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Business of Machining - Episode 134
217 Plays6 years ago
LET'S DO THIS THANG. If you're a parking lot circler, share the podcast for a chance to WIN!
Submission Deadline: Tuesday September 17th, 2019. Winner announced on September 20th Episode!
Hints of an upcoming lathe purchase have been gracing these podcast episodes for some time. Saunders asks Grimsmo for advice on the right number of radial and axial live tool holders AND which machine features to purchase or skip to maximize utility.
Holding tight to visions of automation, they discuss benefits and drawbacks of CAPTO holders, bar feeders, and palletization.
European Manufacturing Philosophy - Investing without Hesitation? Visiting machine shops isn't just about the cool machines and parts. Company values, cultures, and philosophies make themselves known. Saunders reflects on his tour of 3D Tech Draw and one striking observation spanning factories in Europe; namely the lack of hesitation to make long term investments in tooling or automation.
Watch 3D Tech Draw Tour | http://bit.ly/2m2On09
NEW MISSION If you're headed to EMO (the world's largest trade show) this year, you have an assignment: FIND GRIMSMO'S EROWA AND STICKER BOMB IT!
STOP THINKING AND DO IT! Our minds love to make up unrealistic emotions about the items on our to-do lists. Often, DOING the task is rarely as bad as THINKING about it. Speaking of to-do lists, could a deliberately drawn, small box beside the task lead us to be more deliberate and methodical?
Self Imposed Deadlines - You're NOT REAL, MAN! Deadlines are a necessary part of being a business owner. The question is: How can you create deadlines that you believe in, that give you the same sense of urgency and dedication that an outside force of accountability can produce?
ERP TIME Saunders makes the mental decision to move forward on implementing ERP. He continues to gather information, specific needs, and arrange meetings with end users to determine which system will work best for SMW.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Promotion
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business on Machining Episode 134. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. Good morning, my friend. Good morning. How are you? I am excellent today. Good. I am as well, actually. Good.
00:00:20
Speaker
So what's going on? Uh, let's do this. Um, you and I do this as a, uh, podcast to help each other, but then, uh, you know, for the past two plus years to try to help inspire, uh, or just share, just give folks an insight to the nuggets. Uh, and, uh, on the spirit of sharing, let's encourage, uh, the folks that are listening to spread the word. And so.
00:00:46
Speaker
What John and I thought about was rather than have it be limited to something like just an iTunes review or something on Spotify, because there's all different ways of sharing with social media and Instagram and LinkedIn and iTunes reviews and all that, and we're not trying to gain the system with any specific thing. We just want to encourage folks to share.
00:01:06
Speaker
Share it however you want and then email us a screenshot or some other convincing evidence of you having shared it to businessofmachiningatgmail.com. We'll throw that in the description of the podcast as well.
00:01:21
Speaker
hopefully for simple enough, businessofmachiningatgmail.com. Just send us your screenshot and we will then draw a random winner from that and that winner can do what we did last time, which was what we had like kind of a half an hour sit down video conference call and kind of a private ask me anything, talk about, you can ask Grimsmo all the questions you want about Lays, you can ask me all the questions you want about Mills. You don't know? No, whatever, just kind of pay it forward and share and have fun with it.
00:01:50
Speaker
I love it. It was really fun to do last time. And it's a unique experience because you and I get this kind of private conversation weekly. But to bring somebody else into the mix who has lots of questions makes it a really, really interesting dynamic.
00:02:05
Speaker
Totally right it was fun and I was it's a little bit it was humbling but also cool to see how excited folks were so this will air on September 6 so we'll give everyone all next week and We'll say we'll call it Tuesday September 17th will be the quote-unquote deadline we'll draw a winner and announce it on probably the 20th or something of September if that work Love it
00:02:33
Speaker
Perfect.
Tooling Discussions and Experiences
00:02:34
Speaker
I'm making a note to myself. Good. Are you ready for me to blow your mind? Blow it. What's up? I need advice on how many live tool lathe holders ready on Axial to get. Now why on earth would you? Interesting. Okay. I can play with this. Um,
00:03:00
Speaker
Do you have parts in mind or are you tooling up for generic? It's going to be generic. Yeah, I have a couple of parts in mind for sure, but we are more job shopy than we are production. I don't have a Norseman or something. Some of the parts that we are thinking we would run are pretty simple two or three axis lathe type parts.
00:03:25
Speaker
And I sort of looked at some of the parts I would have used it for in the past and boy, it seems like I could easily use two Axial and three Radial Live tools with the limitation being number one, they're expensive and number two, they look quite bulky. So I don't have a good sense of if I add too many, are they going to start creating other problems in the machine or no?
00:03:53
Speaker
Interesting. Okay, so on my Nakamura, it comes with three and three. And I bought an extra three times speeder. So then I have, I will now have four axial tools, which means pointing at the end of the part. And then three radial tools, which means pointing at the diameter, the side of the part. Yeah, right.
00:04:17
Speaker
And I definitely don't have them all mounted. I do have all of the axial tools mounted. I have all four always because I use those almost all the time. I have one radial tool mounted all the time and sometimes I'll add a second one. What's the radial that's mounted all the time? Often there'll be an eighth inch ball in there for like an outside engraving or sixteenth inch ball for like the saga Norseman engraving. Okay.
00:04:47
Speaker
little chamfers, all kinds of weird little stuff. But 90% of my live tool usage plus, like 95% is axial. Mostly milling torques or putting the shape on the outside of a Norseman pivot, making it an oval. Things like that. Okay, so what are your axial holder? What are the tools in there right now?
00:05:15
Speaker
So on the main side, changes a lot depending on what I'm trying to do. Right now it's an eighth inch chamfer mill. And I'm using that as both an end mill and then also a chamfer mill. Because we're making pivots right now, so it plunges deep and it uses the side of the flutes to mill the oval. And then it backs off a little bit and uses the chamfer to chamfer, which is great. You get two in one.
00:05:41
Speaker
And a good use of one of the 90-degree miltr hills that so often aren't used that way Yeah, like when on earth you ever use the side flutes of a mill drill never right? Yeah, so now I get to and it's really cool And then on the subside so it'll make the part it'll grab it transfer it and then it does Mills the torques with the speeder chamfers the torques sometimes will put dots in it or doing engraving and
00:06:12
Speaker
I think that's it. Interesting. Do you think you're unique? It seems like when I just look at some of the parts that we would have used it for in the past or may want to in the future, it seems to me like the fourth axis capability of doing a lot of the radio work seems more normal to me.
00:06:35
Speaker
And it's, and I'm thinking I could get by, you know, the, there's always going to be your drill tap exceptions where you, you know, for some reason you have a bolt hole pattern on the end and you're going to want to change up your ax seals. But otherwise I feel like the parts I'm looking at a three sixteenths or quarter inch end mill with a chamfer tool. I hadn't thought about using a mill drill. It wouldn't work on some of the parts because they have internal features. Um,
00:06:58
Speaker
But that kind of one-two punch of a mill and chamfer on the Axial may be enough. Yeah, or you could use a corner chamfer and mill. I think Maritool makes them. So you still get mostly a flat end mill, but you have a little chamfer. Yeah, that's a good idea. And if you're clever, you can use that chamfer as a chamfering device.
00:07:25
Speaker
Or like when we make the rask pivots, I put a flat end mill in there, but I use that flat end mill to like 3d a chamfer on this tiny little feature. Sure. Just to step it up a one time at a time. Cause I'm like, I only have one tool. I got to make this work. So, so when you buy a live tool holder, let's say axial, it only points at main or sub. You can't have a live to holder that can point both directions. They do make
Purchasing Decisions and Automation
00:07:52
Speaker
them. Okay.
00:07:54
Speaker
Yep. You don't have one, though. I don't have one, though, because my machine came with three and three. So came with six, which is amazing. Yes.
00:08:06
Speaker
and then I haven't needed to buy any more. I've wanted to buy more from a greedy perspective because I'm like, oh man, imagine if I got one of those four holders that has four tools coming off each side. You just have more setups than one go. They do, yeah. WTO makes them, MD makes them, some other companies, but they're many thousands of dollars. So who are the normal ones? Yeah. Well, these are many more thousands then. Yeah.
00:08:35
Speaker
Okay, so because I remember when I toured Lauren's shop 3d tech draw and Lauren's
00:08:42
Speaker
Two things, one, Lawrence is smart as heck, and number two, he has embraced what I've seen more commonly in Europe, which is a lack of a hesitation, a direct willingness to make long-term investments, whether it's in automation, whether it's in tooling, that I just don't see in America. And it's not a money thing. I so often want to ascribe it to being a money thing. It's not. It's just a philosophy thing.
00:09:09
Speaker
And so he has done a lot of cap toe and I don't work. I gotta go watch that video again because I don't remember cap toe on live tooling. It may well have been. I just remember cap toe on the static tooling. And I am debating what we have in the kind of proverbial shopping cart. Actually it's literally a shopping cart now on the Haas site.
00:09:31
Speaker
is an ST20Y with a, it's not a full blown dual spindle machine, but it does have a, what they call finishing sub spindle. So it can do bar fed parts, mill them on the main spindle, transfer to the sub spindle, and then parts catcher. So it'll be a pretty solid machine, I think. Absolutely. What kind of work can it actually do on the sub?
00:09:58
Speaker
Well, I don't know that it's, I got to figure out why it's limited compared to a proper dual spindle, because at first I thought perhaps it can't do any, um, positional, like live tooling axial work, but I'm pretty sure I was looking at something last week that showed it actually can, you know, control the, I don't know if it's a C axis anymore or what do you call the, yeah, sub sub side C. Okay. Sub C.
00:10:25
Speaker
It looks like it can, so it may just have lower power. I got to ask my HFO guy on that detail. Like on almost all of my parts, I definitely turn the face, because you don't want to part it all finished. It's not good enough. If you can turn the face with only one tool, and I do a lot of mailing on the sub, too, whether I'm putting in a torques or an engraving or something like that,
00:10:55
Speaker
I mean, yeah, if you can have one turning tool and a couple live tools, hit it. And if you do have C-axis, then it's a full-blown sub-spindle. I don't know what the difference is. Yeah. I will find out and report back because I need to have more knowledge on that. It kind of just, I actually specifically said I wasn't going to do this because it increases the risk factor and crashing and complication. But what I'm realizing,
00:11:24
Speaker
God, I sound like a broken record, is how much I freaking want automation and the difference between what I was going to do, which was kind of a
00:11:34
Speaker
looking at it from a bottoms up, looking at it from a, well, I want a two axis lathe, but I definitely want some live tooling. Don't get live tooling without Y. So that's how you end up with, that's a C20Y. Now I'm looking at it from a different standpoint. I'm looking at it for, wait a minute here, Haas bar feeder is like 15 grand. That lets me run this, this machine is now automated and I want the parts catcher to finish that workflow out and you definitely need the sub spindle to take parts off of there one and done. Yep.
00:12:01
Speaker
Absolutely. What is the price difference to get the full-blown sub-spindle version? I don't know. I'll look it up here while we're talking. I'm looking at SC20Y. Don't quote me on this. Because I might push you to just do that. But I don't know. Well, that's the question. What's the difference? So the thing with CAPTA that just seems amazing is that
00:12:30
Speaker
Oh, they only start with a DS 30. Uh, the base price comparison is 40 or 50 more base price, which is a lot of percentage wise of the machine. Now that's not apples to apples because I'm already spending whatever it is 10 or 15 to add the, um, it's a lot more. I'll put it that way. And it's a bigger machine, which I don't really want. Mm-hmm.
00:12:59
Speaker
I was going to say the same for my Nakamura. When I first fell in love with it, I only saw the main spindle version. It was this tiny little short machine. I was like, I can fit that in my shop. That's amazing. I totally want that. Okay, but I need the y-axis, I need the sub spindle, and that adds four feet to the machine length.
00:13:17
Speaker
It's funny. Well, even a bar feeder, I think it's a four foot bar feeder, but it's over eight feet long, I guess, because it has to be able to have a four foot pusher on a four foot bar. I'm guessing. Maybe.
00:13:30
Speaker
Did you, how long is your, how does your, well, no, it wouldn't have to push with a full bar. It could just push with a movable. Yeah. Yeah. With a little flag. Yeah. Right. I don't know why that's so long. My Swiss is a six foot bar feeder and the bar feeder itself is maybe eight feet, but probably not. And the one I was looking for for the Nakamura was a three foot, I think maybe it was a four foot and it was only like a foot longer than that. Definitely wasn't
Machining Strategies and Efficiency
00:13:58
Speaker
quite.
00:13:59
Speaker
I'll check that out. So here's the thought. I love the idea of some cap dough because I've never heard a bad thing about it, except that it is an investment. It's expensive. But then even on a couple of the static tools, being able to swap them over, or it's repeatable without touching off, although the Haas does have built-in auto touch off arm, which I freaking love and want. Nice.
00:14:28
Speaker
But the bigger thing I think is going to be for live tools, because we should be able to have a little cap toe cart next to the machine with tools labeled. And if you want to swap from a, say, one eighth inch ball to a quarter inch rougher, all you have to do is one wrench with a capital thing, swap the two out, make sure you have continuity between what's
00:14:51
Speaker
running in the machine in the right tool in the live tool holder. That's the risk, but no more what it looks like you have to do, which is like take the ER, call it two wrenches, loosen it, set the tool up, make sure it's the right stick out or kind of quote unquote gauge length, measure it, touch it off, run out like that. No. Yeah. I mean, you'll have to do that once to set up the tool. Um, right. Unless you can figure out an offline way to kind of preset it.
00:15:18
Speaker
Spironis can touch off lathe tools, but I don't know if our model can. And outside of Reiki, I mean, yeah, sure, but I think it's still a huge advantage and potential. I will say, very exciting conversation.
00:15:39
Speaker
Well, I look, I've been wanting one and it's a combination of we have some parts we want to run on it for sure. And if I'm going to buy it this year, I'm now is the time to kind of look get serious about it. And then.
00:15:54
Speaker
What we're seeing from folks on ProvenCut is we've always intended to add turning stuff to ProvenCut and folks are already asking for it and it's kind of like, well, we're not waiting for any, there's a reason we can't start adding it sooner. So we've got the Torvok Slam Pro, but we want to also be adding a turning center level of stuff harder.
00:16:17
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, if you're starting to think of bar feeder with automation and making, you know, at least dozens of parts in a row, it starts to make a lot of sense to make this lathe very useful. Yeah, so it's not like you have a robot bolted to the floor stopping you from normal use of the machine.
00:16:35
Speaker
And then I just think about how much it would annoy me if I decide six months later to buy it. And then I've got to start this whole new sale process, pay to freight the machine, to freight the parts or bar feeder out, have a set tech come back and set it like it just to me makes sense. And we are super excited. We just sent out a couple of our kind of gen two mod vices to some beta users and.
00:16:59
Speaker
There's a chance that they'll be off the shelf hardware that works for them. And if so, that's for sure.
00:17:07
Speaker
Totally okay, I guess I'm balancing. If off the shelf hardware works, I think that's very good and smart and I'm happy, but if it improves the functionality or performance or there's a reason to make some of our own, and this machine would absolutely be able to do that, then that's also pretty cool. For sure, and you would be an excellent candidate for rotary brooch, like if you wanted to do a hex or something. Yes, we're not milling them with 20,000 mills, I'll tell you that.
00:17:37
Speaker
Yeah, and that is okay. Yeah, so I'll tell you this with regards to bar feeders and automation.
00:17:47
Speaker
So I came in this morning 10 minutes early for the podcast. The Swiss was still on from last night, but like just turned on running because it was at a bar. I opened the bar feeder, I put a new bar in, I loaded it, took about three minutes and I hit cycle start and I'm doing the podcast right now. And that's going to run for six hours making bearings.
00:18:09
Speaker
And this part is the hardest to set. Well, on the Nakamura, it was one of the hardest to set up on the Swiss. Once I got it, it's been cakewalk. I've run it every day for the past week. That's awesome. Because we're now running high pressure coolant, nothing gets hot. The lathe itself does not generate much heat. It's all that high pressure coolant that's generating tons and tons and tons of heat. In the Nakamura? So I mean, in the Swiss. Wait, wait. You lost me. Sorry.
00:18:40
Speaker
Yeah, I'm running the Swiss right now. Yeah. The high pressure coolant, you would think that that could, you're saying that the pumps to make that are remote from the machine and so it provides a constant thermal stability by having so much fluid pushing through it. Yes and no. It's something about pressurizing the fluid is just generating insane amounts of heat. Oh, it is?
00:19:06
Speaker
Not the cutting itself. Although, I mean, maybe it is the cutting because I'm not really. So wait, the machine is getting hot? Right now, I'm just cutting plastic, and the machine is not hot at all. But when I cut metal with high pressure coolant, the machine gets extraordinarily hot. That's not good. It's just interesting. Oh, so this may tie back to that whole conversation on WhatsApp about needing
00:19:36
Speaker
cool and chiller. Yeah, I mean, when I'm running high pressure, it's not a bad idea. I'm fine without it, but it's not a bad idea. But yeah, it's neat running plastic because it's dry, it's clean, I can vacuum up the chips.
00:19:54
Speaker
The machine is thermally stable. It's epic. It's so amazing. So I don't even measure the parts. I mean, we measure some, but we don't really. They're just solid. They're just perfect.
Shop Organization and Productivity
00:20:06
Speaker
And there's almost zero scrap. That's awesome. So it's so good.
00:20:12
Speaker
It's almost funny to think about not having to, you don't want to prejudice the new machine with the remembering, oh man, those parts are so hard to set up. Well, though that was on the Nakamura before we had different, that's what I think about with Capito. It's like, no more, is it a big deal? I guess I don't like the idea that if you have a problem with an insert and you've ruined a holder,
00:20:33
Speaker
It's one thing to ruin us $80, one inch cm cnm g holder, but to ruin a cap toe. Yeah, and is probably I'm guessing somewhere between 200 and $500. But I still think it's the right way to go. Yeah, I probably agree with you. I don't know if I would do I don't know. I never have thought about it doing it myself. Because I don't
00:21:04
Speaker
I don't know. Unless I get a Wilhelmin one day. I don't know if I would tool that up with Capito. Well, having the bar, having the touch-off arm inside the machine actually negates some of the need because if you need to swap a tool out, it's just easy to set it up and get it within a certain degree of accuracy, I believe. The bar can't always reach the backside tools, though. I know that. Interesting.
00:21:31
Speaker
Well if you have a long, if for some reason you have a relatively long drill on the stub, there's no way the touch off tool is going to get to it. Well my turret can, I don't know how long it can reach on the touch off arm, but
00:21:47
Speaker
decent amount. But I was going to say in Lawrence's case and maybe in your case, I could see it being very quick and beneficial for him to have say 40 capital holders loaded with various end mills, various turning tools so that when he runs a job, he just walks out there, already has his inventory, picks up six tools, pops them in, hits go.
00:22:10
Speaker
Wes, for us to do that with the Nakamura, like you said, you're messing with the ER college, you're taking your time, it's hours of setup for sure. Even just changing between our own current jobs.
00:22:22
Speaker
can take a couple hours. And a couple hours of dedicated time sometimes equals six hours of doing other stuff while you're doing it, daily priorities kind of thing. So turnover can be very slow on a turret, dual spindle, busy lathe like this. Did you see that, I think it was a Doosan vertical lathe that someone posted that had the turret tool changer?
00:22:53
Speaker
No, that was awesome. Because I guess on a VTL, the entire turret comes off. No, no, no, no. You can load and you can ATC individual tools in the turret.
00:23:05
Speaker
Oh, it's even cooler. So it made total sense because it's got like a relatively short ID, like a regular turning tool that you want to have choked up and it's getting the whole turret really close to the part. These are huge parts, I think like 20 inch diameter rims or circular side parts. But then you need to take a 10 inch boring bar or something like that. Well, that tool would have gotten in the way when the other tools were being used. So you can tool change that tool out.
00:23:35
Speaker
to get it out of the way, which is freaking amazing. Very cool. But yeah, I was thinking about your radial tooling needs, and maybe it's just the type of parts I'm making, but there's almost zero radial work. But I can see that on many, especially slightly bigger parts or industry parts or Mars Rover parts or whatever, there's so much going on on the outside.
00:24:02
Speaker
Yeah. You know, whether you're drilling and tapping holes around the perimeter or milling features or hexes or squares or whatever. Right. You know? Yeah, the Mars Rover wheels are a good example for sure. And then your quintessential lightsaber type part where you just have, you know, grooves and features and flats and pockets and windows and all of that is what I'm thinking about. So you're going to make a lightsaber of cool. I love it. Meg wants one. Can you make two? Well, we can barfeed them now. I'll make more than two.
00:24:32
Speaker
Mm-hmm But then I'm yeah, I don't know We're not ready to buy it, you know today or this week, but soon I think and I'm not sure You know, it's a 12 Turret with half index. Is that similar to what you have? Yep. So mine's got 24 potential positions. How many do you use on? How need you use with half index? Like three, okay
00:24:59
Speaker
Um, the one that works really well is when I have my two half inch stick tools stacked on top of each other. So I have my rougher and my finisher, like dead close together. And I half index, you know, one's on normal center line. So I call T O two O two. And then the other one is, no, it's not even half index. It's just why it's just within the Y travel range. Um,
00:25:26
Speaker
Oh, is that how? Yeah, it just moves down in why the only half index tool that I actually use is my pill bottle parts catcher. Wait, so there is a half index where the where the turret actually does a partial rotation? Or is it? Yeah, is that a misnomer? It just knows why to comp. It does. It does for sure. I'm trying to think why, like what? I don't know. I haven't thought about it in a long time.
00:25:53
Speaker
Okay. Well, doesn't matter. Imagine like a boring bar, like a drill holder that has, instead of just one drill holder, it's got three and then two of them might be low. So that would be a half index tool because it would.
00:26:09
Speaker
Instead of being out in Y by like three inches, which is not as stable. It half indexes locks it down and then you're on Y center line. So it's, I think it's more stable than being way out in Y. Got it. Do you, if you had a two or three inch diameter part, would a half index still give you the clearance? I don't know. Okay. Is it even, is it close on your small parts or one inch, quarter inch part, three quarter inch parts?
00:26:39
Speaker
I'd be fine there. Okay, I gotta go take a look at or find see. Yeah, just gotta think about it. Because that's what I've heard with the half indexes you are. As you get bigger diameters, you got to have more clearances. Yeah, I could see that in all this really does is I don't want to buy the lathe with
00:27:01
Speaker
stuff I don't want or need. I'd rather get some basic lists of stuff and then add as we see fit. For sure. It's a tough one though because you don't want to, you want to buy the tool it up and set it up and have it be capable.
00:27:20
Speaker
but you don't want to spend money on stuff you're never going to use. But I mean, things like the bar feeder you will use, things like Y-axis you will use. I mean, at the very least, it makes setting up tools cakewalk easy because you're like, oh, the Y's got to come down two thou or four tenths. And then boom, you're perfectly on center line. You don't have to shim the tools or anything like that. So
00:27:45
Speaker
even dialing in the concentricity of an axial end mill, uh, getting it perfectly on center for runout. Um, not runout, but lined up in this with just 10th here and there in X and Y. And then you'll eventually get it. Yeah, I love that. Yeah.
00:28:04
Speaker
And it's a good, actually, it's a good segue to kind of a common recurring theme, I think, for both of us, which is balancing the new with the old and shop organization. And I've had three pallets of stuff in the back of the shop that I've been waiting to go through.
00:28:24
Speaker
the pallets themselves were just one stage of that process where we had taken stuff from all over the shop and put it on pallets to deal with later, to sort later. Well, the pallets just sat and they sat, I'd say they sat for too long. And so, you know how you get that done? You go do it. And so last Thursday I spent, in the end it was probably two hours, not that much time at all.
00:28:49
Speaker
And I think that's something I have to remind myself of is I will mentally psych myself out thinking, oh man, this is just going to be overwhelming and so much work I'm going to lose. No, it's not that big a deal. Go do it. And so it was actually very therapeutic to finally go through, sort that stuff up, get rid of some stuff, sell what needs to be sold, throw away what needs to be thrown away.
00:29:09
Speaker
And then I did the same thing on my inbox. I used the star system in the Gmail or Google Suites, which works great for me. But every once in a while, you'll leave something starred from May. And I think the worst one I had was I had to fix a shipping error calculation on Shopify or ShipStation. And I'd just been putting it off. And once you go do it, it's not so bad. It's really not. Yeah, no.
00:29:34
Speaker
Yeah. The mental anguish of thinking it's going to be hard or take time is surprisingly worse than actually doing it. So yeah. Well, but that's my, my inspiration that I would share with others because I wish people, I want people to put and part it onto me is, um, if you're listening to this podcast, get into work today, you're going to have some excuse. You're going to say, well, I'll clean up later or I'll do that later because I can't start my day.
00:30:00
Speaker
That way, I need to start my day with my normal routine. I need to start my day here. No, just spend 10 minutes, 20 minutes doing something that you've been putting off that you want to do, that you want to represent who you are and how you run your shop. It'll feel good. I love it. What have you been up to this week?
00:30:27
Speaker
Monday was a holiday. What did I do yesterday? Lots of stuff. I've been working on the current fixtures and tooling list and finalizing exactly what I need for that. It's starting to get very exciting. The machine is done, tested everything.
New Shop Updates and Future Plans
00:30:46
Speaker
Marv says it produces much better surface finishes than the four-year-old test machine that he gets to play all day. That's awesome. He's kind of jealous there.
00:30:57
Speaker
The a row, a palette changer that is mine is going to emo. So they're going to tie it to their new, um, secret machine at emo and display it off there, which is really cool. Cool. And then it's going to come back, get repaired with my machine reconfigured so that they talk to each other properly and then ready for shipping.
00:31:17
Speaker
That's super exciting. So weird to think, uh, unfortunately, uh, I'm not going to emo this year. I thought about it, but not, but that's so weird to think that if you were at the Kern emo booth, that that's the actual a row and it's going to be in Toronto, Canada at John Grisso shop. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Someone needs to, uh, someone needs to sticker bomb that thing in a very secret spot. And then Easter egg grim. So it's like a year later.
00:31:47
Speaker
I am all for that. You, you've heard the mission folks, sticker bomb. Yep. And if anybody, anybody caused you trouble, just say, John said it's okay. How's that going? Are you learning anything about tool holders or a row of bases or.
00:32:06
Speaker
we're holding lots. Okay, a row bases are sort of complicated. I mean, they're not it's just so this they for the show they configured this machine this a row with two different sizes, which is cool. So they have, you know, the 148, which is like a six inch palette, and then the 72, which is like a three inch palette. Yeah, with a gripper changer built into the machine. Wow. So
00:32:32
Speaker
It actually changes from the small gripper to the big gripper. It makes for a very flexible system. You can have big pallets, you can have small pallets. They kind of made that decision for the show. They're like, if you want to change it back, that's fine. It's just going to take some time. It's a little bit more expensive with the gripper changer.
00:32:51
Speaker
I'm just still trying to wrap my head around. Do I leave it and have the super flexibility of big pallet small pallets? Or do I just convert everything to big pallets and call it good? The beauty of the small pallets is you can fit way more. So right now it's got like 25. It's got 25 big pallets. Got it. Yeah, and 50 small pallets. Way more pallets. Yeah, but you want that as a big pallet machine, right?
00:33:17
Speaker
for some stuff, for a lot of stuff, for sure. But then I can also, so it's got these racks of small pallets, I can take out like most of the racks and put big pallet racks in there and still have a few small pallet racks for doing quick and dirty small stuff. So then you still have the flexibility and I don't know, I think it'll be good. Got it. Okay. Interesting. Yeah, for tool holders. Go ahead.
00:33:43
Speaker
I'm going to go RegoFix. I think I have my collets laid out and I just need to pick gauge lengths. Yeah. Sweet. That's exciting. Any news on finding a shop? I've got two shops in mind. Oh yeah? Yeah. I'm waiting to hear back on both of them. Hopefully today I'll hear about one of them. Great.
00:34:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's very exciting. Okay, good. It's a big change. You know, it will be a big change, big move for us. That's great. So we don't want to do it wrong here. Yeah, I hear you.
00:34:23
Speaker
I'm reading Adam Savage's book. It's OK. I'm maybe a third through it. But one of the things I gleaned from it that I'm trying, actually two things. One is to-do lists, which I still use on a daily basis. Like I always have a notepad next to me, which is stuff to do. And that keeps it out of my head.
00:34:48
Speaker
That is sustainable. I've struggled with other longer term lists of like life goals or monthly goals But the daily to-do list does work quite well, but what Adam does differently is
00:35:01
Speaker
is you don't just write a line item. I just do a little dash for some reason with the thing next to it. He draws an open box next to it, like a check mark box area. And what that does is allows you to leave it open, like when you first write the task, but then if you start it, you can half fill it in at an angle he does it, or if it's finished, you can fill it in all the way, but then you're not crossing
00:35:30
Speaker
the whole item off, which is what I do. So I've been experimenting with it. What I like about it is the act of drawing a little box is
00:35:43
Speaker
sort of makes you more deliberate about your whole approach. And it ties in a little bit more to something I like, I've been pushing myself to do, which is to slow down, to think, to be deliberate. So it's not just this figurative and literal mad dash, you just dash something and then write it down and then move on from it. It's more of a, I'm gonna draw this box, I'm gonna write down this task, I'm gonna decide when to fill half of it in. So I think it was, I'm always interested if things like that really make a difference or if it's just,
00:36:13
Speaker
You try it and then go back. But I wanted to share. I like that. Yeah, I like that a lot because drawing the box forces it to be an open loop in your brain as opposed to the proverbial forever to-do list of where you're always writing things down but never doing any of it. I've certainly been there for sure. But yeah, drawing the box makes it like, no, I've committed to doing this. So let's get it done.
00:36:39
Speaker
The other takeaway, which is absolutely wonderful, is deadlines. I think you and I can both benefit a lot from this, and it is simply to put deadlines on projects and on things to do.
00:36:58
Speaker
It's not just black or white deadline. If it's a bigger project or something that is harder to ascribe a deadline to, break it down. So, I don't know, let's say, Rego Fix. Well, it's hard to put a deadline on sorting out lots of money and options for Rego Fix stuff for your new current, right? But maybe what you do for a deadline is you say,
00:37:20
Speaker
Today by noon, I'm at least going to find the, I'm going to have a deadline for picking the three criteria for the first 25 holders that I'm going to set up as my court, like make it a smaller hurdle, a smaller thing, or maybe get a deadline for, I'm going to at least put together the Excel sheet that I've been meaning to do that lists the links, the PDFs, the resources, so that when I want to go think about this later, I've got all that busy work prepped and ready to start parsing through it.
00:37:50
Speaker
I like it. Yeah. And then you just have that commitment to yourself and you become really good about holding yourself accountable to those deadlines, which can only fit you in love. And they totally did it with egress to the point that it almost, it upsets me because it was a lot of stress on our part. And frankly, I'm upset that they played us in a funny way. They really didn't play
Productivity Insights and ERP Systems
00:38:12
Speaker
us. But if they had come to all of the makers with
00:38:16
Speaker
three months or six months to do project egress, it wouldn't have worked. You would have put it off. It would have just been like, okay, we'll get to that later, blah, blah. But they came and they created this kind of fire drill. And again, you know, not my preferred style of working, but darn it, it worked. They did it. Did it feel like you were building the original? You know what I mean? Cause like there are time schedules building, like when they built these originally, they're like,
00:38:46
Speaker
you know, working very hard, very long nights to make it happen. It felt like it was, you know, I'll put it this way, the fact that it had the nugget at the end of somebody like Adam Savage and the Smithsonian is what made you not want to muck it up, right? That's the carrot, which is a really good carrot, right?
00:39:13
Speaker
We always had a backup. We could choose to 3D print the parts that we didn't end up machining if we had problems with them. We used Xometry to print this big part that I wanted to machine, but it was insane. It was almost the size of a shoebox with six-inch deep cavity reach parts.
00:39:35
Speaker
just would have been by far the most complicated five-axis part ever. A good portion of it is not that hard, but the parts that are hard were pretty crazy, and nowadays it was just such a good candidate for printing, so we did print it. I had thought if we ever made one again, I would try to tackle it, because I have some ideas on how to do it, but I'm not sure that's going to happen now. It's okay, which is okay. Yep. Cool.
00:40:03
Speaker
The other update for us is I have kind of made the mental hurdle decision to move to an ERP system. I've got a meeting kind of set up sometime soon with your friends, the MODIS folks who are using Odoo. So that's a good chance. I finally get to talk to somebody who has actually implemented and used Odoo.
00:40:25
Speaker
And then I've made a list of all of the other ERP software that we've been at least made aware of. We're going to turn that into an NYC CNC article so that at least other folks can piggyback up on the research and work that we've done.
00:40:41
Speaker
My thought remains that I want to get some pricing information on some of the big players. I think they're actually more affordable than I had originally thought. So if Odoo doesn't make sense, maybe we go with the Oracle NetSuite SAP Business One. There's another one, Access Group, that somebody emailed me about that I want to look into.
00:41:03
Speaker
And so my process right now is, I'm excited to have that meeting with Odu, that's going to be a very, very relevant, you know, they're a manufacturer, a machine shop, very similar tasks and workflows, but then I just put out, yeah.
00:41:18
Speaker
I'm making a list of the features that we want out of it so that I can focus on that and make sure I'm probing into that stuff when we have these demos. But then part of it is also making sure your shop, ERP's not gonna solve problems that you aren't doing well on the physical side. So for example, we used to have all of our steel, ground steel inventory at the back of the shop and I was like, why are we,
00:41:45
Speaker
literally using the Skyhook to move it all the way like 65 feet and it's in the back of the shop and you can't see it and it tends to get less well kept because it's kind of in the back and so we built this little table, guess where you put it? Right next to the VM3 and you put the table height at the same approximate height as the top of the mill so that
00:42:05
Speaker
The Skyhook now has to move five feet and all that inventory is right there. It's stacked much neater. It's easier to see your physical inventory. And then we were looking for ways to also have a physical inventory count. And there were some cool ideas about like Arduinos and load cells and weight things or measuring things, but it's low quantity stuff. You know, we're keeping five or 10 on hand of each size. And so you ever seen on a tennis court, they've got the number flippers that you keep score with.
00:42:35
Speaker
Yeah, they're like eight bucks on Amazon. And so I bought a bunch of those. And they're great because it's this physical thing. It has all the numbers right there. And you just flip it. You don't have to write. You don't have to erase. And it's already a big improvement. I'm sure we will continue to put on it at some point later. But that kind of stuff makes me smile. Wonderful. That's perfect. Cool. Sweet.
00:43:07
Speaker
What's going on today? Apparently, by noon today, I have to have rebooking success spreadsheet ready. No, but seriously, John, that's the outside concern. Any business leader is in a unique position. It's the part of leadership folks don't talk about, which is that no one's telling you what to do, meaning sometimes no one's there to rein you in or impart discipline or impose discipline on you. And I know how much you want to accomplish, and I think discipline
00:43:35
Speaker
I'd be hard pressed to see somebody that you and I look up to who wouldn't say some discipline and deadlines would actually help you accomplish more even though it may feel the opposite at first. Yeah, deadlines, they sort of feel made up at some point, especially without an outside force. I mean, there are deadlines for shipping the machine and yada yada, but
00:43:58
Speaker
The ability to make up your own deadlines and stick to them and trust yourself is going to be a valuable skill that I have been working on and will continue to work on. Just like this ERP, this is a whole sea of possibilities, endless options and noise around it. I can make a deadline right now. I'm going to finish my list of 10 ERP softwares and I'm going to tie to it anybody I know that's using them. Just make a little deadline like that. That's a good thing.
00:44:28
Speaker
to pound through. Sweet. Have a good week. I'll see you next Wednesday. Sounds great. Take care. Bye. OK, take care. Bye.