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Business of Machining - Episode 97
240 Plays7 years ago
Starts off on a SUPER positive note: “We’ve got the recipe down!”
The team is taking initiative, and making projects their own.
“You need the best guy to come up with the process. Then it’s trainable, it’s a recipe.” - Grimsmo
Healthy shops, happy team
Do your machines need filters?
Where are we at in the SAGA of the Saga Pen?
“Priorities, man” - Grimsmo
Knives are the first priority, and the lathe has been running non-stop for the past few weeks in the Grimsmo shop. That’s awesome! But it means there’s less lathe time for pen parts (which are entirely made on the lathe).
Saunders’ Challenge: What spindle to buy next? Check out Saunders’ December shop update! It breaks down how to budget, and what time of year is best to buy.
DOUBLE TROUBLE
Grimsmo is successfully running two pallets(!!) at a time now on his mill, but getting this to work was no cake walk.
Among the casualties: a Cogsdill Tool
“I was so worried about the programming side of it, that I didn’t worry about the mechanical side” - Grimsmo
Your tolerance is inTENTH!
The Johns talk machining and getting their tolerances down to tenths.
Sad news: factory closing the doors after 100 years of operation
- 100,000 sq/ft factory closes down
- Saunders goes across the street to say goodbye, learn, and check out the auction
Back to the Grind...ing company
The Supfina fine grinding machine is no longer happening for Grimsmo. BUT Nifty Bar upped their game and meets the Grimsmo standard in grinding! Could this be better?
Questions raised:
Q: Can an FAQ make up for a subroutine?
A: On a shopify website, perhaps!
Tune in to hear Saunders’ and Grimsmo’s 2019 goals!
Sneak peak:
Grimsmo: Get a new fixture installed to allow a four pallet setup
Saunders: Work steadily on improving the Shopify website
Recommended
Transcript
Episode Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business and machining episode number 97. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. Good morning, buddy. How are you? I'm doing good.
Filter System Innovations
00:00:11
Speaker
So we have our like recipe down. It makes me so happy that stuff works this way. And it's the example that comes to mind is your video of your grinding filter.
00:00:27
Speaker
I may have mentioned this last week, but I think I saw it. I think Ed, maybe even Alex had also watched your video on their own, which just speaks to like the kind of people that I like that we all work with here. And then I found, I think we bought a little bit of a different, slightly different, maybe version or size. And we were able to have, so it's a six inch charcoal filter. So it looks like a giant cylinder, like a little mini beer. Ours is four inch. Okay.
00:00:54
Speaker
And then we don't need it to exhaust out anywhere. We just literally put the 400 CFM fan directly attached to it. So it's this little self-contained system. And we hung it right above the Haas doors, wired it into the lights. So when you open the doors, the external lights turn on. That thing turns on. And basically the mist away from Haas, which I think the mist
00:01:20
Speaker
a ways are better. Going forward, I would buy the aftermarket version, not the cost version. But if it hasn't had the chance to finish clearing out the machine, that will help pull the little bit of coolant or aerosolized stuff straight up into that filter. You don't smell it. You don't notice it. It looks clear. It looks cleaner. And what I love though is it all happened like
00:01:43
Speaker
I think I put it together. Alex helped wire it, or Ed did, and then Jared built a little bracket and framed it, and then Alex put a page up on NYC showing folks how we did it with the bill of materials, with the links to it, and it just happens. It's been great. I've been actually really happy. It was one of my goals to wrap up this year was some of those sort of improvements, and it's awesome.
00:02:10
Speaker
Yeah. Like I first saw that on Instagram, um, on Kelvin's page, urban tactical gear and, um, urban survival gear. And he got one for his nude laser engraver and I was like, whoa, that looks really cool. And it's cheap. It's Amazon. So I texted it to Eric and he's like, Oh, I'll think about it. And then like the next day he ordered it up, it came in. I barely helped install it. And then everybody else just took it over and we don't even think about it anymore.
00:02:36
Speaker
I think the charcoal is, it seems to, the descriptions make it seem like the charcoal is better for stuff like fumes and less like a actual suspended liquid, like we're using it for. So you may end up having some problems with it. I'll keep everybody posted. Well, same for how we use it for, for the laughing machine, because it's a suspended liquid, like diamond powder particles suspended in this spray, this atomized spray.
00:03:04
Speaker
And it's this fog of liquid, kind of like coolant in a machine. And it's working for you guys, right? It's working really good. The cotton filter on the outside tends to get pretty clogged up. So I bought three more replacements the other day and they're just swapping them out and then soaking it in simple green overnight and kind of cleaning it.
00:03:28
Speaker
Mine came with two, and I literally have a note in my calendar. I think it's tomorrow is two weeks to be really nice to my wife, so she'll throw it in the wash. Nice.
Calvin's Move and Personal Updates
00:03:39
Speaker
I haven't paid attention to his Instagram lately to see his updates on, isn't Calvin moving from California to Texas? Allegedly. I think he is working on building a shop out in Texas, so it could be a long-term project.
00:03:56
Speaker
Good for him though. That's super cool. That's amazing. I lost his pen that I carried for a year and a half, maybe two years. I lost it at AU and I'm torn because, I mean, I like his pens and he just did a Kickstarter. So I was thinking about picking another one up, but I'm really hoping my buddy, John Grimsmoke can get one up for sale soon. Yep. Two niche priorities, man. Oh, no, no. I mean, yeah. How's that going? How's no progress?
00:04:25
Speaker
super busy with knife stuff. I haven't had a chance to dive into pens.
Machining Strategies and Improvements
00:04:32
Speaker
But we've been running the lathe like basically four weeks nonstop. Wow. Yeah. That's awesome. It's great. But it shows how many parts we need. You're building up the larger supply of the smaller parts?
00:04:49
Speaker
Yeah, some of it's like six months inventory. Yeah. So it's not just in time. You're not just using that for. No, on the mill, we're doing just in time on the lathe. We're doing like, this takes forever to set up. Let's make as many as we can. Yeah. And that's fine. Yeah. As long as you QC all the parts and you know, they're going to be good. And we obviously know we're going to need them, um, for the coming year. So it's kind of a no brainer.
00:05:13
Speaker
we uh this uh sort of what's been to my next problem it's not a problem but it's it's continuing to take a different direction i mean literally you you know it i've looked at dedicatedly seriously looked at lots of almost every different version of a vertical in the even horizontal um solution bridge mills gantries larger uh higher quality um etc and
00:05:39
Speaker
The current thinking, which is just that, only the current thinking, is actually to just buy a duplicate VM3 because we're now seeing that our biggest setup time is switching between our two different major work holdings on fixture plates.
00:05:56
Speaker
And if we had two, it'd be really more than a potentially more than a double productivity because it'd be easy to have both running. It would be very easy actually to have both running at once because the cycle times tend to be 30 minutes up to two hours. So one person could easily be running both, but then also
00:06:14
Speaker
you would basically be able to leave each one set up for that type. When that clicked, I just thought, oh my gosh, the light bulbs went off.
00:06:29
Speaker
I guess you don't have it that easy, because you're not just bouncing between two setups, huh? Well, tooling, when you say a setup, you really mean things that are in the tool, because the chuck isn't. Like we replaced the 5C collets. We got to dial them in for length and pressure and all that. Tooling changes out a little bit, depending on, like we switched from, what was it, from thumb studs to pivots yesterday. And Angelo probably spent an hour setting it up and dialing it in.
00:06:58
Speaker
Well, that's not bad. It's not bad. It's just interesting. I would think it would be putting tool holders into the turret or tooling into the tool holders. I wouldn't think the collets would be that sensitive. Is it? Yeah, they're not that complicated, the collets. Got it. You're right. It's mostly the tooling and then dialing in the part to get every, you know, each of the five or whatever tolerances that have to be tight. Interesting. Hmm. Okay.
00:07:30
Speaker
Uh, what's been going on on the, uh, knife or on the knife world and Bill side, Bill side. Um, Oh dude. So double pallets are running perfectly.
00:07:43
Speaker
Awesome. It's just like yesterday morning was the first morning. So two nights ago, I ran it for the first time. I've been crunching through this code so much over the past week. You know, for the weekend, just dedicating lots of time to getting it right. And
00:08:02
Speaker
Man, is it ever glorious. Because we put up that macro video the other day, I had one of my friends email me and be like, I've been doing macros too. Here's a version of my code. And I'm like, whoa, that's pretty complicated. That's awesome. Good for you. So I shared with him this code. And he goes, whoa, that's way bigger and more complicated too. But he actually started going through it line by line and following the logic within the code.
00:08:27
Speaker
It was takes a long time to understand and follow, but he did it just for fun because he's into this kind of stuff. And, uh, and he found like three mistakes in the code. He emailed me back and he's like, you know, this one's probably not a big deal, but this one. Basically, if you, if you have the first palette empty and you have something on the second palette, it's not going to turn the probe on, but it's going to think it's on somebody. Cool. That's a big deal. Thank you so much. Heck of a catch to make to just reading through the code. Wow.
00:08:57
Speaker
Yeah, so that was handy. But yeah, and then, shout out to the anonymous guy who's reading through Graham's first probing code. Yep. So Monday night, I put two pallets on, loaded them up. I stayed till like 8 p.m., hit cycle start, and I'm like, I think it's good.
00:09:21
Speaker
I think I've checked everything I can. I dry tested it a lot. Like I made a little fake fan toolpath just to trace the fixture and then rewind and move to the second fixture and then trace that fixture and then rewind and move on. So I'm like, as, as sure as I can be, I think this is going to work. Even still,
00:09:42
Speaker
I could not leave it alone. So I came back at 11 PM to watch it change over. Cause I'm like, I don't still feel super comfortable here. You just knew this is about three hours, three and a half.
00:09:54
Speaker
So I came back literally with like two minutes to spare, which is perfect. And I watched it move from the first palette and it skipped the second palette and finished onto the engraving. And I'm like, wait a minute. There's one line of code where I updated the wrong value right at the end, which caused it to skip the second palette. Um, no big deal really, but I was able to fix it that night. I stayed till like 12 30 and then, uh, made my way back home again, running that second palette.
00:10:24
Speaker
So then came back in the morning and Barry and Angelo had been in already for quite a while. And the, you know, the COGS deal tool that we use, it's, you know, about a thousand bucks, no big deal to burnish the pivot hole on our knives. So that was broken and sticking out of one of the blades again. And
00:10:46
Speaker
Yeah, and Barry texted me a picture of it on my way in and I'm like, no way, it's not possible. Everything's fine. There's nothing wrong in the code because it ran on the first palette. I don't understand what's going on. Ended up there was a set screw in that hole where the cog still goes in. And because that tool has to go so far below the part to properly clearance and burnish and stuff, there's just a set screw in the way. Wait, somebody fell in there?
00:11:12
Speaker
No, like we installed it, because we're like, oh, we don't need that hole. There's no screw that goes in there. So we put a set screw in there. So I'm not devastated or anything, because at least we have the result, the answer. So I drilled out all of those holes so that they're not threaded anymore, and it would never be a problem again. I was just going to say, I hope that's a permanent fix, this thing.
00:11:38
Speaker
Luckily, last time we broke this tool, which was only five weeks ago, we ordered two. We now used our last one, which is good. I already ordered two more yesterday, and then we'll have them. Wow. Sorry, that stinks.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah, it stinks, but whatever. I'm happier that two pallets is working, and I'm willing to eat this little mistake because of that. Well, it's a very fine line because it's potentially a good segue to talk about what I did yesterday at an auction.
00:12:13
Speaker
It's not that you are happy about it or you're cavalier about that, but it's also, it happened. There's no reason to let it ruin your day. Frankly, you didn't crash the machine. You've got productivity running. It was a relatively innocent mistake. I'm not sure. It's tough to say that there was a real teaching moment because good grief. How do you anticipate?
00:12:35
Speaker
I was so worried about the programmatical side of it that I didn't worry about the mechanical side. It's like when I started. So it broke the cocktail tool, it broke the next treadmill, and then it broke the next chamfer mill. But it actually finished the rest of the palette and didn't need those tools again.
00:12:57
Speaker
wow that's so like you come in and you think it's successful except there's just one blade with something sticking out of it um not that bad yeah oh that's a bummer uh i broke the i crashed the first time i ever
00:13:13
Speaker
Yeah, the first time I ever actually crashed the VM3 was this summer making that injection mold. And I think most folks know about this by now. But so focused on dialing in the run out on a Harvey carbide reamer that I forgot to measure the tool height. And that's just, I don't know. I'm not sure. I wasn't really mad at myself. I just
00:13:37
Speaker
you know, yeah, right. Like, I've had some crashes that devastated me for a day or more. Yeah. You know, Linda wheels. Yeah, exploded a few of those and especially the parts that are relatively expensive and take six weeks to get here. Right. That you don't want to crash.
00:13:58
Speaker
Right. Right. So even this Cogstill tool takes a week to get here and we can't be down for a week. Yeah. So you could burn those off line though, right? Yeah, I realized that yesterday too. We could, we could barrel lap them with little brass lap. Um, it just takes longer. But we could, we wouldn't be dead. So yeah, that, that too, we have the same tool and we used to use it. Um, but we don't anymore. And I'm actually glad that we don't, it's not, um,
00:14:28
Speaker
In my opinion or experience, it doesn't really allow you to resize a whole like I think it claims to. Now we're still talking tenths, but it seems to be more of a tool like perhaps you would say like a reamer wear or a boring bar wear.
00:14:49
Speaker
it will resize a hole, but it's still resizing it on a relative and not an absolute basis. So if you're, let's say your hole where your hole diameter decreases about two-tenths across a part because of wear on the tool, you would hope the Cogzilla could come back in and smooth all of those out to be even. And it also effectively inherits at least a portion of that decrease
00:15:13
Speaker
which has the benefit still of improving the, I guess, profilometer surface roughness average, but not actually giving you better tolerancing. And perhaps it's better, but for us, it wasn't worth it. And it's an expensive tool and it's a little bit difficult to run. You've got the
00:15:33
Speaker
We had to buy the facing version, so we have to run ours. Yours is the one you run deeper. Ours is the one where the rollers come out to the face so that you can do a blind hole. I'm actually super glad that we're not using it. It's so awesome how good we've gotten at making the plates in the pours on them. It's exciting. Nice.
00:15:54
Speaker
Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's very influenced by the pre-hole diameter, which I spent probably 10 tries yesterday just dialing it in perfect, getting both the pre-hole size and the burnished size to be what I want.
00:16:10
Speaker
Speaking of that, I met Adam the Machinist on Instagram at the auction yesterday. He was from not that far away here in Ohio, and he is a very, very talented tool and time maker. And I'd follow him on Instagram.
00:16:26
Speaker
and knew generally who he was but when you meet somebody obviously it's a much richer experience. I was actually browsing through some of his Instagram posts and he's got a lot of like more jig grinding work he's done and slots and some really clever clamping and fixturing and stamping dies and really some impressive work.
00:16:47
Speaker
But the reason maybe think of that is things like more jig grinders that are less, I think, less susceptible. They solve that problem in a different way, in a more stable, accurate way. Just like, I guess, a reamer.
00:17:05
Speaker
Well, no reamers are still affected by preboard pre reamed diameter as well. Yeah, for sure.
Tooling Precision Challenges
00:17:11
Speaker
But perhaps less so than a boring bar because there's not deflection. A reamer is effectively a padded, like the Cogsell makes those, those padded boring bars where it supports the tool 180 degrees offset from the cutting edge, which is really cool. Right, right. I'm trying to think of the last time I've ran a reamer.
00:17:34
Speaker
It's probably been four years at least. Oh, really? That's funny. That's funny. You go from interpolating that hole to cogs zilling it? To the cogs. Yep. Yep. And we probably get, we don't even measure it really, probably get three tenths of variation part to part, not part to part, but like batch to batch based on the pre-hole tool life. Got it. Yeah, makes sense. We replace that tool.
00:18:04
Speaker
periodically, every week or two. And then, so I mean, the inside surface looks really good, and probably profilometers really good. And then upstairs, they burnish it again with the barrel app. Got it. And diamond compound. So they bring it up to final size, but it's basically my job to make their job easier. Sure, sure, sure. Get it close. But it's interesting because a tool will create feed forward scallop lines,
00:18:32
Speaker
But that's the only thing that the Cogzill has to even cold flow out. Chips in the end mill will create linear lines as well as the feed forward, which the chips are probably worse than the feed forward lines. Interesting. It almost makes me wonder why don't you remit and probably skip the Cogzill. The finish is night and day difference, at least for us.
00:19:01
Speaker
Yeah. If anything, I'd remand then COG still. Yeah, sure. Is it hard at this point? No, they're soft. Got it. Interesting. I think you can burn as hard, but. Adam's post was showing a semi-floating
00:19:21
Speaker
other half of a die, like an insert, I don't know the die terms, but in a stamping die, one of the, we'll call it the female end was rigid, but the male end actually had like 5,000 float, and then it was aligned with a stripper plate. So the stripper plate is what kept this sort of like a poster, L-shaped pin, excuse me, not an L-shaped pin, but an L-shaped extrusion or machined part.
00:19:47
Speaker
For the stamping thing lined up with the bottom dive and the fit between this floating L-shaped heart and the stripper plate was between 50 millions in one tenth and showing it like putting it in there and moving it up and down and
00:20:04
Speaker
Um, and, and it's funny cause we, we use this deltronics gauge pins to test out holes. So we we've gotten pretty comfortable at knowing what the difference is between a one 10th difference and a two 10th difference. And so you, you kind of like, you know it in it, but then you see it on that work and you're like, that's cool.
00:20:21
Speaker
Wow, because even even making our injection mold for the fixture plate plugs, the tolerance is really only about a thousandth of an inch total clearance on like the stripper. You know, the pins that do the punch out, I can't think of the name right now. Relative ejector. Thank you. So, you know, thousandth of an inch isn't that big of a deal, but he's literally 10, if not 15 times tighter tolerance than that.
00:20:50
Speaker
Wow, that's crazy. I mean, it's fun to say you can hit a tenth sometimes like on various things, but to actually make parts that made together with only a tenth of clearance is ridiculous.
00:21:02
Speaker
Our machines hold tents all day. All day. All day. Never fail. That's what the salesman tell us. That's actually the other thing I've been thinking about. Now that it's getting quite cold here, I'm happy with our ERV. I'm happy with the exhausting. I'm really happy with the big ass fan. But I do think now about the fact that our winter heating bill has always gone pretty darn high.
00:21:27
Speaker
Yeah. And I don't mind it. You know, like today we're hosting the training class. We keep the shop very comfortable, but it bothers me overnight that we're doing it and we don't have, I don't, I got to figure out from somebody how, like we have those, um, Reznor corner gas heaters, the big Reznor things that hang from the ceiling.
00:21:47
Speaker
Um, okay. And they have a little like old school thermostats where you just slide the bar left or right. Um, but I took a quick look a year ago and I was thinking, Hey, can I put a nest on one of these? And it doesn't look like I could put a nest on one, but it bothers me because I don't really want to heat the building from, you know, midnight till five in the morning.
00:22:04
Speaker
Um, but I do want it warmed back up so that when we start running the machines an hour or two later, um, the machine, because the cast iron will effectively be a battery, you know, it'll, it'll stay heated after the heat goes out and then it'll heat back up a little, but, uh,
00:22:20
Speaker
I care about it. Also, my point was from a tolerancing machine accuracy standpoint, I don't want huge swings of fluctuation. Yeah, and you've got a much bigger shop. We've only got 1,000 square feet, so I just keep it hot all the time. Yeah. Keep it at 70, 24, 7. I think I cool it off for the weekend or something. You have a nest. Yeah, I lose a couple degrees overnight. No, we just have a crappy Honeywell thermostat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fine. Well, look, our machine shop room's only 4,000 square feet.
00:22:53
Speaker
I'm wondering, I hate to think about it, but I wonder if taking the time to actually spray, insulate our ceiling
00:23:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of those things where I don't want to do it. But our winter heating bill, I have to see what it comes in at. It's probably going to be about $600 a month. And if that could drop, see, it's not a great ROI. Because even if that dropped in half, which I think would be pretty ambitious or favorable, that's saving you $300 a month, $1,800 a year. The spray phone quote I think I got like four years ago was $15,000 or $20,000. So a 10-year payback is not
00:23:30
Speaker
Not that exciting. It's tough. But we did take, I borrowed my friends, he's got one of these cheap thermal things that you can use to look at heat loss.
Shop Efficiency and Auction Insights
00:23:41
Speaker
I did use it to walk around the shop to make sure we at least put weather stripping and insulation on a little spots so there aren't a quarter inch gap underneath the door can actually leak in a tremendous amount of air. So that was good. Nice.
00:23:59
Speaker
You said you were busy yesterday doing something. Yeah. So the factory, 100,000 square foot factory literally across the street from us unfortunately shut down, which is sad because what's sad for a lot of reasons, one of which is that it was in operation for over 100 years. Wow. It's the reason my building used to be a school because they pulled people out of the program straight. They were very involved in the school here.
00:24:28
Speaker
And so it's just, it's just sad on a lot of fronts like that. But, um, I went to the auction and they had, I mean, John, holy cow. They must've had 40 machines of which 25 were, were machining centers or returning centers. Um, but I was, I was, you know, I went into learn, I went, there was a CMM, the CMM,
00:24:53
Speaker
I researched it a bunch before I had a chance to go look at it in person and the answer became clear that this does not make sense. Then when I went to look at it, literally it looked like you had given Leif a ball peen hammer and told him to have fun hammering things on the table.
00:25:12
Speaker
for about three hours. There's a cast iron table and it was beat up and they took the computer away. Anyways, the CMM ended up selling. It was a huge CMM. Renishaw articulating probe. It sold for $250. Oh my goodness. But it doesn't work. Literally, there's no way to do it. It's worthless. Anyway, the
00:25:33
Speaker
I'm relieved. I ended up buying a drill press, a really nice Rockwell 20 inch drill press. We just need a general purpose drill press to replace the grizzly one I've had for 10 years. And I bought it for 150 bucks. That's literally all I bought.
00:25:49
Speaker
Which is a relief because there were most of the machines were quite old or very specific to glass mold industry or I think the old 19 maybe 90 Monarch twin spindle twin turret lays.
00:26:06
Speaker
But very, very esoteric, very weird machines, very strange tool holders. And they ended up selling for scrap. But they had a Nakamura SC430 lathe, 10 years old. It had machine cast iron, which is an easy way for us to say. It doesn't make sense. But big machine, good machine, twin spindle, big turret. And it's sold for $12,000.
00:26:35
Speaker
Wow. And if that machine were cleaned up and had been well maintained and didn't have cast iron covering the turret, I bet you it could have sold for three times that price. Yeah, easy. So it was a relief to not buy it, but to feel like I've got projects or stuff now like that. Yeah, exactly. It would be easy to just not be able to ignore certain deals. Well, I have to buy that because it's such a good deal.
00:26:59
Speaker
Yeah, you'd have to go in with a lot of conviction and a lot of internal fortitude. But do you see yourself going to a lot more auctions? No.
00:27:08
Speaker
In fact, almost very unlikely. I mean, this one was literally across the street. I would have done that too. There were actually a bunch of things I kind of wanted to buy on the small tools front, but not surprisingly, the small tool stuff gets bit up because people are there that can transport it or it has a more stable market value. The other thing that I had never seen before at an auction is
00:27:34
Speaker
the company still has repair shops in their glass plants throughout the country. So the glass plant shop guys got to come and take all the stuff they wanted. So there wasn't a single set of parallels or indicator or Kurt Weiss, basically everything that was left, it was kind of. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
00:27:57
Speaker
Yeah, I haven't been to an auction in probably five years. So this is pre Maury, pre new shop. Um, but I did go to some in the beginning, um, in the local area, probably three. And at the time having no money and no space for a big machine, it was more just like fun to go watch. Like I saw an EDM machine sell for $800 because nobody wanted it. And, uh,
00:28:25
Speaker
It was neat because there were like, they'd have a lot of tool holders or a lot of boxes of inserts. So you bid on this, like, I don't know, a hundred boxes of inserts, all brand new. And people would bid them up because they would like basically go straight on eBay. It's like just such an easy way to flip and make some money. Because like what shop is going to want a box of a hundred random inserts that you don't need, like specifically?
00:28:54
Speaker
It was so easy. I was telling Yvonne the night before, I was like, I promise. You can get carried away. Lots of people get carried away at auctions. And there was some stuff that I know you could have flipped. Absolutely. I was like, I am not buying a single thing with the intent. Yeah, just not. But what struck me, and I had no knowledge of
00:29:18
Speaker
how that factory really worked or the daily operation. So I would hesitate to ever criticize. But nevertheless, the tooling, the tool holders, boring bars, solid carbide boring bars, inserts,
00:29:32
Speaker
The number of tools that I saw that seemed to be unused, like never used, blew my mind. And again, there may be very good reason for it. But as a guy who still writes the checks for that stuff, like seeing boxes of Sandvik face mills never opened, those are expensive. And it makes me proud that we're still pretty,
00:29:57
Speaker
focus on how we buy tools and use them, but also it makes me also very... It confirms my conviction about how the fact that we've over the last three months sold stuff. If we're not using it, it's okay to get rid of it because otherwise you'll just turn... It feels great to say, oh, we've got a bunch of extra stuff and we got it for a deal, but if you're not using it,
00:30:20
Speaker
In this era, at least, I understand, I guess, you know, my grandfather being a depression era person was a hoarder, basically, you know, wanted to have any tool to do anything at any time, but not the business we're in. Yeah, fair enough. Good segue to that.
Vendor Process Improvements
00:30:38
Speaker
Remember the subfina fine grinding machine that I was looking into getting? That is no longer happening.
00:30:48
Speaker
Interesting. And basically, this is miscommunication throughout a whole company. But they sort of led us to believe we would be able to get a floor model, one of their demo machines, their test machines for a great price. And that ended up not working at all. So they're like, all we can give you is a new machine for a tiny little discount. And I'm like, that just kills our affordability. It's not going to happen.
00:31:16
Speaker
So I was kind of sad at first because I'm like, oh, I was all excited and kind of planning this and I was like, yeah, that's our future. It's going to be blah, blah, blah. In retrospect, I feel really great about it because I mean, here's a very expensive, very specialized machine that would probably be really hard to sell secondary because the market, I mean, the market is there, but
00:31:36
Speaker
Super niche. And now we don't have to buy this machine that costs well over $100,000. This was going to be the replace double disc grinding? Correct. Got it. And the floor with the demo machine was no longer available, or it just wasn't going to be the right fit?
00:31:57
Speaker
They, they said something like, uh, you know, we reviewed our costing and how much money we have into it, blah, blah, blah. And it doesn't make sense for us to sell it for less than a new machine. So we'll just sell you a new machine. And I'm like, okay, got it. Whatever. Um, however, that led Barry to suggest, well, why don't you just push nifty bar to see if they can get us a better finish? And I thought to myself and I go, I don't think I've ever asked them that question. Yep.
00:32:24
Speaker
I feel really stupid, but I'm like, that's really good. So I emailed him right away. Um, John, they're the owner. I met him at blade show. Actually he came by to visit. So I have to talk to him for a little bit. Nice, super nice guy.
00:32:36
Speaker
He's the kind of guy that wants to take care of his customer, that wants to leave a legacy and have word of mouth kind of thing. And I've worked with Nifty Bar for five, six years, but I've never been super impressed with their double disc. So I asked him, I'm like, you know, this deal fell through. We were going to basically cut you guys out. Yeah.
00:32:59
Speaker
What's it going to take for us to get a better finish from you guy? I want your best machine. I want your best machinist. Do you need new wheels for the machine? I'm willing to consider that. Let me know. And he goes, all right, I'll talk it over with my production team and I'll get back to you. We had a batch of material getting shipped there at the same time anyway, like 300 blades. It was supposed to be 400, but I only ordered 300 because I had a little brain fart.
00:33:25
Speaker
So anyway 300 blades are you seen as shaking his finger because that is purchasing not procurement Exactly. That is a purchasing problem. I ordered 400 pairs of handles and clips only 300 blades. I don't know why
00:33:39
Speaker
Anyway, so 300 blades were going there and I said, how about you do 25% of them with the new method, send them straight to us. You'll turn it around really quick and we'll be able to see the finish. Those came in two days ago and oh my goodness, they look fantastic. Awesome. They look so good. And he said to me originally, he's like, yeah, it might increase the cost a little bit. I'm like, I'm willing to do it because
00:34:04
Speaker
It'll be worth it. It'll save our lapping time. If you can get a better finish, the tighter tolerance lapping will be much easier, et cetera, et cetera. Um, yeah. So like Eric gave it a huge thumbs up and sky looked at the parts and he's like, these look really good. You know, they're not perfect because they're still a double disc ground finish, but super consistent, super flat, really good thickness control. And, uh, and yeah, so.
00:34:31
Speaker
I milled a couple, we're gonna lap them probably in two days, and then I'll be able to feed back information to Nifty Bar to keep that machinist process, whatever. That's now the full grim smoke process. And then they're gonna adjust to final size based on what we need to take off.
00:34:53
Speaker
They're going to adjust. OK. Because your issue is not so much the surface finish, because you handle that in lapping. You just want the flatness and thickness better? Both. All of it. Oh, you do? Like surface finish, imagine if it's really bad, you've got to take two thou off of each side. Oh, because there's actual scratches through the part. I see. I see. OK. Exactly. Humble advice, document, work with them to document that process now.
00:35:23
Speaker
Great idea. This almost exact same thing happened with one of our vendors and we found the solution, but it wasn't until we documented it that it was memorialized in a way that I can handle it because guess what? Salespeople leave or the company's transition or if that guy gets hit by a bus and you've got to go to a new double disc grinding shop, you want to have
00:35:44
Speaker
that information period. Not just for their records, but for my records as well, if they're willing to share their process. Yeah, they should. Some of it for us was, how are you holding the part? What's the grit? What's the coolant? Again, it's a good relationship. I never got that with the ulterior motive of competitively pricing them against a competitor.
00:36:07
Speaker
but the reality is that's a key part of my business and that stuff is important simply for the process because in fact, we had one thing occur afterward and they did it incorrectly and they knew it but because I had the paperwork and the spec sheet, in fact, it was hilarious. I got a little stressed this week on some silly stuff outside of work and one of the things involved going to the doctor
00:36:37
Speaker
and about something and they were like, they don't, they didn't know what happened and how they did something a month ago. And I'm thinking to myself, I run a pretty like pretty mediocre machine shop. Like I'm not, you know, what some of these guys that we see and hang out with that are ISO and ANSI or, you know, just crazy stuff, doing work for aerospace. I run a pretty like humble machine shop and I know
00:37:03
Speaker
I keep better track of my material, my sourcing, my processes than you do. Got to be fired up. Anyway, yes. That's awesome though. I'm glad to hear that that could solve that problem then.
00:37:21
Speaker
Totally. We might spend, I don't know, 25% more per part or something, but duh. What's the break-even on that relative to a six-figure machine that you now have to keep in place and operate decades and operate?
00:37:37
Speaker
Yeah, and it's going to reduce the time spent lapping, because right now, we can't keep up still, even with the big machine. Oh, really? It's difficult. So the easier we can make that job, the better we can scale. That's awesome. Yeah, exactly. You already know this, but that's not a secret, which is the easiest way to scale a company when you are limited on real estate resources or balance sheet is to leverage your vendors, period. Yeah, exactly. And asking them to-
00:38:07
Speaker
I'm actually seeing that in reverse as we take more jobs in-house. We're leveraging ourselves in places we don't always have leverage. It's not good. Yeah, it's not always good, is my point. Yeah. Yeah. Bringing in a house is great, but do it over time.
00:38:26
Speaker
I had a similar moment that I had thought about breaking up today, which is a very similar way of thinking. You're going to laugh. So we have all these different fixture plates on our Shopify page now for the different types of machines.
Shopify Integration Solutions
00:38:43
Speaker
And I wanted to have information that I could edit in one place that pushed out to each of the product pages. So obviously, the description may be specific to the type of machine tool or
00:38:55
Speaker
something else that's specific to that model or that skew, but then all this other information about like, Hey, here's the setup video or here's the specs or here's, um, tips and tricks, which is the same for any plate. Yeah. And so, I mean, at this point, I think there's like 20 or 30 different models and I don't want to have to open 30 pages and hit save, which may I may or may not have been doing for awhile.
00:39:16
Speaker
And so I was talking to our Upwork Shopify guy about a plugin that would let us have copy on the page that was unique and then copy that pulled from a central copy file or whatever. It's a subroutine. Yeah, exactly. Right. Which he could kind of figure out. And then it occurred to me, John, you're overthinking it. Just put a link to an FAQ.
00:39:45
Speaker
What the hell is wrong with you? Yeah, exactly. What is wrong with you? This is like, you could do this in front page 97. You don't need to pay 20 bucks. That was my jam. And I just was, it was a very, I literally just like took my hands off the keyboard and started laughing at myself because sometimes you think you're smart and you think you're on top of it and you're like, I'm on Upwork and I'm hiring apps and plugins and APIs. And I'm spending money.
00:40:15
Speaker
Think about what the problem is. What are these questions that I'm doing out here? They are frequently asked questions. Why don't you start a fact page? That is so funny. But to your point, you almost bought, you would have bought a potential six figure machine when the real problem could have been solved by experts who are running these machines every day who have to pay for or maintain the machines and you just pay a few bucks more
00:40:43
Speaker
I mean, that's a win. Totally. And kind of an oversight on my part until I was forced to ask that question. Yes. I should have asked that question two years ago. Yeah.
00:40:57
Speaker
Yeah, so once we got the parts in and we looked at them, everybody gave it a huge thumbs up. I emailed John from Nifty Bar, and I was like, these look really fantastic. I can't wait to grind into them and see how they look. And he goes, well, I'm not surprised, because we have the best grinding team in North America. Yeah, but that's good. Yeah, you should be really proud of your people. Yeah.
00:41:17
Speaker
And let them keep, we've sent metrology equipment to our vendors before. We send it in a Saunders case for use for our stuff, but we're like, use this stuff. That's a good idea. Who cares? I don't know. It was $160 or something. I'll probably never see it back. But it also, if they haven't had any concern about, are you going to go shop the business? I'm like, no, you have the business if you keep doing this work, right? Exactly.
00:41:47
Speaker
Like nifty bar chaps, one of those good ones and have that be a master reference. Yeah, that's a good idea. That's a great idea. And just put it in our file or however they keep track right next to the recipe. Because if their master grinder dude retires or whatever,
00:42:08
Speaker
the new apprentice is going to come in and take that job and have to do the work. I want it to be just as good forever till the end of time. Well, and look, and I don't know, I've never heard of nifty bar before today, but my guess is any company like nifty bar would use their seasoned experienced guy to nail it down the process and then pass it off to somebody else. You know, even though John Greville wants the best guy to on it, it's not going to happen over time. That's fine. As long as you get the process down.
00:42:36
Speaker
You and I, we're both all about the process. You need the best guy to come up with the process and then it's trainable and then it's just a recipe. It's baking a cake. I cannot bake a cake without a recipe, but you give me a recipe and I can barely pull it off. John, you're going to have a bake off next time we're hanging out together. This is not going to go well. Claire will go nuts. It would be funny. I actually would do that with you. We could bake something. I would do it. It would get inside our comfort zone.
00:43:03
Speaker
I'm pretty mean at chocolate chip cookies following the recipe. They have to be powder coated though.
00:43:08
Speaker
Yeah. It's funny. Well, that's a good segue for me for 2019, which is on my short list of big picture goals. Not like task stuff, not sales numbers, but just like philosophically, what do I want to have accomplished that is a result of small things every day and over time? Not just sit down, lock yourself in a room, and bang out a project.
00:43:36
Speaker
I want to be really proud of our Shopify website, and it's getting better. We changed the color scheme from black to white. We've got the filter system. We've got the FAQ. I want to make it easy for somebody who's trying to purchase a fixture plate or a mod vice or understand a setup question. We had a customer who bought a Haas plate who was like, hey, I don't understand something about installing it. And he's a guy I've gotten to know. And I was like, hey, the
00:44:02
Speaker
Should be a link. I was on the road. I was like, there should be a link on the page. And he was like, oh my gosh, there is. I just didn't see it. Well, that's my problem. That's his problem. So that's kind of stuff. We still need to figure out a procurement system and whether that's a
00:44:18
Speaker
vending machine or an ERP or better combine. Oh, you know what I saw? That was interesting yesterday at the factory auction. They had a five S system, whatever, not a big deal, not unique, but next to each of the S's on each station was a unique barcode.
00:44:38
Speaker
And I don't know what that is, but I can take a guess that there was a gun next to that laminated sheet. And when you did one, you just scanned it, which is a great way of logging the data, but not having to have a computer or not having to have like an iPad or a button. Interesting. A light bulb went off for me on that one.
00:45:05
Speaker
Yeah. I guess you would need a computer. No, it has to use it. No, exactly. So you sweep or you sort and you scan the first S and then the second S of that station, of that area with a time and date and user. I don't know.
00:45:22
Speaker
And maybe imagine a, imagine a trigger gun that has like a thumbprint reader on it. So as you're holding it, it goes, John already thought of it. You're no, no, you're no better. Your, um, scanning system first requires you to scan your badge and then everything for the next two minutes is under your name. That way you don't have to have a thumbprint. You just scan your own barcode and then you scan the things you did and it won't take it unless you have a person assigned to it.
00:45:53
Speaker
I guess the only downside to that is somebody has to not manage that data, but at least look at it to make it useful. It's not a bad thing. Sure. And I hate how companies seem to be obsessed with big data these days. Sometimes it goes back to my pet peeve about surveys. I mean, I get surveys about surveys now. But I think there is something to be said for some process, accountability, understanding stuff.
00:46:23
Speaker
Adam, who I met yesterday, was talking about how they are assigned, he called it assets, which sounded unsexy, but they have assets that they're responsible for. One of his assets is cleaning the floor in his area, and he loves doing it because they have a floor scrubber. He's like, it's actually really fun to run, and then certain machines, and they have allocated time.
00:46:44
Speaker
and their shop looks pristine. And we do that here, but in a much less specific way. But if it's important to you, that's all you have to do. Done. It's great. Anyway, and then the last thing is QC for me, which we haven't really had any problems, per se, but more things like that mod vice gauge I showed you that drops in.
Precision and CNC Exploration
00:47:09
Speaker
And then I really think we need to buy a CMM.
00:47:13
Speaker
Which I just need to start researching more. Part of me thinks I don't necessarily need the CMM that would be big enough to do our largest fixture plate. I should be able to do, um, sections of them, right? You don't necessarily need that information, but, uh, it's something I got to research. Are you necessarily looking for true position between first and last hole?
00:47:36
Speaker
Well, that's certainly important. Although, to be honest, the way we use the fixture plates and the way I assume most people use them is that the precision boards are very helpful, but the true dimension from a bottom left hole to a top right hole isn't that important for most people and what they're doing. It's just not. Right. Maybe 1% of your clientele.
00:48:01
Speaker
But I wanna be what I just said is a statement of thought, not a statement of fact. So I'd rather have fact behind it. And then working on the new company, which I'm super excited about. Yes. Cool. It's gonna be a good year. What do you do this week? This week, relishing in the dual fixture world.
00:48:29
Speaker
So like yesterday we spent the whole day kind of fixing the cog still tool and doing other stuff and running the lathe and everything and dialing it in. But I wasn't too sweating it because I could run the four fixtures or the two pallets at night, which will make four knives. I came in this morning.
00:48:48
Speaker
had a broken engraving tool, which is the very, very last tool doing the hard blades. I don't care about that. Um, it means everything else ran successfully. So I'm thrilled. Like that's great. That's awesome. You know, what's interesting got a dial in. It really seems like.
00:49:04
Speaker
because the dual fixture plates has been something we've talked about on the podcast. And we joke about pie time as kind of being having fun, but it almost seems like it took 3.14, 185, 9, 2, 9, 6, 9, 2, 6. Seems like it took about three times longer than you. It took five times too.
00:49:25
Speaker
Yeah, I probably did. Yep. But regardless, this is a project that was worth investing in because it's going to pay off forever. And then next phase, I got to lift up the back magic and the Pearson base on top of two new devices so that I can install the four vices. And then just, I need a fixture to be able to put those things on top. Yep. That's kind of my next. We just bought a shape Oco.
00:49:51
Speaker
I saw that. Josh was running it last night, just dry. Why don't you use that for your phone? Oh, I'm tempted. I'm tempted. Give me feedback once you have it for a little bit. You want to send me a piece of phone? Can I buy it? No, I can do that. I've got some. Send me a piece of phone and we'll just cut something out of it and send it back to you.
00:50:18
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, talking to some people online that have them, like running one 32nd end mills in aluminum. My first question was, don't you have backlash or chatter issues that just destroy tool life? And they're like, no, we're good. So with foam having no radial loading, you should get clean cuts. Use that Datron tool. We bought the shape of it. I think it was $1,400 shipped or something. It's like nothing.
00:50:47
Speaker
Like, for an actual CNC machine that will actually remove material in a precise manner. That's insane. Yeah, I talked to the Shapeoko guy, Ed Ford, I think was his name, at AU for a long time, super great guy.
00:51:06
Speaker
When we cut foam, we use three tools. And I told them, when are you going to make a tool changer? And he goes, ah, it's cost prohibitive. I don't know. So he's like, why don't you just use three shape ochos, one for each tool? Can you do it all with one tool or just slower? Well, one's an engraving and one's the cutting. What's the third? So at least facing down. So he's a half a gen mill to face down the back. Can you face it with the same tool you can do with the pocketing? You could. It would just take care of it.
00:51:35
Speaker
But it is a separate op, so I'm not too concerned about that. Oh, I see. It has an auto touch off too on height. You have to set that manually. Currently, we use a small Datron tool, a big Datron tool, and the engraving tool to actually make the foamy part itself. Got it. Yep.
00:51:55
Speaker
But I'm sure there's ways around that. You could actually build. Anyway, yeah, I will consider that. It would be the problem with putting two routers on it is you'd have more weight and you'd limit your travel area. But you could potentially put two routers on it and just program two offsets. Like two Z columns. Oh, yeah. Well, it's a one Z column with G54, G55. This is how our plasma works. Because it has a plasma next to a marker, next to an engraver.
00:52:24
Speaker
You want the tools different. Oh, because that's a plunge down. Sure. Sorry, of course. Yeah. But if you had two Z heads on it. Or you'd be better off itemless buy, make or buy or find a quick release that just takes the whole Z plate off and then you just pop the new router on that has the other tool in it.
00:52:45
Speaker
And then you're doing a tool change manually, but you're not actually messing with wrenches and collets. It's a really good idea. And the funny thing is the shape of goes cheap enough that that is literally like a $300 solution. It's like a magnetic breakaway on plasma. It just pulls off. Yeah. And then it goes touches off on its own. So literally, sky could just, when it was done, walk up to it, pull one thing off, put one thing on, hit go. Yeah, Barry could do it. Any of us could do it. Just if the machine's not running, do that.
00:53:16
Speaker
No, no more foam on the Maury. Well, that would be nice. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Good stuff. Good stuff. See you next Wednesday. Sounds good. Looking forward to it. Have a good one. Bye. Have a great week. Bye.