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Business of Machining - Episode 36
202 Plays8 years ago
New year, new approach. Grimsmo returns from CMTS; his first trade show since IMTS in 2016. No matter how discerning you plan to be, the almighty sales pitch has the power to undermine due diligence. Click here to time travel back to IMTS 2016 If you're considering EDM, this one's for you. If not, it's cool anyway. Tune in for a simple explanation of the process as well as the pros and cons. For entrepreneurs, perpetual consideration of better technology and processes is crucial to success. Any purchase must hinge on more than it being the apple of one's eye. Saunders relays the importance of RETURN ON INVESTMENT. Machine Shop ROI Video What is a BRAIN TRUST and how can you develop this invaluable resource? Luckily, Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People has some advice. Get the Ebook for $0.90 here! Fostering business relationships that produce win-win output is obvious but what happens if you focus on the INPUT? Saunders realizes he's made a mistake when he meets his anodizer. Video microscope or old school like biology class? There are benefits and drawbacks to both. Microscope on Amazon "Tiiiiimmee is on my side...yes it is!" -- I THINK... Spending time on time management? Although it might seem counterproductive, tracking time is a good way to find inefficiencies. Time Sheet Video on Patreon
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Transcript
Comparing CMTS and IMTS Experiences
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, episode number 36. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. Good morning buddy. Good morning. I am super excited. How was CMTS? It was incredible.
00:00:16
Speaker
I kind of feel like you did when you said, I don't want to call it life changing, but you know, it's very eye-opening. You know, we both went to IMTS last year and it's similar, just different. We're at a different stage in our life. But this was your first show since IMTS, right? It's my first, I did go to an open house with a lot of other machines, but that wasn't as impactful.
Exploring Tumblers and Noise Solutions
00:00:41
Speaker
Yeah, a machinery dealer open house is definitely not the same as a legit machine. Yeah, just way bigger, like hugely bigger.
00:00:51
Speaker
Yeah, it was really interesting because in previous years and shows, you just go and you look at all the cool stuff and all the shiny stuff. This year, I was very conscious of being specific and deliberate in what I looked at. Eric and I definitely wanted to look at tumblers, like every tumbler dealer there.
00:01:13
Speaker
We found one tumbler dealer, they actually manufacture them less than an hour from here, a Vibra finish, and we're totally getting one. Awesome. That's awesome. It's got an insulated lid, and the whole thing is designed to be quiet, and you walk up to the booth, and you put your hand on the tumbler, and it's on, and I'm like, no way.
Evaluating Tumbler Improvements and Unloading Decisions
00:01:33
Speaker
Mike Taylor at Keybar sent me a video of his, I forget which one he's got, but literally it's got that same like automated lid as well, like it can pop up. And it's, I don't think it was, maybe yours is quieter than his, but it was pretty darn quiet. Significantly. Yeah, no, his is still loud, but the lid obviously helps a lot. And then this one was ridiculously quiet. Yeah, that's awesome. It was very impressive.
00:01:59
Speaker
Is it one of the big bowl types? It is a tub type, just like yours and mine, but more enclosed and more designed with sound in mind, as opposed to just to work. And that's a consideration just based on your current shop.
00:02:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's so loud in here. Yeah. Um, with the tumbler on it is the, and it's the most annoying droning sound in the shop. You know, at least the machines kind of go up and down and like music, but the tumblers just for hours and hours. And, and we run it like three to five hours a day. Does yours have to be bolted to the ground? No. Ours. Ours does based on the size, but I was thinking, why not wheel it outside?
00:02:44
Speaker
Well, we have neighbors. I guess it's a moot point. Yeah, I wouldn't think. I used to do that in New York. I'd wheel my plasma machine on wheels. I'd push it outside because my wife didn't like the residual smoke in the house, which is a pretty fair complaint. But in the meantime, I wouldn't think much about figuring out a way to clamp it down. Or you don't even have to bolt yours down. Anyway.
00:03:07
Speaker
That's awesome. So it's going to be more volume, better quality, quieter, et cetera? Yep, exactly. All of those things. The quieter might be the biggest reason, actually. But better quality, and it'll tumble more parts faster, et cetera, et cetera. Does it have an auto unloading feature? No, it doesn't. And we specifically chose not to do that. Cost or size, or what? It'll scratch parts.
00:03:37
Speaker
Really? Yeah, and we're that picky with the stonewashed finish. So you stop and fish them by hand?
00:03:46
Speaker
We leave it running, and we fish them by hand. Got it. Yeah, even if you stop it and pull parts out, it'll scratch parts. But if the media is moving, then it looks great. Oh, because you're on drag. Interesting. But don't the auto, I mean, I'm not a Tumblr expert, but the ones I've seen that do the auto unloading, they just, a feed ramp comes down, and as it vibrates, it vibrates towards that, and they eventually vibrate off. That still is going to cause problems?
Delving into EDM and its Potential for the Shop
00:04:16
Speaker
I think so. Every time I see a picture of Mike Keybar showing his parts vibrating off, they're all banging into each other on the way out. And it's interesting. We're too picky.
00:04:33
Speaker
So I honestly think within the next few weeks we'll be laying down some cash on that. Which would be great, super excited. Like every time we run the Tumblr now, we all look at each other and we're like, what's that noise? What else do you see? I talk to EDM guys a lot.
00:04:52
Speaker
electro discharge machining. Very, very interested in that. We talked about that a few months ago here on the podcast and I see us getting one within the next six months. Whoa, okay, wow. Do you carry a knife with you, I guess? Or do they let you bring a knife into the tree? Yeah, no problem. So, I should say, is it hard to have that conversation with them? Or do they get, if you show them what you're trying to do?
00:05:22
Speaker
No, they get exactly what, you know, I pull out my knife and I say, I want to do this and I want to do this and I want to do this. Can it do this? Can it do this? And then I came back the next day and I was like, okay, I was up half the night laying in bed trying to think about, can it do this? And then they're like, yeah, I think so. So on the second day, I brought back some parts.
00:05:42
Speaker
And I left some parts with them, actually, and then on the third day of the show that I didn't go to, but they actually cut my parts at the show. No way. Yeah, to test the theory and then send me pictures. And then they're going to mail the parts back. That's awesome. This was the SODIC Rep, or SODIC Dealer, which is a Japanese EDM machine tool that's been around forever.
00:06:06
Speaker
Yeah, so the results are stunning. EDM is a slow process. The times he gave me were significantly slower than even I was expecting. So we'll have to run some math and see if it's even feasible to do all the things we want to do.
00:06:23
Speaker
You can run it overnight, lights out, right? But I've never seen, and I haven't looked very hard, but I've never seen like an automation, even a two palette where you're actually introducing a new part because, well, I just haven't seen that in EDM. Would you agree? Right. They were telling me that you can integrate robot integration to load and unload parts.
00:06:48
Speaker
Because the fixturing on an EDM, it's critical but it doesn't have to be strong. The part just has to not move because there's zero cutting force. Right. Like literally the water pressure is the only thing that's going to move the part and it's like a tap water. Right. That's awesome. Yeah, so I mean theoretically a robot could easily go in, unload, you know, you have some zero point pneumatic clamping system or something.
00:07:12
Speaker
And they can use the wire as a probe, is that right? Yes. Yeah, that's amazing. Fantastic, yeah. So you can load, you could possibly load up multiple work pieces with. Absolutely. Locations between the work pieces that don't have the same tolerance that the EDM machine has, but it can just kind of find, you give it, you say, this part's about here, this part's about here, and it can take over. Exactly, yep. And you can easily program that.
00:07:40
Speaker
You could load up 50 parts or depends on how you stack them, how they fit and all that. The table is not huge. It's maybe 10 by 20 or 15 by 25 or whatever. It depends on the size of the machine. But depending on how your parts look and how you're holding them and how many you can fit, the EDM doesn't care. It'll just run, run it, run it, run it, run.
00:08:02
Speaker
So the thing, EDM is the perfect example of something where I've picked up all these little nuggets along the way, but I really don't know. It's such a discombobulated way of learning about it. Explain to me, like I didn't know anything about EDM, just sell me on EDM or explain it to me. All right, so as I like to explain to my wife and kids, imagine taking one of your hairs
00:08:29
Speaker
and stretching it long, you know, like 12 inches long or whatever, and that, and place it vertically. That can cut through any electrical, what do you call it? Conductive material. Any conductive material, so basically any metal, but also some other weird stuff too. But it's very slow and this hair is constantly sliding down, you know, introducing a new wire.
00:08:55
Speaker
And it can cut through anything 12 inches tall or however tall the machine is. And it doesn't care what's in its way. You could put hard carbide or you could put soft aluminum. It just doesn't care. And the accuracy is insane. Like the amount of digits on the control is like five or six digits past zero. And you can do super tight radiuses and super tight tolerances. And it just runs and runs and runs and runs.
00:09:24
Speaker
Yeah, so it's like a bandsaw that has an infinitely small, whatever, five thousandths blade. Yeah, ten thou is typical. Ten thou. Interesting. And so the table is stationary and the head moves, like kind of where the wire... I think on the machine that I saw, the wire is stationary and the table moves.
00:09:50
Speaker
Okay, so the part moves through the wire. Right. And you are going to only do outside features because it's just like a bandsaw. You can't do an ID feature unless you have a way of feeding the wire through it, right? Oh, they have auto feed.
00:10:06
Speaker
Okay, right, with a straw of water? Exactly, yes. So as long as you have a hole, a pre-drilled pre-hole, then it can auto-thread the wire from the upper head to the lower head through this jet of water and find its way down. So even if the wire breaks, it can re-thread and just keep going. Oh my God, it's amazing. That's amazing.
00:10:27
Speaker
Okay, because I've heard about hole popper EDMs that are, I guess, smaller, cheaper machines whose sole purpose is to poke holes. It's one thing to drill a hole on a small piece of steel. It's another thing. If you're EDM, you have a 12-inch-tall block of hardened H13 tool steel. You can't just poke a hole in it. So you obviously are going to drill these holes. You don't want to deal with...
00:10:50
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So it'll be a bit of a dance, depending on what operations we would do on the EDM. But it'll be a bit of a dance between the mill and the EDM and just staging it back and forth. But yeah, I think it could provide a lot of value for us. So it's still ball screws, still linear rails. So it's a CNC machine, even though it doesn't have. No. Oh, do tell. So most of them are still ball screws. And these SOTIC ones are all linear motors. Stop. Oh, yeah.
00:11:19
Speaker
Are you serious? Why? You don't need this. Go ahead. So as it's cutting, it's creating micro particles of dust. Because the electricity going through this wire is eroding the material away. And the dust just goes throughout the water, and then it gets filtered out, of course. But all that dust ends up in the ball screws somehow, eventually, over years.
00:11:45
Speaker
And their justification was we stopped going to ballscrews. We stopped using ballscrews seven years ago. So we've been on every single machine as linear rails since seven years. Linear motors, linear drives. Sorry, yeah, linear motors.
00:12:06
Speaker
Yeah, it just sounds like a much better technology and faster, more rigid, et cetera. It's funny, all of the awesome super fast five-axis machines that we've seen are linear motors lately, like the 4,000 inch per minute rapid. So it's awesome because you get rid of the ball screws. That's an expensive component that has some amount of inaccuracy in it that's long. You can't go so far. They get whipped if they're too. The longer you go, the bigger the diameter they have to be. But also,
00:12:33
Speaker
They're like a mag tree. That's the best thing I can think of that most people know, right? So it's able to take a linear rail that you typically see and make that the device that also has the motion in it, right? Yes, yes. I guess I shouldn't expect anything less from Grimsmode with the perfection. It just seems like that's overkill. They're expensive, right?
00:12:56
Speaker
Yeah, probably. But the machines end up being kind of similar price, maybe a little bit more expensive than their ball screw counterparts.
Maximizing ROI and Vendor Relationships
00:13:05
Speaker
Oh, really? Makino, AG, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, I haven't exactly price costed them, but just the probably three hours that I spent at their booth over the two days.
00:13:16
Speaker
I got to ask every single question in my head and it showed me every single part of the machine and it was really helpful. So you've got to figure out cut time and just sort of what you can out what what's the output of a machine and then you've got electricity because I know they use a lot of electricity you've got the wire that's a consumable albeit recyclable you've got the DI water right
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah. Apparently the water you just put in tap water and it's got this resin, um, uh, filtration stuff, whatever that deionizes the water. And I asked him, I'm like, how often do you have to replace the water? And he goes kind of never, like maybe once a year, but it's not, yeah. And, uh, and you have to keep putting more resin in or change it out or whatever it is. And then the filters you change every few thousand hours or whatever they are. Um, but there's, there's gauges on the front to tell you how much resistance the filters have.
00:14:09
Speaker
I was very specifically asking about the maintenance because everybody tells me maintenance is critical on these machines. And from what I understood, of course it is critical, but it's not difficult and it's not expensive. And the wear items, like filters are $100 each or $200 each or something like that. Not big money. I spend more money on end mills in a week.
00:14:31
Speaker
Then I would you know maintaining an EDM for a while and you know maybe there's I know there's some EDM guys listening to this that I've talked with via email and they probably know way more than I do but Well, that's what I'm gonna say. I'm interested. We all know how slippery this slope is You need to find somebody who owns us was it called Sophoc?
00:14:54
Speaker
I don't know. What's the brand name? Sorry. Oh, a SODIC. SODIC. You need to find somebody who owns a linear motor SODIC machine and uses it and ask them what their experience has been on maintenance and costs and uptime. Yeah, very good point. That's awesome, though. In US dollars, does this start with a one or a two? It starts with a one and a half.
00:15:20
Speaker
OK, that's not funny. Were we talking about this on the podcast or somebody else? By all means, this is not an advocacy to go just spend frivolous money, or money you don't have on buying machine tools.
00:15:35
Speaker
The more and more people that I've seen and talked to are able to generate return on investment of their machine tool in the potentially thousands of dollars per day. Now, again, that presupposes that you have a product to sell, that you can sell, that you know how to run it, a whole bunch of other things. But when you talk about making,
00:15:53
Speaker
$1,000 a day off a machine tool. If you're running it 200 days a year, that's $200,000 a year, which is, if it's a $200,000 machine, that's 100% ROI, whereas if you go look at
00:16:07
Speaker
other returns in the investment world, which is not a direct comparable, you're looking at 4% to 10%. Now, there's huge risks and there's depreciation, and I don't want to discount that. But nevertheless, it's like all of a sudden you see, I saw people at Emo or heard about people at Emo that were buying machine tools.
00:16:26
Speaker
with less emphasis on negotiation, less emphasis on price, and more, more, get the machine on my floor. And when you're in that sort of a productivity and profit stability situation, you don't care about negotiating it down from 167,000 to 152,000. You want the machine on your floor making money, right? It's insane. Yeah, it's kind of a whole different mindset.
00:16:53
Speaker
Yeah. And as you said, once you have that product, once you have that business or the job shop work, whatever, to keep a machine like that busy and profitable and make good profit margins on the work that you're doing, it kind of becomes a no-brainer. Not to be frivolous with it, but it all starts to make sense. Oh, yeah. Exactly. Right.
00:17:16
Speaker
Well, I'd be curious to see what you come up with on the numbers, sort of what's your output and does it match production and do what feels awkward, which is think about what your business looks like in one or two years or at one or two times the output. And I know this sounds weird, but think about, do you want to have a workflow that involves three EDMs next to each other?
00:17:40
Speaker
Or is it a bigger EDM with larger volume that stays up? Or is it the sort of Jay Pearson to buy a cheaper EDM that's smaller, that's more focused and dedicated? Yeah, we were talking with the dealership and just hypothesizing, do we get the smaller one to be cheaper? Do we get the bigger one to do the volume? And he basically said, get the smaller one, fall in love with it, you'll buy a second one very soon.
00:18:04
Speaker
Right. But it's funny, too, because I have talked to a number of people that run their own EDM machines. And I've heard I've heard a lot of complaints. I've heard a lot of criticisms. I've never once heard about ball screw wear. And I just wonder if the price is the same. Perhaps it's a moot point. But I wonder if that's over. I still wonder if that's overkill.
00:18:25
Speaker
Yeah, maybe that's, I don't want to say a sales tactic, but certainly a selling point that the dealership stresses. Oh, don't buy from the other guys because of this. Buy from us instead because of this. What's the controller on it? I don't know.
00:18:42
Speaker
It looked like he ran me through it, I didn't recognize it. Oh, so it wasn't a FANUC or something? No. Okay. The ones I've seen have had... Yeah. Well, yeah. That Mitsubishi I saw I think had a FANUC. FANUC makes an EDM now. No, they have forever. Are Makinos linear drives? Yeah. Okay. No, they're ball screws apparently. Oh, really? Yep.
00:19:08
Speaker
That's interesting. I guess the proper way to do it would be to talk to every EDM dealer and get the real scoop from everybody. As you said, talk to customers as opposed to just diving in blind with the one dealer that wooed me.
00:19:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny. I know that feeling. Just because the guy likes you and gives you a time of day doesn't mean it's the right machine, but it's also tough because I more and more want to do business with the people I like. If you live in an area that has a bad HFO or if you live in an area where the LS into DMG transition didn't go very well, it's like all of a sudden it affects what machine? No, seriously, right? It's crazy.
00:19:54
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Like I have a super good relationship with Elliott Matsura and I go to their booth and I feel like I'm family. And not just because I'm a customer, but because they truly like me and believe in what we do. And I just have a great relationship with everybody there. And side note, the Elliott Matsura booth was by far the biggest, nicest, fanciest booth in the entire CMTS. It's awesome.
00:20:22
Speaker
So that was really cool. And everybody there is just rooting for us and wants to help us in any way they can. So it's really cool to see. But with the EDM place, their dealership's about maybe an hour, hour and a half away from here. And they invited me to come up any time I want and do a full test run of all the parts that I want to do.
00:20:43
Speaker
which is hugely helpful to both get times, but also to get quality reports and see if it is truly what I want it to be and if it can be done, you know? You're not even going to need to buy a tumbler. There's probably a stone wash finish on that EDM controller. Yeah, basically. Yeah, that's awesome.
00:21:04
Speaker
Yeah, I know. I was thinking about that yesterday. We drove up to Cleveland to meet with two of our vendors. And it goes back to the book that really helped me a lot as a young adult, which was the Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. And there's so many good nuggets in there, but one of them is kind of a
00:21:22
Speaker
You have to be brutally honest with people. And in your case, it's pretty easy. You're sort of saying, here's our obsession with perfection and quality and passion for knife making in the process. And some people don't care. Some people won't get that. That doesn't make them bad people. Sometimes you still have to work with them.
00:21:41
Speaker
but you will find people that that most people want to follow a story they want to be part of something even if it's a tangential affiliation with some form of success or passion and we we had a meeting yesterday with our steel vendor for our fixture plates and were were a
00:22:02
Speaker
We are, if not the smallest customer, one of the smallest customers they have. Even if we grow, we will be one of their smallest customers. And we had five people from their team in a meeting for two hours. And it wasn't because of any other reason then.
00:22:17
Speaker
I've tried to show them what we've done and the obsession with all these processes and we brought up examples of things that have gone well and example things have not gone well and we spent time chewing through this recipe and I think they actually really enjoyed it because they're so used to working with these huge conglomerates that have
00:22:36
Speaker
They don't involve them in the process in a kind of a funny way. I think they actually enjoy seeing the product and hearing about the process and the stages. So it was maybe a change of pace for their day. But also, all of a sudden, at no cost to me, I've got this brain trust of these guys that have been in industry for five to 30 years. And literally, they have in-house grinding. So the grinding guy was there.
00:23:01
Speaker
And the guy who runs their whole plate department was there and the guy who does procurement was there and the guy who deals with the Mills, you know new core and Mittal and all that was there like it was awesome nice And it goes back to yeah, you phrased it. Well as a brain trust, you know, just
00:23:16
Speaker
Yeah, and we've had some frustrating things, but it goes back to you can yell at vendors and you can be mad and wave your stick around and demand that the customer is always right, or you can put yourself in their shoes and realize
00:23:33
Speaker
We're all on the same team, even though I'm negotiating with them to try to get this. And I'm not saying that this is a case study of a winning example, but so far, it was this great, I was talking to Yvonne, she was like, how was your meeting? I was like, well, it's funny, because in some respects, the outcome is still TBD.
00:23:54
Speaker
But it was such a good instead of focusing on the output We focus on all of getting all the inputs right that leads to the output. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm So it was cool
00:24:07
Speaker
One of the things I noticed at CMTS, I was walking Barry around and we talked to this one manufacturer of bar feeders and we talked to them for 20, 30 minutes or whatever and he gave us the full pitch and whatever and we walked away and Barry was like, wow, they really knew their stuff. And I'm like, the one thing they never asked was,
00:24:29
Speaker
what we do. Like they gave zero interest, zero interest in what we do, how we do it. It's just like, here's my solution, you need it. And that kind of soured me, right? Like most of the people are like, oh, what business are you in? Or they see my shirt that says, Grimms One Eyes, and they ask questions, right? And I like that because we have such a personal business. I make a emotional product.
00:24:53
Speaker
We're not just some big fancy job shop or aerospace or automotive or whatever and we don't care. We care about everything. I like when people take an interest in the business and it feels like it strengthens that relationship between me and the other person immediately.
00:25:09
Speaker
It's just really interesting. No, but I want to add to that. It's not because you're a narcissist. It's not because you need somebody to stroke your ego. It's because you want somebody who wants to be invested. We're asking, we have some pretty demanding tolerances on the steel fixture plates when it comes to how we work with our vendor.
00:25:31
Speaker
I was talking to them and I was like, guys, this needs to be a win-win. We can't have this be something where the PO comes in and everybody says, oh, F, here's the Saunders job again. Who wants to take it? That doesn't work. And they looked at me. They're like, you're the first time a customer has ever said that. And I'm like, it has to make sense. I'm OK being demanding, but there has to be a recipe that works.
00:26:01
Speaker
Yep, yep, that's awesome. The other takeaway that I had made a note to mention was I made a mistake which is we also went up and met with our anodizer who was in the area and you know it's easy to put that off because it was about three hour drive and that goes back to one of the struggles of doing business in an area like Zanesville, Ohio whether it isn't necessarily all of the infrastructure and resources like you have in a major city like Toronto or Chicago, etc.
00:26:30
Speaker
We've been working with them for well over a year and it was a mistake not to go up sooner. You've got to meet someone face to face. You've got to show them what you're doing, who you are. It helps you on the good days and it really helps you on the bad days.
00:26:49
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Cause then you have a relationship like a real one. Yep.
Choosing Between Video and Traditional Microscopes
00:26:53
Speaker
So it's kind of funny cause I went up and it was probably only a 10 minute meeting and you know, wasn't any need to make it longer than that, but, uh, it was, it was good. Nice. Excellent. So what else have you been up to this week?
00:27:06
Speaker
We were in a training class right now, or ended Wednesday, and I'm working on the website, which is awesome. It gets me really, really fired up. We've been spending a bunch of time researching microscopes. We saw a really interesting one at
00:27:29
Speaker
emote which was in layman's terms a video microscope so it just has this kind of vertical tube and you're only looking at a screen so it's like an HDMI or a USB output.
00:27:44
Speaker
The quality was amazing. I was blown away. It just was a no-brainer. It's not available in the US yet. And then they think the price is going to be a little bit more than what the email guy told me. So I was poking around, and I spoke with another friend who's very, very good and respected and uses a microscope every day.
00:28:07
Speaker
And this is tough because then he said, no, you really want to go with one that is a traditional microscope, like you think of when you see the biology lab in the Petri dish where you're looking through the two eye pieces. It's optical.
00:28:22
Speaker
Exactly. And they also have a, I forget what it's called, a trifocal or something or a simul focus, but they also can have sort of a third eye that is the video and the output. And so now it's really tough because I'm not sure which one to go with. The microscope that has the two eye pieces is going to be more
00:28:44
Speaker
optical, you have better glass inside of it. The other huge benefit is the video microscopes still have some amount of lag, so it's harder to use it if you're trying to actually, people do work underneath them, they do circuit board work, they deeper parts, they analyze stuff where you've got to have kind of real time hand-eye motion control.
00:29:06
Speaker
I really want it more for looking at inserts and explaining tools and it's funny, it's one of the things you don't necessarily think you need until you start to see it and how they're used and you go, oh my God, there's so many things I'm going to stick underneath this microscope. Yes. Yeah, Eric and I got to see one at the beginning of CMTS and it was a stereo microscope, so two eyepieces.
00:29:27
Speaker
and a video as well and we put one of our knives underneath it and we saw on the video screen and then I looked through the eyepiece and I found it difficult to get my eyes and the eyepiece is adjusted right and everything so that both eyes are looking down both tubes like it seemed like only one eye was working but that's probably just a skill thing a skill gap that I didn't have time to learn properly.
00:29:48
Speaker
But the vision through the eyepieces was significantly different than what showed up on the screen. Just the quality in the Christmas, the screen has this pixelation to it. Whereas the eye one, your eye is amazing, right? So it just sees this bright, crystal clear image. So it depends on what you want. If you just want to look at something huge, then the screen will probably just work. And maybe the leg won't matter to you.
00:30:17
Speaker
And somebody said you're gonna end up with both, which is, this is like the EDM saga. It's like, wait a minute here, I didn't think I needed anything. And now all of a sudden I need two. I'm inclined to go with the video one. And I'll tell you this, the screen, we looked at another, the video microscopes and the quality, it was really good. You're like, that's awesome, that's really good. And then you went over and looked at the one I like again.
00:30:44
Speaker
And you're like, oh my gosh, it's like if you ever go look at an old, an old TV against like 4K high def. And you're like, oh my gosh, I never realized how good it was until you see it. So I actually am willing to, I think, bank my dollar on how good that video one is. And it just makes it easier. If we have people here in class and we wanna show them stuff, it's right there. And piping the feed out for YouTube will make it easier, I think.
00:31:10
Speaker
I think you will use the video screen 80% of the time, even if you had both. You know what I mean? Like for your purposes, you're going to film everything and you want to show everything in the classrooms and everybody else in the shop. And you can be like, look Jared, here's the insert that you just used for 32 minutes of cut. You know what I mean? It's a shared experience.
00:31:32
Speaker
It's super cool. We have a cheap Amazon USB one, like $80, and it's still, I would actually...
00:31:41
Speaker
Well, we'll put a link in the description. I highly encourage anyone who's doing any machining to buy this simply because it's really freaking cool. And you can look at tool tips and tool edges. You can look at chips. You can literally see heat gradations in a chip throughout it and like start to read the chip, the thickness, how it leads in. Did it tear on the lead in? Did it sheer on the lead in? It's really cool.
00:32:05
Speaker
Yep. Well, I mean, I've got my little $5 loop from Amazon. That's a 60 times zoom. I use it 10 times
Leveraging Local Resources and Time Management
00:32:12
Speaker
a day. Like, I use it all the time.
00:32:15
Speaker
Yep, no, totally. The other thing I was going to mention, too, going back to traveling and meeting vendors is sometimes it's frustrating, again, to kind of feel like, I won't say isolated, but you were in Zanesville, Ohio. We're not in a big city, or you hear about all of these exciting things going on in the world in Silicon Valley and New York and Chicago, et cetera. But I was at this meeting for this local,
00:32:40
Speaker
What do they call it now? It used to be called an incubator. Now it's a business accelerator. But it's really cool. And actually, if any of you listening are interested in entrepreneurship or getting your business started, go talk to, I would probably say, start with your Chamber of Commerce. They're probably not going to be the answer. But they may know if there's a local makerspace or a local incubator or a local, in this case, they call it a business accelerator that has these awesome resources and kind of passion and energy and network.
00:33:10
Speaker
Anyways, we were talking about it and I sort of chimed in because I've had the chance to live in some different places and as much as those places have some awesome benefits and resources, it also generally is a higher cost of living, a higher cost of doing business, higher wages, makes it more expensive or difficult to find people and keep them.
00:33:31
Speaker
You know it's it's interesting when you hear about what some people are earning in in if they're working as a machinist in Silicon Valley Which is freaking awesome, but I think about that as a small business. I like I couldn't compete with that I couldn't my business would fail there And it makes me it actually gets me
00:33:48
Speaker
fired up about what I'm doing here and it also makes me sort of continue to embrace the, you know, the grass is always greener or there's always an excuse, you know, no one has it perfect, you know, kind of run with it, run with it where you are, don't make excuses. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, our long term plan, I mean, we're going to need a bigger shop eventually.
00:34:11
Speaker
And then we also want to move house and move shop. And then once you have all those things, you're like, well, we don't have to stay here. We could go anywhere if we're willing to move house and shop. So it just becomes that unending question of, well, where could we go? Do we move way out in the country? And then kind of like you guys are. And then you're more isolated. Like right here, we've got our tool distributor for end mills and stuff five blocks away.
00:34:40
Speaker
And it's metal is another five blocks away. And it's central. It's this hub. But is it worth the benefits of being out in the country? I don't know. So we're just constantly debating this kind of stuff. But it's real, too. Where do your kids go to school? Exactly. I don't want to discount that at all. If I can say one thing,
00:35:04
Speaker
And I know you as an entrepreneur and as a guy who's always going to grind and always going to be wanting to do everything. You're going to want to be a great husband, a great father. You're going to want to go to trade shows. For us, I didn't plan it. It just happened. I live one street over from my shop and that differs greatly from my first year and a half here in Ohio where I lived on the exact opposite side of town.
00:35:28
Speaker
and it was about a half an hour each way. And I know you have like a 15 minute drive right now. I will tell you, if you can shorten that up, it is mind blowing. Time is such a finite resource. And I know people offer comments about, oh, I can think in the car, I can do stuff, I can listen to audio books. Let me tell you, there is nothing like the flexibility of being able
00:35:52
Speaker
to be at the shop quickly. I don't bounce back and forth. I rarely come more than twice a day at most. So it's not like that sort of a thing. It's more just like, I'm at home. I could be in the shop and be who I am here. And then I could be back home. It's great. Yeah, because when you're in the car, you're thinking, but you're also driving, so you don't have full concentration. To be able to basically just jump to the shop and get work done. Yeah. Yeah, I could see that. It's awesome.
00:36:21
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's what we had for the first many, many years in the garage. Like, I was there, I was home. That was maybe too close for the kind of business we were going at, because it was just blending everything, which, you know, worked on. I kind of miss it in some ways, but it was too much. Yeah. It doesn't work when you get to employees and grow in size. Exactly, exactly.
00:36:45
Speaker
Although I totally would move into my shop if that was an acceptable social thing. The other thing we did this week was I didn't get frustrated. I just got conscious about time management and it's something I want to spend a little bit more ironically time on. And I've heard some people mention you can do time audits about how you spend your day and I'm kind of less interested in the MBA approach and I'm more interested in the like
00:37:13
Speaker
Am I just being unreal? So we did a Patreon kind of mini chip break video where I built this timesheet and if you're interested, I would recommend trying it. I basically wrote down in columns everything that I'm doing right now.
00:37:32
Speaker
So I kind of bucket into my YouTube videos, the job shop work, the new website, the products that we make, running the business, general communication emails, phone calls, social media, all the miscellaneous stuff. So I have these kind of trunched columns that are discrete things.
00:37:49
Speaker
For you, it can be production, it can be R&D, it could be spinners, it could be tops, you know what I mean, like the business of Grimzo knives. And then I started looking, listing underneath those columns the big things that I know that I spend time on within those projects.
00:38:07
Speaker
And then I listed, okay, how much time do I think I spend? Sometimes you can think about it per day, sometimes you can think about it per week, but no more granular than a day, no more big picture than a week, because I don't think, you can't say how many hours you spend per month on something, really. And then I added all that up.
00:38:25
Speaker
And so I'm kind of doing this bottoms up approach. Instead of saying I've got a, and I put down, I work 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. And I work generally six hours each weekend. So that's 72 hours in a week. And I added up, so I put that to the side then. And then I added up all the time I thought I spent. And it actually kind of jived. I got to like 68 hours. Wow.
00:38:48
Speaker
And I was like, well, that's interesting because I don't feel like I'm on top of it. I do feel like I'm often bouncing around. And so then I started doing what I guess the time audit is, which is kind of annoying, but like writing down every day, everything you do, and you'll be blown away at how many distractions and how many things you get pulled off focus for. And so I'm not sure what the next step is.
00:39:08
Speaker
For me, though, doing this also really helps me say no to things and it also helps me think about what, you know, for me, it either has to be profitable or it has to make me happy. Those are kind of my two things for how I decide on stuff. But then also, some of those things are front-loaded. Some of those things are R&D or work that requires a lot of upfront investment and then it's something that can
00:39:31
Speaker
either kind of run itself or I can have other folks here help out with you. So that makes it more of a hustle up front, which is okay.
00:39:39
Speaker
Yeah, I've gone through phases of doing that, of writing down, had a little notepad in my pocket, write down every single task I did, how long it took. And just so you can get a mental picture of, wow, this is all the crap I did in a day. And this is how scattered I am. It's not just production for 12 hours. It's 42 different things. But to run a business, that's just what is necessary.
00:40:02
Speaker
Right now, what I'm doing is I've got a little, a small little calendar on my mill. And I want to write down how many sellable parts I've made in each day. Like how many finished handles, how many finished blades, how many finished parts on the lathe, et cetera. So that we haven't exactly consolidated it yet. But you could easily look at that and then average for the week, for the month, over time. This is what my actual physical output is.
00:40:31
Speaker
you are turning into that, like, when you go see a production company and you're, we talk about this, like, and you look at a factory and they measure daily output and output per worker and output per machine, and you're like, oh my gosh, that's so, that's so inhumane.
Enhancing Norseman Knives Production and Fixtures
00:40:46
Speaker
Yeah, right, and all of a sudden you start to realize, wait a minute, here, that's probably where we're gonna be.
00:40:51
Speaker
Yeah, I mean technically I am a corporation, I'm sure you are too. What are you up to today? Today, going to make more Norseman blades. It's interesting going from pure rask production to catch up on the pre-order and now we're doing almost entirely Norseman. And we've probably made
00:41:10
Speaker
probably as many or more Norsemen this month that we've made a year to date so far and it's September. Wow. Just because we've been focused on Rask, right? Yeah, sure. The production process for Norsemen is very scattered, very here and there, you know, there's no flow, there's no one-piece flow. It's just kind of batch work. And today and probably next week I will start cutting into my, I've got these new fixtures, one-piece flow fixtures to make Norseman knives that I'm super excited to get going.
00:41:39
Speaker
Explain what you mean by one-piece flow? Yep, so it'll do, you know, the inside of the handles, the outside of the handles, the blades on all the ops, so that every time you hit cycle start, two Norsemen are finished. Yeah, okay. As opposed to making just the handles, just the blades, you know. So you had those for the rask, I guess that's what I'm thinking of. I did, yeah. I had one for the rask, and for the Norsemen, I would make two, probably four of them. No.
00:42:03
Speaker
Oh, OK. I didn't realize that. And so I'm going to make multiples, probably four for the Norseman. So I can have two on the machine, which will make four knives, and then two off the machine to be loaded so that they can be quick changed, which I never had for the Rask, but it was always the intention. You're going to make one and use it for a week or two, or you have enough confidence where you're going to just bang out four or six of them?
00:42:26
Speaker
Well, in my head, I was just going to make four because, well, once you set up the tools and, you know, it takes different tools to cut aluminum, all this stuff. But Eric's like, the code in the machine never goes bad. So don't like, don't batch work it. Just maybe make two. And then next week, if they work, right, make two more. Yeah. I, uh, I hope I actually, I do agree with Eric there. Yeah, it's insightful. I would go into it with, I would go into the, with the mentality that you're going to throw away the first two.
00:42:57
Speaker
And I kind of, at least the first one, I kind of agree with you because I often make little mistakes here and there, a tap breaks or something and, you know, and you want to tweak as you go along. So, so maybe I should just make one and then finish it and make sure there's no more changes and then go ahead and make the second one.
00:43:14
Speaker
Right. This is a long-term investment. So rather than trying to keep the first one for a relatively inexpensive piece of aluminum, use it as a... Have that freedom. Right. Awesome. That's a good point. I like that. And it reduces the worry of, oh, I've got to make four. It's like a lot of time. That'll take me all day as opposed to just making one. Let's see how it works. Right. Right.
00:43:40
Speaker
We've gotten a little bit better at that. We'll just make something real quick on aluminum and if it works then we'll spend more time on it.
Expanding Production Capabilities and Machine Choices
00:43:51
Speaker
Right now what we've been doing is drilling out aluminum fixtures and adding helical oils so that they have better longevity in terms of using it as fixtures.
00:44:01
Speaker
because a lot of times it doesn't make sense to switch them to steel, but I've found that when I become, when I feel like I have to make a compromised decision because I'm too invested in a fixture, that stinks. Yeah. On the flip side, I find if I do a quick and dirty and make it kind of crappy, but just functional enough, I'll never get around to making it better. And then I just live with the crappy one for way too long. That's a fair point. You know? Right.
00:44:27
Speaker
Right. Well, yeah. So yeah, but you're going to make, you're going to, you're going to do it here because you're going to want the quantity. You're going to want four on and four on and four off. Really? Well, that would be awesome. Yeah. Right now I just have two vice stations on the machine, but we know we've talked about this before to expand that. Yeah. And there's literally no reason why this machine should not run 12 hours every night. You know, at least. Yeah. Yeah. At least so. Yeah.
00:44:52
Speaker
I told, who was it? No, I told the DMG guys at Emo, I was like, my buddy's got a dirt vertical and they did a ball bar with Renishaw and they were like, it was spot on, however many years later. And they were kind of like, they were kind of looked at me like, obviously. And I was like, okay, fine, that impresses me. Maybe that's status quo for you. Exactly. Okay, one more brief thing. I think we talked about last week, we were hypothesizing.
00:45:21
Speaker
I forget if it was during the podcast or after, but for super high production, do you get a horizontal machine or do you get like a five axis machine with mini pallets that you can rotate through? So I went to my LAF Matsura guys and I said,
00:45:38
Speaker
How would I make an absolute buttload of knives? Would I use this technology or would I use this technology? And they go, well, how are you making it now? How do you want to do it? OK. You're basically using vice fixtures now. Horizontal makes the absolute most sense for what you're doing. Because everything's plate work. And I have these families of parts.
00:46:00
Speaker
as opposed to one big block that would fit perfect in a 5-axis vise. And then he's like, do you do any 5-axis work? And I'm like, not yet. And I don't really see the need. Like, I can get fancy with it, but I don't need it, right? And he's like, then a horizontal is like for you. Here, let me show you this Matsura. And then 35-minute amazing sales pitch about this palette changing horizontal. And yeah, it just got really cool.
00:46:27
Speaker
Yeah, no, you shouldn't feel guilty about that. That's not like you're not cheating on anybody by doing that. You should totally, totally. Right. Yeah. So the idea there is you'd have a tombstone so you could put four, you could put four of your pallets on one tombstone and most horizontals are going to have a pallet pool of two to 10 or whatever tombstones. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Right. And you could do an octagon tombstone. It doesn't have to be four sided. It could be six or eight sided.
00:46:51
Speaker
Oh, of course. Of course. Because you're not doing parts with a lot of Z depth, so you can actually add facets to the tombstone. Exactly. And I'm not getting 90 degrees at the side of the tombstone. I don't need side access to the part. You know what I mean? Like a 90 degree from a straight on.
00:47:13
Speaker
Yeah. That's what I was just going to say. I think all horizontals are de facto fourth axis machines. So if you think about the tombstone having four sides and you have effectively a riser block that is your fixture plate, that's like what goes on your orange vices, you could put parts along both sides of the riser block as well to do not three plus one work, like positional work on the side parts, not fourth axis simultaneous. But you're probably right. You're probably better off getting a six or eight sided tombstone.
00:47:44
Speaker
Right, yep. And you can do simultaneous tube stone rotation on many of these machines. OK, got it. So you could tip it. It is a fourth axis. You could tip it and do your bevel blades with a fourth axis positional to sweep along it. Right, that's awesome. Oh, man.
00:48:03
Speaker
Yeah, and then, you know, I had Barry there and he's an accountant for 35 years and he's my, you know, basically my CFO in the business now. And to talk about the costs and the benefits and the ratios and the numbers and the quantity of knives we could make and the quantity of orders we have, you know, interested people and all that. And it just all makes sense. It's like how much money do you want to make? Right. You know, it's like how many knives do you want to make a year? Right. And etc. So it's fascinating.
00:48:32
Speaker
You're gonna literally, if you buy a horizontal, there's $100,000 in work holding. With the tombstones and the pallets and the mighty bites. And the tool holders. Right, oh my gosh, right. Awesome. Yeah, so they come standard anyway. Yeah. We should go get real work done, huh? Exactly, we could talk for another three hours, but that's what next week is for. Awesome, but dude, go crush it today. All right, you too, man. Take care, I'll see you, bye.