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Business of Machining - Episode 75
191 Plays7 years ago
It’s Friday today, which means that Saunders picked Grimsmo up yesterday morning to take him on a trip to Kitchener, ON, and visit CAMplete. Saunders is stoked to pick their brains about 5-axis, but they are really just happy to be doing it together!
“If you don’t live in a 5-axis world, you wouldn’t even know what you’re missing” - Saunders
Let’s talk about processes!
Stay tuned for a bonus podcast episode...on YouTube! It’ll be their first video format podcast
It’s ALL about the flow
Grimsmo’s shop is doing well right now with their one piece flow setup, he and Saunders talk about how to set up their workflows and palettes to maximize their productivity.
How can you improve workflow?
What can The Office teach you about machining? Saunders talks about how The Office and the movie “Deep Impact” inspired him to “seize the day, be deliberate, keep planning, and keep working”. Good news: you can do this well into old age.
Saunders’ “Not a To-Do List”
“One of the things that no one tells you as an entrepreneur is that it can be difficult to not have a boss” - Saunders
Saunders and his wife sit down in the morning to talk business and set a focus area for the day. This turns into a focus list that helps Saunders justify how he spends his time.
What does a “goal” mean to different people?
Article mentioned in podcast: The seven things you must go through before making $1 million in revenue
“Actions have to match the ambitions, or else you’re just making it up” - Grimsmo
Grimsmo’s upcoming improvements: heat treating processes, and the lock bar insert for the knives.
5-Axis Blues Bliss!
Saunders was hesitant at first about going 5-axis, but he is in love with it now!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & CAMplete Software
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode number 75. Holy cow. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. Good morning. How's it going? I'm super duper excited. Yes, me too. I feel like it came up quick. I head up to Buffalo, New York tonight, just splitting the drive up.
00:00:21
Speaker
um to come up to tour uh that software called cam pleat which i met through one of the open houses i was at doing five axis machine simulation what would you call it like correct collision
00:00:37
Speaker
It's yeah, it's don't crash your machine software, right? But it's also and this is kind of crazy. It's also posting software so you can do crazy things that blow your mind like reorienting parts and moving coordinate system stuff that if you don't live in a five-axis world, you wouldn't even know you need or aren't missing like it's that crazy.
00:00:58
Speaker
One of the situations that I know someone else is using it for is taking like code from HSM works for Mastercam from NX from all these different softwares and they're posting it out.
00:01:10
Speaker
to camplete and camplete can take all these different g codes and merge them into one program with the correct linking moves reference planes because some scam software is really good like you know you might want you might want master cam for drilling and hsm for adaptive and then hyper mill for your your blisk machining or whatever
00:01:31
Speaker
This sounds like something Rob would do and just blend them all together. Right.
Travel Plans & Live Podcast Idea
00:01:36
Speaker
So they also run apparently a really, really dialed in shop, lots of automation, lots of really cool machines. So, um, okay. So I'm driving up to Buffalo tonight. I will get, what, how far is it from Buffalo to you in the morning? Like an hour, hour 10 or something. And there won't be, will there be traffic? No. Okay. And am I picking you up at home or shop?
00:01:57
Speaker
Yeah, pick me up at home. Okay, so they don't really want us there to like 830, but you want to grab breakfast or something? That's perfect. Yeah. I don't know exactly where they are, but they're at least an hour away from me. Kirchner or whatever in Kirchner. Yeah, it's Kitchener. It's like an hour. I don't know. Sorry, Kitchener. Okay. Yeah, so we got plenty of time. I'll try to get to your house at like seven or something that work. Sure. Okay, awesome. Sweet.
00:02:23
Speaker
And then Friday and Saturday hanging out, uh, full Grimsmo style. Sweet. And the rest of Thursday too. I don't know how long we're up in Kitchener, but I bet you will be there all day. Okay. Maybe not. But yeah, sweet.
00:02:36
Speaker
Yes. I'm excited. And it's awesome because it's, it's, it's not stressful. It's like, yeah. Yeah. I know even here too, it's like, I'm telling everybody Sondras is coming up and they're like, what? No way. That's awesome. I just found, I feel, I feel comfortable to go away for a Thursday or most of a Thursday and everything's still rocking here. Right. Right. That's what was awesome. Right. This is happening. Um, I found sky on Instagram and I'm like, Oh, I'll follow you. Awesome. Yes. Um, so that's cool.
00:03:06
Speaker
Yeah, it'll be good to have you here maybe later on Thursday if we have time, but also on Friday when everybody's here and the shop's humming. And then if you and I come back on a Saturday, we've got some plans on Saturday, family-wise. Tag along if you want. But yeah, we'll figure something out. I was also thinking we should record a live podcast on the drive to Milterra.
00:03:28
Speaker
Uh, to, to complete just cause save time. So we don't have to sit in a room doing nothing for an hour. We can sit in a car for an hour and just record it. Yeah. Awesome. Like film it. That'd be good. Cause Eric Eric's like live podcasts or film podcasts are enjoyable to watch sometimes depending. And, uh, we've only done the audio version. Are we going to air it live from the car?
00:03:49
Speaker
Not live, but we'll film it. So it'll be a YouTube video style podcast. Kind of a bonus episode. Yeah. I've never done videos before, but I have a point and shoot camera. I can get one out and see if we can find a car memory card to get that to record video. See if we can figure it out. Is this thing on? Yeah. The red light means it's recording. Do you have a mount way for your car window suction cup something? Oh, yeah. Yeah. OK. I'll leave that in your hands then. Yeah, we're good there.
00:04:20
Speaker
Okay. Sweet. So exciting. Is there anything you want to see or have us kind of set up here at the shop? That's what actually, believe it or not, that's what Yvonne was asking. Um, she was actually like, are you guys like working on Saturday? I was like, I don't know.
Reflections on Past Visits
00:04:34
Speaker
Actually it's kind of funny. Cause I could almost see you and I just hanging out on Saturday and not working as like almost a figurative and little representation of the fact that we don't have to like grind, grind, grind so hard. Yeah. Um,
00:04:47
Speaker
I never saw it. So last time I was up there was very different. I think it was February, 2016 boy. So I had that part two and a half years ago. So this is fun. Uh, so sort of a symbolic moment, but, uh, Krimsmos DMG Dura vertical 5,100 was the first time I ever hit cycle start on a vertical machining center.
00:05:14
Speaker
It was crazy. It's crazy, right? Yep. Yep. And buying it was the first time I'd ever done it, too. That's crazy. So we made that cool, but it's kind of silly part because whatever. I don't know. I'd love to just like look at some of your I promise to not lock what you're laid.
00:05:31
Speaker
Um, although I am bringing matches. Um, if anyone gets the reference, um, I haven't seen the lathe. We'd love to see that. I'm actually kind of fascinated by the lapping machine. Um, that's for sure. Let's talk about processes. Like let's look at, um, that kind of stuff. I don't know. What do you want to do?
00:05:51
Speaker
Like it'll be really good to have a solid Friday. Everybody's here, everybody's working. The way we have our One Police Peaceflow setup, like we're pretty much doing everything every day, which is fantastic. There's so much to show you.
00:06:05
Speaker
Yeah, no, that'll be pretty cool. This may sound silly, but I could almost watch one of your or my Pearson tours, watch the video together, just to get ideas out of it about stuff. I'd love to show you the 5-axis toolpath cam stuff that we've been working on. It's really opened my eyes to...
Advanced CAM Techniques
00:06:30
Speaker
Okay, so like last night I had a what I thought might be a rush job for next week that I thought oh I'll do this on the five axis but a lot of surfacing so it's a think of it as a round object that has different shapes all around or it's a cylindrical object but it's not mirrored in any way it's just a unique object.
00:06:48
Speaker
So you wanna rough it in from like four or six different angles, right? You wanna rotate it rough, rotate it rough. So you can do CAM patterns, but CAM patterns just duplicate the identical toolpath. What I wanna do is a, and I think we talked about this, I wanna do a CAM pattern that will take a 3D adaptive, just like on a fourth axis, rotate the part 40 degrees and subject to rest machining
00:07:17
Speaker
reapply that algorithm of that CAM toolpath to what you now see. You want to reanalyze the surface. And you're creating a smart pattern, basically. Yeah, I think we talked about on WhatsApp or something. Why should I have to create six different 3D adaptives, none of which can have any variables linking to each other because CAM doesn't have parameters. And the compute time is a pain in the butt. And I've got to create tool orientation things.
00:07:45
Speaker
Yeah. We'll just keep hounding Autodesk to be like, I need this feature. I need this feature. Anyway, it's good problems to have, right?
00:08:02
Speaker
Yeah, it'll be really interesting to dig your brain about five axis and future potential and how I think I want to use it in the coming years and how you think you want to use it and integrate it into our current product lines and future product lines. Like you and I are just going to be brainstorming for two days solid. It's going to be amazing. So actually, why don't you, are you slammed today?
00:08:24
Speaker
Okay. With Camplete tomorrow, I told them, I was like, look, your software does not look easy to learn, in my opinion. Maybe I'm just overwhelmed by the few trade show demos that I've seen. But my thought was I would move, and actually we're running a test. I've got to put that on my list. We're running, hold on, sorry.
00:08:50
Speaker
We'll run mod vices on three plus two. And we should be able to get them done in, you could argue, you could get them done in one op, literally one op, but you'll waste some material. And I don't think I like it. So I'd actually, I'm okay doing it in either, you could call it two ops or you could call it like an ops zero, where you do some really low risk, easy, quick work and probe in the rest.
00:09:18
Speaker
Nevertheless, I really want to, you always get more out of these things if you bring a part that matters to you. So I'm thinking, I'll get a solid model ready of kind of what I'm thinking. But these, I'm assuming the complete guys are pretty darn good at setting a five axis job. So I'd actually love to pick their brain on just even how they would hold these.
00:09:38
Speaker
But if you have time or you want to, do you want to throw in that like sort of quick draft tombstone of that you did of some knife parts and then let's have the folks at complete help us, you know, go through some tips on it. Yeah. I think I might have a screen grab, otherwise I'll just get another one to have on my phone so I can like physically show them what I had in mind. Seriously.
00:10:05
Speaker
It's all on the cloud. Like bring my laptop. Yeah, why not? Yeah, I should do that. That'd be good. Yeah. Because I'm trying to figure out
00:10:20
Speaker
I was talking with Rob about this a little bit, but the, you know, if we got a medium five axis machine, like the MX 330, which has a 330 millimeter palette, I could put a pretty sizable tombstone on there and make a lot of parts in one setup. But then there's a lot of dead parts just sitting there doing nothing while everything else is being machined. Like if you put,
00:10:48
Speaker
20 handles on one tombstone. It's only machining one at a time. And then there's 19 unfinished snoring at home. True. Very true. But the the flow of parts through the shop is becoming quick and nice. And I don't want like a batch of 20 done. Because that's wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you do one piece flow? So let you would for sure.
00:11:16
Speaker
I'm just trying to think the alternative is to do smaller tombstones with like less parts. So your actual throughput is faster. So like one knife at a time or two knives at a time, like what we're doing now, instead of having a 12 hour cycle per pallet, you'd have this, you know, two hour cycle. You're presupposing that the mill is a bottleneck. The mill will not be a bottleneck. True.
00:11:41
Speaker
Yeah, I guess I'm just looking ahead, but I do. I think you're onto something. I don't think you necessarily need to cram. I mean, I'm learning too, but you don't necessarily need to maximize the runtime and maximize surface area. It's okay. Don't be, don't be a pig. If you can fit. Exactly. Even if one knife takes two pallets. Okay. Whatever. Like.
00:12:03
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And that's fine as long as they're staged. So that's why I really like the idea of many pallets. Like even 10 is starting to sound like not a lot. Um, so, you know, I'm dreaming about something with more than 10 or the expandable pallet systems or something like that, that you can go as big as you want. Um, just so you get that, that throughput up so you don't have all your time tied up in like.
00:12:27
Speaker
a huge long run that's not done yet. When I start thinking about the rubber meeting, the road there though, what scares
Entrepreneurship & Accountability
00:12:33
Speaker
me and the reason I think we should tread carefully is the cost, the actual cash cost, but also the investment and the emotional investment in creating the fixed stream.
00:12:47
Speaker
you know, if you want to change six pallets, whether it's replacing the work holding, whether it's because you made a mistake, whether it's because you think you can do it better, you're now talking about thousands of dollars and lots of skill, time and labor and energy. Um, that's tough. That's, I mean, I would really want to get something dialed in. Well, either I'd have six smaller pallets or one giant tombstone. That's the same amount of part holding. So I say it again.
00:13:15
Speaker
Uh, if I had a bigger machine with a huge tombstone and tons of parts on it, I can't even lift that. What I'm saying is, is you are, you're like, that's what I've learned. Like when people say.
00:13:27
Speaker
Hey, I want to use one of your fixture plates to create a fixture and I realize I can fit a fixture that's like 12 inches by 80 inches long and I can fit 62 mighty bite clamps on it and I can run this so long and I'm like, don't do it. Especially when you're new to this or new to the product, new to that particular mighty bite clamp, new to the material, new to the machine.
00:13:47
Speaker
And even if you're experienced, most of the time I would rather create a smaller fixture has lower, it'll have less cycle time but it'll have lower cost. And if and when you want to change it, you can change it, or this idea of modularity so if you make
00:14:07
Speaker
that's your tombstones or whatever Akuma tombstones. I could almost see you having them as having lots of bolt on. Maybe this is a terrible idea because of like locations and tolerancing and so forth.
00:14:20
Speaker
I think we're on exactly the same plane here. Starting with smaller tombstones or more modular tombstones, you have less invested into each little one. And then if that works well, you can just make more of those as opposed to having all your investment in this one giant thing that weighs like 300 pounds that you can't just pull out.
00:14:43
Speaker
change on the workbench. Whereas having smaller ones that might weight 20-30 pounds would be nice. You need to pull it out, work on it elsewhere, somewhere comfortable with the chair or whatever, and then you just keep this flow up.
00:14:57
Speaker
Yeah, I like that. This is exciting. It's super exciting. My brain's been going crazy the past few weeks because everything's flowing and I'm thinking farther ahead now than I ever have before and it's actually starting to make sense. On the strategy side, the business side? Yeah, exactly. Like a direction, a path, an actual roadmap towards
00:15:19
Speaker
what we want to accomplish in the next few years. It's like, wow, it's all coming together. Okay, so you're ready for a weird eureka moment like that? Did you ever watch The Office? Okay, I really enjoyed it.
00:15:35
Speaker
It was just, I mean, a lot of people enjoyed it. But I weirdly had watched the British version because a friend was into it and recommended it. So the British version was so much more intense and dry humored and all that. So when the US version came out, whatever it was, 2005, it was awesome.
00:15:53
Speaker
kind of lost interest toward the end, because we I was adulting, you know, as an adult, but ended up watching the whole thing over the last like four months, just it was my kind of fun, like, okay, you know, enjoy it. And it was a good show. The last finale episode, Pam talks about
00:16:14
Speaker
It's all in the context of her affection and love for Jim, her office romance and husband. But she's like, I can't believe I sat there for three or four years and waited before I acted on it. And then William is really into space stuff. So I can't remember why, but we watched the movie Deep Impact. There's some reason that that was the one we picked.
00:16:40
Speaker
Okay, which is like in like 1998. Yeah, exactly. 20 years old. Okay. It's your asteroid Armageddon impact type movie. And that one makes you really think about how crummy, you know, the life can be if everything everything changes, right? All your priorities change everything. And it kind of gave me this
00:17:01
Speaker
very like seize the day feeling of like, what are we doing with this? What do we want to go with this? Like now is the time. Don't, don't wait. Um, you know, be deliberate, keep planning, but also like, let's go. Let's roll.
00:17:17
Speaker
Yes, exactly. I think you and I have put in our struggle and our hardship the past 10 years, and we're at that turning point where, yeah, let's just start running. At some point, the race will be over, right? You and I aren't going to have this energy, or frankly,
00:17:37
Speaker
skill sets when we're 50 or 60 and it sounds weird, but like, you know, I am going to be the guy probably with the outdated equipment and there's going to be some 27 year old that I want to punch in the face who's got all the knowledge and all the cool toys and knows all the software or whatever, you know what I mean?
00:17:54
Speaker
But then you think of those, you know, those 80 year old tool makers that know more than anybody else in the world, because they just, they've been around, but they're dated. You know what I mean? That's going to be us. That reminds me of Lockwood's quote of the joke about manual versus CNC. And he's like, I don't see too many people ditching their CNCs to pick up more bridge ports. Like you can, you can ascribe value to the knowing the feel of running a reamer with a quill handle. I get that. I'm not disparaging that, but
00:18:23
Speaker
But, you know, you weren't a tool and time maker and you're doing work that is, I don't want to offend a tool and time maker, but certainly the tolerance scene and the skill sets and the love and the care is on par. Right. Well, that's because you and I have the personality where we will teach ourselves anything we find interesting, anything in the world. And I assume that skill will never go away in our lifetime. So hopefully by the time we're 80, we're still learning. That's all I want to do.
00:18:51
Speaker
That's all I want to do. Oh my God. Somebody asked me a message email or something. They're like, I don't know what the context was, whether it was because you're busy or, or quote unquote successful or whatever. And they're like, do you ever, do you ever now spend less time learning on like the exact opposite? Yeah, exactly.
00:19:14
Speaker
Do you find it's more focused now? Okay, so I think I mentioned this to you maybe privately last week. This has been I'll show this to you this tomorrow. This has been my new key and I don't know how to
00:19:31
Speaker
It's a list, and it's my focus. I call it daily focus, but it's not a to-do list, and that's something I'm defensive about to myself, but also outward because I don't want it to turn into a to-do list. So what this is, I just did a shop update video that I'm going to release today for Patreon members and NYC members. One of the things no one tells you when you're an entrepreneur is that it can be
00:19:58
Speaker
difficult to not have a boss. Most people who have bosses or day jobs think, oh man, I'd rather be working for myself. Well, let me tell you, sometimes it's really nice when a boss tells you what to do or how to do it or when it needs to be done by, or this is the direction that we're going, and you're able to just respond. We all work for the process or that. Well, when you're the entrepreneur and you're in the front of the pack, it's actually quite difficult.
00:20:21
Speaker
And so I wanted more short and medium term accountability for what we're doing here. And so what I have done, or what I thought about was, well, how do bigger companies handle this? They have a board of directors, and that's a very formal, real process. That doesn't work for either of us. You could kind of have a board of advisors, but that's a big ask, and it's a little awkward, even at our stage. But that could be something that comes into play in the coming years.
00:20:49
Speaker
But what I really said is I don't need all this I just need somebody to kind of keep me accountable Neither you nor I have an accountability problem, but you need somebody Sort of like a form of this podcast where I yell at you for not making spend aligners. You know what I mean? So what I do is I have kind of the daily What are we working on? What are we adding value to on the left hand side? So it's not a to-do list but it is hey what's going on it and the reason it's not a to-do list is because I don't
00:21:19
Speaker
get bogged down with minutia. And it has to do with kind of the allocation of resources of the machines and the people here. What are we working on? And then
00:21:29
Speaker
But on the right-hand side, I have, hey, where do we want to be kind of like in the six months? What's this business going to do? The future will be kind to me before I intend to invent it. It goes back to goals are terrible things because people focus on the outcome and not the input to get you to the outcome. So what I do now is I sit down for five minutes in the morning with Yvonne. She's become my board of advisors. She's my wife, but it's really not
00:21:56
Speaker
It's because she fits that role quite well. She's just, she's smart enough. She's like devil's advocate. She expects accountability and I say, Hey, I'm working on this. I'm going to work on this. I'll get those two things done. Um, this is what Jared or Ed or, or Daniel or, or Alex or whatever, this is what's going on. Here's where I have some problems. Um, and this is where we're going to be and get there and it keeps, it lets me, it's been great. Sorry. It's just been phenomenal.
00:22:26
Speaker
That's amazing. I'm sure you've always kept Yvonne apprised of the situations and stuff. I'm sure you guys talk all the time, just like Meg and I do, but having a slightly more formal note taking session of like you write it down and then you review it with her and then she's just far enough removed from the day to day process.
00:22:45
Speaker
or completely removed from the day to day process, but still understands what's going on and who's involved in everything that she can. She can give you that clear view. Whereas you're so in it that it's easy to be like, Oh, let's just go into work and crush it. But it's so easy to stay busy and not accomplish much. Yeah. That is many of my days. It's like what I, I didn't make anything today. I want to make something part of it's fun. Like I've spent some time this week doing some five axis testing, which does not have a direct path to
00:23:13
Speaker
profitability. That's okay. That's why I do what I love what I do. Um, but that is probably on your focus list of your learning, but it helps your skills.
Goal Setting & Mentorship
00:23:23
Speaker
She's able to say, well, wait a minute. What is going on? And it goes back to, I don't care if you don't make money, but then it's on a business, right? Like don't, don't you, all you need to do is make enough money to justify the lifestyle you want to live. Um, so, so this helps me allocate, okay, no, I'm running this. This is important, but we're also going this, this it's been great.
00:23:46
Speaker
Yeah, actually just this morning, I was briefly listening to a Tim Ferriss podcast with Tony Robbins on it. It was like a mashup of a bunch of different episodes. And Tony Robbins was talking about in investing the allocation of resources. And I thought about that for the business sense. And it's exactly what you're talking about right now. And that was just like an hour and a half ago that I was listening to that. I also hesitant to say this is something you have to do with your spouse because the spousal relationships are very ranging in terms of lots of things.
00:23:58
Speaker
Mm hmm.
00:24:15
Speaker
Of course. Think about Grimpo. If you had three minutes in the morning and three minutes at the end of the day with Tony Robbins, just say, hey, here's what I'm doing. Here's what I'm doing. I'm selling you on why I should spend my day on these few things. This is going to get us. And the thing I like about it is it always you keep that right hand side, that where I'm going to be. Because, you know, if you want to do something with rasks or Norseman's or pens or flashlights,
00:24:41
Speaker
But and that's a six month window or a 12 month window there has to be stuff on the left hand side that Results in the the summation of those daily things it gets you to that, right? Of course Yeah, otherwise, they're just pie in the sky dreams. So something I've never really talked about I don't think I've told you about it, but around
00:25:05
Speaker
2013 maybe into 2014. I can't remember exactly when it was but I met a guy at a knife show very successful dude who basically just decided to mentor me for a few months and help me out and and his his
00:25:23
Speaker
What was it? His rules was every morning at seven a.m. or eight a.m., seven a.m., I had to send an email with what I was going to do that day. And then at five p.m., I had to send him a quick email and said, this is what I did. And he said, it doesn't have to be long. But if you miss it, we're done.
00:25:39
Speaker
Yeah, it was it was almost brutal in a way because I had to be up and ready and awake enough to like, this was, you know, back when I would step super late and sleep in super late and all that and he was like, No, like, you need some structure in your life.
00:25:56
Speaker
I had lasted about two, three months before we eventually parted ways due to a bunch of different opinions and things like that. But the things that, yeah, of course, it's fine. It's awesome. And the things that he taught me have absolutely affected who I've become today. And at the time, I was so resistant of some of the things. And then now years later, I was like,
00:26:15
Speaker
Dude, he totally knows what he's talking about a good like wisdom of age thing It's like it goes back to how to win friends and influence people most people when they profess something or claim something Do so out of good intention and good reason and you may not understand it or you may disagree with it But don't chuck it like keep it in the back of your head. I
00:26:40
Speaker
Of course. It's like when I first read the E-Myth, around the same time, maybe even earlier, it was way too soon in my career to understand that book. And I was like, oh, I'm never going to do it like this. And now I read it. And I'm like, word for word, this is how I'm going to write my business. Or like that article on seven reasons why the first year your business earns a million dollars the next year, or next year it won't, or next year is going to be horrible.
00:27:06
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Ramit Ramit said he was that article you sent that over. Yeah, that's that's funny. That's that's exactly similar. Like it's a it's that niche. It's that sense of of, you know, I need to tell somebody else where this where the ship is going and what are the some of the parts and what's going on. It's been great. And, and they need to look at me rationally and tell me I'm crazy or not. And it's okay if people think you're crazy. But
00:27:34
Speaker
the actions have to match the ambition. Otherwise, you're just making stuff up. So earlier this morning, like right after I woke up, I was like, I want to talk to more successful people about how they define goals.
00:27:49
Speaker
Because I've always, you know, a goal is like, I want to do this. Okay, but what does it mean to you? Why do you want to do it? How are you going to accomplish it? What are you going to do when you get there? Is a goal a rolling target? Like you, you had a six month thing. Are you ever going to be there? Or is it always six months? So that's a, that's a little bit tough. I'm not sure I'm ready for that right now. Like, um, I know more and more successful business people, successful, like way beyond.
00:28:16
Speaker
They will never have to, they're not filthy rich or they're not, what do you want to call it? I don't know. They're not bad rich, but never will have to worry about money again in their life. They can do anything. All their kids' education, there's plenty of there.
00:28:35
Speaker
looking, this is kind of sound weird, but understanding what drives, continues to drive them, what's their sense of purpose, how do they change the world, do what they do, lead their own organization, do other things, is actually a pretty telling, you know, they're beyond the struggle. So it's kind of like, what do they do, right? That to me is fascinating.
00:29:00
Speaker
It's funny you talked about bad rich because, you know, my dad was always an entrepreneur. I always grew up around it. We always wanted to make lots of money. We always did okay. Um, some years were well, quite well, and some years were tight and that's the life I grew up with and it's fine. It's awesome. Um, but I always sort of had this, this bad taste in my mouth about bad rich and I, you know, I never really understood good rich.
00:29:24
Speaker
and like successful entrepreneur and like, like working hard, crushing it, making millions of dollars and that's okay. So the past few years, I've really had to retrain my brain to be like, yes, I do want to make lots of money and I'm totally okay with that. And, you know, here are the steps I want to do to get there. It's tough. Cause you, there's the, there's some other folks that have, that, you know, you and I know, or, or I know when you know separately who have done,
00:29:53
Speaker
really well through other means, you know, inheritance or whatnot. And let me tell you, man, I may not be successful as they are, have a balanced bank account like they are, but I earned it. I earned it. Oh, that's great. Exactly. And I also realized like,
00:30:13
Speaker
Like we're 35 years old. We're still babies. Like, you know, we've gone through the first 20 years of your life. You do nothing really. And then the next 20 years, the next 10 years of struggle in the past five years, you and I have thrived. And then the next 20 years are of potential success. Like, like the next 20 years are going to be insane. We're still super young in our entrepreneurial journey. So I'm just really excited about that. Can I, can I give you an opinion on torque wrenches?
00:30:44
Speaker
Yes. I keep getting tagged and posted on Instagram. I haven't heard too much other empirical juicy data, except one really good data point is a, I don't want to misstate his exact role, but it was a person involved in either working on or overseeing an assembly line at Caterpillar.
00:31:06
Speaker
And the commentary was very deliberate and well put. And he's like, we do not relax the wrenches. We run three shifts. It's an assembly line. The wrenches go through a scheduled QC process, which was like every three or six months, so not too often.
00:31:25
Speaker
And we don't, I believe he's sort of like, we don't really see a problem with them. Obviously, they still get QC'd. But anything that's super critical, like the engine heads are done differently. They're done with a specialized torque tool that is treated differently and actually logs the data. I assume that's pursuant to some ISO, so they can basically look up that engine. Screw number three was torqued this much by this operator or whatever.
00:31:54
Speaker
Every little bit of feedback I've heard from people, excuse me, the feedback I have gotten has tended to state it's not a problem to leave them torqued. I have not seen anyone who said, and some of the tests that we've done aren't as long as I'd like them to be, but I have not seen anyone who has said, yep, we've left them torqued for one month or three months or six months, and I can prove to you that it will absolutely degrade the torque values outside of a,
00:32:22
Speaker
You know, torque wrenches are either plus or minus five or 10% to begin with. Right. So this idea that it becomes 30% or 50% and thus a dangerous tool or worse than useless, dangerous because you think you're using a tool that's not actually there. I haven't seen the data yet. That's all kind of fun. Yep. That's awesome. Yeah.
00:32:48
Speaker
It's been interesting following along. You know, there's certainly the heated people that have their hearsay, but for you to chase the data so passionately has been good because the data is coming now. Like people, people are starting to show results where they're firsthand. I just want to see if it's an old wives tale.
00:33:05
Speaker
that it was a popular spread. Like when the sales, when the Snap-on sales rep says, don't do it. All right, well, come on. Let's get some real data behind it, especially Snap-on. You guys are a leading industry guy. Let's put some data behind it. But also, technology has changed. Springs or certain things from 60 years ago aren't the same as things today.
00:33:30
Speaker
Right. Right. So the old wives tales of 60 years ago might not exist anymore. Sure. What do you get up to this week? Sorry. Oh, yeah. I'll give you an update on our heat treat quenching.
Heat Treating Process Refinement
00:33:46
Speaker
So I mean we do we he treats six blades pretty much every single day. So we're always going through this process and we've been tweaking the arbor press method. I'll show you tomorrow when you come. The arbor press methods working very good. There's more tweaks we got to make for sure.
00:34:02
Speaker
I machined these plates. So we had these extruded aluminum plates because aluminum conducts the heat really well, except extruded aluminum is nowhere near flat. It has like, I think I measured 7 thou of bow in one of them. So I'm like, no wonder the blades are coming out warped because the plates were quenching a lead soft blade is forming to it.
00:34:25
Speaker
Yeah. So I deck those in the mill. Uh, some of them I held in the vice and some, one of them I had to vacuum plate down, but then I was able to face mill it down and it's like dead flat now. And that produced better results, um, from heat treat, but that was only a couple of days ago. So I got to get a bit more feedback from the guys to see how that's working. And then eventually we've got to make some bigger plates and attach them better to the ARPA press. Um, and then we've got lots of water cooled plates as well in the air, not too distant future, which would be sweet because they get hot.
00:34:55
Speaker
Right. And you don't want blade one to be cold and blade two to be warm and blade three to be hot and blade four to be really hot. And we, we've got a bunch of plates now. So we're kind of swapping them out and then dipping them in water to like cool that one down while the next one's on. Um, but right now the heat treats a two man process was before it used to be a one man. So like Barry takes the hot plate out and Angelo has to put the thingy on cause it's just a mess right now, but it's proving the process and it's, it's coming together. Yeah.
00:35:22
Speaker
I still like the horizontal vice style idea with the pneumatic cylinder. So imagine an orange vice right out of the oven. The blade is sticking edge up and it comes out of the oven, drops down into the vice. You hit the pedal and it slams down. There's safety issues involved with that.
00:35:41
Speaker
Uh, anything kind of automatic, you know, we're trying to be very conscious about that. So we've got some ideas, but probably 10 times over the last 10 years I've had that exact thought occur and I wanted to figure out, um, actually I would take up a viewer, uh, or listener on this. If they're, if they're in the know, can Grimsmo or can I buy a reasonably priced light curtain?
00:36:03
Speaker
you know, I don't know, 100 bucks, couple hundred bucks that will actually act as a true light curtain. That's safe. That's real. Like, you know, so you don't lose a finger or hurt somebody, something.
00:36:16
Speaker
Interesting. I've briefly thought about that too, but I haven't even looked it up yet. I figured it must exist. Right. I just don't know how. Infrared lasers or something. I haven't seen them outside of true industrial applications. So I don't know, are they something I can use with Arduino? Do I have to have a relationship with somebody or can I just go buy one online? That kind of thing.
00:36:40
Speaker
like somebody sent me a link once and it wasn't okay. So it was, but most, but yeah, it's worth looking into getting better flatness post heat tree pre-lap because you machine the place. That's great. Yep. Yep. Exactly. That's awesome. So we're winning already. Now we just have to streamline the new process. Did you ever, uh, better and cooler and faster? Did you ever overclock a computer in high school using a water cooled system?
00:37:06
Speaker
Yeah. Same here. I never could, I never have the money to do it, but I remember looking them up back on like, you know, a geo cities page of, uh, of like all the hose clamps and they would always die the liquid. Um, they look so cool, but I'm sure that sort of stuff still exists. So you could easily run a little closed loop. Uh, right.
00:37:28
Speaker
Yeah, it wouldn't be hard like we'd machine the aluminum plates with just water channels inside probably do a two piece clamshell right with some sort of seal. There's no pressure. It's just flow and then an aquarium pond pump to a five gallon bucket full of water. And then if you don't want corrosion, coolant or something like engine coolant or what kind of what kind of water do you have in Canada? Yeah, well, I don't think it's Oh, yeah.
00:37:54
Speaker
I don't know. It's not bad. You don't want to coat the... I don't know. Maybe anodize it. No, too much. But yeah, lots of little variables. And in looking up... Check this out. In looking up heat transfer properties of metal, diamond actually transmits heat the fastest. Diamond is carbon. Carbon is an insulator, though.
00:38:17
Speaker
Should be the opposite. Maybe we're reading the chart wrong then. But it was at the top of the chart. No, you're right then. And then it was like copper. Yeah, certainly outside of my wheelhouse. Maybe we read it wrong. I've always been blown away to see like, oh, we'll see welding guys or heat treat guys that can use like pure blocks of carbon. And they can lay down molten hot steel. And it just sits there like, yeah, I'm good. Not going to bother me whatsoever. Or is it graphite? Graphite is carbon, right? Or a type of carbon?
00:38:51
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, it's pretty cool. They'll use it like, um, I've seen it on Tig, like backing plates for Tig jobs where they can like lay a molten bead right down on it. And it just doesn't do anything. It's cool. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. So today I'm finishing, um, my lock, my lock insert for the knife handles.
00:39:19
Speaker
Uh, it's been a very slow process. Cause like yesterday I turned on the lay that five 15 PM and I left six. Yeah. So.
00:39:30
Speaker
Uh, no, I was just doing other stuff all day. Like I didn't, yeah, the lathe has been sitting basically all week with, uh, a bar of stainless in it to make the lock and search is waiting for me to have the time to do it. And that's, that's fine. We don't need it for anything else. You're using just a single axial live tool on the main spindle to cut that shape out, huh? Yes. And then a chamfer tool. And then the third tool I forgot what for. What's that for surfacing?
00:40:01
Speaker
Uh, it makes a little thumb groove. Okay. Got it. Wow. Three live tools. And that's, I mean, that's legit. Cool. I've got five mounted on the lays at any one time. I'm excited. But yeah. And then.
00:40:17
Speaker
And then I got to figure out how to transfer. I haven't quite dialed that in. I made the emergency call it that will catch the part. And then I got to make sure they're clocked properly. And I was thinking about that. How repeatable do five C's clock when you put them in? Not bad. Yeah, but don't you need it to be pretty darn spot on? Yeah, maybe.
00:40:38
Speaker
I know Angela was telling me that at his old job, they had clocking issues with certain things, whether it was the machine or the call it system. Um, I, I made a little bit of slop in the call it a couple of hours or something. So take it up. Like we'll see. Cause you're going to part it super close to, but the parts only like a millimeter thick, right? It's 60 thou. So two mill. Yeah. Okay. Um,
00:41:08
Speaker
Yeah, it just seems, I totally get why you're doing it. It just, it's so different. Yeah. And I'm also doing it backwards. I'm doing it. The material is in the sub spindle and I'm moving it towards the main. Oh my God. To mind blow you a little bit more. Um, mostly because I don't want it yet. I don't want to turn around my life tools because they're set to like, why would I change that? It's not hard to do it backwards. It's just, you got to retrain your brain. Like.
00:41:35
Speaker
It was like, can I do this? It'd be easier, a little bit harder at coding wise, but yeah, I can do this. Yeah, let's just do it. Right. That's awesome. I was going to ask if, uh, pen stuff will be running tomorrow, but obviously it will not be. Not yet. Nope. Um, soon though, that'll be after the lock insert. I think we're still good on knife stuff for quite a while. So, uh, pens will be next week. It was cool to see you. I was watching your YouTube, your video last night on part, was it part two of the lock bar test? The lock insert. Yep.
00:42:05
Speaker
Yeah. It was cool to see you spine tap it and have it fail. Like you were like, so we need to fix this. Something's wrong. I don't know what the geometry of where it's contacting.
00:42:14
Speaker
Yep. And then the other thing Eric and I figured out, this was like, you know, 20 minutes before leaving at the end of the day and he comes down and he's like, Oh, what about, you know, this surface? So that lock surface on the blade, that's kind of tapered. And I had Carl make up these custom end mills that are now on his website as like the JG round tool, whatever. Um, we've been using that same end mill since 2013 or something. Um, not the same exact one, but the same part number.
00:42:44
Speaker
Oh, okay. I was like, wow. Shout out to lakeshores. Right. Now we only get about 80 blades or something like that per per and mill, but, um, every and mill that we go, um, profile around a part will eventually streak as the animal chips. And then it creates a little streak and that tool is no exception. And, uh,
00:43:05
Speaker
The more air cast to attack that block surface with the Scotch bread wheel to kind of polish it up, you lose some geometry at rounds. It's not so good. So we're like, what if we just 3d machine that surface, but
00:43:18
Speaker
We want the grain not going left to right. We want the grain going up and down because that'll work as you machine it. You mean like the, yeah, the scout in the finish, the finish knife, the grain is going the wrong way now and it's creating a grittiness and rubbing and things like that. So if the grain went the other way, so I'm like, yeah, but you can't do that. And he's like, what if you just 3d mill it up and down instead of side to side? I'm like, whoa, light bulb. So then in like three minutes, I copied a code and I re changed it and
00:43:46
Speaker
change the angle to 90 degrees. And I'm like, OK, let's run it. Let's run it tonight. So it ran in that night run. It came in the morning. Looks great. I love that. But then it had to go through lapping, had to go through a heat treat, had to go through lapping again, mill the bevels, engraved the serial number. And then this morning, it's on the last step. And then Eric will have that part today from Friday, today's Wednesday. So we can test it out today. Because I don't know if the geometry will have changed from the form tool to an actual 3D machine geometry.
00:44:15
Speaker
Oh, I'm sure it'll have changed. I mean, it has to be somehow different.
00:44:19
Speaker
So either it'll be the same or better or worse, but we have full control now if this works out. Are you actually doing very small scallop grooves? Like, should I see this under a microscope or even naked eye? Or are you talking about like sub, like tiny, tiny grain? Yeah, you can't even see it. Okay. Under the microscope, you can barely see it. Okay. And it's, it looks amazing. Like we won't have to polish the surface anymore. Yeah, that's cool. It looks really, really good.
Excitement for Five-Axis Trunnion
00:44:47
Speaker
Although it takes like two minutes, not 20 seconds, but I'm fine with that. Yeah, right. I spent basically this whole week having a lot of fun on the five axis trunnion and let me tell you, I freaking love it. I'm really, really, really glad. You were super hesitant for like a long time.
00:45:07
Speaker
Well, so when we first put it on, um, you know, it's my own fault. I kind of viewed the five axis as a distraction from making fixture plates, which luckily have done pretty well. And so you don't, it's a, it was a bad situation where it's like when the five axis is on, it means that machine's not able to do what helps us, you know, pay the bills. Um, so.
00:45:28
Speaker
But this and when we ran it with the Haas AE here, we did a swarf toolpath out of the fusion cam samples. And I just wasn't happy with the finish. And I then had him reprogram that same CAD file in his master cam seat, because he was as not as uncommon in the industry sort of saying, well, you know, your toolpath is the problem. And then fairness,
00:45:54
Speaker
in five axis, there is a lot of things that can be the problem. But Mastercam gave the same surface finish and it wasn't, you've seen this before, I'm sure John, it felt smooth if you had your eyes closed, but when you look at it, it looked like there's a thousand lines and it just wasn't a part I was happy to have. So I kind of thought, if I'm being honest, I was like, well,
00:46:14
Speaker
I guess, you know, the Haas five axis trunnion just isn't that good. Like it has its limitations and hey, it has its limitations. You know, it's, it's the price point and all that. And I'd never again, love, love, love the Haas, but I was kind of bummed about that. And let me tell you, whatever we did there was just wrong because, um, we're doing, we did, we filmed it. We did a little turbo fan blade, uh, using the flow or blend. I think we use blend in the end tool pad and there ain't any of those lines anymore.
00:46:45
Speaker
So that was a huge confidence booster and kind of telling me, you know, good, good, you gave it a second chance. Now you're getting way better. And then I've done a ton of positional three plus two stuff, which is really what it's all about, including two, we put them up on Instagram, but two of those Johnny five wrist parts that were, would have been such a not fun part to make.
00:47:07
Speaker
on a three axis, you know, multi positional thing. And it's so much fun to make them now. It's just so much fun. Oh, what made me think of that is.
00:47:19
Speaker
I need to now get better at integrating in chamfer tools, end mills, scallop, or those like Harvey ball end mills to do even more in machine deburring. Because we want those to spend a lot of time hand deburring those, partly because I'm a little so nervous about some of the deburring ops, because that's where you get some pretty crazy five axis motion, which is okay, but just baby steps.
00:47:45
Speaker
It's fun though. I love to see your confidence and your happiness with it too, right? Like now not only are you totally sold on five axis, but you're more sold on the setup you have right now. So you can actually utilize it. No totally. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's phenomenal. So that's sweet. Sweet.
00:48:07
Speaker
The other really- All right, we should wrap it up. Oh, go for it. Last thing. It was really cool. Sorry, I lost track of the time. Last week, Julie was like, hey, Ed's filming, John's filming, Alex was filming, Daniel was filming. She's like, can we have a meeting?
00:48:23
Speaker
I was like, of course. So like for the first time ever, everyone sat down and we were like, okay, let's make sure. And she had a list. She was like, let's make sure we dump cards. Don't carry projects over. Here's like where we're going to dump, put stuff in. Here's what we should do, should not do. And it's as small or seemingly minor or silly
Enhancing Filming Processes
00:48:44
Speaker
of a thing as it was. It was actually.
00:48:46
Speaker
really, really cool to have everybody there like, this is what we're doing. This is how we do it well. This is the gear, the cameras, the technology. Here's how we leverage stuff. Here's the processes. We're all on this together. It was just, you know, and to know that I'm going to drive up to see you tomorrow and hey, parts are going to get filmed. Parts are going to get made. Orders are going to get shipped. It is fun.
00:49:08
Speaker
It's very grounding to all get together and do that, right? Yes. It's something we've been doing poorly for the past few years. We've done a couple of meetings here and there, maybe a couple of months or whatever. Did one yesterday, day before. It was great. We're going to do one today. It's going to be awesome. And it feels like when you don't do it for a long time, they're really long meetings because you just have so much to go over. Right.
00:49:32
Speaker
Like I set a timer for nine minutes yesterday because I had a commitment at 11. It was like done after nine minutes. All right. Everybody good. Let's do it. Yeah. I'm no fan of meetings in that sense, but, but yes. Yeah. Awesome. Sweet. Hey, I see you tomorrow morning. Awesome. I'm super pumped. Hey, I'm going to bring my microscope. I'm actually going to bring my hardness tester. I want to compare ours against each other. Yeah. Anything else you're going to bring? Text me if you think of anything.
00:50:03
Speaker
Yeah, I will. Awesome. Sure. Take care, bud. Awesome. Have an awesome day. Bye.