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#295 - There's A Better Way To Communicate
154 Plays2 years ago
Topics:
- Designing a chip conveyor
- replacing a Blum probe
- costs to service machinery
- stop using e-mail for internal communication
- duplicate SKUs, Shopify
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Episode Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 295. My name is John Grimsmough. And my name is John Saunders. And this is the weekly manufacturing slash business podcast where two friends have been meeting for the past five, six years and just running things through, going over, dealing with issues and trying to help each other out.
Business Phases & Projects Discussion
00:00:20
Speaker
Yeah. How are you doing? I'm doing pretty good. Yeah. I realized in my business life, I go through many phases of
00:00:29
Speaker
Intense creativity for a few weeks and then intense productivity for a few weeks and I kind of waver back and forth and I think I'm transitioning from creativity to productivity. It's like I got to put my head down and like do the things I've been creative. Yeah, but that's fun. I like that.
00:00:47
Speaker
What's, uh, what's the productivity do being driven buyers. You need to use it behind on parts or just like, like, like the stuff that I'm responsible for. Um, there's a lot of projects coming up. I want to play with the Wilhelmin. I want to do more on the speedio. Um, a couple of things I want to do on the current. I want to make more pallets and tombstones, um, things like that kind of my projects.
Richlight Cases & Chip Management Challenges
00:01:11
Speaker
Yeah. Well, what's the most, well, what, what's first, um, speedio is what I'm working on right now.
00:01:18
Speaker
For sure. Yeah, running. Yeah, go ahead. Just running the rich light cases that we're making for the soccer pens, which turned out really good. Actually, the team is running them now, but I still have a lot to fine tune and play with. How is the rich light going? How are the chip issues going in? How's the probe?
00:01:37
Speaker
A horrible times three. Oh, really? I mean, the cases are going great. They machine beautifully, perfectly. Chip management is an absolute mess just because the rich light material
00:01:54
Speaker
Soaks up the coolant and it's very dusty. We put down filter paper in the back of the trough and it clogs up in minutes or tens of minutes. One of the runs is an hour 40 to make 10 cases. Okay, it makes 10. Yeah, to make 10. It's like we just got to stand there at the chip bed and keep the coolant flowing.
00:02:18
Speaker
It's not fun. On that note, I remember a few months ago we put out that challenge to design a chip conveyor. I've been working with this guy in England, Keelan, who is absolutely crushing it. He came up with the design four or five months ago and sent it to me and I was like, yeah, that's cool. Then now I've been thinking about it more and more and more.
00:02:41
Speaker
And then about a week ago, I reached out and I was like, you know, I've thought of a lot of different methods, a lot of different ways to do this and your way wins hands down. Let's make it. Yeah.
Chip Conveyor Design & Prototyping
00:02:50
Speaker
Yeah. So I'm making his design. I've been working with him back and forth nonstop for the past week. Um, fine tuning, iterating. And it was originally designed for like laser cut parts and stuff. And I was like, okay, the whole thing needs to be made at 80 20 on 3d printed so that I can make a prototype right now.
00:03:08
Speaker
And so my previous has been going nonstop and yeah, it's McMaster parts all just came in yesterday. Got some steppers and angle gear heads and stuff coming from Amazon any day now and it's gonna be sick. I'm really, really, really excited. So just to clarify that this is the... It's a paper band, like a roll of paper.
00:03:32
Speaker
like a huge roll of paper towels basically. But for filter paper, we've got, we stock a lot of 20 micron filter paper rolls because three of our machines use them. And so we have them already. And I'm like, I just want to feed paper automatically. And when it doesn't flow anymore, feed more paper.
Hyperobsession & Prototype Feedback
00:03:54
Speaker
So there's a float valve in there and I've been doing all kinds of research. So
00:04:00
Speaker
My favorite phrase, my wife said this to me a few weeks ago or months ago. She's like, can I tell you about my latest hyperobsession? That is my favorite phrase now.
00:04:15
Speaker
Yeah. So funny enough, we also had a guy reach back out and sort of said, hey, I went dark intentionally because I wanted to focus on it, but I haven't been ignoring you. It has a design. He has sent a video of a functional prototype. It definitely made me put back on the kind of minimum viable product costs, scalability, complexity.
00:04:40
Speaker
And I don't I only saw a cursory video. So there's a chance that I'm missing the mark on these comments or critiques. But it looks like it's over designed, overly complicated, overly expensive, difficult to scale. And again, I might be wrong. Maybe it's maybe there are a bunch of off the shelf type components. But my initial feedback was kind of, hey, this needs simplified. But I asked if we could have a talk and I definitely owe him a phone call. Interesting.
00:05:10
Speaker
But it's a similar idea of what you said, sort of unwinding the paper towel rule. The question of whether it constantly feeds or creep feeds or whether it waits until the weight of the chips on it push down a sensor or something.
00:05:23
Speaker
Yeah.
Conveyor Design Focus & Motivation
00:05:24
Speaker
There's a couple different ways to do it. I've been looking at what industry does. Traditional chip conveyors are meant to move mountains of chips that don't want to move. They have a three horsepower, 240 volt motor, three phase, and meant to move not only the rack, the conveyor itself that probably weighs 300 pounds.
00:05:45
Speaker
but also the mountains of chips on it. But I'm like, all we're doing is feeding liquid and paper and a little bit of chips. So it doesn't need a ton of torque. But yeah, so learning all about conveyor belts themselves, like the belting. It's a big industry. Are you learning about this stuff? Yes. John, you got to stop this, though. No, this is what I do, man. I like it.
00:06:15
Speaker
Yeah, look, you don't report into me, but the will is not running. Seriously. I think it's fun. There's part of me, again, I respect the whole like, if life isn't enjoyable, what are you doing?
00:06:31
Speaker
There's a level of discipline that I worry it's too much of a shiny object over here and you're now an expert on conveyors. The whole point was to see if somebody else wants to take this challenge on and hopefully build a successful product and profit from it, not for sure.
Machining Techniques & Business Philosophy
00:06:47
Speaker
I would be hard-pressed
00:06:50
Speaker
to even make one myself because that's not my visit. Like if somebody wants to 3D print an 80-21 me, fine. If they want us to cover those costs, happy to have that conversation but like... But that involves the right person with the right motivation, the right timeline and somebody who has access to that exact machine, which I do.
00:07:08
Speaker
And I need a solution now. I don't have six months to wait for somebody else to make me a solution. But the irony is I think you're making a mistake doing this rich light on a $100,000 plus brother anyway. Agreed. Put it on a router with a dust extraction system. Literally, that's what those are made for. But I need the conveyor for other purposes, too. Other things that I want. I'm building this video the way I want it to be built. Go call Elliot Metzure and order the right conveyor for this thing. Done.
00:07:36
Speaker
No, but I need a filtering conveyor, micron level filtering. Yeah. We had this conversation when you bought the machine and you told me you didn't need a conveyor and nothing has changed. You need that for the grinding? That's what you're always going to do. Yes. I don't need a chip moving conveyor, but I need to filter out the dust and the carbon fiber and G10. I want to cut a lot of that stuff.
00:08:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think you can move that stuff to doing that dry is a doable like people do it, but it's dangerous because then you're putting it in the air. Oh, not with a I mean, I'm not a woodworker, but you can have pretty darn powerful proper dust extraction systems. Yeah. But then it's the dust still is on the table and everything. And I don't know, just figured having it in in the coolant and filtering the coolant is a solid way to do it. So that's why I'm going.
00:08:33
Speaker
Okay, but again though, G10, brass cases, all stuff that expands the offering and value and that's awesome, but the Willamans not making pen clips. Is the core stuff happening? Yeah, the core business is running strong, so I get to play. That's what I've built with this company.
00:08:59
Speaker
and play in a way that's not just like useless for fun kind of thing like I'm having fun doing it but I'm doing everything for a need for a reason.
Machine Commitment & Productivity Concerns
00:09:07
Speaker
And yeah maybe other people would do different ways and that's fine but like the end of the day like this is my business and do what I want. But if there's a humble request it's
00:09:19
Speaker
when it doesn't have to be from you to me, but when a friend or a peer says something instead of digging your heels in, kind of just stop and think because I'm not, you know, me micromanaging your business with as little as I know is a fool's errand. Like that's not the goal here. But over the years, you and I have also had the outside perspective to set each other straight, nudging each other towards, wait a minute here.
00:09:42
Speaker
You know do what am I just am I because we all live in our own heads in our own world. So that's the only mm-hmm Trying to keep each other honest. No, I need that for sure. And sometimes it takes me a while to realize it sometimes I end up doing the right thing anyway, but Sometimes you make commitments and you want to follow you want to see them through and
00:10:08
Speaker
Yeah, but I could poke holes in that all day long. I mean, the commitment to the Wilhelmin, John, like that, has it had enough? Are you happy with how much time you spent on the Wilhelmin in the last 12 days? 12 days? Pick up a random opportunity. Zero. Yeah, exactly. Yep. Yep. That's true. But it's gotten to the point, I mean, the business is fun right now, but there are
00:10:30
Speaker
a lot of shiny objects. A lot of fun things to play on and I have to spend serious time deciding what direction to point myself in. Because I mean, you know me probably better than almost anybody. I will barrel down on a direction until I get tired of it or it's done.
00:10:52
Speaker
And that's kind of what I'm doing right now, which is fun. I'm enjoying the process and I'm doing, it's not the only thing I'm doing. I hear you. And that's probably not fair because this is a public audience to the folks not realizing that like you just said, the whole business is running. Exactly. I get that we don't have that perspective right now. On the flip side, your mentality and attitude can bankrupt a company because it's like owner just wants to
Probe Issues & Service Decisions
00:11:16
Speaker
pursue
00:11:16
Speaker
What some would say are silly, frivolous projects like you've got millions of dollars with the machinery and you're bucking around, whatever, picking on you. Keep that perspective. Yes, yes, absolutely. The good news is my router electronics and everything finally shipped yesterday. Awesome. That's good. Do I put the rich light on the router as soon as it's running? Maybe. We'll see.
00:11:42
Speaker
But that's not, that's not happening in the next four weeks, you know, like maybe two weeks. Um, so yeah. So is the probe body? Oh yeah. So I've got a new tip. I put a new tip on dialed it in for run out and tried to use the probe. It turns on, it blinks. You put the batteries in, it blinks colors and stuff. And then you go to run a routine and it says IR error. Cause it's an infrared probe, not a,
00:12:12
Speaker
I guess they all are. It's a radio probe. Not a, I forget anyway. Um, it's complaining. It's saying, uh, it's not connecting properly. So I emailed bloom and I was like, um, it's just, did I, did I really crunch this thing? And he goes, yeah, it's probably toast. So got a quote from them for a, um, replacement body. And it's, it's like, Renishaw has a pretty clear, easy, um,
00:12:39
Speaker
like crash replacement policy, it's like a thousand bucks or 1200 bucks or whatever. And they're pretty open with it and clear and obvious and is less so from bloom. They're basically like, you can buy a new probe for this price and we can take your old one for $125 inspection fee, which will be waived, whatever, whatever. And then do I get a,
00:13:02
Speaker
refund, like a core charge kind of thing on that. It's a little unclear so I need further specifications on that. But I guess the replacement cost is because I don't need the receiver which has a significant cost to it as well. So like the purchase price of the probe which is probe and receiver and wiring and everything will be less for just replacing the body itself.
00:13:30
Speaker
But it was still thousands of dollars. Yeah, right. It's not at $1,200. Yeah, exactly. And so luckily, I can do the work I need on this video right now without the probe. Even though I was trying to use the probe for the rich light, I just decided not to and assume some tolerances and measurements. And it's making good parts now. So that's good. And then I just have to I got the quote yesterday from Bloom. So I just have to sit down and decide I'm probably just going to have to buy another probe.
00:14:00
Speaker
It stinks. I wonder if that's not whatever. Yeah, I hear you. Yeah, good to know. I mean, honestly, that's a decent reason to... I would say that's a big win in Renishaw's court. It is kind of. They have a good program because... I don't want to pick favorites, but it's like they each have their benefits and that is one of Renishaw's benefits. If you pancake a probe, you can replace it for a thousand bucks.
00:14:24
Speaker
We had one, I think I mentioned this probably six months ago, the glass crack, it was one of our older machines. And that was causing some issues of some sort, I think. And I feel like there was something, we never crashed it, but I feel like there was something else that was peculiar like, did coolant get in it after a crack? I don't think so. But it was acting errantly. And we actually found an eBay aftermarket glass donut replacement. So the glass
00:14:52
Speaker
And because what did I do? I think I stole the class from a different one just to test it before going down that rabbit hole. And long story short, we got it working again, which it's the weird thing to like what you're saying about electronics is kind of like like waiting here, as long as it's got the infrared line of sight.
00:15:08
Speaker
The PCBs, I'm going to eat my words here, they tend to be binary. They either work or they don't work. If you didn't get an overheat, fry a chip, or physically break connections on the circuit board, it seems odd that it would be
00:15:22
Speaker
Depending on how they're... Like, you know how the Renaissance have the three lobe thing with the three sticks sticking out? I think the bloom works completely differently, possibly with the little laser beam inside or something. I'm not sure. But I bet you that part broke, whereas it still turns on and functions otherwise. But that wouldn't give you the... I wouldn't think that would give you the IR connect issue. Yeah, I don't know. Unless that's kind of a catch all. It's like I can't...
00:15:47
Speaker
receive a touch signal or it's already touched, I think that might have been one of the explanations. It's as if it's moved already, the stylus. That could be it. It's like locked in a closed state or something. Yeah. So I think if it's in that state when the thing turns on, it'll give you that error. Okay. That could be. Because the macros are fairly simple. They're like, if this happens, give you this error. If this happens, give you this error. There's only like three errors, I think. Got it.
00:16:13
Speaker
Yeah, so that's unfortunate, but whatever, life. Yeah, move on. So there was a couple of notes that I've continued to just kind of move to the next week because we had really good general conversations. But one of them was back when you had the tornos, what was it like the y-axis? Was it chips that were built up in it or something?
00:16:42
Speaker
I don't, I still don't know what the cause of it was. Um, but the, yeah, the y-axis was beyond its limit. Yeah. And the machine wouldn't turn on because of that. And it was weird anyway. So it was, I ended up reflecting on that story more than you might expect because the benefit of this conversation is, you know, I and anyone listening gets the outside perspective
00:17:10
Speaker
that you don't get because it's your own story. And what hit me, which was, it hit me hard because look, I'm holding up a mirror here. You and I are exactly the same in this regard is that any, any
00:17:25
Speaker
traditional machine shop that had a larger shop or whatever. It doesn't have to do with the size. It has to do with the fact that you've got a general manager or a foreman or a head of operations that isn't necessarily the owner or the holder of the purse strength. He doesn't know if the company or he's not responsible for variances in his repair budget. Anybody else would have seen that
00:17:50
Speaker
Yeah, sure. Maybe if they have some in-house repair expertise, maybe they would have tackled it. Basically, they would have called the service tech. You and I don't. I don't. It's only for one reason. It's because I feel, if I'm just going to be totally honest, I feel like it is an absolute pillage. It's $400 to $600 in travel. It's super often- It was $1,000 to have service guys come out.
00:18:15
Speaker
You've got one or two hours sometimes of them just getting their tools set up and I'm not trying to rag on, especially some of the great repair field techs out there, but I've had a person under warranty, thank God, spend an hour and a half downloading a service pack install on his cell phone hotspot and I offered to join the Wi-Fi and they're like, oh no, it'll just take a while, don't worry about it.
00:18:40
Speaker
As solopreneurs, you think, man, this repair, once they get in there and they know the right thing to do, it's 20, 30, 40 minutes or whatever, and look, I get it. There'll be prep time, there'll be repair time afterward. But there's an element of efficiency that you and I are held to every hour of every day about keeping the lights on our company that doesn't exist in the ecosystem of paid service. It just can't to the same level.
00:19:06
Speaker
Yeah, totally. I'm not saying I'm right. I'm just saying it's a thing that bothers me and it shouldn't and oftentimes the right call is probably to pony up. On top of that, it's your and I and many of the guys in our shop
00:19:20
Speaker
The instinct to know what's wrong, I can figure this out. The instinct to get your hands in there and be like, maybe it's easy. Maybe it was just 10 minutes. Maybe it's a fuse. I've got to look at this before I call service immediately because that $500,000 bill, I could fix this in 10 minutes. And sometimes it's probably, at least half the time, it is fairly easy to fix it. Oh, that's loose. I can tighten that up. Or oh, there's backlash. Let's fix it. Or whatever, whatever the thing may be.
00:19:47
Speaker
But every now and then that 20 minutes that you think it's going to take turns into like the whole day, turns into the whole week, turns into like, man, we should have called service a while ago, but now we're so deep into it. We're so close. We're almost, we've eliminated all of these things. It can't be too many more things. And fine tuning that line between where you call it and where you do it yourself is
00:20:14
Speaker
I don't know if I'll ever be great at that. Yeah, totally. But that was just the nugget I wanted to share with like, you know, the company, the factory next door is a major food production company. Like they actually have in-house repair guys. But like, okay, if something doesn't fit their criteria or confidence in the ability to meet repair, just call the service people in the car.
00:20:33
Speaker
what it costs. They don't even see the invoice. It goes to their accounting department. At the end of the year, they look at, hey, we didn't do so hot on repairs. Yeah, we spent $57,000 on repairs. Next year, let's be careful with that or let's hire one person to do that instead.
00:20:47
Speaker
And to give credit where credit is due, I love the kind of joke phrase you see in like auto shops. It's like, you know, cost to tighten, screw $6, you know, the one 30 years experience knowing which screw to tighten $200, like total respect. We've had some great service texts in here. Yeah, sharp and focused. But too often, I just feel like it's kind of a, oh, you know,
00:21:16
Speaker
Like for example, if it takes an hour to take the sheet metal off, we'll do that. I don't need to pay two, two, $300 an hour to remove the cap screw anyway.
Okuma Machine Performance & Testing
00:21:24
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. How's the Akuma running? Uh, beast mode. I mean, it's great. It's absolutely great. The only thing, I wasn't even going to mention this, but now that you say it, the only thing that spooked me
00:21:41
Speaker
And I'm confident enough to share this for what it is, but it doesn't make sense at all.
00:21:49
Speaker
There's been no accuracy issues with that machine whatsoever. I have probably two or three times had what I call minor bumps. One was in the beginning where I didn't have a tool gauge set correctly. I think it was only two then and they were like 10 percent. You got to know access over travel alarm or access overload alarm. Yeah. So it's quote unquote a crash, but like nothing like very much nothing big. Otherwise, machine has been running great.
00:22:17
Speaker
Here's what's happening. When I face a part on a tombstone, so the part is, the face of the part is normal to the spindle, just like a normal three axis in that sense. So you deck a part. I deck that part and then I put a 50 millionths brown and sharp indicator and I sweep up and down the face of that part, six inch part. There is no measurable
00:22:41
Speaker
deviation. It's perfectly perpendicular as one would expect. It'll vary a tenth or two just because life exists, the world exists. But to quote the Renzetti, if your indicator is not moving, get a better indicator. It moves but a tenth or two at most, which is great.
00:22:59
Speaker
If I then rotate that tombstone to be 90, which would rotate it from, let's say six o'clock is the position where it's cutting the spindle. I rotate it clockwise to nine o'clock. So it's now 90 degrees offset. I obviously have to reorient my indicator needle because I'm kind of sweeping the left side of it. When I swipe up and down, it is consistently about eight to 10 tenths tipped toward the toward the operator.
00:23:30
Speaker
up and down. So when I go and when I rotate right back to be zero, same indicator. Of course, I've never moved the part out of the fixture here. It goes when I move it right back to be zero and I sweep it, it's back to being perfect. And when I here's what's really crazy is I switched it to be the other 90 so far facing away the dark side of the moon. I had to get up on a ladder and look over and hand jog it as best I could tell it was a little bit awkward to be in that position as best I could tell it was
00:23:57
Speaker
perfect at three o'clock. But again, repeatedly at nine o'clock, I get about a foul tipped toward leaning toward the operator, which doesn't to me like I can't figure out the kinematics of how this could be.
00:24:14
Speaker
Huh. You would have thought that the opposite dark side of the moon would have been the opposite tilt. Bingo. Right? For sure. I don't know. And at first I thought you were going to say it'll be off in rotational value, which means the indexing ability left to right of your 90 degree rotations is like 90.01 or something. Right. That would make sense in a way, but the tilting forward, unless there's like
00:24:40
Speaker
Do you know how the palette indexes to the table like what the clamping mechanism style is? I do not.
00:24:48
Speaker
Like is it a big ball lock system or is it some a row at times 10 or I don't know. Oh the four four tapered cones. I don't know how it actually clamps it down John. Now that we're talking about this out loud I should also go to 45 degrees and sweep it there to see because I guess what I'm wondering is there somehow it's acting like when it rotates to that one orientation somehow like it's rotating
00:25:14
Speaker
over a chip. This doesn't make sense. But like, how is it tipped up there? Like a roller coaster, like when it gets to this angle, it's a little bit higher than it goes back and flattens out. Right. Well, if I assume there's four tapered cones or something. Yeah. If maybe one of them has a chip on it, but the other three are stable, then that shouldn't matter because it doesn't. The cones rotate with the B90. So I machined it in place. So when you rotate it,
00:25:43
Speaker
Nothing is being re-clamped. It's just rotating. Oh, I see what you mean. It would be like on your kern. If you tip the B over and seize at zero and you deck a part and then you move the C to 90 and you sweep that part, how is it tapered there? I don't know.
00:26:13
Speaker
Yeah. I'll do a little more playing. It's just me. Interesting. It's like you want to sweep. I don't know. What's great as a Band-Aid is I tested the Fusion G11 probing, which we've been using some Renishaw direct code. And I just don't like using handwritten code for a bunch of reasons.
00:26:40
Speaker
if at all possible. And so now the fusion built in Akuma probi competent comped for the taper and, um, even with the seven tenths or eight on a small part of a seven tenths nailed it, like zero tenths taper, which is cool. That's cool. So if you put a blank palette in there,
00:27:01
Speaker
and you rotate at the B or something and would you think it would go up or if you try to sweep the whole empty palette? That's not going to do next. I guess you can't face a blank palette because your spindle is to the side on the horizontal. Face it when it be zero and then tip it to
00:27:20
Speaker
Oh, I guess you're right that you could take a like a super glue, a piece of aluminum extrusion where I had enough reach to get at it with the side of an end beam and then rotate it to be 90 be zero and see if that
00:27:35
Speaker
That's what I want to prove out. If I can really prove out that I can replicate this, then I'll probably... It kind of goes back to the service thing. I don't have the appetite or budget to have service people come in for two days and only say, we don't know. We hear about that from some of our friends. They're like, oh, service guy's back again. Oh, another service guy's here. Yeah. But where do you want to spend your time? Yeah. Well, for now, we've got it solved.
00:28:04
Speaker
It's interesting. I don't really love the idea. If there's truly a kinematic issue, whether it's caused by us or the machine settling, then I'll get it fixed. But also, this is a foul across six inches at the top of a tombstone. I mean, I care about it, but it's also still very minor. Great. That makes sense. Yeah, especially considering how far is that to the mating surface of the tombstone?
00:28:31
Speaker
Like 10 inches. 26 inches, yeah. So like a thou over 26 inches is we're talking, I don't know, 0.01 degree or something. Oh, yeah, not even. Like how big of a chip. I did this on the Kern once. Like how big of a chip would it take on your locating pad to create a thou movement at 20 inches?
Internal Communication & Project Management Tools
00:28:49
Speaker
And it's like a half a tenth or something. Yeah, 50 millionth chip would put you out 2 thou, far enough out. Yeah, something like that, yeah. But still, I want it perfect.
00:28:59
Speaker
Yes. But yeah, on the current, I found out that about a year ago, my wash down between pallet changes was not effective enough and there were some chips ending up under the pads, which would kick out the whole tombstone. I mean, my tombstones are only like seven, eight inches long. But it would kick out the tip of the tombstone by a few thou just by having a metal chip underneath the thing. So now I do a probably two minute wash down between each pallet with coolant spraying and rotating and
00:29:27
Speaker
It works great now, super stable. The other thing that's been on my share list is we have
00:29:37
Speaker
gone out of our way to try with mostly success to stop using email for all of our internal communications. And this has actually worked really well. So we had these classic email problems of people, you know, I'm a zero inboxer. Some people don't even check their email.
00:29:58
Speaker
And you've got these issues where if you're going back and forth with two people, then you want to rope in a third person. You know, do you have them read this whole chain below it and share documents and the list goes on. I was thinking about Slack because I've seen Slack use elsewhere. Personally, I've always found like it was a very easy thing to get overly distracted by. But then I started looking at what Slack lets you do with having different
00:30:25
Speaker
what do you call it, like rooms or chat categories, if you will, and tagging people and so forth. And then when I was looking at what Slack hop, the best options were, you know, sometimes the best way to look at what software can do is to look at its competitors and have them contrast like pros and cons. Well, Slack costs money now. I wouldn't have had a problem paying, but I realized Google spaces is
00:30:49
Speaker
free and we're already on the Google ecosystem with our Saunders Machine Works hosting an email and drives and all that. So we now have Google spaces set up. It's on the same page as our email and we have different spaces
00:31:05
Speaker
I guess within spaces where they're like, you know, internal production, marketing, sales and quotes, and you can tag people. It's, God bless Google, incredible search. That's like a big part of it is being able to look back to stuff. And you can, I mean, tagging people will bring to their attention, but you can also go look through what's going on. Or if I ask,
00:31:30
Speaker
Joe to do it, Joe's an employee, Joe's busy. He can just re-tag a different person. It's been like this unexpected windfall of like, oh, this is so much better than rifle shotting emails that are sort of private conversations like between me and Ed. And then all of a sudden, I'm like, well, hey, maybe we can have Grant run one of those real quick. Well, you just tag Grant. The file's already there. It's just nice. Interesting. Does it work for sort of project management and like to-dos?
00:32:00
Speaker
It's not Alex was actually trying to has a to do function that didn't seem to meet his desires. So we're using it more as just fluid communications. We still have a sauna for kind of project managing type stuff and then recurring to do stuff is now for sure lives in Lex. So like
00:32:20
Speaker
maintenance-y type tasks. Or I'll come back to this here in a second, but we have a recurring issue with shared SKUs that we haven't figured out how to work for flow, and I saw that with a mate's Lex maintenance item.
00:32:34
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, because we've been playing with Microsoft Teams, but we're actually having technical issues where I can't even log in with my work email and I can't switch the two-factor code away from an employee that doesn't work here anymore. And it's weird. I'm stuck on Microsoft Teams and I haven't even really played with it enough to know if I like it, but some of the guys on the team have liked it.
00:33:03
Speaker
And yeah, so we're in this kind of limbo of like, but we want it for not only communication, but light project management. Like if we're designing t-shirts and we got to talk to people, we got to talk to vendors, what's the status of that project? You know, what's the timeline? Things like that.
00:33:20
Speaker
It's like we ordered new custom boxes for the Shimp Works valve covers and Alice and I had that conversation over spaces because I don't really want that stuff to be private like that. It's great. It actually solves the other issue of people do end up moving on where you don't need to worry about the loss of their inbox.
00:33:42
Speaker
Yeah. What do you use? Who hosts your Grimstone Ives email? Google. It's a Google Workspaces. Yeah, same thing we're doing. So we pay like $9 a month for... Not everybody in the shop has them, probably four or five people. Yeah. But that works good. And then we use WhatsApp a lot for quick one-time communication like, you know, I'm out of this or I need this or, you know, this is wrong or come look at this kind of thing. And that just works great. We just use that.
00:34:12
Speaker
Do you have different WhatsApp threads or is it just one general? Yeah, we have a whole team chat. We have a CNC group chat with just the manufacturing guys and we have kind of an admin chat and then Eric and I have a chat and then Eric and I and somebody else have a chat and then it works.
Inventory Management & E-commerce Solutions
00:34:29
Speaker
Yeah, it sounds similar. I think the thing I do love about the Google thing is that it does integrate really well for uploading and sharing files. But also, again, WhatsApp search is OK. It's not the same as Google. No, I've definitely viewed WhatsApp as a live one time. You know, you can search it, but and I have actually. But yeah, it's it's not for long term.
00:34:56
Speaker
Yeah, so yeah, the issue we have on the shared SKUs is a weird one. The Haas VF5 is the exact same table as a Haas VF3YT.
00:35:09
Speaker
So, we just got, and it's actually a pair of plates, so it's a little bit confusing. Oh, you don't have a VF5, but you're making a plate for a VF5? Yeah. Okay. I was confused there. Sorry. And so, we just got two sets, so four individual plates, but it's two products, if you will, back from anodizing. So, we have
00:35:29
Speaker
quantity two of those available for sale, but Shopify doesn't really give us a good way of showing. Like if you were interested in buying two VF5 plates sets, we've got those in stock. But what I did for now was just put one in for the VF5, one in for the VF3YT. And on the end, you'll note to like check it, but we're looking for a way to, and Alex has said he's really like, he's looked at like custom liquid scripting and like, hey, we could probably just set up something kind of brute forcey like,
00:35:59
Speaker
a Gmail filter, a Google filter that tracks when a sale includes this SKU to auto then forward because that's what you'd want to happen is as soon as we sell either one, then you update the other's inventory. Why don't you just make them the same product? Play it for VF3 and VF5. Because it would still hit your search criteria on the website and it would still filter and stuff maybe.
00:36:26
Speaker
That's a good question. Is it just SEO in confusing customers potentially? That's a good question. I have to look at that. Because then, I mean, it'd be neat for those customers to be like, huh, I didn't know it was the same place. That's cool. Move on.
00:36:44
Speaker
Yeah, there's something, look, the compromise is the name of the game here. There's something to be said though for, you'll confuse, you will potentially confuse customers. You'll cause somebody to go back and ask their boss or their procurement department or be like, wait a minute, I think they've got a mistake. And like, hey, if I want to be a three YT fixture plate, you're on that page. It shows your machine. It shows the stable set up like clean. Agreed. Do you have skews in Shopify? Oh yeah. Interesting.
00:37:13
Speaker
That's how Shopify and Lex talks to each other. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, because every single one of our products is unique. We don't repeat.
00:37:23
Speaker
you know, we don't add inventory. We add a new product because every knife is its own serial number. It's its own thing, right? It's a different process. Except for like t-shirts and stickers and stuff. Then we just go quantity 20. But, um, but yeah, like every day we upload product, it's new product, copy paste, duplicate product, change, change description. So it's a different way of running. Yeah. Are you happy with Shopify? Uh, yeah. Um,
00:37:51
Speaker
Yeah, there's definitely things I find little like sort of frustrating that we wish you could do but are you? I think generally. It works fine. We've thought about going to something else or custom building something or and it's just always fizzled out. We're like Shopify just works. It just works well.
00:38:16
Speaker
We're probably at the point where we could justify going to the next tier of Shopify because of our volumes would justify the reduced transaction fees. That's probably somewhere where if you double our business, for example, it probably could make sense. But boy, they've got us so in their ecosystem. Yeah. And there's that whole, is it called like Shopify Plus? Like it's not even... That's what we have.
00:38:43
Speaker
Really? Yeah, and it's expansive. Yeah. I think you kind of, you don't have to get like invited into it, but you can't just decide. You have to have a business that they deem worthwhile. Why do you pay for that? We've had it for about two or three years. If I remember right, we kind of had to due to volume of transactions and sales and things like that. And there was a,
00:39:11
Speaker
conversions point where Shopify fees monthly end up being cheaper because we pay like $2,000 a month Canadian plus a negligible amount for every transaction like pennies or 75 cents or something. I forget.
00:39:29
Speaker
And it works out to be at a certain volume of sales per year. I forget if it's actual transactions or dollar amounts. It ends up being cheaper going to Shopify Plus, which we did. We crossed that a couple of years ago. But yeah, it still sucks to be $2,000 a month. Yeah, that seems a great service. Yeah. I want to say our math was break even. It would be actually saving money to spend more. Right.
00:39:59
Speaker
I don't even remember what it would cost, but it was pretty big setup. Like going from $200 a month for Shopify to $600, but the $400 cost you'd save on lower transaction fees, but it wasn't a slam dunk. And I was like, wait a minute, I'm not going to obligate myself. Like what if things slow down or we cut back or whatever? I was like, I, this is, it needs to be a bigger slam dunk before I obligate myself to you know, six, $7,000 increase per year or something for
Freight Invoice Frustrations & Programming Tasks
00:40:27
Speaker
sure. Yeah.
00:40:29
Speaker
What's going on today? Putting together a chip conveyor. Moving on. I guess I'll call Bloom, talk about the probe. The guys are making more rich light right now. And yeah, that's about it. Cool. Chip conveyors, you mean like the filtration, really? Yeah, for sure. So yeah. What do I do? I am.
00:40:59
Speaker
frustrated but realizing I shouldn't be frustrated, which is that we have a lot of FedEx freight. I would guess many weeks we have four to five FedEx freights and well over $1,000. We're spending over $50,000 a year just in freight. We have three invoices that it's our opinion that FedEx incorrectly invoiced them for pretty substantial things.
00:41:25
Speaker
And so, we've disputed those and they're not responding. We've been very communicative and this is where it's frustrating because I value as a smaller business, I think there's a lot to be said for like, hey, the customer was disputing something we charge them for and there's a back and forth.
00:41:41
Speaker
you know, recognize that that conversation has to play itself out. FedEx just sent us a, we're turning your account over to collections. Now, this is for $700 in total disputed invoices. They don't even acknowledge that they're being disputed. And every other invoice we pay the day it hits our desk. So it's kind of like, you guys are, this is a tactical error, you know, treating us like every deadbeat is
00:42:04
Speaker
is unacceptable, but I recognize I'm not going to get anywhere by telling them that I don't appreciate that. But it's so frustrating because it's just those, you got to recognize what it's like dealing with a big company like that. So I got to deal with that. What else? Love and programming. I've been programming more with those valve covers in the horizontal. It's like you said, kind of productive and creative. Like that's my jam. I just really enjoy
00:42:34
Speaker
I really enjoy sitting there and it's just like a challenge. It's just so fun.
Automation & Process Simplification
00:42:40
Speaker
Yeah, taking on new challenges. Yeah. Other than that, same old. Yeah. I think the guys are going to come by soon to install the auto door on the speedio and get it ready for a ROA integration. Okay. So that's going to be exciting. Yeah, awesome.
00:43:02
Speaker
taken longer than I thought it would. Yeah, I thought that was like might have almost been installed before the machine even hit your floor. Yeah, no. But I think I think the door itself is ready to go. And then they got a schedule in a row a guy to come up and like plug everything in together. Got it. So that's gonna be cool. Because then yeah, then we can share work with the current and the speedio and pallet change parts into this video is gonna be sick.
00:43:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's getting me to rethink how, not only how I'm running the current, but how I want to use the Aroa because I'm using the big pallets, six inch pallets with the tombstone upright. And then I also have 55 small pallets that are like three inch pallets that I can make a top plate for. I can put small work on it.
00:43:52
Speaker
And instead of trying to stuff as many parts onto a small tombstone, you know, around the outside, patterns and copying and multiple offsets and multiple faces and all that stuff, it gets very complicated for the programming, especially if you want to touch off each face and machine up from there or something, assuming there's rotational differences or, you know, if you just want to touch off from the pallet surface, regardless of which pallet it is and which side it is,
00:44:20
Speaker
and you want to offset for each side, it gets tedious, it gets complicated. Whereas using the small palettes, just making say one part at a time, way simpler in the macros, the custom programming, even doing serialized engravings. So I think it's nice, right? Use those smaller palettes a lot more, both on the speedio and on the current. Yeah, cool. Yeah, I hear you. I mean, if I could have
00:44:48
Speaker
If I had a DeLorean and it was an option, I would have definitely even gone from the six to the 10 palette palette pool on the horse. Yeah. Just because it's all the more jobs that you can leave set up forever. But I get it. Those are it's they're much less common and it is what we're for sure. Cranking with the six. Sweet. Cool. See you next week. Sounds good, man. Take care. All right. Take care. Bye.