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Business of Machining - Episode 33 image

Business of Machining - Episode 33

Business of Machining
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213 Plays8 years ago
Have you ever heard of EUSTRESS?  Probably not.  But you've definitely experienced it. It's a feeling our co-hosts lovingly refer to as "the grind."   With the pre-order in the past, Grimsmo turns his  focus and renewed energy toward the Norseman workflow and  the automated process for Maker's Choice knives.   While some think chip thinning is overrated, Saunders believes understanding this machining phenomenon is valuable. Click
Transcript

Introduction to the Business of Machining

00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, episode number 32. My name is John Grimsmo. You're right, 33, man. My name is John Grimsmo. My name is John Saunders.
00:00:12
Speaker
And good morning, my friend. Good morning. How are you? I'm doing awesome. Fantastic week. Do you know what's funny? I legitimately, I can tell and it's, I don't know if you realize it, but when I look at your Instagram posts and the energy behind them, first of all, just the higher frequency, the longer texts.
00:00:34
Speaker
You can just feel, it's like people say when you make YouTube videos or when you do voiceovers or podcasts, you're supposed to try to smile. Because when you smile, you talk in a manner that's more conducive to what people want to hear and see and listen. And I feel like I'm getting some of that energy, which is cool. You can feel that smile through the Instagram post and text. That's awesome. Well, I assume it's a legitimate conclusion.

Achieving Goals and Shifting Production

00:01:01
Speaker
Yeah, I'm free. It's like I have all this liberation now. From an internal perspective, it was such a giant weight on us for so long, and now we're free and we're happy, and I'm glad we could make our goal and our deadline.
00:01:23
Speaker
move forward. It's been a really happy week for all of us. Eric's skipping around like a leprechaun, it's awesome. That's awesome. So what have you been working on this week?
00:01:33
Speaker
This week, we're still producing rasks because they're easy. And we're easing back into Norseman production, and we're running into the hiccups of a knife that we haven't mass-produced in quite a long time. Little things here and there, but we've got this target in our mind. We want to finish 20 knives a week, and we know we can do it on rasks. But we try to do that on Norseman, and we're like, oh, this is a problem, and this is a problem. And it's a one-time fix thing, but we don't foresee them quick enough.
00:02:03
Speaker
Can I offer some humble advice? Yeah.
00:02:07
Speaker
do it right.

Entrepreneurial Advice: Process Over Product

00:02:10
Speaker
I made this sort of internal decision probably about a year ago, and I think we've talked about it a little, to kind of get back into the production of products for a variety of reasons involving entrepreneurship and the path of the company, frankly the difficulties, at least as it relates to my skill sets of growing the job shop work, but really what I was excited to do was
00:02:38
Speaker
I think I do better, I know I do better at things in life when I pour myself into them. I want to become obsessed with the processes and the systems and the resources and how we effectuate and roll something out. I almost don't even care what the product is. To me, it's that path that I love.
00:02:59
Speaker
you know, so take our steel and aluminum fixture plates for the tormach, you know, as we kind of bounce back and forth between the steel and the aluminum, as we bounce between machines and between processes and between fixtures and materials, I all of a sudden am like, oh, wait, if I did that over here, no works better. We weren't doing that over there. So oh, well, that's like, no, don't say, oh, well,
00:03:22
Speaker
like best foot forward on that stuff.

Resource Allocation and Financial Implications

00:03:25
Speaker
Once you have the idea, you have to roll forward with it, or at least experiment to see if it's valid. Honestly, even keep track. It's not that easy anymore. Money is not free. Jared and I were talking a lot about, hey, we have a better way to hold one of the ops, but boy, it takes
00:03:44
Speaker
four dedicated orange palette tops, which are, we make them, but still, it's 50 bucks a load of material per, so that's 200 bucks. It takes over 100 bucks, actually, over 150 bucks in Mighty Bite. It takes a couple hours to make them. And you know, none of that stuff is a big deal. Like, just what I said right there, three, 400 bucks, that doesn't bother me. It's this idea of,
00:04:02
Speaker
Well, are we gonna iterate beyond that in a few weeks or do I need to do that for everyone and does it wear out? It's fun, that's what it's all about. We need to come up with a new word for entrepreneurship stress.
00:04:19
Speaker
Yeah, when it's fun stress, I mean, there's terrible life-crushing stress, but then there's, it's just good work. Yeah, it's like the grind. The grind, yeah. I wouldn't have it any other way, but boy, you gotta make sure you stay, make good decisions, critical thing, like, you just have to be, and sometimes you just have to remember, don't just, don't compromise. Take your time, do it right.
00:04:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think you and I very easily fall down the rabbit hole. We just have to make sure we're falling down the right rabbit holes. Well, I saw your, I don't even know, sorry, it's been on vacation right now actually, but your, this is funny, I'm in my daughter's bedroom where we're on vacation and this is much nicer than the last remote podcast I did where I look like an FBI agent in like a Starbucks parking lot with headsets and computers and microphone audio recorders.
00:05:12
Speaker
and stuff laid out across the dash. But you posted something where you talked about a new workflow for, it was Norseman blades, right? Yeah, for a Norseman blades. And it's an idea that I've wanted to pursue for over a year now, and I finally now have the freedom to do it. And oh my goodness, is it ever working just better than expected? Well, I have high expectations, but it's crushing.
00:05:38
Speaker
everything. Dude, also. I love it. It's so

Tooling Improvements and Production Efficiency

00:05:41
Speaker
good. Is it tooling or fixturing or how you present the tool in the material? Yeah, it's both. So we used to use that Tormach toroid cutter, which is a great tool, but the workflow, the way the blade was held and the way it was done and led to a lot of chatter and things of that nature and the inserts were wearing out quick, but inserts are cheap because you can rotate a round insert and get multiple edges.
00:06:04
Speaker
Now I've got the blades on their side, edge pointing to the sky, on the side of the fixture, just like we do the rasp. And I'm using a 3.8s bullnose end mill to rough it away in a hard state, so 60 to 62 Rockwell. I rough away the bevel and then I go in with a 3.8s ball and I use a 3D parallel toolpath.
00:06:25
Speaker
Because I need the Norseman grind lines to look exactly like they did before because that's the character of the knife. I'm trying to hold that similarity with a completely new workflow and completely new toolset and toolpath and everything. I think I've finally nailed it and tool life is amazingly good. I was worried I'd get like one or two blades out of a ball mill but I'm at 12 so far and it still looks good. And I'm like, holy cow, yeah. It's awesome. How long is the tool in the cut per blade, you know?
00:06:57
Speaker
The ball mill? Yeah. Each pass probably only takes 10 seconds. There's probably 30 of them. I don't know.
00:07:06
Speaker
for 300 seconds is five minutes or so. Yeah, I mean, you would, I would think at a minimum, I don't know, I've become, you know, it's interesting how do you measure tool life and do you measure it in number of cuts or do you measure in number of runs or just days in the machine or do you measure, I mean, I think the best is minutes in the material. That's not always an easy thing to do. Yeah, that's assuming your cut recipe is very consistent and your load
00:07:34
Speaker
is consistent. For me, I thought about measuring time and cut and all this stuff, but at the end of the day, I just care how many knives I've made. So I'm counting that now with macros. It's so nice to be able to see. You said it's a bullnose or a bull?
00:07:52
Speaker
I rough with a bowl and I finish with a ball. Okay, and are either one of them specialized tooling? Nope. For hard... Lakeshore or another carbide brand? Yeah, currently I'm using IMCO just because I had them from my local distributor, but I want to move to Lakeshore for sure. The ball is, I think it's a variable, so I'll have to play if I can use a cheap ball or if I need to use a variable flute to get the best finish.
00:08:18
Speaker
Interesting. That'll be interesting too because I, it's funny, I have, you know, heck you and I both have had such great experiences with Lakeshore and I unapologetically will continue to endorse Lakeshore for so many uses, but IMCO is kind of like a leading world class, much more expensive, you know, I think of them like a helical, right? But what's that heads up comparison? I'm actually very curious.
00:08:44
Speaker
Yeah, well I've got a good workflow now with the mcode tools, and I'm just about to order $1,000 in the Lakeshore stuff, so we'll see. I'm assuming I can just move right to theirs with the same amount of fluids and everything and just call it good. That'll be interesting. Yeah, it will be interesting.
00:09:01
Speaker
I think last week, didn't I talk about the idea of trying hard milling? Wasn't that last week's? Yes. So fun fact, screaming success. Nice. Now I only used the Lakeshore dedicated hard milling
00:09:19
Speaker
tools exactly so my layman's ish understanding is you've got a couple of differences it's got a much thinner flute which means the center core of the tool is thicker so that needs it to much stiffer tool stiffness is a good thing and it's got that different coating and i do think it has a different actual honed edge like the leading cutting edge of the tool has a different geometry to make it last longer but um we stuck
00:09:49
Speaker
First, I did some, oh, I cut some annealed A2, which is like 20 Rockwell, but I used a regular Anvil to do that, just to like kind of get warmed up and compare the chips. Then we stuck a Chinese 123 block in there. It tested on Rockwell between 55 and 60 on my portable tester. And someone was sort of saying, well, those may just be case hardened. I don't think so, based on trying to do an internal
00:10:15
Speaker
Rockwell test it was a little tricky to do the way I machined it to get into there But also looking at the chip formation if it was if it moved from Case hardened to soft. I would have thought Maybe I'm wrong because your same cutting recipe But regardless I then stuck a old high-speed steel end mill which is hard and I mean that is hard and we filmed it all it'll be a Wednesday widget, but it was
00:10:42
Speaker
It was, John, it's insane. How does that, it's insane. And you did this on the Torvac?
00:10:49
Speaker
So yeah, I did them on the 1100, because that's my go-to machine, and that's what I think of as being the machine to do harder work on, more rigidity, more weight. But what's funny is the recipe here, I was using a quarter inch tool, and I was going about 200 surface feet a minute, and I'm not in front of my computer right now, but I think that's like 2,500 or 3,000 RPMs. So an RPM range that most machines are going to have. And then you only take, it's 2.5%
00:11:19
Speaker
width of cut so that's for a quarter inch end mill that's like six thou step over. So there's no horsepower requirement at all to speak of. Yeah that makes sense. I'm sure rigidity helps for tool life but my point is that it worked in the 1100 and then I was like I gotta try it on the 440 and it worked on the 440. It's insane.
00:11:37
Speaker
Beautiful. Yeah, when I rough out with my three-eighths end mill, I think my step-over is just five thou. Okay. But I'm ripping at like 70 inches per minute. Right, right. Have you ever heard of, did we talk about this? Have you ever heard of chip thinning?
00:11:51
Speaker
Uh, yeah, I'm fairly familiar with it. You probably know 10 times more than I do about it, but I get the concept. So we did a, um, well, so there's sort of this, I don't want to call it industry debate, but there's a sort of like, I've heard, I've talked to a few people who are kind of like chip thinning is overrated and it quickly gets fascinating to me because it shouldn't be a debate. It's scientific. Um, and long story short, I, we did a film to Wednesday widget where we,
00:12:21
Speaker
not only compare chip thinning with the slow motion camera on spring passes but we built this little I found the formula shout out to Dartmouth CNC on Instagram who posted a really good version of the formula and then we built we plotted it out in excel and we created this graph in excel that shows
00:12:39
Speaker
based on your programmed inch per tooth feed rate. So your IPM, basically what happens as you reduce your radial engagement and where it is an issue and how you can combat it because you combat it generally with a higher programmed feed rate or a higher radial load. And it's just super fascinating, super fun. But my despoiler was that when we took a one-fowl
00:13:06
Speaker
spring pass. Now this is on aluminum so we're just starting easy. A one thou width of cut at one thousandth of an inch per tooth. You with me?
00:13:17
Speaker
That should be a 1.3 tenths chip, which is a smaller, that's a smaller chip than the leading edge of the tool, which means it should be either rubbing or it should be creating chips that are effectively like dust. They don't actually have a formation of a sheared chip. And that is not what happened. Really? Yeah.
00:13:43
Speaker
Would rigidity in the machine and flex and things like that cause a heavier cut than you're expecting? So that may be what happened if on our first pass we had more than anticipated tool deflection. But I don't know. I need to do more testing. Yeah. Yeah. And this will be for a Wednesday widget? Yeah.

Machining Advice for Beginners

00:14:05
Speaker
can't wait. It was actually it ended up being a super fun Wednesday widget because I wanted to do chip thinning but then I realized wait a minute here that's kind of an advanced topic it's been a while so we start off and we say hey here are two speeds and feeds recipes that you should use if you're starting in aluminum or you're starting in steel like don't ask me questions this is just what you should go use period for advice folks are getting started then we kind of walk through yeah cuz
00:14:29
Speaker
Like I remember getting started and having no idea where to start. Yeah, I had the best phone call somebody with somebody yesterday, kind of a friend who's getting started. And what did he ask? He didn't know how to assemble the Jacobs Chuck into the Tormach TTS like tapered adapter.
00:14:47
Speaker
I had no idea, which is funny because I was at that point as well at one point and then, oh he did something else. It was funny and it was, I hate to use the word cute, but I was like this is what it was like to get back, to be back in that, it is so daunting at that point in time and it's like I just want to give people the way to get started.
00:15:10
Speaker
Yeah, it would be really fascinating if you could get somebody like that in your shop and asking the quote unquote dumb questions so that you can both nostalgically like, I remember being at that point on video in your shop, but you can also educate and train this guy so that everybody else watching who's in the same place gets to see, you know, direct reactions. Right, it's starting from, it's almost awesome, it's like starting from scratch. Yeah, it's you 10 years ago.
00:15:40
Speaker
Okay, so let me pitch you on something. Have you ever done a business pitch or a rocket pitch where you've got like 30 seconds to sell somebody? Not legitimately, no. I've played with the elevator pitch and I've never done a well job at it. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, no, it's not. That's nothing too formal. I mean, you can do it to anybody or whatever. You don't have to go to a structured event to do this, but my pitch to you
00:16:06
Speaker
is going to be on this revamp of the NYC CNC site, which is offering people the best place to come learn CNC, learn CAD, learn CAM, learn manufacturing entrepreneurship, and giving you learning workflows of everything, from what tools to buy, the starting recipes, what mistakes to avoid, how to get started, recommended advice, how to find your first work, and then also going into really, really deep silos on things like
00:16:34
Speaker
everything you could possibly want to know about fusions 2d adaptive you know including all the common problems that you have with it common linking move things and mistakes and like all these really deep troubleshooting stuff again that's in a manner that's easy to find and offers you the real world experience of how it works in a shop
00:16:55
Speaker
That was an excellent pitch. I love it. Thank you. So that's the idea. It's like people shouldn't be embarrassed about not knowing. Oh yeah, somebody, the same person I was talking about, didn't understand how do you tap a hole.

Revamping CNC Learning Resources

00:17:11
Speaker
Do I buy a tap? Is it a hand tap? Is it a spiral tap? Can I do it in my machine? Do I do it? They didn't know what a tapping block was. They didn't understand if and how thread mills would play a role. And that's all totally fair. Of course.
00:17:25
Speaker
I would never poke fun at somebody for those questions, you know? Right. Yeah, earlier this week, I had to re-tap a hole in one of my aluminum fixtures because it got stripped out. And my father-in-law Barry, he's 64 years old or something, and I'm like, have you ever tapped a hole before? And he goes, no, I never have. Why isn't that awesome? He's a career woodworker, and he's never tapped a hole. It's just kind of mind boggling, but it was really interesting teaching him how to do it.
00:17:53
Speaker
The best story I've ever heard wasn't firsthand, so this could be internet lore, but the best story I've ever heard was, I guess it would be an apprentice was starting at a job shop doing some work and he had to tap a hole. And of course, you know, you're kind of all thinking, okay, he's going to break a tap. You know, there's a lot of ways you can break a tap in a hole. And so sure enough, he comes back over to the boss about 10 minutes later and it's like,
00:18:17
Speaker
I broke the tap and the boss is kind of like, okay, you know, let's just go figure out which mistake you made. You never drilled the hole.
00:18:29
Speaker
Which I know that sounds really stupid, but if you had never done it before, you could, first of all, number one, you could think that the tap could create the hole, and number two, they actually make thread mills now that push down in, drill the hole, and then expand out helically to thread it and chamfer it all in one Z-plunge operation with one tool. So, it kind of is possible. Right. That's a good one. Right, I thought that was funny.
00:19:00
Speaker
So on the website, are you going to have a series of private videos that are only available on the website? Or are they going to be kind of cross-posted publicly? Yeah, that's the question. And the short answer is I'm not exactly sure, but yes, there definitely will be a portion of the site that's behind a paywall. Right now, we're planning. We haven't launched it yet, but it'll be hopefully the end of September. We're planning on doing
00:19:26
Speaker
a ninety nine dollar a year membership and that would get you access to everything uh... by that is so fair well and by volume the majority of the content will still be free and open but look the yeah i mean when we go we do specific learning programs or specific advanced stuff uh... is going to be behind a paywall we're going to talk a lot about entrepreneurship developing business plans running the shop and that stuff that i want by the paywall because one i want to be able to to turn this into a business that's able to generate
00:19:54
Speaker
We're gonna get with attorneys again and other experts to help create content. It's gonna be way more than just me. And I also want to build this community of like-minded people that want to learn and share and be part of this. So that's the goal there. Yeah, absolutely. It's a bit of a cost of entry to have the right clientele visiting your site.
00:20:18
Speaker
Right. And I thought about it a lot. Free is popular, but I want to keep the cost super low. But I also, if somebody wants free, or they're not able to afford it, or they don't find value in what we do, that's OK. There's actually now more and more other places on the web where you can find information. My pitch is we're going to have the best information. We're going to curate the content in a way that's going to help you learn.

Entrepreneurial Mindset and Book Recommendations

00:20:45
Speaker
you know it's tough like even Autodesk, Autodesk keeps putting out more and more fusion videos and I gotta admit they're pretty good but the difference is that they're not objective and they don't always speak to some of the difficulties of using it and they don't show real world use always like hey this is how you use it in the shop this is tying it all together. Yeah it's interesting because I'm
00:21:06
Speaker
I'm somewhat conflicted, but not really when I think about it. I firmly believe that information should be relatively free and easily accessible, but, as you and I know, when we're going on an information binge and trying to learn something, you gotta look hard, and you gotta look far, and you gotta do your research to really understand subjects, and you are more than
00:21:28
Speaker
allowed to charge for a central location of curated content. You know what I mean? Yeah. And it might be something where the video is open to everybody, but there are certain attachments or tool libraries or follow-ups where that part of it is behind the membership, inside the membership side.
00:21:48
Speaker
I think what could work really well is if you had a preview video that was free, even on your YouTube. And then the full hour-long video about Mighty Bite Fixtures is behind the paywall. You have to be subscribed to something like that. Because you want to tease people. I heard the best analogy about social media. It's like filling up a volleyball with a hole in it. You just have to keep pumping. Oh, that's funny.
00:22:12
Speaker
When it's tough, because I've never been, I hope, I always say, what's that balance of, I'm not going to apologize for my successes to the extent that I've had them, I'm also not ever, I don't ever want to lose a pretty strong sense of humility, period. It's just, it's how I enjoy,
00:22:33
Speaker
acting and being around other people that are aggressive and proud of what they do and very inspiring and very motivated, but also not in your face, not arrogant, not full of themself. So in some senses, I'm just like, I'm not gonna apologize for putting some of it behind inside of a paid membership, but on the flip side, it's a great value and I am very excited. I'll put it that, and we'll see what happens. No, I think it's a fantastic idea. I can't wait to watch it happen.
00:23:03
Speaker
The other thing I wanted to ask you about is, it's actually something I've always wanted. And actually, it's funny, for folks out there that are trying to start a business or trying to think about entrepreneurship, just think about what you want in life that you don't have or can't get. And that's a great way to start thinking about where there may be demand for something. Because at the end of the day, I think one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is they think too much about
00:23:30
Speaker
their own desires and not necessarily what people may demand. And I know they sound like they're the same thing, but if you want it, a lot of people may also want it. If you would pay for it, then other people may pay for it. That's different than if you just like it or you think it's cool. Right. Different than if you just think that the customers will like it. Right. And you're not invested in it whatsoever.
00:23:53
Speaker
Would you buy your own product? That's funny. I get people that are, one of the examples is kind of like, hey, I want to make, and look, I've been, I've actually had this exact same potential business idea, which is I want to make, you know, accessories for milling machines like speed vice handles. And it's kind of like,
00:24:13
Speaker
Would you buy your own $40 handle? Would you? It's a sincere question. I think you'll get some sales on things like that because people want to kind of support somebody, but is that really a business that's worth? I'm not saying it's not. I'm just saying you gotta think about that.
00:24:32
Speaker
No, but here's my other idea. I struggle as an entrepreneur to filter information. So I like reading books, but I tend to look to like you for recommendations or a couple other people for recommendations because that gives me a really good filter. I know if Grimms knows Reddit, and I like the fact that you've told me a couple books were kind of passes. That's awesome. But I also...
00:24:55
Speaker
I've got a business, I've got a family. I don't always have time to read a book. And if I've read a book, I find that a lot of times if I don't reread the book after a year or two, it's become of zero value because all that's been kind of lost. So here's my plan.
00:25:12
Speaker
as part of the site when we talk about manufacturing entrepreneurship is to start a book series where we put together the books that we've read that have been influential and helpful to us. And we can offer kind of the Saunders Cliff Note version of those books, including certain summaries about sections that were really good, sections that you should reread. And the biggest thing that I like, I think I mentioned this before, is
00:25:35
Speaker
when you should read that book. At what point in your stage is this a good book for you to go into now?

Task Focus vs. Multitasking Debate

00:25:43
Speaker
Absolutely. Because when I first read the E-Myth five years ago, it was too early. I didn't like it. Yeah. And now I read it and I'm like, oh my God, this is the best book ever. Right. Right. Same thing happened. I read Dale Carnegie in high school and it went in one year and out the other and I reread it as a young adult, changed my life.
00:26:03
Speaker
I read a book on vacation this week. It's funny. It's the wrong book for me right now. It's kind of like getting started in inspirational content. But I was like, this is a great book for somebody who's much earlier in this stage. Mm-hmm. That's a wonderful idea. It's distilling the information and giving a reliable source of a book list. Yeah.
00:26:26
Speaker
I hate to use the analogy of Cliff Notes, because that seems, I always felt like Cliff Notes were the kind of people that were looking for the easy way out of the shortcut, but it's more just like, hey, I need to go remember where it's a section to deal with organizational stuff, or company culture, or for you it may be, hey, I'm at that point where we've sort of shackled these burdens of the list, I may be hiring, I may be growing, do I focus, okay, here's a question, should you be spending
00:26:55
Speaker
every extra second you have on improving the Norseman workflow, or should you start thinking about the next thing for Grimsmen Ives? Honest answer is we need to buckle down and do what we're best at right now. And on the side, I'm also thinking about the next thing for Grimsmen Ives. Yeah, right, right. And that's what my weekends are.
00:27:19
Speaker
Okay, but one of the things I'm dealing with right now is 50% of your time, or let's say 20% of your time is the daily business activities. 20% is kind of the R&D that deals with current products, like Norseman, and I'm making this up, but 20% is family time. But basically,
00:27:43
Speaker
As you break those sections down, as you break 100% of your time down into smaller increments, the sum of those increments doesn't get you back to 100%, because there's inefficiencies of spreading yourself across so many things. So it's kind of like, do the bare minimum you need to do to keep the shop running, and then every ounce of your free time should be focused on X until X is done. Then you can move on to the next thing. Versus saying, I'm going to split half of my free time into improving the Norseman and half of my free time into R&D.
00:28:12
Speaker
That's interesting because then every project is drawn out for way too long and you have to wisely choose what's the most important and how do I get it done as quickly as possible to the fullest extent. You know, make it perfect.
00:28:26
Speaker
And I bet you you would agree with the statement that you would rather end the month of September knowing that you nailed down the Norseman workflow, the Norseman fixtures, the Norseman processes, rather than say you'd rather end the month with a couple of good ideas that you've even done some work on and most of the Norseman stuff close to done.
00:28:47
Speaker
Right. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I do not want Norseman improvements and other shop improvements to drag for months and months. I want to see the results of that ASAP as soon as humanly possible. And the other, the future, the R&D, the projects, the new products that I'm trying to come up with,
00:29:07
Speaker
They can wait. As long as we're generating good cash flow, I don't need those new products. It's so tough because you're like, as an entrepreneur, you've got this like borderline disillusion that you feel like you're doing a service to society by offering them your products. You know what I mean? You're like, I owe it to get this out, developed as soon as possible. And it's like the world will go on. It's okay.
00:29:31
Speaker
Yeah, you're absolutely right. And then there's the internal drive, like, oh, new project. Ooh, I get to do all this research. Oh, it's new information. Oh, I've never learned about that. Ooh, now I've got to learn about this. It's fun, right? It's so fun, but it's so dangerous because you lose sight of current activities. And like right now, we have a plan to buckle down and make as many Norsemen and Rask as we possibly can. We're doing the maker's choice thing.
00:29:57
Speaker
And I need to make that as hugely successful as possible.

Exploring Automation Platforms

00:30:01
Speaker
It looks like it's going great. And if I get distracted with new products, then it is going, it's going super great. So here's another thing I want to talk to you about real quick. So I'm doing this random maker's choice list. So I've basically got a whole list long of emails and I use random.org and I choose a name and I email the guy and he's got 24 hours to pay and respond or else I pick another name. Now that's a manual process and it's time consuming because there's a lot of back and forth.
00:30:26
Speaker
I want to make it an automated process. I want to go to Upwork and I want to pitch the idea. I have the blueprint of everything I want to do, all the lists and all the details, and I want to have somebody do it.
00:30:41
Speaker
But whenever I go to Upwork and look for people, I'm a looker, not an asker. I want to find somebody that can do it as opposed to put all the information out there and have them find me. So teach me how you use Upwork and how I should approach this.
00:30:56
Speaker
So obviously the more specific, the better off because it's, it's, it's, uh, Geigo, you know, garbage in garbage out. Um, the question I have with you, with your thing is I'm not sure what you want. I mean, do you want like a little, do you want just an expiring URL or that where if it expires, it auto sends the URL to the next person on a list? Yeah, basically.
00:31:20
Speaker
So I would look for a web development programmer. And instead of pitching the end product, I would pitch it as a one or two hour, I need some direction of brainstorm. Because you right now separate out the, tranche out the sections. You just need to know what is it. You're not looking for a $6,000 custom built ERP plug-in. You're just looking for something that helps you
00:31:50
Speaker
Frankly, there could be, actually there probably is something. You use Shopify, right? Yeah. Maybe actually there's probably some Shopify plug-in and that may be worth talking to one of the Shopify experts on Upwork. You can go on Upwork and limit your job to Shopify experts and let them figure out because what you're asking for is not, I guarantee you it's been done for sure.
00:32:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I mean, somebody needs to read the Excel spreadsheet with all the names. They need to go to random.org and use the script to find a random name. And then that person needs to get a canned email with a link to, like, we'll probably put up the knife on Shopify on a hidden page as a product. So there's a link, and they can purchase it through the site. And then it's zero inventory afterwards. So it's out of this list, out of this rotation.
00:32:41
Speaker
But if it's still in the rotation after 24 hours, then the list gets pulled again. So the biggest thing as a layman to Shopify, the biggest thing that I can think of is that maybe a hiccup is that Shopify's database is generally an internally created database that has to do with people that have already
00:33:00
Speaker
Basically, you don't want to go have all people, the people re-sign up for the list. So you've got to deal with importing. Now importing is easy from Excel as comma splice values and as a database. That's not a big deal. The question is, I don't know what that database on the web and side will be.
00:33:18
Speaker
But you and I need to stop talking about this. Go push it out onto Upwork. I would focus on the Shopify side of things because that's the natural integration from an order fulfillment side and everything else. And the people who are good at Shopify will be good at Excel and will be good at making little scripts and things like that. Like they'll have the side skills to be able to pull it off. How many unique names are on this list right now?
00:33:46
Speaker
I prefer not to answer that publicly. That's fine. Well, here's what I would say. Let's say that the database or the Shopify person says, oh, we could totally do this, but you need to recreate the orders or the names.
00:34:01
Speaker
then you can go hire a Shopify data entry person, and if there's only 300 names or 700 names, somebody can just copy and paste those in as if they were each one of those persons creating a new move, port those names over to the database. There's got to be a way to upload it though. So you think the database has to be within Shopify, like Shopify customer profile or something? Maybe, yeah.
00:34:26
Speaker
as opposed to staying within Google Sheets. Because the list keeps getting added to. People add their names constantly, and I want to leave it open. Well, you may have to do that, and you may have to change, John. I'm sure there's a different way. Right. Yeah. But go figure it out, and keep us posted.

Networking Opportunities and Events

00:34:42
Speaker
That'll be super cool. Yeah, that's good. Good advice. I like it. And limit the hours to whatever I assume? I've never had. How do you keep people from going crazy?
00:34:53
Speaker
Yeah, so look, this goes back to entrepreneurship. Find great people, get them on your team, let them do great things. I had a couple of Shopify experiences where I'm like, okay, this guy clearly rounded up, or it seemed like that was maybe, didn't take quite that long, get over it. So I paid him $42 instead of $37, you know what I mean? At the end of the day, let it get done.
00:35:19
Speaker
So I generally don't cap the hours. Sometimes I will require, I forget what the features call, but it's like basically you require that Upwork captures images of their screen randomly throughout the work session.
00:35:37
Speaker
Again, I don't think any successful entrepreneur I've talked to is not the kind of person who is sitting there checking in on remote employees or like, you know, get the job done for a fair price and if you're gonna sit there and worry about if somebody's trying to screw you over on upwork billable hours, you're focused on the wrong thing. Right, right. Sounds good. Yeah, I'm gonna do that this weekend probably. Sweet.
00:36:04
Speaker
Hey, can I throw out two things? One is yeah, I am gonna be at emo or emo in Hanover Germany in a couple weeks, which is crazy So stay tuned on I'm gonna be there with Amish Sri lanky from SS cat cam I'm gonna be there Monday through
00:36:22
Speaker
Friday morning to really Thursday. So we'll post something probably on Instagram or Facebook about maybe some sort of an informal meetup. But if anybody else is at email, we've had a couple of emails inbound. We'd love to meet up. And the second thing is on Wednesday,
00:36:38
Speaker
October 4th, we're a speaker at the Reynolds Machinery Open House in Dayton, Ohio. These are the people that I met through the Samsung booth at IMTS, who are also the Okamoto dealer.
00:36:53
Speaker
and they're doing one of their annual open houses and so we're gonna go give a talk on social media and manufacturing and they're also, this is so cool, they figured out how you buy one of those sort of insurance policies where basically they can give away a machine if you roll, I don't know what the deal is, but if you roll the dice and all the dice show something, it's a lottery type thing where you have the potential of winning a Samsung lathe or a Herco mill.
00:37:21
Speaker
Wow, which is just like, I think it's cool because I'm like, I want to understand the mechanics of that because it's cool. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah.

Efficiency in Production Methods

00:37:30
Speaker
So anybody wants, if anybody's in the Midwest area and wants to come over on Wednesday, October 4th, you can email me or go to Reynolds machinery and sign up. It's a free event. What do you do today?
00:37:46
Speaker
Today, Norseman handles. See, I'm still making a lot of the Norseman the same way I've been making it for five years. Yeah. You know, piece by piece, batch work. I made, you know, eight blades yesterday and heat treat, you know, it's not efficient. So over the next few weeks, I'm making the big fixtures. But yeah, today's handles in single piece flow.
00:38:09
Speaker
Have you thought because we like two months ago we debated this idea of to summarize a pallet does every part of one knife versus a pallet does 50 of one part. Correct. What's your thought on that now?
00:38:26
Speaker
I'm a very big fan of One Piece Flow, where a palette does every single part to one knife. Because otherwise it's a bookkeeping thing of, oh, do you have enough of this? Oh, do you have enough of this? Oh, we have tons of this, but we have none of this. Whereas I set up the rasks to make two knives, every palette. I try to run it every single night when I go home. It's a three-hour run.
00:38:52
Speaker
and I come in in the morning like I come in in the morning and oh, the machine's off not beeping at me. So it was a successful ride. I love that. It's the first thing you, like unlocking the door and you're trying to listen to see if it's going to be a good morning or not. Exactly. And it's, it's never a bad morning, but it could be a little broken $10 end mill or something, but oh, it broke early on. So, you know, it's sitting all night and now I've got to spend two and a half hours today remachining it. Right.
00:39:19
Speaker
No but today was successful and now I've got two rasks done ready for me. That's awesome. So yeah I definitely want to get the Norseman set up that. I'm actually going to make four fixtures so I can have two on and two off. So I'm making four knives on and then you're also loading
00:39:35
Speaker
the four knives on the side so when you come in in the morning first thing after a night run if it was successful pull those ones off put these ones on warm it up hit go and you're rocking right away because loading these fixtures takes you know at least 15 minutes each fixture and that's time and then distraction too and you don't get around to it first thing and you know it's uptime is more important to us than cycle time
00:40:01
Speaker
It feels really good. We've got a video coming out on it, but we love, I freaking love, either what you just said on the VM3 for us where we've got a part ready to go, or we've been using the Pearson's on the VF2.
00:40:18
Speaker
double down yet and build duplicate fixtures, which is kind of the whole point of a Pearson to do the offline loading because we're still learning and I don't want to fail fast, fail cheap. I'm not going to make two or three until I've proven one out, but nevertheless, we can still swap between part A and part B.
00:40:35
Speaker
and you make better decisions when you know you can just sit the next one and hit go and then spend your time. Seriously, have a sip of coffee. Look through your desk, what needs organizing, start looking over these parts. It just is a very, I am in control feeling. Yep, otherwise you're frantically loading five minute cycles all day long and that's not efficient.
00:40:58
Speaker
Why don't you buy a chunk of Dura-bar or even aluminum and just machine some orange replica bases to put one or two more pallets on top of? You don't even need the lead screw. You could just use T-clamps or straps or clamp them straight down.
00:41:18
Speaker
Interesting. See, when you said that, I immediately thought there'd have to be bolts going through the top, which I don't have the real estate for. No. I'm sure there's a way to side clamp it. You produce a gallon of chips a year. You need accurate work holding, but you're not ripping through material. Seriously, you could have a couple little indentations on the side that you have some strap clamps that go into.
00:41:47
Speaker
I will think about that because I definitely thought about putting two more vices on the machine sooner rather than later and then maximizing running all the four pallets at night. I will make it for you if for some reason it's a problem for you to do it. That's easy. We have been ripping through making orange tops. It's awesome. Good. We've made a lot of them.
00:42:12
Speaker
Think about that. I will, for sure. I'll spend some time this weekend thinking about it. Speaking of machining, today, Renishaw is actually coming by. I've got three guys from the Toronto Renishaw office coming by because I asked them once. I was like, hey, do you guys do ball bar tests just out of curiosity? And I've become friends with all the guys here at Renishaw Canada.
00:42:35
Speaker
And they're like, yeah, all the time. Can we come by? And I'm like, yeah, can I film it? And it'll be fun. Hilarious. Yeah. Dude, awesome. They're going to come here. They're going to bring a ball bar. We're going to ball bar the mori. And we're going to film it. And we're going to have some fun. And we're going to see what the results are. I've never done it on the mori. And I've always been curious. They did it when they installed it, no?
00:42:59
Speaker
No. Really? No, not here at my shop anyway. Oh, sorry. Yeah, that's true. They do it hoses at the factory, but then I think they did it online at the shop, but I think that's because the AE and I were nerding out and he happened to have one with him.
00:43:15
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so I'm super excited to see that. And one of the guys is going to help me with lathe macros and probing on the lathe and things like that. Because in my mind, there's something wrong with the math of the probing offset updates on the lathe. Like, it's just not doing exactly what I want it to do. So we're going to run through line by line, layer by layer in the macros, and try to understand why I think there's a difference
00:43:42
Speaker
just minor, but enough for me to be confused. Seriously, it would not be crazy if you have used something that nobody else has ever used and thus exposed a bug. Well, they don't make a lot of probes for layouts. It's not a big thing. And I'm actually using
00:44:03
Speaker
the macro system for a Nakamura NTX, which is a mill turn lathe. So more of a milling machine, less of a lathe. And the layout of the code would be different from mine, and et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, it's a relatively new set of software. So it'll be fun. Interesting. Keep me posted. And you're going to put a YouTube video out, which will please everybody.
00:44:25
Speaker
I absolutely will. And yesterday, my brother-in-law came by, Meg's brother, and he is a world-famous paleontologist, and he goes all around the world to Sahara Desert, Mongolia, etc., and digs up dinosaurs. Three or four years ago, we gave him a Norseman to use as a digging tool, because he used to use a Swiss army knife and would break the tip off all the time.
00:44:46
Speaker
So we gave him a Norseman, and he has been abusing it like crazy for years. And he just brought it in for a quick little refurb. And it's missing a screw, and it's dull as heck. And it's gritty inside, because there's mudstone inside. But other than that, it's fantastic shape. So we did a video about that yesterday, too. That's super cool. And just him talking about it, and how he hasn't dug up a T-Rex skull yet, but he will. And he's keep digging. So that'll be a cool video.
00:45:13
Speaker
Dude, awesome. We are on vacation, unless I have to run. All right, sounds good. Enjoy your vacation. Say hi to the family. All right, take care. Crush it. See you. Thanks. Bye.