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#457 Blade Show Collaboration Knife of the Year
2 Playsin 1 day
Topics:
- Blade show Collaboration knife of the year
- White light interferometer working!
- Robot system hiccups cutting steel
- Overhaul compressor system
- Wax fixturing success
- Waterfall cashflow
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Hosts
00:00:01
johngrimsmo
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining episode 457. My name is John Grimsmow.
00:00:07
John Saunders
My name is John Sonners.
00:00:08
johngrimsmo
And this is your weekly manufacturing podcast where two friends chat about what's going on in their businesses and what they're up to and what they're having fun with and what they're struggling with and what's going well.
00:00:19
John Saunders
Yes, good to see you though.
00:00:20
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it's good to see too. It's been a couple weeks.
00:00:23
John Saunders
Yeah, sorry folks, we it is what it is.
00:00:25
johngrimsmo
Life happens.
00:00:26
John Saunders
What happens, vacations, and then i i mean I suppose I'm happy to allocate all 40, informal 45 minute
Preparing for Blade Show
00:00:34
John Saunders
allocated time. So I wanna hear about pre-blade show, blade show, post-blade show, everything.
00:00:39
johngrimsmo
Yes, back from Blade Show, it was a wild success. It was just, everything went well.
00:00:43
John Saunders
Good.
00:00:45
johngrimsmo
We spent a lot of time preparing. actually read through a Google Doc that I wrote after Blade Show last year of like all the thoughts and notes and like problems, which is really helpful.
00:00:55
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:00:57
johngrimsmo
Sort of like ah you know in the military, they have an after-action report.
00:01:00
John Saunders
of
00:01:01
johngrimsmo
And i like did that, and I started it again this year because you know in the moment, you... remember a lot of things and you think you'll remember for next year, but you won't. And it's like you writing a machine buying document.
00:01:12
John Saunders
Yep.
00:01:13
johngrimsmo
It's like, you think you know all these things, but it's so much easier to have yourself hold your hand through the process. Right.
00:01:19
John Saunders
Yep.
00:01:20
johngrimsmo
um So that was quite helpful. The big, ah most of it was due to shipping and customs.
00:01:23
John Saunders
what What kind of stuff was in that, can I ask?
00:01:27
John Saunders
Right, right.
00:01:28
johngrimsmo
Cause those are the big hassles from last year. And, i I've come to terms with um you know all the debacles we've had last year and previous years. It's not really UPS's fault.
00:01:39
johngrimsmo
It's the fact that importing $20,000 to $30,000 worth of of merchandise into the States last minute is just not a good idea.
Importing Challenges for Merchandise
00:01:50
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:01:50
johngrimsmo
And even with a customs broker this year, it took us, you know, at least three days, probably closer to five days of just back and forth and paperwork and things like that to to finalize all of this.
00:02:00
John Saunders
Really?
00:02:01
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:02:02
John Saunders
Ugh.
00:02:02
johngrimsmo
And which is fine, but it was getting down to the wire um to the point where I drove the packages with customs paperwork across the border, dropped them off at Tucker's house the day before we left for Blade Shows.
00:02:17
johngrimsmo
So it was tight.
00:02:17
John Saunders
This is when you're in your sedan going through the semi-truck line?
00:02:20
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah. And I have to lift my hand on paperwork and passport, you know, 10 feet tall.
00:02:23
John Saunders
ha
00:02:24
johngrimsmo
And the guy has to lean out the window to get it. But I was all prepared and I had all the right thing. And there's this big full page QR code that you're supposed to have as your top document, which I didn't have last year when I drove through the truck crossing. And so I had all the paperwork and he recognized the customs broker we're with. And he's like, oh, you're with these guys. Nice.
00:02:45
John Saunders
Oh, that's good. Yeah, sure, sure.
00:02:46
johngrimsmo
Yeah. And then he's like, okay, you got to go inside. You got to pay your fee. And it was like $20 processing fee, whatever. And then that was it. And there were a lot of trucks in the lineup and the line was flowing. And I was like, there's no way all of these drivers are going inside.
00:03:03
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:03:04
johngrimsmo
And it's just like when you drive through the border and they check your paperwork and they make you sure you don't flag anything and they just let you go. I think with trucks, it's probably the same thing. It's not like every driver goes inside to like fill out the paperwork.
00:03:14
John Saunders
Right, right.
00:03:16
johngrimsmo
And so I only went inside to pay the $20 fee. And if maybe I did this more often, i would have that figured out. You know what i mean? Anyway, it was interesting. It was actually painless. And I heard a quote last week that said, you're not nervous for a test you're ready to take.
00:03:32
John Saunders
of Yeah, that's a good part.
00:03:33
johngrimsmo
And that was rolling through my head the entire time I'm waiting in the lineup. And I'm like, I'm ready for this border. I feel fully prepared. I'm not nervous. I'm excited. I'm antsy. But like, i was comfortable enough.
00:03:46
johngrimsmo
Whereas last time I went through the truck crossing, trying to self clear all the paperwork
Blade Show Success and Learnings
00:03:50
johngrimsmo
and all the garbage, I was extremely nervous.
00:03:50
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:03:52
johngrimsmo
um So anyway, epic success. And yeah. And then after that, like the whole show was like not important because it's like my stuff is imported into America. Everything else doesn't matter. You know, it's like, this is the hardest part.
00:04:09
johngrimsmo
um then the show was great. So we made two auction knives, the collaboration with chip metal with the fancy engraved handles and the dragon skin Damascus blade. And then the Norseman I made with the bronze and the pearl inlays um and the engraved clip that one of the other guys made Richard with the 24 karat gold helmet inlaid into it.
00:04:32
John Saunders
Sick.
00:04:33
johngrimsmo
Yeah. So we have those two auction pieces plus about, I forget the exact count, maybe 10 or 15 other knives and 20 pens. um Easy, smooth sailing down to the show.
00:04:45
johngrimsmo
On the first day, the show opens at 10 a.m. for early birds and then 11 a.m. for everybody else. And within the first 40 minutes of the early birds, we'd sold more than half of our stuff.
00:04:55
John Saunders
Nice.
00:04:56
johngrimsmo
And so by the end of the day, on the first day of a three-day show, we had two fjells left. And they sold Saturday morning first thing.
00:05:03
John Saunders
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:05:05
johngrimsmo
And so it was great. You know, midday Saturday, people come by the table. They're like, oh, you don't have any stuff. We sold out baby. As opposed to last year. It's like, it hasn't showed up yet. Yeah.
00:05:15
John Saunders
Oh, yeah, right,
Product Showcasing and Improvements
00:05:16
John Saunders
right.
00:05:16
johngrimsmo
We had so many people, makers, vendors, customers, fans, like remembering last year's story vividly and come by and like you know congratulating us that it all worked out this year.
00:05:27
John Saunders
Yes.
00:05:28
johngrimsmo
um But yeah, hugely epic show. Amazing talking to everybody and seeing everybody. Talked to a lot of business and machining listeners, which is really cool.
00:05:40
johngrimsmo
And get to see them in person, talk shop.
00:05:42
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:05:43
johngrimsmo
I brought down the Zeiss microscope um so that we could...
00:05:47
John Saunders
Serious?
00:05:47
johngrimsmo
Oh, yeah, I did.
00:05:49
John Saunders
You took a microscope from Canada to Atlanta?
00:05:51
johngrimsmo
er
00:05:52
John Saunders
Oh my God.
00:05:53
johngrimsmo
Packed it in one of our big nano cases, padded it all up, went to Walmart, bought 28-inch TV or monitor, and and just had it on display, which is cool.
00:06:00
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:06:03
johngrimsmo
I... I don't know what I expected from it. It was nice to have because I love having the microscope and showing things. And I had probably like five very expensive watches under there throughout the show.
00:06:09
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:06:13
johngrimsmo
it was really cool. You know, somebody has a cool watch on the wrist and I'm like, hey, you want to go in the microscope?
00:06:15
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:06:17
johngrimsmo
Like, let me show you the stuff. So it was cool. But overall, I don't know if it was like worth the effort and cost of bringing it. Like, I don't know if it had the big enough payout, but it was good to good to know.
00:06:29
johngrimsmo
um
00:06:29
John Saunders
Could you just check it, like fly with it?
00:06:31
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it was fine.
00:06:32
John Saunders
Yeah, so it's not a good, okay, so that's not a big, yeah.
00:06:34
johngrimsmo
No, it's just, you know, if I ever got questioned, I'd just say it's like trade show, like gear, just like our banner, just like our stickers, whatever.
00:06:39
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:06:42
johngrimsmo
Really?
00:06:43
John Saunders
But the the last time i drove up to visit you or one of the last times I had that, one of those microscopes in the backseat of my truck and the customs agent entering Canada gave me a hard time period about entering and then saw the microscope and was just like having none of it.
00:06:55
johngrimsmo
Really?
00:06:59
johngrimsmo
really
00:06:59
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:07:01
johngrimsmo
oh
00:07:01
John Saunders
Yeah. Yeah. I'll do it.
00:07:03
johngrimsmo
I just got that face. So do you. um
00:07:06
John Saunders
No, it's awesome. I love the department. Like that's super fun. The conversation thing.
00:07:09
johngrimsmo
Super cool. Yeah. And it was a conversation piece and you know customers would be like, can you look at this under the microscope? And I was like, yeah, yeah, I can.
00:07:16
John Saunders
Yeah. Hmm.
00:07:17
johngrimsmo
So it was cool. I think what would have made it even better, and the guys and I were talking about this, is if we had a slideshow playing most of the time, instead of just a static picture of a pivot, like zoomed in or whatever, it's kind of boring.
00:07:26
John Saunders
Oh.
00:07:31
johngrimsmo
Whereas if we had a slideshow with like high-res pictures just floating through all the time, it's very eye-catching. So when people are walking by, they just stand there and they watch it for a while. And then if we need it for the to show something cool, we flip the switch and we go to microscope view and then we flip it back to the slide. So I think that would next year we'll do something like that. And then we get best of both worlds.
00:07:51
John Saunders
Yeah, that's fine.
00:07:51
johngrimsmo
because we actually printed off photographs of that Ryan, our photographer, took of these fancy knives, and we had them on the table as like like five by eight, whatever, printed photographs.
00:08:00
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:08:04
johngrimsmo
And people looked at those before they looked at the knife. Like it's very eye-catching to look at a photograph, right?
00:08:08
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:08:09
johngrimsmo
So that kind of taught us too that like, you know, paper photographs or a slideshow on a camera on a TV is like very eye-catching, very, you know, you sit there and
Awarding Winning Collaboration
00:08:19
johngrimsmo
watch it kind of thing. But It was awesome. the um The Dragon Skin Rask ended up auctioning for $8,500 and won Best Collaboration Knife of the Year at Blade Show.
00:08:28
John Saunders
That's incredible.
00:08:33
John Saunders
oh John, congrats.
00:08:34
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it was pretty special.
00:08:35
John Saunders
That's cool.
00:08:36
johngrimsmo
It's the first award that we or Chip has ever gotten.
00:08:37
John Saunders
Holy cow.
00:08:40
johngrimsmo
Um, so because the two of us collaborated on it, he was like, Hey, should we enter this in the award? And I was like, if you handle it, that's fine.
00:08:46
John Saunders
Thank you.
00:08:49
johngrimsmo
Like, I'm happy to do that. So whatever. So he went over, he took the knife, he took, filled out the paperwork and like had it for judging for three hours. And he was like, coming back to our table all the time.
00:09:00
johngrimsmo
He's like, they still have it. i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Like they said it would be done two hours ago and he gets it back. He's like, I finally have it. It's all fingerprinted up. i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Like, did they look at it a lot?
00:09:09
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:09:11
johngrimsmo
And that's why it's all like, you know, needs to be cleaned. um But yeah, it's the first award either of us have ever gotten. And he wrote a nice thing on his Instagram that said, because he's older than us, but he said like 30 years ago when I was first looking at Blade Magazine and I would look at the awards section,
00:09:28
johngrimsmo
I never thought I'd be in that category. Right. And I'm not huge on awards or trophies or anything like that. Generally, I don't care, but I actually, once, once I got it, I cared more than I ever thought I would.
00:09:37
John Saunders
No, you should. like Yeah, John.
00:09:40
johngrimsmo
Like it's pretty big deal. And somebody else called us an award winning knife maker. And I was like, Oh man, this was pretty fancy.
00:09:48
John Saunders
what So was the auction before or after that?
00:09:52
johngrimsmo
ah but bu but um It closed before that.
00:09:56
John Saunders
Okay, well, that's a great, that's an honor.
00:09:57
johngrimsmo
Yep, exactly.
00:09:59
John Saunders
That's really cool, John.
Post-Show Reflections and Learnings
00:10:00
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah.
00:10:00
John Saunders
It looked, I don't know which one, to be fair, I saw some of Insta stuff which all looked fire, to quote my kids. But, and I don't know which one that exactly was, but it all looked sick.
00:10:09
johngrimsmo
Yeah. No, the team came together and did an amazing, just epic job. It was like perfect. The show went great. we had We brought three of us down and then our customer, Bob, um also showed up and we got him an Exhibitor badge and he like he literally worked the show for free for free for the weekend.
00:10:24
John Saunders
Yeah, yeah.
00:10:26
johngrimsmo
So a four man team is good. Three man team would have been light, would have been very tight for the amount of traffic we have and things like that.
00:10:32
John Saunders
Oh.
00:10:35
John Saunders
I love the poster too. That looked great.
00:10:37
johngrimsmo
Yep, and Bob made the PVC frame for it. like he He's like, hey, can I help? And I was like, we got to do this. And he's like, done.
00:10:44
John Saunders
Sweet.
00:10:44
johngrimsmo
So that was good.
00:10:45
John Saunders
Yeah, that's cool.
00:10:45
johngrimsmo
um And again, that poster, nine foot tall poster with made of 18,000 products, it, i don't know if it was like hiding too far back because it didn't get enough as as much attention as I thought it would.
00:10:58
johngrimsmo
You know, the people that saw the Instagram post would walk up and like look at it close. But I don't know if we need to like put it closer or something like that, but little things you learn, right?
00:11:01
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:11:06
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:11:06
johngrimsmo
We actually had the fire marshal come by and like analyze its location. And he's like, it's kind of covering the fire exit like a lot. It needs to move over four feet. And it wasn't really our fault because our booth was overlaying like the backdrop of our booth that they set up was overlaying the fire exit.
00:11:22
John Saunders
Right.
00:11:24
johngrimsmo
So the whole thing had to be shortened. And we actually lost like three feet of our paid booth space. Whatever.
00:11:29
John Saunders
Yeah, two sure, sure.
00:11:29
johngrimsmo
I don't really care. But, you know, fire marshal comes by with a microtech in his pocket. And he's this big like, big gruff guy with a handlebar mustache. I'm like, whatever you need, boss, just you tell me what you need.
00:11:40
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:11:41
johngrimsmo
No problem. And, uh, it was just perfect. It was great.
00:11:48
John Saunders
Good. It's awesome. I'm glad to hear that.
00:11:50
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:11:51
John Saunders
and So you don't have to bring anything, no merchandise back? Is that is that fair?
00:11:55
johngrimsmo
Correct. We sold
Visit to Science Museum and Manufacturing Precision
00:11:56
johngrimsmo
everything.
00:11:56
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:11:56
johngrimsmo
We brought some t-shirts back that we didn't get rid of, but, um,
00:11:57
John Saunders
Super nice. Yeah.
00:12:02
johngrimsmo
sure. Yeah, it's like you don't want to bring too much stuff because then what if you don't sell out and then you have to like re-import it back into Canada?
00:12:03
John Saunders
Good.
00:12:08
johngrimsmo
don't want to deal with that. Could leave it at Tucker's house or something and like do it again.
00:12:09
John Saunders
Right.
00:12:12
johngrimsmo
But so next year, I don't know. Maybe we'll, I want to bring more, but you don't want to bring too much, you know?
00:12:19
John Saunders
Yep.
00:12:19
johngrimsmo
It's a weird balance.
00:12:21
John Saunders
It's say that Ferrari model of you build one less car than you think you can sell.
00:12:26
johngrimsmo
Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
00:12:29
John Saunders
yep well uh i was top of mind because when we were on vacation we wo were in a kit science museum and are you ready for this mean i've been i've always enjoyed good science museum and have been to a fair share but i've never seen a as relevant a uh what do you call a little ah like exercise booth challenge thing as this one it was a stare it you know what a micrometer head is the things that look like the size of a tennis ball
00:12:58
johngrimsmo
I saw the same thing at the Boston Museum of Science.
00:13:01
John Saunders
That's where we were.
00:13:02
johngrimsmo
Oh, okay.
00:13:03
John Saunders
Okay. Yeah.
00:13:03
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:13:03
John Saunders
ah Yeah. So you rotated It it was like a lapped face with a plunger and ah like one of those EDM things where when it's flush, you can't even see the thing.
00:13:05
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah.
00:13:12
John Saunders
And you, with your eyes closed or on our system, had to rotate it until you thought the two surfaces were the static in the movie one were cochlear.
00:13:20
johngrimsmo
ye Yep, yep.
00:13:21
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:13:22
johngrimsmo
It's so, yeah, I remember Leif was playing with that and I was like, I was geeking out about it for sure because it was Starrett brand, wasn't it
00:13:22
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:13:27
John Saunders
It was. Yeah.
00:13:28
johngrimsmo
And it was like, it's like big, you know, it's it's like a little height gauge, but bigger.
00:13:30
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:13:33
johngrimsmo
And yeah, the two lap, the cylinder to the flat face and you bring it out to make it flush, man.
00:13:39
John Saunders
Yeah. And the other one they had next to it, and i don't remember what the, I don't think there was a challenge. um Although you could think of some ways to turn it into a challenge. It was profilometer samples.
00:13:51
John Saunders
And so it had like milled, horizontally milled, vertically milled, turned, um and lapped ground.
00:13:53
johngrimsmo
All right. Yeah.
00:14:00
John Saunders
so forth. And it was really cool. I mean, know obviously we're biased, but like to really see that and it reminds me a little bit of the Deutsches Museum, which is under a multi-year renovation. But when it was pre-renovation, I was able to tour it and see all of this stuff, getting kids excited about industry.
00:14:17
John Saunders
You know, there is really cool aspects to injection molding or or casting or machining or robotics, more so than just like, oh, there's an exhibit with a robot, move you know, move on.
00:14:26
johngrimsmo
Yeah, that is awesome.
00:14:27
John Saunders
so it was really is really fun
00:14:31
johngrimsmo
listen
00:14:32
John Saunders
The other one that was fun, which you
Automation in Manufacturing
00:14:34
John Saunders
anybody could do, was it was a 60 second. there was It was an invisible timer. So you hit start and then they they told you to not count in your head again our system.
00:14:45
John Saunders
But basically, if how close to 60 seconds could you guess time has elapsed?
00:14:50
johngrimsmo
Even if you do count, like, it's not easy.
00:14:54
John Saunders
True, yes. um And so that was fun because you get you know a while, we all did that as a family, which is fun.
00:15:00
johngrimsmo
Yeah. yeah
00:15:01
John Saunders
a range of responses.
00:15:03
johngrimsmo
That's funny. um I recently, this is on point, I swear, but I recently ah started on an electric toothbrush. I haven't done ah that. So I got a Sonicare and it like buzzes at every 30 seconds and it goes for a two minute cycle.
00:15:15
John Saunders
okay Oh, yeah, yeah.
00:15:15
johngrimsmo
And so I counted my head up to 30 seconds to try to like hit the 30 and see how off I am. And I'm convinced this thing stops at 117 seconds, 120, but
00:15:26
John Saunders
That's funny.
00:15:27
johngrimsmo
and is funny
00:15:27
John Saunders
I don't know anybody who isn't fast. Like it's almost impossible to go as slow as you need to go.
00:15:34
johngrimsmo
yeah Yeah, you have to go slower than you think you do. Yeah, yep exactly.
00:15:36
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:15:38
johngrimsmo
Cool, man.
00:15:39
John Saunders
Yeah. Okay. So the high of, bla do you find yourself like if we're going to get like introspective here, does it hard for you to come back from the high of a show like Blade Show?
00:15:49
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I definitely slept for nine hours, two days in a row. um That was nice. And it was good. You know, we give everybody like the next two days off the weekend, their weekend, basically. And I did not much. I i hung out with family, know, watched a lot of shows with the kids, went out a little bit. Leif and I went to an all-you-can-eat buffet yesterday and just gorged ourselves.
00:16:10
johngrimsmo
And it was just nice, you know.
00:16:13
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:16:13
johngrimsmo
And then last night, the you know, the itch started to come in and I...
00:16:19
johngrimsmo
Turned on the white light interferometer and spent the next six hours fine tuning that.
00:16:24
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:16:25
johngrimsmo
But getting back into work mode kind of thing.
00:16:28
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:16:28
johngrimsmo
And what's that?
00:16:28
John Saunders
How's that?
00:16:31
John Saunders
How's that going?
00:16:31
johngrimsmo
Oh, it's fantastic.
00:16:34
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:16:34
johngrimsmo
I think I've got it cracked.
00:16:35
John Saunders
Okay. So what remind me you were, you were done hardware, but working on software. Is that where we left off?
00:16:40
johngrimsmo
Yeah, so software is good. Now I'm just in the endless fine tuning stage. um But basically i have a little calibration thing. glass from Thor labs.
00:16:52
johngrimsmo
That's a little piece of round one inch round glass with, um, plated precision circles on it.
00:16:52
John Saunders
Okay.
00:17:00
johngrimsmo
So everything from 10 micron, 25 micron, 50 micron, hundred micron, 250, 500 micron, and like a thousand micron.
00:17:00
John Saunders
Okay.
00:17:07
johngrimsmo
So these are all precision circles that you can use to calibrate your whatever, but I'm now scanning them with the interferometer, trying to figure out how thick the plating is.
00:17:18
John Saunders
You're serious?
00:17:19
johngrimsmo
yeah and so i'm able to resolve a 250 micron circle with a whole bunch of pixels so like a lot of detail um which is 10 thou diameter and the the fine tuning i'm doing right now is that there's some weird shadowing around the outside that's like making fake deeper gouges and higher spikes on my surface and i'm starting to realize the um
00:17:20
John Saunders
That's cool.
00:17:28
John Saunders
vote
00:17:31
John Saunders
Yeah, that's crazy.
00:17:46
johngrimsmo
uh, non-importance of that little bit of, you know, that the, the thing I'm trying to scan is a very difficult thing to like get perfect.
00:17:50
John Saunders
oh yeah
00:17:56
John Saunders
who
00:17:56
johngrimsmo
And I need to try this on like an actual part, like one of our knife parts or pen parts or something like that, just to like see it in real life, not on this very precision, ultra perfect, ultra like worst case scenario kind of scan. Um,
00:18:09
johngrimsmo
But I was able to kind of rejigger the, i would get this banding throughout the scan because I have to i have to sweep a distance of 15 micron, which is like 1,000th of an inch, over about 20 seconds.
00:18:27
johngrimsmo
I have to move 1,000th of an inch over 20 seconds smoothly and consistently at the same speed for this to work properly.
00:18:34
John Saunders
That seems very challenging. Oh, with what's the motion, like linear motion?
00:18:39
johngrimsmo
It's a stepper motor crappy Amazon stepper motor with a tight, very tight lead pitch screw and, uh, and an encoder, a magnetic encoder that I built that works amazing.
00:18:42
John Saunders
Okay.
00:18:50
John Saunders
Yeah, but this's this is the derivation of the YouTube Gaia.
00:18:53
johngrimsmo
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. yeah
00:18:54
John Saunders
it Yeah.
00:18:55
johngrimsmo
Yep. So it's doing it except because of that and because of various other things, sometimes it moves faster. Sometimes it moves slower. And we're talking, i think i've figured out the lead screws moving 21 degrees.
00:19:08
johngrimsmo
over this band.
00:19:09
John Saunders
Over the whole time. Yeah.
00:19:12
johngrimsmo
And that has to happen within 20 seconds and be smooth the whole time.
00:19:16
John Saunders
Smooth, yeah. Sepers are, guess, look, I don't know what i'm talking about here other than seppers are like by definition, the exact polar opposite smooth.
00:19:23
John Saunders
They they chunk left to right or angularly.
00:19:23
johngrimsmo
Exactly.
00:19:25
johngrimsmo
Yep. Yep. they They lobe and lag and all this stuff. So I'm like, I'm fighting the battle here, but it's a lot of fun. And once I figured out that I can time the actual frame rate, so every single frame of the camera I'm recording,
00:19:43
johngrimsmo
the actual position from the encoder. I'm recording the frame. I'm recording the time. I'm recording the Z height from the encoder and I'm, uh, and I'm recording the pixel data and I'm using that in the calculation to like, even if it does lobe and lag and move and stuff like that, it should auto compensate a little bit.
00:19:49
John Saunders
OK.
00:20:00
johngrimsmo
So that's what I was working on last night and I got rid of the weird banding and I got like a really clean scan and now I just have some weird spikies that I can, I can eliminate through software, but I'm trying to get it perfect.
00:20:12
johngrimsmo
But um for a slapped together brute force effort thing, like it's it's pretty phenomenal. And it's teaching me, if I really wanted to throw some money at this in time, like what I would do next time to make it like way better.
00:20:21
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:20:26
John Saunders
Right. That's literally. Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:29
johngrimsmo
And oh, the coolest one was, you know, how I've mentioned that vibration is the enemy in this, right? Because the fringes jump all around and it's any, any footsteps, any vibrations is, is death to this kind of accuracy.
00:20:42
johngrimsmo
And so I had this theory where i need to isolate the microscope from my desk from vibrations, whatever like that. So I do a quick Google search for, you know, what do the optical tables have for vibration? And they use pneumatic pistons because air is compressible, liquid is not.
00:21:00
johngrimsmo
And so I kind of got to thinking, I'm like, I can buy fancy stuff for hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Innovations in Vibration Isolation
00:21:04
johngrimsmo
What if I just go to the store and buy a bicycle inner tube, a small one, 10 inch diameter bicycle inner tube, put that on my desk, pump it up to low pressure and put a very heavy weight.
00:21:08
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:21:15
johngrimsmo
So I've got this steel plate that's like one inch thick by 12 18 or something like that
00:21:17
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:21:20
johngrimsmo
So it weighs many tens of pounds, put that on top of the inner tube and put the microscope on top of that. And let me tell you, it isolated 99% of the vibrations that I'm seeing.
00:21:29
John Saunders
Yeah, yeah. That's awesome.
00:21:32
johngrimsmo
It's like so cool. If I touch my desk, I can still see it moving, but if I back off and just stay still during the scan, it's like near perfect.
00:21:37
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:21:41
John Saunders
And it's not like if you were to put two your palms down and push and you could, can you really teeter the whole thing around?
Precision Challenges and Metrology
00:21:46
johngrimsmo
You could, for sure.
00:21:47
John Saunders
Okay.
00:21:47
johngrimsmo
If you push on the weight or on the microscope, it'll teeter, it'll rock.
00:21:48
John Saunders
That's Mm-hmm. Yeah.
00:21:51
johngrimsmo
So having one circular tube that's all connected with air will make it blow up and like, blah, blah, blah.
00:21:56
John Saunders
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:21:57
johngrimsmo
Ideally, you'd have three separate little donuts, which is like next step, whatever.
00:21:59
John Saunders
Oh, sure, sure, sure.
00:22:02
johngrimsmo
But dude, I'm like, this is this is pretty great.
00:22:06
John Saunders
and I don't know why or if anyone else feels the same passion, but the idea of these like cascading systems of like, you know, what you do is probably enough, done, full stop. but like, then on top of that, you build the next thing and then you're only starting with, you know, 1% of the initial forces.
00:22:22
John Saunders
So you can isolate those. You take them like to a whole nother decimal place. I don't find that like always really fun.
00:22:27
johngrimsmo
I find that so cool and I'm having so much fun like isolating all the variables. like Vibration is its own mechanical variable. And no matter how much I mess with software, I can't get rid of the vibration.
00:22:38
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:22:38
johngrimsmo
And I don't know if I can fix it in software or if it is vibration.
00:22:39
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:22:41
johngrimsmo
So let me try to isolate vibration with an inner tube, $12 bicycle thing.
00:22:45
John Saunders
Yes.
00:22:46
johngrimsmo
okay now that's way better now i can isolate this is that the camera is at the frame rate is it recording the frames at the same speed is it the motion profile of the encoder of the thing and i'm tracking like the encoder movement and i can see some ripples and i'm like well i can't get rid of the ripples without totally scrapping the whole motion system how can i work with the ripples and like you know log the frame rate with the motion with the movement with the whatever
00:22:50
John Saunders
yes
00:23:10
johngrimsmo
and trying to isolate bit by bit by bit by bit by bit and build a really strong DIY system. It's super cool. So I think my next step is to stop trying to scan this piece of glass for perfection and actually scan something real.
00:23:25
johngrimsmo
And what I've seen so Cyrus do is not only can you see the cuspite of every tool, but you can see the grind of the end mill in the cuspite.
00:23:36
John Saunders
Yeah, that's so cool.
00:23:36
johngrimsmo
And like, ah so that's probably tonight's job.
00:23:40
John Saunders
Well, so that to come full circle, when the reason I thought about the science museum stuff was, um again, not to tell you what to do. You guys do a great job with trade shows, but next year or some event, maybe you do the contest, like match the mill feature with the end mill or count the feed forward marks or
00:24:00
johngrimsmo
Hmm.
00:24:00
John Saunders
I know, there's a million different things you could think of but it's so up your full Grimm's mode, ties in the product, ties on you do wonderful job with the imagery, ties in metrology, ties in maybe the DIY interferometer, and it gets people engaged.
00:24:02
johngrimsmo
Interesting. Okay. So many people came by asking, asking about Grimmsmo vision.
00:24:15
johngrimsmo
Did you bring Grimmsmo vision?
00:24:16
John Saunders
yes Yeah.
00:24:16
johngrimsmo
did you
00:24:17
John Saunders
Yeah. Need little key.
00:24:18
johngrimsmo
Interesting.
Machinery Upgrades and Adaptations
00:24:21
John Saunders
Um, people love that.
00:24:21
johngrimsmo
Cool.
00:24:22
John Saunders
Like how steady I would frankly steal this myself, except we don't work on trade show company, but like, you know, how quickly can you set something up or how aligned can you get it?
00:24:27
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:24:32
John Saunders
Like it's people love those challenges, you know, how close can you get to, sorry.
00:24:34
johngrimsmo
yeah yeah Yeah, I like that. Exactly like you saw at the at the museum with the indicator and get it flush, right?
00:24:43
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:24:43
johngrimsmo
And there's like you know there's what we think precision is, and then there's what precision actually is. And to be able to show that in a demonstrable way is...
00:24:48
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:24:52
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:25:01
John Saunders
had a first, which was that about four hours before leaving for family vacation, bought two more machines.
00:25:10
John Saunders
um So we're executing on the plan, which is we have been really happy with the UR robot feeding the um feeding the steel into the Brother S700. Stop me if I said this last time, um because I don't want to repeat myself, but I also do want to emphatically state it The robot system is not perfect, full stop. Like even when I asked, and I really like have had a great experience working with the folks involved in that world, including Lights Out. but I think some folks who sort of led us to think that like, nope, it'll just work. Like you get up and run, it'll just work.
00:25:45
John Saunders
I think one of the big differences is most of the examples that we seem to have heard about are aluminum production. And the nature of steel chips and swarf has given us some um definitely tackleable, but like quirky hiccups with sensors, vice sensors, encoders, and then odd stuff.
00:25:56
johngrimsmo
Really?
00:26:06
John Saunders
Like we had some, um I'm gonna call it backlash in the current vices, where I don't think it's a fault or flaw per se, but you we just aren't used to, when you're actuating a vice robotically, you don't have that human involvement in the loosening and tightening of it.
00:26:25
John Saunders
So nothing that has all really caused us to pound. Well, a couple of things have gotten us frustrated, but I'll tell you i i don't think we formally got out the piece of paper and to do like a fish scale, but we have thought of that, what's it called?
00:26:38
johngrimsmo
Yeah, the fishbone diagram.
00:26:40
John Saunders
Yes, I still really like that, John.
00:26:43
johngrimsmo
Good.
00:26:43
John Saunders
It's just like a great way to, yeah.
00:26:44
johngrimsmo
should Find one, print it off, and put it on the wall.
00:26:47
John Saunders
yeah and Actually, I think that's what it was. I think we had a chip that was affecting inerrant reading on a radial Hall effect sensor that was causing, it was causing of the five um magnets, one of them was sometimes getting false triggered, which was causing you to skip signals.
00:26:56
johngrimsmo
No way.
00:27:04
johngrimsmo
Ah.
00:27:06
John Saunders
And it was, that's a real problem. and Once you figure out, it's like great, but we we even beat our head against the wall a little trying to figure out, hey, why is this not repeating well?
00:27:07
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:27:14
John Saunders
But bottom line, still resoundingly awesome. And um we have today's, you know, second week of June, the VF6B was sold, is sold and gone.
00:27:14
johngrimsmo
Mm-hmm.
00:27:25
johngrimsmo
Good.
00:27:26
John Saunders
And the horizontal is sold and awaiting the decommissioned guy to show up any day. It's fantastic.
00:27:33
johngrimsmo
Nice.
00:27:34
John Saunders
From build of sales standpoint, it's not our machine anymore though, and it'll be gone here. It should be gone from our shop within two weeks for sure.
00:27:41
johngrimsmo
wow good for you
00:27:42
John Saunders
So we're goingnna wait to get those new brothers until the Horsel's gone, give us a chance to kind of clean up the floor a little. And and I didn't wanna just have them got hot swapped, if you will.
00:27:53
johngrimsmo
so at what at what point did you stop writing the horizontal like you're like this is no longer our machine we're gonna pull back
00:27:53
John Saunders
one of them
00:28:00
John Saunders
Yeah. So I guess I can, and I've always been an open book, so why not share? So we wrote a contract with the buyer and actually made a, I won't say a mistake in that contract, but next time I will improve it. Um, where,
00:28:17
John Saunders
We had the buyer had a an inspection period where they had the right to have a person come in and inspect the machine. I wanted the right to continue to use the machine up until it was, I forget, paid for or something.
00:28:29
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:28:30
John Saunders
They said, no, as after it's inspected, you need to stop using it. And I was like, you know that's a fair point.
00:28:36
johngrimsmo
I can see that.
00:28:37
John Saunders
Yeah, I sort of, so what we said was, and I enjoy it, I think it's probably a byproduct of my former life, but like I enjoy the minutia of like figuring out the game theory of these contracts of like what makes sense so forth. So when I said, that's fine, we'll stop using it production.
00:28:48
John Saunders
We just need the right to jog the machine around for purposes of getting, you know, fixtures off, tooling off.
00:28:53
johngrimsmo
Sure, yeah.
00:28:54
John Saunders
They were fine with that. um But, and then I figured what else I had said in there. But it so it, I don't know how, sorry, I'm ignoring your question. It's been like a month though, um that it has not been in production.
00:29:06
johngrimsmo
Yeah. And you've had that, that and previous time to like plan for the exit of that machine. Like you were using it cause it was easy, but you've already kind of figured out different ways to make stuff.
00:29:17
John Saunders
Yeah, we, um I would be lying if I didn't say there little stress because the problem with having one brother and fortunate have some some strong enough sales to further add pressure where let's say the brother needs to make one part.
00:29:21
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:29:32
John Saunders
Well, that doesn't make it easy to have R&D time. um I'm not sure what I would have done differently other than the two obvious answers. One, you could have had had more time with it.
00:29:45
John Saunders
Um, I would have bought the brother sooner. I did not want to keep the horse all longer. I wanted that machine gone. And, or we could have bought two and had one for R and d one for production.
00:29:56
John Saunders
That would have been smart, except don't know, as if the shop owner, I wanted to make sure this was going to work.
00:30:00
johngrimsmo
Yeah, you weren't ready to commit to the speedio yet, but I think you played it well.
00:30:03
John Saunders
Yeah. Yeah.
00:30:05
johngrimsmo
think of um
00:30:05
John Saunders
I get a team. Yes.
00:30:07
johngrimsmo
Think of how many speedios you can fit in the footprint of the horizontal.
00:30:12
John Saunders
yes
00:30:12
johngrimsmo
You're like, I know. I've i've got it mapped out.
00:30:14
John Saunders
Sure do. Very excited.
00:30:16
johngrimsmo
Good, man.
00:30:17
John Saunders
Yeah. So one's going to be effectively identical for those that have seen on like social media, effectively the identical infeed table and um same parts except the aluminum versions of those parts.
00:30:28
John Saunders
So that'll be easy. We've done it with steel, but aluminum, this is like cake.
00:30:30
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:30:33
John Saunders
And Grant has already got most of that robot system built and and ready to go. And then, and actually credit to Grant and Courtney, our intern, they, um while had
Air Compressor System Overhaul
00:30:44
John Saunders
some, they had some sort of a summer downtime or between stuff, she got the robot working to where the robot picks up material and can hard stop home the part against a hard stop. And it can then using the UR axis math, measure the part within like 10 thou.
00:31:00
johngrimsmo
Jeez.
00:31:01
John Saunders
So now we can do preloading stock validation and adjust how we open the vice, which that was, it's all the things you learn.
00:31:04
johngrimsmo
Right.
00:31:08
John Saunders
Opening the vice is a really nice thing to be able to control. First off, well, it's part of what was biting us when the encoder was miss skipping, but I also wouldn't necessarily want to have brute force I'm glad that we had that problem to fix it, period.
00:31:24
John Saunders
That needed to be fixed. But what we can now do is we can measure the stock and have the vice open only as much as it needs to, you know, plus 30 thou or something, which is really nice because sometimes with robot systems, we find you don't want to over open the vice because you need to have a landing pad for the part to sit on.
00:31:42
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:31:42
John Saunders
if you open it too far, there's nothing, it it lands and it would be be seated in no man's land so forth. So I really am proud of them that for even just having that like curiosity, like let's figure this out.
00:31:52
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:31:56
John Saunders
Yes, the first one will be that. Second one is going to be our bar fed mill. So ordered a spindle gripper, ordered a fourth axis, and we are going to figure this out.
00:32:04
johngrimsmo
Interesting. thing So not a table moving mill, but a, or it's not an R series.
00:32:12
John Saunders
Correct. So here is the logic. Our series machines are definitely better because the table is completely static. X, Y, and Z are all in the head.
00:32:20
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:32:20
John Saunders
And so if you wanted to mount them to a proper bar feeder, it is some obvious advantages of a static table. However, they suck to program because you can't stand in front of the spindle. They're bigger and they're more expensive.
00:32:31
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:32:32
John Saunders
So my thought was, let's order another S700 with a fourth axis. We know how to run those machines and they are easy to do things with.
Success with Wax Fixturing
00:32:41
John Saunders
And we're going to just start, you know it's again, breaking the problem down into phases.
00:32:45
John Saunders
If we can make bar-fed mill parts on, just call it a three-foot stick or a six-foot stick or even a 12-foot stick, put one stick through the fourth, that's a huge win.
00:32:50
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:32:54
John Saunders
If we get to that point, we can either figure out a way to make it work with a moving table machine or We'll just repurpose the S700 for other stuff and buy R series.
00:33:03
johngrimsmo
who Totally.
00:33:05
John Saunders
Done.
00:33:05
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, even a two foot or a three foot stick, um, because it's not spinning at 6,000 RPM. So you can hang out the back.
00:33:12
John Saunders
<unk> There's no terminator lathes involved in this.
00:33:14
johngrimsmo
You can hang out the back a lot. Yeah. Um,
00:33:18
John Saunders
actually the The one thought was like, do you, you could just have a robot and load three foot six, but that's a hard no. I don't want another robot here. And I don't want to pay for saw cut. Like the whole point is you just order material from the spider off the rack.
00:33:31
John Saunders
You're not paying for any processing.
00:33:31
johngrimsmo
yeah Yeah, and you're building the process.
00:33:33
John Saunders
Um, but maybe sense.
00:33:34
johngrimsmo
You put in one three-foot stick, you can get a bunch of parts out, a bunch of unattended running. um depending on how, like there might be some weird resonance in, you know, one inch sticking out the front, 39 inches sticking out the back or whatever.
00:33:48
John Saunders
little
00:33:49
johngrimsmo
And it might just want to vibrate and like be weird depending on material. I think I've seen that in our Willimon. Nice.
00:33:56
John Saunders
It'll be supported. So we're building a table, an outfeed table that will slide on either Justin Gray inspired roller blade wheels or UHMW.
00:33:58
johngrimsmo
Okay,
00:34:02
johngrimsmo
cool. nice
00:34:06
John Saunders
And then you can just have inserts that drop in and out that support your center line of your material, even though it's not rotating at all.
00:34:11
johngrimsmo
Beauty.
00:34:13
John Saunders
So there's no width concern. You still want to stack the deck in your favor.
00:34:17
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Love it.
00:34:23
johngrimsmo
Very cool.
00:34:24
John Saunders
ah Last thing all I'll share update on is we're also now with the horizontal moving, gonna overhaul the compressor system and had a great idea from the guys in the shop to we're taking all new components.
00:34:38
John Saunders
So like one way valve. So that way, if you isolate one tank, it doesn't backfeed into another tank.
00:34:44
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:34:46
John Saunders
Bypass loops so that you can change filters on the main filters without even taking the system offline. It actually was expensive. We're buying it or choosing to buy it from McMaster because I want someone reputable that I don't, you know, four years later, I'm like air compressor parts direct doc, you know, net is no longer in business.
00:35:06
John Saunders
and really it's simple we're just having our two compressors tied in together ah coalescing filter and then a main regulator and then we'll still have downstream stuff in the individual areas but we didn't have a main coadlessor that's kind of the big thing we didn't have and uh the the none of that is particularly revolutionary um But ai has been helpful to sort of interrogate certain features like on the regulator, do you want a non, oh, there's a phrase I don't remember, but basically when a regulator, if you adjust the pressure, do you want it to auto bleed off or do you want it to wait for a tool to used for it to to adjust or attenuate?
00:35:40
johngrimsmo
Oh, interesting. Okay.
00:35:41
John Saunders
Um, and the, but the bigger but takeaway was we're going to lay all this stuff out and then we're to order a send cut, send panel. And we're going mount all of this stuff on a single panel.
00:35:52
John Saunders
And that way going look nice. And we're also not, um, you know, putting a bunch of tap cons in the wall and it looks janky and all that.
00:35:58
johngrimsmo
yeah Yeah, exactly.
00:36:01
John Saunders
So.
00:36:01
johngrimsmo
I like it.
00:36:07
johngrimsmo
um In preparing for Bladeshow and making the pearl inlay knife, I got to really stretch my legs on this wax fixturing idea.
00:36:16
John Saunders
Hello?
00:36:16
johngrimsmo
And ah totally proved it, totally sold. ah You know, green tape and super glue is dead to me now.
00:36:23
John Saunders
Hmm.
00:36:23
johngrimsmo
And it's just been fantastic. It's got its downsides and its quirks and it's hot and you have to clean the wax off, which is actually not that difficult with either acetone or isopropyl. Acetone looks better.
00:36:36
johngrimsmo
I haven't actually tried it in an ultrasonic yet to see if that just the heat and the soap, whatever, cuts it off. But, you know, acetone and a Q-tip.
Machining Process Innovations
00:36:44
johngrimsmo
gets gets all the wax off perfectly and makes it a perfectly clean bondable surface but I had some fancy um this fancy piece of vintage material that was about the size of like my notebook
00:36:57
John Saunders
Okay.
00:36:58
johngrimsmo
Right, so 3x5 or whatever. And I've got this big hot plate, this industrial hot plate, and you crank it on full blast just to pump some heat into this little fixture.
00:37:09
johngrimsmo
And I have to preheat the part just a little bit. And this vintage paper micarta material curled.
00:37:16
John Saunders
okay Oh, your workpiece.
00:37:17
johngrimsmo
As it starts to preheat, I'm like, oh no, it warps. So then I flipped it over real quick and it curled back the other way and it got straightened out. I'm like, oh, I just got to be careful with this stuff. I got to heat it up like slowly and evenly.
00:37:28
johngrimsmo
So I flipped it a couple of times and it seemed to be fine.
00:37:28
John Saunders
move Interesting.
00:37:30
johngrimsmo
But yeah, stuff tends to warp when you put heat into it. And I thought that was, I don't know why I didn't see it coming, but yeah. kind of obvious and then the bronze that i was cutting ended up being i got it from mcmaster it's 510 spring bronze and i just bought it because it's a sheet of sheet metal that i could buy at mcmaster um turns out it's a spring steel and it's been like rolled flat and so what happens to that when you heat it up and or machine half of it off it just kept warping you know i'd bend it straight and then i deck one side wax it down debond it boing it would just whack you know bend up again And then I'd, you know, go back to the Arbor Press, bend them flat again, and then machine my inlays, and then, boing, the inlays would be warped again.
00:38:03
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:38:16
johngrimsmo
And was like, oh my gosh. Like, do need to stress relieve this material or, like, buy a different bronze next time? So there's there's things to research for that. but But overall, the wax held extremely well.
00:38:29
johngrimsmo
um it It won't hold as well as, like, straight-up superglue or the black toughen superglue because that's just –
00:38:36
John Saunders
Mm-hmm.
00:38:37
johngrimsmo
adhered superglue has like 3000 psi of holding force the wax has maybe 400 psi But the tape has probably like significantly less than that so was just great.
00:38:51
johngrimsmo
just worked. And there's some cutting strategies involved, like like leave a few thou on the floor until you're like all done, and then just nip that away one thou at a time, down down, down, down, and cutting carbon fibers and things like that. It's abrasive on the tools, so I not just cut through the part, but I'd cut down another 15 thou so that I'm like coming up the sidewalls of the part and basically spring passing the part a whole bunch of times. I don't care if it takes longer as long as I get good results and You know, if you just leave a 5,000 skin on the bottom that you're tickling away one thou at a time, you're not going to throw the part.
00:39:24
John Saunders
Yeah, sure, sure.
00:39:25
johngrimsmo
And I made um on our Saga pens on the button, I made a little inlay pieces that are 200,000 diameter. And I kept throwing them due to various mistakes and challenges, and things like that. And then once I got that nailed, that was like hardest challenge.
00:39:43
johngrimsmo
It's like if I can keep these held down with wax. And then I forget if I told you last time we talked, but to debond those, I actually, i did one and I'm like, well, these are pretty on there. Like i had to take a saga button with a hole in it and I had to like right put it on the fixture.
00:39:55
John Saunders
Yes, yes.
00:39:57
johngrimsmo
I had everybody in the shop like come do it. Cause I'm like, you gotta feel this cause this is like more than you expect. But yeah, going through the pearl and the bronze and more carbon fiber, just such a good fixturing trick. So this Mighty Bite Blue Wax is, it takes some setup and it takes some theory and some, you know, thinking through, but it's awesome.
00:40:20
John Saunders
Is it completely impervious or not unaffected by coolant?
00:40:26
johngrimsmo
Seems to be. Yep.
00:40:27
John Saunders
Yeah. that's for sure a major benefit over
00:40:28
johngrimsmo
Mm-hmm.
00:40:30
John Saunders
um and look I'm not, don't sell super glue. I'm not like, a I'm not like biased by that.
00:40:33
johngrimsmo
Yeah, whatever.
00:40:35
John Saunders
I just, anytime somebody doesn't believe it and you take a chunk and you show them what it can be, what it can do, it's impressive,
Financial Management Strategy
00:40:41
John Saunders
but Hey, awesome.
00:40:41
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:40:42
John Saunders
It sounds like the the problem is if you let a part soak under flood coolant for an extended period of time with super glue is confidence meter.
00:40:50
johngrimsmo
Yep, or the tape, the powder coating tape, whatever.
00:40:52
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:40:53
johngrimsmo
It just, something starts leaking. leaking
00:40:56
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:40:57
johngrimsmo
and then you end up losing the whole part.
00:40:57
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:40:59
johngrimsmo
um What's the other thing? the So i'm I leaned hard into your idea of just clamp the six by six aluminum into the vice, right?
00:41:07
John Saunders
Yeah. the
00:41:09
johngrimsmo
And then I'm torquing it very light, like 10 inch pounds or whatever it was, or 10 Newton meters, like like a very light torque. um So this hot fixture goes into the vice and I torque it down and then I machined some parts.
00:41:24
johngrimsmo
And then when I loosened it, the vice was loose. And I'm like, what? I must've torqued it.
00:41:28
John Saunders
Yeah. Yeah.
00:41:29
johngrimsmo
Of course I torqued it. then I do it again and then on the next part. And then the vice is still like not that tight when I go to loosen it. I'm like, hold on. Turns out putting a hot vi or a hot fixture into a vice and you're torquing it while hot So I figured this out and then, so I torqued it while hot and I turned on the flood coolant and I just let it cool off with two seconds with coolant.
00:41:51
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:41:54
johngrimsmo
And then I torqued it again and it moved significantly like a, you know, eighth of a turn or a quarter of a turn of more torque. And I was like, that fixture just got smaller.
00:42:03
John Saunders
That's crazy.
00:42:04
johngrimsmo
Like, holy the cow.
00:42:04
John Saunders
What did they drink? I'm like, isn't it the other way though?
00:42:08
johngrimsmo
Um, no, it'll grow bigger when hot. So then I'm torquing on a bigger thing and then it cools off and it gets smaller. So I have to torque more.
00:42:16
John Saunders
guess you're right. Okay.
00:42:17
johngrimsmo
Right.
00:42:17
John Saunders
Yeah.
00:42:18
johngrimsmo
And, uh, what is it? Steel grows six millionths per cubic inch per degree. i think aluminum is more like 15 or 18 millionths. So it's like three or four times more than steel, but enough to like clearly enough to feel it and torque different.
00:42:27
John Saunders
Okay.
00:42:33
johngrimsmo
So I thought that was kind of cool.
00:42:34
John Saunders
Yeah, no, that's really cool.
00:42:35
johngrimsmo
So then my workflow became, you know, put it in the vice, torque it lightly, turn on the coolant for a minute, jog the machine around, and then and then it's good.
00:42:36
John Saunders
Oh, that's working.
00:42:45
johngrimsmo
And then torque again, and I'm good to go. so yeah, like with everything I'm doing, I'm always trying to build, not just do it once, but I'm trying to build a process that I can not only do it repeatably, but hand it off and like now have a company-wide process. It's like, hey, this is how we do this. And it works, I've debugged it, you know,
00:43:05
John Saunders
That's nice.
00:43:05
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:43:11
John Saunders
I'd had a note that I wanted to come back to my waterfall approach um for budgeting stuff. And I know you and I talked a little bit about offline too, but I really like this.
00:43:21
johngrimsmo
Mm-hmm.
00:43:24
John Saunders
It's been really even more transformative than I first thought it would be. And I like it.
00:43:27
johngrimsmo
Remind me.
00:43:29
John Saunders
So a to take it is a way to take known cash flow or especially if you have any sort of retained earnings um and allocate it appropriately into buckets if you will so there's some required buckets you know we aren't fun it's cash management like we're not doing this for things like payroll that just kind of happens through our main checking account but like things that we want to carve off you know property taxes you know our insurance bill is not small
00:43:55
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:44:01
John Saunders
And ah we keep a machine repair account. And so that's a good example I'll pick on. Like, let's say we pick a number. Let's say we want to put 500 bucks a month into it. but So it gets to grow to a certain size. Well, like, at what point do I stop funding it?
00:44:15
John Saunders
Or what if we drain it? How does it get topped back off? How do I want to handle that? And I used to do, hate these fancy terms, but like bottoms up. Like I used to just like, we would just fund each one individually in an amount. And it would sometimes be up to my discretion as to how to handle what. Well, build a top-down of flow. So let's say we have an extra amount of,
00:44:33
John Saunders
money, and we do this once a month, it's like, okay, the first thing we do is we make sure our accrual for, say, property taxes is funded. And then you make sure the ah the um the other important one is funded, like machine repair, if that's important. um and it And it ties back to something I mentioned a while back of you know managing a small business where it's easy to allow lines to be blurred between the business and your personal life.
00:45:00
John Saunders
And this between this and sort of that ROI metric of like, as long as I can hit a certain ah ROI that I think is reasonable, then I can tell myself and I can tell my spouse that we can pour every dollar back into anything we want. New machines, R&D, education, the team or the thing that came up this morning was can we just replace all of our electrical outlets some of our sockets are from 1991 with the building was built and it's just like that's a great idea like have an electrician be like dude when you downtime between jobs like you don't to schedule it's like literally please take the advantage of like the fact that we don't care when you do this sometime in the next three months come just start replacing our outlets great
00:45:45
John Saunders
So that framework and the process for me to follow has been really helpful. And I will say too, um you know, i I do come at this business with a comfort around like and ah and a passion for numbers, but also I'm proud that we haven't had to incur the cost of having a full-time CFO or that type of a thing so far, at least.
00:46:07
John Saunders
Yep.
00:46:07
johngrimsmo
Good, man. Okay. That's a good way to think about it.
00:46:11
johngrimsmo
And it's like when you make up these numbers, so you want to have $10,000 in your machine repair fund, that's your maximum.
00:46:18
John Saunders
Yep.
00:46:19
johngrimsmo
Once that bucket is full, you stop filling it. It's like it flows into the next one.
00:46:22
John Saunders
Bingo. Exactly.
00:46:25
johngrimsmo
Yeah, okay.
00:46:25
John Saunders
Yep. Yep. And let's say we drain it and I really don't like it being drained. Well, I could say, and I'll make, these
Closing Thoughts and Future Tasks
00:46:32
John Saunders
are just fabricated numbers. Let's say we have $50,000 to flow through the waterfall. Well, do I want to take all 10 and top it up right away?
00:46:37
johngrimsmo
Right.
00:46:37
John Saunders
do i want to take half? It's just, you could, then you can more comfortably decide. um but it's, it's been nice.
00:46:46
johngrimsmo
You've done the preliminary work of, um, I have all these buckets, the machine repair fund, the new equipment fund, the education fund, the take home fund, if that's one of them, um, whatever it is. and and at the end of the month, like once a month, you kind of think about this or.
00:47:07
John Saunders
Yeah, exactly.
00:47:08
johngrimsmo
Cool.
00:47:08
John Saunders
Yep.
00:47:08
johngrimsmo
Cool.
00:47:08
John Saunders
Yep.
00:47:11
John Saunders
Yeah. And there' so there's that always that like um push and pull of like the whole like pay yourself first, which i I love. Like you have to make sure the business works for you on the flip side. Like ends up you have to pay property taxes too.
00:47:23
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:47:23
John Saunders
So this is kind of like paying everybody first. You know what I mean?
00:47:33
johngrimsmo
Sweet.
00:47:34
John Saunders
audio What's on the tap the suite?
00:47:36
johngrimsmo
This is my first day back at work. I just got in. um
00:47:41
johngrimsmo
I don't know. Our buyer's choice system broke some Google Cloud authentication, something, something. So I need to deal with that. I promised Spencer I'd have it done by a time I go to sleep tonight.
00:47:55
johngrimsmo
So I'll have that done.
00:47:56
John Saunders
Good, fair enough.
00:47:57
johngrimsmo
um Otherwise, i i don't know. Just getting back in the swing of things.
00:48:02
John Saunders
Suite.
00:48:02
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:48:04
John Saunders
I got to dust off some of those air compressor parts because it's like mac McMaster fittings and all that. Like I'm excited to do it next. Like I want to, it's one of those examples where I want someone to walk and be like, oh, of course, like that makes sense.
00:48:11
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah,
00:48:15
johngrimsmo
yeah.
00:48:16
John Saunders
um The little things that I'm annoyed with are like the diverter valves that are the three-way valves that allow me to divert the air to bypass filters. The port direction isn't the way I wanted. so I'm like, oh, do I want to replace those? um So we're spending a minute on that. Same thing though, I've been out a lot. So dusting off...
00:48:33
John Saunders
That's not that. We have a vendor issue. Maybe I'll talk about it next week, although it's not particularly exciting. But it's been pretty, but you know, if you and I are being honest with each other about what's stressing me out.
00:48:43
John Saunders
um Actually, the only reason this isn't really stressing me out is that Alex and Yvonne are dealing with it, but like, it's not cool.
00:48:50
johngrimsmo
Nice.
00:48:52
John Saunders
So i'll maybe i come back to that.
00:48:53
johngrimsmo
Go.
00:48:54
John Saunders
That's all.
00:48:56
johngrimsmo
All right.
00:48:58
John Saunders
next week.
00:48:58
johngrimsmo
Yeah, good, man.
00:48:59
John Saunders
Take care.
00:49:00
johngrimsmo
right, take care. Bye.