Transcript
johngrimsmo: Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, episode 451. My name is John Grimsmo.
John Saunders: My name is John Sonners.
johngrimsmo: And this is your manufacturing podcast where we just, John and John have this private conversation and nobody else is listening and we just talk about what's on our minds in our businesses as we grow our manufacturing mini empires.
johngrimsmo: But nobody's listening.
John Saunders: Nobody's listening.
johngrimsmo: How are you?
John Saunders: Good. Good. We were at spring break last week, here this week, and then I get to see you next week.
johngrimsmo: Yes.
John Saunders: So it's like a good whirlwind and i don't, at the risk of sounding like a bromance. I think this is one of the longest times we've gone without seeing each other.
johngrimsmo: Maybe the whole pandemic time was a few years there.
John Saunders: Was it?
johngrimsmo: Now maybe we saw in 2022 at IMTS. I don't know.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: and It's been a while. I came down to your place, what, two years ago, maybe with the kids.
John Saunders: Whatever. Yeah. Yeah. that crazy?
johngrimsmo: Yeah. But yes, it has been a while. So that'll be really good. Get the, get the crew back together, the team.
John Saunders: The crew back there. Yeah.
johngrimsmo: It's going to such a good turnout there. I don't even know most of the people that are coming, like that. I probably know, you know,
John Saunders: They know you.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, I know. No, but my point I'm going to be like, oh, you're here. Like, I didn't know you were coming. Like, it's gonna be great.
John Saunders: Yeah. Well, so I'll, I'll flex on it a little bit to sort of say not to incur FOMO. Cause at this point, if you're listening, I don't, and you aren't coming, if you can try to make it great, but I suspect, um, it's a bit last minute, but the event should occur next year as well.
John Saunders: And like, when you look at like the, um, attendee introductions, it's like, Hey, like Nick from P3D is like crushing it with frigate and home assistant on this is like, this is why I love to live.
johngrimsmo: Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, I didn't know Nick was coming.
John Saunders: Well, and and he has this is exactly what I want to do, but unlike me talking about he's already doing it. He has a webcam on his, i think it was on a Haas machine, with the AI understands if somebody doesn't put the filter back below the output drain, the fishnet filter to like send him an email to be like, hey, somebody didn't put the filter back.
John Saunders: Like that is what,
johngrimsmo: excuse
John Saunders: I need to be doing more of, um, nice excuse for why we're not i'll happy to elaborate on later, but like we're getting there. Um, and then another guy just introduced himself. He's like, Hey, I'm basically an accountant that focuses on a lot of machine stuff.
John Saunders: I'll be talking about some business stuff. It's like, dude, that is awesome.
johngrimsmo: Cool. Yeah.
John Saunders: Um, yeah.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, it will be a three days of picking people's brains and wonderful conversation in Mammoth, California.
John Saunders: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. You ever been?
johngrimsmo: I've never been to Mammoth. No, I've been to California as a kid, but not. Well, I guess I went to L.A. 2017, yeah. yeah
John Saunders: Yeah, cool.
johngrimsmo: I'm super excited. i'm I'm finally this week getting excited for this trip.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: It's like sinking in. I'm planning. I'm prepping. I'm packing. I'm like getting some stuff that I need or want for the trip. And I'm like, okay, yeah, it's happening.
John Saunders: Yeah, exactly.
johngrimsmo: and And like I can feel my work brain starting to shut down. And this is by no means a vacation, but it's a work trip. And it's, yeah, I'm just planning it. And it's, it's I'm getting jazzed.
John Saunders: When are you getting in, do you know?
johngrimsmo: um I'm going to meet you in Denver, I'm pretty sure.
John Saunders: Great. sunday On that Sunday flight, you're on that flight to Bishop.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. On that Sunday. Yeah, like the one o'clock flight to to Mammoth or whatever.
John Saunders: Okay.
John Saunders: I literally think it's a effectively a charter flight at this point from Denver to Bishop.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, we're going own that plane.
John Saunders: Like if you aren't part of this crowd, um thoughts and prayers.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, yeah. agree yeah
John Saunders: Sorry. Yeah.
johngrimsmo: It's going to be so cool.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: It'll be weird like to have your assigned seating and to sit sit next to somebody you know. like
John Saunders: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. I appreciate it. I introduced myself on the Discord yesterday because it's the right thing to do.
johngrimsmo: I haven't checked it in a bit.
John Saunders: and
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: i tied you um because and I was like, introduce my wife who's coming and Grant who's coming, which I'm excited for.
johngrimsmo: Okay.
John Saunders: And then somebody DM me like four seconds later. It's like, dude, why are you introducing yourself? and i'm like, no, ah guess i I enjoy. I enjoy. i enjoy
johngrimsmo: Because accountant guy doesn't know you.
John Saunders: Well, that's what saying. like I like, enjoy meeting people in this industry that don't know who I am. It's actually like lovely. Anyway, um looking forward to it really am. So we, what John and I were just talking, we think we'll try to work forward next week, but we just don't know what that looks like.
johngrimsmo: So looking forward to
John Saunders: Is that fair? Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Yep, absolutely. And then the following week, I'm still in California, so I might be available for a call, but oh yeah.
John Saunders: Oh, good for you. Dude. Oh, honestly, that's fine because, well, I'll go either way. we were on a Wednesday the day before that RV of six is leaving.
John Saunders: That won't be crazy busy for me, but on Wednesday, the day we record our Okuma M660 arrives and then the, which is probably all hands on deck. and the day thereafter, our Doosan DNM 6700 arrives.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Okay, so i'm the I'm the opposite. I'm booked on Tuesday. Wednesday, not sure yet.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: flying Flying home Thursday. So probably we're skipping that week after. Okay.
John Saunders: Yeah. like Like I said, I will figure it out, but yeah.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, cool.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, so i'm you know we're at the show kind of Sunday to leave Thursday morning, and then I'm in California for another week.
John Saunders: Good for you.
johngrimsmo: I have six shop tours lined up. And I'm going to film everyone.
John Saunders: Anything you want to share?
johngrimsmo: um I'll share all of them when I get back. I'm getting a guided tour of SpaceX from an employee who's a customer of ours.
John Saunders: Awesome.
johngrimsmo: And he's like, you can bring your phone, but you can't film anything. I'm like, okay, bummer.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: He's like, make sure you bring a valid passport too, because you're a foreigner.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Like...
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: um So that's cool. And then, yeah, a bunch of other precision shops. Like the goal of my trip is ultra precision. So I've got some, i'm going to go see Adam and Laney Machine Tech and some some really cool stuff that I am very eager to film and share.
John Saunders: Good.
John Saunders: Good.
johngrimsmo: So my past few days has been figuring out, like my goal of the trip is to travel as light as possible.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: Because I want to be footloose and fancy free in California. I don't want to have a suitcase that I'm lugging around. Like want to be able to walk around the outskirts of LA or whatever whatever city I'm in with a backpack.
John Saunders: Oh, sure, sure, for sure, sure.
johngrimsmo: So I'm trying to pack everything into a backpack, including my ski gear, um like my Gore-Tex.
John Saunders: Yeah. What?
johngrimsmo: So it's it's been interesting. And then I want to film these six shop tours, probably more by the time I get there. So I bought some DJI cameras. I bought the Osmo Pocket 3, which is the stick with the gimbal on top, the little head.
John Saunders: No. Okay. Yeah.
johngrimsmo: It's awesome.
John Saunders: The thing that looks like the camera got forgotten because it's so freaking small.
johngrimsmo: It's so small. um It's like the pack of a Starburst, the size of a Starburst, you know, candy. um It's incredible.
John Saunders: Yeah. Yeah. OK.
johngrimsmo: And then I also got the DJI Osmo Nano, which is a tiny little, like the whole assembly is a GoPro, except the whole bottom half of it detaches the screen portion.
johngrimsmo: And you're left with basically half of a GoPro as just a screen and one button to turn it on. And you can flip the screen around, you can have the screen remote and it's still like syncs and live records.
johngrimsmo: So you can have the, you put the camera on the shelf behind a book or whatever, and you can like have the screen over here.
John Saunders: Here, look this up.
johngrimsmo: And yeah, it's really cool.
John Saunders: DJI Nano.
johngrimsmo: So I filmed on my Instagram.
John Saunders: Damn you, by the way.
johngrimsmo: What's that?
John Saunders: um I'm swearing on our family-friendly podcast saying damn you because I've resisted upgrading my whatever.
johngrimsmo: yeah
johngrimsmo: I know. Well, I've done the research for you and I'll show you on the trip.
John Saunders: Go ahead.
johngrimsmo: Like I'll see you next week.
John Saunders: Yeah, sure. Yeah.
johngrimsmo: um So I've used both cameras now to film various videos for Instagram. They both film natively vertical or horizontal easily. With the DJI app, I can send files immediately to my phone.
John Saunders: yeah
John Saunders: Yeah, in incredible.
johngrimsmo: or I can pull them to my phone and then I've gotten really good at editing um on on my phone right now. So I can like film something pretty complex and I can pull it to my phone. I can edit it right there and I can have it uploaded within.
johngrimsmo: It still takes time. I filmed, I don't know if you saw my one from last night of talking about the Norseman, using it to cut some cardboard.
John Saunders: OK.
johngrimsmo: was a good edit. took me probably three hours to like film and edit the whole thing.
John Saunders: Holy cow.
johngrimsmo: But It was good practice for the camera and it was off <unk> good because I want to be proficient on the equipment for the trip and I want to be able to film like really cool shop tours.
John Saunders: Yeah, sure.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: So good little cinematic, little angles and shots and splices and overlays and it was fun.
John Saunders: What are you doing for audio? Or it it handles the audio?
johngrimsmo: It comes with those little mics, the wireless mics.
John Saunders: Oh, the DJI labs.
johngrimsmo: think
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: eleven
John Saunders: Yep, yep, yep.
johngrimsmo: So it syncs right to them and it's great.
John Saunders: Okay.
John Saunders: I, um, filmed a shop update before spring break. And then I started to edit it on spring break and I just deleted all the footage. Um, because I was also using, um, coincidentally the DJI mics, but even the lav mic from them on a shirt collar.
johngrimsmo: Oh yeah.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: when you're walking around our shop. um I would argue that our shop isn't particularly loud from like an overall decibel standpoint, but there's just lots of fans, motors, parts, chips, and the audio quality was not fun to listen to.
johngrimsmo: Yep. Yep. Same.
John Saunders: And I said, I need to stop this.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: I need to figure it out. And $43 part makes for magical, perfectly clean audio in a noisy shop.
johngrimsmo: Tell me.
John Saunders: Ready?
johngrimsmo: Yeah. What is that?
John Saunders: It's one of those, it's a metal wire mic. think it was called like a, here, I'll take my headset off here. Sorry. So it goes around my ears and it comes through. It's like a cheek bike.
johngrimsmo: It's like what you see speakers at, like like ah public stage speakers, where?
John Saunders: Yes.
John Saunders: Yes. So does it look cool? Not particularly. Do I care? Zero cares given.
johngrimsmo: What is it?
John Saunders: Hold on. Let me, I'll talk.
johngrimsmo: No, but it's it's a tiny microphone that pushes right in front of your face.
John Saunders: Yes. So, Yes, it's a microphone that then just has a three millimeter jack that plugs into the DJI wireless thing.
johngrimsmo: Okay.
John Saunders: It is called a, i got it from Amazon, JK professional headset mic, $46.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. Yeah.
John Saunders: forty six dollars um Here, I'll just send you the link, but ah you see it again, yeah.
johngrimsmo: No, I see it. Yeah.
John Saunders: yeah um
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: So, then here's what's even more cool. I tried it on in the same footage, walking through our shop, like A-beat it with a regular DJI lab mic and then with this on. It is so good that you don't hear anything in the shop and it sounds like I'm overdubbing it from a soundproof room.
johngrimsmo: Whoa.
John Saunders: And I'm like, well, that's not good because it actually is a problem. So then i wear... The other DJI mic on my collar that grabbed some of the ambient.
johngrimsmo: The other one? Yeah.
John Saunders: But then we actually just filmed the shop update video, which I'm going to launch today. um And I walked over to to to Grant to have him explain something.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. And you can turn that down and.
John Saunders: I just handed him the extra mic. So then he has good audio. um I'm like, oh, this is such a win.
johngrimsmo: Cool. Well, that's cool, man. I like it. Yeah, I did some testing um both at home in a quiet house, but also in the shop with the onboard mic on the cameras and with the remote mic.
johngrimsmo: And they both sounded fine to me.
John Saunders: who
johngrimsmo: um the The lav mic or the remote receiver, Bluetooth mic, whatever it's called, sounded better. And it was louder audio, but like and more direct from my voice. But both of them were acceptable enough.
johngrimsmo: It was like fine. I like walked right up to a machine that was running and I like sounded all right.
John Saunders: Yeah. Because you're using a DJI camera system, do you still have to use this part of the mic?
johngrimsmo: No, no. The receiver, it's built in.
John Saunders: Okay. Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: Oh, that's a no-brainer.
johngrimsmo: But I have that same kit and I cannot use those mics with the new cameras. It comes with new mics or I have to buy extra new mics.
John Saunders: Oh. Oh, okay.
johngrimsmo: So yeah, reviewers online were complaining.
John Saunders: That's a bummer.
johngrimsmo: They're like, couldn't the engineers have made some cross compatibility here?
John Saunders: Sure.
johngrimsmo: Like, this is kind of lame. I already have all this stuff and now I can't use it with the new cameras. But yeah.
John Saunders: Good find.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, so it's like I bought the Pocket 3, which is the gimbal camera first, um and played with it over the weekend.
John Saunders: That's cool.
johngrimsmo: i was like, this is the greatest thing ever. And then the Nano came in couple days later, and I played with that last night, and I'm like, this is the greatest thing ever. Which which one am I going to use? I'm going use them both.
johngrimsmo: But they have kind of different purposes, and it's going to be so good.
John Saunders: I'm impressed you're going to try to do 10 plus day trip with a backpack.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, see how it goes.
John Saunders: No checked bag then? No, no, no, no Sharpie pointy things.
johngrimsmo: I will. so
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: So I'm having a ah local friend custom make a duffel bag for me. And my requirements were, I want this to pack down into nothing, but to still be durable enough that I can trust TSA and like, you know, it's not going to get punctured or torn or anything like that. So it's made of like the best ripstop nylon and it's a local bag maker.
johngrimsmo: And so I'm going to check that with all my bulky stuff, my clothes and and my knives stuck in the pockets so that I can bring my three knives on the plane. But then that duffel will shove into my backpack and will pack light.
johngrimsmo: So that's my plan, my goal.
John Saunders: Sweet.
johngrimsmo: If I have to like buy clothes along the way, I'll figure it out, but it should be fine.
John Saunders: Yeah. That's a funny like life thing that this is not a particularly insightful comment other than like, I'm like a pretty, like, think I think generally like frugal guy, but like you realize like, oh, if I need to buy a swimsuit and then just throw it away on a trip, big deal.
John Saunders: Like it's wasteful, which I don't love, like big deal. Like you you spend more on an appetizer at a nice restaurant sometimes than, than that.
johngrimsmo: Exactly. Yep. And I've never actually had that mentality, but I've kind of wanted to be able to travel like that at some point.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Like I've always, you know, wanted to just show up at the airport and be like, okay, I'm just going to go here with nothing but what's in my pockets. I usually keep my pockets pretty stocked, but...
John Saunders: Yeah, nothing puts what's in my pocket, but stand by while i do a pocket dump.
johngrimsmo: Exactly. just got to leave my knife in the car for this trip, but I can buy one when I'm out. And I was talking with Dave Precise about that because that dude travels everywhere all the time for all reasons.
John Saunders: Yes.
johngrimsmo: And and i was like, have you ever done that? Just like gone to the airport with nothing? He's like, yeah, a couple times. Just buy some cheap clothes whenever you're at the place.
John Saunders: Let's go somewhere.
johngrimsmo: It's fine. was like, yeah, i want to be like that.
John Saunders: Yep.
johngrimsmo: um And I, ah it's annoying to come home from a trip and unpack and realize you didn't touch half your stuff.
John Saunders: hundred percent
johngrimsmo: i'm I'm over that. I don't want that anymore. So I'm pretty frugal and pretty specific with, you know, how many socks and underwear, how many t-shirts. I'm like, what can I actually do realistically to get through this trip and not overpack? Cause that's dumb. What what's I'm curious about is the skiing temperatures, like April skiing in California. Is this going to be t-shirt weather or do I need to bring my big gloves? Like,
johngrimsmo: I don't know yet.
John Saunders: I think it's going to be spring skiing, but you should check.
johngrimsmo: Oh,
John Saunders: I'm i'm like not great sure by the way. um Here's the other thing, John, I like don't mind. I'm packing my skis. I don't mind throwing a few layers in for you.
johngrimsmo: you're bringing skis?
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: It's just easy for us to be hurt.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, Amish said the same thing. He's bringing in two pairs of gloves. And I'm like, okay, I'll be fine. Like, I'll bring my...
John Saunders: Which is, Hey, like, if you want me to like pack stuff for you, I'm happy to, I don't care.
johngrimsmo: But that defeats the point.
John Saunders: No, I'm a, I think you get a hall pass when it's a ski trip.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, yeah.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: But no, I should be good.
John Saunders: Yeah. Dude, awesome. I'm excited for you.
johngrimsmo: Sweet. Yeah, I'm getting pumped for this trip. Both the Mammoth portion is going amazing and then the rest of my tour trip is going to be awesome too.
John Saunders: Yep.
johngrimsmo: um Yeah. I did find a ride from Mammoth to California.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: um
John Saunders: Oh, yeah. Just hit me to the Bay Area or whatever.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, so that's good. and
John Saunders: That's awesome.
johngrimsmo: Yep. So sweet.
John Saunders: this is about as random a transition as they come, but I'm reading a book called Shantaram or Shantaram.
johngrimsmo: Okay.
John Saunders: And it is popular, but I mean, I certainly haven't heard of it. um And it's about a, it's like a allegedly true story, but probably has some literary literary liberties in it of a gentleman who escaped from prison in Australia or New Zealand. And then kind of surreptitiously made his way to India and ended up spending an extended period of time in India, um going through some trials, tribulations of life and meeting people and living in the slums and traveling and getting robbed. And I'm only about a third of the way through the book, but it is a
John Saunders: for not traveling, like for just sitting on your couch and reading a book, it's like a very eye-opening thing about just kind of a different way of life. And it very much speaks to what you just said about like, it'll be okay. Like I'll figure out how to get to San Francisco.
John Saunders: I'll figure out how to make it do without a full backpack.
johngrimsmo: yeah
John Saunders: Like, um, it's, uh, yeah.
johngrimsmo: I'm trying to put myself in these situations because we live a very comfortable life generally and it's like no it's fine
John Saunders: Yeah. So it'll be fun. You'll make it work.
johngrimsmo: yeah and as I joke with the kids and now that I have grown up money ah like to be able to buy a pair of swim shorts when you're out is literally no big deal like I'm by no means wealthy but I can buy a pair swim shorts if I need it
John Saunders: ah
John Saunders: Yeah. Yeah.
John Saunders: Well, and like long, irrelevant story, but like we were on a weird thing for spring break last week. We just brought a shipping label with us and then found a box, slapped a label on it and shipped up small boxes of home.
johngrimsmo: Ooh.
John Saunders: Does not deal something like easy.
johngrimsmo: Nice.
John Saunders: Yeah. $13. just now all of a sudden don't have much to carry on.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Smart.
John Saunders: Yeah. All right. We allegedly skipped our list, but whatever.
johngrimsmo: It's fine.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: I didn't have much anyway.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: So what do you have?
John Saunders: Uh, okay. Two things that are relatively quick. Number one, Claude is like light years better than chat GPT. Like, I don't know that I'll ever log into chat GPT again.
johngrimsmo: Really?
John Saunders: I'm yeah.
johngrimsmo: For for day-to-day like answer answering questions?
John Saunders: Well, so for reasons I don't understand, it got super slow for me for the past three days, which may be kind of a, I don't know what i'm doing, but I'm just like, i don't care if it's not working i and i don't know how to fix it. I'm now open to suggestions. And then I've been in Claude for the past three or four days working on a mix of work stuff and non-work stuff.
John Saunders: It's just, it's so much better. And then the last thing I asked it to do was coincidentally how to deal with getting the, what's it called? Quadratic encoder output from a linear DRO into a Python script on ah on a computer.
John Saunders: And so it's just like, yep, not hard.
johngrimsmo: Yep.
John Saunders: You need Raspberry Pi Pico, 3.3 volts, blah, blah, blah. And i was like, yep, great. Can you just give me like an explain like I'm five graph of that? And ChatGBT often would do like stick art, like ASCII art or whatever.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, yeah.
John Saunders: No, this thing did like just created like a beautiful graphical properly done illustration of it.
johngrimsmo: Whoa.
John Saunders: um It's faster. Like I'm just like, this is...
johngrimsmo: Interesting.
John Saunders: I'm not really sitting here trying to make a point other than like, I was just very comfortable using chat GPT and now I'm like, great.
johngrimsmo: you Yeah.
John Saunders: Claud it is.
johngrimsmo: Interesting. I have not tried Claude yet, but I'm i'm using ChatGPT for kind of word-based stuff and then Cursor for programming stuff.
John Saunders: Okay.
John Saunders: Interesting.
johngrimsmo: And like Rob was telling us in our chat, he said the separation is really nice, like having a conversation here with no um no commitment.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And then the code is like, you just have the context you need to write me the code when you're not having a conversation with random stuff.
John Saunders: Yes.
johngrimsmo: But yeah, I've heard continue here to get here continue to hear good things about both Claude and Cursor for programming, which is good.
John Saunders: Yeah. Yeah.
John Saunders: The other thing is I, for years now, have used this Google Sheets as my just like to do list tracker. its It has worked well. um But two things I don't like about it. Number one, when I open the Google Sheets app on my phone, it is not up to date. It takes sometimes a few seconds to refresh.
John Saunders: um And if I happen to be...
johngrimsmo: Really? Like a specific sheet or the the homepage with all the sheets in it?
John Saunders: no, I go directly into the the file I'm in. And it's like a cached version for a split second or sometimes more.
johngrimsmo: Okay, well.
John Saunders: If I don't have a great connection, I've Googled it, looked it up. There isn't a way to force it to sink in the background or basically there isn't a way around this.
johngrimsmo: Got it.
John Saunders: Um, so far as I know. And where that's really annoying is if I'm really busy and I just want to pop it open to add something as a note, um you can't do that because you're waiting for it to refresh before you like add something. The other thing I learned is when I open it to do to kind of a dump of something in my head, you can't not look at other stuff there And that's not what I want to be doing.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: I really want to just be adding bingo.
johngrimsmo: You want to add a note. Yeah. Okay.
John Saunders: So on spring break, I was like, let's solve it. And in about seven minutes, I wrote a Google form webpage that has its own yeah URL that I now bookmarked on my phone.
John Saunders: And when I go to that webpage, all it has is an input field and a button. And when I go to that field, I type what I want, I hit submit and itend it appends it to the Google sheet.
johngrimsmo: Yes.
John Saunders: I never have to go in the sheet and it actually it's even better because now, um, you know let's say I'm out for a walk and I had three things when I get back, I know, no, I'm, I sort of need or want to process those three things.
John Saunders: Like, are they immediate to do's?
johngrimsmo: yep
John Saunders: Are they just ideas? Like it gives me a framework to work through the work those in. I love it. It's great.
johngrimsmo: And it timestamps them automatically for you.
John Saunders: Bingo.
johngrimsmo: Yep. That's how we've been doing our buyer's choice signup forms, like for nine years, um, through, through a Google form into a Google sheet, um, different use case, but similar like data entry kind of thing.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
John Saunders: okay
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And I like that for you. That's really cool.
John Saunders: Yeah, that's
johngrimsmo: Nice. Um, I told you a couple weeks ago, but i ah remade our GURP ERP system, Grimsmoo ERP for GURP, from scratch using cursor, database driven, no longer spreadsheets through app sheets, and it's
John Saunders: good.
johngrimsmo: It's insane. It's so good. And if it's not good, I fix it. And I have a feature request tracker built into this the site that I or anybody on our team can add a feature request.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And we actually had ah a really hard time getting it to work on Apple phones um with the login and cookies and tokens and all this stuff. And so back and forth with cursor, back and forth, is still not working.
johngrimsmo: So I built the feature requests to be like a text chat. So I can add a a text, like a comma comment, like in WhatsApp. It looks just like WhatsApp with the bubbles over here and then the bubbles over here.
John Saunders: No kidding. Okay.
johngrimsmo: So I can continue to add context as a text chat. What's the best word for this?
John Saunders: Wait, rewind. Let's say I'm an employee at Grimsmo and I'm like, Hey, John Grimsmo, I really want the lathes to be able to tell me when it is on fire and going to burn to the ground.
johngrimsmo: OK.
johngrimsmo: You need to add a feature request.
johngrimsmo: If GURP has that information. But more specifically, say purchase orders doesn't work in GURP because this vendor is whatever. like
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: it's not It's not displaying the information properly or if something's broken or a link doesn't work or when I click on the PDF link, oh it doesn't open up into a new window, like a a technical thing or ah a request.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: like a I wish it showed me this.
John Saunders: Yeah, sure, sure.
johngrimsmo: So you go to the click on feature request and you type in your request and you hit submit and it creates a um just like in WhatsApp or in your texting app on your phone, bubbles for like, John Sonder said this, John Grimmsmo said this.
John Saunders: OK. Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And so each person can have their own text bubble and you can add context. And then when I tell cursor, scrub all feature requests for ones where I have checkmarked cursor ready, because that's my final, like, there's enough context for cursor to run it.
John Saunders: yeah
John Saunders: I see.
johngrimsmo: then it not only reads every text bubble, every conversation point, but it adds its own and says, I did this in a very summary, like two sentences.
johngrimsmo: I fixed it by doing this. So the Apple phone is not working. It said, okay, I tried to increase the latency of the cookie. It happens with Safari browsers, yada, yada, yada. i'm like, okay, I don't really care.
John Saunders: Yeah, i don't get exactly.
johngrimsmo: And then it didn't work. So then I would add another update text bubble that says, still didn't work. We're getting this error. It works for eight seconds. It stinks for eight seconds. And then it goes, oh, that's because we had eight second timer and blah, blah, blah, blah. And so you're having this logged historical conversation. Like it's one thing to have it in chat GPT or in cursor and all that conversation doesn't matter really because you're just trying to solve the problem.
johngrimsmo: You don't go back to it. This gives us a little bit of historical tracking of the feature requests and how they were solved.
John Saunders: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: And then I can now say, oh, fix it like we fixed that one.
John Saunders: Oh, sure.
johngrimsmo: And there's a bit of history there that says that. So anyway, the GURP has been amazing. Using it primarily for purchase orders and RFQs now. We've never had RFQs before.
John Saunders: RFQs to, oh, out to vendors.
johngrimsmo: up to vendors. Yep.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm. Sure, sure, sure.
johngrimsmo: Um, and then me just look at it real quick. So we have that, we have a whole vendors list. It really helped to have all this data in previous group, um, which helped me import a lot of it, like tell cursor to automatically import it all.
johngrimsmo: Um, Items is like every, ideally every physical thing in the company from the current to each end mill. um Process plans are a big thing we're implementing.
johngrimsmo: We're going to track every single operation and every single time and eventually apply cost to that so that we can really start to see like when we make damage steel blades, are we actually making any money or is it just like a ton of work?
John Saunders: Yeah.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And yes, we charge a lot for it, but is it panning out?
John Saunders: Sure.
johngrimsmo: Right now we have no visibility, no idea. So we need that. That's gonna be sweet. I have a task section, which is like the ongoing to-do list where I could assign an employee a task and it just lives in there until it gets done.
johngrimsmo: And then we can all check it. um Shopify Live is a really sweet section where I can use the API from Shopify to see visibility in GURP of all of our products that we've ever made.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And since we upload a new Shopify page for every single product we've ever made, we have 20,000 products.
John Saunders: Oh my gosh. Yeah, yeah. Sure. Sure.
John Saunders: oh my
johngrimsmo: products entries and in group now I can sort them I can filter them I can search for a specific keyword and and it scrubs the whole database on Shopify syncs it with our database and so I can type DLC and I can tell you how many DLC sagas we've ever made how many damasteel plates we've ever made and it's already like paid off it's already showed some really good data and Because you search for Damasteel and it shows 77.
johngrimsmo: And I showed that to Eric and he's like, we've only made 77 Damasteel knives ever. And I'm like, yeah. And he's like, that's why I still suck at it.
John Saunders: Really?
johngrimsmo: Because it's like, um i don't have enough practice.
John Saunders: That's crazy.
johngrimsmo: I know.
John Saunders: Huh. So GURP, from a technical side, it's not just one like one Python script or one file. It's like a whole, like i assume it's on Git and um and so forth.
johngrimsmo: Yep, yep, it's on Git and it's hosted and it's database driven with a Postgres database. So all this stuff is stored in multiple databases. And it's a web web page based with a React front end apparently, and things like that. So it's a web browser that's fully secure and locked and password controlled.
johngrimsmo: And as we build it out, I wanted to do everything that we wanted to do, that we will use in this company.
John Saunders: Yeah, sure.
johngrimsmo: And that's the problem I've had with other ERPs that I've tried and spent money on and spent a lot of time on.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: They're better for job shops or they're better or they're like one size fits most or they're not for us.
John Saunders: Yep.
johngrimsmo: And maybe that's a me thing, but... I mean, on one hand, manufacturing is manufacturing. Every business should be the same and run by the same core principles. But like, I don't know. I'm super picky. I want it the way I want it. And if you can't do what I want, I'm not happy with it. Sure.
John Saunders: I think you're right. i think there's probably things we're not aware of, like it might make sense to use. um business one for, you know, Oracle or somebody, if you need a standing ISO certification platform, bla blah, blah, blah, like we don't.
johngrimsmo: Sure.
John Saunders: And I think the other sort of obvious point is that like, it is now become so easy to reinvent the wheel that we will be reinventing the wheel to be the exact wheel we want. Like, um, it was.
johngrimsmo: Exactly. Yeah. Well, as we've heard from people trying to get their AS certifications, um
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: a lot of those pre-existing ERP systems like will guide you through it, but it sounds like it's really just about capturing the certain information and being able to call that up, being able to present it, being able to track it, and you could easily build a system that does that for you, I think.
John Saunders: Trying to like not debate this, but think, to think like, what are we missing? And we in our shop update video that or it'll be out by the time this airs, I walk over to Grant and he shows off the thing that we already put up on Instagram. But Grant, who great machinist, like has gotten more comfortable with robots and PLCs and click or in post, but like not a software programmer and has never written a webpage or program in his life.
John Saunders: use claude to write a really good looking web interface to take digital metrology measure stuff decide when to push it log a database files of it and then push those offsets via the fans focus to over to the williman and like this looks like something you would have spent thousands of dollars with a software development company across a period weeks or months to do and grants just like yeah i did it a couple of days while i was doing other stuff and he's got the initiative and intelligence the confidence but but
johngrimsmo: Like pro.
John Saunders: everybody should now. Like if you want to do this, you can. And so um what i was trying to think in my head was like, if you were walking in and buying a company that you wasn't an industry you knew and you had a moon junior or a mid-level person who looked like they were reinventing the wheel, writing custom software,
John Saunders: At one point you'd be like, let's, let's just not reinvent the wheel here.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: Let's make sure we're just buying it from vendors that can give us support and a framework. And if you end up leaving, what are we left with now? I'm like, just don't care. It's like, you just grab that, you screenshot it or find the code and be like, Hey, this isn't working.
johngrimsmo: Right.
John Saunders: What's going work. You just.
johngrimsmo: Exactly.
John Saunders: Okay.
johngrimsmo: Well, like I have one of my neighbors was an accountant. He's now retired, but he was an accountant at a... um distillery for like 30 years or something like that. And he, even as an accountant, he went the hard way and he like wrote his own accounting software and wrote like the, the internal process tracking and the databases and all that stuff.
John Saunders: Wow.
johngrimsmo: So it's been actually fun to have him to bounce ideas off of.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: But he did it the hard way and it took years to like make these softwares, but it did everything they ever wanted. And it was sweet. And this is actually my dad's story too, throughout his whole career.
John Saunders: Yeah, sure.
johngrimsmo: But so my neighbor basically said, and then once the company got acquired by a big conglomerate, they came in with their big SAP software and everybody hated it. And it was just crazy.
johngrimsmo: bad because it didn't do what they wanted.
John Saunders: Sure.
johngrimsmo: It didn't do what they were used to for one, but it also just took years to onboard and it was like clunky and bad and doesn't do what you want. And yeah, i don't know. Those days are changing, man. And I think about that for our company too.
johngrimsmo: Like if I were no longer here and the company had to keep going and I've made all these custom weird stuff, nobody in the company currently knows how to deal with that.
johngrimsmo: But It's still possible to people, like you said with Grant, has to drive the initiative and the intelligence to pull it off.
John Saunders: hundred percent
johngrimsmo: And yeah, and it's just like any with any technology, even though this stuff feels so accessible to you and me, we're like nerds for this stuff right now. And I still don't think most people are going to adopt this for a while still.
John Saunders: I don't know, John.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: Like, I want to know more. Like, we were at a dinner party and I wanted to hear more about other people. How are you using Like, don't try to impress me. I just like wholesomely want to know, what are you doing?
John Saunders: Are you uploading your tax return to to see if it can find stuff? Are you asking it to do Excel modeling? Are you asking it for interior renovation? Like, I don't care. I just want to know. That's one of the reasons I enjoy our friendship is like,
John Saunders: You know, you get to two similar guys that still see other stuff through our journey in life. So I want to know more, but like, I don't want to underestimate how much people are using it.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: Yeah. Yeah,
johngrimsmo: It's good.
John Saunders: yeah it's cool, right?
johngrimsmo: um So I did want to ask you on that. You've talked about before in Lex, you have what I'm calling internal purchase orders, but like when the guy on the floor needs to buy a thing, what is the workflow for that?
John Saunders: Yep.
John Saunders: What kind of thing?
johngrimsmo: So like like, oh, I need the these endmails from McMaster or I need a thing, but he but he's not going to hit purchase. he's He's flagging a request. i need We need more of this.
johngrimsmo: Don't you have like a shopping cart kind of system in Lex?
John Saunders: Yes. Yeah. I just want to make sure i'm i'm understood the question.
johngrimsmo: Okay, yeah.
John Saunders: So right now I'm going to go into our our order queue. And so, um, the quick sort of disclaimer here, there are things we don't have in Lex, know, paper towels aren't in Lex. Um, and even some one-off stuff isn't in Lex, but, um,
John Saunders: And certain vendors like McMaster do such a good job on a shared persistent cart that anybody can log into McMaster and just add stuff to the cart. McMaster gets pushed every Thursday.
johngrimsmo: that's what we do too.
John Saunders: So that's how that kind of works. But right now we have a seal vendor, a outside service vendor, an aluminum vendor, and a tooling vendor have items in, um, the order queue and then each vendor has certain notes about it.
John Saunders: like some like Haas tooling does free shipping. So we just don't really care. We'll order that as soon as we need it. Others we order when it hits a certain point or once a week, Serena monitors that. So there's some tribal labor involved in how that gets monitored.
John Saunders: But like YG1 is a good example. Right now we have one Carbide center drill in there, quantity 15, but only one of them, $173 total purchase. That will probably sit there.
John Saunders: It tells me who put that in the cart.
johngrimsmo: Nice.
John Saunders: So we know who to ask if we have questions about it, but also who to deliver to it to when it arrives.
johngrimsmo: And when I assume?
John Saunders: And then it says right now, it's been in the cart for 1.2 days. And there'll be an email reminder generated in three days to make sure it gets ordered so that we don't just accidentally leave it there forever.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Yes. I like the reminder.
John Saunders: That answer your question?
johngrimsmo: Yes, it does. Well, yeah I wanted to hear how you use it because we don't have a system like that right now. Yes, we all add to the McMaster cart, but I'm hitting purchase or Angela's hitting purchase.
John Saunders: Yeah. Yep.
johngrimsmo: Same for Uline. Like we'll send a text to everybody. Oh, if you need any Uline stuff, let us know by Tuesday because we're ordering. But it's all the littler stuff. It's like like end mills or bandsaw blades or like weird, you know, things. I'm just trying to figure out what is the least stressful way to kind of funnel this all to a purchasing person or kind of time schedule. Maybe it could be done by me or Spencer or Angelo or something like that. But yeah, and I like that.
johngrimsmo: What do you call that?
John Saunders: So we have all our inventory items. And so there has to be some way for you to know what to order. You can search it, there's a Lex ID, you can scan a barcode. We don't, to be clear, but you could, we have barcodes.
johngrimsmo: Okay.
John Saunders: And then you just hit add to cart and it goes into the order queue.
johngrimsmo: Okay.
John Saunders: And anybody could immediately push it. Like if Grant needs more aluminum for an order, he get add it the cart and just immediately push. Well, that's an RFQ, so it'll come back. and It has to get converted from a quote to PO, but exactly.
johngrimsmo: But it's ah in process, basically.
John Saunders: um and that we are We were just talking about it doing potentially doing some more permissions limiting stuff. it's It's not something we we are worried about, but it's also probably quite appropriate to have to make sure you know a brand new intern doesn't order $14,000 worth of steel.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Yep.
John Saunders: Actually, I don't really care if that happens because you can't like you couldn't do that in a malicious way at this point. But nevertheless, it's and you and i talked that we have a um I have a review system that I get every Friday.
John Saunders: i don't know if that was off the air or on the air.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. Yeah, I forgot.
John Saunders: um i Every Friday I get a report of all of the past week's POs sorted with the total dollar by total dollar amount with a price change relative to the past three times we've ordered that.
johngrimsmo: yes
John Saunders: So for materials or carbide or cardboard, even I get to see, oh man, we've ordered that three times in past 18 months and the price just went up 37%.
John Saunders: Well, when that's a 14 cent screw, I don't really want to spend a ton of time worrying about it. But when it's a $443 piece of aluminum, it's like, hey, now we need to check our margins, our pricing, et cetera.
johngrimsmo: Yep. And remembering as I built GURP 3.0, I'm calling it, um I was thinking about that conversation where you were telling me about that pricing history and and the report and all that stuff. So I've started to build that into GURP too. So you can click on any vendor and it shows every PO associated with that vendor ever.
johngrimsmo: And then on each item page, you can have... ah pricing history tracker that just shows you little graph, little set. And the the freedom to do all this is like so liberating.
johngrimsmo: And i what I want now is feedback from my team with ideas be like, you what would be great is if we had, Angela had one right away, if
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: On the vendor page, when you click on vendor and it drops down and it shows every purchase order we've ever made from them with the totals on the side, he's like, can we add that up at the bottom and see how many dollars we've spent at our DLC coding place?
johngrimsmo: I was like, yeah, we can.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: By the next day, I had it done. And it was like instantly really cool. you'd be like, well, we spent how much of that at that company? Like, okay, we're not a small fish to them. Like...
John Saunders: Again, I wish this podcast were not public because what I would sort of privately tell you to push you is like, this is so easy with AI now. It still takes a lot of back and forth, but John, you shouldn't be doing this anymore.
johngrimsmo: It does.
johngrimsmo: i don't see anybody else the company doing it, to be honest, like right now. But it would it would be great if I had that.
John Saunders: Okay.
John Saunders: both because you you need to be doing better stuff, but also you will be better adding value as an outside observer to this, not be the one in the weeds.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, maybe. Yep. Because it has taken probably over 100 hours to do what I've done so far. Like, it's a lot of time.
John Saunders: Which is, but it's so incredible. Like I'm not like, it's great, but, um
johngrimsmo: Yeah. Oh, totally. But it's like, we make it sound easy, but it is still time consuming and there's still like on the more advanced side, database management and GitHub uploading.
johngrimsmo: It's like, it's not easy. It'll probably get easier over the years, but it's accessible.
John Saunders: I know that stuff's hard, but especially if you found somebody who happens to potentially be younger and much more in, so I just want to, don't want to be close-minded about it. And I know that the recurring things that we've had, like you will be better when you're in a place where you're just like, great.
johngrimsmo: Oh, totally.
John Saunders: Do I want to work on a new product today? Or do I want to work like not GERP is on my shoulders.
johngrimsmo: Yep.
johngrimsmo: Well, I'm choosing to work on the product of GURP is, you know, where I'm at right now because I want it for my company. um But yeah, getting to the point where I can add all the feature requests and then somebody else can manage the implementation of all that. It'd be great.
John Saunders: That's what I was gonna though, when I asked about the technical side of GURP, this just a dumb question I don't understand is let's say your GURP is 74 file, it doesn't matter, like different Python or Java, it doesn't matter, different programming files in cursor or Claude or whatever, if you're like, okay, I wanna update the PDF doesn't work.
johngrimsmo: Sure.
John Saunders: So I wanna switch the way we're parsing PDFs with this, this, how does it know to see your whole code base and realize it doesn't have to update all 74 files or the full Git, blah, blah, blah. It just is like, okay, it's two or two files I'm going to replace.
johngrimsmo: So Cursor does that naturally. um It knows the whole code base because the way Cursor works is you sync your entire GitHub locally on your C drive.
John Saunders: Okay. Okay.
johngrimsmo: it doesn't It doesn't work on a shared Google Drive, by the way.
John Saunders: Got it.
johngrimsmo: I used to have it on my, I'm like, yeah, let's put it Google so I can have it on my work computer as well.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
John Saunders: home
johngrimsmo: There's sync issues and everybody complained. So I have it on my C drive at home and I have the entire code base on my C drive. And then I push that to GitHub when it's ready for upload, basically.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: So then Cursor has access to every subfolder within this main folder that I tell it to. You basically open Cursor with this folder. um
John Saunders: Got
johngrimsmo: And then you just say, yeah, you know the purchase order page? It's not generating the PDF properly. Or can you move, you know in the generated PDF, can you move my email to the bottom and put it on the right? or make it Make it blue and underlined like it should be.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Things like that. So I just have to specify like, Yeah, on the PO page. And it knows the difference between PO and purchase order. I can just shorthand everything. It just knows.
johngrimsmo: um and And we built everything into modules. So there's the purchase order module. There's the Shopify Live module.
John Saunders: Oh, you sure? That's smart.
johngrimsmo: So it it can just hone in and then I can relate to because sometimes two different modules will have similar features or like I want them to look the same.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: like yeah Make purchase orders look like we did on vendors because I like that look.
John Saunders: Right.
johngrimsmo: Make feature requests, you know, big and bold like it is on the other one. And it rarely have I ever broken anything else by making a change on something else, which has been great.
John Saunders: Okay. Yeah, that's good to know.
johngrimsmo: You know, that's always the concern.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm.
johngrimsmo: I've definitely broken it a couple times, but whatever. He's like, oh, nothing's working anymore.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And you just feed back and he goes, yeah, no problem.
John Saunders: Yeah. Sorry. It's going ring here.
johngrimsmo: It's been fun.
John Saunders: Good. That's awesome.
johngrimsmo: But yes, now that I'm, as I call it, coming up for error from a ah deep project like that, now it's maintenance and addition, and I'm getting the team to use it.
John Saunders: Mm-hmm. You
johngrimsmo: We went live on it after one week, like live after one week.
John Saunders: can see it.
johngrimsmo: And the old group is dead to me already. And i was able to import all of the data. So every purchase order we've ever made, because it was spreadsheet based. So it's all there and you can parse it easy.
johngrimsmo: So every every purchase order, every price, every vendor, every everything is already, I have a starting point for the new one, which is awesome. um So yeah, now that that's kind of done, I'm getting, as I told you, really excited about filming and media and marketing and like pushing that. So that's going to be a big push for me.
johngrimsmo: Blade Show's coming up in a couple months, you know, the mammoth trip.
John Saunders: easy
johngrimsmo: And I definitely want to get back into product design and updates and things like that. So...
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: It's always lots to do.
John Saunders: Dude. Awesome. I want to, so when we're in California, can you show me GURP on like on your phone?
johngrimsmo: Yes, I got it on my phone.
John Saunders: Okay. Okay. Sweet.
johngrimsmo: Yep, yep.
John Saunders: That'd be cool.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, it works good on the phone, but because there's so many columns, you have to like scroll sideways sometimes, which is fine.
John Saunders: That'd be cool.
John Saunders: Okay. Sure.
johngrimsmo: I'm just accepting it for now.
John Saunders: Sure. Sure. sure
johngrimsmo: I'm realizing the challenge of making a wide desktop view and a narrow mobile view with a lot of data is actually like really hard.
John Saunders: Do you want to be able to use on your phone though? Or is you okay?
johngrimsmo: All the time. Yeah. Like I want access in bed. I want to like see it.
John Saunders: Dude, no, sorry. No.
johngrimsmo: Mostly just to answer a question.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: You it's like, it's like how much damage steel do we have?
John Saunders: it'sburg yeah
johngrimsmo: I'm curious if we have that pattern. Oh yeah, we ordered it last time. We should have it. Little little stuff like that.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: That's cool. I wanted to show you video. I don't think we put this up yet, although I'm happy to. um So the way we make our top jaws, we always end up with a burr that's rolled onto the inside of an occluded edge.
johngrimsmo: You showed me the video.
John Saunders: And yeah. And so I, We scotch-brite them and I was like, okay, as part of the phase two of our robot system, phase one is just getting stuff to work day shift.
John Saunders: There's actually more nuances to these phases, but phase two and phase three will start you know lights out and then start adding robot capabilities before and after the machining value added services or functions. And so take a look at this.
John Saunders: um It's pulling the part through. And it's actually this really satisfying ASMR sound. where Unfortunately, one of the big drawbacks to this project was we had to use a lathe holder and a lathe tool bit.
johngrimsmo: So
johngrimsmo: I mean, that's what I thought it was.
John Saunders: but it
johngrimsmo: So explain it to me. Like I'm a listener. um
John Saunders: Okay, so it's basically using a lathe, like a CNMG insert um held statically at an angle. So it's almost like a scraper, if you will, and or a shaper.
johngrimsmo: Yep.
John Saunders: And it's taking the jaw and it's pushing the jaw into a 3D printed fixture. And it's running it along the X axis where the tool is now mounted such that it just knocks that burr off with the cutting edge.
John Saunders: And then we'll probably still wanna have either like a stone or a Scotch-Brite that will help finish it if you will but already this is almost good enough and it's like okay great now we can have this part being taken out of the machine and have it now deburred which is phenomenal yeah
johngrimsmo: Yeah, yeah.
johngrimsmo: Yeah, and now now we don't have to worry about the machining of that burr in a second op or anything like that. We can accept it off the machine and fix it automatically in the ungripping cycle.
John Saunders: yeah it's just it's just win it's just winning
johngrimsmo: It is, yeah, hats off to you on that. yup Yep, yep.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Cool.
John Saunders: um The last thing I've had on my like rolling to do list is um I want to want to reach out.
johngrimsmo: Cool.
John Saunders: I'll probably reach out to a guy at Cannon Metal because I got to know some of the guys at Cannon Metal through Toolpath. But um I think we need to finally buck up and order custom step drills.
John Saunders: And here's what's tricky.
johngrimsmo: Like, like for your fixture plate million holes a day that you do. Okay.
John Saunders: Exactly. And so if you think about our average a fixture plate, let's just stick with aluminum because it's actually the, it's the more interesting example because we, fought
johngrimsmo: Really? Everybody's a hero in aluminum.
John Saunders: Yeah. Yeah. Well, so what makes interesting that we form tap them. um
johngrimsmo: Okay.
John Saunders: And so when you form tap, the suaging action of the form tap does raise up some material. So you basically, you can't, um you have to chamfer after the drill.
John Saunders: um
johngrimsmo: You can't chamfer big enough before the drill?
John Saunders: Well, so that's kind of the question. If our fixture plates have a threaded section and then they have a
johngrimsmo: e
John Saunders: um
johngrimsmo: Like a boar above that?
John Saunders: a larger counter bore and, and then let's assume for now, let's assume that we still ream or bore the precision with a high quality, high end PCD drill.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: We may actually not need to ream because it's some of these drills are so accurate, but let's set that aside for now. Um, we, then we chamfer it. So it's right now it's a bunch of operations. It's, it's drilling for the form tap.
John Saunders: Then it's, dr it's, we're actually rough drilling the larger diameter. Then we're form tapping it. Then we're coming in when coming into chamfer, the chamfer, the 90 degree shoulder edges on the counterbore in the top of the face.
John Saunders: And then we're coming in with like a reamer or boring head and doing the precision bore. So it's five operations.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: I think if we actually took the time to design a form drill, what we could do is the form drill would would be quite complicated in its shape because it would have the form tap diameter drill and the majors with the chamfers built in, but it would also have a relief area
johngrimsmo: Oh.
John Saunders: so that when the form tap occurs, that material can flow into an area that doesn't s muck up your ability to, um, start a thread, start the, start the screw.
johngrimsmo: Mm-hmm.
John Saunders: Um, in which case you could get down go from five to two tools. You would literally form drill everything, including your chamfers, um, thread or form tap, and then potentially still have to precision, um, machine the board, maybe maybe not.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
John Saunders: what do you think?
johngrimsmo: I like it. Yeah. I've, I've heard of people, Angelos mentioned it too, of having custom step drills made. It doesn't suit what we need, but um yeah, apparently it's common enough in especially higher volume industry.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: um There's probably lots of companies that do it. What I don't need the specifics, but what sort of, you just think a carbide step drill or something fancy?
John Saunders: Carbide, well, so that's one of the questions I need to ask because PCD are are usually, I believe, just like brazed insert sections. So it might be the case, certainly the drill will be carbide. It won't be like high speed steel or something lower, if you will. um But the precision section could be PCD if we needed it, if that was worth it. I think it has to do more than just save it It has to do five things because if it just does two things, it's not worth you to buy five drills.
John Saunders: They're four to $700 each. They take ah eight weeks to get like it has to be juicier return, but we really need that return because aluminum pricing has really compressed the margins there.
johngrimsmo: yeah
John Saunders: And so cycle time really does matter more about, Hey, let's, let's make these plates in a way that doesn't compromise the quality either.
johngrimsmo: Of course. No, it's a cool challenge. Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Curious to see how it goes.
John Saunders: Yeah, i'll let you know. so i It's been on my list.
johngrimsmo: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Sweet, man.
John Saunders: What else?
johngrimsmo: Last thing I have is I was on Spencer's podcast the other weekend, the PFG Live, and it was ah absolute pleasure and a joy to get get back together with Spencer and have that conversation.
John Saunders: listened to it.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: And we mostly talked about AI programming as well.
John Saunders: Yeah.
johngrimsmo: Super fun.
John Saunders: I enjoy it PFG. I don't enjoy it when Spencer misses, but maybe the maybe that's mutual.
johngrimsmo: Yeah. Yeah.
John Saunders: No, it was good to hear you on that.
johngrimsmo: Good. It was fun.
John Saunders: Yeah. Yeah.
johngrimsmo: That's all got.
John Saunders: See you in a few days.
johngrimsmo: so I'll see you Sunday morning.
John Saunders: Sounds good.
johngrimsmo: Cool, man. All right.
John Saunders: Take care.
johngrimsmo: Bye.
John Saunders: Bye.
