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Business of Machining - Episode 88
180 Plays7 years ago
:: Solving a toolpath mystery ::
:: The John Saunders Turkey Machine ::
:: Don't judge a fish by how it climbs trees ::
DEFINING BUSINESS OBJECTIVES Saunders asks himself, "What the heck ARE we?" Does having multiple areas of specialty dilute the business? After some revelatory conversations, he's "zeroing" in on what it means to be SMW.
"Daddy, I'm trying to find John Saunders Turkey Machine Shop." While enjoying the Canadian Thanksgiving festivities, Grimsmo's daughter, Claire, is on the hunt for a hilarious and totally under-rated video. Click The Image to Watch!
MACHINE SHOP LINGUISTICS Often, words lose their meaning and need updated to accurately reflect our ever-changing world. By changing the suffix, the word "Marketing" gets new life.
TOOLPATH MYSTERY SOLVED! The gradual arc on a GK knife handle goes from 1 line of G-code to 50, leaving behind noticeable facets that the guys have to buff out. Luckily, in this digital age, we can turn to the machining community to ask for help! Thanks to @laurenswijnschenk, the proverbial thorn in Grimsmo's side is gone. Check out his Instagram HERE!
BUST OUT THE FUSION 360
First, pull over and open your laptop! Have you ever used the "View Toolpath" feature in Fusion? If you haven't, you aren't alone!
IMTS 2018 - GET YOUR FIX The NYC CNC full length IMTS video hasn't been published yet but here are some shorter IMTS videos to tie you over!
Grimsmo Knives IMTS 2018 Day 1 - Becoming Swissish
Grimsmo Knives IMTS 2018 Day 2 - Small Booths
GRIMSMO KNIVES is HIRING Their "We're Hiring" video has been released to the interwebs but in order to be seriously considered, you MUST make a short video about yourself! A deep conversation ensues about the art of hiring employees that you don't want to miss!
Click the Image to Watch!
THERE MUST BE A FULL MOON Saunders is back in NYC, looking at a Mori Seiki SL-1A with FANUC control...but will the forklift have enough capacity to handle the instruction manuals?
Finally Got Some Green Tops! Grimsmo gears up to try out Helical tools for the first time.
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Transcript
Defining the Business
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, episode number 88. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. Morning, buddy. Good morning. How are you? I'm doing awesome today. I am even better than last week. Nice. Any shareable reasons.
00:00:17
Speaker
Yeah, I have had some really good sit downs with myself and then talking to my wife and other stuff about answering what was really like the certainly the question over the last year and maybe you could argue the question over the last 10 years, which is what the heck are we or am I?
00:00:38
Speaker
I don't like I because what we're doing is way bigger than just me now with the team here and that reach. Yeah, for sure.
Marketing and Branding Strategy
00:00:47
Speaker
What are we? Are we education platform? Are we a website? Are we a channel? Are we products? We've certainly bounced around on a few different things. I think
00:00:59
Speaker
I think there's probably been an argument that there has been a lack of, not a lack of focus, but an acknowledgement of a few too many different. Anyway, long story short, I've been trying to figure this out and it's never clicked. Sometimes you just are like, man, I can't.
00:01:14
Speaker
get it to click, but a close. And then earlier this week, I kind of morphed that daily focus Excel thing I was talking about. So in full disclosure, I kind of stopped using that for a few weeks, which bothered me. Ironically, I stopped using it because I didn't need it because I was actually very hyper focused on a few things, which is actually good. I think I needed daily focus because maybe I was spread too wide.
00:01:44
Speaker
I change that from Excel.
00:01:48
Speaker
into a PowerPoint, which is most people, myself included, usually shutter when you hear that. But this is good because it gives me a slide for each of these different things. So what's the overall little Saunders world? And then how do training classes fit into that? How does the YouTube channel fit into that? How does the website fit into that, the new thing we're working on? And then what's a fair representation of all those things? How do they work with each other?
00:02:18
Speaker
The biggest thing has been also, what do I want people to view them as from a sort of like a marketing? It's important to, I think you've done a great job of it, is the quality in your product speaks for itself, but you have been unapologetic about marketing that and showing people that.
00:02:37
Speaker
so that they realize what it's like to live in your head about the obsession, the perfection. It's not just one of those things where people happen to know Norsemen are well-made and they're making these observations. You're kind of steering. What is it? You can't make a horse drink water, but you can lead them there or something. You can lead a horse. That felt really good. So you are able to overarchingly understand what
00:03:02
Speaker
what you're aiming for and how to describe it to somebody because you put in a PowerPoint presentation, so it's like you're giving a speech, so you have to explain it, right? No, it's not quite like that. The reason I like it in PowerPoint is it let me pull in a couple of little ... You're going to laugh at a couple of pictures. It made it easier for bullet points. It's very much just an internal thing.
00:03:26
Speaker
The outcome of this, so this is something I really don't think will be what I call a living document. So I will probably use this for a couple of months, and then I'll be done with it. What I'm anticipating is come, I don't know, January or February, we're going to consolidate our marketing. So right now, if you go to our Instagram or our Facebook or our YouTube, there's different messages, different text or copy.
00:03:53
Speaker
I want to combine all that to say, hey, here's what we do.
Understanding Market and Audience
00:03:57
Speaker
I want to bring the YouTube channel back to being fun and entertaining, and say the educational stuff is over here on the website. And we're going to do a rebranding. It's not going to be huge, but it is going to be huge. Nice. Speaking of which, I'll let you finish that thought. Oh, no, just saying it quick. It's something where I will, I'll tell you more about it if you visit when you visit. Yes.
00:04:23
Speaker
It's something where I can look at any of my peers, customers, acquaintances, advisors, et cetera, and be like, I will sell you on this. I believe in this. I have a conviction in this. And before today, it's kind of like people would be like, what do you do? Or what's your YouTube channel about? And is there a YouTube channel about building Johnny Five robots or lathes? Or is it widgets? Or what is the YouTube channel? It's not a bad thing, but anyway. It's like you've got three or four different industries that you're
00:04:53
Speaker
You're trying to do at the same time and you can't really explain it in one sentence, the elevator pitch. Which do you say first? Do you say we're manufacturing, we're training, we're educational YouTube videos? Yeah, and so we figured that out. That's amazing. But as you know, darn it, this is now currently an idea with partial execution. Now, we got to execute. That's amazing.
00:05:19
Speaker
Sorry, speaking of marketing, last weekend, this past weekend was our Canadian Thanksgiving. OK. So we had a lot of turkey day with various family. And Clara says to me, we haven't talked about this in an entire year. She says to me, Daddy, I'm trying to find John Saunders turkey machine shop. Can you look this up? That's hilarious. Because she was searching for the words John Saunders
00:05:47
Speaker
Turkey machine or something and you have to search for NYC Turkey or something because you didn't tag your name it. It was like so funny. So we watched it again together and I'm like, this is gold, right? I really wish like at a personal level. I really wish that video had gone viral just because it was, I mean, you can't make a viral with the video with the intent of it going viral, but darn it. We had, and maybe it doesn't matter because we had fun doing it. Oh my God. Hilarious. Yeah.
00:06:17
Speaker
That's good. So good. Speaking of, why did you say marketing?
00:06:23
Speaker
You were talking about before. Oh, I thought you said. I am proposing that we, as in Western civilization, stop using the word marketing. OK. So I remember thinking that marketing was advertising when I was like in college taking these classes or whatever. And the reality is it's kind of could be, but it's a really a lot more. And I'm not a marketing guy, but
00:06:53
Speaker
things like trying to understand how to price your product as a marketing thing and understanding how to do A-B testing to like you run two different ads and you see which is better response, which is kind of advertising, but also like what's your market
00:07:06
Speaker
outreach. The word marketing I don't like because for me, as soon as I hear that word, I immediately just accept it for what I already think it is and I don't really comprehend. I've been talking to other people as I've been dealing with this thing about our overall structure, what we do. The word that I prefer
00:07:31
Speaker
is not a real word, but it's marketizing. So trying to break down who your customers are, which is ultimately one of the major goals of marketing and ties into why people will pay a certain price for your product or what it's worth to them and who your audience is. And so for us, that's a very much like, we have
00:07:53
Speaker
And there's no necessarily final answer. And there's different ways to slice and dice a market. But we have, I'm sure, part of our market is people that are just inspired by us. Some are actual Tormach owners. Some are Haas owners. Some are future owners. Some are people that want to be entrepreneurs. But it's such an important thing to understand who your market is. And when people say that, they just, I think, and I say this because I built you of it as well. You just think, oh, my market is
00:08:23
Speaker
Anyone who wants to make stuff,
Challenges in Market Definition
00:08:24
Speaker
well, that's not really an answer. Yeah, I have consistently struggled with answering that question. Who's your market? Who's your ideal customer? What kind of people buy from you? Things like that. And I still struggle with that answer. I don't have a good, like who spends $1,000 on a knife? I can't just be like hunters, because that's not even the answer.
00:08:48
Speaker
And it's like, well, anybody, doctors, lawyers, people who like nice things, people who appreciate the quality, people who follow our channel and like appreciate everything that we do, yada, yada, yada. That's the best I've got at this point. I still don't feel like it's the solid golden nugget answer. Yeah.
00:09:03
Speaker
And it's OK. You and I, the way we built our businesses by bootstrapping and organic growth and lower overhead, at least for a long time, means you let that process happen and evolve over time. But if you're going to flip that on its head and you're going to be one of those companies, I think about that. I think about companies that, after three years, have gone from non-existing to $150 million in revenue or something, these crazy tech type companies, not who we are.
00:09:32
Speaker
You know, those companies need to know that, need to execute on it. And for better or worse, that's one of the biggest things that your peers or partners or investors or whatever are going to be hammering on you about. It's not about the product. It's not even about the team at that point. It's understanding who your market is.
00:09:52
Speaker
What was your market and how can you help them? It's good. It's fun. It's good. Certainly something I think a lot about is value to the customer in any way, not just in the product, but in the marketing, in the marketizing, in what you're delivering to the customer from an experience, from an email perspective, from an after-sales support.
00:10:13
Speaker
and from a future entertainment value of watching your Instagram and your YouTube and things like that. So you develop this fan or this customer and how are you going to keep feeding them so that they stay a fan and a customer? It all becomes really important.
00:10:29
Speaker
I think you probably know a lot more about your market than you realize. And I don't know. I don't know. Is it a good use of your time to try to start a little marketing diary and start? Because I think if you write that stuff down, you'll do a better job of aggregating it at different points through your journey and life and mood. But I don't know what you see with it. You'll see it differently. Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:51
Speaker
Well, I mean, having at least more answers as to the direction of it might give me better marketing plays if I wanted to, you know, like run Facebook ads or something targeted against so and so. I mean, that's not a bad idea. If every time a customer emails me and be like, yeah, I'm a law enforcement officer, write it down.
00:11:17
Speaker
Or, I'm a doctor, I do this, or I like this, write it down, write it down, write it down, write it down, and then consolidate. Actually, it could be important because there is a difference between a pen price point and a regular Norseman and the whatever. Can you get over 2000 for a Norseman? Yeah, so that's a different audience. You would actually want to use a different marketing
00:11:44
Speaker
technique and buzzwords and what you're playing on there. Sure. Yeah, the Rob Report crowd versus the- Yeah. Is Rob Report still around? It is still around, yeah. Oh my gosh. Whenever we'd be in a hospital or a doctor's office lounge and when there's a kid and they had that, I remember looking at the cars and the classifieds. I know, of course.
00:12:06
Speaker
Yeah, that's funny. What else been going on?
Technical Programming Challenge
00:12:09
Speaker
Um, I've been super busy past week throughout the weekend, throughout the holidays on, what was it? On, on Friday morning, I got a little bit of work done on my computer and then I was like texting the shop and I was like, I'm going to be a little late. I'm just getting stuff done on my computer. And then I ended up staying home the entire day cranking out computer stuff. Um, I had this, you probably saw it on WhatsApp, but,
00:12:33
Speaker
I've got this arc on the back of our knife handles that keeps getting broken up into line segments. OK. So like, you know, 0.15 inch straight lines, facets, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. And I programmed it as this 45 inch arc radius. It should be one line of code. 45 inch? Is this a 45 inch diameter circle? Yeah, diameter or radius, I forget. Oh, whatever. Super gentle.
00:13:01
Speaker
Yes, super gradual. It should be one line of code to traverse like three inches, but it breaks it up into 50 lines of code. And you can see it in the part and it goes like line, line, line, line, line, line, line. It's been driving me nuts for months. Eventually, Lauren's in the Netherlands was, we were going back and forth with this and back and forth and he finally realizes, oh, it's the post that's screwing it up.
00:13:27
Speaker
because the max arc radius is a thousand millimeters, which is 39 inches. Oh, you're just over it. And I was trying to go 45 inches and the post broken arc up into line segments. And I was like, who would know this stuff? It was that simple. Yeah. So I haven't actually, I haven't made any parts yet with it, but I'm confident like the code looks perfect. It's going to be beautiful.
00:13:50
Speaker
Okay, so just because I'm trying to visualize this in my head, what you're trying to do is move what effectively looks like a straight line across, say, two inches, but it happens to be a really gentle curve, and you want the machine to do a G2 or a G3 move.
00:14:06
Speaker
So it's one line of code with whatever IJK along that curve. And instead, it's doing little chunk lines, little dots like move, move, move, G1, G1, G1, G1. Yeah, exactly. And you can see that.
00:14:22
Speaker
Yeah, and they're not little. They're 0.15 inch in length. So they're just over an eighth of an inch. And as you rotate the part through the light, it looks like shimmering, like the light reflects off the different surfaces. It's not much. Yeah, it's fascinating. It doesn't take the guys very long to polish out. And they do polish them all out. But I'm like, this is dumb. The machine should be able to make this perfectly. And I've programmed it to do so. Anyway, I haven't run it yet. But today, I should be able to run a test. And I'm excited for the results.
00:14:51
Speaker
What's interesting to me about that, and this is like 50% over my head, but I would have thought that smoothing would have ... I guess I thought smoothing was the last thing that happened, so I thought that smoothing would have overridden, because if subject to the smoothing intolerance, it could have ... I guess smoothing turns things into
00:15:13
Speaker
Ooh, I don't know the answer to this. Does smoothing only get rid of points with regard to G1 moves, like line moves, or will smoothing actually apply to arcs as well? Yeah, I think it wants to do more arcs than line moves. So if smoothing happened after the minimum arc radius, then I would think smoothing still would have satisfied. No, no. The minimum arc radius is in the post settings. OK, so that's the thing, is it happens after? Yep. Oh, OK. Interesting.
00:15:41
Speaker
Yeah, because I tried smoothing, no smoothing, tolerance, no tolerance, and I was still getting the same result. And then finally Lawrence was like, Oh, of course it's in the post. That helps a lot. Now I know the exact answer. Um, you know, it would be helpful for nerds like us would be some way of doing a chronology of, of the processes. So like,
00:16:05
Speaker
I'm going to create a cam hop and then I want to see the tool path points and lines in their purest form and then I want you to start applying the smoothing. What happens? Then the tolerance, like almost like you get indexed through and it just shows you like, okay, now I'm going to apply this. Now I'm going to apply this. Now I'm going to apply this because that all happens behind the scenes.
00:16:26
Speaker
Of course, all at once. Well, and we did look at the... Well, no, not all at once. I mean, it happens in progression in behind the scenes. True. Well, under current circumstances, you know, it looks like it happens all at once. Sorry, right.
00:16:40
Speaker
We did look at the Lawrence had me look at the tool path in fusion, where you can actually see the G1, G2, G3 output lines before it hits the post. And I'm like, it looks fine. It's one line, one radius, and then goes through the post and it spits it out different. You just did that in simulation. And if you right click on a tool path. OK. And you go to view tool path at the bottom. I'm doing this right now because I'm actually very curious about this.
00:17:10
Speaker
Stand by, folks. OK, so I'm in Fusion. I'm going to take an adaptive here. I'm actually playing with this SwiftCarb demo from IMTS. I got the file from somebody because we're doing our video and I wanted to show that. Did you see that demo?
00:17:26
Speaker
The switch car removal rates aren't are pretty impressive. No, it's so I want to make sure I had the correct. I think it's actually I have it here written down. It's worth it's worth it. It's worth a mention because it's in a Haas machine, too. So a machine that many of us have access to. It's not, you know, some rigged machine. See your old Swift car. Yes, I may have moved it all the way, but it was, I think, 100.
00:17:55
Speaker
I have to look for it in our IPS video. It was impressive. So I'm in a toolpath and I right click. Oh, view toolpath. I have never paid attention to that before. I know, right? Oh my God. Are you kidding me? So explain to the listeners what you're seeing.
00:18:12
Speaker
Okay, so I would recommend pulling over to the side of the road right now and pulling out your laptop. Right click view toolpath. I now have a table or a spreadsheet basically with each line.
00:18:26
Speaker
And there's no G or M codes. It's just the first move is a linear move. It shows the X, Y coordinates, Z, whether it's a rapid or ramp or cut, the feed rate and RPM comp. So it's just, it's almost like a plotting out each move. It's planning out each move. Yeah. Oh my gosh. This is obviously with smoothing and tolerance applied. Well, you say that obviously, I'm not sure I would have known that.
00:18:53
Speaker
That's a good point. I'm assuming, um, cause this is a generated tool path. And then, yeah, it just says like command. And then at the end, there's an end group and then a linear move and wow. Oh my gosh, in group and it's neat. And if you are, as you click on each line, it actually moves your tool in the simulation. Do you, did you see that? Yeah. I know.
00:19:21
Speaker
If you do, I've got the dual monitors here. I'm not sure, but that's helpful. I wish I could click on the points like you can in simulation and have it show that. I'll click on the model. But that is handy because you could be like, wait, which line is this? And then it'll move the tool to that spot.
00:19:41
Speaker
Actually, this is really not that much more info than when you go into Simulate and the second tab in Simulate is info, which I feel like a lot of people don't go to and they don't realize, okay, if I want to see, is that doing a feed in, a link in, or a wrap it in, or a ramp in, and what's the feed rate?
00:20:03
Speaker
Um, look at that and you're right. It is probably the exact same information. This is just more spreadsheet listed, which is nice for some other reasons. Yeah, I know. Absolutely. That's really cool. Yes. Thank you for, thank you for sharing it. So we did that actually help you figure this out.
00:20:20
Speaker
It did because it showed my move as one G2 arc radius. Oh. And it's like R45 or whatever. Right. And so I sent that to Lawrence and he's like, oh, duh. So wait, the freaking post was taking that and butch, literally butchering it. Yes. Literally saying. Literally cutting it up with the Norseman into different chunks. Oh my God. Wow.
00:20:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's been interesting to watching dr. Phil talk about the post stuff of like form tools and then complete or not complete and like how I'm still not in that world. The post stuff that we've done has been relatively minimal. Um, but it's a whole crazy world.
00:21:01
Speaker
Yeah, especially when you know in your brain, you're like, I should be able to do this. I just, how? And then you basically ask Lawrence and you figure it out. I posted that photo on Instagram last night. I'm on the advisory committee for the local machining high school program. And they've got a really nice shop with a bunch of manual machines.
00:21:21
Speaker
There's a whole bunch of factors at stake here. There's accreditation and curriculums and politics and bureaucracy. I think you have to be sympathetic to that to recognize how you do effectuate good over the long term. But the reality is you could make an argument that there's too much
00:21:41
Speaker
high-speed steel tooling on manual machines that isn't really what kids need now. This is a polarizing topic, and I think we should all remember we're all on the same page here. There's a lot to be said for the fundamentals. On the flip side, I think the favorite quote I heard, I think it was at an Autodesk thing that we were all hanging out at. I don't remember who said it, but
00:22:05
Speaker
The general gist of the quote was, I would rather hire a young person who had no clue how to tram a bridge port, but could make edits to a post. I know that's going to upset people. It's not to say that there isn't an important understanding of the feel of a machine tool, but there's also the innovation of technology and understanding what modern machining is and simulation. In one of our friend's shops, they've got their tool library nailed down, which
00:22:34
Speaker
for better or worse, generally eradicates the needs to understand what fees and speeds are dialing stuff in. What you need to do is you need to know how to freaking run hyper mill. It just probably means that being a machinist has a lot of different silos these days. It's like you were saying,
00:22:54
Speaker
A couple of months ago, I think you said is like, if you're 14 years old, learn hyper mill. That may not be the best career advice, but, um, right now there's some, I think apparently really high demand for some very complicated and cool camp stuff. Yes. Right. Right. Yeah. That's funny. Yeah. Um, speaking of which last week, Thursday, I think it was, we put up our hiring video. Yeah.
00:23:20
Speaker
Yeah.
Hiring Process Insights
00:23:21
Speaker
And we got some amazing responses. My favorite part that I was like, I hope this is going to work is I had people, I required that they did a two minute selfie video of themselves. Introduce yourselves. Tell me about yourself. You know, sell yourself. Yeah.
00:23:36
Speaker
And it was awesome watching through all these submissions, being like, this is amazing. This is like I'm sitting with the person for two minutes and they're elevating pitching me and everybody's nervous and everybody's, you know, but but they're doing it because it's like a little barrier to entry that I wanted to do. And I was like, yeah, filter, you know, obviously to work here, you have to be able to try it. And it was great. It was very enlightening and very clear that it was a good idea. Good. Yeah, it was awesome. So what's the next step?
00:24:06
Speaker
Next step is, here's a question. We had a lot of good submissions. We got one or two guys that are clearly at the top of the pack. It's only been six days. Do we wait longer or do we just go? This is the real world stuff here. You've got people's livelihoods at stake and this is stuff I don't take lightly.
00:24:26
Speaker
That's different because generally you and I get to live in the world of having fun and not necessarily worrying about this important stuff. You know what I mean? One of the good things that comes to mind is just keeping in mind that some really good people, they are good technicians, they're good team members, they have a good culture, they have a good fit.
00:24:48
Speaker
They may do really poorly if you were to bring them in and say, I want you to go kind of heads up against the other guy for a couple of days. I'm not saying that you were thinking of that, but it's something that's always just been fermented in my head about like, don't
00:25:04
Speaker
It's kind of like it reminds me of people that are incredible people and don't do well at standardized testing. Don't measure a fish by its ability to climb a tree. So I would say you should do more conversations with them, try to make sure they're themselves and not in interview mode, relaxed, fun, go bowling with them, come hang out in the shop for a couple hours. But then also, you probably shouldn't draw it out.
00:25:33
Speaker
You found a couple good people make the decision to move on. And then I also wonder at what point do you hire, you know, if you look at some of the people that you're interviewing and you're like, man, that person would be a great friend.
00:25:49
Speaker
you know, do you hire the friend even if he's qualified or do you hire the qualified guy that might not be your best friend? You know what I mean? I don't think that's even a question. No, I know. It's something that I was thinking about. You don't need to hire people. It's weird because you don't hire the friend. And I think it's something... Yeah, I agree. And you know, I've got Eric in on this decision too, because this person is going to be working with Eric almost the entire time. And
00:26:17
Speaker
You have to get along really well. If you don't get along, then it's not going to work. Eric's going to be his boss. Of all the different pieces of advice I've heard, you absolutely need to be willing to fire the person if they don't do well or fit. That's actually something I hadn't thought about yet.
00:26:40
Speaker
And you should tell them that, not as a threat, as a very like, there are companies that refuse to fire people because they think it's a point of pride. And the reality is that means you're a weak manager, you have a weak culture, and you're unwilling to make decisions that are better for the company and for all the other people because you just want to have some arbitrary metric about not, like it's actually better for the person that's been fired as well to not be. Yeah, if they're not a good fit and if nothing else.
00:27:08
Speaker
That's different than saying we're going to take the bottom 10% every year and fire your butt. That's different. Companies do that. You should tell that person. It's one of the things we talk about when we bring someone on board is, and I borrowed this from Jay Pearson, was our pep talk about why you're here and what we believe in and what we expect of you and what it's like to work here and just to say, look,
00:27:33
Speaker
If you make a mistake, we want to understand it so we can all learn. I don't want you hiding things. I really don't ever get upset about things like broken tools or just goofs. And we talk about, I'm fine if you want to try something new, but you need to think about the consequence. If it doesn't go well, is it going to hurt you or somebody or damage something really expensive? That's something you need to think about or ask me. But otherwise, I want you to feel comfortable trying something.
00:27:59
Speaker
And then I just say, basically, we have a policy about disciplinary actions or writing up, which are the more you did something really wrong, but not fireable. And then I said, the only two reasons that we would immediately fire you are for theft or deliberate damage to something.
00:28:16
Speaker
But you would just say that it's not a personal thing. It's very upfront and very clear. If you steal or you intentionally crash a machine, like intentionally, because you do whatever. Cause damage or take a hammer to something. You will be terminated. Pursue it to employment laws. You will be terminated immediately. Sure.
00:28:36
Speaker
That's a really good pitch you got there. I like it. And to have that laid out and to say that in the hiring process or the final interview or whatever, just sets the ground rules. It sets the boundaries. Yes, this is a serious place. Right. Yeah. You've already made this decision, dude. I think so. It's nervous. Yeah, exactly. The first time you've hired somebody that wasn't an organic
00:28:59
Speaker
Exactly.
Reflections on Hiring Decisions
00:29:01
Speaker
We reached out. We had a bunch of applicants. We're choosing the best fit. Yeah, that is the first time we're doing this. So it's different, yet still, I have done this before. Right. So in your head, hire each person in your head, extrapolate it out two weeks, two months, two years, and think about what it's like. Like I said, I think you probably already know what the right decision is. Yeah.
00:29:26
Speaker
And look, you're not going to bat 100 over the next 10 years. You're going to get some bad hires. That's the funny part. It's OK. Right. That's OK. And that's the fast you do it, the fast you'll learn. I feel like we can probably talk about this now, because it's been, geez, almost two years. But I let somebody go.
00:29:43
Speaker
Um, it was tough. Um, it was tough. And I think I probably out of that have more conviction about the process now. Um, but right, but it was the upfront process. Yeah, exactly. Um, did you wait too long to fire them?
00:29:59
Speaker
I was hoping it would solve itself for looking for an excuse to do so. I knew earlier. I don't think I'll wait as long in the future. I don't know. Yeah. It's tricky, right? In the future, would you bring those kind of issues up sooner and try to deal with them? Or would you realize sooner that this really isn't working out? Or can you fix it?
00:30:26
Speaker
This is complicated stuff. I do think there's an obligation.
00:30:30
Speaker
There's a lot of different things at stake here. And one of the things I hope to take to my grave is a group of people having been through our shop and proud that they went through it, even if it was hard on them or even if it was tough. And that was, from the best of my experience and knowledge, something my grandfather offered to a lot of people when he ran his fabrication shop was,
00:30:57
Speaker
a lot of people who are sort of said everything from he taught me a lot to he gave me an opportunity to he frankly set me straight on life or got my butt in gear and a lot of different really positive reactions and comments from people. So sure, there's some people I guess that probably should be just purged or moved on from, but there's some times where you owe it to somebody to either
00:31:22
Speaker
either give them, it's a combination of either giving them a second chance or just making it really, really, really clear.
00:31:29
Speaker
What needs to come from them and why it's not happening. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's super beneficial, laying out the expectations throughout the career, throughout the process, so that they realize they're still not meeting the expectations. I hired you for this kind of thing. Are you now thinking, not necessarily to live up to your grandfather's shoes in a sense, but you have the ability to have people say that about you throughout their life?
00:31:59
Speaker
Do you think about that? Oh yeah. And look, we have a couple of the individuals that have moved on under all good circumstances. I've run into their family members and other people they've worked with and they've gone out of their way to pull me aside to say how much they appreciated the chance. They really looked up to me, really thought it was an incredible experience, really helped prepare them for the next thing. All stuff that
00:32:24
Speaker
It warms your heart, reaffirms what you're doing, just really good stuff. That's the goal. That's amazing. Right. That's what it's all about.
Upcoming Projects and Equipment
00:32:39
Speaker
What are you up to this week? What's going on today? I got so much stuff on the go right now, which is good. It's really good. Specifics. I think I mentioned it last podcast, but October is a huge month for us.
00:32:54
Speaker
Not only are we trying to hold our production numbers and squeak them better, we're working on the new lapping machine should be here in 10 to 15 days. Exciting. Which is good. Waiting to hear back test results on the fine grinding machine. Oh, the Rhode Island machine. OK. Yeah, exactly, the subpoena. Are you going to go down there? One of my buddies texted me Friday morning as he's listening to the podcast. And he's like, oh my gosh, I have so many questions. Awesome.
00:33:23
Speaker
Um, I don't know if we will go down there because the, the guy that's, you know, my guy there, um, he's going to Germany for work for two weeks, but his interns should be able to run the test parts for us while he's gone. And the timing doesn't work. And I'm like, if I do get the machine, I want it like end of October, not late. I don't know. We'll figure something out. Um, yeah, we might go down there still. I think it would be good, good investment of time. And,
00:33:50
Speaker
things like that to go down there and see and meet everybody. If you're asking my opinion, which you didn't, I would second that. Even if it's a day trip to meet people. Yeah, exactly. The faces, see the shop, just ugh. And see the machine run and get to see it and feel it and smell it and see how to do it. Yeah, I think the investment there would be no brainer. So we should try to make that work.
00:34:15
Speaker
Yeah, and then Amish is making my pallets right when he comes back from his trip. I think he's on vacation again. Again, jeez. I think this one's only two weeks. I think Airbnb limits the amount of days you can use on the website per year.
00:34:34
Speaker
No, I mean, I'm, I'm happy for him that he can, uh, he can take that time out as family. And so we got to make a bunch of clamps, um, that we're going to need for all those pallets, which is good. And what's that other thing in the higher, we got to figure that out. So probably make progress on that today. And I feel like there's one more thing. Why is it because somebody else making the clamps?
00:34:57
Speaker
Angelo and I are going to do it together. I could have spent some time with Angelo and actually get him more fusion trained. He's got tons of experience with like SolidWorks and Mastercam and things like that. We just haven't sat down together and like done it. And I feel kind of bad about that, but I want to because I know he's got the skills. He just needs to apply it here and we will.
00:35:21
Speaker
So yeah, maybe we should do that today. And then I've got a bunch of little projects that I've designed and want to make. No. You just try to sneak that in at the end there. No, no. Make a five or 10 minute video for Angelo on something in Fusion and then give it to him and then let him go run with it. That's a good idea.
00:35:43
Speaker
I found that it's much more productive and it lets people working there in styles versus me grabbing somebody. We've got a new guy here, Josh, who just started and it's like, I don't want to sit down with him and like start giving him individual fusion lessons because it's not a scalable technique and it's actually not good for either one of us. But what's much better is if I walk him through something and he can watch it, rewind it, practice it, look something he's going to pick up right away, some things are going to take longer.
00:36:13
Speaker
That's a great idea. And it's scalable because then you could show the same video to the next guy. Love it. Good. Yep. Oh, I'm actually trying. I've never used, um, helical end mills, but I finally bought some green, green, and, uh, looking forward to trying these seven flute, uh, variable, two different coatings, ones and out in coding. And then the other is like their T plus max something gold. Um,
00:36:40
Speaker
looking forward to trying that along with the new smooth tool paths on the handles. Oh, nice. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. We ran a helical test. I think we put on Instagram and I was, I was, I mean, there's lots of great tooling out there, but I was impressed. I was, whew.
00:37:00
Speaker
I think we were pulling for material removal or? This was a roughing tool. So we just set up, I use their machine and advisor pro, which is funny how the speeds and feeds that they gave on their PDFs are, they were, so, okay.
00:37:19
Speaker
The material removal rate on the PDF starting speeds and speeds would have been like four or five cubic inches a minute, which is anemic. It's like an asthmatic breeding through a straw. I want something real. So I pulled up the EDP number in Machine Advisor Pro and just turned all the knobs to 11. And we run a comparable tool, so I know what we should be able to get out of the machine and the material and all that. It's for the 4140 stuff for the mod vices.
00:37:47
Speaker
The first test I ran was 19 cubic inches a minute. It was, it was, uh, and actually Tyson lamb has been doing a similar ish thing for his in 303 stainless with the helical stuff, but it was like super light with the cut. So maybe maybe 10% with the cut, but seven foul feed per tooth and 300, which is 350 inches a minute. And it just looked great and sounded great and great chipper. I mean, everything so far was great about it.
00:38:18
Speaker
Sweet. It's fun. It's fun. Yeah. Cool. What we're getting with the tool that this is replacing tends to streak. So we've got these lines going around the outside of the handles and the blades because of microchipping in the tool or something like that. So I'm really trying to find the right tool that will avoid that. Can you see that in the microscope? I can see it by eye. OK. Is it the carbide or the coating?
00:38:47
Speaker
I don't know. It's a good question. The coating is apparently like a micrometer. It's like nothing. There's like no thickness. I remember asking that at the Sandvik tour. I was like, do you change the grind diameter based on the anticipated coating? Because if you grind it to a half inch and then you add a coating, guess what? It's not a half inch anymore. And they're like, no, it's not thick enough to do that.
00:39:11
Speaker
Okay. So it's not like too dense. Not even. I thought it was like, I thought I read that before. I could be wrong or it could be different coding. I might be more thinking of a DLC, like a decorative application or a heavy use application, not so much end mills. Fun. What are you working on today?
00:39:33
Speaker
I am tying up some loose ends on a couple of fun little projects, and then I am off to New York City tonight. Yeah. Nice. So looking at going to tour a couple of factories, which are super cool and exciting in film, and then seeing some friends and looking at that lathe.
00:39:55
Speaker
Yeah. Yes. Welcome to my world. Oh, my God. It's like so weird because it's like I'm trying to figure out what the best meme is for this because it's like I'm going back to New York City. I'm going to look at a lathe and I may be bringing Fannock into my shop, which that's enough. That's enough for it if there ever was one.
00:40:12
Speaker
Yeah. The rigging is the concern, not because of the machine, but we don't have a forklift with enough capacity to handle all the FANAC instruction manuals. Nice. What year is the lathe? It's like a Grimms-Mossander's birthday type of thing. I think it's early 80s. Seriously?
00:40:32
Speaker
That is old. Actually, that's something I'm going to have to chew on is I believe there's a set identical machine except it's the one that has the ASNOC controller and it's not working and thus effectively for scrap. No one's going to spend 20, 30 grand to retrofit these things.
00:40:54
Speaker
If we end up buying, taking whatever the working one, do we also pay to rig the non-working one for non-electric spare parts? I don't think so.
00:41:09
Speaker
If anyone's listening to this, I would actually welcome it. It's a Maury SL1A, late, I believe mid 80s, runs every day, works great. We readily acknowledge the realities of the old machine and potential electronics or other problems. But that's the question, is do we take the gas knock one as well?
00:41:35
Speaker
They are the same lathe. I believe so. Right. Hopefully, same part. It is an older machine. Yeah. The only scenario in which I would regret it would be if it was somehow the rigging and moving of it itself meant it never worked here. It just showed up and something had got bumped. If it runs for two months and then breaks, we'll figure it out.
00:42:01
Speaker
Yeah. Awesome. Cool. I will talk to you next Wednesday. Sounds great. Everybody crush it. OK. Yeah, you do. Have a great day.