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Business of Machining - Episode 80
176 Plays7 years ago
The Johns share heartwarming entrepreneurial moments that hit them RIGHT IN THE FEELS.
Square One No matter your experience level, the learning should never stop. Each new aspect of business sends you back to the green. If your brain is exploding, you're doing it right!
A Testament To Self-Care Grimsmo and Saunders know the drill (pun intended) when it comes to "taking time off." Usually it's for business related events but if you're listening now, Grimsmo has left the building! He's on an adventure--but he may or may not leave the laptop in the FRUNK.
The Mori. The Haas. Bada Boom or Biiig Bada Boom?
Nail on the Head Ryan Wenner's quote about the "2 most important skills for entrepreneurs" resonates with Saunders. ALSO: Changing your definition of the word "failure" can change your life!
Business as Usual Implementation of a shared maintenance schedule is in progress at SMW, which brings up preventative maintenance (batteries in particular).
HAAS ATM Groups--we were doing it wrong! That moment you realize you've over complicated tool life management--and LAUGH ANYWAY.
HAAS Training Classes at SMW That old block of machining wax is FINALLY getting put to use AND, it benefits those who purchase a Haas without the Renishaw!
FEED ME SEYMO--I mean, GRIMSMO! You don't have to be a fortuneteller to know that a BAR FEEDER is in the GK future!
THRIVING vs. STAGNATING Growing too fast or not at all could end up in closed doors. While changing your definition of failure, it wouldn't hurt to get new perspective on PROFIT; it's more than just owner take-home.
MONEY, MONEY, MONEY now that we have your attention.... Accounting is a dreaded subject for most but you owe it to yourself and business to understand it!
Saunders discusses contribution margin and why it's a number he likes to focus on. Click below to learn some accounting basics!
Accounting for Machinists and Entrepreneurs: Beginner's Guide AND...if you ARE going to borrow money, don't get "fleeced." If you have a grip on how loans work, take the quiz and watch "Should I Take Out a Loan?" just to be sure. You don't know what you don't know!
::::Under Pressure:::: TORN about IMTS: Grimsmo is pumped to find his dream machine while Saunders works to regain his curbed enthusiasm. BE STINGY with your time and DO NOT FEEL GUILTY if you have to turn vendors down.
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Transcript
Introduction and Brand Reach
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning, and welcome to the Business of Machining episode 80. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. Morning, buddy. Good morning. How are you? I'm fantastic today. Awesome. How are you doing? Awesome. This doesn't happen that often, but four different things yesterday, they were all like little just like awesome entrepreneurial. Like a win? Yeah. Well, they were just about the extent of the brand.
00:00:29
Speaker
one person was hired an excavator in New England somewhere, like randomly that I know. And the person showed up with the excavator to do site work in a Saunders Machine Works t-shirt. And then I was talking to somebody at a factory and they were like, that's too funny. I was just thinking about you because somebody else in the factory was wearing a Saunders shirt. Oh, that's awesome. Then somebody pulled into the shop
00:00:53
Speaker
And I was actually had just had a little frustrating thing happen. So I was kind of, I was frustrated and this family pulled into the shop with their 18 month old son. And we always leave our front door locked because we don't have a receptionist our side doors where everyone that knows us comes in. And they saw that the door was locked. I happened to just see them as they was, this was happening out my window and, uh, they put their son in front of the sign to take a picture and it just like my heart. And so they were the nicest people.
00:01:23
Speaker
Um, came in, wanted to see the shop just on their way from Midwest to over to Pennsylvania. And then the last thing was, uh, a woman email me and she's like, husband loves the channel. Huge fan of the podcast. Uh, we're going through some tough times. He's turning. He has a big birthday coming up.
00:01:40
Speaker
would you be willing to send a little message?
Learning and Mastery in Machining
00:01:43
Speaker
So it's funny because this is the stuff that I feel like because we're becoming better and better entrepreneurs, we're capable of doing this. So literally I just fired open Screencast-O-Matic, which I use probably every three hours now. Seriously. And shot him a 30 second happy birthday message like, hey, keep it uploaded. And kind of one of those check the box feel good. Right. That's amazing.
00:02:07
Speaker
I love it. Um, I actually got an email from a lady that she showed me a picture from your open house, either one or two years ago. I can't remember. And you know, where I'm like with, with the guy and this is his picture and, um, this is her husband and she's like, we're getting married and you know, is there anything you can do in just little thank you or something? He'd love to buy a knife, et cetera, et cetera. Um, yeah. So we did something really special for them too. And then last week, uh,
00:02:35
Speaker
this guy and girl showed up at the door and he's like, uh, what's his name? Uh, I forget what his name was.
00:02:44
Speaker
Anyway, he's like, Hey, I'm, I'm from Greece. I'm visiting family here. Oh my gosh. And I've been watching your stuff for a long time and I work at a machine shop and I've got a DMG Maury, uh, you know, the, the CMX, the new version of mine. And you know, I'm like four months into the CAD CAM journey and like nobody in the area knows CAD CAM. So I'm all on my own and it was great. That's awesome.
00:03:06
Speaker
Yeah. And actually something he said that I loved was, um, he's like, so I'm only four months into the CAD cam journey and I'm all learning myself. And he's like, it feels like my brain is exploding. Like it's full. And then I go to sleep and I wake up the next day and there's more room and I just keep learning. And I'm like, yep, that never stops. Yep. That's awesome. Yeah. It is. It is interesting how, if you ever, like when you have to learn, like, like your ERP system or something like totally different and you're, you all of a sudden are humbled by remembering what it's like to be,
00:03:36
Speaker
in the beginning to put you know like the video that stands out for me is watching you with the uh what was an x2 machine in your garage when you're like flipping a part on a dowel pin fixture and and and don't get me wrong i was right there with you lock step but we did not know what we were doing but darn it that's what that's what got us here there's a tenacity a hunger be persistent have tenacity keep doing it keep learning keep pushing yeah
00:04:05
Speaker
and realize that it never stops, that I'm always learning new things and always pushing my own boundaries. You know, what I know now I take for granted because I've experienced it. And like when I'm teaching things to Eric or Sky or Aaron or something like that, and I'm like, oh yeah, you don't, I guess you don't know that. I get to teach you this whole new thing that I'm like take for granted now.
00:04:27
Speaker
How could you not know that as the person who didn't know this thing like six months ago? Happens to me too. It's funny. Awesome. That's awesome.
Personal Time and Adventures
00:04:38
Speaker
So tomorrow and Friday, I'm taking a vacation.
00:04:45
Speaker
blasphemy. Yeah. I'm taking some actual, like I realized, I don't know if I have ever taken actual like time off without a purpose where I like go somewhere and do nothing. Right. Like a university, not really a vacation. Like, like I go to IMTS, I go to AU, I go to your open house, I go to a car show. I go to things like I've always, I've taken time off, but I've always go somewhere and do something. Right. So I'm like, I just need some time away personally, myself, just me. Um,
00:05:15
Speaker
So I am renting a Tesla 100D for two days. And then I'm just going to drive. And I've got my charge stations mapped out. And it's not too hard. And I have an 800 kilometer cap before it starts to get really expensive. So I'm like, I'm going to max out 799 kilometers. And super duper excited. So I'm just going to drive up north and sit at a lake or something. Yeah.
00:05:45
Speaker
No plan. No plan. I know where I'm going and I just want to be by myself for a couple days. I'm so excited. In the most amazing car ever. I'm so excited. I know there was that guy who visited with a Tesla that rented one, but you've never driven one? I drove that rental, which is a 70D and this is a 100D, so it's faster.
00:06:09
Speaker
I thought the 70 versus 100 was just battery size. It is, but it's also power, like speed. Didn't realize that. OK. It can make a big difference. Does the D mean it has ludicrous mode? I think the D is dual motor, which I think means all-wheel drive instead of just rear-wheel drive. Yeah, that is true. Yeah.
00:06:27
Speaker
I think the P100D is performance, which would have the ludicrous mode. But I mean, it's still going to be really fast. 100D, it's insane. They pass. Yeah, totally. Yeah. So I did get to drive the 70D when Will came by. And it wasn't the fastest car I've ever driven, but damn, was it nice. I still think it's really fast.
00:06:46
Speaker
It's, it's really fast. So I'm thrilled. I'm like, I got one, one big day of work ahead of me today. And then I take two days off. Like, I don't know what to do. You're going to wake up tomorrow and you're going to go pick up the car or coordinate that. And then what are you literally just going to get on the highway?
00:07:04
Speaker
Yeah. And then the highway only lasts so long and then it's back roads for the whole trip. So it's like, what are you going to Northwest territories? Well, not back roads, but just not like huge freeway. Um, you know, like little city roads and things like that. Okay. That's, that is a phenomenal. So where are you going to say tomorrow night? Hotel somewhere. I don't know. Okay. But you've not planned. No, I have like two or three cities in mind and we'll just see where I end up.
00:07:30
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I was just too funny. You mentioned this. Yeah. I saw a sign. I don't know where it was. I feel like I saw it, but maybe it was just in my social media feed somewhere. Um, and it said people who think adventure is dangerous ought to try routine. That stuff is lethal. Really? Which is a phenomenal, like, um, yeah, yeah. Good for you, dude.
00:07:58
Speaker
Yep. So, you know, you always hear about people that are like, get away, clear your head, do all this. And I've never really purposely done that. You know, I'll go for a hike or something, but that's, you know, two hours and then I'm done. Right. Yeah.
00:08:12
Speaker
I almost don't know what to do with myself, but I mean, I'll just drive and don't think and just do exactly right. I don't want to plan it. I just want to organically, you know, see what happens. Obviously I'll be thinking about everything, you know, life and business and everything the whole time. And that's the purpose, you know, it's just.
00:08:29
Speaker
Figure things out. My advice would be don't force these expectations. Don't force yourself to have these like crazy revelations or just go to, you know, ironically, it's like if you don't force yourself, those things probably will happen, but don't go and be like, I need to go think and brainstorm. I need to figure this out and like to just go, just enjoy the world, enjoy nature. Like if you do nothing related to Grimsman knives in the end, that's still absolute.
00:08:57
Speaker
Yeah. And I'll probably come back clear headed anyway. Right. So, so yeah. What are you nervous about anything?
Managing Absences and Team Reliability
00:09:07
Speaker
About the trip or in general? Both are fair game. I meant more, not even the trip, but more like leaving the shop. Nope. As long as I can make spacers today, because we're out, then I'm good, which I was just working on right before the call here.
00:09:24
Speaker
Got it. But other than that, no, it's like rocking. It'll be fine. Are you taking a laptop? Yes. I say hesitantly. I don't know if I'll need it, but just I don't know. I don't know. What do you think? You can always take it and leave it in the trunk or the boot or whatever they're called in Tesla. The front one is called the frunk. The frunk.
00:09:53
Speaker
I mean, look, you're disciplined enough. I don't think you're going to start like cracking open fusion. Well, that's the thing. I think I would, I would avoid email and businessy things, but I might do, if I cracked into my computer, I might do like research or fusion or something building, not monotonous daily. It's your time. And I think if you decide, you know, I've done this a few times, I've gone down to our farm and like,
00:10:21
Speaker
no intent of doing anything. And then all of a sudden like, hey, I really wanted to like go figure out what they were talking about with that blend tool path. And I have no problem hopping on the form. That's what I want to do. I feel like the phone is a tougher one though, cause it's like, it would be, there's such a practical and safety element to it. But on the flip side, Lockwood was mentioning there's some like Instagram timer function. I wish, just wish you could kind of lock yourself out of all that stuff. I'm not that addicted to it, but like still you just end up just like, you know,
00:10:50
Speaker
creature habit. Exactly. Right. Leave the phone. It'll be okay. Yeah. Cool. Sweet. That's awesome. What else has been going on? What do we do? We did some stuff. I, I crashed the Maury.
Machine Mishaps and Solutions
00:11:12
Speaker
Again. Yeah. Um, not a big deal. You know, on the orange vice, the center carrier thing, when you take all the stuff off the top, it slides back and forth. Uh, it slid out and I didn't notice like it slid back behind the thing and I didn't notice. And then I did a warmup routine and it hit the back sheet metal of the Z column and bent the shaft of the carrier.
00:11:37
Speaker
Spent the shaft of the- Of the orange vise carrier. Really? It's like a one inch shaft. And then- Holy cow. It made a loud noise and luckily I was standing there to stop it. So the back of your table gets that close, I guess it does to the machines. Oh, it does, yeah, for real. And it shifted the vise almost 45 degrees.
00:12:00
Speaker
And this is probably a good thing. And this is the second time that's happened. So what we did is we took all the vices off and we drilled and tapped holes in the front and the back of the vise to attach little tabs to keep the carrier from sliding back and forth.
00:12:17
Speaker
Okay, so you modified the vice. Yes, and I believe the new ones are threaded and tapped in the front anyway. Okay, to check that. Do you mind posting that on Instagram? Yeah, we filmed a video of it, so we'll... Okay, better, okay. We'll hit that up for sure. Well, I feel like, I mean, almost certainly you wouldn't have affected your XY table. I don't think so. Yeah, right? No. Strong machine. Right, and it wasn't a rapid-type move, I assume, on a warm-up machine.
00:12:47
Speaker
Was it a rapid? I think it was a feed. Anyway. Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. I mean, it happens, but I'm glad we solved the problem. And luckily those replacement shafts are only like 45 bucks from orange vise. You're talking about the vise? The screw? The screw. Yeah. It's a really deep vise. Yeah. Yeah, that's insane. Yep.
00:13:11
Speaker
Well, that's good. And we bought two last time we had this problem. So we used our last one and now we have no extras, but we solved the problem. So it shouldn't really be a problem anyway. That's good. Yeah. I was talking to Mark Terryberry, the positive of the day guy.
00:13:28
Speaker
after we bumped our HAZZ, and I actually was confirming about the load, basically does have the same thing as yours, where if the servo encoder decides it can't see it correctly, it'll stop, it'll alarm out. So you're not gonna continue crashing harder. Now the question is, what sort of G-forces and inertia do you have? And you can definitely still bump things, but he was, and this is,
00:13:57
Speaker
This is good advice until it isn't. But he's like, look, normally, especially in Z, those machines can take it. They just can't. And I got to give Haas credit. And you're more is probably every bit the same, if not a bit better. But we just we did what we thought we could do of sticking an indicator in the spindle and then checking to run out. And then it was cylinder square. So we put an indicator in.
00:14:22
Speaker
the spindle hanging out of the cylinder square on the table and then just jogged up in Z, which should tell you if there's head nod.
00:14:31
Speaker
which is what we were worried about. And I mean, everything is like totally good. You know, like on a two, four, six block, maybe we got a 10th or two, but the reality is those are not good anyway. And he was saying that you've got to be a little bit more careful with XY moves because of that. And then he was like, and then for whatever reason, he's like, anytime I ever do the slightest little thing, bumping a lathe, it's like,
00:14:58
Speaker
you know, the world ends and I've got to align turrets and tooling and tail socks. And I'm like, yep, yep. You're just reaffirming everything I believe. When you had the crash that involved the person that I will no longer name, did you check alignment and everything? No, I don't think so. I don't think that one was that bad. I've done, I did a worse one many, many months ago and it did actually move the turret somehow. So like I have to do all my offsets again.
00:15:29
Speaker
But you never checked the turret alignment? No, I didn't go out of my way to do that. Got it. I would like to have a baseline practical level of making sure we have the, especially if we already have the tools. We've got some indicators, some basic metrology tools. I'd like to get a little bit better about what are the procedures you should do to at least know, and then is it something where you can
00:15:53
Speaker
you know, fix it yourself or is it or is it where you need to call in, you know, the service text? Yeah, actually, nothing. I think about it. I did. We did indicate several surfaces to see squareness and things like that. Okay. And it's it seemed like it just moved like evenly, but in one direction.
00:16:11
Speaker
And I just, I gave up. I'm like, it's, it works fine. If you're holding tolerances, then exactly. Right. And it's interesting though. I wonder, uh, boy, I'm trying to think it's too early to think, but if you're running across longer shafting work, which you do, it would be different. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.
00:16:30
Speaker
Yeah, actually Eric, I saw Eric from Avant post a picture yesterday of him doing some, I guess you would call it preventative maintenance on his, I think he's got Haas machines. And I was like, man, I have a sheet on my desk that's been here for a few months of like things to do and to check and all that. And I just haven't done it. There's always a good excuse, but I want to pull off our weight covers and take a look and good stuff though.
Focusing on Business Opportunities
00:16:54
Speaker
I heard another really good quote this morning actually going through the forum on NYC CNC from a guy Ryan Wenner who I really is a solid guy and solid entrepreneur. I've mentioned it before and we were talking about the debate of
00:17:10
Speaker
When you're getting started, do you run more than one business or do you run with more than one idea? Do you really try to focus down? And the consensus has been most of us don't ever hit home runs on the first ones and don't necessarily know or have this absolute.
00:17:25
Speaker
Most people don't, at least. I mean, I think if I recall correctly, you're even that way. You did car parts, you did night after market night handles. Many failed learning experiences, but businesses that went nowhere, although I've been all in from the beginning in all of those.
00:17:42
Speaker
Yep. Right. So I think it's good to say that we've all for sure done that, been there. And that's okay. The word failure is such a weird failure, I think implies a terminology. It implies that it's over and it's not. A good stepping stone.
00:17:57
Speaker
Yeah. But the quote that I like is, two of the most important skills to learn as an entrepreneur are one, the ability to generate more options when you run out of choices. Number two, the opposite, the ability to narrow those choices down and focus when you've got too many options. Whoa. I like that. I like that a lot.
00:18:22
Speaker
Yeah. I think the second, for me, the second one resonated because, uh, we had been doing it. I actually made a list when we were getting into it with each other on WhatsApp on that ERP debate. And I was, I was, cause somebody was like, you really should have done the RP sooner, blah, blah, blah. And I was kind of like, I just don't agree. It's all good. It's all good stuff. But, uh, I've made a list of everything we've stopped doing or whatever you have. You want to describe it products that we pulled or stopped doing or.
00:18:50
Speaker
changed and it made me realize we're doing a good job for this year of really focusing down a lot of things all for the better. Excellent. There's so many different ways to run a business and so many different ways to focus on different aspects. Yeah.
00:19:10
Speaker
And just being conscious of it and making a conscious effort on, you know, kind of every aspect of the business. It's like a living organism that just has to have this equilibrium. Um, and I find that otherwise, you know, various aspects just kind of plummet if you don't watch them and then you're like, Oh man, I didn't even, I haven't thought about that in a while and I should have, you know, right? Right.
00:19:33
Speaker
We're finally, next steps are definitely to do final implementation of things like shared maintenance and scheduling, because it's still my calendar or me telling. And we're close. We're getting there. It'll be a good thing. I forgot. I don't know why it shocked me, but I forgot to do our rent-a-shot batteries. And it just happened to remind, just literally like fortuitously popped up in my head. And they're $9.
00:19:59
Speaker
we actually maybe nine dollars per pair so i guess it's eighteen dollars but we just do it every six months like you can debate about the longer length of the battery but i don't care good grief yeah i don't have a schedule for that yet i just kind of have spares on the shelf and then just wait for it to require it however some of my cycles do like a lot of probing in routine
00:20:21
Speaker
And if I'm not there to catch it, I assume it just alarms out if there's no return signal. But still, why stop production at the cost of $9? Right. This is hyper-analytical. But what are you trying to gain by not just replacing them on a schedule? Right, right. Over the lifetime career of Crimson Knives, you'll probably save $150 by stretching them another few months. But at the cost of potential downtime or something, which is way more valuable. Right.
00:20:51
Speaker
Same thing goes for the machine controller batteries. Oh, I don't think about those. Oh, yeah. Every year. I do those every year. I never even thought of that machine. I've got to look into that. My mori has, I think it's four D cell batteries.
00:21:08
Speaker
That's so fanic, by the way. Right. Good grief. I've got to go find my childhood flashlight to steal four D-pack. I know exactly. On the battery, it doesn't actually say D-cell. It has the more technical term. And I have to Google it. It's just a D-cell battery. That's insane. Doesn't the Haas have a battery pack that's not just cells? I thought I saw that somewhere.
00:21:32
Speaker
Yeah, I'll look it up after we talk because I feel like I have, I, my vaguely our collection is that I've heard horror stories about, and I'm not trying to pick on Fannock here, but I've heard horror stories about Fannock's and some machines where it causes real problems. And I just don't feel like I've heard about, heard that about hospital. That's, I need to go Google that.
00:21:50
Speaker
Well, as I understand it, if those batteries die and you turn off the machine, you will lose all of your offsets, all of your tool lengths, all of your parameters, which is really stupid. So yeah, when the machine's on, it's fine. But it needs the batteries when the machine is turned off. Got it. And we turn our machine off usually automatically every night. So it does use the batteries every night. But anyway, so we've got a big green tape on the side of the mill that says,
00:22:17
Speaker
last replaced this date and then we kind of look at it every now and then.
Efficiency in Operations
00:22:22
Speaker
Here's a good one. We were using the Haas calls at ATM. I think it's automatic tool management, but it's their tool life management thing on the controller. We were using it wrong.
00:22:36
Speaker
It's actually way simpler than I thought. I was really frustrated, but you know how you learn. Sometimes you just have to work within the way that these things were built. Don't fight it, just embrace it. You expect it to be a different way, but then you realize it needs to be so.
00:22:51
Speaker
It's actually, we were over-complicating it. We were creating groups. So if we had, let's say tool number 13 was a drill and we wanted to count whole life or load limits, we would put that drill into a group 1000, the number started at 1000 and up.
00:23:08
Speaker
So you create a group 1000, you apply the conditions to that group, and then you put tool 13 into that group. And you can also add other tools that would be identical so that when tool 13 hits a limit, the machine will automatically pull tool 17, which is a duplicate or something like that. What's weird is that you then infusion
00:23:28
Speaker
you post T1000, H1000 as your tool and height offset. It requires a fair amount of workflow change from CAM standpoint. Well, but it's annoying because it sounds like my Moria works almost the same way, but I haven't figured it out yet. I haven't really tried it.
00:23:47
Speaker
But the irony is that we don't actually use any duplicate tools. We're just not important to us and we're not running lights out, et cetera. And I just realized you don't have to use the groups. There's like a global ATM that you can just apply individual tool limits as is to get the limits.
00:24:06
Speaker
Which is what you would totally expect. Yeah. Like I only want to drill 5,000 holes or I only want to drill or I want it to shut alarm out or feed hold if it hits 70% torque or something. Okay. So that was like, I just, I actually literally started laughing in front of the machine when I saw that.
00:24:25
Speaker
Yeah, nice. Yeah, I do want to use duplicate tools, but I don't have enough carousel spots to use it. Right. So you said you would post T1000, H1000 in Fusion.
00:24:41
Speaker
Yeah. The only thing I know about mine is Eric from orange vice said he's got the same kind of Maurice. He said, you got to post like an, a height offset of zero or something infusion. And then Maury takes over and uses the tool height offset. I'm just like, that's just confusing. I don't, I need to test it, but, but I don't have enough spots anyway. So we're, uh, we just added, um, Haas machines as an option for our training classes.
00:25:11
Speaker
So we've always done them on Tormox, but now we're letting, saying, because we're getting a lot of people. It makes sense. And now the long-term goal would be to add another machine that could be more training focused and probably wouldn't be, well, but what occurred to me is, well, let's get our feet wet. Let's learn. We've got some things we can do to control the safety and risk elements of it.
00:25:34
Speaker
but we've got two machines here. We generally aren't running, certainly not running both of them. Usually only one of them, if any, during training classes anyways, so it's not a disruptive. Anyway, we were going through how to set tools up manually without a probe because we don't ever do that. But if somebody comes and wants to
00:25:54
Speaker
train and learn on a Haas without having the Renishaw option. Then we've got to do that. But I was laughing with Jared because I think we might actually finally use that block of machinist wax. I bought like 10 years ago because setting tool heights manually, when you don't know what you're doing or you're risky, you have to crash the machine as you touch off, you know, down onto a surface. Anyway, that was funny. Nice. It's just be part of the curriculum. Don't buy a Haas without touch probes.
00:26:22
Speaker
I don't know. I give Jay Pearson some respect and he almost, he has I think no probes. That's right. He did say that. And you look at the number of machines he has, the number of machines times the probes is literally another machine. That's a good point. Programming off of, yeah, there's an interesting argument. Nevertheless, we like them. I like them a lot. Yeah. Yeah.
00:26:49
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and I think the, um, it's interesting. We don't, I never really see it, but you could totally have the tool, the, um, cat 40 probe to measure parts, but not have the, um, tool breakage type table mounted probe. Anyway. Yeah. Or opposite. If you wanted to get a Hymer or something like that in the spindle. Oh, then I would just get a probe because then you could, Hymer's not automated. Yeah.
00:27:14
Speaker
I saw it really cool. I actually think it was Tyler from Matsura posted a Instagram of some new, I don't know if it's new or whatever through spindle coolant pump that you, did you see this? No. Oh my God. It was full blast PSI, probably, you know, thousand PSI or something high. And then it shut off and it looked like it shut off in very, very quickly. And it looked like it almost reversed.
00:27:40
Speaker
because it went from 1000 PSI coolant to bone dry, no drip right away. And if you've run through TSC, it'll usually just drip for a while, which is a big problem on the lasers, which everyone got those machines is using non-contact lasers. So I saw that and I was like, that's impressive. That's really cool.
00:28:03
Speaker
Yeah, I've never had through spindle coolant on my mill. So I guess I haven't had the dripping problem I've got on my lathe, but it doesn't drip as bad because it's sideways. Interesting. Yeah. Some of that serves are sideways too. Yeah. Speaking of which IMTS is like three weeks away. I am, I'm getting really, really freaking excited. Are you, what's your, have you, do you have an approach? Like, are you thinking?
00:28:26
Speaker
strategy, booths, learning technology, or are you just going to kind of go absorb? I want to spend a lot of time at the citizen Swiss lathe booth. Okay. I want to nail down what my dream machine would be. There's a lot of, there's an A series. There's an L series. I don't know the difference yet. I need to like, I need to cram on that kind of stuff. I need to figure out what, what size bar I would max myself at, you know, half inch, one inch, things like that. Um,
00:28:55
Speaker
And just- How hard is this a switch bar size? Like- On a Swiss? I mean, if you buy an L12, you can't run more than a 12 millimeter bar, which is like half inch. But if you want to go eight millimeter bar, is it as simple as the collet or is it like a ton of setup and dialing in? It's some bar feeder settings, the guide bushing, and I think the collets on either side. And it's,
00:29:21
Speaker
I don't think it's that hard. It's just a little time consuming. What I understand, I mean, some people really complain about Swiss layouts and they're like, Oh, the setup is eight hours every time you want to touch it. And other guys are like, no, it's just not like, yeah, you kind of get this kind of global setup going with all your normal tools. And it's not like you're tearing it down every single time you touch it. The same way we have our Nakamura set up. It's like,
00:29:46
Speaker
80 plus percent of our tools are always there. Just like the middle two. It's just, you know, smart. So yeah, hopefully the changeover won't be that that hard once we get into it. But yeah, some call outs and stuff.
00:30:01
Speaker
I think you have to very carefully adjust the tightness of the collet so that the parts will slide or the guide bushing, something like that. That's not bad. I guess if you were dialing, like let's say you had two different bushings that were spaced 18 inches apart and you had to dial run out between them and that dictated your part accuracy, that would be
00:30:20
Speaker
To me, it's one thing if you just have to do work, you just have to take out sheet metal and parts and screws and all that. It's a different thing if the outcome is dependent on the skill of the input. Exactly. It's really like it's just a very high skilled cop part. Sure. That's fresh. Yeah. Like you said, doing the work, changing out parts is no big deal, but spending two hours dialing it in, that would be really frustrating. Yeah.
00:30:45
Speaker
Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Citizen the, I know they have a strong, it seems like, it seems like a ton of Swiss slave companies have strong reputations though. It does. Citizen does seem to stand out to me in regards to like people that I know that use them, but you know, for every citizen guy, there's probably another guy that's like star, Sugami, I love it. I ran one when my old job, but that might be the only one they ran and they were happy with it. Right. Right. So I mean, there's citizen, there's tornos, there's star, there's Sugami, there's,
00:31:16
Speaker
I don't know. Are you really going to go wrong with either of those solutions?
00:31:22
Speaker
You know what I mean? Well, I guess what I'm thinking is like, we've learned so much about the five axis world of kind of high mix, low volume of automation of higher tool changers. And we're, I think we're much smarter about reacting to setups now than, so it's kind of like with the Swiss world, do different manufacturers offer different functionality? Do you spend more money to have more
00:31:50
Speaker
Tool is as simple as more tooling positions more travel so that you do have to Less set up or is that is that a bad, you know concept? No, that's definitely the keys and your companies like DMG morey They have their sprint series, which is like a hybrid between a Swiss and a regular lathe So you can actually run it with a chuck or with the guide bushing and like change it out and do cool stuff and there's tons of tool positions and
00:32:18
Speaker
Is that what Will has? That's what Will has. And he's moderately happy with it. But he's not like it's the greatest thing in the world. Interesting. Yeah, so and he has a Maury NLX lathe as well, which is almost just like my Nakamura. And you know, so he uses both every day. Yeah, it's just further like, you know, he like the NLX? I think so. Yeah, I think he likes it a lot.
00:32:42
Speaker
It's just further fuel to the fire. He posted a picture last night, I think of his Swiss lathe and his bar feeder with like 30 bars in it. And then the next swipe picture was like 4,200 screws. Oh my gosh. I took that post and I sent it to my, we've got a team Grimsman knives WhatsApp chat. And I'm just like this, I need this bar feeder. I need this. Yes. Yes. So a bar feeder is amazing.
00:33:10
Speaker
Almost an immediate purchase. Like we're just kind of, I don't know what I'm waiting for. On the Swiss? Yeah. No, like. Or on the not. Like I can get a bar feeder for 10 or 15 grand and I'm kind of just almost ready to pull the trigger anytime.
00:33:24
Speaker
And you can, it's freaking tight back there. You can fit it. Edge, edge precision makes one or edge, um, makes a bar feeder that will just fit with about an inch of clearance. Plenty. I know. Right. So could you have to move the lathes to get it in though? Nope. Shouldn't. Oh, John. I know. So I mean, I don't really know what I'm waiting for. It's just a lot of money to like jump into. Um, but yeah, I need one soon, like real soon. Right.
00:33:51
Speaker
Cause right now you can only run 36 inch sticks because that's 42 inch. So, and you'll go, so 42 inches, three, three and a half feet. Yep. And you're going to go to what? Uh, same length, three feet bars, um, or you have three or four, four foot, 40 bars.
00:34:12
Speaker
Of course, of course. Right. So where that saves you is night runs? Yes. Well, the lathe will run 24 seven basically. Got it. Assuming to a life and like maintenance and things like that. Now the thing goes through whey oil and coolant like on a daily basis. So that's a problem.
00:34:34
Speaker
Dude, yeah, the summer, it's the first summer where we've been using the Haas a lot more. We've got two of them and blah, blah, blah. And holy cow, our coolant is evaporating. And the lathe is three times worse. Well, you're in air conditioning, John. If you move into an unair conditioned shop, good. It's going to get way worse. Yeah, that's not going to happen. PS don't. Yeah, exactly.
00:34:59
Speaker
Well, and that segues into the next thought process of mine. As we're going to IMTS, as we're wishing and dreaming what machines we'll be getting in the next year or two, I'm like, man, when do we get a bigger shop?
00:35:15
Speaker
I want to stay nimble enough to be able to get one maybe in six months or something, you know, get ourselves in that position. I don't want to lock myself down here. You know, we got the addition next door, but it's, it helps, but it doesn't really solve a lot of, you know, problems with growth and things
Business Expansion Considerations
00:35:31
Speaker
like that. So
00:35:32
Speaker
Well, that's a, yeah, I mean, you've got, uh, that's what makes you an entrepreneur. I mean, you've got to figure out where do you allocate capital and decide and some things are easy. Some things are sticky. You know, that's the problem with real estate is it takes time. It takes money to move its commitments. Yeah, I know. Um, and then to what end, you know, like,
00:35:56
Speaker
you know, we're, we're snug here, but we're not exactly cramped. We have everything we need. We just can't really fit a lot more and we can't really fit a lot more people. And if we, you're, you're, you're, you're cramped on, you give yourself that. I mean, seriously, you're, it's impressive what you do in that space. Thank you. Yeah.
00:36:13
Speaker
But yeah, like moving to another shop, it doesn't have to be as big as yours, but laid out kind of like yours where you do have some rooms and some office and like a kitchen and, uh, and more machine space for sure. Um, you're in 1500 square feet now with the addition. Yes. I'm like that. Yep. 4,000 feet. John would be huge. God is plenty. Seriously. Like I wouldn't even worry a tremendous amount about the offices.
00:36:40
Speaker
that much. We need, we need something, especially cause Aaron sits in an office all the time, which gets shared as a lunch room and everything else. And it's like the only quiet place to take a phone call other than outside. Right. Right. But you could, you could probably pop up a drywall thing or something.
00:36:58
Speaker
Yeah, not like corporate pattern space, right? Like didn't have offices, but they, well, you could do more permanent. You could do more stuff in there. That's not a huge deal. Yep. So just lots, lots of my mind right now, the next six months are going to be interesting. Even my wife was saying yesterday, she's like, I'll be surprised if you guys last the winter in that place. I'm like, right. Thank you for agreeing with me.
00:37:26
Speaker
Well, that's the trade-off is coming at it from trying to be responsible and bootstrapping and just a good entrepreneur standpoint of evaluating the risk and recognizing that it's expensive. The flip side is I remember reading that article about how Contour, the camera company, kind of failed. It did fail and it lost to GoPro because
00:37:46
Speaker
they were too conservative. They weren't willing to invest and grow. And, you know, again, you put on your kind of outside investor hat and you're like, Grismo, what are you doing? Like, you need the Mets, or I say Mets, or you need a fifth axis automation, you need a part feeder, you need a Swiss, you need more space to let people, the people that you've got do what they need to do. This isn't like, this isn't a fun garage project anymore. You have an obligation to yourself and to the people that work for you and your customers, like you got to do this.
00:38:16
Speaker
That's been heavily on my mind lately. Um, not saying that I have to, but as you said, imagine an outside investor walks in and says, okay, you got,
00:38:27
Speaker
I'll give you a million dollars to do whatever you want. Obviously you need this, you need this, you need this. Just go, just go do it. And then I was thinking to myself, what dollar value would that actually be? Assuming we leased machines, we need the down payments for it. And I'm like, it's not actually that much money. Like for 150,000 cash, I'd be able to do everything I want. I could hire three people, I could get a Swiss, I could get a five axis, maybe 200 and get a new building.
00:38:56
Speaker
We'd be rolling and I'm like, holy cow. That's not much. That's not much. Like I'm, I'm spitballing these numbers, but, um, but you know, it's not like a million dollars. I need that to move forward. Right. Exactly.
00:39:12
Speaker
So I wonder, and we have the business, we have the product lines, we can expand, we can do so much more. And so either you hypothetically take that outside investor, which we won't do, or you just grow from your own profits, which is our plan, but at what speed?
00:39:29
Speaker
Yeah, no, and I'm not I think if anything, you know, I'm not a person that advocates riskless or you know, careless growth and just borrowing and blah, blah, blah. But you know, it was like when I we talked, we did that bomb earlier this summer when I was in Sweden, and I was just like,
00:39:46
Speaker
Really eye-opening from seeing that. I think we were joking at dinner that night. I looked at the Sandvik, and I can't remember if this is Coromant or the parent company, which is a big difference because the parent company has like mining operations and other stuff. So forgive me for these round numbers. But if you look at their financial statements, reported net income, which net income isn't really a great number, but nevertheless,
00:40:12
Speaker
That's their paper profit for a year. It is, I think it was about $205,000 per hour of profit, profit, profit, profit. I heard that that actually changed the way that I felt about profit somewhat. And that's been an ever evolving feeling of mine. What do you mean?
00:40:34
Speaker
That's a long, long explanation, long conversation. But profit drives growth. Like profit allows you to do awesome, amazing things in this world. If you run a business on no profit, you're not going anywhere. Right.
00:40:48
Speaker
Right. And I don't know your numbers. Well, I used to just think profit was, you know, what the owner took home and spent on himself. And I'm like, that's, that's one kind of profit, but business needs to make profit in order to survive and thrive and do everything it needs to do and invest in new technologies and new people and all that. It finally makes sense to me. Like that really took a long time to drive into my skull.
00:41:12
Speaker
I'm glad you said that because it's an important concept that I think too many business people or entrepreneurs don't appreciate. The number that I like to focus on is what's called contribution margin, which is effectively your cash, cost of goods sold, subtracted out from your product sales or revenue. And you can argue about how much allocated stuff you want to roll into that. But the idea is contribution margins basically means
00:41:39
Speaker
If I have a product that I sell for $1,000 and it costs me $300 to make it, I've got $700 to play with. And that play with money, it's got to pay the lights and the overhead unless you're allocating that in above. But I can sort of choose at my discretion how to
00:41:54
Speaker
to direct that money. And that's what you've got to make sure you've got down cold is you can make these big leaps of growth as long as you understand the numbers of, we actually are, lots of people get shockingly far in business without really knowing if they make any money. That sounds crazy, but it's true. Well, and now that we have Barry, the certified accountant on full payroll, him and I have been, he's been teaching me so much about accounting and about
00:42:25
Speaker
all the numbers and the balance sheet, the profit and loss. And I just get it now. I just understand it. I have a lot more to learn, but man do I, I had no idea what I was doing up until about a year ago. If you guys are, if anyone's listening to this and you're interested or you're wanting to become an entrepreneur or a business person, go watch our video on the NYC website. I think it's called like a beginner's guide or a machinist's guide to manufacturing
Financial Literacy for Business Success
00:42:51
Speaker
account. It's like a 15 minute video we walk through.
00:42:54
Speaker
You know, it's not in any way, you don't get a certificate when you're done watching the video, but it's going to get you enough terms and some words to start thinking about and go Wikipedia on your research on your Google or go be hungry. You have to, like you have to, um, you have to know this stuff. Yeah, you have to know it and not necessarily want it as bad as you want to learn, you know, CAD cam and things like that, but it's equally as important.
00:43:18
Speaker
Yeah, you don't need to do monthly bank reconciliation and debit and credit accounting and all this crazy stuff. But the problem is people here counting and they shut down. Yeah, I wanted. Yeah, I don't want to. I don't even care about accounting. I care about understanding kind of like what's the pro forma. I give you half a million dollars. Show me what that looks like after a year. Yeah.
00:43:37
Speaker
What are you producing? How much do you make here? What's that like you do? What's the return on that investment? What's the risk behind it? That's how you sell, you sell me, sell yourself, sell your wife on this. Sorry, got me fired up. And you have to know, you have to know all of your numbers to be able to pull that off. You know, right? Yeah. Like if said hypothetical investor walks in the door and he's like, okay, show me your numbers or tell me your numbers. And you're like, ah, we, you know, we're doing all right. It's like not acceptable.
00:44:07
Speaker
Yep. Yep. Well, and totally we've been talking to, you know, various banks and lenders and things like that so that Megan, I can buy a house and, um,
00:44:17
Speaker
we get a credit card and the business name and things like that and so we're talking to the banks and I like I know my numbers and I get to tell them and we have balance sheets to show them and it's like yes we're prepared we're ready and they're they're really really impressed with with how we're doing the business yeah that's half the battle yeah your numbers aren't necessarily going to be perfect no they're just they're not
00:44:38
Speaker
But the fact just having them and showing them. And I've heard from several lenders or accountants or whatever that say, I'd be surprised if these statements are 18 months recent and we have them every month. Yeah. It's just a little thing. A friend of mine out of college used to work for a small bank and he was joking over beer once that a member of the medical community wanted to get a loan and he submitted
00:45:04
Speaker
his line of credit outstanding balance as an asset. You get that? I think so. That is debt. That is a liability in every sense of the word. An unsecured line of credit. That is not an asset. He owed the bank $37,000 of play money that he had borrowed on it. He listed that balance as an asset. This makes me worth more money. No.
00:45:34
Speaker
We have a video on advice on borrowing money for machines. And it's kind of like path to battle is making sure if you are going to borrow money, do it the right way. Do it smart. Yeah. Don't get fleeced.
Excitement for IMTS Event
00:45:47
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm torn on IMTS. I was all fired up a few weeks ago. And I still want to go see more about 5-axis for sure. Yeah, me too.
00:45:56
Speaker
But part of me feels a lot of pressure. We're getting constant emails from people, personal emails, as well as the blanket emails and messages. And part of me is just like, you know, I'm not going to let this turn into like, I want to go to enjoy it from my own. This is my time. Like, I want to go learn myself, not if you're getting emails from people to meet up or something.
00:46:24
Speaker
Not because of the YouTube channel or like fans of like vendors like oh, I want to show you this machine I want to show you this tool like do you have time at IMTS? Like we want you to come look at this and I'm just like bring your video camera kind of thing
00:46:37
Speaker
some of that, but some of it's actually just like as a normal shop and they're doing their job. I don't fault them, but it's also just like, Hey, like, um, again, it goes back to the difficult skill of, of saying, I'm no longer interested when you're in a trade booth. Some guys talking your ear off and you're like, I only have, I only have 24 hours and IMTS in the actual store. Like I'm not wasting an hour of it on a machine. That's not no longer of interest to me. Appreciate it, but I got to run.
00:47:05
Speaker
Yep. I'm going to, I'm going to exercise that, uh, that skill there as well. Yeah. We need like a, uh, we need like a safe word that we can text to each other. It's like, call me. Yeah, exactly. Call me, get me, uh, save me from this, save me from this bad date kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But like an Arduino, it's too late to this, but like a little Arduino thing on your belt that you just hit the button and it texts, grim smoke, grim smoke calls me. And then I get to make up that I have an urgent. Yeah.
00:47:31
Speaker
SOS. That's awesome. Anyways, cool. What do you see today? Oh, you get your finishing screws. Finishing spacers. I think I got it dialed just before the podcast and then get those running and man, just make lots of stuff. I got to order metal. I got to do so many tiny things that just, it takes to run a business, but good. I love it.
00:47:55
Speaker
Are you getting pro shops eventually to the point where it will order that metal? I do not necessarily. Got it. But it can create a PO and you can just email that to the vendor. Yeah, won't that happen automatically? I don't know if it'll happen automatically. I don't think so. I don't know. I'm not that far yet.
00:48:12
Speaker
Got it. That would be important to me. Maybe it's not automatic, but it's, it makes you react. It's sort of like, Hey, we notice the, I want the ERP to say, we noticed that you're low on inventory. We're generating this PO. I'm going to send it as long as unless you click no or something. Like basically the way it's structured, it's not, um, inventory minimum based. It tends to be demand based. So you create a work order to make 200 pens and it says, Oh, you only have enough material to make 30.
00:48:39
Speaker
you will need to buy this. Um, interesting, which it struck me at first cause like with end mills, I'm like, I, I have a minimum. I have a maximum. I just want to always have my minimums. And the way it's sort of set up is to go, no, no, no. If you don't need them, you don't need to buy them. You got to create the demand first before it. So explain that.
00:49:00
Speaker
Like the way I order end mills is I always want, you know, I want no less than two by the time I order or five or whatever. When I hit five, I order more. So I figured I could do that in pro shop because it manages the inventory, but it's sort of demand based. Meaning if I want, if, if it's all dialed in pro shop and it's a, I'm making this part and it requires all these end mills and it knows I need two end mills to run this job, it then checks your inventory and says, you're going to need to order some ahead of time or something.
00:49:29
Speaker
Okay. Yes. I'm not quite there yet. Okay. But yeah, it's okay. I'm with you.
00:49:37
Speaker
I think. Yeah, exactly. Maybe I'm not. Cool. All right. Well, have an awesome day. I'll talk to you next week. Sounds good. Yeah, everything's normal next week. Although we do need to figure out what we're going to do for our IMTS week. Yes. It would be strange to do a video bomb. I thought it went great, but we could do another one of those or just do an audio one in person. We'll see. Unless we did a group bomb.
00:50:02
Speaker
I briefly thought about that. I'm fine with it. OK, let's think about that. Yeah, let's think about that. Cool. All right, have fun. I'll see you. Have a great day. Bye. Bye.