00:00:00
00:00:01
#351 Business existentialism
224 Plays9 months ago
TOPICS:
- Business existentialism
- FOCUS
- Facemill blew up
- Horizontal deburring
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Focus
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, Episode 351. My name is John Grimsmo. My name is John Saunders. And this is the weekly manufacturing podcast where we kind of go over the day-to-day of our business but also talk about future plans and big ideas and small ideas and history and kind of what got us here and what it's going to take to get us there and where there is sometimes.
00:00:23
Speaker
Please tell me you have all the answers. I have no answers, but this is why we podcast to to converse. I mean, this is the reason we started this is like we have ideas. We want to go places. Let's have a private intimate conversation. We didn't even think about recording for like six months. And and here we are six years later.
00:00:43
Speaker
Yeah.
Listener Feedback and Business Growth
00:00:44
Speaker
The number of emails we get from folks that have sort of said, hey, I'm binging from the beginning is awesome. I don't want to sit here and sound like we're tuning our own horn. But it is wonderful to think that that's been a helpful tool for folks to keep it candid and real. And look, I don't know that I can possibly rewind totally to back to episode number one. But I believe we each had maybe kind of one employee, no system to replace. Revenue was a fraction of what it is today.
00:01:13
Speaker
The word that always comes to mind for me is insecurities about like, hey, are we doing things the correct
Saunders on Insecurity and Personal Growth
00:01:19
Speaker
way? And there's plenty of folks in the world that fist bump, pound chest, mic drops that they've got all figured out. I've always enjoyed the people that were more contemplative. And I think that's what this started out as. I'm not sure what it is. I'm not sure it's that.
00:01:33
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know anymore. Yeah. Well, and I don't ever want to become the like, this is the only way to do it where the experts were the best. Um, I don't have it all figured out. I'm still learning every day. I have some things, experience and knowledge that I never had before that I'm somewhat confident on. And then there's a ton of things that I'm still completely not confident on. And I'm also very open-minded and like, well, I don't know. Is it the best way? I don't know. Okay. Here's how about this?
00:02:04
Speaker
empirically, I am more successful, wiser, experienced, et cetera, today than ever. We run a business that has had countless employees that have hired, some have been fired, some have been promoted, managed teams, built systems, shipped, significant numbers, blah, blah, blah, you could go on. I hear that, John, talking to six years ago, John.
00:02:30
Speaker
You know what I mean? Well, but here's the irony. And this actually has come up in two different conversations with acquaintances lately, privately. I feel more cautious. I don't know the better word to use, but
YouTube Presence and Learning
00:02:44
Speaker
more uninterested or cautious, not insecure. It's not really that disinterested, I guess, in actually proffering knowledge than ever, which is ridiculous because
00:02:58
Speaker
I have the most to speak from. And I just feel more in its look to be blunt, it's probably one reason why I've taken a huge step back from YouTube. And I'm not putting out some of the other sort of foreign platforms of content, I just find myself more interested in absorbing and not so much the I don't know. And maybe it's sorry, I'll shut up. No, you're absolutely right. And I
00:03:25
Speaker
I'm in a somewhat similar boat where I've done less YouTube, especially recently the past few months. And I, I, it was almost easier to do it five, six years ago. Yeah.
00:03:40
Speaker
I don't know. Because I feel like we're on a platform now where I should be the expert and I don't feel like the expert. And because I'm so open-minded and I'm like, oh, there's different ways to do it. This is just the way we do it. And obviously, I see tons of other content and guys who are great educators. And I don't think I could be that. But I don't think that's what I
Openness, Authenticity, and Advice
00:04:05
Speaker
need to be either. I need to share what we do, period.
00:04:08
Speaker
good bad or otherwise. I watch excellent content from very small creators that is fascinating and I'm riveted and glued to the screen and it's just because they're sharing their story. That's it.
00:04:21
Speaker
No, that's completely true and YouTube is what a wonderful resource to civilization. I don't mean it like that but like for sure to wave the white flag like I'm getting smoked by so many better people out there on YouTube. God bless them. I'm happy for it. I mean more of just the like even if
00:04:43
Speaker
Like I don't want to do like private consulting for a variety of reasons, but even if I was compelled to do so, like, okay, like this, like we did a bomb giveaway where we spent an hour with a young, well, it doesn't matter who they are, but like, let's say the person that won it was a 22 year old that had a silo in his garage and a successful company. I feel more cautious about doling out advice now than I ever had. Why, John? I don't know if I've thought that perspective yet.
00:05:13
Speaker
Maybe a bit. I don't know, maybe because you realize what got you here might not work for somebody else. That's true too. You have that perspective now. But what you rattled off before, the accomplishments, the hiring and firing of people, the experience you've gained just by doing what you do, talking to six year ago, John, would have been mind blowing. Be like, I've done what?
00:05:44
Speaker
That is yes, I give you that like if I walked I don't know how this is all kind of There's probably an argument to be said that we should just shut up here because this is not. Yeah, this is funny Yeah, it's interesting if I could somehow walk into this shop today and you know watch Alex talking to Grant and Caleb doing a new fixture and Garrett Modifying to the world like oh
Business Success vs. Personal Fulfillment
00:06:05
Speaker
my god, John. It's yeah, you know, that's She built it. It's so yeah when it
00:06:13
Speaker
when it comes to fulfillment, um, you know, what fulfills you as a, as a, you know, cause you're, you're like it or not, you're in my lives are inextricably linked to our businesses, like our personal lives, even though they are. And so that sense of accomplishment fulfillment is certainly tied into that. And that's, that is truly a wonderful thing. Yeah. Yeah.
00:06:36
Speaker
But as we've both known, it comes at a cost. It comes at a cost of sanity, stress, worry, financial gains and losses. And I don't know if I necessarily want that for other people.
00:06:52
Speaker
Yeah, there's some cautious words there. It's not for everybody. And I don't want to give advice that puts somebody who can't handle those things in the wrong, you know? But when you were talking to 22-year-old John, I absolutely will.
00:07:10
Speaker
tell you without apology that I wouldn't have listened to you. And I'm glad I did because you had that young hunger, I will power through it, work through it and kind of deal with the consequences later. And that's maybe in a bad, this isn't like thought out.
00:07:26
Speaker
Chain of thought here, but like that's what I did you kind of build it up to where it's unmanageable and then you manage it by yeah Yeah, but that's that's I guess the hard part is yeah where we're at But but I will say we're there It kind of comes back to the whole Days off in the shop that I'm doing starting Jan one but that's kind of the polish of the final finality of it because
00:07:51
Speaker
For the sake of keeping this raw and candid and sharing it, I made that decision a year ago where I
Reducing Stress in Business Approach
00:07:58
Speaker
wasn't going to – this sounds dramatic because it was never ever remotely considered that this business wouldn't continue to grow, succeed, exist, but I sort of told myself, I'm done.
00:08:11
Speaker
are not good, are going to get fixed. Reminds me very much of when, and Jay, if you're listening, I give you a lot of credit. I stood in front of your dishwasher that you use to clean your Pearson palates, I don't know, 2017. And you're like, stress is a choice and I choose not to get stressed. And that was one of those moments that you realize there are more things that are choice than you realize. And I sort of said,
00:08:33
Speaker
you know, son, I'm done sustaining Saunders at an unsustainable pace. And so we have all the things we already talked about this podcast from, from Lex to the team, blah, blah, blah. Yep. And I think I am, I am going through that conversion. I don't think I've fully grasped the like commitment of like, you know, I'm done with old John new John business. I'm going through that conversion and I feel it happening inside me. Um,
00:09:02
Speaker
right now. So it's neat to see that you've tipped past the conviction point of like, nope, no more. I'm changing it. I'm doing it this way now. And it's neat.
Special Episode Announcement
00:09:12
Speaker
I treated it.
00:09:14
Speaker
more serious than I probably let on, kind of like a quit smoking or quit drinking attitude of like, no, yeah, like, like this isn't a gentle phase in like, I'm going to try to make this a priority. It's like, nope, I'm done. This is being fixed, kind of quote, unquote, or else. Just because I think for me, that level of disruption was needed because
00:09:34
Speaker
Sorry, these are all phenomenal teasers to the six pages of mostly Instagram VMs. Shout out to my wife, Yvonne, for helping. She handles the Instagram account these days. She handled a lot of the posts, and then she separated all of our responses into sections regarding machines, business, general stuff, Sondra's grim sort of questions, Sondra's questions, and
00:09:59
Speaker
a section on the Tennessee forefinish. And John and I are going to record that episode, special airing, what is it going to be the day after Christmas or something? Yeah, the 27th, I believe. Yeah. So we won't be next week. We won't be live, but we're going to address a bunch of those viewer submitted questions, which
00:10:21
Speaker
It's going to be awesome. So we're recording a double header this week and then we'll take next week off because it's Christmas, but we will have a podcast up continuously like this weekend next week. So good to go guys. Well, that's, I'm trying to think of a title for what we just talked about and sum that up and I got, I'm blank here for our little show notes. Business existentialism. Right.
00:10:47
Speaker
I don't know how to spell that. Exist. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know either.
Conviction and Confidence in Leadership
00:10:54
Speaker
There's an aspect of leadership that I'm appreciating more when it comes to being honest with yourself about that, but then also recognizing you need to have that conviction in that direction and the confidence to do it and it will be done. And you find that within. I'll say that. Yep. You build it. You nurture it. You fuel it.
00:11:18
Speaker
And it is a conviction. It's a choice. Stress is a choice. Decisions are choices. Control is a choice. Yeah. You know, and we tend to have more control than we believe we do. And yeah.
00:11:36
Speaker
Something that's been on my mind a lot lately is that focus is a choice and focus is one of my most valued things these days and I see it myself and I see it in other people, the distractibility of everything and it drives me insane.
Focus, Aging, and Multitasking
00:11:53
Speaker
Yeah. Yes, John. Yes. You and I are, I don't really use the word blessed. I'm not particularly religious, but like to have the situation we have with the opportunities I couldn't at the time, that's what I think 50 year old John will look back on. Like the, I get so much joy.
00:12:15
Speaker
In the morning, I wake up early and do something. Usually it's practice piano. Sometimes it's now. I actually did pick up reading books and some. And knowing I can just focus on this, full stop. Doesn't mean focus and start thinking of the stuff you're going to do as soon as you're done focusing. Because that's what I used to do. Silence, just focus. And I don't know if it's an age thing, like we're both 40 now, if
00:12:40
Speaker
I wonder if our brains can handle as much as they could at 30 at one time. Because when you're like 20, 30, you're like, I'm on top of the world. I can multitask. I can do everything at once. Maybe we literally can't at this age or we've realized the
00:12:57
Speaker
dumbness of trying to focus on too many things at once. And it drives me crazy. So I literally I put a lot of effort into quieting the noise into focus into time. And turn just thinking a straight line as opposed to a total zigzag of of everything. Yep. Yes.
Deep Focus and Late Nights
00:13:21
Speaker
So on that note, I found a very unsustainable way to find that focus and produce a lot of results. And I spent four nights this past week till about 3 or 4 AM in the shop. Go home, have dinner with the kids, put them to sleep, everything. And then like 9 to 3 AM, 9 to 4 AM, I did that for four nights in a row. And boy, I got a lot of stuff done.
00:13:51
Speaker
God bless you. I don't know how you do that. Yeah. It's not sustainable. Like I said, it's wonderfully liberating just to have the shop to myself. Okay. I get to focus on just a few tasks, few projects, no distractions, no people. I love all the people in our team, but it's really nice to work sometimes.
00:14:15
Speaker
Yeah. How did that go? Were you working? It went really good. I got to work on the Willeman a lot, like two, three nights. Made a bunch of parts. Got more comfortable with that machine. Made some fixture clamps that I've been wanting to make for a long time. It's just a really nice process. And then speedio as well. I got, what did I work on? I made last two nights ago, I made a fixture.
00:14:43
Speaker
that we needed kind of last minute. So I busted that out. Obviously, I put way too much time and effort into it that I kind of should have, but man, is it nice. And yeah, some current stuff and just projects that I'm like, these need to get done before Christmas. These need to get done now. And I just want to take the time and get them done.
00:15:03
Speaker
Yeah. Good. And it's like clearing those off my plate so that I can then spend time to develop our new knife that we're coming out with. That's awesome. Right. It's super exciting. And I get to the end of those nights kind of relieved and also frustrated because I'm like, I just spent all that time focusing on a couple of projects. But man, it would be nice to spend all that time developing this new knife period. Full stop focus. So I think I'm just about at that point now where I can actually focus on that.
00:15:33
Speaker
Well, that's what drove my, I don't know what I'm calling this action plan thing, was what I've not been doing that I need to do is use my mix of knowledge, talents, et cetera, to help make some marketing content, which hashtag we're not good at. Like, here's why you would use a mod vice, here's why you would use a fixture plate, and here's why you would use our new puck chuck.
00:15:59
Speaker
And there's some excuses about, well, we have the automated, like a pneumatic puck chuck is available for purchase, the mechanical one that's a simpler, really only designed for one at a time. We're tweaking some stuff on it.
00:16:12
Speaker
And we want to kind of have that done before we publish info on it. But nevertheless, the real excuse is that I get too much of the stuff I want to do. And so that's kind of my accept that if you if you ignore those, the obligation of doing that marketing stuff, the goal with this action list is to be at a point come, you know, March 1, where
00:16:36
Speaker
I will still play the role of managing the company and I'll still play the role of putting out fires. Yesterday, I was up on the roof, doing some minor trim patching before winter. I'll still help in capital planning, but by and large, other than responding to acute situations or questions, my role will basically be I will have fired myself from most other
00:17:03
Speaker
as much as I probably should. So that means I should be able to walk into the shop and this is the dream, John, walk into the shop and just think what's the best thing I could do to help us today? And yeah, you know, maybe it's hey, maybe it is being a laborer and helping out somewhere because I actually love doing that. Yeah, doing that because you truly are just at the mercy of what needs the most is is different than
00:17:31
Speaker
Oh, uh-oh. I have to do this. But then also being able to put my best foot forward on creating the best version of that content and that voice is
00:17:47
Speaker
I don't know if it comes through and I'm talking about it, but the richness and personal rewarding of that is going to be awesome. It has to happen. I need to do that as well. There are several projects that if I put my pure expertise focus on would do good for the business.
Delegation for Business Growth
00:18:06
Speaker
It would take us to that next level that we're striving for so much.
00:18:11
Speaker
But if I've got my head down too much and working on these things and programming parts and tweaking and running this machine and doing that, those high level tasks don't get done and they're not going to get done by anybody else. And I need to create an ecosystem where all those other tasks, the work gets done by other people, is capable of being done by other people. And then
00:18:36
Speaker
Like you said, I get to walk in and I do this some days, but I get to walk in and be like, where will I be most beneficial? Where can I make the most impact today? So I look at my list and I go, yeah, that's got to get done. Either I can delegate it, like Pearson says, do it, delegate it, delete it, or defer it, his four D's. Oh, I don't. Okay, that's good. Yeah, he's got it in his notebook.
00:18:59
Speaker
What's that, say that again for me? So if you have a task and you look at it and it's like, it's kind of the getting things done mindset. If you can get it done in two minutes, you just get it done. So do it, delete it, because not everything has to get done. Some things are just ideas. So do it, delete it, defer it, or delegate it.
00:19:18
Speaker
Interesting. Yeah, the deleted is I love that of the leanest thing you can do is just to get rid of it. So we sold our blue EMCO lathe because Serena who runs our shipping wanted that area for a way scale. It made sense. And the work we do on that manual lathe was literally like modifying a half inch bolt or something. And we had this big, you know, 3,000, 2,000 pound.
00:19:44
Speaker
whatever it is, 13-inch lathe with a big tail stock. And so the plan is to buy one of the Precision Matthews that has a DRO. But I'm kind of pushing, to be clear, I kind of like to have a manual lathe for a variety of personal report reasons. But I'm kind of delaying that because too much of the stuff that I think we were doing on that might be stuff that we just need to stop doing,
Manual vs. CNC Machining
00:20:07
Speaker
period.
00:20:07
Speaker
Yeah. We need to be in a place where we're just buying a screw from McMaster for next day delivery rather than modifying some. And some of that's me also being a bad manager. Like we should be able to, it's a weird way to go both ways on this, but the rework and tweaking is stuff that is not lean, I guess is a way to say it. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know. Paul Aker is good. I don't know.
00:20:37
Speaker
I don't know, it's a tough one because being a tool maker, being able to modify things, being able to change things is kind of an important part of our business. But on the other hand, we don't have a manual lathe and it's kind of been on our wish list for 10 years now. Ever since I converted my manual lathe to a CNC lathe and I was just like, yeah, CNC everything. So I'm literally doing manual work sometimes on the Nakamura, jogging it in.
00:21:04
Speaker
on the Willem and things like that. It's fine, but a manual lathe just makes it so much easier. Wishlist, if we had 10, 20 grand to spend, just get a rebuild hard engine, call it good. I don't need it right now. I'm thinking
00:21:22
Speaker
more along the lines of like, so we do modify screws. And we do that for good reason of, you know, we take a Torx screw, we like the Torx pattern and the head size, but we need it to be effectively low profile. And so we do that by trimming the head from the bottom side, reducing the head height.
00:21:40
Speaker
what I'd rather do, I think is say, okay, for this fixture in this product, we need, you know, 12 of those screws that you wear out. So let's do a run of 75 on the CNC lathe. We have a process bin, you have a Ziploc in there that can be for extra screw hardware. Let's do it that way rather than like, hey, grab a couple, go over to lathe, use a, you know, kind of tool to hack them down a little. That's kind of where I'm heading with this. Yeah, fair. Yeah. Because it's look, there's a,
00:22:10
Speaker
There's 25 different, quote unquote, manual lathe things that get messy. They aren't necessarily maintained. You look at the systems and shops that some of our friends have to run at bigger companies or the publicly traded companies where it's like, hey, you need to have authorization and safety to do this and permission. We're not ever going to be like that.
00:22:31
Speaker
but you kind of start to realize it's not always great to just have anybody be able to walk up to, does it make sense? Talk about, I feel like I'm sounding like a camera. No, no, totally. And whether it is from a, hey, you left a mess on the lay of the kind of situation, keeping everybody on the same page, but it's also the training and authorization. It's like, it's the dangerous thing. Has everybody gone through the training? Like no long hair, no loose clothing. Like somebody's going to get sucked into it kind of thing. And it's not a toy.
00:23:02
Speaker
I don't know. This is little stuff in the grant scheme. They're probably putting too much emphasis on it. Well, that's the life of running a business is you put a lot of effort into very little things and then you kind of realize that doesn't really matter. Okay. Because to put all of your effort only on the big things is, I don't know if it's sustainable. It's like drives you crazy. We like our little dumb projects.
00:23:27
Speaker
where we are really continuing to have luck. I think we just did our fourth order of metal 3D printed custom screws, clamps, fixtures, et cetera. And that is continuing to be a really good avenue. What's your turnaround time on that?
00:23:46
Speaker
We've been doing them from overseas because like I'll be honest, a lot of these products now end up being $3 to $8 a piece, 20 bucks shipping, so we'll order one or 200 bucks worth of stuff. And it usually gets here in probably under 10 calendar days from overseas, like quick. Yeah, super impressive.
00:24:09
Speaker
There's a story that I keep meaning to bring up. It was actually before Thanksgiving and I got the flu on Sunday and I
Tool Inventory Lessons
00:24:19
Speaker
had been running a new kind of like doing a runoff proving of a new fixture on the horizontal for our castle grips and it was actually running great and so all I wanted to do was get
00:24:33
Speaker
some more made before I was leaving on vacation on Tuesday. So I was going to work. I was just running, reloading the horizontal over the weekend and I was going to run it Monday as well. And that was going to give us enough to send them off for black oxide and heat treat. And on Sunday, on the fourth run, it broke. It blew up a face mill or actually, I think the tool before it and end mill broke
00:24:58
Speaker
which I didn't have brake detect on. We obviously subsequently added it, but it wasn't normally where we would think, that's a brake control scenario. The face mill ended up eating itself because it couldn't handle the material that was presented to it.
00:25:15
Speaker
And it really screwed us up, John. Because it was a face mill that also gets used in a minor, like a quick, but important, so not minor, but a short, but important operation on two other products. And we didn't have a replacement for it. And the diameter mattered. We couldn't use a bigger diameter one for clearance reasons.
00:25:39
Speaker
So I found myself and then I was, it's funny to look back and talk about this. I was so
00:25:46
Speaker
feeling so crummy with the flu, not to complain, that I didn't even want to deal with it. I literally was like, I don't want to think about ordering this end mill or anything. And so it was a Mitsubishi end mill, or face mill, which we really liked. I ended up switching it to a Sandvik because I could order the identical diameter online. The Sandvik comes next day for us.
00:26:11
Speaker
And the two, I guess, takeaway lessons. First off, I put the team in a bad spot, which stunk because I was so crappy. I didn't even want to deal with it. But then it's like, hold on, we got a pool. Well, it goes back to my fusion complaint about tool libraries. I had to go figure out what other programs use that tool, which we can do, but fusion doesn't let you do that easily. Yeah.
00:26:30
Speaker
stop doing that avoid risk crashing. And then I shut down the idea of trying to do a quick temporary replacement because there's just too much risk that you screw things up. And then
00:26:44
Speaker
to the number one lesson was, um, I'm going to further consolidate because with Sandvik, I can order online and can reorder online comes the next day versus more complicated ways of doing so. And then we really need to have an extra one of stuff like that on hand. And it needs to be in a process bin. That way, when you need the extra one, you're not like, who knows where the 12 millimeter, you know, uh, three flute insert face mill is the extra one. I thought we had extra, but who knows? Maybe somebody took it. What just, yeah.
00:27:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's you can't have extras of everything which sucks sometimes. Yeah, but
00:27:25
Speaker
Yeah, it's like we have multiples of most of our end mills, but every now and then there's something that just lasts forever. We're not going to need another one of those, or it's really expensive. I don't need to buy two. That's a waste of resources until it puts you in a bind and you're like, actually. Yeah. Yeah. But you don't know until you hit those situations and that's how you learn to fix the problem or to avoid future problems, right?
00:27:52
Speaker
We were fine on inventory for a day or two down, which is all it would take to get the replacement tool. Even if we had bought the Mitsubishi again, what we weren't fine for was this was Black Friday and I was going to take vacation. It's like, hold on, now you're looking at like, are we going to not run this product for seven days until I'm back?
00:28:17
Speaker
or the new tool, Garrett did an awesome job at setting it up, testing some feeds and speeds, because it was a different, it's insert the finish we care about, and it's kind of get tweaked and dialed in, and it ended up working out great, but it was a rare moment where I was like, wow, I kind of really screwed that up. I've been criticized before of being too, I forget what the term was, but like overthinking stuff and so forth, but I think a lot about risk and
00:28:43
Speaker
you know, the risk of, are you screwing something up, trying to be a quote unquote hero before you're about to step away for, you know, if you want to turn your phone off for seven days, the day before running it, continuing to run a new part program, may not have been the smartest thing to do. Yep, yep. And you only learn that through the perspective of having done it. Yeah, true. True. So how's the will in running?
00:29:11
Speaker
Great. Good. Super great. Um, I still don't have the bar loader hooked up because I haven't fully needed it yet. Although the parts I was running the other day, I only had to make like 20 of them, but still one by one. And I was doing it from leftover slugs of titanium bar. So I have these like five inch pieces. So I'm loading every one one by one. That's fine. But it got me to re fall in love with that machine, you know, and realize that man, if
00:29:41
Speaker
It would be so easy to just keep this machine running for hours and hours.
00:29:45
Speaker
And I want parts for it that are required to run so that we can just make hundreds of them. Because the machine just wants to run. It's just hungry for material. And I was having an issue. We talked about it months ago, where I kept chipping my V insert, my turning insert. And I never figured it out. And that night, I chipped three of them doing the same thing. And I'm like, I'm taking a 2,000 diameter cut. It's not a problem.
00:30:14
Speaker
But I at least in that part what happened was so I'd use that Vinsert to do a facing pass and then I'd come back out and then I'd do a OD turning pass but it would come in and it would ramp into the face of the part that still had 1,000 material and then pull up like from center line up and around and
00:30:36
Speaker
that kind of ramping into the 1000 material, I think is where it was chipping the end mill on the face or the insert on the face. So I kind of rejiggered it so that the facing pass cleans it to zero and then it comes in and it kind of does the up and around turning pass. And then I made like 20 parts in a row and it was, didn't have an insert problem at all. Not chipping. So that was good. But there's also my two a.m. like,
00:31:04
Speaker
Looking online at different inserts, maybe different hardness grades, different edge geometries, things like that. Maybe I need a tougher insert, not a more brittle insert, something like that. I did find some miscar inserts with different grades. I sent a quote off to my rep and I was like, how much is this insert? I'll get some of those just to have on hand.
00:31:26
Speaker
Yeah, it was interesting. What a good example of being a moron to solve the problem the wrong way. It's like the problem is not encircory. The problem is your strategy. Yeah. Yeah, maybe. And sometimes I'll use that tool to dig into, imagine you're making a thread. You have your profile and then the little thread relief at the end before the head of the screw. So I do like to dig into that thread relief. And I think it chips out there sometimes.
00:31:52
Speaker
But it's ways of thinking about this, you know? It's like whether it's a lathe insert or an end mill or whatever, sometimes I like to think like the tool, like how's the tool going to react to this little corner?
Tool Strategies for Material Removal
00:32:04
Speaker
You know, is it going to be overloaded? Is it going to have a hard time? Yeah. And I heard a phrase a couple of weeks ago that was like these two brothers or something talking about their shop and they're like, bro, we're here to make chips, not glitter.
00:32:18
Speaker
And to remove material, not to make little dust, right? And it's kind of stuck in my head. And in our shop, we don't make chips. We don't make mountains of, you know, gallons of chips per hour kind of thing. We do kind of make glitter because everything's finishing and most of it's from water jet stock and we're not hogging material. But still, that kind of phrase stuck in my head because
00:32:42
Speaker
I think there's a lot of speeds and feeds I could be going quite a bit faster of than I have been. I don't know if I like that phrase though because it feels kind of like... It's still stuck in my head though. It feels kind of like tightness to me though. It's like no, what we make is excellent products that we make profit on and have pride and quality and how we get there is a mix of things. Sure, go harder where you can but like... And that's the takeaway. Yeah.
00:33:08
Speaker
If I do everything at one thou per tooth, then if that's just my default for roughing everything, then I've got a lot of money on the table kind of thing. I was roughing the steel part on the speedio and I was going down.
00:33:26
Speaker
only an inch, I think an inch depth of cut with a 3.8 sand mill. And I was like, how much step over and how much feed per tooth can I actually get away with on this machine? And the setup was really rigid, which most aren't in my stuff. And I was like,
00:33:43
Speaker
I just kept pushing it. I was like 2,000 per tooth, 4,000 per tooth. Interesting. Okay. 50,000 step over, more, more, more. And I started making these big toenail sized blue chips. And for me, that's like, wow, this is huge. Wow, we're making chips now. 4% spindle load. Whoa. Yeah, exactly. Because I don't hog. I don't rough. I don't use 100% spindle load.
00:34:07
Speaker
It's like I'm too afraid, and I just don't need to most of the time. And I don't want to break anything. So it's kind of new to me, but it was fun to go through. Is that a 40 taper machine? 30 taper. It is 30. Oh, wow. Big plus. Most of my holders are big plus. But yeah, it's interesting. Because the few times that I have tried to rough, either I have chatter or vibration, or the tool's too long, or the holder's bad, or I haven't spent enough time to get really good at it to be like, oh, yeah, it's working.
00:34:39
Speaker
But every now and then, when I do, I end up just making glitter and having the tool pad take an hour, as opposed to like 10 minutes, you know, doing it the hogging way. So yeah, it's interesting.
00:34:52
Speaker
One of my to this day puts a smile on my face is when I'm at the horizontal watching it in the face no we use a lot of the 45 degree like the Sandvik 245 or the SE it's forget the steel grade is but that four-sided positive rake insert and when it when it starts face milling it sounds
00:35:11
Speaker
worse as it's entering the part. And then we have a couple of holes that it goes over. So you hear the sound change. But when the face mill is fully engaged with solid material, it's like 30% spindle load on a Akuma, which is real. And it's silent. And you see these chips coming off. And it's just for the warm and fuzzies. It's the best. That's cool. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Yeah.
00:35:41
Speaker
So speaking of chips, I wanted to get in front of our scrap issue, which it
Shop Process Improvements
00:35:47
Speaker
was an issue. So it seems like for whatever reason, we have a worse situation than many shops with our scrap material because lots of folks have emailed in to say like, they don't have a problem period. We have a problem. Our vendor really was effectively going to drop us if we didn't separate and so forth. And we've been using these Gaylord
00:36:07
Speaker
I don't know what the volume of a Gaylord is, but they're three feet by three feet by three feet. Cubic yard, I don't know. And I'm tired of those, blah, blah. So what I called them, I was like, hey, we want roll-offs. I'm tired of dealing with these Gaylords. It takes us 45 minutes to load the Gaylords up when the guy does come to pick them all up. Like, this is stupid. Like, lean. Like, lean is to lean. We're deleting the Gaylords.
00:36:32
Speaker
And, and, but I also was like, we will start separating our scrap. And I was like, there's going to kind of be some work, but we should just do it. It's a win all around. And so talk to Garrett and what he's really the one that runs a horizontal. So we're going to switch to, um,
00:36:47
Speaker
just putting the horizontal into 33 gallon totes for now. We need to build a little sand paper funnel that will just clip on that because the horizontal conveyor is wider than a 33 gallon tote. I don't want a bigger tote because we'll just hand dump them. We're going to do that to prove it out. It's a logical first step that doesn't really cost us anything because
00:37:08
Speaker
I got quotes on the self-dumping hoppers. I like them. I'm willing to spend the money, but the truth is it's five grand to buy three of them. I don't know if we want more than three because we want to be able to hot swap them, but the guys don't want them on the other machines. They like the 33 gallon totes. They're light enough to hand dump. We double stack them with holes drilled so the coolant self drains out of them. Don't fix it if it isn't broken.
00:37:36
Speaker
Don't you say tote? This is not a garbage can. This is a square. It's a garbage can.
00:37:41
Speaker
33-gallon Rubbermaid round garbage can on. So the one that we dump, again, we have holes drilled around the circumference and then- Two on top of each other. The lower one is mounted to wheels so we can wheel the whole thing away. Right now, it's just one-to-one. Like one machine has one thing. What we'll do is create a system where we'll have, there'll always be one or two free aluminum ones and one or two free steel ones. That way, if somebody wants to
00:38:08
Speaker
If Grant wants to swap his out, he doesn't need to dump it. He can just take it over to the dump section and then grab a free aluminum one and get back to work. Yeah, and they're cheap too. Can you get them in different colors, I wonder? You could color code your scrap that way. That's a good question. Or put tape around them as color.
00:38:27
Speaker
That's what Serena did with our, I need to do a shop update video. Serena took all of our spray bottles across the shop. We threw out all the old ones. We bought all new standard size ones. We 3D printed hooks to where we want them out on the walls because it's better to do that than to leave them sitting on tables all over the place. Spray bottle to do what? We have spray bottles for LPS. We have spray bottles for
00:38:50
Speaker
WD-40, and we have spray bottles for denatured alcohol. So they're all color coded now. They're all brand new. They're all clean. And now I know a spray bottle with red tape around it is LPS3. It's also label written. Sure, but I like that. And that cost you about $50 in new bottles and just some time. But yeah, that adds to the whole lean shop. I'm proud of this shop. Everything's standardized. Everything's labeled.
00:39:20
Speaker
And we don't have the road, like, did somebody put Windex in that one? Like who knows? Well, and we've run into that too. You know, you Sharpie on the side, like Windex, it's a blue liquid, but, uh, our lapping fluid is also a blue liquid and it's also in a spray bottle. And I still get stuck on those. Cause we have like the Home Depot spray bottles, um, that are fine, but they all look the same. And, uh, yeah, I need to know what's in it. Cool.
00:39:48
Speaker
The other thing I'm trying to work on again with this approach of like we're just going to fix it is the top jaws are the product that we're making where we use the back cutting tool to reach an included piece of geometry. It's absolutely the way to go full stop even though I have to deal with the fact that it does tend to leave
00:40:13
Speaker
Burr is the correct term, but it's barely a burr. You could take it off with your finger. You could also potentially cut yourself. It's pretty loosely attached, but it's attached. I don't like the idea of hand scotch braiding with a pad or filing or blah, blah, blah.
00:40:31
Speaker
my, I want to, I want to fix it. Like what's the way like, Oh, yep, those come off. It's worth it. So I think what I'm going to try is I was actually asking a acquaintance about it. Um, shout out to you, Seth, for the tip, the six inch, they make nylon brush wheels. So they look like fingers. Yeah. Cause if you said it's, um, it's, it's so loosely on there that you couldn't do just brush it off.
00:40:58
Speaker
Because I don't want, they make scotch brite wheels for like Dremel tools that are the actual like spongy scotch brite that is like loose stuff. I don't want that stuff because it actually flings scotch brite debris everywhere. Yeah, it's done last year. The hard scotch brite wheels, which we have are too hard. Like that's for like, you know,
00:41:19
Speaker
really smoothing out a blend of something. I want something that that's why I think these fingers might be perfect. It just kind of knocks them out off without otherwise mucking it up. And it shouldn't I mean, it'll make a little bit of a mess, but it shouldn't be as messy.
Automating Deburring Process
00:41:35
Speaker
Yeah, they're like little nylon. What do you call them bristles? Yeah, like a not a toothbrush more bigger than that. But
00:41:45
Speaker
But if that works and what I want to do, it's not just buy it and put it in place. It's buy it, put it on a dedicated machine. I think I want to get a VFD on it to slow down the wheel because we don't need
00:41:55
Speaker
full blown RPMs and then 3D printed jigs that you just take the jaw in this jig, slide it across, and it touches with 30 thou or 100 thou of interference to knock that burr off in the same position every time. It's not somebody that's moving it back and forth at different angles. It's just like, oh, that works. That's awesome.
00:42:18
Speaker
No, I thought you were going to put it in a tool holder in the machine and deburr it there. Doesn't work. There's plus and minuses to that. And if it doesn't reach anyway. It would be around three right angles from the spinner. So it doesn't really work. Well, I'm sure you will find a solution. Sounds like you got a good
00:42:43
Speaker
a good track. Actually, now that I say that, the only thing I can think of that could work. I don't know if I want to try this, but would be to 3d metal 3d print a ported tool to blast through spindle coolant. Because again, I need to look around
00:43:03
Speaker
Well, technically only two quarters, but you can't get there with any sort of a wheel disc tool because it's, it's around that second quarter, but it's tucked in behind it. But if you had a little, um, hooked tool that lasted thousand PSI cool and added that might actually fix it off. Hmm. Hmm. 3d printed down a plastic and see. Yeah.
00:43:33
Speaker
Interesting. Okay.
Progress on AROWA Setup
00:43:37
Speaker
What have you been up to? What's going on today? Speediotek is in, hooking up the fancy cable that Aroa finally sent us to hook that up. So I believe the last step is to get Aroa themselves to come in, guys in the US, some tech to come up to finalize the installation.
00:43:59
Speaker
which is good. It's not going to happen before Christmas, but at least at least everything else is done. So that's good. Yeah. Yeah. Super good. Cause now we're running this video like all day, every day and manually hand loading every fixture, which is fantastic, but it's really making us see like, Oh, I can't wait. Yes. Yeah. That's great. What's the row of percept to do?
00:44:24
Speaker
PLC changes on the aroa, finish the wiring, add all the pneumatics. So like, you know, chuck unclamp signals to the chuck on the table, things like that.
00:44:37
Speaker
make sure everything's configured and wired to do what it needs to do. Because now that a row is going to be controlled by two machines, by the current and by the speedio. So current is going to say, I want pallet 12. Speedio is going to say, I also want pallet 13, which one's first and who gets it first kind of thing. Interesting. Is that how the current is set up?
00:44:58
Speaker
Who's the master? The aroa? The aroa is the slave, even currently aroa to Curran. So Curran is the master. Curran says, give me pallet 17. And the aroa just goes, OK. And then the aroa opens the door, and it puts the arm in. It takes the old one out, puts it away, grabs the pallet 17, puts it in. And if it has to change from the big gripper to the small gripper, big pallet to small pallet, it automatically knows how to do that.
00:45:25
Speaker
And then some people, when they set up multiple machines with the Aroa, they'll have the Aroa be the master. So your programs are actually stored on the Aroa, and they get sent to each machine. I don't like that for various reasons. Maybe I'm just stubborn, but I really like the system that I have right now, where the machine is the master and just tells the dumb Aroa, like, hey, give me a pallet. OK, next.
00:45:48
Speaker
Is it, dumb question, but is it not the case that it could request things out of order or at the same time? If they both requested at the very same millisecond, I don't know. I think the RO would just have to pick who's first.
00:46:06
Speaker
I mean, it's not going to happen. I don't think so, right? One code will hit first, right? Exactly. So I think the reality of that is slim to none, but maybe. Is it, though, like Palette 12, does that need to be kerned first before it can be speedioed? In other words, is it the most part? I think
00:46:29
Speaker
I don't know if I'm actually planning on programming to share palettes between two machines. It was kind of the original intention, like rough it out on the speedio, finish it on the current. Even if we do that, we'll program it separately. We'll rough it out on the speedio, put it away, and then, oh yeah, it's done. Okay, now program it on the current to call it later. To actually have them synced and tied together, it sounds awesome, adds complexity, might not be necessary, period. But we'll get to there if we need to.
00:47:00
Speaker
Yeah, got it. Can I prod you? Yeah, go for it. You mocks.
Moving on from Older Machines
00:47:09
Speaker
Yeah. It is the end of the year. I've had reached out to several people. I haven't done anything major. I had some individuals very interested. So I was like, well, let me see if this works out. Everybody's ended up saying no.
00:47:27
Speaker
So yeah, I mean in the past we've talked about some drastic ideas to move them and I think it's about time. Okay. Yeah. Because they got to go. They got to go. Yeah. So yeah, thank you for the reminder. I would put this... You finish. Okay. Well, it's something you mentioned last week about the Smarter Every Day video where he's talking to NASA.
00:47:54
Speaker
And I watched about half of it last night. And I got to the part you mentioned where it talks about PID loops.
Leadership Conviction and NASA Inspiration
00:48:00
Speaker
And as an electrician nerd myself in a way, I've worked with some PL, what's it called? PID systems. It's like feedback, positive and negative feedback to keep it in line. It all has to ying and yang balance to zero. And with only positive feedback, if you only tell me rah, rah, rah stuff,
00:48:20
Speaker
That is an unstable system. It becomes the high-fiving podcast. Exactly. And yeah, when you mentioned it, and then when I heard it last night, it helped make more sense in this video. But the kind of the balance and the force of positive and negative feedback, and you need the negative feedback to reinforce
00:48:42
Speaker
standards and continuity and continuation of life and everything. Negative is not the right word because it's not constructive criticism. I think I spent too much time avoiding it and not doling it out enough and avoiding negative feedback from anybody. Maybe I need more PID loop equilibrium in my life.
00:49:11
Speaker
Yeah, but I don't enjoy prodding on it. And it kind of goes back to what I said at the beginning of this podcast. The more seasoned I get, the more I think it's just inappropriate of me to sit here and prod. Like, no, just shut up, John. But what I want you to find is that inner confidence of leadership means recognizing that you've got, I think about it from the team standpoint of like,
00:49:35
Speaker
making sure everybody at Crimson Knives is like, oh, no, we've got a boss that recognizes sometimes you got to make hard decisions, sometimes it has to happen, and then you make it happen. And I'm putting that on myself. It comes right back to that, what I'm doing starting January 1st. Too many things I've been like, hey, guys, we're going to do this. And then talk is cheap, John Saunders. Let's actually do it. Yep.
00:49:59
Speaker
Like in that video, he's talking to this symposium of NASA experts that are in charge of space flight, like everybody. And he's like, so we're going to the moon, right? And he starts getting like super aggressive with them. He's like, we're going, right? And nobody's answering. And he's like, guys, I have to be the bad guy right now. Like you say we're going to go, I want the fire. It's like you don't believe yourselves.
00:50:25
Speaker
So that's the whole setting a goal, saying, we're going to do this. Saying, and being able to actually follow through. Yes. Yes. Yes. Good. Excellent. Well, I think we're going to wrap this up. And I think we have next week's podcast, the mailbag to film next.
00:50:46
Speaker
But Merry Christmas, happy holidays. Whether it's a Christmas season or something else for anybody listening, great time to reflect on the year, spend time with family and get invigorated for 2024. Yep. Try to take at least a few moments of pure peace. Don't stress about everything in life and just enjoy, enjoy your family, enjoy whatever makes you happy. It's a good time to do that, but get ready to come in hot for next year.
00:51:14
Speaker
I like it. All right. See you in 10 minutes. OK, bye.