Transcript
jamie peacock: Welcome to the Loan Machinist Podcast, so it's just you, the work and the machines. Today, we've got a special guest alongside Kurt. We've got Al from G28.io. How are you this fine day,
AL Whatmough: I'm very good. Thanks for having me.
jamie peacock: Al? Oh, always welcome on the podcast. How are you doing this fine day, Kurt?
Curt: I'm doing fantastic. i'm ah I'm super excited. Thank you for making time for us. It's always fun to chat with people doing cool stuff in the industry. so ah as Jamie's dying still.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: Well, you made you da made time for me. I'm what, like an hour and a half late?
jamie peacock: No, that's fine. os We were chatting about books and all sorts of other odds and ends, so yeah, really not an issue.
AL Whatmough: Haircut ran way long.
jamie peacock: it happened Yeah, I'm still dying off in the background.
Curt: okay
jamie peacock: Oh, fuck. ah Yes, sir. I think people want to know what G28.io is all about. So i think let's start there and then we'll dive into your history in the industry after that.
AL Whatmough: we jump We jump right into it. ah Well, G28 is the G code to go home to a safe location and reset.
jamie peacock: Yep.
AL Whatmough: So that's that's what it's all about. ah Give the people and ah hopefully eventually the technology, of the industry, a place to to go home and reset in a safe location. That's kind of the way I think about it.
AL Whatmough: um
Curt: Thank you.
AL Whatmough: You asked me about my career. So I guess I can unpack a little bit. Started, and you can ask more questions later if you want, but started as a machinist by trade and then ended up going to teach high school and finding out that I really, really loved learning from the students. i was teaching... like It was interesting. he'd learned I'd learn more about SolidWorks often with the high school students. Like, oh, you can actually make like a multi-sided hex. It's not just a hex command. You can change the number of sides. This is one example I thought about. But you end up like learning a lot when you create a creative space for people to to talk.
AL Whatmough: And that sort of followed me through my career at Autodesk when I led Fusion. My job was product management, but my joy was getting people together. And then when I was at Toolpath, same thing. Job was leading a Toolpath, but my joy was getting people together. it just always used my my job to do that.
AL Whatmough: so now but But then when we did the summit, there was kind of this realization that the rest of the industry is willing to support this. We started getting sponsors for the summit. Oh, maybe...
AL Whatmough: maybe my joy can be my job. ah So that's, that's kind of what it is. How do, how do I facilitate ah we Becca, Becca's and Adam have joined me on it. How do we facilitate getting the industry together so that when, when smart people get together, they can talk to kind of our job to just create a safe place for open conversation.
jamie peacock: Okay.
Curt: So is, is that a, like when you say to say split, like, are you talking in like a digital sense or in a physical sense or in kind of a combination of both?
AL Whatmough: Uh, well, i think I think people like you do a great job of podcasts, so I don't i don't think that's necessarily ah needed, although i was thinking on my drive home, i'd I'd love to do some digital stuff too. um one i Again, when I was at Autodesk, every Friday we did a call. I called it the loading dock chat, but the engineering team came and and customer advisory board came and we just had a coffee and talked together for an hour.
AL Whatmough: And over time we'd get different presenters because it grew to a couple hundred people every Friday. So i I suppose maybe digital is necessary, ah but presently what we've got scheduled is the Summit in Mammoth, which is nine nice condos to hang out in the living room and have conversations, a big banquet room for conversations, chairlift snowmobiles and fly fishing for conversations.
Curt: Okay. Right.
AL Whatmough: um So activities that incite dialogue. You tend to talk more openly when you're hanging 40 feet in the air with somebody. it's like all of a sudden it's like this elevator conversation happens.
AL Whatmough: when When you're stuck on the same flight from Denver to Bishop, because there's only one flight. So we had 60 people on that flight last year of 75 seats. You end up talking to the person next to you.
Curt: Cool.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: IMTS, we now do ah do a booth there in a partnership with them. so we'll have the rock crawlers and Most of the time when people are playing with RC cars or planes, one person's driving, two people are standing watching them do it and you end up talking.
AL Whatmough: ah So yeah, in general, ah how do ah how do we do things that help remove the friction and facilitate conversation?
Curt: As I say, that's that's a brilliant way because then people drop their guard and like you said, you get you get honest conversation as opposed to something that feels forced.
AL Whatmough: but it's and it's It's like, it happened so quickly.
Curt: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: had ah A major brand, I don't think they'll mind me saying it. DMG Mori sent a couple of people to summit last last year. ah And on the second day, said, we should probably take our DMG Mori shirts off because the conversations are more open when they don't realize we're from DMG Mori. And then afterwards, they're like, oh, you're people too. and And the guard was down, but we tend to have our guards up when you're talking to a salesperson or you're talking to a salesperson at a trade show.
AL Whatmough: And it's it's down a little lower when you're sitting in a living room.
jamie peacock: Yeah, that was something at, at IMTS last time, the toolpath booth was absolutely amazing for just chatting to other people in the industry.
Curt: Totally.
jamie peacock: Like, Danik and I spent every evening there, like till we eventually decided to stroll out of IMTS. And because we were behind the wall, no one knew we were there. So they didn't kick us out. Like,
AL Whatmough: it's It's funny. And by the way, the inspiration for that booth was... The barber I just went to, but I didn't have him cut my hair. I had his his new girl cut my hair. like, I don't care. You can do it. She took a little longer, but did a good job.
AL Whatmough: um But the inspiration for that IMTS booth was, well, let's just play Cornhole because you show up with a friend and you stand next to somebody you don't know. It's a good facilitating activity to talk.
AL Whatmough: And that's how I met my barber was at a local event where ah My son and I were playing against him and his son, and I ended up talking next to him and getting to know him. And that was that was the inspiration for the IMTS booth, ironically announced.
jamie peacock: Okay.
AL Whatmough: The reason I was late today.
jamie peacock: Yeah. that um Yeah, that booth was was absolutely great last time around.
AL Whatmough: This one will be far better.
jamie peacock: Okay, that's good to know because our flights got booked last night, so we are on our way to IMTS.
Curt: Ooh. Oh.
AL Whatmough: Sweet.
jamie peacock: Yeah, Danica booked all the flights for us last night. So it's going to be proper fun.
Curt: Well, and especially in a giant hall where like pretty much every other booth is going to be focused on like driving a sale. If like, if you're kind of one of the standalones, that's just like driving a conversation. Like that's a, and I think that's why the ah old booth there with, with tool path was such a huge success. Cause everyone just was like, Oh, this is not stressful.
AL Whatmough: I think we might even get no soliciting yellow flags to put in the
Curt: oh ah
jamie peacock: right
Curt: yeah
jamie peacock: the What is the plan for the booth fair this time around?
Curt: That's cool.
Curt: Or is it a secret?
AL Whatmough: So the the primary facilitating activity will be r c rock crawlers.
Curt: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: And the goal, so if you if you saw the video from Mammoth, for the people that weren't skiing, we we set up obstacles for the rock crawlers. In this case, the obstacles will be things you find at IMTS.
jamie peacock: Nice.
AL Whatmough: um
jamie peacock: Nice.
Curt: not cool
AL Whatmough: Working on a fun one right now, which is like, it shows it shows how amazing this industry is too. Like we always assume the people on the sales side are not the same as the people on the buying side. I reached out to Qualychem and a Blazer Swiss Lube and said, hey, I want coolant drums to build a bridge between them, but it's going to be a bridge to your competitor. And they were like, yeah, sure, why not?
AL Whatmough: um So we'll we'll hang a Hennig chip conveyor between two coolant drums and make the bridge of brands. So that's ah that's a fun one.
jamie peacock: masss
AL Whatmough: um some ramps to to crawl up onto toolboxes and Horn just sent me a whole big stack of like majorly oversized tools to crawl over.
jamie peacock: Nice.
Curt: That's cool.
AL Whatmough: CNC repairman said he's going to work on something at a little broken machine parts. So we'll we'll see it we'll see what happens.
jamie peacock: Okay.
AL Whatmough: Feels a little bit like the Lego movie. Maybe a double-tucker couch will show up. Just kind of letting people, like, if you've got something, send it over um and and let's have fun.
jamie peacock: Yeah. Nice. Okay.
Curt: That's such a cool way to do it. Yeah.
jamie peacock: Yeah, no, definitely is.
AL Whatmough: But it's it's kind of like a community space supported by the community and a community of vendors. And all the vendors are sending stuff.
jamie peacock: Okay.
AL Whatmough: and And I'll try and fund it by letting the vendors ah wrap one of the rock crawlers and raffle it away in their booth. So come hang out in this one and then run over to the Datron booth. And when they scan your badge, you'll get a chance to win the rock crawler.
AL Whatmough: and That should keep people moving around.
Curt: That's awesome.
jamie peacock: Yeah, I think, yeah, I think IMT is going to be an absolute blast this time around.
Curt: That's so cool.
jamie peacock: It was a blast last time, but yeah, think it's going a blast this time as well.
AL Whatmough: I hope so.
Curt: Yeah, well, and just like novel ideas like that are just, yeah, it's so much more intriguing.
AL Whatmough: I hope so. There we go.
Curt: I think so.
jamie peacock: Yeah, I'm...
Curt: i haven't heard of a rock crawler we race. So yeah, that sounds awesome.
AL Whatmough: They're fun. They're, they're addictively fun.
jamie peacock: Yeah. I've got ah some stuff in the works for IMTS. Some magnets that are going to get put places. Going to see who can put them in the most ridiculous place.
AL Whatmough: I'll make sure there's no metal in my booth then.
Curt: It's a wise idea.
jamie peacock: Haha.
Curt: It's a really good idea.
jamie peacock: Yeah, probably not a bad idea. But yeah, i'll figured the magnets, because then we're not permanently vandalizing anything. Like, it's just a magnet sticker.
AL Whatmough: you go There you go. There you go.
jamie peacock: Like, yeah. I mean, I think last time we were throwing the toolpath, um the corner, let's see how high we could get them, yeah, up the one pillar.
AL Whatmough: Oh, we're trying to see how far up on the beams.
jamie peacock: I'll be curious to see if there are any still there.
AL Whatmough: They're probably gone. It'd be funny if they were.
jamie peacock: Yeah, well, we'll see. it would be. I might just bring some with and throw them up there and take a picture.
jamie peacock: But yeah, so you know you say you you were teaching and then you went to Autodesk. And from there, where did you...
AL Whatmough: there was ah There's a couple things in between. So yeah, five five years as ah as a machinist. And then um i was like the introverted kid in high school.
AL Whatmough: And I always give our scrap material back to our shop. And then one day, shop teacher called me and said, we fired our drafting teacher. We can get you a letter permission to come teach. So then...
AL Whatmough: The next week I was a teacher.
jamie peacock: Nice.
AL Whatmough: So did did that for two years and a letter of permission. But interestingly enough, didn't get into teacher's college and you could only have a letter of permission for two years. And so I got denied from teacher's college because they said you need five years work experience and four of your years who are an apprentice.
Curt: Okay.
AL Whatmough: So it doesn't count. So i I got denied. ah But I ended up ah getting married, which was amazing, and moving to California. So it didn't really matter.
AL Whatmough: And started doing video-based curriculum to teach SolidWorks because what I realized when I was teaching was... Most high school teachers weren't teaching solid works, not because the industry didn't use it, but because it didn't exist when they left industry. So they're still teaching what they know.
AL Whatmough: so I created video based curriculum so teachers could facilitate the learning. And that was like a big aha moment for me anyway, because you teach parametric solid modeling to ninth graders.
AL Whatmough: The first day, some students were like, I only know how to use Facebook and other students were drawing V8 engines with pistons going up and down. So you you kind of needed to
Curt: Mm-hmm.
AL Whatmough: not be the source of knowledge, but just the facilitator of it. And that's that's kind of what the the video curriculum was. And then I ended up having half the customers being, so much easier to talk openly about this, because I don't work at Autodesk anymore.
AL Whatmough: Half the customers were like auto, 60 year old guys that had learned AutoCAD that needed to learn SolidWorks. And they were doing the same curriculum I'd built for high school students. was oh, well learning's learning. It doesn't really matter your age.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: Um, so that was, that was InspirTech because my belief is education is about inspiring. um and that led me to say, well, I'm a machinist. I should teach cam too.
AL Whatmough: so i went and found HSM works, which is cam inside of solid works, started teaching that, uh, and then started selling that. And then Autodesk acquired HSM works.
AL Whatmough: So when Autodesk acquired HSM works, uh, they made some changes to the channel and I realized that the HSM Works team really was just all software developers. So I took a job at Autodesk and got to lead CAM from when Autodesk didn't have CAM to when there was well over 100,000 CAM users.
AL Whatmough: So that was kind of the career arc.
jamie peacock: Okay. Yeah. Um...
AL Whatmough: and It's interesting, though. I think everybody should spend time teaching.
AL Whatmough: You'd think that my time at Autodesk in the quote-unquote corporate world was more defined by the fact that I was a machinist. And the truth is, I think it was more defined by the fact that I was a teacher.
AL Whatmough: Because at that time, Autodust had 15,000 employees and 15 people knew what a CNC machine was. One of them was the head of product for Fusion. The other one was Carl Bass, the CEO of Autodesk. Like not very many people within the company. couple people at Pier 9 that were making parts, but not many people that knew what machining was. So i was like explaining what a work coordinate system is and explaining so to sales teams the difference between 3D printer and CNC machine. um You end up realizing that a lot of your time is how do you articulate knowledge and less about the knowledge that you've got.
AL Whatmough: And then that evolved from like, I can't do it myself.
jamie peacock: Yeah,
AL Whatmough: I just need you to talk to you, which sort of became the last 15, 10, 15 years of my career. And I was like, oh and I just need to be the monkey in the middle and help connect people.
jamie peacock: that's something i was actually chatting to one of my engineer friends this week about. And he was like, yeah, he kind of was a tad envious of the podcast because Kurt and I practice articulating ideas every single week.
jamie peacock: And if you don't do it, you... it becomes It's a muscle that doesn't get exercised if you don't do it.
AL Whatmough: Yeah.
jamie peacock: and it I know Adam Demuth started his YouTube channel to be able to keep practicing articulating ideas after he left where he was working and went out on his own. Because otherwise you end up in a position where you can't easily articulate complex things.
AL Whatmough: Yeah. i mean, there's a whole bunch of things that happen. You end up being comfortable with being wrong publicly. One of my videos when I tried to teach people how to FEA and solid or seismic machines, i didn't know what i was doing.
jamie peacock: Yes.
AL Whatmough: I applied it to rubber. It's like, and then after which realize a lot less than was useless because you can't really use it on rubber. um
Curt: Thank you.
AL Whatmough: see it So there's, there's that bit of like just a comfort in not knowing as like, well, I'll be corrected and that's okay. Nobody got really mad at me. And then the other thing is,
AL Whatmough: I don't think you really know something until you've taught it three times. Like there's this, this thing of explaining something that actually is almost more helpful to the person talking than the person listening sometimes.
Curt: Absolutely. Yeah. so I think it's a great way to get deep knowledge on something is, yeah, like you said, try to educate someone that doesn't have any experience with it.
jamie peacock: I've
jamie peacock: yeah i've got a few customers.
AL Whatmough: And and they like, you kind of get good at like you're making a statement is often a question. It's, If you ask somebody a question, it's usually hard for them to answer. If you make a wrong statement, it's usually really easy for them to tell you.
AL Whatmough: so if you're okay with making statements and being wrong publicly, you end up learning a lot.
jamie peacock: Yeah, i've got ah I've got a few customers that have asked me to teach them Fusion, and I'm just like, sorry, nope. There's so many things that I just take for granted, having used Fusion and AutoCAD and SolidWorks over the years, that I'm going to tell you just do something.
jamie peacock: Expect you to have that core knowledge, and you're not going to, and I'm going to get frustrated. Mark, as it is, there's one person that I've sat down next to who's been using Fusion that I haven't wanted to punch in the face.
jamie peacock: Mark, of all the people I've dealt with, there's only one.
AL Whatmough: I mean, that's the other interesting, i mean, if we've turned this into a podcast about teaching, but it is, it is interesting that a lot of people think, Oh, I need to be the expert to do a podcast or i need to be the expert to do a T to be a teacher.
AL Whatmough: The irony is the person who math was intuitive to is probably a pretty shitty teacher. It's the person that went through the process and struggled to learn it. That's got more empathy and a better teacher at it. It's,
jamie peacock: Yeah.
Curt: That is a great way that' is a great way to put it.
jamie peacock: That is, yeah yeah, it's absolutely brilliant way to put it. I mean, yeah. And the first time, yeah, first time I got in front of AutoCAD 2007 in high school, we got given our projects.
AL Whatmough: Thank you.
jamie peacock: I had AutoCAD 2000 that was super legit on my home computer. I went home, came back on the Monday, said to the teacher, hey, how do make a hole? There's no press pull tool because 2000 didn't have a press pull tool.
jamie peacock: He's like, oh, no, you used the hole command. I'm like, sweet, Tuesday morning. Here's my project for the term. Done. Like, i went home and just figured, brute force figured it out. But, yeah, that doesn't make for good teaching.
AL Whatmough: Right. Because it was all intuitive to you.
jamie peacock: Like, yes, I figured it out.
AL Whatmough: So yeah, like you can't relate to the person that's struggling.
jamie peacock: Like, yeah. Yeah, and I've got, like, I've watched some of my customers model things, and it is infuriating to watch. To the point that I've told them to just give me the mouse and their computer, and I'll just quickly do it.
jamie peacock: I think modeled something for them with trackpad faster than model it with the keyboard and mouse.
AL Whatmough: It's funny.
Curt: Well, I think that's where like, I like i don't know who who made the call when when Fusion was coming about to basically, I mean, A, the way that they released it into the market and then B, the way that they had, I mean, I guess it follows suit when you have mass adoption of people like students learning the software, you get a lot more like information put out there.
jamie peacock: Oh, God.
Curt: So it makes it more easy for people to learn and then it just kind of snowballs on itself. Um, cause I came from a few different pieces of CAD software before fusion. And I was like, this was like, there was no way, like you could just Google an answer. Cause it's like, well, it they're all hidden behind paywalls for education. Whereas fusion was kind of different in that regard.
AL Whatmough: Yeah. I mean, that the fusion was the product everybody knew about, but fairly should call bass is a good personal friend and mentor. It was his decision as CEO to say it's short-sighted for auditors to charge for educational software.
AL Whatmough: I think it was like a $200 million dollars decision he was making at the time. he said it was the best decision he ever made it as a CEO to give it away to education instead short-sighted. um so And then Fusion just adopted the generic Autodesk policy that anything Autodesk is free to students.
Curt: Interesting.
jamie peacock: Because you guys have this...
Curt: OK. Makes
AL Whatmough: ah ah Fusion took it a step further and and applied it to makers and hobbyists and startups. And then there was... Fair amount of abuse, so things had to change to try and reign the reign the abuse in.
jamie peacock: I would know nothing about that.
AL Whatmough: um
Curt: sense.
AL Whatmough: ah There is a bit of a truth to it though. every Every product that software product has gone viral has got a healthy element of abuse that made it get more pervasive.
AL Whatmough: This is Al talking, not ex-autodesk Al. You can just kind of look at all the spaces where there's piracy and it generally helped lead to that product being the standard.
Curt: Yeah, well...
AL Whatmough: So in this case, it just was like, well, why not just bake it into the take it into the plan and let people use it?
jamie peacock: like Yeah. Well, I mean...
jamie peacock: Well, I ported where used to work. I ported us from SolidWorks because it didn't have any, well, we had Bobcam. It was horrid. I ported us to Fusion because I could run the CNC or Fusion, and it made life a hell of a lot easier.
jamie peacock: I then ported my two draftsmen over as well, and I think up until I left, we were still on the startup license or something. um I don't think they actually ever paid for Fusion. Obviously, I pay for Fusion now because I actually use it and make a living off of it.
jamie peacock: um But the first three years of Jspec engineering, we were classed as a startup and I took full advantage of that. And now happy to pay for it because I'm in the ecosystem.
AL Whatmough: Yes, I mean, that's the thing. It's a little different with cloud software, but Fusion didn't have too much cloud compute. Machinists can relate to it. In software, it's 100% setup costs. There's no spindle time cost. The cost of goods sold is effectively zero.
AL Whatmough: So you spend all that money to make the software, and if you sell 100,000 over one of them, the cost of shipping all of those is effectively zero. In the days of CDs, okay, so it was mailing a CD. In the days of downloadable software, it goes down to next to nothing. So it's a game of making the best product and making it as pervasive as possible.
Curt: That makes sense, yeah.
jamie peacock: i think fusion does well they've caught up the market at this point in my opinion because there's not really any other decent options that aren't going to cost an arm and a leg or aren't going to nickel and dime you for every add-on you want
AL Whatmough: right, we've done a good job.
jamie peacock: Yeah. And because of the huge adoption, like, like said, they've got all that online content. Some of it's a bit outdated these days because they've changed the UI a bit. But there's enough people using it that there's constantly new stuff being generated, which is like super, super helpful.
AL Whatmough: right.
jamie peacock: Like I was programming, I've got a customer who's got Edgecap. I don't know why he has EdgeCab. He paid more for EdgeCab than he would have paid for Fusion for like seven years. But he knew knew how to program EdgeCab.
jamie peacock: I'd machined an electrode for him this week because he didn't know to program it. It took me all of like three minutes to program.
AL Whatmough: I mean, you just answered your own question. The reason people use the tools they do is because they know how to know how to get the job done.
jamie peacock: They know it. Yeah. Well, he doesn't. But yeah, they think they know get the job done.
jamie peacock: But anyway, um well, speaking of Autodesk, Ken asked, well, i want to reword this, but I won't. um He asked, who does he need to stalk at Autodesk so that Fusion will work on Linux?
jamie peacock: I think Kurt and are willing to take one for the team here if you can tell us who we need to go and fondle.
Curt: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: i I don't think that's an answerable question.
jamie peacock: Ah, damn.
AL Whatmough: Not because there's no motivation. Autodesk is full of very good people, but decisions like that take an entire machine to move.
AL Whatmough: And that's where things get really hard.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: ah When I say the entire Autodesk machine. So you'll you'll find many individuals and you'll probably find individuals that have a shared passion that want want it done. But that that's the kind of thing that in my mind takes the way too many organizations to make a decision to to make that to make that easy to happen.
jamie peacock: Yeah, well, Kurt and were chatting before we you started recording. The only reason we're still on Windows is Fusion. That is literally the only reason I still use Windows is Fusion.
Curt: Yeah, but
Curt: we're also probably the 2% market share. So it makes sense that no company is going to pursue that avenue because it's just no our no ah ROI.
jamie peacock: Well, yes, we are trained enthusiasts, but... thought Yeah. Yeah. Well,
AL Whatmough: There's Windows and in Mac, fus so Fusion's at least better in that sense.
jamie peacock: yeah, I'm actually considering picking up a MacBook while I'm in the US s in September.
Curt: That's true. Yeah, that's true.
AL Whatmough: It's quick on the the Mac processors are quick.
jamie peacock: Because... the Well, that's how much I dislike Windows, that I'm willing to go to Mac.
Curt: right.
jamie peacock: yeah Windows drives me insane on a daily basis. um So what else do we... I don't know, Kurt, you can do the reading because that's super long and I'm probably going to di halfway through.
Curt: Yeah, I'd say you'll die halfway through. um I don't know who asked this. It came from somebody.
jamie peacock: Ken Aswell.
Curt: Oh, Ken as well? Okay. um
jamie peacock: Yes.
Curt: Curious to see if you see a trend in the industry moving away from large shops ah more towards small shops. Like with automation, single-man shops can be like just as productive as multi-man shops.
Curt: Just curious what your thoughts are.
Curt: Or if you see a trend.
AL Whatmough: i'm just kind of i'm just I'm just kind of having this i'm having this insight in real time.
Curt: Oh, yeah, no doubt. No, don't feel pressured.
AL Whatmough: i had I think media medium, so in any sort of change, like to me in any kind of change, It's the medium sized organizations that often struggle the most. I'm just kind of thinking out loud.
AL Whatmough: there's there's big There's big companies that get very good at a specific set of things, send get send jumps to mind. That will continue to become a larger and larger and larger shop. ah And that will leave more and more opportunities for niche players to be very good at something specific. And to your point with, with automation, shops can get very good at being, I'm the best person to make parts out of three quarter inch bar fed stainless steel.
AL Whatmough: And ah so, so yeah, I think, I think there's certainly an opportunity for, small focused players to coexist with some of the large disruptive players that will disrupt my guess is most of the medium sized players.
AL Whatmough: That's just a, just an assumption, but generally speaking, innovation happens in small teams.
Curt: Yeah.
jamie peacock: Yeah. Okay.
AL Whatmough: So yeah, small shops would likely be the best suited to, to take advantage of, of change.
jamie peacock: Yeah, they're the most nimble. They don't have all the overheads off.
AL Whatmough: that's that's a personal That's a personal opinion, though.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: and In times of change, innovation happens in small teams.
jamie peacock: No, it makes sense.
AL Whatmough: but if i were so So I absolutely believe in the small teams and in many small teams. But I think it'd be wrong to say that there's not going to be big shops. I think sunca Send is proving that.
Curt: Yeah, they're they're getting monstrous. But I mean, I guess they started they started small and efficient as well. Right.
AL Whatmough: they They started focused right then. They just, ah they, they expanded.
jamie peacock: I actually had one of my customers bring up SenCutSend with me the other day. He wants to start lay laser cutting parts. I'm like, dude, they're a software company. They're not a laser cutting company.
jamie peacock: And from day one, they've been the software company. And that's why they can do it as efficiently as they do it.
AL Whatmough: super weird. Like, I don't know. I find this weird. Somebody has like mastered that and is highly effective at it.
AL Whatmough: So the innovative idea you to come up with is do the exact same thing they've already mastered. Like the best thing you can do is try and keep up with the fastest guy instead of saying like, well, what are all the scraps that fall on the table around what that person is doing and thrive on that?
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: Because there's a whole lot of stuff in order to be very good at something.
Curt: Right.
AL Whatmough: There's a lot of things you say no to. Send, cut, send. There's a lot of stuff they say no to. i'd be, if I was running a shop today, not a sales pitch for a Kern, but i I'd almost want to have send gas sends send me near net shapes and have a current to put the put them within tolerance because send gets ends like plus or minus five be happy with it plus or minus five is a great starting point to toss on a machine to get the last person precision bit out to me it's less about seeing somebody's success and more saying like how do I attach myself to that success in a way that they're not going to again personal opinion
jamie peacock: Yeah. No, 100%. No. But like, yeah, Senkatsen doesn't really affect us here because, well, sunny South Africa. We've got other other guys who are relatively good at what they do here for laser cutting.
jamie peacock: um But it's still like an hour to get a quote out of him on a good day.
AL Whatmough: right
jamie peacock: Whereas the instant online thing, but that the amount of effort they could put into that is huge. Yeah. But yeah, again, get stuff in and add your little bit to improve it and then send it out the door.
jamie peacock: That is the ah way to go.
Curt: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: But I guess i guess your your point is you can send to send to serving a large market stateside. So you're saying, well, can you can you reproduce that in a smaller market and have a similar experience?
jamie peacock: Yeah. I don't know that our market is big enough to sustain that. But the whole of South Africa is like 60 million people.
AL Whatmough: And if it was big enough to sustain it, would Senketsen put a factory there?
jamie peacock: Yeah, exactly.
AL Whatmough: i don't know
jamie peacock: I know the the laser cutting market here is cutthroat. My previous employer, after I left, he bought a laser cutter for a job. They did the job and he was like oh, well, let's try job shop on this. And he reckoned that there is no money in it. Unless files are hitting your ah hitting your inbox and pretty much automatically being flowed through your drafting to the machine, you're not going to make any money.
jamie peacock: Like you've got to have those processes in place. It's so cutthroat here.
AL Whatmough: And ah the the interesting thing is like that became, and I talked to, i talked live with this about, with Jim on, on our smarter shops video.
jamie peacock: And our market especially is cutthroat.
AL Whatmough: So I know I can say this. ah You'd think that, oh, that destroyed the laser cutter, cutter companies in the U S and And actually all it did is they said, oh well now I'm the local fabrication place and I focus on creating fabricated goods for my local economy.
AL Whatmough: And I don't have to worry about maintaining a laser anymore.
Curt: Thank you.
AL Whatmough: i get to focus on being the customer experience and Suncut Send will send me the stuff that I'll all put together. there's still a There's still a space for them to interface with their local community on fabricated parts.
AL Whatmough: They just don't have to deal with warehousing all the sheet goods.
jamie peacock: Yeah, well, that takes a huge amount of space. um Has that video come out?
AL Whatmough: Yeah, it's it's on the IMTS channel, so it was Smarter Shops.
jamie peacock: The Swartashop? Oh, okay, I didn't. don't know if I saw that one. I know saw the other ones, so I don't know if I've seen that one.
AL Whatmough: Yeah, a week week or two ago, maybe.
jamie peacock: Okay, I might have missed it. I will go look it up, because those are quite interesting shop tours.
AL Whatmough: They were fun to do them.
Curt: Well, I mean... Yeah.
AL Whatmough: Hoping to do more of them next year with with them.
jamie peacock: Okay, nice. Oh, it's very, very interesting. Well, let me quickly do our Patreon plug because we have Patreons and they make the wheels on the train go round and round.
jamie peacock: Thank you to all the Patreons for their support. There will be a meetup at IMTS for the, well, for anyone really, but the Patreons. um All the top tier Patreons get a shout out every week.
jamie peacock: ah All the $10 and above will be getting a special care package from Danica and If you are at IMTS, if you are not, we're going to ship them Kurt and make him ship them out. um But yeah, top tier Patreons are Jade from Benchmark20, Luke from Fabtastic, AJ from Subtract Manufacturing, and 73 other companies, Jason S, EJ from Nocturnal Welding, the RT Machinist, Christian Olsen, Charles Watt, Kyle from Cursed Machine, Matt from Offworld, Alex B, John from Tourism Performance and Engine Tricks, Matt from Modern Fuel, Josh from Leighton Machine,
jamie peacock: Greg from Tabletop Machine Shop, and we have no new ones this weekend. Let me go, da.
Curt: I could just said that for you instead you trying to struggle bust your way through it.
AL Whatmough: It shows how much he cares about the Patriots.
jamie peacock: That's more fun if I da.
Curt: There's two people. He does. He does really care.
AL Whatmough: I
Curt: Yeah.
jamie peacock: but But yeah, thank you very much, patrons. All the patronage is going towards the Airbnb for IMTS because we're staying in a fancy house. But yeah, back to the back to the podcast.
AL Whatmough: heard a lot of, a lot of names I know in there.
jamie peacock: ah Yeah, it's, ah I was actually hanging out with a bunch of them before we started recording in the Taps and Patients Discord.
Curt: yes
AL Whatmough: by the way By the way, you have a, you have a place to meet up with your Patriots?
jamie peacock: Yes, it's called g28.io.
AL Whatmough: Perfect. That's the place to hang out.
jamie peacock: Yes, there we go.
AL Whatmough: Good answer. Good answer.
jamie peacock: Yeah, we, so our Hangouts is going to be, our meetup is going to be at two o'clock on
jamie peacock: We'll get there on Monday.
Curt: Yeah.
jamie peacock: The first day of arms, yes. That way, if anybody is awkward and wants friends to walk around with, you will have friends to walk around with because, let's be real, I'm not buying a machine while I'm there.
jamie peacock: Like, I'm there to see the cool things and maybe win a Freddy.
Curt: yeah
Curt: that is That is a super cool thing about this community. It's yeah, we have the patrons. that but like it's just It's wild how like closely knit it is. And maybe I'm seeing it through rose-colored glasses because I'm seeing it from a digital perspective of like the Instamachinist crowd and like people that interact with the various social medias. But everybody seems to know everybody, um which is which is kind of cool.
AL Whatmough: It's a a big world in a small community for sure.
Curt: It's super nice.
AL Whatmough: it like You mentioned Freddy.
Curt: Totally.
AL Whatmough: was chatting with Freddy this morning because they're talking about how they make an obstacle to crawl across a
jamie peacock: Nice.
Curt: Oh, cool. ah
jamie peacock: Yeah, we've got a local Freddy agent here, but by the time you ship it here, it becomes, like, brutally expensive.
AL Whatmough: makes sense.
jamie peacock: Yeah, so. But they are really cool. I have a moniker for now, but I do want to actual Freddy.
jamie peacock: Oh, God.
Curt: So you have a, oh, go ahead Jamie.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
Curt: I say, ah so you have the the machining summit coming up in Mammoth Lake.
jamie peacock: yes.
Curt: ah
jamie peacock: Okay.
Curt: what's a Do you have downstream ideas yet? Or is that kind of where all your focus is going right now? Sure,
AL Whatmough: That was all my focus until ah MC and Bonnie said, do do we want to do something? They said yes to this crazy idea of doing the rock crawler course at IMTS.
AL Whatmough: I got I got to get that wip whipped together quick.
Curt: sure. sure
AL Whatmough: um obviously Obviously there's ah the summit. um Adam Morley is part of what we're doing and i we'd like to tell more, more stories of, of shops and,
AL Whatmough: So if you saw any of the success stories we did when we were at Fusion and then the same ones we did when we were at Toolpath, it was always like telling the story of the shop. It just so happened they used the software I was representing at the time.
AL Whatmough: So in this case, I get to tell the story of the shop and it just so happens you use a few other products in the industry and we'll organically make sure that's that's highlighted.
Curt: Sure.
AL Whatmough: So like like to do that. um I would like to get the Friday call going again once I've got ah a little bit of time when the shop's a little cleaner.
AL Whatmough: But I suppose if I circle back to what i said in the beginning, I should be willing to show my messy shop. um And then, yeah, there's there's a there's a lot that goes into pulling pulling off the summit shooting for 500 people.
AL Whatmough: 60 sessions. So more than 10% of the people coming will be presenters. So a good, ah a good amount of logistics for somebody that for me personally, I focus on like organic opportunities and not, not structure, but it requires structures.
Curt: Okay.
AL Whatmough: That'll, that'll keep my, ah that'll keep me busy. if If it filled up too much, I'd love to, I'd love to do a summer thing too. Maybe hiking, golfing. I've got some ideas for how you can make golfing more interactive. Yeah.
Curt: Yeah, I mean, that makes sense.
jamie peacock: Yeah, my wife is...
Curt: If you you're shooting for that many people, like, yeah, they're they're they're big events.
jamie peacock: My wife's...
jamie peacock: Yeah. My wife's already organising snowboards for Summit.
AL Whatmough: that That part's actually pretty easy.
jamie peacock: But I'm not kidding...
AL Whatmough: it's it is it is funny, like the venue stuff. I was talking to our accountant today. He's planning an event, just like a one-time event. He's like, man, that's a lot of work. And then my wife runs a local pony club and we had to go get sponsors and everything. It's almost the same amount of work.
AL Whatmough: And then you go and talk to the caterer at like the local community center and write a contract with them.
Curt: you
AL Whatmough: that part's no different than me talking to mammoth mountain. It's just like, okay, we're having six meals instead of one. And my check is bigger. So they're actually willing to do more work, more terrifying size check.
AL Whatmough: Um, but, uh, that part's actually less work that the, the bigger thing is making sure I get the right facilitators for the conversations. Cause it's not about presentations. it's about who's, you guys are probably be the right people to facilitate conversations. You don't,
AL Whatmough: You don't want to pay to go to an event like this and then be sold to. you want to You want to go to learn.
Curt: Totally.
AL Whatmough: So you want, ah need to find people that it can facilitate a conversation and draw a conversation out as opposed to somebody that wants the stage. And it was easier the first year because everybody that goes the first year believes in what it is. It was successful the first year. So there'll be a little, I think a little bit more work and making sure that that's preserved.
AL Whatmough: If it turns into a sales event. year or two, then there really probably won't be a year three. so so Although lots of sales, the vendors have told me lots of sales came out of the relationships because it wasn't sales focused.
Curt: Oh, that's a, that's a tough thing to strike.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
Curt: Cause I know like I, especially like my demographic of it, like you're, you're hypersensitive to being sold on something like, and it's the same thing. If I, if I interact with, like I interact with companies that I deal with that aren't the cheapest by any means, but they treat me nice and they're, they feel genuine in the way like that they approached me.
AL Whatmough: Yeah.
Curt: And like, of course I'll deal with them. Cause that's, that's a totally different thing than just being like forced fed a good deal.
AL Whatmough: And the thing is like the vendors, the vendors all want to do it. And i'm like, I'm talking to CEOs of companies and all this, but they can't spend their people's money. I go, we want to support it.
AL Whatmough: And, and a good chunk of the revenue will come from industry partners supporting it. So how do I, how do I find that right amount where they can support it without, without it being such a big commitment that they have to draw a straight line to what sales came out of it. And then their marketing team has to justify it. And,
AL Whatmough: even though they want to do it. And so many, many are saying yes, but it's still, it's still got its challenges of finding the balance of making sure that like my goal is 60 vendors are all contributing in a small way so that one vendor doesn't own the whole thing, which is again, a lot of work.
Curt: Right.
AL Whatmough: It'd probably be easier to find one vendor to say, just give me enough to run the event, but then it, then it inherently kind of becomes their event.
Curt: Yeah. No, I see that being challenger.
AL Whatmough: Anyway, so I'm just processing it loud.
Curt: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: that'll That'll keep me busy. that's ah That's at least what's keeping me up at night right
jamie peacock: Yeah, everyone I've spoken to went to it has raved about the the first year.
Curt: get it tracks
jamie peacock: Absolutely raved about
AL Whatmough: now. So now we've got to preserve that, right?
jamie peacock: Yeah.
Curt: I said that's harder now. You got shoes to fill. Yeah. Yeah.
AL Whatmough: Yeah.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: So there's like the 280 people that came the first time, like they self-selected. And there's still a self-selection. Mammoth is not the easiest place to get to. The event isn't free, $1,800 to register to come. So it's self-selecting. I made it high enough that if price is the objective for ah the thing that gets in the way for a small small shop, we can we can remove that objection. but um you kind of know that the other people there are making a serious commitment to come more serious year one, because you truly believed in it.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: Year two, less, it's it's less serious because you knew it was a success. It might be your chance to, to grandstand. So that's, that's the, that's the thing.
AL Whatmough: I think the community is good. I shouldn't be worrying about that. that Generally speaking, the community has been amazing. one One of the vendors I talked to, we were like, oh next time could we, Could we sponsor one of the buses and give people snacks on the buses and and be there to greet them and welcome on the bus?
AL Whatmough: Whereas the first year when I talked to vendors, my God, just put your name on a dinner, but you'd be better off to be there and welcome people after they came this year.
Curt: Right. Totally.
AL Whatmough: Now they realize that it's one thing to pay for people's coffee in the morning, but you should really stand there and hand it to them. That's, that's where you get the value. So I think there's a lot of things. I'm just thinking out loud. There's a lot of things where it's been done once and now people,
AL Whatmough: have a better sense of how they can participate and be a part of it.
Curt: Well, and and even if it's not ah like a draw to, let's say, see the speakers or panels that are being done, but like just when you know that you're going to a place where whatever, ah hundreds of other like-minded people that we probably all interact with are going to be like, there's value in that too, of just rubbing shoulders with people that are doing cool shit.
AL Whatmough: And that's, I mean, that's that that to me is is our job is... Can we attract those like-minded people and can we preserve and steward the time in a way that that's the way the conversations go? Because it it can it can switch very easily. if If nobody's making a sales pitch, then that 50th person isn't going to be the guy to do it. If three people do it, it's kind of like the junk that you put on your kitchen counter. Pretty soon the pile gets gets big.
AL Whatmough: Anyway, i hope I hope it's useful for people to hear that I'm genuinely thinking about that a lot because that's that's what's important for something like this. If if you're going to invest a week in time and money to come, it better be a place that you can bump into people and have the kinds of conversations you're after.
Curt: makes sense.
jamie peacock: Yeah, it sounds like that's what it was, year one. Like, yeah, Danica and I, yeah.
AL Whatmough: it absolutely, year one, it was, I mean, I had, the number of stories were like not not things I would have expected. On the last day, I had somebody come up to me and say, hey, thanks for putting this on.
AL Whatmough: we had a We bought three machines from this vendor and it had been bad. We hadn't been able to get it fixed. And I bumped into the head of sales and they were able to kind of resolve it.
AL Whatmough: And and and I was able to make contact I couldn't have before. And then that head of sales came to me said, hey, thanks for putting this on. I bumped into a customer. We didn't know there was a problem. We were able to fix it I was like, that's why we did this.
Curt: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: You just kind of put people in the room and step out of the way and let let great people and industries full of great people what they do.
jamie peacock: Now that's...
Curt: It strikes me wild that you've picked kind of such like a public interacting avenue for ah person that calls yourself introverted. It's just especially like you say he you went into teaching feeling like an introvert and you're doing this, which is just, you know, gathering tons of people. But I guess I guess you like you said, you get to facilitate ah facilitate it all and then just kind of step back.
AL Whatmough: I'm a weird introvert though. My wife gets so annoyed with me. Like I'm, I'm a quiet introvert.
Curt: ah
AL Whatmough: I get energy from being around people, but don't always talk a lot. Um, which is probably the weird thing in high school. And then ah back to my initial thing, if you struggled with math, you're probably a better teacher.
AL Whatmough: If you struggled with connecting with people and then did all of a sudden, like just's this is massive unlock, like everybody should be able to do this.
Curt: Sure.
AL Whatmough: This is so awesome. um It's, that's probably pieces of that, of how amazing it is to connect with the right people and then how how do you help other people do that?
Curt: Not Drax. Yeah.
jamie peacock: Yeah, no, that makes sense.
Curt: It adds up. Yeah.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
Curt: yeah
jamie peacock: No, good, yeah.
AL Whatmough: And it's it's generally endearing.
Curt: Cool.
jamie peacock: Um...
AL Whatmough: i think the person the person i learned the most from, I shared the bench space with as a when I was an apprentice, Jack, we'd call him Krusty. What you making, in Jack?
AL Whatmough: Parts.
Curt: I'm sorry.
AL Whatmough: It's like nobody would get around him.
Curt: okay
AL Whatmough: ah But like when I asked him questions, he actually taught me more than about anybody else. And most most people do that. They create this shell around them. And those those are actually the ones you want to get information from.
AL Whatmough: And then when we were building software, it's like i so many stories of this. we I remember being in Copenhagen once and we were struggling to make progress on fusion. So the product managers and the engineers had this meeting of like, what let's put a what's plot ah impact versus difficulty. What are the things we can do to make speed up software development? And the product managers put like a reach out to the product manager, sticky notes. Like that feels pretty like high impact, low difficulty. feel like play over on the difficult side ah because engineers just have a tense to like, they just get in like solve the problem mode um because as engineers were problem solvers, when often the best thing to do is just have a quick conversation. So anyway, innovation happens at the speed of communication. How do you speed it up?
Curt: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: I'm rambling now.
Curt: No, no, that's that's good information. It's not rambling at all. This whole podcast is just one long ramble. So yeah, don't feel don't feel bad about that.
jamie peacock: Yes.
AL Whatmough: All right, good. So if i if I'm rambling on that, that I guess that's what that's what drew me to Fusion as well. To me, all of the innovation happens like when you connect breaks and processes.
AL Whatmough: and breaks And the process is the bigger the, or this comes back to our like big shop versus small shop. The big organizations end up with VPs. And so it's like, it's harder to break broken, but connect broken processes. CAD and CAM were broken processes because one one group owned CAM and one group owned CAD.
AL Whatmough: then what was the difference between standalone CAD, CAM and integrated CAM? One's just got shitty CAD. Like the standalone CAM system's just got enough CAD to do CAM, but it's not like we were disappointed when we got a full set of CAD tools to do our CAM, ah right?
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: it's It's just when you, but when you can connect broken processes, whether it's people, technologies, whatever it is, that typically is where innovation happens, um which is kind of an exciting time now because there's a whole new set of tools that can get reconnected in new ways.
Curt: Well, and yeah, this whole, like, our our whole industry is kind of, like, from the whole machine side to the software side, is is it's old. Like, it there's some areas that are advancing massively, but there's also a ton of areas where it's just, like, nineteen ninety s nineteen eighty s style of doing things.
AL Whatmough: that's pretty broken like i remember i think i often remember being late night because i didn't want to just go to the hotel hang pier nine san francisco where the shop was making parts and
Curt: Yeah, totally, right?
jamie peacock: Yeah.
Curt: Like,
AL Whatmough: like literally unplugging a flash drive from my laptop and shoving it into the Haas machine while there's self-driving cars driving down Embarcadero in front of me. Like, how are we so far behind as an industry?
Curt: Exactly, exactly. ah
jamie peacock: That's, um, I, I know guys are regularly use DNC boxes because they're still running machines from the eighties and nineties.
Curt: But.
AL Whatmough: Because it works. If it's not broke, don't fix it.
jamie peacock: Yep.
AL Whatmough: Right.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
Curt: Yeah. Yeah.
jamie peacock: And then you get a NAS and you're like, this is the future. Like that is this week's endeavor. This coming week's endeavors to get all the machines onto the network attached storage. So you post files, you just go pull it off the storage and there's no more flash drive crap happening in my workshop.
Curt: Yeah. Yeah.
jamie peacock: Cause, uh,
Curt: It's lots of, lots of areas.
jamie peacock: Are you still using a flash drive Kurt? assume so.
Curt: Let's not talk about this. We have a guest.
jamie peacock: ah Okay, we're not talking about that.
AL Whatmough: That sounds like a yes.
Curt: Only 100% says yes.
AL Whatmough: there you
jamie peacock: Yeah, I've been trying to get him to go onto a NAS for like a year.
Curt: The problem is I put, I put code on that machine quarterly. Like I, I, I, runs production all the time.
AL Whatmough: yeah there you go
Curt: So that's my excuse, but it's a, it's a shitty excuse.
AL Whatmough: There you It's a good excuse. Good excuse.
Curt: It's good. Yeah. Thanks.
jamie peacock: My EMCO the same because it runs, it gets handed to code and then it just stays there forever.
Curt: Cool.
jamie peacock: But it is. It's amazing how some of the stuff is so like living in the past. Especially here, like where it's literally cheaper to just have so just pay somebody to deburr your parts, then ah it's cheaper to do that than have the machine do it in a lot of cases.
Curt: Yeah. Yeah.
jamie peacock: Or at least that's the mentality that the people here tend to have. I'm like, screw that, it comes off the machine first. Less points of failure.
AL Whatmough: Yeah, i don't i don't i don't think that one's I don't think that one's true.
jamie peacock: You don't know what we pay our people here. It's hilarious. Like absolutely hilarious the amount we pay like casual laborers here.
jamie peacock: like We've got a guy coming to sand two and a thousand pots on the linisher and he's going to make like $20 for the day and he's considered well paid.
Curt: Cool.
jamie peacock: Yeah, South Africa is a joke when it comes to wages.
jamie peacock: Kurt and are actually discussing cost of living here earlier and this place is hilarious.
Curt: Cool.
Curt: Yeah. It's in all scales.
jamie peacock: I'm also bringing my mother-in-law to IMTS, so she's going to shit herself when she sees the price of food in America.
Curt: Anyway, you have
jamie peacock: It's going to be great.
jamie peacock: She's like, don't worry, she'll buy food when there. i'm like sure you will, lady, because we paid for flight. She's like, no, no, she'll buy food. I'm like, yeah, you'll do that once, and then you'll stop wanting to do that.
AL Whatmough: Why will you buy food? you're not You're not going to all the dinners?
Curt: Thank
jamie peacock: Well, we're coming in early, and then we're making our way up from New York New York, Cleveland, Indiana, Chicago, and then we're back in New York for three days after i am test before we fly home.
AL Whatmough: Oh, okay. That makes sense.
AL Whatmough: Oh, very cool.
jamie peacock: Yeah. But yeah, we'll definitely be going to all the dinners every night. Like, that is the plan. Social butterflies. That's the whole point. We did that last time as well.
AL Whatmough: So you're buying a machine this year?
jamie peacock: I doubt it's...
Curt: No, lead with that. Lead with that. you Read between the lines, Jamie.
jamie peacock: Okay, fair enough, yes.
Curt: Read between the lines.
jamie peacock: I would like three of them, please.
AL Whatmough: You're interested in buying a machine this year.
jamie peacock: Yes.
Curt: yeah
jamie peacock: Imagine buying a machine. I'm based just down the road. Yeah.
Curt: I'm sure we have vendors listening. So yeah, Jamie's very interested in all the expensive machines.
jamie peacock: Yes, I'm a sign up for Haas.
Curt: yeah
jamie peacock: I must use them my Autodesk.
AL Whatmough: Especially the machine vendors with the best parties.
Curt: Exactly.
jamie peacock: Well, and what I need to do, ah have a randomly generated US address for buying Fusion because the local guys were just like absolutely ripping the ring on the price.
Curt: The best food. Yeah.
jamie peacock: So I bought it through the US website, but I needed a US address. I generated one online. I need to sign up for Haas Tooling with that so I can go to the their party that they have on like the Tuesday and the Thursday, I think.
jamie peacock: No, last time they were just like throwing out freaking vouchers. It was wild. Like some of mates came away with $2,000 or $3,000 worth of vouchers.
AL Whatmough: Oh, that's cool.
AL Whatmough: They've definitely built a solid business.
jamie peacock: Unfortunately, Haas Tooling don't ship you. Yeah, Haas is wild like the amount of stuff they've got available now. It's absolutely wild.
jamie peacock: Oh, God. You can buy press break.
Curt: Cool. Well, do you have questions, Jamie, or should we move on to the Google box or?
jamie peacock: Yeah, we can move on to the Google box if you want. There was one other... Did we cover this one, guys? One you clicked on.
Curt: I've lost the thing. Oh. ah
jamie peacock: Alex. I don't think we did. Sorry, I'm just going to die quickly.
AL Whatmough: Thank
Curt: Oh, yeah. OK, I can cover that one here. ah So yeah, question from Alex. let me just para our paraphrase this because it's kind of huge. ah ah well i'll justit it um
jamie peacock: That's what she said.
Curt: how do you see How do you see the machining manufacturing education world changing over the coming years? um I feel as an educator, we are having both a difficult time recruiting for the next generation of machinists.
AL Whatmough: there's a couple There's a couple questions in there. I'm going to start with... I
AL Whatmough: think it's two people. i mean, it was the name of was the name of my initial company, InspirTech, because I believe education starts with an inspiring like inspiring learning.
Curt: Sure.
AL Whatmough: that's That's the most important thing. You want to get people excited about it. This was probably... two two of my Two of my biggest highlights are tied together with this from the summit.
AL Whatmough: One, there there is a guy that said 60 of the people brought their their wives and probably a dozen people brought their kids. So we did ah we did a sunset dinner up at the top of the mountain.
AL Whatmough: um But on the way on the way down from that, one of one of the wives is ah works in the medical field and goes to all kinds of events for doctors. and like, this this was better than the doctor's events. i'm like That's what we need to do. We need people to understand that we're, we're in a better spot. And then Grant, i was talking to Grant who works with John Saunders runs the Williman. He was checking his phone to to see if the Williman was making parts. he was literally snowboarding. Well, as Williman's making parts back in the shop.
AL Whatmough: Um, and I, so I, I think to me, the way, the way we solve the problem is attracting people into the trade and getting people understand, like, this is full of great people doing interesting things.
AL Whatmough: Um, More people need to go mountain biking because it tends to be ah just kind of a perception. A lot of people that go mountain biking stare down at aluminum parts and try and figure how they're made and end up getting into the trades.
Curt: Hm.
AL Whatmough: ah But I think it has a lot more to do with demonstrating that the trades are valuable. I also think it's going to happen organically. um And this is partly why I came into Toolpath because I or came away from Toolpath into the g twenty eight is Many players are gonna try and solve the the AI automation software problem and and automate the white collar part of of work.
AL Whatmough: But I have like a deep foundational belief that the last industrial revolution automated muscle power. And when muscle power was automated, where did the high paid, high skilled humans move to?
AL Whatmough: moved from blue collar to white collar. this this and This industrial revolution is automating brain power.
Curt: Sure.
AL Whatmough: It's, it's automated and decision-making and anybody that thinks that, Oh, now nobody's going to need to work anymore is absolutely insane. We want another horse. You want a bigger house.
AL Whatmough: There's people in Mexico that don't have houses. There's but you're you're talking about poverty where you are there as, as productivity increases.
jamie peacock: Yeah. Yeah.
AL Whatmough: The only question is, Where does human labor go? Where do humans go to fill the gap and and move move the ball forward? it's It's got nothing to do with like, oh, now we're all content. We have what we need. So there's no more work to be done.
AL Whatmough: When Elon Musk says that, i just roll my eyes. The richest guy in the world, you work more than everybody and you think somehow automation is going to come along and nobody's going to work.
Curt: you
AL Whatmough: Well, why frig are you still working? Because if anybody could not work, it's you. um and And so then the question isn't, is there still going to be work? The question is, where does that work shift to?
AL Whatmough: That makes sense, right? And I absolutely think it's the people that understand the tactile world. If you think about um the autopilots, an example I always used, but it's interesting. 1932 is the first autopilot a commercial airline.
Curt: How wild.
AL Whatmough: you Do you know how many do you know many pilots there were at the time?
Curt: idea.
AL Whatmough: ah There was 7,000 pilots at the time.
jamie peacock: Not many. Yeah, no. Yeah, now there's two.
AL Whatmough: And in today's dollars, they're making about $80,000 a year. There's more pilots than work. And it was roughly about a ah hundred thousand people had access to air travel.
Curt: Okay.
AL Whatmough: Today, the autopilots come along and the pilot's job is gone, right?
Curt: Wow.
AL Whatmough: No, there there was three people in the cockpit then. Now there's two people in the cockpit and it wasn't the pilot that disappeared.
jamie peacock: ah
AL Whatmough: It was the navigator. The pilot ended up becoming the navigator because the pilot could still take over in the complex situations, heavy crosswinds. So it's the person that was like tactile that became the more relevant one.
AL Whatmough: And the crazy thing is more people got access to transportation. now there's 200,000 pilots. There's a shortfall of 8,000 pilots in in the economy today.
AL Whatmough: a billion people have access to transportation and pilots make $250,000 a year. So didn't, all automation did is increased demand, demand outpaced automation by far.
AL Whatmough: And then the people that were needed were the or the ones that could actually grab on in the hard situations. so Second example, since I'm talking, the, the The one that really hit it home for me is my tractor was blowing white smoke.
AL Whatmough: Like, oh crap. So pull out chat GPT and what's going on with my tractor. And it said, you've broken seal or it's your glow plugs. Glow plugs sound cheaper.
AL Whatmough: How do I check that?
jamie peacock: Hmm.
AL Whatmough: Go get a voltmeter. ah took a picture of my voltmeter. turn it to Turn the dial to this and clip it onto the bar that's connecting the three glow plugs and and and ground and turn it turn it over.
AL Whatmough: Okay, it says 11 volts. Okay, it's getting voltage. It's your glow plugs. What do I get? Here's the link on Amazon. They showed up. I put them in.
AL Whatmough: Um, so I didn't, the knowledge was not my issue at all. The context, I had context of the problem. The tractor was parked next to my shed. I had to kind of squeeze in, reach my arms in to change it.
AL Whatmough: The, the thing that the human needed to do is understand the context of the world and and get your hands into it. Um, so I say all that to say that I, I believe the high paid, high skilled jobs will be the ones of trades people.
AL Whatmough: So that will naturally draw people in. um it's actually probably going to cause a different problem for us. Same kind of problem I was talking about with the summit. There's lots of insights happening in real time here. But if you go back like 20 years when you're trying to build software, everybody that got into software was a total nerd and loved it.
AL Whatmough: Now people make so much money in software, it's a lot harder to do good hiring.
Curt: Right.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: i think I think as the income shifts, it also becomes harder to find out. who's truly there because they love it. Today, all of us in manufacturing, we had to tell our guidance counselor, I know it's dirty, but I still want to do it.
AL Whatmough: 10 years from now, when people are getting paid a lot of money, everybody's doing it. You don't necessarily know if they're there because it's their passion. So part of the culture we have in manufacturing is because of, I think partly because it was self-selecting. Like we'd be like, yeah, no, I know I'm smart, but I still want to go do this.
AL Whatmough: I don't know. that was That was a big unpack that wasn't the question, but i I genuinely think it's going to be, demand is going to shift it because the best-pinning jobs will be trades-related.
Curt: Right.
AL Whatmough: I think that's going to inspire more people into it. It's personal thinking.
jamie peacock: yeah it'll be a case of being able to know what questions to ask because that that's the thing like it's all good while having all the knowledge at your fingertips but if you don't know what questions to ask
AL Whatmough: Yeah.
jamie peacock: you're useless. Like, yeah, I was troubleshooting a machine. I pulled out Claude. I'm like hey, I've got this VFD. Here's the manual. This is the error it's giving. I don't want to read through the manual. It says, check this.
jamie peacock: This could be the problem. And then we went through. It turns out the VFD was poked. It took us like four hours to figure that out, but it would have taken me a month to figure that out myself.
AL Whatmough: But like, I don't want i don't want to, and i I tend to look at the other side of the coin probably too often.
jamie peacock: Like, it's using it as a force multiplier.
AL Whatmough: So don't take what I'm saying too far. but But again, going back to his question, his question was like, really, how do we inspire more people into the trades? Because that's the current problem. I genuinely believe that pit that pendulum is going to swing hard and fast in the other direction where you're going to find out more and more like, oh my goodness, tools like Claude are absolutely displacing.
AL Whatmough: white collar work and there's not jobs there anymore. Where do we look for jobs? And then people are kind of turning your energy there. And we're going to go from, we couldn't attract people to manufacturing to how do we figure out the people that want to do manufacturing and truly want to do it versus are coming here. Cause it's where the work is.
AL Whatmough: um
Curt: Right.
jamie peacock: Yeah, no, no, I look forward to that change because there's there's way too many people with degrees who have never turned a screwdriver.
AL Whatmough: And that, that change will probably happen almost overnight. Who knows though? I could, I'm, I could be completely wrong.
AL Whatmough: Right.
jamie peacock: Like, it's a huge problem here.
AL Whatmough: But they've learned how to articulate themselves very well. And when the money's over here and not there, they will articulate themselves properly and they can research to get the right information.
jamie peacock: So, let's
AL Whatmough: so figuring out attracting the right people to the trade is the bigger problem than attracting warm bodies to the trade.
jamie peacock: see.
jamie peacock: Yes. Well, we, I was one of the last, uh, one of the last groups that went through a technical high school in South Africa. They basically closed them all down because no, you must go get a degree. You don't need to do a trade.
jamie peacock: Like they didn't see the value in it. And now everyone's got a degree and no one can find a job because well, who needs people with degrees? Like we need people who can actually do things.
AL Whatmough: that's where That's where the differentiator's gonna That goes back to our current, I mean, the whole conversation ties together.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: um If SendCatsend is doing a phenomenal job with the low tolerance work, where do you where do you go to be a big fish in a small pond as opposed to trying to be a small fish in a big pond?
AL Whatmough: where where is the Where is the place you go to be unique? um same Same kind of thing. There's far more far far more demand in manufacturing. I think that'll start to draw people in the more they see see it.
AL Whatmough: Who knows?
jamie peacock: Yeah, hopefully because yeah manufacturing is fun. Like I was actually chatting to was told not to call him my employee, the dude who contracts to me, Carl, we were discussing today that we actually both enjoy running our machines.
jamie peacock: I don't want to go drive desk. I want to be making parts on my mill. Obviously now i want to automate it more and more so that i can still have the fun of programming it but not have to stand and load a part in there every minute.
jamie peacock: um And he's running a lathe, like he's loading a part into the lathe every two minutes. And that's fine. He's got 400 parts to run. He enjoys doing it so we still yeah still get joy out of because a lot of guys just want to go drive a desk
AL Whatmough: It's so funny you say that. like I tell this joke at Autodesk all the time, but it was true. i started as a machinist because I wanted to be home every night. I wanted to see what I did at the end of the day, and I didn't want to spend my life behind a computer screen. like There's something joyful about seeing something. And then for a decade and a half, I traveled for software companies and made PowerPoints for a living. it's ah It's funny how it works out.
Curt: Ha ha ha.
jamie peacock: Well, I mean, in the 11th grade, we had work experience. i went, I wanted to be a CNC programmer at the time. So my dad arranged with one of our friends that I could go and shadow him. And after that, I'm like, Nope, not going down that road. It's boring as all hell.
jamie peacock: Because the guy would program a part and then just leave it to run on the machine for like seven or eight hours. And I'm this is boring. Um, That job took way too long. Now, like in retrospect, way too long to do what he was doing.
jamie peacock: um And then I went to study drafting, got a job as a draftsman eventually, and ended up, I wanted to make RC parts. So I'm like, there's a CNC sitting here. I'm going to learn to run this, to run my own stuff after hours. Next thing I knew, i was running production for the company and running a wire cutter. i was just designing parts, manufacturing, doing the whole stack.
jamie peacock: And then I got annoyed with them and left.
AL Whatmough: But it's there there're they're they answered the Patreon question. You got inspired. you want it You had a part you wanted to machine, and then so then then you went and figured out you're and you're inspired by the problem.
jamie peacock: That's it, yeah.
jamie peacock: Yeah, I had a problem, yeah, I wanted to use the machine to make my part. And I think that's the...
AL Whatmough: Money is always inspirational. hate to say it, but it's true. ah
jamie peacock: It is...
AL Whatmough: That traditionally hasn't been the major draw to manufacturing. I do think that will change, but also being able to produce something is inspiring.
jamie peacock: Hopefully... Yeah.
Curt: Yeah. One.
jamie peacock: I hope that will change, especially here, because like some of the salaries here are wildly, ridiculously cheap for what CNC programmers and operators are getting paid.
Curt: the
Curt: one
AL Whatmough: it tends It tends to happen, right? it it increases, go back to the pilot analogy, automating the pilot produced more pilots, created more access to transportation.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: The fact that there's more access to transportation created more demand for transportation. So now it's like, you just wouldn't think about taking a trip to Europe when I was out, I was gonna go five or six times in the year without a problem and and be at the back of the plane, because there's too many people at the front of the plane that have how many of our 100,000 air miles traveling all over the place. and ah All automation does is increase access.
AL Whatmough: ah Rob Lockwood gave me, he heard me say that once. He's like, yeah, fast food's another good example. Fast food comes along.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: it didn't It didn't kill the restaurant.
jamie peacock: Yeah. Yeah. No, that's...
AL Whatmough: You still have a good sit-down restaurant. All it did make me not want to cook at home anymore and and have more prepared food.
Curt: Right.
AL Whatmough: um it it didn't kill the sit-down restaurant. system Price of sit-down restaurants went up and you focus on that experiment experience. I just got ah just got lazier and wanted more prepared food.
AL Whatmough: self-driving, about self-driving, like, man, when self-driving comes along, you should own a tire company or a paving company because there's going to be so many more cars driving around.
Curt: Absolutely. And then the fact, and I think the other thing is people forget like we're populations constantly grow. Like demand is forever increasing unless something catacly.
AL Whatmough: Yeah. Demand always, I've never had anybody give me an example where, where the increased demand didn't outpace the automation that was filling the demand.
Curt: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: i I don't think there's this phones are automated.
Curt: Right.
AL Whatmough: Now I just get a new one every year.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
Curt: Exactly.
jamie peacock: Double.
AL Whatmough: If it got further automated to fill that demand, then I'd probably get a new one every six months.
Curt: Exactly.
AL Whatmough: The automated crowns and now my teeth are better because I didn't have to let one rot out.
Curt: Exactly.
AL Whatmough: Like I don't want to just take like the greed life is better. There's a lot of people that don't have basic necessities that can then get it too.
Curt: Sure. Yeah. All kinds of avenues, good and bad to that, but.
AL Whatmough: But I don't i don't believe i don't believe that that automation and manufacturing automation is going to make Elon Musk right about the fact that nobody's going to need to work anymore. that's
jamie peacock: No, the it's way too, there's way too many little details that automation will never be able to automatically handle.
AL Whatmough: Even if it does handle all the all the details,
jamie peacock: There'll still be exceptions.
AL Whatmough: are there's we'll just We'll just want want more. And cars handled more than all the details for horses. for
jamie peacock: Yes.
Curt: Yeah. Yeah.
Curt: Yeah, it's wild.
AL Whatmough: But it's changed. I think the more terrifying thing is it is change. And it does mean that. It does mean people are disrupted in the change. The truth is navigator, people learn how to be a pilot or didn't have a job.
jamie peacock: Yes.
AL Whatmough: Right. I don't want to like, just be all verbally optimistic. It does, it does mean change and that's disruptive, but that disruption is also an opportunity for people.
Curt: Yeah, yeah, exactly be. Everybody shifts up and like, yeah, the I think the the people that are worried, I mean, i think it's a meme online of the people that are worried about automation taking their jobs or people that are in jobs that probably should be automated.
Curt: Like, not to say that they're bad jobs, but like, if if you see cars coming and you're still the maker of wagon wheels, like, watch the writing on the wall.
Curt: Like, it's it's going to shift.
AL Whatmough: But yeah like even even that's silly. Like cannibals are often feared and never seen as what we'd always say in the software. And it's like, I think it's like, Autodesk still sells a lot of AutoCAD.
AL Whatmough: It hasn't gone away.
Curt: That's true.
AL Whatmough: ah
Curt: That is true,
AL Whatmough: Before the podcast, I just came in from feeding my horses and we pay our horseshoer a good amount of money.
Curt: yeah.
AL Whatmough: so
jamie peacock: Yeah.
Curt: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
AL Whatmough: It just switched from being a necessity to a luxury. ah And I actually became more bougie a little
jamie peacock: Yeah.
Curt: That's good point. Yeah.
jamie peacock: Yeah. But I think that's also a case of they may have been market for 100 horseshoers
Curt: ah
jamie peacock: horseshoers before the car came along. Now there's only market for 10.
AL Whatmough: little bit.
jamie peacock: And the ones who are really good stuck with it.
AL Whatmough: Right, but the ones that are doing it are maybe in a more, what used to be like a mundane job is now
jamie peacock: Yeah. Yeah,
AL Whatmough: a little, yeah, maybe, maybe The one, the ones with true passion still have ah still have a job and it built a career around it.
jamie peacock: an influencer job. Like the number of horseshoe people that are on my Instagram and YouTube feed are wild. Because it's interesting to watch someone put a horseshoe on a horse. It's not something you see every day.
jamie peacock: Yes.
AL Whatmough: It's yeah the, it's the, the the middle. I'm just talking about it.
jamie peacock: yeah that yeah i think that's a yes
AL Whatmough: It's the middle. That's, that's, that's the hardest changes the hardest for the middle.
Curt: Well, and like you said, look at the way thing hundred years ago, if you had a horse, cool. Nowadays you have a horse. It's it's a different thing. Like, like my parents kept horses too.
AL Whatmough: Right.
Curt: And like, it's, uh, they're not, they're not inexpensive things. Like the horse is the cheap part.
AL Whatmough: No, they are not.
Curt: Yeah.
jamie peacock: new yeah danica's friend has a horse
AL Whatmough: No, no.
Curt: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: Which I guess, I guess this all kind of circles back to why my passion is around G28 and the people of the industry is the change is disruptive for people, but it's an opportunity for people.
AL Whatmough: if if I can be at the center of that and helping people in the industry that I love through change, that sounds like a ah great way to not have to work and, and feed my family.
jamie peacock: yeah definitely like that's definite so what is what have you been googling lately or what is in your google
Curt: Awesome. Awesome.
AL Whatmough: I have been Googling 24 enclosed trailers. Googling 24 foot enclosed trailers.
Curt: ah
AL Whatmough: it's Because yesterday on i amt ah the IMTS webpage, a booth showed up, which is our booth.
jamie peacock: ah
AL Whatmough: And I got to log into the um the the portal where it told me that I had to arrange my shipment a month ago. which um't even haven't even started thinking about this booth yet.
jamie peacock: Yes.
AL Whatmough: um So my current plan, i think I'm going to be able to get away with And then also like, The costs of these shows are just insane. It gives you $900 to rent a couch.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
Curt: oh
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: It's insane.
jamie peacock: At least you don't have coolant, because that apparently is wild.
AL Whatmough: oh ah Yeah. So so my current my current thinking, and i I was actually looking at, this is kind of interesting to you, was looking at a race trailer where it's got an escape door on the side.
AL Whatmough: So if I can, the idea is I vinyl wrap a race trailer And it's my Trojan horse that brings in everything for the booth, including patio furniture.
AL Whatmough: That's a lot less than $900.
jamie peacock: Mask. Mask.
AL Whatmough: And we drag it all out and then the race trailer becomes the booth. And if if it's one that opens up on the side, we can just plop the ah the podcasters inside the trailer. That's my goal.
AL Whatmough: We'll see we'll see if I can find one.
Curt: Oh, cool. I see.
AL Whatmough: But if if I do that, then I don't have to worry about all the shipments. I can just pack the trailer full of stuff. um and have them guide the trailer in because it's my booth.
AL Whatmough: And then we'll open up the trailer and pull all the furniture out.
jamie peacock: to us.
AL Whatmough: that' That's the way I'm thinking about it, which is also because I can't plan. I don't know. I don't even know how many pallets. Today, Horn told me they're sending me like some massive tools. I've got coolant tanks showing up for the bridge.
AL Whatmough: Who knows how many toolboxes will show by I don't even know what I'm taking to the booth yet. um So trying to figure out if I can turn a trailer into a booth where it's a nice enough trailer that people don't laugh at me, but a economic enough trailer that people know this is about just getting people together.
AL Whatmough: We'll see.
Curt: ah right
AL Whatmough: But that's what I've, that's what I've been looking at is how do I, how do I pull a booth off for, for IMTS and 45 days? days um
jamie peacock: Yeah, I'm ti just around the corner.
Curt: That sounds so stressful. That sounds so stressful.
jamie peacock: oh where Where exactly is the booth going to be?
AL Whatmough: Uh, it is, so it's, it's outs.
jamie peacock: Oh, B.
AL Whatmough: It's next to registration outside of the secure area. So you can show up an hour before the show starts and hang out afterwards.
jamie peacock: So nice, okay.
AL Whatmough: Uh, it's, it's, there's a booth number there now. Um, it's in the West hall next to registration, next to boom aerospace. I think we're 4,200.
jamie peacock: Okay.
AL Whatmough: Becca just posted it online, but it's, it's, it's in the, so it's in the, it's not the tooling hall.
jamie peacock: of Yeah, I know she's, yeah. I think I got it. Yes, it's 432200. Yeah.
AL Whatmough: four, three, two, zero. There we go
jamie peacock: Okay, cool. Nice. So it's adds outside the security area, so we can actually pitch up early. Because I remember last time we pitched up at 8 on the Monday, and you can only get in at 9. So I literally zig-zagged in front of the a who the main machine tool hall.
AL Whatmough: go. Right.
AL Whatmough: Yeah. so this time we're actually like, it worked out super, super good. It's, uh, and it's in partnership with AMT and IMTS. So huge, huge. Thank you. for them. i mean, um still still still, I've still got costs, but it's a, it's a partnership with them and they put us, they put us outside of security so that it can be a hangout spot.
jamie peacock: Okay, nice. Yeah, because that was one of the best things was hanging out there after the show. ah
AL Whatmough: Right.
Curt: you
jamie peacock: Making friends, making dinner plans. I mean, we went off with Aaron.
AL Whatmough: Right.
jamie peacock: We could only get a reservation at like half past eight at night. So we went and rented bicycles and went and rode bicycles around the lake with Aaron and a bunch of other guys.
AL Whatmough: Oh, it's so fun. Did you do the electric bikes?
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: Yeah.
jamie peacock: Yeah, no, it was great. Like, we just went and hung out and it was awesome. Talked shit and yeah, it was great.
AL Whatmough: So ideally that's what can happen. People can meet up there and say, where are you going to and meet up at the end and where are you off to? Uh, it's right next to an exit that I, I've never left out that door, but I'm, I think there's a bus that, that goes from there and, and, and taxis, but, uh,
jamie peacock: ah Yeah. Yeah, West Building, a you either go over the Skywalk and then down, but there's a bus, number three, goes right there. The number three bus.
AL Whatmough: Perfect. So that that would be just like right right out from where the booth is.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
jamie peacock: Yeah, we were catching the train in and then we'd walk down to just past the park and jump on the number three and it literally takes you to IMTS.
jamie peacock: Yeah. And for anyone who's going, Google Maps is magical with the transport system there. You can tell it, I want to go there. It'll tell you, get on this bus, ride for six stops, get off here, get on that bus, ride for six stops, get off. And like, it's amazing, like absolutely amazing for getting around Chicago.
AL Whatmough: Oh yeah, you don't you don't want a car.
jamie peacock: like Don't rent a car. It is a waste of time and the parking is ridiculously expensive. Yeah, no it's wildly expensive. Cool, so you've been googling ah Googling trailers for your booth.
jamie peacock: What is in...
AL Whatmough: Trying to figure out if that's if that's the way to solve the logistics problem.
jamie peacock: All the issues, yeah. So you'll have a podcasting booth there as well.
Curt: Oh.
AL Whatmough: If, ah depending depending on what depending on what I get, wellll we'll definitely have a space for podcasters to sit if you want.
jamie peacock: Okay.
AL Whatmough: um But the the idea as of this morning was if I can find a if i can find a race trailer that the site opens up on, then we can put some nice chairs and in the trailer and let people sit and podcast there.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: it's It'll be, a it's not going to be the Taj Mahal, let's just say that. Yeah.
jamie peacock: That's fine. It's somewhere to sit in a podcast.
AL Whatmough: it Neither was the back of the toolpath booth, right?
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: Or the concrete floor.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: it's It's the people that matter.
jamie peacock: Yeah, exactly. That's exactly it. Kurt, what is in your Google box?
Curt: ah nothing nearly least Nothing nearly as stressful as that.
jamie peacock: Dude.
Curt: Mine's just a bunch of clawed HTML code, titanium spectrum, because I always forget which way the colors go. ah Not suspicious, because he has his keyboards up for sale. two more By the time you're hearing this, it'll be gone, so it doesn't matter.
Curt: Reddit, and then Adam's video. I forgot about that. On YouTube, he posted the new one of his machines. I love his videos. I love that guy.
jamie peacock: Dude, it's so good.
Curt: Yeah.
jamie peacock: I wonder how long it's going to be on YouTube. Like it came in my feed.
Curt: i
jamie peacock: And I watched it immediately because last time is 1911 one got taken down.
Curt: i ah i so I watched half his 1911 one and then I messaged him. He got it pulled put back up, but I messaged him.
jamie peacock: Yes.
Curt: I was like, I was halfway through. I'm like, I'm ah bumed bummed it pulled out. And he just sent me the video. I was like, oh thanks, dude.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
Curt: So yeah, super cool guy.
jamie peacock: That really, really interesting.
Curt: what but you How about you message Jamie?
jamie peacock: Yeah.
Curt: What's in your Google box?
jamie peacock: um The DJI Matrice because I was making drone stickers and tags.
AL Whatmough: Thank you.
jamie peacock: RJ45 connectors, which I have now solved my issues because I bought ones that are correct for the cable that I have. ah The definition of a square because Danik and I were arguing about it because I think I said to you, go to the square.
Curt: That's heinous.
jamie peacock: behold the square four 90 degree angles and three sides of the four sides of the same length but everything's curves and yeah all funny i was googling my isp because trying to get my internet at the shop working and then trying to figure out the raspberry park config menu on linux cnc because that's strange locale on a machine but anyway nothing too exciting
Curt: Cool.
AL Whatmough: So when do you when do you change what's in your CLAW chat GPT or Gemini as opposed to what's in your Google search?
Curt: That is true. that is going to, it's probably going to happen sooner than later. Yeah.
jamie peacock: Yes, because I yeah this week I ended up asking Claude some stuff.
AL Whatmough: So ne yeah, what's what's the what's the latest thing you asked CLAW or chat GPT?
jamie peacock: Oh, hang on. ah Wait, I don't think I've Claude installed you.
AL Whatmough: but Whatever whatever your your AI agent of choice. what is your What is your AI agent of choice?
jamie peacock: Yeah, I default to Claude these days. So I default to Claude. are Actually, my latest ChatGPT one was making a bit Bitcoin logo because AJ said Bitcoin instead of Bitcoin in his podcast.
jamie peacock: So I made him a Bitcoin logo and put it on there on their Discord.
Curt: ah
jamie peacock: And it was actually really, yeah, it's really good at images.
AL Whatmough: GTV is good at those, yeah.
jamie peacock: Claude, not so much.
Curt: Yeah.
jamie peacock: Yeah, I think the last thing I did with Claude was building a custom fourth access controller for a indexing fourth access on my machine.
Curt: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: but you don't use it for research. Okay.
jamie peacock: I do, but not that much. Generally, I go to it with a problem that I'm trying to to solve already.
AL Whatmough: Interesting.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: i've I've found it very useful to go to it for search like research. Okay.
jamie peacock: I know, so Well, if I look at ChatGPT on here, so i asked ChatGPT what kind of soup I was as per the taps and patience thing. The problem is Danica signed into my ChatGPT or the accounts are confused as to who's the actual driver.
Curt: Thank you.
jamie peacock: So it made me some weird soup because I ask it for, I give it the transcript or she gives up a transcript for the podcast and then asks it to generate titles every week.
AL Whatmough: Yeah.
jamie peacock: So it thinks I'm a podcaster, not a machinist.
AL Whatmough: Got it. Although I, I'm sorry.
jamie peacock: Yeah. Yeah.
AL Whatmough: I took the conversation down a different route, but Gemini is now hooked up to Google.
jamie peacock: Oh, that's fine.
AL Whatmough: This is maybe a little trick I've found.
jamie peacock: Yes. Interesting.
AL Whatmough: Did you, if you use Chrome, did you know you can go to a webpage and say open in Gemini? So I've been using that quite a bit too. as ah So this is an extension to,
Curt: Hmm. Hmm.
AL Whatmough: um An extension to my Google searches, simultaneously, I've been trying to figure out a good event platform to host the summit with. Last year, was it was pretty hot and loose and people didn't know what sessions to go to and couldn't talk to each other. We used Discord, it worked okay-ish. So there's ah products that are designed to run events.
AL Whatmough: and It's always hard to know what the product can do. So I've been using that. End up on a product page and open Gemini and start asking about the product and it does a pretty good job of answering. Does it do this? Does it do that? Sort of questions.
Curt: Oh, OK. So it it just parses the page, essentially, and lets you just ask questions.
AL Whatmough: Right. So event in this case, Event Moby is a platform for hosting an event.
Curt: OK.
AL Whatmough: And I was trying to figure out if I do a weekly Friday call, can I do a an event that lasts a year, but still have the in-person event that's just the three days and the kinds of things you would have asked their agent before it'll just, it'll scrub their page and help you get answers.
Curt: Oh, OK.
jamie peacock: Yeah, that's so that's what I've been using Claude for.
Curt: OK, that's cool use.
jamie peacock: I figured it's not the best if you give it, say, I've got this servo drive. I want to know if it's capable of doing this. Give it the serial number or the the model number. It can't find the information, but go find the manual for that and give that to it, and then it can answer any question you have.
jamie peacock: Like what protocols does it support? Can I use just IO for it? And i then it becomes useful again.
AL Whatmough: Noble
jamie peacock: um But yeah, ChatChipT and I had a falling out when it tried to get me to wire my servos incorrectly on my lathe. And I moved to Notebook.lm where I'd give it the manual.
AL Whatmough: Gallum's wild.
jamie peacock: Yeah, yeah. It is amazing. Like, just give it the manual. you said it I'm looking for this, and it'll read the manual for you, basically. It'll comprehend the manual for you. That's the the thing that really helps.
AL Whatmough: And, and not, and not, and not kind of hallucinate with other information, just the data.
jamie peacock: Yeah. The hallucinations on GPT used to be wild.
AL Whatmough: Anyway, i you, you, you did a trial close and then I distracted you and got the conversation going again.
jamie peacock: No, that's fine.
AL Whatmough: So yeah.
jamie peacock: It's just not a problem at all.
Curt: Don't bother.
jamie peacock: Like, not a problem at all.
Curt: Never bother. No.
jamie peacock: Like, the... the i was listening to lean built this week. And they were kind of like, don't let AI do your thinking for you. Because I think a lot of people are doing that now.
jamie peacock: They offloading critical thinking to the AI, which is not a smart plan. but Like have it summarized it for you, but still read it and comprehend what's going on
AL Whatmough: Definitely still need critical thinking.
jamie peacock: Because I feel like that I feel like that's a that's a slippery slope but to let it to just keep offloading your critical thinking to it. And the next thing you can't critical think anymore.
AL Whatmough: It depends on what your critical thinking, what elevation your critical thinking is at. It could be that you just move your critical thinking to a higher elevation.
jamie peacock: Yes.
jamie peacock: Definitely. But I know Danik has been using it ah using chat to draw up contracts for us currently. But She will give it the thing and then she'll open a different hand, give the contract, find loopholes and finalize. She's not, the end contract is not going to be what they spit out. It's going to be what she compiles.
jamie peacock: But it is a good way to get, like I put my lease agreement through Claude.
AL Whatmough: It makes sense.
jamie peacock: I'm like, hey, is there anything I should be worried about here? What are the renewal terms? All these kinds of things for the new workshop that I could make sure there was nothing really dodgy in the in the contract.
jamie peacock: because I don't want to read 18 pages.
AL Whatmough: It's good at that.
jamie peacock: Yeah, it is really good at passing information like that.
jamie peacock: Sorry, I was busy successfully dying here. So, yeah, let's try and finish the sentence. Al, where can people find you and your things?
AL Whatmough: G28.io is probably the easiest place. And from there, you'll get, you'll get links to the, to the summit. That's what's key. That's what I'm focused And then you can find me in a cowboy hat at IMTS.
Curt: Nice.
jamie peacock: I look forward to it.
Curt: Would you have update eat Oh, we yeah, that part first.
jamie peacock: Kurt, where can people find you and your things?
Curt: ConfoundedMachine.com. Points everywhere. Points to the podcast. Points to my stuff. Points to YouTube. Points to this. Yeah. Everywhere. How about you, Master Jamie?
jamie peacock: Nice. ah Yeah, you can find all the links at jspeceng.com. If you're looking specifically for nautical workholding, you can check us at tapsandpatients.com where you can find all the workholding products.
Curt: Hmm.
jamie peacock: ah yeah What are you guys up to for the rest of the day?
Curt: you up to, Al? What are you doing today now after you got your hair done all spiffy?
AL Whatmough: I am gonna go to the shop and spend some more time cleaning it up so that I'm ready to start putting obstacles together.
Curt: Nice.
AL Whatmough: Yeah, I've got cool coolant drums shipped, a credit with send, cut, send to to make make some transitions.
Curt: Sounds like fun.
AL Whatmough: There's chip conveyor track on its way. The shop kind of sat not used very much for two years. I'm kind of excited to go use it and do something. Although also terrified because but the whole industry is going to be looking at looking at the craftsmanship and it's for a pretty rushed obstacle course.
jamie peacock: I
AL Whatmough: We'll so we'll see.
jamie peacock: ah just claimed that it somebody somebody got upset and kicked it over and you don't have to worry about the the cross friendship.
Curt: the
AL Whatmough: There you go. The four truck driver dropped.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: Did it.
jamie peacock: Yeah, there we go.
Curt: Yeah. Sick.
jamie peacock: Yeah, they did it.
Curt: Awesome.
jamie peacock: They pulled him at Surah on us.
Curt: Yeah. Yeah.
jamie peacock: What are you up to today, Kurt?
Curt: I have no idea. i have no idea. ah All my orders have just shipped. So today was going to be doing some R&D work this morning and then plans kind of shifted to this.
jamie peacock: nice very nice yeah i'm living
Curt: So no, I have no idea what i'm gonna do for the afternoon, but I'll figure it out when we get there. So it's about one o'clock in the afternoon now.
AL Whatmough: What time is it for you?
Curt: So
AL Whatmough: Where are you
Curt: Canada, Alberta, it's kind of, yeah.
AL Whatmough: Okay, so you're straight you're straight north of me. Okay, yeah. i nature
Curt: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: How far north are you?
Curt: Cool.
jamie peacock: i think
Curt: About midway through place called Edmonton.
AL Whatmough: ah No, I know. my My brother lives in Fort McMurray, so.
Curt: Oh, shit. Okay, cool. Yeah, yeah. um Yeah, that's way up there. Yeah.
AL Whatmough: Yeah, way I went up went up for his wedding and Yeah, drove up in the on the road.
Curt: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: I was the only person like three o'clock in the morning for about an hour and a half. it was terrifying
Curt: Oh, that's a riveting drive, yeah. Just straight, straight to boring countryside. Yeah. Cool.
jamie peacock: No, I'm going to go hang out with the Taps and Patience guys if they're still online because I need to put a 3D print on for some test parts for tomorrow for some prototyping.
Curt: Oh yeah.
Curt: I guess he has night, nighttime night, night time for you
jamie peacock: Yeah, know. It's like ah just after nine.
Curt: weird
jamie peacock: Living in the future. Yeah, I know.
Curt: yeah
jamie peacock: Living in the future. I'll let you know if anything exciting happens.
Curt: Cool.
jamie peacock: sweet thank you everybody for listening if you enjoyed the podcast please consider liking subscribing sharing all those fun things and yeah thank you Al for coming on it was a great conversation very interesting listening to you ramble about all the things I thoroughly enjoyed it I'm going to enjoy listening to this back Kurt and
Curt: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: you Okay.
jamie peacock: We both listen to the podcast because we thoroughly enjoy listening, well, not to ourselves speak, but hearing what we didn't hear the first time around.
AL Whatmough: Okay. Well, what did I say? You don't know some things you've taught it three times. I said some things for the first time on this, so I didn't really know it yet.
Curt: ah
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: I could still be wrong.
Curt: wow Regardless, ah folks will enjoy it.
AL Whatmough: Regardless, I'll listen.
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: man
jamie peacock: Yeah.
AL Whatmough: We'll find out of what I said was right, but it's fun to ramble with you guys.
Curt: I appreciate your time.
jamie peacock: Sweet. Thank you very much for coming on. Yeah. And thank you for the time.
AL Whatmough: All right.
jamie peacock: She just...
AL Whatmough: Cheers.
Curt: Take care, all.
