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Machinist Position Available, Delegating Tasks, Small Business Growth, and AutoDesk University Courses
226 Plays6 years ago
Welcome to the Business of Machining Podca---I mean, Business of Machining PRIVATE conversation.
What were things like for Grimsmo and Saunders pre Lockwood button? Saunders remembers a lot more daily struggles, precarious situations, lack of confidence, and FEAR. Have things really changed?
Perfectionism = Double-Edged Knife A driving force for achieving excellence, perfectionism comes at a high price. Could learning to be content in the moment be the key?
Atypical but Awesome AutoDesk University Course Mark Terryberry from Haas gives a history lesson about how machinists have evolved over time.
AutoDesk makes their courses available for FREE online but you kinda hafta dig to find them--or at least you used to. The courses will be easy to access HERE on the NYC CNC page.
ARE YOU PASSIONATE ABOUT SPEEDS, FEEDS AND TOOLING? Saunders is formally looking for a full time machinist for ProvenCut! If you're interested, send an email to john@saundersmachineworks.com.
Giving Responsibility Away: Why is it so hard? Grimsmo's been giving more and more responsibility to his team but still handles the majority of programming. He explores his beliefs about experience level and how it affects his willingness to let go.
Programming CAM | An Artform Nuances in personal style, mentality, and experience all contribute to how we program parts. Saunders discusses the benefits of giving the responsibility to an employee.
Area 419 Tour: A great story of embracing lean, delegating responsibilities, and organic small business growth (Coming Soon)
Tight Tolerance Tornos Stop pins on the Nak were annoying but on the Swiss, they are a dream! Cycle time decreased from 45 to 25 seconds AND they have noticeably more shine.
Moving & Why You NEED to try 3D printing Your Shop With tiny, baby machines in hand, Grimsmo's getting ready to plan the new shop layout.
Check out This Video For More Info!
Dinner and a Flick Grimsmo and his team head out to see Ford VS Ferrari. It sounds like a fun night out but there's more to it. Call it whatever you want but we don't have to put a label on this team building exercise.
Haas ST-20Y Gearing Up SMW eagerly awaits the arrival of the Royal Acculength Collet Chuck and the final live tool holder. Capto tooling is installed and Saunders is excited to start making parts!
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Transcript
Introduction and Private Conversations
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business and Machining episode 146. My name is John Grimsmo. And my name is John Saunders. This is the podcast that is actually a private conversation.
The Journey and Entrepreneurial Challenges
00:00:12
Speaker
You're not supposed to be listening to this between two fellow entrepreneurs who share their successes and struggles as they run manufacturing businesses. Yes, sir. That is what this is.
00:00:25
Speaker
I wonder how long we talked before we hit the Lockwood button. Yeah. I want to say like six months is kind of what's in my head, maybe up to a year. I'm not sure. But geez, that was two, three years ago. Four? I don't know.
00:00:41
Speaker
Well, 120, yeah, over two, almost three, yeah, based on the number of podcast episodes.
Podcast as a Support System
00:00:50
Speaker
What I remember from that time is, and just to be blunt, because I think part of the benefit of the bomb is we don't have to sugarcoat things, is you and I were both in much more precarious situations where I was certainly having more
00:01:06
Speaker
sort of daily struggles or questions or concerns or lack less self confidence. And thus the bomb played a, frankly, a pretty important, it was good to talk to somebody, you know.
00:01:19
Speaker
Absolutely, I completely agree. Now that you mentioned it, I think about the insecurities and the lack of confidence and the scaredness of that period of time. And I still think today that I have a lot of those insecurities and confidence and blah, blah, blah.
00:01:39
Speaker
But I compare the two and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm leagues ahead of where I was then in mental, you know, readiness. But I still feel like I'm, you know, behind the curve or, you know, could be a lot better, etc. And that's just the perfectionist within us. I think that's what makes us strive for greatness, you know, get better.
Balancing Ambition and Contentment
00:01:58
Speaker
Yeah, but I don't like that because at some point, how do you stay hungry and push yourself and never act complacent, but also recognize we're doing okay, John. I think when I see older folks or folks that are at a tail end or over their careers, I don't want to be in that position and look back and be like, gosh, the whole time it was fine. Why did you get so worried all the time?
00:02:27
Speaker
Yeah, I think one of the keys might be to learn how to be very happy and very content in the moment, like in the day, but continue to strive to make tomorrow better. But that way, at least, you're finding the happiness in what you're doing while still growing and pursuing other things. Because I think my brain would starve and die if I couldn't pursue more.
00:02:54
Speaker
just change and growth. And that's just kind of in my nature, you know, but I can still I can very much find happiness in the task I'm doing in the people I'm with in, you know, the place I'm at in life, whether it's where I want to be or not. I'm like, well, this is where I am like, like, there's no reason not to be happy right now. Things are amazing. You know, right, right.
Nostalgia and Achievements
00:03:16
Speaker
Again, if you took an outside perspective and plopped you down in your shop and not just the machines and the iron, but the product that was coming out and the sales volume and the team and the processes, I mean, those things were not self-congratulatory folks, but those things are freaking awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And it's true.
00:03:41
Speaker
I posted a picture the other day in my stories, I think, of our shop from 2016. And it was like, it was empty. Like, there was a mori, and there were two tormacs. But there were no tables. There were no clutter. There was nothing. And it just, I take it so for granted now that everything that's in there and all the, like, there's freaking eight people that work there.
00:04:07
Speaker
And it's a lot, but I'm so used to it now that I don't step back and think about it. And every now and then near the end of the day, usually Eric and I are the last ones there. And we'll go up and have a chat upstairs in the mezzanine, and we'll just kind of lean against the railing and look out over what's in the shop. And we just kind of chat about it. And we did that last night. It was really nice to do.
Tony's Story: Happiness over Money
00:04:34
Speaker
every couple weeks or once a month will end up doing that lean over the railing thing and just like holy crap like yeah that's awesome yeah the uh i reread most of delivery happiness last week on my vegas trip and uh i tell you it's the first time i've reread that book and i don't regret a single page of of having done that and i gotta share this example
00:05:00
Speaker
He sold his first company to Microsoft at a very young age. I think he was 22. And the company was sold for over 200 million. And Tony's portion was, I'm going to make up the number 30 million. I forget the exact number. But he had a 12 month period where he still had to go work for Microsoft post-sale. I don't remember whether it was for his company at Microsoft or just work at Microsoft.
00:05:27
Speaker
And if he failed to do that or broke those terms, he lost 20% of his payout. And after three months, he hated it. He was absolutely miserable. He felt like it was just sucking the life out of him. And he's thinking to himself, wait a minute here. I'm in my twenties. I've got all this energy. Time is a huge
00:05:49
Speaker
Precious asset to me and just daily happiness. I forget that again the numbers but like 24 million was more money than I ever ever would have thought I ever had and need and so why would I ever stay around for the additional six or eight and now that That is crazy thinking because if there's just so many other ways to parse that scenario where you're like Of course, I would work six months or eight months for seven million more dollars something but but that's not really the conversation I
00:06:18
Speaker
It's that perspective that I think really is phenomenal about... I hate the cliched phrase, but what makes you happy? What do you enjoy? Yeah. Yeah. And so I read that book straight through a couple months ago. For the first time, I actually finished it. And as you said, it was just enlightening. Like,
00:06:41
Speaker
so many good examples and stories, especially to do with company culture. That's kind of the ethos of the book.
Investment in Zappos and Financial Security
00:06:47
Speaker
But just like you said with that example, he realized that 20 plus million was plenty to that end. He did invest it into Zappos and it disappeared pretty soon.
00:07:00
Speaker
At the time in his life, he was young and single and bought his apartment and bought his car and bought his loft and traveled and still had millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars. He's like, why would I kill myself for another six, nine months? It was good. I think it's just good.
00:07:22
Speaker
What was I going to say? Oh, I just wanted to say you were talking about you would go nuts if you didn't have the ability to grow at your shop.
Evolution of Machinists and Historical Context
00:07:32
Speaker
One of the presentations last week at AU, I should say that's Autodesk University, was actually by Mark Terryberry from Haas.
00:07:43
Speaker
Yeah, cool. And it was called, I forget what it was called, but he ended up giving basically an hour long history lesson around what is a machinist. And I tell you, it was mind-blowingly enlightening. It wasn't really a typical AU class because it was a history lesson more than it was about Fusion 360 or some advanced cam machining detail. But I had no idea he was such a history buff. I mean, he knew all of these details and inventors and key dates.
00:08:13
Speaker
and the things that are clearly way beyond the requisite scope of work that he does at Haas as an apps guy and their video guy. And it was great to see somebody formalize what you and I have often kind of bantered about, which is used to be that a machinist was somebody who could set up a little bridge port or manual machine or knew how to crank the hand wheels or this and that. And now it's
00:08:38
Speaker
Now it's CAM, now it's post processors, now it's multi-axis, now it's different ways of being siloed and that has different unintended changes about the workplace environment and the culture and the hours and the locations and even the gender and the ages. I forget my exact point behind that, but it was, I guess one of the things I thought is there's a lot of ways to grow
00:09:06
Speaker
yourself without necessarily having to grow your business? Does that make sense? Of course, yep, totally agree. Yeah, because as you and I know, as the entrepreneur slash operator slash, like know every aspect of our business, basically, there's a lot to it, you know, and it's not like, I don't like having someone that comes in and just does one specific
Work-Life Balance and Delegation
00:09:30
Speaker
thing. And that's all that they're allowed to do. And I want to be better about this, but spreading people around a little bit.
00:09:36
Speaker
letting them learn and grow and learn new tasks. It's tough sometimes because the work has to get done, but growing even just mentally, just personally with either skill or mindset or value to the shop or to yourself is huge. Yeah. Yeah. How are you doing on work-work balance, meaning delegation versus management or whatnot?
00:10:06
Speaker
always, always working on it always on my mind. incrementally better every day, which is nice. And
00:10:16
Speaker
especially the projects that, you know, they'd be so easy for me to bang out, but they'd also be fairly easy for somebody else to learn and do. I'm becoming better about handing those off and trusting that, you know, obviously my people can take care of that too. And it might not be exactly the way that I would have done it or that I thought it would be done, but you know what? Done is better than not done.
Business Functionality and Team Development
00:10:39
Speaker
Yeah, well, I think Tony's a the delivering happiness book indirectly is a really good way of talking about the nature of building a team and You know the cliche again, do you work for your business or does your business work for you? And I think
00:10:55
Speaker
I get so conflicted because there's an element of backseat driving from me that's not fair to you. Then there's also the legitimacy of, hey, I think it's actually a pretty good workflow that if you get a new machine like a Swiss or a Kern, Grimsville becomes the expert, sets some stuff in process, accelerates that, and then disperses that through. That's clearly happened with the Maury,
00:11:17
Speaker
the Nakamura, heck, you probably didn't even do that on the lapping machine, right? That was- I've never touched the lapping machine. Yeah, exactly. So who am I to sit here and criticize you? On the flip side, I do think your business would be unduly hurt if you weren't there for an extended period of time. True. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. The good thing is the amount of things that I directly
00:11:42
Speaker
and only control are getting much, much smaller. And they're becoming much higher level things. Like the Swiss being our newest, most complicated machine, that's my baby. Angelo can definitely help me with that. And I need to teach him more about it. And of course, he has the capacity to do it, but I'm still kind of clinging to it because I'm still figuring it out. That just high level business stuff, I still check every single knife and I sign the authenticity card.
00:12:12
Speaker
Other than that, it's just like, right, that's a good thing. But other than that, it's just making sure everything's running smoothly. If I'm not there, most other things happen without me. Okay, that's awesome. Still do all the programming, but most of the time, like we're not changing much.
00:12:31
Speaker
Angela can tweak programming, which is really nice, but yeah, good to show what. Yeah, that's funny. We filmed at Area 419, which is a firearms company up in Northern Ohio that has
00:12:45
Speaker
Actually, it's just an awesome story. Started as a side business, doing some gunsmithing work and really grew as of like two years ago, three years ago and now has, I mean, just crushing it. It's an awesome operation and very much, I think, I say this humbly, has shared
00:13:03
Speaker
entrepreneurial beliefs like you, me, Jay Pearson, where he's embraced lean, he's thought deliberately about how he's growth. It's a very good small business growth story. He hired his first person, which is actually a marketing person, and he's now grown to have seven people on their team now.
Growth of Area 419 and Lean Principles
00:13:23
Speaker
But he is still doing a lot of the design and a lot of the programming. It's kind of a bottleneck, but
00:13:28
Speaker
Kind of like you said, I mean, that Swiss lathe is probably going to have diminishing amounts of programming work unless you add new SKUs or parts, right? True. That's not really our business is adding new stuff every day. It's kind of getting what we make dialed and slowly add new stuff. We're not job shopping, we're programming every single day.
00:13:47
Speaker
He recognized – it's a great tour. I think it's scheduled to – the video's scheduled to go out in December. Sweet. But he recognized that that's a hurdle. And it's not a great thing, per se, because I think we've had people working here at our shop that have had various different skills or capabilities or backgrounds when it comes to programming.
00:14:06
Speaker
You know, programming really is an art in that there's a different style and there's a different mentality to how you approach, how you approach, how you tackle it, how you kind of quality control it with simulation. You just, you know, are you just, there's people who are really good at anticipating and thinking and
00:14:21
Speaker
There's lots of ways to make holes with drills and boring and blowing out from a 2D contour. It's cool to see other people do it. I can see why that's probably a hard thing to hand off. On the flip side, Alex has done a lot of programming for us now, even though he's back at college working remotely.
00:14:37
Speaker
And he's gotten much better at it, which is great. And it's been a really good, I'd switched to me reacting to his stuff with the screen shares. And it's the same thing where if I don't like how he did something, instead of fixing it, I will send him back a video because that's, you know, teach a man a fish. And it's still way more efficient and
00:14:59
Speaker
We're better off at Saunders because Alex is a huge asset to us and Alex is better off because Alex is still in college and can legitimately say that for years he's been programming five access parts, right? That's amazing. So would you say that a lot of CAM basically is experience? I mean, maybe that's what I'm so worried about is because I have 10 years of experience doing CAM.
00:15:22
Speaker
And a lot of it is, I feel like it's just time, like seat time, you know, like to be a good driver, you just got to do a lot of driving. Yeah, I wouldn't say it's anything like the 10,000 hours, like it's not like, you know, martial arts or golfing. Yeah, and then some of it's some of it's, you know, you don't you don't know what you don't know. And I have found, I believe I have a very
00:15:50
Speaker
good and many people listening to this podcast may have the same thing. So I'm not comparing myself to our audience so much as I am comparing myself to somebody who's not in the manufacturing field. But when I see a toolpath and I see the cutter engage even a simulation,
00:16:07
Speaker
I usually have a pretty good idea of how risky that is. Or is it going to chatter? Or is there going to be chip evacuation or clearance issues? Or is it plunging too hard? And so some of that comes from experience. Some of it just comes from when I was a kid and you were building Lego, if you put a piece all the way out here and it was undetected very well, you kind of thought, okay, that's going to break and fall. And that's like oxygen to me. It just exists. I just know that. Some people don't. Of course. And that's part of the experience that I'm worried about. I don't know.
00:16:37
Speaker
Yeah, I wouldn't worry about that much. You're talking about hiring somebody? I'm talking about just handing off more programming stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't worry that much about it. It's just one of those things I don't think about too often, but the few minutes that I do think about it, I'm like, oh, because of that, then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But yeah, you just got to jump in. It's as easy. Phil did a phenomenal class at AU.
00:17:03
Speaker
We'll get all, we're creating a, actually I already created an NYC CNC page. We already have our class up there and some of the stuff that we talked about, but what I'm going to do is add some stuff to it in probably December when AU publishes their class list. I don't think their site is great to navigate and frankly, it's kind of like buried in the interwebs.
00:17:23
Speaker
My thought is if we make it a little bit more public to find these classes, more people will watch them because they're free and they're great. Phil's class talked about rapid prototyping a five-axis part. Literally, customer drops off a thumbstick and he stays at your office for two hours while you run this part. He's done this and it was amazing.
00:17:40
Speaker
He talked about the process of breaking it down into steps. What you're doing is saying, I want to go from me being the programmer to this huge leap of somebody else does the programming. We'll step break it down.
00:17:56
Speaker
One of the great steps there is pick either one of your products or even a sample widget type part and walk them through how you program that in the sort of the what's in the lies and let that serve as how they start as a template. Literally like they can copy and paste the CAM operations into a new part. And that helps you impart some of your influence and preference onto their style, but then also it doesn't micromanage them. I like that a lot.
Hiring for ProvenCut
00:18:25
Speaker
Speaking of hiring, I'm going to leverage the bomb as a first stab, and then we'll also start looking elsewhere. But we are formally going to start looking for a full-time machinist here at the shop to help with proven cut.
00:18:41
Speaker
So obviously it's a position based here in Zanesville, Ohio. That doesn't mean folks can't relocate, but as a practical person, we've tended in the past to prefer folks have a chance to kind of work here temporarily or intern or trial run. So relocation just means it's a higher hurdle of certainty if we're going to have you come out here to meet up or interview. But I'm excited because what I did last week was sort of looked at the business plan and the thought and the conviction. And I'm like, I absolutely want to find a solid
00:19:11
Speaker
machinist that fits in here that has a passion for machining and tooling. We give lots of guidance, but on the flip side, this is probably going to be a position where you run with it on your own. That's exciting. You're looking for someone with at least some good experience?
00:19:28
Speaker
I could foresee a younger person who's only worked at school machine shops having the right attitude and the right hunger, the right background to say, hey, I think I can figure this out because we can teach them some of the stuff. On the flip side, someone that comes in that said, hey, I've worked as a tooling sales guy or I've worked as an apps engineer or
00:19:50
Speaker
anything or a machinist for sure, anything, a programmer, anything like that would obviously be a strong offering. Yeah, helpful. Yeah, I've seen a lot of job postings in our area where it says, you know, five years experience minimum, 10 years experience minimum, blah, blah, blah. And like, like, don't even call if you don't have that. And it's just such a door closer. But I mean, they want someone that they can just plop in and start working first day. It's different, different role. Yeah, you're, you're creating a much more dynamic, diverse,
00:20:20
Speaker
self-led role, especially if it's for proven cut. So it's not production machinist. It's kind of someone who just gets to play every day, which is, oh my gosh, it's like a dream. Yeah, no, there's work to do. I think it'll be fun. It's a job I would love to have, but I can't.
00:20:36
Speaker
And I'm pretty excited because of the direction we've got now to take this, which, you know, actually kind of goes back to delivering happiness about thinking, okay, what's the plan? What's the offering? What do you want to do with this? This is what I want to do. Like, this is exciting. So if folks are interested, email your resume or sell me on who you are. If you don't have a resume, email me, John, JOHN at Saunders, machineworks.com.
00:21:01
Speaker
Love it. That's exciting. Do you have a timeframe or like now?
Importance of Personal Thinking Time
00:21:05
Speaker
Now. Yeah. Yeah. Now for sure.
00:21:09
Speaker
Yeah, and that was the good thing. I find this happens when I travel, which is you get a chance to kind of be a surgeon about yourself. And that's one of my goals for the rest of this year and next year is to spend more time on a regular basis. Don't treat it as something super special. Like once a month, you really give yourself 20 minutes, like really carve out some time to be that surgeon and focus on things that you want to think about. You get a level of clarity, at least I do, that doesn't exist on an otherwise daily basis of work and interruptions.
00:21:37
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And I very much appreciate and protect my personal thinking time. So I go for a walk every single night. Like, I just I get to free my mind. And sometimes it's sometimes nothing comes of it. And sometimes everything comes of it. So it's, it's I remove myself, I can't physically do anything. So all I can do is think. Yeah, yeah. And I like it. I like it a lot. Take your phone with you.
00:22:02
Speaker
I do take my phone with me. I rarely ever touch it unless I need to write something down or sometimes even now, no matter how cold it is outside, I will need to stop and email somebody right away because the idea is in my head or text somebody and I just want to get it done, get it done because I might forget. I might lose the passion for it.
00:22:21
Speaker
So I'll just like stand there in the middle of the sidewalk for like two minutes and just bang out this email. But it's usually late at night, so I almost never see anybody. I see more skunks than I do people sometimes. PSA, use your phone's built-in voice recorder to just make memos to yourself. I never do that. You gotta do it. I never do that. I know you've been saying that for years.
00:22:40
Speaker
I'll do it with like the iPhone, you can open have Siri open voice recorder and then you got to just hit the record button. And then I don't need to look at my phone and I could just have this stream of consciousness. And it's great because in situations like that, you want to just get it out of your head and then move on. And then later you compile and you listen to it again. Yep. Yeah. You've taught yourself to check your voice recorder. Yes. Work on that. How's the Swiss lay that for the crash?
00:23:04
Speaker
It's fine. Oh, good. Nothing. I mean, I, the call it's chewed up, but it's works. It's fine. I killed the boring bar. So I got two more replacements in. So after transfers the part and you have to face the top part.
00:23:18
Speaker
I faced the hat of the part. I didn't have a turning tool in there to face it down. So I'm facing it with a live tool, like a spinning end mill. And I'm just facing the front of it. And the pins that I'm making, it doesn't need to be pretty. So it's a tool path, obviously, not a turned finish. But it's fine. It works great. It holds length within 10th. Nice. So the past week, I've been making these stop pins that we use for our knives.
00:23:45
Speaker
they stop the open and closed position of the knife when it moves. And these have always been annoying to make, especially on the Nakamura because it's a stepped pin. So it's like shoulder, step up or down, and then another shoulder. And the two shoulders are always different. So you have to mess with the code to like, I put variables in there so I can make it bigger or smaller on front shoulder or back shoulder, center shoulder, like make them all perfect. On the Swiss, they're an absolute dream. They're like the greatest thing ever.
00:24:16
Speaker
And they take, they used to take about 45 seconds on the Nakamura. I've got them down to 25 seconds on the Swiss and they're visibly shinier. I didn't notice until just last night when Eric and I were chatting, I opened up his drawer and saw all the pins and I could clearly tell the new ones on the Swiss versus the old ones. They're like so much shinier. So anyway, that's been fun success.
Efficiency with Swiss Lathe
00:24:42
Speaker
That's right. Things are great there. Scream Swiss too.
00:24:47
Speaker
Oh, a hundred percent. Um, yeah, it's, it's lovely. I love it. And I made, I don't know. I probably made 2000 of them in the past few days.
00:24:59
Speaker
Holy cow. Are you still making them in the 10th step increments that you then put into the tackle boxes, you know, ordered by size? Yeah. So the center diameter is in 1,000 increments. So 156, 157, 158, but the shoulders all have to be 15625. Yeah. So I make that and I have a whole range of the 156's and then I have a whole range of 125 pins with, you know, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127.
00:25:28
Speaker
Um, and I just always need them in stock. So I, I'm filling each tackle box bin for Eric, uh, so that he just never runs out. So he should be good for the year. Probably now for the, for 2020 for the coming year, maybe at least once, but they're so easy to set up now that if I ever need to make more, it's like no big deal. So love that.
00:25:47
Speaker
I think, look, a CNC machine is just
Advantages of Right Machine Tools
00:25:50
Speaker
a tool. There's always, well, I would say there's always a better machine, but the reality is with things like your Tournos and Kern, you may be at the end of the road. But meeting, it's just a tool. I don't share the sediments that so many folks on the internet, which people criticizing Tormach or people criticizing Haas's or whatever. And it's like, dude, it's just a
00:26:12
Speaker
It's a point on the spectrum of capability. I always laugh because it's like 30 years ago, the most high-end shop in the world would have probably been over backwards to get a UMC 750. Anyway, what is awesome that I see in your work is how when you had the right machine tool, the capability, the quality, it just works.
00:26:35
Speaker
Like having the gun for you is truly going to support that thesis of like minimizing downstream tolerances and finishes and post-work.
00:26:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's like all this effort and thought and planning and expense and buying this crazy equipment that is, you know, I, I, I literally get made fun of sometimes online. Cause they're like, you know, people are like, Oh, why are you going such crazy stupid and expensive equipment just to make a knife? And I'm like, well, this is not your business. This is my business. I'm going to do it how I want, but
00:27:06
Speaker
It's when it comes together and like when that's with Leith bangs out parts every 25 seconds, like sometimes it takes longer to check one part and there's like three more, you know, in the bin after I'm done. It's so fast. It all just comes together and it's like this, this is why I got this machine. Everything's working, you know, all the stress and pain and bumps and broken tools. It all becomes worth it when
00:27:33
Speaker
The execution or the plan executed properly like the more he runs eight to sixteen hours a day we run it every single night for eight hours run it all day you know five days a week it just runs and runs and runs and runs and runs.
00:27:48
Speaker
That's why I got such a good machine like nice. Awesome. It's great. It's four years old and it's still a baby. And I'm
3D Printing for Visualization
00:27:55
Speaker
speaking. Speaking of the Maury being a baby, I am looking at a 3d print of my Maury at one 50th scale, 50. Because I'm 3d costing my shop as you did.
00:28:07
Speaker
So I'm very excited about that. So I've got it current printed. I've got my Nakamura printed. I printed two Haas VF1s to me. Oh, that's fine. I found a suite model. It's got the trays, it's got doors and the chip conveyor and everything. So yeah, I've got all my machines. I'll be doing the tornosas today.
00:28:27
Speaker
And then we're going to build a little cardboard shop so that we can lay them out in. Because I've got it in Fusion, but I really want to see it and move things around quicker. Because it's kind of slowpoke to move things around in Fusion quickly.
00:28:43
Speaker
The 3D models, the printed model is so much better. We've stood around ours as a shop group and talked about it. We laser cut the concrete expansion joints into the floor, and a couple of times we've printed just a, or laser cut just an acrylic square to represent a machine because that's the footprint, and it's still so much better to actually have a 3D printed vertical. Yeah, have the height and everything. Just visualize it better.
00:29:09
Speaker
So I downloaded all these little Ironman STL files to mimic a human. So I'm going to print those and I realized they're going to be so small that I'm going to have to like tape a quarter to the bottom or something just to have it stand up properly.
00:29:25
Speaker
But yeah, I'll do that. And then I printed these little tables that we're going to use. And yeah, it'll just visualize what the shop's going to be like. Because while it is, I think the shop here is 4,000 square feet, 4,500 maybe. It's long and rectangular. So it's not just a big square. It's quite long and skinny. So we have to actually plan out how the machines are going to be laid out, make sure there's room for maintenance, carts, all this stuff. You have a forklift to drive around.
00:29:54
Speaker
This will be fun. I'm looking forward to actually seeing this and getting everybody else's point of view too, especially... The same... Oh yeah, manufacturing engineer, right? Yeah, exactly, right. We got a verbiage to Dr. Phil's
00:30:09
Speaker
thing because I just want to keep pulling that back, break it down. I've struggled with what you're doing with the printed shop because it's like, okay, I have a sea of machines, a bunch of machines in this whole space. Where do I start? For better or worse, the way I tackle it is the heaviest machine or the worst machine I'd have to move.
00:30:28
Speaker
And for you, that's probably the current because of combination of weight, complexity, and the fact that it's going to have an aroa bolted to it. So the UMC for us is the heaviest machine. And so it's the least favorite one I want to move. The VF2 at seven, whatever, 8,000 pounds, not a big deal. We've actually moved it twice on our own in an afternoon. Those UMOCs, those UMOCs things might as well be on skates.
00:30:54
Speaker
Yeah. The Maury is heavy, the current is complicated. That's my humble advice. Yeah. I was talking with one of my Elliott Matsura.
00:31:08
Speaker
guys about moving the lathes. And I realized now is the time like, do I have to call them in to like decommission the machines, put the brackets back on, move them to the new shop? Because I'm like, I've only ever had machines delivered. I've never, I've never moved a used machine, you know, from one to the other. And he said the mills are no big deal. Like, you move the spindle down to a certain position, you put the bracket on, you move it, whatever, it has to be leveled at the new shop properly.
00:31:35
Speaker
Lathes, especially a dual spindle lathe, is a bit trickier because the spindles have to line up at the end. And that can have to do with leveling. So he's like, even if it's dead level, the spindles might not line up. So they might kind of tweak the feet a little bit to purposely twist it. Maybe that's the wrong word, but so that the spindles actually line up. So he's like, I highly suggest that. But it's no big deal for them to come in and help us do that.
00:32:02
Speaker
Cool. How is the new shop? Good. Uh, still the owners kind of dragging his feet on signing the last document. He says it's all good. Just, he's got some stuff to deal with first and we're like, okay, come on. Like our realtors even getting super annoyed, but that should be tied up very soon. And I mean, we're a month away from getting the keys. Yeah. Okay. I hope there's nothing more to that. Yeah, I totally agree. But I told, I told him we're all in. Got deposit ready. You know, right.
00:32:32
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. I mean, that's the cynic in me worries about that. Because when I had my landlord hat on and you've got a captive tenant, you lock that thing in. Yeah, you lock that up. Yeah. No, they're moving into a different shop. They bought a building. They're moving everything. It's probably to do with that and more of just a timing thing.
00:32:57
Speaker
because they have a captive tenant. I don't think there's anything. I think he's agreed to the terms and the prices and all that stuff. So yeah, it's just a matter of signing it. The person that's signing the lease with you is currently occupying the space as well? Yes. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. So that means this may end up being a February-March move. I don't know. Crud. But the plan is January 1st, and he knows that. Have you met him in person?
00:33:27
Speaker
I haven't met him. It's actually a series of brothers that own it. I've met one of the brothers and he's all good. Okay. But yeah, things are progressing.
00:33:37
Speaker
You and I have, and I'm not saying I'm right, really, I'm not. You have very different... I have a isolate and mitigate risk at all costs attitude in these situations.
Shop Lease Delays and Risk Management
00:33:48
Speaker
I'm going to solve this tomorrow, today. I'm going to meet him. We're going to track him down. I'm going to figure out why. Because darn it, what are you not telling me?
00:33:58
Speaker
I need to figure this out. I need to get rigors. I need to schedule stuff. It's going to come up in the holidays. Is this a situation where you need three brothers to agree on terms to sign a lease? Has one of the brothers not even been made aware of this yet, which is going to be a landmine? I'm not saying I'm right, but they're very casual. No, exactly. My realtor called me yesterday and updated me. So this is yesterday's information. Got it. But yes, yeah, this week I want to tie this down, and he does too.
00:34:27
Speaker
And even my realtor was like, this is kind of the first time I've had a seller drag so hard. He's like, I don't know what's going on. But yeah. Awesome. What's going on today?
00:34:37
Speaker
Today, I'm super excited. We got an awesome day ahead of us.
Team Outing: 'Ford vs. Ferrari'
00:34:40
Speaker
But tonight, I'm taking everybody in the shop out to dinner, and we're going to go watch the Ford versus Ford movie. Oh, cool. And I'm stoked. Awesome. So excited. I'm excited to bring everybody and celebrate and have a nice dinner and everything. But I just want to see that movie. So I'm like, come on, everybody's coming.
00:34:59
Speaker
I saw another movie that started with an F recently, but unfortunately it was Frozen 2 with my kids. How was it? I slept through it. If I'm being honest. Yeah, the kids are excited to watch that too. I love my kids, but I have a hard time watching the kids' movies.
00:35:14
Speaker
Yeah. No, Ford versus Fry looks epic. Yeah, it looks so good. So I'm thrilled and everybody in the shops excited. They're like, oh, field trip. You're like, let's go. Sweet. We are waiting for our Royal replacement chuck.
Setting up New Machining Equipment
00:35:31
Speaker
The one that we bought was the one that's quote unquote compatible with the bar
00:35:35
Speaker
feeder, but we're not going to use the bar feeder to feed bars. We're going to intend on pulling the bars with either a turret mounted puller or the sub spindle. So that means we can and should and are going to swap out to the Royal, what do they call it? Accu length chucks that don't
00:35:53
Speaker
moving Z? With the big C collets or 5C? The GQ65s, the bigger collets, but it's the same style you have. There's no Z pullback. So I need to wait for that to show up before I can, I guess I can put the original Haas Chuck back on it. But quality chem guys coming in this morning, he wants to help us top up the machine, which I wasn't going to say no to because I like, what am I, it sounds simple, but what do we learn from having them?
00:36:21
Speaker
Show us that. Is this John Wiley or somebody else? No, just our local sales rep.
00:36:27
Speaker
Local sales are nice. And I am waiting on one part, one live tool holder. Otherwise, all the tooling is here. It's installed. I put my first CAPTO tool in ever yesterday or Monday. It was really cool. We joke, we joke, we joke about lace. I am unbelievably excited for this thing. The creative juices, the energy. I can't wait to make parts with it, see what we can do, test it out. It's going to be awesome.
00:36:56
Speaker
Good, I'm really happy for you. Yeah, it's going to be exciting. So wait, and it borrows Thanksgiving Trust in the States. We want to make one of our mod vice parts on it, which is a little bit trickier. So the plan is I'm going to just turn a sample widget part first to make sure I've got everything kind of dialed in working, which I don't anticipate as a problem. And then we're going to jump in and go for it with this new tool, with this new part, which is a complicated part.
00:37:26
Speaker
Love it. Yeah, the thing I've found with these lathes is it's not the complexity of the single toolpath. That's a big deal. Like you can turn the weirdest, fanciest shape in one toolpath. It's fine. It's adding multiple tools and different tool offsets and making sure everything matches up. That's where the complication comes in and the transfer and doing things on the sub. But the look of the part, the shape and the finicky-ness of it is not that big of a deal.
00:37:50
Speaker
Hey, I have a tooling question for you. We're running the same end mill, but with very different feeds and speeds because it's basically one operation on that tool is doing an adaptive, the other is a slot. And I strongly dislike how sometimes in Fusion, if you go and edit something, especially in the tool library, like the stick out, there's a risk of it pushing and overriding your speeds and feeds.
00:38:16
Speaker
So let's say it's T22 in my tool changer. It's a three-eighth inch end mill. What I'd like to do is have T22 be that tool, but have T23 also be that same physical tool in the same physical pocket, like that actual identical tool, but they're two separate T numbers in Fusion because then
00:38:37
Speaker
The Haas control sees it as the same tool, but in Fusion in my tool library, I've got just two separate speeds and feeds. Can you do that? I'm not sure. It seems like something that just has to be tried. Well, I just don't know how you would tell it. I don't think you can. I guess what I'm saying. In Fusion, you want two identical tool numbers? No, separate. Yeah, you can do that. But I don't want it to be the same tool in the tool changer in the machine.
00:39:06
Speaker
Oh, so you wanted to post the same tool number. Nope. It'll still post a different, well, I guess it could post the same number. That's a good point. That's true. But Fusion, that would be weird, but sure, that may be the solution. Because if you duplicate a tool in Fusion, I do it all the time, it remembers the last tool number. You just now have two of the same tools. Right. With the same tool number though, that's the problem.
00:39:29
Speaker
True, but they can have different feeds and speeds and whichever one you call. So the problem is that then you make, sorry, absolutely aware of that. The risk is that you can still, if when you go add a new operation, it's not clear which one is which. And so you, it's easy to grab the wrong one.
00:39:44
Speaker
So in the tool table in the first tab, you can name the tool. I name it there. And I'm just like slow feeds and speeds, fast feeds and speeds. And everything else can be identical except for the feed rate. And then as you're picking new tools, it's easy to tell. And then in the tool library, you did a little dropdown thing. Yes.
00:40:03
Speaker
this tool is used here, here, here, and here. That's how I define that because I do do that a lot. I'll have the exact same tool with two sets of feeds and speeds for different areas, and I'll have two or three versions of that same tool.
Toolpath Management in Fusion 360
00:40:14
Speaker
That's an acceptable compromise for us where that fails in our experiences when we're doing this in our training classes and we've got folks that aren't as intimately familiar or just they see T27, they grab it, they didn't realize there were two of them. So being able to give it a different T number would still be a benefit, but you're right.
00:40:33
Speaker
And I just, I hate. Yeah, the naming convention works. The other thing I hate about Fusion in the tool library is that sometimes you end up with three of them and you'd only meant to have one or two. And so there's no easy way of outside going into every operation and re, like I wish there was a way back in HSM works where you could just drag the tool over to consolidate it back. Remember that? Or do you ever had that problem happen? I can't remember. HSM works with so many people. Yeah, right. Anyways, good problems to have. Yep.
00:41:03
Speaker
Cool. Anything else? No, I think that's about it. Oh, have fun at the movie. I will. I'm so pumped. It's just going to be a fun day at work because everybody's excited for tonight too. So I'm excited. All right. Take care, everybody. I'll see you. Love it. All right. Have a great night. Day. Bye.
Matthew Payne's Aerospace Journey
00:41:21
Speaker
Hey guys, Grimsmo here. We'd like to ask viewers to send in a short audio clip of how this podcast has positively impacted their lives and businesses. Here is this week's clip. Hi guys, Matthew Payne here. I've been listening to the business of machining and following both YouTube channels for the past two years. I did work as a aerospace designer and PNM consultant for about 10 years. And in the middle of 2017, I started a aerospace manufacturing company with two private investors.
00:41:48
Speaker
They funded the deposit for a new HASS UMC 750 and basically broke every bit of advice that John Saunders gives about don't go into debt. Looking back, stressful time for me, but every stage reading, the bomb was there to sort of get me through. So I binged out in the evenings, run in the machine, listened to the bomb. One of the biggest takeaways was the mindset that you guys give of be a good person and do good work. It actually steered me ultimately to
00:42:14
Speaker
leave the company that I co-founded mainly because I was being pressured to still work away other local machine shops that were actually helping me and get me going. So not my style. So fast forward to today. I've gone back into the PLM World Book Consulting but I've followed your advice and developed something that I'm truly passionate about, watchmaking.
00:42:35
Speaker
I'm now working evenings and weekends developing my own watch and more importantly running it with no debt. No UMC 750 either but the homemade Chinese CNC mill with 3D printed parts is getting the prototypes made so that's all that matters. Would I've changed anything from the last two years? Probably not. It's given me quite a lot of lessons. It's developed
00:42:56
Speaker
tons of relationships along the way and I think in the long run the benefits are there. The hardest part has been that as a min and guy, I realise that lays are actually truly awesome and I need to binge out on every John Grismere YouTube video to learn the ways. For anyone that wants to follow my story as an independent watchmaker, please follow me on Instagram, Pablon underscore UK, P-A-B-L-O-N underscore UK.
00:43:20
Speaker
or visit the website pablonuk.com. Once again, thanks a lot guys, you've helped me through a tough period and thanks for coming back to the community.