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Business of Machining - Episode 78
204 Plays7 years ago
The Importance of Self-Care Take a second to think about YOU. Have you slept well? Eaten well? If you're used to running on empty, it's time to refuel and recharge. Take care of yourself today. Your business depends on it!
Grimsmo goes on a BENDER, but it's not what you think! Engraving is now 98% closer to being a lights-out operation. While he didn't get much sleep, he IS energized by tackling those neglected tasks!
MO' Money, MO' Problems So, you've got the revenue but do you have the critical thinking skills to plan and budget wisely?
Toolholder Controversy With a plethora of tool holding options and mixed messages from intelligent members of the machining community, making a good choice is tough. Try tossing in a price-point and you have a recipe for uncertainty. The guys discuss REGO-FIX powRgrip, ER Collets, and Shrink Fit, to name a few.
DEBATE ON HOLDERS FOR ROUGHING TOOLS: Hydraulics OR Milling Chuck?
FEELIN' SQUEEZY... At first, those teensy percentages online stores or payment processors charge seem like nothing but it all adds up!
Some payment processors may not take kindly to your product, so BEWARE!
Rob Lockwood. Answers. Giant Sandwiches in the Dark. What does it mean? During Lockwood's visit to GK, he was asked what he would change. For the past 3 months, Grimsmo's been eating a GIANT SANDWICH in the shadows--one that he's now ready to share with everyone!
On that note, here's some food for thought: "Don't become an entrepreneur SIMPLY because you dislike your day job. THIS ISN'T ANY EASIER!"
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 78
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode number 78. My name is John Grimsmo. My name is John Saunders. Good morning, buddy. Good morning. How are you? I'm tired.
Late Night Productivity: A Double-edged Sword?
00:00:12
Speaker
I stayed up ridiculously too late last night till about two knowing full well that I'd have to wake up four hours later to come talk to you guys. I think I saw you on WhatsApp messaging people. Were you working at a shop or at home or just goofing around?
00:00:27
Speaker
I was at home on an email bender doing a lot of catch-up and just a lot of general alone time with the computer, catching up on so many tasks that I've been neglecting for weeks now. So it was a really, really productive five hours sitting at the kitchen table at home, but I kind of regret it. But on the other hand, I totally don't.
00:00:52
Speaker
No, John, but you can't do this.
Work Habits: Consistency vs. Bingeing
00:00:55
Speaker
You can't go, like you will, and I say this because you are that person, you will push yourself so hard and it's harder to recover and it's, you are so much better off if you spend 15 minutes a day, every day doing that and not going on every two weeks or two months going on these like crazy late night benders.
00:01:18
Speaker
I don't do it very often though. It's in my nature, like I used to do this all the time, so I'm definitely phasing it out. But yeah. No, I'm not giving you any credit for that. Sorry.
00:01:32
Speaker
Regardless, I got a lot done which is awesome, but there is this there's an amazing So I actually been stressing just to
Financial Stress and the Power of Small Actions
00:01:39
Speaker
be honest. I've been stressing a huge amount about money lately just I have and I think some of that comes back to one of the positives which is the power of small things in large doses or in frequent doses, so I
00:01:52
Speaker
The idea of like automatic savings plan and putting a little bit away every week or every paycheck or whatever is what buys you that buffer I'm of course I'm still stressing which is probably a sign of why we're generally terrible human beings because we tend to stress about things Sometimes unnecessarily which isn't fair because there are times when you really should stress about it I'm stressing not because we have zero money, but because we're trying to decide
00:02:15
Speaker
Budgets and how to spend money or how to think about it and is it enough and all these other growing your growth eats cash for breakfast totally, but The thing that I love about and why I'm so emphatic about the power of small things daily or on a recurring basis is is it works it absolutely works and most people aren't able and willing to do it and so those that do
00:02:39
Speaker
I find there's like this almost like sense of bond when you can like, you can like kind of like just do the like, yep, I know you do that. So like set a stopwatch set a timer, only do emails for 10 minutes. You're not allowed to go more. Same thing with cleaning only do it for 10 minutes. You're not allowed to do more. It'll, it'll create that. Yes. And it's not healthy. Uh, I don't think to go, look, I'm not, I'm mostly just giving you our time as a friend, but like, um,
00:03:06
Speaker
One of the reasons I had a really tough day yesterday was I stayed up way too late Sunday night. And I can't do that anymore. It kills me. Yeah. It does affect me in a way that it didn't like five years ago. Because we're so old at 35. I know you joke because it seems so young, but it's kind of not. Yeah. On the other hand, though, this is the life of an entrepreneur. And I don't apologize for that in a minute. You know that.
00:03:36
Speaker
Right. Obviously we need to like work on ourselves to streamline and like not do crazy nights that will ruin the next day kind of thing. Um, but you know, I got up this morning. I was excited to talk to you, had a quick shower, woke up and got a great day lined up ahead of me. So I'm, you know, doing pretty good.
00:03:56
Speaker
Which is, which is awesome. I can't do that anymore. Um, maybe I'm unfairly projecting my own limitations onto you. Lots of people are like pound their chest and brag, not you, but like, Oh man, I can run on three hours of sleep or five hours of sleep. It's like, dude, I go to bed at like 10 and I get up at six. And so that's what eight hours of sleep. Right. Right. Um, now granted, I still tend to work most of the other hours, but you know what I mean? Exactly. Um,
00:04:26
Speaker
Yeah. And I think I go through these cycles, especially around the weekend where I will take more time to sleep, more time to sleep in, spend time with the family down, you know, recharge. And then that was kind of a Tuesday night last night where it was like, you know, I've had a lot of sleep lately and I'll probably be okay. This wasn't a conscious choice, but just like subconsciously knowing that, you know, I'll probably be okay with a four hour night because I've had a lot lately.
00:04:54
Speaker
You know what I mean? Yeah, I think that's what I've lost. The ability to bank sleep. If I'm really well rested, I'll still get hosed on a late night or something. Maybe I've been unfair to you. Some of it's probably also the mood of what's going on. Like this morning, I'm super excited to start working on this injection mold. Yesterday, I was not in a good mood. I just wasn't. So that can rebound you. What made you
00:05:24
Speaker
What made you bang through all that work? You just sparked
Exploring Tooling Systems and Costs
00:05:28
Speaker
a motivation or was it something where you felt like you were letting yourself down? The funniest thing is I did everything except what I sat down at the computer to do, which is dumb. I love it. I love it. So I am 98% done with my fancy engraving macro. Okay.
00:05:47
Speaker
that will engrave six blades at a time and automatically count up and all this crazy stuff that's going to benefit us hugely and put engraving time into the evening run, the night run, instead of while we're standing here and spending one to two hours a day engraving, which is silly.
00:06:07
Speaker
So, I just need to go through the code and like change, what is it, change a G65 to an M98 and a couple other things in 50 spots, not that difficult. And yet I kind of got super distracted with everything else that you can do on a computer. Right, right. Do you use one of the fancier text editors? I use brackets.
00:06:31
Speaker
Oh, really? Yeah, which I guess fusion comes with or whatever. Yeah. Somebody's probably going to chime in somehow because there's probably even better ones. I have used Notepad++, which is free, but the color coding syntax, some of the find or place functionality can be well worth when you're hand editing code like that.
00:06:53
Speaker
I think you can do that in brackets too. I just don't. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. If you select it as a, I think Java made it look pretty cool. Okay. Maybe I should do that more. And then I know Phil was talking about a different one that I've since forgotten. What it was called.
00:07:09
Speaker
It's probably like 9,000 posts back in our WhatsApp chat. Yeah, right. So that's actually funny you mentioned that because I feel bad being the individual who keeps asking, I feel like I'm asking the same questions. So if I feel like I am, I probably am. And so I now have a Word doc of running notes of kind of, it's actually not for the WhatsApp, it's more for something else that I keep on machining related notes.
00:07:32
Speaker
Um, it's like we were having that conversation last night about debating the rego power grip versus the shunk hydraulics versus tripos versus er's and it's funny because you live in the present and you're like, okay, I got this. I remember this, uh, six weeks later, I'm not going to have a freaking clue what these guys said. And it's not fair to them to just be like, Hey, could you repeat the whole, everything you just told me about the system that you have and already told me about. So I've got my notes now and I'm thinking, Ooh, that could be a good fun, like,
00:08:01
Speaker
creating an incentive for folks that enjoy the podcast to join its Patreon or maybe on NYC is to post some versions of those notes because it's really good info, but it's not super formal instruction. I don't want to turn it into a machining lesson that's truly perfect information. It's just us sharing.
00:08:21
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, the gist of that drives with what I've been, I guess, aware of for the past, you know, year or so, is that the Regofix power grip system is very expensive and very amazing.
00:08:35
Speaker
So I think it's the expensive both because you've got to spend what high four figures or maybe even 10k for the hydraulic press. Although there's a manual one. There's a manual one. I feel like the manual is like 8,000 and the hydraulic one's 12 to 15,000, which is a ton of money for a tool to put tools in your tool holder. However, I mean, Rob was saying last night that the automatic one is
00:08:59
Speaker
Beautiful and just works so well, right? I don't think obviously the if the manual one was cheaper Maybe and we don't in fairness have to set tools that often but I think we're at that point
00:09:14
Speaker
Presently and certainly looking forward where I'm not interested in investing in things that aren't Smart and lean and good and I would being the bootstrapper want to look at resale or could you find one used or what's the benefit? Or is this the only this is this the only one we need or are you also going to need? something else but I think the thing with that Rigo system is that the
00:09:36
Speaker
each holder plus collet is going to be about 500 bucks, right? Yeah, pretty much. Like a collet is $180 or something like that. Whereas an ER16 collet is like 30 bucks.
00:09:47
Speaker
Right. Darn, darn, darn, darn. Well, yeah, that's a big thing, especially as you, you know, buy a five axis machine and want a hundred of these tools. Yes. Then, right. Then it starts to get redonkulous, but yeah. Hmm. I got to learn more about the tribos. I hear, um, truly debate stuff and not like tend to be flame or troll debates, but more like,
00:10:14
Speaker
scientific debates, but with both sides claiming victory. Um, like I've heard from some really smart people that hydraulics are absolutely the way to go for roughing. And I've heard from some other people that are like, you're crazy. No, that's what you want a million Chuck for. I've heard the same thing, right? Well, gosh darn it. I know. Who do we believe? And that I've heard from some people that swear by shrink fit and some people that hate it. Right. Well, yeah. And these are like smart people. Right. They, um,
00:10:43
Speaker
Camp Lee guys were, they were, I mean, I don't know if you would call them smart or not. I sure as heck would call them smart and they certainly are experienced. Good grief. 20 years, not really limited budgets, you know, from a practical sense of the kind of tooling and equipment they had there. And they were like, you will not find a heat shrink holder in our building. Right. And they had all Regal fix power grip. Yeah, they did. And like, wasn't it one hydraulic holder?
00:11:10
Speaker
Yeah, I think did they have tribos or am I getting my visits confused? The chunk I think yeah, I don't I don't know if they had that I saw some but I feel like you and I talked about it Yeah, we did. That's something that's the system. I want to learn more about as well. I think I care more about well, so Let's think about the parameters with roughing you want
00:11:32
Speaker
You still want low TIR because of tool life, but you also just want really stable work holding. So that's like Uber Chuck or milling Chuck. And then the power grip or height or shrink fit, you get the longer, longer gauge lengths with thinner nose diameters and super low TIR for small end of mills, which is more your grim's mow, engraving five access detail stuff. Right. Exactly. Well, and like you said, you're not changing our tools every day. We are, we probably change out five tools a day minimum.
00:12:01
Speaker
just on the one machine. On the mill. Because you only have 30 pockets or because you don't need more holders? Both, but because tools, our tool lives wear out. Ah, okay, okay. Right. We don't cut aluminum all day long. Ooh. But we also don't make any chips. No, no, that's totally fair. I mean, that's the problem of something like the Rego is
00:12:31
Speaker
The wrong way to look at it is to say, oh, it's 12 grand, man, those people are making a bunch of money and ripping me off. No, no, no, the right way to look at it is wait a minute here.
00:12:41
Speaker
Better tool life, very, very fast tool changes, confidence, not having tools put it incorrectly, not having to check TIR. Those are all very, very real time safeties. And you and I are both now starting to, I think, get into that realm of where labor in the form of time and output is a constraint. Yep. It's, it's a measurable, uh, metric, you know, to gauge against and, and to value. Yeah. Hmm.
00:13:09
Speaker
Hydraulics don't go small, though, right? I thought hydraulics were like a quarter inch. Quarter inch for sure. I think I've seen some eighth inch hydraulics. OK.
00:13:20
Speaker
But yeah. Trying to think about how that bladder design works. And I think that we posted one on Instagram of a cutaway, which was really cool. It looks like there's a little bladder seal that's welded in there somehow, like maybe a laser welded in. It's a very cool, interesting design. It is very cool, yeah.
00:13:41
Speaker
Do you have enough conviction if you bought a machine this afternoon that what's just some of you would use to tool it up? It depends on budget or my perceived budget. Yeah. If I were willing to
00:13:57
Speaker
you know, rob the piggy bank to get the right holders. I feel like Rigo would be the right choice and we'd spend a lot of money doing it, but you'd, you know, buy once cry once kind of thing. And then it's like Rob says, like, I don't even think about run out anymore. Cause we just use these and they're great.
00:14:14
Speaker
It's like, oh yeah, you guys still talk about that? I remember back in the day when I used to think about runout. It is really funny to think that in my somewhat ideal scenario, we would only use ER call it as backups for weird sizes, or we ran out of other normal holders.
00:14:33
Speaker
kind of how I recommend somebody start tooling up a machine. And I think that common stance stands, but it's really terrible as an exaggeration, but it's not the right system. It's a one size fits all that has major compromises all around. Yep. It can work well.
00:14:49
Speaker
Um, like we're using probably 90% ER. Um, and I've got a few really nice holders and aside from runout being perfect every time. They're not much better than the ER, like as far as I can tell, um, we don't do heavy roughing or things like that, but maybe tool life would go up, you know, 50% in the right kind of holder. I don't know. Right. The other thing I wonder when people
00:15:15
Speaker
are selling a product that competes with heat shrink. They always tend to, um, throw heat shrink out of the bus because it does have a limited number of heat cool cycles. You know, as you heat it up and cool it off more times, the tolerance isn't it? Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's hundreds at least. And
00:15:35
Speaker
And it's a trade-off of it's not that it necessarily fails on a binary like it no longer works But rather it just gets a little less perfect or the gripping force is a little bit less but nevertheless Okay, fair point. It's also very difficult to track how many times you've heated and cooled it but I'm late sitting there watching the power grip videos last night and the power grip is basically a collet It has a very very very gradual taper It almost looks straight and you're taking a hydraulic press and you're shoving that taper into
00:16:04
Speaker
the collar tapered caught into a holder and I'm like, well, good grief. Doesn't that wear out the order as well? You're creating an interference fit. That's probably 10th or whatever. Yeah. Maybe the logic is it can just push it as it wears, it can push it further down. You know, it's only another 10th to get more pressure. And that's the machine does have a gauge on it. So maybe that's how it works. But I'm still kind of like, eh, you know, I don't know. Yeah. And I've heard that it does have a finite life, but
00:16:33
Speaker
How would you even know? And you know, there's no way of tracking how many presses you actually do. Right.
Leveraging Data and Systems for Business Efficiency
00:16:40
Speaker
Which goes back to a change in the conversation that is annoyingly accurate also from Rob Lockwood, which is how to track whatever you call big data or all data over like.
00:16:54
Speaker
I don't know if I'll ever get to this stage, but you know, having a system that has QR codes on your holders that says when the holder was purchased through whom it was purchased, how many times it's been in the machine, what it's been used like data, data, data, data, data. Yeah. And if you went with the, um, what are they called RFID tags that some people put in the tool holders and you could scan them and you have all that information forever. That's pretty deep into the rabbit hole, but, uh, but also very cool. Right.
00:17:24
Speaker
Well, like we're not even, I'm lamenting upgrading our Shopify plan from round numbers from like 30 bucks to 80 bucks a month, just because you get better, you get better credit card rates, which would actually make it probably a wash, but you also get better. Shopify kind of penalizes you at the, at the rate we're at for not giving you any decent reporting on sales. And that's like the number one thing of where we should be focused some more on getting some data and analytics.
00:17:54
Speaker
Yeah, we've been talking here about at least pressuring Shopify to give us a better rate, you know, a better usage rate, whatever they charge 2% per sale or whatever it is because of the volume that we're doing. I mean, you too, I know PayPal has that option. Once you get past certain amount of revenue in a 12 month period, you qualify for a lower rate. Interesting. Yeah, for sure. That's great.
00:18:20
Speaker
between PayPal, Shopify, and then PayPal handling the exchange rate from US to Canadian. This is like a lot of percentages. It adds up. Say you make a million dollars a year and all that 5% of stuff that you could save, that's like 50 grand. No, I know.
00:18:40
Speaker
We have we have a city tax. Yeah, you're saying that here of 1.9% and I so often was like Oh, whatever 1.9% and now I'm like gosh darn when I sell a fixture plate, I'm giving our city like 20 bucks, right? You know, it's kind of like darn man. That's that's actually more painful than I had initially thought about So yeah optimizing all that well you should
00:19:03
Speaker
The only reason I didn't upgrade the Shopify right away, just a simple click of a button, was so annoying because they're like, if you do it, you may lose a bunch of ship station carrier rate integration stuff. And I'm like, couldn't be a better example of a response that just immediately shuts me down. Exactly, turns you off from, yeah.
00:19:26
Speaker
I have no interest in opening up this otherwise well-oiled system. Maybe I'm overreacting, but I would say that Shopify, maybe it's both of our problems, but I would be happy to triple my rate to you, but not when you respond to me with this kind of like, who knows what could happen. Right. Do you think I'm going to rock the boat and ruin a good system to try something? I don't know. I still need to do it, so it's ultimately my problem.
00:19:55
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yep. Do you know what Shopify plan you're on? I don't. Not off the top of my head, really. I think there's only three. And for you, based on volume, you should probably not be on the low one like we are, just because you do immediately get better rates. Well, I mean, I get a Shopify bill basically every week that's like $223. And I'm like, oh my gosh, it's every week.
00:20:24
Speaker
Okay. Then that's definitely more. Well, how do you, what do you mean you get a bill? Because they, Oh, I get an invoice and it's, Hmm. I wonder if that's for Shopify, just like a paying for Shopify service or whether that includes the fee section of a transaction, like a credit card processing fee portion. PayPal handles all that for us. You don't use Shopify payments.
00:20:49
Speaker
No, it's harder in Canada. Oh, that's the reason to up. Sorry. That's the reason to upgrade Shopify. Cause you, we do a lot through Shopify payments. There are merchant account or merchant processor. So. Exactly. Yeah. Being a air quotes, a weapons manufacturer. There are very few payment processors that actually like us. Irony is the Shopify is Canadian.
00:21:17
Speaker
Oh my gosh. I unfortunately saw a guy, I think you know him and I don't know if I've met him or not, but Sam from Venom Defense just got his PayPal shut down for manufacturing accessories in the firearms world. And I'll tell you, man, that's a real, it's a real, it gets me fired up. Yeah. It's a slap in the face. Yeah.
00:21:38
Speaker
Heard somebody another friend owns a plastic straw company in California shut down his whole business I'm joking, but this is some of this is getting out of hand
00:21:48
Speaker
Yeah, jeez. All right. So going back a minute, I'm going to read a text from Rob Lockwood that you mentioned a little bit ago. Rob says, after leaving your shop a while back, he kept bugging me that I had such a terrible answer to quote, what would you change here? Like when he was here, I asked him, what would you change bookrooms when I have said he, you know, he had a good answer, but he thought it was terrible. And he's like, the reason I didn't have a great answer is because I didn't have the right information to make the judgment.
00:22:16
Speaker
I think the say is, I think you don't have the right information either and that's what I'd change. I'd put a huge emphasis on collecting measurable data around the process in your shop because it should be a much easier question to answer that question or to answer. That is the entire reason that ERP software exists. Speaking of which, as I told you guys on
Implementing ProShop ERP: Benefits and Experiences
00:22:38
Speaker
on WhatsApp, secretly in the shadows for the past few months, I have been working on an ERP system and I dove full depth into ProShop and I'm very, very happy with it so far.
00:22:54
Speaker
So this is the almost more job shop style ERP, right? It is. It is definitely made for machine shops, although it works as good, if not better for our type of business than for a regular job shop. Really? But it has so many benefits.
00:23:13
Speaker
for the machine shop, as opposed to more generic types of ERP software out there. It's quite incredible. And it's the kind of thing that you only understand the more you learn about it. You can't tell somebody about it, and you get the gist. I mean, I'll attempt to now.
00:23:35
Speaker
But it's like the more I learn and the deeper it goes and the bigger the world becomes and the more capable the whole everything becomes. It's just like holy cow. No wonder why you can't explain what this is and you can't make like a two minute sales demo video and like, oh, everybody understands how awesome it is.
00:23:56
Speaker
This is exciting because I got a couple of the sales pitches and that was kind of my exact takeaway was you're just feeding me sales pitch lines. Like I want to talk to friends or peers that have actually implemented this at our level. So I would love to, can you tell us more about why you chose it? How you got into it? What are you actually doing with it now? Are you buying and using it or are you still like in some long-term test stage?
00:24:19
Speaker
Excellent, excellent questions. Answer the last one first, I am buying it and using it. There's three different user classes, like I'll be the most privileges in the thing, like I have full access to everything, whereas someone like Sky just needs basic, he needs to know what's there, he needs to put in some data, doesn't need to change anything, whatever. But the average, I think it's going to cost us about $70 per user per month. So we've got six users, we're looking at, I don't know, $400 or $500 a month.
00:24:49
Speaker
for that. And it's charged annually. So it's a bit of a hit, you know, several thousand dollars a year. But, you know, I looked at it and I'm like, data, man, data is everything just to have a place to put everything. This business has been run completely from my head. I know every vendor. I know their name. I know where, what their address, email address is. I know what, you know, website. I know my login for that.
00:25:17
Speaker
It's, I know every end mill that I order, and it's only in my head. And I know where I got my computer, and I know where I got my microscope, and I know where I get every tool holder. And if I need, you know, a quarter inch ER, call it, I know what brand to get, and I know who to get it from. All this stuff is stupid to like, carry in your head for years, if you want to scale and have other people work in your business.
00:25:38
Speaker
That's what I was going to say. I actually spend a huge amount of my time every day handling procurement. Exactly, right? Because that's your job. That's my job. Combat cars make it better, and they don't have to make decisions, but it's still a waste of my time. So how does that work? OK. So even by the end of this conversation, I will have covered about 10% of Pro Shop's capabilities, regardless of what we talk about.
00:26:02
Speaker
However, I have a whole, there's a whole contacts page where Lakeshore Carbide is in there and my username and login is in there. That's actually thinking about changing my logins to something more generic for the shop, not like my typical personal email address and password system. So it lists your password in plain text. So anyone who has access- In plain text.
00:26:30
Speaker
Right, so it's my choice to put it in there and I'm basically putting it in the notes section. Got it. But so that if Sky needs to order endmills, then the information is there. And he actually added endmills to the shopping cart at Lakeshore the other day, like I was at home and I sent him a couple texts and I'm like, yeah, go to the contacts page, etc, etc.
00:26:50
Speaker
So yeah, each each vendor has a contact page, each tool that we use, whether it be an end mill or a, you know, caliper or everything. There's a whole tooling section that's designed for machine shops. It's kind of ridiculous. And then there's a cots section, which is stands for a couple things, but consumer off the shelf or commercial off the shelf, basically stuff that you buy and you don't make yourself. Okay. So like,
00:27:20
Speaker
paper towels would be a cots or you know, not stuff that's not tooling, but that you still buy.
00:27:31
Speaker
And everything is in there. And it's like the more I put in, the more I want to put in, which is awesome. And the way they structure the training is really, really hands on. And, you know, part of the value that you get from the price is I've gone through probably dozens of hours of live video training with one-on-one with an instructor on screencast.
00:27:55
Speaker
to like go over every menu and everything. And they have this straight up training schedule thing that I checked off that I accomplished that. And we go through every single module in the software from time tracking to job status, to process flow, process development. It's like everything to run a machine shop you would ever need to remember. Now you have a place to put it. Can you repeat what you said a minute ago? Is there unlimited training? I didn't hear.
00:28:24
Speaker
No. How would I say this? Or what did you say?
00:28:29
Speaker
There is a training schedule that they follow. They created a process sheet for training a new customer. So we usually have one to one and a half hour sessions twice a week, something like that. I've been doing that for a while now and I'm pretty much done now except for like catch up stuff that I don't fully understand. But they're at my beck and call. It is a small company and they're growing rapidly right now.
00:28:55
Speaker
It's super nice to have like a physical person that I've spent hours talking to that I can email and ask, you know, I'm stuck about this or how do I update tool inventories or things like that.
00:29:09
Speaker
So you're using it for kind of procurement, buying stuff, all that.
Capabilities of ProShop ERP
00:29:13
Speaker
Are you using it for inventory of product, sales metrics like time tracking, machine scheduling, anything else? All of that except for sales metrics. First of all, since we're not a job shop, we don't do any estimating, quoting, or I forget the other one.
00:29:33
Speaker
So there's a huge estimating quoting module. And I'm like, guys, I have no interest in this. I don't even need to learn it because I just don't do this. And they're like, regrettably, they're like, OK, I guess we don't have to teach you this. But we normally teach everybody. And I'm like, I have zero use for this. Let's move on. It was really funny going in full bore, full excitement, like, let's do this. And they're like, oh my gosh, this guy is fired up to get this done. And I just wanted to bang through it as quickly as possible.
00:30:02
Speaker
I will say it is a big sandwich to eat. There is so much involved. And I'm glad I went through the process, but it took a lot more work than I thought it would even. And I was willing to put it in, of course, but it's no easy picnic. There's a lot to learn and there's a lot to input.
00:30:26
Speaker
It's that entrepreneurial thing like I will put in 90% of the work to make my life easier. You know what I mean? It's all I work up front to pay off dividends down the road.
00:30:36
Speaker
Right. But you are, and this is something I think that scares me, perhaps to the point of paralysis, and that's not a good thing, but you're locked into Pro Shops. It's not done in any sort of a common format where you could switch to SAP or Odoo or anything. Put it this way. I mean, I don't know too much about those other softwares, not nearly what I know about Pro Shop.
00:30:58
Speaker
Regardless, all the information is in ProShop. If two years down the road, I decide to switch to something else, I could literally pay Aaron an hourly fee to just manually migrate all the data. But the fact is all the data is there. Right. Right. You'd have to do a major migration. Sure. But anyone in IT has heard of that before.
00:31:20
Speaker
It's just so valuable to physically have the information as opposed to being paralyzed to not doing it. Yeah, you're right. I think I don't it's not that I worry about the needing to bounce between different ones, but you do worry about a company ceasing to exist or being bought or acquired and forced that way or and that's you know, my understanding of pro shops is it's still relatively small kind of mom and pop thing where
00:31:48
Speaker
there could be key man issues or potential, where's it going to be versus something like Odoo, which is allegedly kind of open source type thing, or SAP, which is SAP, where it's much more, there's a huge amount of staying power. But again, none of these things are reasons to not go into it. I respect you a lot. I actually would love, I don't know if you're ever willing to do a video on it, but I'd love to see more about
00:32:12
Speaker
daily use of it. Absolutely. And it's interesting because I've been hesitant to share it. I've been hesitant to tell you about it, to talk about it publicly because I feel like I need to wrap my head around it fully before I can do it any justice. I've been hesitant to tell my team about it.
00:32:30
Speaker
Oh really? I told Barry last because I know he would kind of bask at the price and all this stuff and I don't know if like him and Eric and even Aaron to an extent, I don't know if they'll use it as much as I want them to.
00:32:47
Speaker
And it only works if people use it. So I've been hesitant to teach people. And I'm just at the point, I had a breakthrough yesterday, where Aaron was like, I'm getting kind of bored and I need something else to do. We haven't been filming much, et cetera. And I'm like, perfect. I'm going to teach you Pro Shop. Let's sit down together. And I'm going to teach you the basics of how to do time tracking, how to log in, which has been awesome, by the way. Tracking my personal time is something I've never done in my life.
00:33:16
Speaker
And I have for the past probably three months now, every hour I spend working, I track and it's like, holy crap, I do a lot of work. You want to do that? You plan to keep doing that? I like doing it. Okay. Knowing how many hours I put in a day and just, just keeping myself kind of accountable. It's not super important, but it's nice. And then everybody else will be doing the same thing because everybody is hourly.
00:33:43
Speaker
Anyway, so something I've been meaning to do is I put all my Lakeshore carbide end mills in. Each end mill has its own page. But I haven't gone through my bins and checked inventory. So I'm like, I'm going to teach Aaron how to counter inventory and add it into ProShop. I need to know what to order next, basically. They have their safety stock, their minimum order quantities, their maximum order quantities, and your inventory in the shop.
00:34:13
Speaker
Yep. So it was really interesting because she doesn't really know what an end mill looks like. She doesn't know what the difference between a chamfer mill and an end mill and a ball mill. So I had to teach her these things, but I'm like, this is amazing because I want the system to be so simple that she can understand it. You know what I mean? So when we need to replace tool eight, well, where do we find tool eight? And what's the easiest way to tell pro shop? We took one tool eight out of the bin. Mm-hmm.
00:34:43
Speaker
So yeah, it's great. We're reorganizing the way we store the end mills and the way they're labeled and all this stuff. And it was really good to be able to teach Aaron how to use Pro Shop kind of for the first time and kind of got me over that hurdle of being afraid to teach everybody how to use it.
Training and Team Involvement in ERP Implementation
00:35:00
Speaker
Well, I think the other awesome thing is then have Aaron be the one who can
00:35:05
Speaker
or somebody else who could help teach Sky or Angelo or Barry or Eric, because I think that's one of the key things is making sure you don't burden yourself with becoming the only person who could teach it. You're the kind of disaster, but let her be the one who's the first line of defense in terms of getting other people on board.
00:35:24
Speaker
Yep. And the beauty of the system is it's self propagating. So you teach one person and hopefully they teach another. And more importantly than that is they evolve from their base knowledge to learn things that even I haven't figured out yet. Like I told Skye how to do a few things. And then three days later, he's like, Oh, yeah, I do it like this. And I'm like, Holy cow, I didn't even think about it doing this like that.
00:35:47
Speaker
I love it. It's awesome. So it evolves. And during all the training sessions, I hear all the stories from their other customers and they're like, it's like an organism that just totally evolves once you let go. Once you put in all the data and let everybody else work with it, then it just flourishes and grows. And I'm at that turning point now, like today, yesterday, which I'm super excited about.
00:36:11
Speaker
That's phenomenal. Good for you. I want to soak up more of this. And I was going to say the one thing, we're not using it for sales metrics. Like you would use one of the bigger, more IT side of these kind of software. It's not integrated with our Shopify, ShipStation,
00:36:35
Speaker
anything like that. And I don't really care. Or even QuickBooks. Yeah, there is some sort of QuickBooks thing, but I mean, I've got Barry who's just owning QuickBooks and nailing it. I want this to manage everything within these four walls and do it to the best of its ability. And if I can do that, then I'm super happy.
00:36:56
Speaker
It's funny, it's not a problem yet, but it will be a problem where the process of, again, buying stuff. Who generates the order? Does it come in on time? When it comes in, is it what we ordered in, in terms of complete? Should we pay for it? When do we pay for it?
00:37:13
Speaker
where does it get stored? It sounds so simple when you're just buying some screws off of the McMaster, but when we order 500 custom studs for ModVices and they come in in six weeks, was it 500? Did they come in? Who tracks that? Exactly. You don't want to pay for things that didn't show up. Right. In ProShop, something I'm starting to use now is the purchase order function where it's like,
00:37:41
Speaker
if you buy those screws, that's a COTS item. So you have an item there and then you buy them, you create a purchase order. And then that purchase order has like, what do you call it? Status, a pending status or whatever. And you're like, made the order waiting for a receipt. And then when it comes in, there's all these check boxes that are like,
00:38:01
Speaker
you know, check that the order is all there. Check that it went to the right place. Check that there's no problems with it. Check that it's been paid. Check like everything you just said. There's a physical place to go in there and like make a note of it. And one of my favorite parts about the whole business of Pro Shop, it was
00:38:22
Speaker
I saw a great YouTube video about it, about the owner talking about it. And he's like, so you know the book, The E-Myth Revisited? We built the software around that book for manufacturing. And I'm like, oh my God, that's what I need. That's me. That's my guy right there. That's awesome. Great.
Origins of ProShop ERP
00:38:37
Speaker
That's great. So the two second story is that from like 2002 to 2008, they started a machine shop in Washington state, really close to where I grew up actually.
00:38:48
Speaker
Like really close. They started a machine shop from three guys out of college, grew it up to like 70 people, staff, tons of machines, mores and Nakamura's and all that stuff. 70 people, a 70 person machine shop. And they created the software for themselves. And then their customers came in to like pick up their parts and audit them and stuff. And they're like, what is that?
00:39:11
Speaker
What is that software? I need that software. So then eventually they got the business so dialed with their in-house software that they sold the business. They were able to actually step away and sell it. And it's a self-sustaining organism. Wow. And they went full bore since 2008 doing ProShop. That's awesome. And I like supporting kind of a smaller company. It's in my ethos. I love it.
00:39:33
Speaker
That's interesting. That's somewhere where I would be very indifferent. In other words, I'm selfish. It's solely about what's best for my business there. On paper, it sounds good, but that's still something I would be concerned about. Sure.
00:39:52
Speaker
I remember last time we sent something to Peter's Heat Treat, there was some thing on the site like if you're a registered vendor or customer or something, you can sign in and check where your order is in the system. It's so funny because Heat Treat is like, good grief. Heat Treat is, leave me alone. I'm going to go put this thing in the fire and oven and temper and quench and all that. We're not updating you where it is.
00:40:14
Speaker
That's really cool. Clearly, they have embraced ERPs or something similar to let your customers see an element of where your own order is. Love it. Cool. Any other wrap-up questions you had about this that I could answer? I'll keep you guys updated. Yeah. I'd love to see. I'm wondering,
00:40:36
Speaker
I'm wondering if it'll be hard to film because there'll be so much information that's not appropriate to share, but I'd love to see just even a five or 10 minute video, just like kind of what it is and how you use it. It's so much more valuable to see that than it is to see because I've watched the pro shops, YouTube videos as well. Yep. And.
00:40:57
Speaker
We talked to the folks at Odoo, I don't know, eight months ago and gave them an honest answer of it's not right for us right now. We need to spend 2018 kind of fixing our business. Not that it was broken, but I think the right time to look at an ERP is after you've streamlined some stuff. ERP is not going to, it's going to help be a false force multiplier and help you grow, but it's not going to fix things that stink in her turn. Like if you have no, your shop's a mess. You have no way of managing inventory or combine.
00:41:26
Speaker
ERP is not all of a sudden magically going to just fix all that. It's going to give you a place to put stuff and it's going to show you inefficiencies. So it's not going to fix things, but it's going to maybe show you what you need to fix. And it's going to be a lot of work along the way. Yeah. Yeah.
00:41:44
Speaker
Well, that's what we've, I think done pretty darn well. I'm actually, I was really looking at my note I had made for 2018 and it's funny of the like kind of seven major things, two of them I'm no longer interested in doing, which is funny because it was important enough to me at the time to say this is really,
00:42:04
Speaker
So that's kind of fun like introspective interesting change of values and priorities and um I think the erp is still on the radar, but I want to keep doing what we're doing which
00:42:15
Speaker
One of those seven things was I want to be able to not be at the shop for a day or two, you know, short-term notice, or even longer term, being away from the shop, maybe with a little bit of, of, um, coordination. And we already hit that. We hit that two, three months ago, most for the most part. And that's the kind of stuff that helps, like you said, get stuff out of your head, which, you know, I actually still need to order tooling. So that's not really a fair total. We're not there yet, but we're getting closer, you know,
00:42:46
Speaker
Well, baby steps and something I didn't, I don't appreciate often enough is how okay long-term growth is. Um, what do you mean? How things do take time. Oh yeah. Yeah. Actually evolve. Yeah.
00:43:01
Speaker
Whereas I'm so quick-minded that I want it now, but it might be another two years before we get a five-axis machine or not. But I have to respect the process of that long-term time. And before I know it, I'll be standing there two years later. And it's like, whoa, where did that two years go? Right.
00:43:20
Speaker
And I've been doing the same thing for this past two years. And I thought that would be forever away. But all of a sudden, here it is. I think that's a huge takeaway. I've got my list of things I draw back on if I get stressed or frustrated. One of them is things take time. It's OK. And I think you want to use your energy and efforts and intelligence to solve things right away. Things take time. It's OK.
00:43:49
Speaker
I remember when I was at Autodesk University 2016, I knew a little bit about macro programming and I was talking to, what's his name from Swiss Ovation? Chris Welch. Christian. Yeah, Chris. And he was telling me all this cool stuff.
00:44:10
Speaker
And I'm like, oh my god, I want to be there. And now it's two years later. And I'm afraid I got my head wrapped around macros. Your team. And it's like, but back then I was like, I'll never get there. You're teaching the class now. Exactly, right? That's insane. I mean, yes. Just follow the course. Things take time. Put in all the work and you'll get there. I think that's the scary thing too about the ERP is I kind of want to get the business
00:44:37
Speaker
to a point where I'm happy and stable and it's churning because I then realize I'm going to have to go back to a pretty crazy honestly six months. And I kind of wanted to do that. Like I kind of like this idea. I've been romantically thinking about it like
00:44:56
Speaker
John, for one day, do nothing other than spend time going through our inventory. How would you change it? How would you change the layout? It's so easy to not do that and to put that off. Well, okay. I'm going to pull you back to the beginning of our conversation today of things in small doses. Yeah, you're right.
00:45:14
Speaker
Yeah, you're right. We've been picking away at it bit by bit as we got the new shop next door, which has been amazing. We're slowly moving things over there and we're re-going through our inventory here and our storage shelves and things like that and a little bit every day.
00:45:29
Speaker
As you would say, gosh darn it, it really adds up. My rebuttal would be, do churn things, do process things in small doses every day. Just do a little bit of cleaning, a little bit of organizing, a little bit even. This I need to get into my critical thinking mode, be undistracted. I need to be okay to pour myself into what is the vision of what this could be. Yep, I get that, for sure.
00:45:54
Speaker
Yes, it's a bit of everything. I mean, the entrepreneur's life is never clear or easy or straightforward, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Dude, nobody tells you what like, oh man, to anyone out there who's like, it's one reason why you don't quit your day job to be an entrepreneur.
00:46:11
Speaker
Excuse me, you don't become an entrepreneur because you dislike your day job, because let me tell you this ain't any easier. No, no one's sitting here telling you it's harder. That's the I mean, sometimes it's wonderful to have a boss. Yeah, but fun stuff too. This is very fun times.
00:46:32
Speaker
Yes, it's, it's very exciting. And I mean, I've been at pro shop now for like over three months. When I was first looking into it, I was like, man, that's going to be, you know, it's going to be a lot of work and I'm never going to get there. And I don't want to put in that kind of time. And boom, here we are. Like time has passed and you know, a lot of things are different, but on the other hand, like I'm still the same. What other, if any others, ERPs did you really look at?
00:46:58
Speaker
I kind of did the rounds. I looked at Odoo. I looked at some other ones. I forget. I briefly looked at kind of the big manufacturing ones, the E2 and the job boss. And there's a V1, I forget, I think. And they just didn't really zing with me as much as Pro Shop did. I will say the interface of Pro Shop is not the sexiest.
00:47:21
Speaker
It's very simple, but it's a database. It's deeper the more levels you go. Once you understand how to navigate it, it's not like an iPhone app. It's more like a kind of Windows file structure kind of thing. Yeah, more like a Craigslist, I'd say, something like that. I don't want to bash it.
00:47:43
Speaker
Right? Because you think about it, it's just data. It doesn't have to be all sexy and fancy. Right. And as long as you know how to use it and it's clear, then it's all there. Yeah. That's awesome. Yep. So I absolutely have to order end mills today because I've been meaning to do it for a week and we're completely out of two critical end mills, which is unacceptable. Yeah, that's not good. So make it happen. Cool.
00:48:07
Speaker
Yeah, the, uh, going back to that SNH tour video, they rolled their own ERP software, which I get, I'm not sure it's for everybody, but I totally get why you would do that. Um, and I mean, it's just, you can't not, I mean, I'm sure they have little minor hiccups here and there, but literally tooling gets pulled out from the tool crib.
00:48:25
Speaker
If it triggers a low quantity auto generates a PO that's automatically emailed to vendors. Yep. That's not even that hard. I would assume. I'm pretty sure that's not that hard. What I would love is the data, uh, check system that confirms that the tool was received and you know, that's something wasn't lost in root or PO is lost or shipping packages lost. Um, you know, like some sort of a flag, maybe it's not that hard, but you know, making sure that the inventory count gets bumped back up within a certain window.
00:48:55
Speaker
Exactly. I bought things from Hardinge, I bought 12 items. I get the package and I'm like, wait, there's only seven here. Where's the rest of my stuff? Backordered. I'm like, I didn't expect that.
00:49:08
Speaker
Okay, here's a silly question for you, but it kind of rubbed me the wrong way. We sent 15 end mills out for regrind, and I know it because I took a picture. I took a picture because I was having trouble counting which were which, and I wanted to be correct on the PO, so just pure dumb luck. But the picture was just them laid out on my desk. Put them in the packaging. PO said 15, sent them off. They sent me back 14.
00:49:38
Speaker
I'm like they were 15 and they are basically like pound sand. Doesn't that, like, and so you could just say, well, I'm not using you again. And that's probably what we will do, but the reality is that's not actually a sustainable solution. You can't just throw you, you know, act like a teenager every time something goes wrong and just change vendors. Um, but I did not appreciate how they acted. Well, I mean,
00:50:08
Speaker
It's a supply and demand thing. You can if there are other fish in the sea, and eventually you want to find the guy that will get your back no matter what. I guess how do you put the systems in place to prevent it from happening? So how do you not just prove to them, but I don't know how you fix that.
00:50:27
Speaker
probably could have printed out that picture and just included it with the package. Look, I've got proof. Well, given that they were, frankly, given that they were arrogant enough to just absolutely demand it wasn't their fault. Yeah, of course.
00:50:41
Speaker
isn't them in the box. I'm trying to think, maybe you have to have a numbered storage system. Actually, not a terrible idea to laser print a little or use one of those shot shell holders that holds things, keeps them separate, and then you could take a picture of that in the box. This all seems ridiculous. It's more of a theoretical example for stuff going forward.
00:51:04
Speaker
Right now, we actually don't have a really good way of sending out end mills because usually we don't have enough of the little black boxes for them. I could just buy some off eBay anyway. Right, right. Small business life problems. I've actually never had an end mill reground before. Oh, really? I only use tiny ones in the break. Yeah, and we don't regrind anything. We start our regrinds at three-eighths of an inch, and we really only use three-eighths and a half inch, so it's worth it. Good grief.
00:51:35
Speaker
Yeah, for the big stuff for sure.
00:51:37
Speaker
Well, speaking of tiny end mills, um, I am when we hang up going to go machine our first injection bolt. So yeah, I'll either be in a great mood by lunchtime or I will be, uh, in not a great boot by lunchtime. You'll be in a, in a $400 broken end mill kind of mood. It's not, it's 30 Rockwell P 20. If this were a regular job, I wouldn't think twice about it. Um, I've been, what, what's the hardness again? You said 30 or something. Yeah. That's nothing.
00:52:06
Speaker
And we're we bought special tools from Harvey so it's not even like I'm trying to pull this off with You know mystery end mills that are just in our toolbox and I've poured over the cam It really shouldn't be that big of a deal I want to film it because I
00:52:22
Speaker
We absolutely should film it, but that does add a level of stress. Um, and I'm going to use flood coolant, which will make me, you know, with low, um, stick out, uh, gauge length and so forth. It's not going to be the best video, but it's just too cool to not try to film. Speaking of which I yesterday, I got in my, uh, aluminum machine GoPro case with the air blade wiper in front of the lens. So I'm going to be talking about that probably do a YouTube video about that. It's so far, it looks amazing. Will you send me the link for that?
00:52:52
Speaker
I just want to look at it. Awesome. It's funny, the last thing, the tough thing about the injection mold, some of the base machining is actually relatively straightforward and quite simple. Two things are difficult. One is we've got it tilted up on the five axis just to get really accurate. They're called submarine ports. Anyone who does molding would know these.
00:53:15
Speaker
It's how the plastic will flow into the two different molds. And those have to be almost identical in size so that the plastic flows into each one equally as happy. And it's a really steep angle. So we've got to have a long gauge length tool, a long stick out. It'll be a little hairy.
00:53:35
Speaker
And then the other thing that's really tough is you've got to do a lot of machining from kind of from one side. So they're inch in a 1.375 inch thick plates. And so one of them, I have to run a number 38 drill, which is like 58 foul through.
00:53:50
Speaker
almost one and a half inch plate. So really long drill diameters. They're pretty ream. So I've got a chance to kind of clean up the diameter with the reamer. But unfortunately, the tolerances are so high that it's not really reasonable or practical to do like half from each side or chase it from the other side or anything. So that's well, have fun with that. Yeah, I will.
00:54:15
Speaker
Um, awesome. Well, um, next week we got to talk more. I need to get your opinion on the kind of perspective machine preparatory purchase thinking again.
00:54:27
Speaker
Right. I'll just say this. We are going to have a lot of fun and be very busy at IMTS next month. IMTS is getting really expensive. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm actually super, super glad that we're having these conversations now because I don't want IMTS to be the start of my thinking. I want it to be the end of my thinking. Does that make sense? That's a good point. Yeah. That's a very good point. Cool. What are you up to today?
00:54:54
Speaker
Today, order end mills. Absolutely. And we've been cranking the lathe real hard, making screws and pivots and knife parts. Nice. And get that racked up, and then back to pens soon. Sweet. I'm super excited. I got to order many thousands of dollars worth of titanium. So I'm actually going direct to the source to Carpenter, I hope. Nice. Oh, that's awesome.
00:55:16
Speaker
to try to order, you know, get the best price and order in bulk. Um, I'm not sure if they will only sell 12 foot bars when I want 42 inch pieces. So I'll figure that out today. Yeah. Yeah. Well, whatever you're not allowed to buy a band saw cause you've made it this far without a band saw. So you can't break. I know. I have a little portable one. Maybe I need one of those little mounts for it, but, but yeah, anyway, I'll see. I'll catch you next Wednesday, bud. All right. Take care. Have a great night. Bye.