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Ep. 4: The Curt
27 Plays21 hours ago
Join Curt and Jamie as they discuss Curt's history and running a shop in Canada.
Jamie:
http://instagram.com/jspec_engineering
Curt:
https://www.instagram.com/confoundedmachine/
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Transcript
Introduction & Co-host Change
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to the Lone Machinist podcast, where we discuss tools, tips, and tales of the trade. How's it going? It's Jamie from JSPIC Engineering. Yeah. Uh, since our last episode, unfortunately, John has had to step down as one of the co-hosts and in his step, we've got Kurt from Confounded Machine.
Kurt's Background and Journey
00:00:24
Speaker
Kurt, how are you doing today? I'm good, man. How are you doing? Now I'm carrying on. Yeah, no, thanks for, thanks for inviting me along. I was like chatting about all this nerdy stuff.
00:00:35
Speaker
Yeah, no problem. Yeah. Figured was looking for someone else who's a one man in a shop and you're the first one that came to mind. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Yeah. I've been following you on YouTube for many, many years and Instructables. If anyone remembers Instructables, I actually popped on there the other other day. Really? Yeah, it's still around. So is Hackaday. I popped on there the other day as well. Oh, Hackaday used to be my favorite. Yeah. Yeah. I used to troll them at work all the time.
00:01:02
Speaker
Used to pop down for lunch and then open Hackaday, open Instructables. And I've been posting on Instructables since like 2007, I think, 2006. Nice. Okay. Yeah. Back, back when I was still in school, I was posting like all my stupid projects on there. I used to love it and enter the contest and yeah, it was a cool community. Yeah. It was a really cool community. image I don't know what it's like nowadays. I mean, I ah dropped off of there a while ago. Yeah. Yeah.
00:01:26
Speaker
No, sweet. Okay, cool. So what we're going to do is similar to our first episode, we're going to dive into Kurt's backstory here so that the audience gets to know him and what he's been up to in the trades. And then we'll hop into the regular the regular topics. So Kurt, do you want to take it away?
00:01:44
Speaker
Yeah, sounds terrific. yeah so um yeah My name is Kurt, and I basically now run a company called Founder Machine, um but I started off in a totally different kind of arena. I actually went to school for electronic engineering ah because i wanted to be I wanted to work with robots. That was what I wanted to do from when I was little. and There was nothing that like paired with that perfectly, so electronics was the next next option.
00:02:09
Speaker
So I went to school for that and then ah basically just in my area, like oil industry is huge.
Pen-making Business Journey
00:02:16
Speaker
So I ended up working for a non-destructive testing companies doing electronic repair and then.
00:02:21
Speaker
ah later down the line doing some kind of mobile laboratory work um and all the while kind of got more and more interested in like just I don't know general fabric like I was like making stuff um so when MakerBot came out way back in the day with like their cupcake 3d printer and the thingamatics like I immediately I picked up a thingamatic way back I still have it um And like, that was just so cool. And then I just kind of kept going down that rabbit hole of like, okay, I can make things in plastic. Now I want to make things in metal. So, uh, that I got really into like building your own CNC machines. Um, so I built ah just a gang of CNC machines out of like skate bearings and MDF. And, uh, you still got that browser, don't you?
00:03:03
Speaker
Uh, it's downstairs now. I'm going to like decommission. I never use it. It just, it it was for the longest time. It was a table in here. Um, it's, it's cool. Um, but yeah, I just, as soon as I started playing with metal, I realized like wood and dust is just, like I hate dust. And I was like, Oh, machining metal is so precise and everything fits. And like, if you buy a piece of metal, it's always the same, like you don't have to deal with wood grain and nothing moves and like, you you can make everything tight, tolerance. And like, I just, yeah, immediately fell in love. Um,
00:03:33
Speaker
So yeah, I basically just started playing with that. And then one day, I bought a a tiny lathe. I bought a little tag lathe, just kind of like a benchtop lathe and 50 pound lathe at the max. And I had it in my apartment, and it was just turning things. And of course, you have a lathe. The pen is kind of the natural, natural thing to make. So I made one of those. And I had a few people that are like picked it up. I'm like, hey, this is ah this kind of nice. like I wish I had a nice metal pen. I was like, huh, I wonder if I could if i could sell these.
00:04:02
Speaker
So then I made a few and actually started selling them on Etsy. I don't even remember when I started selling them. um And a few folks bought them. And that just kind of from there, just slowly, slowly snowballed. And yeah took me to basically where I am today, where now I sell pens full time out of my garage, which sounds crazy to say. When did you go full time?
00:04:25
Speaker
I went full-time two years ago. but so and yeah i basically like i was working At the time I was working with a company, a super, super cool company. I'm still in contact with them. um and I was doing a lot of their CAD, CAM, CNC work, not on mills though, on big gantry routers. I'm just cutting up sheet goods. so I was like five by 10 CNC routers. and I had a lot of leeway at that company.
00:04:47
Speaker
um i mean like I knew the, uh, knew the owner really well. but It was kind of a startup. So we all started together and, uh, and grew it slowly like that. And, um, that's probably where I learned a lot just about like CNC. Cause I was just, that's, I was, I was the guy that did everything for that. And I, I kind of came in with a hobby understanding. So it just kind of grew from that.
00:05:09
Speaker
And yeah, just progressed and progressed and progressed. And finally got to a point where I was like, I think if I keep, like if I could put more effort into the pens, I could probably start like switching over. And they were crazy flexible with me. They let me like work part time for a significant amount of time before I switched over to full
Machining Challenges
00:05:29
Speaker
time. So I don't know if people are people are wanting to go down that rabbit hole of starting your own jig. It's pretty slick if you can find a company that'll work with you. Yeah, that that's a really nice way to go. because ah Yeah, you listened to episode one, you know, I had a bit of a falling out with where I used to work, but I had a lot of leeway there, like a hell of a lot of leeway. I built a machine in the last year, I was there and then left. But you're having a lot of leeway and having a having a boss that'll let you go part time. but That is the way to go if you're gonna break out on your own.
00:05:59
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And like, I got to talk to him every, you know, I just went there for the Christmas party like a few months ago. And like, they're just, it's just, it's cool to never burn bridges. It's always nice to maintain bridges if you can.
00:06:10
Speaker
No, definitely. You want to keep those bridges there in case you need them one day, but yeah unfortunately where I was, that that wasn't the case. yeah well I left on a good terms. They took offense to me leaving, so that wasn't their problem. Yeah, not exactly. That happens. Oh, cool. And then, yeah, you when did you get the lathe? Was that before you went on your own?
00:06:34
Speaker
ah When i I was still so I still had like my regular daytime job but and was working with I basically had like a hobby size mill that I slowly converted and slowly kept kind of trying to squeak more and more and more and more out of it and put, you know, ball screws on it and then put stepper motors on it and had a full CNC control, then kind of switched it over to a kind of a Tormach TTS tool system. It's basically a 440 now, if you want to consider it that way. That's pretty accurate. but Yeah, it's like, yeah, the current. com And just, yeah, like Bell drives and just, I just put so much, like that thing is worth so much more money than I would ever get back from it, but it also paid for everything else.
00:07:17
Speaker
um So I was using that and I was doing some mill turning on it because I didn't have a really, a reliable lathe, especially when I, my pen switched from brass to titanium. Uh, it just, it really started working out that tiny lathe and like trying to do production on a machine like that, like, and make money, like not starve, not going to be a, not going to be an easy task. So, um, yeah, I remember doing the mill turning. That was that, and yeah, that actually built a similar setup before I bought a lathe to get some prototypes done on the Slo-Yo.
00:07:49
Speaker
Yeah, it works surprisingly well. Like, and you have like a little gang tool lay that you're disposal. Like, I mean, loading the stock kind of sucks, but, um, yeah, it's, yeah it's remarkable how far it can get you. Yeah. Like good that's, I think people underestimate what these machines are actually capable of a lot of the time. Like it's simple G code. If you know how to manipulate it, you can get the machine to do pretty much whatever you want. Like it doesn't have to just cut circles and squares.
00:08:13
Speaker
Absolutely. and if i mean you're If you're willing to exchange some effort and not make the kind of money you want to make, like you can get really far with relatively crappy gear. like you just gotta to I was thankful. I was in a position i mean just between me and my wife. kind of Everything was financially set up where I could take some risks and I could afford to not you know make a good amount of money for a while. um I could basically just kind of float for a decent amount of time. so it gave It gave me some running room, um but if I didn't have that, I'd probably have to make different decisions.
00:08:43
Speaker
Well, yeah, I got lucky my wife got re-contracted as I was leaving. So i could I could also just figure out what I wanted to do for the first two years of JSpec engineering. And then she got retrenched and I had to all of a sudden be profitable. But that was just how life goes. Like we had two months to be profitable and we had to pay the bills. So we made, we made it happen. And yeah get surprising you can get surprisingly with some seriously janky a equipment, and even a big berth on my lathe. That thing should not hold the tolerances it holds. It really shouldn't. But to get into all those tolerances, you need to really, really baby it. Like it's,
00:09:22
Speaker
It's not not fun to run it because you've got to baby it, but in a pinch, you can get some really, really accurate stuff off of it. so Yeah, well then that also teaches you, like, if you get a better piece of equipment, now you've like you've gained all that knowledge of like, oh, how to machine something when you're machining on a wet noodle? When you have something that's like rigid, you're like, oh, this is cake. And you can make great parts way easier. Well, that is why the Sister Slowio sits there and gets used to cross drill pins. And that's it, because it's just not worth the effort to run it, so to try and get good parts when the LK just does it on the first attempt with very little effort.
00:09:56
Speaker
like right that The literally has crossed all pins and made like three parts this year. Right, yeah, no, I totally and totally get that. Like even when I, so through Instagram, actually I came across a person that was selling a big hardened lathe, an old lathe, an HNC, so it's full CNC lathe, turret lathe, but zero control. So I had to completely retrofit the control, got all the electronics, got all the motors, put new servos into it. um But once I was finished, it's like,
00:10:25
Speaker
my little, the little tag lathe, I use it for polishing parts. Like I'm not going to machine parts on it just because, you know, you have a 3000 pound lathe that's going to make, you know, it's going to run circles around it, unfortunately, because that's what it's designed to do is just yeah make parts. Exactly. ah Speaking of the island, did you ever build a control cabinet for it? Like a human, it's face to us.
00:10:46
Speaker
I didn't. No, no, I have all of it sitting because you sent me that. I love your little like kind of light and everything's like, Oh, I'm going to do this one day. I'm going to do this one day. So I still have all the parts sitting in a box. It got, it got finished enough to work and then that's as far as it ever gets.
00:11:02
Speaker
That's the problem is like when you're trying to do production, it's like, okay, I could stop and fix this or it's working and I could keep going. Like, so it's the worst is when you procrastinate something and then you fix it eventually in like a year's time and realize, shit, I should have done this a year ago.
00:11:19
Speaker
because it makes that much of a difference. Yeah. that So often it's, it's annoying. I mean, the M Co has been running now for just coming up on two years and it's still got the MDF laser cut panel that I did a test fit with and then ordered the acrylic and just never got around to cutting and installing. Yeah. That's a problem with ah a well-functioning temporary solution. yeah Nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.
00:11:47
Speaker
A hundred percent. Yeah. So it's like it is is what it is. Yeah. that's yeah Anyways. like Yeah. Getting a second machine is one of the cheapest ways to get into it. If you've got more time than money.
00:12:01
Speaker
Absolutely. And when I started off, I had absolutely more time than money. um And then it's silly. I mean, I always say like time is the only like resource we should worry about because it's the only thing that you can never get more of. like I can go to 7-11 tomorrow and get money if I need to. like ill If I serve hot dogs there, they'll give me money in exchange, but no one will give me time.
Business Strategies and Financial Insights
00:12:21
Speaker
So it's like, that is the most valuable resource. 100%.
00:12:26
Speaker
If you, within reason, if you don't have any money, you can't just go and buy a big fancy machine and be like, okay, what am I going to do now? No, that's exactly it. like I'm now looking to leverage leverage the time that I'm asleep with the LK, but that comes with a whole lot of its own issues. Yeah. and we're I think we're in the same boat there because that's that's why I bought the Sile is um i but I bought an X5 just about a month or two ago for the exact same reason. So I could finish the day and then run parts into the evening or run parts early in the morning or you know while I'm asleep so that I can, once again, leverage more time.
00:12:59
Speaker
No, that's exactly it. like I've got a job. I'm waiting for them waiting for them to pay before I order material because I've learned this lesson many times and I'm not going to be forced to learn it again. But it's not a huge amount of material. And if I order it tomorrow, I can have it this week and have the order out by early next week.
00:13:19
Speaker
um And it's a lot of walk away time on the LK so I'm like, I've got one or two pieces of from the previous run of these parts. It's not a third batch I'm doing. So I'm like super tempted to just order material tomorrow and say YOLO and just start machining it before I've actually got them. I mean, I've got a purchase order. Like I've got all the paperwork. It's just I don't like really doing stuff until there's actually money in my account because I don't trust bigger companies, like those guys especially. They they spent about $50,000 on batteries, on drone batteries. but And they didn't fit the craft. So they sat discharged on their shelf until they threw them away. Like the most ridiculous setup. They are the biggest operators in South Africa.
00:14:06
Speaker
If you take their revenue or you take everyone else's revenue, add it all together, times it by like four or five, you then starting to approach their revenue per year. They are massive, but but grand but yeah, total bunch of clowns. So like I do little landing legs for them. So I'll run 100 of them in the next week or so.
00:14:26
Speaker
But yeah, I want walk away time because the machine could be running right now. It's got an hour long cycle where it slits off the parts and they just fall into the chip train. I picked them up later. So I want to get that running, but I'm trying to balance being a responsible adult and wanting to run a machine.
00:14:43
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Well, and that's, ah that's, I mean, the whole premise of this podcast is like, you do everything. Like you run the machines, you design the parts, you sweep the floors, you pack the parts, you deliver them. Like it's, there's a lot going on. I mean, I yeah mean, and you were in a little bit different phase because I'm a hundred percent like product. Where's your, your product and.
00:15:02
Speaker
Yeah, I'm a bit of a mix. Kind of job shopy, production job shopy, if that's fair to say. Yeah, I'm trying to move more towards production. this My goal for this year is to turn work away. So different we want to be doing production stuff, recurring production. That's where the money's at. That's where we can put the time and effort in once and reap the benefits going forward. um We manufacture for a local company that does a diesel sensor. We manufacture that whole assembly now. I've got to take some. There's one last component.
00:15:31
Speaker
ah that we could manufacture I'm waiting for testing to be done that I can go and take that work as well because then it's 250 of everything every month all the components and then we're bringing online doing their sensor housings for them should be the end of Q end of Q1 they said that their R and&D will be done and then they'll need housings from us ah but again it's like a six or seven dollar pot it's not It's not an expensive part, but it's an automatable part. So like we make our shop rate running it. We run it super quick on the LK, but we need to run a good couple hundred to make it worthwhile every month.
00:16:09
Speaker
But that that's going to be stuff that gets set up with tool holders. yeah The tool holders get color coded with a different tool tag. They go in and out of the machine for the job. They go in for the job, out onto the shelf. They don't get used for anything else that when they go back in the machine, I know everything is as it was when I stopped last time. That I'm not stealing stealing Enmel for some other job, putting a chip in it and then scrapping a bunch of parts.
00:16:34
Speaker
Cause I want, I want that to run unattended. Like that is the goal. Absolutely. Oh, and especially if you can, watch yeah. And if if the, you know, if the profit on a job can justify just having those tool holders sit for that job, that's ideal. And you just have a little trade and you're good to go. It's well, that's it. I've got some stuff now that they stay set up. I've got a boring head, a Rima two drills. They've got green tool tags. They go on the shelf. Those are for that job only.
00:17:00
Speaker
When that job comes around, I put it in, we do 60, maybe a hundred parts a year of case gauges. And those, when it comes in, I load the tools, I load the program. The part used to take three hours. My neighbor was actually on the other day and I was running the hundred hole case gauges. So putting a hundred high precision holes in a block of aluminium. And I was like, this used to take me three hours. and now It now takes me 35 minutes.
00:17:25
Speaker
I literally, I run up one on one side, up two on the other side, and the two vases, 35 minutes parts out of the machine. He's like, how the hell did you manage that? I'm like, $40,000 on this machine. That's how I did it. Exactly. I bought a machine. And literally do that. Yeah. It's built to poke holes. And the things are, I'm making them faster and better quality than we were on the Slowio. Like some of the stuff I was going through my Instagram feed,
00:17:49
Speaker
or the archive in December. And some of the stuff I did on that machine blows my mind. I'm like, how did I do this on this wet noodle of a machine? But right you learn to do it there. And when you go to a proper machine, it makes life really easy.
00:18:05
Speaker
Oh yeah. And I mean, that's, that's what I'm going through right now is doing all the like, uh, like I do a lot of thread, thread millings, like 256 thread milling on my little hobby machine, which is like the tools are tiny. And like, if you mess a chip load up, I just a little bit, they blow up and like, yeah so learning how to play with it nicely on that noodle of a machine. Now going up to the big machine, it's like, Oh, this job that used to take eight minutes now takes, you know, 17 seconds. It's like, that's insane.
00:18:31
Speaker
i've got I've actually got a job, I picked the material up today, it's a recurring job we do. It's a little aluminium part with a hole drilled in it and then tapped in tap. So instead of tapping it in the lathe because both are chipped out on the spindle motor, so rigid tapping is not really a thing on there.
00:18:47
Speaker
So I drill them counter bottom, then I literally stand at the LK, open the door, put a barrier between me and the work piece, because I put it in the, uh, in the vast type and hit go. And four seconds later, I need to take it out because it comes in at 2000 RPM and rigid taps M10. It's absurd. It takes me longer to take the pot in and out than it does to, to tap it. And I've got to do 200 of those. So I'm going to run them and then just put a podcast stand there for an hour and quickly load and.
00:19:17
Speaker
load and go but No, no doubt, no doubt. Hmm. Hmm.
00:19:34
Speaker
No. Did with his Jamie. Jamie, are you there? We have a bunch of dead air.
00:19:46
Speaker
I don't know if Jamie's also singing.
00:19:51
Speaker
Hello into the void. He is gone. Oh, now I'm a hundred percent by myself. Okay. Well, um, thank you all for listening this far.
00:20:05
Speaker
Hopefully Jamie will come back. Oh, now he says he's offline. Okay, well I'll just continue talking about my world. So I bought the big hard hinge and then slowly converted that thing over, put servos on it. um it's a it's an It's an old machine. It's older than me. I think it was built in the 70s or late 70s, but it was an oil machine. So it pumped oil. And thankfully I bought it off the, I bought it off the guy who bought it off the um original owner so the machine was in great condition and being an oil machine like instead of running a water-based coolant it runs just neat oil which is just just straight like engine oil if you want to think of it that way so the machine is constantly coated in oil which really helps you know keep the keep the thing running a long time hey Jamie you're back work yeah hopefully we didn't lose any audio my PC just blue-screened of death
00:20:54
Speaker
Okay.
Core Competencies and Business Focus
00:20:55
Speaker
I just kind of started rambling about like the lathe that I bought. and not nice I signed for a little bit. yeah I think we were good. Okay. So yeah, anyways, I was just saying I bought that lathe. It was an old lathe, but I mean, as an oil based machine, that's kind of where you get lucky is they just, they really never wear out.
00:21:09
Speaker
Um, and ended up getting all the like stock service manuals with it. And when I went to test it through all of it's like, what this, you know, the lash in this and what the play in this should be, everything was like textbook still. So it was like for a whatever 50 year old machine, it still holds like can easily hold 10th tolerance, which is insane. So yeah, huge fan of that machine.
00:21:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's absolutely nuts. Yeah, I was saying ah before, I think I was saying before I got cut off there by the computer. I'll think next thing is going to be a lathe because the bar loader doesn't like being a bar loader. So I try to convince her that we need a new lathe and she's like, oh, it can just run a whole bar and I don't have to sit there. And then we can just use it.
00:21:48
Speaker
She's like, yeah, no, no, by late. That's fine. But yeah, late. Pacific Lake was like $40,000 to buy it new. They not not a cheap ever. But that is one of the cornerstones of the business. So I've actually got a seller lined up or buyer ah lined up for Big Bertha when I'm ready to sell that I get rid of it for like $5,000 be gone. Not my problem anymore. And yeah, for the price, it works really well.
00:22:17
Speaker
Oh, exactly. yeah You lucked out on your lathe. Oh, that's so lucky. Even the Emco, the Emco's a 35-year-old lathe. When I got it, I didn't strip the slides. Everything was still tight. I put new motors on it and I run and it holds. I will set up and I'll measure the first part of the day, the last part of the day, and I can't discern any difference.
00:22:39
Speaker
Like it is, okay, I am just cutting brass and PTFE. So it is running on easy mode, but I mean, even running, we run a 316 job on there and we have an insert chip every, every now and again, compensate for that and carry on. Like we run the chipped insert because if the surface finish is good, we don't really care. It's a cosmetic part and the guy doesn't pay me enough to use lots of inserts. mark Yeah, he doesn't pay nearly enough.
00:23:08
Speaker
But yeah, that's... Yeah, so I mean, i that's i mean that was the big cornerstone of my world is just is getting that machine and then, like I said, just recently getting the the big... drill tap center here has helped a ton too. it's just yeah it's ah Equipment can help significantly. It just comes with a significant price tag. It comes with a significant um <unk> commitment is the word. We're we're discussing that today. I was at one of my customers, and I was saying, November, we hit a bit of a wobbly with cashflow. Up until now, it's always been fun. I've made enough money that
00:23:42
Speaker
Yeah, we struggled a little bit, but we'll be fine. And now our commitments over the last year have gone up because new machine and whatnot. So now it's actually we need to look at the finances properly. And we're now switching out to profit first to try and address that. Because if you've got a problem and you don't address it, you're not long for this world. Yeah, no doubt. I was actually looking at that.
00:24:04
Speaker
listening to, I think it was AJ's podcast, and I was like, oh, profit first. I'm like, interest, because same thing. I just like, my world is so, I mean, I have the luxury that I basically whatever I produce, I can sell, but still at the end of the day, it's like, it's not straight cash. That's never my problem. It's always just cash flow. It's like, okay, I just bought, you know, whatever two months worth of everything. It's like,
00:24:24
Speaker
Well, I was sell to cover that. And so I was at a at a customer today, they are a press shop. And they used to do a lot of like CNC turning with that to CNC leads, they're not a tool and our work for other people. And it was owned by the guy i regularly deal with it was owned by him, his brother and his dad. And then his father sold out shares to a family friend who used to run robo in South Africa, a huge steel factory.
00:24:52
Speaker
They got liquidated and whatnot a few years ago. um And he came in as one of the director or as the director now, and he's like, no, no. ah turn what Turnover is turnover his vanity. Profit is sanity.
00:25:07
Speaker
And I'm like, that makes perfect sense because chasing turnover. Ooh, big number. Doesn't mean you're making money. Like he came in, they wrote everything they do on a whiteboard and we're like, okay, cool. What are we actually making on this job? Oh wait, we're losing money doing CNC turning work. Get rid of it. They were doing it as, they ended up doing it as a favor to and another customer. They outsource it now. It's not their problem because yeah, it was, yeah, it was turnover. They were doing.
00:25:33
Speaker
doing $10,000 a month of turning work. But of that, they their profit margin was so slim that you stuff up one part and that's it, you you make no money. So they've now narrowed down, but you look at their profit margin, like the turnover is way lower than it used to be, but their profit is like way, way up. So they're focusing on their core competency. They're a press shop, so do pressing work.
00:25:56
Speaker
Like I'm actually, right what I've got their pots here that I need to design a press tool for. So we've got a, yeah, it starts off as a flat plate and then gets domed in a flat press. I probably shouldn't show that, but I don't, I assume that I'm going to watch the podcast. ah marla Probably not. If someone, if someone can reverse engineer from that, I want to meet them. Yeah.
00:26:19
Speaker
No, the problem with these things is it's a race to the bottom, like very much a race to the bottom. right now The guys will go, oh everyone's running 0.8 material, we'll run 0.7 millimeter material and then undercut by like 20 cents on ah on a part and get the work. It's ridiculous.
00:26:35
Speaker
Like they do. That's the world. Yeah, that is the world. That's the world. I want to stay. Well, no, I say I want to stay are you as soer as away from that world as possible. Like that well that terrifies me. Race to the bottom is scary. yeah So I've got, I've got things that ah today I turned down work. So in August last year, I did a tool and die turning job.
00:26:56
Speaker
I didn't enjoy it. I pretty much lost years of my life to stress because everything comes in only enough material, no tolerances. So I'm trying to hit exact size on Bertha running tool steel. It was not a pleasant experience. And my customer, he was making the whole set of tooling and his customer said, nope, we don't accept this. This is now like six months later. No, no, make us a new set on your own dime.
00:27:20
Speaker
So
Precision and Equipment in Machining
00:27:21
Speaker
he phoned me on Friday and I'm like, I'll come see you on Monday. I went down like, listen, I'm not actually interested in turning these spots. I'm just, I'm not interested in doing it. so Take it somewhere else. That's what I charged you last time. Go see if you can get a price similar, but I'm not willing to do it. so He was a bit upset with me, but sorry, and not, not worth it. It's not what we do. We specialize in small components.
00:27:42
Speaker
I like doing things on the lathe that I can hit everything in one operation. Then guess what? It's concentric because there's no re-clamping. None of that bullshit going on. It's just, it comes off. It's right. It's right enough. Like a lot of the stuff we do is not a four or five foul tolerance.
00:27:59
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's awesome. if you can If you can design it in like that, it makes it so, like you were saying, that's where you can just run it off the machine. Because pretty much any kind of reliable machine is going to easily hit that tolerance. Yeah, especially running aluminum. So we still check all the threads on the diesel sensors we make. I think we must be up to 3,000 or 4,000 of them that we've made. Every single one of them gets screwed into a mating thread because it's an M25 and then an M30.
00:28:28
Speaker
ah both 1.5 pitch. Whoever designed these things should be taken out back. But I thread the one, I thread the other. It's the same tool, same setup. So if the one's good, the other one's good. At least that's the theory. So every one of them gets screwed into a flange, unscrewed, put in the rack so that I know the threads are always good in case the machine hits a wobble because it's got an encoder that I made out of a piece of G10 and two optical interrupts.
00:28:56
Speaker
and but works shockingly reliably now, but everything gets gauged. ah We've got a gauge for every part to check the pitch. We've got a gauge for one in every five parts goes in there just to check the size, like the but overall, let me just stop hitting my microphone, the overall diameter of the thread. And then we've got the master that I use for setup, because these people can't give me a drawing, can't give me a tolerance. So I'm working off of samples they've given me.
00:29:23
Speaker
which is less than ideal, but it's fine. I also own all their drawings. They gave me pots and all their drawings. So they don't own drawings for any of their components. I kind of have them by the nuts, but it is what it is. I was going to say job security there. Well, I had a meeting with them. They called me and they're like, ah, can we discuss price?
00:29:45
Speaker
sure go in, they've got a spreadsheet with two competitors' prices there, one of which is China and one of which is Ukraine. I was cheaper on three out of five items, and the ah the ones that I was more expensive, it was like a couple percent. So I said, guys, the price is staying what it is. I haven't put it up in a year, so be happy firstly. Secondly, my value add is not being the cheapest. It's being, pick up the phone, hey, we short parts, I get in my vehicle and I drive there. That is the value add. And fixing their stupid engineering is the value add.
00:30:16
Speaker
I found one of the original parts, I was cleaning under a workbench and I found one of the original parts. It was so badly designed. knock So the the aluminium tube we bought, it's meant to be 15.88 millimeters. So 625,000, 650,000, something like that. I need to finish my Imperializer so I can just type this in.
00:30:38
Speaker
I've got a batch in it. I'm Canadian, we can just go millimeters. No, yeah but I feel bad for the for the audience. We'll make everybody else angry, yeah. Yes, we're working in the real units. Improper unit there. So my pots are opened up the tolerance to 16 millimeters. So I've got a 16 mill bar that needs to go in, that is my tolerance, it's comma, comma one two bigger, should be like a loose fit. It's nearly five thou clearance, it should be an easy fit.
00:31:05
Speaker
extruded tube came in. Uh, a batch came in in November. I looked at it on the truck. I'm like, this doesn't look right. Grab the Vernier measured it. No, it is a 16.1. I'm like, take your shit and go.
00:31:37
Speaker
I can still hear you, so I don't know. Keep keep chatting away. Oh, no. Now we and we've lost Jamie again. Well.
00:31:48
Speaker
Back to Kurt's stories. So we've talked enough about the lathe. The the big lathe that I bought, the hardened lathe and the little mill got me through a long time. Like I was working full time um in this in this business, slinging pens with just those two machines. It was like a lot of work I put, like you you spend a lot more,
00:32:14
Speaker
time and effort to make those machines work, but it totally works. Like, um, and I made that work for a long time and both those machines generated me enough money to consider buying a big machine. And that's when I bought the, the Silex five and that has significantly changed things because now I'm no longer, you know, just burning time on a machine that was never designed to run production. The little mill was never designed to run production. And I've been forcing it to do production for, you know, a good year now. Um, so it's nice to have a more dependable machine to do that.
00:32:43
Speaker
More so just the fact that if my little mill were ever to go down, I lean on it so hard now for so many aspects of my business that it would be, it would be, it'd be crippling. Yay, Jamie's back. I rambled more about yeah machines. Sorry, I'll unplug the webcam. I think it's causing problems here. Oh, okay. Well, I get to look at a nice pretty orange and blue dot now. So there we go. Sorry, you were saying.
00:33:06
Speaker
Oh, I was just rambling about how having a bigger machine now, like using my small machine, my little my little hobby ah mill and the lathe, I ran that as my business for about a year. And that generated me enough income to basically afford to buy a better machine, like this X5 behind me, which is nice, not only for the fact that you know you get better surface finishes, parts come out faster, everything, but the fact that if my little mill were to explode,
00:33:34
Speaker
Like I would be hosed, like I would have to put in so much work to get another machine functioning like that. It's just nice to have a dependent ah to dependable, dependable machine. Um, when I literally depend on it for my livelihood. So yeah, that's a, that's a lovely change. Part of the reason I went with the new machine as well.
00:33:53
Speaker
Yeah, I got lucky with the LK, it was a 2019, so it's not super old. That was decent, yeah. Yeah, that's why I've kept the slowier around. It's more valuable as a backup spindle than as money in the bank accounts. 100%, like I will never sell this little machine because, A, it's a backup, and I'll never get what I have into it. I would rather just look at it and remember than sell it for whatever, two, 3,000 bucks. I don't need the money for that. I'd rather be here.
00:34:23
Speaker
No, exactly. like ah yeah I've considered selling the slowio, but I would rather have it as a spare spindle for now. Maybe when I get another spindle, that conversation changes, but yeah we'll see then what actually what actually happens. but yeah no told I can't remember what I was talking about when I got cut off. This is going to be a very interesting podcast.
00:34:42
Speaker
I know it was those ah those tubes that were undersized. Oh, yes, yes. Okay, ah so they came in in December. We were meant to deliver, it was but about $1,200 order that we meant to deliver. We could only deliver like $600 worth of pots because the tubes didn't go together because they were oversized.
00:35:00
Speaker
And on the invoice, there was a note saying, make sure the tube is the right size. And I looked at the invoice, I was reversing out the driver, I'm like, okay, it's what it is, offload quickly, I gotta be somewhere. And yeah, I came to assemble the day after the supplier closed for the year, only to discover that, hey, this stuff doesn't go together. So I then, yeah, then the stuff came in this last week, had the order, had a note on it, and I checked every single batch of tubes, comes in at 15.1 millimeters.
00:35:31
Speaker
It's meant to be 15.88. Knack, what the hell? But yeah, that that's just, apparently it's within the tolerance from Huliman, so now we check to make sure we're not oversized, if it's undersized, it doesn't matter. Because we changed the design to accommodate for it. We're now crimping the parts together instead of pop rivets. So, the part isn't loose. They used to come loose with the pop rivets. So yeah, hopefully, well, we're gonna assemble this week still. Knack, tomorrow Danika's machining 150 parts and then,
00:36:00
Speaker
We'll assemble those later in the week and go get them off to the customer. Yeah. See, that's like, that's the one aspect of this whole machining world. That's just unknown to me.
Production Workflow and Automation
00:36:10
Speaker
Cause like, I've always been up here, like, pro I mean, I dabbled a little bit with job shopping, like before I kind of had any, like I did, I wanted to do some like custom work for people.
00:36:22
Speaker
And quickly realize that didn't appear that didn't didn't interest me. But so like my world is like, I don't, I don't encounter that problem. Cause it's just, I buy my materials, like oversized significantly and just machine it down. So it's kind of interesting hearing other people's stories being like, Oh, I could see that being quite stressful. Yeah. No, it's a.
00:36:40
Speaker
Yeah, buying material for jobs is is a bit stressful. I got that that camera job I did, I ordered a spare piece. I needed the spare piece, I made a mistake in Fusion when I was setting the job up. And when I flipped the part, it didn't align. Luckily it was just the one part, so I could remake it. But I've got such a pile of off cuts of material, drops or spare pieces, because I'll always make sure I order one or two spares, that if something happens, I'm not now waiting another week for material so that I can finish the job.
00:37:11
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Running job shop is, is an interesting one. We're chatting today. Uh, I was trying with my own customer and I was saying, no, I ran off all my material for one of the components I make. It was a whole like $20 worth of material. So I just ran it in December because the machine didn't have anything to do. And that's, it's on the shelf now. And when they place an order, I just count our pots. I don't have to produce, which is, right right yeah, which is a nice change.
00:37:37
Speaker
Oh, totally. Yeah. Yeah. So we, yeah, it's running, running production is a different, is a different beast. I was listening to within tolerance today and they were discussing the heavily and the coolant management that goes into it to be able to run lights out for long periods of time.
00:37:54
Speaker
Yeah. yeah not I know it's people always assume like robots and problem solved. It's like, no, there are so many little intricate issues. Like, you know, like even just running a machine, like just ah like, you know, your mill or my mill running it lights out for, you know, a few hours in the night. It's crazy. The things that be like, okay. Like if a tool breaks, you have to be able to detect it. If it's, you know, if chips build up everywhere, you have to be able to flush those out. Like there's just a thousand things that you have to think about because robots do exactly what you tell them to do.
00:38:22
Speaker
even if it's not. No, that's exactly it. Like I'm looking at automating some stuff and it becomes a ah serious thing. Like now I'm looking at, okay, I need a probe because I need to know the materials there. Otherwise I'm assuming it's there and that's going to work well and right up until it doesn't.
00:38:37
Speaker
but right yeah right yeah It works well ah right up until it doesn't. So like you've got to be able to check things. So like now it's, okay, cool. I found a cheap probe. Cheap probe is still like four or $500. And then I've got to have it integrated. The guys actually meant to visit me this week from W.D. Hearn, the Siemens expert. So my machine's got a whole bunch of relays in the back.
00:38:56
Speaker
that aren't being used. The hardware is there. I'm gonna be like, hey, friend, show me how to make these M codes, please. The hardware is there. It's just a software thing. Sort this out. I want to use all of those functions because I have very, very stupid plans afoot. I want to basically assume you've seen the gimbal automation.
00:39:19
Speaker
UMC automation stuff, yes. So ah before they came out with that, I'd come up with a similar plan for inside the LK, because I've got a lot of spare space on the side. So my thought is to build a Kern style tool changer that grabs material, drops it in a positioning spot, and then loads it onto the corner of the table so that I can load up. Because I mean, I've got stuff that's got to run 500 parts a month. I'd rather the op one, the op one's like a ah one or two minute cycle. Let it run automatically. Let it run it, throw it in a bin, and then I manually load the op twos. That's my... My plan on that stuff, because if it means I can do it in the evening while I watch TV, like bonus, like I don't have to stand at the machine. Cause as fun as it is watching the robots run, it gets old very quickly. Just to play devil's advocate. Why not just like you got a huge table. Why not just load your table? Fixturing cost. And yeah, like I could build a plate that holds a whole bunch of them, but even then a whole bunch of them, it's going to take what, 20, 30 minutes.
00:40:23
Speaker
Whereas I wanna run yeah like, yeah, I can i can probably put 30 or 40 pots on the table and that's it. And then it's moving. No, the pots, I need clearance around the pots for some of the stupid things I do. okay okay So like the one pot, the one pot's a really simple pot. It's drill a hole, bore two bores, sham for the thing and trim the ends. And that ah couldn I've got a fixture right now that holds 10 pots at a time.
00:40:50
Speaker
But the work holding on it is not quite good enough. So I've got to rebuild that anyway. And that 10 parts takes like seven minutes. So you're forever loading and unloading that fixture.
00:41:02
Speaker
And it's okay that kind of too big. Yeah, it's too big to, to put on my pallet system. Though if I did it on the pallets, I could fit one set and then it's a minute and I basically have to stand at the machine then. So like they're not complicated parts. They just, there's a lot of them. They, they talking like 2000 assemblies a month, which means that would be 8,000 components.
00:41:24
Speaker
The problem there becomes the lathe. Like the lathe is the cycle is long. It's a little ball thing that I machine and that takes a good two or three minutes. So I'm going to have to figure something else out to make that happen faster. Now the milling stuff is quick. Yeah.
00:41:42
Speaker
yeah That's the problem with lathes is la lathe cycles are always super short. So you're kind of just limited by your, uh, how long you can bar feed. If you can feed a 12 foot bar, great. But if you can't, yeah i's like no no that's the biggest, you're like, no, I'll bar feed a one meter bar. If I'm pulling it with a ball puller, if I'm pushing it at seven 50 on a birther and 500 bills on the EMCO.
00:42:05
Speaker
But like 500 mils, I ran for 90 minutes on the on the one component. The part right the part is 3.7, it's three millimeters long. The parting tool is two millimeters. So it's literally five and a half mils of material per part. So I ran off about 90 of them in a row and do something else while it does that.
00:42:26
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, that's kind of similar to my, yeah, like my heart and just same thing. I can, I can fit two feet. it Technically has like a super long bar feeder. I just don't have it. Um, I can, I can, I can bar feed two feet at a time, which is nice for my parts, but it's still like the longest walk away I have is like maybe hour and a half, two hours. Yeah. But then like, for me,
00:42:46
Speaker
So I could bob pull the job we're going to set up tomorrow, but instead I have Danica sit there and pull the bar forward every three minutes, gauge the parts because chip buildup becomes a problem. Cause I don't have the horsepower to chip break the aluminum. I'm actually waiting. I'm waiting for a guy on Instagram, a local machine tool. What is he? He's a sales technician or whatever. They've got an insert that he wants me to try that will hopefully break the, break the chip properly.
00:43:15
Speaker
oh Because that's the biggest thing like I'm feeding it. I'm feeding it at 2000 rpm. And I'm feeding at nine meters a minute. I don't nine meters, 900 mils a minute. So it's like a point four, five feet per rev. Like and as fast as the machine will basically tolerate me doing it, trying to break that chip. And then the finished parts are slowed down a little bit. But again, surface finish doesn't really matter on the pot. It's going into diesel tank.
00:43:42
Speaker
And then I also learned, yeah. And then I learned that udrils, um, I've got a pick the because I don't have high enough pressure coolants. And I also learned that the bodies on udrils wear out.
00:43:55
Speaker
Like I had one just wouldn't, it wouldn't perform properly. And I put a brand new one, I obviously i have a spare on hand, put a brand new one in, works beautifully. Just the coolant, the tools, it was blowing coolants in the wrong place. It was rubbing. I don't know. It was being weird. Put a new one in, problem solved. So I keep one or two of those on hand because again, China.
00:44:16
Speaker
And they're like, I think that's $12 a usual. So my God, that is so cheap it's ridiculous. I bought, I bought two of them at a time, put one on the machine, put one on the shelf. If I have a problem, I swap it out and I go like, I'm running a left hand boring bar and that is proving the biggest problem right now. Cause I can't buy replacements.
00:44:37
Speaker
um They're not super common this side. So I'm trying to find one with a different insert to try and get better chip breaking But not really coming right because I'm using a left hand bore 16 diamonds a boring bar At the top of the machine to do all my roughing Okay, because I don't I literally don't have space on the gang bed to put another stick to yeah, just right Yeah, i just trying to save save dual space Yeah, basically. So it's running right at the edge of the limits of travel. And then the machine as the machine spins up, the table moves across and it's at speed by the time that tool gets to the job. It then does its thing, does the threading, goes back, you drills it, and then does some grooving and parting off. So I have four tools and that's it. like That's all I can fit on the machine.
00:45:21
Speaker
I think the most I've done is six tools. And that was like, some really, really stupid setups to make that happen. like I love the turrets on the M code, everything's always set up, you just load the job and go, like a little bit of hand editing and like, yeah, always end up doing hand editing on lathe code. Oh, that's yeah, I I'm working on that. I just I Yeah, i mean someone was but I mean, yeah, I think John was asking me why hand edit. And I'm like, no, I handed it because i I don't set the clearance plane in fusion, because otherwise it sets it halfway to China. So I go in and I'm like, okay, this is one of the longer tools, go back an extra 10 miles, do the tool change. Oh, it's a short tool, go back 75 miles before you tool change.
00:46:02
Speaker
Things like that, like just little hand edits on the gang lathe, the sequence in which it needs to move. So like if it's a long tool, it needs to move back in Z, then across an X. But if it's going from a short tool to a long tool, it needs to go back in Z, then over an X. And those things are, you can also cut of cycle time by not doing stupid moves.
00:46:25
Speaker
Yeah. And late lathe code isn't like, it's not like mill code where you're going to have, you know, 70,000 lines of code. Like you'll have a few thousand lines of code. It's y' allll pretty max. I think I had one that was a few thousand lines the other day. That's the biggest piece of code I've ever run for a lathe. Most of it, if it's 200 lines, it's a lot. And that's just cause I'm packing all the time to break the chip. Like otherwise it's, yeah, it's usually pretty simple. Yeah.
00:46:52
Speaker
Like, the I see your your flap for the USB is open on your cell. Have you not connected it to the network yet? I literally was looking at that last night because so I'm like, I am getting sick of walking the USB stick back and forth. It's only three feet, but I'm like, I'm going to burn out that connector. Yeah, no, no. that's That's how poor people do it. yeah So i've got an old I've got an old NAS that I got given, like a 256 gig NAS um that was given to me because it was too small to be useful. And then I just set up and.
00:47:24
Speaker
That works. If it ever fails, I'll move Home Assistant, my Home Assistant Pie into the office, and then just use that as a Samba share. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Machine Memory and Optimization
00:47:33
Speaker
Super, super simple to set up, but like took me a morning, not even like, fucking like 30 minutes, and I was connected, and then I just dump Fusion Post straight into a folder on my NAS. I've got an LK folder, I've got a Bertha folder, and I've got a Slowio folder, and it just dumps it straight there. On the controller, I go navigate my way to the folder,
00:47:51
Speaker
Hit, oh, one thing. ah If you post the same file, like say you just make a tweak and you post it, don't go input and then execute, just hit execute in the program manager. If you go input, then execute, it doesn't always pull the latest version. Oh, okay, okay, I gotcha. So like when you when you navigate or when you go program manager, it'll still be on the same file. You just hit execute on the top and then it pulls the latest and i've I've run into that once or twice before.
00:48:19
Speaker
where I like comp something and I'm like, why hasn't it adjusted? And I figured out it was just the order of button presses. It seems like it shouldn't be a problem. Yeah. Hopefully it helps. We have like, we have the same controller on both our machines. That's why we're talking in the same, cause like we have an eight 28 D Siemens controller. So we're both identical. So we can actually, I'd be curious to know what, uh, what the part number on yours is.
00:48:48
Speaker
ah yeah actually Yeah, when you're in there next time, just have a look because I don't know how many tools my machine can take. So I looked into it and I opened it and googled the spec sheet for my specific controller, which is the PPU 280.3. And it can take 256 tools, 512 cutting edges, assigned to said tools, i and has five megabytes of memory.
00:49:15
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. Cause I was curious. Uh, I've run a 37 megabyte program because it just effectively drip feeds it from the NAS. Oh, okay. Interesting. Those molds I did a few weeks ago. Yeah. I think the one was like 37 megabytes.
00:49:31
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. Okay. because as as I was wondering how the actual like works in, cause I know the same thing of mine. It has like five mags of internal space, which is just ridiculous on machines and nowadays. Like what year are we living in? Besides the point, I was thinking, I'm like, yeah, if I drop like a six meg file on a USB stick, I'm like, does it chunk it out? Like, does it chunk out like a, so it'll stream and from yeah.
00:49:53
Speaker
It'll stream it, it'll stream the beginning section and it'll just load the backend in. And then when the program ends, it'll load the front end and again, pretty seamlessly. Yeah. And that's what I was wondering. I'm like, if you're jumping around back and forth through the program, like doing block search, or if you're just like running crazy macros and bouncing, I'm like, I wonder how that works. Block search can take, it can be a little laggy on big files.
00:50:14
Speaker
So I run, um at the end of my code, I normally, if I'm running production, I'll go and add in a G599, G0, X0, Y0, and then the next line, G54, just so that the machine comes to a preset, because we've got a hell of a lot of offsets. So 5.99 is just where I want the machine to park, that I can move that around as needed. um And that's the same in everything as well. So... Doing that, ah search M30 to get me to the bottom, and sometimes it takes a while to get to the bottom of the code. Like, noticeably annoyingly long. ah Interesting, interesting. Yeah, I don't think I've ever spit a, I think the biggest surfacing program I threw into that so far is like a meg or two, so I could just run that directly off, it's internal, so. ah Yeah, he's running you're running quite small, small parts. Yeah, like nothing, nothing savage yet, so.
00:51:07
Speaker
Yeah, no, no, uh, no giant multiple foot molds. Like I ended up doing. no Yeah, no it never fail yeah that that's the other thing. Like a lot, a lot of the dumb stuff I do wouldn't fit in the next X five. I still want one cause they really need little machines. Like ah my machine doesn't have the servo turret. It's got a indexes pot to pot. So if you've got a tool on the opposite end of the turret, your tool change goes from like one, 1.6 seconds to like seven or eight seconds.
00:51:37
Speaker
Oh, so it was teaching, teaching, teaching, teaching. So like now I'm setting up for production run, I will remove tools and rearrange that it goes one, two, three, four, five. And then at the end of the program, I'll put a manual tool change that it'll go back to the first tool. So when I hit cycle start, the machine just goes over and starts machining. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Like small things like that. It cuts six or seven seconds of cycle time. But when you're doing a hundred parts, that starts to add up pretty quickly.
00:52:05
Speaker
Yeah, no doubt. Yeah, no doubt. That's up really, really quickly. Okay. don know that yeah Yeah. So yours is nice and quick. Like adds a second. Ooh. Yeah. It's so lovely. Like the biggest tool changes like two seconds from chip to chip, which is lovely. It's an insane. Now, like we're chatting on Instagram and I was saying the, my one mate Roger comes past and then I'll set the machine at 20% rapid, do the first part.
00:52:28
Speaker
100% rapid hit and go and walk away and every time he thinks it's going to crash. But ah it's a robot. It does exactly what you tell it to do. If it didn't crash last time, it's not going to crash. It's still terrifying seeing like all that metal just flying at it oh yeah and stopping within like, you know, like you said, half a millimeter, a millimeter. You're like, what? Yeah, it's even my tool break, my tool break macro that I wrote, so it will, it rapids up and because like now when you're running full production off of the first part, you hit 100% rapid. It's fine.
00:52:57
Speaker
Like, you know, it's not gonna crash. And it'll go to the tool break detect like that. So it'll go all the way up, across at lapping speed, and then all the way down till like two or three millimeters above the toolsetter, and then slowly come down. It is truly terrifying. ah But yeah you've got to have confidence that you know what you're doing at some point.
00:53:17
Speaker
Oh yeah, no, totally prove it out. Like I said, to prove it out once slowly and yeah you're like, okay, well, let's send it. Like it's, it's fine. Yeah. um My machine goes to 1% rapid. It's really annoying. It's super flipping slow, but 20% is too fast. Like for proving stuff out. So I'll go on the knob and I'll go 20% speed up till it's close back to zero, go to 1% and then slowly approach. And I'm like checking clearances and things.
00:53:43
Speaker
because enable it's okay yeah inevitably dumb things happen where my standard setup of tooling is not what is required. Like I need extra millimeter of reach or, sure yeah especially on the yeah the mold stuff especially. Although fusion simulation's really good. Like I'll just, I will basically, while something else is running, I'll simulate with a set stick out. Oh, it collides, okay, adjust the stick outs in fusion till it's right, then go adjust my tool. And then you know you're pretty good.
00:54:11
Speaker
I do the same, like I said, I've modeled all my tools to the, the whole taper and the spindle nose and then just, yeah, exactly. Run simulation. If simulation passes, I'm like, yeah, I'm not, I'm not worried about anything contacting. Yes. Cause you've got the fourth on there. So it gets taught. Yeah, it gets scary, especially when you see it rapidly like to the side and you're like, it's, I know it's going to stop like a half inch before it hits that fourth axis, but spear you're like, but I hope it stops. I was, I made a riser for my palette because I was running between a vase and my tool setter.
00:54:40
Speaker
And that is truly terrifying. You're machining between the two of them. You're like, you watch it again. It didn't touch. It's not going to touch, but ah yeah, it's fucking scary when you've got a 40 diamonds of face mill coming down at your like next to your toolsetter. Yeah. These are all expensive little components too. So like well yeah I got lucky on that one, but still luck. Yeah. I got a free, uh, Renishaw TS27R.
00:55:02
Speaker
Right. Yeah. I think i heard youmaing them yeah was it working. So ultrasonic cleaner, magical healing ultrasonic, ah jar the guy that I'm actually going to see if I can get him to tie it into the Siemens controller when he's here now, because I would like that to be integrated and automatic. Like I don't actually want to be doing it manually. So if I can have them tied and then bonus, because as far as I know, well, I'm not as far as and I ah know, all the Renishaw macros are on my machine.
00:55:30
Speaker
I just have no documentation for it, so I don't actually know what's what. yeah like They've got all the stupid names like L, whatever, whatever, whatever. I don't know what that means. Because also, have you messed around with subroutines on your machine yet?
00:55:45
Speaker
Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's um so great. Serial engraving. Oh, they're fantastic. They're so good. You just like, I'm on a tool break detectors TBD. You put TBD and it executes that piece of code. It's flipping sweets. Like yeah I thought it would be more complicated than that.
00:56:00
Speaker
Yeah, I know. I was, I was
Automation and Production Efficiency
00:56:02
Speaker
same thing. I i was, ah I was messing around with chat, uh, trying to figure out how to run macros. And then I was like, you know what? I think it's just plain, simple subroutines will work for our sub programs. I'll work for 90% of what I have to do. And yeah, it's, if I'm not passing any variables, subroutines or like sub programs, just so convenient. Yeah, no, it works. Brilliant. Like that's probably how I'm going to load parts into the machine. When I get my spindle grip assaulted.
00:56:24
Speaker
So I built a spindle gripper and then a yama through spindle air isn't working currently. And LK can't give me part an exploded diagram of that specific unit. So my mates got my boroscopes is going to come visit me this weekend. I'm going to shove a boroscope into the spindle head because I physically can't get my hands or my fingers or my face in there to see what's going on. So boroscope. Then once I understand where the problem is, I can address it. Interesting.
00:56:51
Speaker
But yeah, I've got a plan to not use the through taper through tapeer purge um and actually have just effectively a coupling that I drive over to position, drop in, index 60 degrees, come out and I've got the gripper attached, go back, drop in, index 60 degrees and go park the tool. And then I can run a hose because kind of like the gripper stays behind.
00:57:16
Speaker
Kind of like the gimbal guys do for the guys that don't have like through coolant or through air. Well, no, they've got, they've got a, um, a bypass coupling that they use. I don't really want to get into building one of those. Okay. So yeah, I've got, I've got other stupid plans involved. I'll make it that I can just drop it, take it on and off the machine easily as well. So one of the things that you're responsible for is me making a double pallets at some point for slightly bigger work.
00:57:42
Speaker
um and then I will put the cripper on that so I can just drop it in and I know exactly where it is every time. Oh, that'd be so cool. Yeah, yeah i like i like I like that method. so that using Everything's here now. I need to actually just get my head out of my ass and put together those pallet systems so that I can save them overseas.
00:58:03
Speaker
Yeah, um I'm curious to see how that works. I think that'll be, I think it'd be a cool item. and yeah I think there's a little gap in the market for that kind of stuff. So I think, yeah, I think there's a severe gap in the market for that, especially at the price point that we trying to aim at. I think we've, yeah, yeah but there's nothing even. remote No, no. Yeah, exactly. Like I said, if it if it works out, and sign me up for a yeah gang of them. Well, that's it. I'm looking, ah we're discussing how to how to ensure accuracy over four of them, because now it's tolerance stackups, it's designed to be individual units. So now if we put four of them on a base, we potentially have tolerance stackups, but I have a plan. My plan is to make a plate with pull studs facing up that I drop it on and I deck the back of the assembly.
00:58:49
Speaker
So then in theory, we are true. We're true. Yeah. Theory. We will, we will see in practice yeah because you could potentially end up with a bit of misalignment between four of them. But yeah, I'm looking at how to make it a bit bigger and more rigid because it's only got 700 pounds of downforce. It's not the most rigid thing in the world. But if all you're doing is facing something and putting a chamfer, it works perfectly.
00:59:16
Speaker
Right. Like I wouldn't use it as my, I don't use it as my roughing devices. I use it as a easy way and cheap way to fix just something for an opt-to because a pallet is $5 a material and a pull start is $2. Like yeah that's it. It's not $20, $30 per pallet. Like.
00:59:36
Speaker
ah Yeah, that it adds up very quickly. I looked at Pearson stuff when I was planning a job, and it was going to end up being like $100,000 to, to buy five systems with pallets. And I'm like, at that price, I'm gonna rather like at that point, maybe roll my own if I have time. But yeah, I assume you get what you pay for with this stuff. But yeah, yeah, the like my my system is not designed to to compete directly with it.
01:00:06
Speaker
Like it's meant to be a ah cheaper solution for guys who want to do, I don't know. It's more for the hobby guys, I think, than the industrial guys or the light industrial. I mean, mine run, I've run thousands of pots across the one pallet because I use it every time I run production and it repeats well enough for what I need it to do. Like the the only way you're going to pick up where is if the bores wear out in your pallet. And in that case, put six put a drill bush and then look, it doesn't wear out anymore.
01:00:36
Speaker
yeah no It's not a complicated fix. well and That's what's appealing to me about your system. is I was like, okay, the pallets are like significant. like there's There's not a huge barrier to like just having a gang of pallets floating around. Well, that's it. yeah i mean I've got 13 or 14 on the shelf, and then I've got another 10 pieces of material sitting waiting.
01:00:57
Speaker
for the five for the the samples that are going out and then five spare for me for other stuff. Because the pull studs the most expensive part of it. The pull stud costs me more. If I buy locally, it costs me more than it costs for the material. And I just haven't had the cash flow to order like 100 of them from China. Because it doesn't need to be, the other thing is it doesn't need to be a good quality pull stud. It's only pulling down to 300 kgs or 700 pounds.
01:01:23
Speaker
It's not in a machine with a thousand pounds of upforce on it while getting smacked with a cutter. Like yeah yeah yeah it can be a cheap one. It's not going to fail. Like that is not going to be your point of failure. Yeah. And yeah. So like all the springs are, you know, I need to make the grinding fixture and actually grind the contact pads. Although I'm not entirely sure I want to keep going with tool steel on those. I don't know how necessary it is because it does add a significant cost to heat treat those.
01:01:53
Speaker
So it's, yeah, yeah I mean, my one that's in the machine is just 303 stainless. And at the price point, I'm kind of thinking it doesn't need to be a hardened steel wear plate. You've got a piece of aluminum rubbing against it. I was going to say, yeah, you're interfacing pieces of aluminum. So yeah, the only reason I want it hardened is if you miss while putting the thing in, you don't want to put a thing on it with the pull stud. Yeah, sure. But guess what? That thing's going to transfer to your aluminum and then it doesn't really matter.
01:02:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, like I don't know. Yeah, it's the ones that are going out the samples that are going out are going to be hardened tool steel, and we'll see how they work. Well, four of the four of the the spatula be hardened and one will be stainless. And we'll send them out and see how they how they go. But I mean, that shouldn't make a difference.
01:02:44
Speaker
They're all gonna be ground, so they'll look pretty now, because I've got a surface grinder. I was actually busy. finished So the surface grinders, I traded, these guys needed a retrofit on like old Bridgeport. So instead of paying me a deposit, they paid me two surface grinders, and then I invoiced them the balance of it, and I was on site this morning, finishing up that retrofit. Nice. On site for two days, machines done, I'm like, put a vase, connect it to power, let me know when when you're ready to actually use it, and I'll come give you your day's training.
01:03:14
Speaker
So like I do the retrofits and then they get a day's training as well. That's nice. That's good. Nice and cheap as well. When I look at what things in the U S cost, it's hilarious. I know. That's a cool thing. ah I think it was episode two, whatever you're kind of getting bit into your kind of your backstory and kind of the yeah way the economic world works there. And it's just like, what just blew me away. I was like, no okay, that's why we're in different worlds.
01:03:38
Speaker
Yeah, no, no, it it is something special. I like that whole retrofits ended up running them $1,500. Yeah, that's nice. Yeah, that's nice. They've got a ah machine running like they they actually have a Doosan Lynx lathe that came in that I think rats got into the wiring on it. So they're busy trying to fix that. Like these are sparse second and machinery and, and basically will restore it and sell it on.
01:04:07
Speaker
That's it, they're actually the guys that I bought the EMCO from. Oh, okay. So they, yeah, they've they've been meaning to come visit me for a while to come see the EMCO because it was on their shop floor for like two years that no one wants it. I saw it, I'm like, this will be mine. If anyone looks at it funny, you phone me, I come fetch it. Like this will be my machine because small machines in South Africa are not a thing.
01:04:30
Speaker
Like you don't find small machines because a lot of the industry here is mining. So the guys will buy the one meter long beds because they can do big mine work on it. So you don't find small machines. I spent years looking for a secondhand brother or robo drill or something like that. Nothing on the secondhand market. so Yeah, that's kind of the same with our world here. A lot of it is big, like heavy oil, big valves and stuff like that. So same thing. People are always like, Oh, well, you know, for the price of your ex five, you could have got a brother. It's like, yeah, but like, I have to buy from the States. Um, and then I have to bring it across the border and that has a whole host of issues and like transport costs are significant. at that Like yeah it ends up being a wash and like everything local here. Like I think I came across a, um, uh, was it not a, uh, Haas, uh, not one of their, uh, mini mills, but like, um,
01:05:19
Speaker
or in their tool room, tool room mills. Yeah, and it still went from like 70% of what new was, and it for a clapped out machine, I'm like, no. like i don't and They're doing that because they can, like anybody in a garage is looking at it, and they know they can get it for it, but it's just like, yeah no, no. No, South Africa's even worse with that stuff. South Africa, you'll buy something, you'll run it into the ground, and then ask more for it because you've used it and you've looked after it. like The second-hand market here is insane.
01:05:48
Speaker
i cause Now, the US guys will pick up a car for like $1,000. Yeah, good luck. $5,000 if you want something that actually runs. Secondhand, like 10, 15 years old, like the, it's ridiculous. The resell, like the secondhand market here. But you're even machines. Like I picked up Connie for, so all my secondhand machines I've picked up for $1,000 or less. wow So be Bertha was $1,000 if I wanted the collet chuck.
01:06:18
Speaker
um And then my friend who works at WN and just threw a whole bunch of random stuff in the machine as I was walking around the workshop, seeing what he could throw in the machine. I can sell it for scrap or use it or whatever. Cause like we went to high school together. it was yeah yeah I got a whole bunch of random cuck with that but machine. And then Connie I paid $1,000 for that. I ended up selling for just over five went off. I had retrofits in it. And right right right yeah, like, but that is not like last year I ended up doing three retrofits. It's not really my core business, but it's easy money.
Buying vs Building Equipment
01:06:51
Speaker
In the grand scheme of things, it's easy money. I can charge a fair amount for it. If business gets a bit slow, I start looking for retrofits because I do all the prep work here. I'm on site for two days and I'm done. And if you'd like doing it, that's, I enjoy doing it and I would rather do it to someone else's machine than to my own machines. Fair. Yeah. Like I want to build, I want to build a Swiss lathe, but
01:07:15
Speaker
I can't justify the time and effort. I can't justify buying one and I can't justify the time and effort to build one. The M code does the job. There is a citizen three M seven, like 1990s era Swiss lathe. That's like a thousand kilometers from me. And it's, it was initially 5,000 bucks that I found it from ah the guy. And that's the one I was super interested in. Uh, so I ended up talking with a few guys that run a bunch of Swiss machines.
01:07:42
Speaker
And they're like, nah, stay away from it with like a 10 foot pole. Because it had its parameters wiped. And in Swiss land, the parameters are like built into the drives. And like he's like, tell you what, he's like, I was talking with Citizen directly, like the engineers that program these drives. He's like, and I still ended up scrapping one of mine. Because we just couldn't get the parameters reset. I was like, oh, good to know. He's like, you can buy it. He's like, but it might just be a paperweight. And now it's yeah it it hasn't moved in six months. Because anybody that knows anything is like, no, that's that's a paperweight. Yeah. Yeah. so No, that's the thing. It's a different conversation if they eventually flog it for like $1,000 and then just put your own drives, but then it's all the integration stuff. right and there's like Yeah. yeah like it's It's a non-standard kinematic setup. So then it's trying to figure out how to convince Linux CNC that that is what you want to do.
01:08:33
Speaker
Yeah, and like I don't have the time anymore, unfortunately, to play that. Well, that's the thing, yeah. The time-money scale is shifting. I'd be way better off yeah buying a brand new Swiss lathe and making the payments and making parts. like yeah That wasn't the case a few years ago, but right now, like yeah, that would make way more sense. You used to have more time than money, and now that that is shifting. It's not necessarily inverted, but those are coming closer together. You've got to think about where you sink your time.
01:09:01
Speaker
Yeah. And it's unfortunate because I love that. Like I totally want to go and buy just like that and just play that same game. But it's like, no, it'll cost me thousands and thousands of dollars. just things so Yeah. It's where, yeah, where your time is more valuable. right ah Like I enjoy all the random stuff I do. Like I do automation for guys, but I'm trying to phase out of that now.
01:09:23
Speaker
Like I'm tying up projects, projects are not done. They're not getting done again. Like, Oh, you need automation. Go find someone to do it. Like I'm not actually that interested in doing it. Cause it ends up just eating up so much time that I could be running machines. Right. Like this year, our shop rates has gone up. If you want me on site, my shop rate, my previous shop rate has pretty much doubled.
01:09:45
Speaker
because I could be at my shop actually running two machines. Instead I'm standing looking at your stupid thing. So best you get ready to pay for it because you are literally costing me money to be standing, looking at your thing. I got a customer phoned me today. Please come through to Wadeville and have a look at his plasma cut. He wants something special on his plasma and he knows I'm the person to do it. He's been trying to get me there since November.
01:10:08
Speaker
But I'm going to go look, I'm going to send him a quote and he's probably not going to give me the work because I'm going to be too expensive because yeah my time has a cost assigned to it
Economic Climates and Client Management
01:10:16
Speaker
now. And that is what it is. I never used to it like, I didn't really care when I didn't have to pay the bills, but those got to get paid. So priorities have to shift.
01:10:25
Speaker
Yeah, no. And math doesn't lie. like That's the one thing I did too. Crunch down, like how much money does it actually cost me per day where I'm like, if I'm producing, what do I make? And if I'm not producing, you what do I lose? And it's like, okay, all of a sudden, you know spending X amount of dollars for that specialty tool or whatever that's going to solve your problem, it's like, yeah, that's actually significantly less than even what I would... Let's say I think it's going to take me a day to make it. It's like, okay, what cost me this amount of money? it's like Wow. like that's a Well, that's the thing. if we yeah We did the maths. And so our our shop rate here is, give or take $25 an hour is what we can get away with charging on like generic work. On the customized stuff, it's a different situation. But generally speaking, ah job shop work, we're looking at about $25 an hour. We have to charge out eight hours a day at $25 an hour. So 40 hours a week at $25 an hour to break even.
01:11:17
Speaker
that pays That pays for the machine, the rents, lots, all that stuff. And pays for our health insurance and all the household like thing. No food yet. No actual spending money. That's just the bare essentials. And still some days some days we run at $200 an hour, but that's not every day.
01:11:39
Speaker
And not every hour. That's insane. like I don't mean like any disrespect. That's an insane shop rate. But like I said, different words. Yeah, totally different ah economic climate here.
01:11:50
Speaker
Yeah. like knock now everybody here's go ah say Almost everybody here is going to have to add a zero to that. Yeah, pretty much. These guys are like order of magnitude higher. like i' charging ah If we charge now, my going rates is going to go up to like $40 an hour. If they don't like it, there's the door. End of conversation. I'm not here to survive. I'm here to thrive.
01:12:13
Speaker
like that's the thing and up till now to get work it's been okay cool what is it what price do you need it for that we can get the work and now it's like actually this is the price there's the door like I'm not and I'm not racing to the bottom because racing to the bottom just hurts everyone and specialize yeah and find your value add somewhere else is the is what you need to do Well, and if you have customers, like I said, if you're not, if if you're not now hurting for clients, it's it's, it's easier to make those decisions and say no, as opposed to just having to take everything that comes in the door. Well, that's it. Like now I've got a couple of customers. I'm trying not to end up with one big customer. So I've got, I've got three or four decent customers and we're looking to grow it into the new year, but those three or four customers keep us pretty busy.
01:13:00
Speaker
And they, the one customer, the biggest one is now talking about doubling their last year's production and starting up like three or four different additional products that we're going to be manufacturing. So it's like potentially they're going to take over 80% of the business, like of our capacity, which is very not ideal. But in that case, we'll just start making the, we'll make it so that we can take on more work that we not having all our eggs in one basket.
01:13:29
Speaker
Right. I mean, that's, I'd say that's the primary reason, like even my old day job being so focused around the oil industry, it's lovely because it's like, but when it's booming, it's like, there's more work than you can ever possible. Like you can do more overtime than you ever want. And then when it's not, it's like, okay, well let's paint the floor. Like it's just ended. It's a cycle. It's happened so many times that I've been in this is just like, I gotta get out of this. Like I gotta to find a different industry where it's like, it's not so just feast or famine.
01:13:58
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's it. Like i've got I've got quite diverse customers. Like we've got guys in competition shooting. We've got the guys who run the press shop and we've got the diesel guys. And it usually is the case that one of them will get quiet and the others will pick up.
01:14:14
Speaker
So it kind of balances out, but like now I'm looking to diversify even more. And like I said, if the, if the big guys decide, no, they now want to double their, their required quantities, I buy more equipment and they are take on more work that we still sitting 50, 50 kind of story that we not entirely reliant on them placing consistent orders. Cause if anything from the last year, I've learned they don't place consistent bloody orders.
01:14:40
Speaker
Like they say they're going to, and then you sit there and nothing comes through. So like I'm trying, I've said to them, please don't order a thousand parts of this month and then nothing for the next two months. Rather order 250, 250, 250, 250, because it makes my business easier to run. ah Because it's an nice when the thousand order comes through, but if it's not going to be constant, then rather don't do that. Rather try and balance what you need.
01:15:09
Speaker
But yeah, trying to get that through to the customers is also a bit tricky. But I mean, I've got like six acts of projects with those guys. So now they've discovered that they can phone me for R and&D stuff. So like I was there and they were, I was making, they asked me to quote on one part. I'm like, cool, this part you're buying from China. Can I quote on that too? What are you paying from China? And then I just went to an undercut China. I'm still making no money doing it. And that's cool they get lost turnaround on it. That's the big thing.
01:15:39
Speaker
That's cool that you can compete with that. Yeah. But that's also because shipping, like that's why horse machines are not a good value proposition here because by the time you've put it on a ship and brought it over the ocean, it's no longer a cheap machine. Right. And you can get better stuff from Taiwan for less money. Right. Not even my LK. They don't bring the LK anymore. The price went up by 30%. There's better options on the market now.
01:16:05
Speaker
for South Africa's market. like I still keep asking them to give me a quote and lead time on a new one, because I want another one like this, because it's only a 6.5 kVA machine. And for what I do, I don't need more horsepower. I could put another two of these in my workshop with the current power situation.
01:16:23
Speaker
I mean, that's kind of the same way I went with mine is cause I know like if I had to shoehorn another one in here, like I have the power and the space for one. So yeah, I've got a sneaky plan to get a basically double the power that I have. So we've got a hundred amp breaker at 220 volts. I've got 22 kilowatts of service. So that's my mother-in-law. We have two services to the property. So when i I'm planning on building a new workshop in my front yard, when I do that, I'm trenching two cables that when I run out of power, she just doesn't pay for electricity anymore.
01:16:52
Speaker
And I just, right yeah, I pay for it and I have 44 kilowatts of power, which sounds like a small amount, but when you're running aluminium parts, it's plenty of power.
Workshop Power and Stability
01:17:03
Speaker
Oh yeah. Like, and I mean, same thing. I use all my power on spindle ramp up and slow down. And otherwise, like what cuts my biggest my biggest tool is a 3.16s tool. like yeah like It's hard to pull a lot of power. So my lamp in the lounge flickers, not when I spin up and down my spindle, but when my Z-axis retracts at full full rapid.
01:17:22
Speaker
Oh, okay. Okay. I can see that. And then my last time. Yeah, that's probably a few more circles, a hell of a lot more. Yeah. I think that's, uh, that's probably a 2.2 kilowatt spindle, uh, servo motor on there. Like my last, because obviously the spindles decelerating at the same time. and Right. Yeah, exactly. And you're lifting. Yeah. So I run, I've got a 20 kilowatt generator that I can run the entire workshop on.
01:17:48
Speaker
Oh, cool. Because Africa, yeah. Like, yeah. Yeah, that's another thing that blows my mind. Watching your stories and being like, whoa, thats that's crazy to have to contend with. So we had no power yesterday morning. ah Yeah, yesterday morning I woke up, was sitting in bed drinking coffee and I heard a beep, turned my lamp on next to my bed and the light doesn't come on. I'm like, okay, cool, no power. Walked outside, turned on the generator so I could make breakfast. 20 kilowatt generator so that I could boil the kettle and make breakfast.
01:18:16
Speaker
Um, and it's run. So I bought it because we were having elections and I figured, uh, the whole load shedding thing would come back. It's run for 16 hours since may last year. Four of those hours, four of those hours were on Sunday. Oh no. Like it's, it is stood. It runs every two weeks. I turn it on for 15 minutes just to make sure everything's right. But that's all it's, uh, that's all it does.
01:18:45
Speaker
No, it's not it can't I've run I've run the shop on it for about six hours, just to make sure everything can run. And it does run everything pretty well. But yeah, andnoying it's a very annoying purchase. It's a $7,000 purchase that I wish I didn't have to make. Yeah, well, I mean, the problem. Yeah, no the problem comes when when I need it. It's $1,000 in fuel to fill it up. And that will run me for just over a week.
01:19:13
Speaker
if I'm running eight hour days. But then if that thing's on, every single machine is running. Because, yeah, it costs the same if everything's running or nothing's running. So everything will run. Yeah, it's the joys of Africa.
01:19:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's, I know, that's where I'm like, Oh, okay. I'm like, I don't remember the last power outage here. So that's, that's. Yeah. and filling your best laugh Yeah. Oh no, totally. It's just, you don't even consider it. We've, we've had, we had a power outage now on the weekend. Don't know why. And then we had, uh, something happened at our local substation.
01:19:53
Speaker
a few months ago. That's all that's happened in the last year, almost year. It's been really, really stable and that's concerning. If you want to buy a generator, now's your chance because ah market the second-hand market is flooded. Everyone's selling them and then it's going to come back and everyone's going to need to buy them again. I'm like, nope, just let it sit. Pay it off and let it sit because that's this the business has two loans. It's that and the LK.
01:20:20
Speaker
Otherwise, it's been cash up to this point and I'm looking forward to getting back to that point where I don't have a machine payment every month. yeah because yeah that's yeah It's a heavy burden. Yeah, no doubt. yeah Going from no overhead to overhead. kind of Yeah, so like it it's it's significant. Basically, I used to be able to make what I pay for the machine payments. If I made that every month, it was fine. Like that would cover the bills. And now it's just slowly crept up, crept up. um And yeah, now it's terrifying.
01:21:02
Speaker
Like, yeah, we've got to do way, way, way more than I wish I had to do. But I mean, that is just, that is what what it is. yeah may so um I need to not be doing admin stuff during the podcast. I'm just very curious to see how much I've paid off on my machine.
01:21:21
Speaker
Oh, yay. The computer's not stupid. That's nice. Let's just delete that. Sorry. Okay, there we go. I'm back. I was just adding it into the spreadsheet because I haven't been and I'm going to get shouted at by my wife for not doing any stuff. But yeah, anyway, okay, cool. So I really hope that we've got all the bits and pieces from this podcast.
01:21:42
Speaker
um that the recording hasn't died. Like I'm- Yeah, I don't know. It seemed, I'm still showing a full consistent recording here. So hopefully- Yeah,
Product Promotion and International Challenges
01:21:52
Speaker
I'm not. That's what's concerning me, but that's fine. There's what it is. um Okay, cool. So we're going to go through our actual talking points because we should probably do that. ah Okay. Well, I'm going to do them out of order because we've been going for, how long does it say we've been going for?
01:22:12
Speaker
Uh, hour 22. Okay. So let's run through the call to actions and then we'll go through all that stuff. So sounds good. Yeah. So basically yeah just points pointing at our website. So, uh, I've got, if you want to check out the frame rock utility knife that we manufacture, that's available at jspeceng.com. Um, there will be some other exciting things on there at some point when I eventually finished making the pallet systems, but yeah, you can check that out. Or my Instagram is at jspec underscore engineering.
01:22:41
Speaker
um and That's pretty much the only two things that I've got to push. Mine is just ah Confounded Machine. If you just Google it, confoundedmachine.com. I sell pens. Unfortunately, there's none available because I only sell by lottery. But if you're interested in it, you can sign up or you can hit the contact page and I send out emails when I drop stock.
01:22:58
Speaker
or follow me around on Instagram, same name, or YouTube. You could probably find me with the same name too, but Kurt Van Filipowski on YouTube. I haven't posted anything in there for like a year, so I really got to get back onto that. I enjoyed that. If you search Confounded Machine on YouTube, you get a bunch of pen reviews, and then you scroll down, and eventually your channel comes up.
01:23:22
Speaker
Oh, that's cool. That's kind of cool too. I was looking for it earlier. Yeah, I was looking for it earlier because I wanted to see how long I'd been watching your stuff for. And I was looking like, when do I recognize videos? So yeah, it was interesting to see it's all pen reviews and then you come up.
01:23:38
Speaker
I'm pretty sure you, I did a contest way back in the day and I think you won. Yes, I did. I still have the pen. Yeah, I posted a picture of it. I still actually donate to Naked Surfers right inside. That's cool, yeah. The National national Sea Rescue Institute. That's cool. Yeah, so still. That came across, I was like, wow, that's trippy. Yeah, no, I mean, I've been following you since even before then. like That was COVID.
01:24:06
Speaker
ah yeah Yeah, that was that was fairly late on. Yeah, I remember I remember your yeah from earlier too.
Safety and Societal Norms
01:24:10
Speaker
So it's yeah, that's getting yeah getting that pen here was a was a whole story. We actually discussed it yesterday. Like I was chatting to my brother in law about it. Because I think that went via my mates in England to my mother in law in Ireland and then she brought it back. ah It was I know its thing.
01:24:28
Speaker
I know. Cause it was fully shut down to ship to you at that point. I mean, I think even shipping to you generally is more difficult, but at that point it was like, no go. yeah ah So our post is working again, as long as there's a tracking number, it does work, but yeah, it's, it's a whole thing being in the arse end of Africa. Yeah. Yeah. Please get to enjoy the beautiful warm summers. Well, warm all the year, all year round like winter, young winter still wear shorts.
01:24:53
Speaker
That's nuts. It's minus 30 here today. No, like our winter, if we drop below zero, it's a really cold day. And then by 10 o'clock in the morning, it's 20 degrees again. And you can stand in the sun and drink a cup of coffee. It's great. Yeah. Sunny South Africa. But yeah, we're actually, we're just, so we went to the, uh, Calabash concert last night to see, uh, yeah, fork off police, the car, um, the offspring and green day.
01:25:20
Speaker
And I was saying, like at no point was I worried about my phone being stolen or anything. like It was a really weird sensation in South Africa. like i'm always You're always very aware of who's around you and what's going on. But when you're in a stadium with a bunch of people who've paid $50 or $60 per ticket, like you don't really need to worry that much. Fair, yeah, I suppose. like when we When we left, actually, we were walking on over the bridge to get out, and someone snatched a cell phone and was running, and someone just clotheslined him in the crowd.
01:25:50
Speaker
wow Yo, my oak was trying to get away like, stop, who's got a phone? Boo, clothes like, oak over. Like, you don't try that shit in South Africa, like the crowd will murder you, like. yeah Africa's not for the faint of heart like I've heard Danica was Danica was ah laughing at me because I keep telling I kept telling John no come visit it's like a you'll feel rich she's like you do realize people come here get in a car drive to Sun City spend the time they get back in the car go to the airport and leave because the stuff we take for granted like always locking your car doors always being aware of who's around that's not normal everywhere else in the world
01:26:25
Speaker
Right, yeah. Like even IMTS, ah we told the guys where we were staying, we were in Stony Shore. And they're like, that's such a like ah a dodgy area. I'm like, really? someone stepped in the road, I gave them the buggers look and they ran away. Like they were more worried. I was going to rob them than anything else. Like I'm from South
Networking and Community Support
01:26:44
Speaker
Africa. This is par for the course. Like right and the du I had a, we were standing off the dinner, the one night, um, but just opposite the bean in Chicago. We had gone for dinner. We're waiting for Uber to pick us up and I'm on my phone and I check out my peripheral vision. There's a crackhead there.
01:27:01
Speaker
So I turn and look and he skimpers down into the subway and throws a sandwich over my head. I'm like, this is so cool, what a da. Like what the hell is going on here? But that was like the weirdest interaction I had while I was in the US. Like it really, yeah, that place is, it's pretty easy going compared to here.
01:27:21
Speaker
ah dust school um'm yeah I'm looking forward to IMTS 2026. You know, I want to make the track too. So I'm hoping I can go out and see some of these people. Let's make the podcast popular and then we can... Yeah, totally. That's my plan. We are ready planning for the trip. Because after this last trip, we figured out how expensive it is. So we are now planning from now for that.
01:27:44
Speaker
Fair enough. Like looking, you're looking to get an Airbnb up near, uh, Wembley field, Ridley field. Um, yeah not in the dodgy South. And then, cause like the hotels are just ridiculously expensive. I know. I looked this year. I'll just took a quick glance. I'm like, yeah i'm nope, sorry. No, yeah no, we paid for for 10 days. We paid less than one night in hotel.
01:28:10
Speaker
Yeah, that would make sense. yeah Yeah. Hotels go insane at that time. Oh, yeah. there No, the price triples because it's IMTS. Yeah. buts Straight up just triples, but yeah, I spent five days walking around and I still didn't see everything. Yeah. I've heard, I've heard you got to take a big, big swath of time. Yeah. ah du I spent five days and I'm planning on spending five days there in 2026. Just go see everything because machine tool Africa was solidly depressing.
01:28:36
Speaker
Yeah. I know we have like the Canadian manufacturing show and it's not like you can get through it in an afternoon. So it's not, it's not all that impressive. It's nice to go through, but like it's nothing. I still spend three days at Pachintl Africa, but that's cause I was, my mates who I went to school with was there and talking cuck with him, putting my pots on all their measuring demos and just being a general nuisance.
01:28:57
Speaker
Right. Yeah. I mean, that's why I want to go to, I want to go to IMTS to see people. I mean, see the machines obviously, but then just like see some of these people that I just interact with digitally. Yeah. That's my reason for going was to go and meet everyone face to face.
01:29:10
Speaker
Yeah, that's kind of cool. Yeah, it's the fun part. Like even machines for Africa, I met up with all the South African guys, because we all follow each other, all the machinings of African guys. And a lot of them are resellers of stuff. So I went and spoke to the guys at To Go Cam or something. And the guys from Whole Tooling Solutions who do MatiBart stuff locally and Filthamus locally. We also have been chatting to them for years and went and met them in person.
01:29:39
Speaker
That's cool. That's cool. Yeah. Again, what Toolpath did at INTS was so brilliant. Oh, yeah big brain move. like That's the best move that it made. 100%. Yeah. Because I know of them. Everybody knows of them now. yeah like it's Speaking of that, ah I was chatting to Justin from Toolpath today, and we're going to get him on at some point. Oh, that's cool. I love talking to that guy. Have you looked at Pretool?
01:30:06
Speaker
Uh, I've heard about it. I've podcast or listen to it and I was like, Ooh, I got to run my library through that. That sounds fantastic. It is great. I ran my libraries through it. Like I put off redoing my libraries for months. Turns out it only took me half an hour. Okay. yeah I'm going to go. I got to do that because yeah um I know what I can get away with on my little machine, but there's everyone like I'm, I know I'm leaving tons on the table. Well, that's the thing you can put in your spindle limits. I think he said that we're going to add a provision that you can set the surface foot surface speed.
01:30:34
Speaker
and Okay, so when you so not only RPM, but because I posted my drills through them, okay, is this for carbide drills? Like, yeah, defaults to carbide. So I was like, Okay, no worries. So I went through, I pulled out the book and just typed in all the values manually, which took more than 10 minutes. But he may have said something about there being a surface footage adjustment. So you can look at your tooling catalog and say, Oh, it says almost run at 45 meters a minute or 100 meters a minute, and you can actually fine tune your feeds and speeds accordingly.
01:31:04
Speaker
Yeah, that's, I mean, that's how I program everything. I just program everything off SFM, basically SFM and chip load. Yeah, no, that's not hard. Well, that's not how I used to do it. It's how I do it now. Yeah. like always depend out how I used to do it either. Yeah. I was having chatter issues with, um, my 12 millimeter finisher and just ran the default wall finish, uh, settings from pretool. Baba chat problem gone away. Uh, my settings were, I don't know where I'd pulled them out of.
01:31:31
Speaker
I pulled them out of Feed and Speed Wizard and they were just, it wasn't, it wasn't good. And I ran their stuff and yeah, it just works. But yeah, I like pushing pre-tool because it's a great piece of of software.
01:31:44
Speaker
Yeah, no. And guys in the community, once again, I've reached out to a few of those guys and they're just like, oh yeah, just give you information without any expectation. It's just so cool. Happy to help. And that is the biggest thing. All boats rise with the
Machinery Integration and Safety Automation
01:32:00
Speaker
tide. And I think that is the newer generation of machinists are embracing that. Yeah, 100%. The old projections aren't, but the new guys are.
01:32:08
Speaker
Yeah, no, you can't, you're going to die with it. Like give it away. Like if you have some little secret trick that you think is making you valuable, like you're doing something wrong. like Yeah. Well, that that's the way a lot of the guys here are looking at is they, they think they've got it the only way it can be done. Meanwhile, everyone else has figured it out. They just not actually looking and don't know that they're doing it the slow way and it's, it's hurting them in the long run.
01:32:32
Speaker
Yeah. ma ah Cool. So onto our next little topic thing, our second to last one. What problems did you solve this week? Well, in the last week. Let's put it that way.
01:32:43
Speaker
My problems for I saw on the style when I bought it um I had a fourth axis spec'd out for it came on the Manufactured build list as a fourth axis and it showed up without a fourth axis. No drive. No cables. No anything so both Yeah, I'm not gonna like I've been working with style now for like a month. I'm not gonna throw them out of the bus um They've been super good. They sent me like a brand new Siemens drive for it and everything Where did you buy yours from?
01:33:10
Speaker
It's from a Canadian reseller, basically the only Canadian reseller. Yeah. And honestly, he's been amazing. Like I was giving him a little bit of flack off the jump because I'm like, come on, dude. And then he kind of relayed the scope of what he's having to do because Siemens was not cooperating. And I was like, okay, I appreciate the amount of effort you're putting in. So, uh, yeah, I mean, it is what it is. I'm, this is one of the first Siemens units in Canada too, just because of like Canadian safety stuff. They can only allow Siemens controls in here. So anyways, it's a, it's a bit of a.
01:33:37
Speaker
run around yeah I was wondering if you had got it from the Boombastic YouTuber, but I was wondering how it all got. I kind of wanted to avoid that. so I mean, it's nice for the American guys. You got yeah you got kind of like direct support. of Yeah. but But that is a bit of a controversial figure. Yeah, me is a bit polarizing, but whatever. He seems to be helping out the community. He is. like yo I met him at IMTS. I yes ah was there.
01:34:03
Speaker
Yeah, we'll we'll discuss my feelings about a more fair because I don't feel any feathers. I met Barry. Barry loved my shirt. My shirt was I like big cuts and I cannot lie. Barry was quite entertaining. Oh no, Barry was really sweet. like Yeah, it seems like you get a drink with that guy and he'd be all right. Yeah. No, I had a long chat to when they were announcing the Swiss Academy.
01:34:24
Speaker
for the long chat term during that. um But yeah, so, okay, so you got yours from the agents. I've actually got the Siemens guys coming around. One of the things I asked them about is what the in interface protocols are for fourth axis on the okay on that, because I would assume it's not just, you can only use a Siemens drive with whatever their protocol is. I would assume it supports something more than that for if you're buying an aftermarket,
01:34:49
Speaker
I wonder I'm wondering that too because everything is like everything seems to be ethernet connections I don't know if that's just either cat everything but yeah so far what I'm trying to figure I'm gonna find out I'll let you know yeah no no but I'll let you know because I've got a harmonic drive and I kind of want to use it to make a little fourth axis um yeah Because I don't want to spend the money on buying one, but they are the resellers for well my local agents. They resell a different brand that they have integrated before. So I'm going to find out what the protocol is. Is it step direction? Is it ah only ethicate? Do I need to feed in in coder positions of the fourth axis? What is the actual requirements? right So i will yeah I'll find that out this week and i will I'll let you know when when I actually know.
01:35:33
Speaker
No, and I'll share whatever info I have. I have a ton of install information now. So, okay. What was your, uh, what was your, uh, what was your problem that you solved? the stinky coolants in Bertha. theunky coolant So Miss Lewinsky doesn't suck hard enough with my older my old vacuum cleaner. My old vacuum cleaner has sucked out pool filter to sand a few times and had a bit of gravel go through the through the vacuum pump. So I went to bought a new vacuum and that just ah changed everything. Apparently 23 kPa and 18 kPa are not the same.
01:36:08
Speaker
And yeah, we suck that coolant tank out in no time. So yeah, we got that that resolved. Last week, I had the flexi loop guys come past, ah had the rep visits and quote me and supply and give me some really nasty biocide stuff to throw in the machine. Nice. So we got that y'all got that all sorted out. so We'll see how it runs tomorrow with their fancy. It's one of the more expensive coolants, apparently. um It was a whopping 75.
01:36:33
Speaker
What's that? It's still just like a soluble oil or? is Yeah, soluble oil. Yeah. Yeah. It's their bio cool. See you too. It's like $75 a 20, 20 liters or a five gallon. Okay. Yeah. So and like not expensive, a double, nearly double when I was paying, but these guys will come out and check concentration and keep an eye on it for me as well. And just cool check pH and things like that to make sure that the coolant lasts. And then, uh,
01:37:01
Speaker
depending on whether people actually pay or not, I want to order another 20 liters of it and change out my other two machines so that everything's running the same coolants because that's the standard answer. But yeah, Monica did that. That was the big thing that we we resolved this week, like the biggest, the biggest issue.
01:37:21
Speaker
ah do and um And I buttoned up the index. I don't think I posted it this time. I posted it a while ago. ah The thing for crimping stuff in a press. So the guys don't have to put their hands in the press. So I was there today. They're going to put a piece of wire to offload the parts. As it indexes, the parts just fall off into a bin. And oh if that doesn't work, we're going to add a pneumatic cylinder that when the press gets told to come down, the little secondary cylinder just flicks the part off into a bin.
01:37:47
Speaker
Oh, so you don't lose your finger. Well, no, then then it can be operated by one guy. So they can have one guy loading and then I added a potentiometer so they can adjust the one of the delays.
01:37:58
Speaker
because it's literally running in Arduino. So I hard coded a bunch of ah delays that I'm added one, one of them I added to a potentiometer that when you reset the, or when you power up, it'll read it during the setup and then it won't look at it again. So that they can it's not always changing. They set it when it boots and they go that they can slow it down. I'm like, just feed your guys meth and let them.
01:38:20
Speaker
can go but apparently that's not ethical and because the machine runs it runs about 50% faster than the the person loading it so they wanted to
Podcast Closing and Future Plans
01:38:30
Speaker
slow it down to match because then the guys will run constantly and if they can run it constantly they double their throughput so but because right now the guys are manually putting the parts in a press with an idiot stick which is a magnet yeah idiot stick yeah um and they've had guys lose fingers on like three or four occasions Good. Yeah. The last one that got picked up to work on the weekend, he was drunk. Oh no. Yeah. That was a rough one. So like, yeah, that's the problem with having staff is dealing with all that, all that stuff. Yeah. yeah I like my, I like no staff. Yeah, I know that robots, they do call in sick, but that's fine. I can deal with that. Oh yeah. They got their own issues, but yeah, at least that's like, it's bad enough having my wife run the machine. No, no.
01:39:19
Speaker
Cool and then yeah, what are you what are you gonna be up to today or well? Yeah today. It's morning there for you Yeah, yeah morning here for me. Uh, just bunch finishing this week is a huge finishing week for me I need to try to finish everything by Friday cuz yeah starting to dig a hole that's starting to get to be a big hole So I want to get this to finish so you keep moving on Okay. Yeah, that's the only thing with batching out, batching out work. Totally. yeah Yeah. I mean, it's lovely. Cause when this batch is finished, this would be the biggest batch I've ever made ever, but it's not, it doesn't, it doesn't do many good until it's done. So it's like, yeah, he's sitting with a whole bunch of half finished stuff.
01:39:57
Speaker
Right. Yeah. You're sitting on a bunch of almost stuff that you could sell. It's just like, it's, it's always a balance between trying to, you know, build in a smaller batch size or larger batch size. I don't know. I'm floating around between everything, trying to see where I find my most efficient methods. Trying to find your groove. Totally. Uh, I've played with batch size and yeah. So anyways, that's my world. What about you? Your day's ending. and ah Yeah, my day's ending. I'm going to go sit and have dinner and watch some TV with the wife. But tomorrow morning, we are going to be running Bertha with the new coolant. We're going to knock out 140, 130 pots. So we're going to try and get it done tomorrow, because then there's a job right on that one's tail that we need to get out by like Wednesday. And then hopefully, material arrives, and I can start on the next job that's going into Bertha. So Bertha's basically booked out till the end of the month.
01:40:49
Speaker
It's also booked out towards end of the month. LK, I need to go finish a bunch of little press tools that I need to make for different bits of bobs I make. So I have stuff laser cut, I'll tumble it, and then I just need to put some bends into it. So I'm just making custom little press tools that I throw in the arbor press, load the part, be bend, bend, bend. I'm busy with the product line for, so I do a lot of white labeling. So I'll make it branded, pack it for you, and then ship it, you just sell it.
01:41:16
Speaker
oh nice So like another product's coming online. It's not a, it's like a one and a half dollar thing, but it's a laser cut port. I'm going to bend them, throw them in the tumbler, slap a magnet on and it's done.
01:41:28
Speaker
like super easy. so So, and the guys, they starting now with their first batch of like a hundred pots, and then hopefully it'll just roll into more and more of them that I can stand there for half an hour, bend a hundred pots, throw them in a tumbler, and that's it. That's all my input done. And I'm making, making really decent money on it for the amount of effort I'm putting in. So yeah, we got a busy week ah ahead. Like today, today was a SART day. I ended up on SART and then,
01:41:56
Speaker
Yeah, I visited three customers today. So it was a bit of a, a bit of a lost day. So tomorrow morning, early, we get the lathe running and then we'll, we'll crank through that. Nice. ah yeah ah Sweet. I think we'll call it there. Sounds terrific. Yeah. Sweet guys. Thanks for listening. Please give us a five-star review on Spotify. Give us a thumbs up on YouTube and hopefully we'll soon be on Apple podcasts. We're looking into getting that set up.
01:42:26
Speaker
But yeah, thanks for listening and yeah, we'll see you guys next week. Adios.