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#229 - "You're an owner, act like it!"
181 Plays4 years ago
TOPICS:
- Saunders' grandfather has a great quote: "if something is wrong, and it can be fixed, fix it, and if you can't, don't worry about it".
- International shipping via DHL.
- Grimsmo bid on his first machinery auction!
- Saunders is still fine tuning coolant washdown system.
- Kern senses pallets loading.
- Airtags to track shipments?
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Transcript
Introduction to Hosts and Episode
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, Episode 229. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo.
Balancing Confidence and Acknowledging Business Unknowns
00:00:08
Speaker
John and I talk about that balance of confidence and conviction in what you're doing, but also there's a lot you don't know about running a business and try to be candid about the conversations you need to have with peers and not a support group, but what do you need to do to figure stuff out, period? Yeah, sometimes you have to open up, but a lot of times when there's stuff you don't know and people tell you about it, you're not ready to hear it.
00:00:35
Speaker
You don't take it. You know, in running a business, there's stuff you don't know and then somebody tells you, oh, it's going to be hard or it's, you know, you're going to have to deal with this and you're like, I got it. Don't worry about it. I'll figure that out when I get there. And then when you're there, you're like, holy cow, this is hard. This is really hard.
00:00:52
Speaker
Well, it's like that kind of advice is contextual, where it doesn't work unless you're hearing it at
Perseverance in Business: Learning from Struggles
00:01:00
Speaker
the right time. Yeah, totally. You don't control when you hear advice or when you read a book or when you talk to somebody. Yeah. And I struggle with, you want to communicate and you want to figure things out, but you also, what's the balance between that and putting your head down and just working.
00:01:17
Speaker
Yeah, because you never want to be the guy that's complaining about everything, and oh, life's so hard, and oh, blah, blah, blah. I don't want to be that guy. I want to be Mr. Happy Pants. But life gets you down. Business is tough. It's a struggle. It's worth it. Yeah. But yeah, it's not supposed to be easy. Yeah.
00:01:36
Speaker
I ran into somebody last week who knew my grandfather, who I knew, but he passed away when I was in high school. My other grandfather, not the one that I think folks have probably heard about. We've talked about one of them many times. Yes, the other one that I probably have never mentioned before. He unfortunately succumbed to Alzheimer's, which is truly a terrible thing. I knew him as a very young kid, and we would hang out together some, but certainly not like my other grandfather.
00:02:07
Speaker
And this person said to me something that my grandfather, he had actually said to me, but again, it's kind of the contextual context of what common is. And he had said, your grandfather always said, if something is wrong and it can be fixed, fix it. And if you can't, don't worry about it.
Moving On and Learning from Business Challenges
00:02:29
Speaker
And I remember hanging out with him once and I lost the key with him. I lost the key to our house and I thought my parents were going to be so upset with me or whatever. And I remember him saying, don't worry about it.
00:02:43
Speaker
there's some difficult things when you run a business about doing the right thing, communicating, fixing things, but then sometimes you just can't fix it. In those situations, it's on you to realize, okay, there's, I don't like it, but there's nothing we can do. So we're going to move on. Yeah. How do we move on from here? Like let's take an action step. Let's do something. Even a mental, like you gotta be okay with it kind of thing. Yeah. Interesting.
00:03:10
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's hard to accept what you don't like or what you wish you could fix and wish things were different kind of thing, but yeah, there's a lot of value to that. I like that. Yeah, it was good. I kind of chuckled because I'm grateful to have had some influential folks in my life, my other grandfather being one of them, mostly for the better, a couple of times for the worse, but in a way that makes you a better person.
00:03:39
Speaker
So it was a wonderful thing to all of a sudden out of nowhere have my other grandfather come back and post-mortem, offer this piece of advice vicariously through somebody else.
International Shipping: Challenges and Solutions
00:03:54
Speaker
Yeah, it was good.
00:03:58
Speaker
And it's like it's a practical level like we're we've got a couple hiccups going on right now and You know you want to Do what you can to stack the deck in your favor to learn from them to fix things, but it's also like look You just sometimes you can't fix it. You know Both with lost free or one was lost one is that same order? It was just really last week, right? Yeah. Yeah
00:04:28
Speaker
I'll just share the outcome is that we stopped doing USPS international period. The only times we've had hiccups, it's been with them. I think you and I maybe have talked about this. Honestly, that should really solve the problem going forward. Do you have a different carrier like any of them?
00:04:49
Speaker
Sorry, DHL. DHL, yeah. Yeah, we've been using DHL a bit more lately and our first experience with them last year was not awesome and then past few times it's been awesome. Yeah. Are you direct? I think so, yeah. Barely handling it, but yeah, we had a shipment of steel come in from Sweden for blades, so two pallets, like 400 pounds each.
00:05:15
Speaker
And it was from Sweden here in four days, easy to clear everything. It was pretty great. Crazy, right? Yeah. We sent something to England DHL and the guy had bought some other stuff in England the same day and our stuff got to him before his inter-country shipment. That's awesome. Yeah.
00:05:33
Speaker
We were with a DHL reseller and that was a very poor experience from a pricing standpoint and ethics standpoint and customer service. I would very much put them into the bucket of scum and to the tune of they actively tried to stop us from going direct with DHL, which also is my witness test of the more somebody screams when you're moving on, the more it tells you or validates the fact that they are doing something that they don't want to lose you
00:06:03
Speaker
meaning most of the time it means they're making a lot of money off of you. Anyway, we are now with DHL Direct, and that's so far much better. Yeah, I will have to ask and confirm. I think I'm pretty sure we are, but I've never asked, so I don't know. Fair enough. Look, I mean, if it isn't broken, don't fix it, I guess. So yeah.
00:06:28
Speaker
It was funny when we ordered the steel a few months ago, the first shipping quote that they gave us for air freight from Sweden a year was $14,000 and we're like, hold on, that is like 400% more expensive than it was last time.
00:06:46
Speaker
Yeah. Like way too expensive. And they're like, yeah, that's what it is. We checked three different shipping carriers and they all came back with the same thing. And Barry's like, two and nine. He's like, just doesn't make sense. I know things have gotten more expensive, but this doesn't make sense. So he said, you sure you didn't add a zero to the shipping weight or something? Hilarious. So he asked them and they didn't respond, but they said, oh, actually it's $2,200. Okay. That's a bit better.
00:07:11
Speaker
Yeah, that seems crazy. It's still expensive. It's still expensive, but two huge pallets air freight across the... Oh, pallets? Yeah, pallets. Oh my God. What are you buying? Blade steel. Okay. Like a year or two's worth of blade steel.
00:07:31
Speaker
It's in strips. It's in sheets. Sheets. Okay. So this gets cut up by somebody else. It's a pallet sized of sheet. Got it. And then we water jet cut it locally here at a local company.
00:07:43
Speaker
I remember way back in the strike mark days, we were buying motors and like it or not, the motors were much easier to get overseas in Asia. And of course, the hesitation there is I would have preferred to source domestically, but just we didn't know enough to figure out how to do that. And overseas,
Optimizing Packaging and Material Preparation
00:08:02
Speaker
it was businesses open and good to go. And we used to send them via boat and it was not particularly expensive to do it, but it took like
00:08:10
Speaker
three months. And so the one time we said, let's go air, the heist is a lot higher. And then when they hit the dock in New Jersey,
00:08:20
Speaker
we got the invoice and it was almost like a stand-up comedy routine of all of the invoice fees. It was like strip fee, unload fee, inspect fee, re-box fee, re-parcel, and it ended up being like four times what we were told because of all these downstream freight fees that we didn't ever pay when it was via boat. Wow. Anyway.
00:08:44
Speaker
I mean, that's good advice. Other businesses listening, there's all kinds of stuff we ship back and forth to and from that you don't always think about import fees, brokerage fees, various taxes here and there. It's crazy. Is the steel from Sandvik? No, it's from Damasteel. I didn't realize you were Swedish. It's cool.
00:09:07
Speaker
Yeah, I remember learning this when I toured the Sandvik places and they have a legit, like they make steel as well. It's crazy. Yeah, one of the steels we use for the lock bar insert, we use a steel called the AEBL, which is like they use it for kitchen knives a lot because it just holds a really good thin edge, but Sandvik makes their own
00:09:30
Speaker
identical variation of that, like chemically the same. They just call it 27N something, something, whatever. We're looking into getting sheets of that, but they only sell it in like 3,000 pound increments or something. Can we get two sheets? We're trying to find some middleman in the US that might have a skim it off the top kind of sheet. Yeah, sure. That's cool.
00:09:58
Speaker
Yeah, we're buying that in strips right now from Alpha Knife Supply, and it's great.
Auction Strategies and Equipment Acquisition
00:10:04
Speaker
It's really cheap steel compared to the blade steel that we do. It's good quality and just not expensive at all. And then we're band sawing it into one inch or two inch, two by two squares. But we're thinking about buying a big sheet and getting a water jet into two by two squares might just be easier. It might be cheaper too.
00:10:22
Speaker
You're not, you're buying a water jet or you'll have a water jet. Yeah, there's a place just like five miles down the road that has been doing good work for us. That's awesome. Do you own a bandsaw now?
00:10:34
Speaker
We have a little porta band on a stand and we're actually looking at buying a proper bandsaw. It's about time. It's exciting steps. It's funny trying to figure out if we want to spend a little or a lot because we don't use it like for production. It's not like we're chopping blanks, slugs all the time, but we need one. Yeah, fair enough.
00:10:57
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, speaking of which, I bid on an auction, a machinery auction, yes, two days ago, Monday. No, Tuesday, yesterday. There was a Mitutoyo optical comparator.
00:11:10
Speaker
Okay. And a Japanese brand hardness tester, just like from the 90s or something. But I was like, yeah, I want those two things. I googled it and I found the auction and I was like, yeah, sweet. Let me put a bit. So I put a bit of, I wanted the optical comparator. So I put a bit of 3800 Canadian on it.
00:11:28
Speaker
And I was like, yeah, nobody's going to bid that. I'll get it. And it sold for $38.50. No. Somebody else had their limit whatever higher than mine. I just missed it. But I got the hardness tester. So that's cool. Oh, great. Cool. You shouldn't have a hard time finding an optical comparative though. Yeah, they're around. This one was really nice. So I'm kind of bummed that I missed it, but they're around for sure.
Innovative Shipping Solutions and Future Technologies
00:11:55
Speaker
Yeah. Angela's been asking for it for three years now, and now Pierre's asking for it too. The more I think about it, the more I'm like, we would really use that a lot. Random note. Do you know if the border's open between the US and Canada? Yeah. I don't know. I've heard whispers. I just don't know the rules. Fair enough. I was just thinking about, I guess I don't know if you could even drive back with something like that without raising. Oh, good point. Suspicion. I mean, whatever. Declare it. Clear it. Yeah.
00:12:24
Speaker
some old used tool. Yeah, right. But there's so much industry in Toronto area here that they're around. Just got to look. Yep. The whole freight issue and so forth is such a great reminder. Again, advice may be contextual, but I think we talked about this. But rather than fixing what broke, try to look at what caused it to break. Why?
00:12:52
Speaker
We have a lost something I didn't discuss yet a different lost palette right now, which is super weird and You know, we we know rather than worry about why that got lost it's kind of like what led that led to that Bit situation. There's a come in a couple other things where it's like waiting here rather than even getting better at something take a step back and think about
00:13:16
Speaker
We simplified some of our packaging way into less additional material, less hassle. We replaced a screw gun with a nail gun. It's so much faster and easier to use. And these things sound silly, but we found, we haven't received it yet, but we realized, do you ever use the stretch wrap that goes around stuff?
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah, on the roll you hold the handle and yeah, those are great. You know, there's two different types of that. I did not know that. So we haven't received the second type yet, but it's called pre stretch. So apparently they pre stretch it and then rewind it on the roll.
00:13:54
Speaker
And so it means when you wrap something, you don't have to really wrap it as tight because it has its own elasticity, which is great because sometimes we're trying to wrap things that are a little bit funny shapes to each other. And if you don't wrap the regular stuff really tight, it just kind of falls off. Yeah. So figuring out a mix that makes packaging stuff up secure and efficient. Do you think, did the whole palette just disappear or did the parts fall off the palette?
00:14:22
Speaker
So the mistake is that we sent a mix of different things to anodizing across a couple of different shipments. And I don't actually know that this is 100% accurate, but it's pretty close. If not, it's emblematic of the confusion on everyone's end. The anodizer finished some stuff.
00:14:44
Speaker
that came in separately, and they're like, we can send it all back together. Great. Well, when they did that, they added a second pallet. We have a custom crate that we normally use. They added a second pallet. And that second pallet that they believe they shipped out is lost. And it's a question of, we've been through our shop. It's not here. Anodizing doesn't think they have it. The freight company doesn't think that they have it. So it doesn't get lost, per se. It could have been misdelivered.
00:15:12
Speaker
all these things are unlikely. So it's hard to say any of them are unlikely because they're all unlikely. Yeah. Yeah. As sucky as the situation is, it's a good opportunity, like you said, to step back and be like, well, you know, do we.
00:15:25
Speaker
spray paint our phone number on the outside of the palette crate. Like do we, you know, it is John, but they are branding is on it, but they added more stuff to a second just off the shelf palette, which that maybe is the lesson learned of like, even though that could save us
00:15:45
Speaker
So some money actually leads to this problem of where is it? But you would never foresee this problem. You're like, yeah, consolidate whatever. I'll save the $100.
00:15:57
Speaker
Yeah, with anodizing specifically, I see a lot of guys on Instagram and friends of ours that like and you guys put a lot of effort into creating custom 3D printed or foam inserts. So all my anodized parts go in here, they get shipped the anodizer, they get put back in here, they get shipped back to me. Everything's protected and trying to eliminate all of the common problems with anodizer and shipping is one of them.
00:16:24
Speaker
not just packaging, but actually making sure it gets here and there. Yeah. Well, we're actually, we've been using different crates that we built and we're actually already working with a custom crate company to design a custom Saunders machine works, anodizing to and from crate that will be totally tool-less. So like the road latches like you see on
00:16:50
Speaker
gear equipment and a piano hinged lid with wires. So basically you can open the crate and load and unload it without risk of damaging other plates, without scratching plates, without requiring tools, without setting the lid somewhere else. It's going to be sweet. That's awesome. That's worth. It'll last. It'll last. Yeah, that's amazing. And your aluminum fixture plates are only so big.
00:17:17
Speaker
You don't make VF6 aluminum fixture plates, I assume. We make a VF4, which is a big plate. Yeah, big plate. But my point is you can standardize the packaging and fit your range of products.
00:17:31
Speaker
That was the more complicated part of how do you build something that works and it stays flexible but also keeps things secured. The big question was do we ship the plates vertically or do you ship them horizontally on a shelf and they both have their trade-offs.
00:17:49
Speaker
The biggest risk with vertical is that, especially on the heavier plates, it's quite awkward when you're pulling them in and out because you have the whole weight of the plate versus the shelf style. It makes it a lot easier to load them and to see what you've got.
00:18:02
Speaker
actually thinking they're going to do vertical. We hired them, gave them a deposit. They're sending us a draft sketchup back right now. They're going to actually make the crate for you as well. Exactly. We're going to design it, make it probably a few thousand dollars, I'd say.
00:18:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's like 20, 400 bucks. It's money, but it's worth it. It's like the worst time to be building custom lumbering crates. Apparently that's gone back down.
Developing Efficient Systems: Coolant and Maintenance
00:18:29
Speaker
I'm not going to try to renegotiate this, but I heard anecdotally that the lumber and insanity has abated. Yeah, cool.
00:18:38
Speaker
Good to know. Yeah. The other project that's kicking our butt is it's such a great example of that enthusiasm when you start something, you're like, we're going to do this. We're going to figure this out. And then two months later, you're a beaten man. The coolant wash down system. Yeah.
00:18:58
Speaker
Holy nuts. I know exactly what I want it to look like from the lock line and integration and the bulkhead manifolds to go into the machine and all that stuff is kind of good to go. Can't find the red pump. We haven't given up, but something's not adding up. We bought a 56 gallon per minute
00:19:21
Speaker
Immersion water pump from a company called Absolute Water Pumps. This was 570 bucks. I mean, it's a real pump. Alex is actually great. Alex is taking a fluid
00:19:34
Speaker
mechanics class in college right now. So he's got some more of the engineering background, the formulas. So there's the whole caveat of like what the GPM is it under load or how much head pressure is there and friction system, but like something off because 56 gallons a minute should be one gallon a second and it should fill up a five gallon bucket in five seconds then. And it's filling up a five gallon bucket in like over a minute. So we got to figure that out.
00:20:02
Speaker
If that, if that gets fixed, then I think we'll be back in business. But, um, yeah, I was hoping that this would just work. Yeah. That's the theory. I find that so much. It's like, okay, just, I got all these ideas, put them all down, get it to work. And then why isn't it working? Why isn't it working? Like I thought it would on day one. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. You guys will get it. We'll get it. That's like perfect project for him in that class then. Yeah.
00:20:31
Speaker
It's one thing to learn things theoretically, but to have an actual hands-on project to practice those engineering skills is really cool. Right. Yeah, I agree. The goal here was to solve a problem for our shop, but also to document something that hasn't really been documented, which is a recipe for other folks because it's fine if you're bootstrapping in the beginning, but a lot of shops will reach a point where it's quite inefficient to be
00:20:57
Speaker
Hosea machines and there's other problems with heavy chips built up in the machine. I'd love to get to a point where we can offer a solution and I don't want to get to that point where we fail or I frankly just don't. I can't imagine it's going to require the cost of a $2,000 pump, but maybe I'm wrong. Yeah, even like a
00:21:20
Speaker
quality coolant pump, a Grundfos pump is under $1,000 I think. Yeah, you're not the first person to mention those. Those are like boiler or water pump pumps like for house water systems, right? Grundfos makes all kinds of stuff. My Maury came with one. My Nakamura came with one.
00:21:38
Speaker
For the coolant. For the coolant pumps, yeah. Do you mind sending me a picture of the data plate or model number on it? Yeah, sure. Yeah. That'd be good to know. Yeah. The Maury main coolant pumps, like 50 PSI, is a Grundfos, and then the 300 PSI on the NAC is also. And they're great. Okay. And I bought a Grundfos for our cooling system. The pump's cooling around the shop.
00:22:02
Speaker
Oh, okay. That's one of those holds pressure kind of pumps. Yeah, that would be super helpful actually. Yep. Okay, thank you. Sounds good. Good. What are you even up to? Starting two days ago, Kern was having some pallet changing issues. It could change the big pallets just fine, but every time it switches in a 72 millimeter small pallet, it says, pallet badly clamped. The Aroa complains with an alarm.
00:22:30
Speaker
And then the current just kind of sits there and waits for the aroa to be happy, but it's not because it says badly clamped. So when you put a pallet in the truck, in the table, it's got the pulse down on the bottom, it pulls it down. And then there's these little air jets that go to the pad feet. So when the foot blocks the air jet, the pressure goes up.
00:22:55
Speaker
Okay. So the row is constantly measuring the pressure of the air coming out of those holes. So when there's a pallet there, the pressure goes up and it goes, oh, yeah, there's a pallet there. Yeah, I love that. There's a set point limit. So it can know that here's my empty state, there's a pallet there state, and then right in the middle is where you want the set point.
00:23:19
Speaker
It was just going over, so the big pallets have three feet on each of the sides and the small pallets only have one feet. So when only one foot is covering the hole, there's two holes that are open on each side. Like exposed to chips? Yeah. Oh, interesting. It's fine. But for the air sensing, there's now a bunch of holes that are open
00:23:44
Speaker
So it's not seeing the same closed pressure as with the big palettes. Sure. Anyway, I was talking with the current service person, Tina. She's awesome. And she told me how to tweak that and reset that limit and stuff. And we decided that it was set for the big palettes. It was not set in two and for the small palettes. So the fact that it's been miraculously working for the past year and a half is one thing.
00:24:11
Speaker
But it was set to 2.7 bar pressure empty. With the small pallet, it was 3.3. And the set point is 3.4. Can you give those in freedom units? No. Times 14.7. Is that right? Yeah. OK, so times 15.7 times 30 psi or something. Yeah, 40 psi. Got a lot. Totally good now.
Machinery Challenges and Technological Integration
00:24:34
Speaker
Anyway, the set point was below or over what the palette was now doing for whatever reason. Anyway, I did all the tests and calculations and stuff and I set it to a much happier number.
00:24:47
Speaker
And that works great. That's so weird that it was working. I bet you it was just at that limit and it just happened to work every time. I've certainly seen badly clamped before. The point is if there's a chip on the table and the pallet goes on and there's a chip under the foot, then the air pressure will see that because it'll leak under the foot.
00:25:07
Speaker
which is great. I have that sometimes because the big pallets seal on the rubber ringer on the outside, but the small pallets don't. Chips definitely do get inside there. Ever since I had a couple badly clamped errors because of chips and contamination, I started doing wash down.
00:25:27
Speaker
Like, before I do a pallet change, coolant sprays, spins, air dries itself, drips, like it turns the table upside down and drip dries for 30 seconds. And then a pallet changes to an empty pallet, pallet zero, does it again, another wash down, turn it upside down, 30 seconds. So every single pallet change now has two wash downs, basically. And then I have full confidence. I've never had that happen since then. So it's really nice to solve a problem and be like, that's never going to happen again.
00:25:56
Speaker
Those are my favorite fixes. Yes. I love, love, love that. Super weird. Gosh, that scares the Jesus out of me because it's like you're not able to correctly diagnose something because it's actually been broken the whole time and nothing actually changed. You know what I mean? Yeah. Everything's super tightly controlled, pressure-wise. There's all these little electronic valves and stuff.
00:26:23
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know what changed, but the fact is it was set for the bigger palettes, not for the smaller palettes. So that kind of makes me happier that I got it set properly. Yeah, got it. And the base pressure was 2.7 bar, but it's supposed to be like three. So I can crank that up. Okay.
00:26:42
Speaker
So it's working. It works awesome though. Is the Maury vertical the only dual contact cat based machine you have? I think so. Yeah, I think so. It's so weird because you're- It's the only cat machine I have actually. Period. Yeah, the UMAX or HSK is obviously the- Okay. Got it. Have you ever had chip issues on the big taper mated faces? Yeah. Okay. Is that kind of a
00:27:05
Speaker
I don't want to say over-hyped thing, but just not a practical concern. Yeah, I think Eric from Orange Waste was like, meh, don't worry about it. Oh, really? Like right when I got the Maury, because he has some other Maury's, and I was like, okay, I'll believe you. Yeah, I've got probably, I don't know, five dual contact tapers in the machine. That's it? Yeah, and I just use them interchangeably. You mix, okay.
00:27:26
Speaker
Interesting. I think if we do end up with a dual contact, I would, I think, stick to all duels too. Which makes sense. Mitigate that, but yeah. Right. I mean, now that there's a good selection, Maritool makes lots of dual contact. They're easier to get than they were six years ago when I tooled up. Fair enough. So yeah. Got it. The other, this is kind of funny, but
00:27:53
Speaker
Another issue, which is almost, you got to just chuckle, is we actually have a lost customer freight order. This is not stressful. We'll just take care of it. Very infrequent, but we started to think about what it would look like to ensure freight shipments and the what's happening or why.
00:28:12
Speaker
And one of the things we chuckled about was for certain shipments like one that were maybe critically important or particularly large or in value is rather than trying to purchase, well, you could purchase insurance from the carrier. We generally have self-insured packages because they are lost.
00:28:31
Speaker
Self-insured meaning, we literally had one FedEx order lost ever in the soul. It's never shown up thing. But we were joking with Freight because I'm like, well, we could just put an air tag in it. Okay. Because our air tag's like 20 bucks. Which, explain it.
00:28:51
Speaker
Oh, it's the new Apple like tile was the company that used to make them, but it still does. But air tags are now out where you can put them on your keys or your purse or whatever. And basically, if you lose something, it'll tell you where it is. It's a little GPS.
00:29:06
Speaker
The crazy thing, it was in the news for me, it's somewhat controversial, but if I understand it correctly, the air tags can anonymously piggyback off of any iPhone. For example, let's say somebody had a valuable thing and they had an air tag on it and they left it outside our shop and no one else was around. Well, the air tag can't do anything, but when I walk out to my truck,
00:29:31
Speaker
it can use my iPhone to ping its location. Kind of like, wait a minute, that's crazy. And you could put them in, another controversial thing was you could put it into cars and surreptitiously track people. For sure. But we were just shocked because I'm like, well, that would tell us where the freight is. If it gets misdelivered to some huge company that doesn't really care about fixing it because they have a thousand parcels in their receiving department, we could at least be like, hey, it is in Salt Lake City right now.
00:29:58
Speaker
Do you think that's the future of shipping? Why not? Realistically, in five years, is that going to be normal? Every package is going to have a $3 sensor in it. Yeah. That was actually on my list today was to look into... There's probably a more efficient freight solution than IoT. When we got our Datron, it had some really cool things that we hadn't seen before with
00:30:23
Speaker
Um, not the binary, like this package was dropped too hard, but rather like, uh, beads that showed the tip angle and like some things help. Yeah. So things that really helped show you, cause it's the whole, like if you get something and one of those stickers is, is violated, what are you, what are you going to do? Like deny the free, like, so, so seeing them on a gradation can give you more middle ground to be like, Hey, you guys handled this too hard and they look okay. But, um,
00:30:51
Speaker
Yeah, when we got the Kern, it had all kinds of those pop stickers all over it on different increments too. So you can see like how hard, how violent the thing was and some of them were popped. And I remember Tony from Kern, like I showed him all the pictures and I was like, yeah,
00:31:08
Speaker
This one's blown, but this one's not. And he's going back to all the freight companies and just like, OK, who mishandled it? Who handled it roughly? It was all fine, obviously. But yeah, what do you actually do with the information? It's great to know. You need to know. But what would he do with it? We actually seriously talked about putting a time lapse GoPro in the crate or stuck to the outside of the crate. It just timing-wise didn't work out.
00:31:36
Speaker
But yeah, I was like, I kind of want a GoPro on the outside of the crate for the entire shipment. But I think there might be some legalities to that. I don't know. No, I think somebody got in trouble for like the US was like, you're filming places you're not allowed to film. Yeah, fair enough. Didn't your current have GPS on it though? Or was that just they knew where it was because of tracking? Because of tracking, yeah. OK. Yeah, I could tell what port it was in. And yeah, that's true.
00:32:06
Speaker
But yeah, the AirTag thing, I thought about that a couple of years ago. Actually, when my kids were tiny, like eight years ago, I was like, oh, if I could totally put a tracker in their shoe, I would. Like, because a two-year-old's going to run away. Like, you know, just get out of your line of sight every now and then. I remember thinking about that. And now it's like the technology is actually here. It's possible. I know, right?
00:32:32
Speaker
I was like, one time Blake ran down the end of the street in his underwear, nothing else. Just all the way down to the end of the street and I had to like find him and chase after him.
00:32:46
Speaker
Well, yeah. So air tag four pack is 99 bucks. So that's 25 bucks, which you could use to ensure it's like a particularly high value thing. And I was thinking about like, was there a way you could incentivize the receiver to return, return the air tag for you. But for 25 bucks, if you want to give them something and incur the cost of shipping back, it's not worth it. So it's like, well, wait a year. Is there a way that we can then transfer ownership of the air tag to them? Cause then they get a free air tag. I will look into it.
00:33:13
Speaker
Because this is going to be like, I think we're going to do this like maybe once every two months. It's not a big concern. But to play with it, it's a fun, interesting idea. But yeah, seriously, in five or 10 years, that could be standard.
00:33:29
Speaker
Oh, sooner than that, John, yeah. Especially in a shipping thing, like with tracking, you know where it is. You're not tracking the wrong person kind of thing. You're tracking your package, your property.
Enhancing Operational Efficiency and Business Leadership
00:33:40
Speaker
Right. And I'm sure there's going to have to be all kinds of new rules and laws about tracking things and people regarding stuff like that. But for packages, makes perfect sense.
00:33:51
Speaker
Well, in the spirit of closing the loop on the AirTag controversy, let's say I come to visit you and I want to be a bad person and I throw an AirTag in your car. I guess you would need to have an iPhone, but if your iPhone realizes that there's a rogue AirTag that stays within your proximity as you're moving, it will alert you.
00:34:15
Speaker
So you can't use this to like do super bad things. Maybe there's loopholes, blah, blah, blah, but there is some system in check to make sure.
00:34:23
Speaker
No, that's interesting. It's neat, technically speaking, how it piggies off of iPhones. Technology-wise, that's really cool. Scary, but cool. Super cool. Because you figure every loading dock's going to have a bunch of workers' bedrooms. Yeah. I don't do an iPhone. I'm a Samsung guy, but probably more than half the guys in the shop are. Perfect.
00:34:49
Speaker
Um, other thing I've been working on is just continuing to enjoy. Um, I kind of, uh, started doing some JavaScript lessons super super basic stuff. And, um,
00:35:02
Speaker
We had somebody ask, hey, how would I write a routine that would perform an action every 10 parts? And there's a couple of different ways of handling it. And so I'm kind of finishing up my notes as a beginner. What are some ways that you can implement a post-mod that can allow you to adjust a warning or a probing routine or an operator comment every X number of parts? And when I say it's not hard, it's truly not hard.
00:35:26
Speaker
Really? If you've never touched a post, it would be intimidating because there's other things to it. But the actual code is quite simple and there's some elegant ways to do it as well. So I'm excited to put out a video and just encourage folks to start becoming more competent and tackling the basics of that kind of modification. That's so cool.
00:35:47
Speaker
Cause it's like, Hey, every, this was a NYC forum court request on, I think a probing routine, but occurred to us, like his worst putting in our, um, set up sheets. And I told, I tell you a while back, we did these drawings that are very unusual, I think, because they're drawings that only have a couple of critical dimensions. Cause everything else, if those criticals are hit, the other stuff should be okay. And then we have these qualitative things that, you know, if the surface finish is good,
00:36:16
Speaker
That's going to go first before I have a tolerance that goes out beyond what I care about. And we also have, it's kind of a drawing me to set up sheet in terms of talking about how often do QC them, but we're all human. And so how do you tell somebody to QC every 15 parts? Well, actually it's pretty nice if you haven't and see like a code reminder, because why shouldn't your CNC machine play an active role in encouraging or forcing that as part of that process, you know?
00:36:49
Speaker
Yeah, that could work. You're thinking. I'm thinking, in our case, we walk away from the machines. If it's stopped or warned you every 15 parts, we wouldn't be there. I hate you. That's actually a really interesting point because that also speaks to the weakness of
00:37:10
Speaker
automated systems that are really good at making a bunch of bad parts, right? Now, you may not need to worry about it, but what if you had a different probing routine that got run every 10 parts? Different tool checks that happened every 10 parts. Like on the Nakamura, we have the probe that can measure parts and features and diameters and stuff, and we use it quite a bit. I've had to hand write code, not JavaScript, but G code to
00:37:37
Speaker
probe and offset every 10 parts or 5 parts or something because if you do every single part, it tends to walk away from itself. It tends to overcompensate and chase itself. So you want to average it over like 5. If you're trying to chase thermal comp and warm up growth every single part, it's too much, too little, too much, too little.
00:38:00
Speaker
Well, even our oscillate has an automatic tool arm. And it can quite easily, with Fusion, it can do a tool check. But every time I do a roughing pass with a CNMG, I don't want to take the time to deploy the tool probe automatically, even if it's automatic. But, man, doing that every 20 parts, the time cost is negligible. You'd want to. Yeah, right? Yeah.
00:38:26
Speaker
Go ahead. What is your reason for pulling out the tool arm and probing the tool to see if it's broken or just to offset the wear a little bit?
00:38:35
Speaker
much more binary for me than it would be to comp. I mean, it's a roughing tool, so the ware is almost irrelevant. A better example actually would not be the CNMG, but rather the parting tool. Every five parts take the time to check the tool first. That's valuable. Well, my question with that is if it's broken on the first part, it's going to do four more before it checks.
00:38:59
Speaker
No, you're right. And when it breaks, it tends to go from perfectly good to gone. So fair point. But yeah, it depends on the tool. Everything's going to have different rules, you know? We should get better at checking the tool and the life management on that tool. Because if the insert's gone, the thing that sinks is you're going to basically ruin the blade anyways. I don't think there's a situation
00:39:26
Speaker
where you won't ruin the blade. Yeah, unless you replace it every 5,000 parts or 500 part officer.
00:39:36
Speaker
We have another good example of what I talked about earlier. Solve the problem, not the thing that's happening, if you know what I mean. If you take a step back, my thinking is a little bit misleading because we've had problems in the past. In reality, that was, I think, the wise offset of that tool. Now that it's fixed, it's kind of like, we had problems in the past, but it has been fine. We haven't had any of those all of a sudden irrational blowups. Which is great. Quit worrying about it.
00:40:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's something huge I've been working on incredibly is just creating reliable systems, creating repeatable speeds and feeds and tool life replacements and checks and inspections and diameter offsets. I'm obsessed with that right now. I just want it all to be perfect all of the time.
00:40:24
Speaker
Last night I had the current schedule to do a, I don't know, 16 hour run or so. And it stopped after seven because I miscalculated a tool life. So it just hit a tool life limit. And I was like, I looked at that tool and I thought it would have enough life left, but it didn't. I was mad at myself. Well, okay. Okay. You're doing great, John. I'm doing great. But yeah, now we're, we don't have the parts I was expecting to have when I came in this morning.
00:40:51
Speaker
Got it. A lot more pressure is going on the current and me to do daily production. Coming back to that theme, I made that comment of, look, I value you as a friend.
00:41:12
Speaker
the day, but the day we stop saying what we need to say because we're worried about whatever is this podcast becomes not what it's meant to be. It's supposed to be a private conversation where there's not the risk of whatever. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I was joking about how you shouldn't touch the Wilhelmin and I'm not the one to make that decision.
00:41:31
Speaker
Somebody else made a comment last week. Not about that at all, but I thought it was great because it just smacked me in the face. It wasn't even that comment. It wasn't even made toward me, but I took it as made toward me because I loved it. There's a word that I won't say in it because this is a family-friendly podcast. I will put an F in there. You're a business owner. Act like it.
00:41:55
Speaker
Now, say it with a little attitude and a cuss word, you're a business owner, start acting like one, meaning, John, you're the owner of Grimsman Knives, you're the CEO, you're the president, you're the leader, quit acting like a machinist.
00:42:10
Speaker
And look, I'm not sure I'm right, because I'll be honest, I miss a lot of the time I don't spend, I spend my time now dealing with paperwork and lost packages this week, which is gay, you know, I think you probably hear my voice, it's gotten me down a little, but so I'm not saying I'm right. But the future of Grimsman Knives is having an awesome team of people who know how to own that Kern and that Wilhelmin and that second Swiss, not
00:42:35
Speaker
Not me. John Grimsmough being like, oh man, I messed up a very well on the tool life of the Kerns run last night. You're a business owner. No, you're right. You're right. I like it. Yeah, I just told the leaders in our team on two days ago, Monday, and I was like, guys, I can't run the current anymore. I just can't. Oh, John. Yeah. Dude. I'm mentally there, but to physically get there is
00:43:01
Speaker
is a whole new thing, which I'm working on. Angelo's been learning it more and more. It's tough because he's busy. He's busy doing other stuff all day long. So for me to put more on his plate, he wants it, but we're just trying to both find the time to do it. They're not easy answers, John. No, exactly. But as you said, I'm an owner, act like it. I'm getting there. It's evolution. It's progress.
00:43:26
Speaker
Yeah. Look, John, you think about what we do and what we get out of this, and I love being aggressive and pushing it, but I hope we always continue to stay, have that element of humbleness or humility, because that's also, it's fun and joy. That's one thing I'm learning. I'm 38, and I don't have all the answers. Good grief. I just don't.
00:43:54
Speaker
But darn, if I don't want to, you know, I said to everybody our Friday lunch, which has been great. Um, you know, there's been a lot of things that have been thrown at us and we figured them out and we get better at them and we keep getting better at them. And if it's as silly as Julie saying, gosh, John, it's taking me two hours to pack up a freight order because of this, all these silly complexities that I can't believe would be remotely interesting to a podcast audience. But it is because it's like, Hey, we need a jib crane. We need an electric hoist. We need a state. We need a nail gun. We need, um, all
00:44:22
Speaker
better ways to shrink wrap it. You need to get away from banding because all these things that are the life of that. Yep. The process is establishing the best way to do it. That's the best for everybody on the team and the best for the product, the process. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Cool. Have a good week. All right, man. I'll see you. Take care. Take care. Bye.