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#319 The life of a business
264 Plays2 years ago
TOPICS:
- The life of a business
- Unwillingness to let go of control
- Giving a tour to Toyota employees
- Storing production tools
- Selling unused tools
- Process bins!
- Chip build up on the Okuma
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Transparency Challenges
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, episode 319. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. And this is the weekly podcast where two bros in the manufacturing field talk about their journeys and the process and all the little hurdles and ups and downs of running our businesses. It's our therapy session. Yes, it is. You're right. It is. I joke, but it is. It is. It's good. Do you wish it was in the podcast sometimes?
00:00:31
Speaker
I don't know. I guess I don't think about it. Agree. I don't think about it either except like, I guess if I'm being brutally honest, there's sometimes I feel like I'm reserved because- For sure. I mean, there's a sense of information. You can't just talk about numbers and things like that publicly. We always have to have that slight little hold back to be conscious of the words that are coming out of our mouths, but I'm generally very conscious of the words that come out of my mouth.
00:01:02
Speaker
Yeah. Works. How are you? How are you? Jinx. It's Coca-Cola sandwich. We've had this conversation. I don't know. That's what our kid, that's what our kid, like I'm now, like I don't even know what our kids. Well, when I was a kid, it's Jinx, you owe me a Coke. That was. Oh, so I never heard this. Really? We had doorknob. Okay. I think doorknob was, I don't know what it was. I mean, it's just silly kids thing. Yeah. Got it.
00:01:30
Speaker
So what's up? Good. I mean, look, this is what prompted me to say, do you wish this wasn't a podcast?
Business Changes and Management Separation
00:01:40
Speaker
The existential life of a business. We've had some
00:01:49
Speaker
major changes since actually almost a year ago to the day that the horizontal got here. And that was brought online. And then we had new people hired on board. We've had some people move on. And just last week, we had a title. Did I mention this publicly? But we a person joined that is the logistics and operations coordinator. Yeah, we've talked about it briefly over the past few months.
00:02:15
Speaker
Okay, it's hard for me to remember because I know we talked for a hot second last week after we hung up, but it's great having her on board, handling the orders and allowing Yvonne, who's been involved in really overseeing a lot of that, take a step back.
00:02:32
Speaker
it is disheartening how much I realize how important and valuable it is to separate management from tasks. I'd like to think that I could do both, and I don't do both well. I don't think most people do both well.
00:02:47
Speaker
And so being able to have the ability to see the forest and not be just chopping down trees or planting seeds, whichever way you want. Yeah. That's a good analogy. Yeah. And so that's where I'm at now is knock on wood. We keep things going stable. I've got to take a step back. I've got to wear my machinist hat to bring some help, some products and pictures to come online. But I really need to spend
00:03:12
Speaker
a couple of days a week or some time, days off in the shop to make some good quality of life improvements. We actually started some cleaning today, but I've kind of had this list of like, okay, as soon as I can get away from, you know, because even when Yvonne was filling orders, I was still helping pack the plates and LTL. Anyway, it's good to be in this place, but now it's like, okay, let's go.
00:03:40
Speaker
What does this look like for you going forward?
Philosophy of a Business Owner
00:03:43
Speaker
Pearson said something a couple of years ago in one of his videos that totally resonated with me and I think I'm finally there. He said, my job is to work on things that are new or things that are broken. That's it. I think that's pretty much where I'm at. Then you add the caveat of being the business owner and running the high level of the business.
00:04:04
Speaker
Um, but in the shop, I don't do production at all. I don't do day to day. I do
Shop Environment and Tours
00:04:10
Speaker
a little bit of overseeing, but for the most part, Angelo and Eric take care of all of that. And, uh, I mean, I don't even touch the product. It's fantastic. Good way of putting it in a funny way. That's exactly what my dilemma is. I think we don't have stuff that's broken so much as it is delayed. So like we give it like, if the program needs updated, if something's wrong, like.
00:04:32
Speaker
that's broken. The process needs to change. I'm often involved with that, not always. Yeah, sure, sure. I've got some more things. The new stuff is always more enjoyable to tackle and hang your hat on, pushing the company forward. I need to even put in one, it's so silly job, one day off in the shop and just work on
00:04:57
Speaker
Some cleaning not cleaning like what we actually did that this morning those tub of towels, you know getting some areas It's amazing how much we got done in 20 minutes. So yeah, here's the gentle nudge to everybody out there. Go do that It feels really good. I want people
00:05:12
Speaker
I want people around here to push me to do that more and not just have me be the one to say, let's do it. Because I want it to be something that we take a pride, a point of pride of. I was watching the Mercedes Benz F1 team put out a YouTube video on their machine shop. And of course I'm like, Oh my gosh, let's go. I think I saw that too.
00:05:31
Speaker
it was disappointingly, you know, not that, you know, they showed some matsuras and some nasacs apart, but it wasn't as juicy as I had wished. Also, I had to laugh because the matsura had a like perpetual maintenance alarm at the top of the control. And I'm like, well, it feels good to know that we're not alone. Like, yeah.
00:05:53
Speaker
I actually can't believe that they didn't edit that out because even like we see that when we film some places and people are just like, ah, we don't want people to see that. Like we haven't done a filter maintenance. Right. Anyway, kind of like we're all human, but.
00:06:06
Speaker
I saw that F1 shop, and look, F1 shops are the gold standard of cleanliness. But we used
Canadian Manufacturing Perception
00:06:11
Speaker
to look a lot more like that. And I looked around and was like, ah, man, you know, it's a frog boiling in water. And I suspect some people might be hanging up the podcast right now because they're probably tired of me saying that. But the truth is, it needs to be a priority because I want to make it a priority.
00:06:27
Speaker
I'm fortunate enough to have Angelo on my team who is driving the guys to do that clean. Every day they do a sweep together, every day they clean up every cell. The shop is spotless. When we're giving a tour, the shop's ready. It's already spotless.
00:06:45
Speaker
So that's really nice. Every time I walk in, I'm like, oh, these floors are clean. I can walk around barefoot or in my socks if I need to. Yeah, that's a good job. That's really good. Yeah, no chips on the floor anywhere. As similar as our shops are, as we joke over the years, I think that's probably the big difference is, I don't know if the word foreman is the best term. I suspect a guy like Angela may deserve it.
00:07:09
Speaker
want a title above. Oh, he's director of operations. He's like top dog. I hear you. So I don't mean to. But yeah, I see what you mean. He's the manager. Absolutely. Yeah. And like, that's what we don't have outside of me. So yeah.
00:07:24
Speaker
He's grown into that role. He's a couple years older than me and he's got more shop experience than I do in various different places. It's a perfect fit but it took years for me to be comfortable enough to trust him with that level of responsibility and now he has
00:07:43
Speaker
full autonomy with all things production and he checks in with me all the time and we've developed a really good relationship together on that. But my unwillingness to let go has been a constant source of pain for the company and I'm getting better at it. No, that's a good, I just have to be thought about that kind of confiding in your spouse type of conversation about
00:08:10
Speaker
I've always been really good about letting our team do what they do about like, hey, you know, we've got lots of guys that write fusion postcode, you know, we QC, like all those sorts of things, ordering material. So it feels really good to not have that like key man clause around that. But then it's like,
Evolving Business Identity
00:08:26
Speaker
I think there's still too much of a, I don't know how to articulate this. And I kind of wish I wasn't sharing this with everyone who's listening. But like, there's, there's too much of a feeling of it's like john shop and not so much machine works. And I don't want that. Like, yep. I don't want, you know, people asking me every it's common to ask the boss questions. That's not a problem unique to us. But that makes sense. And I've
00:08:52
Speaker
It's that me versus we kind of conversation, which has been on my mind a lot over the past five years. Funny enough, I noticed it in you sometimes. For the past five plus years, when you're on a shop tour, you say, we're here filming at the place.
00:09:09
Speaker
In my head, I'm like, there's no way, it's just you. It's just you that's at that shop. That's the me event mentality of wanting the pride of like, I'm here. But even five years ago, you took that on you to be like, Saunders Machine Works is here as an entity, as a corporation is here to tour the shop. I think we're turning the bend from this becoming John's project baby to Rimsmo.
00:09:38
Speaker
you know, Grimsman Ives, its own self sufficient, you know, corporation people that just work for me, they work for the company. And that's, it's been a long process. You feel you feel it's never like comparing in the sense of like, who's winning, but you feel
00:09:55
Speaker
I feel like I've got catch up to do compared to you on that front. Like you've got, you've hired people that where you weren't involved in hiring process. You've got a more formalized review process. You've got more, you've got Angelo and it's not that we're, I don't know. Yeah. It's just,
Showcasing Manufacturing Techniques
00:10:11
Speaker
Yeah, and they're not one-to-one comparisons, but I've been super fortunate. Angelo's a rock star, and then Spencer, our controller, is also a rock star, and he's taken on heavy tasks, taken more off my plate, and that's just fantastic. That was great. They've been patient enough for me to release that control over the years, and now it's paying off.
00:10:22
Speaker
I
00:10:38
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's great. How long has Spencer been on board? Almost a year. If I look in GURP, I got the page up right here. 0.96 years. On the employees page, it actually calculates that pretty perfectly.
00:10:59
Speaker
Okay. Um, silly question for you, but what your insight and then I actually want to hear about your, you said you had a shop tour. I'll come back to myself. Tell me about your tour. So, uh, just an hour ago, we had two guys from the local Toyota factory come by our shop to tour our shop. And I was like, well, that's cool. Um,
00:11:20
Speaker
So we have some Schunk products from the German company Schunk and I'm getting pretty close with the rep there, Nicholas. And he's like, I've got these guys at the Toyota factory who are looking at our system. We've been trying to pitch them for months. They want to go see a customer who's using the Vero S pallets, the quick change zero point fixtures. And I've got
00:11:40
Speaker
I've got five of them mounted on machines right now and I've got a few more on the shelf ready to mount more. I've got some on the Speedy, I've got one on the Maury. I was like, yeah, that'd be kind of cool, have those guys come by. Toyota's all lean and process driven and everything.
00:11:53
Speaker
So these two guys came and they're super smart and they're both tool and eye makers from back in the day and just got done giving them a tour. I actually think Angela is still giving them a tour and it's just really cool to chat with them and show them not only the VROS system, which I'm very happy with, but also just stuff around the shop and they were pleasantly impressed. That's super cool. Yeah. What sort of Toyota worker factory is it?
00:12:20
Speaker
I think there's two locations around here, one in Kitchener, one in Cambridge or something. They make cars. I don't know. I don't know what, but... Okay. It's cool.
00:12:32
Speaker
Yeah, but I mentioned to them on my way out up to the podcast here. I'm like, so Toyota factory tour next. And they're like, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Dude, that's, I feel like the holy grail because you can't help but not think of the Toyota, uh, what's it called? TMS Toyota. T P production system. TPS reports.
00:12:52
Speaker
Nice. I'm going to need you to come in on a Saturday. Yeah, and finish those TPS reports. I have them on my desk. But I think I'll take my whole manufacturing team and we'll just take a morning or whatever it takes to go there and just tour it. I'd mentioned it to the guy and he's like, I mean, it's not as cool as this.
00:13:11
Speaker
But it's okay. Yeah, because like some of these, like I've been through a couple car factories and the final assembly, it's cool, don't get me wrong, but it's, there's no chips being cut there. You know, it's, it's so such a well oiled machine that it becomes boring. I thought that's a better word. Like, but like, I don't know, are they making
00:13:32
Speaker
Well, he said they have a DMG Moria. I didn't hear which one, if it's five axis or three axis or whatever. So that's why they're looking at the chunk system because they have at least one mill where they need some machining done. And the guy's like,
00:13:46
Speaker
Some of our guys are really good and some of our guys are not really good. I need a system that just plug and play. If they crash it, I just buy another one. I don't want to custom machine it. I don't want to modify it. I just need a plug and play solution. He joked about budget and stuff. People think it's an endless pot of money, but I absolutely have a budget that I have to work with.
00:14:06
Speaker
And it's finite. And if I buy expensive pallet systems, I have less money to buy cutting tools or whatever. So it's to balance. Well, that's what I'd be curious. Are they making gears and transmission parts? Good
Tool Storage and Organization
00:14:21
Speaker
grief. Is it a stamping? The stamping facilities are huge. There's some really cool stuff there. That'd be cool to see.
00:14:29
Speaker
Yeah, I will report back if that happens. But yeah, I think Angela will sweeten that pot and finish that conversation as we speak right now to get a tour lined up. It'd be really good. Good. That's cool. So they saw the shunk system, and then you showed them the whole shop? Yeah, pretty much. Yep. Do you think they're all good? I got distracted with the shunk wrap, and then Angela took them and started showing them on the machines. And all the parts were making and all the cool stuff.
00:15:00
Speaker
Did they know Swiss machines in the Kern? Did they know this brand? They knew about the Kern. They knew about DMG. Some of the ladies I think they were familiar with. They're tool and die guys. They've made parts and fixtures and things like that. I think they're pretty into it. They seem to keep up with every word out of my mouth pretty much. Yeah, it's cool. I think it's cool how
00:15:23
Speaker
We're kind of insular, a very, very broad brush comment, but I forget how much heavy industry and big auto there is in that area of Canada. Oh yeah. Yep, between Toronto and Windsor, which is by Detroit, especially on the ends, Toronto and Windsor. Windsor is the auto making capital of Canada. They just make parts.
00:15:46
Speaker
And then there's all the assembly factories all over the place. There's a huge Ford factory, the Toyota one, there's other ones. And yeah, there's so much industry right around here. And we're kind of hidden because Canada doesn't talk that much. Yeah. That's, again, that's the risk of making serotypes. But I don't think your typical average American thinks about
00:16:10
Speaker
I think about Canadian manufacturing. I think about hockey and cold stuff and nice people. That's all true. Like very legitimate, heavy, big production of that stuff. Yeah. Because even driving up to see there's that giant, is it Hamilton or something that has a giant like steel mill that you see from the highway? Yeah.
00:16:32
Speaker
Yeah, DeFasco. Yeah, Hamilton's been a steel town for a hundred years. Yeah. And yeah, it's still around and it's making a absolute mess of the Bay here. Oh really? They're working on it. Like you drive by and all you see is smokestacks and like dirty buildings and you're like, oh, they've been a steel company for a hundred years. But yeah, so let's go.
00:16:58
Speaker
I think I already answered my own question. So, could I just remember it as I was thinking in my head about it, storing production tools for our Okumo. We have a drawer.
00:17:11
Speaker
We use shallower bins and the problem with the shallower bins is they aren't secure in place and there's no rhyme or reason. For example, I found an extra 316 Lakeshore TAS, which happens to be tool 53 in that machine. I don't want to look through all of these bins to see if I already have a T53 red shallower bin.
00:17:31
Speaker
and put a piece of paper in a new bin. That's bad. So I was thinking about buying the tackle box, but then I remembered, especially now that we have the bamboo, there's that pretty viral guy who made the 3D. Gridfinity. Gridfinity, thank you. Yeah. OK, good. And I think Amish was, did Amish modify it or run with it? Why am I thinking of it? I don't know. I've used Gridfinity. I've printed a whole bunch of stuff. It's honestly fantastic.
00:18:00
Speaker
It's just great. And you make your own bins. It's like shallow bins, but they locate into a grid that's on the table. You can glue it into your drawers. Yes. It's awesome. I started categorizing all my push to connect fittings, all my metric hardware, inch hardware into
Shop Cleanup and Equipment Management
00:18:16
Speaker
bins. Metric is red, inches blue, or maybe it's the other way around. But yeah, I don't care. So now whenever we're looking for an M6 nut, open the drawer, it's right there. Yeah. So that's cool.
00:18:29
Speaker
And then, so we don't have every tool in there. And I don't think it's realistic to do them. Oh, but with Gridfinity, they just rest in there. So if I skipped, if I currently had bins for T51 and T53 next to each other, and I want to add T52, I just scoot everything over. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm literally going to go print these when we hang out.
00:18:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's awesome. Print a sample or two just to make sure your tolerances like they fit together. I think I had to modify the file ever so slightly. I noticed parts coming off the Ender 3 and parts coming off the Prusa are like different sizes. But if everything's off of the bamboo, then go nuts. So something we did for tool management or tool tracking was for the most part, we have most of the tools stored by the Kern in Husky toolboxes.
00:19:20
Speaker
And we dedicated a drawer or half a drawer to flat end mills, to ball end mills, to high feed and thread mills, to corner radius end mills. So you open a drawer. All you see is corner radius end mills. And I've really liked that system for like, because when you need a tool, you're like, this is a ball mill. You open up the ball mill drawer. Now you have no other busyness to confuse. You're like, I've only got 10 different size of balls mills. And this is an eighth inch. So there's, oh, there's only three different eighth inch ball mills. Now I've found my tool.
00:19:50
Speaker
That's just for the Kern, or that's General Shop? General Shop, although we do have a bit of inventory by the Maury and a bit of inventory in the Swiss cell for tools that are only used by those machines. But the Kern has somewhere close to 100 different tools that it uses. So that's the busiest cell, and that makes it very easy to find what we're looking for. Yeah. Got it. And I don't label them as 53 or as numbers. They're just labeled as what the tool is.
00:20:20
Speaker
Okay. Because we're the same tools used in several different machines. Yeah. So there's that. We've basically gone to a machine specific tooling cribs. Like every machine has the stuff we need for it. And that has worked fine. We have a lot of machines. Like if that works, then good.
00:20:38
Speaker
Yeah, it does. It really does. And two of the VF6s are identical, so they can share one. But do you ever worry about, Okuma runs out of this quarter inch end mill, and the VF6 has 20 of them. But the Okuma is now buying more.
00:20:54
Speaker
So yes, that could happen. There's enough tribal knowledge that we couldn't solve that, or we just order up. And I don't care about the increased real estate use or working capital tied up of having the key. I just don't like pretty much what we have. And that's sort of coming back full circle on my end to like the whole like what needs to happen in May, as soon as machine works is it's going to be uncomfortable. It's going to be
00:21:19
Speaker
Um, you know, we have, um, and it's kind of funny. I don't know what to do with some of this stuff because, um, it's too famous. Everybody thinks their stuff's worth more than it is. It's too good to throw away, but it has to go. Um, and I don't know how I want to spend the time, like being an individual, but like.
00:21:36
Speaker
I might just put up a box of, here's a box of 30 unused end mills and just put it up on something for 30 bucks. You'd be dumb not to buy it. It's better than throwing it away, but it's probably $300 with a new tool.
00:21:53
Speaker
When I was starting out, I had a guy watching my YouTube channels when I had like 96 subscribers who sent me a box of barely used end mills, most of which were Niagara brand and I still have many of them, but they like, those were the nicest end mills I'd ever seen in my life. And here I got a box, like hundreds of dollars worth. And he's like, they're past their life for us. Like we can't use them anymore. They're just going in the scrap and do you want them? I was like,
Empowering Employees and Process Sheets
00:22:18
Speaker
yes, yes. This was back when we're buying the $3 end mill, you know, cause that's all we can afford.
00:22:23
Speaker
Um, but the problem with that now that I see from a production standpoint is like, I need standardized tools that I just keep buying more of all these onesies and twosies are useless to me. So, but for little shops, like absolutely. Yeah. Um, and it'll feel good. I've got my list of stuff. We sold the tumbler. We're going to sell some vices that were just, they're just sitting around, um, clean up. Yeah.
00:22:50
Speaker
Yeah, I could sell some stuff like we talked about the tormac surface grinder a few weeks ago. There's some stuff I could sell for sure. Not top of mind, but yeah, that's kind of my.
00:23:03
Speaker
It reminds me of somebody was talking about the Latin roots of the word decide. Remember heard this? Yeah, I think I might have told you that like to cut off from. Thank you. Forgive me if you were the source of knowledge there. If you're going to sell the grinder, if you're going to sell the humox, sell, get it done.
00:23:24
Speaker
decide to keep them. Or not even that, but just without shame, be like, oh, I'm not even allocating any of my time to that right now, unless somebody walks in the door with a check-in. But it's kind of like get out of the middle ground, like do it or don't do it. And I'm at the point now where I want to, I think I owe it to do it. So we've got like old computers and monitors and I sold some, like a lot going on. But yeah, it's good. Cool.
00:23:48
Speaker
Yeah, because I want I want Toyota call me and walk in and recognize that can happen any day. And when they come in, they say, Oh, wow, you know, and I, I know that's what it's like now if you visit your shop, or you know, maybe I'd be hard on ourselves, because I think relative to a lot of other shops, we got it going on.
00:24:06
Speaker
Still, you're allowed to be hard on yourself. That helps you grow and improve and set a standard for yourself and for your team to have the kind of shop that can be toured by any other shop like McLaren F1 team. It happens to come by your shop and I want them to go like, oh damn, nice work. Yes, scribbling notes furiously. Right? Yeah, right.
00:24:28
Speaker
And that kind of plays into what we show during the tour, what little things and bits and bobs. And check out this 3D printed thing that solves a problem that does this. Check out our Lex ERP system that we created. How deep do you go in these tours? Do you actually open up a computer and show them cool stuff? Or is it just the big, that's a current, that's a tornos. And it depends on the person and the feel and the flow of the thing. Do you get a lot of people that come by for tours?
00:24:58
Speaker
Like not even industry other people? Oh, we've had local folks come. We sort of said no.
00:25:06
Speaker
through COVID, we did say no through COVID for obvious reasons. And then for a lot of 2022, we had some repeat jobs from some customers that were legit NDA stuff. And so it's very much a torn battle because I love sharing and showing and touring and the pride, but then it's also, it's time away and it's awkward when people want to take pictures and you're not sure you want to share with them of certain things. So it's not a huge issue right now,
00:25:36
Speaker
Yeah, we generally say no to tours specifically from customers just because it takes time. But we probably give maybe one a month or less of industry people that come by. Like I said, Tony Gunn from MTDCNC came by a couple weeks ago and that was most of the day. The guys got much of their work done but it was so busy and awkward and everybody was like, that was exhausting afterwards.
00:26:06
Speaker
Well, so it's funny you mentioned this because we used to do open houses that were really popular and then been enjoying Ryan Winter. I have a conversation almost every month that we sort of talk about marketing and manufacturing. A phone call?
00:26:21
Speaker
Yeah. Nice. And we had this idea of sort of hosting a manufacturing summit, unclear if it would be a his shop or mine. Where's he located? About an hour north of Pittsburgh. So actually, not far from me. Yeah, kind of closer to you than me. I think we have a better shop size to host it, but that will come. We'll figure that out.
00:26:50
Speaker
I kind of, and it would, we would do some sort of a limited attendance. I'm not looking to make money, but maybe it's, you know, what token amount of money or note money, but you have to have a ticket or registered a limited to 100 people. But I have a manufacturer, sorry, get folks back together and talk about stuff. And that's a good chance. I think what we could then run sewers again, if it happens to be here.
00:27:10
Speaker
Yeah, I think charging for it is not the end of the world because you cover your food and the t-shirt that everybody gets or whatever, 100 bucks a head or something is very reasonable. Yeah, agree. I know if we wanted to do 100 tickets at 50 bucks a ticket and then sell out, that's not the spirit of it. And let me tell you, if there's one thing I wish I could use my... The power I don't have, the change in the world, it's like shutting down Ticketmaster.
00:27:39
Speaker
I miss the days when concerts were 70 bucks for OK seats and not $400 to $900. My gosh. It's crazy. Whoever allowed a $47 convenience fee to be called a convenience fee should have taken out. You don't see this ever? I don't go to concerts or sports events at all.
00:28:02
Speaker
Leif and I did go see the new Mario movie, which was fantastic. Awesome. We saw it in 4D, and I was like, what's 4D? The seats move and shake like a roller coaster, and there's wind turbines, fans that blow on you, and it releases smells at certain places. I was like, what is this? Canadians have got it going on these days. What? That was pretty cool. I think it's $25 to take in. I'm like, still worth it. Let's go. Yeah.
00:28:29
Speaker
We saw air. I want to say that because we were with a bunch of people and some of the kids. That's the Nike one. Yeah. I saw the preview for it. Really good. Yeah. Yeah. Some pretty.
00:28:45
Speaker
I won't spoil it for anybody. Really good movie. Unfortunately, I think this represents, based on reading IMD being Wikipedia, this represents some power play moves that you had hoped were done by a wonderfully sympathetic person in the movie that were actually probably done by somebody else. But anyway, still a really good movie. Kind of like the founder, maybe not as good a business parallels to it, but yeah. Nice. Yeah. Yeah.
00:29:13
Speaker
Wow, that's a quick 30 minutes. What are you up to today? Okay, so I have to issue a large thank you to you because I bought process bins and I bought the same shelf that you guys have. The wire shelf with the wheels, they sell them a Canadian tire here and even just the guys put together the shelf and then they put the bins on the wall, like on the shelf and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is already the greatest thing ever.
00:29:37
Speaker
Nothing's in them yet. But I see that this is the way to go. And on each shelf, you can still fit three process bins stacked on top of each other if you want. And like four wide, I think. So I really don't like the extra effort at all of ever having to do effort to move and relocate to get to a process bin.
00:29:57
Speaker
And you're also hiding what's inside, I guess.
Quality Control Processes
00:29:59
Speaker
Yeah. It's just interesting. It's an additional friction point that is unacceptable. Maybe if it's a process bin that's only used every quarter, that would be okay. But then you've got to make that decision. I just like kind of like, um, Oh, a mailbox system or a recipe system. Like you pull the ingredient, you just grab it. You go, you don't have to unstack other things to get sure.
00:30:19
Speaker
Yeah, I'll keep that in mind for sure. And then I started working on, I finally printed off some setup sheets from Fusion, which was actually pretty helpful, pretty awesome. So I've got, I want to make more fixtures for the Kern and also for the Maury. And I've got it all designed. I've made them before most of them. So it's literally just like a repeat process, but there's a lot of caveats and there's a lot of like, you got to use this stock size and you got to dovetail it first. And there's a lot of like steps and ops. So I took some good time.
00:30:48
Speaker
I printed off the setup sheet, and then I also created my own process sheet, and I wanted to create a template that can be used for multiple other things, which tells me the location of the file in Fusion, the location of the file on the Kern, location of the file on our Google Drive, the stock material, notes, setup notes, critical tolerances. Basically, to be able to make a part without really needing a drawing,
00:31:15
Speaker
And then all that stuff printed on one sheet of paper and that I printed that off for two separate components and I laid them in a process bin and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is just the greatest thing ever. I totally, totally see what you're talking about now. And I don't know why I would have ever hesitated in the first place.
00:31:34
Speaker
And then the bids are big enough. I can put my stock in there now and I can put like, if I want a post-it note that says, please make five pieces. And then that should be enough information to give Angelo and Steven and let them like actually make these parts. Cool.
00:31:48
Speaker
The humble piece of advice is don't congratulate yourself yet because I'm not sure I'm in the same trap of I love processed bins. I see the vision for them. But you know how I was saying like there's stuff I just need to finish. Part of it's clean, the shop part of it's like hey, these processed bins are half family friendly podcast but half tushed.
00:32:08
Speaker
Yeah, I need to get the laminator out, set it up, I need to get the QC sheets finished in there. And even on those, we've talked about this before on the podcast, but we have some dimensions where it's like, no, we can hit, we're talking, usually we're talking really small values. And that's a point of pride for us. Like, hey,
00:32:26
Speaker
We want plus or minus two tenths on this, but the reality is if it's plus four tenths on a separate product, it doesn't need to be thrown away. It's not going to be reworked or it could be okay, but plus or minus say four tenths might be that threshold of discard, but that doesn't mean everyone can come off that way and we just say, oh, don't worry about it. The difference between a goal and an acceptable. Yes.
00:32:50
Speaker
Yes. So in just conveying that in the process been on the sheet that way, it's not an emotional decision. It's not a conversation. It's clear. Because I want us to have QC sheets. This sounds really basic. I want us to have QC sheets where it's absolutely clear if it misses it, it goes into the track. Yeah. And then no questioning, no bringing it to you, no nothing. Absolutely. Same here.
00:33:15
Speaker
But it's also, hey, we can do better than that first published tolerance most of the time. Yep. And a lot of our stuff, I mean, since we're making our own product to our own tolerances, to our own specifications, a lot of it's nuanced and we're still learning on the go, including the final inspection of the product. Like the guys are cleaning it to be put in the box to be shipped to the customer and final check to make sure it feels good. It looks good. There's no scratches. There's no nothing.
00:33:41
Speaker
No blotches and anodizing. The guy showed me one of the scratches in the blade that they found. It's a stonewashed blade. There's a billion scratches on it. Sometimes the scratches are bigger than others and they stand out and they glint in the light. The guy showed me, is that scratch acceptable? We're looking at everyone. I don't know. You can see it, but it's not much bigger than all the others. It's kind of fine.
00:34:06
Speaker
How do you control rocks in a shaking bowl to be perfect? That's all through process control, the amount of water that's in there, the amount of lubricity, cleanliness and all that stuff. We're pretty good at it, but still, that's a tolerance. How do you even make a process sheet around scratch size on a blade?
00:34:26
Speaker
Well, I'll tell you exactly how. It's what we've done because we have the same question around streaking on end mills. If a top jaw is still with intolerance, but we're starting to see streaking, what's that even mean? Sure. The part's fine, but it looks bad. Yeah, yeah.
00:34:44
Speaker
And most people, you know, we're selling to machinists, which arguably are a more scrupulous bunch because she is, I don't think most machinists would pick that up and say, what is going on here? This is dog. You know what? Um, so what we've done is, uh, taken photos and laminated them and they go in the process bin and they, they give you some qualitative context around what we think is okay or not. And that can just help you say, okay, where do I want this to feel? You know, I like that. Yeah.
00:35:16
Speaker
Similar to the process spends time in them with Lex.
Maintenance Documentation
00:35:20
Speaker
I spent my morning actually got derailed because our Akuma horizontal chips can build up between the door seal for the main door. And it was really perplexed the first time it happened because I didn't know how to clean it. And then I realized you have to go kind of inside the machine undo to two wiper, like wiper rubber strips. And that exposes where the chips could be built up. Because what happens is the door closes and it
00:35:50
Speaker
successfully latches but it can apparently something happens with the Akuma like when it does a tool changer between that where the door can unlock and so the machine movement itself can cause that to just barely open and then you get an alarm
00:36:06
Speaker
and not good. It's kind of frustrating. And it's just like, okay, machines, DLC, we need to clean it. But we made a tool to clean it. And I forgot about those rubber gaskets yesterday, like kind of a classic, like, I need to fix this, but I forgot how to do it. And so we did a Lex maintenance
00:36:25
Speaker
item for it. And then in that we put links to photos that show what the tool looks like and what the rubber gaskets look like. So it gives me the confidence. So that's right. I need a four millimeter wrench. There's five. And then this is what we need to do. And like it feels so much better. Yes.
00:36:45
Speaker
Nice. So that used to happen on the Kern, sort of. On the left-hand door, it slides back on an air cylinder and opens up to the Aroa pallet changer so the pallets can come in and out that door.
00:37:01
Speaker
Chips would accumulate on the seals of that door, and they would cause problems with the door opening, and they would also cause leakages or clogs actually in the drain hose that's under that. So when coolant hits the door, it goes down a drain hose back into the tank.
00:37:18
Speaker
Chips were getting into that hose, clogging the hose and causing floods because they couldn't go down the hose. I 3D printed these shields that cover those seals, the cracks in the door basically front and back. I 3D printed them out of PLA like two years ago and they've been absolutely fine and they get drenched 24-7 and they're like- That's awesome. Perfect. I even printed them with like 10% infill and they haven't really died yet.
00:37:48
Speaker
Huh. Can you either send a picture of those or put it up on Insta? Yeah, I really should because they worked. I guess when I made them, I was like, well, let me see if they work out before I really go flaunting them and saying, Kern could do a better job at their design, but it's awesome. All I had was PLA and I didn't have any closed printers. I was like, they'd be better out of ABS. Maybe I'll print them eventually. I haven't even thought about it in almost two years.
00:38:14
Speaker
The PLA, the stuff that we printed for our Haas to give this sheet metal steeper angles and corners have held up
3D Printing Solutions
00:38:20
Speaker
great. Yep. The failure is sometimes that they, some of them are in with magnets and some of them are in the silica. That is sometimes more the failing point. But because I know PLA kind of gets weak, but these have been fine.
00:38:32
Speaker
It's been fine. Yeah, exactly. It's mostly, like you said, what attaches to the PLA. We've got some of those heat set inserts for threads. We just had some of those fail on the speedio printed parts. Oh, really? Whatever. It doesn't matter. Interesting.
00:38:48
Speaker
The Akuma B-axis, you know, fourth axis if you will, has about a one inch gap and next to the tool setter turret. It's a little like box that protrudes up and chips used to build up between those two all the time. It would drive me nuts and it's also chips building up along a rotating, you know.
00:39:06
Speaker
gasket bearing, all that. It took me a while to figure out the 3D printed shape because it's such a weird circle into a complex box. I got it, I silicone it in place, and it is the best thing ever. And then I sent it over to Scott Harms. Humbly, I was like, hey, I don't know if you guys have this problem. It drove us nuts. Here's a 3D print. If you have a printer, I'll send you the solid model. If you don't, I'll just print them and send them to you because he's done so much for us.
00:39:34
Speaker
And he wrote back that he's beyond excited. They were already printing them because that was a daily maintenance list, which I'm almost like, how did I out scott harm scott harms? Because you'll be doing something every day when you can solve it by not doing it. You know what I mean? Right, right. Yeah.
00:39:51
Speaker
Because sometimes it's easier just to deal with it than it is to take the day of totalized work to solve it. But that's where you need to live is in that time frame where you're like, I can fix that problem. You guys are busy. I can take the time to do that. But that's coming full circle back to what I need to do for the next month. I need to stop being John the whatever problem. I need to be able to be a surgeon on those things. You love being a problem solver. That's totally fine.
00:40:21
Speaker
Um, what I'm trying to do too, because I like to run at every problem and try to solve it. If I have the time available to do it, uh, I need to empower the rest of the team to be able to solve their own problems to a certain extent. Um, and they are, but I'm, you know, I still solve a lot of the problems that they can also solve with enough training or time or, uh, access to whatever. So that's cool. So I've got, go ahead. Uh, the,
00:40:51
Speaker
I was going to say. So we've been working on the printers more. So now my brother Eric has successfully designed his own part. He hasn't touched Fusion in like five years. So he designed a part in Fusion, printed it. I gave him one of the pruses. His guy Gabe has also been designing and printing parts. My lathe machinist Pierre designed a part for himself, printed it on the ender yesterday. And I'm like, oh, this is finally happening. Like everybody's starting to actually use this stuff. And it's not all just on my shoulders.
00:41:20
Speaker
Good, I need more of this. Don't you have daily, you either have morning huddles or lunch huddles or something, right? We're doing every day at noon, we'd go outside and have a meeting. We've reduced that to Monday and Friday now, that's where the whole team gets together. But now the production guys are having a huddle on Wednesdays.
00:41:40
Speaker
where they actually go outside they bring their white boards you know one from the machine shop one from the finishing shop they put it together you know who needs what parts who's still on this that's been awesome so it's become you know monday monday friday is the whole team everybody gets together no matter what um and then little manufacturing meetings at various stages which is working out really well okay yeah i gotta think about
00:42:03
Speaker
We do our Friday lunch, and then we do a cookbook manager meeting. But that's really more about R&D. And it's not so much what I think we might want to have, which is helping questions that can get addressed. And you always want to be respectful. And it's something I don't know that I have the answer to as a leader of when an employee asks a question about, hey, a tolerance or decision or process,
00:42:28
Speaker
how much do you help them? Because that's what it's always feels good to help people versus how much do you push back and say, I trust you, I believe in you, right? If you if you want to, you know, come with a solution and just double check it, that's fine. So it's just something I think is that more of a one on one thing or a team setting
Effective Team Meetings
00:42:45
Speaker
thing? Both? I guess more one on one that I found
00:42:51
Speaker
Um, our Friday lunches are far more reporting than they are. They ended up, we ended up having debates about stuff or discussing stuff, but it's not, there's a lot of one-on-one stuff. That's not bad, but, um,
00:43:05
Speaker
Well, what I found with the team meetings is when there's 12 guys standing around, and it just becomes a one-on-one conversation between two people, and everybody else is just shuffling their feet. So that's why we reduced it to only two days a week, not five, because the critical information is just wasting everybody's time, because it doesn't matter to them.
00:43:24
Speaker
And that is something I've noticed in some of our Friday lunches is it gets a little bit too drawn out on too many rabbit hole topics. So having some more group specific meetings or so forth would help with that. Yep. And what I've tried to do is when I see that happening, I'd be like, great. You guys further discuss that. It's not valuable for everybody to like, you know, we're aware of it. Great. Everybody knows you guys are struggling with that. Awesome. You guys can take care of that.
00:43:55
Speaker
It's cool. It's good. Good. What's up with the rest of the day?
Maximizing Machine Use and Future Plans
00:44:02
Speaker
I've been thinking a lot about my Maury lately because I've had it for eight years. It's awesome. Fully paid off. It's still a great machine. It's like our most reliable machine in the shop. I'm like, okay. We're currently only running it about six hours a day. I'm like, I want more. We can do more.
00:44:19
Speaker
But that's all we need right now, but trying to get to the next level of production. So I'm toying with ideas. And the first step, I think, is to improve the way we're managing tool life and tool tracking, just like how we have it on the current, where it can actually predictively look ahead and be like, OK, you've scheduled this many pallets. You're going to need to replace tools. One, 19, 17, 479, bother. I want that on the Maury, too. So how do I?
00:44:46
Speaker
get data out of the machine onto a computer. That's what you're asking about, right? I thought that was Wilhelmin. That's Maury, huh? Yeah.
00:44:54
Speaker
And I think I figured it out last night, so I want to go check right now. On the fan controls, you can set which device you're outputting and inputting to, whether it's USB, the hard drive itself, or a network. And I've never been able to successfully network it to a computer hard drive. I can file Zilla to it. But anyway, I think I found the setting I need to do that. So I'm going to test that. And then it'll push files. I can de-print all of the macro variables.
00:45:22
Speaker
directly to the Raspberry Pi that also does all of our current tool life calculations. And then pay my programmers to like do what you did on the current for the Maury. The data is totally different, but I want the same result. Let's go. Yeah. So that's got me all hot and bothered right now. I'm really excited about that.
00:45:41
Speaker
Which leads to like, if I want to run that machine more, there's a couple things we want to do. Like I want to put more shunk pallets on it. And then I'm thinking, do I consider putting a UR robot on the side and make a pallet rack? And so playing with that idea, which I have been playing with for like four years.
00:45:58
Speaker
Yeah, no, we talked about this. I'll tell you, I give respect. I'll keep it anonymous, but acquaintance who realized, ah, you know what? If I swapped out machine A from machine B, it would be the better fit. And he came to that decision pretty quick. And I'm not actually advocating that you say you're a vertical. It seems like a great machine, blah, blah, blah. But like, you know, just cause you own it, like, yeah. And if I were to replace it, it would be with one or two speedios. But the problem with that is a lot of money.
00:46:27
Speaker
I don't have to spend a lot of money because I already have a great machine. Yeah. I don't know. We'll see. I hear you. I've been told by my accounting and by Eric that I'm not allowed to spend big money this year. That's cool. I told them unless there is a direct need and I will prove it with data. Yeah, I sure. But a little stuff like even buying a UR, they're
00:46:52
Speaker
40 plus thousand dollars US. No, that's crazy. That's money and that's cash money. It's not like you're going to get a loan on at least or whatever. Just thoughts.
00:47:05
Speaker
Everything I've heard, kind of what you're talking about, but kind of not, but everyone I've talked to about sort of automating three axes or similar sort of things, the minicoes and similar, I'll tell you, chip control is such a, it's not a question of if it will cause problems, it's a question of when it will cause problems or how it will manifest itself. And I think we've done a really good job on the current and also on the speedio for controlling that chip control. So I have experience at it.
00:47:31
Speaker
I'm not too worried about being able to pull it off, but also, I'm like, how much of that whole project would I take care of or how much would I distribute to the rest of the guys? Here's the UR in a box. I'm going to come back next week and it's going to be running, right? Yeah, I hear it. Cool. Sweet. What are you up to?
Post-COVID Training Revival
00:47:52
Speaker
So more of that same stuff I've been talking about, getting some stuff for sale as well. And then we are hosting our first post COVID five access class tomorrow. Ah, sweet. Vince runs those, but I'm going to help the first class, which of course is appropriate. I'm happy to do so. But one of my big things has been running the training program with Vince and the people he needs to run that with basically no involvement from me in my time.
00:48:19
Speaker
Yeah. So this is an example of where we're breaking that rule. But so be it. I'm excited for it. It's a small class. It's the invents only four students. So it gives us a good chance to dust off the cobwebs. And you see on Instagram that little V8 engine they do. I did see that, yeah. Yeah. It's a young soft jobs for two. And it'll be a good class. Nice. Yeah. That's exciting. Well, I'm happy for you guys. That's awesome. Yeah, it'll be good. It's not a lot of five-axis training classes in the country.
00:48:47
Speaker
I know, right? It's good for you. Yeah, it's good. It kind of brings full circle. That's why you bought the UMC 500 and the Pallet Changers, to be able to do classes, right? Well, yes, but selfishly, actually, Alex is working this morning on our, oh boy, we can talk about this next week, but we're starting to make the first batch of alpha
00:49:10
Speaker
beta zero points, everything else. It was just a one-off. We test it. We tweak it. Now we're going to make 10 of them. And so one of the, that's why I bought the pallet. One of the pallets for the foreseeable future will have the fixture to run those. And it doesn't cost me anything. Like it's just there. I can run them when I run them. I freaking love that, John. Yes. With enough tools and enough pallets, like anything's possible. And that's, it's just hit run it and go. Love it. That's cool, man. Cool.
00:49:40
Speaker
All right, I'll see you next week. Okay, have a great day. Bye.