Introduction to Episode 298
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the Business of Machining, Episode number 298. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo.
Reflecting on Business Efficiencies
00:00:08
Speaker
Today, I want to talk with John about a little bit of the year in review, but mostly what I have focused on this week about keeping me honest on things we need to evaluate and deal with today, this week, the rest of this year, and for next year to make sure we don't lose sight of things that are obviously important and some things that aren't as obviously important about how we're running this business. I'd love to.
00:00:37
Speaker
The real thing is, gosh, I hate the word efficiency. So it had already been top of mind about how do we make sure we're doing the best we can with the team, the resources, everything we can.
Influence of Toyota vs Honda on Business
00:00:52
Speaker
And then it was perfect timing because the Business Wars podcast I'm listening to at the gym is Toyota versus Honda.
00:01:01
Speaker
I've actually never read the Toyota book that everyone talks about. I probably should. Yeah, the Toyota way. Have you read it? I've got it. I've started it several times, get about a quarter of the way through. It's heavy, but it's really good if you're into it. Yeah. Should go through it more.
00:01:17
Speaker
So I'd like to, but I'm also addressing a lot of my own personal inadequacies as a leader and project manager by just saying, okay, rather than say I'm going to read a book that I haven't read, and what you just said is kind of hilarious. I own it. I started it.
00:01:35
Speaker
No, you haven't read it. The goal is not to read the book. The goal is to embrace things that, in this case, have the Toyota Method. Now, obviously, you may need to become an expert at certain levels, but let me tell you, some of the stuff that we need to do, you don't have to be an expert in tier one auto manufacturing to come up with 5S lean strategies. It's as simple as like,
00:01:57
Speaker
A lot of it's around packaging. We have all these touch points around our failures of packaging. People asking, how does this get packaged? Is it different? Where is that packaging? How many pieces of cardboard are for? Fix your place for mod vices.
Standardization in Packaging and Costs
00:02:15
Speaker
This is of course top of mind because Julie is no longer with us and so she used to kind of handle the boxes and so I'm taking over standardizing it, reordering it, working with our suppliers to get standardized drawings, inventory levels for changing the packaging for plates that have the option of shipping parcel or ground because those are more likely to be damaged than freight shipments which are protected on a pallet.
00:02:41
Speaker
Then we're, this actually gets me excited, we're tying all of the packaging Lex numbers in with the product itself. So when somebody orders a VF2 fixture plate, Lex has an ID for that plate. And in that sub assembly of that plate includes the packaging for it, which is important because
00:03:02
Speaker
That means whoever's doing the order picking knows that's how the plate gets packed. They know that it uses box T-1362 because we don't store our plates in boxes. And it also really helps because we use Lex for all of our profitability, cost accounting. And look, boxes are not cheap. One of our fixture plate boxes that we're getting rid of was 20 bucks. Yeah.
00:03:30
Speaker
It's my focus is not on creating these big crazy scope of work awesome to-do list. It's like hey no super simple list. So this morning I redid all of our box descriptions and part numbers. We're working with our it's actually kind of awkward. We told our vendor I need all of your CAD drawings for
00:03:50
Speaker
these boxes, which they've sent us in the past because we're trying to check them. And it's funny because as a machinist, you exchange drawings all the time for obvious reasons of manufacturing. But I think they were probably wondering, are they pulling the business and just want all the masters? But I'm like, no, I'm not messing around here. We're standardizing all this. I want our numbers to match your numbers, pricing, part members, dimensions, drawings, and we're cleaning this up.
00:04:16
Speaker
like you want to use a drawing for your internal tracking, like in Lex probably, like there's a picture of it kind of thing.
Improving Vendor Communication
00:04:23
Speaker
It's not even that so much. Actually, that's a good point, but it's more, their drawing has a customer part number on it, but they weren't using our Lex ID because we had not given it to them. Yeah. And they're not, like many vendors, they're not great at
00:04:38
Speaker
updating stuff like that. So what we're doing is we're demanding that they start demanding, but like, Hey, send us all your drawings. Let me please mark them up and correct them with our part numbers. You guys then can use that markup to update your system and things like, Hey, if we're going to make a minor change of a dimension, I want the latest, uh, drawing so that, um, I don't have to, John Saunders doesn't have to be the one to know. Oh, do these, is this the right one that we're ordering? Is this the right rev? Um, yeah.
00:05:08
Speaker
simple rev control kind of stuff. I like that. These are custom-cut cardboard boxes? Yeah, most of them. Well, yes. It's not like an off-the-shelf U-line box. Sorry. Yes. It's a local-ish cardboard company that's done for us. Although we're also
00:05:27
Speaker
trying to figure out better ways for the mod vices, and that may be a more expensive custom insert, but that then goes in a Uline style box. I don't know. It's worth working on. I like it. Yeah. Yeah. The whole thing with lean is it's very easy to get in over your head and get overwhelmed and just stop.
00:05:49
Speaker
and just like, not right now.
Applying Lean Principles at Work and Home
00:05:52
Speaker
But the reality of it, the goal is that we just want continual improvement. Just a little bit, just a tiny bit. So the past week or so, Angelo started talking about 3S, sweep, sort, and standardize. Simple. And just reminding me, reminding the guys, sweep, sort, and standardize. We can do that. I taught it to my son on the drive to school the other day. He was actually into it. He's like, I could do that at school a little bit. I'm like, yes, you could.
00:06:18
Speaker
I wonder if I should tell the principal about it. Yes, you should. Hilarious. That's awesome. So simple, keep it so simple. Okay, so sweet means clean, right? Could you actually explain more of the... So sort is like put stuff where it belongs, put stuff away. If you've got junk everywhere, you've got tools out, you've got whatever. So that's sort. And standardized is standardized tooling, standardized work areas, the same sort of layout at every cell.
00:06:47
Speaker
so that you have this continuity throughout the shop of like, it could be in your machining programs. Like we always use this quarter inch end mill from that on all of our machines. It's like standardized is just simplifying. That's weird to me though because sweep is like spur of the moment clean sort is probably the same, but then the one you just mentioned there is like massive systemic multi-year overhaul. It could be, yeah.
00:07:12
Speaker
Is that what your, have you guys started doing that? What's that? A little bit. Yeah. So, um, it's funny cause a couple of weeks ago, Pearson put up a video or post or something where he's like, at the end of the day, we leave everything dirty and we just leave our workout and we come in in the morning and we clean up in the morning because when at the end of the day, you don't want to spend the 10 minutes to sweep. You just want to leave. And he's like, I realized the reality in that situation, you know, you, the perfection is you want to leave a clean working space and you want to like, you know, come into a nice shop.
00:07:41
Speaker
Same thing with the kitchen at home. You want to wake up to a clean kitchen. It's nicer. You don't want to wake up to a pile of dishes. But he said at work, we flipped it and we said, we're going to spend the first, I don't know what he said, 10 minutes or whatever, just cleaning up in the morning. You're fresh, you're with it. You're like,
00:07:58
Speaker
Organizing things and Angelo said he started doing that with that with the guys here and he's like we spent five minutes and we all sweep at the exact same time and All five of us doing it it takes Minutes and we all kind of work at the same pace now not at everybody's individual pace and it's like you kind of drive this The pace for the for the group and it gets done real fast and then they put things away and they it he said it's getting a little bit better every day because they're seeing
00:08:27
Speaker
more improvements every day, like the things, the tools that are getting put away, like the guys are texting me pictures early in the morning saying, is this garbage? Can I throw this out? I'm like, yeah, probably. So it's good. And it's so simple on the face of it, but it's actually really working very well for us. Yeah, that's awesome. I'd like to hear
00:08:48
Speaker
Not that if it continues in the sense that I'm expecting it not to, but does it become part of the culture forever? We have the problem of, and I'm using the excuse that we need to do a pause and overhaul because we have some shelving and storage of stuff. Do we want to keep that? Is that meant for something? Is it the accumulation of having a shop for 10 years? We talked about this a lot.
00:09:14
Speaker
Oh, for sure. My excuse just to be a totally open book about it. My excuse right now is, hey, let's get through the end of the year holiday sales. But I mean, we will. We're not too bad about it. But that's the reality. That's the constant.
Optimizing Task Efficiency
00:09:30
Speaker
We will. We'll get to it. But right now, we've got a lot to focus on.
00:09:34
Speaker
continual improvement though, it's, it's, we are doing improvements. Um, you know, the boxing is a big deal this morning or yesterday and this week. And then things like, Hey, I got a nice new homemade or home Depot, Rubbermaid tub and labeled it funnels. And all of our funnels are now in the tub. So they're, they're one place. And if they leak, which they will, because they always have oil and other stuff in them, it's just inside one top. It's much better than the hodgepodge of funnels laying around.
00:10:03
Speaker
Yup. And funnels are the weird thing. It's like they're not important, but when you need one, gosh, you know that there's five in the shop and you can't find them. Yes. And the wrong size funnel is not what you want. Yup. Yup. So what are your thoughts with having all of it in one place? You've got a fairly big shop. And if you don't know where that one place is,
00:10:25
Speaker
like you're still looking around for that one place, you know what I mean? So that's part of the idea of moving to the room next to me being kind of a tool crib to try to standardize that a little bit. And we're not, again, being realistic, we're not going to grow by leaps and bounds. I'm just not going to happen soon. So I'm okay with the knowledge that we have here
00:10:48
Speaker
of people knowing where stuff is, and then as you bring on an intern or a new person, it'll take some time versus trying to do some systemic overhaul with some smart storage system or whatever. Just be realistic. Be better off just getting some racking cleaned up and going for that way.
00:11:06
Speaker
But even with a new person coming on, if you have your Rubbermaid bin full of funnels in the tooling area and they happen to see it one day doing other stuff, all of a sudden they know where it is or they know where to look because that's where all your random stuff is. Right. And we've got a few storage locations here in the shop. We've got a little storage room. It's like a small office. We've got some shelving in the shop. So if you're looking for something like a funnel,
00:11:32
Speaker
or a strap wrench or something weird like we've got three or four places to look in. I do see us myself included like zipping around trying to find that one weird thing like a slide hammer. You know, they're in this box in the bottom shelf by the air compressor that I know where they are. But right. Right. Yeah, so that's good. What's the other thing that's on my I kind of like a dump file of stuff.
00:12:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's efficiency of tasks. I was watching the flow of how we make a fixture plate to how we QC it, to how it gets stored, and then how it gets shipped out. We're starting to see now is the right time to address being smart with that so that we can grow with the systems in place for that. Mod devices are an easier example to talk about because
00:12:28
Speaker
you know, we're not terrible at it. We have a mod vice assembly cart that has all the stuff you need on it, which is great. It still takes way too long. And people have different ways of doing it, depending on who's assembling it. And one of the big things is just nitpicky is do you assemble the mod vice on a
00:12:46
Speaker
cloth or something and then when it's done, move it into the box. Well, no, this is like a Pearson thing. It's like you're handling the product twice. It should be as simple as having the box right there and then pulling the parts into it as it's being assembled and you're done. Yeah, save a whole step. Right, yeah. Still don't like our box on it, so we're trying to look at foam as an option for it. Yeah, you cut your foam. I don't want to cut the foam.
00:13:12
Speaker
Yeah, and everybody's like, why don't you just laser it? Well, we cut multiple layers of a laminated two-color foam. I want depth. I want accuracy. When you laser it, you have one all the way through. It's cutting all the way through. You could glue pieces together, but that gets messy and yada, yada, yada. So I like milling our foam. I think it works really good, and it leads to a really nice product.
00:13:35
Speaker
Yeah. It's scalable enough. I mean, if you're doing it on the routers, good grief, you could end up with four of those routers in a router farm. Yeah, exactly. For very little cost. And the table space of the router is two to three times what our current vacuum plate is. So once we get rolling, we can make, it'll just run longer, easier setups, right? Yeah.
00:13:57
Speaker
Awesome. That's great. Update on the router. Pierre and I are quite busy with other projects, but we've been picking away at it. It's together. The motors are on. It's got power. It jogs around. We're tuning the ClearPath motors.
00:14:15
Speaker
learning how to tune the clear path motors, because we're getting some pretty janky movement right now. And it's just jittering and not exactly sure. We just need to spend more time on it. The limit switches aren't working for some reason. I don't know. PR told me, but I haven't seen it yet. So it won't properly home, which I think might solve a lot of our problems once we figure that out. But spindle turns on, the relays turn on, coolant, whatever. And yeah, just keep picking away at it.
00:14:43
Speaker
Yeah, but John, that's not what I wanted to hear. Well, I mean, we're cutting. The reason we have it really is to make our foam and we threw that on the speedio last week in like an hour's worth of work and it runs it so well. So it's not the long-term solution, but we have our short-term solution like nailed. So it bought us some breathing room because for us to rush on the router is going to take effort away from other projects and it's going to
00:15:10
Speaker
It's not the right call right now. We're good. No, things are good right now. We're waiting on the local company to finish up that stand, the whole table, essentially enclosure and everything. Timing is working pretty good actually. We're making good progress. I know, but that's the concern is
00:15:29
Speaker
You know would Mike from military and look I get that you're gonna say you enjoy your building I do too like I is part of that's what's life's all about. But yeah But would Mike and military be building a router? Where it could you could have it fixed in a half an hour could take three weeks of troubleshooting It could take a ton of your time that is like just gotta think about that. Yeah. Yes, there was there not an option to just buy a turnkey router and
00:15:53
Speaker
There are, but I'm picky and I wanted to build it and I started to invest into the build of it. I'm like, okay, let's see this through. Let's finish it. The costs are adding up for sure, but I still think I'm cheaper than buying a similar turnkey router, but at the time, obviously. At the end of the day, this is what we're doing. I'm okay picking away at it.
00:16:20
Speaker
Now that we have a short-term solution on this video, I'm not like stressed, rushed about it. And don't get me wrong, I've certainly had thoughts where it's like, we're spending a lot of time and money on this router, and maybe we should have just bought one. But that's okay. I'm okay with that. Of course. Some costs, you got to get it working. You will. You're smart. You got a great team. But the point of this is also to push each other is to be better leaders and
00:16:47
Speaker
I still think there's too much of this, bootstrap's not necessarily the right word, but, you know. Having fun. Execute. Having fun is also progress. Having an avid show up at work that is cutting foam, I mean, if you bought a turnkey router, you could probably have it cutting foam within an hour or two. Probably, yeah.
00:17:09
Speaker
as much fun as it is to build a router, there's a limited return of happiness on troubleshooting, homing of clear path motors. Yeah, but once you get it, I mean, I've had this bug inside of me that I want to build my own CNC machine from scratch for like 15 years now.
00:17:26
Speaker
And you know the avid is a is a kid it's not really from scratch and it's not as detailed and intricate as i would want to go but it's sort of tickling that it's you know it's like having that fun. And now we have the resources and pretty much the time to be able to do a project like that so that that is a perspective of me doing this is like scratching that itch.
00:17:49
Speaker
I push back on what you said there. You have the time to do this? Well, that's why I said with a mental asterisk there, we're making the time to do this. Yeah.
00:18:02
Speaker
Cause when we talked last week, it was like, Hey, done with the podcast. Hopefully just go run that homie routine, get the, like the, whatever, like kind of a, hopefully it's just a box we missed to get that fixed or working and then we're good. It should be good. Yeah. Right. And I think shortly after that, I just put the foam on the speedio instead and stopped thinking about it.
00:18:20
Speaker
Yeah. So we haven't made much progress since last week because the short-term need is done. But I wouldn't want to cut foam on the router until the enclosure is done, until it's set up, until things are ready because it makes a lot of dust and a lot of like, I'm just not ready for it yet. So I'm glad we found the short-term solution because we could have stood there with a vacuum, but we'd be doing it for four hours a day and it'd be dumb.
00:18:47
Speaker
Yeah, so it's coming along. Look, we've got a lot of things on the go and all of them are making good progress. So the good one, the big, big one is the Willaman has made its first official final part with vice transfer and everything.
Wilhelmin Machine Milestone
00:19:01
Speaker
Dude. That is exciting. I did it in a couple of steps, a couple of different operations, but I think I should be able to post it all as one file today, which I'm going to do, and I'm going to run it as one file. It's just like a bushing, like a round washer with a hole through it and the countersunk and chamfers and
00:19:16
Speaker
really tight tolerances on the OD and some tapers and stuff. But I should be able to just post it all, hit go, and watch the magic happen. And that's so exciting. But there was a lot of little hurdles. The probing wasn't working because the macro was wrong. And I had to make some tweaks. I had to talk to Wilhelmin. I had to do this. But it all works now. So it's good.
00:19:38
Speaker
And so that's a part that has turning and milling to multiple tools of different cutting styles. Yep. Yes. Yeah. From both directions. Awesome. So on the main spindle turning, I don't have any drills on the machine. So I'm just helically interpolating the bore.
00:19:55
Speaker
I'm doing a bore operation. I'm milling at B90 and then milling the hole, milling the countersank, milling the 3D chamfer because I don't have a chamfer tool in the mill yet, and then transfer and then flip it down, face the backside with an end mill, and then 3D chamfer the ID bore.
00:20:13
Speaker
And so yesterday I was working on my G55 subposition, getting the probe to work so I could probe the Z and the XY of the hole and ran into some challenges there. So Wilhelmin helped me figure that out. And then now it's like holy cow, it works now. That's phenomenal. Yeah, so exciting. Do you consider a Reneschau spindle probe mandatory for that machine?
00:20:42
Speaker
Yeah, probably for calibration. Explain kinematic calibration on the machine, calibrating the rotational accuracy for X, Y for sure. Some of it you could do manually with an edge finder or something, but I think so.
00:20:58
Speaker
Just thinking like we would not need or use one on our mill. And a lot of the parts that we would move on to Willeman would come off of the mill. So I'm not going to do in-process probing. And your center line is your work coordinate system. That's true. You could. I'm not trying to be stingy. No, no. But that's probably $10,000 plus cost. True.
00:21:22
Speaker
So, I'm thinking about, hey, bar feeder, probe, tooling that's not super common or reusable or so forth. What do we need for this machine to do what it needs to do? Is this thinking of the used one that's on the table or a new Sugami or whatever, like something different? No, the used one.
Is a Spindle Probe Necessary?
00:21:44
Speaker
The E-shirt doesn't come with probes? Look, mine did.
00:21:48
Speaker
You came with a spindle probe? Yeah. Oh, I don't know. I have to ask. Yeah.
00:21:55
Speaker
I guess I don't know how common, like I would guess from knowing what little I know. I know CJ uses it, but he's a little bit of a power user and different. I think I feel like most of the folks I see running medical stuff or high volume stuff, they build incredible processes that don't require the slowness of a probe period. Like you run 17 parts and then the insert gets rotated and you obviously check
00:22:21
Speaker
offline, but I don't know. I'm just trying to think, do we need a probe? Would we use it? Yeah. I'm not sure how much I'd use it for in-process probing, although I might. I mean, you can use it to make sure that your hole was drilled, but tool breakage detection kind of does that too. Because I've got the laser, so I can just laser the tool all the time to get that going. Can you do... Sorry, go ahead.
00:22:47
Speaker
you on your knock, you can use a tool like a physical tool to lightly touch a hole. That's right. Yes. I haven't done that in a long time, but I used to do that with a T9 Torx tool that after milling the T9, I would take this like
00:23:05
Speaker
Torx wrench, like a flag key kind of thing, mounted into the turret and gently shove it into the hole because the NAC is sensitive enough in the certain mode to sense for a resistance. Yes. So when that 20 now end mill would break and the hole would not be there, the Torx tool going into the hole would sense that it's broken and it would stop the machine, which was awesome because we'd make hundreds, thousands of these parts. What if you can do that on a Wilhelmin?
00:23:34
Speaker
I mean, it's pretty sensitive machines, probably. But you've got to be in some like, it's almost like the Haas safe mode where you're going to controlled crash. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You're waiting for extra load and you're stopping there and ideally backing off, I guess.
00:23:50
Speaker
Yeah. But on the Nakamura, we do have a spindle, a turret probe, which right now we're only using to check that the hole got drilled. Got it. Because we don't actually have tool breakage detection on turning. That's right. Tools and drills and stuff. We used to use it to measure the ID and the OD of a turn part and offset tools and thermal compensation based on that. I don't think we are anymore, but it worked really well.
00:24:16
Speaker
Why not? I think our process just got simplified, and I'm not running it anymore, so the operators are simplifying. Got it. And just comping over time, over throughout the day kind of thing. And that machine's very consistent if you run it very consistently. You run it for an hour, tweak it by a thou. You run it for half an hour, you tweak it by half a thou, and then it's good for the rest of the day kind of thing. Got it.
00:24:40
Speaker
The if you were knowing what you know, if the Wilhelmin only ever made pen clips, which is both incredibly awesome, but also horrifyingly sad to think about. I mean, but if it only ever made saga pen clips, you don't need a probe, right? I mean, I don't think so. You're right. I mean, the only critical on that is that there is a hole and that it is the right diameter, which I don't know. I have one, so I'm going to use it, but no, totally. We'll see. Okay. And do you have a good question? Did you put a bar feeder on yours?
00:25:11
Speaker
I did. Yeah, I got an LNS. I forget what it's called, but it's not hooked up yet. But once the Willem is making parts, then we'll tackle that project. Yeah, I hear you. Okay. Yeah, and then... What was I going to say?
00:25:27
Speaker
So, the Nakamura we've had for a while now and it will be completely paid off in like a month and a half. Congrats. Which is awesome. Yup. And then, I mean, we run it a good six hours a day plus every single day. With the clips going on the Wilhelmin, it can't help me wonder what the future of the Nakamura is because that's going to take like three weeks of work a month off of that machine. Right, because everything else has already been Swiss.
00:25:57
Speaker
Yeah, the Nakamura makes three parts right now. The clip, the pen tube, and the slider. Okay. The little clicky part that goes down. Both of which the tube, I don't know.
00:26:11
Speaker
Just thinking, is it the right machine for us? Is it the right machine to keep around? It'll be completely paid off. We'll own whatever it's worth right now. So it's five, six years old. We could sell it for whatever they're worth. I don't know. Invest in something better, another Swiss, something
00:26:31
Speaker
I don't know. I don't know. It just gets me thinking a little bit. John, you do know. I know that it's not the ideal machine for us. I've seen that over the past few years going on the Swiss, now the Willaman. I do worry about if we put the clip on the Willaman and the Willaman breaks because it's an 18-year-old machine, we are now SOL. We can't make pens and we rely on them for income and stuff.
00:26:55
Speaker
So that's one of the concerns. Whereas the NAC is solid, reliable. We could just park it and leave it there and use it a couple days a month for now. I mean, that's what we'll do for now. And then if we ever need to put clips back on it, it's all set up. It's all there. We just do whatever.
00:27:12
Speaker
That's also a multi $100,000 backup plan. You're not wrong. I value risk awareness with a high priority of thinking like, what the heck do we do if this happens? Because things do happen for sure.
00:27:29
Speaker
I think I told this to you offline maybe, but I was filming, well, our IMCS video, the audio stunk, and I was upset about it, and it was right after Julie's accident, which didn't really relate to her accident. It wasn't why the audio stunk. Of course. It may be kind of like, OK, this needs to get fixed. And I was hesitant to invest a bunch of money in new cameras and gear, because I find that when I do that, it's usually you're just succumbing to the
00:27:57
Speaker
acquisition syndrome of shiny new things that are fun. I really held off and then I started looking at what the GoPro 11 can do and nobody uses the gyros anymore because the cameras handle that with software. The microphones are way better. There's obviously been a huge influx of gadgets and technology around video making over the last few years.
00:28:20
Speaker
And I mean this really sincerely. It hit me really hard to look at a simple little GoPro that used to be state of the art. People used to see me with that GoPro and be like, oh man, you got this really cool. And now all of a sudden I realize
00:28:36
Speaker
I'm a dinosaur. It's not how people do it anymore. People are making incredible content with their phones, with simple GoPros that have the software on them. And the point of this story has almost nothing to do with the actual GoPro. By the way, I did buy the new one. It's great. I'm glad I did it. The point is that it was that little moment in time that made me realize I'm almost 40 and have been doing this for 10 plus years, and I now have old stuff.
00:29:05
Speaker
GoPros obviously iterate a lot faster than CNC machines, but it kind of reminded me I'm going to become a dinosaur. I'm going to become burdened with older stuff and processes and technology. That's inevitable, but I can at least go awkwardly out of my way to minimize
00:29:22
Speaker
that. So it's one reason why we are even more active about purging old stuff, selling old machines, buying newer machines. So not only did I buy the new GoPro, it's great. I actually eBay'd the old ones. They have to go. They have to go. This idea that like, oh, if the new GoPro breaks, I could use the old gyro. No, gone. Yeah, they may have only been worth 80 bucks, but it was going to go donated, trash or eBay. So
00:29:47
Speaker
long-winded way. Look, the NOC is not a GoPro. It has a valuable machine tool that could be critical for R&D, for new products. I get it. On the flip side, you're making decisions because it's paid for, which is also a sunk cost. That brings up the timing of it. I saw the payment history and I'm like, holy crap. Yeah, end of this year, we're done. Finally.
Machine Investments and Strategy
00:30:10
Speaker
Yeah. I've been paying for that for a long time. It just brings that like, well, what do we do with it? You know, I've been thinking about this for a year and a half since we bought the Wilhelmin basically. I was like, by the Wilhelmin, maybe we could sell the NAC and blah, blah, blah, get another Swiss. But yeah.
00:30:26
Speaker
I mean, look, you could, talking out loud here, if you're thinking about a new Swiss and you're thinking about selling the NOC and you have, if your Wilhelmin is running, it would arguably, you could actually make money selling it as a turnkey functional Wilhelmin that now works versus what you had to buy, which is kind of a black box of who knows what, you know? So start adding that up, you know, X amount here, Y amount here, a new Swiss would be here. You're actually like 80%, 70% of the way to a new Wilhelmin.
00:30:56
Speaker
If that makes sense. Well, can I say numbers out loud? Do you care? I'm making the money. Yeah, go for it. Yeah. So let's say your Wilhelmin that's 18 years old, that you get it all working and functional with a bar feeder, it's worth over 100 grand, I would guess. Your Nakamura is well over 100 grand, even used for sure. Your buying a new Swiss is two to 300. So now that's obviously the money you don't have, but you've been thinking about that. Sure, sure. So if a new Wilhelmin could
00:31:26
Speaker
replace the need for a new Smith, replace the need for a new Swiss, which I may be wrong about. And you could sell the NOC, and you could sell your current Wilhelmin. Hey, you've got four or 500 towards a six or $700,000 machine, I think. Right. And then you get the newness in you. Yeah.
00:31:45
Speaker
Interesting. I'm very curious to see how this used Wilhelmin will work in production. I'm optimistic and I'm hopeful, and I think it's going to crush pretty hard. If I were to consider a new Wilhelmin, I'd probably want to keep this one. Sure, but that's an easier decision.
00:32:03
Speaker
I'm okay with that. My opinion doesn't matter. The Nakamura is just going to sit there. It's not going to get used. If it's not critical to how Grims and Knives is making money or developing products, gone.
00:32:20
Speaker
Yep. And the, I mean, you know this, the way that the Wilhelmin works where you can have 48 tools in the carousel or the new ones can have up to 96. You can have turning tools and milling tools and all you're doing is changing a spindle collet and vice jaws. And
00:32:35
Speaker
Everything else is plug and play, like bar feeder liners or whatever, but these are 10 minute changeovers. The Swiss is literally eight hours to set up and dial in a part, like a complicated part for us. Simple parts are less than an hour.
00:32:52
Speaker
There's a couple complicated parts where Pierre's been tracking his time, and he's like, I need the day or the day and a half to properly dial in this new part. Whereas on the Wilhelmin, all the tools are already there, you're just dialing tolerances. You put in your collet and your vice jaws, and there's actually some Swiss parts that I want to put on the Wilhelmin because I think it'll do them better and easier and reduce that eight-hour setup time to nothing. Then the Swiss can just pump harder on what it's better at anyway.
00:33:20
Speaker
And yeah, so I'm really having fun planning the future. That's what I plan for this. And as you said, I feel like once this Wilhelmin's running, I'm going to absolutely fall in love with it. And then a new one is going to seem cheaper and cheaper. Yeah. And that's a more capable decision process. Yep. And like you said, if I can sell the NAC for $100, $150, whatever it goes for, that's a solid down payment on a brand new Wilhelmin if I choose to go that way.
00:33:49
Speaker
I would be shocked if that machine is as worth as little as 100 grand. I mean, it's got to be, I would think, close to double that. I think it knew it was 300 Canadian. Six years ago though, John. Stuff's a lot cheaper now. Oh, true, yeah.
00:34:07
Speaker
I can use inflation to my benefit here. No, for sure. That's a weird conundrum because to be clear, machines depreciate full stop. They do not appreciate in that sense. On the flip side, dollars depreciate too in the form of inflation. Yeah, that's interesting. You've sold used machines. You sold your UMC. You sold a bunch of houses. Did you sell them direct or did you do a tool reseller?
00:34:34
Speaker
We did fine. We sold the VF2 that we just sold. We actually still possess the machine, but it's sold. We sold direct because the VF2 was easy to do for me. Some of the other machines,
00:34:49
Speaker
Um, I used a broker who usually, if I'm talking out loud, they usually want to 10%. So the brokers are, um, we use one in particular. He's been great. I'm happy to share his contact info, but I'm not going to because I don't really want to.
00:35:06
Speaker
commercialize this in that sense, but they usually just try to tell you the number they're going to get you and not disclose what they're actually charging, not because they're trying to be slimy or super secretive, but whatever. It works. I mean, they give you a number and you're like, yeah, sounds good. I'll take that.
00:35:23
Speaker
The biggest reason, because I would argue like good grief, we've got this huge audience through social media, we could easily just put machines up for sale. I enjoy having an insulated barrier. Like, I don't need people to know if it's me selling it for better or worse. And I don't want to deal with the conversations and the look, hey, here's a machine, here's the history, as is where is you handle the rigging, you handle the buying, like, I don't want to be hand holding a bunch of phone calls. And we have we have had that a couple of the machines we sold the first time buyers
00:35:52
Speaker
through the broker and there's all these like, what's this dimension? And could we take this off to move it? And I don't blame you for having those questions. I want to sell the machine. I don't want to play broker here. Yeah, interesting. Cool. I would encourage you to consider both. I don't know how easy it will be to sell that machine within Canada. Although machines cross borders all the time. We use machines. I bought my Wilhelmin from Ohio.
00:36:21
Speaker
Yeah. I do think you need to do a better job at saying no to things. One of those things is to be involved in a cross-border machine transaction where you're the seller. Oh, I'm not against that. Yeah, absolutely. That's actually a good segue to a conversation I had with an old high school friend who coincidentally has moved into the
00:36:44
Speaker
He's indirectly involved in buying and selling manufacturing companies, kind of more as a broker, if you will. And he was a good friend, really sharp guy. And I was like, hey, tell me more. I just want to hear more about your life. How are you finding companies? What sizes are they? What are you looking for? Because they're buying mom and pop manufacturing companies that aren't bigger than your mind, but they're not that much bigger. And to me, this is very curious. And I'll say outright, it's curious not because I have any intention of
00:37:14
Speaker
any sort of selling. I don't.
00:37:16
Speaker
I wouldn't say I wouldn't listen to a conversation, but I love what I do. I don't want anything else in life. I have my dream going on right now. Full stop. All that would happen is if I won the Powerball is I would cautiously grow a little bit more like people and so forth. But even that conversation you and I had where I wouldn't grow unsustainably to where when the Powerball money runs out, you're like, oops, that was dumb because this business doesn't justify that level of investment. For sure.
00:37:45
Speaker
Anyway, my buddy's name is Greg. I said, Greg, if you were sitting down with Saunders Machine Works, what are we not doing that you would say, you guys need to fix this or do this better to set yourself up for success period? Because that relates to
00:38:01
Speaker
Also just running better on our own it relates better for me offloading Management and operations if I get sick or hurt if it that there's a transition because I think at this point Sounds weird to say but I think at this point It's better for Saunders machine works as a company to out let live me. Yes There's no like we are
00:38:21
Speaker
We are a very legitimate player in the fixture play business now, and I don't say this with any intent of bragging, but there are many days now where we're shipping multiple plates to multiple legitimate household name customers where it's like, if it's just some whim where I decide I want to go pursue music, you don't just shut this down. This is a real business. What we talked about in that conversation was wonderful because it basically
00:38:51
Speaker
Related to of course there are other things about profitability and and capital structure, but like basically how owner-reliant is it? Mm-hmm And that's something I think you and I need to focus on absolutely. I'm totally with you because We have the work we've done where with Lex fresh desks Management did employee confidence decision-making There's room for improvement, but we're pretty good
00:39:19
Speaker
We are pretty good. And I think that's something where you got to get some programming off your desk. You've got to get some, you know, that's kind of where I feel like I'm harping on you on this router things. It's just like, it's probably the damn router, John. Yeah. If you want to build a router on the fun, you know, Mike from Melterra can go build a machine in his garage for fun. That's different than what's stopping, you know, tools from getting ground or turbos from getting made. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly.
00:39:47
Speaker
Yeah, and it's good to have these – it's like I almost need to do the project to realize it was a dumb idea and then I learn from it and then I move on to the next one. I don't think this is a dumb idea, but it's certainly a use of time that could be spent otherwise, new product development, improving processes, whatever. I know that.
00:40:06
Speaker
But what Greg said they would do with a company like ours, this is going to rock your world. So think about this. Think about Greg's comes into Grimsmode Knives and he sits down with every employee on a one-on-one or maybe a couple of employees together.
Reducing Owner Dependency in Business
00:40:17
Speaker
You're not in the room though. And he talks about how much they would need John Grimsmode to be here to help run the company.
00:40:28
Speaker
That to me made it very easy to think about, oh my gosh, the boxes are a disaster right now. People can't handle this box stuff without me, so let's fix that so it can happen. But ordering steel, making plates, making mod vices, other than helping troubleshoot quirky horizontal technical problems, which frankly could be handled by the team or more formal support from a team. That's where I'm happy about where we're at.
00:40:56
Speaker
But I think the takeaway there is, for all owners listening to this podcast, imagine if Greg came into your shop and sat down with your employees and basically asked them, how owner-reliant is this company? And give me specific examples. And I can think of many in my case, but a lot that I'm not.
00:41:16
Speaker
Everything strums along without me. I could absolutely not show up for the week, and the company is fine. But I still order the end mills. I still order some of the materials, but not all of it. I still do most, if not all the programming. A lot of the heavy troubleshooting, and I like all these things, but I can see them now, and I can start to pick them off my plate as I've been doing more and more. But yeah, that's really good. I'm going to keep that in mind for sure.
00:41:43
Speaker
My response to that too would be, I don't have a problem with any of that except what I have a problem with is I'm not sure you've got a rigid enough plan to fix that. The end mills, that has to get off your plate like this month. That needs to stop.
00:42:00
Speaker
We even did that this month with Lex where people need to stop asking me or even asking Ed to order it. You guys have Lex in there and we actually need the person who wants them to order them so that way their name is tied to the PO so that when the thing comes in, the one order from YG1 has everybody's name tied to what they ordered.
00:42:20
Speaker
The programming one is a harder step because that effectively involves the complication of a full-time cam expert, or you know what I mean? Which I'm not against in the next period of time, investing in that person, paying for that kind of skill level. You could argue that I'd be happy to train somebody up, but that takes a significant amount of time and absolute dedication to do that. I'm not against it, but yeah.
00:42:48
Speaker
Sorry, you mean training somebody who doesn't know versus hiring somebody who's experienced as a knife maker or fusion maker? Hiring a cam expert, a fill level kind of person versus training somebody who's mediocre to non-existent skills. It's doable, but I don't know. Well, I think that's the way to go. Which way? The training? Yeah. Maybe.
00:43:16
Speaker
get them up to speed on fusion or find someone to use and then you get the chance to nurture them. Yeah, I know. I know. I like it. I love Phil and Devin. Those guys are incredibly sharp, but I would worry that somebody like that has too much of their own ways. Yeah.
00:43:34
Speaker
But also, I don't know, I think the opportunity to find somebody who's hungrier and needs is looking for an identity to have them turn this career into their identity is a very powerful thing. It's very true. Yeah. And you've got the, you know, six years perspective of running your training classes and doing training people on CNC, which is fantastic. I don't really have that. I've been very protective of my effusion.
00:44:04
Speaker
I need to move that away. But that's the honest statement that is a red flag. That's when Greg walks out of the room. You know what I mean? And look, you're not – so much of your programming is probably
00:44:19
Speaker
locked down at this point, you know what I mean? If you got hit by a bus, I could probably move up to the Grim Zone Knives and figure most of the stuff I actually probably couldn't with all your custom stuff. But you can poke through it. The structure is there if somebody were able to poke through logic and G code and map their way through it to do the tweaks needed, it's doable. But
00:44:41
Speaker
It's a great like Saunders and Grimsville film their own reality show where like I like I just have to put a mouth gag in and handcuffs on and shadow you as you play me in my shop all day. What could you figure out and handle? Trading places. Yeah, no literally. That would be hilarious. We drive to each other's shop. We wave in like upstate New York as we're driving by each other. You run my shop for a week. I run your shop for a week.
00:45:09
Speaker
We're over time. Sorry, Phil. Holy cow. This is fun, though. It's a good, serious thing. It's why I want to... Grimstone Knives will outlast you as well, John. I hope it does, right? You should. It's the whole like, in Small Giants, they talked a lot about that, the book about buying companies and things like that. In the E-Myth, they talk about setting up your company as a franchise so that you could scale it and grow and
00:45:39
Speaker
make other branches and things like that, whether or not you ever would. You're building the structure to not be owner-reliant, to have the manager structure and the technician structure. All the information and the documentation and everything is just there and laid out. I think we're both making really good progress on that over the past two years.
00:45:57
Speaker
We're also, with every day though, we have more and more baggage around our history. So the other way I've heard this explained, which really hits hard, if you'll allow me the liberty of using you and Leif as an example here,
00:46:14
Speaker
Um, is a statement like Lafe takes over grandson knives and says, my dad was so in love with his first machines or scared to re borrow money that he didn't make the right decision to sell the knock and invest in the machine that we needed at the time, because that was, he was burdened with his history. You know what I mean? Those sorts of statements are really powerful when you realize, wow, that was the right decision. I've just lost the ability to make that decision because of my past.
00:46:43
Speaker
Yeah, I'm too into it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, cool. What are you up to today? Not to imply that Clara can't take over. Now, she's got her own path. That was actually incredibly rude of me. No, not at all. Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah.
00:46:58
Speaker
Uh, what am I up to today? Dude, we're just cranking. Um, box stuff is good to go. So I actually, I did all that before the podcast and then now I need to look at what's on my list to be honest, but I'm in go mode. I'm in no more project management, long-term layout. I'm in like, Hey, if it's a longer term item, we have a dump area where we're moving out to what we're doing now over the next six weeks is stuff that we're making happen. Period. That's good.
00:47:24
Speaker
I'm working on the Wilhelmin. I want to make a full part. I want to debug it. I want to see what tolerances do if I make five parts, 10 parts kind of thing. Is the machine going to warm up and grow? I probably won't get enough parts through to see that today, but yeah. Good. That's it. See you next week. All right, Ben. Take care.