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#339 Grimsmo crashed the Speedio
350 Plays2 years ago
TOPICS:
- Grimsmo crashed the Speedio
- Saunders is surface grinding!
- My dream job
- Willemin U axis errors at SMW
- How do you manage all the tasks and projects?
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Transcript
Introduction to the Business of Machining
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, episode 339. My name is John Rimsmo. My name is John Saunders. And this is the weekly podcast where John and John talk about their manufacturing adventures and the ups and downs and broken tools and crashed fixtures of running a machine shop.
Fixture Incident and Learning from Mistakes
00:00:17
Speaker
Oh, no, not a bad thing. Just on this video, I thought I'd be a little clever. And instead of in the toolpath selecting selected contour, I'd like, you know, bottom of part.
00:00:32
Speaker
you know, bottom of model, basically, model bottom. And it turns out my model has a hidden body that is deeper than all the rest of them. Oh, that stinks. And I was like, oh, no. So I dug into my fixture by a good quarter inch into my vacuum fixture on the speedio and whatever. That happened about eight minutes ago. Oh, I'm sorry. So I'm still like, like, calming down from that.
Standardization and Depth Control
00:01:03
Speaker
Yeah, because making these carbon fiber inlays in the model, it's just a thin 70,000 thick part. But with each toolpath might choose the top face, like the top line around the outside or some might choose the bottom and I was kind of flip-flopping back and forth. And I'm like, let's standardize everything chooses the top face. And then you instead of saying select a country, you go model bottom or model top or whatever. And I yeah, I didn't check my work.
00:01:30
Speaker
No, but I don't notice anybody else. It's unreasonable to be like, okay, you should simulate the whole thing and make sure that doesn't gouge. Yeah, and literally like doing a side view, which I did afterwards, where you could see the height of every tool pad and you're like, oh, those are way too deep.
CAM Software Complexities and Risks
00:01:50
Speaker
I didn't do that.
00:01:52
Speaker
Fusion could do a better job at, well, first off, there's like two different worlds of height plan selection. Some of them are more manual and some of them are more, you know, metric-y. Like if you have an offset from a selected contour, intrinsically, when you pick that contour, you're kind of
00:02:09
Speaker
offering some guidance on where the depth should be, whereas things like model bottom or below stock. Well, good grief, I might change the stock later for some reason and not realize that a bunch of cam operations were driven off of that. And of course, parametrically, I see the value, but it's also scary. Yep. And honestly, I didn't even hit simulate because I thought it would work. Yeah.
00:02:39
Speaker
It'd be great to have a better comparison table. Maybe I'm asking for too much here, but like show me where each hyping will be on my actual part because this coincidentally came up with us on the reversible inserts that we make where
00:02:55
Speaker
It's a rectangular shaped part. It's like an elongated talon grip, for lack of a better description. So approximately half inch wide by four inches long by 0.3 inches thick. And we actually make them from round bars, way better to make them from round. And we are really particular about how we cut each one.
00:03:15
Speaker
into a round bar stick is 17 inches and it makes four of them. In the OP-1 fixture when it's almost done or done, we have slotted those all the way through or some of them were leaving 10 thou or 15 thou as a snip off section. And I care about that depth to where I want to be very particular. I can't remember what exactly it was but
00:03:40
Speaker
Um, that was another example where like, I just didn't trust stock bottom. I was like, I'm going to control it with like an actual offset from model top. So I can kind of measure it and see what it's actually doing.
Delegation and Hiring Decisions
00:03:56
Speaker
You know, I got to look through my design and figure out which model would, which body is lower than all the rest. Cause I'm trying to do that container method that Lockwood likes to use where it's like you have your part folder.
00:04:10
Speaker
and all the parts are in there. And I'm also using, because I'm making multiple in this, I'm using the arrange feature where it's automatically copying and fitting them into my stock square. But one of them is deeper than the other. Can you repair the fixture? Yes, I'm able to just sand it down and it looks dumb now. It's not dead. Okay. It's just an ideal.
00:04:37
Speaker
Because it's like, could you take it or don't laugh? It's not that bad. JB welded. Yeah, right. Totally serviceable. There's a shape of an inlay in it now. I'll stone it flat and it'll be fine. Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah, that's fine. This is how we learn. But it does make me
00:04:57
Speaker
hesitate to have more people do this kind of work in my shop? I don't know. Exact wrong approach, Sean. I know. OK, talk me out of it. Because I want that. That's my goal. Actually, I see what the problem is now. Yeah. I mean, look, I'm going to talk you out of this from the perspective of like, you know, I'm not saying it's easy, really, with you. But like, I think the way we should think about our businesses is
00:05:27
Speaker
And this is just the best way for me to sort of form that mindset is you have this like 10 million dollar scenario and you just are like, hey, I'm gonna hire, you know, Joe, Bob, Rob, Phil, like, you know, these like just fictitious people that are seasoned, capable of machinists and then leave them alone. Like, and that's something. Yeah, and like, but not like, even like,
00:05:56
Speaker
talking out loud here like there's one scenario is like hey you hire somebody who's smart maybe use fusion 3d printing but like you're gonna teach them along the way and like I part of me loves that idea really gives you that chance to mold and craft them but then the other idea is like hire somebody who's like John I'm good like I will I'm I'm confident enough in myself to come ask you what I'm not sure and I want to help otherwise leave me alone I'm gonna make you some good parts in the current you know what I mean and then say out of the way
00:06:23
Speaker
Yep. Yep. Yeah. Somebody who's made their own mistakes and learned a lot of lessons already. And, uh, you know, everybody's got more to learn, but yeah, I do, uh, I definitely need and want the business to get to that point in the coming months, years where, um, we have a mix of, of inexperienced guys that we train up to have more skill.
Balancing Growth with Error Prevention
00:06:43
Speaker
Cause I want everybody to learn.
00:06:44
Speaker
as much as they can handle. And then also bring it in season to people that can actually execute on the plans and ideas and future growth of what we need to do because there's a lot to get done and there's not enough meat to go around. I think our job is to
00:07:05
Speaker
install, like for me, this one I think I'm conscious of is trying to make sure people appreciate the balance and the difference of mistakes that, you know, rolling a scrap apart or break a tool. Good grief that happens. Maybe it happens too much, but okay. Versus the mistakes that cause machine tool companies to get phone calls for repairs. You know what I mean? That's the sort of guiding light of like, you know, okay, we miss on a high plane.
00:07:35
Speaker
Yeah, and much of the time it's like the end mill breaks or you know, not huge damage, lose a collet, things like that. But it's, we haven't had a lot of major crashes where things bend, you know, which is good. And much of that is on me. I've had a lot of little bumps and a lot of little broken end mills. And maybe that's par for the course for machining and kind of pushing yourself and
00:08:01
Speaker
trying to go at a pace that's quick enough but not too quick.
00:08:06
Speaker
We broke a hosstooling face mail that's been great, it's relatively new, and we broke it because the tool before it broke, and that tool has never been a problem, so we didn't have break detect on it. It's just there forever. We generally haven't done break detect when we haven't had it to, but we should add it more because it's such a free, easy thing to do. The new tool is going to be here in two days.
00:08:33
Speaker
The team was like, well, let's switch the face all over to do everything and run it and I was kind of like,
00:08:40
Speaker
The culture, again, from a philosophical standpoint, sure, that sounds great, except now we've got time reprogramming separate processes that aren't going to be continued, that have their own risk of finishes, of tooling, of mistakes, of goofs. But the sort of response was, yeah, but we sell a lot of these. We're ahead, but let's not get behind. And I just kind of let it go. Well, sure enough, about an hour later,
00:09:03
Speaker
tried to make one that way, made a mistake, just nicked apart, which broke a tool and nicked apart. Well, not cool, but not a big deal, really. And then I was like, this is what I'm saying. We have inventory, sure. We're finally in a place where we have a week or two of inventory versus just in time. We can afford a couple of days now. Let's just move on to other stuff. No big deal.
00:09:27
Speaker
Yeah, but it's hard to allow yourself to think that way. You are the guy on the floor.
Cross-Training and Machine Operations
00:09:33
Speaker
I have a solution in my head to keep doing this. I'm in the mindset to make this right now. How do I solve this problem? Whereas shelving it for 2 to 10 days is probably a good idea, but sometimes hard to mentally allow yourself to do that. Yeah. But that's where I think we've got to reinforce
00:09:54
Speaker
guys, we are okay. We're not out of inventory. We're not going to be out of inventory. Sure. It's that one in a million order comes through that wipes us all out. We can all celebrate and deal with that, but we're good. It's kind of a take the win moment. Like, okay, we're going to be down for two days in that part. No big deal with your other stuff. Yeah, we're kind of there right now because
00:10:20
Speaker
Pierre just took off for two weeks of vacation. So we're going to keep running the Nakamura, making one part. And then the Swiss were probably good on Swiss parts, unless some need comes up. And I have to get in there and remember how to use it. But I haven't run that Swiss in at least a year. And he's been here for three years now, almost. And for the most part, he's in charge of that machine. I have forgotten much of it.
00:10:49
Speaker
I'm confident that I could jump on and make parts if I had to, but for the next two weeks, if I don't have to, it might just sit there collecting dust and that might be okay. Right. Cause we are fine for parts. Um, but yeah, it does kind of highlight the not only cross training, but also staying fresh on processes and procedures and machines and how to run stuff.
Avoiding Burnout and Sharing Responsibilities
00:11:12
Speaker
Um, cause if anything ever happened to him, I would be forced to jump in there and then
00:11:17
Speaker
I don't want to be the only person running that machine. Cross train somebody else. Yeah, we've thought about it. Take a step back and think about, is it appropriate for you to have more stuff on your plate to fall? No. Yeah, right? I need less stuff on my plate. Yeah. I feel like this is
00:11:43
Speaker
That's how you get burned out when it's like you carry the weight of the business on your shoulders because you're the one that can do everything. Correct. Yeah. What are you up to? I am grinding.
R&D in Grinding and Surface Finish Techniques
00:12:00
Speaker
Oh, yeah. To be a thousand percent hypocritical. I'm delegating and all that. I'm the one running the grinder.
00:12:11
Speaker
Here is my justification. It's an incredibly simple machine with a simple process on a dedicated part. It is so much different than running a vertical machine center or horizontal with multiple parts, tools, tolerances, etc.
00:12:31
Speaker
And so I'm enjoying seeing what it can do and kind of working around the process under the guise of like, this is also kind of R and D and QC. And I'll tell you like, things like when do we stone the part, the backside before we put it on the magnetic chuck. And when you stone it, if you sit it down on something, is it potentially picking up?
00:12:49
Speaker
debris again and or do you wipe it actually just texted Spencer Webb this because he makes the stones I'm like hey what's your best practices of like after you stone it I have to help I have to very actively stop myself from wiping it with my hand or a microfiber usually my hand but I don't know like my hands aren't perfectly clean or skin cells and I'm like I don't know how thick a skin cell is but that feels like a very
00:13:18
Speaker
you know, relevant, fun, nerdy question here. And so it just feels odd to precision stone it and then set it directly on the magnetic chuck without doing a hand wipe. Yeah, yeah. Right. Or blow it off or sound like some. Yeah, I hear you.
00:13:39
Speaker
And then it's just fun too, because the parts that come off that machine, they're not flat. They're not perfect. But what I mean by that is we have a brand new machine with a brand new wheel, a brand new chuck, and it's a three-inch diameter that we're kind of measuring around the grinding. And we have a Mitsutoyo LH600, which is pretty darn good for- The height gauge?
00:14:02
Speaker
I can't give you specs, but certainly on repeatability versus accuracy, I would say that's a very good instrument to use in the setup of a fixture granite surface plate and that machine is a good setup for checking stuff. And to that point, it will repeat
00:14:21
Speaker
very well measuring against the datum of the granite plate. It'll measure really well with a one-inch mittutoy of sera block, which we use kind of as an internal master for checking stuff. And then I put this dimension of the puck chuck on there, which should be 1.93 with a plus zero minus a very small tolerance. And around that three-inch periphery, we're seeing deviation, but it's, you know, 12 millionths, 61 millionths.
00:14:50
Speaker
But it bothers me because why isn't it, you know what I mean? Yeah, well within dollars. That's those skin cells you're talking about. Yeah, or maybe. Oh, man. Yeah, like everything matters. And like Renzetti says, everything is rubber. And as stiff as everything you think is, I don't know, like you've said before, huge granite surface plate, you get six guys to stand on the corner.
00:15:18
Speaker
of the concrete that it's on and it will tilt. And it's like, those things matter at this level, you know, and you almost when you can measure that fine, you have to learn to pull back and be like, I can see it, but it's fine. Yeah. And that's hard. That's really hard.
00:15:35
Speaker
Same thing with like lapping and optical flatness and optical flats and things like that. Like it's never good enough. You know, it's almost good enough, but it's like. You see that curve under the automatic light source, but you realize, oh my God. Yup. I actually bought a bunch of sodium bulbs on eBay.
00:15:55
Speaker
eBay UK is the only place I could find them. And I built two monochromatic light boxes with the actual bulb, not the fluorescent tube with filters and stuff kind. I've got one of those two. They both work great, but the actual sodium bulb is just crisper and brighter and nice, really, really cool. That's awesome. Yeah. It's fun. You can actually see surface finish, like say a surface ground finish that has topography in the grind from the grit of each wheel.
00:16:26
Speaker
Like an RA kind of thing? Like each kernel in the grinding wheel? Kind of, yeah. With a good light and a good flat, you can start to see surface roughness in the optical flats. Oh my god. Because the lines look kind of jagged. And I'm like, oh, this is really cool. So it's like you're almost measuring RA with light. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah.
00:16:51
Speaker
Well, so look, to talk about that, that's kind of, you know, think big, like my, I love my job, the company, sometimes you got to pinch yourself like, hey, this has been a fun, good journey.
Company Roles and Team Dynamics
00:17:04
Speaker
I love the team. My dream job would be spending 10, 20% of my time supporting the team of like, hey, you know, quirky problem, need a second input. Because, you know, I'm not bad at that stuff. And it's been a big part of how we've gotten here. But
00:17:21
Speaker
otherwise spending 70, 80% of my time as almost like a quasi outsider to within the company where I'm just, I think I've talked about this before on the podcast. So at some point I'm going to have to stop. I like it. Shut up and put up and do it. But like, hey, I could spend a full day building a organization system that ties into the process of how we run the grinder with 3D printed parts here and an organization bin here and how does the material flow.
00:17:49
Speaker
And I could do the same thing for how we handle our inserts and changing those over in like the, quote unquote, tool crib and how we package stuff up. Like I actually enjoy all that stuff when it's in a controlled state and I know I'm able to do it not. It's less fun if you're like, well, I could be a surgeon right now, but by being a surgeon, I'm delaying on the fact that I know I've got a tolerance problem on a park that I just don't love and it needs me, really needs me over there.
00:18:17
Speaker
Yep, priorities. And yeah, at this point, I hard to put numbers on it. But I definitely spent a good part of my day with that first one, the kind of helping the team out, checking in with everybody, solving some problems, sometimes helping with some rework problems, the more fine-tuned stuff that I'm kind of directly responsible for, even if I'm not the one fixing it. But it's like, I caused that problem. So I'm going to help them fix it kind of thing.
00:18:44
Speaker
So a decent part of most days I spend like that and I do spend probably another decent portion of every average day on kind of my own stuff. Do you? It's nice. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. That's good for you. Developing new products, new procedures, new things like that. I make the time to do that or filming videos. Yeah. The videos kind of lead to projects as well, which is a nice little, you know, they support each other.
00:19:12
Speaker
I want to do more of that. I want to be less on the I am needed everywhere stage and more on the I have built the freedom in the company to do what I feel like I need to do for the company and for my own needs to be able to grow and enjoy everything and support the company in that way, in a way that everybody else is too head down to do.
00:19:38
Speaker
Yeah. And it all kind of clicks. I think you and I talked about this theme on this podcast of advice is contextual. And I remember a mentor, like a soft mentor who was in the beverage distribution business talking about, you know, his business and job and life works because of the team he has. And when you're younger in your journey, you just think, oh, yeah, it means you got to hire people and they got to be good people, blah, blah. And then you sort of realize it means you want
00:20:06
Speaker
you know, in his example, he had a maintenance head and an operations head or, you know, these roles, I don't know exactly what they were, that there wasn't, you know, his name was Sean, he wasn't being called over. Like I was being called over to fix a breaker that was tripping. And then as with the wiring issue, I'm dealing with the company and like no one else can do that. And I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't think anybody's gonna look at me with a straight face and tell me, Saunders, you really need to hire a full-time facilities person. Maybe you could justify that. Because frankly, there is a lot of stuff we could do. Two buildings, yeah.
00:20:36
Speaker
Well, yeah, we just have a lot repaved and I can install some different lighting stuff on the outside. I guess I can create bliss, but am I going to staff a position around that? Who can also do electrical repair or all that? I don't know. Yeah. It's a different mindset to build out the company in that way. Sometimes you have to think, does that free you up to do what you're best at?
00:21:01
Speaker
Is it worth your time double, triple, quadruple doing your thing, what this facilities person is doing for all the normal day-to-day stuff? I don't know. Yeah. But I think, I don't know, talking a lot here like you, there isn't anything I'm best at. There's stuff that I enjoy and it's part of our journey of how we got here.
00:21:23
Speaker
Yeah, there's a part of the fiery competitive part of me that when somebody's like, you know, you don't know how to run a grinder. Nobody really said that. But like, yeah, we like partly because of this community is for sure part of that is, which is awesome. They're like, Oh, we'll be good. Like, yeah, times have changed. I'm not worried about that.
00:21:42
Speaker
Yeah, but like, I'm not ever going to be the person who's going to put his resume down around, you know, actually, for what it's worth, I have thought about like, would there ever be a world or an era in my life where I'm like, let's go work as a machinist at a shop? Yeah, that would be different. Yeah. Actually, yesterday, I was everybody had gone home,
00:22:06
Speaker
I had a little bit of time to myself and I spent some good time just sitting there thinking about what needs to be done next and kind of stalling a little bit and eventually it hit me. I was like, if my boss saw me doing this, it wouldn't be good. I had that vision of like, yes, I'm the head, I'm the boss, the leader and I can kind of do whatever
Accountability and Task Prioritization
00:22:26
Speaker
I want. But if I wasn't and if I saw me doing that, I'd be like,
00:22:32
Speaker
Go, you don't get to work. It's just so weird. No, it's why like, I almost wish I had a boss or a board of directors or oversight because for whatever reason, I have a, I'm comfortable that I have enough self-imposed discipline around a variety of things. I'm good there, but nevertheless, sometimes you need somebody to be like, what the fudge are you doing?
00:23:01
Speaker
Honestly, I try to leverage my team a little bit. I say, okay, I've got these three tasks I could do. I don't care which one I get done because I will enjoy the process of doing any of them. What do you need first? Or just tell me what to do, please. Make this decision for me. It's a good way of putting it. It works because honestly, I'm happy to do either of those three things. Make inlays, grind rask blades, or play with the bamboo 3D printer or something. Yeah.
00:23:29
Speaker
Tell me what you to do. Well, you don't need to play with the printer. We need grass blade. So go grind that. Okay, done. Thanks. Bye. Yeah. Okay. Willeman update ish.
00:23:48
Speaker
Shortest answer is I haven't played with it a ton but that's for one reason I was out on Friday number two is we've got it running some parts that where the issue can be worked around for lack of a better description. Which is actually good because we've got some custom plates that I want to get done so blah blah blah.
00:24:10
Speaker
But I'm able to much better articulate the issue right now. And it's mostly sharing this just as a nerdy, fun thing. I didn't really appreciate or understand how FANUC encoders work as in quadratic encoders. Briefly last week. Did I? With the AB thing? I don't know. Start over. OK. Yeah. And I'm not going to do a great job explaining this.
00:24:34
Speaker
Basically, the encoder pulse signal is not just a simple hash mark on the back end of the rotating part of the motor shaft. This is like a round disk encoder. That's what I'm used to thinking of. Sure.
00:24:49
Speaker
And basically, the way FANUC encoders work is there's A, B, two channels, and it looks for a pattern of going forward, A, B, then A, B. So if you, and again, I hope I'm not doing this disservice, if you somehow missed an encoder tick, like let's say the marked, their optical, I believe, let's say the optical somehow just disappeared, which also seems kind of weird, but nevertheless.
00:25:14
Speaker
it would C-A-A and it would throw an alarm. Likewise, if it goes backward, if it's going A-B-A-B, it ended on B and it goes backwards, it's going to look to see how that solves that and this is where I'm not doing it justice. It has enough intelligence around that pattern because I believe you have
00:25:37
Speaker
Yeah, so that's really cool. It also just tells me I don't think it's a, it could be a Soviet servo motor issue. I don't think it's as simple as like, oh, our encoder has oil on it or is the damage. It also, and again, to recap, we have a U-axis that moves left to right. As you're saying to the machine, total movement is about two inches. Yeah, a hundred and a way, I think.
00:26:01
Speaker
We're moving it 1.9 inches. The only test that we've done so far has had the indicator on the far right. And it moves very repeatedly. The first motion, perfect. Second motion, perfect. Third motion.
00:26:17
Speaker
moves further to the right by one tenth. And it does that pattern of perfect perfect one tenth, perfect perfect one tenth across, I think I only ran it 50 times, but 50 times, well essentially 30 times would be 10 times it hit the tenth mode. And after 30 times, it's off by exactly one thou. Wow. One tenth, right?
00:26:40
Speaker
No, every third time it loops through, the third interval grows by a tenth. So if you run it 30 times, you get a total 10 tenths, one pound. Okay. So it's also hard to think like, could it be ball screw wear? Could it be one of the couplers? That's something we need to look into more. The next step though is I need to put an indicator up
00:27:01
Speaker
on the other side to make sure it's not growing the travel both directions somehow. And it's actually shifting the start stop all to the right. And I'm also going to try that test only moving an inch to see, I'm trying to isolate, could it be where that part of the ball screw, so forth. And also make sure I'm not, what I said is true on the 30, but I want to run that five more times, 50 times to make sure I'm a thousand percent correct with that pattern.
Reliability of CNC Machines and Task Management
00:27:30
Speaker
Makes sense. Yeah. A bit more testing, a bit more pushing Wilhelmin to see what options are available if they've seen this before. Yeah. Shout out to them. Marcus is great. Their sort of answer was just buy a new servo. I want to do this more testing before I go back and the FANUC servo is 2,500 bucks. I'm happy to write that check if that's the answer, but it's not returnable to FANUC. And so I don't do all this work, put the thing in and have the same problem. Yeah.
00:27:59
Speaker
A ClearPath server was $300, I'm just saying. I don't know if it worked that way. You have to say, right? There's not something I'm missing here, John, is there? It is that friendly reminder of old CNC machines become paperweights. If FANUC didn't stop that, I mean, it's a 20-year-old machine. I can't fault a company like FANUC for no longer. I don't know how nichey or how many other machines use that thing, but whew, that's scary, John. Yeah, exactly.
00:28:31
Speaker
So I guess you're using the machine, you've figured out programs that can run it without caring so much. Yeah, so it's only the U-axis, which is the vice going the G56 or when the parts tip down and it moves, again, it moves one thou every three intervals. So some parts we can run 10 parts and then just shift it, like the chambers will have moved a few thou, it just doesn't hurt anything. One part that we need, we don't even really use the U on it. So we're doing that now.
00:28:59
Speaker
That person's actually on vacation next week anyway, so we were focused on some other stuff while that just ran. I'm defensive here, I know, because I'm okay that we weren't totally focusing on it, but I need to. Combining the past two topics, I have a question for you.
00:29:19
Speaker
It's easy for both of us to look at a problem, okay, Willyman, we need to do this test. We need to test it on the right-hand side. We need to do that. That takes time. That's me or somebody else qualified to do that. That's a task or a quick project, something like that. And when I sit down and write down all of these tasks or projects, I get dozens of things on the more we're going to do that. Got to sign that fixture on the Willyman, got to do this, this, this, got to install the bar feeder, got to do that.
00:29:44
Speaker
How do you manage and handle those lists and projects and delegation? Like what comes to mind when you think like that?
00:29:54
Speaker
I have a system that has worked well for two, three years now. It's a Google Sheet that stays open. That allows me to access it from anywhere and delete it, copy paste up around versus a written sheet. Now, when I'm out and about in the shop, 10 times a day I'll write something on a piece of paper and stuff in my pocket. That way I don't have to open up my phone. That's what our notebooks are for. Oh, shout out to you. Thank you. Actually, I will do that. That's a great point. This is my mental, like our notebooks that we make.
00:30:23
Speaker
Whenever I'm having a conversation with somebody in the team, thank you. I sent you on like 10 of them. And it's like, when you're having a conversation, it's very fluid. It's very like things to do, things to do. Okay. I write down every single one. Otherwise, they're completely gone from my memory. I will not remember what to do at the end of the conversation. Yes. Anyway, continue. No, John, I have found, I'm 40. I have found my ability to remember things has dwindled.
00:30:51
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not blaming it on that yet. I'm also 40 now, but I'm not quite admitting that yet. But it's more the heat of the moment. It's like, yeah, we got to do this. You got to do that. Great. Now what? I've lost it. And to pull out your phone in a meeting with this just disaster. For sure. Agreed. So first thing is, it's kind of like you're in the business of doing stuff, not in the business of making to do this. Yeah.
00:31:21
Speaker
Look, I think you just need more people to delegate. Yeah, I know you don't miss someone to do that, but I do actually know that. Yeah. Well, so look, right now, I'll just be totally sorry, my first shot was ringing. I need to just share with you right now, my stuff that I have on my list of things that need to be that need to occur before my head hits a pillow tonight. I need to call restaurant to make a dinner reservation. That's personal. You actually use your spreadsheet for day to day like like today tasks.
00:31:50
Speaker
There's three tasks. Short-term, medium, long. Short-term is stuff that needs to happen by the time I go to sleep. Medium is stuff that I basically want to get done actively. Long-term is your list. It's the way- The pie in the sky. Or even stupid stuff. There's filters on the genos that I need to put a pair of gloves on and clean. That's probably been on there for five months, and that's horribly embarrassing. I could hang up this podcast and go do that in 20 minutes.
00:32:17
Speaker
That's on me. But whatever. Yeah, so I have my short-term list. Some of it is work. Some of it is more like fun. Like I want to write a, I want to hire, I think hire an upward person to design a linear rail with some 12 by 12 cheap-ish sheets that are replaceable of Lexan for a sliding door that looks elegant for the grinder. I just don't want the janky shower curtain.
00:32:46
Speaker
And if I can get the components for a couple hundred bucks, that feels awesome. And this is one of those like, I know I'm not a great designer, blah, blah, blah. And so I'm hoping that an Upwork person can give me a bill of materials or some design ideas. Shout out to Rob for that idea of like putting the
00:33:04
Speaker
They call it a Z-style sliding door, so basically it's when you pull it open like an accordion, the first, if you have multiple panels of 12x12 glass, as you pull the first panel and it hits the end of a little lip, it catches the next one to open it up. And then similarly, when you close it, eventually when the 12-inch door gets to the second panel, it starts pushing them all shut. It's probably a better accordion or better phrase for that, but it's not an accordion. You know what I mean. Yep. I'm trying to think of a practical example. I'm sure we've all seen it in a
00:33:34
Speaker
somewhere I can't think. Right? Yeah, what is an example of that? Like I want to see a door going into a hotel or something where they just slide into each other. But I don't know. It's better. Yeah, I can't. But yeah, I know.
00:33:53
Speaker
I need to find a, I'd like to purchase a 1.9 inch three ground master. I know we can grind our own and measure it and make it rather like Deltronics equivalent of buying one. So I just need to go look and see is that something that is easy enough to get made or is it going to be 300 bucks in six weeks? Or do you just stack gauge blocks up and then make your own master? Yeah, so I thought about that and obviously we have those. I would use those
00:34:23
Speaker
I want a master. I want like a qualified, I'm trying to take that philosophy of like, no, but I have an independently made ground master. I know. It's cool. Even if you're going to get Renzetti here, like gauge blocks all individually have tolerances. If you buy the better sets, they show you each one's tolerance. But if you stack more than four or five gauge blocks, you need to include those because it could well be into the tenths.
00:34:50
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I've combined Aerostack up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've got a cheap list of gauge blocks and each one has a millionth tolerance range like on the calibration program or whatever. I don't know how accurate that actually is because it's pretty cheap set. But still, it's like if you really wanted to, this piece of paper shows more numbers than what the gauge block has written on it.
00:35:16
Speaker
Yeah. When that goes back to what I was saying about the grinder and the process, I'm like, wait a minute. We've got a set of Mitsutoyo 1-2 mics. We've got Brown and Sharp. Is it Brown and Sharp? And an Okamoto 50 million style test indicators on stands that you could sweep against a master gauge box. We've got the height gauge. I feel like there's one more thing that I'm not remembering. So it's kind of like we actually need to pick
00:35:41
Speaker
what's going to be our master. Yeah. Yeah. And method, measuring method and all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can compare them all together, but that's another large task that like is going to take somebody three hours to like do more. And I'm okay being in charge of that right now. For sure.
00:36:00
Speaker
on my, what was on my short term list that I kicked over to the medium was I wrote a program over the weekend to actually I love this, we have 1520 tools on the horizontal that we just need to put eyes on more often.
00:36:14
Speaker
because tool life won't necessarily catch them, but we just need to look at them. And we were stupidly either going to the matrix, I wish, God bless current, the best design in the world for a tool changer. They deserve a Nobel Peace Prize for that. And so it occurred to me, I was like, what am I doing? I just wrote a program that calls all the tools to the spindle individually.
00:36:39
Speaker
at one at a time, which does two things. Number one, it makes it way easier to check the tools. Number two, that list also then serves as a better version of our written list on the machine cover of like, hey, these are the tools that we should keep an eye on. Because now you just run the program and whatever the latest version of that program is that has the tools we care about, they get cycled through and that's something that the team can do once a week. Yeah, exactly. So I wrote the program, haven't tested it. Yep, yep. I like that.
00:37:06
Speaker
What about you? You're just overwhelmed with to-do list stuff?
Automating Processes for Efficiency
00:37:10
Speaker
Yeah, I am. A lot of it needs to get done. A lot of it are wants. Some of it are cool little program checky things like how on the Kern, I developed an auto tool touch-off program. We replace the end mill, put it back in the rack until the tool table, we type 999 in one of the fields. Then every single tool change, it looks for a 999. If there is one, it will auto touch off the tool. Awesome.
00:37:37
Speaker
We've had this for like two plus years now. It's been absolutely rock solid. So we just replace end mills at the end of the day, 999, whatever we need. And then at 4 AM when it calls that end mill, it's still running. Yeah, I got to touch it off. The machine, it's great.
00:37:52
Speaker
I wrote a simplified version for the speedio so that I could load up a whole bunch of tools and just tip 999 and it'll automatically touch off the tool. It'll know if it has to do length or diameter or both and apply that and I was like, that's pretty cool. So I wrote that over the weekend too and I just want to test that out. Minor little non super cool thing, but nice quality of life improvement. But a lot of it, like we got a new knife we're developing and I want to do more carbon fiber development, which I'm doing right now.
00:38:20
Speaker
I need new fixtures on the Maury. I need some tweaks on the current, new palettes on the current. I just need stuff, stuff, stuff. Just like actual work. Some of them are tiny little projects that take 20 minutes or two hours. That's more of a task. And then some of them are actual projects that can't be done by just anybody.
Balancing Development and Management
00:38:42
Speaker
The hard thing about these sorts of questions is like, I'm not you, you're, you've done wonderfully well. And I really hesitate to like, you know, offer criticism, but all I'm looking for is perspective, you know, how do you do it and
00:38:59
Speaker
Well, so like Alex and I were just huddling on like, I'm kind of working on Gen 3 mod vice stuff, more on the production reliability side of like how we're picturing them. So Alex is working on the puck shot. It is an unbelievable amount of work to bring a product to market now that we're where we are. Because we're not just making, hey, we sell mod vice, we'll make one, we'll test one, we'll ship one. It's now we're like making batches of these with different team members, different assent.
00:39:26
Speaker
It's a totally different perspective on how we do things. It just requires us to, we have upped our game, but it takes a lot of effort. Knowing that you, it seems like it would be better served for you to spend time hiring another machinist or
00:39:45
Speaker
taking care of existing stuff rather than new product development from an outside perspective. That makes sense. Good grief, I get it. New product development brings money in the door and that's revenue, which money solves. When it doesn't make you happy, it sure solves a lot of problems. You know what I mean? But the hiring somebody and getting some fusion in the machine program, that one just isn't going to solve itself. You're not going to wake up one day and have that problem. Yeah. Unless you solve it.
00:40:12
Speaker
hours involved in making that a reality and a lot of time and thought process and discussions and conversations and action execution things like that and That one's hard to pick away at over the next six months like I kind of if I'm gonna do that I need to like put my head down and you know set a deadline and get it done and
Building a Sustainable Business Legacy
00:40:33
Speaker
Yeah, think of it. Find those questions that get you outside of your own private comfort zone. You don't have to. This is something we want you to talk about publicly on the podcast. But if you got a cancer diagnosis nine months ago and you wanted to make sure this business worked for Meg and the kids, maybe your kids were getting old enough to maybe start getting involved in it. What do you need to do to leave this in the best place possible?
00:40:59
Speaker
That's going to change your answer, I think. 100%. And I do think about that. I actually do spend time thinking about that. The business is 12 and 1,500 years old now. At this point, if I disappeared, would the business continue? Maybe. I don't know. But it's definitely not like gold star approved, no problem kind of thing. And do I want that in the next five years, 10 years?
00:41:28
Speaker
Yeah, I think I do. I think we actually have something here that can have legacy that can keep going that can be, you know, the Rolex of the knife industry. Like, I don't know. Like, maybe there was
00:41:41
Speaker
But that's a 100-year-old watch brand. And these companies continue. And they've built themselves to be a self-sustaining organization that is beyond the founder. And I think we absolutely do have that. And I think that's the goal that we want to achieve. And that's going to take a huge mental shift for me and some of the other guys in the shop to not just share, but actually
00:42:06
Speaker
teach and train and distribute the workload and make sure that everything can be done and there's procedures and organizations and things like that. I mean, credit to everybody on the team. We are well on our way towards there. I actually do delegate and hand off a whole ton of tasks. I just feel like it's never enough. I agree, John. Yes. The reason I think this is so important is that
00:42:31
Speaker
all those things have the benefit of solving the legacy or transition problem. Thousand percent have built something that is bigger than you and that's wonderful. The reason to do this is because it also will mean a huge improvement in your personal and business quality of life in the relatively short term and you have to do it. So do it now and reap the benefits of it.
00:42:55
Speaker
And the nudge here, I think would be stop psyching yourself out and making it sound like this is the big Herculean task that's going to cause fair lots of overhaul, like get up, fire up indeed and start interviewing machinists like to stop overthinking a job. Yeah, I like it. Sometimes you need that kick in the pants. Because it's like I've been on the fence for a while. But honestly,
00:43:17
Speaker
I'm not on the fence like it's happening. The question is when do you start putting effort into it because new product development is pretty darn fun. You're good at it and you've got the energy and you've got that charisma and you've been there and think about that.
00:43:33
Speaker
some of the guys that we know who are just super dialed machinists and you're, you know, call this person Frank and you're like, hey Frank, here's three or four different prototypes. Will you carve out some time on the Kern, see what these would look like, send, you know, let me know what you think, you know, what your input, this is the direction. And then you just go, you know, yeah. And they're like, John. Yes, please. Yes, please. Yeah.
00:43:56
Speaker
This is kind of like the Brigadier Commander General doesn't sit behind the machine gun. It's fun to shoot the machine gun, don't get me wrong. But your job is not to be the door gunner. Actually, I think Jocko Willing had a really good thing in one of his books where he said,
00:44:21
Speaker
You know, when a team of seals is out in the field and they got their eyes through the scope and they're just looking, they're very tunnel visioned. And they got a bunch of guys looking at all different directions. It's the leader's job to put his head up and like actually, you know, smell the air kind of thing, get a real 360 of the whole problem. Not just this tunnel vision on each project.
Leadership Perspectives and Team Management
00:44:39
Speaker
And you have your gunners, for lack of a better word, that like, it's tackling that project and that project, that project. You got your medic, you got your guy, your guy, your guy.
00:44:46
Speaker
It's the leader's job to really survey the whole field and that's where I'm transitioning to becoming. Probably already there more than I think I am but I still have a lot of technician jobs on my plate. Yeah. That's a good segue to something we're thinking about here with Lex is Lex creates work orders for say steel fixture plates which are a mix of inventory and custom.
00:45:15
Speaker
we now have booking, we're now booking those out through November. And so when you look at that work order list, I think it's too easy to look at that and think, oh my God, there's a lot to do, even though we're fine, like we've scheduled them. Lex now does time costing to jobs, so it's a work order.
00:45:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's like we just know roughly, this isn't perfect by any means, but it's pretty good about like, okay, so we know what's reasonable to, especially on the custom stuff to manage expectations of delivery, but also never, you know, we do a lot of custom pictures, but like inventory matters for sure.
00:45:57
Speaker
The punchline though is that I don't actually want the team to look at some list, be like, hey, what do we have in the steel order queue? Be like, oh my God, it's three and a half pages long. Because that's through two, three months out. So we're actually thinking of this idea of truncating it to sort of say, hey, all we need to worry about is there's three plates to run over the next six days or something. Because that's what I need to know. It's like the to-do list. I don't need to see the to-do list.
00:46:24
Speaker
Four and a half years worth of things I'd like to get done. I like that. Well, on that note, what's up today? On that note, I'm going to stone down my fixture that I crashed into.
Logistics and Inventory Management Challenges
00:46:41
Speaker
I keep making some inlays. I made one sheet of carbon fiber that was orange and black weaved together, and I think it was done by some small shop, and it's not very good quality material.
00:46:54
Speaker
Oh, the orange is stringing up and looking gross and it just didn't work out very well. So trash that, but, uh, I actually put it in a plastic bag so I can keep it in my inventory as like, this is why we don't run this material. That's funny. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so yeah, it makes more inlays. And then, uh, Angela's got the current handle for the night and probably test that tool, tool, uh, macro, the nine, nine, nine macro on this video. That'd be really nice. It's about it. Yeah. Get home early.
00:47:24
Speaker
Sweet. You? Sweet. Make dinner reservations? Yeah. That one might. I feel like that one might get put on. Well, so that's what I do, though. Sometimes I'll be like, hey, I want to watch YouTubes on what was the one I wanted to look up, something else. I'll be like, that's something I could do tonight. That's actually kind of fun. Yeah. And I got to grind a couple more parts. I don't know what else on my TV list.
00:47:52
Speaker
Oh, we're moving. I need to do a shop update, but we've done a really good job of cleaning up some areas. We have a coolant problem where
00:48:00
Speaker
we have open drums of 251C, we have empty drums, and we have the same drums that we'll use for waste oil, like the oil that we get picked up by Safety Clean, or if we don't really ever have to purge our coolant, but that would also be in there. And now it's all like getting confusing of what's what. So we need to label these, and then this is just one of those hashtag
00:48:24
Speaker
business, life is a small business center, Qualcomm delivered two barrels last Wednesday. And I never saw them, but I don't think about that stuff normally. Then I'm like, wait, where are they? And then we asked and they're like, yeah, they were signed for. I'm like, and I'm like making sure nobody here saw them. It was hectic with the lot was being repaved. So there's just a weird day with shipping and stuff that moved to the building next door. But I'm like, we're not missing two barrels and ends up that the LTL carrier,
00:48:52
Speaker
Delivered them at quote-unquote 6 30 p.m. No one's here then signed for But by not us but now claims they're lost. Oh So shout out the quality cam. They're gonna they're like, we'll look into this but we'll just send you two new barrels right now So that is much nice So I gotta go figure that out Yeah, we had a barrel Luckily what? We ordered those two because we tapped our last one. So we're fine. Okay, so
00:49:19
Speaker
Yeah, we had a barrel of new quality chem, some Geocool 910 or something like that as an experiment. I knew the guy wanted to deliver it and so I asked Angelo, I was like, yeah, didn't Joe say he was going to like set up a time to deliver it? And he's like, yeah, it got delivered last week. Like it's been here.
00:49:36
Speaker
for a while. We just have barrels everywhere and I don't know what's clean, new, empty, full. It's just another, I didn't even notice it, right? Yeah. That's stuff that I do that maybe I shouldn't. It's like I'm going to go put them up for free on Marketplace or my kid's friend's parents want one as a burn barrel, so I'm going to get them a burn barrel. That means I got to cut the lid out of it, which is me with the sawzall, which
00:50:01
Speaker
Johns Hunter's never wants to be too good to run assault. I like it, but it's like, again, probably shouldn't be doing this. Yeah, yeah. Anyway. Time. All right, man. I'll see you next week. Have an awesome day. Bye.