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Ep. 50: The Proteum Protocol: Inside Dylan’s Machining Mind
229 Plays3 days ago
Join Curt, Jamie, and special guest Dylan as they navigate a week packed with cursed tolerances, and unhinged workholding ideas.
They dive into Dylan’s questionable engineering philosophies, the psychology of over-tightening everything, and why some jobs require therapy instead of tooling.
Expect chaos, CNC heresy, and the kind of unfiltered commentary that should probably require a permit.
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The Lone Machinist:
- Website: https://thelonemachinists.com/
- Merch: https://www.jspeceng.com/online-store
- Patreon: https://patreon.com/TheLoneMachinists
Jamie:
Curt:
Dylan:
- Proteum Machining: https://www.proteummachining.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/proteummach/
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ProteumMach
- Within Tolerance Podcast: https://www.withintolerancepodcast.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:00
jamie peacock
Welcome to the Lone Machines podcast where it's just you, your machine and the work. This week we've got someone special. We got Dylan from Prodium Machining and within Tolerance as well as Kurt.
00:00:14
Dylan
Hey, guys.
00:00:16
Curt
Thanks for joining us, man.
00:00:17
jamie peacock
So yeah, thank you very much for for coming on the podcast. We are going to jump straight into it by flipping the script and getting you to tell us about your beginnings.
00:00:28
Dylan
Sure. Yeah, I'm happy to. ah i mean, I guess going back super, super far, I was always the kid who was taking stuff apart, breaking stuff, trying to fix it. That came later, obviously. i think many of us take a million things apart, and it's only like, oh, three years, four years down the line, you're like I can actually fix it now. Parents aren't mad. Awesome.
00:00:49
Dylan
ah humh But going into college, I went to the University of Arizona for two years for mechanical engineering. And while I was there, i was 18, living on my own, stupid, not going to class.
00:01:03
Dylan
And they politely asked me to leave at the end of the second year and said, hey, you need to go to the community college or somewhere else and like raise your GPA and come back and we can finish it out.
00:01:05
Curt
Mm-hmm.
00:01:14
Dylan
And so I went to Pima Community College locally, and they have a fantastic machine tool program. like It was great when I went, and now they have ah I can't remember how many million dollar building that they just built recently that has three stories and, all you know, mechatronics and all this stuff now. But I went there.
00:01:33
Dylan
I was just doing gen eds and I was like, oh, you know, I'll take this machining course like, i you know, whatever. i've I've heard of this. I'll take one as a elective. I need to fill out some or, you know, pad my credits and just fell in love.
00:01:46
Dylan
Like I was like, this is so cool. This is all of the mechanical stuff that
Dylan's Educational Journey
00:01:51
Curt
Thank you.
00:01:51
Dylan
I wanted out of engineering that I wasn't getting.
00:01:53
Dylan
you know I was like going to class. It's so funny because like looking back in retrospect, there was classes I wish I had paid attention to. Like I took a really great material science class from a professor who like really knew his shit. But at the time I was like, why do I care about any of this?
00:02:08
Dylan
Like none of this makes sense. And now, of course, I'm like, I deal with these metals every day and like heat treat and all this stuff. It's like, man, I really wish I had paid more attention. So I understood more of this. Uh, but yeah, so I, you know, i ended up first, I took one class and I was like, Oh, I'll stick around. They have like a, you can get a degree, which is two years. You can get all of these certificates. It's just like a manual machining certificate, a CNC operator certificate.
00:02:34
Dylan
i was like, Oh, I'll do my manual machining cert. And then, you know, go back to engineering school. I was like, oh, I want to see what the CNC stuff is about. And so like I took one of those classes im like, oh, I'll stick around for like the CNC operator. Like then I can get a job while I go back to school.
00:02:47
Dylan
was like, oh, but I really want to like do some programming. And so like it just ended up that I stayed for the full two years. Ended up being two and a half, three years because motorcycle accident in the middle of there. But yeah, Yeah, it changed my life. And then during my last either last semester or last year that I was going there, there was a shop in town that had a Craigslist ad for a Mastercam programmer.
00:03:11
Dylan
And at the time, I was like just just starting my first Mastercam class. And so like I went in, I was like, i i can't program Mastercam, but like i I'm learning. like i'll I'll be able to do this.
00:03:22
Dylan
And they were like, well, we can't pay you, but like we will be able to one day. i was like, okay. And so I swept floors and loaded parts and did all that stuff for, think it was maybe six months or so, four to six months. And then they had a maintenance guy leave. And they were like, well, we have an open paycheck. So like do you want it? Do you want to you know actually be...
00:03:42
Dylan
a part-time employee and I was like, sure, that sounds great. And yeah just kind of slowly built up my resume and my skills
First Job Experiences and Lessons
00:03:51
Dylan
there. Like the the boss there, Jim, is he was he is and and and was fantastic at kind of training me and making me think about how to make parts and letting me fail, but not so much that it was devastating.
00:04:06
Dylan
I think I've told the the story before on a few different podcasts, but The first big crash I had, i was cutting, they had these hard jaws with a step in them that you could bolt down little pieces of aluminum, so it was like a hard soft jaw hybrid.
00:04:22
Dylan
And i bolted those pieces in and cut the step with a shell mill that had a 90 degree corner. And just looked and was like, OK, I'll set that as my Z. Like, I haven't lifted it up yet. I manually cut it. Like, that's perfect.
00:04:37
Dylan
Not remembering that there's the height offset to account for. And so load the first part, get everything else indicated in, hit the cycle start.
00:04:44
Curt
Thank you.
00:04:48
Dylan
And like you know if it was a normal slow feed in or something, I could have caught it. But whoever programmed it had it coming down XZ at 200 inches a minute to start the facing.
00:05:00
Dylan
And it just crashed the shit out of the hard jaws and broke every insert. And and so, of course, I grab it out of the machine, super red face, walk up to the front, show Jim. And he's like, all right, go out there and look up how much the the cutter bodies are. Find me in a new cutter body and like have me go through all that. So I knew what the cost of my mistake was. And the the thing he would always tell me, because I was learning very, very quickly and he was learning to trust me more and more.
00:05:27
Dylan
But he was always telling me, you know can you hurry up and fuck up so I can start trusting you? Because he knew i was going to screw up. like Everybody's going to screw up in this trade. It's just impossible not to. He was like, just make your mistakes now. Make them hopefully small enough that you're not you know destroying machines.
00:05:43
Dylan
So I can start trusting you to do more and more and more. And by the time I left there, I was probably one of their top programmers and, you know, running and programming three or four machines every day.
Starting Proteum Machining
00:05:54
Dylan
And then i think six or eight months, maybe a year before I left is when Brad and I started Proteum. So. Brad and I met in school.
00:06:05
Dylan
So like during those Mastercam classes, I lucked out and ended up sitting next to him. And he was big into cars and motorcycles. And I rode a motorcycle every day. So it was very clear that I was into cars and bikes.
00:06:17
Curt
Thank you.
00:06:17
Dylan
And you know we just started chatting about that and became really close friends. And constantly were complaining about where we worked. like I love Jim. Jim is a fantastic person. But he has like a habit of...
00:06:30
Dylan
just buying a ton of old shit from auctions. And so it was like every three months, these boxes would show up from some random ass auctions and it would be like kind of trash holders and kind of trash tools. And like, sometimes there would be a gem in there and stuff, but like,
00:06:48
Dylan
I could tell like that was holding us back. like we ah you know All the machines there were Kitamura's from like 83 to 95.
00:06:56
Dylan
I think we finally got like a 2000s Kitamura, a 2001 Kitamura when I was there. And it was like, oh, this is the the new thing. It was like, yeah, it's not though.
00:07:03
Curt
Ha ha ha.
00:07:07
Dylan
ah But so Brad and I were constantly lamenting to each other like, oh, we could do this better. you know We were young and dumb and naive and was just like, clearly looking back on it had no idea the business side of any of this.
00:07:21
Dylan
It's like, ah how hard could that be? Like the machining is the real hard part of this. um And so we.
00:07:25
jamie peacock
That's, yeah.
00:07:26
Curt
that's that's the perfect That's the perfect mix of like dumb, naive, I can do it better. like That's the only way you're going to go out on your own.
00:07:32
jamie peacock
Well, that's that's the the E-myth in a nutshell, is you can do it better than your boss can do it.
00:07:36
Dylan
Right. Uh huh.
00:07:38
jamie peacock
So you're doing it anyway. Why don't you do it for yourself? And yeah, that's what my situation is.
00:07:41
Dylan
Mm hmm.
00:07:43
jamie peacock
I mean, I think that's how a lot of people get into it.
00:07:46
Dylan
Yeah. And so we kind of joked and he was like, well, I've got some savings that like we could buy a machine with. um And still just like not really taking it seriously and not really thinking that it was something we were going to do. And then there was a robo drill in Phoenix, like two hours north of me.
00:08:02
Dylan
that popped up that had lost all of its parameters. And one thing I loved about my first job is because the machines were older, we did all of our own maintenance. Like we replaced spindles, we you know pulled out servo drives and sent them off to get reflowed and stuff like that. and so I had to put in parameters by hand many a time.
00:08:21
Dylan
Like I knew, i knew how to do it, unfortunately. And so i was like, Oh, we can fix that. Like I know how to fix this for sure. Like rebel drills are reliable from everything we knew at that point. I can totally fix that if we, if he has a copy of the parameters. And so we were like super stoked about it. It was only, was like five grand or something. It was super, super cheap.
00:08:41
Dylan
Uh, And we call and he was like, oh yeah, it's still here. yeah, yeah. yeah And we planned to like go up the next week and look at it and pay for it. And it sold out from under us. And like we were so crestfallen by that that we realized there was something there. like We really actually did want to start a shop.
00:08:57
Dylan
And kept searching, found our first machine, which was a 2001 Kitamura Spark Changer 1xi. So it's the vertical palette changing BT30 machine.
00:09:10
Dylan
ah Like I said, all of the machines I had run were Kitimuras, so like I knew how good their support was, all that stuff.
00:09:14
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:09:17
Dylan
And the only, not a really red flag, but unknown about it was it was a Yasnak control, and all I had worked on was Fanuc. But we decided you know it was $10,000.
00:09:30
Dylan
ten grand like It was so cheap.
Overcoming Early Business Challenges
00:09:33
Dylan
And barely run by the the place that we bought it from,
00:09:33
Curt
Yeah.
00:09:37
Dylan
you would walk in there and think it was a Haas distribution place. Like they had like 50 Haas machines and one Kitamura and one DMG.
00:09:47
Dylan
And you're like, oh okay. ah
00:09:49
jamie peacock
Yeah, so they they basically didn't like it.
00:09:50
Dylan
and And it was like, you know, yeah, yeah they nobody, i think there was one guy they said they that knew how to run it. Otherwise everybody else had no idea. Mm-hmm.
00:09:59
jamie peacock
ah On that machine, so I'm assuming because it's the spark, whatever it's meant for machining electrodes. Like that was it's
00:10:05
Dylan
No, Spark Changer was their way of saying like, it's a fast palette changer.
00:10:09
jamie peacock
Okay, because I was gonna say BT 30, like, they're not super common with the with the kits and motors.
00:10:10
Dylan
Yeah.
00:10:13
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:10:14
Dylan
No, so up until, I wanna say like early 2000s, they were mostly BT35, which is impossible to find now.
00:10:23
jamie peacock
Oh, you. Yeah.
00:10:25
Dylan
um But like all the ones that I'd run at my first job, I think eight out of the 12 or eight out of the 15 or whatever were bt thirty five
00:10:27
jamie peacock
Oh,
00:10:34
jamie peacock
wow, because i used to run Kitsamora's where I used to work, and those were BT40. Sorry, Cap40. couldn't be You couldn't still change a... You couldn't tool change a BT, but it would take a BT, you just couldn't put it in the carousel.
00:10:47
jamie peacock
Not that they really used the carousels on the one machine. Yeah, it it was one of those shops. Everything was programmed by hand on the controller or turn the handle or even better, wedge a piece of shim stock in the button to jog it sideways.
00:11:02
jamie peacock
Yeah, one of those shops, yes.
00:11:02
Dylan
Wonderful.
00:11:04
Dylan
o
00:11:04
jamie peacock
Okay, now, interesting. I just never heard of them having a BT30 spindle. That's why thought maybe it was aimed at the the electrode market.
00:11:09
Dylan
Yeah.
00:11:13
Dylan
I think it might have been aimed at medical because they had a lot of, they still have a lot of like medical facing ah models.
00:11:16
jamie peacock
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, wow.
00:11:24
Dylan
And so that thing was awesome though. Like it was 15,000 RPM. I think it weighed 12 or 14,000 pounds BT30 machine. Like twelve or fourteen thousand pounds for a bt thirty machine like
00:11:35
Curt
Nice.
00:11:36
Dylan
ah so so I left my first job. contracted for a little bit and this is while protium is going on and like still kind of a, you know, occasional night, occasional weekend kind of thing. it was more just like a place we stored bikes and motor and, you know, engines and projects and stuff.
00:11:52
Dylan
um But I ended up working at another shop that was all Haas and like, it was so frustrating to me because my BT 30 Kitamura was the same weight and more rigid than like the VF twos and VF threes I was running during my day job. Like I would try to take a cut,
00:12:09
Dylan
that I knew would work in my machine. and it was like, nope, squeals. I'm like, this is so stupid. ah um But so yeah, ah like, I guess dual tracking there.
00:12:17
Curt
So,
00:12:20
Dylan
i left my first job, did some contract programming, tried to make that a thing, didn't really have success or motivation really at that point. Like I, I, I left my first job not under my own volition. They didn't fire me. They made me a contractor.
00:12:36
Dylan
And it all kind of stemmed from butting heads with the lead manual machinist quite a bit. Like he was very much one of those people that Like he would see me on my phone and be like, oh, Dylan's not working.
00:12:49
Dylan
And it's like, no, dude, I've swept all of my machines and I have four machines running my programs. Like, what what do you want me to do?
00:12:54
jamie peacock
Yeah. Yeah.
00:12:55
Curt
Yeah.
00:12:56
Dylan
I can't take machines from the other programmers. Like, I'm done. And the the way my boss put it to me, still that's still it doesn't piss me off at him, but it pisses me off that this is the truth. is He was like, sometimes the appearance of evil is worse than the actual evil. And I'm like, cool, all right.
00:13:14
Dylan
Uh, so, so anyway, I became a contractor. Then they kind of just like tapered that off because they were very, very clearly trying to fire me without firing me. Um, and then i did that for a little while that I've worked at another shop that taught me a lot about what not to do in a shop.
00:13:31
Dylan
They were extremely frugal while doing very advanced aerospace stuff to their own detriment. um And I started there as like a night shift operator because I didn't really believe my resume.
00:13:45
Dylan
i I don't want know why, but anyway, that whole thing, i very quickly was like, I need to leave this place. Like this is not, I don't know that this place is going to last six months, let alone me be here.
00:14:00
Dylan
ah And it didn't. I think I left and they were gone two or three months later.
00:14:05
Curt
And all this while, you and Brad had, like you guys had a small commercial space?
00:14:11
Dylan
Yeah, so we bought that Kitamura without having a place for it because we had to jump on it so quickly.
00:14:12
Curt
All right, so. OK.
00:14:17
Dylan
And then we found a shop. It was a thousand square feet or so. um And thankfully, you know, it had three phase power, had what we need, super low rent. I think it was When we first got into it, it was like 700 bucks a month.
00:14:33
Dylan
And like the suites had no running water. You had a shared bathroom. There was taps outside. Like each side of the building had two taps for 15 suites that you could like run a hose to, but had three phase power, was relatively clean.
00:14:49
Dylan
It worked out. It was, and super cheap. Like it was cheap enough that like we could take one job a month and be like, okay, everything's paid for, it we're good.
00:14:59
Curt
i just I know we have a question later on talking about like business and risk and stuff like that. So yeah, you basically stacked it so that you could you could have this place, a machine, and still, if worse come to worse, you and Brad could easily float it along with your other bills and not be under...
00:15:11
Dylan
Yeah, yeah, exactly. what And at that point, like, Brad was funding most of it. Like, thank God Brad was very frugal during his teenage and, like, early adulthood because he had a bunch saved up.
Expanding Skills and Capabilities
00:15:22
Dylan
I mean, not a bunch, but, like, enough for, like, the machine and the space and, like, you know, up few pin sets from eBay and, like, a few mics from eBay and, like, you know, all that stuff just to start off. And, like, I had worked enough in inspection at my first job that I knew what we needed in terms of like, okay, if we're gonna go after this kind of work, these are like the bare minimums. Like we need you know a few indicators, we need a small granite plate, we need ah a pin set up to quarter inch and like, you know this, this and this. And like we got the absolute minimum viable product as far as I'm concerned for a ah shop inspection set.
00:15:57
Dylan
ah And yeah so we moved that thing in. Had no idea, like we powered it ourselves. We did all the like electrical ourselves. um Had no idea how to send programs to it.
00:16:10
Dylan
So I had to figure all that out. And like that actually landed on a week or two weeks where Brad was in Japan. And so I was just there like every day after work dicking around on it. Like, okay, what if change it to to this baud rate and these stop bits and this and that, like going back and forth between the Kittemurum manuals. And like, I found some FTP or serial transfer program that don't remember who it was that it was some online one that had like a free,
00:16:40
Dylan
a freebie version you could use for 30 days or something, but it was also very unguarded. So you could like go into the registry and just like change it back to zero and continue to use it.
00:16:49
jamie peacock
of fun.
00:16:50
Dylan
Like it would, it had no idea.
00:16:51
Curt
Nice.
00:16:53
Dylan
Not that I'm suggesting stealing software. I would never do that intentionally.
00:16:56
Curt
No. No.
00:16:59
Dylan
But so yeah, so I was working at that shop that was failing. i told them, i ended up getting I don't remember if they called me or I called them, but there was a, you know, a headhunter job finder person that I ended up using to find my next job. And he completely lied to me.
00:17:21
Dylan
um He, he was like, Oh yeah, they're looking for a fusion 360 programmer. They need another programmer, bla blah, blah, blah. I go into the interview and they're like, what's fusion? What are you talking about?
00:17:33
Curt
oh
00:17:33
Dylan
ah We need a, either a button pusher or we need an inspector. And i was like, Inspector it is, sounds great. And I told my other boss, I was like, hey, I'm leaving in two weeks. He was like, no, no, no, no. like we'll We'll give you whatever you want.
00:17:46
Dylan
And I was like, all right, I need more pay. I need you to buy Inventor HSM because I'm not using Mastercam anymore. And I need like this, this, and this. And he was like, okay, we'll do all of that and we'll make you head programmer and blah, blah, blah. I was like, put it in writing. If it's in writing tomorrow, I'll come in and I'll stay.
00:18:02
Dylan
Come in the next day.
00:18:02
Curt
Mm-hmm.
00:18:02
Dylan
Well, we can't quite give you what we promised and pay. Well, we can't quite do this. Well, we can't. I'm like, all right man, I'm out. Peace. um And then I would say that becoming an inspector was probably the best possible thing for making me a better machinist.
00:18:21
Dylan
Like I, it was funny because the inspector at my first job hated me. Like we we butted heads constantly. he constantly found a reason to reject my parts, my first articles.
00:18:34
Dylan
um I really did not like him. Like I would go home to my girlfriend and just be like, I hate David. Like, fuck that guy. i cannot stand him.
00:18:41
Curt
yeah
00:18:43
Dylan
And it turned out that he had come from full circle, my new job.
00:18:45
Curt
Hmm.
00:18:49
Dylan
Like he was an inspector there. And it was only after becoming an inspector that I realized like all of his gripes with me were completely right. Like I was not good at machine deburring. I was, you know missing very like small scratches. I was putting in parts with like mics and stuff. I was just like sloppy and,
00:19:08
Dylan
I mean, he was a total asshole about it, don't get me wrong, but he was right. And so like it was all of those things that I learned there that really changed the way I viewed machining and changed the way I viewed work holding and just how to make good parts, like actually good parts. Because like when I started there, the president and CEO, he was like, your job and inspection You're technically my hire, but you are our customer's employee as far as I'm concerned. he's you're that You're here to make sure that they get parts that they want and that we abide by the prints and all that stuff.
00:19:43
Dylan
And so I learned, you know, AS9100 stuff and ISO and filling out fares. And then I started programming their CMM because the two guys that knew how to do it had kind of learned on the job and didn't really take after it.
00:19:58
Dylan
And I was like, dude, this is a CNC. And like, i it's okay. I can get back on a CNC. That's not, you know, my own. And so I learned that they sent me to training for it. ah We ended up buying a scanning CMM that I fully programmed and templated and all that stuff. And around, i was there like four and a half, five years, something like that.
00:20:17
Dylan
And I think three and a half years into it, the president was like, oh you don't, you know how to program like CNCs. And I'm like, yeah, Told you guys that day one.
00:20:30
Dylan
He was like, oh, okay. I think we're going pull you into engineering. And like him and my boss in inspection got into a big fight because she was like, we can't lose Dylan. He programs our CMM. And so I ended up being both.
00:20:42
Dylan
It was just like, okay, you just do all the things then.
00:20:43
Curt
right right yeah that's easier yeah
00:20:44
Dylan
Wow. as Yeah, as usual. Yeah. um But it was great. Like I got really, really good experience learning the inspection side. i also got experience troubleshooting age old programs because that company had been around for, i don't know, 40 years or something like that.
00:21:04
Dylan
We had a lot of historical programs that were either programmed in software we didn't have anymore or just were hand programmed. And like so many of the programs used custom ground tools or like they would take an end mill shrink it into a brass extension and then put that in a holder and that would stay set up forever. And it's like, oh, that tool broke.
00:21:25
Dylan
and there's no print, there's nobody to make it. it had some weird custom ground radius on the end. Dylan, you need to find like an off the shelf solution and figure this out and like reprogram it. It's like, okay, but there's no program. Like this is a manual program that somebody hand wrote 35 years ago.
00:21:44
Dylan
And so i was like, OK, backplot in an NC viewer, figure out the tool I need to pull out, figure out what it's actually doing, look at the print, figure out where the work coordinate is, and then like actually program it in.
00:21:44
Curt
Oh.
00:21:53
Dylan
We were using HSM ah and in SolidWorks. so that was like ah it was fun. It was a great challenge because every day it was just like, OK, something's breaking. Something is going wrong. Dylan, you need to fix it.
00:22:07
Dylan
u ah and But when I first hired into engineering, like we had a meeting with the engineering manager and my inspection manager and stuff, I told them, I was like, hey, I have my own shop. I'm not doing the same kind of work at all. i'm not doing aerospace at all.
00:22:23
Dylan
But I will be leaving in some undetermined amount of time for my own shop, like once I feel like it can support me. And they did not believe me at all. I could i could tell. Like they were just like, uh-huh, okay, kid, you know, whatever.
00:22:37
Dylan
And then I think it was like two years later, i was like, hey guys, I need to leave. like And I gave them six months. I gave them ample time um and regretted that very much. So but yeah it and you know so then we were doing to make the leap and i did i left november twenty twenty one so actually yeah four years ago now
Full-time at Proteum and Equipment Investments
00:23:03
jamie peacock
Nice. Yeah.
00:23:03
Curt
Nice.
00:23:04
Curt
Well, congratulations. Yeah.
00:23:05
Dylan
thanks Yeah, and then, yeah, since then, it's just been growing and growing and growing. We bought, like, one of my non-negotiables for going full-time was buying a new machine with support, because, like, we had had our Kitamura go down, and we had to, like, send off boards to get We sent off the main board to get ah fixed because we didn't know what was wrong with it.
00:23:26
Dylan
Paid $800, $900 to get it fixed. It worked for like two more months and then took a crap again. And then we ended up having to buy a brand new board from Yaskawa who owns Yaznak now and the price to fix any board is half the cost of a new one from them.
00:23:46
Dylan
Like getting a replacement, like that you send in your board to get fixed and they just send you a new one basically.
00:23:46
Curt
Right, right, right
00:23:52
Dylan
And then use yours as as a core to build another one.
00:23:52
Curt
right right
00:23:55
Dylan
And it was stuff like that that i was like, there's no way I can be paying myself and like worried about this if I am constantly worried that our machine is going to go down too. And so, yeah, we bought that Brother Speedio. In the middle there, we had bought like another used Kitamura that we took apart. It was like absolutely disgusting.
00:24:17
Dylan
We were going to rebuild it, and then we took it all apart, cleaned some of it, and we're like, this is not what we need to be doing. And then we bought a used Brother TC-S2A, and that was our first Brother experience, and that thing was fantastic.
00:24:31
Dylan
I mean, it had almost no look ahead, but like in terms of holding tolerance and being reliable, it was, what, 14 years old at that point when we bought it, and it was still holding good tolerance and running great and still crazy fast.
00:24:35
Curt
thank you
00:24:46
Dylan
um
00:24:48
jamie peacock
So on that on that machine, um that was running the brother controller.
00:24:49
Dylan
and the Yeah, go for it.
00:24:54
jamie peacock
That was one of the like, their first brother controllers. Okay, so it was meant to be a drill tap center, where you don't need a huge look ahead.
00:24:57
Dylan
Yeah, it's.
00:25:00
Dylan
Yes.
00:25:02
jamie peacock
Yeah, okay.
00:25:03
Dylan
Exactly.
00:25:03
jamie peacock
I was just curious about those, that era machine like, because I mean, they spun their own controller, because I think it was because for Nook wouldn't supply them, because they were becoming a competitor.
00:25:04
Dylan
Like we had to buy. Yeah.
00:25:15
Dylan
I don't know the whole provenance there of like how, why they did all that stuff. So we had the A0. They technically had one before the A0 that was like truly just conversational. Like you could do basically nothing with it.
00:25:28
Dylan
And then for the RTCS2A to be usable, we ended up having to buy the last revision of the control board. so like ours was an early revision. I think there was six or seven revisions of that board.
00:25:41
Dylan
We bought the last one and then they had to come in and install it because otherwise you had no DNC capabilities at all and no helical interpolation abilities at all.
00:25:50
jamie peacock
Ah, fun.
00:25:51
Dylan
um And then that turned out to be a nightmare because like we output all the parameters and stuff and then lo and behold there's like no way to load them back on. like it You'd send the same file back with DNC and it just like wouldn't read it. It's like okay.
00:26:05
Dylan
Hand putting in all the parameters again. Going back to my roots. like This is great. And like the Yamazin guys were great. they like they so they They were there till eight or nine at night with me. like Hand putting back in parameters and making sure that everything worked.
00:26:18
Dylan
um They were both really good friends. Like they had, you know, been good to us. And yeah, so that one, think we, I can't remember. I think we got the new speedio first.
00:26:29
Dylan
Then we got the TCS to a, cause we needed a third spindle. And by that point we were barely using the kid, Amara. ah we're using the two brothers way more than the Kitamura for sure.
Business Growth During COVID-19
00:26:42
Dylan
And then, so we tried selling Kitamura and that was a whole weird story too, where like we had it on Craigslist, nobody was really biting, And then I get a call out of the blue from some guy who's like, hey, I sold your machine.
00:26:56
Dylan
was like, excuse me? And this company, they're in Florida, and they like find Craigslist ads and people who are like trying to sell machines, and then they just like steal your pictures and your description and put it on their website and sold it for us.
00:27:14
Curt
Nice.
00:27:16
jamie peacock
Fun.
00:27:16
Dylan
like I was like, I don't believe that you're real, but like, here's my bank information. Wire me the money. And if it's real, come take the machine. Sure.
00:27:24
jamie peacock
Come fetch it, yeah.
00:27:25
Dylan
And like, so we bought that machine for 10 grand and we sold that machine for 10 grand. And I'm sure he marked it up to probably 12 15. But like we rented that Kitamura for whatever it was, four or five years for a few grand in repair costs.
00:27:40
Curt
And at this point, what was like what was your work entailing?
00:27:40
Dylan
Um,
00:27:43
Curt
if you I mean, if you can talk much about it, was it like kind of all over the map? Or was it were you already trying to like find what you were good at? Or just take what you can get? Yeah.
00:27:52
Dylan
We had, at that point, we we still did a fair bit of local stuff. Like, so we when we started the company with just the Kitamura, our biggest customer was a local company who does, i don't even know if they do it anymore, but they did airplane interiors. They had a bunch of press brakes and laser cutters, and they would cut out paneling and bend it and put in all the tight tolerance features in their mills.
00:28:13
Dylan
And so, like, they would just give us their fixtures, give us the blanks, and we would put in, you know, counterbores that were plus or minus two, um weird features, engrave them, stuff like that. And like, it was great because A, they would just tell us what they going to pay us. They would like say, hey, do you want to make a hundred of these for this much money? i was like, sure. Okay, we'll do it.
00:28:34
Dylan
And it was always very tight turnaround. Like they'd be like, hey, it's Thursday afternoon. You want to come pick them up and have it to us Monday morning? It's like, but yeah, I'm working a long weekend. Sure. Got this. No problem. ah And then we kind of graduated. Like i Brad and I put out like a Facebook post that was just like, hey, we started a shop. if you guys have any work and like because i had gone to engineering school i had enough friends that like were working in places now that send us work and yada yada yada and then by the time we were selling the kitamura we had picked up a few other bigger customers that weren't local just through family friends and word of mouth and we're kind of starting to steer ourselves towards the the high precision quick turnaround prototypes that we do now but it was definitely not all of our work um it was
00:29:20
Dylan
we had no conviction that like that was the way that we were going for sure.
00:29:24
Curt
Interesting. Yeah, that's cool.
00:29:26
Dylan
Yeah. um So yeah, and I think that that's this around the time that I filmed, it's on the Practical Machinist YouTube channel, like there's a shop tour video.
00:29:40
Dylan
I think this is that is like right around this time.
00:29:41
Curt
Yeah.
00:29:43
Dylan
Like I think we had one Speedio, the Kitamura and the brother TC. And so we sold the Kitamura and then COVID hit, I think.
00:29:56
Dylan
And we were down for like a week and then everybody came back up and was just like, okay, we need parts more than ever now. And it just got super, super busy. And that was when we bought the F600 because that was a demo machine that was sitting for the longest time. And we got a great, great deal on it. And we really needed another spindle.
00:30:16
Dylan
ah
00:30:16
Curt
And is is this when Brad already came on full-time as well, or was he still doing part-time, new part-time day job?
00:30:25
Dylan
think so. I went full time November, 2021. think we bought the
00:30:31
Dylan
think we bought the f six hundred that year as well in November. And then he came on full time the following June or July.
00:30:45
Curt
OK.
00:30:45
Dylan
And that was a that was a tough thing because like I was scared enough having to pay myself and support the business. And I was there every day and like I was going through some real motivation issues like it was very strange being there alone every day, not having anybody to hold me to a schedule.
00:31:09
Dylan
I was you know rocking up around 10 to 12 every day and it was like, well, some days I'll work till two and some days I'll work till nine and no schedule, no nothing. ah So anyway, all of that was going on. i was trying to find myself as an entrepreneur, really. And Brad was like, dude, I don't want to work here anymore. You need to figure this out. Like, we need to figure this out so that I can go full time. was like, okay, like well, we'll do this. and I kind of kept pushing back and pushing back, but also knowing that it was not fair of me to be like, no, no, no, no. I can quit my job, but you can't quit your job.
00:31:44
Curt
Totally.
00:31:44
Dylan
Um, and so he came on it was very scary for sure.
00:31:45
Curt
Yeah.
00:31:49
Dylan
um he went through his, his own thing of like trying to figure out what that feels like being self employed and not having anybody to hold you to a schedule.
00:32:00
Dylan
Uh, but it all worked out. Like we, we kept getting busier and busier, making more parts, uh, really starting to bang into the limits of our thousand square feet at that point.
00:32:11
Dylan
Um,
00:32:12
Curt
Right.
00:32:13
Dylan
Then we sold, yeah, he came 2022. We
00:32:19
Dylan
we sold the TC that year, and then towards the end of the year, because IMTS was September of that year, i think we bought our S700X2 in August of that year, because we were just so busy. We needed a third spindle with probing and tool setting all that stuff.
00:32:37
Dylan
And...
00:32:37
Curt
Mm-hmm.
00:32:38
Dylan
Yeah, that was it was around that year, like was kind of coming to a head like we knew we needed to start looking for a space. This was getting super cramped. We had installed a mini split in that shop because there was just a swamp cooler that was dumping humidity on everything and rusting our tool holders and it was like this sucks um the mini split though would only had it it was a two ton i think and only i had enough juice to really lower the the temperature 10 degrees so like when it's 90 out that's great but when it's 110 out it's like it's still 100 degrees inside the shop um and it's miserable
00:33:16
Curt
Well, I'd you're Arizona. So like this is like I can't imagine running a machine in a shop without AC in your climate. Like that would be ragged.
00:33:27
Dylan
We get like two or three weeks here where like, a ah ah what's it called? Not an AC unit, but I just said it.
00:33:36
jamie peacock
Swamp cooler. Yeah.
00:33:36
Curt
Oh, like a mini split?
00:33:37
Curt
Swamp cooler?
00:33:38
Dylan
A swamp cooler, thank you. A swamp cooler works incredibly well for like a month here until the monsoons start. But like when it's dry, it i mean, it would get too cold in the shop with the swamp cooler.
00:33:49
Dylan
Like it would get into the 60s.
00:33:49
Curt
Oh,
00:33:52
Dylan
um But then, yeah, it would start monsooning and it's like, oh, OK, now it's just pumping humidity.
00:33:53
Curt
ah wow
00:33:57
Dylan
Like it's 90 degree humidity into the shop. Awesome. I remember at one point too, like they didn't tell us and they were doing work on all of the swamp coolers in the shop or in the entire building. Like there was 15 suites or something like that or 20 suites.
00:34:14
Dylan
And we come in the next day and like it had just dumped five gallons of gross swamp cooler water all over like a tool tower that had a bunch of tools in it, but like a vice.
00:34:27
Dylan
It was like, cool. Okay. So all of this is rusted now.
00:34:28
Curt
Oh.
00:34:30
Dylan
And like, we had to try to save what we could and it yeah, we knew it just was untenable. And so like we, bought the mini split, installed that. We covered the entire swamp cooler outlet with like um reflective insulation so that it would hopefully keep the cold air in. Well, cold you know, not quite cold, but colder air in.
00:34:52
Dylan
ah But yeah, that was kind of end of 2022, beginning of 23 is when we started looking for a new shop. And it took the entire year to find a place that was good. Because like a non-negotiable was like, OK, AC everywhere. we We need AC. And it was shocking how many landlords were resistant to that. like We were looking at places and we're like, we will pay for it. like We will put in an AC unit ourselves.
00:35:19
Dylan
Nah, we don't want to do that. What are you talking about?
00:35:23
Curt
Right, yeah.
00:35:23
Dylan
um
00:35:23
Curt
Why?
00:35:24
Dylan
It was insane. And it wasn't until like, thank God Justin was like, oh, I've got a friend of a friend that's in real estate in Tucson. Turns out he's like VP of one of the commercial real estate companies in town and became our personal realtor because of Justin.
Advancements with Hermle Machine
00:35:41
Dylan
And within two or three weeks of of meeting him, he was like, okay, let's go look at this place.
00:35:41
Curt
Awesome.
00:35:46
Dylan
Let's go look at this place. All of them had AC. All of them were like acceptable. The third place I think we went and saw with him was where I am now. And it was perfect. Like it was a little more space than we thought we needed, but we were like, all right, it's got AC, it's got all the power, but enough power at least, let's pull the trigger.
00:36:06
Dylan
And then we moved in here beginning of 2024. And it's been just been kind of blowing up since then.
00:36:11
Curt
Nice. doubt.
00:36:15
Dylan
Like, it's just been crazy. We bought the Hermal at the same time because, so as we were like trying to decide to move out, one of my customers, I had like no quoted stuff towards the end of 2023.
00:36:17
Curt
don
00:36:19
Curt
yeah
00:36:28
Dylan
And one of my customers was like, you need to stop saying no to me. What can we do to make that change? Like, how can we incentivize you to, to to you know, find more capacity for us? And so like we worked out a deal where they dropped their payment terms quite a bit and like didn't promise. Like there was no contract of more work, but they were like, we have so much more work that we want to give you. Like you're the one who's saying no. Like we we want to give you more work.
00:36:56
Dylan
And I hadn't want like i knew at that point that we wanted to buy a Hermla, but I was like dead set. I'm like, no, no, I want a custom order one that's automation prepped and has the tool tower and like, you know, blah, blah, blah. ah A friend locally who had bought one kind of at my recommendation for a job ended up.
00:37:18
Dylan
needing to get out of it basically and so like my customer said that he was still having that machine for sale everything lined up and we're like all right we're gonna buy your machine he gave us a great price on it and so like that thing moved into the new shop when we moved into the new shop and just kind of started off this whole journey down five axis as well
00:37:37
Curt
why ah Why Hermla? What set you onto them so hard? as i mean, because they're they're a rather spendy machine. They're a beautiful machine.
00:37:45
Dylan
Yeah, i so a friend of mine ah says like ah any five-axis machine is a ah liability.
00:37:45
Curt
But... ah
00:37:55
Dylan
And like when he said that initially, I didn't really understand what he meant. And now that I have one and you know a second one on the way, it's because like... you get like a new better hammer. And so like now everything is the new better hammer. You don't want to use the old hammer.
00:38:08
Dylan
And like everything's just so much easier that like it becomes a liability because it's now like the linchpin of your business. um And i knew I didn't want FANUC. Like everybody I had talked to had said just how good Heidenheim and Siemens are for 5-axis.
00:38:24
Dylan
ah We thought about Micron for a little bit, but they are known for just having such horrible service in the States. Like i the the scuttlebutt at least is that like they went through and fired most of their support staff during COVID for who knows why, like just the dumbest of reasons.
00:38:43
Dylan
um There's just not that many options really with like Heidenhain. I knew I wanted HSK because it's just, I think a superior interface now, like especially now that I've used it for a long time, but I had always heard how much better it is than BT and like no pull studs is really nice. i don't have to worry about another wear item. like ah And it's got a way more clamping force, us the higher RPM you spend, to all that stuff.
00:39:05
Curt
Yeah, sure. Hmm.
00:39:11
Dylan
It's automatically dual contact, ya yada, yada, yada. you start adding those boxes and it's like, there's only a couple of machines that you can really buy in that price bracket. DMG, again, I'd heard kind of horror stories about their support. And this was like right maybe a couple of years after they had gone direct, which had only hurt their support network even more.
00:39:32
Dylan
ah And then we went to Hermla, they invited us out to the open house 2023 as well. and like seeing them build Hermlas on Hermlas. Like the only machines they have in their their factory that are not Hermlas are ones that are bigger than anything they make.
00:39:50
Dylan
And it's like, okay, that's, I mean, that's a good a good thing to go by.
00:39:52
Curt
Yeah.
00:39:55
Dylan
Like if you if you trust your machines,
00:39:55
jamie peacock
Yeah, that instills a lot of confidence.
00:39:59
Dylan
Right, right. ah And like, I just really liked, I think like the first thing that ever turned us on to him was Saunders's tour of Hermla. And like watching that, I was like, these are sick, but like, there's no way in hell I'll ever be able to afford one. Like, there's no way we'll end up with one of these.
00:40:15
Dylan
And then seeing them in person, seeing the the support behind them and how they they kind of think about all the machine design. i just, we kind of fell in love and we're like, all right, if we can get one, this is what we want to get. And then it all just lined up.
00:40:28
Dylan
And like the, We got it for such a good deal that like there's almost nothing else that I could have bought for around the same price that would have been anywhere near the performance.
00:40:40
Curt
Right. Like you said, you're you're picking from a small handful if you want. Heidenheim, five axis, good.
00:40:44
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:40:45
Curt
Yeah, yeah.
00:40:46
Dylan
Yeah, yeah.
00:40:46
jamie peacock
The good parts. Yeah, that was like something I was thinking about today. It's like you can get into five axes relatively cheaply, but what is your what is your volumetric accuracy going to be when you want to get like really accurate? Your choices are somewhat limited to like three or four brands that you know will be kinematically accurate over time.
00:41:08
Dylan
Yeah. Yeah. It just, they work so well.
00:41:10
jamie peacock
So.
00:41:12
Dylan
I'm like, now that I've had one for over a year, year and a half or whatever, it's everything I had hoped it would be like the tool management, like the, it's, it's funny, the things that I didn't think about or didn't know about that have become such a instrumental part of our workflow, like the tool management of Heidenhine is like so good.
00:41:32
Dylan
And then on top of it, like the, modifications that Hermla has made to the hide and hide and control for tool management. I mean, know I've talked about it before. Like i the only tools I've ever had to manually tell it to touch off our T slot cutters. And it's because the laser needs a different set of parameters, but like,
00:41:51
Dylan
Everything else, I load it in the back of the machine. There's a checkbox in the tool table that says tool is measured. If that's unchecked and it goes into the machining volume, it goes and measures the tool. And it's like, cool.
00:42:02
Curt
That's awesome.
00:42:02
jamie peacock
That's, yeah.
00:42:03
Dylan
So like, I just never worry about, like, there's the things like that that on other machines, like on our brothers, on old FANUC machines that I was like, oh, did I set that tool?
00:42:03
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:42:10
Dylan
I don't have to think about that anymore. It's like, no, it just is. It is or it isn't. Like, there is just, there's there's no anything else. Yeah. And yeah, the the tool center point control, all that stuff is just so well baked into it that like it's just become so, so, like so many of things are so easy and I go work on the brothers and i'm like, oh, I can't load tools while I'm running. Like that's another thing that like, because of the way the Herm was built, I load all the tools from the back.
00:42:36
Dylan
So very often if it's a part that has maybe five of our standard tools and then, five or six tools that aren't built yet, I'll program it all, start it running, and like make sure that I have the tools built by the time it gets to those tools.
00:42:49
Dylan
and like I can load them in the back as it's running, and it doesn't care, and then it sets the tools and continues running. and It's like, cool, this is awesome.
00:42:56
Curt
That's so
00:42:57
jamie peacock
Yeah, I tried to do that yesterday and ended up locking up my tool changer on the LK.
00:43:03
Dylan
No, no. No.
00:43:04
jamie peacock
Yeah, I realized that I needed a drill. It was set up, touched off, but wasn't in the machine. I'm like, oh, shit, it's the next tool. So I paused the program, jammed it out of a tool out of the carousel, loaded it in loaded into the tool table, and then it went to call the tool, but it had already loaded that tool number.
00:43:22
jamie peacock
And it wasn't in the carousel. So then yeah, it went to tool one and then the yeah, in a bit of a tissue, ended up having to power cycle then I got it to come right.
00:43:28
Dylan
Uh-huh.
00:43:34
jamie peacock
Yeah, that that being able to load tools while the machine's running would be ah super useful.
00:43:35
Dylan
Yeah.
00:43:35
Curt
Totally.
00:43:39
Dylan
Yeah. And it's one of those things that like they told us in training and they told us, you know, on the tour and stuff that you could do it. I was like, I don't know what that, why do I care? And then now that I use it, it's like, why would I ever not want this?
00:43:51
Dylan
Like, this is amazing.
00:43:52
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:43:53
Dylan
And like I can check tools while it's running too. like you When you go to the tool table and you highlight a tool, you can like either load the tool if it's not in there, unload it, or there's just like a check tool button where it like brings it there, it opens the door, you can check it real quick, but it expects you to put it back in.
00:44:09
Dylan
Otherwise, it'll throw an alarm and be like, hey, tool table's messed up, dude.
00:44:09
jamie peacock
Yeah. Okay. that's
00:44:13
Dylan
You you screwed something up. um But it's great because like very often... if I'm working in stainless and i'm like, oh, is that ball mill still looking good? i can go check on it. Um, granted, like I can check a lot of that stuff with the laser too. Like it, it will, on like my roughers and stuff, I can tell it like, oh, it's a seven flute rougher and it will not only check that the tool is still there, but it'll spin and check for every flute and be like, oh, you're missing one out of the the seven.
00:44:40
jamie peacock
Well, thanks.
00:44:40
Dylan
Um, and,
00:44:41
jamie peacock
Now I want a laser tool setter.
00:44:41
Curt
awesome.
00:44:44
Dylan
I mean, I think that they've talked about it a lot of podcasts. There are serious, not drawbacks, but like everything needs to be impeccably clean when you set it.
00:44:54
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:44:55
Dylan
Otherwise, you start having like you're like, oh, I picked up a piece of dust or, ah you know, dried coolant. And now my tools two thousand too long. And like you have to worry about that with a touch setter because it just plows through the coolant like.
00:45:02
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:45:05
jamie peacock
Yeah, just mushes it out the way.
00:45:07
Dylan
Yeah, so there's there's a lot of, not drawbacks, but just like more work that goes into both Heidenhain's tool table and a laser tool setter where like I have so many more parameters now that I have to enter.
00:45:12
jamie peacock
Yeah, to using a laser. Yeah. Yes.
00:45:18
Dylan
Like on the brothers, I just load tool 10 and it it is what it is. the Heidenheim, it's like, no, no, I need to give it a name. I need to give it a length. I need to give it an approximate radius. I need to tell it if I want to set the length and the radius or just the length. I need to give it like the offsets from center to check the length and the offsets from the tip to check the radius. I need to tell it how many flutes it has. If I want it to check that, I need to give it like ah tolerances for the break check if I want it to
Customer Collaboration and Prototyping
00:45:46
Dylan
check that. So that there might be 20 20 boxes that I need to fill in when I'm loading a tool now.
00:45:49
jamie peacock
yeah cuz yeah
00:45:51
Dylan
And like I remote in from my programming computer and do all that prior. I'm i'm not doing it that at the control, but it's still a lot more work for sure.
00:46:00
jamie peacock
A lot of things, yeah. Because the Siemens requires quite a few things if you're adding a tool to your tool table.
00:46:01
Dylan
Yeah.
00:46:05
jamie peacock
It wants the name, the offset, the diameter, the rough gauge length, what it is generally, are not really necessary, but with taps it is actually necessary before it' will go and do a touch off.
00:46:16
jamie peacock
And then my, I got lazy, my tool break detect just has like a standard 4th hour deviation or 8th hour deviation. If it's bigger or smaller than that, you need to stop. I was actually running that today because I exploded an endmill last night in brass.
00:46:31
jamie peacock
I broke an endmill in brass of all things. Like, yeah.
00:46:31
Dylan
Oh no.
00:46:35
Dylan
How? What happened?
00:46:36
jamie peacock
A bit of chatter. And it it's a 40mm hard bar that's six wide, standing vertically. So it was starting the end off and didn't sound healthy and then didn't sound at all.
00:46:43
Dylan
Oh.
00:46:48
jamie peacock
Luckily, I was standing there because I didn't have tool brake detect on the program. So then I went and slowed it down a bit, added tool brake detect, and ran the rest of the parts.
00:46:57
Dylan
I blew up two stainless ruffers yesterday or Thursday with a ah similar rib of death that Fusion programmed for me that was wonderful.
00:46:57
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:47:07
Curt
Mm-hmm.
00:47:10
Dylan
I thought it was, the the frustrating part is that it broke, it was a worn one, I was like, oh, maybe it was just worn. So I put a new one in and then it broke, I guess it broke three, because it broke again. and I was like, oh, it must be when it rotates to A90, because it gets very thin there. and so like i just eliminated that tool path and had a smaller tool do that broke again and then finally i was like i should probably look at the tool path and then i looked i'm like oh yeah that's uh 400 thou tall rib of death in 316 that it's trying to take with a six mil cutter and like i because they would just blow off like three out of the six teeth and i'm like what is going on this is bizarre and yeah it was just me being stupid and trying to rush through it so
00:47:44
Curt
Right.
00:47:47
jamie peacock
Well, that job, I put another tool in, an old tool, because it's brass. I didn't want a waste to waste a brand new one. And it became it was a three flute, became a two flute. like I knocked off another tooth.
00:47:58
jamie peacock
It finished the job. I machine another 200 parts like that out 1,000.
00:48:00
Dylan
ah
00:48:04
jamie peacock
Stupid things like that happen where it's like... It's been fine up until like 800 parts and then the thing dies and now it's giving me endless shit.
00:48:13
jamie peacock
But yeah, that job is now finished. Yay.
00:48:13
Dylan
Yeah. Awesome.
00:48:16
Dylan
awesome
00:48:16
jamie peacock
a job like that That's, yeah, fun times. So the hard-man controller, other than the tool table being a lot more needy, what is your what are your thoughts on that controller?
00:48:27
Dylan
It's fantastic. I really, it handles so many things so well. Like there's a few things that it doesn't handle well that I'm still surprised about. Like I've talked about ah it not handling tool compensation and going into like a same size radius very well.
00:48:44
Dylan
And like now we all have a workaround for that.
00:48:45
jamie peacock
Okay.
00:48:46
Dylan
But like if I'm trying to drive a six mil tool into a three mil corner with tool compensation on, it will just air out every time. um but you can give every tool call a DR and a DL value. So you can have offsets that are just for that time you call the tool.
00:49:05
Dylan
And so Ledger told me that the way that he gets around it, and now I use it, and it's fantastic, is that all of my tool calls now just have a negative DR value equal to the radius of the tool.
00:49:18
Dylan
So as far as the control is concerned, it's a zero diameter tool unless I have where in there. So I can run where instead of in controller and it never gives me the tool radius alarm because I'm never interpolating a you know three tenths circle or anything like that.
00:49:33
jamie peacock
Yeah. Okay, that's a very interesting workaround.
00:49:35
Curt
Right.
00:49:37
jamie peacock
Because I was chatting to, and they're saying how this was this to a podcast?
00:49:37
Dylan
Yeah.
00:49:41
jamie peacock
they thinking yeah How do you get around people designing stupid corner like square corners and things? I'm like, Most of my customers that I deal with on a regular basis, either I'm designing their parts or they've been told, this is the corner radius, 2.1 millimeter, 3.2 millimeter.
00:49:56
jamie peacock
Put a corner radius or the price goes through the roof. And a lot of the guys, they've come to visit and they now understand why I'm specifying that because those are the tools that are in the machine. Like, if you can make it that I don't have to struggle, your price goes down.
00:50:09
jamie peacock
Like, it's quite...
00:50:13
Curt
Nope.
00:50:14
jamie peacock
Yeah, it's quite nice when the people actually pay attention to that kind of stuff. Because I assume you get to see a lot of funny business with doing prototype work.
00:50:19
Dylan
Yeah. Yeah. Funny business. People just not under... like we We'll get corner radiuses, but like we do a lot of small parts.
00:50:30
Dylan
And like right now, I'm running a 0.4 millimeter ball in stainless because there's a bunch of tiny radii.
00:50:30
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:50:38
Dylan
i ran a 0.2 millimeter ball in stainless last week because of dumb parts. of And like sometimes they'll change it, and sometimes they're like...
00:50:48
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:50:49
Dylan
Nah, it just needs to be like that. It's like, okay, it's going to cost like this then. and they're like, yep, sounds good.
00:50:54
jamie peacock
Yeah. Yeah, well, dumb dumb choices cost money. It's not your problem. I've got yeah I've got a lot of a lot of the guys I deal with on a regular basis. Like I've mentioned Roger on the podcast a couple times. He's an industrial designer.
00:51:08
jamie peacock
He designs the molds, the molds get sent to me, I machine them, I'm doing like the tough more work I do is via him through his customer. But he knows the design constraints. I'm actually busy with a set of tilting mechanisms for a vertical takeoff drone that we designed.
00:51:23
Dylan
Oh, cool.
00:51:24
jamie peacock
I helped him refine the design probably six months ago and made samples. They've now just put their first production order of a whole five units. But I started running them like, oh, this is great. I've run these. It's all programmed. It's just, how did I set it up? Set it up again and run it. It's like, yes, repeat work.
00:51:40
jamie peacock
yeah, I'm busy running through like, I've got 200 pieces of aluminium that arrived on Thursday that I need to run through this weekend.
00:51:47
Dylan
Nice.
00:51:47
jamie peacock
Yeah, it's going to a ah busy one on the LK.
00:51:49
Dylan
That's awesome.
00:51:51
jamie peacock
But yeah, the...
00:51:51
Dylan
That's killer.
00:51:52
jamie peacock
Yeah, the ah well, while we wait for Kurt, because he seems to have run away, um we have got a whole bunch of questions, but I'm going to button first with my question that I just added.
00:52:03
Dylan
Sure.
00:52:03
jamie peacock
How long do you see a machine being in
Maintaining and Upgrading Technology
00:52:05
jamie peacock
your shop? It's something that's been on my mind recently. Like was saying to Danica, currently the LK is a six-year-old machine. In the next five years, it's not going to be my primary machine any anymore, or it's going to be gone.
00:52:19
jamie peacock
In the reality, if I'm, if I am successful, I'm not going to have a 20 year old. Well, I'll say that I've got a 30 year old machine in my workshop, but not the point.
00:52:28
jamie peacock
Uh, ideally you would phase your machines up while they still have decent amount of value to them.
00:52:28
Dylan
yeah
00:52:33
jamie peacock
What are your thoughts on that?
00:52:33
Dylan
Yeah.
00:52:36
Dylan
I think for us, so we just went kind of through this where we were going to sell one of our S700s and then decided not to. it was like, oh, why are we going to lose capacity?
00:52:44
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:52:46
Dylan
um So within that constraint of like not losing capacity, probably every five to eight years, we'll probably cycle stuff out as long as you know business is good and we need to make capital purchases.
00:52:49
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:52:57
jamie peacock
Okay. Yeah. Because it's something I was thinking about in within context regarding you guys having just bought the HS flex. What do you reckon your your ownership timeline on that is going to be?
00:53:12
Dylan
Maybe 10 years on something like that.
00:53:13
jamie peacock
that's yeah that's a bigger a bigger thing i'd expect you say somewhere around 10 years before you phase it out for a replacement like yeah
00:53:17
Dylan
Yeah. It just depends, too, on... Yeah, I think that like the reasons we'd phase things out is either gaining more capacity. So like our current Hrmbla will likely trade out in the next you know four or five years for another flex or something like that.
00:53:36
Dylan
But we'd either gain more capacity or more technology. like I don't wanna be one of those shops that's like, no, I don't need probes. And you're like, but you you do much better work with them.
00:53:45
jamie peacock
Yeah, 100%. upset
00:53:47
Curt
Thank you.
00:53:49
Dylan
like Why would you not want them? And so if there's ever any kind of incremental steps like that that I want to take advantage of that we can't retrofit to our current machines, that's like an instant like, OK, those machines are on the chopping block now. like We need that new capability to be better.
00:54:04
jamie peacock
Well, yeah, that that's what I was saying to Danica. It's basically a case of, cool, I've got a really good three axis, but I want to go five axis. Not because we currently have the work that requires it, but, well, we do, but I would like to have that capability and niche in on that because I know there's not a lot of guys around here with that capability because a lot of guys did really well in the 80s and 90s, bought equipment, didn't replace it, and now they're sitting with stuff that they can't actually compete with.
00:54:12
Dylan
Right.
00:54:31
jamie peacock
like tool parts have come a long way, your 6000 RPM spindle is not going to cut it anymore.
00:54:37
Dylan
Right, exactly. And and like it could even just be software stuff. like That shop that I worked at that I knew was not going to last long, like I had to tell them to turn on the high-speed machining stuff on their Haas machines. And they were like fairly new ones. But like we were running these...
00:54:54
Dylan
thought you know missile bodies i guess they were and they were surfacing the entire thing and it was going slow as molasses and i'm like guys just you should buy this option they're like no no we we're not gonna spend the 2400 bucks i'm like okay let's turn on the 30 day trial then and you'll see how much you so you save and they're like oh my god we're saving 45 minutes apart i'm like yeah uh-huh i think it's worth 2400 bucks don't you like
00:55:02
jamie peacock
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
00:55:16
jamie peacock
exactly no
00:55:20
jamie peacock
Well, yeah that the yeah other reason that's been like top of mind is having just gotten rid of Bertha and replaced it with the good way.
00:55:20
Curt
Welcome to the future.
00:55:21
Curt
yeah
00:55:27
jamie peacock
Yeah, the good way makes parts like crazy. Cut a minute and a half off a three and and I literally don't have to measure the parts. They're all coming off identical. Start in the morning, end the evening, they're the same.
00:55:41
jamie peacock
Like well within the de defined tolerance.
00:55:41
Dylan
That's awesome.
00:55:42
jamie peacock
So it's like, yes, I sold my bigger lathe and got a slightly smaller lathe, but the slightly smaller lathe is way more capable. And that's it. Moving better capability, not necessarily newer machine, but better capability and better technologies is was my thought behind it.
00:55:58
jamie peacock
It's something I'd be interested to hear Kurt's take on that. how long How long do you see machines being in your shop, Kurt?
00:56:07
Curt
uh uh i mean kind of the same question but at the same time i'm i'm making a product so and my products will advance like i have a new product coming out um right quick but i think my main thing is going to be capacity so like once i saturate the machine then it's move along to something that can take on the capacity and improve upon it or double it up um like
00:56:30
jamie peacock
Yeah. Yeah.
00:56:31
Curt
Right now i'm looking to replace my hard inch because it's swamped. And obviously it's the same situation that you were in when you jumped off with the Kinomura is like, if it goes down, like I'm hosed, like the only way, like I got that on a good deal, but I invested a ton of money to make it work. And like the only thing that I'm going to be able to buy to compete with that is going to cost significantly more. So I'm like, I'm budgeting for that so that I can have that, but it's, it's kind of scary to have all my eggs in that basket right now.
00:56:55
Curt
Um, But yeah, same, don't know. Kind of same deal, same deal. Like I'll run it until, I mean, I'm i'm never going to sell it until I need the room for it. um But yeah, capacity is going be my main thing, my main bottleneck I'm running into and power and space because I'm here and like there's a lot of complexity with not having a lot of that either which way.
00:57:13
Curt
But at the same time, I can kind of schedule my growth because customers aren't, I mean, customers are approaching me, but it's for a single product. So it's a little bit, a little bit different.
00:57:22
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:57:23
Dylan
Right.
00:57:24
Curt
Like that's, I was talking with you on, on your podcast, Dylan, about like with your HS flex coming in, you basically have no idea what parts are, I mean, you have a ah vague idea of what part sizes are going to go on it, but you don't know the part that's going onto it.
00:57:36
Curt
Like you can't start making fixtures and palettes and like in a situation where like, if I need to do that, of course I can, but it's like your world freaks me out.
00:57:37
Dylan
Yeah.
00:57:43
Curt
But I mean, it's, it's all what you're experiencing. Right. So it's, it's interesting.
00:57:48
Dylan
Yeah, no, for sure. And I think that like, I'm so averse to sitting on my laurels with machines, at least are like sitting on old machines, because I've worked in so many shops that have old machines that they've kept long past their prime that like I have serious anxiety seeing that stuff now because like I see how much it hurts stuff like we at every shop I've worked in.
00:58:09
Curt
Yeah.
00:58:13
Dylan
has had machines that are so long past their prime that like they just needed to be put out to pasture long ago, you know, sold to either a home shopper or put into the scrap bin. Cause they are just like, you know, they're they're either investing so much trying to keep the controls running or they're creating a bunch of scrap when the machine does something wonky. Like i remember my first job, we had a Kitamura where if you, most of them, if you hit reset,
00:58:40
Dylan
you could start another program and it would be totally fine. One of them, and we never knew why, we couldn't find a parameter that linked to this.
00:58:43
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:58:46
Dylan
If you hit reset and didn't home the machine afterwards, it thought that where you stopped the program was now g fifty three
00:58:54
jamie peacock
Oh, wow.
00:58:54
Curt
Oh
00:58:55
Dylan
And and on to make it more fun is it would do it intermittently.
00:58:55
Curt
Oh no!
00:58:55
jamie peacock
That's horrible.
00:59:00
Dylan
It was not every time.
00:59:01
Curt
Oh no!
00:59:01
Dylan
Sometimes you could hit reset and it would be totally fine. You could restart the program, but then sometimes you hit reset, hit cycle start, and it would try to plunge 10 inches through the table. And you're like, sweet.
00:59:11
Dylan
Okay.
00:59:11
Curt
Oh no!
00:59:11
jamie peacock
Ugh.
00:59:13
Dylan
Yeah.
00:59:13
jamie peacock
The fact that it's one out of the bunch, that's horrible.
00:59:14
Dylan
That, that, Yeah. well And that was one of the ones. It was so funny because you know people always say, like, if a machinist is blaming the machine for the crash, that they're full of shit. This was one where i was like, no, actually, the machine was doing the the the issue.
00:59:25
Curt
Thank
00:59:26
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:59:28
Dylan
um It was not the guy's fault. Because we had one of our operators who who's the one who unfortunately discovered it. And he... crashed the absolute shit out of that machine and we were like what did you do how could you do this and he was like i literally just hit reset and then restarted the program and they're like no we don't believe you you're you're full of shit and then it happened to me i think one time and thankfully i caught it but i was like oh we're really sorry victor like you were right um but yeah
00:59:53
Curt
yeah good oh absolutely
01:00:00
Curt
All right.
Learning HyperMill and Creative Projects
01:00:01
Curt
Well, we have plethora
01:00:02
jamie peacock
well yeah do you want to jump yeah we got a whole bunch of questions for you
01:00:05
Curt
letho of questions we can start going through. So, ah Jamie, you want to pick one?
01:00:10
jamie peacock
yeah sure let i'm gonna start at the top actually no i'm not gonna start at the top i'm gonna start one down mr gray asks what is the opposite of a calm lathe
01:00:19
Dylan
Justin knows the the the consequences for continuing to bug me for HyperMill, and that's that he's going to continue to get pie charts from me. So, no, Justin was great that, like, he he knew I really needed to get my shit together with HyperMill and was like, hey, I'm just going to start bugging you every day.
01:00:28
Curt
You
01:00:29
jamie peacock
Oh.
01:00:38
Dylan
And so I would constantly send me stuff of, like, Hey, slow lathe. And I was like, what are you talking about? he's like, it's the opposite hyper mill. Did you do something with hyper mill today? i'm like, damn it, dude. All right. um So yeah, hyper mill is the the opposite of a calm leave. Justin.
01:00:55
jamie peacock
There we go. Okay. I had run. Yeah. Since he sent that through, I've been trying to figure out what he was on about, but okay. Now I know.
01:01:01
Dylan
Yeah.
01:01:02
jamie peacock
Good. Do you want to grab one there?
01:01:02
Curt
Oh, that's sick pie chart too.
01:01:04
Curt
the pie chart looked cool.
01:01:04
jamie peacock
Yes.
01:01:05
Curt
And watching it move, i was like, Ooh, I see.
01:01:05
Dylan
Thanks. Yeah, it was.
01:01:08
Curt
That's pretty. Yeah.
01:01:09
Dylan
Well, because I was going to start programming a customer part when I had apps guy out for HyperMil, which I'm so glad. and like if you It was funny because afterwards I messaged my salesman and and was like, thank you so much. I feel so much more confident. I'm gonna make a customer part now.
01:01:25
Dylan
And he was like, is there anything that I could have done to like encourage you to do this? like We knew... you going into this that there was a very high likelihood that we'd end up sending somebody else because they recommended it like right off the bat like hey we recommend somebody come out for three days of training blah blah blah and i was like no no i got this and he's like is there anything that you could have we could have done to like steer you more correctly should i pushed further and i was like no dude i am so hard-headed like i needed to get there myself and realize my mistake myself um But anyway, while he was out here, i was going to try to do a customer part. I'm like, this is not how I learn. Like every new toolpath or new thing I've always learned on a personal project. And so i was like, what should I do? And then I think Justin had texted me that day to bug me about HyperMill. And was like, all right.
01:02:12
Dylan
Pie chart is, buddy.
01:02:12
Curt
Nice.
01:02:13
Dylan
Yes.
01:02:14
Curt
Nice.
01:02:14
jamie peacock
Well, yeah, with the whole Parchart story, he, in a message to me, realized that we are probably going to be making some shirts and sending them to him.
01:02:23
Dylan
yes
01:02:25
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:02:25
Dylan
I can't wait to see it.
01:02:26
jamie peacock
I'm thinking, I'm thinking IMTS next year that I'm going to bring a whole bunch and we'll just pitch up one day all wearing Parchart shirts.
01:02:35
Dylan
That would be amazing.
01:02:35
jamie peacock
That would be freaking great.
01:02:36
Dylan
Yes. Please do that.
01:02:38
jamie peacock
Yeah, because we are, we are planning for IMTS. That's brilliant. What have you got there, Chris?
01:02:44
Curt
All right, keeping with all the highbrow questions here, we have SSCADCAM from Instagram. If you could snuggle any single Canadian, who would it be?
01:02:53
Dylan
I mean, Amish knows that hes he's the he looks so snuggly. Like, of course.
01:02:57
Curt
He does. Yeah, he does.
01:02:58
jamie peacock
I don't know.
01:03:02
Dylan
ah
01:03:02
Curt
I know a lot of Canadians, and he'd still be high on my list.
01:03:06
Dylan
ah
01:03:07
jamie peacock
Oh, okay.
01:03:08
Dylan
ah
01:03:08
Curt
That's awesome.
01:03:08
jamie peacock
We've got, okay, we're gonna, I think we're gonna loop back to the first one because that I think is gonna take, that's gonna be a bit of a longer, ah longer answer, hopefully. um Let's see, Rebecca from Instagram or from, well, now from Toolpath asks, ah do you enjoy making pie charts to spot Justin?
01:03:28
Dylan
Yes, it was a ton of fun.
01:03:29
jamie peacock
Okay, good. Everyone does.
01:03:30
Dylan
Like designing it was a lot of fun. Figuring out what I was going to engrave on it was a ton of fun. And then machining it like I was actually, it was a perfect part because I, each one of the pie pieces, I used initially a different tool path on because I was going try to make them look different.
01:03:46
Dylan
And then one of them looked so much better than the rest that I was like, okay, i'm just going to do fine finishing on all of them and then engrave them rather than, like I was just going to send him a blank pie chart initially.
01:03:55
jamie peacock
Okay. Nice.
01:03:56
Dylan
And then I was like, no, no, no. I'll just make them all fine finished and then engrave stuff to make it funny. Like that feels more right.
01:04:02
jamie peacock
mos
01:04:03
Dylan
Yeah.
01:04:06
Curt
Nice.
01:04:08
Curt
All right. ah I have one by Fabtastic Creations on Instagram.
Tool Preferences and Mechanical Curiosity
01:04:12
Curt
What was your favorite tool starting out or favorite tools starting out? guess that could be big tools or little tools or mean.
01:04:16
Dylan
Hmm.
01:04:19
Dylan
um cutting tools wise I'll go like we very much fell into like the instant machinist starter kit of like Qualicem 250 and I followed and really loved CalPay on Instagram I don't think he's on there anymore but he used Destiny tools and I was like so thankful that
01:04:30
Curt
Mm-hmm.
01:04:40
Curt
Nice.
01:04:41
Dylan
I listened to them and bought those because they still are some of our standard tools. Like they're, the grind tolerance is fantastic compared to a lot of brands. They just last and last and last. They seemingly are nearly indestructible. Like we've run them into too many things and they just keep trucking like,
01:05:01
Dylan
forget that your stock is half an inch larger and it just like full slots the fort first pass in adaptive and it's like oh well it survived but like it wasn't supposed uh and then as far as favorite other tools i don't know like we we didn't have like anything super special starting out um
01:05:01
Curt
nice
01:05:11
Curt
yeah
01:05:23
Dylan
We've always used nicer digital mics. And like i have never owned one of the black Mitutoyo calipers. like We started right off the bat with the coolant-proof ones.
01:05:34
Dylan
I don't think I could go back to like having to turn off my calipers. i like having auto-off.
01:05:39
jamie peacock
Oh no, that's not a thing that should happen.
01:05:41
Curt
there.
01:05:41
jamie peacock
You should never have to turn your calipers off.
01:05:43
jamie peacock
And when you pick them up and slide them, they should turn on.
01:05:43
Dylan
Yeah.
01:05:46
Dylan
Exactly. Yeah. So I'm...
01:05:47
jamie peacock
Yeah, I've got a customer that wherever the wherever it is when you turn it on, that's the new Xero.
01:05:52
jamie peacock
Yeah, no, it's horrid.
01:05:53
Dylan
who
01:05:54
Dylan
oh
01:05:55
jamie peacock
I use them like I'll be i'll be visiting them and we want to measure something quickly, so he'll give me his calipers and they're unusable.
01:05:55
Dylan
That sounds dangerous.
01:06:02
Dylan
Yeah. Well, I'm sure that that's led probably, maybe not with you, but to some of their vendors where he's like, oh, it's, you know, 50 microns off or a hundred microns off. And it's like, or did you open your calipers a hundred microns and turn them on?
01:06:15
Dylan
um Which, which one was it?
01:06:15
jamie peacock
yeah yeah the first thing you do the calipers close them and check that it goes to zero like first thing you do always aar i've got a bunch that have nfg written on them because they're no fucking good yeah because the insides ones actually wear out over about six months the whole thing starts to rack so you can adjust them once and then after that they get binned yes
01:06:16
Dylan
Yeah.
01:06:21
Dylan
Yeah.
01:06:24
Dylan
Yeah.
01:06:28
Dylan
Nice. Uh-huh.
01:06:34
Dylan
Oh, yeah.
01:06:41
Dylan
Yeah. They're good saw markers, then. Like, we have an old set of carbide jaw ones that we use to scribe at the saw.
01:06:44
jamie peacock
Yeah, scribes.
01:06:45
Curt
Yeah.
01:06:48
jamie peacock
Ooh.
01:06:48
Dylan
Those are perfect.
01:06:50
jamie peacock
Yeah. Doesn't matter if you're awful, but... So, John from Two-Stroke Mafia asks, did your passion for import slash performance cars help guide you?
01:07:01
jamie peacock
I'm assuming there's more to that. Yes, into machining.
01:07:05
Dylan
Yes and no. Like I think it's funny because I think if you go into this trade not knowing what machining is but only through like the advertising words on performance parts.
01:07:18
Dylan
Like so for example, going back to when I was going to school, the first class you're supposed to take is Mac 100. And it's like learning how to read calipers, learning how to do this. And like, you can test out of it and jump into 110, which is where you start in the manual mills and the manual lathes.
01:07:32
Dylan
And because i was young and dumb and didn't know anything about machining, i was like, I can test out of this. I'm like, had them give me the test and like looked at the first page and it was like, I don't know any single answer on this thing.
01:07:40
Curt
Thank you.
01:07:46
Dylan
Like I can identify calipers. Boom. I got one out of 50 questions. Um, and so like I knew of machining because of motorsports and things like that. Like I had seen videos I knew of a mill. I knew, you know, I, I could tell you the difference between an end mill and a drill, at least like I'd seen enough YouTube videos to tell you that, but like,
01:08:09
Dylan
It helped guide me into machining. It didn't help me know what machining was though. Besides that, like I was like, I know you can cut metal with these machines, whatever they do, cool. But past that, like I'm just as dumb as everybody else.
01:08:23
jamie peacock
okay no it's know it gets your attention into it but yeah it's a very very deep rabbit hole once you start going down it
01:08:24
Curt
makes sense, yeah.
01:08:31
Dylan
Yeah. Once you learn that aerospace grade aluminum means fuck all. ah um You're like, oh, yeah, it's all aerospace grade. Cool, okay.
01:08:40
Curt
Yeah. Yeah.
01:08:41
jamie peacock
i am guilty of putting that on uh on header cards on my products yep
01:08:46
Dylan
Uh-huh. I mean, it it sells.
01:08:47
Curt
Yeah.
01:08:48
Dylan
It sells really well because most people don't understand.
01:08:48
jamie peacock
a hundred percent it's a 100%! It's a base pad for a magazine, aircraft grade aluminium. One time, like, yeah.
01:08:57
Dylan
Yeah, yeah exactly.
01:08:57
Curt
Yeah.
01:08:59
jamie peacock
I've definitely done that.
01:09:01
Curt
All right. i have a ah I have a long, decent one here from ah Joe Harrison. joe Sorry if I pronounced your name name wrong. um First, a little compliment for you. I'm sure he listens to your podcast. as Dylan, you really set the bar high for what a small, highly automated instant ma machine shop can look like. Seriously impressive. And it's been an awesome following you. Congratulations.
01:09:19
Curt
um
01:09:20
Dylan
Aw, thanks.
01:09:20
Curt
like His question. If you were starting over today with the knowledge you have now, what would you change about your growth path? Would you have jumped straight into five-axis palette changing systems, more advanced cam, high-end toolpath simulations, visualizations much easier? are you actually glad you took the slower, more deliberate route, getting the fundamentals down first and you know keeping your machine payments and overall business list risk lower um as you scaled?
01:09:42
Curt
Long question, but...
01:09:44
Dylan
So I think if I was starting over today and I had customers, like if I had, if I was like, you know, sold Proteum, whatever, started another business in another sector that had customers that were like, we need these parts for this. Maybe I would start with a five axis and like go down that route. But like starting over having no customers, I'm so glad we did it the way we did. Like we,
01:10:08
Dylan
we're very risk averse. Could we have gone faster? For sure. But like at no point, every step we've taken has been incremental enough where like, I'm nervous. I'm stressed a little bit, but I'm not like losing sleep. I'm not, not eating because I'm so stressed. And I think Brad's the same way. We're like, you know, buying our first speedio was like 83 grand. And I think it was,
01:10:36
Dylan
$1,000 a month or $800 a month or something like that, like super low cost.
01:10:41
Curt
Yeah.
01:10:41
Dylan
Him and I could have completely floated the shop and the machine if all of our work dried up overnight. like It would have sucked. we I would have had to eat ramen for a few months, but like every step of the way, I've done it to where It's going to be okay. Like things are going to work out. If, and if shit hits the fan, I'll be okay. And like your risk tolerance gets way bigger, the bigger your shop gets. Like the HS flex is not a cheap machine, but knowing what I know now and knowing where my business is now, it's like the next thing.
01:11:14
Dylan
maybe not incremental step. It's a, it's a few steps ahead of where we are, but um it's the the right move. And it's, it's not, it's still not stressing me out to the point that I'm like losing my mind. And I think that for me, at least like everything I do in my shop is about like quality of life. Like that's why we buy,
01:11:32
Dylan
things like power grip and all the laying stamping stuff. it's like It's not because, like yes, does it make the parts easier? Yes, but it also makes my life easier. Like i I just don't worry about tool pull out anymore or run out anymore. I haven't checked run out in years.
01:11:47
Dylan
Because it's just like, I know it's going to be good. Like if the call it's good and the holder is good, it's it's good. um And like, same with the length stamping stuff. It's like, it's got a centering mark. I know i I don't check anymore. Like, oh shit, did I put it where it's supposed to be?
01:12:01
Dylan
Did I clamp the vice? It's like, it's, it's where it's supposed to be. I can see everything's clamped. I can see the, the zero points torque down. Cool. Like I just, it's all about getting stress off my plate. And like, that includes building a business of like, I just want to,
01:12:18
Dylan
you need to take steps that scare you, but you don't need to take steps that scare you so much that like your, it affects your entire rest of your life and makes you just like not enjoy life anymore.
Business Philosophy and Stress Management
01:12:29
Dylan
At least in my opinion.
01:12:31
jamie peacock
Well, on that note, like, yeah, the the steps, like you say it's a couple steps ahead, but what I've noticed is the steps just keep getting bigger.
01:12:31
Curt
No, I think it's a super healthy, yeah.
01:12:41
jamie peacock
Like when I went from ah when I bought the LK, that was a huge step for me.
01:12:41
Dylan
Mm-hmm.
01:12:47
jamie peacock
But since then, it's like, okay, cool, I need to spend $1,000 tool holders. Cool beans. Whereas two years ago, i would have thought I was out of my mind if I wanted to spend that much on tool holders.
01:12:58
jamie peacock
Like it just everything yeah just constantly gets more expensive. But it also like you said, quality of life is huge. I've got customers who come past and they're your wall of tools is insane. I've got yeah I've got 40 tools outside the machine 16 in the machine at any given time.
01:13:14
jamie peacock
And it's all tagged if I want to swap it in, I swap it in. And then i that's crazy. They've got like 20 tool holders and they're constantly changing in most I'm like, No, yours are yours are crazy. I can go from running one job running a different job in a matter of minutes.
01:13:27
jamie peacock
Like, it's all about convenience, because I'm lazy. um And yeah, actually getting started on things is a challenge.
01:13:36
Dylan
Uh-huh. It sure is.
01:13:36
jamie peacock
Yeah, so yeah, make it as easy as possible.
01:13:37
Dylan
Yeah.
01:13:40
Dylan
yeah look
01:13:40
Curt
Well, machines look good on Instagram, but like sometimes building up the the backend systems, like you said, to avoid stress in your life or reduce the stress in your life, it like that makes a huge impact on how you feel as a person.
01:13:49
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:13:51
Curt
and it Sometimes it's not flashy. Sometimes it's like, okay, I just want to have X amount in the bank so I know that if shit goes south, I have you know a little bit more breathing room than would be like, oh, if this next job goes south, I'm done for.
01:14:03
Curt
like You can't show that, but it's like it's a nice feeling.
01:14:06
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:14:08
Dylan
Yeah. Yeah. It's, I don't know if you're working for yourself, like that's my biggest goal. It's just like, I want to come to work and enjoy where I work and not have points of friction throughout my entire day.
01:14:20
Dylan
And if I can continue to spend and make that easier every day, like that's what it's all about for me.
01:14:21
Curt
Exactly.
01:14:26
Dylan
Like I, we make, Brad and I make pretty okay money now. um And we just like both enjoy, like at the end of the day, and neither of us wants to go back to a day job.
01:14:37
Dylan
um Like it's not to say that we don't have days where like, man, this really sucks.
01:14:38
Curt
exactly
01:14:40
Dylan
and Like today really sucks. Like yesterday i broke those three end mills. think Brad broke two or three. And like, to your point, Jamie, like we broke, $800 worth of endmills today or yesterday. And like, that's not a normal day by, by any means. Like that was a very, very abnormal day.
01:14:55
Dylan
But I remember buying Swift carb endmills for our first stainless job. And it was like $300. And we really had to like, be like, okay, we need to be very careful with these.
01:15:07
Dylan
Like we, this is a lot of money to spend on tools.
01:15:08
Curt
What?
01:15:10
Dylan
And now it's like, dude, I just broke $800 in endmills and just reordered them immediately. Cause I need them. Um, and like, it's still suck.
01:15:16
jamie peacock
No, that's it all scales.
01:15:17
Dylan
Don't get me wrong. Like,
01:15:18
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:15:19
Dylan
Yeah, yeah.
01:15:19
jamie peacock
But it all scales like that $800 in NMLS is not going to put you out of business.
01:15:19
Dylan
And like. Right.
01:15:24
jamie peacock
Whereas go back a couple years and that would have put a serious thing in your, in your profits.
01:15:32
Dylan
Oh, yeah. Well, I remember, like, I was looking at our books last year, I think it was, or the year before when we were buying the Hermla, and I was getting everything together for the loans.
01:15:33
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:15:42
Dylan
And I just, like, happened to go back a few years in Xero and looking at what we made the year that they financed us for the first Speedio. I was like, how and why did they think this was a good idea? Like, we were...
01:15:58
Dylan
we made less than a year than we make in a month now. And it's like, it when, what world were we a viable credit creditor?
01:16:03
Curt
Yeah.
01:16:08
Dylan
Like what? We were a risk. Like, why did you take a risk on us?
01:16:11
jamie peacock
Well, I mean, i'm the first year that, okay, so the first
01:16:11
Dylan
Yeah.
Networking and Niche Focus
01:16:15
jamie peacock
year that Jspec was actually needing to be a business, not just me cocking around in the garage, I did what I do in a month now.
01:16:22
jamie peacock
Like that was that was four years ago. ah I literally do more than a month now. When it came to financing the LK, the bank said, sorry, no So I'm like, hey, brother-in-law, you said you'd hook me up, hook me up, please. And ah he helped me get that machine because they were happy to lend me about half of what I needed for it. And I didn't want to buy a 20-year-old Finuc machine when I could get something decent.
01:16:22
Dylan
Yeah.
01:16:45
jamie peacock
But yeah, it's... Yeah, it's interesting to see how that grows. And over the short time span, like we're not talking 20 years, we're talking five years. i think in your case as well it's like five years.
01:16:57
jamie peacock
the bill you
01:16:57
Dylan
Yeah. Real full-time.
01:16:58
jamie peacock
But also your cost every month is a lot higher than it was back then.
01:16:59
Dylan
Yeah, basically.
01:17:04
jamie peacock
Like even I look at what my cost per month is now and it scares the shit out of me.
01:17:04
Dylan
Oh, yeah. who
01:17:09
jamie peacock
Like if I was, I would never have been in a position to have half the shit that I have if I wasn't doing this full time.
01:17:10
Dylan
Yeah.
01:17:17
jamie peacock
Like if I was getting my old salary, I wouldn't be able to afford the machine, never mind anything else. Like, well, it's, yeah, it's interesting.
01:17:22
Dylan
Yeah. Yeah. it's It's crazy. I mean, it's great. like it's It's wonderful, but it is... It's just so weird to look back on that stuff and realize how quickly it all changes for sure.
01:17:30
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:17:33
jamie peacock
Yeah, no, it's very, very interesting how quickly it changes. Okay, we've got another question from Surge Creator. I'm assuming his name is Lightning. How do you get work and good customers looking to start a job shop slash prototype shop in my garage?
01:17:51
Dylan
ah Like I said earlier, we, just through friends. Like we've just put it out on Facebook. We put, you know, talk to like, just talk to everybody. um There's, there's no, there's nobody in your life that isn't touched by manufacturing in some way. And like, it might be like the most tangential connection of like, Oh yeah, my cousin works at, I think some kind of engineering firm. And then you like end up talking to their cousin. It's like, Oh, this ended up being a giant customer of mine.
01:18:17
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:18:17
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:18:17
Dylan
ah Like our first customer was one of Brad's old coworkers was their
01:18:24
Dylan
head of quality, I think at that point. And so he got us in and like, that was great. And then like our, one of our other biggest customers was a a friend, one of my friends, his dad worked there.
01:18:37
Dylan
And like, that's how we got in there. And like, it's just talk to everybody. And you know, worst case, yeah, you can start going, looking up places on Google, like search engineering, search, whatever. And ah Very often you can even just find that like sector of town.
01:18:52
Dylan
they're They're usually pretty close to each other and just like literally go door knocking.
01:18:53
jamie peacock
yeah
01:18:56
Dylan
You'll get a thousand no's and one yes and like the one yes is what matters.
01:19:01
jamie peacock
it all all comes down to networking and not not necessarily what you know but who you know i mean yeah yeah yeah
01:19:06
Dylan
Yeah. yeah and And practice your 30 second elevator pitch. There's always going to be a million shops around you. Find one thing that makes you different and let them know.
01:19:16
jamie peacock
Well, exactly. I mean, that that's what I'm focusing on now. I did some tool steel stuff that was a bit of a mild shit show a few weeks ago.
01:19:27
jamie peacock
And after that, I'm like, nope, we do aluminium, we do brass, we do small components. Anything big goes somewhere else. I'm not actually interested. I'm going niche down on what I'm good at and what I enjoy doing. And now I've got a bunch parts I'm making for Dutchman squeeze boxes, concertinas.
01:19:43
jamie peacock
um making like making stupid custom screws for the guys and little nut plates and yeah all sorts of weird shit but stuff that i enjoy making that's easy to make and i can automate and that's yeah but yeah it it comes down to just just speak to people yeah
01:19:52
Dylan
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. but
01:19:58
Dylan
Yeah. And you'll find what you're good at and what you don't want to deal with. Because, like, for example, you know, you won't do big stuff. We don't typically do anything that big.
01:20:04
jamie peacock
yeah
01:20:06
Dylan
And, like, we won't do composites at all anymore. It's like we we spent a very hot summer in the Kitamura. We just needed work. And, like, we picked up this big order of FR4 parts.
01:20:19
jamie peacock
Ooh. Yeah.
01:20:19
Dylan
And so it was cooling off.
01:20:20
Curt
Yeah.
01:20:21
Dylan
filter paper all over the bottom of the machine. We're both in, uh, masks and have the vacuum. They're holding it over the other pallet with the door up in the Kitamura, vacuuming it as it's cuts.
01:20:34
Dylan
And it's a hundred degrees and you're just like sweating through the mask and it's running down. Like it was miserable. And then we had to change the coolant. And it was like, we're just not going to do this anymore. We're just done. Like just no more. There's other people that do composites. Great.
01:20:48
Dylan
Leave it to them. I don't want to do this anymore. And like,
01:20:50
jamie peacock
Well, yeah, I've got Tufnel this next week or two. I've got a machine Tufnel again, and that literally pulls all the coolants out of my coolant.
01:20:58
jamie peacock
Yeah, it's a total shit show. But I make good money doing it. I'll replace the coolant every time. like It's not the end of the world. But yeah, that's so one of the only big jobs I really do these days.
01:20:58
Dylan
Yeah.
01:21:09
Dylan
And that's not to say, I mean, I guess if one of my big customers was like, we really need you to do this composite job.
01:21:09
jamie peacock
It's...
01:21:15
Dylan
It's like, okay, but I'm going to tack on a $50,000 fuck you cost. Cause I just don't want to do this.
01:21:21
Curt
Yeah.
01:21:21
jamie peacock
That's what I did on these parts is I added a coolant sucking out fee to suck out my coolant tank and clean it afterwards because I have to.
01:21:21
Dylan
Yeah. Yeah.
01:21:28
jamie peacock
whole bottom gets full tufnall. I've got to spend two hours cleaning the cleaning the machine out after the fact. And that ain't free.
01:21:37
Dylan
Yeah.
01:21:38
jamie peacock
yeah um Okay, I think Kurt has one more question and then I've got the long question left.
01:21:45
Curt
You bet. ah So this is from Redisaw on Instagram. How's dad life? And have you had to cave into buying pink filament yet?
01:21:53
Dylan
Dad life is wonderful and incredibly
Balancing Personal Life and Business
01:21:57
Dylan
tiring. I haven't bought pink filament yet, but like, yeah, it's great. I love going home and seeing her at the end of every day.
01:22:04
Dylan
ah But also like last night, she decided to wake up every hour on the hour. Like I was like, oh, I need to come into the shop early to get parts done before I record with you guys.
01:22:15
jamie peacock
Awesome.
01:22:15
Dylan
I'll go to bed early.
01:22:15
Dylan
I went to bed like two and a half hours earlier than I normally do. And then was up all night. i was like, cool. All right. This is, this is my life now. So ah lots of positives, a few negatives overall.
01:22:31
Dylan
Fantastic.
01:22:33
Curt
The fact that you said you were up all night, that's like 9,000 points to a good dad because tons of guys world are like, oh, i just let my wife deal with it. I'm like, oh, great. Okay, your kid's to have a relationship with your wife and not you.
01:22:44
Curt
So, yeah, that's awesome.
01:22:45
jamie peacock
Yeah, fun times.
01:22:45
Dylan
Yeah, no, we were both up because like, you know, sometimes she'll wake up and just cry and just want to be in our bed.
01:22:46
Curt
Yeah.
01:22:51
Dylan
And it's like, that's totally fine. She's whatever, seven and a half months old. Like you can come into our bed.
01:22:56
Curt
Yeah.
01:22:56
Dylan
But like even that was like, nope. And it could very well be that she's teething now. Like she, you know, it feels like some teeth are coming in. Who knows? It's just like, all right, that this is this is just how it's going to be.
01:23:12
Curt
Yeah.
01:23:13
jamie peacock
and tom
01:23:14
Curt
Oh, man.
01:23:15
jamie peacock
So we've got two more questions, both from job shopper TN Instagram.
01:23:15
Curt
That's awesome.
01:23:21
jamie peacock
Firstly, why did you start the podcast?
01:23:25
Dylan
ah So thankfully, Peyton from Brick Tactical reached out to me, whatever it was, five years ago now.
The Impact of Podcasting and Community
01:23:32
Dylan
And was like, hey, I want to start a machining podcast. like He listened to The Bomb. I listened to The Bomb. There was not that many other podcasts out there.
01:23:41
Dylan
There was, yeah, there there's maybe two or three other ones. And he was like, hey, do you want to do this? Like we had barely spoken to, I don't really know why he reached out to me specifically, but it all worked out. Like it was sounded like fun and so we did it. And then he got too busy, whatever it was, four years ago.
01:24:02
Dylan
um And i was just like, dude, know I'm having too much fun to stop. Like I'm just going to keep it going. Like this is fantastic.
01:24:10
jamie peacock
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
01:24:11
Curt
I was wondering how that played out because I remember the Peyton ones and I'm like and then he left i was like I wonder if they had a falling out or if he just got too swamped and just had to bow out or yeah
01:24:13
jamie peacock
you
01:24:19
Dylan
Yeah, he was just getting super busy. And I think it it is all like, ah as you guys know, it's a not insignificant dedication of some time every week.
01:24:28
Curt
Totally, yeah.
01:24:30
jamie peacock
it's I think for both of us, it's more of a mental health break, like just chatting to someone in a similar situation.
01:24:36
Curt
Yeah.
01:24:36
jamie peacock
And that yeah makes it a little bit easier to justify as well. But yeah it is ah it's a significant like commitment to every week, but a lot of fun. And then, yes, yeah thank you.
01:24:48
Curt
And thank you for doing it, because I know we all enjoy it as well. So thanks for the effort.
01:24:52
Dylan
Oh, I love it.
01:24:52
jamie peacock
Yes. Yeah. sir
01:24:52
Dylan
like i Like you said, it's a great mental health break.
01:24:53
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:24:55
Dylan
Like I will go into a day where I have to record being like, really don't have the time. I don't really want to do this. Like I just want to like, you know, clam up and not talk to anybody. And then like the second I start recording the podcast, I'm like, oh, I love this.
01:25:09
Dylan
Like, and I like come out of it like super jazzed to like either go make more parts or like go home and program or like whatever it is. i'm like, this is, i love this. So like, there's never, basically never a time that I record where I'm like, I regret doing that, you know?
01:25:23
jamie peacock
Yeah, it's, you know, you get motivated by people who are motivated.
01:25:27
Dylan
Yeah.
01:25:28
jamie peacock
And generally, when you have people on there talking about what they enjoy doing, and that you feed off that energy.
01:25:34
Dylan
Yep.
01:25:36
jamie peacock
And then, ah who are some of your favorite guests? There are two correct answers here.
01:25:41
Dylan
ah I love all my guests equally. ah
01:25:46
jamie peacock
Okay, sorry, sorry, three answers.
01:25:46
Curt
That's a safe answer. It's the safest.
01:25:51
Dylan
Yeah, no, I like i really do. i have so much fun with everybody. It's it's really, really cool. I mean, like at the end of the I've talked to people where they're like, well, how do you get people to open up?
01:26:01
Dylan
And I'm like, people love talking about themselves. like Not in a like an egocentric way, but like especially in this trade, it's like fairly solitary.
01:26:03
jamie peacock
100%. Yeah. Yeah.
01:26:09
Dylan
Most of us work alone or with only a couple other people. It's not like you're like telling your life story very often. And it's always really fun to get to do that. And so, yeah. Yeah. I really I always learn something.
01:26:22
Dylan
People ask, like, why do you keep doing it? It's like because I have a Rolodex now of like 200 people that like it any like, oh, if I need to if if I want to make a pen, guess who I'm going call?
01:26:29
Curt
Yes, yes.
01:26:32
Dylan
Like if I you know, if I'm like thinking of like anything in South Africa or if I like want to talk about LK, like guess who I'm going to call? Like I know somebody for everything now, basically.
01:26:40
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:26:43
Curt
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
01:26:43
jamie peacock
No, 100%. That's Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. Let people talk. like That's something was saying to Danica, were driving around today I'm like, let's see if we can wrangle Dylan like he managed to wrangle me because you managed to wrangle me really well in the podcast.
01:26:50
Dylan
Yeah.
01:26:58
Dylan
ah
01:27:00
jamie peacock
like You kept me on track. You very experienced that interviewing people. But I think half the thing is just letting them speak because people want to talk about themselves.
01:27:07
Dylan
Yeah, it's just putting up bumpers in the bowling alley. Like, that's all it is, is like, you just need to have like, some very vague guide rails to keep people somewhat on on track. And they will, they will say everything that you want, because yeah, people loved it. And we're all doing cool stuff. Like it's not machining is cool. At the end of the day, like it is just freaking cool. And so like, there's always something to talk about.
01:27:32
jamie peacock
i mean that's why i like i like sharing on instagram because there's always something interesting going on and if it can help one person It's a success. That's all it has to do is influence one person and help them in a bond, and it's a success.
01:27:32
Curt
Well, I know I...
01:27:45
Dylan
Yeah.
01:27:46
Curt
Well, this is like, it's such a cool community. Like, I don know I chat with Jamie and like... just the inst instant machinist community the podcast community of chacklin with everybody like you get so many connections that i would never have in regular life like i talk to people that i would never cross paths with that are in crazy positions that people would pay to have a meet down like sit down and talk to and i could just hit them up on instagram and send him a message and they'll be like oh yeah this this this this and i'm like this isn't so like how why do you put a value on that that's bonkers and they do because they like it like we just saw we all for a bunch of dorks and just like you said
01:28:17
Curt
We just want to chat. We just want to talk to somebody else that it gets jazzed about the same things.
01:28:20
Dylan
A hundred percent.
01:28:20
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:28:21
Curt
Yeah.
01:28:22
Dylan
Yeah. I mean, some of my like best friends I met through the podcast and the instant machinist community, like Easton and I talk every other day or, you know, Zap and I text for sure every day.
01:28:29
Curt
Yeah. Yeah.
01:28:35
Dylan
And Justin, like I talked to him all the time. Like I would never have met these people or like if I didn't have the podcast and I didn't have the ins instant machinist community, I would have like met Justin maybe at IMTS. Yeah.
01:28:47
Dylan
and that would have been it.
01:28:48
Curt
Right. Absolutely.
01:28:49
Dylan
We'd been like, oh, that guy's cool. Never would have known how smart he is. Never would have known like how much he's done. and it's it's like it's it's insane how much all of this has changed my life for the better.
01:29:01
jamie peacock
Yeah, my main concern now is that I think Instagram might be dying as a as a platform just because everyone's uninstalling it because all it is is doom scrolling these days.
01:29:02
Curt
absolutely
01:29:11
jamie peacock
Like I'll open it in the morning. I look through all the stories of the people that I'm following. ah don't scroll. Well, I end up scrolling through the the posts and things, but then it just three posts down. It's just random crap again.
01:29:11
Dylan
Yeah.
01:29:23
jamie peacock
Like if it's not in a story, I generally don't catch it.
01:29:24
Dylan
Yep.
01:29:28
jamie peacock
look
01:29:28
Dylan
Same. Yeah.
01:29:29
jamie peacock
And I get why people are uninstalling it. It's just a bit kind of bit sad that it seems to be a bit of a dying platform.
01:29:36
Dylan
Yep. I mean, that's what happens when it gets that commercial and like that.
01:29:37
jamie peacock
But, yeah.
01:29:37
Curt
Yeah.
01:29:42
Dylan
Yeah. I mean, i think you guys talked about on your last episode. It's like, oh, yeah, am I going to open up my racist meme app again?
01:29:48
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:29:48
Dylan
Yeah.
01:29:50
jamie peacock
100%.
01:29:50
Dylan
Yeah.
01:29:51
jamie peacock
Well, they took a note from Microsoft and ruined the UI this week. Like it's gone. Sorry, you're a picture app. Why is the message thing at the bottom?
01:30:00
Dylan
Well, I heard you say that and it's so funny because it hasn't been a picture app for like years at this point.
01:30:00
jamie peacock
And now if you're not, dude.
01:30:05
jamie peacock
Yeah, it hasn't, but. I used to hit the the partd that middle button to take to do a story or whatever. Now it's up in the top. And if you're if someone posts multiple pictures in a post and you're trying to scroll between them, you best be dead on the middle of the picture.
01:30:20
jamie peacock
Otherwise, it takes you to reels. yeah They try and obviously push the reels and shit to compete with TikTok, but it's and a little infuriating.
01:30:30
Dylan
Yeah, I end up watching, if I want to watch reels, I end up watching more of that stuff on ah YouTube now.
01:30:30
jamie peacock
that area
01:30:37
Dylan
Like shorts, their algorithm seems like it's better tailored.
01:30:37
jamie peacock
Yeah, as well.
01:30:38
Curt
Yeah. Yeah.
01:30:41
Dylan
I get more on topic stuff. It's not like, like
01:30:44
jamie peacock
Mine is literally just physics duck and that's it.
01:30:47
Dylan
yeah, um and like I get things I actually care about on YouTube, whereas on Instagram, it's like maybe 30% is stuff that I actually care about.
01:30:51
jamie peacock
Yeah. Instagram.
01:30:56
jamie peacock
Yeah. It's just a bunch of really ah things you shouldn't share in public. um And yeah, it's rage baiting. That's all it is.
01:31:07
Dylan
ah hundred percent
01:31:07
jamie peacock
Trying to rage again. yeah, we've got, well, we've got one more thing the Google Box section, but before we get to the Google Boxes, we need to thank our Patreons who make the wheels on the podcast go round and round, and are making it so that when I kidnap Kurt, we don't have to sleep on the streets in Chicago for IMTS.
01:31:25
jamie peacock
Big thank you to our top Patreons, Jade from Benchmark20, Luke from Fabtastic, AJ from Subtract Manufacturing and 25 other companies, EJ from Rockternal Welding, Jason S and the Aussie Machinist.
01:31:38
jamie peacock
aye we got a new Patreon this week, but they're going to get shouted out in this week's episode, not this episode, which is three weeks' episode's time. So, yeah. Patreons get access to the after show, where Kurt and I usually discuss super secret things and things that we don't really want the public to know too much about.
01:31:46
Curt
Thank you.
01:31:53
jamie peacock
um And then, if you want to pick up some of the fancy merch, it's available on the loanmachinists.com. There's a link through to the Jspec ENG website where you can find all of that. And as far as I know, next week is back... Well,
01:32:08
jamie peacock
oh you missed black friday guys sorry um all the shirts will be available for a week after back black friday so if you're listening to it they should still be there yeah sorry forgot about the time jump thing there um so what is in your guys google boxes
01:32:18
Dylan
Uh,
01:32:21
Curt
Go
01:32:22
Dylan
oh man, that's great.
01:32:29
jamie peacock
who wants to go first but i was gonna say yeah let's go dylan first
01:32:29
Curt
ahead, Dylan. You're the guest. go ahead dylan you're like you're the guest so
01:32:32
Dylan
Okay.
01:32:35
Dylan
A couple things, so i just I just ordered another automatic PG Press from eBay because I had ordered one four weeks ago. at That at the time,
01:32:49
Dylan
I knew it might be a scam four weeks ago. So like it it showed up, the guy had three sets of like the automatic press and it was like five holders and 10 collets or 10 holders and 10 collets for, I think it was like six grand or something like that. Like the the machine itself is like a nine or $10,000 machine.
01:33:09
Dylan
um But he it said in the thing, like, these will be these won't be able to ship till November 17th, and then they'll be shipped. And it was like, okay. And I reached out to him after to see if he could ship it quicker. And he was like, no, like, this is the earliest that I can promise it. Like, I, you know, overdid the timeline just to make sure that the guy can ship And was like, okay, this seems weird.
01:33:31
Dylan
um so I contacted him after the 17th, just like, hey, just checking on this, making sure we're here for any deliveries. Nothing. Another guy that I know who also ordered one tried to contact him. Nothing.
01:33:44
Dylan
Obviously, you know, eBay will refund it if we need to. But another one popped up on eBay this morning.
01:33:47
jamie peacock
Yeah. Okay.
01:33:51
Dylan
that looks basically brand new. It's like a 2022 machine with 138 presses on it. It was listed four parts because they just said they didn't want to test it.
01:34:02
Dylan
They were like, it looks brand new. We have no idea. Came with the dies. It was four grand for a $9,000 machine.
01:34:08
Curt
Oh, nice.
01:34:10
Dylan
and i was like, okay, I'll buy that immediately.
01:34:11
Curt
Nice.
01:34:13
Dylan
And you know what? If the other one comes through too, I'll have a second one that I can sell. Great. Not a big deal. But we, I'm looking, you know, I have a pile of PG for the new machine sitting in my inspection room right now. And the idea of hand pumping 100 plus tools doesn't sound awesome. So
01:34:33
jamie peacock
Like that's what I was about to ask you is do you not already have one? Like you're using PG, okay, you're hand pumping.
01:34:37
Dylan
yeah, so we have two of the manual pumps. So we bought one when we bought our S700 X2.
01:34:41
jamie peacock
Uh, okay.
01:34:43
Dylan
That was our first kind of step into pg because you can buy, They call it the anniversary kit and it's the manual pump, five holders and 10 collets for, think it's like six grand or five grand or something like that.
01:34:56
Dylan
So you get basically get all the collets for free is how the discount works out.
01:35:00
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:35:00
Dylan
um And then my friend who had bought the C250 we bought had also bought that for HSK. And so when we bought his machine, we got his pump and all of his holders.
01:35:10
jamie peacock
Okay. Yep.
01:35:11
Dylan
And so we have two things and we keep one set up for PG-10 and one set up for PG-15. And then the PG-15 one I'll swap to PG-25 if I need to. But it's fine now when I'm only changing a handful of tools, though i'm I'm doing enough work in the Hermla now that even that is starting to get tiresome.
01:35:28
Dylan
You know, five or ten holders a day, you're like,
01:35:29
Curt
Mm-hmm.
01:35:30
Dylan
like it's not tiring my arm but i'm just like ah all right i guess i'll set the tools now um but yeah setting a hundred tools is like i kind of want the auto press now so yeah i bought that one still waiting for the guy to contact me with uh rigging or not rigging uh freight prices but it's in california so it shouldn't be too bad
01:35:52
jamie peacock
Okay. Does it count how many cycles it's pressed?
01:35:56
Dylan
Yeah, it's got a little, just like ah a mechanical ticker in the back.
01:35:58
jamie peacock
Oh. A little manual counter. Okay, cool.
01:36:00
Dylan
And it's 138 on this one. So like that's nothing.
01:36:02
jamie peacock
Yeah, that's cool.
01:36:04
jamie peacock
Yeah. and
01:36:04
Dylan
And I think that includes un-pressing too.
01:36:06
Dylan
So that means like 60-something tools, 70 tools.
01:36:08
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:36:08
Curt
Wow.
01:36:10
Dylan
ah Yeah, so it's basically brand new.
01:36:13
jamie peacock
Okay.
01:36:14
Dylan
ah ah The other thing I had, i had Daisy Leader in there, which was the ship that RHS Flex is on.
01:36:14
jamie peacock
Very cool.
01:36:20
Dylan
And it landed in port today. So I've been tracking that thing for weeks now.
01:36:23
Curt
Ooh.
01:36:25
jamie peacock
Isn't it running late?
01:36:25
Dylan
And... ah
01:36:27
jamie peacock
Wasn't it meant to be there like the 19th? Okay. Yeah.
01:36:29
Dylan
Yeah, so it was going to be a day late because it didn't get into the port in Germany until a day late. And then I guess the transfer across the Atlantic took an extra couple days. But it's here.
01:36:43
Dylan
We'll see when it gets through customs. Still trying to organize rigging. i was going to have the machine shipped directly to our riggers in Phoenix and then have them truck it down just so I didn't have to worry about coordinating both.
01:36:55
Dylan
And then my riggers let me know that it is seven crates, not the three that I thought it was. And they were like, so we'll have to bring down three extra trucks if you want to do it that way.
01:37:01
jamie peacock
Ooh.
01:37:04
Dylan
And it will cost you a lot of money. And she was like, but I work with the shipping company quite a bit so we can just coordinate for you.
01:37:06
Curt
Yeah.
01:37:11
Dylan
And i was like, oh.
01:37:11
jamie peacock
Oh, well yeah, that's much easier.
01:37:12
Dylan
yeah, let's do that then. Like, why would I not? Of course I'll do that.
01:37:14
Curt
Yeah. yeah
01:37:16
Dylan
ah Yeah. Turns out, like I thought it was like machine in one, HS Flex, like the Flex automation in another one, and the tool tower in one. And it's like, yeah, it's those three. And then it's the conveyor and sub pan in one.
01:37:28
Dylan
It's the storage module for all the pallets and the pallets in one it's the coolant system in another one and i'm forgetting two whatever there's just seven of them it's like oh sick all right so yeah it's landed hopefully i'm um i'm really hoping it will be here second week in december that's the the goal right now because i have work that takes me through about halfway through the first week in december so
01:37:38
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:37:38
Curt
Cool.
01:37:40
jamie peacock
Okay. Okay, yeah. Yeah.
01:37:57
Dylan
I'm hoping and praying that it works out like that. Otherwise, going lot of late nights coming up here, trying to get everything out the door before we shut down. um And then last up, I had Gadjuino. So we had bought a Gadjia.
01:38:10
Dylan
So we had we had ordered the who makes a Fellow ES1 espresso machine when it came out. And that one was on pre-order. It was supposed to ship before the holidays, quote unquote.
01:38:22
Dylan
And then they sent everyone who backed it
01:38:22
Curt
Yeah.
01:38:25
Dylan
or ordered pre-ordered it a video a month ago that was like, ah, we found issues with our production line. We're going to change these things, but it's going to push it till July or June of next year. i was like, we really wanted an espresso machine. Like our our current Phillips one was like,
01:38:41
Dylan
making really gross coffee and like no matter what we did, it was just not working. And so Gadgie is like the most basic, fairly nice, inexpensive one. And you can buy refurb ones from whole latte love is the the website we used.
01:38:58
Dylan
And so we got a good deal on it.
01:38:58
Curt
Mm-hmm.
01:39:00
Dylan
And then you can add all of the intelligence stuff through the Gadgie. We know kit. And they actually sell full kits now. We bought ours from Peak Coffee, which we'll see if long term that ends up being the good decision or not, or if we should have just ordered it from the UK. But it has you know the scales built into that where you rest the cup, so it stops when it gets to the right weight.
01:39:19
Dylan
It does all the pressures. It does all the temperatures, yada, yada, yada. So we have the kit now, and I'm kind of going through. And ah did a bench test the other day. All the electronics work, but I'm kind of unsure.
01:39:30
Dylan
all of the gadget we know kits that I've seen so far have terrible documentation. Like you can go to the gadget gadget we know GitHub. There's a bunch of documentation there, but it's not universal for the kits.
01:39:37
Curt
Mm-hmm.
01:39:42
Dylan
So like some of the things they tell me or the wiring that they tell me is like not quite right. Or like the prints that I printed out don't quite fit the cables that are included with my kit. And it's like, okay, so now I got kind of go back and forth and piece together everything and figure everything out. But, um, It's exciting. It'll be a lot of fun.
01:40:03
jamie peacock
Okay.
01:40:03
Curt
Yeah, those are sick machines.
01:40:05
Curt
that I mean, it's nice because that's like a it's like a low-price, decent espresso machine.
01:40:05
Dylan
Yeah.
01:40:09
Curt
like The actual company, like if you look up decent espresso.
01:40:11
Dylan
Yeah, decent. Yeah, exactly.
01:40:12
Curt
Yeah, like I would love a decent machine, but they're not cheap.
01:40:13
Dylan
Yeah. Well, and that's why we bought the ES1 because it's the same. Like, the ES1 from Fellow is looking to be basically like a prosumer level version of the Gaduino.
01:40:23
Curt
Right.
01:40:23
Dylan
Like, it has a built-in screen and will do all the temps and pressures and all that stuff for you. It's just going to take a year from when we ordered it basically. So ah yeah, we needed something.
01:40:32
Curt
Totally. Totally.
01:40:33
Dylan
And then like either Brad or I'll take home the Gaduino and we get the ES1 or we'll have two machines. for I don't know. We'll figure it all out. Yeah.
01:40:41
Curt
Yeah. Never a problem. Yeah.
01:40:43
Dylan
Yeah.
01:40:45
jamie peacock
So what the what have you been Googling, Kurt?
01:40:46
Curt
Cool, man.
01:40:49
Curt
ah So I came across ah one thing called the Lunch Ease, which it just was scrolled through my Instagram. I Googled it. um It's like a programmable lunch box that like heats up and stuff. I have zero need for it.
01:40:59
Curt
i thought it was really cool.
01:41:00
Dylan
ah
01:41:00
Curt
It's rather expensive, but like I just walk into the kitchen and make lunch. But like I kind of almost wish my shop was farther away so I could like just use this. Stupid idea. but um I also... uh for this laser scanning i've been doing um came across sublimation spray which i just bought a can of i thought it was just like matte spray paint i was like why is it so expensive so i bought a can of it and then i realized sublimation spray you spray it on your part that you need to scan you so and it makes it all flat and then you wait six hours and it just disappears it direct sublimates from a solid to a gas so you don't have to clean it so like yeah so if i want to do like my wife's ring or something like that i can spray it and then just leave it be and it's gone and like don't have to worry about trying to clean yeah so
01:41:30
Dylan
Ooh, cool.
01:41:40
jamie peacock
So what my mate Roger does is he puts talcum powder in alcohol. puts in a spray bottle, shakes it up and sprays that on and then the alcohol evaporates, leaves you with this white powder everywhere.
01:41:45
Curt
m
01:41:50
jamie peacock
So it looks like a coke head sneezed. But yeah, in a pinch it works because I know the sublimation spray is not cheap.
01:41:53
Curt
Totally. I know. and That's how...
01:41:58
Curt
Yeah, but I mean, looks cool. So i was like, why not?
01:42:00
jamie peacock
Yeah, it's cool. So yeah.
01:42:02
Curt
I'll try it. And i I want to try to get the best results I can. So I've always been pissed around with that. ah And then ah Blender. I haven't messed with Blender in like a decade, but same thing. I've just, I've wanted to to get better at doing some mesh modeling that isn't CAD specific.
01:42:15
Curt
So there's like ZBrush, some very expensive software. And obviously Blender is the open source alternative. And it's amazing. It's advanced so much. So I spent yesterday just doing some sculpting tutorials on Blender because it's fun.
01:42:26
Curt
something to do. and a mesh to CAD program, which I will link in the show notes. I can't remember the link right now, um but it's the equivalent of like, if you do a 3D scan and you want to use it for something ah recent or decent. So like I'm making a, like a ball bar to do some scan testing, but,
01:42:44
Curt
I want to overlay models on my scan so I can actually measure how accurate everything is. um And to do that, you can use like all whatever scanner you buy. They always have their own software, but it's usually like a thousand bucks a year.
01:42:55
Curt
But a company came out with one that's open source and it works super, super well. And it lets you bring mesh models and like best fit like a sphere or best fit like a cylinder or best fit a cone to like whatever you scan. So it takes a lot of the annoying part of converting a mesh model to a solid model.
01:43:12
Curt
um Anyways, I can't remember the name. I'll link it in the show notes. You can download it and it runs on your computer and it's totally free. Or sorry, it's not totally free, but there is a version that you can download that is free. And it works apparently quite well. So yeah, that's been my search bar.
01:43:25
Dylan
That's awesome.
01:43:25
Curt
How about you, Master?
01:43:26
jamie peacock
Interesting.
01:43:26
Curt
Yeah. Yeah, it seems cool.
01:43:29
jamie peacock
I've been trying to figure out more staper sizes for Carl's lathe. um Tracking two parcels that are heading to the US via India. um They went from here, so from Johannesburg to Dubai, to India, to Italy, to the US.
01:43:47
jamie peacock
Yeah, the most ridiculous route.
01:43:47
Curt
Ha ha ha.
01:43:49
jamie peacock
But yeah, there's some ah some anchor points that will have arrived already in the US.
01:43:49
Dylan
Yeah.
01:43:54
jamie peacock
They arrive this coming Monday with some special secret engravings on them. And then, yeah, I've been looking into relays for... um the servo alarms on Spinderella. So if the servo's fault, which they did today, the machine will go into e-stop.
01:44:10
jamie peacock
So I've just got to go pick those up on Monday. And then looking at rototanks still for putting in some RO water storage in the workshop.
01:44:19
Dylan
Awesome.
01:44:19
jamie peacock
And I'm probably still going to be Googling rototanks in three weeks' time.
01:44:19
Dylan
um
01:44:20
Curt
Thank you.
01:44:22
jamie peacock
So I think it's appropriate.
01:44:23
Dylan
I'm in the middle of figuring all that stuff out too right now. It's interesting.
01:44:26
jamie peacock
yeah i'll i don't have space i want to put 180 liter tank in the workshop and then 240 liter tank outside the workshop that the ro's um bypass line goes into so the outdoor can use that to water the garden and i'm not just pissing it down the drain because yeah i may as well try and use the water for something because the bypass is like three times what you get out of the ro system no
01:44:53
Dylan
Yeah, it's unfortunate. it really is.
01:44:56
jamie peacock
Yeah, so but for watering the garden, that's perfect. Like, I can put the tank at the top of my little stairs, it's high enough that you can use it easily with the hose part. So yeah, that's one of the plans that are afoot in the workshop at the moment.
01:45:08
Dylan
Awesome.
01:45:10
jamie peacock
So where can people find your stuff, Dylan? Or you and your stuff?
01:45:14
Dylan
I am on Instagram, either protiummach, M-A-C-H, or with Intolerance Podcast. The podcast is available anywhere you can get podcasts and on YouTube as a video and Spotify as a video.
01:45:30
Dylan
ah Yeah, that's pretty much Prodiumachining.com. There's a link there if you want to send a quote, but we're pretty, I think we're done for the year. So that's a 2026 thing.
01:45:41
Curt
Nice. Yeah. And if you don't listen to Dylan's podcast, go do it. It'll be linked in the show notes as well. Definitely one of my favorites.
01:45:47
jamie peacock
gift video yeah
01:45:47
Curt
so and one of the One of the ones I don't skip. so
01:45:50
Dylan
Thanks, guys. I really appreciate you having me on, too. It was a lot of fun to get to tell my story again.
01:45:53
jamie peacock
yeah no nothing like a and nothing like a little bit of podcast incest everyone's on everyone's podcast Kurt where can people find you at
01:45:55
Dylan
It's it's not something I get to do very often, and it's really fun to get to talk to other people.
01:46:03
Dylan
ah
01:46:04
Curt
ah
01:46:05
Dylan
Totally.
01:46:10
Curt
confoundermachine.com. You can find links to everything. can find links to the shirts that we sell. You can find links to the products that you can't buy from me, but that will change in the new year, hopefully. So that's that's the goal. How about you, Master Jamie?
01:46:20
jamie peacock
Nice. ah Yeah, you can find me on Instagram at jspec underscore engineering. You can find our website at jspeceng.com where you can find the Anchor Point, the t-shirts, and the Flux. I think there's still stock of those. um And the podcast at theloanmachinists.com where there's a companion guide, some bonus content, and a link to the fancy shirts, which will still all be available because Jamie is an illiterate.
01:46:45
jamie peacock
um So what have you guys got going on today since it's still pretty early in the day, although it is the weekend?
01:46:53
Curt
Uh-huh.
01:46:54
Dylan
I am finishing up some stainless parts in the Hermla, and then I have my first customer hyper mill part going on the Hermla, which I'm excited about.
01:46:54
Curt
huh
01:47:02
Dylan
I was just playing around or trying to finish the programming a little bit ago because I It's a fairly easy part with some frustrating features, but it's it's all working out. like they're I think I talked about it a while ago, but there's a really cool toolpath in HyperMill where it's called 5-axis rework.
01:47:24
Dylan
So if, for example, I can't get a toolpath to do what I want in 5-axis, I can generate it in with HyperMill. collisions and then apply the five axis rework and say, okay, now take that tool path and move the five axes how you need to to avoid collisions.
01:47:39
Dylan
And it'll be like, okay. And it just like refits all of the tool path to avoid stuff.
01:47:42
Curt
Oh, cool.
01:47:44
jamie peacock
Yeah, that's really cool.
01:47:45
Dylan
Yeah, it's insanely powerful.
01:47:45
jamie peacock
Okay.
01:47:46
Curt
Oh, that's cool.
01:47:47
Dylan
And it's just like a very interesting way to think about stuff. So like I have... all these angled bosses and I have to get under them. And so I just like only told it to look at the face for generating the three axis tool path.
01:48:01
Dylan
And then I just said, okay, now avoid everything else and and reference the real model. It's like, okay, no problem. I got you.
01:48:08
jamie peacock
That is really cool.
01:48:08
Curt
Nice.
01:48:10
Dylan
Yeah.
01:48:10
jamie peacock
Yeah, that's a really, really cool sounding toolpath.
01:48:10
Curt
That is cool.
01:48:14
jamie peacock
Kurt, what you got going on today?
01:48:14
Dylan
Yeah.
01:48:15
Curt
Nice.
01:48:15
jamie peacock
Nice.
01:48:16
Curt
ah Weekend. So I was just going to joke. I'd say my wife took Bob Barker's advice and got me neutered. um So I'm feeling a little rough today.
01:48:25
Dylan
ah ah
01:48:28
Curt
So I'm probably just going relax. Hence why Blender was in my search, because I just need something to do where i can just sit comfortably and un do some drawings. So I've been messing CAD and Blender. So I'll probably do that for the rest of today. And then, ah yeah, just chill.
01:48:41
Curt
I'm crazy. How about you, Jamie?
01:48:44
jamie peacock
Yeah, I might need to go fix Bertha.
01:48:47
jamie peacock
The one limit switch just got munched.
01:48:48
Dylan
Uh-oh.
01:48:49
Curt
Oh.
01:48:50
jamie peacock
So yeah, i don't know. going mess this guy already down. I might just shoot down there quickly. And I've got a hot, I've got a spare. Like I'll just go change the limit switch out. It's on with way goes anyway. Um, It's been swapped a few times. ah yeah just I don't know why it got munched. I don't know if there was a shaving or a screw came loose and it slipped down. I'm not entirely sure why it got smushed.
01:49:11
jamie peacock
Because he was running, he turned the machine off, went in for dinner, came back, and it wouldn't hoe. So he pulled the cover and the whole limit switch is bent sideways. So I might either this evening or tomorrow morning shoot down there quickly and then see how far he's got on with my Lades truck adapter as well.
01:49:27
jamie peacock
because he's making the chuck adapters for all the lads that we busy chuck adaptering.
01:49:28
Curt
Cool.
01:49:32
jamie peacock
But yeah, that's the plan.
01:49:32
Dylan
Awesome.
01:49:35
jamie peacock
And on that, everybody, thank you very much for listening. but If you're listening on YouTube, we're available on Spotify and all the other podcasty things. if you're listening there, you can watch Ugly Faces on YouTube.
01:49:47
jamie peacock
And yeah, thank you very much. We will see you next week. There will be a fancy after show that Kurtz and I will record ah in three weeks' time. Should be quite quite interesting. But yeah, thank you Dylan very much for coming on.
01:49:59
jamie peacock
And yeah, we will chat to you again at some point.
01:50:03
Dylan
Definitely. Thanks, guys. Really appreciate it.
01:50:05
Curt
Take care