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Business of Machining - Episode 28
220 Plays8 years ago
Feel like picking some BRAINS?
By reviewing this podcast on iTunes from now through the end of September, you could be chosen to have a CHAT with the co-hosts on the topic of your choice!
Saunders visits Madison, WI for Tech Days, formerly the Tormach Open House and Mitutoyo America Corporation, second to The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in metrology accuracy.
And I said, "LAAATHE, what's goin' on?" Grimsmo's coming in hot...so hot his inserts are turning to TOAST! Reaching out for some help on Instagram, he's told to go back to school when it comes to SFM. Click here to see Instagram post.
Should Grimsmo dive into arduino and put a z-axis motor on the Tormach Surface Grinder? It's a yes AND a no from Saunders.
With the August 31st deadline fast approaching, marking the Rask Advent Calendar has become an exciting part of the day.
COMING SOON: Crunching numbers on accounting and the role it plays in capital investment.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Tormach Event
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining. This is episode number 28 and my name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. Good morning John, how's it going? Good morning, how are you? I'm fantastic. So tell our audience where you are and what you're up to right now.
00:00:19
Speaker
I am sitting in a 2015 Nissan Versa, just outside. Grinzo, when I did our pre-recording check and the Starbucks, it's funny, it's not that loud inside, but it was too loud for the microphone.
00:00:35
Speaker
I moved my rental car right up next to the restaurant, in a parking spot, I'm not being that guy, in a parking spot, still with ample wifi, so I'm sitting in the passenger seat of my rental car, it's at like six in the morning in Madison, Wisconsin, talking to you. I'm up here for, Tormach renamed their, they renamed their open house tech days, which is actually, that's actually a good little story to talk about, they've learned some tough lessons.
00:01:00
Speaker
on just some unfortunate goose there. But today is all about training and learning. So we've got clinics on work holding and fixturing and machining, turning, all that. And then tomorrow is their traditional open house. Oh, nice. That sounds like a blast. Yeah. Funny story. Two years ago, we both went to the open house, and that's the first time you and I ever met.
00:01:22
Speaker
And God, it seems so much longer than that. I know. In the best way possible. Yeah. That's crazy, though. And they've grown. Oh, my gosh. I mean, and it's awesome to see you. They're a small company, but they've grown a ton, which is great. I think the audience has grown the number of people that want to make. I think I feel like we see it because we see the number of emails that come in for people saying, hey, how do I do this?
Growth and Community Engagement
00:01:45
Speaker
Or I'm thinking about buying this machine, which is cool. Yeah, cool.
00:01:49
Speaker
Yeah, or the lots of emails that like, oh, I just got my first 440 or 1100 or, you know, or how did you do this? Or I watched this video and can you explain more?
00:01:58
Speaker
Right, right. Which is, I mean, that's what it's all about. Yeah, absolutely. By no means do I feel like I'm done hustling on like the saunter side of things with the products that we make and the work we do. I think I've got a lot left to do and prove, but I also want to start making sure I mix in an ongoing amount of the sort of giving it back with beyond just the YouTube channel. Yeah.
00:02:19
Speaker
Awesome.
Metrology Insights and Cultural Reflections
00:02:21
Speaker
So on the way up here, I've really the last year tried to get in the habit of any time I travel, I try to make it a two or three or more stop visit. Like what can I do now that I have this passion and interest and enough. Usually now what's nice now is usually I can get my phone calls returned if I want to do something, you know? Yeah. And so I got to go tour Mito Toyu, Mito Toyu's American headquarters. Whoa.
00:02:48
Speaker
So, I mean, literally you would have been going bananas. I'm literally hanging out with a, they just call him the doctor. This guy has his PhD in metrology. He's like the chief nerd in metatoyo. Now, metatoyo America is legit, but it's still,
00:03:04
Speaker
the sort of, it's underneath the Japanese parent. So most of the manufacturing happens over there. They still have a huge amount of resources and inventory and repair and service. They used to assemble coordinate measuring machines here, but they no longer do. But they've got the, I hope I phrased this correctly, they have the most
00:03:27
Speaker
accurate metrology standards outside of NIST, which is the North American, I should know that. It's NIST is what in the US at least tells us what an inch is and so forth. But as like a machine shop, I can't send my calipers or my gauge blocks to NIST. They're like, go away, we don't want to talk to you.
00:03:45
Speaker
I can send them to Mitsutoyo. And Mitsutoyo has. They are the number two behind this. And we got to see that room with the concrete isolation and the temperature control and just amazing. So cool. Was it a different experience than visiting the Starrett factory?
00:04:03
Speaker
Yeah, well, so obviously the big difference is that Starrett, that's manufacturing. And Starrett is American as apple pie. I mean, it's literally in this small, quaint New England town on a river. They use the hydropower. They've grown, I don't know. I mean, it appears to the naked eye that there maybe were seven major expansions of
00:04:25
Speaker
you know building this original small wooden building of with what was his name L.S. Starrett up to what's now I think over a million square feet of manufacturing. So it's very cobbled together and it has very much the remnants of what I've seen like I toured Smith and Wesson which is also a Massachusetts factory. They had these old
00:04:45
Speaker
a feel of America in the construction techniques and the layout, whereas this was very Japanese. So first of all, it's a brand, basically a brand new building. It's a warehouse that's got 30-foot clear heights. Everything's LED lighting. You could eat off the floors. And that's not to say that Starrett wasn't clean or nice. It's just that it was a very different... Actually, it'll be curious if I ever go to Japan, which
00:05:08
Speaker
i say that casually because it was discussed yesterday a lot because i was like this would be so cool to see this um you know how do you etch glass scales but you know i'm hesitant because uh as a culture every time i've talked to somebody um from the far east they have a incredible different
00:05:25
Speaker
perspective on sharing, you know, even stare. It was tough to get in there. But Mr. Toyu, you and I talked about this with Okuma. I mean, little Okuma was like, please don't film our machine even if you buy the darn thing. So I don't know that going over there to me, there's no point in going if I can't film it because it's about sharing the experience.
00:05:43
Speaker
I can go, we didn't film yesterday because of some, some vacation schedule things and they had conflicts, but they said that we're welcome to come back and film there. And that in and of itself would be cool. Absolutely. So that was, that was pretty nerdy.
Technical Deep Dive: Machining and Gauge Blocks
00:05:58
Speaker
Nerd-tastic. I love it. Hmm. Well, you know, I got to share one thing. So I forget what they're called now. Have you ever seen the, maybe like 24 inch long,
00:06:09
Speaker
things that have multiple gauge blocks staggered so that the gauge blocks, one is higher up and the next one's down and the other one's higher up. So basically you have, if there are half inch gauge blocks, 24 inches, you'd have 48 gauge blocks rung together in this like plastic fixture. Have you seen that?
00:06:28
Speaker
It's called like, gosh, I'm kicking myself now. It's also early in the morning, but it's like a standard or something like that. So you basically, you could pick point A at the beginning and point B could be, you know, 18 and a half inches. And I now have, I think basically the most accurate way of looking at what really is 18 and a half inches. So in other words, I think you can use this to say calibrate your CMM, which just tells you how bananas they are.
00:06:56
Speaker
But I said to him, I was like, so wait a minute, why, if you're taking 48 gauge blocks and you're ringing them together in a fixture, how is that not less accurate than taking, obviously your time with one piece of, one homogenous piece of material and really taking your time to machine it, grind it, lap it, stress relieve it, relap it, check it, all that.
00:07:23
Speaker
He basically said it's a cost thing. The more company in Connecticut, Wayne Moore, the founder, being the guy that wrote the Bible, the principles of mechanical foundations or mechanical accuracy, they do do it because they've got machines, I guess, where they can set parts up to within like, I don't know, five or 10 millionths. Wow, even across a length like that.
00:07:47
Speaker
Well, that's the conversation I wanted to have. This was the PhD fellow talking about this, and he was limited on time. So I figured it'd be a good icebreaker for next time I get to see him. But yeah, I mean, that's the problem, is that workpiece is going to inherit all of the inaccuracies of the screw and the ways and the temp and the tram. You know what I mean? If you had 48 gauge blocks, and each one is off by 4 millionths, then that's 48 times 4 millionths off. Like, tolerance stack would grow, wouldn't it?
00:08:16
Speaker
Yeah, so next is a great question. I asked the same thing. Right next to the tool, the standard was your calibration, your certification sheets. It had the tolerance of each individual block in that stack. You just add it all up. Two to millions. Wow. Exactly. OK.
00:08:33
Speaker
So the point was it's basically really easy to make super, super accurate and frankly, relatively cheap half inch gauge blocks, bring them together. So one of the first thing I'm gonna do when I go back is I wanna get some different gauge blocks and like measure them on their own, measure them rung together. And I guess, I feel like I already know the answer, but how does ringing not still leave some amount of a gap? You know, when you're talking about the sub 50 millionths, 50 millionths would be half of a 10th.
00:09:04
Speaker
Anyway, super cool. Which you can't even really measure, I mean barely measure, half a tenth. Yeah, that height gauge I've got should be able to do it if I don't move, I use the same spot on the plate, do it all at once, I don't touch the gauge, I don't know, it'll be an interesting video. Yeah, absolutely.
00:09:24
Speaker
If anything, I can just confirm, what's your control? Well, your control would be how repeatable is it to the, I mean, the decimal places go deep enough on it. So can I repeat to a few millions if I just keep hitting the same part without moving it? I'm sorry, this is super, I love this stuff, so cool. How have you, how has your week been? My week's been pretty awesome. So I learned an interesting valuable lesson.
00:09:52
Speaker
I've been trying to make these titanium buttons for our spinners on the lathe, so it's this five-eighths titanium rod. And I've been having so many problems with it that eventually I just posted a bunch of information on Instagram and said, what am I doing wrong? And this wasn't before last Friday, was it? We didn't already talk about this. I think it was around the same. This is the tool, the V insert that's chipping? Yeah.
00:10:14
Speaker
I don't think we talked about it on the podcast. Yeah, because I forget now. It's been a very busy week. But anyway, so I finally learned a lot more about surface foot SFM and using constant surface speed. It doesn't matter, right? Right. Yeah, of course, especially on titanium. Yeah, I learned how important it was and how much I was abusing it and running way too fast for this diameter.
00:10:42
Speaker
You went too fast. Yeah, because I was running a fixed 3000 RPM, which works on my tiny parts, but you get up to this bigger diameter of 5.8s. But as you decrease, like constant surface speed, as you move and insert towards the center line of your spindle, your SFM decreases massively. With constant surface speed.
00:11:06
Speaker
If I run 3,000 RPM on a titanium part that's on the OD of a 5'8", I'm at a certain surface feet. If I move to the center of that, I'm at way less. But you would think you were burning these inserts, but how would you burn them when you're actually reducing the surface footage? No, because I'm used to running at, say, a quarter inch bar where the surface foot is perfect, and then I'm now running a 5'8 bar much bigger with the same RPM, so the surface foot is like 600, not 200.
00:11:36
Speaker
So it's like no wonder why I'm burning the insert. And the first comment on the thing was from Rob Lockwood, and he's like, go back to school. Learn about the surface. So anyway, I started using constant surface speed, where it variates the RPM up and down based on diameter. And I don't know why I've been avoiding that for so long, but I did that and zero problems now.
Machining Techniques and Challenges
00:12:03
Speaker
Wow. So I guess I thought it was the dive bomb into the smaller portion of that work piece, but you're saying it was actually just getting fried on the OD relatively open cut, but too hot. Exactly. Just way too much, too much RPM for that diameter. Um, so I was running 3000 and now with constant surface speed, it's at like 1200 at that diameter. And with titanium, you can't, you can't play around like this. Like you'll just toast inserts, which, you know, I was doing.
00:12:35
Speaker
So yeah, I made hundreds of parts and the inserts look brand new and it's like...
00:12:41
Speaker
Yes. So explain to people, because I was kind of watching that thread. I think it was on Instagram or something. But people don't like using constant service speed CSS. They don't like using it for, say, under quarter inch, because it causes too much, like, basically, as you dive to the center, your spindle would, if it could, increase to infinity, or tens of thousands of RPMs. And then there's a, what is it, a G98 to cut that off. But nevertheless, do you want to disable CSS?
00:13:10
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's a G50, at least on my machine, to clamp it. So I can clamp it at 4,500 or whatever. But yeah, as you get from like quarter inch to center, it variates quickly. Got it. And for tiny parts, and especially aluminum and brass and things like that that aren't so critical of accurate SFM,
00:13:29
Speaker
What I understand is that it's pointless to use because you're just jumping around too fast for the drive motor, the spindle drive motor to keep up and you're working it too hard. But even Rob posted in that thing, and he's like, this is a clear example of a good use of CSS. Got it. But yeah, tiny aluminum parts is a poor use for it.
00:13:56
Speaker
So so funny to think that you I mean you really I saw your how you had gone through each little cam linking move and transition And what was it I and to think that it was something so relatively simple, right? Good grief like so like something so go back to school and learn this properly because I mean I
00:14:15
Speaker
I dive deep into lathe stuff. I'm no expert, but I feel like I know a crap ton of stuff about lathes, and yet these simple things kind of elude me because, hey, I'm self-taught, and I go where the road takes me. I learn what I need to learn as I need it, and this was the time I needed to learn this trick. And actually, yesterday I had an Iskard representative come by
00:14:40
Speaker
and like my local tooling rep from his car and I've never met him before but it was good good for him to come by and he stayed for like 45 minutes and we talked about SFM and layouts and everything and he was telling me some interesting stuff that actually at a higher SFM you get a better chip break and a better surface finish.
00:14:59
Speaker
Sure, which I've never dived deep enough into SFM to truly understand what it is and what its benefits and all that are. So he says, you know, your tooling manufacturer will give you a range of SFM, say from 150 to 300 or whatever. And if you can climb to the max or close to the max, then you'll get a better chip break and a better surface finish.
00:15:23
Speaker
Yeah, the service finish, I don't know that I can speak to. My understanding with the chip breaking, well, first of all, so much of the chip breaking actually relates back to the actual design of the chip breaker ground into the insert. Also, you can have inserts that are rated more for toughness versus sharpness with the shearing action or the sharpness tending to do a better job sometimes, depending on the material. But the harder you drive the tool, it's a shear, that's what I think
00:15:51
Speaker
I forget sometimes, it's a shearing action. It literally is shearing that material off. So the harder you drive the tool, the better the mechanical properties are of that shear, which I don't want to say it plasticizes at the tear line, but it has to do with the physics of literally how you're getting that material off of there and then rolling it back around to get those Cs or 6s. I think a good half example or visual would be like peeling an apple.
00:16:19
Speaker
Would you agree? Because you're kind of peeling the material away, and then there's no chip breaker on an apple peeler. Right. Somebody run with that invention on Kickstarter right now.
00:16:34
Speaker
love it. Now the surface footage, the surface footage thing is a good one and I emphasize it a lot in our training classes because I shut down for years like two or three four years anytime somebody mentioned inch per tooth or surface footage I just assumed that that was too complicated for me I wasn't there yet in my machine journey and I just
00:16:53
Speaker
I just ignored it. And it's not hard. And the surface footage thing is funny, because for mild steels and aluminums, I get a little bit of flack for this, but it doesn't matter. You almost can't go too fast these days, especially in aluminum. And going slow is fine, as long as you've got the right chip load. But what you're talking about with burning, just think about running your hand on carpet when you're a kid.
00:17:20
Speaker
Basically, if you go too slow, it's not really going to cause problems. But when you go too fast, that carpet in your hand, it gets uncomfortable quick. Exactly.
00:17:31
Speaker
Yeah, and just like you, I've been kind of avoiding the math of SFM for so long. I'll just do a 3,000 fixed RPM. It seems to work for everything. And I've been getting away with it so far. But when I'm having trouble holding tolerance on my very fancy, very expensive lathe, and maybe the problem is me, because I'm not educated enough
Fusion Tool Library Updates and Business Focus
00:17:53
Speaker
in just a few key aspects, it's fun to learn.
00:17:59
Speaker
I don't even, well first of all, we actually are doing a much better job over the last two months of Infusion using, actually using templates and using the tool library that's been, we've been revamping our tool library because my wife's on vacation. And the, I don't even use the RPM field in Fusion anymore. Like I always type in service footage and IPT for, yeah. For Millie.
00:18:28
Speaker
Well, yeah, I would say the lathe work. I haven't done any lathe work for the last few weeks, but yeah. OK. Yep.
00:18:35
Speaker
And it's funny too, cause I, you know, like I got these new, I got a 3.18 millimeter, which is basically a one eighth inch, Sandvik Coro drill 860, through spindle coolant drill, blah, blah, it's an awesome drill. And the book surface footage recommendation is, I wanna say 750 to 1500 service footage. If you do the math on service footage for a eighth inch tool at 1500 service feet, I think it's 60,000 RPMs.
00:19:04
Speaker
So my point there, service footage doesn't matter. It's not that it doesn't matter, but I got a 12K spindle on the VF2, and I think that ends up being 300 or 400 surface foot or something. Right. It does matter because you can't utilize it. You can't come close. Unless you had like a Datron or something, and you could just zip through it like crazy. Right, right.
00:19:27
Speaker
It's fun stuff, though. I had a question for you. I woke up yesterday morning at 5.30, and the very first thought in my mind was this. And I want to run it by you, because you're much more in tune with this side of things than I am. So the Tormach surface grinder, which I'm sure you'll see many of today at The Thing. We use ours every single day. I don't personally use it, but Eric and Barry are experts at it. And I watch them, so I feel like I know it.
00:19:53
Speaker
I'm tempted to put a Z-axis motor on it. A clear path servo. It's still manual. I'm not going to run G-code, but having dials and a jog wheel and a digital readout, basically, to
00:20:09
Speaker
to control Z height. Because there's a ton of backlash and a ton of slop in the Z Acme balls. So I'd put like a ball screw on there. I'd put a clear path motor. And I just want to Arduino something together. I've never touched an Arduino in my life. But I've kind of done some reading. So I kind of get the gist. Yeah. No, that's not that hard. Yeah. Do you think this is a project I should tackle? Not today, but within the next few months. I think it would benefit us.
00:20:34
Speaker
Yeah, the problem is you can't do this, John. I've been thinking more about this. I've been thinking more. So I did this, I'm going off on a small tangent, but we're doing this talk on Saturday at the Open House. It's like my keynote presentation called Social Media in Modern Manufacturing. And the presentation is not, I'm kind of taking some liberties with the title. I can't put the title, but I really morphed it into this, like sort of how,
00:21:01
Speaker
I as an individual and Saunders as a business uses the resources on the internet, both social media, but more so what I call force multipliers that help me run the business. For instance, when we hang up this phone call, I'm going to get on Upwork, reach out to my graphics designer, and I'm going to have him print up a diploma for you for constant service speech.
00:21:24
Speaker
No, I'm kidding. But as I do that, I think back to if I lost all of that and I had to bring that all back onto my plate, how it's the frog boiling in water. When you get yourself into that situation by just starting from the ground up and taking on more and doing more and thriving and loving it, because we're young and we're energetic, you don't realize you're getting yourself into, the water is boiling around you. But now that I've got all that going on, if that all collapsed around me and it came back onto my plate, I'd be dead, I'd be toast.
00:21:54
Speaker
When I say all that because that's a great idea and somebody can do that and maybe you could even find like the local high school robotics club to help do it careful because Z travel on surface grinders is not something for the faint but um But you can't do that John. You need to be executing on your business. Yeah, period
00:22:11
Speaker
And I was thinking about that, too. I know what I want it to look like. I know the gauges, the dials. This is the wish list that I want for this project. And maybe I can even machine the brackets and stuff. I'm pretty quick and good at that. But as far as diving into the Arduino code, the which ones to buy, the wiring, and the buttons, and all that stuff, that's a project that I shouldn't be touching.
00:22:34
Speaker
You are a great quarterback. You're done with this project as far as I'm concerned. And Ed has been phenomenal with this. I have this idea. I convey it to him with enough direction of the end goal. And sometimes I'll give him some front-loaded thoughts I've had. And then it's the mantra of find great people.
00:22:56
Speaker
Get them on your team and let them do great stuff. Julie is like that. She loves editing. She does a great job at it. Yeah, I have some preferences and some things I like to say. I can sometimes say, hey, I want to change the composition of the shot or emphasize what we're seeing in the video. But otherwise, let people do things they're really good at. There is a kid in your high school area who loves Arduino, who has a 3D printer. Go let him do this. Yeah, I need to find those kids.
00:23:25
Speaker
From a mechanical standpoint, yeah, you can totally do that. Check the counterweight, make sure the counterweight is working okay. You may need to break it depending on the counterweight and breaking it. There's a YouTube video that shows how you can add a brake in line with a clear path, but that can be important. Like a physical brake, you mean, to stop movement?
00:23:50
Speaker
Yeah, so basically make sure if you lose power or something happens, it doesn't drop the head. OK. Now keep in mind, I have a belt attachment with a rubber contact wheel on my thing, so it's not like this brittle stone. Yeah, it's a hard wheel. It could still, I would think, if you drop that belt down an eighth of an inch, it could still throw a blade into somebody.
00:24:11
Speaker
OK, you think of a power outage or the glitch or something like that. You just got to be really careful. Yeah, good thoughts. Really, the better, I don't remember, unless I was in your shot, but you might want to just rotate that basically so if it throws it, it throws it into a wall and not into it. Yeah, it's safe right now. It would throw it right into a concrete wall. There's nothing else there. OK. Yep.
00:24:31
Speaker
Got it. Yeah. Put a piece of sheetrock or something up, or even light wood. That way, that'll absorb a lot of energy and not bounce it off. Good point. Because, I mean, you can bounce it 50 feet and knock somebody out, too. Yeah, that's a very good point.
00:24:47
Speaker
But yeah, that kind of stuff is awesome. I'm biting my tongue because we've got some stuff coming. Not on your direct application, but I'm excited. Well, it's funny because I've been dying to build a CNC machine for the past 60 years.
00:25:02
Speaker
Like, ever since my ex too, you know, I put the steppers on it, I made the brackets, and ever since I've learned so much more, and now clear paths are coming out, and I'm just, I'm dying to get into it, but this is my old, like, total DIY, have nothing else going for me mentality. I don't have the time to do that anymore. It's, you know, it's still, I'm still itching for it, but practically, it's not, not for me.
00:25:27
Speaker
It is that endgame question of how ironic, circuitous, just funny would it be if I don't have a business that would be really, I don't think anybody would
Machine Shop Routines and Podcast Engagement
00:25:42
Speaker
buy my business. It doesn't have that kind of, eh, maybe, but if I was all of a sudden no longer involved in it, I would be like, okay, I'm just gonna go build CNC machines now.
00:25:58
Speaker
How are the machines running? Dude, you were grinding early this morning. I saw you shutting off the Maury when we got on the call at 6. Yeah. Yeah, I was here. Well, we started at 7, 6 year time. Yeah, so I've been here since 5.30. Ran a bunch of parts this morning, which was awesome. And then I do shut kind of the shop down, all the machines, the air compressor, the transformer, just for background noise for this podcast. But yeah, right when we hang up, I'm going to turn the Maury back on.
00:26:27
Speaker
run a pile of rasp parts. I'm going to drive home so I can pick up my daughter and bring her to summer camp for the day. And then I'm coming right back to work. Awesome. Hey, so speaking of the podcast, it's funny because if I can speak candidly, I don't really care. I don't do a podcast. I have a conversation with you. It happens to be a podcast. So it's funny because in summer sex, I don't really care how many people listen to it. I don't care about its growth. It's not the goal, et cetera.
00:26:56
Speaker
I've gotten a couple messages from people that are like, you need to spread the word, blah, blah, blah. And I was listening to another podcast and he was talking about how you need to get people to give you iTunes reviews to get better, I guess, SEO on iTunes or something. I was just hearing about that too.
00:27:15
Speaker
So I'm conflicted, and I guess I'm asking you on the spot on my podcasting. But first of all, if folks enjoy this, feel free to share the word or give a review on iTunes. The other question is, at some point, I guess you and I could do something. What I heard the other podcast do is basically every review given between this date and this date is going to be eligible for a private conversation with the podcast host. I think we might have listened to the same one.
00:27:44
Speaker
It's the guy that swears. Yeah, the MFCEO project. OK, yeah. Am I paraphrasing it correctly? No, exactly. I just listened to that same one like two days ago. That's hilarious. But yeah, what he's doing is a private 20, 30 minute conversation with, I guess in our case, it would be either one of us or both of us or whatever. I'd be up with that for sure. OK. So if you post reviews between this date and this date, I don't know, in the month of August, let's say, then we'll randomly pick someone. I don't know.
00:28:15
Speaker
Let's, do you want to just, okay, this doesn't go out until a couple weeks, so why don't we say this. Any review posted in the calendar month of August or September, we'll let it go for, it'll only be really a month and a half.
00:28:32
Speaker
At the end of September, we will go through randomly the iTunes reviews and pick somebody. Make sure in the review you give some way for us to reach out to. I have no idea what that looks like in iTunes, but we obviously need to find you. And we'll have a conversation with you, your topic of choice. Yeah, I mean.
00:28:55
Speaker
Awesome. That's so funny. We listen to the same one. It's like the only other podcast I really listen to like, like once a week every now and then. I still get frustrated with like him and everybody else because this podcast with you, I like because I am not looking to fill the time. I'm not looking to, you know, the old Mark Twain get paid by the word.
00:29:15
Speaker
This is my conversation with you that guy could could whatever his name is the supplements MF guy He could yeah, he could make that 12-minute podcast in two minutes Yeah, I'm tired of him hearing him belabor the plug. I guess it's because I get I'm obsessed with time Right. So right. I like some of his points and messages, but it's belabored
00:29:39
Speaker
Yeah, fair enough. I'll end with this. Speaking of time, I had become obsessed with something I can't afford or justify, but I'm trying to figure out how to afford and justify it.
Productivity and Technology Innovations
00:29:53
Speaker
OK. Do you have any idea what it is? Give me a better hint. It's made by your hero. New car.
00:30:09
Speaker
Tesla yeah good job I could nice candidly I don't care about the vanity I don't care about the speed I don't care about even the fact that it's like exactly I care about the autopilot okay
00:30:21
Speaker
John, I had no idea. I had heard about it and it just never sunk in. It's real. I'm literally test driving one on Monday. Oh, you jerk. That's awesome. Used ones are not cheap, but this is not a car to me. It's an investment in my life. It's safety. I got to drive to Dayton here in a little while. That's four hours on the road that I can now work.
00:30:49
Speaker
You have to be in the driver's seat. You have to keep your hand on the wheel. And by all means, it has problems. You can't sleep. You can't be totally distracted. But on the highway, in good lighting with normal road conditions, it drives itself. You will not rear end somebody. You will not change lanes. This is amazing. And this is amazing.
00:31:13
Speaker
The fact that that technology is now actually usable on public roads and what that's going to look like in five years, and all these cars are already wired for that, it's mind-blowing.
00:31:25
Speaker
Yeah. The biggest huge fundamental flaw in the autopilot is it does not recognize stop signs or traffic lights, you know, red, yellow, green. So that's the problem with autopilot on normal roads, but that's not really an issue on highways. And if you're on a normal road with traffic in front of you,
00:31:47
Speaker
It basically inherits that traffic pattern's activity, so it will know. But the highway time is getting changing. I mean, it's amazing. Oh my gosh. So you're thinking about the Model S or the brand new Model 3?
00:32:05
Speaker
The threes, you can't get a three until like the end of 18 right now. The three would totally be the choice because again I could care less about the speed or vanity but you can get used Model S's for like 50 grand. So I actually, my wife has a long commute so it would actually make more sense for her to have it as her primary vehicle but I would like to be able to use it when I have to do like you know one or two hour road trip type things.
00:32:33
Speaker
But this is something where, I mean, to me it's not a vehicle. It's, you know, you think about how much time you bill, you get some portion of that back and the ability to, you know, if I drive for two hours, I show up and I've got 12 emails that I've got to answer or want to answer. And I've got, I show up to somewhere where I've got to be present or do work or have meetings. Now all of a sudden,
00:32:55
Speaker
I not only get those done on the trip, but I can get proactive stuff done, or I can relax. And it's all, you know, my life changed a lot in January due to a car accident. You know, I almost changed a lot. You know, that thought of it's also ultimately a much safer platform is awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. So cool. Yeah. Good for you. Well, not things. I know, but just the fact that you're thinking about it and trying to figure out if it's possible. And, you know, maybe it's not tomorrow, but
00:33:25
Speaker
This is the thing where I would dig deep. I would start selling, you know, I literally would start thinking about stuff I own that I can sell to make that justifiable or work because I just, it's this breath of fresh air about, oh my gosh, the productivity, the enabler, like, it makes you think back to like, oh yeah, it's just amazing. Sorry, I get really excited.
00:33:50
Speaker
What are you up to today?
Knife Production Update and Business Growth Teaser
00:33:51
Speaker
Today, cutting Timascus knife handles for the Rask. I was putting it right down my list of the last few parts that I have to make to be all caught up on Rask parts. And it's like two angled handles, two crosshatch handles, and a few Timascus things. And I'm like, oh my goodness, I can do that today. You could taste it. Do the pictures you're putting out, or you saved the best for last, dude. Holy cow.
00:34:17
Speaker
And we literally did. We're saving all the hard knives to the end, which to everybody else is the beautiful knives, and to us it's the hard ones. So our productivity and progress feels glacially slow right now, because we're working on knives that take twice as long to make. Right.
00:34:38
Speaker
So I don't know if I told you this, but we are hell bent on this August 31st deadline of having every single knife that we owe people shipped and out the door and out of our hair. So that's September. We are free to actually make money. Yep. Awesome. Yeah. So we're all very, very, very excited about that.
00:34:57
Speaker
Are you breaking that down into, so that's what we call it a one month from the date of this podcast. I think we're doing this on, we're recording this on August 4th. So 26, 27 days. Are you doing that in week goals, daily goals? How are you tronching that out? Both. My first step is to make all the parts, to have everything ready.
00:35:18
Speaker
And then give them to Eric, and then we can supplement Eric and help him finish X-Meni knives a week. And we have a countdown, basically. You know when you cross off on a calendar until your goal? We have that for every single knife number. It's the Rask Advent calendar? Exactly. And yeah, that's what Eric called it. It's funny. So he's already got a bunch of them crossed off, and he puts the knife number on there so we can track it a little bit. And as we're getting closer and closer to zero, it's getting more and more exciting, and everybody's pumped up.
00:35:48
Speaker
You know, we've had a lot of hard months, all of us here, for various reasons, whether I've talked about it or not. But I think we're all coming together, and it's just getting exciting, finally.
00:36:00
Speaker
Let's leave it on this. I'm going to throw out a teaser and I'll let you decide how much you want to share. But next week, let's talk about, maybe it's just a big picture, when you go, the role accountants play when you're doing capital investments in a business and making sure you do the right things right and avoid the wrong things. Sounds good. That's a teaser for next week. All right. Because you had some good news, I think, come out of that, right? Yeah.
00:36:25
Speaker
Yeah, not sure how much of it I want to talk about, but there's certainly lots to talk about. Yeah, awesome. All right. Crush it, bud. We'll have fun at Tormak this weekend and say hi to anybody. Yeah. Awesome. Sounds good. Absolutely. I will say hi to fans and folks and the like. Cool. Take care. OK, take care. Bye.