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#353 Coming in hot for 2024. Reflecting and planning
368 Plays1 year ago
TOPICS:
- Coming in hot for 2024. Reflecting and planning.
- Buckling down for a tough year.
- Grimsmo Buyer's Choice, new knife model
- Grimsmo's Eumach machines
- Selling CNC machines
- How do we buy cleaning supplies
- Dual color 3d printing for text
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Episode 353
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, episode 353. My name is John Rimsmo. And my name is John Saunders. And welcome to 2024.
Journey from Solo Entrepreneurs to Business Owners
00:00:10
Speaker
This is the podcast that we've been doing for like six years where we talk about our manufacturing journey. And we started it back when we were just solo prenoors.
00:00:20
Speaker
You know do our thing and now we've built something that I feel is quite substantial for both of us and you know. Kind of will see where this takes us, but I think we're both hungry and eager and still young enough to like really do what we've got to do right get after it agreed.
00:00:38
Speaker
Agreed.
Holiday Reflections and Family Time
00:00:39
Speaker
There is always a freshness to getting through the wonders of the holiday season and then new year and then coming in and thinking about what's on tap this year. Yeah, I really feel that and I didn't feel it so much coming into the end of the year. I know you've mentioned a few times you get kind of reflective. I kind of didn't as much but I really feel it now after that. I took probably five, six solid days off and plus weekends and I was like,
00:01:08
Speaker
I actually turned my brain off from the busyness of day-to-day production and stuff I got to do in projects. I just played massive amounts of Minecraft with life and we went hiking and watched some good movies and just hung out. It was just such a nice quiet holiday season. Awesome. That's great.
00:01:28
Speaker
We got away and enjoyed some time away. I normally am very contemplative and reflective.
Strategic Planning and Reflection
00:01:38
Speaker
Ironically, I didn't just care to get in the mood for that when we were traveling. Good. We're recording this on the third. I do actually want to do that. I value that a lot. I make notes throughout the year about reminding myself the highs and the lows and then
00:01:57
Speaker
The future is kind to, the future will be kind to me for I intend to invent it. It's kind of like, you know, where do you want to go? You don't get what you don't ask for, put your sights on. All that's tempered a little bit by, I'm not in the, I'm not lacking in direction right now at all. Come Friday is my first thing.
3D Printing Room Overhaul
00:02:23
Speaker
Remember I mentioned this thing? I do, yeah.
00:02:26
Speaker
I just called it days off in the shop, which I know I've used that phrase before, but this is the first structured duets. So on Friday the fifth, I'm starting in the next room overhauling the 3D printing room, which has become the puck jug zero point QC and assembly R&D room as well.
00:02:46
Speaker
I'm realizing as I start thinking this through, I'm going to need more help from the team about, hey, what can we throw out? What can we not? Where are we organizing stuff? It's beyond just you knowing everything, every component now. It's like, you got to start me too. You got to start asking people, do you use this? Does this have to be here? I don't use it, but that doesn't mean you don't use it.
00:03:06
Speaker
But it harkens me back to a set of probably originally faxed or telegrammed memos at my first boss, who was a little bit of a...
00:03:18
Speaker
hard person to be polite, gave me from the Navy during, I think, World War II, that my old boss was also a naval officer, which I'm guessing is why he had these. And it was basically like, don't ask a question, propose an
Leadership and Workplace Culture
00:03:34
Speaker
answer. It was pretty, I think I mentioned this a long time ago on the podcast, but it was pretty, it was not gentle, what do they call it, gentle parrot team? Like it was not gentle bossing. Right.
00:03:45
Speaker
I always have believed in trying to think about showing respect both ways. My time is important, but so are my employees. What I plan to do would be to go to the 3D printing room. There's old parts from other projects, from pneumatics, from microcontroller. There's a kind of a hodgepodge of stuff in there. I'll get it as best I can do it, and then I'll grab Alex or I'll grab Garrett or Grant and say,
00:04:07
Speaker
I'm proposing this is being thrown away speak up rather than making them sift through me over my shoulder.
Task Management and Future Projects
00:04:14
Speaker
That makes sense. So yeah, you do the work. Yeah. Yeah, I just always enjoyed I guess it's I enjoy when people really prepare for me and are like, hey, I've got these three things ready for you. I have a question about this one. This one I believe is good, but want you to check this like that's to me is
00:04:31
Speaker
It's, it's hierarchical in the good way, but it's bi-directional hierarchy and making this up. You know what I mean? Yeah. So my basically focuses, uh, spend the next few months on that, which is actually really nice. There's a oddly liberating sense of knowing that I don't have a control over it. This, I, this list owns me right now. That's your boss. Yep. Yep. That's you have solidified a plan and now you as the employee of that plan, just follow through. I think it's brilliant.
00:05:03
Speaker
Yeah, I'm super excited. And there's some, you know, inevitably there'll be some hiccups.
Ownership and Maintenance of Equipment
00:05:10
Speaker
Oh, that's what I wanted to share. So for our distractions, so like I'm still the assignee on certain Lex maintenance tasks.
00:05:21
Speaker
totally the example of like, I could offload this, but I don't mind doing it. And here's a good win. Either six months or a year ago, the scissor lift that we own, the batteries were dying too quickly. I thought I should look at the batteries. It's got four of those six volt golf cart batteries. They're not cheap.
00:05:39
Speaker
And I looked at them, and the contacts were corroded, and the water was low. And I was like, oh, man, come on. I bought the batteries new after we bought the used unit a few years prior, probably four or five years prior. So it had been some time. But I was like, this is
00:05:55
Speaker
When i hear mentors say you know be careful what you wish for if you own a bunch of stuff you end up having to it owns you and this kind of is like oh man we got so many things like that require batteries or filters or springs or gaskets.
00:06:13
Speaker
And so I thought, no, let's do this right. So I got the DI water, bought some extra water. It's in a known location with labeled for battery top off. And then I took some, so top off the batteries, reconditioned them with the electric charger thingy, and then put some dielectric grease on the terminals. Got them all nice, neat, clean all the tops off. Like I felt really good to do it. Kind of one of those like surgeon things like
00:06:35
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And so the maintenance task popped up yesterday to do this. And if I'm being honest, I thought, oh boy, I got to go do that. And you kind of have a deep breath. And then I was like, no, John, don't sit here and get worried about it. Go look at it. And I went and looked at it.
00:06:52
Speaker
They looked perfect. Perfect. Yeah. Because you did it right. Well, that's good. And then you have a checklist maintenance task that is like, oh yeah, done. That took me four seconds to confirm that everything's good. Or you can hand that off to somebody else very easily now. Yeah, exactly. You stage zeroed it, right? Yes.
00:07:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's what we used to say back in the Volvo forums when everybody's trying to upgrade, boost their mom's old station wagons and stuff. It's like everybody's like, how do I make 300 horsepower?
00:07:24
Speaker
do stage zero, like filters. Clean the contacts on your distributor, like stage zero before you do anything else. Otherwise, you'll be chasing your tail. Like, why am I misfiring? Why am I pinging all this stuff? Yeah, as we still talk about that, because Angelo is an involved guy, we're like stage zero. The basics have to be done before you can make performance.
00:07:48
Speaker
Well, if you want to talk more about this, tell me. Otherwise, I'm going to say it and shut up. But I always liked having a scissor lift because it was really convenient as we were adding more machines. We're doing a little bit less of that these days. And we've realized the latter actually is easier sometimes. And so basically, my thesis is I'm going to sell the scissor lift along with a bunch of other stuff. And it's funny because my wife was challenging me about how
00:08:17
Speaker
I can be like, one day I'm like, no, it's great to buy stuff. You don't have to pay to rent it. It's here when you need it. A lot of that stuff, in my experience, if you buy it, use, maintain it, it actually tends to hold its value. As the scissor lift, well, actually, probably, ironically, make money on it, selling it.
00:08:37
Speaker
But now I'm like, no, sell it. If I need one once or twice a year, I can rent one. It's here next day, not that expensive. And she's like, well, which is it? And I, it's funny. I don't have the answer, John. But, um, it's like, as the leader, you just have to be confident enough to make the decision and just live with it. And if you need to change that in two years and buy another one, well, oh, well, you just, you're
Renting vs. Owning Machinery - Which is Better?
00:08:58
Speaker
just exchanging the pot of money in your hands and out of your hands and into the machine and out of the machine. And who cares? Like do what you gotta do. Like we haven't bought one. We've rented one.
00:09:07
Speaker
two times probably to install various electrical things. And is that worth, I don't know what they're worth, five grand, 10 grand, something like that? Not even, for sure. Probably five grand or less. Still, that's like money that I don't really have to spend. They cost me, I don't know, hundreds of dollars to rent for a short day. And the rental place is literally like five buildings over.
00:09:31
Speaker
I can have it here in an hour. Same with a forklift. We don't have a forklift. It would be nice sometimes. If we're getting a big delivery, we'll get one delivered and cost me $800 to have it for two days or whatever the price is. I don't know. I don't know how you don't live without a forklift. Yeah. It's because we haven't. Nobody here is certified to drive one. We can fake it, but we just haven't yet.
00:09:58
Speaker
How are you not doing palletized deliveries? I guess they do bring them on liftgates. Yeah, liftgates. We very much specify liftgate delivery for anything big and then we just pallet jacket. Yeah, sure. A couple times we've had to turn away deliveries because we're like, no, no, we specified liftgate and this is not a liftgate. We can't take that off. Sorry. Come back tomorrow with a liftgate and it sucks to have to do that. But yeah, that's just how we're dealing with it.
00:10:25
Speaker
For us, the lift gate fee is usually a hundred to $200 per shipment.
Economic Impact on Business Decisions
00:10:34
Speaker
So it would be, I mean, we get freight stuff. I don't know. We probably load or unload a truck.
00:10:42
Speaker
I'm going to guess eight to 20 times a week. Yeah, we do not. Like twice a month, maybe, is when we even use a pallet jack for delivery. It's just not a lot. Even like when a barrel of cooling gets delivered, they have the drum dolly and they do a lift gate.
00:11:03
Speaker
This could be a segue into the topic. I've been top of mind for me, which is thinking about buckling down for what could be a year that's tougher than last year. And I'm a numbers guy. For better or worse, I just am. And so I think about the past five or eight years running this business, your money was worth nothing. You earned just literally
00:11:26
Speaker
25 basis points on interest or something like a pittance. Well, now that's not true. Now you earn 5.5%. So if that forklift is $5,000, then that's a current US Treasury bond, that's $250 a year or $20 a month. I know these get to be small numbers, but they do add up and it is a good point of like to what you said, the opportunity cost of what are you doing with that money and what's the priority
00:11:55
Speaker
and how much friction is there to, like you said, you're in a great place. There's one envious of that. Drive it down the road. They won't, but I've thought about it. Right? It's funny. At the old shop across the street, there was a powder coating place next door and they had a bunch of forklifts and we would walk over with a six pack of beer and be like, can we borrow one for three hours? They were always fine with it. Right. You don't have that anymore?
00:12:22
Speaker
No, it was across the street, but we're not really in contact and whatever. Yeah, right. Sometimes it's nice to just separate and like, yeah, I'll just rent it. It's fine. I'll take care of this myself. I'm much less on the buddy deal train than I used to be in the beginning. Now, I'm quite happy to pay for things that should be paid for and I don't need freebies and
00:12:45
Speaker
you know, vendors and things like that. I really, you know, I'll push a little bit, but I don't try to bend people over backwards to like, well, I'm special. Give me a deal. I'm happy to pay you for your hard work. Just like I want my customers to pay me for my hard work. Like that's how business works. Like when you're small in the beginning, the buddy deals are great. They do so much. Totally agree. Well, how you been? What's new? What's cooking?
Enhancing Customer Satisfaction and Customization
00:13:13
Speaker
It's been good. We worked the two days between the holidays, like the Thursday, Friday, between Christmas and New Year, which was good. We did a lot, but I could tell myself and everybody were kind of a little bit out of it. It was fine. We got a lot of work done, but the fire wasn't quite there, which is totally fine. We got a lot of cleaning done, a lot of production done, some really good conversations planning for the future, and then we took three days off again for New Year's.
00:13:42
Speaker
And then coming back in now, we worked yesterday, working today. I can tell the fire's coming back to everybody and everybody's, it was good to have the rest. Some people did some cool things over the holidays. One of our staff members had a baby yesterday morning. Oh my gosh, congratulations. But yeah, super excited for that. And yeah, a lot of stuff's happening, which is really good. Good, good to hear. Yep. So coming into the new year, trying to think,
00:14:11
Speaker
both short-term and long-term and what we're trying to do here. I'm not big on New Year's resolutions, but I want to be big on following through on actions and plans and be the kind of person that follows through on whatever you set out to do, which I'm becoming and I really see it in myself.
00:14:30
Speaker
I want to this year focus more on the customer and more on giving the customer what they want, what they think they want, which a big part of that will be the buyer's choice system that we had for many years. We talked about this a couple weeks ago and something you said really stuck with me.
00:14:47
Speaker
Um, cause I was like, buyer's choice is going to add complexity to the business because now we don't just make whatever we want. Now we have to make specific to order all of the time. And we've kind of lost the nimbleness to do that and something you pushed and you were like, well, it's your job to figure that out. If you can't figure that out at this point, like you're the wrong business or however you said it. And I was like, that really stuck with me. It's like, okay, it's going to be challenging, but that's our job. And that's what I told everybody yesterday in the meeting. I was like,
00:15:14
Speaker
It might suck for a couple months while we stumble and find all these new process flows. But that's our job. We're smart people. We can figure this out. And it's going to be great. The effort now to do that, to be able to give the customers to order what they want to a certain scale and degree, whatever fits.
00:15:33
Speaker
Once we establish that plan, I think it's going to have so many wonderful repercussions and downstream effects for the brand, for our customer happiness, for future customers, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's clear to me that that's the direction we need to get back to, which is super exciting.
00:15:51
Speaker
Good. So what do you have to do in terms of where you are to getting that running? Buyer's choice specifically. I used to run it from a Google Sheets and Google Apps scripts that I had a programmer create.
00:16:08
Speaker
Basically, we would tell it, pick 100 names, and it would pick 100 names from our list of customers, and then it would randomly email those people a link to buy, and then it goes through a Google Form and all that stuff. It was all through Google, and it was kind of rinky, and we ended up taxing that system to the point where it just didn't work at our volumes anymore for whatever reason. So I'm having a guy reprogram it now in Python and something else.
Challenges in Software Development
00:16:33
Speaker
I can't remember off the top of my head what other language.
00:16:37
Speaker
It's coming together really cool, but the guy's being extremely slow and not giving me proper updates. It's getting frustrating. I want to have a lot of faith in the dude because he's saying all the right things and I trust that he can do it, but the proof is not there yet. Why do you trust that he can do it?
00:16:57
Speaker
the way he's explaining the plan. And he's got his head wrapped around what I need, which is good, which has also taught me more of it's allowed me to tell another person programmer like this is how I need it done this. And the feedback there has been really good, but
00:17:13
Speaker
I basically told him yesterday, I was like, I need to see a working prototype by Saturday or else I'm going to have to look for somebody else because this is not good. My accountant Spencer is like, set that deadline like now. Have you emailed them yet? Yeah, okay. Upwork developer.
00:17:31
Speaker
Yeah, so I've learned a lot from that process. And it's proved to me that the waiting game is over now, like, now it's time to move. And if it's not him, it's somebody else. The right kind of person should be able to turn this around in in weeks, not months. So, yeah, that has to happen immediately. I feel a lot of shared
00:17:59
Speaker
feelings of where you want to believe in the best in people and you don't want to be a hard driver or rude boss. You're the one that taught me about you can't manage what you can't measure and this is one of those you can measure
00:18:17
Speaker
that there's a 100% effort on saying, talking to talk in a zero on walking the walk. And if there's one thing I've learned when it comes to wasting time and wasting money, move on.
Team Management and Accountability
00:18:31
Speaker
The number of times somebody has acted like this guy for you, I don't know all the details, but we've had plenty of these on our end. The number of times where they've been soft, weak, unresponsive, super salesy, but not deliverables, it has never once
00:18:46
Speaker
flipped around like, Oh, my gosh, last week, it was actually just that my wife was sick, I am back on it. You're gonna love working with me now. Nope. It's always just interesting. It's like, like, it's not my job in the world to fix those people or like, right, or, or lead them into a better No, just move on. Yeah. No, that that word deliverables really hits.
00:19:07
Speaker
Because even if somebody actually has the skill and the talent and the wherewithal, if they can't deliver in a timely manner, it's useless to you. And I'm realizing more and more that time is like one of the most precious resources we have. And wasted time doesn't come back. We can make more money later, but to waste time, that doesn't come back.
00:19:34
Speaker
especially something like a critical project like this, where it will define our future going forward. If this takes me six months or another year to implement, that's six months to a year of not having this and of, you know, weakening the brand because of that. And that's completely unacceptable. And I see that now with I have the clarity to do that. So definitely lit the fire under that. Also been working on not so much over the holidays, but coming in hot now with our new knife model.
00:20:01
Speaker
the integral knife. So I started dovetailing some titanium stock yesterday, and then it's mounted in the current now. So I just got to make some, I'm going to pick away at it. I'm going to do like some toolpaths. I just want to like see it cut metal. So profile it first and then do the slot, high feed mill the slot, and then kind of go from there. Squeeze it in this, I have time on the current to be like... Your high feed milling the slot where the blade folds into? Yeah, exactly.
00:20:26
Speaker
Why not use a indexable or insert driven? That's what many people do. And depending on how you hold the material, like I'm holding it. Imagine if the whole blade was together, cutting edge in the sky, like slot up, right? So I'm five axes holding this thing with a dovetail so that once I slot it, I can contour the sides. I can do everything just leaving a tab on the back. And let's think about this yesterday.
00:20:52
Speaker
When you design something, there's like the part of your brain that goes, I want to do it this way. And I kind of get stuck in the mud sometimes. I'm like, I'm gonna do it this way, no matter what, because this is the vision. This is the plan. Like I want to hold it from a dovetail. I want to do it all one and done. I want to tab it off at the end.
00:21:08
Speaker
And it sometimes prevents me from seeing other options. Like, well, if you add a second up in there, it actually makes everything so much easier. And you can put on this machine, put on that machine. So I'm trying to be conscious about, you know, not getting stuck in those, those mindsets. Sure. But still the ego part of me like wants to see it through and be like, no, I think it's gonna be great. Like,
00:21:28
Speaker
I was talking with one of the developers or entrepreneurs out there that's in the AI toolpath world. The vision seemed to be really focused on this idea of enabling newcomers or, quote unquote, nobodies, people that haven't had experience to being able to successfully make a part.
00:21:48
Speaker
I enjoyed debating this. I think that's a little bit like full self-driving. It sounds great, but the reality is that's incredibly tricky notwithstanding the consequence of FSD and fatalities on the road and machine tools crashing and hurting people or six-figure damage. But I was
00:22:09
Speaker
professing my desire to say, no, show me at least intermediate, if not maybe more than intermediate cam programmer, show me three different ways to do it and base those on, and I'm not a big fan of all the buzzwords these days, but machine learning or the data sets you pull from other users. What was successful? What was actually posted and run? Show me three different ways to surface this part and then let me use my brain and experience to decide, ooh, I want to run with this one.
00:22:39
Speaker
It's sort of like AI image generation, like I've been playing with mid-journey, which is amazing. And it gives you four options. And you're like, okay, iterate on that one. Okay, iterate on that one. And you want the same thing with toolpaths, like give me three options. And then let me in my expertise pick. But I think part of what people are trying to do is to take the decision making out of it so that a novice can come in and do
00:23:06
Speaker
And I guess in that case, any of the three will function. But there's some art to it and there's some, you know, experience and you're like that toolpath is not going to work because it's going to leave a nub here or something. So clearly that's the one but maybe a rookie wouldn't know that and maybe it wouldn't matter to them. They'd still be further along than otherwise.
00:23:28
Speaker
Yeah, it's tricky. That ties really well into the way we used to use Upwork. We're just not using it a lot these days. We actually did do this for a recent PDF. We hired three different people. And these were $100-ish, one single page graphic designs. And we sent it to three different people. And they don't know that they're competing with each other. So you're not able to invoke that sense of I need to
00:23:57
Speaker
Like it or not, although there's some downsides, there's a lot of upsides to that style of competition. The point was who gets it back to us, who does the best work, who's the most communicative, and then which ones do we like and we can pick
00:24:12
Speaker
any of the three options. Of course, we're paying all three. Interesting. Usually, there's additional work to be done and then we can incorporate. We pick number one, we can incorporate things we like from two and three and one doesn't even need to know or realize that doesn't matter. It makes me think back to your software developer guy of like you said it is a limited thing and see you actually
00:24:35
Speaker
Yeah, get some basic work done. Who can do the first deliverable? Like if I planned it out into stages, and I'll be like, okay, this is a five state process. Once stage one is relatively simple should take a good guy a couple days to do whoever can deliver that first pay all three people. But like and then there's a lot of iteration on top of that. That's where the real money comes in. Yeah, that's a really good idea.
Improving Hiring and Training Practices
00:25:00
Speaker
I guess that's part of me that's still in the bootstrapper mentality of like, I got time. If it takes a while, that's fine. He hasn't gotten back to me in a week or so, but it's fine. This is the guy, I need to wash that. You and I have different personalities. You're so easy going. The job that I know and see. Frankly, there's a lot to be said for that. I'm very much of a like,
00:25:27
Speaker
like, what the heck is going on? Like, this is unacceptable. Like, I quickly am like, I guess to be just quickly, we'll just write somebody off like, yep, you're, you're not real. And look, there's the truth is there are a ton of the world is fraught with
00:25:43
Speaker
people that will take advantage of you or not do credit work. Or it's actually disheartening to see the number of ports or even machine shops that will bid a job, take a job, and then just flip it around, outsource it, and arbitrage some money. And you're like, it's just so not who we are. Yeah. I like that three-pack idea.
00:26:07
Speaker
It's almost counterintuitive because it feels like it'll be more expensive. I'm wasting money, hiring three people to make this one page PDF, but you have to think the goal, the outcome that you want. I'm not fighting for a dollar, I'm fighting for a result. My result has to be so good. And if that cost me a little bit more, then
00:26:29
Speaker
So be it. When you're not in the business of Python development. So if you were doing this every week or every month or in the significant part of your overhead, I think there's probably a lot more to be said for managing the cost of it. But it's kind of like hiring people. We're not in the business of hiring people. We're not like some of our friend shops that have huge turnover or should not turn over, but huge volumes of people, which means there's more turnover and growth. So I don't need to be an expert in hiring because it's not worth my time
00:26:58
Speaker
I'd rather spend more money and that can mean more on indeed or recruiters or I like the intern model because that's kind of like you get a chance to see somebody. Go for a test drive kind of thing. Or the Python thing, create a totally different Python project that's simpler. Yeah, that proves it. Yeah, exactly. I like that. Yeah, I like that a lot.
00:27:23
Speaker
I'm going to crunch on that for a while. Speaking of which, conversely, we are getting much better at hiring, with Pierre tongue-in-cheek being deported from Canada just because his visa is expiring. He's moved back to France and he's got to be out of the country in February. He technically can't work past next Monday or something. He's got a week left, which is bittersweet.
00:27:49
Speaker
It's going to be sad to not have him here. And he feels the same. But our replacement just finally signed the hiring document yesterday. So it's like super, it is locked. And I'm like, until I see that signature, you can say it's all good and all you want, but I need that signature. And it's been a bit of a nail biter through Christmas and the holidays and stuff. He hasn't gotten back. I know it's busy time, but anyway, he signed. It's been awesome. So we're all super excited for that.
00:28:20
Speaker
Kind of the same thing, like, is this all talk, or can he walk the walk? We had some good tests to see if he's legit and can do what we need to do. And I think we have a lot of confidence in that decision. So super excited. Can I ask, was it Indeed? Yeah. Awesome. It was, yeah. That's great. Yeah, Indeed actually panned out quite well. We had some really good applicants.
00:28:47
Speaker
even a guy or two for the future that I'm in touch with. I'm like, not right now, but definitely we're going to keep talking. That's great. Which is really cool. Good. Yeah, it's good. We've got a lot of things we want to do and we need a solid staff of people that can deliver. For sure.
00:29:08
Speaker
Okay, you're not going to like it, but I had on my list. I know what this is already and I have an answer. You marks. So I haven't done anything big, but I do have two interested parties that are in the works right now. One is trying to make a visit this week, I think. They're pretty close by. And then another one, I've got to read his reply that he replied this morning.
00:29:35
Speaker
So I don't want to wait too long to see how those pan out. I'm going to try to push them along and see if something happens. But that's progress, which is good. I was telling Leif about it this morning. And because one of the interested parties is a YouTube channel that he's heard of before. No way. Yeah. And I'm like, this is kind of interesting. And he's telling Leif about it. He's like,
00:30:02
Speaker
He's like, you got to do it. I was thinking about the machines and I had that dumb entrepreneur moment where I was like, I kind of want to use those machines. I like them, they could work. I know they're broken, but I'm just opening up. I did have that moment where I was like, there are two machines that are sitting there that I'm not utilizing. And if I did use them, then the other part of me goes,
00:30:25
Speaker
money notwithstanding, I would far rather have speedios. I don't know, but yeah, sure. Totally. Anyway. You're allowed to open up and share, but you're not actually thinking this, right? No. This was two hours ago over breakfast, but as I said,
00:30:55
Speaker
going back to the famous word deliverables, how much have those machines done for us in the past four years that I've had them? Like, almost zero. I thought they cut foam for a while. They cut foam for a while. It was good. But in the past,
00:31:12
Speaker
year, two years probably. They haven't done Jack. They're not delivering. You buy a new speedio, it's on you if it's not delivering. You're not running it or buy a new speedio or something. Anyway. Yes. Yeah, they got to go. It's bittersweet, but it's clearly the right decision. Yeah. Good.
00:31:37
Speaker
I mean, get them gone. I would incentivize there. And then move on and just make that decision. Sort of like your scissor lift thing different, but make the decision, move on. Stop thinking about it. So we've had an interesting experience selling some machines. So to caveat it, I don't really like using Instagram or YouTube to try
Selling Machines in a Complicated Market
00:32:01
Speaker
to sell stuff. It just doesn't feel
00:32:03
Speaker
appropriate to me. I recognize the hypocrisy because I mentioned it on this podcast, which I'm well aware of, has a good audience. For sure. If folks are interested, that's great. That's not genuinely why the point I mentioned it. Most of the Tormach machines we have sold, we still have
00:32:18
Speaker
The oddly, the machines I thought would sell easier would be the Haas machines, and they have not. I thought I'd kind of share the, we had a Haas SC20Y in training building. It's the exact same one as, well, almost as the guy that we have here, Saunders. And I pretty quickly just kicked it over to a machine broker because I was like, I'm either going to go big on spamming our followers with it, which I didn't like, or,
00:32:46
Speaker
I'm going to get it sold. The UMC, we had a buyer and- Which one, the 350? No, sorry, the 500, UMC 500 with the pallet pool. Okay. Right. Had a buyer who actually rerouted a business trip to fly here and see it, which is pretty legit and all checked out. And this is, I think, maybe a little bit telling. Can't get financing.
00:33:12
Speaker
And what they can do is they can get financing from Haas on a new machine. And it's an obvious asset that Haas has that hadn't really occurred to me because, frankly, we haven't been in this kind of a market in the last decade. But because Haas finances its own machines, well, it's technically a third party, but it's not really arms like.
00:33:35
Speaker
They have a huge advantage over the used market. They were actually basically fine with the price, but just can't get there on financing. I was like, that's telling. That's going to be interesting. I've heard enough nuggets now from three different people about
00:33:54
Speaker
changes in the world. I'm not seeing it on the newspapers, frankly, but I am conscious of, oh, are we going to see some pain come about here in the next three months? And I'm choosing to sell the machines. So the short story is that UMC 500 is now also with the same broker. It's Clark Machinery, if anybody wants to look it up.
00:34:16
Speaker
But they're going to get sold. They're worth what they're worth. The guy who's selling them does a great job. They need to get gone for the price that they're worth full stop. I don't want them here in two months. Yeah, exactly. I like it. What's the most enjoyable? Because I was kind of like, oh man, I feel great to offer them in a, they're both almost new machines. The Laid has a couple hundred hours on it. The UMC has a couple hundred hours on it. They're demo machines, basically.
00:34:43
Speaker
but, um, I thought I could, it would have been fun to have to rifle shot them off market to somebody. Great. Cause it's not cheap to use a broker, but, um, I sort of told myself, go on, let's go. Yep. Yep.
00:34:59
Speaker
Silly question for you, which is how does Grimsman Knives handle buying stuff like cleaning supplies and other household stuff for the business?
Efficient Inventory Management
00:35:11
Speaker
Good question. Some stuff we can order through Uline. We make a Uline order twice a month, whatever, for various packaging, shipping stuff.
00:35:21
Speaker
gloves and things like that. Everything else, we have a Costco down the street, so our customer service lady Marissa tends to make a weekly, every two-weekly Costco trip, buys us.
00:35:37
Speaker
food for the kitchen, snacks, paper towels, toilet paper, whatever else. Anything Home Depot wise, sometimes we'll order from Home Depot and just have them deliver, especially if it's a table or something. Because again, nobody has a truck here, which to an Ohio resident doesn't make sense. Yeah, no. So either, yeah, we'll do that or we'll send guys to the hardware store and just get whatever we need. Does that answer your question?
00:36:03
Speaker
No. OK. How do you handle buying it, meaning if you need toilet paper, if you need latex clothes, is there a list in the kitchen? It's a good question. I think we're pretty good about preemptively checking inventory and making sure we have enough. Paper towels is one thing we do run out of more often than we should. I just heard that yesterday.
00:36:33
Speaker
text the WhatsApp team chat is the way to do it. We're out of this next Costco trip. But I think we make enough regular trips to usually catch all the criticals quick enough. Meaning Marissa or somebody just kind of looks around for what's needed? Yeah, does a quick visual inventory. We don't track it well. And ideally, we don't want to be so hand to mouth that the employee in the machine shop
00:37:03
Speaker
notices that a common item like the bulk paper towels is, is empty. Um, can't have that, you know? Yes. The visual inventory, I think is something we could probably do better at in our, at our lunch yesterday. I mentioned, um, the kind of,
00:37:19
Speaker
motivation around what I'm doing with days off in the shop as well as just our general desire of lean in the sense of it just makes what we do happier, more intelligent. And Scott, one of our interns who's back for Christmas had sort of mentioned that it's been difficult to track some things should be Adam and Lex. And I've been pretty emphatic about like, no, we're not adding brawny paper towels into Lex.
00:37:42
Speaker
Because it just doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't work a lot. But what he had the idea of, which is great, is we now have a shared Google Sheet. And that can be just a shared shopping list for stuff like that. And then the link for it is going to go out in the weekly email. So people kind of have a reminder of that. That's good. Because otherwise, Google Sheets get lost, I've noticed. Totally agree. That's why I'm not a digital fan.
00:38:12
Speaker
And then that allows me, Yvonne, or Serena to handle buying it. That person can then also then wipe the sheet when they do buy it. And it avoids the noise of like, you know, two days ago, somebody walked up to me while I'm doing something and was like, Hey, can we run this like that? Yep, yep. That's this is not the time to tell me that because I can't do anything about it.
00:38:37
Speaker
I need to be more deliberate and accountable around removing myself from procurement or purchasing, whichever one you would call it. I don't mind if I'm at Home Depot picking stuff up, but it can't be the case that I'm the person that does it. It just happens if I am there, great.
00:38:54
Speaker
That is all good. What I don't like about it was this morning, somebody was like, hey, we need gloves. I like the ones that go a little bit higher. And I'm like, do you mean like dishwashing gloves? Do you need latex disposable gloves? And so I still think there's probably something to be said for better. Actually, this will be one of my days off in the shop projects, putting the supply rack area with a
00:39:17
Speaker
empty box that's taped to the areas that we can see what it looks like. And then we can have a QR code or a link for at least some of the items, the simple greens, and so forth. Because I'm sure you've noticed too, like, we get into the habit of liking what we're used to. And I like these gloves, I like the black gloves that are, you know, nine mil thick, not 13 mil thick, or whatever the numbers are. And like, you get
00:39:44
Speaker
Consistent and used to the specific one from this vendor not from a different vendor don't change up my you know my this so the more clear you can make it at the source at the storage location like where we got it. You know what the specific numbers and stuff are yeah so whether it's in lex or not is just make it clear.
00:40:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny. We had a local company that does this service. I'm saying this because I'm anticipating some folks might reach out and say that this is available. Maybe we should still reconsider it, but the ARA company that does this service-oriented company that will come through, check your supplies every few weeks, and replenish them. And the person that came by a couple years ago was exactly your upward person. Talked the talk, brought all this stuff over, and then complete flop.
00:40:31
Speaker
Well, they quote unquote didn't get emails, didn't return voicemails, they were on vacation. And it was just like, your fire got like, this is totally doesn't match up with what you said. Well, similar, we've got a rug service that puts down runners like at the door, like carpets, basically.
Frustrations with Service Companies
00:40:48
Speaker
And, you know, they take take they come every week or two weeks, I really don't know, because I'm not in charge of the whole thing. I just see them every now and then.
00:40:56
Speaker
they bring in new rugs they're always moist and wet so we have to like we don't let them put it down we you know have them drop it off rolled up and we will lay them out on the side and let them dry out which is silly but
00:41:10
Speaker
Because our floors are so clean. If you walk over a wet rug, you're going to slip on floors. That's not good. So we dry them. Anyway, last week they delivered literally brand new rugs. And I'm like, these have never been used before. This is the nicest carpet I've ever seen in my life. Can we just keep these ones? We don't need them washed every week. We keep them pretty clean. Can you extend that? Because I want these ones. These are so nice.
00:41:36
Speaker
But also, I'm over a company making me do the work like John. If they deliver rugs, you have to store them, then unroll them, evaluate whether they've got moisture left in them. Done. No. It's a good point. Fix it or else you're no. No. Bamboo question. Sure.
00:41:57
Speaker
I want to do more dual color printing for text so that the text is highlighted or pops out. So we do this a lot where, you know, we'll print something in red with black text. Usually in Fusion, I'm just extruding the text down 5 or 10 thou. It's plenty enough to get that layer fill. I don't care about one or two layers of the color. I'm not nitpicking on it.
00:42:20
Speaker
What I annoyed with is in the bamboo slicer, and I tried to find answers on Reddit and so forth. I can't find any. If I have a flat plane, just a sketch or rectangle, and I extrude 25 characters down 5 thou or 10 thou, all of those characters are on a new plane. I can't figure out a way in the bamboo slicer to take everything at that level and change it color. I have to go fill each character.
00:42:48
Speaker
I don't know. You know what I'm talking about? I do kind of know. And I've only done it like once. I know our guy Grayson has done it quite a bit. And he brought some two-color text prints in that were flawless. They're great. And I'm like, I can't even tell. Like, how did you do this? Because I did one where I just selected the faces in the bamboo slicer. And it left gaps. And it was like, not as good. And he's like, no, you've got to extrude two separate bodies. Like, the text is one body.
00:43:16
Speaker
Features another body. I don't know but it would turn out really clean. So I'm not even trying to do that level of where the Where the let's say it's white text is all the way filled back up the 10 thou. Yeah, I just want white text like it can be Still be embossed or relieved or whatever so if anybody's listening can have pretty tips because What is your actual question? Like you want it flush to the surface
00:43:43
Speaker
So when you extrude text down or any feature, it doesn't have to be text infusion, let's say 10,000 down. I now click export to bamboo, bring it into bamboo. Into two color printed, I have to choose the fill option and fill each.
00:44:00
Speaker
floor surface. Clicking on each one. The one I did this morning was a grind go-no-go gauge for grinder about pre-grind dimensions. I had a bunch of words written and I had to go pick each one. Those are all in the same plane.
00:44:16
Speaker
I think the difference is Grayson suggested exporting two bodies like push pull your text as a body and then your model with negative text as a body and then overlay them in bamboo so that they're together and then you just select the one body as your text. I think that's how he did it and it prints way better because now it's printing to the edge of the text and then also it's like overlapping and blending.
00:44:45
Speaker
That is, I'm glad you said that. That is better if you have a lot of text characters. In my opinion though, it's still more work than need be done. Like I don't want to have to create two separate bodies. If you extrude two, you have to separate one SSTL files then import it. Like I want to print a bunch of stuff and just make it one click to, hey, turn that layer white. That's what I'm trying to figure out. But there's a good tip. If you have 75 characters, it's going to be way better to do Grace's method. Yeah, yeah. Carl. I'm going to try it. Thanks.
00:45:14
Speaker
I see what you're saying now about having one plane. Like if you have raised text, like say it's on the very top plane and it's a black object with white raised text on the top. It's that's a whole layer. It's all the same. You still got to pick each face, right? But if that was a whole body that was separate, like a second scale file, um, yeah, one click would probably do that better. Yeah. Yeah.
00:45:38
Speaker
Honestly, I haven't, I haven't used the bamboo in a while. Um, but the guys in the shop have been running with it. Eric took his, said the second bamboo that we have, he took it home and it hasn't left his home for a while. Yeah. He's like, damn it. I'm going to have to buy like another one for home because I need it back at work. Yeah. I bought Alex his own at the end of last year because we were fighting too much over it. He needs one that he can always have.
00:46:09
Speaker
Last night, I wanted to print. I've been slowly working on a Norse boy. A Norse boy. Norse man. Okay. So a 25% scaled down version of the Norseman. And I was like, I at least want to put the small amount of time to design it so that I can print it. Let me start there. So and the life came up to me a couple days ago. And he's like,
00:46:38
Speaker
Dad, I'm not going to be a boy for much longer. You ever going to make this Norse boy? It's funny. Oh, deep. That's deep right there. And I was like, okay, well, let me print one first. Let's see what it feels like, looks like. So I ended up printing it last night on my Voron V0 printer, which only has a four inch by four inch print volume.
00:46:58
Speaker
but I was able to rotate it up at a 45 and like fully kitty corner, the whole build volume and just fit it. So I printed it with some built-in supports and printed last night, came off this morning. And I'm like, this thing is sick. This thing is really cool. That's awesome. So, so yeah, I haven't used the bamboo in a while, but I got to use my worm last night, which is good. Good. That's fun. Yeah, that's fun. Anyway, what did you do today?
00:47:28
Speaker
Today, I am making parts for integral knife. OK. I am going to make the toolpath to cut the profile. And I already have most of the toolpaths for the high-feed slot. So I might just do that. Just run it and see how it works. I dovetailed 20 pieces of stock yesterday. So I have some good play stock. Got it. Is this like genop zeroing for the? Yeah, for the dovetail, yeah.
00:47:57
Speaker
So yeah, I want to see progress on that, which is good. And then I'm sort of out of touch with filming a project. Not that I can't do it, but it's like, I just haven't done it a while. And I'm like, this is a project that needs to be filmed because this is, this is what I do, right? This is what my customers need and expect. And like, I can't just hide in the corner and make it myself. Yeah, it's done. You're not.
00:48:19
Speaker
able to use this new project as an example for somebody else to step up for programming? Not right now. But yeah, bits of it maybe. But yeah, that's what I'm up to. What are you up to?
00:48:39
Speaker
Some year-end stuff. It was even just getting ready for accounting. I always like to just tackle it right now because it just gets stolen. That's just my thing.
00:48:53
Speaker
And also, I value doing the busy work right now, getting everything done that I can get done. And then in a week or two, that lets me be more reflective and contemplative about what those results were. Because it's kind of the fallacy of you can't evaluate and review this stuff you did yourself. You can if there's a little bit of time between the two. But to that, got the grinder running right now. And not much else. Just getting back this many things. It's good though. Love it.
00:49:23
Speaker
Sounds good, man. Cool. I'll see you next week. Sounds good? Okay. Have a good day. Bye.