Transcript
Speaker: Good morning and welcome to the Business Unmachining Episode 212. My name is John Grimsmo. And my name is John Saunders.
Speaker: And this is a podcast we have every week where something I've been thinking a lot about lately is learning and getting better at a skill. And over the past 200 episodes, we kind of talk about that without directly talking about that. But maybe we should directly talk about that this week. I love learning new stuff, especially when it's my choice. I want to tackle that new skill. I want to figure that out. I'm like a dog with a bone. I want to figure it out.
Speaker: I realized there's layers of understanding with a topic. Because in the beginning, you're kind of uncomfortable. You're like out of your fish out of water. You don't know what you're doing. You're like, I kind of conceptually get it, but I really don't get it. And then you try it. And then it's kind of better. And then it's easy. And then you feel like you got it. And then it's not till you do it for a while that you're finally like, OK, I really got this.
Speaker: I know what's going on. And the reason I talk about that is because I feel like I'm there with the current now. You know, I've had it for a year, a little bit over a year, and I feel like now it's everything I've learned, everything's coming together. I'm creating more complex programs and everything's just like, I got this now, you know what I mean? Have you heard of the Dunning -Kruger effect?
Speaker: I don't think so, no. It's like one of those like not household things, but I don't know, I kind of think of it as like the Streisand effect of things where like maybe you come across it at some point. And I only know it because it came up ironically in a 3D printing video I was just watching because like you,
Speaker: Actually, I love the word curiosity because learning implies like tasky or school in a sense and curiosity is like, like, John, you are curious. That's why you and I are friends. Like, you know, um, and so the dining Kruger effect is this idea that basically when you don't know how to do something, you overestimate your ability to do it from a sort of.
Speaker: whatever you call arrogance or ego or confidence. But I, and look, I'm not a, whatever this is, field of psychology, far from even basically, I succumb to this Dunning -Kruger effect of discussing the Dunning -Kruger effect. But look, that's what part of your and my story is. It's like, you're buying this five -axis machine, you'll figure it out, you know?
Speaker: It's that ability to just look at something and be like, you know, I could figure that out. I could do that. And absolutely overestimate. I remember buying the machine, especially telling my team, I was like, yeah, I'm going to have parts coming off that thing in the first month, no problem. It's just things take time. And I'm very slow. And I accept that. That's who I am. That's fine. That allows me to be who I am and do what I do. But yeah, I definitely overestimate my ability.
Speaker: But that's what people ask this question of, can you teach entrepreneurship or is it intrinsic? Are you born with it? And it's a fun question to debate around a campfire. But I don't think it's a I don't often don't find it the outcomes of those conversations particularly valuable. What is interesting is this idea that like the Dunning Kruger effect is actually really important to be comfortable not to get cocky and not to risk damaging, tougher or
Speaker: being so blind to correct, of course, but like, I'm living it this week with 3d printing, like I've been printing a ton. And the first few prints I did, it's like I didn't care. I was just knew I was going to do it. And maybe this isn't the exact definition of Dunning Krueger. But now I'm tweaking the settings. Now I'm changing the film is now I'm doing the layer fills and supports. And like, if you look back,
Speaker: It would almost be, as somebody who is curious and thus likes to share these experiences with people, it would be hard for me to be a bystander while somebody else is learning because you want to, like, it would just be like if, if Marv was sitting next to you every day with the Kern, you'd go nuts, right? You'd be like, Marv, just leave me alone. I got to figure this out on my own, at my own pace, right? Yep. Yep. Yeah. I can't be told what to do to an extent, but I like to just bash my head against the computer until it works. Yeah.
Speaker: So what is your, you started this off by saying learning, is that what is your learning? Just everything, comprehension, understanding, just a depth to it. Like you think in the beginning, you're like, I got the bones of it, you know, I got to figure it out. But you realize there's more and there's more and there's more. And I remember, take tabbing on a five axis machine, you know,
Speaker: before I actually did it, I was like, I get it. But how like, how do you actually calculate the thickness and the width and the strategy and the left to right? And how you know, like until you do it, and you've done it 510 50 times, like then you start to really get it. And I think I've got it now. Right? No substitute for experience. Exactly. Right. Go make parts, right? Just go make parts. Yep.
Speaker: The, I'm debating on buying another 3D printer because we really want one that can do dual extrusion for solubles. Do you have a dual? I don't, I would love one, yep. So my first, first guidance in steering was Ultimaker, which now makes that kind of hybrid high -end printers that push into the professional level but are still,
Speaker: There are thousands of dollars, not tens of thousands of dollars. At first, my reaction was that's a bit overpriced to spend north of $5 ,000 for an FDM printer, given what it can do. But I've spent some more time researching, and there are definitely sub -thousand dollar printers, including the Prusa, where you can purchase or modify or hack dual extrusion add -ons.
Speaker: It's kind of an odd segue into the day I spent last week at Area 419, which was very impactful. I would say kind of one of those top five moments of my professional career as a manufacturer.
Speaker: both because it was the perfect storm of seeing what John who runs and founded area 4919 has done, but then also just the he actually talked a lot about how advice is contextual. And in this case, seeing the decisions and changes that he's making right now really hit home for me.
Speaker: I'm putting words into his mouth, but he doesn't think about his company like many sole proprietors do or owners do. He thinks about it from let's get the tools that we need and invest to make things happen. In that regard, if we need a dual extrusion printer to R &D to prototype to just make stuff,
Speaker: And so forth, the Ultimaker is a complete no brainer. Good grief. It's still, but I, I can't get over that hurdle because, um, because, because I keep using this word bootstrapper and I think, I think I just need to tell myself, you know, get over it, dude. Like you thought it was cool. You, it was your upbringing. It's kind of how you got here. That was great. It's really hard. Um, I guess I also don't want to sit here and look for a pity party, but darn it, it's hard. Um, I.
Speaker: was raised pretty frugally and just that was money you didn't have to spend and I don't need it. And you can get by with a printer that costs 20 % as much, but it's also like, let's go. Yeah. Yeah. I battle with that as well. Um, the printer is a great example. I'd love to spend, you know, five grand on a dual extrusion printer. I just, I don't want to, right? Like, you know, it's like, does the business need it? I don't know. That's, that's a lot of money to be putting into something that could go elsewhere. Yeah. And it's,
Speaker: Yeah, it's just that feeling of always feeling strapped for cash, whether or not that's reality.
Speaker: It's good in some sense, because then you're not just blowing money on everything, and that gets dangerous. And I want to be careful that I never just freely buy anything I want. I think that's good for us to keep that in mind. But on the other hand, when there's actual tactical results that will be gained from said things, go. Go, go, go. I think it's the most significant
Speaker: business advice or concept that I don't hear discussed enough, which is truly thinking about the opportunity cost when you're not
Speaker: getting folks on your team, whether that's hiring or helping in any capacity or your own time or, you know, who knows who else here would be using that 3D printer to come up with new things that then lead to new machines. And I'm not, we're not at a point where that's wishful thinking. Like I'm not here sitting with no experience and no background, just saying, hey, I've got an idea that could work. I'd like to get a bunch of money and buy something on a credit card that I don't like. It's not that anymore, John.
Speaker: I've got the title for your video, how to spend money. Right. Part of it's just, I think about it from, this is what we do, John. I freaking love this. Yes. 3D printing is still, there's definitely a technology curve that scares me a little about buying something that
Speaker: I don't know enough about the space to know how mature 3D FDM printing is. That's not a possible question to answer, but what's on the horizon for FDM that you'll be losing out on in two or three years? I certainly know that metal printing, SLS printing, SLA printing has been changing a lot.
Speaker: FDM printer as an extrusion, you know, the frosting extrusion, it seems much more mature. Yeah, it's, it's gotten tighter. I mean, they still work the same as they have, you know, past five years, but they've just more reliable, more better, just smoother, better experience, the software is better. And you know, you want the kind of thing that's just like, the printer is already on. And I just am at my computer anywhere in the world, and I hit print, and it just goes.
Speaker: And there's a camera on it. And, you know, I can see that it worked. And, you know, once I confirm that the first layer sticks, I just leave it alone. Yeah, exactly. You know, yeah. And, and that's, I mean, it's like, is it going to phase out in three years? Maybe, but who cares? Like, you'll have three years of a amazing use out of it. And I'm making that number up. But like,
Speaker: you know, you want it now or soon so that you can you can benefit from it and utilize it. I'm not directly like giving you permission to go buy whatever you want, but it's
Speaker: You know, it's a consideration. Do what you got to do, man. Yeah. We, there's been a lot of like emotional or impactful things in the last week. I'm serious. The area four one nine tour, which I'd like to talk more about was, was, it was crazy. And then I recorded that video on, um, when to quit your day job, which that was, that was raw. I mean, that's a good video and it really forces what I do on YouTube and why I try to do what we can to help share and so forth. Um.
Speaker: I like that and then this is it reminds me of frankly one of the reasons that my strike mark my first business fell apart and that partner and I you know to this day don't speak really and a lot of it was he was just like dude quit you need to quit over analyzing things and you know that wasn't compatible with me today it sure or less so it certainly wasn't then I think I had it chilled out and learned some now but
Speaker: He would have been like, look, we know how to make money. We can make money. We can pay this off. You know, maybe we make a mistake or two down the road with something, but on a printer like that, I have no idea if you could resell those things. But if you can, I think that's important to think about as you're making this decision, because, um, a printer that you can easily carry to your truck or sell to somebody, it's not a 20 ,000 pound machine.
Speaker: if you buy it for $5 ,000 and you realize it's the wrong one or you don't want it, and a year later you sell it for $3 ,500 or something, then that's not a $5 ,000 loss. Yeah, exactly. But even all that, he's just like, if we need this, you need to go buy it, right? And it's always hard because we had a big falling out. But I do try to remember that just because he and I had a falling out doesn't mean some of the stuff he said didn't have good points. Absolutely.
Speaker: something I've been working on a lot lately is, you know, pulling on those threads of wanting to make something or do an improvement in the shop or have a custom tool made or make it myself or whatever. Past week, I've sent out several texts to friends that were like, I need your brain. Can I hire you to make this thing for me? Yes. And it's been phenomenal. Like,
Speaker: the feedback from the guys like, yeah, that'd be really fun. That's right up my alley. I know it's right up your alley. That's why I'm talking to you. And they're excited to do it. I respect people's time. And I always say, if you don't have time, that's totally cool. Don't feel like you have to do it for me. But if you want a fun project, this will be perfect for you. So I've got a couple in the works right now with various friends. And it's exciting because it's like, OK, I've been thinking about this for months and months and months and months, years sometimes. And it's like, now it's happening. Yeah.
Speaker: Let's go, you know, I think you we could somebody could rewind to like episode 100 or earlier and it's we started talking about this So this idea that you should spend or I should spend Some amount of money to pay somebody to go prototype something if it doesn't work. Okay, like then you figure that out But you got to keep doing that stuff. Yeah, it's opportunity cost. I mean I
Speaker: I kind of get stuck in doing things the way that I want to do them and I don't always listen to good advice from like others around me or in the community of like how I should and sometimes that works and I just get to do what I want which is great but it's slow because I only have so much time available to do certain things and I my list of things I want to do is literally
Speaker: way bigger than my available time, which is great. But I got to disperse. I got to spread it out. John, the next 10 minutes has the potential to be the best conversation you and I have ever had. It's not a new theme, but I am 100 % guilty of this own self -fulfilling. You are who you want to be. If you want to be busy, you'll be busy. Frankly, if you want to be successful at this day and age, you'll be successful.
Speaker: Um, the world is your oyster. Uh, when I walked into area four one nine, you know, I look, they're human. They make mistakes. They have, they have stress. I'm not trying to paint them as some unicorn, but darn it. They had a great team. They had great equipment. They had a great process. They had a new facility and a lot of this stuff is representative of the fact that they've been doing it when they didn't have all of those things in the same form of just the material items on their floor.
Speaker: You know, they built a new, um, fixturing system and they got the work holding that they needed. Like, it's just, I don't think he is, is, um, he doesn't, he thinks he's a very intelligent person, but he also, I don't think over analyzes, maybe like you and I do. Um,
Speaker: But the biggest thing that came out of that for me, uh, actually there were a couple of good things, but, um, was, was somewhat ironic, which is I asked him to also film, uh, uh, when to quit your job, because I think he's a, he's younger than us and he had a good job as a mechanical engineer. He didn't necessarily have full blown conviction that his single muzzle brake, I think it was, was going to turn into this sort of thing. And, uh, so I wanted to get his perspective as a just different viewpoint of mine and.
Speaker: We sort of did that video and we'll put it out on the YouTube channel here soon. And then he said, Hey, I actually kind of want to film a little more. And I was like, Oh yeah, shoot. What do you mean? You know, he had told the story of quitting his job. Uh, and he's like, well, I continue to quit my job.
Speaker: And it clicked. And he has done something that you aren't willing to do. And I wasn't until Thursday of last week. Seriously, I made a list that is seven or eight items long. Since then, I have offloaded every single customer service thing off of my plate. I have started the process of getting
Speaker: changes on a lot of our other housekeeping stuff within the business, which I had told you, I told myself, I told my wife for months, if not years. Oh, I've got it streamlined. It doesn't take long. I do it. It'd be more work to have somebody else do it, baloney. Like, no, John. And you know what?
Speaker: What airy four nine did john there all three johns? You know, he's got a director of sales and marketing. He's got, I think he calls it a director of operations, but for men, wherever you want to call it, the guy who handles HR, he handles scheduling, inventory, production, material ordering,
Speaker: John at area four nine is not involved in any of that. He doesn't handle internal staff reviews He doesn't handle hiring at unless it's at a certain level. They're 19 people to give folks context So they've grown a lot but these are all things that stemmed out of them I mean they say being a sub 10 person company, which is much more relatable to you and me Well, and I'm sure just like all of us
Speaker: He was all of those things until a certain staffing point, until whatever, eight employees. He did all of those things. You hire people for production. You hire people to get the grunt work done. You hire people to do this. And then it grows and it grows and grows. And he had to make a very conscious choice to step out of those roles, to step out of the customer service industry, to step out of the operations and management and purchasing.
Speaker: And so what does he do? But he did it. That's the difference. Because I have so much affection for you, I want to push you to do better at this shot. What does he do? He does what you want to do. He was there. He's setting up the grove. He's programming the Maury horizontal. And of course, he won't run it long term. But that's what he loves. That's what he's good at. He still makes the decisions on buying the machines. But he doesn't deal with
Speaker: Um, so much other stuff. Um, so I, the other thing I've gone through is I've set up, um, I've started to do what I had said earlier, which is I had set up aliases. So like we have aliases within, um, Saunders machine works, email domain. So like emails that would go to PO or ordering would still come to me. That's all started to get pushed out, which is perfect. That's what the plan was. Um, and then for all the remaining emails, I'm a zero inbox person. It's just the way I use my, um,
Speaker: It's my to -do list if you will so in an email is unread that's something that needs to be done So all of these order confirmation like I order something from Mari tool or Amazon or Lakeshore All of those are now set with a simple filter to auto read There's no reason I need to be marking those as red when I just ordered something. Yeah, you know, it's there. Yeah. Yeah
Speaker: That's awesome. Yeah, I've past year or so become zero inbox as well, and it's the only way to live. Interesting. Yeah. Oh, I thought you were never going to be that, which is not to judge. It was a hard shift. It was like there are 500 unread emails in here. We're getting rid of all of them, and we did. Interesting. And then now, Fraser deals with all customer service.
Speaker: Everything goes through him. Even if it comes to me, we're like, hey, can you send the same thing to support email? Trying to get the customers headed his way. I don't see the support email. As of the past two weeks or so, we've changed all. We're finally changing the emails from my personal Gmail account to, so we've got, I'm not going to say all of my emails out there, but support at fullgrimsmo .com is, yeah, so.
Speaker: Why didn't you do Grim's Own Eyes? It was a domain issue that made it difficult to go at Grim's. So we're like, and this helps some other reasons too. So yeah, all email communication is going to be through fullgrimsmo .com. Cool. Awesome. Good for you. I don't, you know, I'm not right. I don't have all the answers, but I do know that, um, but if we don't pick away at these things, it will never happen and they have to be conscious choices. Yeah. You just need that. You need,
Speaker: You know, if you could have a magic eight ball to show you what you're missing, it's walking into a shop. Yeah. Airy four one nine to see, uh, you've got people that are doing, you know, it's easy to talk about this stuff. There's the, I see that quote all the time on LinkedIn of, I think it's Steve jobs being like, you don't hire smart people to tell them what to do. You hire smart people to let them.
Speaker: you know do their own thing and be good and excel and uh talk as a sheet man because putting that into place is when you see that done is awesome and I guess part of that is you know it's easy for you and I to have the vision inside of our head about where we want to take the company whatever you know how it's supposed to look how it's supposed to flow what everybody's supposed to do it's very hard to convey that to the team
Speaker: in a way that they can run with it and don't need to ask you for everything and can just make their own decisions and even purchasing decisions. And it's yeah, it's it's a conscious choice to get out of that role of like, you don't have to ask me for that. Just just do it. Right. Yep.
Speaker: So let's work towards that. Say again? Well, let's work towards that. Yeah. Well, I needed that stimulus, that push to just look at all these things I've been making excuses about. Like, oh, it's OK. I can do that. It's OK. Even we do shop lunches on Fridays. And even I was still ordering all the lunches. I have somebody else. It's habit. Yeah. You don't realize. Right. Yep. It doesn't mean it's not still a fun group lunch. Of course, we all do it together.
Speaker: Yeah, I would. It was anything that's disrupted like that kind of gets you your heads turn in and you want to step you want to go time. But I'll tell you, it was I'm selfishly so glad that that happens. I just went up there to tell their story. I didn't expect to get anything out of it. Like, you know, I mean, yeah, but that's that's the best is those hidden gems.
Speaker: And sometimes it's the littlest things that keep us from seeing the obvious or doing the obvious, whether it's ordering lunch. You're the guy with the credit card. So of course, you do all the purchasing. Up until not too long ago, well, six, 12 months ago, I'd go to every hardware store. I'd go to the fluid line for fittings. And now we've had corporate credit cards for me, Eric, and Barry for a while now.
Speaker: So whenever the guys need something, go to Barry, get the credit card, go to the store, get whatever you need. I trust you guys. You're not going to buy dumb stuff. And sometimes, usually it works. Sometimes it's completely the wrong thing because they don't know what they're buying. But whatever, that's how people learn. I can't do it all. They show up with 500 sweetest fish. Yeah. Well, it's not just that.
Speaker: a misphrase or somebody orders something they don't understand and you just have to go return it, no big deal. But how else are they going to learn? Bingo. Yeah. Yeah. Well, good. That's awesome. I mean, I have become scrupulous with looking at everything I'm doing and it's awesome because I'm still like, I'm actually
Speaker: We are tweaking the way we make a part on the lathe and I'm doing that. That's okay. I love that. I'm good at that. It's okay. Yeah, it's like giving yourself permission, but also just focus of like, this is what I'm doing. This is what I'm best at. This is what I need to be doing in this business. It's valuable because of this, all these other tasks like ordering extra screws from McMaster. I don't need to be doing that.
Speaker: So actually funny you say that I came in this weekend for four hours six hours and purged like I've been talking about this we've been doing it but but I Purge we have we had boxes of screws of different sizes and it doesn't it's that same thing I said before it doesn't do any good if you don't I mean they were organized but like it's it's just gluttonous we didn't need all of it let's let's you know when I walk into area four one nine I see a company I
Speaker: that manufacturers, muzzle brakes and silencers and reloading presses. I don't see a job shop or I don't see, you know, a whole McMaster car of screw in warehouse because we don't need four different lengths of five, 16, 24 flatheads that we don't use period. I just know.
Speaker: You're smiling right now. I'm seeing it. I visualize it. That's why. Yeah. Yeah. We've got our inventory of garbage too. And the bootstrapper in this is like, you can't throw that stuff. Those are good screws. Somebody's going to need those one day. The answer is no. But it still feels bad just to throw away good parts or recycle them or whatever.
Speaker: Do it, John, do it. Yep. I actually took your advice last week, two weeks ago. We were just like spend 10 minutes and just clean something. Yeah, dude felt great. I cleaned all my toolboxes and I was like, yeah, this is infinitely better immediately. And doing that regularly is fantastic. So easy and so big difference, you know? Everyone go clean for five minutes, 10 minutes. Just put a smile on your face. Yeah. Writing that down for the notes.
Speaker: We, separately, we had one customer, probably our, it is our worst example, wouldn't pay. And they, the reason it, I took it to the next level, wasn't just because they hadn't paid, it's because they gave me three different excuses, including the third one, the second one being, oh, we actually mailed that check,
Speaker: uh like seven or 40 to five 60 days ago or something like so that's like if you tell me you're not going to pay me on net 60 because we have net 30 or you tell me like schools will often say oh you know we look we know it's late but the board doesn't meet until next week that's when we run these improve these like
Speaker: Okay, fine. You're being honest. There's nothing I can do about it realistically. But when you lie to me and tell me you already sent the check and thus are effectively blaming the post office for losing it. And then I later talked to a different person who's like, oh no, we just haven't even approved that yet. We're waiting to get paid by our person before we pay you. It was a reseller of some kind.
Speaker: That's when I will go from being just no. So I gave it another week back and forth, still nothing. And then I kind of in the same vein of area 409 and like, look, I'm not in the payables collection business. This is not something I should even leave on my plate. I want a tool. I want a system. I want a process. So I asked a buddy, I was like, is this eligible for small claims court, which in the US is a great way that you can pursue
Speaker: things yourself without getting a lawyer. I'm not a lawyer. It ends up, I think because we're a business, you can't represent the business yourself because you're not an attorney. I'm not an attorney. So I just called the attorney. I have a relationship with him. I said, hey, can you write a letter? And he's like, send me the PO, send me their correspondence. He's like, yeah, dude, this is easy. He sent a letter, and within six hours, I had an email from them with a check number, a copy of the check number, and it was in the mail.
Speaker: There's the part of me that's like, yeah, I won. But then it's just like, nope, I just need a system. Now in the future, when I get to a certain point, we just hand it off and move forward. There's a bad spot there, whatever. As long as that certain point is logical and reasonable and feels good. And in that example, yeah, they're pulling your chain for way too long. And coincidentally, wasn't it immediately after you put out the video, having the customers to pay you?
Speaker: total coincidence, absolute coincidence. But there's an important takeaway too that I want to share for anyone else that's listening. I used to just take that stuff either personally or just I used to think about it too much. And there's a truth to you, you are who you want to be that is hard for me to
Speaker: soak up in a B every day. But I'm a happy guy. I love making stuff. I don't want to get upset. But whether it's for whatever reason of upbringing or work I've done in the past, like I see when people are trying to get one pulling over you, I get you worked up. I think that's pretty common amongst folks. And everybody deals with it differently. But yeah,
Speaker: Yeah, let it go. At the end of the day, we got paid, we have a system almost certain that that company does that to everybody. It's not like they thought, hey, we're going to stick it to this guy and just move on. There's a point where you have to grow as a businessman to separate business and personal feelings, I guess.
Speaker: I do that too. I take everything personally and, oh, something goes wrong. And it's, oh, I feel terrible. Like I'm all worked up about it for days and days. And, you know, do you, I don't see a side of you, but show it. Yeah, right. Because I want to be the happy guy, not just portray it, but actually want to be it. But yeah, I think things get to me absolutely, you know, less now because I'm very aware of it. And I'm very, you know, conscious of where I'm spending my time and my mind and my energy and stuff. But still, I get worked up about it.
Speaker: And I struggle to separate that business from personal feelings and just go, that's business done, move on. But as you're putting into place, like once you have a system, the system is that's business.
Speaker: Well, and the system is going to get better because soon I'll have somebody getting more involved in even this, like the aging reports. And then that person, I don't know who that's going to be yet. I'll just say, hey, when something hits 30 days past there, send it over to Derek. Like, I don't even, I want to know every quarter, tell me how many people, but Derek sent letters to that didn't, like, I just, you know, then you're just getting a report at some point about real issues that you got to deal with, not, um,
Speaker: you know, letting your pulse go up by five beats simply because you've got some guy who's being a turd. Yeah. Cool systems, man. Yes. Systems like they allow you to not worry about it anymore.
Speaker: you know, you want to improve the system over time. But once it's in place, you're like, Oh, man, now I don't actually have to think about it. I just follow the system. Like, it's something like I work for the company, not it's not my company anymore. It's like, you know, I work for rooms, my knives, and maybe I'm not fully there yet. But it's a concept, you know? No, it's not. That's, that's what I'm trying to say is, is it's a choice to say, I'm not there yet. Tell yourself you are there. Start doing this stuff. So
Speaker: Yeah. Excellent. What have you been up to? So when our first guy came in this morning at seven o 'clock, the current was still running. That's amazing. Yeah. 11 hour, 46 minutes cycle time. Successful. A couple of the holes are a little bit undersized. So I'm going to have to rerun some of the parts, but like, I don't care. It's fine. How'd you know that? I checked this morning. So you check, walk me through how you check that. Like is it, you call them up to the pallet loading station? Check what? The hole sizes?
Speaker: Well, because for us that don't own kerns with pallet changers, the rows, that part is done. It's back in the pallet rack. Yeah, it's back in the pallet rack. So I opened the door. I see all the pallets, and I know a certain one. I could see surface finish on one.
Speaker: And I took my gauge pins and I real quick, like I had five minutes before the podcast. I'm like, I just want to know how tight the holes are. And this one, yeah, it could be a little bit bigger. Maybe I'll rerun that. I've been having a tool chipping problem on that kind of operation. So, um, not surprising. I like, I haven't found the recipe that like, you know, this is the way to go. Um, but yeah, it's great. Like huge success. That's awesome. And pallets I ran last night.
Speaker: same product, same part, probably seven different. No kidding. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Couple of the same. Oh, yeah, it's amazing. When to can you open the whole pallet door and just like grab a pallet by hand? Yep. Okay.
Speaker: I'm thinking of a like Matsura style where you have to call it into the load cell, which I guess it's nice because then you can like blow parts off in there and you can rotate it around. You can load parts there. It's loading station. Whereas mine, I have to physically remove them and put them on the bench and load them that way because I can't rotate them in the Aroa rack.
Speaker: can't rotate. Oh, you sure you can't turn around? Got it. Yeah, yeah. So some things like advice, you can put a part in there. But my tombstones, I want to be able to rotate it around. So I'm working on a workbench setup where I can do that easily. But yeah, it's really nice. You know,
Speaker: Oh, yeah. Remember the military guys were saying that they really were critical of a single load station automation systems for certain parts, because if you need to load 32 pallets up, it takes like an hour or more because you've got to wait for that whole thing to do all that work, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Cool. That's great. Yeah, it's fantastic.
Speaker: Good. You? What are you... We had a lathe issue.
Speaker: We had a lathe hiccup. Okay. Oh, I thought that would garner a, ooh. I loaded, switched jobs from mod vice washers to diamond pins. Works great, was so quick, like you're awesome. Switched out the spindle liners and sucked a new bar in and proved out, worked at the machine, did the first program just to make sure everything was okay.
Speaker: then ran parts and it was running great, great. And then as you run parts, the bar gets shorter, not rocket science. So I had probably run over half the bar and then all of a sudden there's a noise, the noise.
Speaker: And I'm like, what? So I slammed the stop ends up. I had forgotten to put the end cap back over the spindle liner tube. And when the bar was long enough, it was, I think, just sort of self supporting the liner. But as the bar got shorter, I think the rotation caused the spindle liner to just inch out a few. So it was sticking out.
Speaker: Obviously more than it should have been, but not too bad. So when the liner started backing out, spin liner backed out when the spindle then just decided to randomly turn on, it was the it was the bar whip of a plastic spindle liner. So, you know, it was it whipped for probably less than a second and I stopped it. And so the bar spindle liner in this particular material is five eighths of an inch. So there's two liners which stinks. There's the main liner and then a
Speaker: 1 .75 on the house and then you put a smaller one into that one.
Speaker: And so it kinked the spindle liner. So I thought, well, darn it, I'm down now because I don't have another backup spindle liners. And then I was like, well, it's kinked. Let me see if I can kind of bend it back because it will only kinked about a few degrees. And here's the irony. Haas spindle liners, I'm told, are a little bit loose, probably intentionally. And so if you buy the trusty cook ones, you can get them tighter tolerance, which matters because any slop in your spindle liner can be seen
Speaker: on the other side of the spindle where it's cutting in terms of tolerance based on how much materials in the spindle liner. Well, ironically, the kink self -straightened out when you push the spindle liner back into the tube, and that little bit of kink that's left is a great stabilizer. No way.
Speaker: So the, um, the area four one nine of me is like, dude, you're going to go buy two new spindle liners tomorrow. You at least need to have them, even if you think you've come up on a, uh, an improvement hack. Yeah. So, uh, all as well in the end. That's funny. You know, I'm glad that worked. I mean,
Speaker: Yeah, the concept of bar whip is terrifying. Sure. If you've heard the stories and you've seen the pictures and stuff of machines actually moving because the bar hit the ground. Yes. Oh my gosh. It goes back to I had this debate with a friend a couple weeks ago about buying
Speaker: Um, an automated bandsaw and getting better at that. And I was just like, dude, you gotta, um, order stuff, saw cut. And he got more quotes and realized with a couple of quotes and a little bit more volume, it's, you can't even begin to cut material yourself for that place. Yeah.
Speaker: And same thing for us on the lathe, it would be for sure cheaper to buy 12 foot sticks or 20 foot sticks, but we buy them at 36 or 40 inches that way. They're ready to go. You're not going to risk whip because it's already shorter than the spindle liner or at the right length.
Speaker: Yeah, what we do, the knack likes 42 inch bars. So we get a lot of material in 42, but the Swiss like six foot bars. So you get like whatever, two and a half out of whatever the math is. But yeah, 72 inches down to 42. Since we buy centerless ground bars for the Swiss, it's nice sometimes to put them on the knack in that material. So we cut them in half and we just run them that way. And that is the reason for that, is because we're buying the better material.
Speaker: So that's like, that's worth the hassle of cutting it in half every now and then. You're right for most scenarios, like buy the material for that machine, because you know, you're going to need it for that machine. And, and yeah, we still, we have it, you know, cheesy little hand band saw, but I've considered buying a big boy band saw, but it's not a need. Yeah. You know, it's like, yeah, I'm with you. It's fine.
Speaker: And at some point you can still bring it in house, you know, when we were like fifth axis, they have three full blown Amada's in a whole warehouse of material. Totally, totally get it. That's a different world. That's probably more machine, more saw costs. And then I have machines though. Good. What's on tap for today? Today.
Speaker: See if I can do another 10 pallets on the current tonight. Sweet. It's like, um, I talked about this for the Maury too. It's.
Speaker: We like to set up our night runs to do all of the work. And then we can fiddle in the daytime. And if you can have a reliable process with process stability, it works. It doesn't work every day, but it works enough times throughout the week that it's worth it. And then to be able to fiddle and have the freedom in the daytime to change the tools and dial in a tolerance and test out programs and prove that parts and then trust them and run them throughout the night is phenomenal.
Speaker: That is the recipe. Yeah. I absolutely love that. Yep. So I'm probably two days away from making some of the Norseman parts on the current, which is fantastic. I'm really excited for that. And I just have to make, I have to program a new clamp today and make two different clamps. And then I'm ready to do that. Awesome. That's exciting.
Speaker: Yeah, so my days focus on that. It's nice. Everybody else is handling everything else. I just get to play on the curtain and deal with whatever comes up. But for the most part, it's great. Awesome. Anything else? Probably, but I can't think of it right now. Good. We'll talk to you next week. All right. Take care. Okay. Take care. Bye.
