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#381 Being in the right mindset to make good decisions
3.8k Plays2 months ago
TOPICS:
- Grimsmo's family vacation
- Alarms on Machines
- American Precision Museum in Vermont
- Kern toolsetter issues
- Okuma break detect issues
- Electropolishing metals
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Personal Update
00:00:00
johngrimsmo
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, episode 381. My name is John Grimsmough.
00:00:06
John S
My name is John Saunders.
00:00:08
johngrimsmo
And this is the podcast where two friends talk about their manufacturing journeys and the ups and downs of running your own machine shop.
00:00:16
John S
Bingo. And what it's like when you take some time off, right?
00:00:20
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it's, I think you've certainly taken some good time off this summer and and I feel like I have too, finally.
00:00:26
John S
Good.
00:00:26
johngrimsmo
And I i have not. been known to vacation and take time off for the past many years due to, um you know, busyness in the business, but also just feeling broke all of the time and not wanting to, you know, spend money on myself. um And this year we tried to change that a little bit. And I'm like, the kids are 11 and 14. I need, and they haven't traveled much. That's my fault. Like, so let's do stuff.
00:00:54
John S
Yeah.
00:00:54
johngrimsmo
um Yeah, so
Family Adventures and Educational Experiences
00:00:56
johngrimsmo
it's great. Last week um took the whole whole week off and we drove Meg had a figure skating event in Lake Placid. So we drove her there. We dropped her off. Kids and I kept exploring basically. And Meg had an awesome week all by herself. One of the cool things is she's taught by like ex Olympians, which is super cool. And she's like, it's way different than the local coaches.
00:01:21
John S
Oh, I bet.
00:01:21
johngrimsmo
But the coolest one, she said, was this lady who used to go to MIT and would teach professors, physics professors, how to skate.
00:01:29
John S
Mm-hmm.
00:01:30
johngrimsmo
And did they have some questions?
00:01:32
John S
Oh, yeah, right.
00:01:33
johngrimsmo
So this lady learned how to coach for a physics professor and and answer their questions. And she brought that to like Meg's class. And you know where's your center of gravity? And what happens with this and aerodynamics and all this stuff?
00:01:46
johngrimsmo
And Meg said it made everything make sense. like It became so much easier.
00:01:49
John S
Uh... Interesting.
00:01:51
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it was really cool, she said.
00:01:54
John S
When you said that I'm thinking solely about the interaction between a sharpened steel edge and and the ice, which certainly makes me think a lot of...
00:02:02
johngrimsmo
Yeah, there's definitely some to that. um It sounds like from what Meg said, it was more body position and weight and wait in entry and exit and things like that for doing spins and things.
00:02:08
John S
Okay.
00:02:13
johngrimsmo
So it's great.
00:02:16
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:02:16
John S
Isn't that, sorry, not to detour off of ice skating, but like, I sometimes think we machinists, we cut stuff every day.
00:02:24
John S
Carbide inserts, solid carbide, twist drills.
00:02:25
johngrimsmo
Mm hmm.
00:02:27
John S
And when you really think, and there's certainly some, like, I don't know if they're high speed or what are those, electron microscope, what would it, we've seen, everyone's seen those clips.
00:02:35
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah.
00:02:38
John S
And I think this is certainly something that Marv, more than anybody else in our sort of quote-unquote peer group has talked about or shown stuff, but like, when you actually think Like what is happening as you shove a sharp edge, which is not perfectly sharp.
00:02:55
John S
Like you're not you you you're not like splitting the matte Adam in half.
00:02:56
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:03:00
John S
You're separating, you're severing it, you're fracturing it.
00:03:01
johngrimsmo
You're moving metal, yeah yeah.
00:03:03
John S
Yeah, like what does that actually look like?
00:03:05
johngrimsmo
Have you seen the video from Breaking Taps where he he like so slow-mo moves, you know, cuts aluminum frame by frame and he like feeds it forward and takes another frame and he feeds it forward.
00:03:08
John S
Uh-huh. Sorry.
00:03:17
johngrimsmo
ah or whatever, a micron or whatever. And he strings it together and you watch the aluminum just curl off. And it's a really cool video. If anybody hasn't seen it, look up breaking taps on YouTube and watch all of it.
00:03:30
John S
Yeah. His stuff is phenomenal. Like God bless.
00:03:32
johngrimsmo
Next level.
00:03:32
John S
Awesome.
00:03:33
johngrimsmo
Yep. ye
00:03:34
John S
But like, it makes me think about, and I don't know anything about ice skating, but you know, you're probably forming some like melted, like the friction is, is melting the ice, which forms a fluid layer.
00:03:41
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:03:44
John S
Water's not a great lubricant, but it is relative to, you know, whatever. And then it, yeah, like what's happening there.
00:03:47
johngrimsmo
Basically, yeah.
00:03:50
johngrimsmo
Yeah, and I know, especially in the hockey world, ah the sharpness of your skate and the angle and the grind and the cup and the everything really, really matters. And in figure skating too, you can specify that.
00:04:01
johngrimsmo
but But yeah, she had a great week without the kids. And then I took the kids we drove.
00:04:08
johngrimsmo
There's the Six Flags in Massachusetts, Springfield, Massachusetts. And life's like, I wonder if, yeah, yeah.
00:04:11
John S
That's where my wife's that's, that's where he wants from. Yeah. Like right there.
00:04:15
johngrimsmo
ah Life's like, I wonder if the Simpsons are here.
00:04:18
John S
Hmm.
00:04:19
johngrimsmo
And, uh, yeah, so we went to that six flags. It was amazing. We rode every, we actually went two days cause we, we went late the first day and got rained out basically. And then the kids are like, let's go back. So when back, we rode everything except for one ride. We're like, not that one. Like I'm, I don't need that one.
00:04:35
John S
Sketchy or too scary.
00:04:37
johngrimsmo
Both. It was very, it looked very jarring and a lot of flips and a lot of like really just swingy.
00:04:39
John S
Uh-huh.
00:04:43
johngrimsmo
Like you remember the zipper ride from Carnival's?
00:04:44
John S
got.
00:04:47
johngrimsmo
You ever seen the zipper? Anyway, it's like that but way worse. But we rode the Superman, the biggest roller coaster. We rode the world's tallest swing, 400 feet tall.
00:04:57
John S
Holy cow.
00:04:57
johngrimsmo
And basically like up until now, I'd never ridden a ride where my feet were hanging or I went upside down. And I accomplished both of those.
00:05:04
John S
Oh, wow. Yeah.
00:05:07
johngrimsmo
The kids were great.
00:05:07
John S
dude
00:05:07
johngrimsmo
We stepped our way up and, uh, you know, life was coming off the rides, buzzing and he's like, I can do anything now.
00:05:14
John S
Grim smoke goes five axes in real life.
00:05:16
johngrimsmo
Exactly.
00:05:19
John S
That's awesome.
00:05:19
johngrimsmo
So we just had an amazing time together. Um, it was good. And then we drove to Boston, um, got a hotel, stayed the, or went to the museum of science in Boston.
00:05:30
johngrimsmo
um
00:05:30
John S
Yeah.
00:05:31
johngrimsmo
Leif basically a couple months ago found and like came across a YouTube short of some physics professor doing a thing and it was at the Museum of Science in Boston and so we looked it up and it's like okay let's go there we'll be in the neck in the neck of the woods right so like Leif called that trip which is great spent half the day there it was awesome really just really cool science physics math um
00:05:44
John S
Perfect, yeah The platen or whatever, yeah
00:05:54
johngrimsmo
displays, they actually had a display with a micrometer, but it was like a bigger micrometer. And you know how when you like a depth micrometer, when you move it just right, and the anvil is flush with the, the the flat, platin yeah, I think, and it's like flat, flat. So they had this display that was a bigger version of that and is your job to feel zero.
00:06:14
John S
Oh, that's cool.
00:06:15
johngrimsmo
and like kind of close your eyes feel for zero and then look at the dial and see if you're you know two thousand two tens whatever it is over and I was nerding out so hard and they also had a what's it called a ah roughness gauge or just it's like that display piece of steel with all the different roughness um things carved into it like an RA I forget what it's called
00:06:20
John S
the
00:06:32
John S
Yeah. All right.
00:06:37
johngrimsmo
um Anyway, they had one of those and I was like, guys, this surface is lapped, this surface is milled, this surface is ground. And it just shows that all the RA.
00:06:43
John S
That's super cool, yeah.
00:06:44
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it was great. And then a lot of light work and measurement and at least that's the stuff I remember.
00:06:53
John S
that's a 10 out of 10.
00:06:55
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it was awesome. And then from there we drove up to New Hampshire and we popped by Spencer Webb's house and greatly enjoyed the three hours that we spent there. Even the kids had a fantastic time.
00:07:06
John S
Good.
00:07:07
johngrimsmo
um His daughter was in town, who's at a fine arts school, and Clara's an artist, and the two of them got along great.
00:07:09
John S
Mm-hmm.
00:07:12
johngrimsmo
And she's also a video game developer, and Leif wants to maybe do that one day, so they talked about that. And Spencer's just a ah gem of a person. um And seeing a shop was really cool. like Like you have a business with all your tools at work. I have a business with all my tools at work. At home I have like a hammer and a screwdriver. And Spencer at his house has a full machine shop with a CNC grinder and a mill and a bridge port and a lathe and a full electronics lab upstairs and a big three. And I'm like, this is pretty cool. like
00:07:45
John S
It doesn't have a garage anymore.
00:07:45
johngrimsmo
and Yeah, no, nowhere to park his cars, but very cool to see and really, really glad we got to do that. It's just nice, really nice.
00:07:55
John S
That's awesome.
00:07:56
johngrimsmo
life got to They've got to turn handles on its bridge port, which I've actually never done.
00:07:56
John S
What'd you...
00:07:59
John S
Oh, that's hilarious.
00:08:04
johngrimsmo
um What were you going to say? Would you get something? um
00:08:08
John S
What'd you guys talk about or do or Grindr or...
00:08:10
johngrimsmo
We actually, I knew that Spencer was a pilot and just in passing, like he's mentioned, I didn't know anything about it.
00:08:13
John S
Mm-hmm.
00:08:17
johngrimsmo
And on the drive down, Leif was like, how much does a pilot make? So we started talking about being a pilot and my dad was a pilot, private pilot for many years. um So like Leif started to get curious, we'd had hour long conversations about this on the drive.
00:08:30
johngrimsmo
and So we brought up his Spencer and Leif was grilling him all kinds of questions. And Spencer was, he flew gliders for many years and small planes and stuff. So he was telling us stories and Leif was just like gripped.
00:08:42
John S
That's cool.
00:08:42
johngrimsmo
It was awesome.
00:08:43
John S
It's fun.
00:08:43
johngrimsmo
And then like later, Leif would remind me of the stories that Spencer told him, ah like, like landing in the farmer's field of Ben and Jerry's ice cream.
00:08:48
John S
That's cool.
00:08:51
johngrimsmo
And, you know, in a glider, sometimes you land anywhere, you know, trying not to land at a military base when you're not allowed to, like all these cool stories.
00:08:53
John S
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:09:02
johngrimsmo
So it was awesome, and he's very good at telling stories, which was great.
00:09:06
John S
That's fine.
00:09:06
johngrimsmo
yeah Yeah, and then we were like, I want to see ocean, and I want to find a crab. That was one of our goals. we We did not find a crab. We did go to the ocean. We went to Hampton, New Hampshire, and stayed in a beach town, Hampton hampton Beach.
00:09:21
johngrimsmo
And you know they had a huge groomed sand thing, and and we played in the ocean for a while. Didn't find a crab. We found a crab leg. um
00:09:29
John S
Oh, that's legit. I thought you had like a crab restaurant.
00:09:30
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:09:31
John S
I'm like, ah, you can, one one can achieve that. No problem.
00:09:34
johngrimsmo
Exactly. Yeah, we did have lobster. um And yeah, and then we drove home, went, picked up Meg and drove back. is It was awesome.
00:09:43
John S
That's great. What is Toronto to, uh, Olympic place?
00:09:43
johngrimsmo
It's a great trip.
00:09:48
John S
I can never think of the name.
00:09:49
johngrimsmo
Lake Placid.
00:09:49
John S
Thank you. What does Toronto delay class at a Boston without stopping like for.
00:09:52
johngrimsmo
Like Toronto Lake Placid's like six and a half hours, plus we drove our Teslas, we had to charge. It was like eight hours for us.
Balancing Personal and Professional Life
00:09:59
johngrimsmo
And then to Boston was another,
00:10:01
John S
Five or six.
00:10:02
johngrimsmo
six, something like that.
00:10:02
John S
Yeah, right. It's good drive.
00:10:04
johngrimsmo
It was a good drive.
00:10:04
John S
It's awesome.
00:10:04
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it was a lot of driving. Um, a lot of time either hanging out with the kids or they're, you know, watching something and I'm just thinking to myself.
00:10:13
John S
Yeah.
00:10:13
johngrimsmo
Um, so I got, it was interesting cause I got some time to think about work, but not from a stressful point, but from like a bigger picture kind of thing, like what's a specific problem I want to solve or think about.
00:10:24
John S
Mm hmm.
00:10:26
johngrimsmo
Um, But being away with the kids kind of busy, kind of driving, you don't get to focus as much as you would think you could, you know?
00:10:33
John S
Yeah, I very much so.
00:10:36
johngrimsmo
So that was really interesting. Yeah. It's like, you know, beforehand you're like, man, I'll have so much time for myself. I'll think about like, I have a lot of time to crunch problems and you you kind of don't. It's interesting.
00:10:46
John S
it's It's one of the, I have a few things that I feel, passionate about or with strong convictions that I don't think I've heard from somebody else. And don't get me wrong, ah there's a billion things I'm better off of because I've learned from them or been influenced. um This one I haven't heard from anybody else. And it's this idea that what you're talking about and something I care about on a, not necessarily a daily basis, but certainly a weekly or monthly basis, is this kind of like being able to be in the right mindset to to think think, make good decisions, recognize how those decisions are being influenced by
00:11:17
John S
what's on your plate and stress level and in your mood. um It's like and yoga. Look, i don't i like you I don't really do yoga regularly, but I have done it. And you are you're a different person in a yoga class when you're 15 minutes into it than you were 30 seconds into it.
00:11:33
John S
Like you have to have, it's just like warming up in a sport or stretching. And I i don't know that I have like the answer to what one can do to get in that.
00:11:37
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:11:42
John S
mind, head and state. And certainly when you're excited or there's kids around you, it's, it's perhaps futile, but, uh, I do, I think it's a, it requires conscious focused effort.
00:11:47
johngrimsmo
I agree.
00:11:52
John S
It's not just one of those. And maybe this is like the whole like, maybe I'm just overthinking if this is the whole, like why people think in the shower, cause you're like in a good mood, you're relaxed. Like, yeah.
00:12:00
johngrimsmo
And you're by yourself and and there's no no other commitments. That's a good point. Um, no, and, and me doing the 75 hard workout routine for so many years has given me the time either during my morning workout or my time outside to, to be that it's no responsibilities. I'm by myself. I'm working on myself either, you know, like exercising or thinking or whatever, and it's that detached. It's a good time to think for me.
00:12:26
John S
Yeah, something I don't think I want to talk about today, but if you want to, we could add it to kind of a future agenda, but it's starting to think about something that I.
00:12:38
John S
I'm not worried about it, say. I'm thinking about it, say, which is the best way I can explain it. Long-term planning for a small business that you own as it relates to you know reinvesting in the present and planning capital planning, and then also thinking about, like any small business, how intertwined it is with your personal life, for lack of a better word, and then what that looks like.
00:12:59
johngrimsmo
Hmm. Mm hmm.
00:13:03
John S
you know
00:13:03
johngrimsmo
Absolutely.
00:13:04
johngrimsmo
Those are deep topics.
00:13:04
John S
i liked
00:13:06
John S
I sat down with Adam Demuth. I'm 90% sure this was on a video that we did. By the way, Adam is doing some great YouTube content lately. So if anybody isn't following Adam the Machinist on YouTube, you should.
00:13:13
johngrimsmo
Yes.
00:13:17
John S
But ah Adam sort of made this, I'm paraphrasing from years ago, but like tongue sort of tongue in cheek comment that like my retirement plan can't just be selling the residual value of my equipment.
00:13:29
John S
And that is a great point because we all all all humans tend to think our stuff's worth more than it is.
00:13:34
johngrimsmo
Right.
00:13:34
John S
um And those, those machines do depreciate blah, blah, blah. So it's kind of like, yeah, I feel proud of what you got and you should, but except that's not necessarily the same as, you know, what, what does that look like?
00:13:46
johngrimsmo
Yeah. What I have, what I have today is not long-term planning. You know, it's like, it's not.
00:13:50
John S
Yeah.
00:13:52
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:13:52
John S
and It could be part of it, but it's not, it's not it.
00:13:54
johngrimsmo
Yeah, absolutely. But. Yeah, no, that takes the conscious, you know, removed effort of sitting down, thinking about it, planning it, and and seeing what life will look like in five or 10 years or more.
00:14:05
johngrimsmo
And yeah, I do think about that quite a bit. And I try to figure out where the next steps are, where we want to take this business and where we want to take our personal lives, how it relates to the business being the owners.
00:14:14
John S
Yeah.
00:14:18
johngrimsmo
what we want out of this, you know, we've put almost everything back into it and taken very little for ourselves.
00:14:22
John S
Right.
00:14:24
johngrimsmo
And I'd like to change that.
00:14:27
John S
It now's the time because it doesn't have to be drastic, but it does have to The, you can't get the time back. And so so the power of small things over long periods of time is all where it's at.
00:14:40
John S
And it's as simple as like, Hey, every week, every week I'm putting a hundred, taking a hundred bucks out of the business and putting it into a private, like not business, like personal, like start somewhere.
00:14:49
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:14:53
John S
Well, good vacation was a hit.
00:14:54
johngrimsmo
I like it. Vacation was a hit. I had no panic texts from work.
Technical Challenges in the Machine Shop
00:14:58
johngrimsmo
Angelo sent me an update text on Friday. He said everything went went great. Had a weird alarm on the curb and just want to let you know.
00:15:04
John S
Hmm.
00:15:05
johngrimsmo
And I was like, great. That was awesome.
00:15:07
John S
Yeah, that's great. That's awesome. Good. Okay, we had a we had a weird alarm, and I luckily think it's a non-issue, but two one of the Haas machines threw a low voltage a alarm, um and then the Wilhelmin did as well, and it's been it was nice and cool last week, and then it kind of skyrocketed up to record heat, which it's been this hot here before.
00:15:32
John S
It's only in the mid-90s. It's not fun, but it's not, frankly, like it's I've seen it before.
00:15:35
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:15:37
John S
In fact, you see it every summer. And so I thought, what's going on? and My thought was, you know, look, the grid is being taxed, um which, you know, it's one of the pleasures of not living in California is one that need not deal with such ridiculousness is in a first world country.
00:15:52
John S
But then I thought, wait a minute, but why are some of the machines fine? and Others aren't, which really spooked me to think, okay, do we have a different sort of a problem here? The Haas diagnostics panel gives you a voltage input and two or three of the machines were at 90% and the others were at 99 or 100%.
00:16:07
John S
I thought that's sus.
00:16:09
johngrimsmo
Percent what?
00:16:10
John S
of the desired voltage input.
00:16:13
johngrimsmo
Interesting.
00:16:14
John S
And i so I thought about it and I realized it's an obvious answer. ah The Haas machines have four different inputs on the back.
00:16:24
John S
So you mean you bring your main power in um like through a disconnect or whatever it would be. And then it goes down, in our shop here, our power feed is 208 volts, which is common, but most people sort of think 220, which is a different power grid voltage, and ours is 208.
00:16:41
johngrimsmo
Yeah, okay.
00:16:43
John S
And it ends up that about half our Haas machines were set up what feeding into the 208 input, and half were fed into the 220, which at the 220,
00:16:53
johngrimsmo
Interesting.
00:16:55
John S
input getting 208 puts them right at the low threshold of the acceptable like plus or minus 10%.
00:16:59
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:17:01
John S
So frankly, it hasn't been a big deal, but it it's an easy fix. And then I, yeah, I'm assuming that Haas just did this as a cost saving simplicity to not have to have different skews or machine configurations or transformers.
00:17:04
johngrimsmo
So the machine itself actually has different inputs for those slightly different voltages.
00:17:14
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:17:16
John S
So they all have, I don't know if there's a high voltage, like a 400, but there's a There's something higher like 240, 220, 208, and there's a fourth one I can look. um Makes it super nice.
00:17:26
johngrimsmo
And you don't, you don't have any transformers on those machines. They just kind of plug right in.
00:17:29
John S
Correct. Yeah.
00:17:30
johngrimsmo
We have, we have 600 volt to the shop. So like everything's on a transformer.
00:17:34
John S
Well, I would take that trade all day long though.
00:17:36
johngrimsmo
Oh yeah.
00:17:36
John S
i Oh my gosh, to to the cost of running wire, higher voltage means thinner gauge.
00:17:40
johngrimsmo
Hmm.
00:17:41
John S
I would i would love that, but it ain't happening at this point.
00:17:43
johngrimsmo
yeah Interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:17:46
John S
And then the Wilhelmin, same thing, it's a new machine, new transformer. There's another way to rewire the transformer is just to bump it up 10 volts and that's all we got to that's all we gotta do. So I thought, oh boy, do we have a big problem?
00:17:54
johngrimsmo
Interesting.
00:17:55
John S
And I think it was just kind of a, maybe the grid was taxed, but it was like one or 2% that just happened to drop them below the threshold.
00:18:01
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yep. Have you ever heard of um like, do you know what a kilowatt is?
00:18:06
John S
The measuring thing for me, yeah.
00:18:07
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it'll plug it into the wall and it measures how much your vacuum cleaner uses, whatever.
00:18:10
John S
Mm-hmm.
00:18:11
johngrimsmo
So we got a couple of those just for fun. It's neat to see, especially for battery chargers and stuff. um I've always kind of wanted one for the shop, like line in kind of thing.
00:18:21
John S
Oh my gosh. Yeah.
00:18:23
johngrimsmo
Like how much am I taxing my 200 amps that I have available when all the spindles are running kind of thing? um Because every time I ask the electrician, I'm like, how much room do I have left to get more machines?
00:18:33
johngrimsmo
It's always like a weird answer. He's like, well, I just, until you start blowing breakers, you're kind of good. But if you do, then that's too far.
00:18:42
John S
Yeah.
00:18:43
johngrimsmo
I'm like, I don't know. um But I always thought it would be cool to like, there are systems out there that can data log and display and like track your power and all that stuff, but it's just money that hasn't needed to be spent, but it would be cool.
00:18:54
John S
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, those, my understanding is it's usually, it's the big, 100% rapid, all accesses at the same time, and you're turning on like a big, like, yeah, exactly, which, yeah, mostly because the, we put amp meters on our machines and they are drawing 20% of the breaker capacity under normal use.
00:19:04
johngrimsmo
Spindle turning on, yeah.
00:19:13
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:19:18
John S
Yeah.
00:19:20
johngrimsmo
um One thing,
Museum Visits and Educational Insights
00:19:22
johngrimsmo
the last thing we did on the drive from the beach to back to Lake Placid, we were like 20 minutes away from the American ah Precision Museum, which I had heard of, and I was like, ah like guys, we gotta go.
00:19:35
John S
Oh, yeah.
00:19:38
johngrimsmo
like they I'm not gonna let you talk me out of this.
00:19:41
John S
Yeah.
00:19:42
johngrimsmo
So we went.
00:19:42
John S
Isn't that in Vermont?
00:19:43
johngrimsmo
It's in Vermont, yeah, in I think Windsor, Vermont.
00:19:44
John S
You covered some ground.
00:19:46
johngrimsmo
and And so we went, and I'm super glad we went. I even told the kids, I was like, all I need is like 45 minutes. Just let me go in, play, get my nerd on for 40. I want you guys to come even just for 10 minutes, and then you can go back to the car.
00:19:59
johngrimsmo
But like I want to show you guys what a 1700s lathe looks like.
00:20:02
John S
oh
00:20:03
johngrimsmo
And and it was it was amazing.
00:20:04
John S
thank ah sorry ive got well
00:20:06
johngrimsmo
Oh, they had so many lathes.
00:20:07
John S
ah oh
00:20:07
johngrimsmo
It was wonderful. um It was super cool because the, uh, I could talk for an hour about this, but did you ever read the book perfectionists by Simon Winchester?
00:20:20
John S
The history of precision.
00:20:22
johngrimsmo
Yeah, exactly.
00:20:24
John S
I can't remember. I don't know if I did.
00:20:26
johngrimsmo
I know we talked about it like ah I did read it is all about the history of precision and rifle manufacturing and the theory of interchangeable parts and this museum encompasses that entirely and they're actually selling his book in the store and they had a great gift shop to like life walked away with a bunch of cool little toys new but
00:20:27
John S
I i know I was supposed to.
00:20:36
John S
Yeah, yeah.
00:20:43
John S
but so They don't sell any leaves though, right? Good.
00:20:50
johngrimsmo
It was awesome. Yeah. I've got an Instagram post. I'm just about finished with that. We'll have a bunch of pictures and some video that I took um talking about all this, but it was good. I'm so glad I got to go.
00:21:00
johngrimsmo
So glad the kids got to see it. Leif got to turn the handles on his second Bridgeport, which was actually Bridgeport.
00:21:07
John S
Hilarious.
00:21:09
johngrimsmo
They had Bridgeport number one and the prototype machine that the designer like played with.
00:21:12
John S
Oh.
00:21:13
johngrimsmo
So they had those two machines and it's great.
00:21:15
John S
That's actually really cool.
00:21:16
johngrimsmo
It was really cool. And they had like a Sharpie in the spindle and kids can go up and draw squares and stuff and credit to Leif.
00:21:21
John S
Uh-huh.
00:21:23
johngrimsmo
So like it's easy to draw a square, right? Just X and then Y and then come back to X, right? Leif on his own decided to try a diamond where he's cranking them ah evenly.
00:21:32
John S
Oh, yeah.
00:21:34
johngrimsmo
And then it's, one's backwards, but the other's still the same direction. And he like, you watch him kind of struggle and he's like, I got got it. And he drew a diamond.
00:21:41
John S
That's cool.
00:21:42
johngrimsmo
And I was like, high five, bro. That's good for you, man.
00:21:45
John S
Yeah.
00:21:48
johngrimsmo
And they had like, they had a mechanical typewriter that Claire really enjoyed.
00:21:48
John S
All right.
00:21:50
johngrimsmo
And she's like, I kind of want one of these. know Yeah.
00:21:53
John S
Well, that's a fun project. Like a, I don't know, a fixer-upper, but like something they could work on too. Maybe she just wants to use it, but yeah.
00:21:59
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:22:02
John S
I think. I remember, like you don't know, you only know yourself, so I don't know if this is the same as other people, but I have sort of two formidable memories, actually three as a kid, that I think... foot helped shape me.
00:22:17
John S
you know You figure out what you like in life, and and two of them were related to COSI. the Anybody in the central Ohio area listening will know COSI. It was and still is a really good science museum.
00:22:28
John S
It stands for the Center of Science and Industry.
00:22:30
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:22:30
John S
and the When I was growing up, it was still downtown Columbus, and they had a robot that would write your name. It was just some sort of a six-axis robot, nothing crazy but a Sharpie. But just to me, that was mesmerizing.
00:22:42
John S
And then they brought a robot that was kind of like a Johnny five, but it was not a Hollywood based robot to our school as part of their traveling exhibit things. And, and I think my teacher knew I loved robots.
00:22:53
johngrimsmo
So.
00:22:55
John S
And so I got to be the kid that they picked out of the audience to come up on stage. And like, this is John Saunders nerding out in like second grade hog heaven, but I really did love it. Um, yeah.
00:23:06
johngrimsmo
Formative years, man.
00:23:07
John S
But yeah that's the thing, you don't know. like like Your parents don't necessarily aren't necessarily tuned in, or they don't have the same interest, so they don't know what's clicking.
00:23:09
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:23:14
John S
And so I think about that, not a ton, but a fair amount, about like you don't know what I'm going to expose my kids to that clicks for them.
00:23:20
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:23:22
johngrimsmo
Exactly. Yeah, so the more the more experiences I can get them into, um the better, you know, and you kind of feed those things like
00:23:28
John S
Yeah. Yeah. It's great, right?
00:23:32
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it's good. And I'm glad we're in a position where we can start to do that time and finance and things like that.
00:23:36
John S
Yeah.
00:23:37
johngrimsmo
And I just want to fuel the fire. Claire crafts every day. She's always making dolls or dresses or clothes. like She makes her own clothes.
00:23:46
John S
Yeah, that's cool.
00:23:47
johngrimsmo
And we just we just fuel that fire. And Leif, Leif doesn't have a ah hobby yet.
00:23:54
John S
Okay, yeah.
00:23:56
johngrimsmo
And um um he will, I know it. And we're just, he's learning a bunch of stuff, but I'm just waiting for that day when he's like, I'm going to do this, you know, full grim smell and go at it. And I will fuel that fire very happily.
00:24:08
John S
Yes, that's great.
00:24:14
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
Machine Maintenance and Troubleshooting
00:24:16
johngrimsmo
Um, before I left a week ago, uh, right after the podcast, the current started really acting up. Um, and we started noticing that almost all of the parts it's been making for a while now are bad.
00:24:31
johngrimsmo
And some of the tools are wrong in Z height. Like it's, it's cutting, you know, chamfers way deeper than it should, but other features are fine or it's getting a pocket deeper, but some, so like,
00:24:36
John S
Okay.
00:24:44
johngrimsmo
It was very confusing for a couple of days. um And of course, it's like two days before I'm going on vacation for a week.
00:24:49
John S
Oh, John. Yeah.
00:24:51
johngrimsmo
And so i you know we we do our own debugging. We try to figure it out. um it's I think I was throwing a weird alarm at one point. So I got on the phone with Tina at Kern and had a long chat with her and showed her some stuff.
00:25:05
johngrimsmo
And I was like, what's? We ran kinematics on the machine. Um, like something's wrong. We didn't bump it. We didn't crash it. We didn't do anything in the past few weeks and something's weird.
00:25:16
johngrimsmo
So we did kinematics did calibrated the tools retouched off a tool that had been touched off. I know recently, and it was several thousands different.
00:25:21
John S
Mm hmm. Oh.
00:25:27
johngrimsmo
like a lot. And then we reached out retouched a tool that was touched six months ago that we don't use very much. And it was also like fourth thou off. um Not all of the tools, some of the tools were like one to fourth out off, which in our world is a mile.
00:25:42
johngrimsmo
And after a solid Friday, entire Friday of debugging and testing and calibrating and tuning and testing and everything, it turns out the lenses on our bloom laser probe were just dirty.
00:25:55
John S
Oh my God. I was literally going to say, you have to give me a closure to the story.
00:25:56
johngrimsmo
And
00:25:58
John S
I don't think I can handle any more of it.
00:25:58
johngrimsmo
Yeah, absolutely. I closed it on Friday, right before my vacation, like five o'clock.
00:25:59
John S
Holy cow.
00:26:03
John S
Yeah.
00:26:05
johngrimsmo
And I mean, we've had dirty lenses before. It usually gives just an alarm. It says the laser beam can't travel across to the other sensor. And it's it's whatever the alarm says. you know And we just know, clean the lenses.
00:26:17
johngrimsmo
It's something you don't have to do very often, but it's not a bad idea to do every month or something like that. I've never had it where it's just wrong enough that it's measuring tools erratically.
00:26:29
John S
Yeah.
00:26:31
johngrimsmo
It's kind of concerning.
00:26:33
John S
Horrifying. what When you say dirty, ah like built up scum on it, like because it's cool and it's cool it's washing those off, I assume.
00:26:33
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:26:40
johngrimsmo
Not coolant air is is purging out of the nozzles. They have these little pistons that will literally seal the opening so that nothing can get inside, almost nothing. can get to the sensor when it's not in use and then air pressure ah turns on and moves down the piston and then blows out the opening on both sides so that it's purging air and coolant and stuff can't go in and then the laser beams on and then the tool can go through.
00:26:54
John S
I see.
00:27:00
John S
OK.
00:27:03
John S
I got it.
00:27:07
johngrimsmo
But um stuff absolutely does get past those pistons and i it's true.
00:27:11
John S
Yeah.
00:27:15
johngrimsmo
um And so, yeah, every now and then, we've got one on the Kern, we've got one on the Speedio. You got to turn the air off to the device or to the whole machine to be able to get the lenses off or that the cover plate thingy off.
00:27:27
John S
Oh, interesting.
00:27:29
johngrimsmo
So it takes a second, but they come off very easily.
00:27:31
John S
Yeah.
00:27:33
johngrimsmo
The Kern ones unscrew, the Speedio ones literally 90 degree turn and then come off, which is pretty clever. And then you just wipe it with a eyeglasses wipe, alcohol wipe or whatever, and then put it back together, you're good to go.
00:27:42
John S
Yeah, yeah.
00:27:46
johngrimsmo
um So yeah, that's, that's going to be our our monthly maintenance now is to make sure that, uh, that those are good to go.
00:27:52
John S
Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry that's.
00:27:54
johngrimsmo
I can't believe it. And so basically we figured out there was this period of time for the past two weeks or so where tools started to touch off erratically and, you know, micro erratically, but something.
00:28:06
johngrimsmo
So the cool thing on the current on, on the hide and hide is you can look at your entire tool table and you can see last used. And so I so sorted the whole table.
00:28:14
John S
Oh that's cool.
00:28:16
johngrimsmo
It's just like a spreadsheet by last used. And I just started going down and I retouched off a tool from a week ago and it was weird. And I retouched off it. Like I cleaned the tool, retouched off a tool from two weeks ago and it was weird.
00:28:29
johngrimsmo
But two and a half weeks ago, the tools started to touch off normally. So I can see how many tools and it was 78 tools had been used in the past two and a half weeks. So I wrote them down and I cleaned off every wound with erotico and so there's no oil or junk on them and I retouched off 78 tools and then we're good to go.
00:28:49
John S
Oh my God.
00:28:51
johngrimsmo
And actually the way I have the tool touch off setup is I just type a 998 in the
00:28:56
John S
Yeah.
00:28:56
johngrimsmo
in the tool screen, 998 will touch it off without resetting the counter, 999 will touch it off and reset the counter. So I just 998 all of those. And then you just run the program, every program, you know, the machining programs, and then as it needs that tool, it'll touch it off.
00:29:13
johngrimsmo
So I i didn't actually sit there and touch off 78 tools.
00:29:15
John S
Yeah.
00:29:15
johngrimsmo
I just, I let them touch off in in use.
00:29:15
John S
That's we're super nice.
00:29:18
johngrimsmo
And there's probably some of them that haven't been needed in the past week and a half, but, uh,
00:29:24
John S
And now it's good, making good parts, yeah.
00:29:25
johngrimsmo
And I was good. Yep. That was Friday night. And I was like, good luck.
00:29:30
John S
Oh my gosh, yeah.
00:29:31
johngrimsmo
And I didn't hear anything the whole week. So I assumed everything was good.
00:29:36
John S
So this sort of thing, um You know, that issue is easy to solve. Like you know, you'll create a maintenance task.
00:29:43
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:29:44
John S
What scares me is that like, it doesn't scale well. It's tribal and it's one, it's one thing on one machine and it's doesn't scale well when you're, if you're less involved in the business where you've got five machines or whatever.
00:29:51
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:29:56
John S
So I feel like a lot of what has been top of mind on my end is like, okay, so then what are practical solutions that don't cost me anything, um meaning
00:30:06
johngrimsmo
That ideally other people could figure out or solve like.
00:30:08
John S
And that just happened. yeah And what I mean, don't cost me anything. like like So what comes to mind here is I'm guessing that you have a gauge length tool on the Kern, like a master tool.
00:30:17
johngrimsmo
Yeah, we do. Yeah.
00:30:18
John S
So as smart as you are, as good as you are, every day or every week, you could just have a program that auto runs that compares the height of that tool. And that could solve some other issues because like, when you started telling this story, I'm thinking that like a screw came loose on the laser bracket or or you do have a crash or you do have some kinematic issue.
00:30:33
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:30:37
John S
I don't care.
00:30:37
johngrimsmo
Something's loose.
00:30:38
John S
What I wanna do is not make a day or a week with the bad parts.
00:30:38
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:30:41
John S
And yeah testing that tool as a validation seems like an easy way
00:30:41
johngrimsmo
Exactly.
00:30:46
johngrimsmo
I like that. Yeah. I was thinking earlier today, I was like, what if we made, uh, a calibration part, you know, every day, something that takes two minutes or every week or month or something that could be verified, but maybe that doesn't answer the question.
00:30:54
John S
Mm hmm.
00:31:02
John S
That cost you something, though, like your current at 2 a.m.
00:31:04
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:31:06
John S
can just touch off that tool. And if it's if it's within five tenths, don't.
00:31:08
johngrimsmo
So, exactly, then good to go.
00:31:12
John S
Yeah.
00:31:13
johngrimsmo
Yeah, that's a good idea. The weird thing with that calibration tool, so it's like it's an integrated tool holder with a little cylinder at the end and a reduced neck shank.
00:31:18
John S
Mm hmm.
00:31:23
johngrimsmo
So it's like a little pencil eraser size thing at the end. The gauge length of the tool is from the top of that cylinder, not the total massive length of the tool.
00:31:31
John S
Oh. Oh, interesting.
00:31:33
johngrimsmo
It's like six millimeters above the bottom of the tool because that's the top of the cylinder and that's how it uses it to calibrate the tool. And even Tina Kern was kind of surprised when we looked at all the specs of this tool holder.
00:31:46
johngrimsmo
And we're like, oh yeah, I guess guess the cage like this is the top of that cylinder. So that's weird. So if I did have it as as your your checking tool where you just touch it off at the tip, I'd probably have it as a secondary tool offset or something where it's whatever.
00:32:00
John S
Yeah, sure.
00:32:01
johngrimsmo
But that's a good idea.
00:32:04
John S
It's funny, the the story you just told reminded me of an issue that completely ah shut me down shut us down last week and I had already forgotten about it in a wonderful way, which is great. like i think that's the it was it was It stressed me out, I'll explain it.
00:32:22
John S
and The incident didn't stress me out, it's like how it transpired stressed me out because I'm like, this is this is not good.
00:32:26
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:32:27
John S
So Monday morning, the Akuma started to hang on a touch-off probing, a tool brake detect, it just paused. And our Akuma has paused, or like kind of like a quote unquote Windows freeze, where the the machine stops moving, the coolant's still flowing, but it's frozen.
00:32:45
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:32:45
John S
And it's happened probably two or three times in two years.
00:32:45
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:32:48
John S
So nothing I'm going to worry about, frankly, right now. um But it looked like that behavior. So we reran the program, rebooted it, something, reran the program, happened, and it paused in the same spot.
00:33:03
John S
So I looked at the error. And the error had something to do with the collision avoidance software, which we have installed, but we don't use. Talk about that later if you want, but we don't use it. So I thought, let me figure out how to disable the collision avoidance software. That's not an easy thing to figure out. It involves getting a password, which I didn't have. Fast forward a couple hours, I got it disabled. New error, a different error. but ah so what And what I later found out was that the real error that we have is a sensor broke. And because the sensor was broken, CAS thought we were going to crash into the toolsetter. But really, the problem is that there's a sensor
00:33:37
John S
um That detects when our Renishaw toolsetter is up or down so it has nothing to do with the Renishaw sensor itself It just has to do with the Akuma has a linear rail that moves the it's like R2D R2D2 poking his or a Johnny by poking his antenna up or down and so it this took us almost a full day just to realize it was the sensor that was bad and then
00:33:46
johngrimsmo
Okay. Yeah yeah.
00:33:59
John S
um So then they ordered us a new sensor, shipped it to us. I actually, I'm going to keep this short story story short, i actually was like, okay, we've got a ton ton going on. This is where you need to put on your CEO hat and not your bootstrap hat. Just have them come fix it. So I was like, Hey, great. Can you please send somebody to fix this? Cause I just didn't know what it was. And.
00:34:23
John S
This is my own words. I felt like they were kind of like, no, you can do it. here's this We're sending this answer to you. And I suspect that's because their texts were booked up and maybe even busy with IMTS stuff.
00:34:35
John S
Again, my own assumptions. But I thought, OK, well, we may maybe need some phone help to understand how to get to this.
00:34:42
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:34:43
John S
But OK, it is what it is. And so ah that was kind of like stress point number one. I wanted them to come and they they kind of sort of softly softly said no. To be in their defense a couple of days later when the so problem still wasn't solved, they had a tech available, but by that point we were well on our way to solving ourselves. Stress point number two, the sensor showed up and I looked at the old one, I looked at the new one, and I'm like, this isn't right.
00:35:04
johngrimsmo
Oh.
00:35:05
John S
I'm like, this is crazy, close, but not the same. So I called them and I'm like, hey, you know this is our machine, serial number, this is the case number. You guys said the sensors, they're wrong and they're different. I sent a picture and this is where I switched from being cooperative to being pretty pretty boldly direct. The guy on the phone was like, he was more polite than this. He's like, no, you're wrong. Those are the same sensors. Like I guarantee it. We've done these sensors go bad. We know it. Um, this is the one, this is the one on all of the MB four thousands, blah, blah, blah. And I hadn't personally crawled back in to find a little spot where this extrusions that it slides in, which I probably should have, but well, no, I hadn't. And it's like right at the end of the day.
00:35:47
John S
And so I thought, okay, well, we'll get in there tomorrow morning and I'm probably wrong. I'm probably misunderstanding something kind of just, I didn't, didn't get stressed. I guess I'm getting mad at that point, but I took the guys like, okay, hey, I apologize.
00:35:59
John S
Looks like you sent the wrong one. If you're telling me they're right, great. Next morning we crawl in there, they're wrong. And now I'm pissed because, because, you know, that's, remember, I think it was Will Hodges saying this about a tactile turn about his DMGs.
00:36:06
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:36:13
John S
It's like every, yeah i Again, my words, not his. Every DMG is different. Like every NLX 2500 is like a serial number that has who knows what build spec inside of it. And I think that's something I really give Haas a lot of credit for was that we have not seen this on the few times we've had repair issues. Maybe I'm just jaded about quirky experiences. But ah so I called that back Gossager and I'm like, Hey, these are wrong. And then all of a sudden guys like, Oh, it's this sensor.
00:36:37
John S
Now it's Thursday. We were down Monday we were down monday at 10 a.m.
00:36:39
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Oh my gosh.
00:36:41
John S
And so then I found the sensor number and it was available from Grainger and DigiKey for $37. I preferred to buy it through Gossager because they'd been supporting me and just, it was fine too.
00:36:55
John S
I was expecting they would have a markup, but their markup was $375. And this is an SMC branded sensor that's readily available. um They were in stock at Motion Industries in Dayton.
00:37:07
John S
And I told the guys, I'm like, look, I would buy from you guys for 100 bucks without blinking an eye. But I'm not spending $380 per sensor when it's next day air for 37 bucks.
00:37:14
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:37:15
John S
So got the sensor. We got it replaced. I give our team and Garrett a lot of credit. Once we got that in there, it was totally fine. but
00:37:21
johngrimsmo
Hmm.
00:37:22
John S
Nothing about that was a win. like It couldn't figure out why it was broken.
00:37:23
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:37:25
John S
Couldn't get support in there when we wanted to. Sent the wrong one. um just was It was not fun. But to to look at it from the upside, the way we've been running the shop, we had plenty of inventory.
00:37:36
John S
um we the The truth is it actually didn't cause any problems.
00:37:37
johngrimsmo
That's good.
00:37:42
John S
um So that's that's a win, I guess.
00:37:42
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:37:45
johngrimsmo
A lot of mental stress and worry and and, you know, you don't like to be down. It's no fun, but.
00:37:50
John S
Yeah. so
00:37:52
johngrimsmo
Would have been worse if you were bleeding money without that machine, I think.
00:37:56
John S
Yes. Yeah. Sorry. That was a little bit of a emotional event down there, but yeah.
00:38:02
johngrimsmo
It's good to hear, though. It's like everybody has challenges. It's nice to hear what they are sometimes. you know in in our team meeting whenever I talk about problems, and Larry is one of the finishing guys.
00:38:15
johngrimsmo
in the east He's been around the block a couple of times. He's worked in other places for a lot of years. This is his his retirement fund job.
00:38:21
John S
That's awesome.
00:38:22
johngrimsmo
and And every time I say the word problem, he corrects me. He goes, opportunities.
00:38:26
John S
yeah
00:38:27
johngrimsmo
there all
00:38:28
John S
No, you gotta, yeah like I'm all about rolling with the punches. I remember down on the farm, there's a maintenance task and it's like the written out instructions for doing this thing that's not fun to do is it's like number one, pour yourself a cup of coffee, sit down and just smile.
00:38:41
John S
Because the next step number two is not going to be as much fun.
00:38:41
johngrimsmo
Yep,
00:38:43
John S
It's like, okay, sometimes you just got to like go, you know, but.
00:38:47
johngrimsmo
yep.
00:38:48
John S
The other fun takeaway, I learned something and shout out again to metal quest. Those guys have a bunch of Akuma's and i I kind of reached out to them to see if they were helpful.
00:38:55
johngrimsmo
sure
00:38:56
John S
Um, I hope everybody on the podcast knows this and I'm telling you something you don't know, but I didn't know it, which is. We've used heat shrink stuff for splicing cables together before, for sure. What I didn't know existed are these heat shrink little ah one inch long heat shrink things that are gauge specific. and so you And they have a bit of solder in the middle of them, a little solder
00:39:20
johngrimsmo
Really?
00:39:21
John S
ring and you don't crimp anything. You cut off the wires on each end. So you've got like a half inch or less of tail.
00:39:29
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:39:31
John S
You shove the wires together. It's kind of hard to twist them because they're both fixed, if you will. And then a regular heat gun will cause this, I'm assuming low temp solder to reflow.
00:39:42
John S
And as it does that, it heat shrinks down on both sides, and it's a great way to make a connection that's sealed from coolant. What we did to Metal Quest was we also had put heat shrink tubing on the wires so that it was already in the right place.
00:40:00
John S
We did the ah heat shrink tubing that had the solder, and then we put dielectric grease on there, slid the heat shrink tubing that was oversized up, and then we kind of doubled
00:40:07
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
Innovative Techniques in Manufacturing
00:40:08
John S
double secured it with dielectric grease to minimize, because apparently coolant getting into the splice connection is also what can cause some long-term issues.
00:40:15
johngrimsmo
Sure. Cool, no, I didn't know about that.
00:40:18
John S
Yeah, eight bucks for a 50 pack off Amazon.
00:40:21
johngrimsmo
Done.
00:40:22
John S
Yeah.
00:40:24
johngrimsmo
That's cool.
00:40:26
John S
Yeah. Yeah.
00:40:30
John S
What else on your list or to do?
00:40:35
johngrimsmo
i Part of the um chemistry obsession for the past six months or so has been towards this theory of electro polishing metals.
00:40:48
johngrimsmo
And so i've I feel like I've read everything on the internet, I haven't obviously, but um I've read a lot on the internet about electro polishing and I feel like I absolutely have my head wrapped around it. There's some dangerous chemicals involved, concentrated sulfuric acid and phosphoric acid and things like that. So it's it's not for the faint of heart, but I'm all set up to do it now.
00:41:12
johngrimsmo
and it's gonna be cool. um So I have everything set up already. I have my assets mixed. It was my my birthday the other day and I was like, you know what I wanna do on my, yeah, thank you.
00:41:19
John S
Oh, happy birthday. Sorry.
00:41:21
johngrimsmo
um ah Usually on my birthday, I like to... do a project that's outside the norm that you know just like one year I worked on my car, one year I had like did something that I don't normally do. So this year's birthday adventure it was to mix these acids together. So I had my lab coat on, I had my face shield on, gloves, everything. I did all my research. I felt you know nervous but comfortable doing it. and And it was really fun and really enjoyable. And so now i'll I have my acids mixed. I have my sodium hydroxide to neutralize stuff and to
00:41:55
johngrimsmo
rinse and everything. And I have my setup. I haven't actually electropolised something yet, but um it'll that'll take five minutes when I'm ready to do that. And what's really cool about it is it takes off the high points of an irregular surface, the surface atom by atom, using electricity.
00:42:11
John S
That's how it polishes.
00:42:12
johngrimsmo
That's how it polishes.
00:42:13
John S
That's cool.
00:42:13
johngrimsmo
So imagine a ah jagged mountain range is your microscopically 50 million times zoomed in rough surface finish.
00:42:17
John S
Mm hmm.
00:42:22
johngrimsmo
And because the sulfuric and phosphoric acids are very thick, they're like oily, they're viscous. So they seep into the cracks and they kind of flow. They create this boundary layer on the surface that is thicker in the deeper trenches and thinner at the peaks.
00:42:39
johngrimsmo
So the electricity through this electropolishing process is is, you know, more, it's the peaks and it's literally nipping off atom by atom these metals.
00:42:43
John S
Sure. Hits the peaks.
00:42:50
John S
That's cool. That's really cool.
00:42:51
johngrimsmo
It's really cool. And so it's called anodic leveling, and it's leveling the surface.
00:42:52
John S
Yeah.
00:42:57
johngrimsmo
High points first, jagged corners first, and it slowly brings it down.
00:42:59
John S
Sure.
00:43:03
johngrimsmo
Apparently, they say it has a it can it can lower your RA 30 to 50%, which is significant. ah So it's not going to fix you know it's not gonna make everything beautiful. But people use it for three d print like metal 3D printed castings. um Not castings, but metal 3D printed parts to really kind of blend everything down. And I think it will be perfectly useful on our the button, on our Fjell.
00:43:28
johngrimsmo
the button lock, because there's a surface in there that we're hand polishing and we're noticing differences and deviation.
00:43:28
John S
Okay.
00:43:33
johngrimsmo
And it's hard for us even to polish them all evenly. So that's kind of the big driver for this.
00:43:39
John S
Sure.
00:43:39
johngrimsmo
And then also, I think we have a bunch of other uses in micro polishing a lot of our surfaces for this. So I'm quite excited.
00:43:47
John S
Good. That's fun.
00:43:48
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it's fun.
00:43:50
John S
Is it stopping you? This is where I could, now I have can't help but be the turd in the room.
00:43:53
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:43:54
John S
Is it stopping you though from being focused on stuff you need to be focused on?
00:43:58
johngrimsmo
And three other people in the company have asked me that same question.
00:44:01
John S
And that's, look, it's your birthday. My God, John and live life.
00:44:03
johngrimsmo
Totally.
00:44:04
John S
I don't, but, but.
00:44:05
johngrimsmo
Yeah. It is not stopping us from making those, those knives. We can absolutely, like we made the 10 before blade show. Um, we hand polished them. We got them in just fine.
00:44:16
johngrimsmo
It's more of a longer term, like, you know, uh, process improvement for various things in the shop.
00:44:18
John S
Yeah, right.
00:44:22
johngrimsmo
I
Task Management and Personal Productivity
00:44:23
johngrimsmo
think for our pens too, we could use it for, for several of the features.
00:44:23
John S
Yeah.
00:44:28
johngrimsmo
So no, it's not stopping us. Pretty simple.
00:44:31
John S
i Due to you nudging me, I reread the, I had to get abstract of the David Allen Getting Things Done book. And it's like literally like sometimes the best thing you have to do is just recognize you gotta take take other stuff off your plate. And i I'm still like, I would give myself like a five out of 10 because I don't,
00:44:56
John S
Sometimes I just need to let go and realize the whole, like be a surgeon, like we're going to hang up this podcast. All I need to do is opt to have a new fixture.
00:45:04
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:45:04
John S
There's a, there's 10 more things I could do and I will do, but I don't need to worry about those right now. Um, and yeah.
00:45:10
johngrimsmo
It really is a a formative book, um getting things done, like whether or not you follow his recipe recipe exactly.
00:45:13
John S
yeah
00:45:17
John S
Yeah.
00:45:17
johngrimsmo
I still, I read it probably eight years ago, and I still use some of those concepts. I think about it. I like that.
00:45:26
John S
Yeah. It was good.
00:45:27
johngrimsmo
and ah update on my inbox zero. I am still at inbox zero. I am thrilled with it.
00:45:34
John S
good
00:45:34
johngrimsmo
You know, I i show my wife and she's like, cool, good for you.
00:45:38
John S
funny
00:45:39
johngrimsmo
And I'm like so excited about it. um It's, I don't know, life changing in a minor, tiny little way, but it's it's a total win, you know? And it makes you realize the 10 emails you got today or whatever were like easy to blast through.
00:45:52
John S
ah
00:45:52
johngrimsmo
you know, as opposed to the massive pile of, oh, I got all this old stuff. And I've really translated that to a lot of areas of my life of like, no more dead weight, no more baggage, no more mental stress, no more like, like lingering responsibilities that I'm avoiding and not doing and whatever it is.
00:46:08
John S
It's funny. Yeah.
00:46:13
johngrimsmo
I'm done with it.
00:46:14
John S
Yeah.
00:46:14
johngrimsmo
I don't have time for that anymore. And it's so freeing to get those away from me and off my plate.
00:46:22
John S
hi This, which is great. i I feel in a weird way, almost in inverse desire, not that I, I'm not a zero unboxer too, but not that I want to relax more.
00:46:35
John S
I can't handle having unread text messages or unread anything on my phone. My point is, you've got to chill. You've got to relax. It's OK if your battery is at 33%. I have a backup battery. I can probably charge it.
00:46:45
John S
I've never once in my whole adult life had my phone die on me. It's going to be OK. So I commend you, but I also don't go too far to the spectrum.
00:46:54
johngrimsmo
Sure, that's fair. Yep, that's absolutely fair.
00:46:55
John S
yeah yeah
00:46:58
johngrimsmo
And it's I'm still in control of my time. It's not that i I definitely do not. I don't answer my phone like ever. It's on silent. I don't let it ring.
00:47:10
johngrimsmo
I don't get back to texts immediately. I try to do it within the day, but I still control my time.
00:47:13
John S
Yeah.
00:47:15
johngrimsmo
Even if I notice something come in, I'll take care of it later.
00:47:18
John S
Got it.
00:47:19
johngrimsmo
So I'm not ah obsessive, like I want to be in control of that time.
00:47:23
John S
Oh, yeah, right, right.
00:47:23
johngrimsmo
You know what I mean?
00:47:24
John S
Yes. That's a good point.
00:47:29
John S
Yeah.
Fixture Production and Machine Efficiency
00:47:32
John S
Well, I got to share this because it was like just. a validation, the story itself is somewhat trivial, but but it's not because it's kind of the summation of doing this for 15 years and the decisions and all of that, which is we're doing all these new fixtures.
00:47:45
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:47:48
John S
I were revamping Akuma fixtures. We're doing these new VF2 fixtures and I wanted this clamp. And we had some old ones, but I kind of wanted a new one. It was not particularly difficult to make. And one of the reasons I wanted this new Willemin was that the Willemin is just phenomenal. And a clamp like this can be made out of the round bar that we already have in the machine with the tools that we already have in the machine.
00:48:13
John S
And so I had the model up, I dumped it in the Wilhelmin folder in Fusion. I mentioned it to Grant. I was like, hey, I would take 20 of these, but you know look, don't like you know he's he's been cranking on the Wilhelmin. It's been going great. So I was like, don't don't stress, don't interrupt your workflow. But if you can, take a look at these.
00:48:32
John S
um and let me know and I kid you not it was within 25 minutes he walked over and just just dropped one in my my hand and it was he was just like yes no big deal it's like it was just yeah like literally that's it and so that's what like i talked about the the youtube video but that's why we bought that machine is um there's nothing it really can't do that our st life well there's some things but like
00:48:49
johngrimsmo
Huh. Yes. Yes.
00:49:01
John S
The point is we can switch between all these different products. Some of them are higher value, higher margin Saunders products. Some of them are a little inexpensive, lower margin Saunders products. Some of them are internal picturing. It doesn't matter. It just makes them, and it makes them with low stress.
00:49:13
John S
Fusion does a great job. like it's just It was a complete validation of the largest capital expenditure we've ever made.
00:49:19
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:49:20
John S
ah And frankly, in that specific instance, the what we would have been doing was buying High three figures low four figures worth of a commercial product and modifying it and I'm happy to do that because I've also always told myself I don't want to crash the wheel and then making but but this part isn't like that it was it was totally safe to do it and They were done and we could modify them and tweak them and replace like it's just phenomenal.
00:49:36
johngrimsmo
dumb stuff. Yeah.
00:49:44
johngrimsmo
Mm hmm.
00:49:44
John S
Love it.
00:49:45
John S
Yeah
00:49:46
johngrimsmo
That's so awesome. And that it that is the goal. Like the Wilhelmin can be a very complex machine, but grants obviously super smart and and good at what he does. So he's like trained on it. um And once you have that skill, it's easy.
00:49:59
John S
Oh,
Complexity and Skill in Manufacturing
00:50:01
John S
it's just great.
00:50:01
johngrimsmo
And I'm concerned with our future that the more complex our products get and our our machines get and everything like that, it requires a high level of of effort and skill to do anything.
00:50:12
johngrimsmo
I don't want that, you know?
00:50:14
John S
Yeah. Yeah.
00:50:15
johngrimsmo
I want things to be easiest that we can move forward and do a lot.
00:50:19
John S
Yeah.
00:50:19
johngrimsmo
It's just getting more complicated.
00:50:22
John S
Yeah. Well, if if the... mar I mean, it's just it's like business 101. It's like what are the input costs or what do you sell it for? and There's a reason, I know the 1911 world a lot better than your world, but like there's a reason you could spend six grand on a yeah a custom 2011, which has had ah two days of frame to slide fit handwork versus a perfectly good thousand dollar Kimber.
00:50:30
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:50:48
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:50:50
John S
Making sure you match that stuff is big.
00:50:53
johngrimsmo
Good stuff time.
00:50:58
John S
Time, I guess. but Okay, what do you have today?
00:51:01
johngrimsmo
Today, ah I am making, um to help try to alleviate some of the rask blades being weird and and moving in heat treatment, and we're still scrapping quite a few, hard milling the features on the rask, which means I have to modify a clamp, like cut one of our normal clamps in half, basically, and then maybe make a quick little Willeman toe clamp to hold the other side of the blade, and then test hard milling, because I think it's i think it's the answer.
00:51:09
John S
Yeah.
00:51:26
John S
Nice.
00:51:32
John S
That's great Um, we have two fixtures.
00:51:34
johngrimsmo
Yeah, what do you have to do?
00:51:37
John S
We're so that's actually will be the last one. Um, we've made, I don't know, eight, uh, puck chuck fixtures, pull the pressure off the horizontal. They're going great.
00:51:47
John S
Uh, and it's proving itself. We, I was running soft jaws and I didn't realize it, but we ran out of pallets. And so we needed to make two.
00:51:58
John S
I, the program finished in 10 minutes. I hit one button. The fixtures is lifted off. I dropped the, uh, 12-bit palette fixtures on there and I had them for Serena in, I don't know, like two hours with just no stress, no stress no effort, no risk, no nothing.
00:52:13
John S
um And then I just went back to the work I was doing, which is what life's all about. Like, it just feels like you're you're winning.
00:52:18
johngrimsmo
That's the goal. Yep. Yep. Good.
00:52:20
John S
Yeah. Yeah.
00:52:22
johngrimsmo
It's awesome. All right, man.
00:52:23
John S
Good. Hey, I'll see you next week.
00:52:25
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Have a wonderful day.
00:52:26
John S
Take care. Bye.