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Business of Machining - Episode 64
193 Plays7 years ago
New INTERN for Grimsmo Knives! At the risk of making the podcast solely congratulatory, Saunders gives his pal a pat on the back.
FAST LEARNERS? New people at the shops seem to learn at an alarming rate but processes viewed through a 10-year learning experience lens seem more complicated than they truly are. If it's easy to learn, that's a good sign!
Revising the Welcome Guide Driving culture is easy via paper but does it accurately reflect the in-action shop culture? The Johns don't have all the answers BUT the questions produce sparks!
MAXIMUM BENEFIT THRESHOLD? Saunders praises the benefits of living in a digital age from a distance. There is a point at which things are TOO digital. When you start ignoring alerts, it's time to get physical!
NEW CHAPTER--or something like that. Life journeys are gradual; pinpointing the beginning or end of a chapter proves difficult. Saunders embarks on a more defined focus.
The 7 things you must go through before making $1 million in revenue
Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh on Amazon
Set an M01 Should a limit be defined that triggers an automatic re-evaluation of your company?
Rinse, Repeat, and RESCHEDULE? Grimsmo turns his attention to rescheduling the order of events for knife making and this simple change could be paramount!
Plus, Rob Lockwood, the originator of this podcast is visiting GK tomorrow---and we're jealous!
Recommended
Transcript
Welcoming the New Intern
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the Business of Machining, Episode 64. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. Morning, buddy. Good morning. How are you? I'm really good today. Good. What's been going on? So our new intern, co-op students, started two days ago. So today will be its third day. And it's been going super duper well.
00:00:23
Speaker
Yeah, okay. This podcast can't turn into, or even this conversation can't turn into just self-congratulating, but holy cow. Insane. Although I was watching the video on The Mother of Pearl, and that was the first video I felt like where you got a sense of how crowded your shop is. Yeah.
00:00:50
Speaker
Yeah, and there's another person in here now. Right. How's it going? It's really, really well. Yeah, he's smart, 20 years old, in manufacturing engineering program. So it's perfect for him, and he's perfect for us. And
Training and Efficiency
00:01:06
Speaker
it's working out really well. I mean, he's only been here for two days. It's not that we're getting more normal stuff done. It's that we're getting more
00:01:14
Speaker
other stuff that I can't get around to done. You know what I mean? So it's, it's been super handy. Like, oh, let's finally tackle this little thing. And how about you do that? And how about we do this? And now, whoa, look at all this stuff that's getting done around here. Right. It's, and that's just the start. Like, while he's also absorbing the processes and ways that we do everything, like he learned,
00:01:34
Speaker
So Eric taught Angelo how to anodize just a few weeks ago. And then just yesterday, Angelo taught Skyes how to end in like 20 minutes. And then he anodized one of his personal knives and he did a great job. And it's like, oh my gosh, this is happening. Titanium or aluminum? Yeah. Yeah. And then that's what I was telling you about. Like it's when you can have other people then force multiplying downstream. Yeah.
00:02:00
Speaker
And it's, I got to be careful. I don't like discredit their competency and like ability to learn, but it's like when they pick up something that we think of as kind of complicated and they pick it up quickly, it's impressive and weird at the same time. And I told that to my wife and she was like, well, you're thinking of it as a 10 year learning experience, right? And you taught them the right way how to do it. Yep.
00:02:26
Speaker
So there's the difference right there, right? Like you think of it as, Oh, I spent 10 years learning how to do this. And it's so hard. But actually, I figured out a good smooth way to do it. And I could teach a very competent willing to learn person. It's, it's excellent.
00:02:40
Speaker
Sometimes I feel like the toughest thing is also letting go to your personal past. The new person doesn't need to hear the positive or the sob story version of how long it took to figure this out. All that matters is that we're good at it. We figured
Shop Culture and Cleanliness
00:02:55
Speaker
it out. Here's the process. It may be a laugh over a beer sometime about, man, it took us a long time to get here. But otherwise, it's just, yeah. It's almost sad that it's so easy sometimes. I know, because it's easy now.
00:03:09
Speaker
Like, here's how you fill orders. That's the truth. I guess that's when you, maybe that's a sign that you're doing it right, when it is easy to explain, when you have franchised it, or you created the processes behind it. Job well done. Yep, yep. And even at this point, the processes are still in our head. And we're in the process of writing it down and everything. So getting there. That's awesome. Yeah. So is he kind of report into you, like in terms of what he's idle, or needs stuff to do, or needs direction?
00:03:39
Speaker
Yeah, I guess. Although, I mean, Angelo took him under his wing most of the day yesterday, which was nice. That's great. Yeah, I could focus on my stuff here and then, uh, but yeah, it was good. So he's kind of roaming around and you know, Barry took him around too and taught him everything about heat treating and it's good.
00:03:58
Speaker
We, uh, we had the same thing with, uh, one of our interns here and, uh, he's become pretty darn good at editing the NYC CNC website. I like the way all this stuff on the back end within WordPress. And, uh, it's funny cause it's like took me forever to learn some of this stuff and that he's doing some of it better than I am. And that's like, that's totally great. It's, it's, and it's the single most energetic thing is to be able to say, Hey,
00:04:21
Speaker
I want to figure this out. I saw it on a forum here. Here's a one or two videos. Go spend three hours. Get smart on this. Go figure this out. Go down that rabbit hole that I don't have the time to go down. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And I see Skye doing that a lot for me in the future, which is exciting. Cool. Do you feel like in this example, Julie takes care of the website for most things, right?
00:04:47
Speaker
Not really. She does the videos in the YouTube side. So she works with Alex in this case on, cause there's this like really annoying back and forth where some like links can't get created until videos get created and vice versa or like placeholders until the real thing is live. And it's weird because like we've got our WordPress built. It's actually kind of cool. Our WordPress will automatically grab the YouTube thumbnail.
00:05:12
Speaker
But if you don't, if you create the page before the thumbnails up, you've got to like override it. So there's like this dance back and forth. My question is, do, as you gain more people and they take jobs, do people feel like they're taking my job? That's my responsibility. You know what I mean?
00:05:30
Speaker
It's a good question. I don't think so simply because we're busy and I don't think so. I don't think it's like that. I don't want it to be like that, right? Me too, but the goal is to get more done, you know? Right.
Team Integration and Responsibilities
00:05:43
Speaker
Yeah. For sure. We do bounce around and I'm conscious of that. Sometimes I'll have somebody working on
00:05:49
Speaker
Um, you know, there's, you take like, there's clean, there's cleaning and maintenance and stuff like work. And then there's, there's computer kind of work. And then there's shop work and different things are fun at different times. But, um, my kind of attitude is I'm, um, emotionally indifferent to that stuff. Like we all get to do fun things sometimes. And sometimes like, I mean, I still clean the toilets here, literally. Yeah, not into the,
00:06:11
Speaker
I am deliberate. We're bringing on another person here in two weeks and intern and I have been revising our kind of welcome guide. Yep.
00:06:23
Speaker
And I'm really deliberate because it's that framework of introductions that you only get one chance to. Now, what's tough is that that guide has probably evolved more on paper than the actual direct existing culture here. So it's weird because it's easy to drive culture on a piece of paper. It's different when it actually manifests itself through the daily life.
00:06:48
Speaker
So I don't know, I've been thinking about maybe we should all have like a, we don't really do meetings here because everyone, we just don't, but just like say, what's the culture here and making sure that's reflected. And if you tell something to a new person and then they see opposite behavior occurring, it's at best a conflict at worst, a recognition that, oh, that paper was silly and doesn't mean anything.
00:07:10
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. So you're welcome, guys. Is it more a culture and ethos kind of thing, or is it simply the rules and regulations like
00:07:20
Speaker
You know what I mean? Both. It's not like a full blown handbook on every single guy. But it's like, hey, here's how we handle time clock. And here's your email. And here's when we work. And here's stuff on the key. And if you're the last person to leave. And then it's stuff like, you shouldn't be on your cell phone during the day. And that shouldn't be something we have to ask about. Obviously, it's fine if you've got an emergency or you need to coordinate
Challenges in Workplace Culture
00:07:43
Speaker
a text on something. But you shouldn't be on your phone.
00:07:46
Speaker
Um, you know, just the idea that if there's something wrong, fix it or let us know or pick up the piece of trash, like that's important. Um, and let me know if we're not doing things right. Or, um, if stuff needs fixtures out of place and, um, yeah. Yeah, that's a really good, uh,
00:08:03
Speaker
handbook, the one that I came up with, which I think was based on something you sent me, it was just kind of like the rules and regulations about the shop, not like how to work here, but like drug free workplace and that kind of stuff, the boring stuff. I think I just have continued writing on that thing since I sent it to you. No, I like adding those things just so that day one, they kind of have a sense of like what the lunch schedule is like and how to clock your time.
00:08:30
Speaker
Yeah, people people take that for granted, like totally. You got like the he said his name is Skye. Yeah. Like he doesn't know that Angela is not like a 10 year season veteran employee of Grimsman eyes, right? Like it's just I always laugh about that. Like people don't know that in our shop, I guess it's been two years now, but this this still feels like a new shop to me, the one we're in now. People don't know that we used to be like this little shoebox, you know, exactly like they just see this as this big, big, you know, shop company, whatever.
00:08:59
Speaker
This is how it is. This must be how it's always been. Right. No, not really. One of the best things, I actually got lucky. Was it last summer or two summers ago? We had one or two new interns starting. In the first week they started, we went down to another shop in town and we rigged out some of those old machines and brought them over to our shop. They got to see the quality
00:09:24
Speaker
and condition of the interior of that shop and it was not good. It was a really good example just to say. Look, nobody ever said, let's turn this shop into a not nice place. Nobody ever said, let's turn it into a blank hole is what I'm thinking of.
00:09:42
Speaker
It just it just happens. It happens because nobody cleans the sink for three months and then no one wants to clean it then because it's a lot of work and then it doesn't happen for a year and then literally things don't get cleaned for 10 years and you have just like piles of like literally like you have like eighth inch piles of Stuff in corners and stuff. It's just an absolute it looks repulsive But nobody ever makes the conscious decision to let it get there. It just happens. So
00:10:08
Speaker
It sounds silly, but you combat that through the culture of little things every day. Yep, yep, absolutely. Yeah, just a tidy mindset and respect for others around here. Right. If you see trash pick it up, clean up after yourself, try not to drip coolant all over the floor. Right. Exactly. Or if you do clean it up, everybody makes mistakes, but deal with it immediately.
00:10:31
Speaker
Yeah, I've even noticed that it's hard man. We've got all these machines now and like I was over at one of our Haas machines and there were a bunch of chips and grind between the top of the sliding door and the kind of like the where they there's sheet metal gaps and there's
Automation with Asana
00:10:47
Speaker
just a bunch of grime and junk in there and
00:10:50
Speaker
That's probably an example of where, as the owner, I care more than your average person because the machine looks quite nice otherwise. But I'm like, no, I want to clean that because otherwise that will not get cleaned for two years. And then that's why when you go to an auction and you see machines that look like junk, again, nobody ever thought, hey, let's just let these machines go to heck. It's just what happens. Right, right.
00:11:11
Speaker
Yeah, yesterday, Angelo was teaching Sky how to feel cool and don the lathe. And we have a little pond pump with a gun on it. And he was like, as you're filling the lathe, open it up, spray it down on the inside, spray it on the walls, spray it on, get all the chips off. And immediately, it looks better, even though it looked great before, but it looks better. So on day two of his career here, he gets to see that transformation and the mindset behind keeping it clean and just hosing it down.
00:11:40
Speaker
every time basically. Do you guys do or what is your like cleaning regimen mopping the floors like what kind of cleaning do you do on a regular non disruptive basis and what kind of cleaning do you do on a regular but disruptive basis? I don't have a good answer for either of those. Yeah like we'll clean up a spill. I do want us to get into a better sweeping mopping regimen. We kind of you know we can go months without doing either. Yeah.
00:12:09
Speaker
But yeah, I'd like to do better about that. Ours is also generally reactive, obviously to a spill, but also really it's reactive to whenever I look at the floors and I'm like, we should mop these. So today's Wednesday widget was a thermal printer that we got to tie into a sauna. So I can set up
00:12:30
Speaker
maintenance or anything in Asana that can become a recurring event. It's just a calendar, but it's just Asana is so much nicer than a calendar to deal with and interact with. So it basically can call it every three weeks. It can say mop the floors around the machines. And when that event occurs, it will actually just print out that as a tag with who is assigned to on a thermal printer out on the shop floor.
00:12:54
Speaker
Nice. So everybody checks that printer, walks by it. It's brand new. That's the idea. And in full disclosure, we got it working. We have not used it. And I haven't set up any of the tasks yet. But what triggered it initially was that I had the six-month warning for Renishaw batteries in my personal calendar.
00:13:14
Speaker
And it's funny because I've had some people say, oh, the batteries last longer. And I'm like, no, it's like six bucks. Like, we're just replacing them proactively. That's the right thing to do. Across the life of my machining career, I'm going to spend like $100 on retinal batteries. It's OK. And you're never going to have a dead one. That's the thing.
00:13:31
Speaker
So I was like, well, I don't want this in my personal counter because I shouldn't be doing this anymore. I shouldn't even have it pop up and then write on my to-do list and then walk out and tell somebody. But not everybody out on the shop floor uses calendars. It's just not a great thing. And honestly, I don't always do well with the digital world. I've really cut back massively in the last three weeks from
00:13:56
Speaker
everything electronics. It's actually kind of weird. I'm happy to talk more about that if you want, but it's nice to be, you know, Mr. Pearson, we all work for the system. We work for the process.
Balancing Work and Family Life
00:14:11
Speaker
When I'm out on the floor and I look over and the receipt printer, the process spits out a thing and it tells me what to do and who's to do it or whatever, just what to do.
00:14:22
Speaker
I have a piece of paper, it's in my hand. I know it's now my responsibility. That's to me so much nicer than just a computer that's flashing an alert or I don't know, I like this physical idea. Or especially like a Gmail calendar update that it's easy to ignore. Like you'll see it and you're like, okay, I got to do that. And then it falls behind and falls behind and never gets done and you kind of lose it.
00:14:45
Speaker
how many people listening like hits the equivalent of snooze by like starring it or follow up later or resend it or just add it to your calendar a week later. Yep. Absolutely. You just ignore it, which is bad, bad habit. Yeah. So the thermal printer ended up being a really difficult thing to build because we had to, it was fun, but it was like,
00:15:05
Speaker
If this, then that, along with an Adafruit IO to access the API, it was a lot more work. We got some help with it. Partway through, we found an off-the-shelf solution from a company called Memo Bird. We put up a webpage on it this morning. The problem with the Memo Bird is it looks like a Hello Kitty printer.
00:15:25
Speaker
It's not exactly like machine shop cool, but it's great because it you purchase it for like 60 bucks off of Amazon. You've got to buy a very specific model because there's Amazon has a frustrating thing where there it appears to be a it appears to be the same printer, but it's not. So you have to buy a very specific version. But then you plug it in, hook up if this than that in a sauna and you've got this whole thing set up in probably two to five minutes. Cool. Very cool.
00:15:57
Speaker
Sweet. So what else you got going on? Starting something new. A whole new chapter.
00:16:04
Speaker
Kind of, yeah. Probably it ties in a little bit with, you know, the last four years getting to where we are. And then it's really not so much something new as it is choosing what we're going to focus on. You know, what do I want to be really good at and what do we want to, and when we're, it's going to be more on the learning education website. Our products are good and I would say great. And we're continuing to do, you know, process improvements and quality improvements on them. But that's,
00:16:34
Speaker
for all intents and purposes from an outside perspective, those are really good. Like we like our mod devices, we like our fixture plates. So what do I, well, I've just been brainstorming through, what do I want to focus on? You've got this kind of chance opportunity. So I've been doing a lot of brainstorming and actually kind of going back to the basics of, you know, business plans and thinking and so forth on that, which is fun.
00:16:57
Speaker
Nice. Isn't it nice to be able to spend the time to do that? It is. One, two years ago
Strategic Planning for Growth
00:17:03
Speaker
you couldn't have, you know, or you did, but not enough.
00:17:06
Speaker
Well, so it's funny, the last two weeks, I used to come into the shop at usually about 6 or 6.15. And the last few weeks, I've actually been spending the first hour and a half, two hours at home with the wife and kids. And it was very unusual. And it was good to kind of like, what do you call it? Like the rebound or you're just chilling out. It's kind of weird that I feel guilty that I get into the shop at 7.45. That's silly.
00:17:37
Speaker
But I also miss it. I miss that hustle and energy and I think a desire and I had a little break. Now I'm back in it. So this is basically stemming from your Australia return.
00:17:52
Speaker
Yeah, like timeline wise. Yeah, really Australia was just the end of this I think of it as like for really a four year stint of leaving New York moving here, working for myself for the first time building this business into something. And honestly I read
00:18:08
Speaker
I don't have a handy, I'll figure out a way to, we'll put it in the description, but I read one of the, it's not so much that it was the best article I've read, but it really hit home for us, which was this article talking about how you can brute force build a business only so big. I think the number, the example that the guy gave was a certain revenue amount.
00:18:33
Speaker
And what's difficult is to do that year to year back to back. What's even more difficult is to ever grow beyond that because too much of that represented your own
00:18:43
Speaker
personal willingness to work harder than you should, which is what every good entrepreneur will do, but it's ultimately not. It was a great article because it just cut through all the BS about how difficult it is to then take that next leap. So that really resonated with me. And I think that's a point
Investing in Equipment
00:19:00
Speaker
where I'm really excited for you because your business is frankly very well suited to blow through those kinds of barriers, which is really exciting. I mean, you've got some work out of you, but that's really exciting, John.
00:19:12
Speaker
Yeah, I got to read this article. Do you have, um, I'm writing it down. Do you have any like things I can look up? Uh, honestly, I, I don't, because it was a Facebook click through link and I PDF'd it, but I think I PDF'd it at home. Let me email it to you when we, I know where I can find it. Um, okay. We'll put it in the description. Yeah, perfect. I'll send to you when we hang up to, okay. What about you? What's going on?
00:19:37
Speaker
Making knife parts, stop pins on the lathe, which kind of sucks because I just want to make pen parts. Yeah, right. But Eric's like, Oh, no, we need these parts. And I'm like, No, I just want to play all day.
00:19:50
Speaker
So in my dream world, we get a robo-drill and a Swiss lathe, and that might satisfy me for six months, and then we'll need more. You will, John. Yeah, I know. You will. But I also have to kind of realize, no, we have this stuff now. Let's hunker down.
00:20:07
Speaker
do really good work with what we have right now, and we'll work our way up for sure. But I don't want to get into the position of stretching too far or too soon. I'm just conscious of that. But you've got the framework in place. Like if you got a Swiss machine on your floor right now, the mill's like easy because whatever. That's just easy. But if you guys move into that.
00:20:30
Speaker
I mean, you could be working on it, and Angelo could be running the knock, or vice versa. You've got work for it. You've got parts for it. If you take that outsider perspective view of, hey, I'm an investor in terms of knives, I'm like, let's get a Swiss machine on your floor. Good grief. I've actually thought a lot about that phrase that you brought up, I guess, two weeks ago.
00:20:53
Speaker
If an investor came in, not that they will, because we're not doing that, and through as much money as you wanted, where you needed to go, and they looked at everything and they go, you need this here, you need this here, obviously. It's such an interesting perspective to step back to be that investor mindset and to
00:21:12
Speaker
to figure out what would make a difference. And it's helped me make quicker decisions on small things, like under $1,000. Like Eric wants more buffers for polishing and everything. And we can get the cheap ones. Or we found these really nice. They're made by RB, A-R-B-E. They're built in dust filter enclosures for a buffer. Cool.
00:21:36
Speaker
Yeah, so the second you turn it on, it's not only spinning the buffer, but it's sucking and filtering the air coming out of it too. And some of the scratch grade wheels
Financial Management
00:21:43
Speaker
that he uses every day for hours a day kick up so much dust. Angelo's got his face mask on and a big clear face shield in front of his face and all this stuff.
00:21:54
Speaker
And he actually has these RVs at home in his basement shop. So he suggested them. But I'm like, they're 500 bucks each. Let's just get two of them. And I did. And they're shipping. They're shipping today. They should be here any day now. And Eric's like, really? Like, I get stuff too, finally. But yeah, of course. Like, those little things that, you know,
00:22:17
Speaker
A year ago, 500 bucks is like, Oh, well, let's, you know, let's work up to it. And now it's just like, if it will help, we'll do it immediately. So yeah, that's totally the only, the only thing that I think I struggle with is, um,
00:22:31
Speaker
Also making sure you don't lifestyle your creep into those things at the risk of not. It's so hard. I'll be honest. It is so hard to save money at the business level. And I thought about, do you, because I don't know if you log into your bank account, but I end up seeing our bank account balance every few days because I'm just doing the books. Yeah. Yeah, I see mine every day. Right. So it's something my wife and I started doing when we got married was we always moved
00:23:00
Speaker
I think I told this before, but we moved. When we get pay, we set up those auto deducts that move into one of those like ING savings accounts or whatever, e-bank savings accounts, because it just disappears. It makes you like don't think you ever had it, and then you can't spend it because it's just like hidden. Yeah, like a 10% fund kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. Do you do that on a business level though? I don't, but I would like to.
00:23:30
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're, you know, we, we paid off two credit cards last week, which was awesome. We still have a bunch more debt to tackle, but I'm keeping up.
00:23:41
Speaker
big buffer in the bank account, you know, an amount of money that I've never had before. And it's oddly, I don't even think about it. Because, you know, because we still owe a lot. So I'm just kind of like saving up to start really picking away while keeping ourselves extremely comfortable for day to day expenses. And it's
00:24:04
Speaker
It feels different than I expected it would to have basically so much money in the bank account. But I don't see it as roll in the cash kind of thing because it's got to go for it. Right. It doesn't feel at the risk of using a word that's a bit out of vogue. It's not like you feel rich. Yeah, exactly. Right. I feel like that will feel different once we're consumer debt free. Yeah.
00:24:30
Speaker
I'm totally fine with the machine leases, and I don't include that in the same kind of bubble as the rest of the credit cards and crap like that. But I feel like once we're through that, which will be very soon, the extra money in the bank account will feel different. But maybe
Scaling Operations
00:24:44
Speaker
not. Maybe it'll just be normal. I don't know. I think it's a pretty darn good life question. And anyone listening who hasn't read the book, I believe it's just calling.
00:24:58
Speaker
Sorry, I was looking to see if it's behind my desk. I think it's at home called, I think it's happiness by Tony, the Tony guy from Zappos. Yeah. Delivering. Thank you. Delivery, happiness, Tony, shoe, Shoshiro.
00:25:11
Speaker
day. Forgive me, but Delivering Happiness will come up. Another one of maybe, maybe the third book. I have two books that consider very formative in my adult life. And that may be now the third one to add to it. But like, what do you even actually read past the first three chapters, which is where I'm stuck. You don't like it?
00:25:33
Speaker
I just haven't gotten through it. Okay. Okay. No, that's fine. Um, you know, I'm actually a little bit like, that's when I'm excited for this sort of new thing that we're focusing in on is like, I've been so focused on the, some of the financial side of things, but it's like, like, like John, John Grimsby, you're going to be okay. Like maybe a year ago, that wasn't as clear, right?
00:25:56
Speaker
And for me, three, four years ago, I have some notes where people that I loved and the people that loved me were like, you can't do this full time. You had it as your hobby, you did it as a side thing. How are you actually going to make money? And we have blown through those hurdles and goals and what this is, which is just absolutely awesome. But it doesn't make me... It's not like I walk around
00:26:24
Speaker
I'm proud of that, but I still feel very young and hungry. Does that make sense? Exactly. Yeah. Anyway. And it's super weird now that our monthly payroll is more than we used to make in a year, just five years ago, four years ago. Right.
00:26:43
Speaker
And that's just monthly payroll. That's not everything else that we have to pay out in a month. It's weird, but comfortable. It's sort of lifestyle creep, but at least the revenue is creeping with it. You know what I mean?
00:26:56
Speaker
No, that's a good point. And I'm conscious of that too. Our payroll has grown a lot. And it's a good thing, but it's certainly not debt in the sense that you're living. I think a lot of the connotations of debt imply, for me, living beyond your means. But it is a fixed obligation. And it's a very real one because it's real. Payroll is real. I mean, these are people who are investing in you.
00:27:21
Speaker
Yeah, and depending on you. And I now understand that scaling your people side of things, as you said a few minutes ago, will grow you past your personal ability to
00:27:37
Speaker
to succeed, you know, like as a one man shop, which I kind of always expected that I would be, you know, we'd make a good living probably, but it would always be a struggle. And then, then Eric came on and then Barry came on and then Aaron came on and then Angela, and it's like, it's growing, growing past what I ever expected it to be just a few years ago, but I'm very happy with where it's going. And it's, it's allowing me to break through these barriers that I always thought I always accepted as like, well, that's my ceiling, you know, I'll do really well, but, but now, you know,
00:28:06
Speaker
I
Envisioning Future Opportunities
00:28:07
Speaker
do wonder if it would be, and this is all awesome and positive stuff, but I do wonder if there's like, do you want to think about setting a limit, an M01 that at least forces you to stop and say, hey, if I ever hit this point, and that could be payroll or it could be number of machines or it could be revenue or it could be like a lot of different ways of measuring that.
00:28:29
Speaker
But I always told me if I'd hit this level, I would stop, take three days off, go camping or go on a vacation. But also during that time where I detached myself, I would also reach out to the people that I respect and look up to and say,
00:28:45
Speaker
do I want to take it any further than this? Because you do hear about the guys who turn into whatever. I'm going to use the Spydercos. I don't know anything about Spydercos. The conglomerates of the world, and then all they want, they've got all this money in their bank, but it's not that fulfilling. All they want to do is go back and make knives on their own. Yeah. And how close, or have you passed that point?
00:29:13
Speaker
Oh, not even good grief, not even remotely close. No, no, no, I'm like, I'm just getting warmed up. That's good. Yeah. Well, no, but that's ultimately good. You do have like a number in your head. Oh, sorry. No, no, no, I don't. But ultimately, I think you just said it, which is that the business that I've built has really been a manifestation or an extension of a solopreneurship where I've sort of started to
00:29:37
Speaker
I've started to delegate the tasks that I used to handle. And now what I want to do is take the opportunity to sort of think about branching off. This sounds much more disruptive than it really will be, but forget about everything you have and you've built. Just leverage those as existing assets and tools and think about what would I start Clean Slate brand new and focus on? What's a game changer? What's an opportunity that we have the ability to execute on?
00:30:04
Speaker
And that's something that's going to start from the beginning as a true endeavor with a team around it, with opportunities around it. It's not going to be this homegrown, organic, slow, individual five-year grind. Purposeful. Exactly.
00:30:20
Speaker
I totally, totally agree with you. And I feel like maybe within the next year or few years, I'll hit that point too, where I can like, the business is like running really well. I can start to remove myself and run at the next project with all the knowledge and some backing, some cashflow from, you know, whatever to do this new crazy thing. And you know, my wife kind of teases me. She's like, one day you're going to come up with that idea and you're just going to want to run hard at it.
00:30:48
Speaker
And she teases me. She's like, you're going to build helicopters or something like that that's never, I don't know. That's exactly it. In my little life Excel file, I keep a list sometimes of what I want. What do you just want, period? And a lot of times, you end up
00:31:09
Speaker
getting there and you don't even always realize it. And then you kind of have to pinch yourself like, look at you, Grims, or like you have all this stuff. And then like, what I think you need is a bigger shop, a Swiss, a brother, probably eventually a five axis, but that's all just like, that's all just housekeeping items at this point. Yeah. Yeah. They're not like life goals anymore. It's just like part of the business growth. And it will happen. Yeah. It's weird. Yeah. Right.
00:31:35
Speaker
It's awesome. But man, is it weird to think that that's kind of normal stuff now. Yeah, but it's the journey, right? And that's all that matters. It has almost nothing to do with the end result. It's just the journey. This got a lot deeper than I expected today. I like it, though. I like it.
Addressing Maintenance Issues
00:31:57
Speaker
So are you reading any good books? I got to get back into some book rhythms on my end.
00:32:02
Speaker
I got the Toyota Way, the lean manufacturing Bible, and I've been picking through it. I've read maybe 20% of it, very much enjoying it. I guess it's been a couple of weeks since I've really picked at it, but it's like on my living room table, meant to be touched, but I keep walking by it going, yeah, I got to read that. But it is very, very good, lean manufacturing, culture ethos kind of thing.
00:32:30
Speaker
Yeah, I gotta pick that up. That's that's all I've been reading later. Yeah, cool. What else is going on? Just rinse and repeat like we're on such a consistent like we're trying to reschedule our order of events for making knives, which is neat. Interesting.
00:32:54
Speaker
Because when I hear Eric, I can look upstairs and I can see him sharpening a knife, or I can hear the sharpening action. I'm like, oh, good. Knives are going to be finished. Which is great. But in the past, it's been, or even up till recent history, he doesn't really start sharpening until late in the day, like 4, 5, 6 o'clock. And he stays till about 8. Whereas just the other day, Monday, I think, he was sharpening at like 11 AM.
00:33:22
Speaker
And he had three knives finished before lunch. And I'm like, this is new. This is good. What's going on? And him and Angelo have been talking a lot about kind of rescheduling the order of events so that Eric's not waiting for parts to finish a knife. So that all the tumbling, sometimes five hours of tumbling happens the day before, not the day of. So that the day of is always primed and always ready and always has what you need. And I think just that little schedule shift of
00:33:49
Speaker
of having things ready for the final step for Eric is going to help us pump more knives out the door. That's awesome. It triggered a question I had, which is, in your video yesterday on Shop Life 16, what was the one on the mother of Pearl? Your new vibratory tumbler shorted, the VFD shorted out because of wires?
00:34:16
Speaker
Because the wire, I mean, it's a jiggly environment. And the wires with those horrendous wire nuts, why do they still exist in the world? I can't imagine a wire jiggling back itself off after being vibrated for 782 straight hours.
00:34:33
Speaker
Exactly. And it's not that it vibrated off. It's that the wires are touching each other with slack between them. So they're just rubbing the sheets together. It's a terrible design. And I actually haven't talked to the company yet, but we need to send them. Maybe I'll send them that video. But it got fixed. Yes.
00:34:50
Speaker
Yeah, Angelo like electrical taped and made it better, but it's, you know, ideally we'd go in there with proper like aerospace wiring techniques. You know, I spent a lot of years, Angelo too, working on our own cars and I learned a lot about wiring and what I got from it was that
00:35:10
Speaker
Automotive
Managing Fine Particles in Machining
00:35:11
Speaker
wiring is good, aerospace wiring is better, and household wiring is an absolute joke. So what is, what's the, what would be an example of aerospace wiring here? Like crimp on suffer.
00:35:23
Speaker
Yeah, like proper crimp on stuff, heat drink in the right places. Solders, solder joints are usually bad because they can vibrate and break at the solder joint. You know, when you're talking about wires, just a lot of things like that. And whereas household wiring is just like, let's just wire nut everything together and make biggest rat nests and
00:35:44
Speaker
Every time I look at an exposed basement wiring, it's just like, oh my gosh, facepalm. How does this even pass code? But it works, I guess. I'd never thought of it as aerospace or automotive or even good, but when we were doing those strike mark targets, that was like,
00:36:01
Speaker
harsh environments of getting moved around, banged around, weather, rain, cold, freezing. We just moved our whole wiring harness to these, I think they were 3M crimp on, and you bought this $80. It was an obnoxiously expensive crimp tool. Because people would be yanking on them, tearing them off, the battery tabs. Everything was over-molded for short out protection, so you basically couldn't short the harness together. Everything was recessed in, but it was still only a $5 harness in the end or something.
00:36:32
Speaker
But it was well thought out, you know, it's obviously the right choice. Yeah. So I don't know what the best choice for this Tumblr application would be, but they're going to have to fix something because if we have that problem, somebody else is likely to have that problem. How are you the first ones to have that? That's weird.
00:36:50
Speaker
And they also redid the coolant tank, or whatever you call it, on the tumbler. It's got a recirculating pump and everything. But all the sludge from all those stones sinks to the bottom. And we had like two inches of clay, of compact clay at the bottom of the thing, just because the stones, right? They break down to dust. And we were talking with one of the tumbling companies, because we're having some issues with the finish. And they said, well, how often do you clean out the water and put new water in?
00:37:19
Speaker
And we're like, well, we run it like six, 10 hours a day for months. And it's been months. And he's like, oh, you've got to replace the water every six hours. What? And we're like, what? That'd be like twice a day or every day. Anyway, so we're doing it once a week now, which is better. But they also redesigned using Rubbermaid Tubs, the coolant system, to kind of like two-stage filter sediment. So the sediment stays in the one and not where the pump is. Got it. Which has been working really well.
00:37:49
Speaker
I was going to, it's been on my like kind of long-term to-do list to ask you, but this whole like coolant system, I guess people call them fines. It wasn't really a word I used every day, but fines are those like...
00:38:06
Speaker
In what context? For machining centers, mills, lathes. But the inevitable particles you get of chips that are very, very small, smaller than 1,000th of an inch. But I'm just not happy. And I haven't seen anybody's system. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I just haven't seen one that's actually a good, well-thought-out, logical workflow or flow, pun intended,
00:38:33
Speaker
coolant that's being properly filtered and not just filtered in the cliched sense like we have a cheesecloth or a thing here but like and we've got the same next jet thing whatever that you got and we've got the Pearson thing which helps but I feel like all of this is kind of
00:38:52
Speaker
throwing darts at it. And I just feel like there should be a better system that it just does a better job of automatically filtering, letting us know when filters need change or swapped or get loaded up. And I just feel like I should be able to run a machine for six months and not have the coolant tank floor end up with a quarter inch or half inch of sludge. Like that shouldn't be that hard.
00:39:16
Speaker
I don't know. I feel like maybe the big boys, the hermoles and the grubs of the world might have figured this out, but maybe not. I don't know. Oh, actually, no, that's a good point. I keep meaning to look into... We actually mocked up a design a while back, but scroll filters, I think, could be a big part of that answer.
00:39:36
Speaker
What's a scroll? So Amish has got one on his DMG monoblock. So it just uses a scroll so that it's constantly passing. The scroll turns at like 0.01 RPMs, but it's constantly allowing the coolant to flow through new filter media.
00:39:53
Speaker
a scroll that we're scrolling across. So I
Improving Machine Tolerances with Mist Collectors
00:39:56
Speaker
think the benefit there is that you can use a really, really fine filter media and it won't clog up because it's always being presented with new fresh media as it rolls. I know that's common on surface grinders, which would be another good example of where you're getting a lot of fines, perhaps a little bit more expensive, but at this point I'm not, I don't really care about, like I don't care about the consumable costs of the media paper because I want a better system.
00:40:24
Speaker
Yeah. And I need, I need some filter system on my lathe. Like I've got the coolant coalescer, which takes the oil out, but I don't have a filter to get the chips out. Got it. And you know, some of the through coolant tooling that I have has tiny ports and stuff, and you get plugged up with chips.
00:40:40
Speaker
And any milling that I do on my lathe is like, you know, a two tenth tip load or something ridiculous like that with a 20 thou end mill. So like I'm making dust basically. And I need to get that dust out of the coolant. And it has to be able to support 300 PSI of coolant pressure.
00:40:58
Speaker
So I can't just use those household water filters because they're 100 PSI or whatever. Right. And I just want to make sure we are smart because it's cool. We're young. We've got relatively new machines. We're still hungry. And to some extent, we're sort of green. You and I haven't been through major maintenance problems in our lives on this stuff.
00:41:18
Speaker
Those fines are hard on bearings, are hard on wear surfaces, they're hard on precision surfaces, pumps, and surface finishes. Good grief. I mean, that is absolutely, when you're regurgitating, when you're reflowing chips through your coolant and you're cutting, that is absolutely marring surface finishes. Sweet. Awesome. What's anything on tap for today?
00:41:44
Speaker
Today, hopefully I can get done with these stop pins. We're just making lots, which is good. We've got to make them in a dozen different sizes, and we just want to make lots, so we don't have to look at them again for a while. But the miscollector that we got a couple weeks ago has absolutely been helping with tolerances. Really? With tolerances? Thermal growth is half or less what it was before. Just from pulling out or circulating air?
00:42:11
Speaker
No kidding. Huge difference. Like, I'm, I'm disappointed in all my applications guy that they didn't suggest that first. Oh, my God. I mean, and I told them that at the open house. And they're like, Oh, I never really thought I'm like, Yes, like this is so important every machine and stupid Nakamura doesn't come like suited for Miss. I've seen the numerous low hanging hit your head sign from the like Jerry rigging of that thing.
00:42:39
Speaker
Well, even just like on the Maury, there's a plate that you unbolt with four bolts and then the miscollector bolts right on. It's the easiest thing in the world. Whereas on the map, like, like we had to create a four inch rail in the side of the sheet metal and it was not easy.
00:42:54
Speaker
But that's what I'm telling you. Machine tools are becoming less interesting in their capabilities, in my opinion. The more you know about them, like five, 10 years ago, I was like, oh, it's the greatest thing ever. I can't even understand it. Sure. And some of it may just be our own personal journeys.
00:43:13
Speaker
We've kind of, it seems like we've hit the limit of three-axis machines for some time. Who knows what? Maybe linear motors will come to them or something, I don't know, or the price will come down. But it's like all these other things, like the mist system, the coolant system, the chip evacuation, that needs to be, there should be more attention put on that stuff.
00:43:32
Speaker
Yeah. And they're almost never done by the machine builder. It's an add on. It's a, you know, an afterthought kind of thing. And then, you know, LNS or whoever has to like integrate and all this stuff. And it's like, wouldn't it just be so much nicer if the machine tool builder kind of clean slate, like let's just build something new. That's hopefully good. Um, and I'm sure some of them are trying for sure, but yeah, but yeah. Sweet. I am envious of your visitor tomorrow.
00:44:01
Speaker
Yes. The originator of this podcast who convinced us to start recording it, Rob Lockwood is coming to visit. That is super cool. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. He told us a few months ago that he was going to be within a few hours of here. And I'm like, oh, maybe I'll find some time to come up to see you. And he said, there is literally zero chance that I'm within driving distance of Grimsman Ives and not. That's awesome.
00:44:28
Speaker
Yeah. I'm envious because it'll be fun and all that, but I'm sure you're going to just learn a ton and just nerd out. That's really cool. Awesome. We'll have fun. I'll see you next week. Sounds good. All right. Take care. Bye.