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Business of Machining - Episode 61
189 Plays7 years ago
Grimsmo’s wish list is GROWING!
He's lapping up a ton of information about Lapping Machines as the Grimsbros get “pickier with age.”
And hey, a diamond grit is a Grimsmo’s best friend!
Another thing on his wish list is a profilometer, to help measure the smoothness of the each blade’s surface.
Machining in Ohio vs. California vs. Australia. What’s the difference?
Should you invest in an ERP system?
ERP System: Enterprise Resource Planning
Does business size matter when it comes to considering an ERP system? Or is it just how you use the data?
"Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy" --Call or E-mail Moore Tool Company, Inc. to get your copy!
Never scrape super glue from your inlays again!
To finish off, take a look at this video by SmarterEveryDay as they shoot a bullet into glass.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Catching Up
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning, and welcome to the business of machining episode number 61. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. Good morning, buddy. You okay? You don't look so hot. I did not sleep a lot last night. In a good way or in a not good way? Life's really sick, so I was up a lot with him.
Fascination with Lapping Machines
00:00:19
Speaker
I basically went on a three-hour cell phone YouTube binge of lapping machines. Oh, really?
00:00:26
Speaker
Yeah. That's cool. It is cool. So I'm, you know, I was excited about that, but then I got, you know, two hours in the beginning of the night and one hour just before coming here of sleep. And I'm like kind of trashed right now, but anyway, yeah, we're getting pretty serious about getting a lapping machine here pretty soon. So I'm just trying to figure out best one, you know, all the options and all that.
00:00:50
Speaker
So, because I saw a lapping machine at Starrett that was lapping the faces of a micrometer, the little carbide insert, so that those two faces are parallel to each other, which is obviously important. And that's a wear item if you think about using a mic over time. And then I've seen the ones that, was it Lat Masters on Instagram?
00:01:13
Speaker
OK, was that the one I tagged daily? Yeah, you sent that to me, right? It's almost like two flat dinner plates or like two Blanchard grinders kind of motions, right? But it's just has that has diamond paste in it. Is that all it is? Yeah, there's a couple of different ways. So it's like one big spinning disc. Like I would get the 24 inch. So it's a two foot spinning disc with three rings on it that are called the control rings or the conditioning rings that you put your parts in the rings.
00:01:41
Speaker
And then basically weight goes on top of the parts and then the disc spins on the bottom. So it's only grinding on one side at a time. So they're just held in with the weight in the ring. They're within the ring and the rings are kind of stationary a little bit, but they rotate themselves in their own little nest. So the part is there's no work holding. It's just literally like putting the weight on top of a part inside of a corral.
00:02:08
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. And you want enough parts in there, like at least two or three so that the weight is level. Right. If you put just one part on the side, the weight's going to go crooked. I have seen people make like laser cut. I'm actually thinking I might hit you up for some laser cut.
00:02:27
Speaker
templates, like to hold parts in a certain orientation or to hold smaller parts or something like that. Right. Yeah. So, but my buddy Brad Southern has a 15 inch lap master, like a little desktop one. And he says he uses it all the time, loves it. And there's a couple of different ways to use it. He actually glues a piece of sandpaper down to the table and uses that like a giant sheet of sandpaper. No, he just sand in a lapping machine.
00:02:54
Speaker
Exactly. And he says it works awesome and he loves it. And then there's regular abrasive like aluminum oxide or silicon carbide or whatever. And then there's diamond, which is like the premier.
00:03:06
Speaker
which is of course what we would go. So apparently the aluminum oxide kind will get you flat, smooth, pretty high RA surface or low RA surface, but it will always look matte. It will always look kind of dull, whereas diamond can get you that mirror polish to like do the RA finish. So this is, is this flatness or just finish? For us, mostly finish, but flatness as well. Yeah.
00:03:34
Speaker
How
Entrepreneurial Insights & Challenges
00:03:35
Speaker
many are you, is, I'm sure there's exceptions to this with the types of media and the time in the machine. But I mean, is this something where you're only going to remove millions or could you remove tens or could you remove thousands of it? I think you can remove thousands with enough time. Okay. We'd probably plan on removing one thou per side for all of our parts. And they'd be in a machine for half an hour or something. And with this machine, I could fit a ton of parts on it.
00:04:01
Speaker
So if you had a 12 thou bow in a part, you wouldn't stick it in here to grind the bow out, for sure, lap the bow out. But for that final finish for a thou or two, maybe it would be OK. Right, right. Although, I mean, you could because a bow is not stock removal on the whole way, right? Oh, that's true. It works faster when the service area contact less. Exactly.
00:04:22
Speaker
So I actually watched your video about the surface grinding shop. You went to the Blanchard Grinding Shop. I'm like, holy cow, I haven't seen this. I saw your intro out front.
00:04:33
Speaker
Yeah. There's like mountains in the background. I'm like, wait, that's at Jay's shop. Yeah. I was just there. That was one of the times where I kicked myself, not kicked myself, but you pick, we talked about this before you pick your battles. Like I have a lot of benefits from having our shop here in central Ohio, a lot of benefits and it's, it's the right fit for me. But man, the fact that Jay Pearson has things like
00:04:58
Speaker
McMaster car milk truck deliveries like twice a day. McMaster car just drives by like a picture like an old Chevy S10. They're just throwing parts out the door. And then you can literally walk to I believe his anodizer, but definitely he can walk to his grinding shop.
Building vs Buying Lapping Machines
00:05:15
Speaker
That is awesome. When it comes to entrepreneurship team, your vendors like that are part of your team. And boy, man, that is freaking awesome. Does he just like drive the forklift over there?
00:05:29
Speaker
That's a good question. I don't know. It's seriously, we actually walked. It wasn't even worth getting in our vehicle. It's hard to, I don't know. Well, I actually meant to ask you, I think he's moving. His move keeps getting delayed because of some printing press that's like stuck in the, maybe it's over now. Like an old tenant who
00:05:52
Speaker
I don't know what the story was, but basically there's an old printing press that's in the shop that needs to be removed before Jake. Right. Right.
00:06:01
Speaker
Yeah, when he told me about the new shop, he just kind of pointed across the street, and he's like, it's over there. And I'm like, oh, so you're just going to walk everything over, OK? So not encouraging Grimsmo 1.0 from a year ago here, but why not build a lapping machine? What's hard about it?
00:06:23
Speaker
It's not a complicated piece of equipment, but I mean, first of all, I was kind of surprised to see that the motors are 233 phase, which kind of a serious motor. And the lapping plate itself is like a grand or something like that. But because the weight
00:06:42
Speaker
Because you're using the weight of gravity in a object or the force of gravity, I should say, there is no machine built spec as between like the top half and the bottom half. Like you would think with a grinding machine or like a Blanchard, if you've ever seen the Blanchard on the
00:07:00
Speaker
heel of the blancher. It is a giant screw that goes down to the floor and you literally can dial in millions or tenths by bumping that screw to adjust how the machine is trammed, which is just stresses in the cast iron. But you're not going to do it. You're not doing that on a lapping machine, huh?
00:07:15
Speaker
No, the, the surface plate, whatever you call it, the big one, um, does wear, it does go out of true. Um, so that has to be kind of conditioned, uh, to flatness again. And you check that for flatness. However, often you're using it like, I don't know, it could be once a week, once a month, once a day, I don't know, but, um, but yeah, it's pretty easy to keep it in check. You just got to watch it. Cause if you're always grinding parts on the OD of the plate, then it's going to wear on the OD, right? Do you have to dress in a plate or?
00:07:46
Speaker
Not really sort of like the three, the three big rings that come with it. I don't know if you use those or use different ones, but those basically condition the plate for you and you kind of specifically do it every now and then. Have you ever seen them? Have you ever seen them lap? It's called lapping, right? You got to be confused here. Lap in surface plates? No. So they just. Oh yeah, by hand, right?
00:08:15
Speaker
Yeah, with a cast iron lab, which is just a checkerboarded. Usually it's cast iron and they just put some diamond paste on there and then they just run it back and forth. But the really cool thing that's kind of mind blowing and this goes back to that. Was it the Moors, the people that build the jig boring machines and more tool company? They have that book called the foundations of foundations of accuracy.
00:08:39
Speaker
really good book. You can actually still get it if you call their company in Connecticut. It's like 140
Lapping Techniques & Materials
00:08:45
Speaker
bucks, but it's like a 300 page hardbound textbook that's kind of like, it's like America at what it comes to.
00:08:53
Speaker
are the principles of how things work. And the laps self straighten, they self correct. So you it's rich is a really cool thing like the more plates they do, even if the plates themselves are not perfect, it all fixes itself. And I'm not going to do a good job of articulating why but right as the lap runs over. Yeah. So do you would you ever change the grit?
00:09:19
Speaker
I don't think so. I mean, you obviously can. With diamond, half the grit actually sticks into the table itself. And then the rest tumbles around. Whereas with aluminum oxide and stuff, it doesn't. It just wears like the cast iron table is normally for that. So for the traditional lapines, a lot more compound, a lot more fluid, a lot more waste.
00:09:43
Speaker
And it wears the cast iron plate, whereas with diamond, it sticks itself into the surface plate. Right. And then it's like they're like little fingernails as well, which is good. And so it currently uses tons less fluid. And yes, you don't like they have this fancy, crazy jig that it's like a lathe turning tool. And you basically turn the surface of the thing. Yeah. To like, but that it's stupid expensive and it's kind of not.
00:10:11
Speaker
not needed. This is interesting because my understanding was any lap or the definition of a lap was a softer material than the object being lapped. If you're going to lap soft seal, you want to use an even softer lap because what happens is the media, your grit or a diamond or aluminum oxide will
00:10:35
Speaker
impregnate in the brass lap or aluminum lap or cast iron lap or even a wood lap. That's what's funny. You can literally just use a dowel rod as a lap. That's what you just form. It forms a little barbed plate or a fingernail plate and then it'll eventually wear down. I've never heard of a situation where the lapping process uses or makes use of free-floating grit. It's all about what's stuck in the plate.
00:11:05
Speaker
Well, yeah, because this kind of lapping machine has a pump, like a free flowing grid. And with the traditional stuff, it's kind of a light flow. And yeah, there's a boundary layer. So the part is never actually touching the plate, because there's water floating in between. Right, right. I guess that makes sense. Maybe it's just literally floating around like the world's slowest water jet. Exactly. Like operating.
00:11:31
Speaker
And I think the plates used for diamond are either copper or some sort of composite. I don't know what. But yeah, so they are soft, like you said.
00:11:41
Speaker
Our new, what's the ballpark price on a new 24 inch machine? So a lap master, which is a solid American brand. They've been around since the forties, um, starts at 17,500. And then if you want the diamond stuff, it brings it up to about 20. And so I mentioned putting these weights on top to kind of put pressure, even pressure on the part.
00:12:05
Speaker
The bigger machine you go, the heavier the weights get. And the more weight, the faster it laps, right? So they have these cool pneumatic arms that go up and apply the weight and lift the weight for you, which is really sweet. So apparently for consistent production, if you're going to do it a lot, then the pneumatic are a sweet thing. And that brings it up to 30,000.
00:12:25
Speaker
Okay. But still, I can't believe I'm saying this. It's relatively. I totally agree. And I think, like I mentioned last week, we're currently having another lapping company do the work and they kind of suck at it and every part's coming back scratched and we're paying them about $1,000 a month for that work. So this is kind of a no-brainer.
00:12:48
Speaker
Well, in the time, if you think about time and what the future time invested in the machine, you'll have depreciation of the machine. But lapping machines can last forever, I think. Yeah, forever. Yeah. Not a huge amount of variable operating costs in terms of electricity. And that doesn't take a lot of real estate. And then the labor on your end is not. It's not a lot. There will be labor involved, but we get to control the quality. So it's like a wash. It's worth it, right?
00:13:12
Speaker
It's funny, I haven't really thought about your business plan deliberately this way. But is that part of the five-year plan is just to continue rolling
Vertical Integration & Quality Control
00:13:21
Speaker
in, kind of, retained earnings or profits into being more vertically-oriented, integrated? I think so, yeah. And bringing everything in-house is what you're getting at, right? Right. And after this, literally, the only things are water jet and double disk. DLC.
00:13:42
Speaker
Yeah, that's never going to happen in-house. Right, right, right. Oh, we filmed it helical. We got to film there, coding. Oh, cool. But it wasn't actually, it was super boring. It looks like a microwave that's the size of an office room. But we saw the actual aluminum oxide, because I was like,
00:14:02
Speaker
Like the big disks, right? It actually looked like a, almost like a banister on a staircase, but it was like four inches in diameter, but it was kind of worn concave. Because I was like, we were in there for a few minutes. I was like, I couldn't articulate the question well. I was like, where is the stuff? Like when you pull out a tool that has titanium nitride coating or whatever on it, where did that come from? Is it a gas? Is it a chemical? Like does it create it somehow with some sort of
00:14:31
Speaker
crazy, you know, alchemy inside the machine. What is it? And then he finally was like, Oh, it's that thing over there. It's like that giant white thing. Really? So you'll see it eventually. But yeah, it's great. Yeah, I got to tour the LC place when
ERP Systems & Business Efficiency
00:14:46
Speaker
I went out to Vancouver and saw Amish. Oh, awesome.
00:14:50
Speaker
Yeah, this was one and a half summers ago. But so at this place, they had these disks like probably 10 inch diameter that were made of pure tungsten or pure aluminum or whatever. And that goes in the chamber with an inert gas like nitrogen or something like that, that creates a vacuum system. And then
00:15:11
Speaker
electricity through the air somehow magically pulls particles from that tungsten flies through the air and sticks itself to the part via static electricity or something. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's kind of like, uh, I hate to analogize this to power coding, but I was, I was right. Yeah. Um, the, it was super cool. The tools are on.
00:15:32
Speaker
um you know what a planetary gear is like an internal drive gearbox so the tools are on these little platters the platters rotate on their own platter and then that platter that they're on rotates inside the bigger base platter so they're forming it's like the teacup ride at disney world so that no matter what
00:15:50
Speaker
orientation they are in at any point, they're always changing so that they're basically going to get coded because it is line of sight, I guess, or it's not just gaseously filling it up such that it will cover every cubic inch of area and volume.
00:16:06
Speaker
One guy was telling me, a sales rep at IMTS actually, because I was picking his range for like an hour about DLC, that there's two types of machines. There's one that's line of sight, and then there's one that's atmosphere, like any surface around the part will get collected, no matter line of sight. I think that's more rare, but yeah, it was pretty cool to listen to.
00:16:25
Speaker
I could be way out of I could could be the difference between PVD and CV because one is physical vapor deposition. The other is chemical vapor deposition. Yeah, you're right. Yep. Cool.
Networking & Collaboration in Business
00:16:40
Speaker
Speaking of laps is a little bit of a jump, but speaking of laps, I was I got to share my story about Clickspring.
00:16:48
Speaker
Yeah. Right. Right. And what made me think of it is that Clickspring, I believe, on one of his videos did a wooden lap, which is just awesome because it kind of goes back to something that I really admire or really look up to and maybe
00:17:04
Speaker
When you think about what you want to do and who you want to be, I'm like, gosh, it's the carpenter, not the tools. And that's what Chris really exemplifies, being able to take relatively inexpensive tools, relatively limited access, and just do stunning work with them.
00:17:24
Speaker
I had a chance to hang out with him and meet him. We've done all of his, I mean, you know this, but we've done his US manufacturing for his fire piston parts. So we've had this kind of partnership at the risk of using the word partnership for about a year and a half, and it's gone really well.
00:17:42
Speaker
And so when we were over there, he picked us up and we got to go hang out with him. Even his wife and me and Yvonne. And he was we got to his house and he's like, hey, you want to see the shop? I was like, yeah, of course. And so we walk out and he is a garage and next to the garage is a room that would be like in the U.S., what I would think where we have our water heater or something like really. And we open up the door
00:18:12
Speaker
And that's it. John, his shop is smaller than your bathroom. Wow, you you could fit three, maybe four people if you literally had them like intimately touching in the straight line. And so it's just it's that it's a small it's a different it's not your bathroom is a square. It's a little bit more rectangular shop. And he has
00:18:36
Speaker
one lathe on the left, one lathe on the right, the laser on top of the toolboxes. And at the end, he's got one or two, I think there were two mills there. And then he's got that wooden benchtop on the left where he does all of his projects, like all of the skeleton clock, all the antikythera mechanism. And then he's got some pipes on the ceiling that he uses to either hang cameras or just tripods straddling. And
00:18:58
Speaker
Not only is it mind blowing, but he also hasn't like made a stink about it. Like, oh, you know, poor me in my little shop. You just hear a guy who's just so, so good at what he does. Self taught. Just it really humbled me and made me just want to rethink the quality and pride with which you put into everything.
00:19:28
Speaker
Chinese tools, you know, doesn't have very difficult to get, there is no used equipment in Australia, very difficult to get raw materials relative to things like the US or even Canada. When you're complaining between you and Pearson, who gets McMaster deliveries, and like someone in Australia is, yeah. Right. It was awesome. So it was really cool. Nice. So when's that video launching?
00:19:55
Speaker
We didn't show Lee. Oh, you know, we didn't film. No, I didn't want to ask because I, you know, it's funny, I've known him for a year and a half and we talk all the time, but it's his house and, you know,
00:20:08
Speaker
When you ask, you force that person to say no, if they want to say no, and that doesn't, you know, I figured that we'll see if it comes up. It didn't come up. He obviously has not shown his face on camera. That's the thing, right? You don't want to like bust the myth, although we're talking about it now, but, but yeah.
00:20:27
Speaker
That's awesome. Of course, I'm sure it would have been a tremendously popular video and hey, I will go back to film for sure if that offer stands. But you know, I'll tell you something kind of tying in with like last week's podcast, like it was honestly, what's life about? Like it was nice to have a friendship to talk, to share and not feel like, hey, I'm here to work. I need to get my camera out to make a video for my channel. Like just, we just enjoyed it.
00:20:56
Speaker
Good. Good. Yep. It's really nice to be able to like, yeah, do exactly that. I've done that at a few different shops and I'm just like, you know, I'm not even going to ask. I just don't need to film. And I'm just going to enjoy this for me. Right. Nice. It was cool. Yeah. Oh, sorry. My other note, we finally got our accounting system like working. OK, what do you want again? Zero. Zero. X zero.
00:21:25
Speaker
Yes, thank you. Not spelled correctly, coincidentally. I believe it's an Australian company. So most of the transitional frustrations were self-imposed. One is that we set the accounts up incorrectly. Two is that this was an unpredictable consequence, but because we're pulling in so much more information, you have to make sure that that's being processed correctly. So for example,
00:21:55
Speaker
It pulls in all my PayPal information, it pulls in all my credit card information, Shopify, Stripe, like all these different things. And that's what I wanted to be clear.
00:22:05
Speaker
I didn't predict the outcome, which is something silly. Like if someone in our shop buys something on eBay and they use PayPal to check out, but when they use the PayPal to check out, it runs it through my business credit card. That creates like five transactions.
00:22:26
Speaker
because the credit card gets charged, that credit card charge creates an inbound of cashflow into PayPal. Then PayPal says, okay, now I've got money. Now I'm going to send that money out to the vendor. There's the invoice itself that was created. And it sounds like a nightmare. And the reality is that was by far the worst situation. So we actually changed that whole flow to get rid of that. Cause that's a ridiculous process. But what it is doing, which is finally what I wanted, which is taking invoices that are created from things like Shopify for sales or training stuff. And
00:22:56
Speaker
giving me the right reporting and data, tying into our actual accounting system. So it's giving me kind of a taste of what a proper ERP would be or something that was a much bigger system that would let you really
00:23:11
Speaker
I'm very happy I did this. And the
Shop Improvements & Future Planning
00:23:14
Speaker
thing that it does that QuickBooks tripped over to a fault, to an honest fault, was this idea of setting up automation and rules and intelligence. And it now knows
00:23:28
Speaker
I don't have to recode my utility bills each month. I don't have to reclassify sales. It pulls all that in and is intelligent about that. So now when I do like this morning, I started my transactions before our podcast and I have, I don't know, I have probably 17 transactions from yesterday and that will probably take me 45 seconds.
00:23:49
Speaker
Because I'm just confirming everything. Exactly. Honestly, you never tried QuickBooks Online, did you? I did not. To be clear, I did not. Because this sounds like Barry's doing our QuickBooks Online and he's a long school or old school legacy QuickBooks user.
00:24:08
Speaker
But what you're describing sounds exactly what he's reporting to me for what QuickBooks Online does. Now that being said, you have your aversion to QuickBooks, period. But no, it sounds like...
00:24:21
Speaker
we're getting similar results and he's thrilled by being able to do that. And he says same thing, like he'll go in, he'll update, it's tied into all of our credit cards, all of our PayPal, bank, all that stuff. And then you can see everything that happened. And then he's just confirming like, oh, this is that, this is that, oh, I got to relabel that.
00:24:39
Speaker
And exactly what you said before, between having that, and he's been doing a lot of Google Sheets, like an Excel inventory tracking, cost analysis, cashflow reporting, and all that stuff, but it's a very hand done. It's a little bit tied together, but it's given us the...
00:24:58
Speaker
the insight into what a true ERP system can do, right? So it's like, it tells you, oh yeah, this is good stuff. And we're just like tip of the iceberg kind of to what's out there, right? Yeah. So what are your current thoughts? What are your current thoughts on ERP? We don't need it right now. I'm actually super, super happy with what's going on right now. Kind of continuing the 2.0
00:25:25
Speaker
Chapter two. Chapter one was the first four years I moved back after a New York. And we have streamlined. We've cleaned up. We're cleaning up stuff in the shop. I want to go back. The laser has been friggin amazing. It makes you so happy to have that little
00:25:47
Speaker
improvements in a shop. I've been cleaning up more of my office. And I don't mean cleanup as in like dusting. I mean that. But I also I really mean like, hey, we're now in the business of this, like we really are focusing in. And I think the byproduct of that will be a move to the ERP, but honestly, like a year away. Yeah, just not that far.
00:26:10
Speaker
Oh, that's true too. I about fell over when something happened and I was like, didn't we just, or like even AU, we're closer to the next AU than we were like, or at the halfway point. And I was like, Oh my gosh, that's crazy. So what are you, are you thinking anything? I'm, it was recently brought to my attention and I got thinking a lot about it and I learned a lot about it over the past few weeks. And, um,
00:26:35
Speaker
One of the ERP guys reached out to me. I think he talked to you, Paul, at Pro Shop. I think it was. And so we've been chatting. We're going to have a phone call later this week, just so I can wrap my head around more about what it is, what it does, and all that. And the pricing, which is not on the website, all I've heard so far is it's not that bad. Yeah. So I told him that, though. I was like, it's a real turnoff to me that you are willing. Just period. I'm sorry. It is.
00:27:03
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I understand there's probably tiers and levels and modules that added up and all that stuff. But yeah, I told them, like, there's guys like me and you and Pearson who have, you know, three to six employees. And we've got these growing businesses and we're trying to stay on top of everything. And I'm like, oh, ERP is just, we're not big enough yet.
00:27:25
Speaker
It's sort of the perception I get from you, I get from him, I get from myself. And he said he got one of his clients as a four person shop, local to him. And they were in the running for manufacturing business of the year for the entire state.
00:27:41
Speaker
Uh, then because of, of pro shop, you know, um, so I'm just curious to look into it more if the costing is, uh, not ridiculous and is manageable. And if it'll do some crazy stuff, like I hope it will, then I'm looking into it, you know, I think, um, it would be sadly the most important purchase we ever made. Like, like your, your, so cost is almost not a factor in that sense. And if you look at it that way,
00:28:11
Speaker
And the one thing I have learned too is that I almost cannot contemplate going with somebody that's not one of the majors because we've already run into this with
00:28:27
Speaker
We have some ERP-like things when it comes to how we built the NYC CNC website using WordPress with all of these WordPress plugins. And you basically need to be using plugins and software and WordPress capabilities or partners that are
00:28:43
Speaker
that are key players that have the robustness because you need to be updating those. You need to be having the most recent reporting and merchant account interfaces. And so, for example, we had this problem where we wanted one of our plugins to accept Amazon Pay, our others do, and that wasn't an option. And to do that would have cost
00:29:03
Speaker
thousands of dollars in code, and it would have been custom. So there would have been no updating. It's basically not realistic. And my cursor review of some of the ERP systems that are more job shop focused is that they are much more
00:29:19
Speaker
It's cool that they can do things like integrate with tool libraries and CAM software. That's cool for sure. For me, I would look at the ERP benefits that you see out of the SAP level stuff where they're really going to tie into proper, whether it's in-house or third party, Salesforce or CRM stuff or marketing stuff or web stuff, because that's what it is to me. It's not just the internal operation side.
00:29:43
Speaker
Interesting, because I hadn't even thought about that level of it yet. That's what you need. Interesting. If the ERP were a closed, limited functionality, closed internal operational thing, I would just look at a turnkey package like that or build a little custom database that could do your, just like what Jay's done with the QR codes and inventory levels. And actually it is what MariTool literally did. It's not easy, but it's not that hard.
00:30:11
Speaker
But depending on how, depending on how involved this software or any like it actually are, like there's probably way more to it than we even understand at this point. Like remember, that's an H machine shop in SoCal. Yeah, they created their own. Yeah, I was thinking about that actually. Yeah. Yeah, but it doesn't have to do anything outside of you're not built by an ERP as a machine shop, you're buying an ERP as a effectively a dot com manufacturing company.
00:30:41
Speaker
if you want the benefits of that sort of functionality. You need the shipping, you need the web, the marketing, you will. Yeah. If you hired the best marketing person in the knife industry and said that you're going to be here for the next five or 10 years, they're absolutely going to tell you we need, because guess what? You're growing so nice, it has to grow beyond its current customer base, right? Yeah, for sure. You're going to get into that stuff.
00:31:12
Speaker
Yeah, I'll start doing some more research about that side of ERP systems, because I really know nothing about it. You even spat out some terms that I'd never heard of before, so. Like what? PC or something? I don't know. I don't know. OK. CRM, Customer Resource Management Service Force. Yeah. I forget. OK. But yeah. It's really cool. And actually, that's something I've been working on this week a lot is data.
00:31:39
Speaker
Yeah, we have all of this data from Shopify, from our online reports, even YouTube. And I'll be totally honest, I don't do anything with it. I haven't done anything with it. And I think I'm probably like most people that you just kind of you look at how much money you earn, how many subscribers you had or like kind of the silly stuff that is honestly a little bit dangerous to do or get in the habit of. And so
00:32:06
Speaker
we are now trying to use data to help make better decisions. So where are we getting views? Where are we getting watch time? Where are we making money? And just to start understanding that, which is super fun. I like
Data-Driven Decisions & Machining Experiments
00:32:23
Speaker
that. Yeah, like you said, we look at it every now and then and we're like, oh cool, that's that. And that's kind of the end of that story.
00:32:32
Speaker
But like little silly little things, like have you ever tried to look at what Grimsman knife example on your website has been clicked the most, right? Like pass number? Like, what does that tell us? You know, should we offer more in this?
00:32:46
Speaker
Yeah. Like why is that one popular? Um, it's different on a website than it is like, which video on YouTube has the most views because it's a totally different dynamic. Um, on a website, it's more closed. It's more like, well, why are people clicking on this one more? You know, why isn't always getting engagement? I don't know. Or just go to, I'll just do it right now. Go to Google and I'm going to type Grimsmo. So if you go to Grimsmo knives, have you ever looked at what the auto populate are?
00:33:18
Speaker
in Google? I don't know. Yeah. So this is a super, super, everyone should do this. That's an entrepreneur. You go to Grims and Knives and then just hit space. Like you're going to type in one more thing. It goes rask for sale, price, Norseman cost review, contact YouTube, Instagram. So this is what people are looking for for you. Right. Right. So that's stuff you've got to think about when it comes to how you build websites, make products available. Like it's what people care about seeing and learning and so forth.
00:33:48
Speaker
Anyway, nice. What else are you up to for the rest of the week? It's Tuesday today. I don't know. Machining some rich light. You ever heard of rich light? No, it is. I read about it before my trip, and then I got to reread about it. But my recollection is it is paper that has been
00:34:17
Speaker
somehow like epoxy sealed or somehow turned into like a laminate composite. So I think it's because of the adhesive or whatever the glue is that makes it stable because totally ironically I was reading this old school fixturing book like 1970s jig and template or jig and fixture book and it talks about using rich light as fixture material which is a bit odd and I think
00:34:45
Speaker
Don't quote me on this, but I think it's that epoxy that makes it impervious to liquids, which is quite unique for being a paper product. Anyway, this is just a Wednesday widget for a customer job, but we're going to use a compression cutter, which I've never used before, to try to cut that laminate and not have it chip away or tear. And then we're going to try to get some good surfacing recipes out of it, which we'll see how that goes.
00:35:11
Speaker
Yeah. And the knife world, they have a similar thing called micarta. And, uh, right. They make knife handles out of, and it's, it's either made of paper or jeans. Sometimes people like cut up jeans, jeans and make jeans, micarta. Um, but yeah, I've machined a little bit, a few inlays of it and it's, it's dusty. It smells pretty gross when you cut it. Um, but it's, it's so easy to cut. It's not even, Oh, really? Yeah. I've never even used one of those compression cutters.
00:35:40
Speaker
Oh, okay. That's good to know. It's not that bad. Can you make your own micarta? People do that? Oh yeah. People do like with not a lot of skill. It's like two-part epoxy and just layers and layers and squish it together. Yep. Okay. Okay. That's good. That's good to know. Yeah. The stuff seems hard. It doesn't seem like what I would think of. It almost looks like a Delrin from a few feet away. Really cool. Did you machine those knife 1000 handles, the mother of Pearl?
00:36:10
Speaker
I'm issuing the handles, not the pearl today. I was going to do it yesterday, but no, today's the day. Are you nervous? A little bit, but my friend Brad was saying it's his favorite material to work with, and he's like, it's not that hard. He's like, give it all the RPM you have and treat it like titanium. Still like 150 service heat or something? Well, like whatever, as much RPM as you can, but just go slow for the feed rate.
00:36:36
Speaker
So, but yeah, he's like, it's not as brittle as you think it is layered and it is chippy, but don't don't be afraid of it. And he says you can buff it and polish it afterwards really easily. So I'm looking forward. And I watched your blue tape fixturing video, which I loved because I'm like, this is genius. I've never heard of that idea. And then I told it to Brad. He's like, oh, I thought everybody knew that idea. Like, well, so we we like everybody has have done super glue before what Ed.
00:37:05
Speaker
brought to the table and Ed learned it from a guitar maker on YouTube somewhere. That's what Brad said too. Yeah, Brad learned it from a guitar maker. Okay. Is the tape and the tape makes it unbelievable because the work holding strength is or the work holding factor is increased massively for reasons I can't really explain, but also it means you don't have any super glue to remove. I know. It's just, it is, we now use it
00:37:32
Speaker
I mean, all the time. Wow. And the glue use is a thicker CA glue, right? Yeah. So what I... Go ahead. It's not like the super thin stuff, because I've got thin and medium here.
00:37:47
Speaker
So when we did that video, we were using a certain brand of Loctite. We since learned there's a better type. So if you just Google NYC CNC Super Glue, it'll take you to the NYC CNC page. And we have all the updated stuff on there. In fact, just yesterday, the tape came in. Somebody had sent us 3M makes a higher bond
00:38:11
Speaker
painters tape or masking tape, which works great for things like steel. So this is what I love about the NYC site is it lets us keep like the most up-to-date links and versions of what we're doing and learning. So that's the weakness of the blue painters tape is that sometimes on flood coolant or sometimes with certain materials, it seems to not do so well, but the other 3M version, it's not expensive, seems to, we have been told works better. Ours just came in yesterday, so we've got to test it.
00:38:40
Speaker
Yeah, it looks like that is the blue tape that I got when I got my 3D printer. Yeah. And honestly, that works fine for most things. Sweet. The workflow has changed. Literally, I walk up to the machines now and Ed or Jared, somebody has the mod vice holding either a piece of aluminum or MDF that's like semi sacrificial and then just painters tape for everything.
00:39:07
Speaker
That's awesome. I told it to Eric and Angelo and they're both like, uh, I don't know if that's going to work. And I'm like, no, seriously. Like, like John did torture testing and he had this block of aluminum and like couldn't make it lose. Have you had any fail? Uh, we've pushed the limits for sure. Um, he, so he will do it. And obviously you can build up heat and aluminum if you wail on it for two hours. Um,
00:39:34
Speaker
We haven't, let me put it this way, we haven't had anything fail that we thought, hey, this is good, there's enough surface area. For sure, we've pushed the limits, but that shear hug cut, I mean, that was three inches above the glue line, going 60 inches a minute with like a 0.15 inch step over, step down, eight thou for two, I mean, it was- With a single flute shear hug, that shear hug is not a gentle tool.
00:40:02
Speaker
Yep. That's awesome. Yeah. And with the, like I've been making inlays for our knives for the past four or five years or something, and there's always glue on the bottom of the part and I have to scrape it off or sand it off or whatever. It's a problem that those days are over.
00:40:16
Speaker
So next week's Wednesday widget is a Ren shape casting pattern. Super cool. It looks like a, looks like an anodizing dip rack. You'll see it. It's really cool. And same thing. We use the
Machinery Challenges & Solutions
00:40:28
Speaker
super glue trick, but it never would have worked. It was way too fragile if you didn't have the tape involved. That's awesome. I can't wait to start using it. Yep. It was, it was exciting.
00:40:40
Speaker
Nice. What else go on with you? So that's, that's today. We got one of those, um, next gen coolant coalescer. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's sort of a skimmer, but it's like a pump and it shoves all the coolant into this foamy lattice structure thing. And then it's supposed to like oil floats to the top and cooling goes to the bottom. Um, yeah, I know Ken got one at his shop and Amish got one and.
00:41:04
Speaker
I think you got one. Um, yeah. So we're in the process of installing it right now and it's, it's not been easy on the lathe just the way the coolant tank works and everything. And it's yeah, it's been tricky. So, uh, Angela's in the process of doing that yesterday and we'll finish it up today, but it looks really cool. It doesn't have to go explain it. It's not an inline, like it's not part of the flow. It can literally just be a, a loop.
00:41:30
Speaker
to and from your coolant tank anywhere, right? Correct. Yeah. OK. Yeah. So this lathe has a small cooling tank directly under the chuck area. And then it's got an auxiliary tank in the back. But all the whey oil is going into the main tank. So there's no point putting it in the auxiliary tank. Yeah. And just access to the main tank is not easy. So it'll be fine. Yep. Yeah. Looking forward to that. And.
00:41:56
Speaker
Do the inlays for knife a thousand today and then send it off to Eric and he can do all this stuff. We've been having trouble with the tormach surface grinder basically forever, but like it's passable, but the parts are never good enough. And I think we're all getting pickier as we get older in age, hence the lapping conversations and all that. So some astute observers might notice that for the past month, basically, we've only made acid etch knives.
00:42:25
Speaker
Ooh. OK. Because Eric will stonewash like surface grind and then stonewash and then it's not good enough. So either he has to surface grind again and stonewash again until it's good or just acid wash it, which hides, you know, just that last little five percent of ugliness. So he hasn't gotten an acceptable surface grind for the past month, basically. What's wrong?
00:42:47
Speaker
What's wrong with the machine or what's wrong with the part? So it's a, it's a belt, uh, one by 42 surface grinder and it's leaving streaks or lines or deeper sections or, and we've, you know, skim the wheel, we've dressed the chalk, we've done rebuilt the machine kind of thing. And it's, I don't know.
00:43:04
Speaker
It's annoying because I don't know where the problem is. I know what's happening, but I don't know how to fix it. But lapping just brings a whole different dynamic to it. Not only can we lap all the raw materials, but we can lap the finished blades for the final polish after heat treat, and then they're going to look better than they ever have before. So it's all exciting for all of us. So the workflow would be to ditch the service grinding and only lap? Yeah.
Precision Measurement & Technology
00:43:34
Speaker
Okay, got it. So we'd lap all the rough material coming in, then we do our machining, then we do our heat treating, and then it gets lapped again, the blades do after heat treat. Got it. And then there should be mirrors.
00:43:48
Speaker
Yeah, that is cool. Like that's what I would be. It's Tom Lipton and Robin Renzetti and a couple other guys have been kind of playing around with this hand lapping and building this sort of combination of metrology and precision tooling and surface finishes and flatness. And it's super, super cool to see all that happening. And this thought of like the thought of integrating that into a workflow like you're talking about is really cool.
00:44:15
Speaker
Yeah. And watching one of those guys measure flatness with light bands. Yes. Is insane. Or like, like Angela, what's that? Go ahead. Well, Angela was saying back in tool and die class, he they would surface grind parts and then you put them together and you look up at the light and what color the light is between the two parts shows how flat they are. So like blue light. Yeah, it's crazy. So yeah, the blue light is stupid flat.
00:44:45
Speaker
Whoa. Yeah. We bought some of those Russian optical flats off of eBay because I could not buy them. They weren't that expensive. What's frustrating is you need a monochromatic light source, I think. OK. So a helium light. Some people have done. Oh, that's not that bad. Oh, really? Oh, I don't know. A helium light doesn't sound that. I have no idea what it is. But I don't think you can buy it at Home Depot. Yeah.
00:45:16
Speaker
So, oh, the other thing is what you could do is you could turn all the lights off and you're like all the other lights and then use a laser pointer, like a $10 laser pointer. It's not really enough light and it's too focused. So people would diffuse it through a ping pong ball, but it becomes like just not like it's too amateur hour. But, um, yeah, watching Tom show that stuff is just, it's really cool. Really cool. Sweet.
00:45:42
Speaker
On the flip side, it's kind of like, wait, why do I, you know, because you're a nerd and you accept that. That's cool. I think the I like this idea of this is the finishes.
00:45:56
Speaker
And just the, I like this idea of process reliability. We were doing the right thing, which is we were making our mod vices, no problems whatsoever, but I really, really, really wanted to get a better surface finish on some of the faces, just because darn it, that's what we do. And so we kind of said, hey, stop, let's grab some scraps or blends or whatever, and let's just figure this out. And we started going through,
00:46:25
Speaker
checking the work holding, torques, torquing it down, surface footage, inserts, chipper tooth, feed rates, sock to leave, like all these variables. And darn it, we got it. And it was so much better. And it was so awesome. It was great.
00:46:40
Speaker
Um, but it was hard and I didn't like the fact that it was, I don't call it arbitrary, but there is no such thing as the answer. It's just what works. Whereas lapping, we've got an answer. Darn it. You know, it's like diamonds in this machine is going to just work. Yep. And then I realized I'm going to need a, um, uh, surface roughness tester over that's called again, a pro-fluometer. Right. Right. So that'll be on my wish list too. Um,
00:47:09
Speaker
Because you need to know what surface you're lapping to. You need a numerical value. I mean, you could look at it and be like, that's good enough. But I don't know. I would want to know. I would want to know exactly to the decimal what it is.
00:47:22
Speaker
Somebody sent us a super old Mitsutoyu surf test, and we plugged it in, and it does appear to work. But here's the funny thing. We went down to the Mitsutoyu field office two months ago to look at CMMs, and we actually had one of our plates checked, which was super cool, and it was a good result.
00:47:42
Speaker
But I was talking to the guys, I was like, help me understand who buys a roughness testers. Why? And it's funny because it seemed like the most obvious answer was people that don't want smooth surfaces. So they need enough texture leftover for oil ring grooves or oils, excuse me, oil surfaces or. I guess that makes sense when you really think about it. Right. Yeah. I just kind of thought, oh, that's funny. You need an RA to make sure you're not too good. Right.
00:48:11
Speaker
Well, and I've learned a lot that people will lap glass or like cell phone faces get lapped like the glass that the screen. Oh, really? Yeah. OK. On these mapping machines and you get a optically clear mirror polish using silly grit diamond and then roughness has that and you get a reading of zero and you're good to go. Have you ever watched the smarter every day on the Prince Rupert's drop?
00:48:39
Speaker
the bullet in the glass thing where he takes more takes molten glass drops it into water and it like instantly. Right. Cool. So apparently somehow that technology where the bullet basically cannot even shadow the glass. It's the traveling shockwave that goes back to the weak point. Remember this? Yeah. Apparently that's part of the technology behind the Gorilla Glass that Corning makes for Apple's iPhones.
00:49:09
Speaker
Really? Yeah.
00:49:12
Speaker
Weird. Okay. I don't, I don't know more than that other than that's what somebody said. And so I, it could be, uh, uh, internet rumor, but it kind of makes sense. Like, okay. They figured out how to make Prince Rupert drops in the form of right. Right. But there are also means there's like one super weak point, which is always the point I dropped my phone on. Yeah.
Closing Thoughts
00:49:36
Speaker
Oh, that's awesome. All right. Awesome. Shall we wrap it? We should have a good day. Big buddy crush it.
00:50:07
Speaker
You too. All right. Take care. See you. Bye.