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Business of Machining - Episode 95
243 Plays7 years ago
It feels like winter in Canada (brrr), but America just had their thanksgiving weekend! Just remember, big data collection never takes a vacation.
Directed Marketing is WEIRD
Big box stores, like Target, have to stay ahead of the competition and now (in the digital age), that involves marketing to individuals. But even stores that collect big data can fail if they don’t use it properly; Target failed in Canada!
“The store’s called Target because everyone’s a target” - Grimsmo’s dad joke of the day #DJOTD
These days, it’s necessary to be a little more aggressive with marketing, but is GK or NYC CNC ever going to get into it?
The NYC CNC website is getting REVAMPED
They will be phasing out paid memberships, and bringing NYC CNC content (videos, articles etc.) back to the open open source world. Saunders is really excited about paying it forward through his website. BUT there’s a catch. “Pro-articles” are still behind a padlock. You have to give your name, e-mail address, and a little information about yourself if you want access to those. It’s NYC CNC’s own way of getting to know its customers a little better.
Saunders and Grimsmo talk about their friendship, and how far they should push each other.
Meanwhile...at the Grimsmo Shop
The lathe has been running almost non-stop for the last two weeks. Yay! Sometimes it goes for a while without being used. That’s mainly because knife parts are a priority, but pens are coming soon and they are going to keep the lathe SUPER busy.
Saunders and Grimsmo discuss other ways Grimsmo can use the lathe.
“Things you need to do before buying a new machining center” - the title of the article that Saunders is working on
In this article, he’s going to cover what to ask, be aware of, how to buy, what not to buy, what to negotiate when buying a new machine, details to think about, financing options, and much more. Listen to this episode, and you might just hear a little of the advice before the article gets out.
“You don’t ask you don’t get. I mean, that’s the rules of life right there” - Grimsmo
Videos Coming Soon to a YouTube channel near you!
- Keep an eye out for a Haas “Tips and Tricks” video on Saunders’ channel
- Grimsmo’s working on prepping the fixtures that Amish made for him, and getting clamps made. There’ll be a video on that today (Friday)!
Saunders (feels like he) is in a whole new shop!
The shop has been rearranged to maximize productivity and efficiency. They are also working on a final purge and getting rid of things they don’t need. Saunders is going to continue to reorganize today, as well as set up his new Energy Recovery Ventilator, which is an awesome air filtration system.
ONE MORE MONTH OF 2018
Next week, we’re going to talk about new years goals!
Here’s a little teaser:
Saunders is thinking that he wants to work on being more “in control”, and have a more calm, cool, and collected sort of mentality going into the new year.
Recommended
Transcript
Thanksgiving Traditions and Deer Hunting
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to Business and Machining, Episode 95. My name is John Grimsmo. My name is John Saunders. Good morning. How are you? I'm doing great. Good. Yeah. How are you? Good.
00:00:15
Speaker
I, it was, it's the typical like Thanksgiving week where, you know, for us, at least in the States, Thanksgiving was off Friday as a quiet day in Ohio. Monday is a very big day because, um, Ohio is very big into deer hunting. So like our schools are closed for it. What? Yeah. Very different, very different.
00:00:34
Speaker
So it was a quiet day here
Ethical Concerns in Marketing and Data Scraping
00:00:37
Speaker
at the shop. We had some folks in, some folks off. And then I was on the road yesterday and had a meeting with a friend, mostly just for fun. And it was interesting that they came up with, they were walking through, she used to work in like, I don't know, I call it the crazy sales world. Not the sales pitchy world like,
00:01:02
Speaker
close the deal, aggressive sales tactics, but in the marketing world. So stuff that is way outside of my wheelhouse and comfort zone. And frankly, some things I'm just not even familiar with, which is exciting, but also just strange. Because I feel like I've been around the block on a lot of different things. So things like
00:01:23
Speaker
segmenting your market into very specific details, scraping information on users from your social media, like algorithms and programs that can go through your social media comments to interpolate what people are looking at and interested in.
00:01:38
Speaker
Separating into like the you know individual users versus corporate users and how do you extrapolate out the corporate emails? And their titles so you can understand how you use titles to then go against other companies and like all stuff that to be honest it feels It feels a little that feels very aggressive And I think there's some it seems like you could quickly run into some things that become gray zone at least ethically but I think on the flip side, I'm probably a bit naive to it because
00:02:07
Speaker
I still think it's creepy that when I email you, that my wife and I are going to take a trip to Nashville next week, that all of a sudden, in my Instagram on a separate device, I'm seeing promotions for like the latest Nashville musical. Yeah, exactly. I've seen those too.
00:02:25
Speaker
Is it weird? Is it ultra weird? Because you now have a type of business that if you wanted to, you could implement marketing strategies like that. It wasn't even for us. No, no, I don't. It's too close to home because you could, not that you would, but you know what I mean? It's like 10 years ago.
00:02:48
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. What I will say is it's a good reminder to enjoy what we do and recognize that not doing certain things like that may have some limitations in terms of growth and opportunity. If you are able to control those, and that's OK, that's fine. If it's something that could result in a competitor
00:03:11
Speaker
blowing you out of the water, then that actually could be a problem.
Lessons from Contour's Marketing Failure
00:03:15
Speaker
I always think back to the GoPro and Contour sort of case study. Contour was the other high def or whatever, HD sports action camera. And they literally went bankrupt. Like hundreds of people lost their jobs because they weren't aggressive enough. Well, hindsight is 20, 20, and there may have been more to it. But in that situation, perhaps it was imperative to do so because there was a very aggressive
00:03:40
Speaker
Um, sure. And there's not, I mean, you see it now, there's a lot of, I think GoPros really struggled because folks don't necessarily feel the need to upgrade from the four to the five to the six to the seven. And, uh, there's a lot of less expensive options out there. And, um, initially it was so, for us, it was so exciting to have GoPros and to use them. And now it's kind of just become, Oh yeah, you know, another camera, you know, yep.
00:04:04
Speaker
Weird. Yeah. There's no shortage of data out there to mine and scrape, if you will. Um, and yeah, even saying some of those things, I'm like, I never even thought about some of those.
00:04:20
Speaker
There was a, I actually should find it because it was worth rereading. Maybe a year ago, one of these kind of like expose style pieces in the maybe New York or New Yorker or something like very highbrow journalism. But it was a kind of a deep dive into the retail company Target.
00:04:40
Speaker
And how they are the biggest user of big data and the because everyone's a target Too early This isn't funny they figured out
00:04:55
Speaker
from shopping patterns, and that doesn't, I think that doesn't necessarily include what you purchased, but even what you browsed for and what you searched for. They figured out when individuals were pregnant. Not for, and this wasn't them buying obvious pregnancy stuff at all.
00:05:19
Speaker
It wasn't like type diapers or whatever stuff. And the article does a great job of kind of walking through it, but they basically have enough data or
Personal Goals for Productivity and Business Management
00:05:26
Speaker
enough users. And it became this issue because, um, when they first decided how to respond to this, they started sending like, like basically like your congrats, congratulations type, you know, like explicit like baby stuff. And it, one of them went to this, this younger girl's father and they lived in the same household.
00:05:43
Speaker
And the guy called Target and he was like, you know, this is absurd. Why would you predatory market my daughter like this? And ends up ends up she was pregnant. So then they realized, OK, well, we got to we got to mix that stuff in with and like we still we're still going to target them, but we're going to mix it in a little bit more subtly with other stuff. But it's still, man, this is I guess it's the world we live in, like it or not. Right.
00:06:11
Speaker
I honestly try not to think about it, about those ads for locations that come up after you just mention in an email. It's super weird and creepy, but I don't spend a lot of time dwelling on it because I'm like, this is the world we live in. I have no effect on this change, so I'm not even going to worry.
00:06:33
Speaker
I will sometimes keep a different browser open in private mode and I'll just spend most of my day in private mode because I feel like who even knows if that's actually stopping any of it, maybe some of it from a cookie standpoint or something. But then there's so many benefits of doing it in regular Chrome where it like remembers your browser history and your logins and all that and you just browse faster. That's why they get you.
00:07:01
Speaker
Okay, great segue thinking about my 2019 goals now. I want to
00:07:09
Speaker
I want to, this sounds really lame. I want to feel in control. Like I want to be, if anything, I'd rather slow down a little, and that doesn't mean less energy. It doesn't mean less productivity, but kind of a slow is fast, fastest smooth or whatever that saying is. And just, um, I tend, I think I, I think I talk too fast. I think I try to do too much. I think I try to get, uh, it's easy to get myself worked up on. Oh, this, though, this, oh, this. So, you know, I'm doing one thing, I think of two more things and I just want to,
00:07:37
Speaker
you know, very much you are what you want to be in. So you have to recognize you have to just control that. Yep. Hmm. So what do you have any ideas or plans on how to just slow? Just keep first keep it in your head for one thing. Again, it's sort of your choice. Um,
00:08:01
Speaker
Yeah, just, just, uh, well, no, I don't, I guess maybe I need to think more about that. And it's not, you know, I do tend to, I want to be careful to not do what many people do, which is kind of talk a big game or think, think big about, you know, goals and then, and then not embrace them. But really like when I think about people that I look up to, I think about.
00:08:22
Speaker
In fact, without exception, they are all folks that are almost not ever frantic. It's not that they don't scale their response as needed to certain situations, but they aren't always stressed or always emotional. And I'm not saying that I am, but I think about that is calm, cool, collected type of mentality.
00:08:48
Speaker
even more so than normal. You know, like you think of those people that you look up to, those successful people that really got it figured out, they're chill as a cucumber most of the time. And maybe it's just on the outside, but I think in order to sustain that level of, I don't know, intensity, you have to do it in a calm way.
Entrepreneurial Decision-Making Strategies
00:09:13
Speaker
Yes. I always think about the ability to have breakfast, whether it's at home with my family or alone thinking or wherever, and be able to do so in a manner that is what I think of as somebody who is in control and successful and has their stuff together. Maybe I'm doing a little bit of work. Maybe I'm reading some newspaper articles. Maybe I'm just literally enjoying the scenery. That doesn't work.
00:09:42
Speaker
Even if you are able to do that, but the second breakfast is over, you become this wound up spring, right? So I'm trying to not compartmentalize it. Like you try to hold that mentality throughout. And I think I will. I don't think this is a crazy hard challenge. I just think it's something I want to be conscious of.
00:09:57
Speaker
No, I think you've been working towards it this whole year. Removing yourself a little bit from day to day operations so that, hey, you can go to AU for five days and business still happens. Or taking a breakfast off either for yourself or with a meeting or whatever doesn't affect anything else. And it's actually better for you and your business. Yeah.
00:10:19
Speaker
And I've been leaning that way too this year, you know, realizing that I can go away for a couple of days and everything still works. And I'm, you know, delegating more and training more tasks and getting more people on my responsibilities so that no longer they're my responsibilities. Because the last thing you want is, you know, everything to crumble if you're not standing here. Yeah. And you and I got to be really, really careful of that.
00:10:44
Speaker
Well, it was interesting because you can to go to use the big data targeting approach with this podcast. I mean, the I guess the comments you and I got into maybe two episodes ago where I was giving you a hard time, which which I don't know. I don't want to apologize for it because I think that's why we do this. And I wasn't I don't think I was upsetting you, but I was I was on you like don't make these parts anymore like and yeah.
00:11:09
Speaker
I was thinking about that at first, you know, super receptive and super Yeah, he's right. I should do that. And then it did get a little overboard. But but in a, in an exaggerated way, and sometimes you have to exaggerate to make a point. Well, yeah, like, and I realized that. And sometimes you need that, that push to realize what's going on and what you got to change or what you got to and it has reframed the way I think about things, which is awesome. Like, it's
00:11:39
Speaker
In a way, it was almost like, you know, telling me I can't play with my kids because I don't have time. And I'm like, I love playing with my kids. I love being on the machine. But it's a reframing of, okay, but you don't have to be on the machine all the time. You don't have to do this yourself. And that's fine.
00:11:59
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and my apologies if I did, if I went over, I think subconsciously or subconsciously, perhaps I did so because I knew this wasn't something that was new, a new concept to you and it wasn't even a new concept to us talking about it. So maybe it was one of those things where you feel like you've got to take it a hair too far to make, to make it sink in.
00:12:19
Speaker
Because I think you can play with your kids. Terrible analogy, by the way. I'm taking you away from your kids. But once you put the systems and processes in place to pick up the usual suspect of this podcast of Jay Pearson, Jay Pearson doesn't run his machines. But I bet you he can walk out to any of them at any point in time if he's got an idea or he wants to run apart. That's what I want you to get to.
00:12:43
Speaker
Um, Oh, so yeah, but it was interesting because that was the most, I don't remember what I was mentioning about it, but that was the most responses I've ever gotten when people are like figuring out ways to reach out to us, like over message. And most, well, and in some people with one person, it was like, you're being too hard. One person said.
00:13:01
Speaker
you're simply flat out wrong about John's business and the knife industry. One thing I will always try to embrace and say is your job as an entrepreneur is to listen to people that you think are smart, try to keep an open mind to understand where they're coming from. They generally are coming from a place that has good reason for it, understand what that reason is, and then you make your own decision about it. Exactly.
00:13:25
Speaker
Yep. Yep. Taking as much data and information as you can. Big data. Big data. Let's never use the phrase big data again. Yeah. Cool. Yeah.
Transitioning NYC CNC to Free Resource - Aligning with Big Data
00:13:38
Speaker
So what's been going on? Crushing it as normal. Nice. So our lathe sometimes will sit for a week or two just because we're busy and we don't need it. Okay.
00:13:51
Speaker
And we're busy. But it has been running nonstop 12 to 18 hours a day for the past two weeks. That's awesome. Yeah. So it's really good to see it. It's good to feel. And I actually, I wish I could turn it on right now, but it's right beside me and it's a little loud.
00:14:11
Speaker
That's awesome. Are you still on knife parts? We're stockpiling for another month or two. And then hopefully next week, pen, pen, pen. I've been saying that for months now. But I mean, knife parts come first. We've got this huge organization now with seven people that rely on knife parts. Right. Which is part of what my rebuttal was to
00:14:38
Speaker
the whole, you septied away is you've made the choice to have more machines, you want more machines, you want the people, the infrastructure, it's not a, you're not a one craftsman with one or two support hands type of customers spoke, you know, let's make three knives a month type business, right? Right, right. No, I do want it all. And I never think of myself as a victim of circumstance. Like I chose this, I want this, I am here for a reason. Yeah.
00:15:06
Speaker
I'm like obligated to support it and to grow it, but not in a bad way. Like, like, yeah, I made my bed and I'm going to lie in it. I'm going to smile the whole time. And this is, this is what I want. Right. That, which is awesome. Um, for sure. Um, lathe is running well.
00:15:26
Speaker
Yeah, very well. We've been making our plastic ball bearing cages for the past six or seven days, which it took an entire day to set it up just to get it running right. But they've just been like perfect nonstop this whole time, about three and a half minutes each and making, I don't even know what we're at now, but a lot. Should do this for many, many months.
00:15:52
Speaker
Did you play with or research any into swapping out the speeder with an air spindle? I didn't, but I really wanted to.
00:16:00
Speaker
That seems like it could solve some, well, it's interesting. It could solve some problems on the flip side. You've got that lathe. I mean, think, try, try to think back to where you are now with that lathe versus where you were two years ago in terms of, I mean, all the mods you've done to it. Holy cow. Yeah, exactly. And I'm, I'm running the same parts that I was two years ago, just much better, much more efficiently and, uh, with better results, cleaner, more productive. Um,
00:16:27
Speaker
step back one step further, think of how I made all those parts before the Nakamura. On the Tormach? On the Tormach lathe, with the second op on the Maury, or sometimes the third op. And yeah, yeah, yeah, thanks for good.
00:16:42
Speaker
Were we we were doing the podcast? Excuse me. We were doing our talks When you saw the talk with I don't know if we were recording No, I just think so either. Yeah, because we started the the first recording date was july 1st 2016 in the lathe
00:16:58
Speaker
Okay. No, I got it in December 2016 or August. Wow. Anybody want to go back and listen to the first episodes and see if we're talking about the decision in between. Yeah. You must have ordered it quite a few months beforehand or was it on the... Ah, dude. Yeah. So that would have been right before. Was it a showroom machine or ordered or how does that work?
00:17:19
Speaker
What was it? They said they had it in inventory and they could pull it into the showroom to show me and power it up. And I was like, yeah, let's do it. So it was great. Cause then I did my first few days of training there at Elliott and uh, you know, 45 minutes away. So it was, it was awesome.
00:17:36
Speaker
Awesome. Oh, is that actually super awesome segue? So when we finally launch this new project, which I think is now probably February, we got a phasing timing on the next phase of the site. What we're probably going to do or almost certainly going to do is
00:17:55
Speaker
change NYC CNC to being not having a paid membership and all the paid members we will sort of move over or give them the full option to make them whole and move them over to the new thing which I think will be I don't think anyone will have a problem with it but I like it because it puts NYC CNC back to a
00:18:12
Speaker
Kind of a free open pay it forward resource and content and that that's when I it's not that I didn't want that before I like what it's we've done with it But when I see that model laid out I get really excited about it. So what we'll probably do is have some of the like quote-unquote pro content or articles still behind a little padlock, but it'll just be
00:18:37
Speaker
You've just got to sign up with an email and give us basically some information about you, kind of tying back to the big data thing, very ironically, but nothing like that. But just basically like, you know, sort of who you are, are you an individual or are you a business? Do you have Tormach or Haas, a big machine? Just that could help us think about, hey, do we want to give, do we want the chance to pitch you on something that we offer as a value added product, like a fixture plate or
00:19:01
Speaker
the new company, but are training. And I think that's a pretty fair trade. Anyway, one of the articles I'm writing is like 10 to 20 things you need to do when you're buying a new machining center. All the things to negotiate, all the things to ask for, all the things to be aware of, how to buy it, what not to buy, it's such a good
00:19:24
Speaker
Yeah. Amazing. I remember all those decisions. I'll run it by you. Because we've got, not to say we don't have more to learn, but we've gotten pretty good about all the little controller things and the training side and warranty and spindles and contingencies if your machine tip's over, things like that.
00:19:41
Speaker
Right. And also the, um, I don't know if you want to dip into leasing or financing options because, because there are, you know, little hidden agendas that, Oh, you need, you need insurance on the machine before they will give you financing for it. So you need to kind of, you need to hand in hand, get the, both of those in line. Um,
00:20:03
Speaker
And those are things, I don't know, nobody talks about. Exactly. Right. And you have leverage ahead of time. It's not like a secret once you realize it that you will have more leverage to get deals closed on soft cost type things.
Machining Centers: Buying Tips and Negotiation
00:20:18
Speaker
So a controller unlock feature or an extra day of training that you don't think you'll need, but make sure it's got a two year clock on it, not a three month clock.
00:20:32
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And any dealer would throw that in at the last minute to get the deal across the table. Exactly. Yeah. You don't ask, you don't get. I mean, that's the rules of life right there. What else? I was thinking there is always, maybe not so much with Haas.
00:20:50
Speaker
But there's, especially with the big brands, there's always wiggle room in price. Yeah. And it could be like, it could be like 5%. It could be like 20%. And I think they kind of roll it off as like, Oh, I'll throw this in for free to entice it. Like when I got my Maury, they, you know, we haggled a little bit and
00:21:12
Speaker
This was 2015. We were broke almost. We weren't in a very strong position, but they threw in the Renishaw probes, and I thought it was the greatest thing in the world.
00:21:27
Speaker
Because retail up here for both probes, not Haas prices, but actual prices, was like 20 grand. And I was like, oh, sweet. I'm getting 20 grand off the machine. But you start to realize that there's wiggle room always. And they just call it something fluffy to make it sound awesome. And then, yeah, it's not a gotcha thing. It's just.
00:21:49
Speaker
I don't know, a little tactic.
00:22:05
Speaker
one gig, 32 gig and 64 gig of memory option. And the reality is, so I'm told at least that all the machines have 64 gigs on the board, but it's just a software unlock. And some people have a philosophical problem with that. My response is kind of a deal with it slash that's just the world we live in with lots of different devices. And, uh, and
00:22:27
Speaker
I also thought that this was kind of a Haas thing myself just because I didn't know any better until I started getting quotes on things like the high-end Japanese brands and frankly, they all do it. It's not- Everybody nickel and dime. Everything's an option. You want coolant, that's an option. You want your spindle, extra. You want a miss collector, extra. You want a chip conveyor, extra. And some base price machine is 100 grand, but you're looking at 150 out the door.
Enhancing Tool Capacity and Efficiency in Machining
00:22:54
Speaker
And even mlock unlock codes extra. Yeah. Or you know, so custom. It sucks, but it is normal. Exactly.
00:23:03
Speaker
but just deal with it. And look, we were talking on the WhatsApp about different pricing when dealers are trying to push out inventory machines, which can be a great opportunity. If there's some machine that works on the flip side, I feel like I'm pretty picky about how I would buy a machining center. I would be hesitant to cut a deal if it weren't the machine I wanted, period.
00:23:26
Speaker
Well, I think maybe you and I are still young and doe-eyed, and we want the one we want, and all that. Whereas a lot of big shops are just like, I need a spindle on my floor. It's got to cut chips. You know, it's sure. You know what I mean? Well, I guess I was thinking of this. Especially with options, you can't change. Like if it had too small of an ATC, or if it didn't have three spindle, and it was not retrofittable, it's like, sure, I don't care what the price is. It's not an option. It's not for me. I agree.
00:23:54
Speaker
Yep. It's like Brian buying a robo-driller speedio with 14 tools. Not going to happen. Even the 21 tool option that they come with is not enough, but it's better. Isn't that the most it does 14 or 21? Yeah. 21. Oh yeah. Right. But like, why would you buy a 14?
00:24:12
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, you keep hearing about these people who have four tools on the machine. It's kind of funny, but if that works for you, sure. The, uh, who was the, not Mar, uh, Marjitul, um, Miltara, you know, it's like the four end mills in that those Metzur is our, uh, uh, George Fisher microns, like, yeah. Yeah. It's running the same thing over and over and over again. Yeah. There's like this, this beautiful.
00:24:36
Speaker
circle segment barrel cutter five axis thing finishing these, these blisks or, uh, you know, turbo intakes. And I'm like, Oh, wow. So what do you use to rough it? Yeah. Same tool. What's the material titanium? What's the material there in canal? What? Crazy. Yeah.
00:24:56
Speaker
We figured out a pretty cool thing. So there's a, we'll do a video on it, but there are parameters in the Haas control that affect things like pec tapping and spindle orientation and smoothing and other things. And while you cannot write to those variables from code, you can check them, which was in the manual, but it was not in the manual in a way that you could actually figure it out, in my humble opinion. Anyways, I got some help, figured out,
00:25:25
Speaker
what those variables, how to access them. And so we have a simple NC code now in. So we basically, we turn, in this example, we turn pec tapping off because that doesn't force the spindle to orient. And so it's quicker to tap holes on our fixture plates because we don't need to have the, there's no point in having a spindle orientation on the threading there. But on our mod vices, we pec tap the,
00:25:52
Speaker
1032s or whatever they are that hold in some of the stuff. So what we want to do is have the machine check if it's in pec tap mode, if you will. You obviously have to have the spin oriented. So
00:26:06
Speaker
I figured out a way to do a manual NC pass-through that basically just stops the program and alarms out and alerts the operator, hey, this setting was not turned on, which is great. I mean, yeah, sure, it's disruptive. And I guess I would prefer to be able to write to it. But I'm not that upset that I can't write to it. I'm perfectly happy with the process reliability that comes from that.
00:26:26
Speaker
So you have to manually go in the control and turn that feature on to do it. Okay. Yep. Yeah. Bummer. You can write to it. Um, so when you rigid tap, it doesn't spend Elorian first. Nope. It just starts from wherever it is. Well, cause mine does for sure. So that takes time. I mean, on our, yeah, it does. It does. Cause you see it's 10,000. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I tap like 10 holes a month.
00:26:52
Speaker
Yeah. Oh yeah. There's no orientation on thread milling, huh? Exactly. It just does it by itself, which is sweet. That is still something that I wish, well, I say this, but maybe I don't mean it, um, that I wish fusion let you do, which was to clock the orientation or just to clock threads with a thread mill. So, you know, in many industries, firearms and others, you want to have consistent thread tightening locations. So when you.
00:27:21
Speaker
when it always starts in the same way.
00:27:24
Speaker
Well in, with threadmilling, you can visually do it based on your depth. Right. If you raise or lower the floor, it'll raise or lower the start thread position. And I have noticed that. I've noticed that too, because we changed it once and we realized that you can't change it and run it again. And run it again. Yeah. I've done that once or twice too. Or else you end up with a 1.2 times thread pitch, start 1.2 thread.
00:27:51
Speaker
Yeah. The other sweet thing we've been working on is the fixtures that Amish so lovingly made us a couple weeks ago. We're getting them all set up, all dialed, rocking. Sweet. I think I'm ready to run one of them today, which I'm super excited about. So you got the clamps all made? We got, they take forever. I know. It's like three minutes, five minutes per side, but then you got to flip it, and then there's 80 of them or whatever. I mean, probably.
00:28:21
Speaker
50. But it's like two whole days of free time to do this. But you knew that john. I know I knew that and I'm okay. I'm teasing. I'm not really complaining. But it's just like, man, I wish I was done by now. This is a lot of a lot of clampage. Yeah. But that's cool. It's been really good. What else?
00:28:44
Speaker
Um, well, so that was, we talked about that last week. Running the second talent was a big step. Can you see your, get to that this week?
00:28:52
Speaker
Yep. So I was, uh, stayed up super late last night, coding the, not only the probing routine, that's going to be like, Oh, there's a palette here. Oh, there's a palette here. Oh, there's no palette, no palette run two pallets. And then also pick up the XYZ of each palette individually. Um, I think I got all that code dialed last night. Uh, just got it. Got like two more things on my list to do and then should be able to test it today.
00:29:17
Speaker
Have you come across the ability to read and write to arrays when it comes to the brand of shawl programming? What do you mean array? This is the thing I was asking CJ and the Autodesk guys about at AU, but let's say you had 25 features that were all different and you wanted to go probe them.
00:29:38
Speaker
In other words, you do a tool change to the probe. You want to probe 25 features. And let's just say you want to store for the sake of simplicity and keeping it a single dimensional array. You want to probe just the X dimension, like a WebX on each one.
00:29:55
Speaker
I'd rather pro ball 25 of those at once because I don't want to do 25 additional tool changes. So pro ball 25 of them, then you could come back with a different tool, uh, potentially for each one, but you want to read and write to an array cause you don't really want to have to store those to, I mean, I guess you could do some loops to write them to incremental variables, but that's kind of like a hacked array, I guess.
00:30:21
Speaker
No, I don't know if array is a word that I haven't read it in the FANUC book or anything. But basically, if you probe the first one right after you're done probing on my machine, variable 137 gives you the measured size, whatever it is. It's either 137 or something close.
00:30:41
Speaker
and then right after the probing op and after it's got that you just go like say you take your 600 variables you go variable 600 equals 137 and then you probe the second one and then 601 equals 137 and then yeah so it's just some simple manual NC stuff depending on how you pattern the probing op but then all of your 600s have the variables you need
00:31:05
Speaker
Yeah, no, that makes sense. And I guess that's not that hard. I think where an array could help is either larger amounts, which, or you could do three arrays for your XYZ. And then you could basically say the first, like the fourth position in each of these array correlates to the XYZ value. It's a lot cleaner. Like from a computer programming point of view, that probably makes a lot of sense. From a FANUC programming point of view, I don't know if it's really possible.
00:31:32
Speaker
So I did exactly that last night. I've got four fixtures. I've got XYZ times four. So I've got 12 locations. 12, 16. Right. So like 12.
00:31:44
Speaker
650, 651, 652, 653 is XYZ for the first one, and then XYZ for the second one. So at the top of my code, I'm writing in parentheses like 650 is X first position, 651. So I've got all the notes to myself, which I use as a little legend that I always go back to it. So I think I'm using probably 20 to 25 variables to do this that I want to do. And it's fine. That's not bad at all.
Understanding Machine Accuracy and Upgrades
00:32:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:15
Speaker
Actually, speaking of probing and machine accuracy type stuff, I got to give a shout out to Sven, who was a viewer who sent me an awesome email on linear scales as a follow up to last week's podcast. And he has recently completed
00:32:34
Speaker
a master's in control engineering with linear scales as a major part of his curriculum. So awesome that he's got- That's the guy. Right. And he pointed out some really obvious points once you read them. So
00:32:53
Speaker
I was asking about the difference between apparently co-located and a non-collated control, but linear scales, which is a non-collated control, can compensate for weird stuff happening with the ball screw or backlash or other changes, which I knew that.
00:33:12
Speaker
You know, if your ball screws performance is good and there's not a backlash or friction issues, you're probably okay with modern quality of components, broadly based. But, um, the difference between a motor encoder, which is what your, your mine machines have in linear scales is substantial. And this is where it gets really obvious. If you want a final table resolution of 0.001 millimeters with a linear scale, you'd achieve this by buying one with that resolution, which is very expensive with the motor encoder.
00:33:42
Speaker
It has the benefit of the gear reduction of the screw, which is five millimeters per rev. So the reality is you have a very inexpensive off-the-shelf part that can sit on the back of your motor axle, which gives you the same resolution and it is literally a fraction of the price. And it only has to be a single disc, whereas a linear scale, because it rotates, whereas a linear scale,
00:34:07
Speaker
you have to pay per distance of travel. Obviously, if you go from a 20-inch machine to a 40-inch machine, your linear scale probably went up by at least twice the price, if not significantly more because of the QC involved in the longer. Just like ball screws, pricing is, I think, more expensive at something between multiple and exponential.
00:34:31
Speaker
and putting an encoder on the back of the motor doesn't need that. So I really appreciate his feedback. That was very, very helpful. Yeah.
00:34:44
Speaker
Yeah. You just kind of put it up on this pedestal of, Oh, only the best fanciest machines have linear scales. So it must be the greatest thing, but I don't know for day to day, it sounds like a servo encoders work. Great. I think that's true. I do think I was like, when Ken mentioned on the WhatsApp that they picked up the Renishall ball bar probe. The first thing I did was I was like, how much of those costs in there are 11 grand. Um, which means I would do it as a surface, but I mean, the problem is a service call. And that's probably a thousand bucks.
00:35:15
Speaker
Right, and if you have 10 machines, then you buy one. Yeah, I've used it before. I had the Renishaw guys come in and we played with it for a couple hours and I'm like, this thing is really cool. If I had one of these, I would throw it on once a month just for kicks. Why were they in your shop? Or did you pay for that? Do you remember? No, I think I'm friends with...
00:35:40
Speaker
Uh, yeah, I mean, I had them in to put the probe on my Maury. I had them in to put the probe on my lathe. I'm friends with the Renishaw guys and they're like, Oh, let's come over and try it out. So yeah, it wasn't the paid service. Um, it's more just for fun for an excuse for one of their guys to come to my shop and say hi. Um, which was awesome. I do think, again, do you think you and I will start to appreciate the longevity of
00:36:07
Speaker
Of our machines in a good way in a bad way, you know, elements are gonna hold up really well and other things are gonna take You know, i've been starting to think a lot more about being deliberate about setting aside some money So that you know, look it is a absolute fact if we keep Uh one of our machines for another six eight ten years that you'll want to replace the spindle period Um, or maybe a screw or rail or something. So not to act, you know surprised and victimized when that happens under normal
00:36:37
Speaker
use. Yeah, and I mean, the machine is there to make you money. So hopefully it makes you enough money to to sustain the life and I mean, the life of these machines. There's 20 year old houses like Amish's VF seven is 20 years old. Yeah, he's like, this thing is awesome. I love this thing. He's got a DMG Maury five axis. And
00:37:00
Speaker
I think about that. There's Maury machines from the 80s that are still in great condition. What is a 2015 Maury going to do for the next 30 years? I assume it's going to be even better than the last generation forward.
00:37:16
Speaker
I don't know. That'll be interesting. I think you've seen some really good things about older machines and the way that they were built. And I think we live in an era where it's sacrilegious to say bad things about technology.
00:37:33
Speaker
And the reality is I don't like all of it. I don't, I think it's an, I don't know that you can fight it. And I think certainly from a machine to a builder standpoint, they embrace it for, for practical reasons, but also marketing reasons, but that makes things more difficult to repair and service and maintain. And, um, we'll see. I think we always assume that what we're doing at the present point in time is the best thing ever. And I'm not sure that's always true.
00:37:59
Speaker
That's a good point, yeah. I can't remember if it was EU that told me this, or a couple of years ago I heard that, you know how people idolize lathes from the 40s, like World War II era lathes? Because they're just, okay fine, that definitely wasn't you. But my point was, apparently the cast iron used then was
00:38:19
Speaker
There you go. It was actually better than what's available today. It wasn't just for lathes, John. It was mills and surface grinders. People will spend the money. I heard it from, I want to say somebody like Tom Lipton, but then Don Bailey on Suburban Tool was talking about why they will spend the money to rebuild surface grinders with that 1940s iron because it's just better stuff.
00:38:42
Speaker
Cool. Yeah, it is cool Yeah, I don't know if I mentioned it on a podcast but a couple weeks ago the the door interlock switch on my mori took a dump I think you did and it was just it just started to get a little flaky and we'd have to you know Jiggle it and like get it going and then it's amazing how much that can halt production We'd be down for like hours at a time just dicking around with this little switch Eventually, I just
00:39:08
Speaker
bit the bullet and bought the $450 replacement. It was here in a couple days and installed it back up and running. But I was like, what is your downtime worth to you? Like we lost a lot of production because of that. The $450 switch almost should have been an instant decision. But I was cheap. Yep.
00:39:29
Speaker
So it's weird, right? This is definitely putting us into a different kind of age bracket mentality. But every time I'm in a vehicle that has one of those radio buttons to shift the transmission from park to neutral to drive, like the new Ram trucks to shift gears, it's literally like a plastic knob that feels like you're switching the band of the FM station.
00:39:52
Speaker
And yeah, I'm not a fan of that. And I know I'm not unique in saying that.
Shop Organization and Environmental Control
00:39:56
Speaker
But why am I better off with that over the floor, the steering column, the ship? Yeah, like a mechanical kind of. Right. Yeah. Anyways. What are you going to do? I have one other thing I wanted to mention. Oh, well, we completely rearranged the shop.
00:40:21
Speaker
I saw that on Instagram. Holy cow. It was, well, I shouldn't say was cause it's not exactly the past tense yet. We're still kind of doing it, but
00:40:30
Speaker
I assume you moved everything but the Haas machines. Correct. But we were thinking about it. And especially the BF2 isn't that heavy. And so we're going to try to, I think eventually we're going to pick up a set of skates. And because I want to be, I want to keep this, I want to keep reasonableness and safety here. In other words, if we needed to just have rigors come in, that's fine.
00:40:57
Speaker
The Haas machines are quite easy to understand or any machine centers, it's easy to understand where the center of gravity is and their weight and you've got plenty of good wide rigging points. It's not something that's really peculiar. So to jack those up with a little jack and get a skate under there and push them around actually shouldn't be that big of a deal at all. Yeah. And I mean, once you watch somebody level at once, you kind of get the gist. Right. That's true.
00:41:22
Speaker
You know, we didn't have to move them right now, but I think we will. I bet you we do in the next year, but it was phenomenal. Once we started, the floodgates just came down. A bunch of people moved desks, me included. I did a absolute final purge. I'm not quite done, but lots of stuff that we just don't use that needed to go, which is which it just feels so good. It's a it's a really a good energy.
00:41:53
Speaker
Nice. It's like when you, I don't know, move your bed around in your bedroom and you flip it around and you're like, Oh my gosh, this is a whole new house. Yeah. Do you, um, do you walk hurriedly into the shop and then either like, whoa, it's all different. Like you forgot or you bump into stuff. Cause it used to be, it's actually, are you pretty good? It's every time I have to do something, I'm smiling because I'm walking less and stuff is better laid out. The visibility is better. The weird thing is that.
00:42:22
Speaker
We go in and out of our side door and we moved all of our shipping over there and the finished goods inventory racks. So when you walk in now, you mean you walked in the side door there next to the air pressure. It's almost like a hallway now, which is very strange. Um, yeah, it's good.
00:42:40
Speaker
But it makes perfect sense. Yeah, that's awesome. We've got to do some more figuring out about clean, dirty. We're still going to have welders and some grinders and plasma and laser. And I don't want to put up walls. Ed was looking at these shop curtains or welding curtains. I'm not against it, but I want to chew on it a little bit more.
00:43:04
Speaker
I also think maybe just some more deliberate either dust extraction or we were even thinking about selling or getting rid of some of the little bench grinders that we've got and picking up those ones that you and Eric have. Go the RB ones? Yeah, whatever something that comes with a built in. Yeah, they're sweet. If you're making a lot of dust or particles with those, does it
00:43:27
Speaker
Is it almost almost all handled or is it all pulled out? I guess I can't answer that, but it sucks really hard. Okay. And, uh, you heard it here first folks. Cause I don't like, I walked in yesterday and they were, we were grinding some.
00:43:46
Speaker
Fixing some desks and stands which is fine But I you know I can smell that metal Particle dust in the air and to go back full circle that does not make your spindles last longer That does not improve the accuracy of your rails over long term exactly
00:44:01
Speaker
Well, and it's funny because here, like I bought two RVs which have two buffers each, like two spindles. So there's four there and they've got them mounted with various stuff, but they're still using like the cheap Harbor Freight one with no shield, no dust extraction.
00:44:16
Speaker
the most. And I think it's for access because the RB has an enclosure and you can't exactly like reach all over it too much. That's got to be the reason. Maybe because it works better as a seated position, little things like that, but literally the one they're using 80% of the time.
00:44:36
Speaker
is the open one. And I'm just like, I don't know. I don't get it. I feel like the answer to that is to remove the open one from your shop for a week and fix the RB. Like, is it the location? Do you need to modify the sheet metal? Like just. That's a good, good point. I haven't brought it up, brought it up to Eric yet, but it should. Sweet. What do you see today?
00:45:01
Speaker
Today, I want to get those fixtures running. Run my code, run two fixtures at once, and then we'll work our way up to four. I've got to do a bunch more stuff to get four going. But two will be a huge improvement. To be able to run two at night has been awesome. We're still trying to fine tune the data extraction from the Maury using the Raspberry Pi and the Google Sheets and all that.
00:45:25
Speaker
It works almost perfectly, but the PI doesn't always sync files to the Google drive. There's some sky road, a little script to do that. And it's not fully functional because you got to mount and unmount the USB, et cetera, et cetera. In Google drive, even it's better than I used to use sugar sink, but still Google drive. Sometimes my laptop, I'll have to kind of close and reopen it to force it to, I don't know if that's your issue, but kind of makes me think about.
00:45:52
Speaker
I just want to move away from the stress of little things like that because it's just not worth it. That's a good example where I think technology, it reminds me, humbly said, of all this talk about self-driving cars. It's super, super exciting, but I think people massively underestimate how far away we are from actual self-driving cars. Yeah, from everybody on the road having it.
00:46:15
Speaker
Oh, I would make a side bet that it'll never happen. Because the solve, the cost and risk associated with that last 1% of consequence is a probably, if you go look at most litigation insurance stuff in the US is based on car accidents, period. It is a multi, multi-billion dollar industry, in a bad way, unfortunately. But I just think people wonder, I see how complicated that is.
00:46:45
Speaker
Humans are just really, really good at making real time decisions on stuff like that. Not all humans. Of course, but there's a, yeah, we'll see. Yeah, exactly. It's up for debate. Cool. What are you up to today?
00:47:03
Speaker
What do I have to do today? Getting some final stuff in the shop reorganized because of drops for the Tormox and stuff, now that they've kind of moved. We bought an energy recovery ventilator, which is. Yeah, you mentioned that a few months ago. Yeah, so it rotates like a silica disk. But basically, it's able to pull in outside air
00:47:27
Speaker
and push out shop air. So it basically is an air exchanger with the outside to get us fresh air, but the rotating disc recovers a decent portion of either the heated air in the winter or the cooled air in the summer. So you're not just swapping out like today. It's 28 degrees Fahrenheit. That's pretty cold. Um, I don't want to just open the window and, and figuratively or literally to get, yeah. So that's, we're hooking that up and, um,
00:47:55
Speaker
I don't know what else on my list. We got some orders. We just finishing up the kind of holiday sales orders, which is awesome. Nice. Your gobble gobble sale. Gobble gobble. And the Haas is running great. We're always making little tweaks on our fixturing, which makes me so excited. I love, like I said this probably a year ago, but one of the things that's exciting to now be back in a product business for sure is
00:48:21
Speaker
pouring yourself into the long-term investment. Look what you're doing today. Those fixtures are you. You have all these characteristics over them, all these tweaks, improvements, processes. It's exciting. Yeah, I love it. Sweet. Sweet. I was thinking for next week, let's talk about any end of year goals we want to accomplish throughout December. Perfect.
00:48:45
Speaker
I think that could work out well. Yeah, that's totally good. I'll put that on my list to do some thinking about. Sweet. Awesome. Have a good day, bud. You too, man. Correct. Take care. Bye. Bye.