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Business of Machining - Episode 90
187 Plays7 years ago
Shootin' the Breeze Grimsmo and his son, Leif, pay Saunders a quick visit. TURNS out, machining isn't the only thing he's precise about. Saunders digs into his quality engineering obsession.
How to Win Friends & Influence People is a life-changing read. Do yourself a favor and get a copy by clicking HERE!
Family Heirlooms Everyone says they look AND act like brothers, so when Grimsmo becomes the owner of a sentimental Kennedy toolbox, it just feels right.
TUFF STUFF Jack Roman from Tuff Writer Pens features GK in his EDC (Every Day Carry) + Micro Manufacturing Documentary. Tuff Writer Pens
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machining episode 90. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. How's it going? It's going awesome. Sweet. Sick. How? I'm tired. How was the drive back?
Family Weekend & Goodbyes
00:00:18
Speaker
It was awesome. So for those listening, um, yeah, Leif and I came down and hang out with you for the weekend, you and the kids and man, it was just awesome.
00:00:28
Speaker
It was, it was fun because it was kind of nice that it wasn't, okay, we certainly talked shop, but it was actually nice to not all like, yeah. John's, your length is five and my son William is four and it happened to me, but the ages are like perfect. Exactly. They were like besties.
00:00:49
Speaker
They said to each other, I don't know if you heard it at the end, but they're like, I'm going to miss you. Yeah, they gave each other hugs. And then about two hours after you left, William said, when is late coming back? It was cute. Nice. Yeah, we had an amazing time. I did the math. We were there for 26 hours in total. Yeah, that's it. I'm going to argue it was worth it. Totally, completely. Yeah, I loved it. Had an amazing time. Thanks for having us.
Guns, Culture, and Engineering
00:01:15
Speaker
Absolutely. Got to introduce John to some American shooting. Went out to the farm and that was a lot of fun. You're good. Thank you. It's been a long time.
00:01:25
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of those things like I admire shooting for the skill and the precision. I don't feel the need to own guns personally, but I've got you and I've got lots of other friends that have, you know, their own collection and like anytime I want to, I can just reach out, which is awesome. Yeah.
00:01:46
Speaker
For sure. It was something I had to deal with when I left Ohio and moved to the Northeast. And I was like, wait a minute, not everybody here owns guns, let alone loves them. In fact, many people don't like them. And as in most, again, this goes back to Dale Carnegie, how to win friends that influence people. Most people have good reason for doing so. Most people just don't understand the perspective on it.
00:02:09
Speaker
And my viewpoint of them was the precision and the accuracy of them when I shot in high school competitively. And then I was just obsessed for a period of time in my life with the H&K MP5, which is this German submachine gun that has this roller cam delayed blowback mechanism. And the precision and the engineering in it was just as good as any
00:02:37
Speaker
Formula one car or or high. I mean just absolute amazing stuff And if you if you look at firearms, I mean some of the most early manufacturing
00:02:49
Speaker
standardization came around the need for parts to be made within tolerances so that this is just like the pen video you just put out, right? Like part A needs to be part fit with part B even if part A got made nine months later or is replaced 10 years later.
WWII Pistol Manufacturing Story
00:03:05
Speaker
Yes. Well, what blows me away is, I mean, last time I was at your house, you showed me your grandfather's like World War II pistol or something like that.
00:03:14
Speaker
And I was looking at it, and I'm like, from an outsider, this looks brand new. It's used, but the quality to me is no different than what they are today, basically. And I'm like, this is insane. And the fact that they go together and take apart with no tools, just little pins, everything stays tight. It's mind-blowing. It's really cool.
00:03:31
Speaker
I don't know if I shared the story then, but if there's any history buffs here, forgive me if I don't say this absolutely correctly, but that was a World War II 1911 in which 1911 itself, which is certainly an iconic pistol design and absolutely amazing mechanism. If you've never taken the 1911 apart and played with the internal components, it's pretty darn cool and fun. But his was a Remington Rand,
00:04:00
Speaker
r and d and i believe if memory serves that that was a sewing machine company which like so many others got repurposed from the war and i always try to find i always find it a good way to stay humble
00:04:16
Speaker
when we think about how good we've got it relative to... Look, if you own a factory and it has to get turned into making components for national efforts, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's certainly disruptive and it may not have to do with your plans and makes me grateful to... I don't know if we'll ever see that kind of era again in our life. Anyway, the sewing machine company made that, which is pretty cool too.
00:04:41
Speaker
That's cool. Right? Wow. Yeah, I mean, we get to live our lives on our terms right now. Like, imagine if big government came in and said, all right, Saunders, you are now making firearms. A, you'd be like, this is awesome. But you'd also be like, this is disruptive. Like, this is not what I want to do with my life. Because you'd have government dictating what you need to do. So yeah, we do live in an amazing time right now. Right. Yeah. Interesting time, but an amazing time. Yeah, exactly.
00:05:07
Speaker
Dude, the Kennedy toolbox, your grandfather's Kennedy toolbox that I bought from you brought it back. I cleaned it up yesterday. I blew it all up and vacuumed it and I like witnessed the whole thing and cleaned it up. It cleaned up really, really nice. Awesome. It's an amazing condition. Thank you so much.
00:05:26
Speaker
So just so we don't misrepresent this, yes, it was my grandfather's Kennedy toolbox. No, it was not his only one. He had, I think, three of them. And I just decided I just don't need one of them. And so I thought, OK. And I'm trying to balance not. I'm enjoying the process of selling stuff we don't need or use. I don't want to mix that in with family heirloom type stuff. Anyways, when John said he was looking for one, I thought, that's a cool part of the story. I'm OK with that.
00:05:56
Speaker
I was thinking about it because it's got to be from the 70s-ish. I'm not even sure. I wish there was a freaking date on the bottom of it. There's a serial number, right? I think there is a serial number. Yeah, I'll call it in. Okay, they'll know.
00:06:13
Speaker
Yeah, because I talked to the Kennedy guys at IMTS, which was great. And I was teasing them, and I was like, the problem with your stuff is nobody buys it new because they get it from their grandpa. And they were laughing, and they're like, man, we got to do better marketing. But yeah, I'll call in the serial number. And I was thinking it would have been cool if there was a little plaque inside that said, owned by old Mr. Saunders, whatever his first name, and then owned by John Saunders, and then owned by John Grimsmo.
00:06:41
Speaker
It's like a little history of the, of the item, you know? Okay. Tell you what, find out what you can from Kennedy, and then let's figure that out.
Restoring a Kennedy Toolbox
00:06:50
Speaker
Cool. That'd be cool. Because I mean, I'm likely to have it for my life, basically. I hope so, right? Right. And I like the idea of, you know, it's funny because I've seen some old tool makers tools where they'll etch in, like on a set of one to three blocks, they'll grind a relief and then etch their name in there. And that's okay.
00:07:10
Speaker
But I like something that's maybe a little bit more decorative and not destructive to the device. So a plaque that's not, I don't know, maybe it's on the backside of it or something. Or under the lid or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Yes, I like that. But yeah, Angelo's got the exact same model that was in an aerospace tool and I shopped. Is it the same? I think it is the same. Let me just- Well, I wonder how much they change over time. Yeah, it is the same.
00:07:38
Speaker
I think it's the same era as his. He said the side handles change a little bit as they get newer, but his is just dirtier and grimier than this one, and it's been used more.
00:07:50
Speaker
Well, that's the thing that was the easy, made it an easy answer for me is I've got two of them and I use them and that's great. But then I thought the third one I could keep, but it's just going to be a storage device that I'm never going to, I'm going to touch it like once every two years for something, whatever. So I was like, no, I'd rather you use it every day. I mean, that to me is... I love it. It's cool. Good. I'm excited. I've got little Kaizen foam plans for the drawers and... Oh, that's cool.
00:08:17
Speaker
Yeah, the one that you have is the one that was in his shop's office. It was the one, if folks have heard me years ago, I used to talk about how we always used to keep, or he always used to keep certain things like a set of drill index that had some masking tape around it. The idea was it's a perfectly intact drill index. You don't break into it unless you're really
00:08:40
Speaker
You're really in a bind because you know, you open up a regular drill index and you're always missing the number 21 or the number of whatever. So that's kind of your in-house backup option. But next to the drill index in the, I think that has the big center, whatever. Yeah, big center. Is that the one? We're a whole bunch of mercury switches. You ever seen a mercury switch?
00:09:02
Speaker
Yeah. The glass bulb thing with the mercury. Yeah. So as a kid, I used to build like anything I could that involved mercury switches because they're mercury switches. They look like something out of Terminator, but those model SDs rockets, I'd try to like use those as the switch in the series of the circuits and for no other reason than I could then rotate the mercury switch until it short. And watch the mercury fall over. Yeah, and launch the little rocket.
00:09:28
Speaker
That's awesome. Yeah, the trunk switch, the trunk dome light switch in the Volvo 240 had a Mercury switch. Shut up. Yeah, so as you lifted the trunk, it bounced around and the light would flicker and nobody really knows why the light would flicker until you figure out it's a Mercury switch and it's the Mercury bouncing back and forth. Oh, wow. I had no idea that they were that common.
00:09:54
Speaker
I'm pretty sure. Part of why I thought they were cool when I was eight is that I thought they were super dangerous, which I guess is only true if you broke them open. But that's cool. That's awesome. What have you been up to yesterday and today?
EDC Documentary & Manufacturing
00:10:11
Speaker
It's been, it's been an extremely busy past week, like in a great, amazing way. So Thursday, Friday, we had my friend, Jack Roman from tough writer pens fly up here from Tucson or Phoenix, Phoenix, I think, um, him and his buddy Rob flew up here because they're filming a documentary about kind of the,
00:10:33
Speaker
EDC market, the everyday carry and tied into micro manufacturing, like small shops, you know, like you and I and a bunch of other guys. So he was up here for two days with professional camera equipment and they filmed and they interviewed and we had a really, really amazing time and got a ton of great footage. So I'm looking forward to seeing how that came out.
00:10:57
Speaker
But after the first day, I was wiped. And then on the second day, we did more filming, more B-roll stuff. But it was good. It was amazing. I loved it. And we still got a lot of work done. So that was good. It's nice to have the shop humming while I can spend time with them, too. And then Saturday, Sunday, life and I came down and saw you. Monday, we did interviews with two of the guys that were out.
00:11:21
Speaker
that we're looking into. I think we've made our pick, but they're both awesome. I wish I could hire both of them. But it's almost like a number one and then a number two. Hire this guy first and then a couple months later, maybe hire the second guy or something. So that's where we're at with that. And of course, as we're going to the interviews, we have three more applicants.
00:11:42
Speaker
Oh, got it. I thought we were good. But it's amazing. And then yesterday was Tuesday, we got, we had 10 kids from the local high school teacher come by the teachers, the manufacturing class teacher. And he emailed me like a week ago, and he's like,
00:12:01
Speaker
Hey, I've watched your videos for a long time and I just realized, you know, you're in next town over kind of thing. Is there any chance you think I could bring a couple of kids by immediately? I was like, Don, let's do it. Let's go. Can you come tomorrow? And he's like, Oh, that's amazing. But I've got permission slips and all this stuff.
00:12:17
Speaker
Yes, they came by yesterday for two hours and We split the group into two five and five so I had five kids and then Eric had five kids and we kind of split the shop in half and then switched and the kids asked a lot of really good questions and they were interested and engaged and What age excited? grade 12 Seniors in high school to me. Okay. Got it. Okay, cool. And That was cool. That was really neat
00:12:44
Speaker
trying to provide as much information and value and perspective to what business can be and what jobs can be to these kids that might be sometimes kind of narrow-minded as to what their options are.
00:12:56
Speaker
Sure. I think there's some elements of our culture that seem to overemphasize early decisions, probably to their detriment. But I think it's behooves kids. It's smart
Inspiring Future Machinists
00:13:08
Speaker
to just go find stuff out. I don't care if you want to be a machinist, but you need to at least know that there's things like machining out there. What is an engineer? What does that mean? What does that mean you're going to be doing? What does it mean if you're going to have these other professions?
00:13:24
Speaker
Well, because if you instantly tell yourself as a kid what an engineer is and you don't like it from the first context, like, oh, an engineer just looks at drawings all day. Well, maybe that doesn't sound exciting to you. But then you start to realize the practical applications. You can be an engineer making pens like we are or crazy stuff. So I told the kids, I'm like, be careful the story you tell yourself in your head because it can dictate your life in a positive or negative way.
00:13:53
Speaker
So for years, I was like, I'm a car guy. I gotta make car parts. And then I kind of lost interest in cars, but I still thought I was a car guy. So I realized manufacturing was my thing. And it was almost like too little, too late kind of thing. But then you dive right into that. So it was fun to be able to tell the stories.
00:14:08
Speaker
It's just like firearms. Yes, I do love shooting and shooting has ebbed and flowed through my life. Sometimes I'm shooting every week. Sometimes it goes weeks without whatever, but it ends up that it was less about the act of pulling the trigger and it was much more about what goes into it. For a while, I was really into reloading and now I'm into strike mark was about making targets and then making camera mounts and
00:14:32
Speaker
We've machined legally pursuant to form 1s and other ATF stuff. We've machined parts. But it's all about the CNC machines and how you get to a... I remember looking at a Ruger 1022 receiver and I had no idea
00:14:48
Speaker
how they made it. I just assumed it was cast. I just thought that you just cast the thing. Then again, I think I told this to you. When I was living in New York, so this would have been right about when I got my tag days, I wanted to make this artistic little aluminum block.
00:15:06
Speaker
And so I bought some raw material somewhere and I brought it home on the plane when I was coming back to Ohio. My grandpa had a Harbor Freight 4x6 band saw in his shop and I like snuck, not sucking there. I'm allowed to use it, but nevertheless, no one was there. I just like went into the shop one morning and I put the saw, the aluminum in the
00:15:27
Speaker
four by six and I brought the splay down and I knew, you know, kind of sort of how to use this thing reasonably. And I start cutting it and I was devastated. Keep in mind, this is like when I started my YouTube channel, I was devastated that it wasn't cutting to a mirror polished finish. It was, it was like even a good bandsaw doesn't, but this was like, this looked like, you know, the Grand Canyon on the cutting edge. And I was, I was just like, well, how do you get finishes? Like I don't understand. Yeah. So.
00:15:58
Speaker
The other story you told me is when you started making the camera, I forget the camera mount or the resetting target, but you had no interest in making it yourself. You were outsourcing it. There was this divide where all of a sudden you thought, we got to make this ourselves. You mean we want to bring it in-house? Yeah.
00:16:18
Speaker
Well, it's a longer story, but with Strikemark, we were trying to do as much of it in-house as we could, meaning source different. I was doing this – most of Strikemark
00:16:31
Speaker
Most of StrikeMark has two different phases. There was the phase when we built the first prototype, and then we stopped for two years. I bought my tag, my business partner went into the Navy, and then we got back together two years later. That's when we actually finished the product and brought it to market. That second phase, I was in the suburbs. I started in the city, then moved to the suburbs. Regardless, we were sourcing components.
Outsourcing & Business Focus
00:17:00
Speaker
I was trying to call machine shops, call fab shops, call circuit board companies, call the motor companies and bring it all into my, my upper East side apartment. And then later into my little house in those suburbs. Um, and, and do all the assembly and testing and like deal with quarter, you know, issues of this part, not fitting that part. Then I, I, and this is a really short version of the story. I tried to quit my job. My boss to his credit was like, you know, what's up. I walked him through it all. And he just was like, don't quit. He's like,
00:17:30
Speaker
run this another six months, run this another year, which is insane that a boss basically said that. I know you're working nights and weekends, but keep doing that.
00:17:40
Speaker
And what that really stressed me out, but what it made me realize as well, if I'm going to do that, we've got to be willing to not make them in house. Like my basement is no longer the assembly shop. So I found the shop that was doing most of the work and I said, are you guys willing to just take over this project and quarterback everything? And we sacrificed a lot of margin, but it was absolutely the right call because that let me focus on higher value things. They were better at doing it. They quarterback all kinds of headaches on, you know,
00:18:10
Speaker
Fitment and yeah, anyways, it was a good call. Learned a lot of lessons. Lessons that now drove you forward and kind of led you to here. Right. That's probably a good insight though when people ask me about how to get started and I really harp on people to keep their day job or just work harder until it's absolutely clear. Like that let me build strike mark into a company and buy the Tormach and then
00:18:38
Speaker
build the camera mounts into a thing where when I just did go full time, it was, I don't want to say it was a no brainer, but it was as close to a no brainer as you're ever going to have. It wasn't some like just brisk at all. Yeah. So what's next steps on, if you don't mind sharing on a podcast, what's next steps on the employee?
00:19:00
Speaker
Um, make final decision on who we're doing, which I think we've done already. And then I mean, the position is available immediately. It's good to go. Lock it up. Move forward. Yeah. It's, it's, um, I think maybe we're both going to see this, that it's been relatively easy
00:19:19
Speaker
when you're a small company to recruit talent and when you have a pretty wide audience like we do and you do cool things.
Startup Recruitment Challenges
00:19:26
Speaker
But I've been trying to pull somebody on to the new startup that we're launching and it's been
00:19:33
Speaker
It's been, you know, you put your game face on, you got to pitch them why, you know, in this person is very, very good at what they do and they know it. So you got to pitch them on where you're going with it and what the opportunity is now and in the future. And, you know, it's kind of the always be selling thing.
00:19:52
Speaker
Because just as much as you want the employee to provide value to the team, you as a business want to provide value to the employee too. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's a great example of, especially as you move up the sort of food chain, it's not just about a paycheck. It's about what do you get to do?
00:20:11
Speaker
How do you get to change the world? How do you get to be part of a cool story? What's the so what behind this? Working on it. Awesome. So what else have you been up to the past week? Starting to think about the end of the year. Yeah, I mean, that's a month away. Right. And so just started two months.
00:20:35
Speaker
You're right. Sorry. Exactly. But what do we want to, if we want to use that as kind of a just stop gap for measuring, what do we want to have done? We need to.
00:20:46
Speaker
Yeah, which is great. Yeah, I should say it's great. It's not stressful. So the big change is we're going to totally change the Saunders website instead of having like, hey, we have a sell Tormach plate. We sell Haas plate. I want to say, hey, we sell fixture plates. So here's a dropdown list of the machines that we offer.
00:21:09
Speaker
For those machines, here's the sizes. And the reality is you could have almost any size for any machine based on, do you want a full picture plate? Do you want multiples? Do you want smaller ones? And then if we don't have your machine in the dropdown, that's probably fine. It just means we need to get some dimensions. But we've got most of the common Haas and Robo drill type things. And then, yeah, so I'm just nervous about
00:21:38
Speaker
redoing that. It's like a little hurdle thing of like, okay, so now I've got to change up the website. I'm a little nervous about if we lose some SEO or old dead links, which I guess I can deal with with like redirects, but it's work, you know? Anything else?
00:21:58
Speaker
OK, so we got a beta smart supply logistics locker. Right. I get to see it. It is a giant vending machine. So it's and it's tough to.
00:22:17
Speaker
make any sort of final judgments or even process stuff because they haven't shared the darn costs with me yet because this is like a test. This is actually literally the IMTS unit. They just sent it from Chicago here.
00:22:32
Speaker
but it has immediately got me in the ERP mindset to the point where I now get it. This locker itself only has 18 drawers or cavity boxes. They're kind of big. They're like shoe boxes. Yeah. They're more meant for like, hey, you can put a cordless drill in it or you could put
00:22:53
Speaker
50 Hymer tips or something. It's not the style I think we want long-term, but what's cooler that I just learned yesterday is that piece of hardware is already on the market made by another company actually in Cincinnati. The company I'm dealing with, which is the Alting thing, is
00:23:16
Speaker
Their whole mojo is the software that they're building to work with the cabinet. So it is a type of ERP, I guess you could say, but because what they'll let me do is they'll let me put any product that we want in there.
00:23:29
Speaker
even if it's not something that we're going to store in that particular hardware cabinet locker. It can do minimum, maximums, reorders. It can do things like when we're done with an end mill and it goes into a re-grind, we can just mark that in the software side of things. Then as soon as
00:23:50
Speaker
The regrinds hit a cumulative 20. It auto-generates a PO to the regrind company and tells us, hey, you need to now send all those out to regrind and here's all the list of what those tools are. All of a sudden, my eyes are really opening to this. Yeah, it puts all that information. It counts it for you and it just automates so many steps of the way so that it takes away the brain space.
00:24:16
Speaker
I'm spending a lot of time doing ordering and even with common cars, and this takes that away. Instantly know, be able to log in to see what we have on inventory levels and stuff. It's great. I'm very excited about what that could do for us, but some more work to do there. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. How's your ERP system going pro shop?
ERP System Implementation
00:24:40
Speaker
It's good.
00:24:42
Speaker
As always, common complaint with me is I need to implement the team more, get them up to speed. I've got various people know various things, but nobody knows enough yet. Some people don't really know anything yet, so it's like, man, that's on me. I haven't said, hey guys, spend some time and figure it out on your own as well, so I got to do all that. Got it.
00:25:08
Speaker
But we're definitely using it for end mill tracking, definitely using it for tracking job descriptions, like how to set up a job, what all the measurements are, what all the common headaches and notes are, especially with the laid side.
00:25:24
Speaker
So that's really good. So because I've had it for like six months now, we come back to a job that we haven't run for three or four months and there are notes in there, so I don't have to remember. So it's like, oh yeah, don't forget about that. Oh yeah, use that, call it. And make sure to call it tightness, the pressure is that. And make sure to measure this, because that gets out sometimes. And it's really good local source of information. That's great. That's exciting. Yeah. Yeah, so that's good. I have pictures and everything.
00:25:53
Speaker
Have you thought about, I don't know who the person would be other than, I don't know who would be, but have you thought about forcing yourself to be number two on the ERP implementation process? Well, with Pro Shop, you go through a lot of video chat training, like hours or dozens of hours of training with them, and I did that on my own.
00:26:15
Speaker
I'm the one that put in the work and the training, right? But that's a good point. That's a really good point to have somebody else. I mean, Angela is the perfect guy for it, but yeah. Don't say he's busy. Cause I know that's probably true, but it's not a good answer for stuff. Agreed. Which is which stinks, but it's just not.
00:26:36
Speaker
I find it makes, it's one of the most rewarding things as a business person is to see things happen.
00:26:48
Speaker
and have them happen better without you. So, obviously Julie edits videos better than I could. That's been the case since day one. Agreed. And she loves it and that's great. But then you see Ed do things that I didn't think of and that's awesome. And you see Jared come up with a fixture that you would have never thought of or didn't think of it that way.
00:27:09
Speaker
And then we did a widget. So today's Wednesday, the air today or last night. Alex did some of the final detail parts on the V8 engine block and.
00:27:20
Speaker
I watched the video and I was so impressed with what Alex did that I recorded a little ending, talking about that at the end of the video. It's not just Alex, it's the framework for that and I hope that's inspirational to other people. To be honest, it makes me proud of the company we build and the people and the team. Alex is a senior in high school and he was running soft jaws and custom fixtures and he was troubleshooting and he was doing his speeds and feeds.
00:27:49
Speaker
I didn't touch any of these parts. I have no knowledge of any of this whole process. I was never in the cam. Maybe he asked me a couple of things along the way, or maybe asked other people, but that's okay. This was not a hand-holding project. I hope Alex sticks around. I think he's probably got some education college type plans, which is good, but I hope he can stay part of our team. He's certainly welcome to, but on the flip side, whatever he does in life,
00:28:17
Speaker
he is going to be massively, if he goes off to design fenders for a car company or something, he will be better at that job because of what he's been doing. And that's awesome. That's insane. Good for you. But the point there is try to remove yourself. Let other people shine.
00:28:36
Speaker
Yep,
Delegation & Empowerment
00:28:37
Speaker
yep. I had a similar conversation with Aaron yesterday, you know, saying what you did about Julie, like you're editing videos way better than I ever did. You know, you're putting a full time job into what I did 10% of the time. And it's amazing that I was able to split myself into you and have you grow and, you know, thrive in this position. And I want to do more and more and more of that. So you're right, I do need to let go of many more aspects, not necessarily entire jobs, but areas and details.
00:29:06
Speaker
Like you said to me two, three weeks ago, it was like, never make another pivot screw again, you know, set it up so that anybody else can run it. Right. Yep. Um, this is sort of silly, but, um, very little, very, it doesn't, it's not that often that I have something that really changes my level of happiness and productivity in like, just makes me happy.
Discovering AirPod Productivity
00:29:31
Speaker
You're ready for this air pods.
00:29:35
Speaker
You got them. Oh my gosh. So I'm like, well, I was there on the weekend and I showed you, right? And you, when did you get them? Like yesterday? No, no, no. I've had her for a couple of weeks. I somehow, okay, sorry, how it never came up when you were here, probably because you were here for 26 hours and all we did was get the kids and shoot guns. But, uh, yeah, yeah, this is, I'm actually, I got a little bit of, I got a little bit of flack cause I bought them for my wife for her birthday.
00:30:00
Speaker
And she loved them, and they're hers. And I used them for one phone call, and I realized, oh my gosh, I'm on the phone sometimes hours a day, just a ton. Yeah, totally. And so I picked up a pair, and I know I'm two years behind the curve here on technology.
00:30:20
Speaker
I actually literally said no to them multiple times because of lifestyle creep. I was like, I don't need a $150 thing. My phone works fine. I have the plug-in corded. You're set. I don't need these. I was wrong. I needed them. Yup. Yup. Meg got them for me for Christmas, so I've had them for 10 months and 11 months.
00:30:42
Speaker
I've gotten some cool stuff this year that might be, it's certainly the coolest low cost item I've gotten the entire year. Best $150 spent the entire year. I use them every single day. I watch friggin' movies on it on my phone. Phone calls are amazing. You have your hands available and there's no cord and the charge lasts for plenty long enough for anything you'd ever have to do. And the fact that they self charge within the case and then the case is a bigger battery, it's like, it's one of the greatest inventions ever.
00:31:12
Speaker
I honestly will probably sell them and buy the wireless charging ones when they come out that have the little mat. Oh, do you think about that?
00:31:22
Speaker
It's allegedly the next version that's coming out. Apparently, there are the rumors that Apple's having a lot of trouble figuring some of that wireless stuff out, at least on the AirPods. But yeah, they make me happy and productive, and it's phenomenal. My gosh. Right? Yeah. It's something I'm happy to keep in my pocket. Right. Yeah. I love it.
00:31:42
Speaker
I was thinking about something I was reading. Somebody was asking on the NYC forums about turning centers and lathes and like what are the pros and cons and options. And it made me wish that people were talking about like Haas and Doosan as compared with Nakamura and DMG and et cetera. And someone mentioned something about they wish Haas used roller
00:32:08
Speaker
bearings and not linear way bearings or I don't know the correct terminology and for which device.
00:32:18
Speaker
What area? I don't know. Haas doesn't make a boxway lathe, so all of your axes would travel on linear rails of some sort. I think I kind of know the difference between a linear rail that uses circulating ball bearings versus roller bearings, which have more... I think they can be like dual contact more, I guess. Well, I don't really know is the answer. Anyway, you may be just wish
00:32:41
Speaker
I don't know how I'm going to learn it other than just piecemeal conversations, but I would totally sit down for an eight-hour class on machine design fundamentals. Walk me through the C-frame and what are the known weaknesses that they design around and walk me through
00:32:57
Speaker
I'm sure there's more than one box weight design, how the gib is adjusted and the oil is distributed. There's different grades of linear rails. There's different size of linear rails. There's different styles of the recirculating, whether it's a roller or a ball. It's practical knowledge for buying machine tools, but I also just intellectually wish I knew more about how machines were built like that.
00:33:23
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Which could fuel, I guess, future purchase decisions, but maintenance and application of certain machines as well, right? Absolutely. When we were – I think the answer is air bearings on everything. Yeah. Just buy everything current, hydrostatic ways. Yeah.
00:33:44
Speaker
I don't know. If anybody has suggestions, I wish, again, I think I could pick up a lot of it by reactive stuff like, okay, so what is that? You can go find that out on the internet. Yeah, like rabbit hole kind of thought process. But the problem when you get it from sales guys is they're only just telling you their side of it. I want to take a 60 by 30 machine, a larger vertical and
00:34:08
Speaker
Some things change because there's a larger casting and it's a larger rail structure and you know I want somebody objective to say okay So this is there's a lot of good parts, but this but you got to be careful because what can happen is here or you need linear scales because look castings are just gonna grow and cool or I Don't know I would like to learn more Mm-hmm Ever the scholar which is fun stuff, right? Absolutely. I never want to stop learning
00:34:38
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, you're the machine you're sitting in front of that Dura vertical. That's a good machine for some probably very deliberate reasons. I don't know that I can enumerate those. It's not just because it was made on an island in the Pacific called Japan. It's not just because it has a label. I think this one was actually made in California. Oh, you have a Davis machine? I think so. Yeah. OK. But a lot of the parts came from Japan anyway.
Enhancing Milling Machine Performance
00:35:08
Speaker
Right. But yeah, it's not just that, it's the way it was designed, the way it's put together, the way it's, you know, powered and rigid and so many reasons. I have zero regrets for buying the machine. Oh yeah, great machine. Sometimes the only thing I kind of complain about is
00:35:24
Speaker
getting a better 3d machine surface, like the way it eats up code and like, looks ahead and all that stuff. And other than that, like it's been a tank. Yeah. I love it. You use the fanic smoothing stuff.
00:35:38
Speaker
No, and I need to work better on that. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, Lawrence was teasing me on that, and he's like, you don't use it? I use it for everything. Well, I just say it because that could be 20-minute fix, low-hanging fruit type thing. Exactly. And I've played with it, but I haven't gotten the result I want yet. Got it. Got it. But it's all linear machine, right? It's not a distance. Linear rails on every axis.
00:36:04
Speaker
Whereas, my lathe has linear on X and Z and then Y is a box weight. Got it. John and I were sitting on our couch with the kids. I was just hanging out. I think you just looked over at me and were like, I now get why mill turns are so amazing. It's like you have a ... What did you say? Well, because my lathe is live tools and Y axis and all this stuff.
00:36:30
Speaker
With the military, you get a full milling spindle and a full tool changer. You can run 15,000 RPM for 18 hours straight. I can do it on my machine, but with the gear driven live tools and stuff, you don't get a great surface finish. I get it now.
00:36:52
Speaker
Long term, maybe I need to research more on small mill turn machines because they're all big. They're all gigantic. That's when I remember this because that's when I was like, OK, Wilhelmin, Chiron, and Stairag are all make mini mill turn things that are just, it's actually funny thinking about it now in the context of you, they scream grimaceau. They don't necessarily scream your parts though that I can think of.
00:37:18
Speaker
But yeah, it's funny because you think about a live tool, turret, gear driven thing, and you kind of think clunky, yucky, whatever. And then you think, oh no, it's nice, smooth, spindle, 15K, 20K. Yeah.
00:37:34
Speaker
So I mean, I remember at IMTSU and Amish and some other guys were in love with that. Was it the Willeman machine that I didn't see it. It's in our video. Dave precise was looking at one for work related reasons, I think. Okay. Yeah. I missed that completely. Yes. Um, I don't see how you could have missed it. I thought you covered every booth. Right.
00:37:59
Speaker
Yeah, I did a lot of running, but I must have overlooked. I didn't see the Datron booth at all. Really? How did I miss that? They were over in the grinding area too, or the... Okay. Did you guys get a long board? I don't think I was spending too much time with grinding. Did they give you a long board? Yeah, we got a long... That's sick. The guy came by a couple days ago. That's awesome. And gave Eric a long board. Yeah, it's really cool. It's hanging up in the shop right now, so it reflects the light perfectly. And we got to show the high school kids yesterday. They thought it was insane. Right.
00:38:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's cool. Cool. What's going on today? This week? Today. So I've got all these goals to finish by the end of the month, which
00:38:42
Speaker
Not all of them are going to happen, but we've made incredible progress on all of them. It was really nice in the beginning of the month to be like, all right, guys, this is our goals for the month. A lot of random stuff. So in the effort of making, we have one Norseman palette right now. I want to have four. It's just going to make the main palettes, but we've got to make clamps and things like that. So we're going to take some time today and just start tackling the clamps. Excited for that.
00:39:07
Speaker
and then crank more lathe parts, knife stuff. I don't think we'll have time for pens today, but we'll start on that tomorrow. And then just keep rocking.
00:39:17
Speaker
Keep rocking, sweet, good. It's interesting to me, it's an obvious statement, but nevertheless, it's interesting to me how when we have processes down about, so it's for us, that's things like the Asana, it's Kanban cards, it's the setup stuff, how stuff just flows much more smoothly. I don't think Jared has asked me and maybe once in the past six months,
00:39:44
Speaker
you know, Hey, what do you want me working on or what should I be doing? I think it's just, just goes. Um, well, like I can go to IMTS for a week and everybody knows what to do because
00:39:54
Speaker
You ask me what's going on this week, and I'm like, normal stuff. Everybody just comes in and does an amazing job. I don't have to think about it or really micromanage the day-to-day, which is fantastic. So the only things I'm really worried about are process control changes, tweaks, improvements, and just keeping the flow steady. We made a mini turnt, what's it called? Tombstone. We made a mini tombstone for some guys that have a pocket NC.
00:40:25
Speaker
Okay. It's a cool little project. It's on Instagram. We'll do a widget on it. And Ed was doing the widget and we were trying to do some work holding. We were trying the super glue. It was way too extreme for the super glue, but we thought we'd have fun with it. And then he realized, okay, I'm better off using a three jaw chuck on the mill, which is a great
00:40:43
Speaker
and I feel like often overlooked, we're holding it away. But one of the things is kind of a pain in the butt because you usually have to use strap clamps and they get in the way and they're big and bulky. So Ed just made a little base for a three jaw chuck that lets you mount it on your table. Actually, sorry, it's mounted on a fixture plate, but you could use it for a table as well. And so without really any
00:41:06
Speaker
involvement for me that turned into its own widget of like, hey, let's walk through how we make this three jaw chuck mounting plate for a mill. And that was like, wait a minute. So now all of a sudden we've got projects happening, videos getting made, and it's all organic. It's what we're doing here. That was good.
00:41:24
Speaker
That's awesome. Yeah, that's something I do wish I was better at is documenting the side projects, the little things, the tools, the clamps, the little solutions that it's easier to just put your head down and do it, but it's really cool to be able to share it too.
00:41:41
Speaker
We basically stopped filming audio on the shop floor, so everything gets overdubbed, but it results in better audio quality, better audio content, and it really mitigates the stress of feeling like you have to make a video right now, because you're just taking footage. You do whatever you want with it later. Right. That's interesting. Maybe I'll play with that. Yeah. Hey, is Alex Steele moving to the US?
Alex Steele's Montana Move
00:42:07
Speaker
Yeah, he's moving to Montana. Serious?
00:42:10
Speaker
if selling everything, everything he has, and he's moving to one of his buddies, I don't know if they're living together, but they're starting a shop. It sounds like they're really putting together a team of
00:42:21
Speaker
you know, blacksmiths and filmers and making like a group effort at this crazy insane. It's not like he's going to go over six months. Like he's actually relocating to the United States. I assume he's worked his, you know, worked on his visa and all that citizenship stuff. I don't know what his solution is, but, um, yep, pretty awesome and crazy. But I mean, the dude's like 19 or 20 years old. He can do whatever he wants, you know, like good for you.
00:42:50
Speaker
Right. That's, you know, totally, but that's, that's a crazy to me. Wow. Good for him. The future will be kind to him. Yeah, exactly. That's awesome. Sweet. Very cool guy. So what are you up to now?
00:43:06
Speaker
Um, that's a great question. You know, I actually, um, I was doing our morning accounting stuff, answering some emails, so I didn't actually kind of get down to looking at my list yet. Um, I need to, what do I need to do? Oh, Julie's got, we toured this, um, shop in New Jersey that makes landing gear for everything from C-17s to fighter jets. So that video is almost done. I've got to get that off to them. Yeah. It's impressive. We were able to film and approved.
00:43:36
Speaker
Yeah, no, we've got to do some edits for that. But generally speaking, should be good to go. Do you enjoy the factory tour videos? Do you watch them? Yes. I enjoy them. And to some extent, that's all that matters, because I enjoy them. Then I'm going to film them. But as I think about the future, I kind of think about what do I want our channel to be and the content to have on it.
00:44:04
Speaker
I'd like to keep doing them, but I also want to make sure, why do we do them? I think it's a chance to sneak a peek inside of somebody else's shop, the processes, the equipment, how does material come in and go out? You know what I mean?
00:44:19
Speaker
Absolutely, yeah, it's this perspective you don't get otherwise. The only thing I sometimes wish for your videos, but it gives you a unique perspective because you've got your GoPro Steadicam first person shooter kind of view and you're not in it, but your voice is in it and it's your perspective of the shop and you get to zoom in and look at things. Sometimes I do wish you had somebody else with you that could stand behind and show you and your excitement and you jumping up and down and you pointing at things and you picking things up.
00:44:48
Speaker
But I still think in that scenario, you still want to hold a camera because you want to zoom in on this thing. So maybe I just turn the camera on more. That could be good. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I've always give the camera to somebody standing by like some one of their staff kind of just hold it. Right. That's totally true. Because the GoPros, you just literally hold the thing. It's it's self and you've got audio on yourself. So I'll do that then. So they could be standing as far away as possible. Yep. Think about that. Yeah. No, no, that's a really good idea.
00:45:18
Speaker
Because that brings you back into the picture. You're an excited guy and you're in a great place. I want to see that. That's phenomenal feedback. Okay, good. Good, good, good. Thank you. Cool. Awesome. I was going to say, we're still here next. AU is soon though, right?
00:45:38
Speaker
I got to buy plane tickets. Okay. I'm buying plane tickets today. Are we around next week? It's not that I can't afford it. I'm just lazy. No, it's a lot. I'm telling you procurement. It's getting more expensive the longer I wait. Oh, that too. Yeah. Can you go direct from Toronto to Vegas?
00:46:00
Speaker
Yeah, there might be a layover somewhere, but I don't know. That's not true. Yeah. Yeah. It's like two or three weeks away. Geez. Right. Oh, your son left his hat. Do you want me to ship it to you or just bring it? That's why I can't find it. Do you want me to bring it to you, AU, or ship it to you? Yeah, bring it to AU. Good. Yeah. We couldn't find it for school yesterday. And I'm like, okay, fine. Take my Grimms when I've
00:46:23
Speaker
I have a Sandvik boring bar for Lawrence and I have grim to a son's hat. So I got an AU, you got my AU bag ready, already packed. So awesome. Thank you. Um, cool. Awesome. I'll see you next Wednesday, bud. Take care. Sounds great. Have a great day. Bye.