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Business of Machining - Episode 35
210 Plays8 years ago
"To say it was life-changing would be a bit dramatic but...it was life changing!" - Saunders Saunders shares his EMO experience while Grimsmo gets ready for CMTS in Toronto. A year has passed since they attended IMTS and major changes have taken place not only in their shops but in their lives. Tradeshows are inspiring but for some, they are intimidating. Saunders offers advice for those who are new to the scene. If you're seasoned, it behooves you to keep an open mind. New advances in technology can impact the direction of your business in the future. Unfortunately, pill-bottle parts catchers were not on this year's line-up. To get a horizontal or a 5-axis pallet system? That is the question. Tune in to find out what Grimsmo's keeping his eyes peeled for at CMTS. Click here to see the tour of Orange Vise. Saunders and Grimsmo love to talk about machines but today they shine the light on software. They make a call to action for the youngest members of our society to get involved! Who knows, maybe you could end up becoming a programmer for hyperMILL!
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Hosts
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning, folks. Welcome to the business of machining, episode 35, I think. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmough. Good morning. How are you? Good morning. Fantastic. Oh, yeah?
00:00:14
Speaker
Yeah, me too.
EMO Show: A Life-Changing Experience
00:00:17
Speaker
Whoa, that's awesome. So I got back from, I got back from emo Friday night and it has just been, you know, saying it's life changing would be silly or dramatic, but it was life changing. Real quick, what was emo?
00:00:35
Speaker
Emo is the largest machine tool show in the world. Oh, I didn't know it was the largest. Oh, yeah. So there's the IMTS, International Machine Tool Show. So this is where all of the manufacturers come together with a focus on CNC and machining technologies.
00:00:55
Speaker
And it was just, I could talk for an hour about this. It was so different than IMTS. I've only been to IMTS once, but it was so different in almost all positive ways, in my opinion, but just amazing.
00:01:14
Speaker
So in
Comparing EMO and CMTS
00:01:15
Speaker
an hour or so, I am going to see MTS, which is the Canadian manufacturing show for today and tomorrow. And I'm super excited. I mean, it's in Toronto, so it's less than an hour away. So you just came back from emo, and I'm going to see MTS. And we both went to IMTS last year. And I'm super pumped to go to the show. And I have a lot of things I want to see and talk about. But first off, I want to hear
00:01:42
Speaker
more details about emo. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's funny because I already have a trade show remorse or regret. You know, I, I'm so happy with it, but I'm already thinking, oh my gosh, I forgot to do this or I forgot to look at that. And no, no joke. Last night I thought, should I drive up to CMTS this week? Um,
00:02:06
Speaker
No, it's just awesome. OK, so it was great.
Meeting Fans and Industry Influencers
00:02:10
Speaker
We were able to meet a lot of fans. That's cool. I spent all four days with Amish Salanke, who runs a shop called SS-CAD-CAM. And he does a lot of, traditionally, three-axis work. But over the last year, he's moved into the five-axis world with a DMG Maury. And so it's great. There's also a value, I will admit, to the solidarity of a trade show of kind of running on your own and being nimble.
00:02:35
Speaker
For me, it was great to hang out with Amish. I knew him pretty well, but to get to know him better.
Exploring Trade Show Innovations
00:02:40
Speaker
And he saw stuff that I didn't know. And it ties back into the Robin Renzetti podcast, where it's like, don't ever get too full of yourself. There's so much basic stuff I don't know. Here, I'll just ask you, do you know what an FCS system is? Nope.
00:03:00
Speaker
Great. Awesome. Awesome. FCS system is like household lingo when it comes to production work or fifth axis work. And it has, it's just a, it's basically a ball lock system that has some really cool ways of doing modular work holding, complex work holding, or even palletized, you know, autonomous or automation work holding. So FCS, I think is actually a trademark company or brand, but there's a number of knockoffs. So I think, you know, pegboard with Dow pins and really cool location stuff. So.
00:03:31
Speaker
Amish not only knew what that was, but he was able to say, hey, that's something I hadn't seen. So that really is a sort of a force multiplier behind walking around blind. I will insist for folks that are going to trade shows, even if you're new, think about what you want to learn and know and have that be part of your task. For me, I wanted to learn more about drills. I wanted to learn some basic stuff about work holding.
00:03:57
Speaker
and some stuff about automation. And I did all that. On the flip side, you're there to absorb. You're there to kind of try to do your best to push yourself outside of your comfort zone. You don't go, don't go, you know, Grimsmough shouldn't go. Yes, you should go to the Nakamura or Ellis, or not Ellis, and Elliott Matsura booth and talk to them and learn what's new and different. But get out of your comfort zone too, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Not hang out there the whole day just because it's comfortable and I know them. Absolutely.
00:04:25
Speaker
yeah exactly you know it's fun to have people say oh john great to see you both but you know really uh... i will uh... i had the chance to hang out with rob lockwood for the day good dude in he was talking about an anecdote where he just was walking and he saw i forget what it even was i think it was a tool
00:04:42
Speaker
And the part maybe next to the tool to him looked eye catching in and I believe it was a no named you know far east company and I will tell you all day long that I would never have the you know I would never have the whatever you want to call it to just stop and say that looks interesting are you on to something because I'm just cynical I think.
00:05:03
Speaker
Most people are, I don't know, I don't have that same attitude. And he went and found it, had this great conversation, and it was very eye-opening to me to remember to have that attitude of there's a lot of people doing a lot of cool stuff out there, and they're not all going to be the biggest flashy brand, you know, biggest brand. Sometimes you've got to go kind of turn over some leafs and look at some smaller stuff.
The Unique Atmosphere of EMO
00:05:29
Speaker
The difference is also it was huge. I mean, I don't want to say it's too big because one of the things I liked about it was there were no, I believe I'm saying this correctly, there were no resellers or distributors. Everybody there was a manufacturer.
00:05:46
Speaker
So that was really nice. There's nobody there who's not offering something that they make and believe in. The scale was huge. There's 27 buildings, but they didn't use all of them. What? Yeah, no, but I mean, John, insane. I don't know how to describe the size. IMTS kind of had three main
00:06:11
Speaker
Buildings or or bays if you were like rooms that you could kind of get to walking indoors. Yeah, this was this was So much bigger What I liked though was again, it was CNC focus There were a couple of random buildings or spots that had some sheet metal stuff, which was which was very odd to me But there was no other
00:06:31
Speaker
They had none of that hodgepodgey stuff that I find that I've seen at American trade shows, both like Shot Show for the shooting world, but even IMTS, where you're like, what are you doing here? This is not, everything at Emo was super awesome like that. But then,
00:06:49
Speaker
By far, the biggest change was the user base. Monday and Tuesday, the first two days especially, Amish and I were some of the only two people that were not in suits. It was such a high class audience. And I think part of that has to do with the European culture as well. But people that were there were there to buy machines. They weren't there because they were just, the boss told them, go take the day off, go have fun. They weren't there just, you know,
00:07:17
Speaker
I'll put this way I felt it was actually a bit awkward for me to be I was dressed in jeans and a button-down with a camera and I was kind of out of place But it was cool because it was just such a more focused We're here to tell you how our products can change your manufacturing and the people that were there were there to buy What that also meant was the hospitality was insane almost every large large booth had
00:07:43
Speaker
complimentary, everything from cappuccino to espresso to bakeries to paste goods to this flam cooking like a German pizza thing to verse to free beer. The hospitality was through the roof. You were taken care of anywhere. I love it. Just insane, which which I vaguely remembered IMTS, you know, a couple of people would be, hey, we've got we've got a keg coming at four o'clock come by for a beer. Yeah, this wasn't like that. It was just
00:08:13
Speaker
Every booth had seating areas with weight staff, white table cloths sometimes, just insane.
00:08:22
Speaker
Yeah, I'm thinking back to IMTS and CMTS. I think I've been two previous years to CMTS, and comparing your experience with what we saw there was just on a different
Young Attendees and Trade Show Strategy
00:08:33
Speaker
level. Like you said, some of the booths might have drink accommodations. There might be a few croissants or something, a bowl full of Jolly Ranchers, but not much.
00:08:46
Speaker
But it's also nice because there was no swag. Literally, I think I saw the opportunity to get a little soccer ball at one booth, and that was it, which is great. Interesting. There was no one accosted you. Nobody was like, hey, come into my booth. Hey, here's what we're selling. It was incredibly professional.
00:09:08
Speaker
I was going to say, oh, no badges, which was actually nice. You didn't have to wear this thing around your neck. People weren't sizing you up. It was also interesting because Amish and I are both relatively young and we didn't have a problem anywhere on anything.
00:09:25
Speaker
I think we were different than most people there because generally speaking this is a gross generalization which I don't love making but generally speaking there aren't a lot of 33 or 36 year olds or whatever that are running shops or owning machines that were at this show.
00:09:42
Speaker
I think that's maybe a cultural thing. I don't know, be here to hear. That was our experience, I'll put it that way. So people were kind of surprised sometimes. As you said, if most of the people there are in suits buying machines, maybe they're higher ups in bigger companies who tend to be older.
00:09:57
Speaker
No, exactly. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but I'm so glad that I filmed because I'm actually excited to
Advancements in Drill Technology
00:10:04
Speaker
rewatch it. You just kind of get in this blur when you're there. It makes it, I find it difficult to make critical thinking decisions about what do I want to do next? What's on my list? Where have I been? It's just overwhelming. So how do you function in disaster?
00:10:19
Speaker
have your list down, know what you want, be willing to, we had a couple people, this guy was talking to us about broaching, I'm like, dude, not interested, you gotta be willing to sometimes say, I'm outta here, time is precious. Yeah, exactly, and I'm thinking about that a lot, going to CMTS for the next two days.
00:10:35
Speaker
Like, everything's gonna be cool and interesting, but I have to focus on what's gonna impact me. And as you said, broaching, I have no interest in broaching. So the guy could easily talk my ear off for half an hour, but my time's too precious for that. So, you know, you and I are both such nice, curious people that it's gonna be interesting for me to pull back from things like that, but I'm gonna have to.
00:10:56
Speaker
Right. But keep an open mind. No, I don't think you want broaching. But I went trying to learn more about solid carbide drills. Are there better geometries? Are there better coatings? Are there better prices? Are there better things I should be thinking about? And you've got to take a step back and think, what are you trying to do? You're trying to reliably drill holes. There are other ways to make holes.
00:11:18
Speaker
and happens to be there's a lot of good insert style drills. I was used to the spade type, but there's, I don't know what they call them, but there's drills that look like a solid carbide drill, but it's just the tip that screws in, ends up that Kenna Metal just came out with one Allied.
00:11:34
Speaker
Drill who is known for making spade drills came out with a new smaller one Is scar has a really good one said that was all of a sudden where you're making progress And I know to a lot of people maybe even some listening to the podcast that they'll say of course We all knew about that, but people don't like that was not like But by the way all it was super weird in me a lot of people listen to the podcast and
00:11:57
Speaker
Really? Yeah. It's just funny to me. I don't know. That's awesome. Obviously, you want to buy a million more dollars in equipment right now, but does it make you rethink the direction of your business and the things you want to do over the next year?
Impact of EMO on Business Direction
00:12:15
Speaker
Yeah, it does. I mean, I came back. Look, there's a high you come off of. And their job is to get you excited about spending money on the machine. So do not get accomplished. One of the things that you don't think about when you're there is how
00:12:30
Speaker
Every one of these machines has to also make money, and you've got to have work to do that. It's easy to get caught up in the fancy technology, but I don't... I think the biggest thing I'm focused on right now is automation. So if I could, I would like to own a...
00:12:55
Speaker
maybe a three plus two machine. I don't care about simultaneous five, but they have these smaller size machines, uh, Grob or not Grob, um, a Micron or George Fisher. GF has the firmly has, and these are all the high end ones where.
00:13:09
Speaker
You've got maybe only a 12-inch circle or 12-inch square work envelope, but built into this machine is a 30-pallet pool automation robot system, and that to me is what, like, John, this is what you should have.
00:13:30
Speaker
You're doing small work. It's so exaggerating. But it's stupid to have a 40 by 20 table. And you're just trying to buy vices and put them on there once when you should have that kind of flow. Now, it's expensive. The machines are expensive. And as Locke would point out, tooling them up. Think about buying a Raptor or lying vise for each of those 30-pallet pools. And then you have 600 tools or something to put in there too, right?
00:13:58
Speaker
Oh, yeah, totally. But when I start thinking about the capabilities and the flow, that to me is, you know, and that's my actually, that's my one regret. I'm like, darn it. I didn't really get that until later on. So I'm like, wait, does brother, does brother have one? They've got the, what do you call it, where it just switches, it just rotates around. So you've got two. But I'm thinking, no, no, no, you want these ones that hold a bunch.
00:14:25
Speaker
Yeah, and Matsura has their LX 160, I think it's called. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You did a video of that in California somewhere. So that machine, and I'll be seeing that tomorrow for sure. So I'm trying to figure out long-term future if I wanted a high production machine to make.
00:14:42
Speaker
lots of knives would I get a horizontal or would I get a fifth axis like what you're talking about with many many small pallets and you just keep the workflow going or a big horizontal that just crunches out stuff all day long I don't know so that'll be good to talk about. Yeah but in the footprint size matters you know you're not looking to buy one of those DMG Maury NHX 4000s that's the size of a school bus. Yeah like what Orange Vice has.
00:15:09
Speaker
Right. So that was so cool to me. Yeah.
Machine Efficiency and Automation
00:15:17
Speaker
Yeah, I learned a lot about it, too. We'll have a video coming out on it. It was inspiring. It was great to get a change of pace and scenery. We met a lot of people. Hanover is a town, kind of crummy, a little bit of a bummer. I've been around to a few different places in Germany, and Hanover was not exactly the place I'd aspire to go back to. But that's OK. Great.
00:15:39
Speaker
So what are you looking for at CMTS? When I talked about the horizontal versus 5-axis palletized system for sure, I've really had flashlights on my brain for the past few weeks. And I'm getting extremely excited about that. So that's awesome. So I'm trying to think, how would I make a lot of flashlights and they'd be all excellent?
00:16:07
Speaker
Either I'm loading them one by one and unloading them one by one because I don't want them to scratch coming off the lathe when it spits into the parts catcher and then bangs around. I did not see any pill bottle parts catchers in it. No, they don't sell those.
00:16:25
Speaker
So the top option, top of the line option, spending a lot of money would be obviously to get a bar feeder for my lathe, which is something I'd like anyway, and a small robot, like a UR robot, to unload flashlight bodies after they're done. I think that would be sweet. So I'm just curious to go talk to those guys and see all that.
00:16:48
Speaker
Have you seen the Brother, it's not a fifth axis, it's a four plus one machine. Eric at Orange Vice has one and we showed it in our video. But it's basically a, okay, do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, MX, something, something, something.
00:17:04
Speaker
So it's a mill turn, which I'm not exactly sure what the flashlight components will look like, but that sort of a machine to me with a pallet pool, which I don't think they have. I know actually Eric at Orange has a robot on it. That to me is super interesting. You're able to do all your work or most of it in one setup, including turning.
00:17:29
Speaker
And I've been looking more about mill turns, which is not something I'm interested in, per se. I'm fascinated by it. And it's like, is it a mill with lathe, or is it a lathe with a mill? And for people that don't know, mill turn is...
00:17:42
Speaker
lots of different styles but generally speaking it's got a chuck on one side and it's got a head that's able to rotate like a fifth axis heads but the crazy part is the same uh... spindle that holds your cat forty or usually their HSK or even CAPTO which is a proprietary Sandvik style holder uh... you're you're the same holder that can hold drills and end mills and face mills can also hold
00:18:09
Speaker
stationarily hold a turning tool so you can literally turn like it's so weird to me that you have a you know a V insert and then it swatches out to a face mill and then it goes back to a parting tool.
00:18:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's literally a lathe plus a milling machine put together with all the benefits of both, maybe a few drawbacks depending on how you look at it. Right. So the downside I see to having the Brother style 4 plus 1 with a spinning table and all that is you can't make nearly as many parts as a lathe with a bar feeder, especially if you're looking at lathe type parts like flashlight bodies. Because say you had a 10-pallet pool, you can only make 10 parts.
00:18:52
Speaker
Right. Well, so they do make mill turns that have bar feeders, which is insane. Right. So a mill turn is a lathe first and has... Interesting debate. Yeah, but it's a lathe. It's got two spindles and a bar feeder fits into it perfectly. Whereas the Brother style machine that you're talking about is a mill first and it has a spinning table. Right. That's fair. And you can't bar feed it.
00:19:16
Speaker
I think it goes back to, this is awesome stuff. Is there a way to load it? Are you doing more than one part on a, like if you're loading it in? I saw some really cool, we have video of riser blocks on fifth axis where you're, cause a lot of times with fifth axis, you've got to lift the part up off the table so that you can get to all four sides without the spindle housing crashing into your table.
00:19:43
Speaker
But what was cool was something I just hadn't seen before was on that riser block where you're lifting the part up, you put parts around potentially all four sides of the riser block as well. Oh. Oh, that is pretty cool. Different kind of part, you think? Yeah, potentially. It requires different access?
00:20:08
Speaker
right but that was that's what is interesting to me when you look at these pallet pools there is no there's nothing homogeneous about them it's this ability to have anything and everything flowing in and out of the machine it just goes back to the kind of the experience i had with tesla this summer which is forget about
00:20:29
Speaker
what a car is. And it's very difficult to do. Think about what a car should be. Like today, when you think about how, in my opinion, companies like GM or Ford or whatever, they kind of start to slowly tie in some integration with your phone and IoT and the web and all that. Whereas Tesla is like, no, that's the base of the car. The fact that it has wheels is kind of a secondary thing.
00:20:52
Speaker
Maybe I'm exaggerating but when I think about why do we buy mills and lays when right now there's we think about how you want to make parts it's like I want to do it all right and why not the one thing I will say I was disappointed in
Software's Role in Modern Machining
00:21:07
Speaker
And it didn't really occur to me until after the show is software. Very little software, very few software exhibitors, you know, the normal people, you know, Hypermill and Autodesk and Mastercam, but it was an incredibly small portion. And when I think about all of this stuff, just what we just talked about,
00:21:30
Speaker
I just, to me, there's so much emphasis. I mean, I spend all my time at the computer, very little time at the machine. The machine is, once the machine is in, it's kind of more or less static. You gotta learn it, but it's kind of this thing, whereas the software is where I push myself, where I build the value.
00:21:51
Speaker
My first impression was maybe creating a software company and creating something unique is difficult, and of course it is, but so is it creating a manufacturing company or a machine tool builder or something like that. That's not the stopping point. Why is there not more advancement in software by more people? Or maybe they're just not big enough to compete yet.
00:22:18
Speaker
Yeah, it seems like, and maybe you lose that perspective, like all of a sudden now spending $15,000 on simulation software, that's still, don't get me wrong, that is still crazy, I want to make that clear that that's still bananas, but it's a little bit less crazy to me.
00:22:36
Speaker
Well, especially when you want a big five-axis machine and you need it then it's like goes hand in hand like like it's a justification thing now, right? Right and I and I we talked to some people who We talked to some people who had first hand or second hand examples about buying machines and software where they don't even negotiate like like some of the examples were two to five million dollar purchases and There's opportunity to negotiate they did not negotiate. It was literally
00:23:06
Speaker
here's the check, get this on my floor as soon as you can. And it's tough because you think about that. Negotiating gives you the chance as a vendor to be like, okay, if it's delayed or there's a little hiccup. I'm not saying that's an excuse, but it's very difficult when somebody says, when you give them the price and it's expected to negotiate and they don't, it's very difficult to do anything other than deliver and perform.
00:23:33
Speaker
When you see that, it's a little bit, it almost strikes you as irresponsible, but then it's also, hey, these people are making a lot of money making parts. They need this equipment. They don't care. Hyper mill is $40,000 a seat. Not only do they want a seat, but somebody was talking about they're putting out a worldwide job posting search for a hyper mill programmer.
00:23:59
Speaker
So if you are listening to this podcast and you are 14 years old, go figure out how to learn Hypermill. I don't know how to tell you how to do that, but Hypermill is one of the world leading five-axis CAM packages. Go figure out how to learn Hypermill, and when you're 21, you will write your check. I'm not joking. Fantastic advice, yeah. No, absolutely. I'm not joking.
00:24:29
Speaker
Well, okay, let's hypothesize that. How would a 14-year-old today, you know, you and I have big aspirations and things we want to impart on people.
00:24:41
Speaker
What would you tell a 14-year-old to do? What would you suggest? Spend a year learning Fusion. I'm biased. I mean, we have our YouTube videos. We have our training here. Learn Fusion because it's free. It's easy. There's a bigger community around it that's open in that nature. You're going to learn the principles of CAM. You're going to learn work coordinate systems, setups, CAM operations, which generally translate through from what everyone's told me to Esprit and HyperMill and NX, et cetera.
00:25:07
Speaker
Then you've got to learn hypermail. And I don't know what to tell you. I would say, go Google and look around. Are there books? Are there video series? Can you pay to go get training? Email hypermail. They may be able to... I mean, hypermail wants people skilled to... You're on the same team there. They want people that are able to use their software. So maybe there's some chance there.
00:25:30
Speaker
Maybe your school can get I don't know how the education world works there with like licenses They may well be willing to give you a seat of hyper mill that doesn't post out code because then it's it's effectively worthless From a from a profitability for a machine tool, you know owner, but but but you can learn it I'm just talking out loud. What else? Yeah, that's great idea
Real-World Learning and Shop Visits
00:25:54
Speaker
Something I found very valuable early on in my career was actually stepping foot in machine shops and being surprised when they were open and willing and happy to give me tours. Not all of them, but some of them. And I was so nervous and so shy and I had my little manual, Grizzly X2, that I was in the process of converting to CNC. So I felt like a nobody. And then I go to this shop in St. Catharines here and they had like
00:26:21
Speaker
five or six Haas machines, a bunch of older Fidals. And it was the coolest place I'd ever been. And, you know, they were a busy humming shop. You know, at least half the machines were turning at that moment. And he gave me a tour and I was like, it was so eye-opening to know just to be able to see it and to be able to talk to them. And the owner did all the programming on like this ancient version of Mastercam for all of the machines. And I was like, there's something wrong about this, but it was good to be able to be there and see it.
00:26:52
Speaker
There is just so much resistance. I mean, there's so much that people emphasize and talk about. You need to own the latest mill turn and the latest bar feeder and five axis, but I don't see that same emphasis publicly on, you know, you need to be embracing technology that's, I mean, that's what frustrates me. I saw so many amazing toolpaths being run on machines and not a single, if I were one of these machine tool vendors, I would figure out a way to, or excuse me, software people like,
00:27:19
Speaker
have a hyper mill or a spree or a power mill or a fusion person there with a laptop walking through the toolpaths, walking through the cam for this. Ooh, at the events. Yeah. That's a great idea. I've seen a powered by Autodesk sticker or something like that on the side of the machine. But to have an expert there with a laptop, not only explaining the toolpaths for this cut on the demo, that's a great idea. Yeah.
00:27:49
Speaker
Hymer was cool. The bigger, much bigger company that I thought about. That's the other big thing I think I learned and started to appreciate is the technology and tool holding.
Tool Holding and Shrink Fit Technology
00:28:01
Speaker
So HSKs, part of me feels like I'll never buy a Cat40 machine again. There's so many benefits. No, it just is like, and then...
00:28:12
Speaker
strength holding different styles of retention, just the role that that plays is really important. I'll keep that in mind as I'm cruising around today because I've seen and heard about HSK and etc.
00:28:28
Speaker
you always kind of ignore it. It's like, oh, that's just for, you know, you want 40,000 RPM or you want, you know, mold making or whatever. That's not for us. Cat40 is for us. But then you start to kind of open your mind and see the benefits of all this stuff, even shrink fit. Like I've been ignoring shrink fit for so long, but now, you know, part of it's because Mary Tool is coming out with their own line and more affordable, easier to get, hopefully things like that.
00:28:54
Speaker
that it's kind of opening my eyes to it. It seems like all the guys on Instagram are kind of the same way. They're like, ooh, maybe I'll try this. Ooh, I tried this. Ooh, Shrinkfit is awesome. You too, right?
00:29:05
Speaker
Yeah, I know. I talked to the Heimer guys about their shrinker. They have a cheaper one than I thought. It's like $5,500. The downside is it doesn't have a cooling system in it. Is that a downside? Well, it means the tool has to sit for about a half an hour. You can't quench it or you don't want to blow air on it because it will literally affect the concentricity.
00:29:29
Speaker
Part of me thinks, well, what's the big deal? Some people I know use shrinkers by having their friends set the tools up, and then they just maybe have one extra, or if they break one, they've got a problem. So more to come on what that is. But I think that that's, after email, I think I would be surprised if I don't somehow figure out a way to tie shrink hole fit into our shop in the next year.
00:29:55
Speaker
Yep, if not sooner, although you mean like a lot of them. Oh, I don't know. No, just as part of the workflow. Right, right. The downside is you have to buy a diameter specific tool holder. So if it's quarter inch, it's only going to look good. But you get rid of a collet, you get rid of a nut, you change, you don't have the torque spec, you have better concentricity, you have better tool holding, you have a smaller tool holder diameter at the tip.
00:30:23
Speaker
For me, I don't think the diameter thing is a restriction because almost all of my tools are eighth inch or quarter inch. So, you know, I'd have that. Somebody was saying you lose some hogging power or dampening capabilities, but I don't, I mean, there may be that's a trade off, but not a big one. I don't think to me at least.
00:30:48
Speaker
Yeah, it was cool. It gets me fired up and I'm actually super excited for you to go up there today. That's really cool.
00:30:54
Speaker
Something that's been on my mind a lot lately, because I'm going to be cranking out knives like crazy, and I want to run this machine a lot more than I ever have been. Tools do break, tools do wear out, and if I have longer runs, not only do I want pre-checking to know that my tool life is going to be with intolerance before the run,
00:31:18
Speaker
I want to have a tool cart with replacement tools that are already mounted, already dialed in to be perfect concentricity, low run out, things like that, numbered and even a quick instruction on the G-code you have to type in to tool set the tool so that if Eric's here, if Barry's here, if we have future employees and it
00:31:38
Speaker
You go to run a program and a tool is broken or worn out or whatever. It's super easy. Tools are already there to just swap it out. You know what I mean? Type in the code and go. And yes, it's a bit of redundancy. You have two identical tools, but I think it'll be completely worth it because uptime is way more valuable.
00:31:58
Speaker
No, it creates a process. And I would say it's not a if the tool breaks, it's a where's, it's when. So when that tool comes out, it goes on a cart that gets processed, which is creating an automatic task for somebody to go ahead and remove that tool, add the new one in. That can trigger a reorder. Because Eric at Orange was talking about, they don't stock as many extra tools as you'd think because it's too much money tied up in tooling.
00:32:25
Speaker
When you own 30 of something, sometimes you forget when you get down to zero that you didn't buy them again. And nowadays, most of us can get things in, say, two days. So having a couple of extras is usually enough.
00:32:41
Speaker
Yeah, and we tend to be ordering often anyway. I mean, usually I just keep adding things to my Lakeshore shopping cart until it's big enough and then I order, or until I'm out of this one thing and then I order, but it might be a month or two between orders, but I could easily see myself speeding that up, you know, just ordering more often and less quantity.
Investing in Technology and Processes
00:33:04
Speaker
I think now that we have been talking through this, to me it's clear what's changed in my head is now the willingness to invest in my business. Now you have to have a product, you have to have an outcome of that, but when it comes to investing in tool holders, tool carts, processes, equipment, software, that bootstrapper was left behind.
00:33:29
Speaker
You know what I mean? Yeah, you've certainly been investing in technology and in theories and in ideas for years and years. You're not afraid of that. But both of us have both been, you know, gun shy in certain ways about investing too much in technology and ideas and things like that money-wise. But yeah, we both have big, big, big goals and aspirations and want to do this right.
00:33:54
Speaker
Yeah, it was cool. I'm really excited to go through the footage. Yeah. How many hours of footage did you take? I don't know. That's a good question. Do you feel like you filmed a lot or not a lot?
00:34:08
Speaker
Oh, no, definitely a lot. I had a pretty frustrating technology week. It's my own fault, but my MacBook charger cable just broke when I got there, which was really tough because I used my computer for a lot of things, including transferring footage off of my SD cards onto an external hard drive. And I'm a big fan of don't travel.
00:34:31
Speaker
Don't put don't pack too much stuff. So like I it would be so easy to add in back extras and redundant and all this I try to travel lean and light but it kind of bit me this trip because my Batteries died and I wasn't able to export anyway long story short We still film three days and it would I mean just just awesome. Sorry. I'm so so I'm so excited Good. I have a small rant about that at CMTS
00:34:56
Speaker
in the registration and when we when we were there last year they told us there's a no filming policy like in the whole show. Sorry, at IMTS? At CMTS. Oh really? Yeah and and it says in the sign-up thing like no there will be no filming or anything like that. I'm like everybody has a camera in their pocket. What is what is wrong with the world? So IMT, sorry, emo was like that. We were asked numerous times politely to not film
00:35:23
Speaker
I don't think we were ever. By management or by individual booth holders? Booth holders, yeah. Even DMG was like, we're OK if you kind of film walking around our building. They have a whole building. But they were like, don't. We're going to ask that you not put your camera up.
00:35:40
Speaker
to any machine windows, which is a little bit like, come on. That got more relaxed towards the end of the week. And with DMG, because Amish has a DMG machine, we had some connections there, and they were great. And so we actually were able to go around with them a little. So I don't think, we were never obnoxious or intrusive per se, but I think it was a different culture and feel. I mean, even IMTS, I saw a bunch of other people with cameras. I did not see, I saw very few other people with cameras.
00:36:09
Speaker
in that email. Did you see any kids there, any young people under 18? Just curious.
00:36:18
Speaker
Thursday the last day we were there by far the most sort of people in t-shirts younger The day that we we saw the most the most random fans that the day we had the most People come up to us and say that they like the channel or it's really cool to meet me Younger people. Yeah, then that it was there was Friday and Saturday. We weren't there for which may have gotten more of that same thing Okay. Yeah
00:36:42
Speaker
I remember at IMTS there were a significant amount of like high school students and there was even a, wasn't there a wing with like student projects and things like that in it? It was just good to see like young people at the event. And at CMTS it says clearly, this is a business event, no one under the age of 18 will be permitted.
00:37:02
Speaker
And I'm like, that's just not, I mean, I understand like from a safety standpoint, it's not a place to bring your four-year-old. But to empower the youth, like high school students specifically, even like 12-year-olds, like my seven-year-old daughter would, she'd get bored eventually, but she'd find a lot of interesting things there. And I'd love to be able to share that experience with my kids, you know what I mean? So it's like I understand part of it, but I also wish it was a bit laxer.
00:37:32
Speaker
to inspire the youth, you know, to show them what the world is all about. Like tomorrow, today I'm bringing Eric and tomorrow I'm going to bring Barry. And Barry's never been to a machine tool event like this at all. He's never been to a dealer or whatever. He just has experience with our shop. So he's like, oh, are they going to have knife grinders there? And I'm like, no, this is not a knife event. This is a manufacturing event. Your mind is going to be blown. Like he's never seen a 3D printer before. So it's going to be like amazing showing him
00:38:02
Speaker
my world, you know? Yeah. DMG had a lot more of their, what do they call it, laser tech machines, which is hybrid, additive, subtractive. That's coming for sure. And that goes back to the software. You know, that's huge on the software side. Building up surfaces, machine them down, rebuilding them up, machine them down. Oh, yeah. Super cool.
00:38:24
Speaker
I didn't even think about the software required for that. Sure, right. The simulation behind it, tying in stress analysis. For me, it's all about the biggest thing is going to be machine simulation collision. How do I get a tool into, especially when it comes to not only simultaneous fits, but just positional stuff. I want to get a tool into a nook and cranny.
00:38:47
Speaker
I don't want it to crash. And I don't want to go through really super complex and laborious processes to simulate that. It should be easier. All the data's there. Right. Well, so you're on the surface. It sounds easy. Why can't you just do it? Right. It'll get there.
00:39:05
Speaker
Yep. Cool. Hey, my laptop battery's continuing my technology theme. I'm out of a charger right now. So I got to run and you got to go. I hope you post some Instagram today. I'm excited to see. Yes. I'll do that for sure. Awesome. I'll talk to you soon. It's awesome. All right. Take care. Take care. Bye. See you. Bye. Bye.