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Business of Machining - Episode 29
225 Plays8 years ago
"I've felt what drowning feels like and it sucks." Grimsmo's pushing full steam ahead but is it enough to meet the deadline? Reducing Stress = Immediate Relief, right? Not exactly. Unfortunately, ANY change in your normal stress level can leave you feeling worse because it's not what you're used to. Saunders grapples with finding a new norm. How do you pay Uncle Sam and what do they call it in Canada? Paying sales taxes in their respective countries is different but do they agree on the notion of getting financial business advice and what to do with it? Saunders and Grimsmo discuss BORING BAR pre-machined surface sensitivity, process reliability, and faking it 'til you make it. In this case a wrong CAN make a right. Keeping up on social media platforms is tedious but with a few hacks, you can stay on top of your game. #toomanyhashtags #watchyourfingers Now Trending: Can't high five a friend because you're far away? E-FIVES are the next best thing. Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes to get your chance to talk with the co-hosts!
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Transcript
Introduction and Pleasantries
00:00:01
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining episode 29. My name is John Grimsmough. And my name is John Saunders. Good morning, bud. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing great. Yeah? Yeah.
Progress on Rask Knives
00:00:13
Speaker
It's been a crushing week in the good sense. OK. Absolutely just crushing it. I think I have like three parts left to make for all the rask knives. And then I'm completely caught up. Serious? Yeah.
00:00:28
Speaker
Oh, that is awesome. Yeah, I have like one blade and two time ask his handles to finish up, which should be today. Wait, and then is it just finishing like the Eric side, the grinding package, all that? Yeah. Yeah. So then all like.
00:00:42
Speaker
I've spent the week organizing through all the orders. It's a complicated list of one person wants this, another person wants this. And I'm always emailing people, and they're changing their minds. And that's part of the process. And I've allowed it to happen. And I'm kind of OK with it. But it's time consuming. No. No. We should talk about that, but OK.
Stakeholder Feelings and Production Goals
00:01:02
Speaker
Well, anyway.
00:01:04
Speaker
It's nice to finally wrap my head around it and print off little order slips for everybody, and organize their parts together, and send the parts off to Eric. And I think last week or something, I told you we had a list going with the target for the end of the month. Today is the 11th, and we're halfway through that list. Yeah, that's what I can't. I mean, this is uplifting to me. You know, it's funny. Can I say, I guess, I talk about this.
00:01:34
Speaker
in a couple of different examples of speeches I've given where there's employees, there's shareholders in the actual legal equity owner sense, but then there's stakeholders. And I feel like I'm a stakeholder in Grimsmough Knives, you know what I mean? I claim no right to any ownership. It's just that I feel like I'm so invested in your journey. That's awesome. How are you...
00:01:57
Speaker
How are you this far, I'm misunderstanding, how are you this far ahead? Because your goal was all of these nines by the end of the month. Yes, and I think we are on clear track to demolish that goal. And I think we were talking after the podcast last week and you were trying to reel me back to reality, like maybe don't assume that you're going to double your previous monthly output this month, but we're going to.
00:02:25
Speaker
Yes. And just so folks know, we're recording this on August 11. So you've got 19 days to do, I'm sure, no doubt, a ton of work. But nevertheless, that execution risk percentage, the odds makers would be ever in your favor at this point. Yeah.
00:02:45
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm happy and things are flowing and it's finally like we're crossing the hurdle, the hill, and we're just, you know, I can just see the top of it and then once we get to the top, it's going to be a whole
Future Plans and Production Focus
00:02:59
Speaker
new world. And it's like we're kind of thinking it as as Grimms One Eyes version two, you know, the business is going to start anew come September because
00:03:07
Speaker
Because we're not buried. We're not working to catch up. We're working ahead. So we're not counting down the knives anymore. We're now counting up. How many can we do in a month? Not how many did we do? You know what I mean? Well, so do you want to talk about that? What is, are you going to build inventory and then release it for sale? Or are you going to pre-sell in smaller batches? Yeah, I've put a lot of thought into this. And obviously, the customers are asking about it constantly. And I'm always trying to formulate my response to them, but also in my own mind.
00:03:37
Speaker
The plan for the next four months for the rest of the year is to focus primarily on what we're calling Maker's Choice Knives. So we have a list on our website and we basically said sign up to this list if you want to find out when a knife is available.
00:03:54
Speaker
not custom ordered, just whatever specs we choose it to be. And we'll randomly use a randomizer and we'll randomly pick a name and email you a picture of the knife at a price. And if you want it, it's yours. If not, you go back in the list and the next person gets it.
00:04:10
Speaker
Because we have a gigantic demand for our knives, we can't just open up the orders and take orders again, because that's stupid. I would drown in orders, and I've felt what drowning feels like, and it sucks, and I'm not going to do it again. Now, this is not the best solution for the customers, I don't think, because we've done so many custom orders in the past, and everybody wants the custom order, and they kind of know what they want, and I want to provide that experience for them.
00:04:36
Speaker
But we got to spend the next four months and hustle and prove to ourselves what we can do on our own terms. And then we can kind of creep back into custom orders, very small batches, very quick turnaround time and ever revolving something like that. So that's kind of my plan.
Challenges in Managing Projects and Focus
00:04:52
Speaker
What's not funny is I had a pretty crummy week and part of
00:04:58
Speaker
What I've been doing is acknowledging I've got too much on my plate. And so then what do you do first? I don't want to talk to you about this, but this idea that you kind of lock down what you know you can do what you're good at. And look, I'll be honest. Both of us run businesses now. I'm not going to apologize for saying, hey, I need to lock down the thing first that I know generates cash for us or generates profits. Get that kind of going on autopilot.
00:05:27
Speaker
And then you can dip back into the sort of the risky stuff, the R&D stuff, the stuff that has a longer cycle to it. But it's frustrating because I wanted to do it all. And it sounds like you're doing, if I can put words here about the same thing, where you're like, let's go through four months of crushing it on operations, maker's choice. It's not like you're doing maker's choice to give people knives they don't want. It's just, hey, we're going to own this process, nail it down, and then, yeah.
00:05:56
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, so that we can improve the process continually and so that we can prove to ourselves what our capacity is. Right. And, you know, streamline things because we've been so up and down and so, you know, everything comes in waves and we run out of material and then we have to spend 10 or 20 grand to get more material. And, you know, it's that is dumb and it needs to be a streamlined process. So we're going to focus. But I want to ask you about
00:06:22
Speaker
OK, so you are realizing that you're overwhelmed, and yet you've spent the past year, what do you call it? Well, you're hiring people. So you've got Julie now, you've got several employees, and you're already delegating a lot of your responsibilities that you used to have before, and you're still feeling stretched. So talk to me about that. Yeah.
00:06:44
Speaker
I think it's temporary, I know it's temporary, and some of it's actually, it's the fact that I did all that, it's the fact that when it's just your own one man band or a couple people, all of whom can play all different roles.
00:07:00
Speaker
Then you don't end up with this situation where the people that are on the team here that work around get these projects to a point where then I need to get back involved. So we're trying to roll out a new product, that means. And there's been a lot of work that's done on it. It's going super well.
00:07:20
Speaker
I'm still the guy who's gonna weigh in on the fixture. I'm still the guy who's gonna weigh in on the packaging, on the whole, that's what I'm good at. Actually, it's not that I'm good at packaging per se, but it's like, that's my job as the, and I mean this in both the good and the bad sense of the term, but I'm the smartest guy in the room. I'm the one who's gonna tie this all together, like hey, okay, here's how we're gonna include the instructions, here's how we're gonna include accessories and fasteners, here's how we're gonna package it, here's how we're gonna fixture it, and here's how we're gonna order the material,
00:07:50
Speaker
set all that up give people that process get that it's almost like we're I'm trying to franchise the product from the start not because I intend to franchise it but because everything I've learned that's by far the best thing I like to make it in a manner that's very obvious
00:08:06
Speaker
And what happens is we basically have three different things, three different discrete projects that came to that point about the same week where I need to be, each one of them is probably more than a full-time job. I could spend 40
Hiring and Growth Strategy
00:08:26
Speaker
days, 60, 70 hours a week on each one of them and
00:08:30
Speaker
When I was on up at Tormach for the open house, and then my wife and I took a little two-day vacation, I just had all this stuff churning in my head. And I'm thinking about how I'm going to allocate a little bit of time to each one. And that was just dumb.
00:08:46
Speaker
Well, it's like we saw in that McDonald's movie, The Founder, where the guy is the orchestrator. He's got all these ideas, and he kind of passed it off to the minions to actually do the work. Do you find yourself doing the work, or just kind of formulating it, orchestrating it, driving the bus, knowing the path, but then delegating the task? Or are you still pulling back these tasks?
00:09:11
Speaker
No, I've been doing that, but like in that movie as well. I mean, it wasn't the—he created this—well, either the two original McDonald's brothers or Ray Kroc, the sort of successor.
00:09:27
Speaker
you know, those guys were very good at creating systems and structures for others to follow. Whether it's the like literally 16 year old working for a minimum age sweeping or whether it was a regional manager who had much more decision making but nevertheless operated within the parameters of a system that they created. But you know, Ray Kroc was the one that came up with this idea of hey,
00:09:54
Speaker
Let's force the franchisees to basically buy the, we're going to force feed them the real estate. They have to buy it and we sell it back. You know, there's that kind of higher level planning that still happened. Would this all help if I had a really, I'm not there yet, but would this be better if I had a really, really good, it's a second John, somebody who had
00:10:17
Speaker
Our skill sets, I think that's tough for me because that takes a while to nurture and that person probably won't stay. It depends, but someone that has that sort of ambition or drive may be a great opportunity for a year or two.
00:10:33
Speaker
And maybe I'm making a mistake. Maybe I should turn that into a priority. But again, as you know, it's not, you don't just, that's not how, unfortunately it's not. I used to think as a kid that when you were a business, like when you were a real company, you just got what you wanted. Like you just were like, I want a inventory system and you just said so. And it just, you know what I mean? Because you're like, you're not your business. And it's no different.
00:10:54
Speaker
If you ever did a project in high school where you had to go do a pretend business plan or do something, it always felt like it was so hard because you didn't know anything and you were just trying to go do research or talk to people. And in some respects, what changes when the business is maybe the network of people you know, which I leverage and use all the time. But on the flip side, it's just the same.
00:11:21
Speaker
Yeah, there's not the magic that you assume there would be. Right. Snap your fingers, and yeah. Anyway, so my thought was forget about, so it's like, here's what I do when I think about, when I struggle with this, is I take a deep breath, and then I say, look.
00:11:39
Speaker
John, if you were an investor, if you were someone that wanted to invest in a company or buy a company, look at this, what you're doing right now. Would you buy the company that was focused on doing this one thing and doing it the absolute best and crushing it?
00:11:55
Speaker
Or would you buy the company that's like, hey, we're multi-tracking, parallel tracking, three different projects, spreading ourselves thin, and we should get them all done okay enough, but then we'll just, like, no. Like, that helps make it clear. So then do you abandon the projects? Do you just put it on hold? Do you try to outsource even more? And I actually have done.
00:12:18
Speaker
Even outsourcing takes work. But I basically have front loaded the one that I'm closest to. It's the easiest for me to get my work done on and then push it off to the guys in the shop to run with. And then that'll free up my time to work on the other one. And then the third one will just have to wait. Kind of simple.
Handling Stress and Business Challenges
00:12:38
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it is a balance because you want to internally create multiple revenue streams, a diversity of products so that
00:12:48
Speaker
You know, if one gets slow and the other kind of, you know, it all works together. You don't just want to bank on one thing, but on the other hand, have you exhausted the potential of the one thing or are you kind of moving on too quickly, you know?
00:13:03
Speaker
Right. Right. And it's also, I don't know if this is a... We get bored, you and I. Right. Yeah. No, I don't get bored. I haven't had that problem in a while. No, I know. But bored of the one thing, you want to move on to the next thing. You want to design a new product. You want to figure it out. You've got three new products you've been designing. Because not to say that you were bored of the first one, but that you've already moved on.
00:13:27
Speaker
It's tough too because two of the three, I hate talking in like, I hate talking in vagueness terms like this, but two of the three really require a lot of critical thinking. So that's draining, it's fun, I love it, I wouldn't trade it for the world, but it's draining.
00:13:46
Speaker
And look, I don't know, I struggle with this a lot. I like being positive. I'm not interested in dragging you down or anybody else, because that's just not fun. On the flip side, I hate the BS when people just say everything's happy and good and great.
00:14:02
Speaker
But that's not how it works. I don't know. You do a good job of balancing, and I know. But I know sometimes you're probably a little bit more stressed than you let on. So what's that appropriate? Be wholesome. Be a good person. Be honest. But also, darn it, we're all pretty lucky to do what we do. Yeah, exactly. So you don't want to, you know, there is a lot of stress and worry that goes with the game. But you don't want to kind of show it too much, because you don't want to seem ungrateful for what you have. Right.
00:14:30
Speaker
But it's there, it's real. I do struggle with it a lot more than I show. But it's my life. Four years ago, when I was still at a day job, this is what I wanted to do. And God, if you told me,
00:14:50
Speaker
This is so weird to say, but if you told me on paper I'd be in a 10,000 square foot facility with all these C and T milling machines running a training program, running products, running a job shop, six employees. We hit our 2016 numbers a month ago.
00:15:09
Speaker
basically halfway through the year. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. And I didn't even, I'm not even trying. Like that's not, I would almost rather, it's not that it's growing out of control, but that's not my goal. That's not what I need to do. There needs to be some growth because we've increased payroll and thus there's more work going on and so forth, but. Right, right.
00:15:27
Speaker
I'm very conscious of this idea of deliberate growth or deliberate, not even growth, but just a simple deliberate path of this is what we're going to do. We're going to keep it under control. You don't want stagnation, but I don't have interest in doubling. It feels like I don't have interest in doubling the workings. You know what I mean? Anyway, life is good. It was just a tough couple of days. Being away, I didn't have a great time.
00:15:56
Speaker
I don't know why. I think I don't do idle very well. And so we had a good time, don't get me wrong, and I enjoyed it. But I wanted more. For me to relax, I really prefer someone to say, hey, here's what you're doing. You're going to do a bus tour or a boat tour. You're going to do a museum. Just waking up and being like, hey, what do you want to do today? I don't want to think. I just want to sightsee and relax.
00:16:21
Speaker
and not worry about decision making. Yeah, exactly. Adding more decision making. That's all good. Hey, I want to go back to a topic that we briefly touched on last
Financial Aspects of Machinery and Tax Rules
00:16:34
Speaker
week. And I'll throw some stuff out and chime in if you want to. But you and I have both now moved from the hobby stage to the real stage. And one of the biggest things we've done is we bought equipment. And that equipment tends not to be inexpensive. And there's ways that you can
00:16:50
Speaker
buy it, you can lease it, or you can finance it, and there's a difference between all of those three. And this kind of goes back to one of those things that gets super stressful, because if you don't have the right people on your team, whether that's an accountant or a third party or a tax person, the consequences can be crazy. But like in the US, when you
00:17:09
Speaker
Depending on how you buy the machine, you've got the rights to either bonus depreciation or what's called Section 179, which I believe is accelerated depreciation. And that stuff really, really, really matters to the tune of ensuring, and likewise in the U.S.,
00:17:26
Speaker
Anything directly related to manufacturing is, this is state by state, but I believe it's the case in all states, is sales tax exempt. So for me, buying tooling is sales tax exempt, but for instance, something silly, like maybe if I buy paper towels that are used specifically to clean the machine, they're exempt. But the paper towels and the mops, just for the general shop, I don't think our sales tax is exempt.
00:17:52
Speaker
So you still pay sales tax when you buy the items, but you get it back on your your forms, right? Nope. In the U.S., you have a vendor's you get a vendor's license. And so like my Uline account. So Uline is a big company where we buy boxes and other stuff. And so boxes are sales tax exempt because that's considered to resell the box effect. Oh, I hope that's right. Right. It's part of what it's part of what gets resold.
00:18:18
Speaker
I'm not reselling, I'm not in the box business. And again, I don't want to, this is dangerous, I don't want to sit here and tell people how sales tax laws work. But nevertheless, we with our accountants help fill out the Uline sales tax form and they're unique because they sell such a wide breadth of product that
00:18:34
Speaker
So when I go to buy Uline, if I place a $1,000 Uline order, there may be like $6 of sales tax because one random thing I bought, for example, had sales tax, but everything else did not. So we don't pay it and recoup it. It just gets never collected.
00:18:55
Speaker
Because in Canada, as I understand it, we do pay it. And then we file it with our accountant as tax exempt tools, items, et cetera. And then we get it back. We get a refund, basically, from the government for all the HST, the Harmonized Sales Tax, that we pay, which here in Ontario is 13%. How much is it? 13%. Yeah, that's like a that, really. I mean, it's double. Yeah.
00:19:20
Speaker
Huh. So do you get it back kind of right away, or is it like an annual thing? Annual. That's absurd, John. I can file quarterly, but often I've been super lazy and just file annually. But then you get a nice little refund at the end of the year, but it's money you've paid out. And because these things are tax exempt, you just get it back. But yeah.
00:19:44
Speaker
Yeah, a friend of mine used to sort of joke, like, I have no interest in making a zero interest loan to the government. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's precious money. So folks, I guess the lesson is don't listen to, well, take it, your job as an entrepreneur in general is to get advice from everybody you can, but then
00:20:01
Speaker
The trick is not that. The trick is then to figure out what advice to listen to. So yes, talk to your machine reseller, talk to other business owners, et cetera. But at the end of the day, stuff like that needs to be answered by somebody who actually knows what the blank they're talking about.
00:20:17
Speaker
And a lot of time, that relates to someone who's a full-time accounting. Like when we bought a piece of fab equipment a while back, I wasn't 100% sure. And it ended up being the first piece of equipment that we had bought within the state of Ohio, new. And so I was like, crud, I got to figure this out to make sure you don't cheat the tax man, like pay your taxes. But I was like, I really don't want to pay tax on this if I legally don't have to. And that's what forced me to finally. Right, know your rules. And yeah. Right, right.
00:20:47
Speaker
Yeah, and talk to as many different people as you can, both from other shop owners, other business owners. I talked to my dentist, my chiropractor, and my accountant as well. And everybody knows something different. You, as the entrepreneur, have to compile all the information. And you find these other things that not everybody knows about, because this one dude knows about it, but doesn't know about it in this industry. And you can apply it to that industry. And yeah.
00:21:13
Speaker
Apple computer, I just set up a sales tax exempt with. That's legitimate. I use my laptop for work laptop. And then Amazon. I mean, I run. I was just going to say, other than work, what else do you use your laptop for? Like nothing.
00:21:28
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. It's hilarious. I'm literally, I need to buy, this stinks, I need to buy a new computer for home, a new computer for my shop, and a new laptop. And I'm like, no, I want to spend the money elsewhere because I can kind of live with this for a while. But no, Amazon as well. We try to buy everything we can from McMaster and Amazon. And I, for years, just paid sales tax on Amazon because
00:21:54
Speaker
It was death by 1,000 cuts. I didn't care. But I bet you I spent $5,000 in sales tax at Amazon over the last few years. And I finally went through and filled out the tax exemption requirements with Amazon so that we don't have to pay sales tax on stuff that qualifies. That doesn't change all the old orders that you've already done. It's from here forward, right? Correct, correct.
Machining Precision and Techniques
00:22:20
Speaker
Anyway, okay, I need your help. How much, do you ever use a boring bar in a mill? No. Do you ever, you use them in a lathe, I assume all the time. Oh, a boring bar, I thought you meant a boring head. Yeah, I do use it in the lathe.
00:22:42
Speaker
Well, what I meant by a mill was a boring bar inside of a boring head, yes. OK, how much deflection and or how reliant is the boring bar's accuracy or nominal diameter dependent on the pre-machine? So for me, it's like how much do I pre-drill or pre-interpret, or for you, how much stock is left on the round part? How sensitive is to that? Critical.
00:23:12
Speaker
It is. Yeah, your rough to your finish ratio will absolutely affect your final size. Doesn't that really take away a lot of the mojo of having a boring bar? Because the whole point of a boring bar, yes, concentricity, but also super, super, super accurate. But if the accuracy is stacked such that the pre-bore diameter is off, then my boring is off, well, then what the heck's the point?
00:23:40
Speaker
Yeah, it sucks. Could you interpolate the whole? We are. Yeah. Well, so yeah, so I wasn't happy with how it was. This is the, this is, well, this is no big secret. This is one of our three projects that we're working on, which is the steel version.
00:23:57
Speaker
of our tormach fixture plates, which we're good. We've got them nailed down. We're just trying to improve the process internally. Yeah, because it's no easy task, cutting hardened 4140. It cuts great. It goes back to what Eric
00:24:13
Speaker
at Orange Vice set on the tour, which is process reliability. So look, I am a hero in aluminum, as are a lot of people. Ends up at 30 Rockwell 4140, wears out tools a lot quicker, chips tools more easily. But when you machine it, it actually machines freaking beautifully.
00:24:30
Speaker
And the surface footage matters. Some of the tools have to be at a lower surface footage. And the boring bar, ironically, according to Corey at Sandvik, who I was talking to last night, he's like, no, no, no, no. You need to run it harder and hotter. And you need to leave more. I was only leaving about 5,000 per side.
00:24:50
Speaker
And he's like, no, no, leave 20 thou per side, higher surface footage, higher feed rate. So I'm excited to try that this morning. I've got another plate worked up here. And you'll get a good finish from that, eh?
00:25:02
Speaker
Yeah, the finish line I have now is absolutely acceptable. But I think I can get it better. But I'm frustrated because I was shocked when we would, again, bad feeds and speeds. So it could have been rubbing, which is a huge problem for accuracy and repeatability. But I was shocked, John. I would run the boring head in the hole, measure it, mic it. We've got all these different ways now to measure these ID holes. And then I'd rerun it as like a spring pass. And it would open up way over a thou.
00:25:33
Speaker
And I just thought, man.
00:25:35
Speaker
So that can be thought of as deflection during the roughing or the first boring pass. Right. Unless you just bank on your finished pass. Like on the lathe, I often do spring passes if I want a critical dimension, because I know it's going to leave like a foul. And that spring pass is going to take off that foul roughly. And then I just program it with the spring pass, and I dial it in to do that. And I mess with the tool offset to make the spring pass work.
00:26:04
Speaker
So yeah, and look, I get it. I'm more interested now, and I've learned this lesson, get down a good process, period, period, and then worry about time later. But we've got, I don't even know, 300 holes. So to double the time isn't really the best way to tackle it.
00:26:27
Speaker
Sandvik doesn't want me taking such a light pass, and I understand that. So that kind of goes to this whole idea of basically go for it in one shot, know that the diameter of the boring head is actually wrong, but it happens to give you the right diameter on that first shot, which just, ah, man, I don't like that at all. You don't like faking it to make it work right?
Machining Strategy and Consulting Opportunities
00:26:55
Speaker
Not really, because now I think about just, again, where on the tool that interpolates the whole out, I think about switching out the inserts. I just think about how much can go wrong. And this is the kind of stuff where I tend to be the one that ends up solving these problems in the shop, not the other guys here. Yeah, because in a sense, they're the workers, and you're the brain.
00:27:22
Speaker
And they're getting way, like, Jared, the guys are getting way better at it. They come up with ideas. And I'm not interested in being possessive of it. I would love to have them. But the truth, our business would be very different if we had three 40-year tool and die makers. Anyway, it's stressful. And I was really, I don't know, I guess I was, I don't want to be too critical because I want to give the correct speeds and fees a shot this morning. That could be a game changer.
00:27:52
Speaker
Yeah, idea for you. I mean, you know enough people around. What if you hired an expert for a week, just like a friend of yours, like a Rob Lockwood or someone who just wanted to come play around for a week, and just to see what that would do for your business. It's not going to be a long-term hire, it's an experiment.
00:28:13
Speaker
So Rob, the offer's on the table trying to see if you'd like to come. Exactly. No one's going to take a week of vacation to come. I don't know. That's an interesting point. Actually, maybe. Holy cow. I mean, I think we certainly get a lot of offers from people who want to come work or shadow or intern. Obviously, it would need to be somebody who's much more
00:28:42
Speaker
Yeah, somebody who's super experienced because you're looking for the experiment of expertise, bringing on somebody smarter than you into the shop, or at least more experienced. At the end of the day, you and I are absolute beginners at this, and we're just figuring it out every step of the way.
00:29:02
Speaker
and there's different levels above that. People with 40 years of experience, they know a different skill set than you and I do, and we know a different set than they do, because we've just learned differently. I was trolling the job listing website in our area, and I saw research for CNC machinists, and I saw applications engineers for Mazak and other companies looking for work, currently employed by those companies, but looking for work.
00:29:27
Speaker
And I'm like, those are the guys. Hypothetically, do you want to come intern here for a week? I don't know. It doesn't have to ask or hypothesize. That's how you come up with cool new ideas. I've met a lot of AEs who are darn sharp.
00:29:45
Speaker
Yeah, me too. It's almost sad. It almost makes me think, holy cow, you know, is Haas or Mazak paying you a lot more than industry such that, you know, it's kind of that crummy thought to where it's more profitable to sell the machines than it is to run them.
00:30:00
Speaker
Yes, yeah. Some of the A's that I work with, they're like super smart, super aggressive. They've worked in big shops before and they're like, I'll never work anywhere else. I love being in AE, I love this company. I absolutely just, this is what I do.
00:30:18
Speaker
and you know they could do transformative stuff if they worked directly in a business but on the other hand they get to consult and they get to applications design and they get to help and they get to do like dozens and dozens of different companies and they get this variety.
00:30:32
Speaker
You're totally right, though, because they all miss. It's not that it's funny, because I've talked to so many of them. They do also miss a little bit of that being in the thick of things. And so you're right. That could be an awesome opportunity. The other thing that just occurred to me, from an entrepreneurial standpoint, folks, there's a huge opportunity if you are qualified. And that's a big if. If you have to ask if you're qualified, you're probably not qualified.
00:30:54
Speaker
But if you're qualified to set up a consulting business, I hate the word consulting sometimes because it sounds very like suit and tie banker-ish, but if you're qualified, go offer one to five day stints where you just shadow observe and then write, offer conclusions because it's like all these things you didn't know, you know, I didn't know they made Bluetooth
00:31:16
Speaker
adjustable boring heads until I toured Orange Vice. Ends up not being the right workload for me but still opened my eyes to a whole realm of things I didn't necessarily think about. Same thing with metrology tools. I've learned so much by touring other shops and not everybody gets that chance obviously.
00:31:33
Speaker
Yeah, and the experience from these AEs or from anybody super experienced, like just the way to measure. I mentioned this in a YouTube video, but to measure with calipers from the tip to the moving part, I don't know, just measure in depth, instead of using the back end with the little stick that sticks out.
00:31:52
Speaker
And I saw the AED do that. I'm like, whoa, what did you just do? I've had calipers for 10 years, and I've never known that. And it's stupid stuff, but it's the stuff you get through application that it's like you can't tell somebody that. It has to come up in conversation, you know what I mean? You're not just going to pull it out of your head and tell somebody, teach somebody.
00:32:12
Speaker
looking at when people use like one, two, three blocks and strap clamps in ways I hadn't thought of and you just, you literally wanna remove your shoe and strike yourself in the face with it. Because you're like, that is so genius and simple and I never, ever, ever thought of that. Well, I think that's one of the reasons why you and I, me less now, but do so many YouTube videos and try to just show these skills in practice without maybe necessarily teaching them because I know I've had a lot of comments that are like, whoa, I didn't know you could do that.
00:32:41
Speaker
And same thing, like I mentioned, the caliper measuring trick. And I had many comments, but some were like, yeah, I've done that all the time. And others were like, I've been a machinist for 10 years, and I didn't know that.
00:32:53
Speaker
Yeah, isn't that funny? We cover that in our training class. Because again, I don't remember who showed me, but it wasn't that long ago, maybe a year ago, where you used the front two blades that face the left side of the caliper when you're holding it in your hand to measure as a depth bar. And I will never use that stupid stick thing on the other end again. Here's a trivia question. What is that little hemispherical cutout on the stick end for? I have no idea.
00:33:24
Speaker
You sure? Yeah, nothing. So when you're measuring with the stick depth bar thing against a shoulder that has a fillet, the cutout lets you avoid measuring the fillet and rather down to the floor surface. Makes sense? Kind of. Did I explain that well?
00:33:52
Speaker
I think so. Is it fillet size dependent? No, no, no. It's clearance. So that way you can push down a side wall, but if you have a little bit of a fillet on your part or something that avoids a stress riser or something, you can clear that.
00:34:09
Speaker
Nice. I know that because I got burned using, I love using the bullnose end mills that have just like a five to, we have a bunch that are 5,000 and some that are 10 and 20 thou radius. And that's fine for 98% of stuff that we do, but I was
00:34:25
Speaker
Measuring apart, I couldn't figure out why I was having a problem with my tolerances. And then I realized that I was measuring not to the floor, but rather to that little bullnose radius on the tight.
00:34:40
Speaker
Anyway, what do you do today?
Work Approaches and Stress Management
00:34:44
Speaker
Today, I was in the shop at 5 AM this morning. I ran the lathe and the mill for a good hour and a half until our podcast. Sweet. And then I'm going to turn them back on, making titanium screws, kind of like you were saying about cheating the wear offsets to do what you needed to do. That's my life on the lathe. It's just making it work, even if it doesn't exactly make sense, but it works. Right.
00:35:08
Speaker
Yeah, in the mill, I'm going to mill this last blade. I'm going to finish up these few time ask his handles, and then all of the rask parts are done. Yay. Dude, I wish I could high five you. E5. E5. This is my other question. Go ahead. No, what's your other question?
00:35:29
Speaker
When you get to a really stress point, or I call it shutting down, when you get so overwhelmed or stressed that you lose that ability to think critically or even evaluate the situation,
00:35:44
Speaker
It occurred to me the first thing I thought about was well How do I handle it and I thought about back to the emith revisited and it's like do you? Go do task work like run machines Do you kind of make to-do lists or do you just like go think big picture? And it and though I swear to God those are my natural thoughts and which tie exactly into the emith thing of like are you I can't remember the terms, but are you a
00:36:06
Speaker
a worker, a manager, or the operator, manager, or entrepreneur. I tend to do mindless work, like just go make parts of the machine, task stuff, not to-do lists and not big thinking. When you're stressed and worried and need some break. What's that? When you're stressed and you need a break,
00:36:33
Speaker
Well, it's not that I want to break. Because usually, maybe I'm sure other people feel this way, but when I'm stressed, the idea of just quitting everything is mortifying because I'm stressed because there's so much to do. Right. Yeah, absolutely. I usually just go do stuff. Going to the swimming pool or going to do whatever usually doesn't help. I like talking to you because you are in a very good way different, or you force me to think differently sometimes.
00:37:02
Speaker
Make to do list kind of at that manager level or do you ever go to the higher like entrepreneurial level or do you when you also get stressed? Do you just say I'm gonna go make extra screws or more clip handles? I think I I I wouldn't choose a single thing. I probably do all three
00:37:18
Speaker
Terrible yeah, it probably is but you know when I'm overwhelmed and I'm like, oh there's so much to do oftentimes Yeah, I will just hunker down and do one thing because I can focus on that Yeah, and maybe I'm doing more than I need to but it's usually not the most important thing that needs to be done I certainly suffer from that I usually spend my mornings
00:37:40
Speaker
You know, I like to wake up early, I spend some time to myself, I still often do the meditating. I was going to ask you, are you doing the meditating stuff? Yep. Not every day, but certainly a couple times a week, which is good. And I often spend a lot of time thinking about
00:37:57
Speaker
you know, the vision, the future of where I want to take this. And that usually leads to very specific things like, oh, how would I design this fixture? You know, it's just kind of down the rabbit hole. Yeah, I often spend my mornings doing that. I start big picture and then it kind of narrows down to different specific things every single day.
00:38:17
Speaker
So while it's not directly productive, because I'm not on Fusion, I'm not in the shop, but it's a lot of higher level thinking that I need the time to do, otherwise, because I don't get to do that here in the shop, but really, I'm busy here at the shop.
Productivity and Social Media Tips
00:38:30
Speaker
I've been leaving the shop more to go to a coffee shop or go even to a restaurant and do an hour tour. It's great. It is great. It's sort of fundamentally disappointing because the shop and my home are my kind of haven. I've chosen to build them this way. I love that. And you have to leave it. But nevertheless, it's a good thing. I really want to go play with that boring bar. I'm not going to lie.
00:39:00
Speaker
That sounds good. I want to give my machines back going. Awesome. Dude, crush it. You too. I'm so happy. That's awesome. And you've been doing a really good job on Instagram. It's super awesome to see. You know how on Instagram you can save a post for later? No. What? OK, so you go to make a post. And before hitting post, you hit back two times. And then you have the option to save it as a draft. And I have like 20. How the heck would I know to go make a post and then go back twice? Is that like a Easter egg?
00:39:29
Speaker
I don't know, but it's fantastic. I have like 20 saved drafts that I can post whenever. Whenever, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty great. Because if I take a picture, so I take a picture and I'm like, oh, I want to post this on Instagram. So I'll go to post it, but I don't have time or I don't want to make a description with all the tags. So I'll just type one word, and then I'll go back. And then I have this draft so that when I'm at home, when I'm in the bathroom, when I'm whatever on the weekend, I can spend the extra time it takes to write a good description, good tags, and all that stuff.
00:39:56
Speaker
But it's posted. It's not lost in your gallery on your phone, right? Well, that's what you're going to laugh. What I'll do is I'll pull up the open the app, and I'll take the picture, and then I'll be like, I don't have time to do this right now. And so I'll literally retake the picture in my iPhone camera instead of an Instagram. So that way it's in my camera roll so I can then do it. Dude, you know the trick on auto correct, right? What?
00:40:23
Speaker
Save all of your social media hashtags as the autocorrect for something weird. I used to do TTTT, four T's. And so go into your iPhone or Android keyboard, autocorrect, and have autocorrect change TTTT to all of your hashtags. What? I did not know that.
00:40:47
Speaker
Think about it. You get it? I use an app called Trello, which I can have on my phone, I can have on my computer, and I have tags saved in categories. I have one for knives, one for machining, one for lathe, one for spinners, and those are all the specific tags for all those things. So I'll just copy and paste from there.
00:41:05
Speaker
Yeah. So T T T S would be spinners. T T T K would be knives. And again, it's just something that never else like, yeah, it's actually super annoying because, um, I, I went to type a message to somebody and I accidentally fat fingered one of my on Craigslist. So they got a message with like 17 hashtags. I was like, sorry about that. That's awesome. Yeah. Um, yeah, that's a great little like life hack. Yeah.
00:41:30
Speaker
Cool. OK, we're ending on that high. Good talk, Mike. That sounds great. All right, have a great day. OK, bye.