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#350 Defining the vision of your company
456 Plays1 year ago
Topics:
- Defining the vision of your company
- Dedicating time to organize the shop
- Post processors
- scrap metal company
- designing a new knife
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Transcript
Starting a Factory from Scratch
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the Business of Machining, episode number 350. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmough. And if you started a factory from the ground up with the end goal of having many people, dozens of people, dozens of machines, how would you go about doing that?
Unexpected Business Growth & Leadership
00:00:19
Speaker
That's not what John and I are doing today, but it's also kind of the extrapolated version of our story, which has wonderful elements of success in some areas where I think we could probably do better.
00:00:28
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I don't, I can't speak for you, but I originally did not intend to get this big. You know, we've got 13 employees right now and I, you know, five, 10 years ago, that was not on my radar and it's sort of been built out of necessity and out of need and desire and like, yeah, we can do a little bit more. Yeah. I want to do more. I want to accomplish more. I want to make more products. And then you just grow, grow into it, grow into the, the need and the role that you, uh, you know, require at the time, a, an acquaintance of ours, um,
00:00:58
Speaker
pushed and prodded us on a good topic in the question, which was kind of this idea of leadership. And I think you and I certainly may have guilty of leadership in the form of being present and making things better of what we're doing today. And I also kind of chuckled because I can't remember where I heard it, but somewhere, a respectable person was sort of saying like, look, you reach a certain point in your life where nobody tells you
00:01:24
Speaker
anything except what you want to hear, for better or
Personal Growth & Visionary Leadership
00:01:27
Speaker
worse. That's just what happens. People just tell you what you want to hear. And you and I have had enough success to where there's some validation in our story. Because at the end of the day, I'd like to think of ways I can do better and be better. But it's also kind of like, hey, it's been a darn good 10-year run. I wouldn't hit the rewind button or try to redo it. Frankly, the thought of redoing it is exhausting.
00:01:53
Speaker
I guess there's like a self-fulfilling balance of confidence, but also not having that. You think your manure doesn't stink approach, but the comment from our acquaintance was kind of this idea of, I think, more about visionary leadership.
00:02:11
Speaker
Um, I don't do it. I'm not good at it. I don't want to do it because I don't necessarily, I don't know. I just don't think that way. I'm like, it's somewhere areas where I think some, some days I would be a better worker than a boss because even if you gave me, if you give me a specific task, rock and roll, if you gave me a project rock and roll, or like even a multi-week sort of thing to, to roll out great. But, um, sometimes I think what maybe.
00:02:38
Speaker
Well, I'll talk about it a little bit later on the podcast, I guess, because it's something I want to talk to you as well is like, no, no, like, re envision, re envision Saunders or Grimsmough now that you're at this point, like, we need to do we need to move facilities, or we need to do an equipment overhaul, or like, oh, my gosh, like, those are not things that I'm allocating time and resources to.
00:02:56
Speaker
Right. I'm actually spending a decent amount of time thinking about things like that and the future and the vision and the growth. I want to continue to be better at being that visionary and mostly communicating the goals and the direction to the team. I kind of suck at that. It's like as much time as that information lives in my head, rent free kind of thing. If it doesn't get shared to the team, it's never going to execute.
Communicating Goals & Team Direction
00:03:20
Speaker
It's never going to happen. I want to continue to get better at that and to share
00:03:26
Speaker
better, you know? Yeah. Yeah. That's good to know. Well, I think that is the best segue into what kind of has hit me. I think I started this slightly before our talk last week, but I don't know that I shared it or had as much conviction, but I think a lot about
00:03:48
Speaker
how people around me could be hypercritical of me if they were willing to be, and no one is, seemingly, had a couple of...
00:04:00
Speaker
of instances and sometimes those scenarios are often highly charged situations where you got to take it with a grain of salt. But one of the criticisms that I think that I'm focused on is like, are we actually getting the stuff done and moving the company forward in the cliched way? But like, wait a minute, are you the bottleneck? Are you the problem?
00:04:21
Speaker
Um, kind of ties in well with, uh, just finished up that Toyota book. Actually I'm ordered the new one because this one, this one, the, was it the machine that changed the world ended up being a little bit too much about the history of the auto company. There was the lean nuggets were wonderful, but not directly. There wasn't a lean. Okay. Interesting. But it does make me think a lot about knowing what
00:04:46
Speaker
I know now, knowing what you know
Imagining a New Business with Experience
00:04:48
Speaker
now, John, if, and I'm a numbers guy. So if somebody said, Hey, John, we're going to give you five to 10 million and we need you to staff up and tool up a company. Let's pick, you know, uh, optic rails for firearms, just to keep it like a different, not the knife or whatever flashlights or something like that. Like how knowing what we know now, I would approach that.
00:05:14
Speaker
both wildly differently, but frankly, with a pretty good amount of confidence. Certainly from a process expectations machine side, I'm not necessarily.
00:05:25
Speaker
I want to bring in some help on the staffing side, frankly, because I don't know. I don't know a lot about middle management or, um, you know, expectations and, and daily and weekly and longer stuff like that. But, um, it makes sense. Mm-hmm. But like in no role would John Grims or John Saunders ever be designing a fixture or ever be, you know, hitting cycle start.
00:05:49
Speaker
Yeah, if you were creating this fictional new company with our current knowledge, with some capital, and you just had to execute, you wouldn't have time to do it all yourself.
Visionary Leadership & Delegation Strategies
00:06:00
Speaker
Just never going to happen. Exactly. It wouldn't work. Right. That's a good point. But we tend to think very linearly, like, if I were to do that, how would I do it? Oh, I'd design the fixture. I'd make the fixture. I'd write the programs. I'd design the part. It'd be fun. Maybe he would help me do that.
00:06:19
Speaker
But that's taking too much ownership of the process, of the entire execution of the plan. But that's where the visionary leadership comes in and goes, OK, here's the target. Here's the goal. In one year, we're going to have a sellable product. And we need to do this and this and this and this. We've got to buy that machine. We've got to make these things. You do that. You do that. You do that. And I can make it up and ramble it off like I just did. But to actually do it in real life is extremely difficult.
00:06:45
Speaker
But one of the reasons I bring that up is I like keeping this conversation wholesome, honest, raw, true. And the truth is, and I think I can speak for you, I certainly can speak for myself, is that we're gonna hang up on this call and we're gonna go back to doing task stuff. Seriously, I'm gonna go do stuff, blah, blah, blah, quote, unquote, shouldn't be doing, and I can justify it for a variety of reasons. And so what I did was,
00:07:14
Speaker
I called it I think I called it days off in the shop. I don't even know if I love that name for this thing. But this is this I now in
00:07:24
Speaker
I can't say this is a family friendly podcast. This list is my boss. I am, it's, uh, you know what? Like, yes. Oh, sure. Great. So it has some very specific, uh, things I need to get done. Um, you know, these are things that are no joke, 90% of the way there. So like castle grips, we're coming out with a different dimensioned style castle grip. So it would be similar to.
00:07:49
Speaker
Different folks make them, but certainly the one that is known by many folks is the Mighty Bite talent grip. We're having one that's different size, so those are made. They're actually at a third party vendor right now. The fixture's done. What I'm doing right now is debating CAM, tweaking tolerances, the process bin, stuff that's so close to the end of the road. Yeah, but it takes time and focus and dedication, and you can't just squeeze it in, I got five minutes right now, I'm going to do it. It has to be like, today is the priority, I'm doing this first.
00:08:18
Speaker
Bingo. And so there's
Structured Work Sessions & Organization
00:08:20
Speaker
one, two, three, four, there's seven things on that list. And those are those are real things. But again, I've got enough discipline and time to bank through those won't be done by the end of the year. But you know, because that's two and a half weeks away, but it'll be very close. Yeah. Then after that, on Friday,
00:08:42
Speaker
January 5th, I will be spending two hours with my phone, not on my possession in our 3D printing room. The next Monday, the utility closet. The next Thursday, just focus on process spins. The next Friday on the Akuma and the 3YT, the list goes on. I've broken it down and there's probably 15
00:09:02
Speaker
two hour day sections here of either machines or areas of the shop because it's that quote that you and I have talked about where goals are pointless, put into place the steps you need to get to the goal. And if I want to, quote unquote, overhaul the shop or do something, saying that doesn't mean anything. Saying on Friday the fifth, I'm going to spend two hours in one 10 by 10 foot section of the shop. Frankly, I will be able to spend two hours, but that's okay. Like
00:09:28
Speaker
do that, go there, make it as good as you need to make it, pull stuff out, clean stuff, decide where we're gonna buy Kaizen foam or Uline bins or rat wire rat, like just done. And so this has an end date right now of early February. I don't really care if that gets pushed to the end of February, but this will happen.
Balancing Family Time & Decluttering
00:09:48
Speaker
We will be way better off for it. I'll get help from the respective team when I'm in certain areas and
00:09:58
Speaker
With the that done plus the work on the beginning part of that list, which is the kind of the machines up knock on wood I should be in a place where My job will be more more about true
00:10:14
Speaker
Like basically further removing myself from taking that next step. I'll say that. You will slowly start building the company into what you actually want it to be now and it'll give you time and space to evolve it into where it should be because these things don't happen by themselves. If you expect that, then you just put your head down, you get your work done every day and nothing really changes and you're always like behind the ball and you're always in a mess and cluttered and things like that. So I like that a lot.
00:10:43
Speaker
I like the specificity of it, the Friday, even if you don't have a time, but like Friday, I'm spending two hours in
Optimizing Manufacturing Processes
00:10:50
Speaker
this area and that removes all decision making. It removes all, you know, man, I don't want to. It's like, no, no, I'm spending two hours on Friday. Leave me alone. Like everybody knows everybody's expecting it. Um, I like that. It's clever.
00:11:05
Speaker
Yeah. I'm actually super excited for it. Good. Is this something that you want to drive because it's your company and it's your vision and you want to build it into what you want to be? Or would you get to the point of delegating that task, the whole project to somebody else?
00:11:26
Speaker
Have I told you I suck at visionary leadership? Yeah. So look, I thought about that because some of the areas I've done a good enough job delegating where if I go over to a wire rack that has fixtures for our hobby, my advice is I don't even know what we use, what we don't use.
00:11:43
Speaker
So in those situations, I'll have to get by in both actual help on doing it. But the idea will be to reset the tone and the expectations around organization cleanliness. We've had some really great examples of where
00:12:00
Speaker
folks have done great things. And so I think that's, I want to give credit where it's due. I think the problem, the pitfall that I fall into is you, even if those ideas live in my head, if I'm not doing it or encouraging it or making it happen, you can't always expect everybody else to also be doing that. And so that's kind of the, I hope is that, Hey, we're gonna, we're gonna clean this up. We're gonna get rid of stuff. We're gonna reorganize it. We're gonna buy
00:12:25
Speaker
It's actually fun. I'll spend $300 or $1,000 on a special tool we need, if it makes sense. But sometimes the best lean thing is to just get rid of it. Yeah, instead of paying a bunch of money to organize it. Yeah, organizing clutter and chaos is a fool's errand. Yeah, yeah.
00:12:50
Speaker
And I kind of think about that I, you know, as a 40 year old, I've now all four of my grandparents are deceased. And so I've been through those kind of processes of selling stuff and have had other friends who have lost their parents. And this is, I don't want to conflate two things. This is not like a
00:13:09
Speaker
morbidity sort of exercise, but it's kind of like, no, like literally, if I died tomorrow, what here is key of the business is valuable, et cetera, versus what is just like, dude,
Managing Scrap Materials & Logistics
00:13:21
Speaker
yeah. Yeah. And like, you don't want that burden on the next person, um, who, who is in charge of getting rid of that, as you might've seen with your grandparents and like, is this good? Is it junk? Do I put it on eBay? Is somebody going to want it? It's just old garbage, like, or is it gold? Like, I don't know. Yeah.
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah, you know, it's the, I don't know if you feel the same way or not, but coming into the holiday season, what makes you happy is, you know, the smiles on your kids' faces, the memories with them. You know, when I've got it, when you have family members, frankly burdening you with gift ideas, it's like, dude, I don't want more stuff. I don't, I just, like, I'm sorry, I really, I want to be happy. I want to have a meal together, go for a hike together. And that sounds super corny, but like, I don't want more stuff.
00:14:08
Speaker
And we're in the same boat. Even the kids are smart and respectful. And they're like, we don't need anything. Give me money, sure. Because I'm just telling the grandparents, cash is the answer. Then they can go get food or go to the mall and get whatever they want. Kids want stuff. But my kids are older. My kids are 10 and 13. And they're like, I don't want a random toy that I'm not going to play with from a grandparent that might not know me so well. Right.
00:14:37
Speaker
And we're kind of over that phase because now we have a house full of cluttered teddy bears and stuff that the kids don't play with anymore and or never did to begin with. And it's like, everybody's starting to realize the pointlessness of some of it for them anyway. But yeah, just want to spend time with them. Want to make sure they're good. Go for a hike, like you said. Attempted to bring the kids and come down and see you very soon. Dude, welcome. Yeah, I'm very excited to do that. Yeah.
00:15:09
Speaker
Good. So that's my plan of what's happening, which I love. Um, and there's some of it's not just cleaning, which I know is a topic I've burdened to death on this talk, but also it's like, Hey, no, one of those days is going to be, um, spending a day looking at, um, horizontal cam and like, Hey, where can we consolidate tools and tools, pull tools out of a not wide rack, but, uh, yeah, wide rack thing. Um,
00:15:38
Speaker
And then if you do that, you can decide what the next, what the next time needs to happen. And that could be, Hey, Garrett, in nine months, this will be pop-up and Lex is something for you to do. Um, grab me if you need help and that sort of a thing. Yes. I like that a lot. Uh, that brings up a thing I was working on last night is.
00:16:06
Speaker
optimizing toolpaths, you know, a lot of our programs, especially on the current are dialed, they work, we know our tool life, we know the cycle times, everything just works extremely well. We hardly ever break a tool. Except I know there's a lot of low hanging fruit in cycle time.
00:16:25
Speaker
And there are ways to speed up, even save hours a day cumulatively. So going from a four-flute ball mill to an eight-flute ball mill, which we're doing for one pattern of the knife. But that halves your cycle time because you can feed twice as fast and keep your same chip load. I didn't know they made eight-flute. Zadaro does. All right.
00:16:47
Speaker
Yeah, custom, because I asked for it. And I'm like, hey, can you do this? And he's like, yeah, sure. And it's more expensive than a four flute, but cycle time is extremely expensive on the current. So I'm like, if I'm spending $60 for an end mill instead of $40 for an end mill or $30, I'm like, that tool that's going to last a month cost me an extra $30, but I'm saving how much cycle time on the current and be able to make how many more products?
00:17:14
Speaker
Why am I not doing this? So like we have a pattern on the rask, the smooth pattern, which is literally like 3D machined smooth with a fourth step over, I think it is. So it's almost perfectly like smooth. And then once it goes through the tumbler, it's perfectly smooth. Foreflute ball mill took an hour to do a pair of handles. Eight flute ball mill takes half an hour to do a pair of handles.
00:17:40
Speaker
And that kind of time adds up. So I want to apply that to all of the other patterns that we do and save all kinds of cycle time. Is cycle time a thing though? Yeah, huge thing. Yeah. I guess I didn't realize that.
00:17:59
Speaker
Yeah, when the machine is busy all of the time and we need to make more products, we need to find cycle times or distribute to other machines, but it's not always easy doing that. Yeah. On the ball mill, that's a what diameter? Quarter. Go to three eighths or half inch. And it works sometimes. Um,
Quality Leadership & Decision-Making
00:18:20
Speaker
it doesn't always, I thought I played with the cycle times of that and like your RPM goes down and it's not actually faster sometimes.
00:18:28
Speaker
But you can do less stepovers, I guess. Yeah. There's a widget. Devin, did we decide Devin had a show to me? I don't think he wrote it. He showed it to you. Maybe it was Phil. If it was Phil, I'm very sorry for mixing up these two. But it was a plug-in or a calculator that showed your cusp height. Oh, yeah. Well, Fusion does that natively now, cusp height. OK. Maybe that's what I'm thinking of now. This is super cool. Yeah.
00:18:55
Speaker
But you should be able to. You're right. Going to a bigger ball lets you take a bigger step over and keep your same cusp height. But there are diminishing returns on that too because like Lockwood and I were talking a while ago about this. There's like optical cusp height, like there's mathematical cusp height and then there's like visual, you know, like the surface of the part. So people are like, use a barrel mill and you can do the whole thing in four step overs. Yeah, but it looks like crap. Like there's
00:19:26
Speaker
you know, this, we're making a very visual product and it has to like look good and be smooth and stuff. So, um, there is a point of diminishing returns and stepovers and cusp pipe and things like that. Yeah, sure. But yeah, all things to consider. Absolutely. Well, how do you know what we're talking about? How do we get there?
00:19:44
Speaker
Uh, cycle times optimizing programs. Oh, you were going to optimize. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's just one example, but it got me to look through all my cam, you know, and a lot of the programs that I've made are like solve a problem, you know, like make a hole, don't break a tool kind of
Designing & Prototyping New Products
00:20:00
Speaker
thing. So I've been constantly tweaking every single tool path to, you know, be slower, use a drill and then bore it out, use a reamer instead of an end mill kind of things like that. And.
00:20:10
Speaker
I don't know if there's bloat necessarily, but it deserves re-looking at to make sure that the whole package is what I want. That's the overall theme of the lives you and I live right now.
00:20:25
Speaker
That's true, but the problem is that that's true for everything in our freaking lives. Our shipping contract with FedEx could use revisiting. You could literally apply that to everything. I'm trying to be proactive.
00:20:41
Speaker
deterministically proactive on things that I listed right there, but on other stuff, I'm just reactive. Like I'm going to just worry about this problem when it comes to being like for cycle time, we don't have a cycle time on the horizontal problem, right? We don't have a cycle time limit or problem right now. We will eventually, but all I'll do is just go look through the cam programs and be like, is there anything that looks egregious? Like I think we probably have some chamfer tools that are plunging at five inches a minute because of just goofy cam. And that's what we probably,
00:21:11
Speaker
minutes worth totally free, not even compromising cut quality. Exactly. I found a couple last night that I'm like, if I do this, I can save a minute and a half per knife. That's not much, but it's something. How many of those can I find? I think I can totally save up to an hour per knife with all of these combined. I'm like, that is massive because that just leads to being able to make more knives per day.
00:21:38
Speaker
That's a good one talking out loud to where either an in-person intern or even a remote intern potentially, it's like, hey, I'm going to show you one or two file examples. You start going through other ones and then screenshot or write down and review because I'm not going to let that person make those changes if they're not a machinist or they're not familiar.
00:22:00
Speaker
I want to be brutally savage with endorsing you and me spending our own time extensively on stuff. That's an easy one that we should offload. Yeah. Something Angela and I talked about is like having, basically looking for cycle time, having somebody sit in front of the machine and watch an entire cycle, even if it's hours. Because sometimes there are retracts that go at a feed rate, not at a rapid or something like that.
00:22:26
Speaker
One step ahead of you on our list was the same thing, but we just put a GoPro. Yeah. So you'd be able to capture. I like that a lot. Plenty good footage and you could scrub through it because once a 20 minute cycle starts, you don't need to see more than the first 20 seconds of it. Right. Yeah. I like the camera idea.
00:22:46
Speaker
It's so much easier on a lathe because lathes usually have very short cycle times, so you can get real fancy with lead-ins and retracts and overcutting and things like that, especially on the Swiss. We've been able to save a lot of time just watching it and optimizing the program based on that. But with the mill, some of our cycles are five hours long. I'm not going to sit there for five hours and watch every step of it.
00:23:09
Speaker
But that's what simulation is for. But sometimes the machine does something that simulation doesn't account for. I don't know why. I think
Improving Business Operations
00:23:20
Speaker
I know why. But there's one toolpath where it'll do a toolpath, and it'll come above the part, and it'll feed down. It takes like 30 seconds to the part. And it's not happening. It's feeding. And I think it's because of a subroutine
00:23:35
Speaker
Thing that I'm doing, but I've just ignored it for two years. And every now and then you look at the machine and just doing that one move. You're like, Oh yeah, that's the one that's that chamfer that goes down slowly. Yeah. And I just haven't fixed it yet, but it's low hanging fruit, right? Yeah, right.
00:23:50
Speaker
It kind of reminds me, I did a guest episode on the Autodesk podcast, which I recorded it last week. It doesn't come out until January, but great conversation and talking about how like we have forked off almost all of our post processors and like on our dual spend delay, like I'm never going to update that going back to the whole like, you know,
00:24:13
Speaker
squeaky door gets the grease like I'm not it works and I did it to the factory like Autodesk came out with a new one you're updated you mean or what? Yeah, because it works like I command the attorney team post team Autodesk fusion for like all of the work they continue to do to develop the new Haas dual spindle post. That's awesome. But like the heck I'm gonna worry about
00:24:37
Speaker
Mine, it works, it's super old. It has some M codes that had to get handed in because at the time the sub spindle post stuff wasn't as mature as it is now. But it's kind of sad because you've got a lot of folks that hate to use the word power user, but like, we're just not gonna add value or test it because it's not worth
Exploring ProvenCut Business Prospects
00:25:00
Speaker
it.
00:25:01
Speaker
Yeah, and you don't want to find that one area that it's lacking on your machine or the custom tweak that you did that isn't in the production post. It's the same thing with speedio.
00:25:14
Speaker
The default speedio post is like fine, but so many people have done their own tweaks in so many different directions that a lot of people now are finally funneling towards the same direction. And there's a couple of guys that are trying to make like a GitHub repository for like, this is the post with everything that everybody's ever asked for, um, theoretically. And I haven't tried it yet because like you said, I'm kind of scared. Yeah. I'm like, I have a post that I've tweaked a little bit and it does a couple of things that I need weird and it, you know, maybe it doesn't do everything, but.
00:25:43
Speaker
It's safe and I know it. This is the new, we'll see that six, but the new term is Toyota John. Works for either one of us. It has nothing to do with us building cars, but Toyota John has to staff up a facility. If you run a punch press, and those don't use post processors, but let's say they did, and it works, and Steve's the one that runs it,
00:26:08
Speaker
Steve, no, we're not spending new time on new posts. If it works and it does what we need it to, full stop, move on, done. Like, no. Like one of the Toyota terms is like, we're not going to, we're not going to look at saving cycle time unless we can cut it in half.
00:26:24
Speaker
Oh, really? Yeah, I read that somewhere. And I don't know if that's globally true, but it's a neat thought process, right? Like, if it's fine, leave it. If you can cut it in half, attack that now, because that is low-hanging fruit. And grinding blades on
Documenting Processes & Audience Engagement
00:26:40
Speaker
the speedio, I'm doing it twice as fast as I was on the current. That's awesome. Due to a lot of different reasons. Yeah, on a machine that costs a quarter. Exactly.
00:26:51
Speaker
mostly toolpath related. I spent some time with the new geodesic toolpath and optimizing various different things. I made a whole new fixture for it and things like that. So even on less RPM, I'm able to get as good or better finish than I was on the Kern and I need to get it off the Kern anyway. So this is all working out finally. I really like the
00:27:17
Speaker
Again, it's that kind of like whole books and advice are contextual. But like the whole Toyota, it's also a big part of the book, the goal. But you know, don't quote Jay Pearson, don't develop, don't buy a super speed machine. If you don't have a super speed process everywhere, like, like match the output of the current or the brother to everything else that's happening. And just have a good steady flow rather than right. The shops a mess, but one machine happens to run boys.
00:27:46
Speaker
And we're actually, we're bumping into that right now because on the current, we designed it as one piece flow. Like we had one tombstone that makes every part of a rask. So in one cycle, like a rask is done. And then that worked out really well. And now that we're trying to separate and put stuff onto the speedio.
00:28:04
Speaker
And it's like, okay, it does that, but it still has to go on the current for two minutes to do this tilted angle cutoff thing. And that break in flow is really challenging for us right now because before one piece flow, load it all up, set it to go schedule it, send it done.
YouTube's Role in Marketing
00:28:20
Speaker
Now it's like, oh, we're low on that. Oh, we have to do that now. Oh, okay. So we're hitting different bottlenecks of like managing our process and our inventory and our scheduling and things like that. And it's, it's challenging.
00:28:34
Speaker
Could you build a positional fixture to keep it on the speedio and have it oriented there with the chunk? You could, but it'd be like manual one-piece loading kind of thing. Same thing with the current when you're doing what's effectively rework, right? Right, although you could schedule it in the Pallet Changer. Yeah, got it.
00:28:56
Speaker
So yeah, both are options. I even looked at this video option this morning, making a one position fixture that tilts the part and just plops it in. But it involves buying some stuff and making some custom fixtures. And I'm like, it works in the current. It's just weird to schedule. I forgot that your brother and the current share the aro. So it actually literally can pass it off on its own. Gosh, once it's connected properly. Which the guy's coming tomorrow. OK.
00:29:26
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Sourcebot. Right. I feel for you and I also want to be like, what the fuck? Yeah, exactly. Hey, on that note, fusion question. We were making a prototype part out of some larger diameter round bar.
00:29:44
Speaker
that we laid down. And I did a quick adaptive and I realized kind of embarrassingly like it spent a bunch of time roughing air because 3D adaptive is not stock aware on it's still a projected toolpath. So it doesn't have the ability to recognize at the top part
Continuous Improvement & Customer Engagement
00:30:00
Speaker
of the part, it doesn't have to rough the full diameter. Yeah, I've had that. Yeah. And I'm like, how is that not
00:30:07
Speaker
Interesting. I know there's a new roughing strategy, but it's probably in the extensions. I didn't know. Is there anything to jump out at you as advice to look at there? No. I know I've run into that before, because as your cylinder comes to a point at the top, it's still 3D roughing the whole rectangle around it. Right. And I think I just dealt with it. OK.
00:30:32
Speaker
I mean, the crap, the poor, but doable hack is just to take like 2D pocket or 2D or actually you can break up. This is why it's so frustrating from software. You could break up your adaptive and the first layer only goes down so far. Then it's stock aware and it doesn't waste as much motion, but then that just seems very hacky. Interesting. Okay. I'm not missing anything, obviously, yes. Not that I know of, yeah, but probably.
00:31:02
Speaker
Um, on the note of, you know, kind of turning a new leaf and just fixing stuff. Um, I am waiting on the callback, which frankly could go great. Could be very frustrating from our scrap company, but I emailed them yesterday and I was like, we're done with these gay Lords. We will.
00:31:20
Speaker
We will start separating our scrap. So in other words, we're going to have to adjust how we run the horizontal so it doesn't mix metal steel and aluminum. So that's on us. We'll do that. But we need roll offs from you guys. We need steel and aluminum. I don't know if they're going to be small and we can fit them in the shop or big enough to go outside.
00:31:38
Speaker
And then I got a quote from a company, Aurora, R-O-U-R-A for the self-dumping forklift hoppers on casters. So instead of these big gate lowers, we'll have the self-dumping hoppers. They can roll into the chip and then when they're full or when we need to switch from aluminum to steel, you can just by hand roll it out.
00:32:03
Speaker
put the one in you need, move that over to the racking side of our shop, and then Serena, who runs our operations and shipping and forklift stuff, will dump it. And then that just solves everything.
00:32:20
Speaker
None of that sounds crazy insightful, but there's been a lot of frustration with Gaylord's and we had to build the Gaylord box together and they want to wait and pick up 12 at a time. It takes 40 minutes for us to load them onto their truck. This is not how I've let this go too long. Yeah. Chip management is always tricky. I remember, I think it was a shop that Devon worked at years ago. They had an inside loading bay that would go down
00:32:50
Speaker
That was just a interior dock ramp and they put the roll off. Yeah, yeah in the dock I just thought it was kind of cool. I'm like, mm-hmm sweet That's downhill. You dump all your chips into that and then they pull it out I'm like it seemed central and like like a good solution, but yeah Yeah, we're still just using I mean, we don't make a ton of chips, but we just used garbage cans You know the brood garbage cans and then we have a back. We have a big 10 foot by 20 foot
00:33:19
Speaker
metal bin that they drop off on the truck. We just dump everything into there. That's what's going to be awkward about this phone call is that you and like I've had quite a few listeners reach out to basically be like, I don't know why you're having such a problem. This isn't a big deal. Whether it's mixed material or whether it's getting a roll off. Our local company is giving us a hard time and it's a little bit awkward because I think there's technically another company but they're a little bit
00:33:46
Speaker
Uh, well, there might be one other company and otherwise we don't have a local source. And I'm like, it's actually not funny. Like I can't regenerate. I don't know. One to two gay Lords a week. Like we can't, um, we have to get rid of our chips. So.
00:34:02
Speaker
I thought about a briquette machine and I'm like, no, that still is not. I don't want the cost, the capital, the real estate tied up. Somebody has to man it, tend to deal with it. I'm not trying to maximize the value of the scrap. The only thing I don't like about this plan is I don't really want, I don't want the roll offs inside because that's valuable real estate and outside they just look so.
00:34:25
Speaker
But look, we're an industrial park. You have yours outside, right? Yeah, it's not back. Nobody ever sees it, except for the two guys that parked back there. And it's not covered too, so it gets rained on and snowed on and things like that. So then any residual coolant and oil that's in there is added to with rain. And some of them are in terrible conditions. They have holes in the side and stuff. So we've had to start specifying. We need one with no holes, because I don't want my gravel parking lot full of oil and coolant right now. That's not good for the property.
00:34:55
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. These are scrap metal bins and things, and I worry about you having the self-dumping ones that you're maybe renting from the company. They're on casters, but you have very nice epoxy floors, and I don't want to roll some scrap metal thing through my shop.
00:35:15
Speaker
Oh, I'm not worried about that. Yeah, we'll buy these and that's different. A lot some of this is well, lots of folks have done this area that for one nine is the most close the person with whom who I the closest is doing this well, they have these all their machines and then the morning they get rolled over and dumped by somebody who does that before other people come in for the day, I at least I was at the time. And when you dump it,
00:35:40
Speaker
you're not exposing the casters to chips either. In theory, it's not. It just cost a couple grand per bin, I assume.
00:35:48
Speaker
Yeah, I'll keep everybody posted. I got a quote for 1800 bucks, but that was with a three way entry option to where you could pick it with the forklift from three different angles, which that's 450 bucks. I think I'll take that off, which is 1300 bucks before they're shipped. And I think we'll probably buy two or three to start, but if it really works, we'll have to get more. Yeah.
00:36:13
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds like a good option. And then you still need somewhere to dump them. So big roll off in the back, but those will come from the well, yeah, maybe this phone call. But again,
00:36:23
Speaker
told you this before, if you walk into our shop or somebody I don't know walks into our shop and they see things like this, I want them, that's my goal, I want them pulling out their notepad and thinking, oh man, this is how. Yeah, this is the way to do it. Yeah, bingo. Yeah, which involves you putting thought and effort and time into it. None of these decisions are easy. None of them are like, yeah, just roll them off, done, done, done.
00:36:47
Speaker
It's not that visionary leadership where it's like problem, solution, problem, solution, done, done. I'm, I'm on top of it. I know everything. It doesn't work like that. Like I'm almost too thoughtful and too hesitant to make some decisions. And, uh, but because I want to make quality decisions. Yeah. Yeah. I've been talking too much. I feel like I need to chill. Sorry. That was good.
00:37:16
Speaker
What do you bet up to or going to be up to? Um, designing a new knife. Oh, very fun. Do tell or, or you wish I had infinite amounts of time to, to devote to this, but, uh, take what I can get and manage what I can and put aside projects that are unimportant in favor of this one, which is more important. Um, and, uh,
00:37:43
Speaker
Long term it as we're kind of talking about this conversation. It makes me realize the value of Having not necessarily dedicated employees, but like enough employees to to do lots of things Because otherwise I have you know Very limited amount of time to be able to devote to this fun new project and it's like if I you know imagine big company lots of people if I had engineers and designers and you know cameras and
00:38:09
Speaker
prototype engineers kind of thing. It's like, here's my vision, my direction. I've been playing on this on the side, go nuts. But at the moment, I'm that person. But it is super fun. Yeah. I certainly see a role in
00:38:25
Speaker
I mean, you are Grimsmo, right? Right. But can you not hand off a sketch and have somebody else model infusion or even program it? Bits of it, but not the whole, not to like completion, not to make a part kind of thing. Sure, sure. So we're working on that. Are you going to just be nosy? Are you going to 3D print the prototype? Are you at work? OK. Yeah, I've got one with the, so it's an integral handle, not two handles screwed together. It's like one solid block of titanium.
00:38:55
Speaker
And I made a model with that and the blade and the pivot and everything. And I just printed the whole assembly. So it looks like it can close, but no, it's solid. It's printed. But everybody tries to close it. So that's cool. And I'm probably going to end up making it in two different sizes. I want to make this small one and then a bigger, more normal sized one. So I'm going to task one of the guys with printing the full-size version.
00:39:18
Speaker
Sweet. And that'll be cool. And then, yeah, I'm working on fixturing for that. I've got one of the, Shunk makes this KSC mini vice. That's like, I don't know, it's like this big, whatever, four inch by three inch or something. Super grippy, super powerful, very low profile. I need to mount that onto a small pallet on the curtain. And then once that's mounted, then I can start hogging away some titanium.
00:39:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, so that's right near the top of my list is mount the vise first. I can't do anything without that vise being mounted. Then after that, start start working on the stock. And then after that, I got to make a button for this knife because it'll be a button lock. Make that on the Willeman, which I want to hit, you know, really good tolerances on that. And then I've already made the pivot, I already made the bearings. I'm going to ignore the pocket clip until the very end, but I've got a really cool idea for that.
00:40:13
Speaker
It's like the whole point of the knife is to use as few screws as possible, if any. Oh, interesting. The pivot needs a screw, but how do you make a clip attach with no screw, just for fun? You could put a screw in there, but there's no other screws, so how do you make a clip in?
00:40:28
Speaker
I know this because I had to JV weld it this shirt this surefire flashlight. It's it's really I'm really disappointed after nine years of everyday carry it to show minor amounts of wear. And the metal form clip just presses in like it's like a dovetail style thing. Okay, I don't know if that would work for a knife.
00:40:48
Speaker
Yeah, I've thought about that. A dovetail would, and actually for my flashlight idea, I was thinking about a dovetail machine thing for the clip, but for the integral, I want to do more like a, I don't know what the word would be for it.
00:41:04
Speaker
But like a little expanding spring of titanium part of the clip that goes in fits into a slot and expands out like a little detent and like you won't be able to remove it with your hand, but maybe you put it against the table and like really pushed on it with your, with your palm or something. That's kind of the goal is to be able to pull it out. So I have this concept in my head. I think I actually designed most of it already. Um,
00:41:27
Speaker
And I figure I can make that whole clip on the Wilhelmin and add the slot later. So it's like I'm trying to prototype in stages. I don't need it all done all at once. Just like make a handle to worry about the clip. And then you're going to need to make a couple of handles anyway. And then once the handle is good, then worry about the clip. And then add those features. Make another handle to do that. So yeah, so this will be fun.
00:41:51
Speaker
Awesome. I've been telling myself for a while that I want to hold one by the end of the year, but the end of the year is coming up hard. Yeah, right. But that's like, okay, so do... I can't... It's not right of me to project my enthusiasm onto you, but make a schedule. Carve out 30 minutes just and put your phone away. The world will go on.
00:42:10
Speaker
Just make sure you're making progress daily or weekly progress towards things exactly. I am listing out the critical first steps and I put an order to everything. Mount that vice is number one. Then start attacking the titanium is number two. I already have all the tools I need. I already have many of the toolpaths already made because I've been picking away at this. I actually designed this knife.
00:42:35
Speaker
11 years ago. Wow. And I've been, I've been playing away at it like ever since and I still haven't made one other than 3d prints. So it's like, holy cow, it's time. Let's get this thing. Yeah. So it's, it's amazing how time just goes by.
00:42:50
Speaker
We're selling our TIG welder because we don't use it. And I remember thinking, I remember the auction I bought it at and then I looked it up and that was nine years ago. And I was like, oh my God, that's crazy. So if you're selling it, are you not taking any more? Like you don't need it? I think, to my knowledge, the only time we've ever pulled that TIG out ever was to try to do minor tweak fixed repairs on let you see your parts, which is not, that's not our business period. Yes.
00:43:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, we bought one a while ago. Way too big, way too powerful. And finally got the electrician to hook it up and still haven't used it yet. It's like being a car guy, like I'm glad that I have one. But I also wish I mean, I mean, I've TIG welded before, but not in like 10 years. And not that I needed to be part of our daily process. But I want the ability in our shop to be able to TIG weld stuff. But still, we haven't really had the need. Yeah, but that's where
00:43:48
Speaker
There's like personal leadership because I think this, a lot of our Cox do intermix our personal life goals with the business. At some point I would love to, you know, we used to write, uh, crime, Ryan and John and Lewis used to teach that to class here. Like I took it, I enjoyed it. I wouldn't, I would love to do that at some point in the future of my life. It has nothing to do with our success here. So I understand exactly. So those are separate, totally separate things. Like, uh,
00:44:13
Speaker
You should sell stuff like that to use that money towards stuff that helps your business today. Well, and the funny thing is it's one of those like big Lincoln electric, like, you know, three feet tall on wheels kind of thing. And nowadays for two grand, you can buy this little phone book size, you know, make take welder that's combined and ACDC and all this stuff, all that, every feature you want. It's like, yeah, I'm doing it wrong. Yeah. But even that I don't need, you know,
00:44:41
Speaker
Yes. Well, so on that note, I did want to take advantage of the podcast audience to mention that we are, I think we have the UMC 500 sold, but we have a Haas ST20Y that has almost like hundreds of hours at most on it. Tormach 1100 MX, Tormach 770, Tormach 15 Snipe Pro.
00:45:00
Speaker
another screw compressor that we're all selling. And I thought maybe it would help to give a little bit more context on Provencut just to share explicitly. Provencut's annual revenue, which is effectively the same as its profit, is the same as a entry-level
00:45:16
Speaker
vertical machine center. So it's awesome, but it's also not, you know, we're not talking about Google here. And everything I've researched is that it's pretty common for those subscription type businesses to sell for some very reasonable low multiple of that number. And so that's kind of the, that's kind of the where I'm at with it. But in the same bucket, like I love it. And I love it. I'm proud of it. It's great. It has recurring revenue.
00:45:40
Speaker
has a great audience base, but like I'm not, it's something that is time for a new home. So I'd like to, if somebody is interested in taking over that business, would love to hear from them. Absolutely. That's cool. Well, that's about our time. Which is it. I'm excited to see more about this knife. Yes. Yeah. And it's like, part of me just wants to like,
00:46:06
Speaker
turn off the world and sit in my shop with nobody here and make it. And part of me is like, I am required to film videos on this entire process now. I've built up that expectation from all of our fans and all of our customers, things like that.
00:46:21
Speaker
I can't just hide away and make this and be like, yeah, it's done. It's like, no, I got to document the whole process. So there will be a balance of like, I'm not going to film everything. I just want to make stuff, but, um, and it'll be fun to film stuff. But as you know, it adds, it adds effort. Yeah. Yeah. And like, I mean, YouTube is, I think YouTube has changed in a great way as a consumer, but, um, yeah, we're not, we don't do what we used to. And yeah, exactly. Yeah. Period.
00:46:49
Speaker
Yeah, YouTube has gotten very entertaining and very professional. And even very small channels are making very professional videos that I can't even keep up with. And that's super impressive. So I'm not looking to reinvent the wheel. I'm not looking to keep up with anybody else. But to continue to do what we do and make fun videos on how we make things is the plan, the vision there.
00:47:11
Speaker
Yeah. Because it is a big part of our marketing strategy in our business to be able to share what we do so that the customer has some value and some almost like steak in the process, in the product. They feel like they really know what's going on and we can't lose that. That's everything for us, you know? No, I hear you. So yeah. Good. I'll see you next week. Sounds good, man. Awesome. Take care. Okay. Bye.