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#207 - Growing A Business In 3 Stages
247 Plays5 years ago
TOPICS:
- Ordering Lathe Material - Purchasing/procurement
- Finances in Business
- What makes you happy?
- Growing a business in 3 stages
- Lathe talk
- Past due accounts receivables?
- Creating your own cnc machine?
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Episode 207
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. Welcome to episode 207. This is the podcast where we have a conversation each Friday about entrepreneurship struggles, happiness, CNC machines, accounting, and more. Good morning. Good morning, sir.
Finding Happiness and Positivity
00:00:20
Speaker
How are you? I'm good. Thanks, sir. Thanks for flowing pretty nice. Good. You are the perpetual happy person.
00:00:28
Speaker
I work very hard. A lot of it's natural, but a lot of it's like, you know what? I'm going to be the happy guy.
00:00:35
Speaker
Right. There is a theme I was revisiting, which, oh, man, I absolutely love it when you can actually believe it. It's like Santa Claus. It's great when you believe it. But you make your own happiness. There is, I was watching that Cobra Kai. Have you heard about this show? Oh, yeah, yeah. I've watched Cobra Kai. OK. I'm halfway through it. It's great. It also clearly was designed for folks our age that are revisiting.
00:01:02
Speaker
Yeah, maybe we're a smidge young, but you know, anyway, great show. But there's some interesting, you know, both as a parent now and as a middle age, can I say middle age adult? Oh my gosh. Feels very...
00:01:16
Speaker
I guess we're both mid to late 30s, let's say. Yeah. Yeah. My wife turns 40 next year. Whoa. Which is kind of a like, what's your problem? Let's edit that out actually. Anyway.
00:01:32
Speaker
No, but he revisits his old late sensei and he's like, man, I thought when I'd get to be that age, I'd have all the answers. There are all these things that when you grow your business or you hit certain goals or milestones or accomplishments or achievements, you got to remind you. It is actually super sad in a way, but it's not sad because you don't let it because it's happy, but you got to appreciate that.
00:02:00
Speaker
It's like you look forward to it for so long, so long, so long, and then it happens and you're like, okay, now what?
Dividends and Financial Independence
00:02:07
Speaker
And like, I'll give you a small example since this business, since this podcast, you know, talks about money and accounting and stuff. We took out a little bit of money lately.
00:02:17
Speaker
You mean owner? Personally, like owners, owner, like dividends. Distribution. Yeah. And we've put so much money back into the business, back into the business that to be able to take out, I mean, not a huge amount, but a small amount of money and just be like, we can do that. Yeah. And our accountant is like, it's your money, man. That cash flow in your bank account, it's actually your money.
00:02:40
Speaker
but leave enough in there to float the business obviously. But yeah, it's weird though because it's like we've been looking forward to it, looking forward to it, we can do something to the house, we can whatever with it. Eric's working on buying a house and it's like now that it's in our bank account, it's like
00:02:57
Speaker
Okay, now what? Right, right. It's like next. So you have for quite a long time also paid yourself, is that correct? Yeah. Okay, so this is kind of above and beyond. Exactly. Sure, sure. Yeah, we both draw a decent salary and yeah, it's just like extra bonus money. I mean, it's dividends is from the profits, we've earned it, it's our money. But to actually be okay with pulling it out and like, it's not the businesses anymore.
00:03:27
Speaker
Right. I think that's one of the hardest themes I've seen in talking with other small business owners is the skill and ability and emotional, the psychological
00:03:43
Speaker
ability when appropriate to disconnect yourself and the idea of people say the word net worth or worth or value or whatever.
Separating Personal Identity from Business Success
00:03:53
Speaker
There's a lot of different ways and that's a lot less about the numbers or balance sheet or cash a lot more about what you find identity for happiness and fulfillment and success from.
00:04:04
Speaker
You know, the easy way for me to psych myself out, to force myself to think about, hey, so let's say there's a $1,300 repair that we don't have to do, but we could do. The small business owner that very much thinks about the business as their own and they kind of commingle, even if they just think about
00:04:22
Speaker
The funds is all being the same. I have my checking account or my personal savings account, and then I've got this business account. It makes it harder to do that. But if you're the small business that is able... I'm saying this because it's not easy, and I find myself wearing both hats. But if you're the small businesses, hey, we have a CapEx reserve or a maintenance account or budget, and it's not your money. It was never your money. It's meant to do what it needs to do, and the best thing you could do with that money is go
00:04:49
Speaker
order that repair or improve that thing. But boy, that is a tough thing. I'd say we've been there for probably two or three years in that business mindset where the cash in the business bank account is to grow the business and to sustain it and do that. That's why it's weird. We've shifted in a way where it's like I started a business back in the day to have fun and get rich. It takes a dozen years to be able to do that.
00:05:19
Speaker
But yeah, to be able to disconnect and I don't know. Good for you. It's cool. Yeah. It's good progress. But then it's like right back at it, right?
What Makes Grimsmo Happy?
00:05:28
Speaker
Totally. I mean, there's no like, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Well, it's funny. I had actually jotted that down. And I don't know if it's a question you want to answer or
00:05:39
Speaker
whether it's something maybe we try to turn into a theme of ongoing, but the question that I wrote down, it's rhetorical and directed at you is what makes you happy and what and when do you feel like you're struggling? Creativity makes me happy.
00:06:00
Speaker
Struggle's a weird word because there's like happy struggle of like, ah, I can't figure this out. And that's definitely struggle, but you're kind of like, it's like loving to hate yourself. But there's definitely struggle too, whether it's staffing or money or problems with customers. I don't like those times, but they're part of the game and I'm happy to play it.
00:06:29
Speaker
I've known with experience that I do get stronger as more of those struggles become less of a struggle. And I've noticed that I'm getting better at expressing myself and better at dealing with those issues. So they're not as stressful as crushing, soul crushing as they used to be, two, three, four years ago. But yeah, as far as happiness,
00:06:52
Speaker
Obviously, I like when things are going good. Even when things are going bad, as long as we're still making progress, that's still great too. But yeah, I think deep down, like me personally, creating new stuff.
00:07:09
Speaker
Yeah. You know, figuring out those new toolpaths or new product or designing new, new things from scratch, learning, you know, all about, uh, pneumatic cylinder pressure conversions and spring rates and, um, whether it's FEA analysis or whatever, like five axis, like that's my happy place. Yeah. And it's a lot of work, but I'm happy, you know, what about you?
00:07:35
Speaker
I wouldn't ever use the word creative deliberately. I don't think of myself that way because to me that implies artistic creativity, but creation for sure.
CNC Programming and Tooling Challenges
00:07:47
Speaker
Again, we continue this theme of I'm the tool room, which I love. Ed was like, hey, I need these support spacers turned. Great part for dual access, live tool lathe, one and done, make, bang out, 30 or 200 of them or whatever quantity.
00:08:04
Speaker
Oh man, there's a couple things I need to get better at with the lathe but like it's that struggle of like because we're already it's already so good and it can only get better but you know, it's this part where I dumped it into that template and really had
00:08:20
Speaker
very little stress. I mean, I had the part programmed in 15, 20 minutes, and I'm thinking of ways I can improve it. For example, threading. I want to add some preset templates with the correct pitch diameter offset so that I don't even have to adjust that. They're a thread gap.
00:08:35
Speaker
I don't know if Audis is ever going to fix that. I can see why it's haphazard because there's no real answer. It depends on major, minor, and crest flatness and so forth. It's also weird that I have to still in this day and age go get my machinery's handbook. It's one of the few things I really don't trust the internet for. I pretty much prefer the machinery handbook on
00:08:56
Speaker
but that and then classic debate of like how many more Capito holders for the lathe do I buy because the lathe is ultimately not a profit center right now or rather the two things that we make that are
00:09:13
Speaker
front facing like that have dedicated tool holders. So I have a couple of extra, but man, it'd be awesome to get more. But even if you get a tooling certificate, they're a couple hundred bucks, if not more. And it's kind of like when I, coming back to the beginning, when I said you make your own happiness, I often suffer from the illusion that if I had, and there's a continuum of this, like, okay, well,
00:09:41
Speaker
In the worst case scenario, you don't have anything. You don't have the right tool, you don't have the right collet, you don't have the extra holder. And that's like worst case, right? Best case is it's already set up labeled with offsets ready to put in. The middle ground is like, okay, you've got extra holders. You've got a full set of ER collets right there. You got the wrenches and the torque wrenches right there and the holder. And like, that's not a big deal. It takes like four minutes, especially when all the things are there. But like,
00:10:05
Speaker
Even when you're thinking about that from the outside, it seems like those would be better. But the reality is when you're living in it, it's not a big deal. So I think I want to just keep three or four extras and recognize it's OK to swap out drills or taps or tools as you need to, John. This isn't the same as the five axis where you know you want tools set up permanently and libraries matter more and all that. But nevertheless, to me, that is happy. I love that. Yeah, just figuring out that process control
00:10:37
Speaker
Yeah. Lathes are tricky like that. Like, do you follow, uh, Alton instruments? Oh yeah. Yeah. Of course you do. Hashtag NYC.
00:10:46
Speaker
Yeah, you've been there. Yeah, I've been chatting with him a lot lately. He's going to run some prototype parts for me. Man, I'm just so impressed by his daily stories, his feet. He's doing different jobs every day. He's the master of setups and it's like, holy cow, man. You're on fire. As a one man shop, the stuff that comes out of there is legit. Yeah, it's super impressive.
00:11:14
Speaker
And when you have a mindset and a skill set like that, then setups are no big deal. You can pull out 10 holders and turning inserts and drill bits and threading tools and whatever and throw new ones in and touch them off because you're fast and you're good and you know how to do it. And it's part of your mindset. Whereas me, I'm like, I don't want to mess it up. It's set up to make our pen clips or something. And it's a mental hassle.
00:11:39
Speaker
to indicate the next tool holder and make sure it's got run out and et cetera, et cetera.
00:11:46
Speaker
That's actually on my to-do list. I'm glad you said that. Is bushing for coax. That's one of my failing points is I often have to, or right now I have to pull out my Royal and put in a three-eighths Royal, which I never otherwise have to put in the coax indicator, but a simple step pulley style bushing will let you put any reasonably leave the collet in there, which would be huge.
00:12:14
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. But then, and that's what you said is key is like for us, the mod vice washer and the diamond pins,
Investment in New Machines and Business Growth
00:12:22
Speaker
those are sacred. So those tools stay in captive holders. So it's kind of like, okay, leave those, set those aside and then get four or five extra. I mean, heck you only have total of six driven holders. Do you have capital in all of them?
00:12:36
Speaker
The Haas came with two, I think of one, four or two, Eppinger, the ER direct. And so they're too good to throw away. So what I did was the Axial has a double angled 90 degree Harvey chamfer tool that I can use for front and back deburring. And that, I mean, it gets replaced like every six months or a year. And you leave it in the machine. Exactly.
00:13:03
Speaker
And then I don't know if I actually, I don't think I use the radial and then the rest is capital. Yeah. Yeah. We've been on the fence for getting capital for the Nakamura. And I mean, we really should, but at the moment we're running three parts on there and we run them for, you know, days or weeks at a time before switching to the next part. So a setup's not a big deal, but capital sounds nice.
00:13:29
Speaker
If you see it on Follow Area 419 on Instagram, what they're doing is just nuts. Really? I am following. I watched your shop tour of them. Dude, follow them. Okay. They just opened up the checkbook for DMG and Grove. They had a sea of hosses in their shop, right? My understanding is they're keeping those. They built a new shop and
00:13:53
Speaker
dumped all the new Moris there, and then are running the Haases at the old shop. And then once the Moris are up in commission, they will move the Haases machines over. So they got a, I'm going to try to wing this, they got an NLX 2500, a CMX 1100, an NTX 1000 B-axis mill turn, and an NHX 5000 horizontal, and a Grove, I think a G350 for the five axis.
00:14:19
Speaker
which is awesome because they actually are in Western Ohio quite close to Grove.
00:14:25
Speaker
I don't know if any automation they got on the group, although I suspect they did because of what they're doing. He's been showing off a machine every day or two on his Instagram. He's our age, he's a great dude, he's humbled, and he is crushing it. His mindset, his mechanical and engineering capabilities, his business acumen, his approach to things is just awesome.
00:14:52
Speaker
I'm with the feet now. It's like, okay, I'm in. Yeah, right. Um, followed. Um,
00:15:02
Speaker
did they get a new shop then? It looks like different area. Built a shop, yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's probably the best example I've ever seen in my life of a kind of a real time documented going from something that has truly broken out of you. I mean, look, I'm going to say you and I are still extensions of solo printers and he is really
00:15:23
Speaker
in the process of making that leap. Being able to watch that real time is fascinating. It can be a little bit uncomfortable. For sure. I don't know him. Certainly none of my business is what some of the details are behind it, but you're generally beyond the point where a business can be self-funded. I'll put it that way. These are real major, major step ups.
00:15:44
Speaker
Yeah, I like that feeling sometimes if you look at a company who's exploding and you're like, how are you doing that? And you try to like logic it in your head. You're like, well, either you've got insane profits or the bank is really happy with you. Or there's some outside funding that came in and said, let's go. Yeah.
00:16:02
Speaker
Look, and that's the irony about in situations where I would say in most asset-heavy industries, including manufacturing, energy, et cetera, debt is very common. And frankly, OK. These are different levels of companies. But the irony that there's no solution to it, but it is a bit evil, is that the less you need the money, the more profitable and capable and skilled you are, the cheaper money is and the happier bank will work with you.
00:16:31
Speaker
It's kind of one of those ironies of capitalism. You got to get to that level before you're even considered. Yeah, that's why, I mean, I think, I'm sure we've lost viewers or fans over the years for harping on this, and I don't care because it's just so true and core to who I am. The most you can do to start with this little debt lets you grow.
00:16:51
Speaker
and offer you options and freedoms. I know how proud you were to get that board paid off and I'm not, you know, it's a point in time. There's different reasons for it, but man, it's a powerful thing. Mm-hmm. Especially in the beginning of business.
00:17:07
Speaker
it's kind of an easy concept to be like, yeah, let's go in, let's borrow a whole bunch of money, let's buy all the best stuff, and then let's figure out what to do with it. And it's a dangerous position to be in. I mean, we sort of towed that line as well when we, the first few years after getting the Maury and the Nakamura and not delivering rasks and getting more and more and more and more into debt, and then clawing ourselves out of that. It was very dark times. And I'm
00:17:33
Speaker
I mean, it's a great part of the story now. I know that it's over. Yeah. So on that level, what makes me happy made me think of something I wanted to share about that growth of small business or solar apprenticeship. And right now, I've got it at three levels. Number one, when you're getting started, just go make stuff and sell stuff. Don't talk. Don't debate. Don't ever think it. Go make stuff and go sell stuff. Figure out what you can sell. Start learning. Just jump in.
00:18:03
Speaker
And stage two is maybe when you start reading or rereading something like the eMyth, which really talks about the value of putting systems in place and thinking about an org chart, even if you're filling multiple roles. Generally, that's where I've seen a lot of advice and
00:18:21
Speaker
Stuff end and that's not a bad thing and even last week, you know you and I had that quote which it was awesome of you know you You what was it you strive for your you rise to the liver? You don't rise to the level of your goals, but rather you fail to the level of your systems Which is great. It has some truth to it. But here's the missing part. It's step three
Delegation and Team Contribution
00:18:40
Speaker
And step three is when others within your team are the ones building those systems and processes or just offering opinions and making decisions.
00:18:53
Speaker
And you hear that from all higher level businesses that are further down the road than you are. They're like, once you give decision making power to everybody on the floor, the team, it starts to compound upon itself and self-grow. And that's something I'm trying to be very conscious of here and nurture. I was thinking the other day, I'm like, look, I'm a super nice guy, and I'm easy going, and I'm not too easy to get flustered. But in my own internal sense, I'm kind of a control freak.
00:19:22
Speaker
in that I probably don't show it, but I like having control over things. I like putting the systems into place. I like being in charge. Not outwardly, but like deep down, I'm like, yeah, kinda. Can you do it my way? It's my business. Can you imagine if somebody bought a machine, it shows up, it turns on knives and you didn't like know about it? You know, like, wait, wait. No, I know what you mean.
00:19:49
Speaker
And I'm trying to relinquish some of that control because I've got a team of extremely capable people and I'm trying to be like, you can handle that. I don't need to be a part of that. And then it gets done and I'm like, whoa, it worked. But that's not what I'm saying. What you're talking about is just
00:20:05
Speaker
of properly designed system where others can make decisions. Meaning it's like the Tim Ferriss four hour work week example. If a customer service issue is under $75, solve it yourself. That's not that person making a decision or offering an opinion or building a system. That's just them reacting within a framework. What I'm talking about is somebody else coming to the opinion design, coming up with a hypothesis. We're gonna revamp how we build this fixture. We're gonna, like somebody else,
00:20:33
Speaker
purchasing and implementing a mini ERP system at Grimso Knives. That's what I'm talking about. There's all sorts of examples, not just responding to a specific task and with guidance. For sure. Yeah. A higher level of control, basically. Yep. Right. Yeah. That's starting to happen more and more. I mean, it's not going to happen by itself. I need to allow it to happen. I need to let everybody know it's okay. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. But I'm loosening the boundaries of that.
00:21:02
Speaker
I didn't bring it up as a backhanded way of criticizing you. It's really just a general observation about, look, it's easy to build systems and processes, and they're great, but really, it's that next level of, and not everybody wants to do that. Not everybody is good at it. That's okay. I think the key is when you figure out where there are ways to do that, run with it, hold it. Yeah. I think I'm noticing
00:21:31
Speaker
I guess resistance for me allowing to do that. I think around things like that and if it did happen, if other people could run with it and were allowed to and had the time and the freedom and the budget and whatever, the amount of explosion we'd be able to do.
00:21:48
Speaker
would be silly. It's like, am I sabotaging our own success by keeping so much control, right? Yeah, starving. The one thing I will say is that often you won't realize it. Yeah, totally. That doesn't mean you are or you're not. It's just one of those frog boiling waters of opportunity costs and all. It's so easy to criticize and backseat disgust, but harder to do it. Yeah. On that note,
Data-Driven Decision Making
00:22:17
Speaker
Shout out to the team here for using a system in our advantage. That didn't make sense, English grammar. We made another run of diamond pins, made 100 of them, put them into
00:22:33
Speaker
the egg crates to track the quantity and the order that came off, polysealed them in bags, all that was great. And then I needed to move on to some other stuff. So I thought, well, okay, let's go use that trailing sales sheet. Cause I kind of thought hundreds a lot. We don't, you know, casually looking at sales, I'd be like, those aren't like a big seller, blah, blah, blah. And John pulled up the trailing 90 daily sales. A hundred is nowhere near enough. Really? And that's,
00:23:02
Speaker
It was one of the best moments of my working life. I'm as silly and small as it was because I now realize I'm making decisions. I mean, this is like so basic, but you're making an educated decision. I need to allocate more time and resources to making more of them, or maybe I need to rethink the process or lots of things you can go for, but you're now armed with facts. So in order to keep a longer period of inventory, that's what you mean?
00:23:30
Speaker
I thought a hundred was enough for like six months. For sure. Just winging it basically. I was like, I don't know, but it feels like a lot. So you're aligning reality with what your brain says is reality. Right. Yeah. Right. Or it's that person where it's like you go into a business and they're like, we keep running out of
00:23:47
Speaker
inventory and we keep playing catch up and we don't know why. Well, how much were your historical sales? I don't know. It's like, that's where we were a month ago. And it is, it's super funny and eyeopening and like almost relieving in a way when you realize those things, you're like slap in the face. Like, of course, why didn't I see that? Yeah. So yeah. Um, that's good. Excellent. It was good. It felt good.
00:24:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's like on.
00:24:19
Speaker
I mean, that's the beauty of automated layouts is they're just, when they work great, it's like, just run it. Make lots of parts. So Pierre has been running our knife spacers on the Swiss and it's going good. It's like, I don't even know, a two minute cycle, three minute cycle or something. And just goes and goes and goes. And I asked him yesterday, he's like, yeah, I came in, I turned it on. I think I tweaked an offset by a 10th and it's been running all day.
00:24:47
Speaker
It's awesome. I was like, OK, sweet. And then he switched to another job last night, the thumb studs for the Norseman. And he made a handful. And he's like, he comes to me at 5 o'clock. And he's like, OK, I'm going to go. Should I leave it running? I'm like, is it going good? It's been holding. He's like, yeah, OK. Super easy job. Let's just run it all night. Let's go. And then he's like, all right. So there's three bars loaded up. It should run till 5 AM or later.
00:25:11
Speaker
good to go. So then as I leave an hour or two later, I look at it and I don't know what happened. Like, as you said to me, he's the machinist, let him be the machinist and figure it out. But there was a problem that it wasn't threading properly. It's like the drill bit was clogged up and was pushing the part back into the sub spindle.
00:25:29
Speaker
So something's wrong, and I saw a big booger at the end of the drill bit. So I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to stop it. I'm going to leave it for him. I could diagnose this, but I don't really need to, because he will just do it again tomorrow anyway, and he can do that. So I haven't talked to him yet this morning. But it was cool to be like, you know what? He's got this. I'll stop it, because obviously it's making bad parts. But yeah, we'll figure it out. Awesome.
00:25:52
Speaker
Do you, if I recall, that's a really short threaded section. So you single point that? Yeah, I thread mill these ones actually now. OK, that was my question. Yep.
00:26:02
Speaker
Because I found thread milling can really help us thread up to a shoulder, basically. Yes. So it feels like the ultimate insult to a proper beautiful CNT lathe is to say, well, I'm not going to let you single point. I'm going to go ahead and y-axis live tool thread mill this. Exactly. Yep. I actually am doing these ones c-axis thread milling. So the c is rotating to thread mill. Why polar over xy?
00:26:32
Speaker
It allows me to tweak diameter. Super easy. X offset and you're bigger. Interesting. It's like the greatest because interpolation, you have to tweak the code. Sure. Cool diameter offset doesn't really change it.
00:26:46
Speaker
But doing it C-axis is like, oh, you want it bigger? Comp the X, it's bigger. So we do that for a lot now. So thread milling is slower than single point, it seems like. But I was having tool life problems with these tiny little, it's a 440 thread. And some of them are quite deep, like on the spacer. It's like 200 thou deep.
00:27:10
Speaker
Yeah, Singapore works great. So we made 2,000 titanium spacers on the same thread mill, and I think he chipped at taking it out or something. So I wonder in Fusion, if I recall, the decision between polar and XY is in the post setting. So can you alternate? You want to polar your thread mill, but you may want to live tool mill flats with XY. I used two posts.
00:27:41
Speaker
I'm still hand editing all my Swiss code, which I'm very good at now. Got it. I've been working with Autodesk, not in a while, but on a proper Tornos post, but it's complex. The Fusion site has to be set up very specifically with folders and names and something.
00:28:02
Speaker
Yeah. There's just all these things I didn't care about a while back where you're like, I see why it's a post property, but it really should be an operation specific property. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. The Y or C. Yeah. Absolutely.
00:28:14
Speaker
The YRCS. The other thing I really wish is there was a better way to, like a more conditional if statement that would allow you to run certain operations or certain questions, like we're becoming a bigger fan of the Haas. I think it's M109, M130, where it's like, can ask you a question.
00:28:34
Speaker
And, but I wish there was a way to, I just haven't, I can't figure it out as a short answer. I wouldn't say I've totally exhausted it, but I'm not going to spend any more time. So I'm hoping somebody could point us the right direction, which is,
00:28:46
Speaker
I only want that question to be asked if it is a new day or something. Basically, you need only the first time around. The question is, what does the first time mean? I don't want to have to run separate programs or code, but it's a pretty classic debouncer. As soon as you say yes, it sets that variable to one. If the day hasn't changed, it doesn't reset that variable.
00:29:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's totally possible with macros, but it's a little complex. You can't do a yes, no. It's like you can jump to a certain section of code based on the day for sure and then not jump if it's the second run of the day because you can pull the time variable.
00:29:35
Speaker
You can tag it as of midnight, reset it to zero, and the first time it happens, set it to one, and if it's one, don't do it again. Right. Well, that's totally ... I guess I was relying too much on trying to find a parameter within the machine control. You're just saying, write the whole thing yourself. Don't rely on it at all, because you can say- It's a combination of both, I guess. I do so much macros that it's how I think, and it's how I work. Right.
00:30:06
Speaker
There's not two user inputs, yes or no. It's like based on this input jump to here or M0 pause. Oh yeah, that part's easy. Basically, once it's been satisfied, skip ahead. So the question is when you first post the program, I got to think about how you define the reset because the machine's not going to be on at midnight for us. What are you trying to do, like a spindle warmup or something?
Managing Delayed Payments and Accounts Receivable
00:30:33
Speaker
I don't want the operator to be queried about whether the setup is correct with a question and a video on the control or photo on the control every time. So the diamond pins, we only run like five at a time. The stick holds a lot more, but we 100% inspect and every once in a while we're bumping a 10th or so and it's just little things like if we open the door for a freight delivery, even though that door's on the other side of the shop quite a few feet away, the reality is a draft of breeze will,
00:31:02
Speaker
will cause a change, and now most products, it doesn't matter. But on that part, I do care. I don't want to make 30 bad parts. And so we just run five at a time, and so I don't want to- How do you hold tolerance on five at a time? That's easy. What do you mean?
00:31:22
Speaker
I don't know, if we were running that on the Nakamura, I'd be like, all right, get the lathe warmed up and just run it all day and it'll be happy after about an hour and then it'll hold all day, so we'll just make 200 or whatever. Ours won't hold, I wouldn't say all day at 200, but if nothing went bad, it would probably do fine at making 30 at full stick, but if somebody opens a door,
00:31:45
Speaker
I just don't know if you're warming it up. Oh, no. It runs a 40 minute warm up cycle before. Sorry. You have to get it up to temp first. That's the program where we have the spindle temp variable. It won't even run if the spindle's not above 90 degrees. OK. So you are putting heat into this. Like, are you running a fake program? Correct. Or are you just, yeah, OK. Yeah. We run a set of fake. And I'm fine leaving that as a separate program, because that you just do once. But then there's a couple of things I want to check the first time you're setting it up.
00:32:13
Speaker
I just, it sounds weird. You're running a 40 minute warm-up cycle to run five parts. No, no, no, no, no. Sorry. We run a 40 minute cycle and then we're going to run a hundred parts, but we only run five and we make, because if somebody's not standing in front of the machine, putting a mic on each one of them, I need to see how it's grown or God forbid an insert chips. Luckily the inserts have been solid and the machine's been solid. It's really a thermal issue.
00:32:40
Speaker
Yeah, both, both my lights are like that too. And that's why I came up with the parts carousel for the Swiss. So I can count like, Oh, this is the first, second, third, fourth and fifth part. And you can see the growth between all of them. Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah. Because if you have, if you have a pile of 200 parts, you don't know the first, you don't know the last. And if you pick up anyone, you can't guarantee what to comp next. Right. Right. How long is your cycle?
00:33:05
Speaker
Oh, five minutes for me. It could, it could be improved. It's longer than you want to stand there all day and like run five parts. Absolutely. Yeah. I got it. And look, the material is not expensive. So there's times where we've run 15 and we just check them all. And if you throw away six of them, you throw away six. It's a trade off. Yeah. Yeah. It's that stage is like, I have no problem throwing away lathe parts because they're cheap and it's trying to hold super accuracy. Like it's just part of the game.
00:33:33
Speaker
So we have 3D printed green bins for good, red for bad, and yellow for, I haven't checked these yet. And if the green bin is bigger than the red bin, like more quantity inside, then you've had a good day. Our red bin is the trash.
00:33:48
Speaker
Yeah, it's more of like a daily temporary thing, but it works great. And then some days it's like, you know, Pierre will show me a green bin full of 300 parts and a red bin full of one part. And he's like, yeah, that was the first part. Let the lathe get warmed up. I love it. That's awesome. I have a question again for our audience, which is if anybody has advice on handling
00:34:15
Speaker
delayed past due accounts receivable. Whether it's net 30, net 60, net 90, that's a separate negotiation. This is one of your customers buying one of your products. Yes, correct. That hasn't paid yet.
00:34:31
Speaker
Well, and we don't, I'm careful to say that we don't really have an issue. We keep pretty close eye on it, and this is a very common theme of this, but what we're seeing is, whether it's corporate folks or education folks, is, again, I don't care whether it's net 30 or net 60, that's not the point. Say that's net 60. What we're seeing is that we'll follow up on day 60 or day 61, and they'll say, oh, we're processing it for payment next week or the week thereafter.
00:35:01
Speaker
Now, there's a very practical side of this, which is like, look, if they're a week late on that terms, just move on with life. You've got bigger problems to focus your energy on. But I also respect folks that have recognized how important it is to keep a close eye on this stuff. And so what I'm curious about is there a practical way
00:35:21
Speaker
You can't just say, well, I'm just not going to sell them anymore because the reality is that most people aren't willing to actually do that. I honestly do think it's deliberate. I do not think it's accidental. I think if they wanted to pay on time, they could. I think they're just doing what so many companies do, which is pushback because they can. What I'm curious about is what are tactics that are reasonable
00:35:47
Speaker
Because my view is, look, this is a deal. We agreed on a deal, whatever terms those are. Don't make me chase you down one day late to get it 15 days later and act like that's sustainable. So the simplest idea is you add a charge to it. But I don't think companies will, I just think they'll tell you to pound sand. And then you're telling them you're going to charge them. And then they're saying, well, we're not paying it. So you can do what you want.
00:36:17
Speaker
Yeah, and they already have the product and you haven't been paid yet. Well, they'll pay us, if it's $1,000, they'll pay us the $1,000 and they're like, you could take a $30 late fee and send it to collection or whatever, we're not.
00:36:28
Speaker
I've certainly seen in terms of most vendors that I've dealt with that have a net 30, net 60, they'll say a charge of 20% annually after the 60-day period. Oh, really? Like credit card. Yeah, I've seen that for sure. And I have no problem with us or other people pushing that 30-day window up to that point. It was given to you.
00:36:56
Speaker
manage your money properly and use it. Why not? It's an asset almost. But yeah, if you're continually pushing past that just because you can, just waiting until you get hounded, that's just gross.
00:37:11
Speaker
But I mean, if you just set in your net 60 terms, be like, if it's late, there's a $45 late fee, period, period. That's what I'm curious about. Has anybody actually done that? And I just think, you know, I just think it'll be,
00:37:29
Speaker
is one of those examples. You make your own happiness. What are you trying to do here? You're trying to stick up for yourself ultimately. And I think it's worse if you end up losing more sleep or anxiety over a fresh stretch over like, hey, I've got to pay. You either have to do it yourself or you have to pay somebody on your team to go create these past dues, send them, track them, follow them down, recognize a low probability you're going to get paid. You're creating all of this for nothing. But I'm not willing to just say, whatever. Right.
00:37:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's a weird balance of, you know, you want to be the nonchalant nice guy, but you also like this is a business. This is about money. And, you know, money doesn't have a face. It's just like facts, you know, we'll just do just do you said you were right. Yes, the deals that I've signed, I mean, whether you sign it, or it's just a purchase order in a quote request or whatever. But it's like,
00:38:22
Speaker
If you don't pay in 60 days, there will be a small percentage increase every month after that. And acceptance of this quote implies firms. Yeah, I have no idea how legally complicated that gets about state by state laws or so forth. The best answer I've heard to date is really if it's only going to be something you care about with repeat customers. That's where it's really an issue. It's the one-off whatever.
00:38:52
Speaker
But, and when it's the repeat customers, you just pad the quote, which is kind of like sad, but you're like, okay, well, I'm rounding up whatever some amount here because I know you're going to delay me and it's ultimately time value of money. So, you know, it's kind of ironically, you figure out a way to make them pay for it in a sense, but I'm still curious. I feel like, um, I feel like there's probably a good, a better way to handle that to the extent it becomes a real problem. Hmm.
00:39:20
Speaker
I mean, when it becomes a problem is that when you have that big boy conversation, be like, look, I can't accept these terms anymore. If we want to continue doing business, then it's got to be paid within the confines of our time.
Purchasing Used Machinery
00:39:34
Speaker
I just don't think that works because these are mostly larger companies where you're dealing with somebody who's like a accountant or a payable clerk who isn't necessarily somebody who makes the decision. It's not like I'm talking to John Grimsmough who's like, oh yeah, I run the company. I tell him everyone had to slow it down. It's actually very much reminds me of a conversation
00:39:59
Speaker
we had on the NYC forums about a guy trying to, did we talk about this, trying to buy a used lathe? I don't know. He had sent in a tech on his dime. He hired somebody to go inspect a used lathe for sale and he found what seemed to be a major issue like 3,000 backlash in the slant axis, which is a bit odd.
00:40:24
Speaker
It got to this question of it's almost a bad situation where he knows too much because many other bidders aren't going to be privy to that information. You're going to put yourself at a disadvantage where you're ... I'm not saying he's wrong, but it's also like the more you know, you're going to talk yourself out of every potential deal. Some of the advice was like run, run, it doesn't make sense. I'm very much in that boat and in the situation, I do think that probably was the right situation. But at the end of the day, if your goal is to buy a machine,
00:40:53
Speaker
If you go look at 100 machines and you say no to each one, you're going to end up with no machine. You've got to figure out how to make it work, period. That's the goal, not just to be a smart, wise guy about your ability to get fall bar tests done and show everybody why every machine's bad. I'm taking extremes here, but you've got to figure out how to get a deal put together here. Yup. Yup. Because it's so easy to nitpick every single aspect of everything and nothing's ever perfect enough, especially with the used machine that
00:41:23
Speaker
even new machines. You try to hide between a few different ones. Well, this plus and minus is here and there. Yeah, at some point, if you're ready for it, pull the trigger and deal with the consequences. Right, right. Yeah. What do you do today? Well, speaking of new machines, I've got this idea that I want a tiny little CNC mill to do one job.
Innovative CNC Ideas
00:41:50
Speaker
So on the knife, when you open and close the blade, the area where the detent ball is scraping across the blade. Yep.
00:41:58
Speaker
I'm calling that the detent arc. And it's like this arc where it's scrubbing the blade and rubbing and creating friction and stuff. After we tumble the blades, they have a tumbled, mildly rough finish. So Eric and I put the knives together, and we pinch the lock bar, pinch that detent ball against the blade with some oil, and we open and close the blade and rub it in and polish that area. And I'm like, man, if I could create a little tiny machine that could go in and polish that little arc,
00:42:27
Speaker
It would make the knives better, better than we could do it, like with some diamond lapping compound or something, just some paste, and a small rotating brass spring-loaded rod. That all it does, it goes down, it does the arc a couple times, whatever it takes, and then it's shiny. And then you wash the blade off. And I'm like, this could actually be worth it for us to do, whether it's a Tormach 440 or whether it's a tag or something. Sure.
00:42:56
Speaker
So you would be using an XY motion, basically two and a half axis with a brass rod and some spring loaded. I think it has to spin, but not, I don't know how fast. And then you'd put the diamond paste like out of a syringe onto the blade and it would just arc, arc, arc, lift up, done. Maybe mount a couple at a time or something.
00:43:17
Speaker
Why not simplify it to get somebody else on Upwork to design a very simple cam? So think about the motion of a full 180 degree motion of a circle that's just moving an arc back and forth like a metronome, basically. Because you can control the radius of the metronome based on your pivot point of the lever.
00:43:41
Speaker
And then you now have the correct arc radius and arc distance. And then you can put a beefy motor on it. And then you just have a ball in there in the tip of that arc in the right place. And then you could just drop, I mean, this is a better way to do this probably, but I put it basically add weight to it. So you put the knife in there, you turn the machine on, it's going to just go back and forth.
00:44:04
Speaker
for five minutes. And then when you're done, you flip it off, and you take the knife out. And now you've built, I love CNC machines, but simplicity is the elegance. Point being, it doesn't need to be a CNC motor, step or servo, controlled device, when all it has to do is arc back and forth and lift up. That's a new variable. OK.
00:44:26
Speaker
What you're doing is roller burnishing. Just roller burnish with the sacrificial ball. Not the ball that the customer is going to get, but just a ball that maybe you have to replace every week or whatever to cost a penny probably. Interesting. Yeah, that could work. It's the windshield wiper motion. Basically. Yeah. Done. Okay, I'll think about that.
00:44:50
Speaker
And you can get torquey, torquey gear motors, dude. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So you could have a hundred pounds of weight somehow on top of it as it's rolling, burnishing and batching forward. Okay. I'll crunch that around for a little bit. Um, thank you.
00:45:08
Speaker
I thought you were going to say you were doing the CNC machine for the ball bearing cage insertion. Oh, also doing that. Okay. Did that go anywhere? It's been on pause. I haven't thought about it for a couple of weeks now, months, but yeah, that'll be a simple
00:45:29
Speaker
Yeah, I've already got two guys in the wings to help design and make that for me. Got it. Sweet. I just need to put the package together and buy the stuff and send it to them and tell them to buy it. Yeah, maybe. Say, look, it's going to be over $500. Let me know, but otherwise, go buy the frame. The money's not the problem anymore. I guess what I'm waiting on is I need to finalize the project in my head. No.
00:45:59
Speaker
Well, in order to tell them what to do and give them the freedom to do, to finish it. But the next step is obviously me taking an action, whether it's a simple action or finishing it. You know what I mean? Sure. Sure. But yeah, no, you're right. Send them an iPhone video of the power ball, the six ball, and just be like, the goal is automate this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought it was a CNC machine, but run with it and see what they come up with. Yeah, I did that the other day.
00:46:28
Speaker
there's a checking fixture that I wanted to design. And so I took a video and I mocked it up and I mocked it up in Fusion, like super simple. This at this angle, this here with nothing else. Design everything else 3D printed around it to be able to do this. And he nailed it. It was great. It's like so cool letting other people do that stuff. Awesome. What's going on today?
00:46:56
Speaker
Current stuff, Norseman lock bar, insert stuff. I don't know, we got a mist fit, a mist collector for the Okamoto surface grinder. Nice. Which Angelo and Steven have been putting up and installing and it should be running now as of this morning. Grinder's been running.
00:47:15
Speaker
Yeah, less because we don't quite have the miscollector yet. But yeah, they've been running it. Now it should be full bore as of today. Got it. It's great. It puts off a lot of mist, I guess. Some and the dust that comes off and there's a lot of wheel and dust that comes off of that thing. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. I'll take a picture because like in the corner of the machine where all the dust goes, there's like a lot of white dust from wheel from dressing all the time and
00:47:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's cool. I mean, I'd be careful. It's in the same room as the Kern. Yeah, we're putting up walls around it as well. Yeah. The mist collector sucks 10 cubic feet of air per second, I believe. Woo. Yeah. Wow. Maybe it's per minute.
00:47:59
Speaker
I don't know, but it's a lot. 10 cubic feet. Yeah, it must be per, well, a minute's too slow. I'm curious. No, because 10 cubic feet is three by three. That's 10 by 10 by 10. No, that would be 1,000. 10 by 10 by 10 would be 1,000 cubic feet. Oh, maybe you're right, yeah.
00:48:22
Speaker
So that's only 1.7 by 1.7 or whatever. The cube root of 10. Um, anyway, cool. Yeah, fine. Nerd out. Cool. Well, awesome. We'll have a good week. Okay. See you next week. Take care.