightens it spreads them apart. Bingo.
00:25:42
Speaker
Yeah. And they're each, you know, about the size of a fingertip with some features on them. 1000% we can make these on the Wilhelmin. I was just gonna say. Probably what we will do, but it's busy and it's, you know, it's working. They seem like good candidates, but I uploaded them. I meant to pull up the braces before this podcast. I put them on like, I think
00:26:03
Speaker
geometry 3D how the shape ways the kind of three that comes in mind and The pricing was just like you like I need 20 of them and it was gonna be five six seven hundred dollars I'm like yes, and you know a couple hours in the Wilhelmin right, but I want to be conscious of like You know I wanted them to be like okay great, but set send them out. I'm also wondering if I just don't know that much about filament if they're a stronger
00:26:31
Speaker
either stronger filament under compression or even just moving to like 100% infill if that wouldn't work here because it's a really light op three kissing operation. I don't need that much work holding on it. It makes sense. I'm hesitant to. Is the final use, is this going to be like a part of a kit, a sellable product? No, internal fixture. Internal fixture stuff. Yes. It's not worth spending 800 bucks on.
00:27:00
Speaker
Unless, I mean, there's a ton of 3D printer resins or filaments and stuff out there that have all kinds of properties I don't even know about. I just hear, you know, Rob go on and on and on about them. Carbon fiber and fills and all that stuff.
00:27:16
Speaker
It's interesting. The quick Google I did this morning was carbon fiber is not always stronger and better in the way people think. It's not just the end all be all answer. I was like, okay, let me go read about PETGs and the ABSs to see how it would handle. I was just tested. Other benefit with the 3D printed part in any filament is it becomes a throwaway part. If it wears out after five days, put a new one in, I don't know.
00:27:44
Speaker
No, so the way what we'll do here is this will be a test fixture and it'll have a toggle pin that holds the part in the correct general location. Okay. But that's not your work holding all that just prevents it from falling off the horizontal tombstone and then the ID clamp goes in an ID hole and allows us full access to the outside and edge. So if the clamp failed, you would end up
00:28:07
Speaker
breaking tools in the horizontal, which we consider unacceptable consequence these days, which is going to do that. So but I suspect there's a film that they probably could work for how like we're taking a tooth out. They smell skin pass in a light and a light undercut. Interesting. Yeah, I'll keep chewing on it. Or making them on the wheelie.
00:28:34
Speaker
Yeah, probably just will. So easy. I love that machine. Yeah. Like, like you, I've had a couple quotes. I sent a couple quotes for like a three printed metal part and I'm always like, oh, like how many hundreds of dollars for this thing? Yeah, I know.
00:28:48
Speaker
Yeah, and it was funny, I remember Tom Lipton was making that advice, I think the baby bullet or something and sent out a maybe three or four inch shaft that had a bulb, like a bulbous sphere in the middle and it tapered down, like a real pain in the butt part to turn or make perfect candidate for 3D printing. And it was like 78 bucks. Like he showed the screenshot of getting it. So I don't know if those services have gotten less competitive. It just struck me as like, man, that's a bummer.
00:29:17
Speaker
Or maybe it's like, you got to know the tricks of quoting, like, I don't know, infill, things like that. Yeah, right. What else? Um, have you ever used a downcut end mill? Yeah.
00:29:40
Speaker
And compression cutters. I've never used a compression or down cut, but I bought some down cut end mills for the router to cut our foam. Sure. Because I saw another company that uses this exact end mill and gets great results. And I was like, we have to try that. Because we're still getting chip packing on the flutes of an up cut end mill of foam. And the foam glues itself to the end mill and can cause problems.
00:30:09
Speaker
So I have these down cut end mills, probably going to try them today actually. Does down cut help with that? This company seems to think so. The one that is cutting the same foam and getting great results. Or maybe it's just the end mill itself, I don't know.
00:30:27
Speaker
I thought down cutting just basically had to do with not pulling up on your part. You're pushing your part down into the vacuum table. For a vacuum table, which is what this is, might be a consideration as well. Although our vacuum sucks real hard, so we don't really have any lift up problems.
AI and Automation in Manufacturing
00:30:47
Speaker
Interesting.
00:30:48
Speaker
You're tired of doing the wood buzz pass? Yeah, it's variable and even different pieces of wood have different density. You can hear it through the shop. It's weird. And still a lot of fluff and cleanup to clean up after milling the foam. And this other company doesn't deal with any of that. And I'm like, you've
00:31:07
Speaker
made the process so much simpler than we have. I'm envious. What are you doing? We're using these end mills. I don't know. It wasn't that hard. I'm like, we've made it very hard. But okay, let me try your end mills. See if it works. You're using the sharpest single flute you can find. We're using the Datron foam end mills. They're three flute. But I haven't tried a one flute in this application yet.
00:31:33
Speaker
Humble suggestion, I would look at an Amana or On Strud single flute. I mean, you probably can buy any brand, but I would consider it high. But the single flute is going to be markedly different. Yeah. Yeah. If this doesn't give us the results we need, then I will absolutely try that. What's your depth of cut, Axial? Usually we're stepping down. Like total is about 1.1 inch, but I think we're stepping down three times.
00:32:01
Speaker
because of the water line features or just? That and also fluid length sometimes. Hmm. Okay. And you don't want to load up a one inch deep cut slot through foam, like, I don't know, maybe. Dude, you got to try single fluid. Yeah. Yeah. Rock and roll dude. Cool. Is there an air blast of any kind on it? There is. Okay.
00:32:29
Speaker
And like we said, lifting up off the vacuum table is definitely a consideration. It's too fast, too hard, too rough. You don't want to go too much, you know? Or the park can actually move a little bit, shift.
00:32:42
Speaker
I don't know if I've seen a single flute down cutting end mill. I'm trying to think of there's a reason why it's not possible. It's just not our world. It also pushes all the chips down into the slot that you're making, which feels weird to me.
00:33:05
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. We'll try. What diameter is the current date or not? Like quarter. Date run six mill. Yeah, that's fine. Okay. Interesting. So yeah. Okay. I was laying in bed last night and I had the weirdest
00:33:22
Speaker
weirdest, like, thought, and you can tell me to stop talking, but we were using somebody to ship me images.art. I think it's one of the AI image services. And John, I know everybody listening has heard about AI, and I don't want to be another, you know, source of just rambling about it, but it is insane. Like,
00:33:41
Speaker
you know, create a photo for product release of a this XYZ product that's in a 1940s feel and use red line art and it just does it and then and then I did like I just randomly was thinking like create an image of a person in a XYZ clothing outfit as a invitation to an event and it does it's just like it's crazy surreal.
00:34:06
Speaker
And so also the top of mind is there's more of this stuff coming in the cam world for like intelligent feature recognition scripts, and then true like my AI machine learning of auto doing your parts. And here's what I here's my kind of like, there's no punchline to the story. It just kind of had to chuckle like, okay, go back to the Bridgeport days, you got guys turning cranks, then you get DROs. And
00:34:32
Speaker
other things that can have assist with what you're doing with your hands, power feet. Then you go into the CNC world and you've got a motor. The motor's being controlled by some sort of a motor driver and that language is being fed from a machine controller perhaps that's doing the arc filtering, processing, the look ahead. That's coming from
00:34:52
Speaker
the G code that's getting fed into that. The G code is coming from a post processor. Post processor is coming from CAM. CAM itself is this whole beast of like different kernels and the CAD software, the user interface. Every tool path and everything is its own.
00:35:06
Speaker
Yeah, now on top of that, like CAM is seemingly moving toward the direction of the DRO, where you're going to have more and more, it's not hard to paint this roadmap, you've got more and more capability of looking at the parts you've programmed in the past, your tool library, your machine tools that you have access to, you know, there's no real reason why a software can't start to figure out like, hey, this guy really likes doing 2D contours with finishing overlaps. And
00:35:32
Speaker
you know, two spring passes. And by the way, he uses a lot of Datron six millimeters. So I'm going to, I'm going to give him this tool path that he can at least react to. Um, and it's just funny that I thought about like how many different layers of like, somebody could tell a pretty funny story about like, Hey, there's actually like eight layers of software or software plus hardware that are between the thoughts of your head and the, and the chip coming off. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's nuts.
00:36:01
Speaker
Can you imagine a little checkbox in 2D Contra toolpath? Do you want to store this for memory, like for AI future? It won't even ask you. It won't even ask you, right? Yeah. Or you'll do it and it'll be like, by the way, you normally don't have 20,000 negative selection. It's like Tachipiti, but for CAM.
00:36:24
Speaker
John, yes. It's like you do a new toolpath and they're like, you don't usually do it like this. Make sure you want to do it. When Gmail is like, are you sure you meant to not attach something to the email where you just typed? When you typed attached. Thank you, Gmail. Yeah, I forgot. It's going to be like that. That's coming. And I think it might come quicker than we think, John. Well, the funny thing is that is
00:36:54
Speaker
Obvious like within like it should be happening soon What's gonna be crazy is the things that are not obvious that we don't even can't even foresee yet sure, you know, but within five years It's gonna be like what? Yeah, but we're all we're society is so much used to Such a fast-paced technology cycles now that it's you know in the next five years is gonna be a lot of weird stuff But we're used to the speed, you know
00:37:21
Speaker
I don't know. Yeah. There's so much stickiness too though about, well, software makes it so much easier to iterate, but you look back, if you're 55 years old and had a good run at it as a machinist in 1995, are you really going to go buy that first Fidal or Haas? What were those things called? The spaceship Haases or whatever the VF ones look like? Yeah, the submarines. I don't know what they're really called.
00:37:49
Speaker
Yeah, you're like, no, I'm going to hang it up here in a few years. I'm not taking this leap into this newfound CNC. That's a big hardware level, capital investment, sticky change. Knowledge, yeah. It's software. Somebody's going to start feeding us scripts or add-ins or stuff. That's going to be the one to create them.
00:38:13
Speaker
I think there's actually some stuff. I didn't bring this up as an alter your motive, but I started to hear about stuff like this already, which I guess is not surprising, but yeah, crazy. Crazy. I love it. Yeah, right. Anything that can make my parts better, faster, more fun, more consistently. That's my big thing. Yeah. Yes. Agreed.
00:38:44
Speaker
What do you do today? Today, I have a good list ahead of me. For our Norseman knives, we always engraved the month and the year inside, and I'm still going into manually changing the month every month and posting new code. On the current, I've automated this and
00:39:02
Speaker
Every month I'm like, Oh, I really got to automate that and have it like logic so that it auto changes every month. Not going to be this month though. So I'm just going to change it to August and do that. Move on to the next, um, more carbon fiber inlays. I'm going to install another bag filter on the speedio, um, just to catch the final bits of carbon fiber. And then, uh,
00:39:28
Speaker
We've been working in Fusion with Angelo yesterday. We're designing a new piece of foam, which will be a shipping tray for our pen parts so that we can... Okay. I guess I shouldn't really talk about this, but we're going to send them out for PVD coding. Okay. Multiple different coatings. So we're putting a lot of effort into the package, the shipping container from here to the PVD place. Yeah. Because there's like 200 parts going.
00:39:56
Speaker
And you can't just throw them all in a box. So we're taking our foam sheets and we're milling slots into them and we're trying to figure out what layout, what parts. So it's been a good, good experience for Angelo to like get used to programming stuff for the router and all that. And then we're going to use the new down cut end mills on that piece. Yeah, that's awesome. This is the PVD you were talking about two or three months ago where you're hoping it's a better, that's awesome.
00:40:25
Speaker
Yeah, we got some parts back. Great, great results. Good. Just awesome. Yep. Yeah. Speaking of that, we got our, I know I talked about this with you offline, we got our butt kicked.
00:40:37
Speaker
And again, it's not that I don't want to share any of it, because I'm really fine with sharing most of it. It's
Material Challenges and Equipment Choices
00:40:41
Speaker
just I don't know what the outcome is going to be. But I wanted to have some 4140 parts heat treated. I'm just a novice when it comes to this. And because they're oil quenched material, the oil quenching leaves
00:40:55
Speaker
not what I would call a scale. You can't necessarily feel it, but it looks unacceptable. It's black, right? Yeah, like stained, blotchy black. It's not the sort of part where we can easily post heat treat, clean it up. I appreciate your help. I mean, the idea that sandblasting might help, but it also
00:41:17
Speaker
could cause surface ruckus that attracts long-term rust. That's no good. And then when you were like electro, what do you call it? Electroless nickel is an option to coat it. Yeah. Either over the black or blast and then electroless nickel or
00:41:36
Speaker
Something. There might be an option there because Electrolysis Nickel is really cool. I've actually done it in my garage like 12 years ago when I was making Volvo parts. Really? Yeah. A little Caswell plating kit. It adds thickness? Yes, and it's calculable. Yes, okay. Very calculable. Great wear surface, great salt spray, rust resistance testing.
00:42:00
Speaker
There's other coatings too. There's a guy just down the street that does, I think it's zinc plating and cheap, like super cheap. I want to do it just to have it done to see what it does because I could walk there. That's an option too, but Electroless Nickel, my flashlight's Electroless Nickel and lots of stuff is and it gives it a cool gold color.
00:42:26
Speaker
Yeah, I love that part. Because it's not paint, I know that, but it's truly covering everything. It almost doesn't matter if your substrate is smooth, but blotchy aesthetic. It'll just cover it all. Probably, yeah. Not like anodizing where you see through it, if you will. Correct. Yeah, it's a plating. It's a total covering of the surface. If there's flaking, it'll cover over the flakes, and you'll see the flakes.
00:42:52
Speaker
Yes, know that. And then the cool thing, like regular nickel plating is line of sight. So you have your cathodes and anodes and the ions like line of sight. So it won't go inside holes or things like that. Whereas electroless nickel is the solution with the nickel particles like floating throughout the whole solution. We have agitation in there, so it'll get inside screw holes and internal features and
00:43:16
Speaker
all this stuff which is really cool and it's not that expensive like for a product that you're selling for that price it's worth considering.
00:43:30
Speaker
I don't know, probably $5 to $15 for all of it. I don't know. It's worth quoting, for sure. No, for sure. And my hesitation isn't that it's more just like, okay, you're now introducing something that we have not done, which is multiple downstream vendors with multiple processes. And I'm conscious of what that means. Well, I was joking with Sky yesterday because we were talking about this and sending you information.
00:43:55
Speaker
I was like, Sanjay's reached this point where he created this amazing product. And he's like, sweet, we'll just ship it like this. And they're like, well, what if we heat treated it? And that one question adds a whole stream of downstream problems. Yeah, right. Like, let's make it hard so that it doesn't dent and it just lasts forever and it wears. OK, great. But now you got to hard grind it. No big deal. You got to clean it. You got to plate it. You got to do stuff to get that one feature of hardness.
00:44:22
Speaker
You're not going to machine the whole thing full hard. That's silly. No, but the ones that we've been using in betas have been like 30 Rockwell. And that will be, there's nothing wrong with that. I just would like to pursue the other options. Well, as I've seen from loading similar fixtures, as you've got a heavy pallet in your hand and you're trying to aim for that hole, you're going to miss. And you're going to ding the surface. And you're going to like.
00:44:51
Speaker
Yeah, so that's one of the reasons I'm a little bit more comfortable or casual about this is that the bushing that will be the three-eighths of an inch radially around is a hardened insert. So if you miss by a mile, yes, you could ding it, but I'm kind of like, oh, okay. But the area right around it is hard, and that's important. How do you work that piece? Do you machine hard? Do you heat train?
00:45:20
Speaker
I think they're hard milling it right now. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Yup. Sweet. What are you up to today? We sent out the RFQ to get Vectra for our Okamoto grinder that we purchased. Oh, sick. I forgot that I didn't share. Oh, yeah. So with the Okamoto. I did. And we bought the 55 gallon drama Vectra.
00:45:47
Speaker
You did, okay. Yeah. I have an email in my inbox from Petro Choice saying, does it make sense to buy seven pails or just get a drama? Sorry, I didn't see what they say.
00:45:57
Speaker
Well, I'll keep this short then. I forgot that I didn't show this yet. I, no joke, actually liked a couple of things on the Chevelier better. Just the fact that it had physical buttons that would be, I don't know how to describe it, but like actual buttons that move in and out that are plastic and large versus bubble buttons that I find over years or so cool it can get crunchier.
00:46:19
Speaker
And there were a couple of software things I liked in it. There was just, I was just like, I was kind of resigned to like the Chevrolet is a great machine. I'm okay with it. It's better price. It's lower price because I believe it's lower to Taiwan ease or Taiwan easish machine. That's very good. But still that where's the Okamoto is that step up into the premium ish bucket. And to be blunt, Okamoto got really aggressive and
00:46:42
Speaker
I think it's the better machine. I think it's, as we kind of joked, or who knows how right or wrong I am about this, but you know, if we're going to market, we're going to create marketing materials about our production, showing the Okuma machines that we've got. And Okamoto is different than, you know, XYZ brand of CNC machine and, you know, import Taiwanese grinder. But I was also, it's weird because I'm like, but no, we can grind, we would be able to grind the great parts of Chevalier. But anyway, Ultimate sent the POA for the Okamoto and hope to have it here in a couple of weeks.
00:47:12
Speaker
So I forgot what I was searching for, but your original Okamoto surface grinder video came up on YouTube. And I was like, oh, I used to have an Okamoto. It was like regrinding the chuck or something like that. And I was like, and he's getting the new one. Of course he is. I love it. It's actually, John, it's a 1224SA1. It's your exact machine. Yeah. Yeah, which would be great. Yeah. Well, full support from us. Anything you need. I appreciate that. Yeah, we love it. It's great. It just works.
00:47:42
Speaker
The most annoying part is dealing with warped parts, putting on the machine. It's like the act of being a grinder, of a grinding person. The machine itself is great.
00:47:54
Speaker
Yeah. Well, so then that's what I did. I look, I had reached the point where I was over analyzing it. So I just said, OK, I need to stop. And I created my final list of there's some weird differences. The Okamoto had three inches more of X, even though they're the same 24 inch machine. Big difference in the wheel. The Okamoto is a 12 inch by one and a half inch wheel. The Chevalier was a 14 by two. And then the final big difference is the Chevalier is all linear guide ways on all three axes, whereas the Okamoto has the
00:48:22
Speaker
I believe it's like the Scrapes Turquoise V table. So in theory, you could kind of lift the table off the machine if you were infinitely strong, not withstanding the hydroxyl.
00:48:35
Speaker
Um, Robin Renzetti is somebody that I had the pleasure to get to know a little bit. I don't ever want to abuse knowing him well enough. We've had enough conversations where I said, okay, I got my final few questions. I'm going to call Robin and just say anything that you can steer me right or wrong here. And he was, he actually spoke very highly of the Chevalier through some other tertiary relationships and knowledge and experience, but just sort of said, look, you're either one's going to do great. Um, why did I bring that up though? Oh, he talked a lot about the chucks and.
00:49:04
Speaker
I was thinking about heat distortion of the chuck itself.
00:49:09
Speaker
and going upward into your part and what he had said that kind of set a light bulb off was the heat distortion from the chuck also potentially going downward or any distortion in the chuck itself flexing your table. I suspect Robin's just, Robin lives, he's such a talented individual and he's so well spoken. I really enjoy his approach to things. I suspect he's working on a level beyond what we will need. Yeah, millions I'm not going to think.
00:49:34
Speaker
Yeah, but I also want to sack the deck in our favor and appreciate that guidance. What we need is guides like that, legendary leaders to bring up the question of like, hey, it's an electromagnetic chuck. That's going to create heat. Where's that heat going to go? What's that heat going to do to your part, to your table, to your cast hands? It brings up that question so that every machinist starts to learn.
00:50:00
Speaker
to question, to like, what happens? Where does this go? When you're cool, it heats up by five degrees. What does that do to your machine? Like, you know, it's these questions we don't know as young machinists. And that's what's fun about this industry. It's like, it's a never ending black hole of curiosities. It is. I love it. Yes. Good. Good. All right. When's it come?
00:50:22
Speaker
Uh, so we're, we want to get it delivered the same day as the UMC 350. Um, so I'm aiming, it'll be either be the 15th or so, like two weeks or then I go, well, we're all going to that, uh, DSI event in San California. Anybody who's listening should come by the way, like come hang out, come talk to other fusion cam and machinists. Um, so I don't want to come in when I'm gone. So it'll always be the other month.
00:50:51
Speaker
Yeah. Not soon though. That's cool. Soon. Yes. Super exciting. Good for you, man. Good. See you next week. Have a great day. Take care. Bye.