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Business of Machining - Episode 63 image

Business of Machining - Episode 63

Business of Machining
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199 Plays7 years ago

IT’S JOH TIME!

And no, that’s not just John’s name misspelled. The Grimsmo team took a field trip to the 2018 Joint Open House last week!  

Trip Notes:

  • Have your codes and questions ready on the cloud. There are SO many people with answers there!
  • Sweet to see an MX 330 in the flesh metal
  • Spent 5 hours at Elliott Matsuura
  • Checked out the Robodrill for a half hour

Keep an eye out for the 2018 Joint Open House video on Grimsmo’s channel!

Can’t wait? Here’s Grimsmo’s video from the 2017 Joint Open House

New machines are definitely in the cards for Grimsmo!

As a laser falls lower and lower on his list of necessities, robots seem more plausible. But could robots take over the Grimsmo shop one day? On the other hand, Saunders couldn't live without his CO2 laser! 

Either way, Grimsmo's gonna need a new machine for the PENS he's officially bringing to market! He shows Saunders the prototype pen, and plans to bring 200 to Blade Show! 

Thinking outside the box

Someone somewhere has the skills you need, don't be afraid to ask for help.  

“That’s the kind of question you need to ask yourself and the industry; here’s the job I need, is it possible? Can it be done?” - Grimsmo

IMTS IS 5 MONTHS AWAY! 

Look out for Grimsmo and Saunders as they run around learning a ton together. 

Grimsmo hiring again?? 

A sixth person is coming to work at the Grimsmo shop for a co-op placement, he's a manufacturing engineering student.

The Irony of Capitalism; "The more successful you are, the better financing is" - Saunders

Saunders reflects on staying competitive. 

Do you remember contour? No? That's because GoPro beat the marketing battle. 

 

 

Everything’s always improving, and software is no different. Grimsmo and Saunders discuss what they’d change about Fusion. What would you?

Transcript

Introduction and Joe Joint Open House

00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, episode number 63. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. Good morning, buddy. Good morning. And how are you this week? Good. How was the joint, the Joe joint open house? I have so much to talk about this week. I actually should like sit back and listen. All right,

Troubleshooting Nakamura Machine

00:00:25
Speaker
fine. I'll open this up.
00:00:28
Speaker
The Joint Open House, I can't believe it was a week ago, was incredible. Very similar to past years, but I know a lot more people there. I was known by a lot more people there, which is really funny. I feel like I got to talk to basically everybody there, which was really nice. I got to go deep with a lot of people. There was even one guy, we were standing in front of a big Nakamura mill turn,
00:00:54
Speaker
layered thing with one of the applications guys that I know of. And I was like, okay, so I'm having this error on my Nakamura and I pulled out my phone. And since I have all my codes on the cloud, I just pulled up a text editor on my phone and I showed him, okay, it always errors at this line. And he's like, oh, put that line in brackets and try this and try this and try this. And I edited the file right there on my phone, brought it home. And it was totally the answer.
00:01:19
Speaker
It was like a G 41 G 42 or G 40 cancel cutter

Tools for Entrepreneurs

00:01:23
Speaker
comp thingy. Um, yeah, it was going on, off, on or something. Yeah, sure. And that was the problem. So that was cool.
00:01:34
Speaker
Awesome lesson there too. I gave a talk to these college students last week who came by. Really cool project, I'll tell you about it later. And I was like, hey, some of these skills or tools that I think you just have to have as an entrepreneur. I talked about Asana and video recording, but then I said, look, for me,
00:01:53
Speaker
Chrome Remote Desktop. If I have the chance to be hanging out with somebody and they're willing to help me, I need to be able to... I'm not a big fan of my phone like you and a lot of people, but I always have my laptop with me. So within 30 seconds, hop on your computer, get into there, and let that person help you if the chance presents.
00:02:11
Speaker
Absolutely. And a long time ago, I use Google Drive, Google Desktop a lot. So everything I post, every single file just goes into a shared folder that gets synced to my Google Drive. So it's always available, any computer, any device. And this was one of those examples where it was like, yes, it totally paid off. That was awesome. So it's not like you're trying to remember, I think it's at this line, at this, no,

Connecting with Industry Experts

00:02:34
Speaker
I could actually show them.
00:02:34
Speaker
Yes, that was cool. What else? What else? We got to see a bunch of Matsuros, got to see a couple MX330s. I didn't get to see the 10-pallet changer, nor did they have a MAM 7235, the small one. They just had the 100, which is like a crane to get into, basically. Yeah. But yeah, I got to see that, got to talk to them.
00:02:58
Speaker
Really cool. Got to see a bunch of robotic stuff. Got to talk to probably seven, six different Renishaw guys, which was always nice. I feel like I know everybody who works in Renishaw, Canada now. That's awesome. It's probably not that. It's funny, even in the US, sometimes these companies are like seven people or something. Totally. Absolutely. Yeah. Aside from administration, I probably know all the techs and all the people. It's funny. It's fun.
00:03:25
Speaker
What else, what else?

Switch from Brother to FANUC in Canada

00:03:27
Speaker
So I was very sad to hear that, and I just learned that morning, that Elliot Metzger stopped carrying Brother as a line. Oh no. And replaced it with Fannock. I knew they had Fannock coming on. But I was like, I was really interested in this video and now nobody in Canada carries it. Why do you have a robo drill? Interesting.
00:03:48
Speaker
I heard some chatter last week that there is more bad blood than I had. I guess I didn't know anything about the backstory, but apparently Fanuk and Brother are not cool with the the machines have stepped on toes, I guess. Well, yeah, sure. Whatever. Yeah, they're similar in many ways, and I'm sure one is kind of piggybacking off the other ways.
00:04:14
Speaker
Um, but yeah, so I got to see, I've never seen a robo drill in person. It's certainly not up close. So they had, they had one on display, like a medium sized one. And, uh, we, it's like, we did this circuitous route in Elliott, Matsura, where it's like all the math zeros, all the Nakamura's. And then we were there for five hours and the last like half hour we got to spend on the robo drill and talk to one of the guys from methods machine tools in the States. Um.
00:04:41
Speaker
It got stuck to them all about the robo drill and ask them all the questions. And we walked all around it and saw everything. And it was an excellent opportunity to finally see one and run it real quick. And yeah, I'm a fan. That sounds like a really awesome machine. Did he share any juicy insights in how is it better or how is it different than a speedio?
00:05:09
Speaker
Tough to say. I mean, obviously, he's a huge fan, fanboy. Right. As far as different than the speedio, I don't know. They're so comparable and relatively similar price range. I haven't specced them out dollar for dollar yet. So I don't know what would make you choose between the two. For me, it becomes more obvious because now there's no brother in Canada that I know of. Right.
00:05:37
Speaker
And I like working with Elliot. So if I want a machine like this, then they're, they're a really good place to look. Um, but yeah, it should do everything that this video does at least. And the benefit of a robot drill is like everything on it is FANUC, FANUC control, FANUC motors, FANUC drive, FANUC everything, everything, everything. And, uh, and they've been around forever. So.
00:05:56
Speaker
The continuity there is worth it. I hate to say it because I feel like I feel like I'd like to be able to be willing to make the right decision about a future machine tool because it's the one I want. But the reality is it's probably worth compromising a little if it meant like the same code could run or the same controller interface.

Choosing Between Machine Brands

00:06:15
Speaker
Oh my gosh. But that makes me feel like from a marketing standpoint, makes me feel like
00:06:21
Speaker
the brother is just a tinge above like in terms of it's I think because the brother is kind of the rebel like they they created that their new controller system that moves I think it moves faster I think it moves does more positioning moves in multiple simultaneous things like the coolant the retract the fourth axis homing all at the same time right yeah I don't know if that's options on the robo drill I know exactly what you're talking about but I do remember hearing that about this video for sure
00:06:51
Speaker
But it's all these like, how can we save a tenth of a second from a cycle and these big companies finding little loopholes and little quick codes and all that. But yeah, it sounds like a really sweet machine. And I'm actively looking for a second machine for this shop that will also work in a bigger shop, obviously. I don't want to shoot myself in the foot by buying some tiny little thing.
00:07:15
Speaker
So yeah, super duper interesting, the Robo drill. And, uh, don't know how soon it'll be pulling the trigger, but, um, it's only a 30 taper, right? Yes, it is a BT 30 big plus. Yep. So that's a big benefit. Um, and I, the more I think about it, the more I realize how much we'll be using it. Oh my gosh. Yeah. It's not just foam and engraving. Um, it's so much stuff that I have no time to do on the Maury. Like the Maury literally just needs to pump out handles and blades and clips all day long.
00:07:45
Speaker
Yep.
00:07:46
Speaker
And it can, and it's great at that. So we were also looking at the DMG Mori, their mil tap 700. Yeah. Which is a similar, like a mil drill, drill tap machine. It's got a few benefits over the robo drill, like on paper, but there's, it runs on a Siemens control, which is great, but I have, I know nothing about it. It would be like one Siemens and two Fana controls in my shop. And there's, you know, pluses and minuses both ways. And I think I'm happier with the robo drill.
00:08:17
Speaker
I think the Robo drill is kind of that utilitarian, like it's not the sexiest machine in the world, but darn it, it does. I mean, I joke about, I probably should clear the air. I don't actually hate lathes. Like it's been a funny thing to joke about. And I'm a mill guy and I'm okay with that, but I don't hate lathes and I don't actually hate fan of controls. I just find, I look for opportunities when people can do,
00:08:45
Speaker
creative and disruptive things in industry. And I think Brother's a good example of that. I think Haas is a good example of that. And I think, you know, what we're seeing now with, it's not really anything new, but it's new to me because you and I are still kind of new to this big boy world

Potential of Robots in Machining

00:09:00
Speaker
of like the, the, the, the C-Lose on top, the hide and hide that has the layer. Matt Sura has the same thing. So it's like, like, we're taking this sort of stale old Relic controller interfaces and we're trying to make it a much more modern era.
00:09:15
Speaker
just a more normal user interface. And what was really cool about Matsura was that they definitely do some of that, but Matsura, and I'm speaking...
00:09:26
Speaker
my time was really spent with one person who I should probably disclaim. He doesn't speak for Matt Sura as a whole, but just kind of like, hey, what do you guys stand for? Why are you different? And I like the fact that they weren't, I think I may have mentioned this last week, but they weren't always trying to be the newest, shiniest, the cloud, the bubbles, the windows 10, or like the
00:09:49
Speaker
It's like we know this works. We want to make sure it's really usable. We might be one iteration behind some of the other people in terms of the gadgetry, but darn it, it's a well thought out interface.
00:10:02
Speaker
I agree with your sentiment before of like, like pushing the boundaries and being the rebel and all that stuff. But I hate to say that I'm becoming that shop that is like, you know what? FANUC is good and reliable. Everybody knows how to run it. I can hire a machinist to run it. I'm that, that legacy jerk. That's like, no, this just works. It's good. It's funny. Like.
00:10:24
Speaker
Yeah. No, but you don't have to be. You can treat like it's like I'm trying to think about our business now, which is which is like, hey, I've got some stuff that's kind of on autopilot. It may bring in the revenue. It may bring in, you know, it keeps us busy. But then you and so that can be kind of your stability side. And there could be some risk taking side. You know, you eventually get to a point where, you know, hey, we take it's kind of crazy to think about it. But like, hey, we we venture outside our comfort zone on a machine tool.
00:10:52
Speaker
Yep. And then there's no doubt about it that you and I, um, push the boundaries even within the limits of what we have, like with all the macro work that I'm doing and all the probing and all the complicated codes and hundreds of operations and all that. Like you work with what you have, even a quote unquote legacy product like FANUC is still capable of doing basically anything.
00:11:12
Speaker
Right. I'd love to hear not so support for sure matters in the brand record or the brand stability. And, you know, like the Maury drill mills, I think a pretty new machine, obviously. Well, and it's interesting. DMG Maury is quite, you know, quite a prolific player, but they've been through a lot of changes and so forth. But I'd love to hear really like if

Investing in Fiber Lasers

00:11:40
Speaker
somebody had owned
00:11:41
Speaker
the brother, the Robo drill and the DMG for two years. I'd love to hear what they're like, look, here's where this machine doesn't, doesn't like, give you an example. Somebody I know was looking at one of the five axis machines that happens to be from one of the companies we're talking about. I think all three of those machines now come in five axis flavors as well. And there was a sort of a thing about how the lowest spindle, it's not called spindle to the table because five axis,
00:12:11
Speaker
Can the spindle go past the center line of rotation on the trunnion? Does that make sense? One of them had a meaningfully different amount. I would never think of that. I may not even need to know that if I bought the machine, but when you hear somebody who figured that out, whether it's from research or owning the machine, you're like, oh, okay, that's what none of the sales guys are telling you or know about.
00:12:35
Speaker
Yeah, and all these kind of drill mill machines have a surprisingly poor spindle nose to table distance. It's high.
00:12:45
Speaker
Yeah. Like, like, so you, you can't just put an orange vice in there and expect you're going to reach it. Like you need to space it up three inches or something on the regular Robo drill. It's like nine and a half inches spindle nose to table. So you put a three inch tool in there, six inches, right? And you put a vice that's only three inches tall in there and you you're not even touching. There's three inches to make up. So somehow you got to space it up or you got to buy long tooling.
00:13:12
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Huh. So that's one of those stupid things that you're like, oh, I didn't think about that. And even on the mori, I have my VAC magic plate on the table. I can only run it with really long tools. Even the Pearson Mini Palette, I had to make a two inch spacer to go underneath it. Oh, I was going to say, I thought you did spacers, but only on the Pearson. Yeah. So yeah. Interesting. A lot of little considerations. There's so much stuff you don't even think about.
00:13:43
Speaker
Are they all that higher spindle to table? Some of them, they're like seven to nine inches usually in the speedio. So you just got planned for it. Somebody was telling me actually yesterday that they had an emote that drill mill, what do they call drill mill 700?
00:14:02
Speaker
Miltap 700. Thank you. It comes in a five axis dedicated flavor, which I saw in emo. And I I've seen the Robo drills, also, it's same show that were dedicated five. And I know Brother has I don't know if it's so called a speedio, but it's that it's a different mix for 520 or something. Yeah, five axis one, right?
00:14:23
Speaker
You just said you just said in that sort of machine, MX 520. Oh, geez. I forget what it's called, but you're right. The one that Eric at Orange has got. So it's not simultaneous five. It's four plus one. But it can do turning. It's pretty cool. It could do that turning with the drive dogs on the BT tooling. Anyway, I think, don't quote me on this, but I think all three of those machines are
00:14:49
Speaker
inside of 200,000, which is interesting because they're all pretty dark. Okay. What's that? As the five axis machine, it's under. Yeah. Okay. Right. And it's certainly all those are good builders, good quality, so forth. So it's an interesting, different way to think about that functionality. And like Eric at Orange has got his on a little FANUC robo mate arm to do automation.
00:15:14
Speaker
Yeah, we got to see some cool automation too. Like, you know how normally robots have a guards. You can't get close to them and all that. They're starting to get into vision systems where it's got proximity sensors basically. And you could walk up to it and it goes two lights, three lights, four lights, and then the robot will actually slow down as you get closer and then stop, which is fun to see. Yeah, that's awesome. Do you feel like that's ever going to be
00:15:40
Speaker
I feel like your business might grow into that, but I wonder if robots will ever grow down to somebody who's running a smaller, it just seems like such a big investment. It's not just the robot, it's the service and it's the integration and the safety compliance and the setup and reliability. Do you think you'll ever get one?
00:16:02
Speaker
Uh, eventually, yeah, for sure. Whether it be a big boy one, like a FANUC or even the you are robots, um, seem really popular nowadays and, and very capable if you have the right kind of work for it. Yeah. And the barrier to entry for those is not crazy. They're like $20,000, $25,000 or something. Oh, I thought they were like double that. I really don't know.
00:16:27
Speaker
Maybe I'm guessing. I think the UR-10, and that may be the larger one, but it's still not that big of a, it's like a 10 kilogram payload, which isn't that much. I thought it was like 42 US or something. I could be wrong. I forget. But the cool thing with those is you don't necessarily need the technicians to come in and do it all for you. Sure, totally.
00:16:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's meant to be more DIY, which is sweet. Yeah, then that's cool. But then it's funny because it's like, OK, take a real world situation in corporate patterns. Jonathan posted that thing on Instagram where he had, I don't know, what was it these like tubs? Like, I don't know. He has like like 3000 castings to machine quick ops on.
00:17:15
Speaker
Yeah, but they were coming in these tubs that were the size of like an office desk. Yeah. You know, like a meter cubed or something. And there were there were hundreds of them in it. And he was like, I want something to go pick them up, orient it within a pretty loose tolerance. But nevertheless, I had to be oriented, drop it onto a fixture and then remove it and put in a different bin. And I didn't come back to the Instagram post to sort of see if anybody had good answers. But it wasn't didn't seem like there was really an answer. It was obvious when.
00:17:46
Speaker
Yeah, I know it is totally possible. And that's the kind of questions you need to ask yourself in the industry. Like, here's the job I need. Is it possible? Can it be done? But I think he's having trouble finding a good solution. Do the URs, do you know if they integrate with a vision system that would allow it to look it apart? Yeah, absolutely. I've seen lots of videos of that. OK. I'd be curious to see how particular it is with lighting and shadows. And if you have the sun through windows or a door open,
00:18:13
Speaker
Good point. You might just need some dedicated lighting for that job. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to hear. I'd love to learn more. I just feel like it's the death by a thousand cuts of all these little things. Like Jay Pearson, how do you are? Sold it. Right. Lawrence has one. I think they're using it, but I'm not seeing it, right? A ton. Good point. Yeah. I don't know.
00:18:41
Speaker
The, uh, the Ohio sales guys called me a few times and we've always been on the road, but, um, they were going to bring one by and I'm kind of torn because I'd love to see it and learn. I'm also realizing that part of success involves saying no, like I'm not in the market right now. So it's kind of like the John, the intellectual fund, John wants to for sure, like learn on the flip side. It's kind of like, Hey, um, my goal is this year. Our, our don't involve a robot. So I don't need to spend, I mean, literally it would be.
00:19:11
Speaker
I mean, even if they were coming back for an hour or two, it ends up your whole afternoon, and then you go on one of those learning binges, because it's fun to do, but yeah. Yeah. Well, I just realized IMTS is five months away, so you and I can run around at IMTS and learn about some robots with vision systems and stuff. That sounds like a good idea. Yeah.
00:19:31
Speaker
Um, yes, a similar thing. Like I, I got super interested in lasers, like laser engraving again, really high powered fiber lasers, like 70 watt, a hundred watt kind of thing to do some deep, deep engraving and titanium. Anyway, cause I know some people that have them. And so I sent like one little inquiry to control laser and, uh, the sales guys calling me and emailing me all the time now. And I'm just like, I'm not ready. I was just kind of, this was a late night band, just gain.
00:20:00
Speaker
Yeah, but that's okay. You just get to know them, you know? Exactly, right? And things like this take time. But it makes me put into perspective like the order of purchases that need to come up next.
00:20:13
Speaker
A second machine is not immediate, like we'll get the lapping machine first, and then probably a second machine within the next few months, hopefully, and then kind of go from there. But a laser, the more I think about it, it gets lower down the list because everything else just makes more of a difference. You don't even have laser work done now, so would it replace a machining process? It might replace the engraving, and it would certainly add
00:20:39
Speaker
artistic patterning capabilities, which for those two reasons alone is not worth the price tag. Oh, that's right. Because you're talking about, you're talking about real, like our CO2 laser was like 13 grand, which is talking about like 50 plus thousand. Yeah, right. But holy cow, we have used our laser. Like everyone who said you should get it and you'll use it. It's just
00:21:03
Speaker
bananas. So it's the exact opposite of a robot, because next to it, we have wood and acrylic, which is the majority of what we do, although we also cut a bit of rubber. And it just works. There's no work holding. The programming is easy. Unlike, again, this idea of setting up a robot to pull parts off,
00:21:26
Speaker
I feel like is the antithesis of that in the laser. It's a true solution where if you want something, you just make it right away. Nice. Fun. Even easier than like a 3D printer because there's just less to think about. Yeah. You don't have the heat, the part separated from the build table platform where you've got to scale it or do whatever. It really is. It really is cool.
00:21:50
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know if I would ever get a, what do you call it? A bed type laser versus a Galvo head. Yeah. Right. Cause that's what I would do. I'd put small parts in it and I'd want like super fast engraving. Right. Whereas like you and Phil, they got these big bed type lasers where the laser actually traverses X and Y. But it allows you to make these kind of acrylic or wood or whatever jigs and fixtures and all kinds of cool, crazy stuff.
00:22:18
Speaker
Yeah, the Galvas are insanely fast. We like doing big parts and cutting out. I don't think the Galva would let you cut like even textbook size cutouts, though, of fixtures and jigs and templates, which we definitely use it for. You'd get a taper, wouldn't you? What's that? You'd get a taper because the laser head doesn't move. It just angles differently. Well, but you'd get I mean, you'd get like a 40 degree taper if you were cutting six inches off over the side. I don't.
00:22:46
Speaker
I don't know.

Hiring a New Co-op Student

00:22:48
Speaker
I don't know. The people that engraved the strike mark mounts back in the day had Galvos and it's just, it's unbelievable how fast they cut or move. Yep. That's cool. Yeah. Let's see what else, what else? I think I just hired our sixth team member. Whoa.
00:23:09
Speaker
Co-op student for a summer internship. Dude, perfect. At the local college, yeah. So if everything works out, he should be starting on Monday. What's the background? He is in school for manufacturing engineering. Perfect. So he'll be doing help helping you and Angelo? Exactly. And Eric, for sure. Right. Basically, everything needs to be done. He's going in the same program that Angelo graduated from. Oh, perfect.
00:23:39
Speaker
which is really sweet. Dude, good for you. Yeah, it's like such an opportunity. I couldn't turn it down. And he's a good kid. He came by two days ago for about three hours in the afternoon just to kind of learn everything and get to know him better and all that stuff. And he picks things up right away until he'll be a really good fit to the team. I'm super excited. Yeah. Dude, awesome. Yeah. Yeah. You're never going to look back.
00:24:03
Speaker
I know it's crazy. It's like, I feel like I'm just hiring people like once a month almost. Because Erin's been here for six months now, which is crazy by itself. But in that time we hired her, Angelo, and now this kid Skye.
00:24:21
Speaker
And it's like, what is going on? I feel like we'll just keep going. It's interesting. Something I've never talked to. I've got that list of people I look up to or when you talk to other entrepreneurs who have been through enough to impart wisdom. Somebody I've never asked them is how much do you look back on stuff at? I remember how,
00:24:47
Speaker
I can't help but think back to what these conversations were like, even in like October, November, right? And it's like, do you, is there value? It's like, or just, no, quit it. Move like full steam ahead. Like I'm not worried. Like I'm not going to go, um,
00:25:04
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I think we've gone through it. So for us to think back too hard about what it was like, like we remember what it was like, basically, even though it's not, it's not on the forefront. But it is really fun to be able to share this whole process for the past two years, basically, in the podcast form. Yeah, it's crazy. You know, like, like other people can hear our progression. And now you and I are thinking about it. And we're like, it's crazy, right? Now it's kind of normal now.
00:25:29
Speaker
Isn't it? That's what bothers me is how I've lost the ability to remember what it was like when it was just me or when it was
00:25:41
Speaker
You know, I enjoy, I enjoy being able to relate to people. And, um, I think that's something I don't want to lose, which is the ability to inspire the folks that are getting started or the one man shops. And now it sounds, it just sounds like you have a payroll of six people you're buying your third machine tool while you're already looking at your fourth. Really? Like if we're being honest here, right? Like, um, yeah, it's cool.
00:26:04
Speaker
It's crazy. Yeah, there is no looking back now and I'm totally happy and I'm totally comfortable with it. Right now. Yeah, it's awesome. Oh, big thing, big thing.

Progress on Debt Repayment

00:26:13
Speaker
So we haven't talked about it in a while, but I've had debt for quite a while. Credit cards, crap. That's all gone into the business. It's gotten us here. I'm not proud of it, but it's fact. I just killed two of my cards in the past week. Good for you. Down to zero. It's amazing. No credit card debt?
00:26:33
Speaker
No, no, no. Just two of them. There are more. But a significant amount of debt just lump sum, done, down to zero. Could be very happy. And now those cards, while we will continue to use them for shipping and all that regular stuff, every payment from now on will take it down to zero. Because there's only $1,200 on it. Of course, I'm going to pay it down to zero. That's fantastic. So we're picking away. We're actually doing it.
00:27:01
Speaker
That's really nice to hear. And I'll tell you, I think you and I talked, I don't know if we talked offline last week or whether it was on the actual podcast, but like, um, I think one of the differences with, with our businesses at this point, it goes back to that idea of you've got stability, um, in your product base and you're not overextended.
00:27:18
Speaker
So there are reasons it's appropriate to use working capital tools like financing and leasing. So it's not going out on a limb buying a machine that you can't afford, that you haven't earned per se, but rather, look, there's a reason you grow and what makes you happy, what aligns your vision, not getting too caught up in it. But obviously that is totally antithetical to everything I've said in the past.
00:27:46
Speaker
Again, if you take the extreme cases, if a reliable customer gives you a long-term contract, of course, it's much more appropriate there to look at, how do you tool up?

Financing Machine Tools

00:27:58
Speaker
To some extent, how do you stay competitive? Remember those contour cameras?
00:28:05
Speaker
kind of they were like the GoPro competitors six years ago, so they it's a really good like post-mortem right up on how they failed and There's a lot of takeaways from it but the conclusion of the article was that they lost money because GoPro just raised so much more venture capital and just just death by
00:28:25
Speaker
over marketing. I mean, for every one contour product placement or ad or social media influencer, there were 10 or 100 GoPro things. And contour was trying to be conservative. They just wasn't their style. And they lost. So it's kind of like, well, what's the takeaway there? To some extent, you've got to play the game. Yeah. Well, in your case,
00:28:53
Speaker
At some point, if you want to grow, if you want to get a five axis with pallets and all that, you're looking at $750,000.
00:29:01
Speaker
I don't think you're ever going to buy that cash that's just never going to happen. And even if you could, would you? That's the key, John. Financing at 5% is kind of cheap. So it goes back to that core of what are you doing? Why are you being driven there? And look, there's more to it. So the irony of capitalism is that
00:29:24
Speaker
the more successful you are, the better financing is. So I was talking to the Matsura guys and I was like, look, and to be clear, I am not in the market right now for a machine. I am in the market to learn. I'm always interested in learning. So I was like, look, I started giving them some general parameters.
00:29:44
Speaker
And I just looked at him and I said, look, I would want to pay 5% or less. I would put 20% down. I want non-recourse, meaning the only thing that I have signed for is the machine. That is your only collateral. If the road falls apart, if my business falls apart, you can come take the machine, but you can't take my business, you can't take my house, et cetera. And that's gone.
00:30:04
Speaker
Well, it's interesting because he was like so that so I was already sort of trying to negotiate to see where he would react to say, oh, we would never do that. But the difference there is the guy who can't afford the machine, who's quote unquote, not desperate, but just needs it. He's going to get a 10 percent interest rate, fully recourse, crummy terms like. And the gosh, John, the the numbers on a
00:30:32
Speaker
a machine like that, even when you roll in tooling and workholding, which is significant part of the cost. I think the, so if you look at it from a conservative side case of how much work do I need to get done to meet the payment on it is not hard. I'll put it this way. The ROI is astronomical to the point where
00:31:00
Speaker
If a machine tool builders are doing a good job, they're pricing these machines not based on what it costs to build them, but what they can yield in profitability to the customer. And now the difference is that they're still competitive forces. So Okuma and DMG and Matsura and all these companies are still competing with each other, which regulates the price, but the profitability potential is just insane. Exactly. It is.
00:31:25
Speaker
If you have the work for it, correct, which is the key. Yeah. Especially with the big multi-palette 300 tool machines. Like if you have a million parts to make, uh, or a high mix of constant work, you know, lots of scenarios, but, um, you will easily overextend yourself if you get it and don't have the work for it. Totally. You know, but it's also the option value thing. So this is kind of weird way to think about it, but if I can, if I can, um,
00:31:55
Speaker
Let's say it's a $340,000 machine. If I can get all the work done to make that machine not only make sense, not only meet my monthly obligation, but give a darn good return on that. If I can do all of that in the first eight days of a month, well, maybe you should look at the
00:32:14
Speaker
machine that, you know, in this case, I'm thinking of Matt Sura, you know, the MX versus the ma'am. I mean, a ton more money. Let's make sure we're pinching ourselves on this sort of discussion. But if you double that investment or go to a closer to a million to get a ma'am with the tool holders, with tooling, with work holding,
00:32:34
Speaker
Now, all of a sudden, you've got the opportunity to grow and scale, and it's kind of that idea of, well, I know I've got the work to cover the base, and we can grow into that reset. It's fun to think this stuff through. Yep, absolutely. Yep.
00:32:53
Speaker
What else?

Prototype Pen Completion and Production Goal

00:32:54
Speaker
Oh, so the other thing, as I'm showing you on the video right now, our first pen prototype is done. It's done. Take a listen to this. Ready? Ready? I'm going to listen. Come on. It's supposed to click. John, the mechanism is it makes me, it made me smile. I was like, you are going to just be
00:33:21
Speaker
devastatingly successful with that. If it looks, if it works like what I thought, yeah, that collared system or whatever.
00:33:28
Speaker
Yup, exactly. I'm so excited to have just a working prototype. I had it with a zip tie to use as a spacer for a while, but it kind of would rock to the side a little bit and it'd be a little, so it worked kind of weird. And that when the intern was in the other day, as one of our jobs, I was like, I got to make this part. So help me make it on the lathe. And he did some setup stuff and he helped me debug some stuff and get the threading perfect and all that. Sky?
00:33:53
Speaker
Yeah. He was here for three hours and we just played on the lathe together. He spent some time with Eric too, but yeah. Like he's never worked on a CNC machine, but he's got the kind of mechanical mindset that, you know, I was like deeper this and he's like, okay, done. And then, yeah. So we made this little spacer to replace the zip tie. And now the function of it is just so much better. And there's still like 20 things I'm going to change on the pen, which I've already, I spent, you know, all weekend at home on the kitchen table, kind of redesigning it and fusion.
00:34:21
Speaker
And at one point I was almost like, I got to delete this whole file and start over. But I didn't. Don't forget who you are. And I know you're a perfectionist. And I know the Norseman is on Rev, like probably 1,000. But you didn't go to market with Rev 1,000. Agreed. So just don't sit on this for another year because you're Grimsmo. Get it out there. Absolutely. Well, Blade Show is in six weeks. And my goal is to bring 200 pens to Blade Show.
00:34:51
Speaker
Can I buy one please? Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if you'll be like after the blade show push, but of course. Yeah, so I'm crazy excited and we all are here, which is really cool. Is it solely a lathe project?
00:35:10
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. Nothing on the right. It's funny. There'll be a bit of tumbling, a bit of anodizing, depending on what flavors we want to go with, but, um, and then assembly and shipping, basically. That's awesome.
00:35:23
Speaker
And this would be a good job for the laser, too, actually, if you got a fourth axis on it, like a fast Galvo laser with a fourth, and then it can do like patterns all around the outside. Same for the pens. So the laser is like kind of a long-term wish list thing, right? It's actually making a DIY fourth axis for our CO2 laser. It's basically done. The one that Boss had was, I mean,
00:35:48
Speaker
It's funny because I don't generally roll our own, but it was about, I think it was a thousand bucks and Ed was like, this is a stepper in a, in a $50 eBay three jaw chuck or something super easy. Um, and it was a fun little video project. So he's got it on his desk. I don't know that I actually understand what it is or how it's going to work yet, which is part of the world when you pinch yourself. Cause I'm just walking around and like, uh, people are working on stuff and I'm not even sure what it is. And that's a good thing. It's not a, it's not a, it's weird, right.
00:36:18
Speaker
Right. But it really goes back to the culture we're working on.

Using Asana for Project Management

00:36:25
Speaker
And frankly, Asana has been just so key for us. Are you guys using Trello more that you're now distributed?
00:36:33
Speaker
A bit, not really. Oh, really? Going back and forth. We haven't found our rhythm yet. It's not the glue that holds you guys together then, huh? Wow. No. Are you, that's, yeah. Does, do, how does Aaron tell you when the video is ready to watch or review? She tells me. Yeah. Got it. Okay. Yeah. And maybe like, obviously there's better systems to be found for sure. So you guys use a sauna for,
00:37:00
Speaker
scheduling, projecting, communicating, things like that. Yeah, basically, it's like a it's like a health status or like I can just kind of look and see what people are working on. I could reorder it, see where stuff is. And then what is it like synchronous versus asynchronous communication like
00:37:18
Speaker
a phone call is a synchronous communication to talk to somebody. You have to have simultaneous interruptions where you're both speaking, whereas leaving audio text messages, which is something I feel like we should do. People should do more of because sometimes it's nice to use
00:37:35
Speaker
The less I use email and text messaging, the more we have real conversations. It's a nice thing a lot of times. But it lets Julie leave a note that says, hey, here's the video. Check out this time here. Here's the thumbnail preview. Here's where we're going to put cards in or something. And it keeps it all tracked as well as kind of a good repository and lets me check it when I have the time to do so, which is a good thing. Yep. Yep. Do you do audio messages within Asana?
00:38:04
Speaker
No, it doesn't even support that, sorry. But it goes back to something that somebody should still invent or maybe it exists, but.
00:38:13
Speaker
ways to send audio messages to people. I know you can do it on, I could do it from iPhone to iPhone over iMessage. And then we end up using that software Screencast-O-Matic, but I've probably sent eight or 10 emails back to people this week that were just, they're screen recordings, but audio only, where I just talk them through the answer. Okay.
00:38:40
Speaker
And it's so much more efficient for me. It has a sense of it's just what I want to do. So what's going on? Also, did you not focus on five axis at the open house stuff? Did you spend time learning more?
00:38:57
Speaker
I spent probably about an hour talking about the MX-330 and I didn't get to ask them about the MAM because they didn't have the smaller ones. We just got distracted otherwise. Yeah, so I got to learn a little bit, but maybe nothing much that I didn't already know. Kind of like you got to do, you got to sit down in a quiet shop with a mixer.
00:39:22
Speaker
If that time comes around, I'll just go up to Elliott Metzera and I'll be like, I'm going to hang out here for the day. Who's available to talk to me? Because that's what I want to be able to feel educated enough to really represent
00:39:38
Speaker
what these, you know, it's kind of like who these builders get to, what do they stand for? What is their sort of thing? Somebody asked me, they're buying their first VMC. And basically the question was, I'm so nervous that I
00:39:54
Speaker
Is Haas the right decision? Because it's like I'm spending this money that's a tenfold factor increase. And it's funny because in my humble opinion, for the task at hand here, which is kind of a job shop getting started, there's like, it's such a no brainer to go with something like a VF2 or a Haas machine. Like it or not, they've done such a good job. We loved them. I could go on. But then when you step up into this different world of machine tool builders, it's so much more, so much more
00:40:23
Speaker
about what the company culture is, what the machine specs are, what the service is like, what the warranty is like, what the heritage of that machine brand is. DMG is using a lot of that epoxy granite. They have a name for it, I think. That's like synthetic stuff. And that's a mix of epoxy and granite or concrete. Whereas Maury is still traditional scraping and casting.
00:40:52
Speaker
That's a huge difference in the materials that go into it, in the build process, and in kind of what you believe, are you going for stability? Are you going for technology to compensate and adjust? And one's tried and true, one's new. It's kind of fun to think through all that.
00:41:12
Speaker
Well, and like Rob mentioned to us the other day via text that once you get into the price range of the MX330 and especially the Man 72, you're looking at the same price range as a Hermely, as a Grob, as a- Isn't that crazy? Micron, right? Like all of a sudden you kind of got to open your spectrum and be like, whoa, these are all roughly the same price. And if we're going to look there, we got to look all there. Sure.
00:41:37
Speaker
That was when I put the pencils down and I realized I'd had a fun time living in fantasy land and I got to get back to my real job. No, it is cool. What's going on today?

Improving Nakamura Lathe Post-Processors

00:41:52
Speaker
Today, I've got to head home just after this, got a doctor's appointment, and then, no big deal, and coming back, making pens. I've got to start, I worked, when did I work? All weekend, not only redesigning the pen, but also working on the post-processor for my Nakamura lathe. So when Fusion outputs puts the CAM code, it's never been clean, it's never been perfect, it's never done all the moves I want to do, and it's certainly never done a transfer, a part transfer.
00:42:21
Speaker
Oh, to the stuff. You can write that stuff.
00:42:24
Speaker
So I've been hand bombing every layer of code. Like I'll output an operation, do turning, and I'll edit everything in between and then at the transfer, and I'll just copy and paste from other codes and add variables. And it's, what do you call it? It makes me not want to do it. Yes, right. Because it's difficult. Like I love doing it, but it's like, man, I don't want to make a new part quick and dirty because I know it's going to take me an hour just to hand write the code. It's the same thing like setting up the robot versus using the laser.
00:42:53
Speaker
That's what I mean. Yeah, if you had a robot, maybe the UR is a little bit different, but you can't just be like, oh, today I want to do this with it, and tomorrow I want to do that with it. So I've got the post almost nailed to the point where when Sky was here, we were able to output a transfer sub-spindle turning on both spindles, live tools, everything.
00:43:16
Speaker
output it, transferred to the machine, no edits, and aside from... So of course, Fusion knows how long the part is, right? Fusion knows how long the stock or the actual CAD part, or either. Okay. Yep. So the part is called 0.5 inches. You know in a lathe, you have to pull it out 0.6 inches or whatever you want to do, right?
00:43:40
Speaker
Now my code actually tells me pull out 0.6 inches because in the post and in the code, it knows how long the part is. It knows how long extra I want to keep. It knows I always want 10 thou in the front. Um, and it actually calculates where my G 54 is my work offset based on the part length because it changes every time. Right. So it's like all these little things I've been wanting to do and actually Rob Lockwood's been pushing me for years now to like, Oh, just do that in the post. So just, it knows it figured out. So I finally did that and I'm like 90% there. Um,
00:44:10
Speaker
It's awesome. It's gonna make late work prototyping, changing revisions so much quicker. So it's super funny because obviously you and I didn't really know that we were, well, I know you've always tweaked in the post, but I think somewhat of a coincidence. We've been working on our posts a lot too. Much, much simpler stuff, but folks, it's not hard. We published now, I think three videos in the last month or two on
00:44:37
Speaker
how to basically go through a post and kind of reverse hack it. So like when tool changes get called or parts start or parts end or programs start and end, you can have it do custom things and you don't have to write code from scratch. Like you can kind of poke through it, see what happened, find examples. I'm a big fan of putting in comments where you want something to happen to make sure it's kind of getting called up in the right place. Like you're really like,
00:45:02
Speaker
It's almost like you're alone in the woods trying to do this on your own, but like you just take it baby steps and it's super, super fun. And there's some, we've had some unexpected behavior. I will admit like it is a little bit interesting to you. So you can get stuck pretty easily, but there's a pretty good. I'm trying to think you could probably go to the help fusion forums to get help. Right. I'm trying to think where else you can like draw on for resources.
00:45:29
Speaker
Yeah, there's tons of information out there and within the post, like Rob gave me his post and a bunch of other people gave me their post and I can look at, okay, how did they do this? And I kind of find and replace different terms in different posts and be like, oh, he did it like this. And you just, you kind of, you, it's like a language, you know, you read through it and you're like, oh, this means nothing. Oh, this means.
00:45:51
Speaker
What if I use this over here and rename it, try it, and then comment everything. This would be like John's test, April 18th. See if it worked. Copy and paste the line above it so that it's commented out. It's still there. But you can do your tweak one. And it's literally just try. Do you end up going through that dump file a lot to look for stuff like variables or data?
00:46:17
Speaker
This weekend was the first time I'd done it. And I found the park length stock diameter. And I figured out how to custom output variables. You know how you have a manual NC and you can type a comment or a code or whatever? There's all the pull-down options for pass-through, comment, display. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
00:46:42
Speaker
So I never used the one called display. So when the sub spindle comes in and grabs the part, it needs to know how far to grab it. And depending on the shape of the part, that's, that's a variable thing, right? So in CAD I figure out or in CAM, I figure out how far I want to grab onto the part and I type a display message, grab it at 0.66. And then I output it and the dump file says display 0.66. And then I use that variable in the post. So now it just knows.
00:47:12
Speaker
So that was the first post video we did like a month ago. I was like, what the heck are all of these manual NC options? And it ends up that they're all like bogus. Like they're just they're just they're not you. Some of them are used. Most of them, frankly, aren't. So the names mean effectively mean nothing. You can I think like option stop or stop may be programmed. But there's a bunch of weird ones like door closed that's not being used or something. And so you can just it's you can rehack them. You can probably figure out a way to add to that list, although
00:47:42
Speaker
that may be locked out, locked out from us. Because that's fusion direct to the dump file. Yeah, you can definitely you can. Yeah, like you can use your clothes to do whatever you want. Right. But you wish you could rename it so that it was a better lean. It's super easy. It's super easy in that when you click post in that
00:48:04
Speaker
box pops up and there's that white table with all those things. Adding custom things there is cake. Like that's not hard to do at all. In fact, what I was thinking, one of the things I was wishing to do was to have some, what do you call it? Like sort of scenarios or templates where sometimes I want to change multiple values all at once within that like white table.
00:48:32
Speaker
Right. And so instead of clicking three or four things and alternating them, you'd wish you could say, Hey, I want to run scenario A or B or, you know, cutting conditions, or you could even have like a daytime lights out, or I want to just turn silly things. I guess tool touching off on every tool. I don't know. But, um, that's something that would cross possible if you, is it banged your head again? Yeah. Yeah. We'll see.
00:48:58
Speaker
Yep. You would just consolidate them all into one checkbox option and then hide them from that list and they'd be below as one scenario basically. Yeah. You're right. That's like a brute force method that I feel like would start to make programmers really, really, really hate you for being a bad programmer. That wouldn't stop me.
00:49:24
Speaker
It's just like I want something that can, I want machine tool things in Fusion that will let me automatically push through speeds and fees that I can have pre-programmed or preset for Tormach costs, the different Haas spindles. You're going to have this too, right? Your Robo drill may have a different spindle RPM is the most obvious one than your Maury. So I need to have programs that are more dynamic.
00:49:53
Speaker
Yes. I was wondering about that. Will the outputted program, can I run the same program on both machines? Frankly, we'll probably get the robot drill with 24,000 RPM because why not? Sure. Perfect. But then if you have a part and you want to try running it on your DMG, you should be able, in my opinion, I'd love to see how this is done elegantly because I'm sure other CAM or other people have implemented this.
00:50:22
Speaker
when you pull down, it gets complicated quickly, but when you post it to the secondary machine that it normally doesn't run on, let's say it maintains the right chip load per tooth, but it runs at the 12K max of your Maury or something. Yeah. Fun stuff. Such a big wish list. Anyway. Awesome. I'm excited for the day. Good. It's going to be a good day. Good. I will see you. I'll see you next week. All right. Sounds good, buddy. Crush it. Take care. Bye.