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#284 - We're Not Nothing Anymore!
240 Plays3 years ago
Topics:
- Incremental Business Growth Experiences
- Real Estate - Build or Buy Existing? Area 419 Tour
- Baby Brother Speedio Arrives Friday at GK!
- The Marvel of Rigging CNC Machines
- Shipping Insurance - Is it worth it?
- Legal Counsel - Sometimes a Letter Will Do!
- Chips on Willemin, Inserts, Adding Sharpie, and BANG ON Tolerances
- Precision Microcast 15 with Christian Wenzel Innolite
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Entrepreneurial Journey
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machining episode 284. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. And we are two enthusiastic entrepreneurs that talk every week about enthusiastic and the not so enthusiastic parts of what we do running our small manufacturing companies. Not so small anymore, buddy. That is actually a fair point. For sure. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, there's millions of businesses bigger than us. But
Reflecting on Unexpected Business Growth
00:00:28
Speaker
Yeah. There's a lot smaller than us. There's a lot smaller than us. And personally, I never thought we'd get to this level years ago. And now that we're here, I can see more growth in the future.
00:00:42
Speaker
Okay. We're not nothing anymore. It's cool. It's interesting. It's not that you didn't think you'd get this big in the sense that you didn't think you could. I'm speaking for you.
Challenges of Planning Without a Clear Vision
00:00:54
Speaker
You just don't think about it. Literally, those thoughts do not go through your head. I don't think there was a groomsman business plan that involved year seven moving into 10,000 square feet with 10 employees. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly.
00:01:10
Speaker
You're so in the moment, you're so like, okay, what's the next single machine or maybe one hire or something, the next product kind of thing. But to map it out, especially in the early days when you're just like a garage shop like you and I both were, I personally didn't have the vision of like, oh yeah, in 10 years, we're going to have this huge operation.
00:01:31
Speaker
I just didn't. Some people do. It's fantastic. But since we're solopreneurs originally and entrepreneurs and we're just like step by step by step by step, growth, growth, growth, growth, growth, you learn more, you do more, you act more, you need more people, you need more machines and it just, it scales.
Future Facility Planning: Buy or Build?
00:01:49
Speaker
Yeah. But then the next logical question is, okay, stop for 10 minutes. What are you not thinking about that's going to be the case in five years?
00:02:01
Speaker
Yeah. Now that I've seen this much growth in our company, I can use that as a diving board of what's to come. What do I want? Now I get to step back a little bit. Now I get to look at the whole picture. I do think about what five years, 10 years might look like.
00:02:19
Speaker
Because we're at a point now right now like we're still leasing our current building like do we buy it do we buy something else do we build something else to like what is the next big jump in the course yes company which involves if we get a bigger building then we have to plan for a bigger company you know more people machines and that's kind of the whole thought process that i think about sometimes.
Real Estate Challenges and Decisions
00:02:41
Speaker
Real estate is tough because it's often the largest financial decision and purchase, yet the one we often have the least control over, what's available, how is it located proximity wise to all the stakeholders.
00:02:57
Speaker
you know, little silly things like our, I love the location of our shop, generally speaking, except, you know, we don't have a true industrial base in this part of Ohio, which really stinks for certain things, suppliers and so forth. Um, and I think you, I regretfully haven't been to your new shop, which is crazy, but I guess hashtag C word, but, um, you know, I feel like the grim sumo I know would, would, has bigger, bigger plans, bigger thoughts, bigger goals, bigger, you know what I mean?
00:03:27
Speaker
I see that now from the garage. The reason to move out of the garage was to get our first VMC. It was not to grow the business necessarily, it was to get a proper vertical machining center and I chose the Maury which is 15,000 pounds and it was not going to fit in our garage period. The lottery win scenario to me screams you build a building period.
Building vs Buying a Facility: Pros and Cons
00:03:55
Speaker
True. If time and money were not factors, even if they are, it's still on the table. I was talking with one of our mutual friends about this and he said the problem with building a building is that for one, it can take years, permits and planning and then you as the owner, operator, dreamer, you have to make every single little decision.
00:04:20
Speaker
to do that. Whereas if you are able to move into an existing building that's decent and just need some renovation and stuff, you've just eliminated so many decisions off of your next two-year schedule. And you can move in way faster because if it's available. But he also looked for five years for the right place and then bought it the second it came on the market. Yeah, right.
00:04:44
Speaker
You're not wrong, but I would counter the analysis paralysis by just saying these are relatively simple industrial buildings. You're not having to build complicated decisions around the office, you know, amount of office or
Industrial Building Design Considerations
00:05:03
Speaker
structured parking or
00:05:05
Speaker
The area 419 video, if anyone's listening to this is a great example of like, look, they found a place that had the ability to expand the building that they already put up, which I believe John said they're already knocking on their wall and expanding it. And you build a, pick a number 10,000, 20,000 square foot bay with as few poles in the middle as you can. You do the right stuff below the floor. You do the right stuff in the ceiling for insulation, for airlines, for ethernet, whatever you want.
00:05:31
Speaker
And that's it. You can renovate offices later. Frankly, you can add office later if you need it. So keep it simple. Yeah, and there's so much I guess I don't know about zoning and permits and wastewater and getting city water and all that stuff. I don't know any of that stuff. And it depends on your location. If you're out in the middle of nowhere, that's one thing. But if you're in an industrial zone already,
00:06:00
Speaker
That's another, I don't know. Yeah, I wouldn't get too worried about that stuff, John. I'm not thinking about it. I just know those are topics to think about. So they're at the tip of, you know.
00:06:16
Speaker
Obviously, Ohio and the US is different than Toronto and Canada, but if I were tasked with listing my three biggest concerns about Saunders need to buy a piece of dirt and build a new building, really, we had to do this. The first, second, and third concerns would be cost.
00:06:36
Speaker
Yeah, and a distant fourth would be location. I mean, you're at the point now where frankly, you'd be able to probably pull in some politicians, city council or whatever to talk about what are the job creation or retention credits or which is that I actually don't love that stuff.
Engaging with Local Government for Support
00:06:53
Speaker
I'm a capitalist, but I think it's a little bit
00:06:59
Speaker
Unsustainable how much government subsidizes huge businesses you know we just had this year on high with the chips act with intel getting billions upon billions of dollars and i think dell did this in north carolina and didn't really follow through after fit ten fifteen years of just changes in it disadvantages the small tax owners or the business owner but.
00:07:19
Speaker
It would behoove you to start talking to your local Chamber of Commerce or if you have like a, we call it the Port Authority here, but it's kind of like the business development organization. In tech, get on their radar, have lunch with a guy and be like, hey, we're a knife-making company. We've grown from this to this. We will have needs over the next two to five years. They need more people, more equipment, more investment in this area, more job retention, they're good jobs.
00:07:39
Speaker
The people on the other side of that conversation, at that lunch or at that breakfast, they live for folks like you. They love it. It's, you know, if you want to be cynical, it's what makes them look good to their bosses. This is when they can say, hey, I mean, grist my knives. This, they're really doing some cool stuff, blah, blah, blah.
00:07:57
Speaker
Interesting. Yeah, I've talked to our two biggest banks about it in general over the past few years, you know, what would it take to build by a building, financing, things like that. But I guess I haven't talked to anything local, you know, province, politicians, kind of city council, things like that. But that isn't interesting even just to like get your feet wet and start thinking about it because
00:08:22
Speaker
Whatever process we choose is going to take quite an amount of time and planning and ahead of time and maybe now is the time to start thinking about it for three years from now kind of thing.
00:08:32
Speaker
Do it when you don't need it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Put those phone calls out there. And classic negotiating tactic, it's even better when it's their idea. If they say, hey, we heard about this development happening, you should think about that guy that you know 100 times better than I do that was his name, Mike, that runs Milterra. I get the sense that he's that kind of guy. That's a good point.
00:08:58
Speaker
You know, just he probably does know what he needs to know kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's a great, great resource. Absolutely. He's going to say move up near him. Oh, no, no. I don't mean he's that guy to have lunch with. I mean, he's the kind of guy where he's the kind of guy who's done this already. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Cool. It's exciting. Yeah. Well, I saw the Instagram post of the,
00:09:27
Speaker
blue tape for the brother. Good grief. It's like, it is, I thought it was four times that amount of surface like square footage. Holy cow. It's tiny. It's the middle sized one. So the S 500, most of the guys we know get the S 700. Um, so it's what 27 inch wide table. Um, but yeah, it's, it's five feet wide and like five feet deep. So like your, your arms span out wider than the machine.
00:09:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's crazy. It's tiny. It comes on Friday. Awesome. The day this podcast comes out two days from now for us, the machine's
Setting Up and Moving Machinery Efficiently
00:10:07
Speaker
getting delivered. That's super exciting. Cool. What did they end up doing with the door?
00:10:12
Speaker
The auto door, they are building the two sliding French door kind of things. Each one's going to go opposite, like left and right. They're just going to open up like a little side window. So an air cylinder for each one, and very compact, very clean, and it totally replaces the bolt-on door. So like the factory plant panel comes off, this panel goes on, no modifications to the machine whatsoever. Awesome. Oh, that's great.
00:10:40
Speaker
A couple airlines, a couple sensors that are built into this little package. The distributor is working on that right now. He said it's not going to be ready for machine delivery, but they'll come install it in the next week or something like soon. Awesome. Yeah, the question is, we bought a set of machinery skates because you told me to like two years ago and I finally did.
00:11:02
Speaker
I think when the machine gets delivered, we're probably going to drop it directly onto skates and then we can skate it around the shop. We might leave it on skates for a little bit because there's going to be some configuring with the Aroa Pallet Changer and like the auto door and stuff like that. So I'm like, as long as it doesn't roll away, can we leave it on skates for like a week? And you know, then you can hook power up to it, not use it obviously on skates. I don't know. What do you think?
00:11:27
Speaker
Do you have a tow jack or bottle jack? Yeah, we do. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I would chalk one of the skates or put the bottle jack, probably not good to leave a bottle jack. Sure. As the way that's securing it for hours or days, but like can't hurt either. Oh yeah, not going to hurt anything. I don't think so. I'm making this up. I mean, would it make it harder to level because you're going to put twist in the casting and then say, well, no, no different than how it was rigged to you on the truck.
00:11:58
Speaker
And frankly, way easier. It makes it easier to do the door install and stuff. We had our BF2, we moved it next door to the training building and had our first training class. And then as soon as the class was over, we had to take everything out of that room because the floors got epoxied.
00:12:19
Speaker
So we just put up on skates, pushed it to the next, this was easy because we had to, we could just push it to the, um, other half of the building. That's not getting epoxy. Um, that was a lot easier than moving it across our whole parking lot. Um, yeah. And it's on skates has been on skates for a week and we'll move it back Friday. No big deal. Answer sold right there. Yep. Um, and you guys physically just push it with your hands.
00:12:43
Speaker
The bigger machines you usually have to get either has to be like perfect condition. The floor is level smooth, the wheels are all pointed the right way, and you've got a couple of people pushing. Now, I mean like the 20 to 25,000 pound machines, the little machines
00:12:58
Speaker
I wouldn't hear when we did the VF2, so I can't vouch for this, but from what I remember, once you get it moving, it's easy to keep it moving at, I mean, frankly, multiple feet per minute. It's moving quickly, and you actually got to be careful because it's far harder to stop them once they get moving. Yeah, exactly. When we had the current on skates,
00:13:21
Speaker
I wasn't pushing, but I was watching and they did, they were able to move it, but we did use the forklift to help kind of nudge it towards which really helped.
00:13:33
Speaker
Do you have that alignment bar or make one that helps you? So make get a piece of round bar or whatever size it is and bend the corner on it or something or put a little 90 on it that you can stick underneath there to reorient the skates that matters. And then make sure to put wood or rubber between the top of the skate and the bottom of the machine. You don't want metal on metal. And we often will have, you know, we use four skates, we will often have one skate.
00:13:59
Speaker
fall off or get disconnected. Just because there's undulation and it's three points makes a plane, not four. The way we rig stuff when we move it around is we'll have two to three people pushing and we'll have at least two spotters that are always watching the skates and it's no big deal. If one moves, you immediately see it, you stop, you reorient it, you re-pressure, you can just jack up the screw a little and it's totally fine. That could be terrifying actually if you lose a skate and don't see it.
00:14:25
Speaker
Yeah. The point is, pay attention. Yeah. It's terrifying. I mean, honestly, no. That means the machine is going to tip back about three inches, which will look bad, sound bad. It might chip the floor, but no one's going to. No one should get hurt. I mean, we have a pretty strict rule about never getting between immovable objects when we're moving machines around. It's really not
00:14:48
Speaker
a big deal. Cool. I like the wood or rubber between the skate and the machine idea because for the current we didn't. I'm pretty sure it's got like Delrin legs, basically feet that we just had directly on the skate and it did slip around a little bit. Yeah. That was scary. Does your current or does the brother, maybe you may not know this yet, but like most machines, if it has a threaded rod that threads up and down into a puck that levels the machine,
00:15:17
Speaker
Our skates, I don't remember if we, I don't think we modified them, but there's a center hole and we will thread that, that screw down in there half an inch and that will generally keep the skate from skipping out. I like that. The brother should be easy. What's the thing weight, like 6,000 pounds? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Nice. Watching the area, they got another horse model, watching them have that rigged with the
00:15:41
Speaker
big forklift, like the VersaLift style that has the over arm with the hook and the chains that come down. That is just gnarly. Oh man. I would have no hesitation going to work for a rigger for like three months. Oh yeah. Oh, I think it's super cool for three months. Right, right. It would get you into a whole bunch of different shops just to see, which is fun.
00:16:04
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's true. But there's something about good rigors that know it's interesting to see how they read the situation and how they get stuff done and they're efficient. And it's just this idea that it's kind of like the Egyptians building the pyramids. It's just like, man, they're doing stuff that we shouldn't be able to do and they're doing it and they're making it look easy. And yeah, you're getting dirty because you're maybe turning wrenches around your hands and knees, but you're not really
00:16:27
Speaker
working hard. The amount of sweat versus how much you're moving is a great ratio. It's like experience and patience and skill. The guy driving the forklift with the machine on it, half a million dollars up in the air. I know. The rookie doesn't do that. We've used the same ring company for almost all of our machines. Almost always, it's one or two of the guys are driving the forklift. Everybody else is helping in spotting.
00:16:56
Speaker
Okay, so good segue to change the subject if that's okay. Shipping insurance, any change or updates on your end with the world of shipping, tracking, insurance, claims, returns, et cetera? Yeah, as we've shipped, we've shipped like 400 packages a month, something like that, pretty consistently. Every now and then, we'll lose a package or
00:17:23
Speaker
or it'll get returned to us or whatever, but I think we've chosen not to add the extra insurance on every order because it's cheaper for us to replace a package than it is to pay the insurance on every single product going out the door. That's certainly up in the air, certainly easy to change down the road.
00:17:46
Speaker
Yeah, the few amount of lost things that we've ever had kind of just make it worth it. Yeah, you self-insure basically. Right, right. Yeah. Okay.
00:17:55
Speaker
Yeah, and same here. And when we switched from our former freight company to FedEx Freight, we have not had, knock on wood from my memory, any lost freight shipments, which, you know, when you're new to this, it's like, wait, how did it lose a freight shipment?
Shipping Large Orders and Managing Risks
00:18:09
Speaker
And then you kind of realize, no, I mean, there's these terminals that have, you know, literally thousands, maybe tens of thousands of pallets going through every day. Like, yeah, stuff gets lost. The issue we have today is we are shipping, we finish our Langmuir order.
00:18:25
Speaker
Nice. This would be, from a single order standpoint, like a single PO or e-commerce checkout, this order is probably 15 times larger than our next largest, and that was even a large order. This is like ... It took us four months of very focused work to get it done.
00:18:46
Speaker
It'll be approximately five pallets going to the customer of stuff. And I'm speaking kind of off the cuff here. I believe the way this – well, I know that the shipper – excuse me,
00:19:01
Speaker
buyer, the end customer, is responsible for shipping, but that's kind of an open-ended question. Look, just to be blunt, we don't have legal paperwork in place here. Arguably, maybe we should, but my layman's understanding is it's kind of like, hey, you're responsible for freight, so it's kind of quote-unquote FOB meeting. Once it's loaded up, you own it.
00:19:24
Speaker
But they're not, unsurprisingly, they're saying, well, you use your freight relationship and just invoices for it. Which frankly, is it convenient because we've got a good system down for FedEx Freight versus working with third parties or others where you just don't know the routine as well.
00:19:44
Speaker
But there's real risk here if it gets lost, significantly delayed, damaged, or, God forbid, the truck goes into the river. And so I've been talking to FedEx, who I don't want to pick on FedEx here. I don't put a lot of faith in any shipping carrier.
00:20:03
Speaker
that they're the right counterparty when you have a real problem. Now, obviously, if it's their true problem, if their truck goes into the river, yes, that's unquestionably something that they have to help us with. But the initial conversation with my rep was kind of a like, yes, but we're going to generally look at what was your cash costs or something. Well, I'm like, well, hey, we bought the material for x, but we spent four months full time working on it.
00:20:30
Speaker
and you can just start to smell how challenging that conversation is going to go, especially since we're not doing this every day. Obviously, if you're a supplier to NASA and you're shipping satellite parts every day, you've got this figured out in your contract with them. I don't. I also had a call in my insurance agent who already called me back about a
00:20:50
Speaker
I think it's funny, I think it's called like a maritime cargo policy, even though it's not CA thing, but it's basically like, look, here's the cost, because here's the thing, it should be inexpensive. Ensuring, pick a number, ensuring $10,000 or $100,000 for a freight shipment should be very inexpensive because the risk of a problem is very low. Sure. So that's what I'm trying to figure out is, does it cost me 100 bucks or 200 bucks to have a policy around that?
00:21:16
Speaker
That would be really helpful for you, especially shipping bigger pallets of stuff, not the onesies and twosies, but the bigger things. Yeah. Like when we order materials, say we order 2000 knife handles from the States, they get, we buy the material, they get water jet. Sometimes they'll go to a double disc grinding company to kind of do the prep size for us. And then that's shipping boxes and boxes of tens of thousands of dollars worth of material and work to us. And we had one go missing.
00:21:46
Speaker
Yeah, I remember that ago. Yeah, and it was like UPS did eventually help us out with reimbursing that but like it was a tricky process because it already went through two vendors and they're like, well, what's the actual cost of this? Show me the invoice. Yeah, we have them but like Yeah, and the inconvenience and the time and just how do you avoid this? Well, that's what you just said. There's the other big thing is I'm trying to be a better
00:22:11
Speaker
business owner and leader in that I'm not interested in continuing to subsidize bad outcomes with my time. If FedEx truck goes into the river, not only is it all of it's a bad outcome, but the
00:22:28
Speaker
better outcome for Saunders is going to be correlated to how much time and emotional banging I do on the phone with various different reps or lawyers. I don't do this stuff anymore. I want a simple contract with an insurance company that says if life insurance policy person dies, you pay me the money.
Resolving Issues Directly and Efficiently
00:22:46
Speaker
End of conversation. We're going to talk about what happened or why or argue about blame or delay or recovery of assets. No, simple.
00:22:54
Speaker
I don't want to take on that stuff. I don't enjoy it. To your point about opening up this podcast about not being a small business anymore, it's better for me to not have that stuff fall onto my plate. As you're doing, you're planning a system around it. This just becomes a business process.
00:23:12
Speaker
You could ship them not all at once so they don't all end up on the same truck. You could ship them days apart so that they go separately. Higher chance probably of them all arriving. I don't know. At least it spreads it out. But at the end of the day, if something bad happens and you have an insurance policy in place, move on.
00:23:31
Speaker
So that's where it gets slightly awkward is, you're right, that was my initial desire. And we even proposed that to the customer. They preferred, well, in a situation where the customer wants to minimize the cost, it's less expensive to ship it together. And since it's technically their cost and their responsibility, you kind of got to acquiesce to that. But again, my kind of view is like, I may legally be right in saying if it gets lost, it's their responsibility. But like,
00:23:57
Speaker
I'm not interested in that position. I'm interested in a quality product. I'm interested in the end customers using Saunders Machine Works products. I'm interested in future business with the customer. Telling the whole pound sand answer is a bit short-sighted. Let me know how it works over the next few weeks with the insurance and everything. The Canadian border is weird for importing knives into Canada. Any one-handed dangerous weapon kind of thing.
00:24:27
Speaker
You're not allowed to import into Canada. So when we have a return knife, like a warranty return, which is pretty rare for us, but it does happen, it could get seized at the border and like disappear. And we get a letter in the mail that says it no longer exists anymore. And that's happened to us, not often, but enough times to suck. Like once is enough time to suck. Yeah, right. Exactly.
00:24:50
Speaker
So I was just talking with somebody who said our business insurance might be able to cover stuff like that. And I didn't even put the two together. And I'm like, brilliant. Like, yes, they should. Because we could try to fight the border agency and customs. And like that doesn't get you anywhere. Or we could just have a policy in place exactly like you're saying and say, that sucks. Here's our plan. Let's move forward. And the chances of that happening are very infrequent. So the insurance costs and benefits are decent.
00:25:18
Speaker
Yeah, totally. Is it not worth it to go through all the paperwork to become that manufacturer's license, like weapons, whatever? I think, yeah, you have to be the prohibited weapons manufacturer license. Then in Canada, you can make firearms, you can make whatever, stuff like that. It's a big red tape. That's like background checks and legal stuff.
00:25:42
Speaker
heavy duty kind of change of business. You're not trying to make AR-15s. You're just trying to make AR-15s. Exactly. That's the requirement to be able to do that here in Canada. I don't know. We're not there. The real fact is we're not importing anything. It's the manufacturer bringing back their product to again ship it back to the customer. It's not an import to sell. It's this gray area of we're not doing anything wrong. We're legally allowed to make them in Canada. We can ship them anywhere, even in Canada.
00:26:12
Speaker
We can't get them back. If it happens more, the insurance part's a great idea, but it may not be a bad idea to find a customs attorney who can have a letter that you guys can recycle that just says, because then it gets serious. I often find that these government agencies will respond, and it's not a threat. It's more of a, hey, we know what we're doing. I am not Joe Blow trying to sneak a butterfly knife into Canada.
00:26:39
Speaker
We have legal rights as well and you need all of them and happy to have a productive conversation if you'd like to see us doing something different but otherwise we look forward to receiving our knife back. Yeah, I like that plan because I've heard of a few
00:26:58
Speaker
legal cases or attorneys or whatever try to fight the rule in general, like for the importing of knives into Canada, but that's more like for everybody so that Canada can get cool knives. Whereas this is different because this is us as a manufacturer, like we're allowed to do this, why can't we do this? Which I like. I'd be willing to fight for that to a certain degree.
Legal Advice and Business Protection
00:27:21
Speaker
It's how we won the one and only real YouTube issue we had. This is three or four years ago. It was ridiculous. A company that stole our videos in Thailand was then trying to claim as us as the bad guy. I forget all the details, but I realized this could go bad quickly. I had an attorney send a letter, and luckily that channel that stole our content, they committed a
00:27:49
Speaker
They had to sign a form that I believe was an affidavit or representation. When they did so, they lied because they contradicted exactly what they had said in an email to us. That point being addressed on a letterhead lawyer
00:28:07
Speaker
to YouTube, told YouTube, okay, I'm making this up now, but here's a US-based channel that's put in 1,000 videos that has engaged counsel to send us a letter that raises a correct point. YouTube's ... I don't remember if it was in-house counsel or a third party. They responded and basically confirmed, you're totally good to go, and they shut that whole channel down.
00:28:27
Speaker
And it was a channel that was one of these channels that was just stealing everyone's videos and reposting them and they had a million. They were getting huge, far bigger than we got. My goal was like, hey, you can't steal our stuff, dude. And yeah, my point being an articulate letter from a real attorney can often go a long way when you're engaging with these entities that are used to just dealing with mom and pop customers. That's really good advice.
00:28:55
Speaker
And it's like, nobody wants, well, most people don't want to get into a legal battle, attorney, whatever. But like you said, a strongly worded legal letter is...
00:29:04
Speaker
oftentimes further, it's like the show of force that you need. That's it. Yeah, totally. Especially if you're on the right. Yeah. Yeah. Now I'm getting excited because I'm thinking about like, man, if you did this and they kept destroying your property and you could show a trend or precedent or repeated behavior, oh man, you're going to have a very strong case to a judge who's going to be like, this is total abuse of power or whatever.
00:29:30
Speaker
Yeah, so anyway, we're going to keep track of these events. We're going to organize them somehow in a way so that we know how many, when, what. Yeah. Good. What else is going on? I mean, chips on the Wilhelmin.
00:29:50
Speaker
Yeah. Turning chips. So cool. Post the bump. Yes. So I had another tool holder that works good. It uses a VCMT insert, so the 35 degree ones.
00:30:05
Speaker
And two, I have a bunch of different brands of that same insert. Two of them did not fit at all. Like the screw wouldn't even go in because it was too off center. And then the inserts that are made by the same company that the tool holders made, I'm a Utilist, they fit great. So I almost
00:30:22
Speaker
a discount to that holder is I don't have inserts for it. I tried this third insert that was hidden in a bunch of boxes underneath the Swiss table. I'm like, oh, we don't use this anymore. Oh, this is exactly what I need.
Precision Machining and Control Systems
00:30:34
Speaker
Holy cow, they fit perfect. Okay, I'm good. I got two boxes of inserts here that we didn't use. That's good. That's good.
00:30:43
Speaker
Yeah, so I wrote a quick program that basically faces it and comes up again. So it goes just past zero, up, little radius, and then turns the diameter. And I turned the Z position, the X diameter, and even the radius size into three little macro variables. I just took 997, 998, 999, so that I could constantly tweak and tweak and tweak and make the diameter a little bit smaller, a little bit smaller, and just run it again, run it again, run it again, run it again.
00:31:10
Speaker
And that helped me dial in my tool diameters and my matching between two different turning tools, like the grooving tool, a part off tool, and the main turning tool. And I was like, this is cool. Oh, yeah. Because you don't have a touch pro. I don't have a turning tool setter. Thank you. Yes. I have a laser tool setter for end mills, but it doesn't work for turning tools. So I have to manually touch them off.
00:31:35
Speaker
Is it not as simple as saying, okay, I'm going to turn something. It's about 750. You turn it and it ends up being 7,497 or whatever. And you just, you just punch in three tenths or something. Yeah, exactly.
00:31:46
Speaker
Yeah, but making the program let me do 7-5-0 and then do 7-5-4 and then 7-4-0 and 7-3-0 and 7-2-0 and confirm at each step and if was bang on. It's a metric. It was to the micron. It was completely accurate. I wanted to take off.
00:32:08
Speaker
I hate switching back and forth between inch and metric. I'm going to say inch. I want to take off 10th out and it takes off 10th out to the penny, like it's perfect. It's a very accurate, very consistent machine.
00:32:22
Speaker
You know, you turn it once and then you turn it again at the same parameters and it didn't bring up a chip. It didn't do anything. It was perfect. And then Pierre was like, what you got to do is you got to Sharpie it. Or die camera, whatever. I'm like, okay. So we turn a diameter and then Sharpie it and then turn the same thing again. And it, it cut a few little whispers off. So then I added like a micron or two microns and then it started to cut into the Sharpie a little bit more. And I'm like, holy cow, this is, this is cool.
00:32:50
Speaker
I remember when I first got my little Tormox surface grinder, adding Sharpie and trying to deck the Sharpie off without sparking the material. Oh yeah. So cool. Oh, did you listen to the Precision Microcast interview with the InnoLight guy?
00:33:06
Speaker
No, I didn't get, but I saw post about it. It's good. Yeah. Yeah. Adam and, um, I'm sorry. Josh do such a great job on that podcast and, uh, the intellect stuff you will is full grams voted. Really?
00:33:22
Speaker
Yeah, at the risk of spoiling a little bit about it in a light. And I'm going to try to explain this and how I understand it. Instead of using like G code and cam, which you can do, some of the tool paths are so complicated because it's turning at decent RPMs with Z movement. So it's like surfacing as it's turning. And you just the look at heads don't work even on like a hide and hide or Siemens or whatever. So they built their own control system with their own software that can do like I think the most aggressive
00:33:51
Speaker
And I don't remember this is the motion system or the camera, the look ahead or what, but like it's 5,000 times per second and theirs can do a hundred thousand times per second. Like the refresh rate of the Hertz operation and so it's in all the
00:34:06
Speaker
all the instead of a look ahead, it's all computed ahead of time on like a file that you then load in. So it's not it's not like it's streaming G code. Again, I may be wrong on some of the details, but spirit of it is. And so if you see their Instagrams or the post, the intellect stuff, the turning is insane. But they also talked about just the kinematic structure of having this machine that needs to be just a whole magnitude. You know, it's the current of lathes, maybe even probably more kind of. Yeah. Yeah.
00:34:36
Speaker
It's different. It's a what's it called? A diamond turning lathe. It's not a lathe lathe. It's like from making lenses. It's its own brand. It's its own world of optics and whatever. I hesitate to call it much of a lathe. I guess it is, but the precision is insane. I remember a couple of years ago, I think they posted up where they built their new
00:35:00
Speaker
not factory, but showroom in the US. And they talked about how thick the concrete was. And it was like feet, feet, feet thick. And the amount of millions of tons or whatever of concrete that were used to create this factory, because it has to be completely isolated from the world, basically the pad. And it was like, holy cow, that's next level. That's really cool, right? Yeah. Yeah.
00:35:25
Speaker
It's kind of like when I was talking, when we got our Zeiss delivery, the CMM and the guy was like, yeah, like the most expensive Zeiss is maybe a million dollars, but you need a million dollar room to make it worth it. Yeah. That reminds me of, I started, I got me thinking about your Swiss because it's such a good kinematic loop, like it's so tight and closed and so forth compared to say like the knock, which led me to think about, we are thinking about a product
00:35:54
Speaker
iteration that would be better off if we were able to have hex or two using Torx plus screws and they're just they don't seem to be available in the sizes that we're looking for which which might be Somewhere between three it's a half inch But we're probably gonna go metric because that would allow us to sell metric in the US as well as metric overseas and have one skew am I crazy if we really can't find them to make those and
Custom Screw Production and Machining Techniques
00:36:25
Speaker
If you're okay broaching them, then it's super easy. Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, I don't have a problem broaching. I mean, it's- Because you can buy a Torx Plus broach and put $1,000 into your broaching setup. Yeah, that's a really good point. Then it's much easier. But we just finished a run of 6,500 of our knife screws on the Swiss where we're milling out T9 Torx with a 20,000 mill. Right.
00:36:52
Speaker
In titanium, that end mill lasted for 6,500 screws. In stainless, 17-4 that we do, and it's 45 Rockwell, we get like 80 to 300 screws per end mill. Big difference, huh? Big difference. You would want to do it in the steel, but then you got to think, are you going to heat treat it? You're going to
00:37:11
Speaker
Yeah. Black oxide-coated, all doable. Very, very doable. Or make about a stainless or whatever. Yeah, broaching would be simple. Broaching's a good idea. Because we know what you want. Yeah. From talking with another friend, the quantities to have custom screws made are like six figures. We're not even close to
00:37:32
Speaker
getting that done. I don't think it makes sense to buy screws, figure out how to like robotically load one at a time to convert the hex into a torx, right? Yeah. And then, yeah. Is this for fixture holding applications? Correct. So you're not torquing it to like full max spec torque and it's holding airplanes together.
00:37:57
Speaker
No, but I mean, the aerospace lives better. But these, you know, yeah, this is a real deal. The screws on our knives, it has to hold two handles together. It doesn't have to like hold the world together, you know?
00:38:13
Speaker
The big difference with ours is that your screws and many screws are just installed and they're done. Ours are going to be used in and out every hour. So that's one reason why I like the Torx, but I also care a lot about the screw design. Yeah, like we just buy off the off the shelf McMaster black oxide, but they're all Torx plus button head screws.
00:38:33
Speaker
And we pound them every day with impact guns and drills and everything. We torque them. They definitely strip out even the Torx Plus. The Torx Plus is the best, but it does strip out over time. And it's a wear item has to be replaced. So we just buy boxes of them from McMaster. And if it's a length issue or a head issue or whatever your concern is that off the shelf doesn't work, would you modify
00:39:02
Speaker
Like back in the day when we started making knives, we bought off the shelf knife screws, but they were way too long. So we made a little threaded fixture, a plate with a hundred holes in it, screw them all in, flip it upside down in the middle and build them off, deck them. Time consuming, but it's fine to get started. I don't know. You need a process that's cheap and worth your time.
00:39:23
Speaker
I mean, I'd still like to figure out if we could get a quote on making them. The other thing we could do is, because we're not a hot production lady shop. I don't have a Swiss. I don't have, our SC20 is wise great, but it's busy and it's not going to be great at cranking out tons of these. So, but I often forget like it's okay to sub stuff out and get a quote from a thousand of these from somebody. Maybe you buy the broach and give it to the shop for the run and then take it back if they don't have a broach.
00:39:52
Speaker
Why don't you broach your toys? I think personally, I think it looks terrible.
00:39:57
Speaker
The way we mill it adds a lot of features, especially when you look under the microscope, make it look really cool. We actually purposely do the floor finish of the torques with a star pattern, so it looks super cool. To be fair, our T9 is not a true geometric T9 shape. It would not pass an inspection for a T9 certification, but it works for us.
00:40:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's all that needs to do. What if you had no tool change or constraints on the Swiss or whatever, would you broach it under size and then to get over a lot of material and then just come in and finish it? You could. Broach typically you drill a hole and then the broach shoves the corners down to the bottom and then you can drill it again, which usually gets all the corners gone. But most of the time you need a
00:40:51
Speaker
a hole at the bottom of your drive socket, like at the bottom of the- Somewhere for the chips to go. Somewhere for the chips to go and your drill has to bottom out there. And we want a flat bottom on our torques because our heads are very short and there's not a lot of like thread left afterwards. And that's why. Yeah. That's a fair point. Yeah. Okay. Good to know. But I'm just a sucker for punishment and buying 20,000 mils, I guess.
00:41:18
Speaker
Hey, they're not expensive, right? Yeah. Well, the Harvey ones we're using now have a 5,000 corner radius, which makes them five times more expensive than the Lakeshore square corner end mill. So they definitely have a cost. Got it. Got it. And we're actually working with Micron tool right now.
Tooling Challenges in Machining Operations
00:41:41
Speaker
I'm pretty sure they're in Switzerland.
00:41:43
Speaker
about making a custom 20 thou end mill with their kind of crazy lobe design, crazy mill. They do a lot of medical aerospace like Torx milling. They're quite known for it. So we're designing a custom tool for stainless because in titanium we're good, but in stainless we have issues. So I think I ordered three pieces or five pieces or whatever, and they're going to be kind of silly expensive at that low quantity, but I want to try them out.
00:42:13
Speaker
The Torx corners, the small parts where you need the 20th hour, is it effectively just an adaptive style toolpath? Yeah, adaptive. Then I think I finish it by doing C-axis rotation while stepping down a little bit around the profile.
00:42:29
Speaker
Um, which works really good, but that's eating up the corners of the end mill and like all the wares on the corners now. Yeah. So we adapted it to rough it out and then we finished it to go like that. And doing the C-axis rotation lets us very easily make the whole bigger or smaller. Which is sick.
00:42:45
Speaker
Because then you just do an X offset for that tool or something. And now your Torx is bigger or smaller. And something we should probably buy is Go No Gauges. Go No Go Gauges for Torx T9. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, sure. So that we can actually, because right now we just have a WeHow driver bit that we're like, yeah, it's got a tiny bit of wiggle. We're good to go. That's funny. But there's a tolerance spec on drivers, too. We buy a bag of 5,000 drivers.
00:43:15
Speaker
There's a range. Everything's got a tolerance. You put the knife together though too, so you've got your own first line of defense of at least making sure that they're not way out of spec, right? But the guys putting the knife together are using the same driver until it dies. I see. Your point is someone else can have a bigger screwdriver. Exactly. Or a different brand for them, their own kit, their own toolbox at home that's tight and you don't want that.
00:43:39
Speaker
this reminds me back to strike mark when we made picatinny rail mounts for gopros and you realize oh my god picatinny rail had like a 40 thou variants like this is it was it was a vomit inducing
00:43:51
Speaker
I wonder if anyone's ever done a study on kind of like micromachining things like torques and if there's a way of dealing like a 19 or 20 thou drill to open up to get rid of some of the material or plunge was it called plunge milling where you just take like 5% step over and go straight down. You ever played with this? I've done both of those. So we definitely drill the center hole out first as big as you can.
00:44:15
Speaker
For us, it's a 62,000 mill, like a 116th end mill. Two flute end mill, we just plunge it, and that tool lasts forever. What about drilling the corners though? We had tried that years ago, but you need a 20,000 drill bit.
00:44:33
Speaker
And the ones I was using at the time did not last. Got it. But it's, it's a possible way to do it. But on a Swiss, you're limited by how many live tools you have and how many, how many good, like good spindle live tools you have. Like our, our live spindle, the, um, the electric spindle 60,000 RPM, but we only have one of them on the machine and it's got the 20,000 mill in it. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. The other live tools are gear driven. Um,
00:45:01
Speaker
6,000 RPM limit. You don't want to. Put too small of a tool in there because it induces a lot of vibration and Wilhelmin maybe. Yeah. I'm so excited that the opportunities on that Wilhelmin with 48 tools is just going to be silly. Yeah. It's like, I was thinking about setups between jobs. I'm like, okay, what's it going to take? So you throw a different call it in.
00:45:24
Speaker
Whatever you have to do for the bar loader to make it work at different size bar, whatever. Different call it, different jaws, different program. It's ended. Dude. Yeah. I hear you. The horizontal is finally coming online because post-Lime year, I'll make a note to talk about that next week. It is like oxygen. It's incredible.
00:45:48
Speaker
You did a lot of the Langmuir order on the horizontal. We used it to crank out two of our products and just basically grind it for it. Over the last two days, I've brought two more products onto it and it's just insane because somebody's like, hey, I need more of this. Okay, hit the button. It's already good. That gave you a high volume reason to get good at the horizontal. Now that that high volume reason is gone, now you have all the skill and all this capacity and all this availability that you're like,
00:46:14
Speaker
breath of fresh air like, I got this. I know how to do this. Let's go. It's incredible. That's awesome. Yeah. Isn't it great when these big crazy decisions that make you feel like a psycho telling your wife about it pay out, like work?
00:46:31
Speaker
Well, that's a funny thing is because this whole thing started last November when we realized, hey, our sales need to get matched by the right growth in assets and investment in the process of equipment. And those things don't just happen overnight. You got to think about it. And so that whole story of, OK, January, look for a horizontal, can't find one, buy one, finally find one, get it here in March, learn how to use it, then Langmuir order hits. And then you realize, I mean, it's been August 3 or 5, and you're like, OK, now I finally get to start.
00:47:00
Speaker
using what I originally meant for it to do, although thank God we had it. Um, wouldn't it be very difficult to do that order on time without it? Good. Good for you. All right. I gotta run. That's about it. I'll see you next week. Take care. Bye. Bye.