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#360 Being too nice or too driven to your staff?
314 Plays8 months ago
TOPICS:
- Being too nice or too driven to your staff?
- Grimsmo's Willemin needs pneumatic work
- Solved the Horizontal chip sorting issue
- Cash management
- Exit interviews
- Repair parts process bins
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Transcript
Managing Stress and Work-Life Balance
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the Business of Machining, episode number 360. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. John and I talk each week to remind ourselves to have fun. Be good at what we do. Take pride in your work. Good stuff. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. I do think sometimes you've got to remind yourself to make sure you're enjoying this. Yes, exactly. Because the stress will get to you, absolutely.
00:00:28
Speaker
I still think back to that interview you had with Pearson where he's like, I was stressed last year twice. I was like, what? Like, huh?
00:00:36
Speaker
Oh yeah. Like that whole phrase that stresses a choice is there's a lot to unpack there. Exactly. And yeah. Even knowing that, even knowing, okay, I'm stressed right now. It's a choice I can make decisions. It doesn't change the fact that it happened, that it's like I'm feeling it, you know, I can go away from it. I can, you know, I can shift and like realize I'm stressed and like do something else to de-stress, but it still happens. It's a ways on you, like,
00:01:05
Speaker
We don't have small tiny little one man shop businesses anymore. There's a lot going on and it's an ever evolving thunderstorm of decisions.
00:01:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
Leadership and Personal Growth
00:01:17
Speaker
I've been fondly recollecting my childhood memories with my grandfather, who I think I've talked about him quite a bit over the time. But the predominant personality was very much a hard driving, very, very clear on what he expected, no BS kind of guy.
00:01:40
Speaker
But I realized that I was forgetting that there was a side of him that was crazy in like a fun way. Like, you know, smile, laugh, like just kind of crazy. Like, you know, and I- Playful. Yes, thank you. That's a good way to play it. And yeah, it's kind of reminded me, reminds me of yourself of like, yeah, you know, yes, you can be, you know, be exacting in your, and I'm hungry guy, like I've always been hungry and driven, but like also, you know,
00:02:10
Speaker
Be a little crazy. Yeah, and he found that balance, I guess, in his life that worked for him. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know either. That's kind of one of those things where you just don't know. I didn't know him. He had retired when I was an infant, so I only knew him as a retiree, but he was still – I'd run into people that worked for him.
00:02:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a source of inspiration for me that I don't know that I'll ever actually get to, but people will come up to me, you know, his grandkid or they'll come to my father and be like, Hey, I really appreciate like he set me straight, or he's what I needed. Or like, I liked working for him, even though it was not, you know, it wasn't a joyride. Let me tell you, like it was no, you know, Kumbaya. So
00:02:57
Speaker
That's funny. I was just thinking about a similar topic the other day on leadership and driving people to their potential kind of thing. And I'm not naturally that person. And I want to become a tiny bit more of that person so I can guide and direct and expect high standards of people around me. But I don't have it in me to go so hard nose, hard driving, to be mean about it.
00:03:24
Speaker
But I do want to have high expectations. And I do want everybody around me to level up and grow and continue to do their best. So I'm learning to push my own boundaries of what's acceptable. I'm not just everybody's friend. I'm here to run a business, to grow it. So my shy nature is fighting with my driven nature. And then who's going to win?
00:03:54
Speaker
I just kind of ran and I just switched to piano teachers. So I started taking three years ago and had this wonderfully sweet woman and I thought it was actually one of the hardest things I've had to do lately because of how much affection I had for her. She just was the kindest person.
00:04:13
Speaker
and affection like kindness. She was an older woman who was wonderful for me to help learning and helping our kids. So it was very uncomfortable to fire her, like to say, hey, we're going to start taking lessons from a different teacher. That stunk.
00:04:32
Speaker
it
Reevaluating Equipment and Resources
00:04:33
Speaker
was a thousand percent the right position. We're two months in with the new teacher and the new teacher still has that aspect of, you know, kindness. It's not a, you know, we're not professional musicians. We don't, you know, whatever, but pushing us harder in so many good ways. And it kind of reminds you of that aspect of leadership of like, um,
00:04:56
Speaker
I actually want to be pushed. I want to ask somebody who is willing to push me in. That's something we should reflect on for what we expect out of people today. Absolutely. I think the teacher's personality comes out in the way they lead.
00:05:15
Speaker
And I've seen it in a couple different ways, you know, different different styles, different leadership styles, whether it's coaching or teaching or educating or whatever. I've seen it in the kids teachers, I've seen it in extracurricular, you know, stuff. And like you said, it makes a big difference when somebody has the right balance, maybe just overbalance of pushing, but also doing it in a way that the student accepts and can, you know, like push the boundaries, but not drive them into the ground kind of thing.
00:05:48
Speaker
Okay. I made the realization this week that we're not using the UMC 350. It's still next door at the training building. I had planned on moving it over here when we sold the other machines because then we'll have a bigger forklift here and that's like perfect. We'll have it as a free spin R&D machine.
00:06:10
Speaker
That hasn't been needed. And I'm just realizing, no, John, stop. It's kind of that you either would... It's an investment philosophy of there's no such thing as truly holding a stock. You would either be willing to buy more of it because you like the valuation or you would be willing to sell it. It's a little bit of an exaggeration, but I don't need the UMC 350. We don't need it for anything we're doing.
00:06:34
Speaker
That was a snippet into my insight of realizing don't waffle in your like treat that as capital that's tied up, space that's tied up a machine that needs to be maintained. It's not key to what we do. So inadvertently, we're now selling
00:06:51
Speaker
all those machines, we actually now have pricing up over on our website, Sonnage Machine Works. They need to move, so if we're not being correct on our pricing, we'll start adjusting that accordingly. But the ST20 Y lathe and then the UMC 500 and the UMC 350, all with little hours, with the goal of, hey, let's do this. Gotta go.
Family Time and Learning from Experts
00:07:13
Speaker
I like it.
00:07:14
Speaker
We're also selling our scissor lift because I loved having one, but our shop is too crowded now to use. I was just wondering about that. If we were doing hours long work, you'd want it and we could rent one, but I realized you can safely use ladder to get where you need to get. In a few times a quarter, we do it. Same thing as another machine to maintain. That one I'll probably
00:07:41
Speaker
I'll put up locally on Craigslist or maybe we'll do it at the yard sale. I was like, no, John, get rid of it. That's been in my Lex maintenance to take care of the batteries and make sure it's trickle charged and we don't need it. Even to replace, have you had to replace an LED light?
00:07:58
Speaker
Sorry, that was my inverse pie example this morning. Yeah. I came in a few minutes early and was going to get a few things done, walked in and one of our LED lights was flickering, which at this point just means- For what, seven, eight years old, something like that? Yeah, exactly. And we now keep spares on hand and- Okay.
00:08:20
Speaker
I eventually think, oh boy, I've got to switch this out. In reality, it's so easy. Grab the ladder, kill the power, grab the couple of tools you need, get up there, undo one, pop in the other one, you're done. You could probably do it in under 10 minutes. Now, how are your ceilings?
00:08:39
Speaker
13 feet to where the light is. Oh, that's it? Yeah. The north are 18 feet. Okay. Yeah, that's a lot more. I wouldn't want to be up on the ladder touching the ceiling. That's high. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, interesting. And then Grant was like, hey, I really wanted to add a light here. And instead of adding it to the to-do list, it's like, yep, I actually did have to run out to Home Depot, grab a piece of MC cord, but all that was done by 9.30.
00:09:07
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What do you have to talk on your mind?
00:09:18
Speaker
I took the weekend off, which is rare. Meg, I forget if I mentioned it, but she's been getting into figure skating lately, which has been fantastic for her. There was a class taught in Ottawa, which is five hours away, by an ex-Olympian
00:09:41
Speaker
And she wanted to do one last summer. Couldn't make it for reasons. And then this one came up and she's like, let's go. Let's go for the weekend in Ottawa. So it's wonderful. I've never been to Ottawa. It's like the capital of Canada. It's where Parliament is. It's all Washington DC kind of thing. Super cool. Had an amazing time with the kids, you know, three days together. Went to some museums, art galleries.
00:10:05
Speaker
8 out of restaurants just spent a lot of really good time together. It was just wonderful. And Meg had an amazing time at the skating rink. And that's one of the teaching examples we were just talking about. She's got a local coach who kind of is not great for her. And then she goes, gets coached by this Olympian and 30 other people in the class. But she was like, holy cow, that's how it's supposed to be done.
00:10:25
Speaker
I was on my skates for four hours today. I've never done that before, but I learned so much. She had all these tips and tricks. At the end of the class, the kids and I were sitting in the stands watching her. I was listening to this Olympian. She's old now. She was an Olympian in the 80s.
00:10:46
Speaker
I was listening to her lecture the class on the finer points of figure skating. I don't know anything about figure skating, but I could hear the conviction in her voice and the experience and the way she engaged with everybody. I was like, damn, she's good. Hey, this is a family. No swearing, John. Sorry. Yeah, it was just wonderful. It was really cool. So it was a great weekend.
00:11:08
Speaker
There is something intoxicating around people that are just absolute rock stars in their respective fields. Yeah, exactly. The Olympics name is Liz Manley.
00:11:23
Speaker
And she was in the 88 Olympics. And the skating rink we were on is the Liz Manley Arena. And her face is up on the wall, like 20 feet tall. Oh, that's cool. So Meg got a picture next to her with her and with the background of the skater. So it's like, yeah, she's legit.
00:11:41
Speaker
And yeah, there's something intoxicating around being in that environment. And for Meg too, you know, we live a relatively quiet life to ourselves with our kids
Hobbies and Personal Fulfillment
00:11:50
Speaker
and stuff. But now she's in this environment with 30 other adults who want to be there and want to get better. And, you know, it was great. It was great. So it was really good to see. Yeah, it was fun.
00:12:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's cool. You need that stuff. What is your hobby, though? I don't really have a hobby. I have hobbies from my past, mountain biking and working on cars. When I was a kid, I was into RC airplanes and stuff, and I haven't really picked that up with the kids. I don't really do a thing. I work out. I do my own thing. I enjoy that, time to myself kind of thing.
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah, I've kind of been so focused on the business and the grown kids that and I'm totally okay with that. I don't even I don't even have friends like you're my closest friend like
00:12:39
Speaker
I'm cool with that. We live a quiet life, and I'm pretty happy with that. I get my outlet through work, through the career. All my free time is spent researching that and new techniques, and I love it. Watchmaking's been trickling into my hobby. Yeah, but that's going to turn from a hobby to a career before I know it, which is cool.
00:13:13
Speaker
on Friday, right before the trip, like an hour before I'm going home to go to the trip. I was like, let's fire up the Wilhelmin. I want to make this part.
Troubleshooting and Machine Maintenance
00:13:22
Speaker
I got it already programmed. It could take no time at all. And then so I go to do a tool change. And because the Wilhelmin has the two pie chart racks of tooling, it couldn't lift the gripper up to the second rack. I can tool change all day long tools on the lower rack, but it won't lift itself to go to the second rack. So I'm like, oh, no.
00:13:32
Speaker
That's fun. But let's see.
00:13:42
Speaker
some sort of pneumatic thing. There's an air hose busted or something, something. The cylinders are sticky or something. And it's been sitting for a couple of weeks unused. It worked great before that. But so I texted one of the Wilhelmin guys, and he suggested that it's air solenoid valve in the mechanical cabinet of the machine. And there's like 15 of them, 20 of them in a row. So I'm like, which one is it? And I said, it's this one. And so thinking about it all weekend, I didn't have time to do it.
00:14:11
Speaker
I'm away and I come back yesterday and I was like, okay, this is the one. How on earth do I remove this? Because I've never seen an air manifold solenoid like that before. It's like they're slotted together and they're all connected on a shared manifold and I'm like, how does this even come apart? I've never encountered something like this before, but look it up, find the manual.
00:14:33
Speaker
take the one off and realize that one of the three O-rings is in completely the wrong spot and was in completely the wrong spot. I'm like, that wasn't ceiling. Somebody else did that. Interesting. Okay. Then I took out the one that I needed to look at. All the O-rings were there. Wait.
00:14:54
Speaker
Is that the one that was missing? I think it was missing an O-ring. There were like two there, and the third one was actually missing. So I'm like, hmm, maybe that's your problem. Maybe it's not the solenoid itself. It's that it's not getting proper airflow.
00:15:06
Speaker
I'm like, did I drop it? I'm looking through everywhere I'm trying to find. I don't think I dropped it. I think it was just not there. It just happened to be working just enough until now. It was working before, right? It was working, yeah. It's never an issue before. Anyway, took it apart. It's got two little 24 volt solenoids. I go over to the power supply, put 24 volts on it, click, click, click. Solenoids were great. There's no actual mechanical moving parts.
00:15:31
Speaker
in the thing. I thought there'd be this long plunger. I could take it apart. I could re-grease the o-rings. It's an air solden. I don't know. It's interesting. It's cool. Instead of moving a big piston, it just moves a tiny little piston and lets air go through the solenoid. Some complicated Parker part. But it was neat. And then so I'm measuring the o-rings, trying to figure out what size o-rings to buy. McMaster has everything.
00:15:59
Speaker
And so I finally figured out it's a dash O13 O-ring and go into McMaster. This is what I love about McMaster. You go into the cart, you click, you know, okay, order I want to add to cart. It says, you ordered 200 of these in February, 2021. I was like, no way, I already looked through the whole shop. We don't have this O-ring. I didn't check the one drawer that I didn't check. And lo and behold, there's 193 whenever, like I used to color it. Holy cow, I have them. So that was awesome.
00:16:28
Speaker
So right after the podcast, that's my next step is to go put those O-rings in, make sure everything's sealed up tight. This is a good chance to go in and check them all and stage zero everything so that it's like, I don't have to worry about it again for another 20 years.
Optimizing Production and Efficiency
00:16:43
Speaker
Now's not the time to not do it well. And maybe that's the problem. Maybe it's not the actual solenoid itself. Maybe it just didn't have proper airflow to the point where it was kind of unhappy.
00:16:57
Speaker
I don't know fully yet, but I've learned a lot about this pneumatic system. I thought that was really cool. Yeah. Good. Should be good. Wait, what was the part you wanted to make? Two things I want to make. One is the final parts I need for the new knife, the button lock knife.
00:17:17
Speaker
So the bucket itself. And then I also want to make a, um, on the speedio, cause we're grinding, we have a little one inch grinding wheel that should be dressed every now and then against a, um, little metal rod. It looks like a quarter inch end mill, but it's made of molybdenum or something. I always forget what it's actually made of.
00:17:39
Speaker
The vendor won't actually tell me what it's made of. It's a dressing stick. Anyway, we currently don't have a way to auto dress that grinding wheel in the speedio because the way we're dressing is mostly wearing it evenly.
00:17:53
Speaker
OK. But there is developing a taper in the wheel, so I need a way to auto dress it. So I'm making this dressing mount that will mount that quarter inch rod sideways. And the table of our S500 video is packed. There is like. It looks packed, John. It is packed. There are barely any exposed T slots. So basically, I figured if I take a one inch diameter brass rod that's about four and a half inches long, I can squeeze it right beside the laser probe.
00:18:24
Speaker
and be able to mount the stick there. It won't affect anything else. It won't get in the way because I've got three different setups on there. It has to be globally acceptable for all combinations of fixtures. I think that's the solution. I designed that up and I want to make that on the wheelman real quick.
00:18:43
Speaker
Sounds like you could use a fixture plate where you have more work holding area outside of the machine travel that could actually help you do that. You pay for 20 by 40 inches. Don't put, when you can mount stuff outside of that, that then has the work area inside of it, that's a win.
00:19:02
Speaker
Yeah, I saw the most recent knife making Tuesday was that one where I saw more of the like, that brother is a sweet little machine, but it is little. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's a 19 inch wide by 15 inch deep like table.
00:19:19
Speaker
Did you not want the 700 or bigger? Or is it a space thing? Space thing, because it's squeezing between the current and the wall. Got it. And we had to move the current to be able to do it. And I didn't want the current to eat up too much pathway. And I just didn't really need the 700. And I'm pretty confident in that decision. The 500's been great. If I were to get another one, depending on what I exactly wanted to use it for. But the 500's been awesome. I'd consider the 300, actually.
00:19:49
Speaker
Depending on the setup, right? Dennis has a bunch of them. The S300 or the MX thing? Oh, I didn't know that. Even smaller? It's like the phone booth. OK. Robo drills, you know? Got it. It's like literally, I don't know, four feet wide. Yeah. I think mine's five feet wide. So yeah. So relevant topic is, in a backward way, I think I saw our horizontal chips already in the shoe. Interesting.
00:20:20
Speaker
which is we're not going to do it. Before I go down that rabbit hole, the suggestion we got it from a viewer, which is actually an interestingly excellent possibility, was to put a paddle wheel or a rotating, what do you call it? A water wheel that has little buckets that rotates around.
00:20:41
Speaker
I'm not vouching for this system, but I think it's a key piece of the system that could work well. So, chips fall out of the conveyor onto that wagon wheel or the wheel that's rotating. The linkage rotation could be linked to the conveyor itself, so you don't need to add a motor. It keeps it simple. And then
00:20:58
Speaker
a camera or Hall effect sensor or some combination of things like that could then look at what's in that bucket. And then just choose which way whether to dump it like a little air valve could open up a shoot that moves aluminum to aluminum to COCO. Again, I think that's interesting. But what I realized is
00:21:20
Speaker
to just try to take a step back and look at what we're trying to do. We have enough demand and enough growth to just separate them. My resistance before was I didn't want to purchase a second horizontal. It's a big, physically big machine. It's a big capital project. It's a lot of onboarding with tooling and tombstones and all that, even if we have some pictures ready to go. It's just a lot.
00:21:48
Speaker
But then I realized, wait a minute, this system could work really well. So the plan is, I need to do a little more research, but I honestly don't think it's going to be a long debated decision to buy an R650 brother. Yeah. There's other twin pallet machines. So I'm not like, I guess I can look into it, but kind of the same thing. I'm like, so many people, we don't have brothers. And I don't love having other control, but
00:22:14
Speaker
I'm also oddly just okay with this because they're good machines and they have a, the R650 is the would let us have with puck chucks on it, which is actually very similar to how CJ runs his with puck chucks.
00:22:29
Speaker
We can have our higher volume stuff running regularly on it. And then when we need to run those oddballs, you just drop the puck chuck power on there with no stress, no hassle. The R650 comes with a 40 tool option. All of our aluminum programs total are just under 30 tools right now. Perfect. So that gives us all we need to do with some growth. And now the downside is that it won't really run after hours or lights out, if you will, because it's an attended machine.
00:22:58
Speaker
I'm okay with that for the next year plus. And if we really outgrow it, then I'll sell it and buy horizontal or something. But they're not, quote unquote, that expensive. And we could move a lot. Probably half the price of a horizontal sell, I'm guessing. Probably, yeah. It depends on which horizontal you get.
00:23:17
Speaker
It's just simple. We know how to run them, machines like that, and they're fast. And like Softdells are probably the highest volume aluminum product we make. And so, hey, you got two Softdells you'd have one on each table. Some of our other products you may run AB parts on table one, table two. But Softdells, okay, we need to run Softdells one day, you just drop that fixture on there while one's running, you can reload the other one, probably get some
00:23:44
Speaker
I might even look into some automated clamping for the actual material clamping instead of having to do screw clamping. And it'll just crank, like it'll crank. Do you currently make soft jaws and aluminum things on the horizontal? We do, yeah. So you get to load it offline, you get to schedule it, not have to be there kind of thing, but you're still limited by amount of pallet faces at one time, right?
00:24:09
Speaker
Yeah, so until January 1st of this year, we ran everything overnight with mixed material. And it's for sure kind of a crummy thing to think about making six figure capital decisions just because of material sorting. But the reality is, our scrap is worth five figures a year. And this frees up
00:24:30
Speaker
horizontal tubes and faces to run more steel, which we have the demand and growth for. And right now, it's just not good because we're running a lot of steel stuff during the day and night. And if we need a aluminum thing, it's actually become disruptive. It clicked. It just makes sense. It's like, hey, let's run. The machine's too busy.
00:24:52
Speaker
And we could sell our DT2 that's an aluminum dedicated machine, but I think I'll actually leave it for now, especially because it can dedicate to the aluminum fixture plates, the smaller hobby ones. And then this brother will just run, you know, hobby mod vices, aluminum soft shawls, the shimp torques valve covers, time machine covers that we're going through the Porsche stuff. Like it'll just go. Are there, I was wondering, are there any, um, if you're currently running parts in the horizontal where the chips just fall down to the ground, will that be an issue on a three axis, like flat machine?
00:25:22
Speaker
I haven't done any scientific research. I mean, for sure there's gravity-assisted chip evacuation on a horizontal, but we don't have a problem on all of the verticals we have either with this. I'm thinking for those valve covers, you must remove a ton of material. We do. Don't worry about it. Yeah? Yeah, no. Don't worry about it. I guess I imagined the valve cover at the inside being a bathtub.
00:25:43
Speaker
It is, but we drill. One of the first things we do when we make those on the ones that have through holes is blow holes through to create a flow. Okay. Otherwise you just blast. I mean, cool. And I'll just blast it out. I'm not worried. Yeah, it's fine. And frankly, as much as there's an advantage of that on a horizontal, this horizontal has a huge disadvantage of loading parts on a vertical surface.
00:26:06
Speaker
It's to be a real thing in the butt. Yeah. From a weight thing, like if it's a heavier chunk of material or I've never done it.
00:26:14
Speaker
So, yeah, I mean, it's not so much the way it's more that you have to keep a hand on it, or we've designed fixtures that now have those little toggle buttons that will hold the material in place until you clamp it. And they will fall off when you take them off. You just have to be, you know, once you've done it for a month or a year, you realize, okay, I know how to unload a horizontal or load a horizontal. Yeah. But it's not maybe the most intuitive thing right off the bat, kind of.
00:26:42
Speaker
Yeah, you just drop parts. Yeah, interesting.
00:26:49
Speaker
Yeah, like our current tombstones, I mean, they're seven inches tall. But if you try to load them in the aero rack vertically, yes, parts will fall off. But the parts weigh like six ounces. So when we take the whole tombstone out, put it in the misfit or the blow box. We just lay it over on the side. Like our tombstones are small enough. We can pick it up, lay it on the side, and load parts horizontally.
Financial Strategies and Cash Flow Management
00:27:14
Speaker
Can't really do that with a big horizontal machine. No.
00:27:18
Speaker
Yeah, and like your, you know, pit bulls are always like they you have to lift them up with the part to like get them to bite correctly. And okay, there's just very different behavior. Then you take for granted what it's like to have a three axis flat table. Yeah, good problem to have still love. Yeah, love that machine.
00:27:36
Speaker
Well, that's what's funny in, okay, this is an interesting thing in both of our situations. So we bought a big, super expensive Kern to do everything. And you bought a big, super expensive horizontal to do everything. Yeah. And now like we got a speedio to supplement and you're thinking about getting a speedio to supplement. It's funny.
00:27:57
Speaker
I that thought did occur to me and I for some reason feel inclined to apology like I'm copying you. But it's not just like it's not just that it's like this is the right thing. Like, like there is no one size fits all and it honestly sucks to have the current so booked up that we can't squeeze stuff in or like, like grinding blades right now and speedos doing all the blade grinding and it's taking many, many hours a day off the current and getting us a steady flow of grinding blades. Whereas before it would only run like at night or in the day, you know,
00:28:27
Speaker
at weird times so we couldn't, you know, you couldn't just squeeze one in and rely on it because the current's in the middle of a five-hour cycle. Yeah. And not only does it free up growth capacity on the horizontal and the ability to run concurrent parts throughout the day, it's also the speedio, we'll get the 16K spindle and I will run the aluminum at 15K or something all day long. The horizontal, I'm a little bit more
00:28:55
Speaker
I don't want to burn that spindle out through hierarchy and stupid work. Exactly. Same on the current. It's got 42,000 RPM. I've learned to not live at 42,000 RPM. 30 is a good number, and 30 is still a lot. And yes, you can bump up to 42 for short stints. And yet some people like Mike at military, he's got his step tech spindles on the GF machines. He's like, oh, we've got a job that ran at 42,000 RPM for 26 hours straight.
00:29:22
Speaker
Really? Yeah. I'm like, oh my gosh. Yeah. Anyway. But yeah, this video, I'm very happy with the 16K spindle. Obviously, in aluminum, you'll probably be maxing it a lot, but I max it a lot. I do all the grinding at 16K. Most video owners I know, they're like, peg it, run it at red line, don't care.
00:29:43
Speaker
What I've heard is a spindle can be purchased and replaced for well under 10K. Again, not that that's willy-nilly, but if I blew my horizontal spindle because of doing stupid aluminum work, I would be a mid-five figure expense that would be silly.
00:30:04
Speaker
Yep. And then the machine's down. Like we've had to replace the spindle on the current and it's, uh, gosh, I forget what it costs. 30 grand, 40 grand, something like that. 50. Yeah. Like, like too much, like a scary amount. Um, I guess I've blocked it from my memory, but yeah. Well, on that note too, that's something I'm been more, um,
00:30:26
Speaker
I don't want to say struggling with, but conscious of is our own cash management. What's changed is just general growth of the business. What's the cash for breakfast?
00:30:41
Speaker
Yeah, there's more volatility. We have more accounts receivable than ever, although we do a good job at keeping most of our net 30 on track. But nevertheless, managing receivables, payables, we do put a lot of items that we can on our credit card and just pay it off immediately. But that's also another up and down thing. And then
00:31:06
Speaker
It didn't used to be that you could earn any interest, so it didn't really matter if I kept an amount in our checking account. But right now, if I keep two months worth of just general operating cash in a checking account, well, across the course of a year, that's now become thousands of dollars in interest, which you don't let a small amount of interest earnings make big decisions. But I also just don't want to leave free money on the table.
00:31:35
Speaker
I actually had lunch with a banking buddy just for fun the other day. I was asking, how do bigger companies do this? My understanding wasn't really his department was that they have zero balance checking accounts. If you're University of Ottawa that has
00:31:54
Speaker
payroll of 300 grand every two weeks. You don't just leave millions of dollars in a checking account. This is John Saunders assuming this. He was correct. Your banking relationship would handle this so you would have a larger money market fund that may earn interest and have bigger amounts and then you'll have dedicated
00:32:16
Speaker
dedicated checking accounts that have zero balance in them. One would be for payroll, one would maybe for vendors, one may be for loan payments for building projects. Then when you pay out of those checking accounts, the bank automatically sweeps cash from the money market into those. What? Yeah. It's all automatic.
00:32:36
Speaker
Interesting. When you said zero balance, I didn't know if you meant basically enough to cover the next expenses or actually zero. Interesting.
00:32:49
Speaker
I've definitely wondered and thought about that too and I've talked to my accountant about it briefly a bunch of times. If a company is doing extremely well and you have hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars just kicking around, you have many options. You can pull it out as owners and be like, sweet, that's my money now. Or you can keep it as operating expense or does it just sit in the pool
00:33:09
Speaker
Or do you keep whatever hundreds of thousands you need for operating expense as your day to day and then anything extra you can invest as the company, all these options. But I never really heard about the zero balance. I don't know if it's an option here, but if you don't ask, you don't get. Is this one of those bigger company secrets that us little guys don't know about yet?
00:33:32
Speaker
Well, I just think it's not like I find this fascinating, but it's not that it's not the kind of stuff people talk about at the Friday night get together, you know, a friend. Yeah.
00:33:42
Speaker
In my brief time working in banking, a little bit different stuff, but I knew about this sort of thing because they also then bolt on lines of credit. Basically, you have a big company, $2 million in this money market, and for whatever reason, if you overdraft it, it just triggers a line of credit. It's a complete non-event. There's some interest on that.
00:34:03
Speaker
It's a totally different way of, because I was like, if you're a school and you get, you know, $10 million of tuition checks in August or whatever, it's not like your controller is sitting there on online banking, moving like, you know, moving transfers every two weeks. I mean, there is cash forecasting management, but it happens at a much more sophisticated level,
Feedback and Improvement from Exit Interviews
00:34:22
Speaker
I think. Interesting. Interesting. That's cool.
00:34:29
Speaker
Yeah. If you learn anything, let me know. I asked him if he thought we were a bright fit for that. And he's like, yeah, you guys could do it. He's like, there are fees associated with it. And I don't really need it right now.
00:34:44
Speaker
But that's a classic example of where sometimes I make mistakes of like, I don't want to pay $20 or whatever the fees are, $50 a month in banking fees, but I might be leaving five grand a year on interest on the table. That's stupid, John. And I'm sure there's a turning point where if you have 50 grand to play, that's not going to work. But if you have 500 grand to play, that's where it flips or whatever. We've looked into GICs, which is that a Canadian thing?
00:35:15
Speaker
Government insured something? I don't know. It's an investment account that we could take a portion of money. I think you could buy a GIC. I don't know enough about this. But basically, you're taking a portion of money, you lock it in for a minimum of three months, make some interest on it. If you want to pull it out, there's penalties, things like that. But that's not nearly what you're talking about. Got it. Interesting. Yeah, GIC is the Canadian government's national pension.
00:35:42
Speaker
Or I only know it's because my buddy works for their real estate in New York, which works for GIC, which is investing it like the Canadian teachers pension or whatever. Or maybe it's a generalized term for what else?
00:36:02
Speaker
So a couple weeks or I guess last week Pierre officially moved back to France and just before that Angela and I sat down with him and we did an exit interview.
00:36:15
Speaker
Oh, yeah? Which was, I mean, he's leaving on good terms. Canada is basically kicking him out. He's like, I'd love to work here for my life if I could, but that's okay. His visa is expired, like whatever. And he wants to go back to Europe. So all good. But it was really interesting. Like, exit interviews, we've done a couple of them. And this was obviously the best one because he's leaving a good place. I'm super happy about it. Sad, but
00:36:40
Speaker
It was good to pick his brain not only like what did you enjoy about your experience here but what did you. Notice what what would you change you know what what could we do to improve kind of thing like like now you have no stake in the game. Tell me the real truth like it's like it was great so we sat down for about an hour to.
00:37:02
Speaker
and really had a wonderful conversation. And one thing he said kind of sheepishly, he's like, something I've noticed is that, you know, sometimes things take a long time to accomplish in this company, whether it's, you know, in the Wilhelmin being full online or selling the UMAX or big plan, things like that, new products. And I'm like, yeah, that's true. And that is definitely something we could improve on, especially as we spread the load across the company, less just on my plate kind of thing.
00:37:32
Speaker
Yeah, that was a neat little insight. We had a bunch of those little cool things. It was really good. I'm glad you did that. I commend you. To really ask for what you want to hear can be hard.
00:37:43
Speaker
Yep. Yep. Um, it just can't to do it in the safe space. Um, like a couple of years ago, we had one employee who was commuting an hour and a half each way to be here willingly, but, um, he, he wanted to move home and he, or he wanted to work close to home and, you know, be closer to his kids and things like that. So, you know, kind of a sad situation for him. Um, but we had an exit interview with him and it was also really enlightening and interesting. Um,
00:38:11
Speaker
And it's good, like our accountant Spencer is good corporate in that regard. He's like, we're going to do this. He's also kind of HR right now, which is not his forte, but he's willing to do it. And he's really good about organizing it.
Balancing Ambition with Realism
00:38:27
Speaker
When we interview new employees, he's got it all scripted out and all laid out and all the questions. And that's really helpful for me because otherwise I'm just loosey goosey everything. And that's not sustainable.
00:38:39
Speaker
the thing I've tried to keep coming back to and I hope it's working, but I...
00:38:46
Speaker
would want to keep an open mind, just kind of like reminding everybody here, like, I'm here because I want to do this. Like, I enjoy this. I want to make it kind of goes back to full circle to begin this conversation about like, I have a lot of hunger and drive in me, but it's also like, hey, we're having fun. Yeah. But you also, you know, you don't, you don't get what you don't ask for. And I don't, I can't, I can't. You, this is like a statement, not a command, if that makes sense.
00:39:16
Speaker
You can't get mad if you don't give me the chance to fix something. I can't fix something if I don't know that. Maybe there's signs where I should have known or should have been aware of it. That's fair. Generally speaking, hey, small company, at least give me the chance to fix it if something's wrong. Yep. We've had that too where some festers and I don't know about it until way too late. I was like, I could have fixed this three months ago, but nobody brought it up and you just lived with it and were unhappy for a while.
00:39:43
Speaker
No, we're a small company. We have the ability to pivot and change it. And I'm not going to apologize for being driven and pushing somebody. But if there's something I can do, let me know. Right. I've enjoyed the kind of
00:40:02
Speaker
keeping each other competitively motivated as friends of like, you know, that's kind of why, like, I don't really care what you do with the you mock Sean, but like, get him, get him gone. Like, you know, and it's mostly, I'm just ignoring the problem. That's the reality of it. Right. Um, but you're right. And then the guys want it. And that's a festering problem that I'm pretending is not there. You know, I think of, um,
00:40:29
Speaker
I like a weird example about like, trying to make sure we treat the time we're doing this kind of like, you know, living in the present and getting making stuff happen, but maybe you can't abscond on the need to handle the stuff that's not always fun. It's why I've been so
00:40:46
Speaker
I feel like boringly vocal about the need to overhaul the shop. Get rid of the equipment we don't want, right? That's why the brother is such a no-brainer.
Process and Precision in Manufacturing
00:40:54
Speaker
He's like, nope, I know exactly how we're going to run that machine done. It's actually incredibly eye-opening to observe your commitment and your ability to pivot, both in the podcast and then privately as friends.
00:41:09
Speaker
And whether you're spending countless hours crunching this over your head before you open your mouth to anybody about this so that you're prepared, or whether you're a bit quicker to share your thoughts, either way, you seem very convinced at your ability to pivot. And I like that. I think that's admirable because I spend way too much time thinking about this and obsessing and hyper obsessing and not making any decisions, especially big capital decisions. Yeah.
00:41:38
Speaker
And maybe I could have done it sooner, maybe I couldn't, I don't know, but it's cool. Thank you. I think my, I almost have become this way as a.
00:41:46
Speaker
intentional counter to being too over analytical. Training class, that stinks. I was just convinced, what a great guy, great teacher, moved to Arizona. I can't find a teacher. I'm not going to overthink this. I don't want to spend a bunch of time at risk, reputation risk, hiring risk, about trying to find somebody to come run those classes. It's a very unique skill set.
00:42:08
Speaker
I mean, I am bummed. I would have loved to keep doing the classes, but I quickly realized, for now, at least you can always start again later. I enjoyed it on a personal level because it checked a lot of boxes and that felt like it was profitable and it was a good deal. It was a good thing to put forward and say engage, except
00:42:30
Speaker
I can't be everything to everybody and I can't put that program together and run it. I can't. Okay, move on. Two things on that. I literally told my wife yesterday, I was like, I've realized I can't be all things to all people at all times and that's okay.
00:42:49
Speaker
And I wish I could, but pick your battles. Be present where you're present. Give your full effort where you can. Make sure everybody's getting love. But it can't be all things at all times to all people. And the second thing is I'm mildly bummed because I wish I would have sent some guys to your training class. And I thought about it for years. And I was like, ah, it's a lot. And blah, blah, blah. And I probably should have. Sorry. But yeah, that's fine. That's fine. Sorry.
00:43:19
Speaker
However, two of those guys are probably coming down to the event. This is awesome. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm going to try to get some stuff organized because I want to have a little display table to start showing on Instagram. Like, hey, this is kind of like the feel for the stuff we're going to be getting. Yeah, yeah, that'd be good. A little vibe check so everybody knows what to expect. Yeah, yeah. Sweet. What do you do today?
00:43:44
Speaker
today using those newfound O-rings. I uncovered in a drawer. I'm so happy about and it made me realize like what would Saunders do? He would take every O-ring in the shop and he would put them in the same drawer and label that drawer. And I've got them in like four locations and it took me a while and I missed the drawer, right? Like no, no, no. They need to all be in the same spot. So do that and then see if I can get the Wilhelmin put back together. If so, then I'll make the dressing stick mount and then also start working on the button.
00:44:15
Speaker
I would nudge you to make a Wilhelmin repair parts process bin. Yes, I like that. Can you elaborate on that briefly? On something like that?
00:44:30
Speaker
I would make it as a repair parts bin and not just a general machine bin, because this is different, like repair parts are different. So as you start to see, hey, print out emails or even screenshot of texts that you're having with the service tech, that can be a good trigger and fuses and the part number for when you order a repair, you know, solenoid off eBay or whatever. And then those those rings with the McMaster number on them. You don't want to clutter it up, but
00:45:00
Speaker
If that Wilhelmin is kind to you over the next 5, 10 years, you know what's going to happen? The same thing. Yeah, more stuff is going to go wrong. Yeah. Well, literally, the exact same like an O-ring is going to get cracked or crushed. Yeah. And it's got all these regulators with the plastic filter bowls. And they tend to crack and leak air. And that was one of the other problems. It's like, I'm here to replace this olimide. Oh, that air bowl is leaking too. Well, let me start there first. Took that whole thing apart to get out.
00:45:28
Speaker
actually ended up having a replacement bowl, but hidden in the shelf of Willeman junk. It took me a while. After looking online, after finding a replacement, after, I was like, let me check that bottom shelf again. Lo and behold, we already had an extra one. It was old, pulled out of the machine and previously replaced with a new one, but it was still in good shape. So I was like, sweet. If that were in a process bin, that whole process would have taken an hour off my day yesterday.
00:45:58
Speaker
I'll do that today. I'll just start. I have the bins. I'll just start consolidating. I like it and I really like print out texts, print out email correspondence because like me as the guy in charge of that machine right now, I have access to my emails. I have access to my text. I know I texted with Marcus at that time about that thing, but
00:46:21
Speaker
that doesn't work for the next guy. Oh, and it's just such a for me, it's like cheating the system because when I am frustrated or stressed because something goes wrong. Yeah, totally. When I when I find that I printed out the replacement filter, Amazon link or McMaster link, you just it's just that little kickstart I need to remind myself like no, like you got this, you're good. Like I already remind myself, this is how I go order that and then it just feels
00:46:47
Speaker
It's just awesome. You're prepared. And it feels good to be prepared. It's like, I'm ready for this. This is not an issue, a stress issue anymore. I like that. All right, I'll do that today. What are you up to today? I am. I actually don't even know. I did those lights. I got like a laundry list of little stuff. Actually, honestly, looking at some of the Brother footprint layouts. I have a burr on our Gen 3 smooth inserts. Gen 3 vices are for sale, by the way. Sick.
00:47:17
Speaker
We're going to do more of a firm announcement in March, but we are technically selling them there on the website. And the smooth insert, so all the Gen 3 mod devices come with a smooth insert. They used to buy an optional add-on reversible. That's a smooth insert, like a traditional vice jaw, if you will. And then the castle grips, which are our kind of version of a biting style talent grip, are an option to add on.
00:47:44
Speaker
The smooths have a tiniest little, it's either a drill burr or a chamfer burr. So it's probably a quick fix. But I want to look at what's causing that.
00:47:58
Speaker
Oh, press fit tolerances, we're refining our press fit interference, interference fit notes, because it's one of those weird things where it's we have a range. So you don't want to be like forcing it into a certain like one tenths range. But boy, the press fit, you don't know how much you guys do any of that stuff like having research did a bunch, but we don't do it a lot.
00:48:23
Speaker
Pressing in with a three-tenths interference, it feels great. Pressing in with a nine-tenths interference feels like you're trying to move the world. Yup. I can imagine that. Yup. Thinking about how we deal with the fact that tools will wear, I don't really care. Do we wear comp-it? Do we fusion comp-it? Whatever. Yup. Yup.
00:48:45
Speaker
I've pressed in pins into room holes like that you know a solid handful of times and it seems like if you if you do it wrong they always go in crooked.
00:48:57
Speaker
Do you have that? Nope, because we do a couple of things. We have enough room in the part to actually machine in a guide. Yeah. So it's 501 for the first hundredth hour or something. Got it. And then we have 3D printed jigs and help support and align the part. Those will probably get moved to hardened steel, but 3D printing
00:49:22
Speaker
It's actually funny 3D printing works really well as quick dirty and also won't ever mar the part. I've been thinking about moving to some hardened things where you have a semi sacrificial 3D printed jackets that you just throw away every month and replace because you get the strength from the hardened seal part or then maybe not have to be hardened if it's in a jacket like that, but then you get the cushion of a thin 3D printed shell. Love it.
00:49:47
Speaker
Yeah. Every time I press in a pin like that, I'm like, man, I wish I had this little guide that would just help this thing going straight. That would make it perfect. Yeah. Cool. It also is great because those also control the press depth. Interesting. You don't bottom them out, I guess. These know they're left deliberately proud.
Conclusion and Future Plans
00:50:07
Speaker
Interesting. No, but at the bottom of the hole, like push to the bottom. Yeah.
00:50:14
Speaker
Cool. Cool. I'll see you next week. All right. Have a good week. Bye.