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#214 - Entrepreneurship Advice is Relative, Scheduling Production on KERN, Shapeoko upgrades, Selling Machines, Flooding the Shop, and MORE!
209 Plays4 years ago
TOPICS:
- Just Start! Saunders and Grimsmo discuss the importance of context and relativity when it comes to business advice.
- SNAP OUT OF IT! You may not realize you're in a comfort zone!
- Work Smarter AND Harder? The age old debate.
- Intelligence Vs. Diligence & Practice Vs. Skill
- Lights out production on the KERN
- Saunders hires out the cleaning and bookkeeping!
- Odoo ERP at Seneca Woodworking & Using Data
- SMW got flooded! Delay on/off switches: https://amzn.to/3eU8ZB2
- Martin upgrades the Shapeoko into a detent track burnishing machine
- How and when to hire more people
- Grimsmo talks about the possibility of selling the Nak for a bigger Tornos!
- Oil Vs. Coolant
- Ultrasonic Cleaning
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Business and Machining Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business and Machining episode 214. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. And this is a podcast where we chat every week about the projects we're working on, the problems and issues in business, and the cool toolpaths and anything. This is the Business and Machining. Welcome. Yes.
Starting the Entrepreneurial Journey
00:00:21
Speaker
And man, I'll tell you, if you like making, if you're entrepreneurial, yes, you have to have a plan. Yes, you have to be smart about it. But darn it, go do it. Yeah, there's so much of it. It's just like, have you started yet? Right. Start. Start. John and I have had wonderfully different paths that continue to converge on so many points. It's hilarious. But I think it's a great anecdote that it can happen. There's, god, the lows have been low, but the highs have been high. Yeah, yeah.
00:00:51
Speaker
Right.
Navigating Business Challenges
00:00:52
Speaker
And you don't, I mean, that's part of this podcast is pushing ourselves, each other to, you don't always want to talk about the lows. Yeah. And sometimes we do either on mic or off mic. Um, and it helps. It's nice because you're like, Oh, I'm not alone. You've, you've dealt with that too. Okay. Right. So that's good. So I mean, encourage everybody listening to like talk to a friend, you know, find somebody else in business and be like,
00:01:18
Speaker
Yeah, it really sucks right now. And I'm broke. And what can I do? And we've all been there. And I absolutely would love to reiterate or reinforce this concept of relative perspective. John, I talk to you all the time fairly intimately. And I know how hungry you are. I know how not complacent you are. But the reality is to so many
00:01:43
Speaker
on paper, I'm just looking at a guy who is a successful business with a great culture, with a shop full of machines, with a shop period. I mean, good grief. You and I were both in garages where I remember drooling over the Haas website seven, eight years ago thinking, I don't know if I'll ever own one of those. Me too. Yeah. I remember I had a super mini mill printed and posted on my wall and I would look at it while doing jumping jacks and be like, one day, one day, one day. Right? Yeah.
Balancing Hard Work and Smart Strategies
00:02:10
Speaker
Yeah, but you got to make parts. You got to be smart about it. It's an interesting, you know, I don't have all the answers. No one will ever have all the answers. But there's this idea of hard work versus intelligence. And of course, it's a trick question. There's no one answer. But I'll tell you, of the people that I know, that I look up to, or that I want to emulate, of course, there's an element of intelligence that has to be there. But the differentiation point is their ability to work hard.
00:02:39
Speaker
Yeah, I saw an awesome thing on Instagram the other day from Andy Fazella that said,
00:02:46
Speaker
is like that whole debate between work smarter, not harder. And he goes, the people that are successful, they assume that they're already working smart. And then it's the hard work on top of that that makes the difference. It's like there is always hard work. That's not a question. And working smart is assumed at that level. And the tongue-in-cheek element of the lessons I've gone through in the last two weeks, which have been, I would almost go so far as to say,
Efficiency Through Outsourcing
00:03:18
Speaker
could have resulted in long-term, not failure, because darn it, we're not going to fail. But you need those jarring moments to recognize that that's the problem with being in comfort zones is you don't always realize you're in comfort zones. It's not possible to realize it. And I'll tell you, even since last week, John, we hired and had our first cleaning service at the shop. I have bookkeeping off my plate.
00:03:41
Speaker
Oh, that's new. Yeah. And I don't have the best attitude about these things. Like, for example, our bank and our accounting software, two, three, four years ago, were not compatible with multi-user accounts. And so I kind of formed this stubborn mindset of like, well, the technology is just not there. Right.
00:04:00
Speaker
Well, I logged back in, and sure enough, both offer no charge. And even if it did cost money, I'm over that. But they happen to be free. Relatively simple ways to set up appropriate accounts in terms of permission and abilities. And even the bill pay, it's great. It took me under
00:04:19
Speaker
Under four minutes, and you can designate a person to do it. You can even set the threshold of how many bills they can pay versus ones where they do all the payment, but it then pops into my feed for a final click to approve. Beautiful. Yes. Your bookkeeper is that it's not somebody in-house. It's somebody else.
00:04:43
Speaker
So I actually would have probably had somebody in house for, it's actually more bill paying right now. That's the lion's share of the time element of bookkeeping for us is every morning I have between probably two and five invoices to pay. And there's a process to how we do that right with printing them out, logging them and noting when it was paid if there was a discount on the invoice. And so actually for kind of years, my wife and I have
00:05:11
Speaker
about whether she would ever get involved in the business and she switched careers, partly due to COVID. And this was kind of one of those things where she thought, well, hey, I'll help in and start doing that. I would have had someone in house do it, but frankly, we're busy. So it really had nothing to do with the
00:05:28
Speaker
issue around financial issues. It was more just like, hey, it seems like a good way. I'm very, very cautious about any family or marital involvement. But this is also set up to where she can easily hand it off to a third party, a local accountant, somebody else in-house. No worries about that. Fantastic.
00:05:50
Speaker
Just it's progress. Yeah. It's a step in the right direction. That's it. I mean, even if it's an experiment to get it off your plate and see what it feels like, and four seconds later, you're like, yeah, it feels great. Yes. Oh, no. I mean, I wish I could bottle up that. Yeah, right. The rightness of that decision and hand and dish it out because it's new Saunders machine works product. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Entrepreneurial advice. It's just a bottle of hot air. Yeah. Yeah.
00:06:19
Speaker
No, it is tough. I mean, advice is so contextual. It only matters if you're hearing it at the right time. That's true. Very true.
Sports and Business: Practice and Improvement
00:06:26
Speaker
Yeah. But on that note of practice versus just skill, I watched that rather infamous Tiger Woods documentary.
00:06:37
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. I mean, I don't follow golf. I mean, obviously I think most people know who Tiger Woods is, but fun fact, I had no idea how good the guy was. Like first, first masters won by like 12 strokes, like first masters ever and beat the record by a record amount. Like it's, wow. I didn't realize it. And it's interesting because, um, his attitude is just, I got to keep practicing. It's practice. It's practice. It's practice. It's not, uh, they've got this God given talent and I guess some of the other golfers
00:07:08
Speaker
Like there was a commentary in the documentary that somebody else frankly had more natural talent, but he just practices more. And in the element of sports excellence, it reminds me of another phenomenal documentary, the Michael Jordan one, where it's the same thing. Just go practice. I watched part of that and it was, uh,
00:07:28
Speaker
at the end of every, no, I was reading Tim Grover's book called Relentless, fantastic book. He was Michael Jordan's coach or not coach, but like personal trainer. I don't know what the word is, but after every game, win or lose, he would go up to Michael and be like, so a five, six or seven.
00:07:47
Speaker
And it was what time are we working out tomorrow morning? Yes. Win or lose. Doesn't matter. Love that. And it's that attitude. Even when Tiger won something, they're like, are you at the best of your game? He's like, I'm getting there, but I got to keep practice. Love it. Right? Yeah. So what's the parallel to business? I mean, can you practice business? I mean, of course. You can always realize that there's more to do, even if you're at the top of your game. I mean, I'm at the best place I've ever been at.
00:08:14
Speaker
by far, and I still have so far to go. I still feel like there's more to learn, there's more to do, and that drives
Building a Skilled Machining Company
00:08:21
Speaker
me forward. I think a lot of people could feel burdened by that, but I'm like, no, no, the world is huge. What's the equivalent of practicing free throws or dribbling or lifting weights?
00:08:34
Speaker
Practicing your craft, just making better parts, scheduling better, running the business better, profit margin, whatever you want to look at it as. Happier people, culture, more product out the door. It's everything. It's interesting because really, I am not in the business of being a machinist. I'm in the business of building a machining company. That makes sense? I would like to agree.
00:09:02
Speaker
Like you're right, but sometimes I just want to be a machinist, make cool parts. And I absolutely let myself do that, but it's kind of like, I go back up to my priority and needs and roles, and then I can sometimes step out of that and go do, because yes, it's a great example of do you own your business or does it own you? And a lot of that was the last month of work,
00:09:27
Speaker
of offloading some of this stuff and recognizing it was a, I think I took too much pride in the concept of bootstrapping and not realizing why there's a point in time where you need to let go.
00:09:43
Speaker
You step back and you go, why are we here? And what do I need to continue doing to make sure we continue forward? And you're right. My role here is not to be a machinist. It's to grow a company of skilled, awesome people who can solve problems and make great product and keep the customers happy and keep innovating. I have parts in all of those.
00:10:11
Speaker
It's mostly my job to make sure it all happens. Yes. Yes. On that note, what
Maximizing Machine Productivity
00:10:19
Speaker
have you been up to? I posted on Instagram this morning that the current was still running when our first employee came in this morning. That's awesome. That's insane. Yeah. I was like, I texted him. I was like, I didn't even calculate how long it was going to run for. I just kept throwing parts at it and kept scheduling pallets. I was like, yeah, I could do three of those, but let's do six of those and just see if it still works.
00:10:40
Speaker
and work great. And if I had more to schedule, it would be running for days. And I'm getting there. It's amazing. Yeah. Remind me how many palaces it has? It's got 80. Oh my god. It's got 25 big ones and 55 little ones. And I'm using both now. It's great. It's insane. I'm really finding it, struggle is the wrong word, but I'm finding it interesting to schedule jobs, to schedule work.
00:11:07
Speaker
It's not something I've been ever been very good at, especially for milling. But it's like, you know, I get to the end of the night and I'm like, okay, I want this thing to run all night. What can I run tonight? Okay, I got to make like, I've, for the Norseman pallets, I have to make like 30 clamps and I've got them all programmed and you just schedule it. I've got two vices so I can make two every night. So I'm like, well, I'll just make a few more of those, a few more of those, you know, what else am I scheduling?
00:11:34
Speaker
You know, rough out some tombstones. Okay, do that. Rough out some little palettes, make some lock bar inserts, do this. And I have to wrap my head around the whole picture of what I need and what is possible to make and what I have materials for and everything. And it's a nice little challenge. And then you come back in the morning and, you know, most of the time you're like, good parts, sweet. Or sometimes there's a little coolant alarm or, you know, a tool broke or something.
00:12:01
Speaker
If it's just we're having this debate, if it's just one off or it's internal like fixturing tooling stuff, like once you get it done, you're generally not going to be right. I would just buckle down and get it done. And I had this debate, like I said, this week.
00:12:20
Speaker
We are caught up. It is, John, firing on all cylinders. We are just, it feels absolutely great. And in hindsight, it was a sort of a debate about how much did we, I'm not going to sit here and reverse analyze it, but
00:12:37
Speaker
This came up in the context of talking with another friend about scheduling. Just what you were talking about. How long do things take? How much should I have done? And I'm kind of like, look, if you're in a place where you just need to get stuff done, go make parts. Go get these things cranked through. Just hustle, put your head down, make parts.
00:12:52
Speaker
And then be willing to flip the switch to doing a data driven forecasted like, as you're looking forward to pens and rasks and knives and all that, then you want to use intelligence. But sometimes you're just like, Hey, get get these things made. I'm not that was not the time to go open Excel. Yep, yep, absolutely. And I mean, in a perfect scenario, the machine is running. And then you're like, Okay, now what? And at that moment is when you can schedule like, it's like I look at every day as a
00:13:21
Speaker
and as not forever. Like if today's the buckle down day, then tomorrow I can focus and improvise. And like, there's going to be another day. So I will work hard today and I will continue to work hard tomorrow. And as long as I'm making progress towards my goals, then I'm winning. Yeah. We're going to call that the Amish method. Cause he's the one that's like, Hey, I just get a 3d adaptive lay down, go throw it on the machine. And then I program the rest of the part while it's running. Yeah. Love it.
00:13:52
Speaker
Yeah, it came up that conversation was with Ryan over at Santa Code working and it's actually super exciting.
ERP Systems and Business Management
00:14:00
Speaker
He is in the process of implementing his own Odo ERP and we heavily considered it and didn't do it for a couple of good reasons. I don't regret not doing it because one of them was also where there were no real
00:14:18
Speaker
examples that they could point us to of folks that are using it. Actually, I think your acquaintance is up, Modius. Modus, yeah. Modus, excuse me. They are using it, but they also, I think, pointed to some of the shortcomings. Probably not worth diving into the details now, but I'm excited that Ryan is using it or starting to use it in
00:14:39
Speaker
The ability of that, it's also showing me, I could totally see us implementing that or adding it, whether it's alongside Lex or we'll figure that out. He's like, yeah, you can have something set up to where it knows how many parts you're going to run on the laser and you just hit start and then when you're done, stop and it automatically starts building out time studies. And it even has, oh man, what was he saying? It has AI built into it to start doing predictive analysis type stuff, which okay.
00:15:07
Speaker
That starts to make you realize, oh my gosh, this is way more than a well orchestrated database. This is helping me see things in my business that I didn't even realize. Right. And that's when it becomes super valuable. That's cool. I wonder about things like that because the classic phrase is garbage in, garbage out. And it's how you look at it and how you analyze the data and use it that makes it valuable. Having more data is not always a good thing.
00:15:33
Speaker
Right. But it's also a fallacy to think whatever data happens to be put in front of you is going to bias what you think. You may think you're selling a lot, or you may think you need a lot of bearing cages, but you actually need screws or whatever.
00:15:49
Speaker
Her one had that. Good. As businesses get bigger and more complex, you don't realize how much junk you have to take care of. You have to manage, whether it's end mill inventory or parts inventory or things you're making or things you're buying or whatever. There's a lot of stuff. I might also feel like it's good to push you to not be the one
00:16:12
Speaker
leading the scheduling efforts and things, but rather have somebody else go look at your sales data and time studies and ERP data and machine availability and then kind of pitch you on what you know, because you're going to be you're smart, you're going to be better off though, reviewing it and thinking, then you lose that ability when you're also the one who created it.
00:16:33
Speaker
That's a good point. That's a very good point. It reminded me about her, Billy. Oh, it reminded me when I did the Gossheim tournament tour at their factory or headquarters and they had, I mean, it's a just like monstrosity of an amazing thing. It's their, one of their machining centers, maybe more than one combined with their HS flex. So it has both palette loading and material loading and gripper change robots. Like it's the Rolls Royce of solutions and.
Automation and Predictive Manufacturing
00:17:02
Speaker
they had it set up to integrate with ERP systems so that it can actually do either predictive manufacturing, like knowing what needs to be happened relative to current inventory levels or just in time, like order comes in on the next job, switches out the chuck, switches out the material and runs that job.
00:17:21
Speaker
Right. That's cool. Right. Can you imagine the current? You could do this, John. The current sees that saga parts tips got a little bit low or whatever, and you don't know that. You don't need to know that. Just you have a threshold and then all of a sudden it adds those into the schedule. You can do you can do this. Holy cow. And your job then just to become keep keep material loaded for all scenarios.
00:17:45
Speaker
Keep tools happy, and then the machine chooses what to run next. All right. That is very possible. It's not even like break it down. Keep it simple. Just do a couple of key parts or a couple of parts that have longer lead times. Or like for us, it feels so good to get caught up because now if we don't like something, OK, no big deal. Like we can fix it or scrap it, you know? Yeah, it helps you iterate faster. Yeah. Yeah, it was good. On a bad note,
Safety Measures in the Shop
00:18:14
Speaker
Yeah. We flooded the shop.
00:18:19
Speaker
User error, I'll leave it at that. No one got hurt, no equipment or really got damaged, but it was a wake up call. And my PSA, so we have IoT flood sensors. Keep them if you want them, use them if you want them. Nothing beats dumb sensors. We picked up four of them. They're like 10 bucks each on Amazon. They take a nine volt battery. They make an annoyingly loud noise. Now, of course, that doesn't do any good if no one's here, but
00:18:48
Speaker
I'm not looking for the perfect solution. I'm looking at a solution that statistically may most likely help us avoid this. And in the event of human error, humans would have been here to hear it. So anyway, we started putting this around the shop and I would highly encourage anybody to do that. And on that note, I struggle with IoT stuff because
00:19:08
Speaker
You know, one thing goes wrong. One thing's not talking to the other thing. One hub goes down. The sensor, you know, my phone is set to mute at night because you know what? I'm hanging out with my family. I don't want to, it's just not a great solution. It could compliment it, but go get some manual flood sensors. So water or coolant? Water. Better. Better than coolant all over, but. Yeah. Yeah. So what happened? Somebody left a ball valve open.
00:19:35
Speaker
Okay. From where? I'm just trying to picture how we can all avoid it. No, no, totally. And it's embarrassing because it's such a human error, but we have pecs run throughout our shop that feeds
00:19:50
Speaker
water to the machines. And that can either be straight water to top off or instead of opening the PEX valve, you can basically quick plug into the mix-o-tron with a coolant barrel that we wheel around to do actual coolant top off. The idea is you're no longer transporting the water yourself. The water's at the machine. And the problem is the ball valve, I could just see somebody yelling at me for how dumb this was, but the ball valves
00:20:18
Speaker
just feed a PEX line straight into the coolant tank and you could just open it and walk away. Okay. And that's what happened. So 250 gallon IBC tote got emptied into a hundred gallon tank that was almost already full or, you know, partway full right when we ended, we left for the day. Okay. Yeah. Did, uh, so you emptied the IBC tote. Did the motor keep turning? So the pump, I wasn't here. Um, somebody called me.
00:20:48
Speaker
Um, I don't remember. I think the bladder valve on our well pump was trying to work. That was another thing I thought about like putting that on a, some sort of a breaker or fuse to have it stop. But ultimately that's a second degree problem. And in fact, I don't even care if I blow the motor up at this point, like it's more early. There's a fire risk, I guess, but the goal is to not flood the shop.
00:21:12
Speaker
Yeah. Well, like our transfer pump is like 900 bucks or something. I'd rather not burn it up. Oh, me too. But somebody suggested to me a few months ago to have a low level sensor in the tank so that if it's going to be empty for whatever reason, the pump doesn't keep spinning. So it turns off. And I was like, you're right. I should do that. And I haven't done it yet. But that is a good idea.
00:21:37
Speaker
Yeah, none of these are bad ideas. I just am always hesitant on all of these crazy, all these things sort of thing. PSA as well though, we just found these delay on or delay off switches.
Energy Efficiency in Machining
00:21:52
Speaker
I'm not sure this is exactly what we would want to solve this problem, but we have filter mists on our machines, the filter units. I don't want them running all day because sometimes the machine isn't running for an hour or two.
00:22:04
Speaker
So, but they, the manufacturers do not want you cycling them on and off like with cycle start because it could be, yeah, it could be a little bit, I think too much on off, whatever. Some of our machines are like that. Maybe it's not a big deal. Royal tells you not to.
00:22:19
Speaker
So the perfect solution, I think, is this. It's effectively like a debouncer or a delay off. So it can set from 10 seconds up to a day. But basically, I haven't set to 10 minutes. So we now have it. We modified our post with a Haas M code on the IO of the Haas machine. So when you start a program, it turns it on. And then when the program ends, it turns it off with a five-minute delay. And so if you happen to start writing the machine again, it never turns off. Cool.
00:22:50
Speaker
When the Haas turns it off, your little board adds another five minutes of power to it or something. Yeah, exactly. That's pretty good. The board sees that it should be off, but it doesn't actually turn it off until the delay you do. That's cool. The idea with the pump that we were talking about to avoid flooding was the pump should never run for more than a certain amount of time.
00:23:11
Speaker
unless we're like doing a brand new machine fill, in which case you could go override it. But I was thinking about some sort of a sensor or device that's dumb that just says you can't run for more than 10 minutes and then you're off until somebody come in and resets you. I think I have the solution because I literally looked into this two days ago and I ordered a bunch of stuff from Amazon.
00:23:34
Speaker
The way we have it is we have PEX line thrown throughout the shop. We have the Mixatron on the wall, so it's pumping mixed coolant, like pre-mix to each machine, which plus or minus, it works fine for us. And then we have a ball valve at each machine or a cooling gun.
00:23:49
Speaker
So some of the machines we use the gun to wash down and add premix. But on the current, I just have a ball valve and you turn it on and you walk away and you better not forget. Yeah. Um, so I set a phone, I set a timer on my phone five minutes and it beeps at me every five minutes. And then I go check it and still a little bit more, but I'm like, I need a button. Boom. That's like, give me five minutes of coolant. And your buddies made that raspberry pie, that university, right? Yes. High school.
00:24:15
Speaker
And I was thinking about that. I didn't like it at the time because I was set on the idea of float switches and just automatically filling itself. But the five-minute timer, 10, 15, 20 minute, whatever, is kind of simple and brilliant. And I was going to have something built, Arduino or something. But then I found these boards on Amazon that are just like a timer board. Yeah. And it's going to be great. So that'll come in in the next week or two. And I'll put it together. And they're cheap.
00:24:44
Speaker
And I got a couple of them and we'll see if they work. But yeah, you said it, I figured 15 minutes will probably be a decent time. And you just walk by and you're like, boop, 15 minutes, and then it should work. And then you come back later, you're like, yeah, I still need a little bit more. You're doing it with like a sprinkler valve? A solenoid.
00:25:02
Speaker
Okay, yeah, that's fine. There's a pretty well-developed world around gardening sprinkler stuff. Yeah, I looked into that too, but it's very time-based, like at 4 a.m., turn on my sprinklers. No, no, I just mean the solenoid that's built for this sort of thing. You can honestly use the same thing we just bought where basically you hit a button, it turns it on, and then it immediately turns it back off subject to whatever delay you have dialed in.
00:25:28
Speaker
It could be, actually, you'd want it to be a normally closed thing, so if you lose power, it just reseals itself. Yeah, exactly. The only thing we thought, we talked about that, it's probably the right way.
00:25:39
Speaker
The thing I don't love about it is that means you have to have one 10 everywhere for that, which not a big deal, but I was just like, man, I wish you can't, um, we don't talk like there's not a way to solve all of these problems in every scenario, every situation. And so the reality is sometimes we have to just realize if you do something, you need to stay with it, period. Like, you know, you don't leave, um, you don't leave a forklift idling outside and hop off, like, no, stay with it or turn, you know what I mean? Like, yeah.
00:26:07
Speaker
It's a mentality around why are we trying to multitask this? If we need the tool to top off, fill it up and stay with it. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, I mean, we struggle with that too. It's boring to stand there for 15 minutes and, you know, squeeze who coolant through the gun into the machine. Why does it take 15 minutes? How big is the tank?
00:26:26
Speaker
big or we don't have a lot of flow. But like at the old shop, we used to basically manually mix coolant into a little bucket and then have a little aquarium pump on a garden hose and spray it into the machine. It would take a while and it's like boring and you're there on your phone and it's wasted time. So I'm mostly happy with the new system and we're just improving it, getting it better and better.
00:26:49
Speaker
Yeah. You're right. Basically, the idea is assume you will fail. Assume you'll get distracted. I'll have to run out the door for something. For sure. What happens then? Yeah.
00:27:07
Speaker
So last night, my buddy Martin came over with our upgraded Shape-O-Co. Oh. And this is now our detent track burnishing machine that we talked about a couple weeks ago.
Creative Solutions with Shapeoko Machine
00:27:21
Speaker
And yeah, so basically, I gave him my Shape-O-Co, and he came up with a plan and put a little planetary gear motor in place of the router head. So it spins at 720 RPM.
00:27:35
Speaker
And yesterday morning, Pierre made some brass tips with the perfect diameter that go into this arbor. And Martin put it all together and brought it over last night. We did some testing. And he said, I could have posted code from Fusion, but instead I wrote a Python script and made it all variables. And if you want to change the arc angle or the RPM or the IPM or anything, it's pretty easy. So we love it. You're such a nerd. I love it.
00:28:01
Speaker
So we test it out and it needs some tweaking, but it's great, great, great first results. That's awesome. Very happy with it. So now we're trying to figure out how to locate a good zero position on a Shapeboco and make it accurate. Well, that was going to be my question.
00:28:21
Speaker
Certainly anything you do on Kerns, Nakamura's, Morey's is going to be much more locationally repeatable and accurate than a shape-o-co. So are you just burnishing like a runway that the ball is going to be so okay? So it doesn't matter if the shape-o-co is off of it. No, but we want that runway to be where the ball is, where the ball is scraping the track and not overrun it or underrun it or anything like that. So it's going to take some tuning.
00:28:46
Speaker
But yeah, we figured out a way to align it perfectly over the pivot bore of each blade. So that's like a good zero position. And it's kind of a self-validating way to do it so that we know it's going to be fine. And that way, your reference is fine. So if your arc angle needs to be bigger or smaller or whatever, you can tweak the code, the Python script to do that.
00:29:10
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. Just have it reset, like I'm just trying to think about, steppers are great, but belts slip or belts wear stretch. So maybe is there a way of having it like, basically don't compound an error. So basically have it rehome or reset every time it goes back after every blade. Depending on what's more accurate, if the little home switches are actually accurate or not. Oh, they'll be much more repeatable than if it loses steps, it will continue those lost steps or build up on them. Sure. That's a good point.
00:29:40
Speaker
But that's awesome. We'll figure it out. Yeah. It's cool. It's coming together. So we've seen these Delrin fixtures, like one inch Delrin is really heavy, actually, comparatively. And so we've seen those on the U-Mac a week or two ago, and they work great.
00:29:56
Speaker
And I was like, okay, how do I machine these fixtures using only the tools that I use to make foam? Okay, I can make this work. So we did. Do you remember, and I'm guessing that you do, but it's a great trivia question for our audience. Do you remember how Kern
00:30:12
Speaker
located the human hair on the machine because you can't probe it. Do you remember how they located it so they could drill a hole through it? Yep. They milled the slot and then they super glued it in place. Bingo. That is the simplest. I'm disappointed with that answer, but it's so good. But is that the answer for your shape of a machine? Well, in what sense? A machine, a Delrin locating block that you're a fixture then slides into? We kind of did and it was way off.
00:30:42
Speaker
Well, so that you need to, you got to build confidence in the foundation system rather than chase downstream there. I mean, yeah. Right. Watching what Vince can do on a shape book. It was amazing. This is good. Exactly. On that note, we're good. Yeah. We need, we need that confidence. Absolutely. Yeah.
00:30:59
Speaker
No, we're, I mean, we're just, yes, yes, crushing it here. I mean, operationally, like making good decisions. We're switching offices, moving space around, getting better streamlined, thinking we don't make spaghetti maps, but thinking about where are we running back and forth for no reason. It's hard to think about, though.
00:31:16
Speaker
It is, right? And it's not
Optimizing Workspace and Staffing Needs
00:31:19
Speaker
easy. Thinking about where to put material and racking in space, it's just not easy. In that aspect, we are very much out of space because it's not like I have a giant area where we can put racking with forklifts and maneuver it around. So we are
00:31:36
Speaker
I know I could benefit from somebody more experienced in this than me, and I don't have that right now. So we've got to figure that out or just be smart about it. But no, there's a learning curve. But what we're doing is we're moving Vince into Julie's old office, which is its own. If you remember, and it's been a while since you were here, it's like we used to call it the video room.
00:31:55
Speaker
But it's a good size office and Vince is going to have like his little proven cut office within an office there. So all the hobby machines and some of the Tormach machines where he can just go do what he needs to do on that stuff, which I love because it kind of encapsulates, you know, we're Saunders machine works, but we have proven cut is kind of within that empire. If that makes sense. I love it. So Vince, I know he was kind of part time or remote for a little while, but he's, he's on board now. Yes. Yes. Yes. That's exciting. Yep. It's great.
00:32:24
Speaker
Absolutely great any progress on the What did you want to call it like a marketing position? Yeah, I'll tell you next week. Okay. Okay. That's good. But yes Yeah, which is great. Here's the question Do you think about I mean obviously we try to think about the future but do you think about growth in terms of like more staff in terms of like
00:32:50
Speaker
not just onesies and twosies, but like maybe in a couple of years we could actually be a, you know, we're going to need this role, this role. We're going to need three more machinists. We're going to need, or just kind of take it as it comes. More of the latter, but first off, we still need another machinist. I thought I had a great lead on somebody who was going to have to relocate. We were kind of all set to start that conversation and then they said that they were going to not relocate. They wanted to stay home, which
00:33:18
Speaker
better they made that decision then. But we need another machinist, if anyone's listening. And we still need somebody to step in and kind of shop operations, everything from helping fill orders to pack orders, unload material to
00:33:35
Speaker
It could be as easy and simple as that to be more sophisticated around order planning, forecasting, data stuff. But we need help there. So I'm focused on those two, and then the marketing role as well, which knock on wood. Do I think about adding five or 10 more people? No. Yeah, you don't think about it like that. I don't agree.
00:33:54
Speaker
Yeah. But, you know, hey, we're actually talking to every four or nine about going back up sooner because those guys are like unicorns, like how they're already cranking out parts on almost every new machine is mind blowing. Yeah. And so we may go try to film that shop tour update like now. We were planning on doing it this summer. But I want to ask John and hear more about, you know, they are, I believe, at about 20 people and now have people that are
00:34:22
Speaker
to be blunt. My understanding is John has somebody else who handles the hiring and staffing around that.
Company Culture and Identity
00:34:28
Speaker
I don't mean to make this sound impersonal, but I think there are people that are now part of that community and story and company that John doesn't know. It's such a weird concept. I don't want to misrepresent that or make him sound like a cold business or he's an awesome guy, but I think they've reached that point where
00:34:46
Speaker
They've got people joining and it's a great culture. Gosh, there's one thing I continue to see. It's that it's the C word at your company. And I try to at ours. It's something I asked John Point Blank about because I'm not you know, I'm excited and outward with you, but I'm very quiet here in the shop. Yeah. And he is as well. And their culture is not like that. Their culture is a little bit loud. It's a little bit prideful and.
00:35:12
Speaker
It's, but, but, you know, he is not a cheerleader. I am not a cheerleader for, you know, but Mimi, like just, you know, what we do at Saunders is the best. Everyone should be proud to be here. Like Ra-Ra has every, like, I'm not like that. But it's almost like mentality. We think we should be, but it doesn't work for us. Yes. Yes. You know, he, yeah. Um,
00:35:38
Speaker
I also want to do a better job though of when folks here have that to promote and foster that. So like I realized again, like we should all be having more Saunders machine works, t-shirts, swags, jackets, like that kind of stuff. And it's, there's no uniform dress code, but like, darn it. It's all here for employees. Wear it.
00:35:56
Speaker
with pride if you want to. Yeah, exactly. If you show up in a Mario tool shirt, you're not going to get turned away, but like, where, you know, where's Sonder stuff? That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And we do here too, you know, we kind of joke every, every day at noon, we have a group meeting and every now and then, like everybody's wearing the same hoodie. And then there'll be the one guy wearing the not graceful hoodie and he gets teased. It's awesome though. Yeah. And it just, it just works. Like I'm wearing, I'm wearing a Wilhelmin shirt today that they sent me.
Considering Machine Investments
00:36:26
Speaker
I didn't know you bought a Wilhelmin. I did not buy a Wilhelmin, but I was looking into it. Hey, John, you cut out there. I didn't hear the word yet. Yeah, I think about it. But no, that CJ has one. And I know I got an inside source to like somebody who owns one. I think about it, but.
00:36:42
Speaker
Hey, can I publicly ask you to elaborate on a comment you made to me on WhatsApp about this idea of Swiss, Swissish? Yeah, absolutely. I think I made that comment and I haven't checked our group WhatsApp since. Lawrence just got a new job. You can ignore it all. Exactly.
00:36:59
Speaker
So your, your comments last week, um, about Swiss's, um, got me thinking just curious about, I mean, I, I know we're going to get another tornos at some point because they're awesome and they work perfect for us. Do we get another identical one or do we get the next size up? And then it kind of hit me after your chat was like, should we sell the Nakamura?
00:37:24
Speaker
and then get a bigger Swiss to replace it. And it just kind of like smacked me in the face, that thought, and I've been playing with it for about a week now. And I'm not sure where I'm at, but it's really fun to think about. And as we talk about every now and then, put your investor mindset in. If somebody comes into your shop with a bunch of money and says, I'm going to make you guys rockin'.
00:37:45
Speaker
one of the obvious choices to make, and is that one of them? So I came into the shop on Sunday, and I literally sat down on a stool in the middle of the shop, quiet shop, and I just looked around. And I was like, OK, I'm that guy right now. What's going to happen here for this to get cracking? Because it's ripe for the taking. And so either we get a third laid, another Swiss, or we sell the neck and get a big Swiss to replace it.
00:38:15
Speaker
I think the Swiss could out produce it the way that we're using it. You know, the nightmare is a great lathe, but we're not using it right. We don't make the parts for it. We don't have a bar feeder for it. It'll cost us like four grand to put through sub coolant, which is something I want, but like to wash parts during a transfer or something. And I haven't done it yet because it's four grand. I don't want to spend, but I want it. And like, if we got a Swiss, it would just come with it.
00:38:44
Speaker
You know, the beauty of backseat driving with other people's money, you already answered the question, John. It's unequivocally a yes that you should add a second tournos. My perhaps humble advice would be don't think of it as binary. Get the second tournos, larger tournos in.
00:39:01
Speaker
dual track it while you continue to run the NOC. And then once it may transition some of those parts over, then you can still sell the NOC. Or if you want to keep it at some point, fine. But did you make a quote unquote mistake four years ago? It doesn't matter. It's gotten you to where you are. What's that? That's a good way to look at it. It doesn't matter.
00:39:20
Speaker
Yeah. You and I joke about this. Should you have bought a Swiss? It doesn't matter. You absolutely know how to run a Swiss now. Of course, there's risk because you've got a lot of work into that knock on dialing in parts and programs and routines and tooling, but it'll just help you get the Swiss up and running it quicker.
Optimizing Machining Processes
00:39:39
Speaker
Go ahead. We only run three parts on the Nakamura right now. That's it. There's nothing else we need to make on it. Two of them are at Cakewalk.
00:39:47
Speaker
Um, and then we make the clip, but even now Angelo and Pierre are rushing. They're like, okay, we'll make sliders for three days and then we'll make clips for a week. And then we've got to get back to sliders and then next week, we're going to have to make tubes. And if we had another lathe to offload some of the parts, the NAC at the moment could just run clips every day, which would allow us to make more pens every month. Um, or we put the clips on a Williman or on the curtain or something. Um,
00:40:14
Speaker
That's honestly the answer is the clips need their own machine, whether it's a Willy or whatever, and then you probably aren't at the volume yet to have a Swiss for each part, but that's probably part of your roadmap, John. Harry 419 is a great parallel story because they were running their zero presses on a Haas UMC 500, and they're now running them on a grove.
00:40:36
Speaker
there's nothing wrong with the UMC 500, especially for the price point, but it's just better on a growth. I mean, it's literally like four times the price, but you're at that point. There's nothing, I like it because when people think Haas
00:40:50
Speaker
And then other machine tool comparison, they kind of have that like industry reputation comparison, like all Haas, fanboy, whatever, going from a knocker, which is a phenomenal machine tool to a Swiss is a lot more of a lateral move. But the reality is it would run, John would run circles around your knock.
00:41:07
Speaker
Yeah, it makes so many more parts in a day. And with automated bar feeder, better tolerances. Better finishes, better tool life, better coolant options. Yep. I'm not excited about oil versus coolant, but we're used to it now with the current tornos. Oil is fine. It's just annoying.
00:41:25
Speaker
it's, it gets everywhere. It spills on the floor, you slip in, you got to wind exit up every day, drips, but, but it doesn't evaporate. And it basically lasts forever. And there's no foaming issues. And there's there's downsides to cool it too. I'm just used to it. Yeah. And you're not was cool. Sorry, was oil an option in the Kern? Yes. And I vehemently said no. Okay, that's the more of their default option. Um,
00:41:56
Speaker
Maybe. I'm curious how many other customers run oil versus coolant. I wouldn't be surprised if it's close to 50-50. A lot more than your traditional machine tool that usually has a cutting foot. Oil has a lot of benefits, but a lot of downsides too. On the Swiss, it's fine because the parts are tiny, so your carryout and your grossness is very minimal.
00:42:16
Speaker
You know, when Marv pulled off a big vice from an oily current and plopped it on his wooden tabletop and oil started spewing everywhere, I'm like, unsubscribe. This is disgusting. I'm not doing this.
00:42:29
Speaker
That explains maybe why I noticed that you perked up at CJ picking up that three stage cleaner system, which I'm guessing you don't have. No, he got a really nice ultrasonic with basically ultrasonic, hot ultrasonic, and then a hot rinse, maybe cold rinse, I'm not sure, but a flowing rinse water and then a
Advancements in Part Cleaning Technology
00:42:51
Speaker
hot air blow dry section as well. So you just move the bin from one to the next. I'm like, that's sweet, clever. So we have Crest ultrasonics right now, and they're great. But they don't have kind of a built in rinse or hot dry section. Got it. So almost every day, there's parts, you know, laid out on a paper towel, letting them air dry. Yeah, it works fine. But
00:43:12
Speaker
That's my new pushing myself and you. When I walk into area 419, I don't see that. I see the new crest that has the three bin. I'm not picking on you. Sometimes it's like I'd be willing to buy it. I just don't know what to buy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you know about, I think they call it vapor degassing, vapor. You know about that? Degreasing? Yeah, I don't know. But it's like a three-stage ultrasonic system. And then the last stage has
00:43:40
Speaker
acetone or some sort of chemical that the vapors dry the parts off. Didn't orange have that for my tour there three years ago? Maybe. It was like a dishwasher style multi-stage setup that in the last part included
00:43:59
Speaker
I want to say it's a steam, dry, clean something. Yeah. And I don't, I don't, I guess I don't know how it works, but it uses some sort of chemical vapor and the parts come off clean and spotless and dry and amazing. And that's cool.
00:44:15
Speaker
Yeah. All of a sudden, I want to go to IMTS and walk around the cleaning section that nobody else goes to. Yeah. Oh, I went to it, but I didn't know enough at the time. Right, right. Even at IMTS or even the CMTS, the smaller one, there's usually many ultrasonic companies that show up, which is great, but it makes them a commodity. There's so many. I don't know what to choose. Yeah. It'd be a good conversation to have next time.
00:44:42
Speaker
about things because we're just using the Amazon ultrasonic sometimes. Sometimes we don't even use it, but cool. It's not cool. It's not that bad to get off. Yeah, we have two Amazon ones and two crests, I think, and we still use the Amazon ones. I'm kind of surprised to hear that the guys still use them, but they work well. The crest is much more powerful. Like we use the example, if you put your finger in the Amazon one, it tingles a little bit.
00:45:05
Speaker
If you put your finger in the crest one up to the knuckle, like you'll last half a second and you'll be crying. Really? Yeah. It's, it like vibrates the bones in your body. No kidding. Yeah. Oh, that makes me really not like my Amazon ones now. Cause I don't even know if my hands in it. That's funny. Yeah. Good. Um, all right. I should go. We have stuff to do. Sounds good, man. Awesome. Have a good week. Yeah. Bye. Bye.