Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
CNC Machine Purchases, Growing a Small Manufacturing Company, Problem Solving, and MORE!
255 Plays4 years ago
TOPICS:
- Auctions, Warranties, and Riggers
- Is Saving Money the Ultimate Purchase Factor?
- Developing Decision Making Framework
- Formalizing the Interview Process
- Tom Lipton's Test Jig
- Pierre - New to GK Team
- SMW Phase 5 of Shop Overhaul
- Machine Modifications for Chip Evacuation & Larger Coolant Tanks
- Water & Coolant Delivery System Update
- Vendors and Relationships
- DLC Coating
- Sandvik QS Holder
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Business of Machining Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, Episode 198. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. This being the podcast for the manufacturing entrepreneur. We like to talk about all kinds of things on this podcast. For example, machine purchases, growing our businesses, problems issues, all that kind of stuff that
Decision-Making in Purchasing Equipment
00:00:19
Speaker
comes up.
00:00:19
Speaker
We can stop there and rewind to machine purchases. No, just the grinder that we've been talking about. Nothing surprising. We have placed the order for the brand new grinder. And very excited, very solid with that decision. Congrats. Yep. So I'm not sure when it will ship, be here, land kind of thing. But I'm hoping yesterday. Oh, yeah.
00:00:47
Speaker
You're at the point where it's like, come on, I want it. I want to know. It's a delayed preparatory purchase. Yeah, exactly. Can you share a little? Did you further consider the Texas auction used one? I did further consider it. And it's just too many variables that kind of scared me a little bit, turned me off.
00:01:06
Speaker
warranty being one and you know it's deep in the bottom south of Texas and you know you got to organize your own riggers. I did look into they did have a couple like approved riggers there were three on the list on the website etc etc and I don't know I just
00:01:24
Speaker
We can afford it, and it didn't feel right. We've bought new machines else-wise. It wasn't a hard decision once I really thought about it. But when you don't put enough brain power into it, you're stuck in indecision. You're like, maybe I could. And you're just worrying and wondering back and forth. But when you actually logically lay it out and look at it, you're like, no. No.
00:01:48
Speaker
So it was nice. It sounds like, I mean, really the only opportunity was the opportunity to potentially save money. Exactly. And you feel like somehow you have a fiduciary to the business and everybody, there's a social element of feeling like, oh, I got a good deal. But I mean,
00:02:08
Speaker
I think you nailed it. Once you make the decision, even if you are lying to yourself about like telling yourself, let me just pretend I bought it, or let me pretend I've got the auction. You can kind of gain those out and it helps you clarify or helps you have clarity is the better word to think about. A lot of times, I hate to say you trust your gut, but like, it feels right, or the use one just felt wrong. But weird. Yeah. Yeah. So, um,
00:02:37
Speaker
Yeah, I'm really happy with that. Do you know what the auction went for?
00:02:40
Speaker
I don't. I checked it the night before and it was at 20, like 18 bids at 20 something thousand dollars. And then I checked in the morning and it was at 63 bids, but it was closed and I couldn't see the final price because they closed it. But like, holy cow. They do a really good job of shutting those down. I didn't watch it because I didn't want to hawk it, you know, but... Right. Don't trust yourself to... No, exactly. I wouldn't have been ready anyway.
00:03:08
Speaker
So yeah, whatever, you know, out of sight, out of mind, it's fine. I'm actually very happy. There's a huge nugget in there though, John, of advice or
00:03:20
Speaker
ways to build a framework to make decisions because sometimes it's a little bit more, you're not so impromptu, but you don't always have the luxury of it being a machine. Like for instance, when it comes to hiring people, it's a lot more, it's a similar situation.
Hiring and Building Team Autonomy
00:03:33
Speaker
You can pick one that has some drawbacks or one that may be say more expensive. I mean, this is kind of sound strange, but you got to
00:03:40
Speaker
You've got to figure out ways to write, ask the right questions, make the right decisions. It's never the case that you have perfect information. We've done well in the past. We've made a few mistakes in the past where you think about, where were my instincts right or where was I often? Honestly, most of the time,
00:03:58
Speaker
your instincts are right where you make mistakes is when you pretend something will change or could change or isn't there, you recognize it. Because you want it to be so. Yeah, it's something you and I have built over the past 10 years is our decision making process. We're constantly getting better and better at that because it's critical to everything that we do.
00:04:20
Speaker
It's great when I entrust more people in the business to make more decisions. I want to take it off my plate too. It's growing them to be more responsible, better, smarter, and actually feel the weight of these decisions because you and I make decisions on an almost daily basis that have heavy, heavy weight to them and not everybody knows that, understands it, sees it kind of thing.
00:04:45
Speaker
We went through a interesting process. We've been interviewing this week for three different positions and that's going actually quite well. I'm very happy with that and I'm happy to share more. What's interesting was it made me realize what it must be like to run a company or a team where other people are handling the interview candidate selection, hiring process such that
00:05:13
Speaker
you potentially could choose to wedge yourself into it, but that would be not the right way to go about it. It would be just, it's not your department anymore, even if you have the authority, if you will. And so it's quite strange to think again about, it goes back to that idea of franchising out your business, make it so that anybody can run it. Well, make it so that people can hire the people you need on your team without you even being involved. That's culture. That's pushing it.
00:05:41
Speaker
And I don't trust them to make sound choices that would align with your company vision and stuff like that. Have you actually thought through, just done a two minute mental exercise, if Julie hired two people without you knowing? Or if Ed or whoever just was like, I need more people, it's time to go, John said I could. And then next week, four new people show up. Have you thought what it would be like to trust them that much?
00:06:11
Speaker
Well, no, because I don't think we're ever getting to that point. But it is good because it made me realize we should form a lot, even as small as both of us are. Heck, even if you're listening to this podcast and you're thinking about hiring your first employee or your second.
00:06:27
Speaker
formalizing a little bit of that process, thinking about what it would be like if you did have somebody else handle hiring for you, even if it means you hire a local staffing company to send you candidates, which I'm learning there's a lot more resources than I had realized that one as an entrepreneur, you should take advantage of. For us, it was getting away from any bias or influence from my
00:06:48
Speaker
current days happenings to allow me to really evaluate a candidate. So the process of how do you read the resume? How do you reread the job requirements? What did you the time you took to put into the job requirements and rereading those? And I always force myself if I have a thought about
00:07:04
Speaker
how we're thinking about that job to immediately go update because it's so important to make sure you capture that and make sure you are absolutely clear what it is you're looking for, why you're hiring it. And then when the candidates have been here this week, we set up a little test jig for them to assemble. And it's been incredibly enlightening. And I'd be remiss not to give a huge shout out and credit to Tom Lipton, who's the one that really came up with this. But
00:07:28
Speaker
It's not a trick. It's not a gotcha type of assembly, but it's an assembly that probably no one is going to do perfectly. So there's kind of an opportunity to see how do people handle tools? How do they handle fasteners? How do they think about putting something together? As simple as have they in this case even used
00:07:45
Speaker
island wrenches and cap screws before. Where do they put tools back? How hard are they? It's funny. Again, it's not a gotcha or trick thing, but there's a couple other nuggets of tools that are nearby, but not right in front of you. No one yet has gone to grab one of them. I'm just kidding.
00:08:00
Speaker
You're just kind of, again, it just gives you a chance to step back and just see how somebody performs. And inevitably, they'll be performing under a little bit of pressure, which, like it or not, that's part of the exercise to see how they handle that. And it's, again, going back to one of those decision-making processes. I was on the fence of whether to do this, and it's absolutely the right thing to do.
00:08:23
Speaker
That's awesome. Yeah, we had a couple, wouldn't call them stumpy questions in our video interviews that we did, but certainly like machining things that's like, you know, can you tell me about the, um, Oh, what did Angela call it? Draw on a total blank, you know, on an indicator on a dial test indicator when the needle's like not pointing in the right direction and your, um, angular.
00:08:44
Speaker
Co-signing? Yeah, yeah, that's the word. We just asked if some of the machinist applicants knew about that or knew that that was a thing. You don't have to tell me the math behind it or whatever. And like, two of them were like, I've never heard of that before. And two of them were like, Yeah, yeah, I read about that. I kind of understand. I know it.
00:09:01
Speaker
And you know, little things like that just kind of helped gauge your baseline of like how deep their knowledge might be, even just as a passing knowledge, as I'm struggling to remember what cosine error actually is. But that's okay. First off, you're honest about it. And when somebody's answer is, Oh, actually, that's interesting, because our shop just got some new into rapid indicators, I haven't used them yet. But I went on YouTube to see why they move differently in the different direction. Done. You've answered that question in a 100% adequate manner. I don't care about the
00:09:30
Speaker
Yeah, you trigger something, you bring up a question that will bring answers that you don't even anticipate, that you don't expect. Because what I really want to understand is their thought process, is how hungry they are to find the answer. You know, because some guys just throw their hands up there and be like, I don't know, I can't figure it out. And some guys are like, give me five minutes and YouTube and I will come back with an answer kind of thing.
00:09:50
Speaker
and it's great.
Technical Challenges in Machining
00:09:52
Speaker
Speaking of which, Pierre, our new machinist, started on Monday, two days ago, and it's going awesome. Super fun. Yeah. Yesterday, him and I, we were elbows deep in the Swiss pulling out chips from this recessed cavity that chips bind up into, and both of us chips everywhere, oil everywhere, and it's like, welcome to Grimsmough.
00:10:17
Speaker
I love that and it reminds me of one of the things that we've got on our stage five of the shop overhaul, which is the, what do we want to do to make this place even better on long-term run rate? We've got a couple of different ideas for either 3D printed plates or panels or sheet metal. I'll hire a fabrication shop to laser cut and bend because
00:10:40
Speaker
There's elements, we mostly have Haas machines, but I've seen a lot of different machine tools that have areas of weakness when it comes to chip evacuation. Good grief. I'm all for modifying the machine at this point to increase the slope angle so that chips just wash off of there or coat it. Unlike we're thinking about, can you coat it with Teflon or even powder coat tape so that they don't have the friction, like it's a low coefficient of friction, they just slide off. Yeah.
00:11:07
Speaker
It's that weird balance of thinking you can design a machine better than the manufacturer can. But it's not that, but there's little variables, aspects that it's like, this isn't working. I can make this work. Yeah. Well, look, there's some Haas could.
00:11:23
Speaker
could do better on a few areas of it, but I think a lot of it has to do with, look, what kind of chips are you making? How are you flinging? The chips collect differently on our machine when we're roughing aluminum with the two and a half inch face melt than they do when we're HEM or adaptive machining 4140. We have one of the high flow pumps on the new machine, and it first off sounds like a fire hydrant, which is funny and not necessarily awesome. I mean, it sounds like
00:11:50
Speaker
It's crazy. And it is unbelievable. I cannot believe how effective it is at increasing the volume of flow. And one of the things we now realized is going forward, we're going to be getting the larger coolant tank on all machines. It helps so much because it's buffering your
00:12:13
Speaker
any concern about coolant level, that having a higher volume, it's better for thermal stuff. It's better for running multiple different flood, wash down, the high pressure thing. And there's no drawback. What pressure does it run at for high pressure?
00:12:32
Speaker
It's not high pressure in that sense. It's just the normal wash down hose on a Haas seems to be similar to other machines I've seen run. This is like quadruple that. If a normal wash down hose, I'm making this up. If it's 50, this is like 150. It would probably not be fun to get sprayed with it, but it's not through spindle, like 300, 500 type stuff.
00:12:56
Speaker
Like the classic example is a garden hose, like at your house, like that kind of 45 PSI city pressure. That's what our wash down hose is kind of like right now with our Grundfos pump. This is impressive. Oh, yeah. More. Oh, yeah. I mean, if you, I'm trying to give an example. When you spray it at something, it's dumping some, a lot of flow and a lot of, like it's, yeah, it's a lot. Which machine is this on? The VF2 SSYT. Oh, the brand new one that you got.
00:13:25
Speaker
Yes. The newest one, yeah. Cool. On that note, we made a change, which gave me some pause, but it was the right decision, which is
00:13:36
Speaker
We have run water pex lines through the shop with drops to every machine. So we now have RO water going to every machine. And then we had built those PVC nodes, I think they called them, that had the garden, excuse me, the sprinkler system, solenoids that were controlled by the IO box. And it's, I mean, there's a part of me that will come back to this because I absolutely love it.
00:14:02
Speaker
There were some quirks that I wasn't liking about it that need to be fixed. It's something I'm very sensitive to because of the risk of flooding the shop or having a system that becomes more burden than benefit. What we realized, and this is where it gave me pause because it feels like it's a bummer, is
00:14:21
Speaker
we don't need the digital side of it. We have PEX water to the system. We put quick disconnect couplings on garden hoses. So it's normally a garden hose that has RO water. So you have straight RO water that way. And then you just QD the gun off and straight in, and then it QDs into the mixatron and gives you, uh, with a ball valve right there. And so basically you can spray with water or you can switch it straight over to, um,
00:14:46
Speaker
the mixatron, adjust the bricks, and then you're just putting coolant into the sump without a digital, like you can't meter out five or 10 gallons, but it's 90% as good without a lot of the risk and complication in corks for now.
00:15:02
Speaker
Amazing. It's still great. We're not moving water around the shop anymore. Yeah, big difference, right? Same for us. You basically are the same setup that we have now. Our water goes to one mixture on and then it's pex around the whole shop to each machine, whereas you've got water to each machine.
00:15:21
Speaker
Yeah, I don't like your solution because we have quite a few gallons worth, probably dozens of gallons worth of coolant in the lines, which I don't want to become stale. And I want to adjust the bricks right now for this machine real time.
00:15:39
Speaker
But that requires either a mobile mix-tron and coolant tank, like concentrate, that you go to each machine and plug into the water and go, or mix-tron for each machine, right? Oh, yeah. We just mounted the mix-tron to the 55-gallon drum of quality cam, which is on a dolly barrel. That's easy. That is not hard. Anybody could move that around comfortably. And no big deal. Sweet.
00:16:03
Speaker
Yeah. And you could change your system to ours, by the way. Yeah, we could. We could. It's easy. Yeah, interesting. The Mixtron brand unit? Yeah.
00:16:12
Speaker
The red and blue one from Italy. Honestly, the last garden hose fitting was sold out locally, so it arrives. Actually, the UPS truck just pulled in through the window, so we will be connecting that up here in the next hour or two. Yeah, one concern, I don't know, but the unit is plastic. The threads are plastic. If that breaks, that wouldn't be fun. Well, the Mixatron specifically will never be
00:16:40
Speaker
connected when you're not using it. And then what we're planning on doing, we have a ball valve at the IBC tote, and then I'm probably going to add in line to that an IOT electronic solenoid, like we're doing on our compressors that will also automatically shut off. So you have two different ball valves, one's on a schedule, one's manual. That way, worst case, knock on wood, worst case is that the only thing that could flood is the amount of water that's in the PEX lines, which I mean, that's annoying, but that's not going to damage equipment.
00:17:10
Speaker
Right. Or flood, flood, flood the shop. Yeah, I mean, water on the floor is much more nicer than coolant on the floor, that's for sure. Oh, that's true too. Water can be, water can cost, I mean, I wouldn't want to put, what's it, IBC tow, I think 250 gallons. I would not want 250 gallons of water on our floor. No, for sure. It's a bad day. Yeah.
00:17:30
Speaker
So how are you pumping water from the RO tank to the pump that you've always had? Yep. The stainless steel well pump, maybe $300. It has its own bladder. It keeps it pressurized. Yeah, just like ours, basically.
00:17:47
Speaker
Cool. Yeah. And the PEX lines have been good. We've been charging the PEX lines, but not using the system for a couple of days while we're at the shop, just to make sure we don't have any surprises. And PEX is used all the time in residential houses where it's behind sheetrock. So you can't even get to maintain it. So there's no reason that I should be concerned about it.
00:18:08
Speaker
Right. You're using the actual PEX with like the, is it a plastic shrink fit kind of crimpy connector? My understanding, there's three different types. There's Shark Bites, which is the quick disconnect you don't need any tools for. There's Pro Crimp, and then there's the Metal Crimp Bands. It looks like a wedding ring. We're using those, so we just bought a crimp tool. It was not expensive, 30, 40 bucks, to put permanent crimps around each of the
00:18:35
Speaker
which to me seems like the most cost effective and reliable. Yeah, we went with SharkBite here. Angela and Steven have been stringing that up for the past six months or so and getting it dialed the way we want. They seem to like it. Cool.
00:18:52
Speaker
But yeah, much different than filling a $5,000 bucket and carrying it across the shop for the machine. Oh, yeah. It's great. And PEX is great. It's easy to splice in for new. That's what we tried to think about was, hey, if we need to take the system down, if we need to add it to T, making sure you've got ball valves and four ways to drain stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
Achieving Business Independence
00:19:12
Speaker
Speaking of shop overhaul, I kind of had a moment this morning that is momentous, which is for the first time, I can honestly say for the first time since starting, certainly starting full time six years ago, and maybe since starting eight or nine years ago, hustling, trying to bring a product to market and going through this. For the first time this morning, I looked down and I had an empty to-do list.
00:19:39
Speaker
Now there's plenty to do and I'm excited, but, um, and the timing is coincidental that it's the morning that we talked, but I can honestly say we're, we're really starting to reach that point where, you know, material is getting ordered without the parts are getting made without me. They're getting shipped without me. People are building that stuff and it's, it's doing new stuff without me. And it is great. It's so hard to get, to get to that point. Um, I'm,
00:20:09
Speaker
70% there to make up a number. A lot of stuff absolutely happens without me. But there are still things that are absolutely required on an almost daily basis for me to be here. And I'm slowly working towards getting away from that. And there's that pride issue that you're like, I like to order materials. And then you get over it. Yeah. How's your ERP coming?
00:20:35
Speaker
I'm kind of slow right now, but we're using it somewhat. But I don't know, we got busy with other stuff. We stopped wanting to spend money on it for a little bit, so we kind of stalled it. Absolutely, it's going to continue soon. But yeah, just in a weird transition phase, we're still busy with a couple other things.
00:20:58
Speaker
It's tough advice and it's advice that's blind to the realities that you're well aware of that may be more important. But the way to do that is to not make excuses, to recognize it is a priority.
00:21:11
Speaker
It's that combination of those two quotes, the future will be kind to me before I intend to invent it and confidence is a superpower of, I know this will work because we're going to make it work. We're going to give it the resources. We're going to switch over. You can't issue a PO unless it's out of GURP, period. So it's got to get fixed. It's got to get developed.
00:21:30
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm at a weird point where, you know, Barry and I agreed to put it on the shelf for a very short term. But even still, I'm having a hard time turning my brain off and not coming up with new ideas. And like, like, still picking away at it with my dad, like, put this little thing in like, I know we're not supposed to right now. Let's, you know, we'll get back to it soon. But, you know, can you just tweak this little thing? Why such a hard stop on it? A whole bunch of reasons. But
00:21:56
Speaker
Yeah, we got new people coming on, Rask being more important than almost anything right now, et cetera. Yeah, fair enough. Yep. Cool. We're dealing with...
00:22:08
Speaker
I'm still feeling not how to handle this, but it happens to be a local packaging company.
Vendor Management and Challenges
00:22:15
Speaker
Actually, they do packaging for one of the two manufacturers in our industry. They're reputable. I'll tell you, it's been nothing but a mediocre experience at best. Already, way too many excuses, mislabeling things,
00:22:28
Speaker
poor communication none of these things in isolation are unforgivable offenses really like one of these things alone would be kind of a no big deal let's just make work together to fix it but it's just building up and stacking up and.
00:22:42
Speaker
You're at that point now where you try to figure out, it's like coming full circle to the beginning of this conversation. You already know the answer, right? Like is the answer, these aren't the right fit for you. They're just, it's sloppy work that's not done well without pride. And do you try to work with them to fix that and give them kind of that second chance? Or are you just like, look, you know, we're moving on period. Like this is, I'm not in the business of fixing your poor systems processes, customer service excuses. Yeah.
00:23:12
Speaker
Yeah, we've had a few vendors like that. And we've, you know, over the years gone through three, four or five, say t shirt vendors, or, you know, packaging or whatever. And it's, it's difficult finding a shop that wants to work to the level that we expect.
00:23:27
Speaker
even just customer service, even just timelines and getting back. And it's like you've said for years, it's like pay attention to your customers, take care of them, listen to them. And most businesses don't. And you will actually stand out significantly if you get back to an email same day.
00:23:46
Speaker
And then vendors don't kind of thing. So it's something we try to keep in mind on a daily basis here to treat our customers like gold and not give them everything that they want necessarily because it's not possible sometimes. But respect them and listening back and acknowledge. Nine times out of 10, people just want to be heard.
00:24:09
Speaker
That's what I'm still, I need to get a clear head and think about. It seems, it is too abrupt to just sort of say, hey, send us the invoice, we'll get you paid and then we're out, we're moving on. Yeah. Without some feedback, but I hesitate because the inverse of that is, no, they had their change. And look, we're not, we do not have unreasonable demands. These are not, it's a cultural thing as they answer, we're getting emails from the new salesperson
00:24:35
Speaker
where they're sending CCs, not even BCC, CCs to hundreds of people explaining a personal issue that means he's not going to be able to help out for the next 48 hours. It's like thoughts and prayers, of course, as needed, but things are not professional and you can't send an email after. Yeah, thank you. You can't send an email after you've also dropped the ball a couple of times on stuff that shouldn't have been an issue.
00:25:03
Speaker
How hard a line do you draw? When do you make the decision to pick up a new vendor? We certainly give them a fair chance, depending. For example, DLC coding, making our parts black. It's a process we can't do in-house. It's a process we have to send out. I'm on my
00:25:20
Speaker
Third vendor, fourth vendor in the past few years, never been happy with any of them. At first, it's all happy, giggly, let's do this kind of thing. But everybody's struggling to deliver on time, on quality. I'm sending them good parts, and garbage is coming back, and I can't use it. And it's difficult.
00:25:42
Speaker
So now, I've had a great conversation with... I've been looking for new DLC places. I found this huge international company. They have a base in Toronto. So I called them up and I was like, hey, do you guys do DLC in Toronto? And they goes, no, we don't do it here.
00:25:59
Speaker
I was like, well, you seem to know what you're talking about. Do you have a little bit of time to chat about nerdy DLC stuff? You probably know everything about it. He goes, yeah, unfortunately, I do know everything about DLC. Man, we had an awesome 20-minute conversation where we were just nerding out about everything like how and why and surface finish and quality and cleanliness and all this stuff. He knew all of the local vendors. He knew everybody I've tried.
00:26:23
Speaker
And he had a great suggestion. And I'm like, I don't want to send parts to the states. I want to do it in Canada because, you know, go Canada. But he suggested to go to Richter Precision in, they have a bunch of locations, but I think they're main ones in Pennsylvania. And they do a lot of DLC. And I have friends that have used them before with mostly success. So I think we're going to put a package together and send it to them. And I'll refrain on my comments about US superiority.
00:26:53
Speaker
Yeah. So here's an interesting insight that I've learned. Stop having the conversations. I've done the same thing. I want to build a rapport. I want to talk to them. I want to hear things I want to hear. In the end, it doesn't matter. That guy's not running your parts anyways. That was the funny thing. From the beginning, he's like, no, we can't run our parts. But I wanted knowledge from somebody in the industry who speaks
00:27:17
Speaker
clear English for one. I wanted to learn more so that I understand the industry better. Man, he wanted to talk and I wanted to talk and it was great.
00:27:30
Speaker
No, sorry, sorry, totally fair. My point is- Also knowing we would close the conversation and kind of never speak again. It was kind of wonderful actually. Okay, fair enough. What I'm saying is I found there's actually value in skipping that desire to build a bond or relationship at the upfront.
00:27:48
Speaker
come up with a print, a professional industrial print that's relevant for the service application, industry process, et cetera. Send them the print, send them the sample parts, just get them back and then see how they go. Let them perform without the schmoozing or the attempt to say, oh, I got along great with this guy. I really care about getting along great with the guy. I need you guys to see how you do your rack and your packaging, your shipping, your QC, your process, your reports, et cetera. And then you can start to work with them if it makes sense.
00:28:15
Speaker
Sure, which is exactly what we're going to do with this new vendor as we try them out. Yeah, we'll do exactly that, as you said. But I have definitely fallen into the trap before of like, man, I really get along with this guy. They're awesome. They're super nice. And then it hurts more, I guess, if they fail to deliver or if it just doesn't. It kind of breaks your brain a little bit. You're like, but they were so great. How can they not provide? I'm so confused right now. Right.
00:28:44
Speaker
Is DLC happen in those ovens like a PCV or PVV coating? Just like end mills happen. Same oven, I believe. There's three or four different ways to do coatings, sputter, deposition, and yada, yada. But there's something special about DLC that a lot of coatings can't do it. And the cool thing is most end mill coatings happen at a very high temperature, 800, 900 degrees Fahrenheit or more.
00:29:10
Speaker
Whereas DLC can happen at under 400 degrees Fahrenheit, which for our blades, if we go above 400 degrees, that's the temperature, the hardness will actually start changing. But anything under 400, we're good to go. And DLC can be done under 400, safely and reliably. But some people could do it higher and thus, hence the issue for you. Possibly. No, we were very clear that everybody has to do it below 400, but cleaning is probably the biggest issue, cleanliness.
00:29:38
Speaker
Having an ultrasonic machine is not having a good ultrasonic machine necessarily and handling and touching parts and you get parts back and there's spots in it and DLC flaking off and things like that and it's just no good. It's a process we don't need, it's just awesome and it's the only way to make our parts black and beautiful and perfect.
00:30:00
Speaker
Sometimes they come back gray and sometimes they come back with silver spots in it and missing sections and a fingerprint and all this stuff. I'm like, no. If I want black, I want perfect adhesion and don't mess with my surface finish. I wonder if you could somehow deliver them to them on the rotisserie things so that they don't even touch them. They just put them into the DLC oven.
00:30:24
Speaker
It's possible. If we made our own racking, especially for, think of our screws or spacers or pivots or things like that, to having them handle all those tiny little parts and figure out how to fixture them is not the best idea. A couple of years ago, I developed a little fixture, aluminum fixture that I made that we thread in all the screws, we ship them the whole fixture, they clean it and go.
00:30:45
Speaker
They leave them in the fixture then. Yeah, they do. Yeah. Love that. That's awesome. Right. So it's a little bit more work on our part, but we get to control that work. So we know it's perfect. So I like that. Well, someone has to do the work and you're going to do it better than you're going to just care more about it. Yeah, we're going to care. Yeah, exactly. Right. Is it true that DLC is always black?
00:31:08
Speaker
I think so. Okay. Or gray, apparently. Black or gray. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think it comes in any other colors. It's carbon. Diamond-like carbon is what it stands for. Yes. It's cool. I remember seeing one a year. What did you have? You've had DLC rasks or pens? DLC rasks. Yeah. It's bad. I can't say that word on this family for the podcast, but yeah, it's nice. It looks so good. I would love to offer 20% of our products in DLC.
00:31:35
Speaker
just to pick a number. I know customers would buy it. They are happy to pay a nice markup for us so that it makes it cost effective for us to send it out. It's bad A. It's just so cool. Yes. You have room for an oven. Well, I talked to this guy about that. I'm like, okay.
00:31:54
Speaker
stupid question, but I've heard that it's possible to DIY these ovens. And he goes, No, it's not. They're like a million bucks. Exactly. There's 500 to a million. And a lot of the places around here that I've toured, they're small. They're built by foreign geniuses, let's say, and they're built by themselves, like in house.
00:32:12
Speaker
Like they came from home country and brought their technology and literally are building these ovens with PLCs and computers and knowledge and stuff and they're brilliant like completely genius level guys and For anyone who thinks they can do that at home. I mean you can't Yeah, you can but no no Yeah, there's a lot of control that goes to it a lot of electricity a lot of gas cleanliness
00:32:41
Speaker
Yeah, it's not easy. And one of them actually had little viewing windows, like little portholes out of a submarine kind of thing, where you can look inside and you can see all the sparks and arcs happening. Oh, that's cool. I've seen them. I mean, they pack end mills in those physical vapor deposition, I think, PVD. It's really cool. But yeah, they don't look
00:33:00
Speaker
And maybe our marketing geniuses make these things look more intimidating than they really are, but I suspect it's true that they are quite involved. If you can't buy a machine for less than $500,000, it's not easy. Reminds me of the DIY EDM things. I've seen a book. I actually bought the book. I've seen a couple of different YouTube folks go pretty far down this rabbit hole, and then it seems like
00:33:24
Speaker
None of them have certainly gained any consumer attraction or any replicable success. Ultimately, I think it stems back to the complexities and cost of the power supply for an EDM machine. But holy cow, you talk about opportunity. Someone doing the Tormach, like $10,000, $20,000 EDM that may not be quite as precise or even quite as fast, but oh my gosh, that's super cool.
00:33:50
Speaker
Super cool. And it's the same thing. I mean, 20 years ago, 3D printing was extremely expensive. And now you can buy a printer for $100. Yes, technology gets down. It gets simpler and easier. And it's awesome. I'm totally for driving innovation. I would love to see. I would buy a DLC machine if it was $50,000. If it was good.
00:34:09
Speaker
But talking with the guy, obviously he works at a company that makes their own machines and they're like German and super fancy and stuff and expensive. And he goes, they're just good. They're well made. And yes, there are cheap machines from other countries that you can buy, but the consistency is what's the problem here. And if you are coding expensive parts, you do not want a reject rate. You want consistency. You want perfection.
00:34:33
Speaker
It's like running a current. It's the consistency. You can buy a tiny little super cheap five-axis machine, whatever, but it's not Apple's apples.
00:34:45
Speaker
I know you're doing DLC largely for the cosmetic coolness, but is DLC also like a legit like our satellite components DLC'd or military? Certainly molds are DLC'd. Interesting because it's very abrasion resistant and like things that get pounded over and over and over again. It's a good non-sticking like slicky coating.
00:35:07
Speaker
A lot of gun parts, I think are DLC coded. A lot of, yeah, it is part of the industry for sure. In manufacturing on end mills, it's like carbon fiber, aluminum for cutting aluminum kind of things. But in some industries, it's a big deal for sure. Yeah, that's cool.
00:35:24
Speaker
It's just hard to find a shop that's super good at it. Yeah. You hear that all the time on all those services. I mean, anodizing is probably the most common, and it's like you can have this conversation. Anodizing is not hard. I did anodizing. I built my own system in my garage for hundreds of dollars, and I eventually, after a year, got consistent grade results, temperature control, acid quality. After a year. Yeah.
00:35:48
Speaker
But then everybody I've talked to, Phil, et cetera, they're like, this anodizer sucks. This anodizer sucks. Consistency and quality control. People have to care and things have to be clean. Yeah, so that's tough. It's not hard. You just have to be good at it.
00:36:04
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, we don't have all the answers. We've struggled with some as well, but that idea of building your own fixture or building purpose-built investment crates where there's phone inserts. Oh, for sure. Because I try to put yourself in the person's head that runs the anodizing shop. They're probably hiring at a little bit of a higher turn rate with lower skilled labor. So
00:36:27
Speaker
They don't mean ill well, but they're not treating the same parts of the same care as Grimsmo is. Exactly. Industries like ours and yours and Phil's and everything, we're trying to make pretty parts regardless, even if they're functional like heavy use parts. They have to be pretty, they can't be scratched up. The worst that can happen is to have a box come back with loose parts just rolling around the box.
00:36:49
Speaker
I know. That's why Phil makes laser cut inserts for every single part and ships it to them, expects it to come back. Angelo's making prints. This is how we're delivering it. This is how we want it back kind of thing. Yeah. Cool. What do you see today?
00:37:08
Speaker
finalizing the Swiss, I love my Tornos lathe. There's one thing that I absolutely hate about it. Do tell. Chips pack up in this one recessed area behind the Y4 axis and it's a problem.
Maintenance and Efficiency Improvements
00:37:26
Speaker
Yesterday Pierre and I pulled out one or two gallons of chips.
00:37:32
Speaker
from this area. And I cleared it out a few weeks ago, but I didn't get that deep. We went all the way down and got it all out. And what's happening, what was happening yesterday, it ran for 24 hours continuously nonstop, by the way, which was amazing. Amazing.
00:37:46
Speaker
Fun fact about that, there is an MCC timer that after 24 hours of cycle time, it makes you hit the safety button. Otherwise, it'll stop and wait for you to hit the safety button. Stop. Can't legally, they were telling me, they can't let it run for more than 24 hours unattended. Says, show me the wall.
00:38:04
Speaker
Exactly. So he's going to look into if I can extend that or whatever. This is the second win for USA of A in this podcast. Yeah, exactly. So I mean, I don't know all the details of that, but we're certainly looking into it because
00:38:22
Speaker
I started this job. I'm running the screws for knives. I started Thursday, ran it all night, came back midnight Friday night, and I'm like, OK, change this one tool, and it should be good for the weekend. I want to come back on Monday, and this thing's still running. And it's either going to catch on fire or leak oil all over the ground. I'm ready for those two scenarios. I've got fire suppression on it. But anyway, so I come back on Monday all excited, and there's like 1,000 parts made, which is great, but I was expecting like 2,500.
00:38:51
Speaker
And I look at the timer, it ran for 23 hours and 30 minutes, and the MCC timer is flashing 24 hours. And I'm like, what the crap? This thing only stops Saturday night. I lost all of Sunday and all of Sunday night. You now have permission to DIY a robotic arm that is on a timer as well that hits that button because that's absurd.
00:39:13
Speaker
But anyway, so super lot of runtime. So I ran a couple 24-hour cycles. And then I'm here yesterday, and all of a sudden, the lathe just kind of stops and alarms out. And it says, overload error or something. And I think, at first, I thought it was the sub x-axis that was getting bound up, because that's what it looked like. And it would keep stalling in the same spot, same spot.
00:39:35
Speaker
And I can run a manual code with G0 back and forth, back and forth. It's fine. I took the whey covers off, which is gross and oily and chippy. Everything's fine. But it turns out it's the y-axis, which is a totally different assembly, that there's chips everywhere. So how do you fix this? I don't know yet. So it's still a part. I still got to put it together. It's still alarming, even though all the chips are gone. So I'm going to dig into it today.
00:40:04
Speaker
But yeah, I got to figure something out. We thought about building our own little covers or stuff, but it's so tight and there's so much clear, like tight tolerance, clearances, moving parts and all that stuff. We put foam in there to try to keep chips away. I don't know. Can you add and can you either y off or add a different, I guess it has to be oil for your machine, but basically you want positive pressure. Air is not great because air blows stuff.
00:40:28
Speaker
too much, but you could write it down to like 10 PSI and that may help, but, or just an oil stream to counter that force. Yeah. I mean the, the, the poor solution right now is to clean it often, but we are going to dig into a, uh, I don't know. This has got to be. There's a room for a little, um, hobby, sir. You need to be higher quality than a hobby servo, but it could be like one of the higher end RC metal geared servos and a little wiper arm.
00:40:55
Speaker
Hmm. I'll think of the windshield wiper. Like I need to look at the system as it is from a design standpoint, not just from a, how do I get all the chips away? Right. I need to see where they're coming in and how they're getting stuck. And then also possibly re-strategize how I machine to make smaller chips, not birds nests. Like even though I've not helped. Yeah.
00:41:20
Speaker
I'm using active chip breaker to try to break the chip. Maybe I need to tweak the settings, but I'm still getting bird's nest for sure. How's that, Sandvik? Was it QS, CS?
00:41:34
Speaker
Yeah, the QS holder. It's a quick disconnect holder. Amazing so far. Since I installed it last week, I don't think I've pulled it out to replace an insert yet. But I love it. I should have gotten it for everything, absolutely. I will be buying more. Cool. And the other cool thing I realized is
00:41:53
Speaker
Since all the bases are the same and your end holders, your V-inserts, your threading, whatever, they're interchangeable. You can switch spot. Switch the tooling. Holy cow. Save your offsets. Hot spot tooling. This is CapTo. I mean, not exactly, but yes. Sandvik is brilliant like that. At the end of the day, I think I paid a lot for the Utilis tooling that I have now, and QS is probably not a lot more expensive than that. I should have gotten it from the beginning, but now I get to replace it all with
00:42:21
Speaker
Will you do like an Instagram video of that? I still want to see how you're using it. Like how the system works and everything. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great idea. Yeah. Cool. Love it. Yeah. So that's what I'm up to. Awesome. And hopefully get time on the current today.
00:42:37
Speaker
Awesome. We're assembling some rasks now and finding last little fine-tuned things like, the handles are a little bit warped coming off the machine. How do we fix it? Or are we going to bend everyone? That sounds stupid. But point is, it's affecting the way they feel going together. And a flat handle feels amazing. And a slightly warped handle feels a little bit different. So we're like, OK, we've got to figure this out.
00:42:58
Speaker
I like the pattern ribbing that Angela did. Yeah. That looks good. Yeah, that looks so good. The x-wing fighter kind of look. It's actually on my list. I really want to learn the basics of either generative design or simulation infusion just to understand how much stiffer does that make it. I struggle with this because I feel like it's still intimidating and I probably should realize it. I agree. We can figure it out. Yeah.
00:43:25
Speaker
Yeah, I've played with it before, but it's knowing how to apply loads, where to apply loads, and how much load is even realistic. It feels like it's all guesswork. And I'm sure there's math behind it that engineers can nerd out about. But I just feel like I'm poking numbers. And let's try 1,000, see what happens. Oh, that's way too much. Yeah, I'm with you.
00:43:47
Speaker
We're continuing to pull all the extra toolboxes and stuff laying around the shop into an extra room. And we've got some folding tables laid out so we can try to lay stuff out. Just helps if you do need to go find something or when we start this, when we flip the switch and we start pulling stuff back into the shop. But it's been very therapeutic to have that purge ability. And that's kind of we probably should take maybe on Friday. Tomorrow's a holiday here.
00:44:16
Speaker
the US, but excuse me, but we need to take like an hour. Everyone working for one hour carrying something there would probably be better than just the like, hey, when you're running into the kitchen, go grab something and take it with you. But just doing that final purge and most of the stuff is in the racking. I'm going to probably wait and let the new person we hire start organizing the racking because I think that's an important process for them to own. And frankly,
00:44:43
Speaker
I don't want to organize it and then tell them it's been organized. I want them to do it. And is that also strange feeling of the RP system has to work because I don't even know where we keep extra 12 by 9 by 5 boxes, but you need to look in Lex because if I know then it changes.
00:44:59
Speaker
my emphasis on making sure Julie knows or Ed knows or Finn snows or whomever. That's a really good way to look at it. You tell the team, put this away, don't tell me where it is and put it into the system. That way the system knows. It's got to work. It's got to work. That's a good force. Okay, last question. As you're purging the shop, how often nowadays are you finding that weird piece of material that's 10 years old that reminisces from the tormac days or whatever?
00:45:27
Speaker
I wish I hadn't gotten rid of. That you still haven't gotten rid of. Oh, there was some reminiscing the other day in a fond way. I actually am a nostalgic person, but I don't often spend time being nostalgic, but it's been fun. Yeah, no big deal. But some of it you want to keep for the museum or whatever, but some of it's like, oh, I still have that? Oh, that sort of thing. Nah.
00:45:51
Speaker
For the shelf, you know what I mean? Yeah. No, we've got a little swag wall for sure. That's a good point. I'll keep some things. But I'm glad because we needed a piece of all thread this morning. And I literally gave all of our all thread to a friend, local friend who can use it. And then I'm like, I don't care. It's $5. But yeah, I had this. That's the second. I don't remember the first instance, but that's only the second time this happened in a few months, which just tells you you're doing the right thing. Exactly. Yeah.
00:46:20
Speaker
Cool. I'll see you actually. Sounds good. Take care. Bye.