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Business of Machining - Episode 9
286 Plays8 years ago
Starting next week (BoM 10), we'll have better episode descriptions!
Welcome to the John Grimsmo & John Saunders Business of Machining Podcast! We (John and John) have talked every Friday morning for the past year and we realized how helpful it has been to share our successes, struggles and stories with each other! So helpful that we have decided to record our conversations and share as this podcast!
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Transcript
Introduction to Business of Machining Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Good morning, folks. My name is John Saunders. Welcome to BOM 9. And I'm John Grimsmough, and this is the business of machining, a.k.a. BOM.
00:00:11
Speaker
I guess I shouldn't, John and I call it bomb because it's just easier. It's just easier. It's lean. And it plays off, I guess it plays off of Bill of Materials. Yeah, I thought about that the first time I read it and I thought it was funny.
Inventory Management Techniques
00:00:23
Speaker
Hey, so that's actually, it's your question. Do you, for your Norsemen and rasks and tops, do you have a built out bomb where you help to use like to track inventory and levels and costing and all that? You know, with Barry being here and him being an accountant, we just started doing that.
00:00:39
Speaker
uh... and it's been very helpful yeah it's uh... it's uh... it makes you feel it's like such as the stressor and again i'm gonna reference that Pearson tour i can't wait to get that video up because he had the uh... con bond or can ban cards
00:00:54
Speaker
And it only works with, it works better with certain types of inventory, but like for boxes, there's a Kanban card stuck like eight boxes up from the bottom of these stack of boxes or parts or pallets. And when you get to that Kanban card, it just tells you what to do, like to reorder from this company with this vendor and this quantity, and that lasts us for about four months. Or if it's a machine part, sometimes there was even a QR code that pulled up that private video that showed here's where the file is, here's how to set up the machine for it. I mean, just, I'm crazy.
00:01:23
Speaker
Wow.
Handling Business Slow Periods
00:01:24
Speaker
Yeah. Even just since you mentioning it to me a couple of weeks ago, I've been talking about it with Eric and Barry, like this kind of inventory, this minimum quantity where you make more order more and we've really started to streamline. So I can't wait to see that video you got coming out. Awesome. Are you guys, are you ever doing ketchup? Like when does Eric ever say, Hey, I need more pivots or something?
00:01:43
Speaker
Yeah, a little bit, but now we've got a solid inventory of all the little parts and yeah, Barry broke it down like a rask has five screws So we have you know if we have 200 screws divided by five equals how many knives we can make So instead of seeing 200 screws, and it looks like a lot, but divided by five. It's really not Right so here's a good question. Do you are you glad that?
00:02:06
Speaker
you weren't that analytical person a year or two ago. In other words, if you had been too focused on stuff like that, it would have cut into the John Grimson that makes amazing. I think it would have slowed me down a lot because the progress, the growth, the R&D had to come first to a certain extent. And now that I've done that, I can slow down on that side to be able to track and manage and cash flow analyze and all that. It's becoming very important to grow the business.
00:02:35
Speaker
It's kind of like, you know you're making a mistake by not being too organized, but so what? We'll fix that later. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Fine tune as we go along. Right. It's fun. And how's your organizational shop? Anything new?
Improving Workflow in New Office Space
00:02:54
Speaker
You know, it's funny. Everybody always talks about how they're busy. And I think it's a little bit of a defense mechanism where, again, it's like nobody ever wants to admit they lost money gambling or whatever. And we usually are busy. We're different levels of busy. But almost every time over the last year, we've been busy. And yesterday, we have one job shop job that we sent a test piece out for, and we're waiting for approval before we run the rest. And I was like, oh my gosh.
00:03:19
Speaker
We have no other job shop work. I'm not even like close to winning a bid or anything. And I was like, wow, this is slow. And I thought it would be funny. I just went on Facebook. I was like, we're slow because nobody ever wants to say that. It's not a bad thing. And I've told you this before. I like our little model where we have sort of a little bit of a diversified revenue stream where if we get slow on job shop stuff, I just build more inventory for the products that we make. It's such a
00:03:42
Speaker
It's such a no brainer and it lets you scale and kind of ebb and flow with no worries. And I'll be honest too, this might sound a little bit controversial, but some of it is also, nobody wants to come work or be around a company that's just sitting there twiddling their thumbs. So by no means should you just make scrap or make parts that aren't going to ever get used, but it's also like, hey, make sure there's projects to do, keep people busy, keep people energized and make time to improve the shop.
00:04:07
Speaker
Absolutely. I mean, you've been telling me over the past few months that you're purposely slowing down the job shop work. You're not hunting for it. You're not bidding on too much more because you want more of John Saunders time. And that is happening. We're also growing in the sense that the Haas has increased our appetite and our ability. And Jared's now running that machine a lot more on his own. And then this is weird. I don't
Balancing Shop Floor and Office Time
00:04:34
Speaker
know why this is.
00:04:36
Speaker
But I moved into my office two days ago. Describe your office, yeah. Yeah, so when we built out this building, it used to be a machine shop for the local community college, and there were these classrooms in the front which worked out perfect, because one of them is our CNC training classroom. There's this other room.
00:04:53
Speaker
And it's large for an office, I'll be honest. And I didn't move into it for over a year. And I kind of just didn't like it. It was further away from the machine shop floor. Because I was never in it, it felt kind of cold and whatever. I'm sounding too dramatic about it. But nevertheless, for reasons I'm going to sit not tell anybody about, but maybe we'll share on the next Business of the Machine podcast, I had to move into it. And it has been a game changer this past week.
00:05:22
Speaker
I've even had a head cold, so I've been a little bit kind of under the weather. And being in this office has helped me think and structure and plan. And it's actually been a good push, a little bit away from the shop. I love being out in the shop, but it's also important that the guys are able to do stuff on their own. It's again, what Jay Pearson said, we all work for the process.
00:05:43
Speaker
So for Jared being able to QC stuff on his own or see things through. I'm not sure I need to think about it more because I really want to share this but there's been something transformative about being able to think and work and do and it makes me very happy. That's amazing. It's kind of a Catch-22 it sounds like because you get to remove yourself from the shop so that you can make your people more independent.
00:06:05
Speaker
But you also don't want to become the stuffy boss stuck in his office that people have to knock and ask permission to talk to. So it is Catch-22, I get it, but the
Strategies for Business Scaling
00:06:14
Speaker
boss needs to do what the boss needs to do, right?
00:06:17
Speaker
And I think it's also, I love being a machinist, but I also love writing this business and growing this business. And I think when I was in the room, just one room over, I was bouncing between the two so much that it was hard to do either one well. And now it's good because I can do quiet, solid work here. And I've been, I can still program the parts in here and do that sort of work. It's just been great.
00:06:41
Speaker
Well, the difference being the other room was an open room. You could literally look and see your house and see the whole shop, right? Right. This is not a closed door. It's amazing. Right. Yeah, I feel the same with our lunch room.
00:06:54
Speaker
Yeah. Upstairs, you can close the door and have a quiet 20 minutes to yourself or together or whatever. Eat some lunch, watch some YouTube for 20 minutes, and then it chill. And the machines and the Tumblr and everything in the shop are running, but you get to kind of like turn your mind off it just for a few minutes. It's been very invigorating, relaxing.
00:07:13
Speaker
I think part of it too is by no means would I say, I think we're very early in this journey of what, I think both of us are early in our journey, but I think as you get successful, I feel, I'm putting this out there, kind of weird, but I feel like there's some amount of guilt of success, because others won't succeed, or others take longer to succeed, and hey, we've had some pretty phenomenal trolling come out on our YouTube channel lately, and I struggle with it.
00:07:39
Speaker
And I think, well, how much should I answer that to people? And look, folks, John Griffith and I did the same thing. We both relied on our wives or other income to help us get our first machine. And then we've steamrolled that over, people say you've grown so fast. I think, oh my God, it's been 10 years. That's not fast in most people's definition. Yeah, it feels fast from other people's perspective, but man.
00:08:05
Speaker
You and I did that podcast with, what's it called? I get them confused, making... A maker cast. Maker cast, sorry, I was just saying making chips. Maker cast, and we talked about some really cool takeaways from your story that you hadn't shared before. Yeah, it was really interesting sharing a bunch of stuff that, you know, I know, but I haven't realized that I haven't shared publicly. So that'll be up, well, by the time ours goes up, I don't know when. But we'll talk about it on social, I'm sure.
00:08:31
Speaker
We'll put a link in the Libsyn
Setting Ambitious Business Goals
00:08:33
Speaker
for the maker cast podcast. It was really fun. It was really fun. It was kind of silly, which I really enjoyed. I was sitting there just laughing for half the time.
00:08:46
Speaker
some of the antics that are from the early days. I actually pulled up some of your old videos and it is hilarious to watch you, and I'm not making fun of you because I was there too, to watch you with those old grizzly or Asian machines, and actually it's funny you say Asian machines, you're still running Asian machines. It's the other side of the pond now. Right, right, the other spectrum of that.
00:09:07
Speaker
Anyways, the other thing I thought of you this week on when I kind of got into the office was when I was thinking big, when I was at my day job, which I liked but I didn't like, I liked by you it wasn't going to be my career, I started this Excel file called Free Time, and it was what would I do tomorrow if I didn't have the obligations of coming to this day job. And I always knew from mentors and people above me that you don't quit, you're not allowed to justify pursuing something entrepreneurial.
00:09:36
Speaker
just because you don't like your day job. That can be a driver, but you can't quit your day job just because you don't like it, period. But I thought, OK, well, let's think of what would I do. What would I do that would justify this? And I always try to think big. And what would I do? What I love to do? And for me, that's the fascination of making parts and Arduino and automation. And having moved into this office this week has helped me sort of think back to, what do I want?
00:10:01
Speaker
And it's not that I want to make money. It's that I want revenue that lets us continue to pay the bills, build this company that makes products that we're proud of, and then grow these videos. And it helps you just start thinking that through. And you've been such a help for me of whether it's your own stories or talking about the books and podcasts that you listen to about people that are able to think big.
00:10:23
Speaker
Big and specific is a phrase that I heard in one of the books. You know, very big ideas, but also being very specific
Enhancing Production Efficiencies
00:10:31
Speaker
about what they are because it's like, I want to make a lot of money. That's big and vague. Big and specific at least gives you a target, a destination to go to.
00:10:40
Speaker
Yeah. You know, it's like if you jump in your car and start driving, you're not going to end up anywhere specific. But if you're driving to LA, then, well, you have a destination. No. You can map the route to get there, right? Right. So I'm starting to think that a lot for our business, too. You know, where do we want to go? How do we want to grow this thing? Do we want to grow? And yes. Yes is the answer. But specifically, how to do it. And it might not materialize to be exactly that method. But at least if you have a road map, then
00:11:08
Speaker
you're going somewhere as opposed to just kind of letting the business do what it wants to do, which is kind of what we did for a lot of years, where we just came to the shop, made knives, did some marketing, called it good, but now there's starting to be a little bit more plan to the whole action. It's becoming fun to think about.
00:11:26
Speaker
But what you did then was fine because the stakes weren't so high. You didn't have a Maury and a Nakamura. And I've got payroll in this building and all that. And it's like what you just said. I love that big and specific. For me, it's like, OK. And I try to budget either on a daily or a weekly basis. I really don't care much about monthly or annual budgets.
00:11:46
Speaker
Because people don't think, and you don't think, I want to sell, I mean, maybe you do, 100 knives this year or 1,000 knives. I think it's much easier to handle it in smaller doses. And I think, OK, if I can sell three of this product that we make and six of this product we make every day, and I know what our job shop work is going to be relatively by the week,
00:12:07
Speaker
then that covers my overhead, it lets me do this, and then that gives me still 35 or 50 hours of free time throughout the week to make my videos, which is what I love. Yep, absolutely. We've been going back and forth because Barry is the bean counter and he'll tell us all kinds of numbers. Some numbers work for me and other numbers work for Eric.
00:12:28
Speaker
So if our goal is, say, 1,000 knives a year, that's all big and good and well and stuff, but it's so distant and so vast, you can't break it down. What do I have to do every day? So we break it down per month, and we break it down per day. And four knives a day is a solid average for us to hold. And we used to do four knives a week.
00:12:47
Speaker
And that was fairly good. And that was not too long ago. That was just a few months ago. And now Eric has proven that he can do four knives a day, maybe not every day consistently. It depends on inventory and workflow and stuff. But he can, like, within a two-day period, he can start and finish eight knives. You know, from raw materials. They can be machined, heat treated, finished, sharpened, anodized, shipped within a two-day period.
00:13:16
Speaker
It's pretty amazing that we've gotten the whole workflow down that way. And now Eric's thinking, well, four knives a day is totally possible. I bet you I could do six.
Impact of Tumbling Machines on Production
00:13:25
Speaker
Really? Yeah. Is that, and I'm sure you're not going to need this Grimsmo. You're not short changing quality. No, we're not at all. Is it just really finding efficiencies? Yeah, fine tuning, speeding up processes. Eric's constantly refining his sharpening technique. You know, sometimes he'll spend 30, 40 minutes sharpening a knife and that seems kind of ridiculous. And now he's got it down to 5, 10, 15 minutes depending. Yeah. And just streamlining it and reducing the variables.
00:13:51
Speaker
Would you ever, I don't know your minutia detail operations that well, but would you ever buy like a second two by 72 grinder, bell grinder, so you could have two belts on at the same time? Yeah, we've thought about it. Eric certainly wants to invest some money into a couple more grinders and disc sanders and buffers. Right. Because, you know, truth be told, I'm spending all the money on my toys in this business. Right. And once we can afford it, then it'll be Eric's turn for sure. We want to get new tumbler, things of that nature.
00:14:18
Speaker
Well, and it's funny, because as much as that's an investment and so forth, it's way cheaper to buy $10,000 worth of that stuff than it is to try to hire a second Eric. Right. And that kind of stuff can increase his efficiency quite a bit. And then after that, we can hire a second Eric or third Eric, and then hopefully keep the machines running nonstop. So maybe instead of four and a half a day, we're making eight without too much effort. I don't know. It is possible, and now I see it. It's fantastically fun to think about.
00:14:46
Speaker
Have you looked more into those tumblers that we were talking about, the ones that, what was it called? They were like vertical oscillating tumblers? A centrifugal disc tumbler? Yes. Yeah, I looked into that a lot and I actually, I binged on YouTube one Saturday morning for about three hours and I watched every video I could find on them. They seem really cool and then I sent an inquiry to massfin.com
00:15:09
Speaker
They make these kind of tumblers, they're in Michigan, Minnesota, something like that. Then Monday morning, the owner of the company calls me up, and we talked for an hour, or half an hour, and talked all about tumblers, and he's a finishing nerd, and I'm a CNC nerd, and it was kind of a match made in heaven, it was really funny. But he said those centrifugal disc tumblers
00:15:29
Speaker
They have an air gap in the bottom, because it's just like a blender, he said. So there's a disc in the bottom that rotates and oscillates the media. And there has to be an air gap in the bottom. And he said, your blades will get stuck in that air gap. I've seen it before. Really? Yeah. So is that thick of an air gap? Yeah, he said it could be like 50 thou or something. And the fluid is supposed to go through it to kind of wash everything out. 50 thou, but your blade is way thicker than 50 thou's. Not at the tip.
00:15:58
Speaker
only a second just the tip down their house the wedge will get stuck in there do so have you ever seen a high energy tumbler
00:16:07
Speaker
No. Imagine four drums, like big water bottles, kind of like a milk jug. Okay. Four of those, but they have a cap that goes on the end. And they're fairly smaller, they can be bigger. But four of those that oscillate around, you just got to look it up, high energy tumbler. High energy tumbler. Yeah, it's hard to explain, but it's really cool. And apparently they have like eight times the cutting capability of any other kind of tumbler, just because they have so much g-force pounding the material.
00:16:37
Speaker
a lot less waterways, a lot less media required. I'm thinking of some like spider-like thing that has jugs on the end of each, like a roller coaster. Kinda. The teacup thing at the fair ride where there's bottles turning inside of it. Exactly. It's that but a Ferris wheel shape. So it just goes around like that and each of the Ferris wheel containers rotate themselves. You absolutely need one of these. I know. So he quoted me about thirteen and a half thousand dollars for one of their smaller ones, which is a lot of money.
00:17:05
Speaker
Yeah. But yeah, he said we've sold, you know, Chris Reeve knives. They're a big company. They have 30 employees. They have eight of his tumblers, his high energy tumblers. Wow. All the big knife companies he mentioned, Benchmade, Kershaw, et cetera, et cetera. They all have his tumbler, his high energy tumbler. So I'm like, wow, that's good praise.
Maintaining Quality with Vendors
00:17:24
Speaker
You know, we bought that MC, or no, not MC finishing, that's who we bought it from. The Mr. D Burr, I think the whole thing shipped with media and soap was 2400 or 2700. We bought it because our parts are heavy. I was spending time and money shipping them out and packaging them up in the hassle factor, but your blades are low quantity, low weight. Why don't you just send them out? Do it in-house.
00:17:50
Speaker
We used to send out in the beginning before we got our tumbler and the attention to detail was not there because parts would stick together and they'd send it back to us anyway and they're like half tumbled. And our knives are such aesthetic quality that we need full control over it and we like to do it.
00:18:08
Speaker
Do you still do that zip tie trick? I hope that's a public trick. It's funny, I was thinking a lot about doing a chip break on negotiations because I think it's a really, really, really powerful thing in business and in life. Negotiations aren't just
00:18:26
Speaker
what you think about, like I'm buying a machine, I need to negotiate it. Negotiations are a little thing, like when you're working with a vendor to do your deburring, how do you convince them to make it a win-win, where you get the parts you want, but they take the time to do things like individually prepare a blade or something like that? That would be super helpful, because we still deal with outside vendors, we still get stuff, water jet, double disc, lapped, our DLC coding is sent out, and we're getting bad parts back, so yeah, any help we can get negotiating.
00:18:56
Speaker
I saw that fixture you built, that was really cool. Yeah, I finished them yesterday and that's going to hold all of our small screws and pivots and things like that because they were scratching them before trying to thread them into fixtures and yeah, so we're going to screw everything in and we're going to send them a full fixture and they're just going to clean it and coat it. Yeah. And yeah, it's going to be faster and easier for them too and we're getting back perfect parts hopefully should work out.
00:19:19
Speaker
Same thing with us on our anodizer for the tormach fixture plates that we're making. I talked to the guys. I said, hey, do you want me to come up? It's a two hour drive. I said, do you want me to come up? I'd love to bring them and meet with you. And they said, no, no, no. And I said, well, how does this work? This is a high dollar item. The cost of anodizing is relatively low to the value of the part at that stage in the process. So if you scratch it,
00:19:42
Speaker
you know, how do you deal with the fact that it's a three figure part and they're like, we just don't have that just doesn't happen. And they weren't being arrogant about it, but they were giving me this vote of confidence. And I thought, okay, so I sent them a batch of six and sure enough, one came back with some pretty big scratches and they started to say, well, well, you should be able to scotch, write that out. And I'm like, no, no, it's anodized. It's finished.
00:20:05
Speaker
Right, and that's when we had to take and it's just frustrating because as a as a business person You would think I would trade you money for your services of anodizing. It should just be perfect But there's it's not I mean your grim's but you're living proof of that you've been through every vendor in the country on certain processes trying to get people that did things acceptable and And that's one reason why I think you you've gone full grim's mo on your lathe and he ever Doing everything in-house now
00:20:32
Speaker
I mean, it seems unlikely that you're going to buy a water jet, for example. So you still have to rely on every other people, period, for some things. Yeah. So how do you kindly but firmly train them to meet your quality standards within their price and everybody be happy about it? Or as long as you're happy, they can be less happy as long as they're doing good work.
00:20:56
Speaker
Well, and there's a trade-off. In this example, I ended up sort of coming up with a solution, which was, I just started talking to them about, well, you can't use the existing holes.
00:21:06
Speaker
because those holes need to have full anodize on them. And the backside is the only area where we could have anything changed. And then we sort of realized, well, why don't we add two sacrificial holes on the underside? But he didn't propose that, because he didn't think that that was even an option. And you kind of had to work together. And it sounds silly in the end. But let me tell you, it wasn't obvious right now at first. I completely understand. One example is my Mighty Bite vacuum fixture.
00:21:36
Speaker
It's beautiful anodized blue, and there is one hole in the front, a threaded hole, that's not anodized. And over time, it's corroding. Serious? But obviously, I knew from my anodizing experience that obviously that's where they held it from. They screwed a thing in there and held it in the anodizing tank. But yeah, because it's not anodized, and because I used to use such crappy coolant in my early tormac days, it is corroded inside. So this is going to sound silly, but what does corroded aluminum look like? It's white powdery.
00:22:06
Speaker
Really? Yeah, it's like white
Community Building and Online Feedback
00:22:08
Speaker
rust and it just powders up and then the screw's not gonna go in there anymore and it's, you know, that hole is real. So it's real, it's not just surface corrosion, like it's actually into the material. Yep, into and grows out with this gross white powder stuff. So if you do, say you do, yours are black, right?
00:22:25
Speaker
your fixtures. If they do a sacrificial hole, I would put a black screw in there permanently. Really? Yeah. Yeah, when we're done. Because you don't want a white powdery hole developing over time. Sure. I've had the Mighty Bite fixture for like three or four years now, and I'm still bringing this up. This is the first time I ever brought it up, but I'm still thinking about it.
00:22:49
Speaker
Thank you, sir. No problem. Or maybe a stainless steel set screw or something and then lock take the crap out of it and non-user serviceable. Yeah, I like that. Right. Thank you. That's awesome. This is, I was talking to somebody on the phone and they, I didn't think they knew who I was. And then all of a sudden they're like having the conversation. They're like, I love your videos. I'm like,
00:23:14
Speaker
Whoa, that changes the whole conversation because obviously we have a lot more, but like folks, this is what entrepreneurship is. It's not just shilling a product. It's building like a network of team and energy and people around something. Yeah, a community. I have a story about that too. Eric and I were standing up on his side of the shop on the mezzanine upstairs and from there we can't see the front door, but we heard the front door open. Falkor goes crazy and starts barking.
00:23:40
Speaker
And then we come downstairs and this guy comes in and he says, hey, I'm Paul from Elliott Matsura, where we got our lathe from. And he goes, normally I'm based out of Edmonton, central Canada, basically. Yeah, a long, long ways away. Yeah, a long ways away. And he said, but I'm here for some training and some meetings and stuff. And I had to see you guys because I've been watching your videos for many, many years back in the early tormac days.
00:24:02
Speaker
And you know, this is an applications engineer, an expert in his field. He's building robotic cells, the transferring parts between three different layers and a CMM machine. And he's been watching our videos forever and he's like, man, I used to laugh my head off at your early videos, you know, where you're breaking endmills and you're like, on video, you're like, huh, I don't know why that happened. And he's like, increase SFM.
00:24:25
Speaker
And he's like, but I didn't want to like complain and flame you and make bad comments or anything like that. But I told him, I'm like, that could have been helpful information. So don't be afraid to like be helpful. But yeah, it was really funny because, you know, he's a big fan and he was really geeking out at the shop here and he's seen our growth. Now we have two amazing machines. And then he's like, is there anything I can do to help, you know, since I'm here? Amazing.
00:24:49
Speaker
Yeah, so we talked to Zira for about 45 minutes on laid stuff and I'm like, okay, I want to hold one tenth all day long.
Delegating Tasks for Business Growth
00:24:55
Speaker
What's wrong with that statement? And he's like, well, okay, okay, here's what we can do. I love it. It's amazing. So it was really helpful and now I've got his email and I'll be bugging him as often as I want.
00:25:07
Speaker
Yeah, good for you, man. That's awesome. Yeah. One other thing I wanted to mention in the pre-recording we were talking about, the video I just put up on the Kaizen foam. Yeah. Oh, I loved how during that video, literally, you're going, you know, Grim's real excited on these. And I totally agree on the plier orientation, by the way. But I love how in the middle of it, there's this beep and you just sold a top.
00:25:33
Speaker
Yep, my phone just went ding, like a ka-ching kind of noise. And yeah, I've got a Shopify app on my phone, which is logged into my shopping cart online. And anytime I sell a product on the website, my phone goes ka-ching. And it's kind of goofy, but it's also kind of awesome. Because even during that video, I hear the ka-ching, and I got to say it, and it's very cool. But it reminds me of a story I heard about Amazon, Amazon.com. When they first started out, they were an early online business. And they set up a dinger bell so that every time they'd sell a book,
00:26:01
Speaker
It went ding and you know it went from like one a week to one a day and then before too long it was bringing non-stop and they had to unplug it.
00:26:10
Speaker
Yeah, I can imagine. I can only imagine. I don't think I would want the ding. In fact, that goes back to the office. So like when I moved into my office this week, that finally forced me to move our shipping printer over to Noah's computer. And I said, Noah has been doing a lot of the shipping lately, but I was kind of the one that still handled the labels because there's some, our process isn't perfect there yet.
00:26:35
Speaker
because it's just not. And that forced me to give it to him and work with him and have him basically handle it and come to me when there's problems versus me handling everything in anticipation of a problem. And I don't want to, I mean, as much as I get that little endorphin high off of seeing an order come through, the truth is I need to focus and let somebody else do that. Absolutely. I mean, there comes a point in the business when you can't have your finger on every pulse of every action.
00:27:03
Speaker
and you have to let your people do what they need to do, which is great too. But I like it. I did it for a while. I became a quasi-expert on it. I know there's some problems which we'll fix in the medium term, but now it's off my plate. That's great. Well, I mean, that's the whole thing of growing a business real quick is just making the process perfect and then you can pass it off.
00:27:25
Speaker
Well, which is funny though, I guess because here I've consciously chosen to pass it off knowing that it's not perfect and knowing that Noah's gonna spend a little bit more time over the next two or three months doing it than he will in the future, but that's okay.
Leveraging Employee Potential
00:27:38
Speaker
I'm okay having him handle that inefficiency because we're gonna grow and as we grow, I'll spend the time, basically the problem is box sizes. There's no way for Shopify to talk to ShipStation on multi,
00:27:51
Speaker
product orders to correctly handle the box size and then international orders are funny too. So there's some hand holding there for now. Maybe with experience, Noah can come up with some solutions himself. Yeah, that's true and I don't do a good enough job of that. We had a problem with
00:28:08
Speaker
The Tormach 770, when we were installing it, kept tripping the breaker. And I was like, this is weird. And I was super busy. And I said, you know what? I'm going to have Jared call Tormach support, which I would have done that. And Jared did. And sure enough, after about five minutes of walking through some stuff, Tormach was like, wait, do you have this on a GFI?
00:28:28
Speaker
and our contractor who put a GFI outlet here, I don't know why, and one of the noise reducer circuits in the tormach tends to allow or stop some amount of back current, which tends to trip GFI's and boom fixed. And truth be told, that is not a John Saunders problem.
00:28:47
Speaker
Jared can absolutely handle that. One of the things Paul Akers keeps talking about is unused employee potential. And getting people to solve problems as well. Yeah, I'm guilty of that, you're totally right. Yeah, me too. I gotta mention this, I know we're switching topics, but I don't know, and I'm not sure I care, but boy, the last two or three Wednesday widgets, the trolls have come out of the woodwork. And some pretty aggressive comments,
00:29:15
Speaker
Pretty crazy to me and I was it bothered me and then I was like well who cares I'm I do what I love. I'm happy ignore. You know internet heroes keyboard heroes You know blah blah blah, and then I realized no here is the perfect antidote
00:29:31
Speaker
To everybody that doesn't think I'm a good machinist or doesn't like what you or I are doing or anything like that, to anybody who has a problem, go volunteer. Go teach somebody. Go teach a group robotics thing. Teach somebody else how to run a machine. Teach somebody some process. Go give back and focus your energy there instead of trying to tell me that I don't know how to hold six thou across a manual lathe on a boring operation.
00:29:56
Speaker
Yeah, because we don't claim to be experts. We're doing what we love, and we are giving back to the community as much as we can. I'm happy with that. Right? Yeah. You make your own head bothered. Well, I've said what I said. But that's my point. You can criticize me if you've been a contributor in giving back and paying it forward, trying to help inspire other people.
00:30:21
Speaker
But that's the whole troll conversation is, you know, in the end, you can't let them get you down because usually it doesn't. I think this one, well, I mean, obviously it did get me down for a day or two and I was trying to figure out how to shrug this off because I mean, to some extent they were right. I didn't meet. I mean, I've said that publicly on the video. I didn't meet the tolerance. I couldn't do it. I didn't.
00:30:42
Speaker
do it. I failed. It didn't bother me that I failed because guess what? I bet you anybody else in my shoes would have struggled the same way. And the reality is I'm not interested in YouTube videos where people just walk up to a machine and like, you know, it's the John Grimster. You don't just, you didn't just purchase a machine, hit cycle start and turn out with parts that were running out three tens. How many freaking tools have you broken? How many hours have you spent dialing things in? Hundreds, thousands.
00:31:08
Speaker
I've spent and broken and wasted so much money in consumables. It's ridiculous because we're not experts and we figure it out and we're not afraid to show a couple mistakes here and there as we learn. Like you said, we don't just walk up to a machine and make magic happen. We try and we fail and we try again and then we try again because we're resourceful and bullheaded and we don't want to stop.
00:31:32
Speaker
You could have bought one of those high-energy templars for the number of tools you've broken over the last year. Yes, but then I wouldn't need it. Oh man, it's funny. Oh, one more story. Couple nights ago, Wednesday night, so I had a weird day all over the place doing lots of different projects and stuff, and then at the end of the day, I wanted to run three different programs seamlessly, lights out.
00:32:01
Speaker
Okay. So I took a full rask fixture, which is a two and a half hour run, but then I've been doing the blade grinding separately. So I combined that at the end. Okay. And then I'm making these DLC fixtures. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For holding all the screws. So I had that in the other vise and I just copied and pasted all the codes together end by end. No way. I knew it would take like three or four hours and I hit cycle start at five, five, five 30, whatever, whenever I left. And then I went home.
00:32:28
Speaker
played with my kids, had dinner with my wife, we're sitting there talking, and it's about 8.30, and I'm explaining, I'm like, yeah, so I stitch these three programs together, and then it's gonna do this, and then it's gonna do this, and oh my god, what did I just do? I'm thinking to myself, it's gonna crash, and it's gonna break like 13 tools, because the station where I machine two soft blades, I machine the pivot hole and the arc and engraving and everything,
Avoiding Major Production Issues
00:32:54
Speaker
When I grind the blades, I have to put one of the hardened ground blades back in that two spot thick position. And so I had a hard blade in that position, not a soft blade. So it's gonna try to machine, it thinks there's a water jet blank there and it's gonna machine a whole blade when there's already a hard finished blade there and it's gonna cut hardened material at soft feed rates and there's some clamps in the way that are not gonna be there and I'm like, I can only hope
00:33:21
Speaker
that I broke a tool earlier and tool breakage detection caught it and paused it. So I'm like, I'm looking at the clock and I'm like, it's over. I can't run to the shop 12 minute drive and catch it. It's already happened. So, you know, do I go in and assess the damage or do I just go to bed and come in in the morning?
00:33:38
Speaker
So I ended up falling asleep and coming in in the morning and thank goodness there were two tools sitting on my desk that I forgot to put back in the machine. No way. So it's a missing tool number well early in the process.
00:33:52
Speaker
So it never ran. Yeah. It got halfway through the rasp palette and didn't even finish the handles. Didn't get to the blades yet. And I'm like, Oh my goodness. Hallelujah. I saved a bullet there. So is that a process? Is that a flawed process? This idea that you, right. Cause you can have two different types of blades.
00:34:09
Speaker
You have two different products in the same position basically. Yeah, and they should not share the same position. And I do have a small area next to it where I can put that second off. I just haven't gotten around to it yet. The quick and dirty way was to share the position. But one piece flow, all I have to do is machine a couple holes and some pin locations on the other side and then
00:34:29
Speaker
I can do the whole thing like it's supposed to be done. And I guess I'll do that today. But oh, that was close. Glad to hear that that didn't. Don't you get a text if something alarms out, though? No, I haven't set up this machine to do that. You should do that. I could, yeah. It's fun. You have that? I do, yeah. Explain.
00:34:47
Speaker
It's super easy, it's called Haas Connect, it's an app on my phone and it tells me, basically it just sends me whatever error code is on the machine. And then the other cool thing with Haas, which I just learned, is I can remote, I remote into my work computer all the time, that's easy. And when I'm on my local network, I can just VNC into my Haas controller.
00:35:07
Speaker
It just shows me the whole control. That's awesome. Yeah, FANUC doesn't really have that. Some guys were telling me that you can hook an Arduino up to an RS232 port and then an Arduino to like a cell phone GSM card or whatever to text you or email you or whatever. So I'd probably have to talk to your expertise about that. Yours doesn't even have any phone connectivity built into it? No.
00:35:35
Speaker
Oh man, that's crazy. It's Ethernet plugged into my wireless router, so it is on my local network at the shop. Yeah, sure, but it's what can I do except transfer programs back and forth.
00:35:46
Speaker
Yeah, right. That's fair. I mean, I'm not trying to ride on it. I mean, the truth is that I like it, but you cannot control the machine remotely. So it's really only output. But, you know, I guess it's a question of maybe if it happened at 8 p.m., I would drive back to the shop, fix it, and let it run all night rather than not know or whatever. Right. Yeah. I gotta get some work done. Me too. Anything going on today, Biggs?
00:36:14
Speaker
laid i don't know if i get a massage this lady to make it makes magic you know just walk up to it like a boss and turn out magic all day long it's been it's been solidly right yes we're pretty good okay i just need to make a lot of parts of it dot that would go make purchase i will be too sweet right crash but i'll see if they get back