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Business of Machining - Episode 111
238 Plays7 years ago
Let the podcast go on!
Saunders may have lost his voice, but that’s not stopping these two from putting out another episode.
Get ready, goal set, go!
Grimsmo is hitting lots of goals lately. The team averaged their ideal daily production number for the ENTIRE month of March!
Grimsmo is also on his final steps of purchasing a Swiss Lathe! Learn more about its specs and the steps Grimsmo is taking to prepare for his Swiss in this episode.
Upcoming goals in the Grimsmo shop:
- Get a new shop!
- 5-Axis, baby
How to Negotiate
It’s not all about getting a lower price! There’s lots of valuable add-ons or conveniences that you can push for. If you’re the customer, you’re in a position of power! Grimsmo talks about what he negotiated for when shopping for his Swiss, and shares some strategies.
Note: Building relationships with distributors HELPS!
Customer service isn’t everything, but it’s the company’s first impression
“They just make it so easy to buy from them, and their product is quality, so why not!” - Grimsmo
Saunders makes a point for the distributor model
“Sales forces are a relic of the past” - Saunders
What to expect when you’re expecting a Swiss Lathe
Grimsmo researches necessary tooling, and preparations he has to make for his new Swiss Lathe. Watch out for a video on Grimsmo’s YouTube channel where he goes into this more!
Lapping machine vs. a great end mill in a great machine?
Grimsmo talks about tools for getting that perfect mirror finish that the Grimsmo team is quickly becoming known for.
“That is the full-Grimsmo machine!” - Grimsmo
BOM goes international!
Saunders is visiting some machine shops around Europe, and Grimsmo tags along to check out the Kern Factory in Germany, and Tornos in Switzerland. While they’re at it, they plan on taping a BOM episode in Germany.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Health Update
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 111. My name is John Grimsmo. My name is John Saunders. You got an issue with your voice there? Sorry. It's been a week.
Production Success and Goals
00:00:14
Speaker
I'm going on day five. Well, day four or five of a sinus infection and then totally lost my voice yesterday and trying to get it back here. So I'm going to try to go into listen mode here a little so I don't annoy our viewers.
00:00:30
Speaker
Sounds good. Well, I have a lot to talk about and you can, you can tease more out of me as we go. Good. I like that. Yeah. Um, man, so much is happening right now. Um, Barry keeps teasing. He's like, I'm getting a little tired of winning so much.
00:00:45
Speaker
Um, we're on a super duper consistent production streak, like insanely consistent. This is kind of the numbers, you know, the daily production numbers we've been striving for, you know, kind of that goal, like let's get to this many a day. Um, and we're there all month, the entire month we're averaging this exact number, which is just fantastic. Um,
Swiss Lathe Acquisition and Plans
00:01:06
Speaker
I am 90 plus percent closed on the Swiss lay of the purchase. Basically today I should be, uh, today or tomorrow I'll be finalizing and signing papers. Awesome. So super duper excited about that. Anything change on the, we've learned anything. Here's the thing.
00:01:26
Speaker
So, you know, thinking about what I want to use it for all the knife parts, all the pen parts. Um, I want it to be set up and dialed for full production all the time. Like the tornos is special because it has more tool holders available than most other machines its size. So I'm like, well, I'm just going to load it up and have all my drills, all my turning tools, all my grooving, like everything. Because why not? And then the changeover between the 14 different products that I make on the lathe, um, will be just call it.
00:01:56
Speaker
So I'm like, yeah, that's perfect. Let's do that. That's worth the investment, of course. And then let's do that. So one of the things is a 60,000 RPM electric spindle speeder or just not just high speed spindle. The thing costs like 12 grand with all the peripherals and, you know, frequency drivers and all that stuff. So I'm totally in for it.
Installation and Logistics Challenges
00:02:19
Speaker
But apparently there's a backlog and they want to install it at the factory in in Chicago.
00:02:26
Speaker
And there could be like an eight plus week delay. And I'm like, dude, the machine is sitting there on the floor. I want you to ship it tomorrow, but they want to, you know, they want to install it themselves and yada, yada, yada. So I'm kind of at this crossroads. Like, do I just nix that for now? Get the machine shipped, which I'm kind of leaning towards, um, the 12 or the, so what is it? 50 K?
00:02:49
Speaker
Yeah. 60 that lets you do things faster, but you could still do them slower. Absolutely. Oh yeah. And there's literally it's, it's only purpose will be to mill Torx heads on our knife screws. And it can be field installed. They don't want it to be. So I'm going to call them today and really pressure them and be like, what the heck? This is like, it can't be that difficult. It's like a little electric spindle and some wiring.
00:03:19
Speaker
They may have good reason. I mean, I would just, they may for sure. But eight, you know, eight weeks is a lot of time to learn and make money making parts, make, I know. Yeah. I'd make that 12 grand in pens. Like in the time I'd have it otherwise. Right. Yeah. Um, yeah. So I'll, I'll figure out a solution for that. I'm not going to wait eight weeks. That's ridiculous. Um, but yeah, otherwise things are really good. Um,
00:03:49
Speaker
Yesterday, I must have had like 10 phone calls within a few hours just talking to them and a bunch of other people and the finance guy and the president and blah, blah, blah, and a couple other companies. Um, this is very busy day, but great, great, busy. It's all coming together. Sweet. So they will ship it to you from Chicago and then you will have to kind of separately buy all the whole, I don't know how Swiss works if it's different, but
00:04:15
Speaker
you're going to then buy all the holders, you do the kind of quote unquote set up, or did they come do it with you because they're so different? Yeah, they, um, so normally the machine, especially in Canada, the machine will get shipped to, uh, for example, Elliott Matsura or the importer, whatever. Um, and then they will spec it for Canadian certification and all that stuff, and then kind of install all the peripherals and you know, prep the bar feeder and all that stuff. And I'm like,
00:04:44
Speaker
If it's driving across the border, literally past my shop, one block away from the freeway and going another 45 minutes to Oakville and then back, that's just dumb. Direct here, drop it off here. Yeah, that's hilarious. Yeah, and you guys can come here to install all that stuff.
Machine Setup and Protocols
00:05:02
Speaker
That's what I want. And it's interesting because as you push for these things,
00:05:06
Speaker
They're amenable. I mean, they want to make a sale. They want to make the customer happy. So it's not the customer that has to bend over backwards. It's the dealer in this scenario. I mean, spending a quarter million dollars on this machine, I'm in charge within reason. Yeah. I feel like I've been a good example of it's a relationship. Of course. You may be willing to pay for things or things that are worth a value to you.
00:05:32
Speaker
Yep. Um, we had some, uh, folks on, I think it was Instagram. They were like, I can't believe your house is only just now getting installed. It looks like it got delivered last week and they were kind of trolling. I was like, that's how it works. Like it got rigged here Monday unloaded and then.
00:05:49
Speaker
And at least for Haas machines, the customers responsible for hiring are bringing in their electrician and hooking up air, getting power to the machine and so forth. But we did that within, I think we had it done in 36 hours, something, two days later. And then the second that's ready, we call our service guy and he's like, I could have someone there.
00:06:10
Speaker
I think they had said this was Wednesday. He's like, I could have someone there Friday, but if you don't mind, it may be easier. They were kind of like, do you, and that was like, I don't, I don't need it Friday actually. So they're out here Monday. I was like, that's, that's perfect. That's great. Yep. Yeah. And even for all of my machines, it's a, you know, you're like, electrician can come in, wire it up and everything, make sure it's good, but do not turn it on because the, the, the service guy from that company needs to turn it on. Yeah. Same here.
00:06:36
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And then when they when they did my Maury, they wired it up and apparently it's common to wire it up backwards so that the spindle spins in reverse. Oh, it's it's weird. Well, our, our, our higher end Haas machines have a little, little light on the backside of the control, the electrical panels, not the machine control. And if you have the phasing out of
00:06:59
Speaker
If you have the phasing wrong, it just lights up and says phasing, correct. You just switched two leads and you're good. Right. Yeah. Weird. Yeah. I mean, maybe it has that, but I remember they turned it on and the spindle spun backwards. So we have to switch two wires. I think the same on the lapping machine. It's a big deal for rotary screw compressors because apparently I think because at least ours are oil fed compressors.
00:07:20
Speaker
I think you can get into higher end oil-less rotary screws, but that's like a whole other world. If you turn ours backward, they can ruin themselves within seconds because it's extracting oil instead of pulling it in.
00:07:39
Speaker
When they installed our Atlas Copco, they had a piece of paper against the exhaust and they turned it on and so for 0.5 seconds, they saw the paper was sucking in instead of blowing out and they just flipped the leads and we were fine. Interesting.
Material Sourcing and Efficiency
00:07:58
Speaker
That's cool. It could be here in April.
00:08:03
Speaker
Uh, yeah, yeah. It's may 20th right now. Um, yes. Cool. Sooner the better because I mean, there's learning curve. There's train only to install. Sorry. Say it again. There's learning curve and training and install and that I want to eat that time as soon as possible.
00:08:20
Speaker
Yeah, sure. If you don't mind me being nosy, I've seen different people have different stories about, quote unquote, who carries or pays for the freight. Like I've heard people, some machine dealers will say it's FOB, freight on board, meaning basically we import our machines to Long Beach, California. You pay the freight from Long Beach. I've heard other people say, no, no, no, screw that. You can get them to pay the freight just from your closest distributor reseller. I've had other people say that they already got that wave.
00:08:47
Speaker
And I'm sure it's situation dependent, but I'm curious, are you paying any or all of the freight from Chicago? I thought FOB was forward operating base, like from their factory or wherever it's sitting.
00:09:01
Speaker
I mean, that's, yeah, that's a mill. I think that's a military term. It is. Yeah. I think, oh, here, let's go. Maybe I'm confusing, but, but it basically means from where it's sitting, right? Free onboard or freight on board. It's a shipping term used to indicate who's responsible for paying charges. Yeah.
00:09:20
Speaker
Okay. So the term, yeah, it must define something. Well, I think the idea is that FOB means we will load it onto the truck for free. So you don't have to pay for quote, unquote rigging, but once it's on the trailer or truck at our shop, the meter starts for you. You've got to then pay. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it means. Yeah. I saw it on my quote. There was like $2,000 freight or something like that. Not too bad.
00:09:52
Speaker
Hmm. Well, that's exciting. Yeah, that's super exciting. Um, I'm going with the six foot bar feeder, not the 12 foot bar feeder, even though they're the same cost. Um, I just think it'll make a lot more sense for us. And I did some math and I'm like, how many? Okay. So if I get the six foot bar feeder, I can fit a 30 bars in it. If I'm making screws, how many, how many days does it run for? I think it was like nine days.
00:10:17
Speaker
Whoa, really? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Some parts were nine days. Some parts were four and a half. So I'm like, oh, that's fine. I sometimes forget a six foot bar feeder doesn't just mean it feeds a six foot bar. It feeds a six foot bar plus however many more six foot bars are in the hopper, which is what, 10 or 20?
00:10:39
Speaker
So 30, 30 bars under three eights and 15 bars over three eights. Yeah, that's a lot. So it's fine. It's totally fine. I mean, it could, for most parts, it could run Friday night to Monday morning and still be running when you get in and what more could you want? I mean, otherwise you're pretty much here every day, you know, the, uh, and there's, there's issues and downsides to running on an unintended too. I mean, tolerances make a lot of whack and et cetera, et cetera. You gotta be careful, broken tools and such.
00:11:09
Speaker
Does the Tornos have that little lazy Susan that I saw on the, I think it was the Citizen at Hakko watch. It can basically batch out the parts. That way, if you do have tolerances walk out, you can at least know. Yep. I don't think it has that, but it would be very easy to install that at the end of the conveyor, the parts conveyor. I mean, that could be like a little Arduino project or something like that. I like that.
00:11:35
Speaker
Yeah, so I might end up doing that eventually, but yeah, very, very excited. The bar feeder thing is funny because I had a conversation with that company Zama Tree last week about
00:11:54
Speaker
Um, they do this like online parts, quitting, but they are starting to sell. It's kind of interesting to me to start or somewhat perplexing, but also interesting. I think they're starting to sell raw material and supplies, cutting tools, which is interesting.
Industry Changes and Tooling Needs
00:12:10
Speaker
Cause I think there's a lot of potential to disrupt that whole industry of, of distributors and vendors and online. And they were sort of asking about what, you know, opinion about job shops that will buy.
00:12:24
Speaker
material saw cut to size versus just inventorying bar stock and saw cutting down. And I've definitely seen, generally speaking, older shops, either older meaning they've been around longer or they have embraced, they sort of cut their teeth or learned in kind of a different era, tend to have more of the inventory racks with uncut bar and a saw department or a cutting saw.
00:12:52
Speaker
type of stuff. And I was like, most of the guys I know that are either younger or newer to the industry or like a friend in San Francisco who literally his whole shop was like a single five axis machine. That's all he ever had. He never had anything else. All that they would ever do is have saw cut material delivered on a pallet straight to their door, ready to feed into the machine.
00:13:16
Speaker
which is kind of like you, I mean, you, we joke. I don't even have a band saw. No, exactly. And yeah, I think it works really good. Whether water jet or saw cut, it is really nice just to get material and throw it in the machine and start cutting parts. And the whole disrupting the tooling industry, like I'm trying to buy these,
00:13:41
Speaker
drill bit holders for the Swiss lathe from this company, Gen Swiss. And pricing is not online. It's a big company. I know a lot of people buy it from them. You got to go through your distributor. It's hard to find a distributor in Canada that has them and blah, blah, blah. And I'm just like, guys, I just, A, I want to know how much they are. And B, how do I buy them? Yep.
00:14:02
Speaker
So I had to ask like a friend who's bought from them before and he goes, oh, that thing's 300 bucks because I just bought one. OK, now I know. Right. Yeah, I want one. But like it's it's super annoying. And then there's companies like Maritool, Lakeshore, et cetera, that are smaller, like, I mean, not tiny, but good sized companies, but they're not Iskar or whatever.
00:14:22
Speaker
that are direct sale to consumer. And I'm like, that's why I like you guys because you care you offer this direct service and you're crushing it. And, you know, as kind of Instagram community of machinists is like, Oh, clearly, everybody just buys from them because it's just so easy and good. Yeah.
00:14:41
Speaker
I have softened my criticism a little of the distributor model. Probably as we've grown, I get it more and as I learn more about this industry and how the world works. There are some companies that have a good product offering.
00:14:58
Speaker
and they may say be able to offer technical support and inventory, but they just don't have a sales force. And I think we probably take that for granted pre, you know, internet era, which isn't that long ago, you needed
00:15:13
Speaker
a sales force going door to door, kind of the legacy fuller brush world where you've got people pounding on doors, pushing product. And unfortunately, I still think we have the relic of that. It's frustrating because the geography of that is what seems to really preclude the internet fitting in with that well. Like I've been banging on the helical tool people. I'm like, you give me the price online. You have a link to that tool, but there's no way to then
00:15:41
Speaker
even tie it to a distributor in my area so that they can get credit. I don't care about them. Just get me the tool. So I think whether it's anecdotes like that or the fact that Sandvik now sells through Amazon, it's kind of full price, so it's not necessarily the best way to buy. But things will continue to change. Yeah, that's fantastic.
00:16:08
Speaker
What was the fancier question earlier about tooling for the Swiss? There's not a lot that I need. I need a lot of drill and boring bar holders. I need five turning tools, part off and everything. I've got some of my Swiss buddies kind of helping guiding me exactly what to get. Here's what I think I need. Just tell me what to get. But there's not a lot. It's not like I'm buying 40 holders. It's like five turning holders and a bunch of drill stuff and some live tools.
00:16:38
Speaker
I'm doing a bit of a package deal with Elliott. I think they're going to help source some of it. Cool. Um, for the tornos and kind of included in the financing and stuff. So it's happening. And then I got to order coolant and I got to order oil. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, I've got a list going on of what else I need. And then basically once I signed the paperwork, I'm like, okay, it's, it's game on, you know, let's order everything else. Right. Awesome.
00:17:05
Speaker
You would have laughed. Yvonne, my wife, is doing much better, which is great. Fantastic. Last Friday, we had to go up to Cleveland for her first post-op appointment.
Machine Specifications and Visits
00:17:18
Speaker
And this was much more of a happy circumstance to go up there. And it's a bit of a drive. We had some extra time. I was like, do you mind?
00:17:26
Speaker
I was very nice about this because this is about her, not about me. I was like, do you mind if we maybe swing by a machine tool dealer? And it happened to be the folks that also sell Star Swiss Lays for Northern Ohio. And so we're in there.
00:17:46
Speaker
Unfortunately, they didn't have the machine that I was hoping to see a demo of or see one in person, but they had like three star Swiss Leys that they were setting up for PMTS or one of the shows. And I'm like, this is the one that Grimsman was looking at. And she's like, I mean, she's interested, but she's like, yeah, I don't know what I'm looking at.
00:18:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's fantastic. Yeah, Meg's pretty much the same way. Excited for me, but not about it, which is fine. I totally understand. Yeah. So how many discrete tool holders or positions are there? There are technically 30 holder positions. Oh, count. Wow. And I'm loading it up. Can any of those be front and back? So they're sort of duels, or does that count duels?
00:18:34
Speaker
Um, yeah, all the drill blocks are front and back. So I'm putting like, like micro boring bars in the front and the back. And I'm going to feed the same cool and stream to them. Um, getting a 2000 PSI cool and pump. It's crazy. Oh, it's crazy. Um,
00:18:53
Speaker
When you buy a machine like this, be very knowledgeable because I said I wanted high pressure coolant, they threw a 2000 PSI chip blaster on there. And then one of my buddies was like, make sure it has eight to 10 coolant ports because that's eight to 10 individual coolant channels. So you can turn on like channel one, channel two, channel three.
00:19:14
Speaker
And the one they quoted only has four ports. So had I not investigated that, I would have only had four channels. And my buddy was like, four is painful, eight is good, 10 is great. Huh? Otherwise, the cooler turns on everywhere. Pretty much. Yeah, you'd have to T to every tool and you just lose pressure the more things you have. Right, right.
00:19:35
Speaker
Interesting. Not the end of the world, but if you're going to do it right, the cost difference between four ports and eight ports is less than 10%. That's the stuff that scares me.
Maintenance and Future Investments
00:19:48
Speaker
What's little things? I am surprised your Nakamura doesn't have the tool preset or built-in
00:19:57
Speaker
Yes, I have to manually install it every time. Not to pick on you, but that's like, oh my God, that would have probably been a single handed deal breaker for me. Yeah. Sweet. What else has been going on? If that's not enough, thinking what's the next four months, six months, year, two years going to look like, what do we want to do?
00:20:27
Speaker
We do want to move to a bigger shop very soon. And then I, man, I keep thinking about this five axis stuff. And then there's the Matsura line, the ma'am and the LX, um, very amazing machines. I got pricing on that makes sense. Lots of pallets, lots of tools. Um, I pretty much know what I'm looking for. And then over the weekend, I got thinking about these current machines made in Switzerland. Like we've talked about them over the years and they seem like Germany.
00:20:58
Speaker
Did I say Switzerland? Sorry, I'm thinking Switzerland so much. Yeah, they are German machines. Anyway, everything we've heard over the past few years is they are the best of the best of the best of the best, like super tight, taller and super high accuracy and same surface finishes.
00:21:15
Speaker
There are palletized options. There are tooling options. So I started heavily looking into those this weekend. That was my dive for the weekend. I watched every single current video on YouTube. I read every single article on the internet. I scrubbed it basically. And man, they look cool. Yeah. And you know, excuse me, you know, Marvin.
00:21:36
Speaker
Yeah, so Marvin is one of their apps guys. We met him at AU in Vegas. He talked for quite a long time and him and I have been texting on Instagram a lot lately. And he keeps sending me these pictures of mirror finishes. And he was just telling me, yeah, right off the machine.
00:21:55
Speaker
like the same surface finish we're getting from our lapping machine he is getting from an n-mill and it might be diamond or pcd or something but still like right they are insane machines
00:22:07
Speaker
And then price wise, they are about the same, if not cheaper than a Matsura. So that was like, I figured that out yesterday. And I'm like, Oh my God, right. I used to think that those machines and look, this is the tough thing about there's so many great machine tools out there. But every time you get somebody who's willing to share an opinion, it's kind of interesting to hear what they say. And I've heard things like, there's a bunch of really, really good machine tool brands out there. And then there are the companies that are at the
00:22:33
Speaker
at the peak and that the peak would be things potentially like Hermla or Mitsui-Siki or Kern. Yeah, Yazda's up there too. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that's really cool. And you saw them at IMTS. I mean, some of those Kerns include five axis, include automation, include high tool, whatever, tool count, ATCs count, and a really small footprint.
00:22:59
Speaker
Very small footprint. Runs HSK 40. I can get like 40 to 60 pallets in an aroa, like integrated system. Very small footprint, big size table too, like a 13 inch travel. It's just started ticking all the boxes. And I'm like, oh my God, that is the full Grimsmo machine. Like, geez Louise. So I'm super,
00:23:26
Speaker
super heavily thinking about that. And, you know, I'm trying to think of the I know what it'll do for us. I mean, it'll make us a lot more knives, it'll make them better, much tighter, much better surface finishes, which will reduce the polishing time that you and Eric have to do.
00:23:43
Speaker
Well, it's also if you're eventually going to be in the market for an automated five-access machine, what's the best bang for the buck? What's the best capability? Exactly. Holy cow. The one thing about Kern, and this is a pure observation, which I will now do my best to pay attention to better, but every time I've seen a Kern
00:24:08
Speaker
cutting or holding or whatever, it's usually single parts. I've never seen like a little mini pallet or a mini tombstone, and that could totally just be my, I haven't seen that many of them, but I can't think of why it would be a problem, but your goal with a five axis would be to have little mini tombstones, right?
00:24:28
Speaker
Exactly, with several parts around the outside or the top of the tombstone. I've already got it designed up, of course. And yeah, I talked to the president of Curran USA who used to run their production department in Germany. And what's really cool about Curran that most other companies don't do is they have their own contract machine shop. So they will make parts for customers, paying customers, using Curran machines day in, day out, every day for decades. So they're like,
00:24:56
Speaker
direct feedback. You yell across the shop floor and you're like, hey, it's a little vibratey at 6,000 RPM. How about we change whatever? I don't know. I'm making that up. But direct feedback with, you don't have to get your customer to feedback. It's your own factory that's feeding back your machine. That's super cool. But anyway, the president was saying that in their production environment, they would do small tombstones like that all the time.
00:25:22
Speaker
And the other thing that blew me away was that it's got the same horsepower spindle as my Maury. Oh, really? It's got a 20 horsepower spindle on it. You're not going to put a tool in it bigger than like, well, maybe you'd put like a one inch face melt. Yeah, exactly. But it's got balls, you know, it's, it's tend to be seen as a finishing machine, which it absolutely is. But I think it can do some real work. And I don't do hogging. I just don't. I do light finishing. That's
00:25:50
Speaker
Get the machine that's suited. Well, this is kind of weird, but in a very, very significant coincidence, I was emailing with Marvin this morning because I'm touring current on Friday.
00:26:05
Speaker
Oh yeah, you're going for that big European vacation. Yeah, so a shout out to Kern for, again, some of the companies that are now sort of seeing the benefits for them, but also the just passion of sharing their story and sharing their factories and capabilities with the world by letting us come in and film. Kern is one of those companies that you would have typically said,
00:26:25
Speaker
There are absolutely no cameras. I don't think they allow cameras normally. Anyway, we're going to tour their machine production, the machine demonstration, and then their second plant, which is their own job shop that has milling, quality control, EDM grinding, which Marvin was saying is really one of the largest job shops in Germany.
00:26:45
Speaker
Whoa. Yeah. So half joking. What is today? Wednesday? It's a week. It's nine days from now. I'm picking Lawrence up on Thursday from the airport if you want to find. Is there a Toronto to Munich flight? Seriously? I don't care. I mean, come.
00:27:07
Speaker
I will look into that. You could come. That would be nuts. I'll email you the info. But as long as you got there at the same time as Lauren's, so it works with how we've got the rental car, all that, we're going to hang out with Marvin, tour on Friday, and I'm going to drop him back off at the airport Saturday. That would be nuts.
00:27:27
Speaker
I don't do stuff like that. But maybe I should. Worst case, we'll get the video edited and you can see it there. But I will write an excited, legit excited Kern is. Oh, that's awesome. Kern is.
00:27:38
Speaker
They're like, from what I've heard from Marvin and others, like they're very much just nerds and engineers and fascinated like some of the, um, in his 2d adaptive presentation at AU, his talking about how they use, you know, oscilloscopes on the axes of machines to measure the feedback of how they're cutting to get the science behind it is really cool. Man.
00:28:01
Speaker
Yeah, and Marv and I were talking, like he totally invited me. He's like, oh, you got to come out to Germany and we'll make some knives together on the current. Like we'll rent, we'll, we'll set aside a machine for a day and we'll play. And it's like, seriously? Like.
00:28:12
Speaker
Yeah, I need to do that. And if I could tie that in with a trip next Friday, that would be excellent.
Customization and Integration
00:28:20
Speaker
That's probably a better use of your time though, which I'm guessing that needs more more lead time than seven days. I mean, I don't know, but it didn't sound like it for his perspective, but I'd have to, I'd have to clarify for sure.
00:28:33
Speaker
Yeah, I would love to make a handle like a Norseman handle and hold it side by side with one made on my, on my Maury and see the differences. Yeah. It's funny. I mean, that's something that I've heard about with, in this case, Hermla.
00:28:49
Speaker
some acquaintances, kind of friends, more acquaintances. We're looking at a whole bunch of machines for really high end. I think this is medical work and it's just very normal to have these machine tool companies actually run part samples for you and they were blown away at what Hermele was able to do.
00:29:06
Speaker
And it's the whole thing. It's not just the end part. It's how they treated the relationship, the cam, the set up, the work holding. And I think, we're still working on this, but I think Hermel is going to do that for us, for Johnny Fivepart, simply because every other time they do this, they can't show it. And so to me, that just makes me warm inside. That's so cool that they're going to take the time to show us how they go through that whole process with a part. It's pretty cool.
00:29:43
Speaker
all custom builds and it's six plus month lead time for custom build because they want it to be just exactly to your specifications, which is great. And he said the American president was saying that American and Canadian customers are typically very impatient and they want everything now, whereas in Europe, they're more like chill and can wait the six month happily. So he's like, we have some machines that we just kind of keep on order. We do regular production and kind of keep them ready for those tight orders.
00:30:01
Speaker
I'm excited now. Dude, that's cool.
00:30:13
Speaker
But I'm thinking of our timeline. I mean, six months would put us into September. That's basically when I want it up and running, which means I should be deciding soon. How different is, or do you think you have a bunch of specifics or I feel like you would, I feel like I would probably be fine with a relatively stock. Well, I don't know how many options are there. Spend automation and tools. There's some, yeah.
00:30:40
Speaker
Exactly. Spindles automation tools through Spindle Coolant, Chip Conveyor, things like that. I do have my list of probably five, six things that it would be hard to budge me on, but everything else I'm fairly flexible.
00:30:56
Speaker
But yeah, yeah. Um, I'm at that point in my business where like we've talked about so many times where it's like, why are you waiting? Like, what's, what's holding you back? Well, you got to get the Swiss, I mean, as your friend, I'm excited. Like, seriously, this is awesome. As you're, whatever we call this, the bomb counterpart, you know, be careful. Um, you got a Swiss coming, you got to nail that, you got to get that integrated and, um,
00:31:21
Speaker
Not to be a party pooper, but God forbid a bearing goes out in one of your existing machines. That could bring things to a halt real quick or something like that. This is all exciting. I always just make sure we keep it all in balance. Absolutely, yeah.
00:31:45
Speaker
Yeah, we actually talked about physically setting aside tens of thousands of dollars for maintenance for last minute, like, oh crap, we need a spindle on the Maury kind of thing. Well, okay, we have 20 grand set aside for this, for exactly this reason.
00:32:02
Speaker
And, you know, we haven't physically done that yet, but we will. Okay. That's a good, I think that's probably smart. That would be really good. Yeah. Yeah. It's got, I remember somebody maybe high school, somebody told me this once it was always, it's just kind of stuck. They're like, the one thing that is true about any mechanical object is that at some point it is going to fail. Like period. It's that's a known certainty. It's like, it's like death and taxes. Yeah. Yep. Can't avoid it.
00:32:30
Speaker
Dude, awesome. Yeah. I don't think what else is going on. No, things are good. Things are really good. Awesome. That's really cool. Well, I'm going to be in Europe next week, so I'm going to text you or figure out what schedule looks like in terms of doing bomb, or you could just fly over and then we could do it in person together. I think that would be much easier.
00:32:58
Speaker
Um, no, I'm, I'm really excited. It's, I get to see Lauren shop. I get to see Hermla Kern, uh, and then Heidenhine grove splaiser, Swiss lube, big Kaiser and Spironi. I think are all, all the factory tours I've got lined up.
00:33:17
Speaker
So Sprony makes your tool Presetter. Do they make anything else? Oh, that's a great question. I don't know if they do. That's what I'm now embarrassed to say because I'm only familiar with their Presetter, which is amazing products Presetter. Yeah, it looks like it's mostly Presetter. Oh my God. Grims, you actually shouldn't look at these or investigate them in any which way because
00:33:45
Speaker
It's not going to go well for you. The four words I've heard you say about it recently are like, well, if I'm getting a five axis and I'm getting a good one and I'm getting it decked out, I probably need to get a presetter as well just to have that.
00:34:02
Speaker
Oh, I mean, the laser systems are pretty amazing. Yeah, they are, especially on the current. Yeah, we have it kind of for different reasons, which you'll see later.
Tool Efficiency and Reliability
00:34:14
Speaker
And you're not going to be a high production shop. Like when I was touring the Haas factory, they literally have like a full-time person working at a preset or just pulling tools out, setting them up, installing inserts, and then they measure the run out, measure diameter, et cetera, gauge length, and then they print out a sticker or put it into the
00:34:31
Speaker
ERP type system for that tool number, you're not going to be like that. That's not how. No, but I do use my microscope on almost every questionable tool. And we do check run out of every tool. And we do load them and
00:34:51
Speaker
Yeah, that's amazing. Especially on a machine where you can you can replace the tool while the machine is running. Can you do that on your UMC? Cannot, unfortunately. Yeah, bummer. But on a machine that you can, we can't either on armory, but having an offline preset or where you can, you can put a new tool in, preset it, send it right to the machine. So the machines updated already, put the tool back in the carousel. And then you never have to think about it again. Yeah.
00:35:15
Speaker
But I think the other thing is you can flag a tag that says next time this tool is called measure the height and the diameter. I'm pretty sure you can do that as well. So it's kind of a no big deal. No, we were looking I mean, at some point I still I still think I'd like to get an Okuma Genos at some point if I can. And they seem amazing. We were thinking about using that for a fixture plate and
00:35:39
Speaker
we would be right at the limit of the travel of the machine, which would leave no room for a table probe. So offline tool presetter, that machine you can access the ATC while it's running. And then there's a relatively inexpensive device. It's like a little wire on a hobby servo. And yeah, I looked at those and that just tells you, I think it's probably accurate too.
00:36:03
Speaker
maybe 10 or 20 thousandths of an inch. But basically, if you break off any substantial portion of a tool or it goes missing, that will flag it as a broken tool so you don't go tapping holes that haven't been drilled. Yeah, I'm getting two of those with my Swiss. Oh, really? The broken tool? Yeah. Oh, that's cool. Yeah.
00:36:25
Speaker
Yeah. So it's like a tiny little, I don't know, 30,000 wire that just rotates and says, yep, they're not there. Um, they seem pretty cool. So that's, it's going to be specific to a tool spot. Or is it going to move around? Yes. No, it's all, I'll put it to the most breakable tools, like the 20,000 mill we use to do the Torx pattern. Um, that one for sure. And then I don't know, cut off or something like that.
00:36:50
Speaker
Is there like a Sandvik Capto style equivalent where you can have a tool, a replacement tool already set up, check the run out of it. It's in a little collet and a little holder, and then you can just really like 20 seconds pop it in? Yeah. The company GenSwiss makes that for drills and boring bars.
00:37:12
Speaker
I mean, the offset of the new one is going to be slightly different, but you can have it pre-measured, I guess. Pre-setter. But it is, yeah, basically, but they are supposed to be pretty repeatable, but I'm not going for that, but yeah. Hmm. Yeah. Well, that's going to be your limit, right? I mean, you're not going to be able to run three days of production with a 20,000 mill, right?
00:37:36
Speaker
Yeah, although apparently, I mean, if I could have the 60,000 RPM, and high pressure coolant spitting at it, I think the tool will last significantly longer than what I'm getting now. So yeah, absolutely. Yep. Sweet. Well, I'm gonna stop talking because of my voice. Sounds good. Sounds sweet. Anything big planned?
00:38:05
Speaker
this week. Apparently, I'm going to Germany on Friday. If you come, you should come. That just feels like you're not supposed to do that in life. But that's why you should, yeah. I was thinking, I mean, the Tornos factory can't be that far away in Switzerland. I don't know. I'll have to look at the map.
00:38:29
Speaker
No. Yeah. Well, I'll see what I can do. Okay. Maybe I'll see you next week. If not, I'll see you somehow. Right. So FYI, everybody, the bomb next week might be a little off kilter or something. We'll figure it out. Cool. Cool. All right. Have a good one, bud. I'll see you. Have a great day. Take care. Bye.