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#402 "Delegating is sometimes just as simple as delegating"
2.4k Plays3 days ago
TOPICS:
- "My Willy is doing great" - Grimsmo
- Kern was purchased by Ametek.
- "Delegating is sometimes just as simple as delegating".
- Auto serial numbers on Okuma
- Vapor degreaser
- Diamond lapping
- Bad 3d printing
Recommended
Transcript
Episode Introduction and Significance
00:00:01
John S
Good morning, welcome to the business of machining episode number 402. My name is John Saunders.
00:00:08
johngrimsmo
And my name is John Grimsmo.
00:00:09
John S
I awkwardly paused because I thought, wait a minute, here we should do something special for for episode 408.
00:00:16
John S
<unk>s Frankly, that's cooler than a 400.
00:00:16
johngrimsmo
I get you.
The Making of Willyman 408
00:00:19
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah. Willyman 408 baby.
00:00:21
John S
408. How's your willing, man?
00:00:24
John S
How's your willing?
00:00:24
johngrimsmo
It's been awesome.
00:00:25
johngrimsmo
My Willy's been so good. So Jeff's been running my Willy, um, for maybe two weeks now and literally every day he's making fail clips.
00:00:32
John S
Okay.
00:00:35
johngrimsmo
Um, We don't have a bar loaded yet, so he's making them one by one from remnants that we have from our Nakamura. And we've got hundreds of these, yeah, of making saga pen clips for the past almost 10 years, eight years or whatever.
00:00:44
John S
Lots of remnants.
Challenges with Bar Feeder Setup
00:00:51
johngrimsmo
And we have all these nine inch remnants that are like perfect for making two or three feel clips out of.
00:00:55
John S
Yeah, perfect.
00:00:56
johngrimsmo
So we're just loading them one by one, pull the bar out, do it again. We haven't hooked up the LNS bar feeder yet, but the, uh, Wilhelmin guys kind of, I own it.
00:01:04
John S
Oh, that's right, you own it.
00:01:06
John S
Yeah, yeah it's funny, yeah.
00:01:06
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it's, it's, it's there.
00:01:07
johngrimsmo
It's not bolted down yet. It's not aligned yet. Um, and the Wilhelmin guys told me what keep relays to switch and how, you know, do a couple of things and it should just plug right in and start working.
00:01:17
John S
Yeah.
00:01:17
johngrimsmo
So the time will be in aligning it and and leveling it, uh, bolting it to the ground and stuff. But otherwise, like ah but right now, Jeff's happy just doing it.
00:01:26
John S
I've never, yeah, right, it sounds like a win-win to use up a bunch of scrap and turn it into a much more valuable product
00:01:30
johngrimsmo
Yeah, you're gonna say you've never.
00:01:35
John S
I've never, um, I've been around when they've been leveling bar fears. I've never been involved, but how is it not just like, okay, three or four feet? Like you need to have it concentric with the spindle bore.
00:01:46
John S
Like, is it, is it a big deal?
00:01:47
johngrimsmo
Yeah, we did it
Aligning Bar Feeders with Lasers
00:01:48
johngrimsmo
ah when we moved our tornos from the old shop to this shop, we aligned it ourselves. um
00:01:52
John S
Yeah.
00:01:55
johngrimsmo
It has to be a line of sight, like the channel needs to basically match the spindle bore almost perfectly.
00:02:00
John S
Yeah, sure.
00:02:02
johngrimsmo
So sometimes they'll tie a string to the and machine and call it and then to the back of the bar loader gripper thingy.
00:02:08
John S
Right.
00:02:09
johngrimsmo
And then with that string, you tighten it and you can see like if it's up or down or sideways or whatever. um We ended up machining a little adapter to put a laser pointer in the spindle pointing backwards.
00:02:20
johngrimsmo
And if you rotate the spindle, fun fact, laser pointers are pretty crappy quality and they do not aim straight.
00:02:20
John S
ah so
00:02:27
John S
What I was gonna say was this is a in America, and if you guys are end up being the 51st state, you'll be able to enjoy this, sorry.
00:02:33
johngrimsmo
Careful there.
Impact of Kern's Buyout
00:02:34
John S
um All the time, when you foresight a rifle, you there's these little lasers that are in the shape of the cartridge round, and it's like, I don't know how they handle a view.
00:02:41
johngrimsmo
I did see those.
00:02:43
John S
I wouldn't rotate it at 3,000 RPMs, but um cheap and easy.
00:02:44
johngrimsmo
No.
00:02:47
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I remember seeing those in my research, and I think I actually bought one of those. um But even still, they have run out. But who cares?
00:02:53
John S
Yeah.
00:02:53
johngrimsmo
Because all you're trying to do is you're trying to sweep the run out and see like, you know, it's evenly running around this circle, basically, and you put a target at the end on the bar loader side, and you just if you can sweep a circle, a hole in the middle, then that's your lineup.
00:03:00
John S
Right.
00:03:07
John S
Okay.
00:03:08
johngrimsmo
um And the bar loader itself has like two big feet with four bolts on each foot. So basically you have, ah you know, front back tilt. ah Alignment angle is sliding across the floor basically.
00:03:22
John S
True, sure.
00:03:23
johngrimsmo
So you have to like shimmy it and they're not light and they're pretty tippy.
00:03:25
John S
Yeah.
00:03:27
johngrimsmo
It's all these ways to do it. And then it has to be drilled and bolted to the ground. And there's some slight adjustment within that still.
00:03:30
John S
Yeah.
00:03:34
johngrimsmo
So it's it's doable. It's just finicky and annoying.
00:03:37
John S
Yeah.
00:03:38
johngrimsmo
I don't think, I mess with the laser when they installed mine, but Angelo and the guys did the work. I just watched it happen.
00:03:45
John S
Cool.
00:03:46
johngrimsmo
Um, but yeah, so it's just a thing.
00:03:48
John S
Well, goodness, that's great.
00:03:49
johngrimsmo
So it's great. Like just running this
Delegation and Team Training
00:03:51
johngrimsmo
Wilhelmin nonstop, he's broken a couple of tools and you know, you can hear it cutting with a quarter inch end mill. You're like, right where and like oh oh no, everybody panics and it's an oil machine.
00:04:01
John S
Yeah.
00:04:04
johngrimsmo
So we're kind of scared. Like.
00:04:06
John S
Oh, yeah.
00:04:07
johngrimsmo
like We have a fire trace on it, but still. um It's been rock solid.
00:04:10
John S
Great.
00:04:13
johngrimsmo
It's still making this feature to 1 10th tolerance with a 1 16th end mill finishing so reliably to the point where
00:04:17
John S
It's awesome.
00:04:25
johngrimsmo
It'll, it'll go out by a 10th, like hit the upper limit, maybe just go pass it by one 10th. And then Jeff tries to comp it back and it overshoots. And now it's like two tenths under.
00:04:33
John S
Yeah.
00:04:35
johngrimsmo
And he's like, I gave it, you know, 20 million soft set and it moved the future by too much. So.
00:04:44
John S
I had that issue this unrelated or separate issue on the Okuma. The control itself, the OSP, doesn't have a placeholder for decimals beyond 10ths, which is not cool.
00:04:56
johngrimsmo
Okay. Meaning you can only, you can't even type in five digits or you can't have a, you can't have code with five digits or.
00:04:59
John S
I guess so, yeah, I'm not in front.
00:05:05
John S
Well, so that was my question. I didn't further interrogate this, but but beyond. I had a the puck chuck part we were testing to sort of see um the way we hard gauge it and the dual contact taper is is different than just micrometer depth.
00:05:20
John S
But I thought, OK, well, I'm going to walk this Z-surface down 50 million. It's hard milling it. And I couldn't.
00:05:28
johngrimsmo
You typing an MDI or you make a program?
00:05:30
John S
Well, I was going to just adjust the offset by half a tenth, but you couldn't do it.
00:05:32
johngrimsmo
Oh yeah, sure.
00:05:33
John S
And then I actually went back into fusion myself and sort of looked, um there's a, I don't want to call it disconnect or hanging broken, but it is something to be conscious of like infusion.
00:05:44
John S
If I went to 50 millionths in my Z negative socks to leave the post itself rounded it to one tenth as well.
00:05:50
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:05:50
John S
And I do believe that's editable. Now whether it matters, I don't know.
00:05:54
johngrimsmo
Mm hmm.
00:05:54
John S
um So it was just kind of a like, I just wanted to play because what we wanted to see was the start correlating the gauge results to the the two the two different dimensions that we're working on.
00:06:04
johngrimsmo
Totally.
00:06:07
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I now have two, and I now have four machines that read in five digits inch. So it's a 10 million increments and it's, it's, I love it.
00:06:13
John S
Yeah.
00:06:17
johngrimsmo
I love it so much.
00:06:19
John S
Well, again, I'd caveat of like, I'm not sure these machines are necessarily accurately able to repeat to that. But, and also before everyone trolls me, I'm aware they're potentially switching it to metric mode could be an improvement that ain't happening at this point.
00:06:32
John S
Like, sorry, not that I wish it to happen, but like it is.
00:06:32
johngrimsmo
Yep, totally.
00:06:34
johngrimsmo
2.5 times five four times more resolution, baby Nope
00:06:37
John S
Yeah. Yeah. You run anything in true metric?
00:06:41
johngrimsmo
no, I
00:06:42
John S
Yeah. You're going to fit in great. And when
G-code Serialization Techniques
00:06:45
johngrimsmo
and Somebody was asking me the other day.
00:06:45
John S
you guys.
00:06:46
johngrimsmo
They're like ah did Were they okay changing your current to metric? And I said, the current guys almost threw up when I asked them to make it inch, um but they did it anyway for me.
00:06:57
johngrimsmo
I actually, I think we talked about this a couple of weeks ago.
00:06:58
John S
Yeah.
00:07:00
johngrimsmo
I asked Greg, one of the speedio guys, what it would take to convert my speedio into metric to get that extra 2.54 times resolution.
00:07:07
John S
Oh.
00:07:09
johngrimsmo
And he said, he said You can't just do it on the fly, like in a program, because in FANUCRE and Heidenhine, you just, gee, what is it, 1991 or something?
00:07:15
John S
Yeah, G19 G20, I think, yeah.
00:07:18
johngrimsmo
That's the one. In Speedio, you have to hard parameter change the machine, restart it, and then it is now metric. um And there's no feature in the post that defines met metric range.
00:07:29
John S
Yeah, that's interesting.
00:07:30
johngrimsmo
And that surprised me. um I had to rescind my email to Phil, be like, can you edit my post to give me a metric output option? And and sorry, apparently it's not possible.
00:07:36
John S
Yeah. Right. Right.
00:07:40
johngrimsmo
Anyway.
00:07:41
John S
Well, now that Kern's an American company, they'll probably be doing more inch machines as well, dude.
00:07:44
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I'm ahead of my time.
00:07:45
John S
Yeah.
00:07:46
johngrimsmo
Yeah, exactly.
00:07:46
John S
Yeah. You really were a trendsetter.
00:07:48
johngrimsmo
I actually listened to their podcast podcast with Simon Sebastian and mar Marvin, and it was super insightful.
00:07:51
John S
Okay. Yep.
00:07:56
johngrimsmo
Obviously, I'm a current owner. I'm not invested in the company, but I love the company and I am a customer of theirs and hope to be a future customer as as well.
00:08:01
John S
Yeah.
00:08:06
johngrimsmo
And you hear that they get bought out by this American company and it shocked me. It shocked everybody. I was like, holy cow. And the podcast was super insightful. It's just Simon and Sebastian openly and honestly discussing the terms of the buyout. Like, did you listen to it at all?
00:08:23
John S
I would love to.
00:08:24
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:08:24
John S
I have not.
00:08:25
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it was just, it was just good. It got gave me the insider look. Um, you know, current publicly States, they're 50, $60 million dollars a year company. Um, it kind of makes me wonder what the buyout was for.
00:08:37
johngrimsmo
Like, like what they sold for, but I don't know if that's public or private. It might be public if you really dig into it.
00:08:43
John S
most likely won't be and correct.
00:08:44
johngrimsmo
Do you think so?
00:08:46
John S
Yeah. And this, I want to hear more for sure.
00:08:49
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:08:49
John S
the The interesting thing about valuation, this is like, couldn't be more caveat of like it all depends. It looked just legit all depends, but a lot of times the ballpark
00:08:55
johngrimsmo
Totally.
00:09:01
John S
number will be something around their other the revenue number.
00:09:05
John S
Not to talk about machine tool companies, just like in general.
00:09:05
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:09:07
John S
If they want to come to some approximation, and that in a weird way, it kind of works out because usually companies, again, there are companies with margins of 5%, there's companies with margins of 50%, but generally speaking, if you have something like margins of 20 to 30% and your company sells for three to four times the multiple of your earnings, which ends up being what your revenue number is anyways.
00:09:08
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:09:08
johngrimsmo
It's good to know.
00:09:27
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah.
00:09:28
John S
Now is that what cursor for I have no idea, but I don't think it's sold for 30 million I don't think it's over 200 million would be my guess They were they told us that Okay sure
00:09:33
johngrimsmo
Totally. Yeah, yeah. No, that's fascinating. And basically they said that Kern was purchased from essentially old man Kern and his son in 2016. And I'm 90% sure. my My guess is that Simon and Sebastian were two of the purchasers.
00:09:49
johngrimsmo
is Yeah, they did, but he said there were five people that bought the company. He goes, I don't know if he was talking to Marvin or talking to everybody, but he's like, you know, four of them. You don't know the fifth person. I was like, okay, cool.
00:10:01
johngrimsmo
Um, and whether it was, uh, they talked a lot about, you know, maybe it was just the time for those five people to be like, you know what? Like, maybe it's time to get a little kickback from our, our investment in this company.
00:10:11
John S
oh Yeah,
00:10:12
John S
sure.
00:10:12
johngrimsmo
totally Totally fair.
00:10:13
johngrimsmo
Um, so this company, Amitek bought them American huge conglomerate, $7 billion dollars in sales. Um, they own like. I forget if it was 50 or 200 other companies and there are all like ultra ultra ultra precision companies.
00:10:23
John S
Yeah.
00:10:27
johngrimsmo
Zygote Interferometers, Presetech Diamond Laids, like ultra precision companies.
00:10:31
John S
Oh, yeah, yeah.
00:10:34
johngrimsmo
And apparently once um Simon started telling the staff and once they wrapped their head around it, because it was a shock to their current staff as well, like they had to keep it under wraps. It is a good podcast, you should listen to it.
00:10:45
John S
Yeah, well.
00:10:47
johngrimsmo
But He said, once the staff kind of realized what it meant, they start to get really excited
Kern's Acquisition and Growth Potential
00:10:52
johngrimsmo
because they go, Oh, now we're in the family of all these tools that we've been asking to buy, like, like another zygote interferometer or whatever.
00:10:56
John S
Interesting.
00:11:00
johngrimsmo
Um, because current is trying to make the most precise machine in the world. And now they're in a family of other ultra, like it's, it's actually a really good thing. And Simon said, he's like, we've probably been getting 10 purchase offers a year for several years now.
00:11:15
johngrimsmo
And most of them you just dismiss, but apparently this one came across the desk and they're like, we should talk about this.
00:11:17
John S
Yeah.
00:11:23
John S
Yeah, that's something that I think, first off, I know there was some joking, some of it from me, frankly, because there's there is some humor, like, oh, hey, you are a deeply rooted Bavarian German company, and we are now your American overlords.
00:11:30
johngrimsmo
Yep, yep.
00:11:37
John S
And some of that is actually true if they don't want to hear it. um But ah much love for them. And the I have a lot of sympathies for, um CEOs and in particular I found I we know um Simon much better.
00:11:54
John S
What was remind me the other CEOs name? Is it also Simon Sebastian?
00:11:56
johngrimsmo
Sebastian. so Both of them are just lovely.
00:11:57
John S
Thank you um What a wonderful gentleman seriously what a what ah stand-up solid guy and it's not an uncommon situation for Small or medium-sized businesses believe it or not 60 million is probably still a small business by like business definitions, which seems crazy but um
00:12:13
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:12:15
John S
It's not necessarily responsible or prudent to have all of your life work and net worth tied up in something. um It's a wonderful position to be in, and it's it's ah obviously a bit of a unique situation.
00:12:27
John S
and and one you know I would sort of say, ironically, the American dream, not to paint that with the American brush, but like it's wonderful. So I don't begrudge them at all for recognizing that opportunity.
00:12:27
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:12:34
johngrimsmo
ye
00:12:36
John S
And there's probably a ton of infrastructure backs off that they can benefit off of.
00:12:41
John S
um But it's also different, you know, there's there now have they know bosses.
00:12:41
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:12:42
johngrimsmo
And they said, it's different. Yep. Yeah. And that's what they said. That's going to be the weirdest thing is like, we now report ah to something, but both of them still want to continue to be the CEOs and still want to run the company.
00:12:49
John S
Yeah.
00:12:53
johngrimsmo
And this frees them up. um They've got huge plans for making another factory in Germany, even before all this started happening.
00:12:54
John S
Yeah.
00:12:59
John S
Yeah.
00:13:01
johngrimsmo
They told me that a year ago. um They they but want to do more. And this this they said in the podcast very freely, they're like,
00:13:06
John S
Yeah.
00:13:10
johngrimsmo
This kind of just takes the fear away from a lot of it because we now have a parent company that can maybe support the ups and downs a little bit better, maybe can invest if needed, maybe can, you know, they
Machining Task Delegation
00:13:21
johngrimsmo
want us to succeed.
00:13:22
johngrimsmo
And the other thing they said was ah kind of flattered that this company who only so only invests in successful companies wants to invest in us. They clearly view us as a successful company.
00:13:30
John S
Sure, sure.
00:13:33
johngrimsmo
And the due diligence process was gut wrenching, they said.
00:13:37
John S
Yeah.
00:13:37
johngrimsmo
every Every nook and cranny and every penny spent had to be analyzed by lawyers and everything. And he's like, oh, it's totally brutal, but I'm glad we passed. We have a good company.
00:13:48
John S
yeah I have always been passionate about this world of business, I guess, but they're in the honeymoon phase. It's awesome. i want i I wish the best for them.
00:13:59
John S
So speaking speaking generally, not so much about the current situation, but they now do report to a foreign publicly traded company that has to manage earnings and is subject to the whims of the capital markets.
00:13:59
johngrimsmo
For sure.
00:14:10
John S
and um you know there will I think the best thing, I don't know Amitek well, but if they they have a history of acquiring similar industries, machine tool companies, metallurgy companies, and leaving them alone and letting them do anything, that's probably the best validation you could have right there, to know that like, okay, because if you are being acquired by
00:14:26
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:14:30
John S
a new you know but so take for example all of the money that's flowed into the tech sector right now you know in ai all that and it's like hey somebody comes and wants to buy you for some crazy e valuation but they never bought other companies buckle up because your company is probably not going to be the same in a couple years and um goes back to the brazilian fisherman analogy of like hey you and i for better or worse are craftspeople like
00:14:35
johngrimsmo
venture capitalists and yep.
00:14:45
johngrimsmo
Yep. Yeah. yeah
00:14:52
John S
We enjoy the craft of what we make. And Kern is obviously the point where it's it's a true operating company that has an obligation to to perpetuate what they do.
00:15:00
johngrimsmo
I mean.
00:15:03
johngrimsmo
Absolutely. That said, 10 years ago, Kern was purchased by Simon and Sebastian and these three other people and was total paradigm shift shift at that point. And they've helped grow it in the past 10 years to the point that we now know it.
00:15:12
John S
Yeah.
00:15:15
John S
Yeah.
00:15:15
johngrimsmo
So it's, it's, it's already happened in a way to this current company.
00:15:19
johngrimsmo
Um, I mean, it's different, totally different.
00:15:19
John S
No, being bought by a German employee is very different than a a publicly traded foreign entity.
00:15:24
johngrimsmo
True.
00:15:28
johngrimsmo
But it's in stages, you know, it went from old man current or whatever, whoever the guy was, um, you know, to now new, these new fresh young kids, Simon and Sebastian would have been in their thirties at that time.
00:15:32
John S
Yeah.
00:15:37
John S
Yeah.
00:15:40
John S
Crazy, right?
00:15:41
johngrimsmo
And, uh, yeah, I think, I think they worked at 3M.
00:15:42
John S
Yeah, no good for them.
00:15:45
johngrimsmo
Um, was it IBM or one of those huge companies for quite a while?
00:15:46
John S
Yeah, it does sound right.
00:15:50
johngrimsmo
And then they did this.
00:15:52
John S
Yeah.
00:15:53
johngrimsmo
So yeah, lovely people. Hope to make it out to Germany again at some point or see the I'll see them for sure. But yeah.
00:16:01
John S
Awesome, awesome. On that note, talking about the Wilhelmin, there was a brief conversation in our WhatsApp chat that I think is worth trying to, it's kind of one of those things I'll say it, and I don't know that it will change anything, because I still am guilty of it, you're still guilty of it, lots of people are guilty of it, but delegating is often as simple as just delegating.
00:16:21
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:16:21
John S
like telling Jeff to run the Wilhelmin and i I'm gonna, I'll throw myself right under the bus.
00:16:23
johngrimsmo
I was just talking about that today.
00:16:27
John S
I spent a lot of time learning our grinder and working on it. And there's some justification to that because it's a new machine, we're trying to develop processes and and I'm not sure I'm filled with regret around how I did it on the flip side.
00:16:41
John S
I had a lot more um internal debate about the or but anxiety about
Reflections on Company Growth
00:16:47
John S
handing it off to Caleb and I did it this week.
00:16:47
johngrimsmo
Totally
00:16:48
John S
And fun fun fact, crushing it, like picked it up in two days, had a bunch of questions throughout the process. Who cares? That's exactly what you should have.
00:16:56
John S
And it's like completely, it went 10 times smoother, 10 times easier than I thought.
00:16:56
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:17:03
John S
And so I'm glad I didn't wait five minutes longer to to start that.
00:17:03
johngrimsmo
That's fantastic.
00:17:06
johngrimsmo
Yep. Interesting.
00:17:08
John S
Yeah. And proud of him. It was great.
00:17:10
johngrimsmo
That's awesome. I was just talking with one of our guys about that today of um say I've got to re-qualify the speedio. I've got to you know ah make sure the probe is concentric.
00:17:20
johngrimsmo
I've got to calibrate the probe. I've got to reset my origin.
00:17:21
John S
Yeah.
00:17:23
johngrimsmo
I make sure everything's like perfect, perfect, perfect.
00:17:25
John S
Is it okay?
00:17:26
johngrimsmo
And I had, what's that?
00:17:28
John S
Is it okay?
00:17:29
johngrimsmo
It's, I did something weird. I think we talked about it last week where my offset was 16th of an inch off and I'm like, Oh, right.
00:17:33
John S
Oh, yes. Sorry.
00:17:34
John S
Okay. Yeah.
00:17:35
johngrimsmo
So anyway, so I had to, sometimes you just got to stage zero and you just got to be like, I got to reset everything.
00:17:40
johngrimsmo
Make sure it's good.
00:17:40
John S
Yeah.
00:17:42
johngrimsmo
Laser everything. um And as I was doing that last week, I was like, this would be a wonderful opportunity for me to teach one of my guys and like, we're going to do it together for the next hour.
00:17:53
johngrimsmo
But they'd already went home and I just, I had to do it. So like I did it, but I kind of, I'm starting to realize I missed a proper opportunity there to train because they're only going to get good after they've done it 10 times.
00:17:59
John S
Yeah.
00:18:06
johngrimsmo
And these opportunities don't just come up all the time. So I'm, I'm. I'm forcing myself to delegate and teach and train more because yes, I love having these skills and I love training and teaching and growing myself, but that that doesn't take us anywhere.
00:18:12
John S
Yeah.
00:18:21
johngrimsmo
It doesn't take the company anywhere, you know?
00:18:24
John S
And my own, I kind of like trying to come up to pieces of my own shortcomings. I think too much about it.
00:18:29
John S
Stop thinking. Just, just say, Hey, Scott, Steve, Joe, whoever, I'm gonna show you how to do this.
00:18:30
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:18:34
johngrimsmo
ye Yeah, just watch.
00:18:35
John S
Like, you don't need to learn it today. You don't need to master today, but like, just, just like, here's where we start doing it.
00:18:40
John S
And like, just do it.
00:18:40
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:18:42
johngrimsmo
and it all compounds and it grows. And then I was thinking about that last night.
00:18:44
John S
Yeah. Yeah.
00:18:45
johngrimsmo
I was like, you know, disappointed with myself that I'm still taking on a lot of different things. And then I stepped back and I was like, hold on, shut up. Like think about yourself 10 years ago.
00:18:56
johngrimsmo
10 years ago, we had no employees. It was just me and Eric. 10 years ago, we were still just in the garage. In about six months, it'll be 10 years to the first shop.
00:19:03
John S
Yeah. Is that right? Yeah.
00:19:07
johngrimsmo
um So we were still in the garage. And I was like, think, about how this entire company with 12 employees can run. You don't really have to show up for knives to get made on a day-to-day basis. And I was like, okay, I guess I have delegated quite a lot of things over the past 10 years, but don't stop now.
00:19:26
johngrimsmo
like
00:19:26
John S
Yeah, I was just saying, the
Cleaning Methods for Parts
00:19:28
John S
private nudging here is not so much to sit here and congratulate yourself, but rather to be like, okay, no, like there's more...
00:19:32
johngrimsmo
Well, I never congratulate myself. So it was actually kind of refreshing to sit back and be like, actually, hold on.
00:19:37
John S
Oh, you should, yeah, sorry. Sorry, I didn't want you to take that way, but you deserve for sure.
00:19:42
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:19:44
John S
Yeah.
00:19:46
John S
We also had a big win. our Gossager apps guy who's absolutely solid. In fact, I'm loathing to think that there'll be a point in my career when he retires He had a script to do Akuma serial numbers because again, this is like the chat GBT hardcore hallucinated it was like oh, yeah this Haas could work great on your Akuma the G47 I sure you does not and so Kevin
00:20:03
johngrimsmo
Oh, yeah.
00:20:11
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:20:13
John S
Actually, it's kind of a huge win. And a tip of the hat to you, it's exactly what you do. He has a single subprogram that has the G code for every numeric. Actually, they're the letters and numbers.
00:20:24
John S
I only needed numbers. And then um you just have the serial number as a common variable. It it parses out the serial number. And then if it the first character of the serial number is a 1, it calls the 1 subprogram and engraves it and moves through it.
00:20:38
John S
um And it's running. It's great.
00:20:40
johngrimsmo
That's awesome.
00:20:41
John S
Yeah.
00:20:42
johngrimsmo
Yeah. I've seen some scripts posted online or in the Modern Machine Shop magazine, sometimes they used to have a little section on these kind of custom scripts.
00:20:49
John S
Okay.
00:20:52
johngrimsmo
There are ones out there that will actually scale the lettering based on a scaling factor. So you can make it like, really?
00:20:58
John S
Yeah, ours does.
00:21:00
John S
Yep.
00:21:00
johngrimsmo
I don't, I don't, my brain doesn't understand how that works in G code.
00:21:03
johngrimsmo
Like.
00:21:04
John S
There's a scaling code. OK, so actually, I meant to say, too, I will, um kevin the gosseur was completely fine with us sharing it. So I will absolutely share it on our end.
00:21:14
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:21:14
John S
Give me a little while. If anybody's chomping at the bit, they can email me. and I'll send it to you now. But um I'll look at the code.
00:21:18
johngrimsmo
I'm just thinking about it technically, like, like the letter K, right? If you were to to manually G code the letter K, you'd be like, line, line, line. But to scale that bigger, the endpoints have to be like, they have to change.
00:21:26
John S
Right.
00:21:30
John S
No, I believe, well, I don't know if I'm going to be able to find it like real time or look through the actual code. Letters.ssb.
00:21:40
johngrimsmo
And on the Heidenhain, because on Heidenhain you can have a variable, like a macro, but text-based. You can have script QS variables.
00:21:47
John S
Okay.
00:21:49
John S
Okay.
00:21:49
johngrimsmo
um So you can write actual text and have it be a saved variable, which is sweet.
00:21:53
johngrimsmo
And there's a built-in subroutine in Heidenhain that will engrave any number of texts that you tell it to automatically. So, and it'll scale it according to whatever parameters you put. So that's pretty sick.
00:22:06
John S
Yeah, it's um it does appear to be leveraging a um a scale because all the actual code itself is just the um motion, here we go, times the vari the scale variable.
00:22:22
John S
I'll send it to you.
00:22:23
johngrimsmo
Interesting.
00:22:25
John S
But like, okay, so like the first move for the letter B, bravo, is GZ or G91, Y equals negative .4375 times VC110.
00:22:35
johngrimsmo
Ah, interesting.
00:22:36
John S
X is that times VC110. It's all these things and there's...
00:22:40
johngrimsmo
Every letter is get interest is macro like math to get bigger.
00:22:45
John S
Yes, it appears to be that way, yeah.
00:22:46
johngrimsmo
Somebody put work into that. That's cool.
00:22:50
John S
Yeah, it's actually not that crazy.
00:22:51
johngrimsmo
Are yeah.
00:22:53
John S
Well, you should be able to reuse...
00:22:56
johngrimsmo
I don't need it, but...
00:22:57
John S
Well, you guys, if you wanted to, you could reuse a lot of this code because you'd need to switch it from Okuma to your post, so that wouldn't be that hard. And otherwise, the the stick fort to your point, the single font stick engraving would be the same.
00:23:09
John S
So, yeah.
00:23:11
johngrimsmo
But every letter B, C, D is defined as one little subroutine, right?
00:23:16
John S
Bingo, yep.
00:23:17
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think I just posted them out of fusion. Um, I'm not doing that for text.
00:23:22
John S
Yeah, sure, sure.
00:23:23
johngrimsmo
I'm doing it for numbers though. So I'm posting zero through nine and I just posted and then do my own math to move them.
00:23:25
John S
This does both. Yeah. Yeah.
00:23:31
johngrimsmo
It's great. So what are you serializing and how is it just numbers?
00:23:37
John S
Puckchuck bases, Alex was lasering them, but it was a whole step on the laser just for that.
00:23:42
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:23:42
John S
We also laser other parts of it that we will always have to do, but he's like, if we could get, we could engrave them on the machine, it would save me a laser step. And it's like, in that fact, what Alex did about an hour ago, and I have not looked through it, but I give him a lot of credit was he created this flow chart of all these stages of the Puckchuck production, assembly, et cetera.
00:23:57
johngrimsmo
Nice.
00:23:59
John S
And then he flagged stuff that we should be able to either eliminate or consolidate, which is pretty cool.
00:24:05
johngrimsmo
Ooh. And you don't know until you really map it out and you see it all. And you're like, why is this happening twice kind of thing?
00:24:10
John S
Yeah.
00:24:13
johngrimsmo
Yeah, we noticed that even for handling steps or washing steps.
00:24:13
John S
Yep.
00:24:17
johngrimsmo
It's like, why are you washing it before it goes into this cell when that guy is going to wash it again afterwards over processing, right?
00:24:17
John S
Mm hmm.
00:24:27
John S
Crest solvent vapor degreaser.
00:24:29
johngrimsmo
I've read about them.
00:24:31
John S
I want to say this was from Dylan on his with intolerance.
00:24:37
johngrimsmo
I know Danny Ridoff has about 80 of them. to Two.
00:24:39
John S
Okay.
00:24:40
johngrimsmo
I don't know.
00:24:41
John S
It was on my list of things to look into. i Frankly, I was kind of telling you before you hit record, I had not too much on my plate, but all of the good things we're doing this year have kind of cascaded into, um even though I'm outsourcing all of them, it's like electrician, plumber, contractor, but it's like, okay, I'm getting peppered with a lot of like, saddest updates and questions.
00:24:57
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:24:58
John S
And so I kind of hit put this off, but then I was like, I should just ask Grimsbo if you
Reducing Noise from Air Compressors
00:25:02
John S
knew. It's kind of like the same thing. like I just want to know, is this a $6,000 or $60,000 washing machine?
00:25:07
johngrimsmo
Honestly, it's been probably four years since I've even thought about it. um It's like ultrasonic is, yeah, ask me for sure.
00:25:11
John S
Okay. Oh, Danny.
00:25:15
johngrimsmo
Ultrasonic cleaners are the entry into this world. You know, you can get the $400 Amazon one or you can get the $2,000 Crest one or whatever the prices actually are. Vapor degreaser, I think is closer to like six or 10.
00:25:27
John S
Yep.
00:25:29
johngrimsmo
And it yeah, it uses like a solvent to, I don't really understand it.
00:25:35
John S
They clean, ah there actually was a good discussion. I'm sure it was on with intolerance because the great thing about these is you put your parts in and they come out dried. So unlike an ultrasonic, which just agitates and cleans and uses a detergent, these, um and I guess they don't, is it that they, the vapor part of it is that they don't have a flooded liquid volume, but rather they use vaporized cool cleaners to clean the part.
00:26:00
John S
And then they, so I assume steam dry them or something, but,
00:26:03
johngrimsmo
Or does it use the vapor, say acetone or isopropyl or something to to dry the part to displace all the liquid?
00:26:07
John S
Yeah.
00:26:10
John S
Oh, maybe, maybe.
00:26:11
johngrimsmo
I don't know.
00:26:12
John S
Yeah.
00:26:13
johngrimsmo
I know some of the ones, yeah, I know some of the parts or some of the machines have a heated, like hot air blow heated chamber that will kind of evaporate all the water.
00:26:13
John S
that That I can look up. It was more like, I sort of know.
00:26:21
John S
Yeah.
00:26:23
John S
Mm-hmm.
00:26:24
johngrimsmo
Um, those look really cool.
00:26:27
johngrimsmo
Um, for coolant, big parts or for Wilhelmin oily parts or.
00:26:35
John S
The, I don't know the thing that's top of mind is actually the stem torx valve covers because they are aluminum that have tons of smaller threaded holes and just pockets.
00:26:40
johngrimsmo
Hmm.
00:26:45
John S
So they're very difficult to clean. um and our anodizer has asked us to deliver them cleaner than we what was happening is we would dry them off but then some coolant would de-emulsify or harden and then then when they were put in their tank it would re-emulsify and I don't have a problem with them asking that we got away from doing too much cleaning here because
00:26:56
johngrimsmo
Really? Yup.
00:27:10
John S
Long story, but well, not long story. Our heart water is so hard here that it would put deposits on the material and that would cause staining during an anode.
00:27:17
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:27:17
John S
And we can use distilled water, but then it's just another just another process of maintaining is something that it's not fun.
00:27:25
johngrimsmo
You don't have ah
00:27:25
John S
So this is a sort of lazy answer.
00:27:26
johngrimsmo
like a Shoplite RO system or anything, you just start on.
00:27:29
John S
Oh, no, we do. We have a full 350 gallon total of RO water.
00:27:35
johngrimsmo
But that's not your tap water necessarily.
00:27:36
John S
Correct, it's not.
00:27:37
johngrimsmo
Got it.
00:27:38
John S
And what do we, are we just rinsing them off? Are we putting them in a a big ultrasonic with that water? Are we doing a solution? Like what's the goal here?
00:27:47
John S
i I don't have a great answer. Other than I'm like, well, maybe at the point where we move away from the DIY janky, like rubbermaid tub with some water and go and there's something that actually couldn't clean the part.
00:27:47
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yep.
00:27:56
johngrimsmo
Totally. Yeah. I mean, that'd be a pretty big machine to fit a valve cover in, I guess, like a, even an ultrasonic that big is not cheap by itself.
Transition to Diamond Lapping Technology
00:28:07
John S
Yeah. The one that I had pulled up was the S one 1812 and it has a basket size 15 and change by nine and change by nine. So it's actually not, was that it would close, but yeah, it would.
00:28:16
johngrimsmo
That would fit. That would fit your part. Okay.
00:28:26
johngrimsmo
Yeah, we found actually... ah when we would take parts off the lapping machine that still had like diamond grit kind of dirty on the parts and we would put them in the ultrasonic um in the basket.
00:28:35
John S
Mm-hmm.
00:28:39
johngrimsmo
If you just put them on the bottom of the basket, the basket itself can scratch the parts as they vibrate through the thing.
00:28:44
John S
Yeah.
00:28:45
johngrimsmo
And then so we put a bunch of zip ties on the bottom of the metal basket with the ends sticking straight up so that we could tilt the part against the side of the zip tie, like the the end that's sticking them.
00:28:50
John S
Yeah.
00:28:56
John S
That's awesome. Yeah.
00:28:59
johngrimsmo
And then I think at some point, even that was scratching the parts because now they're just rubbing up against this plastic and the little diamond grits that are still wet on the part abrade.
00:29:05
John S
Sure.
00:29:07
johngrimsmo
So then I think the guys put heat drink on those little things and then that is fine now.
00:29:11
John S
um Yeah, right. It's funny.
00:29:12
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:29:13
John S
Oh,
00:29:14
johngrimsmo
And then with the new lapping process, it's just way less slurry and grit. I don't think I've talked too much about that, but it's complicated.
00:29:21
John S
Oh, do tell.
00:29:23
johngrimsmo
So the traditional diamond lapping like we have been doing forever is where you're spraying a diamond slurry liquid and suspended diamond particles onto the plate cast iron plate or a copper ceramic plate or something like that or copper composite plate.
00:29:30
John S
Yes.
00:29:40
johngrimsmo
Um, I think ours was a iron composite plate. Sometimes you're forcing the diamonds to stick in in the dressing process. And sometimes you just kind of spray and pray. Like you hope that most of the diamonds that get sprayed out embed in the plate and it does the little grinding action.
00:29:56
johngrimsmo
But a lot of them don't and they just wash away. So the parts come out really dirty and oily and not oily, but like wet with this black slurry.
00:30:06
John S
OK.
00:30:06
johngrimsmo
That's part metal, part diamond, part slurry, part table, you know.
00:30:10
John S
Mm hmm.
00:30:11
johngrimsmo
um So about a year ago, I learned about this company in Germany called Puron that sells their Squadro diamond lapping pads. and It's basically a big sticker with ah hard diamond shaped abrasive triangles embedded on the top. So it looks like um tire tread kind of thing, like
00:30:35
John S
Yeah, sure.
00:30:36
johngrimsmo
But the little pads, they're about 15,000 tall, little triangles, maybe quarter inch triangle, that are a combination of binder and diamonds that are rigid. And it's basically just a wet process.
00:30:49
johngrimsmo
So we're not spraying any more diamonds on top. The table itself now has the diamonds in it.
00:30:52
John S
Just. put Yeah.
00:30:55
johngrimsmo
So we're spraying the lubricant, which is like a cool-edge kind of thing. um And the parts come out so much cleaner.
00:31:03
John S
Interesting.
00:31:03
johngrimsmo
Like now they're just wet, not black like they were before.
00:31:07
John S
in the Germany rubber diamond product is a semi-consumable, like it doesn't last forever, but it lasts for weeks or something or whatever.
00:31:12
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah, it does. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We, we tracked it. The first one lasted for three weeks, which was like, and just, it's kind of, they're like 600 bucks or something like that. It's kind of expensive.
00:31:21
John S
Oh, wow.
00:31:23
John S
Yeah.
00:31:23
johngrimsmo
Um, and then that was 15 micron.
00:31:27
johngrimsmo
And then we had a three micron super fine because I bought them at the same time. So we had to use the three micron for a while. The finish was almost scratch free mirror, but it took way longer.
00:31:34
John S
Okay. yeah
00:31:40
johngrimsmo
So we're like, I think we can get away with a 30 micron. It'll be a coarser finish, but it tumbles out. Still makes the parts flat and shiny. Any Instagram video I've shown lately is with the 30 micron finish.
00:31:50
johngrimsmo
um And they look great. They're still scratched, but they're flat and shiny and good. um And the first pad lasted like four months, something like that.
00:31:55
John S
Oh, that's awesome.
00:32:00
John S
Yeah.
00:32:00
johngrimsmo
So like huge difference.
00:32:02
johngrimsmo
So it's like, what's the ah ROI? Like, what are we actually shooting for here? Are we shooting for... mirror all the shiny no no defects? Or are we actually trying to remove many tints of material and have the plate last for a long time?
00:32:13
johngrimsmo
And the 30 was the perfect balance for us.
00:32:15
John S
Yeah.
00:32:16
johngrimsmo
But it's like you're experimenting buying these six, seven, $800 pads at a time, waiting waiting two months for them to come in or whatever, just to know like what the answer is.
00:32:20
John S
Yeah. Yeah.
00:32:25
John S
The pad is inherits the flatness of whatever the plant is above it, I assume.
00:32:29
johngrimsmo
It's below it.
00:32:30
John S
Okay.
00:32:31
johngrimsmo
um So it's like a huge turntable 24 inch diameter, iron composite plate, like a lapping plate um that we dress down super duper flat we have measuring devices to check the flatness and then we stick on this adhesive pad which is just like a big foil sticker.
00:32:31
John S
ah Okay. Okay.
00:32:44
John S
Got it.
00:32:47
John S
very sweaty
00:32:49
johngrimsmo
And it works great. it It had some learning curves, absolutely. And then we had to create our own coolant system and
3D Printing Large Parts
00:32:55
johngrimsmo
filtration system. So we basically have a sock filter that it's gravity draining through the sock filter, and then through a pump, and then pumping it through another filter, and then pumping it through little valves. And we've got to make sure the flow of each valve is even.
00:33:07
John S
oh
00:33:10
johngrimsmo
And then your feed rate, your cut time, your pressure, your weights on top, all that like was a totally new learning process. And my guy running it was like, I just got good at the old system, man, like I'm changed everything.
00:33:23
John S
right yeah I
00:33:24
johngrimsmo
but And now that it's been six months or so, they really, really, really like it. I think I should ask, but anyway, yeah, that's one of the many things we do that we don't talk about.
00:33:39
John S
yeah Like I'd mentioned, I feel like I've done a lot. I've been trying to tackle and didn't get to a few things yesterday. So I thought, no, I'll just come back for an hour last night um and tackle more of the air compressor drain, which I think this is probably not relevant to you because your Kaisers have pretty nice built-in systems.
00:33:49
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:33:52
johngrimsmo
to
00:33:53
John S
But um I'm actually really happy. like This feels like a real win for the internet. Some people have already DMed that they they borrowed some of these ideas, and it's lowering the decibels in their shop on their drains, which is like just Awesome, but what I did last night, and I can't believe I waited so long to do this was The the 110 volt auto drain that does the automatic tank purge every 15 minutes or whatever We had always run ours into small diameter push to fit to be like quarter-inch or five sixteenths doing and I mean I think I did that because that's what I've seen you everywhere else is just like the natural go-to and I
00:34:19
johngrimsmo
yep. yeah. yeah
00:34:30
johngrimsmo
Totally.
00:34:33
John S
Ironically, the output of that valve is half inch NPT. So it was significantly larger than the what we were pushing it into, which is a whistle.
00:34:40
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:34:41
John S
And so last night I just you know kind of came in and I was like, okay, I should just do this. And then I looked at the fittings. and I'm like, oh, this is easy. I ended one fitting, threaded in the garden hose adapter, brass garden hose fitting, and go to a garden hose.
00:34:50
johngrimsmo
direct to it.
00:34:53
John S
it's it's It's like half to note but i mean a third of the noise level already.
00:34:57
johngrimsmo
No way.
00:34:59
John S
And then it goes into our little LUFA 3D printed thing. I'll do a video on all this and share the stuff.
00:35:03
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I watched your video and I really like the garden hose idea. The bigger diameter hose slows the velocity, slows the noise.
00:35:10
John S
Yeah, the lupa dissipates both the sound, but also the flow so that it doesn't splatter up out of the bucket. And I put actually Gary's idea, the quick disconnects on the hoses. Um, it's actually wall mounted.
00:35:20
John S
Now, a couple more improvements. Um, send, send stabilizing brackets for the bottom drain valve out of the five gallon bucket. I didn't want the bucket to fatigue.
00:35:28
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:35:28
John S
So that's like $4 from sending us and some brackets that I silicone in the bottom of the bucket. It's like ah just so phenomenal.
00:35:35
johngrimsmo
Nice. So one of our guys, Grayson, I know you're probably listening to this, ah make that hose bigger so that I don't have to jump every time.
00:35:42
John S
Yeah. Oh, you do have a drain. There you go.
00:35:45
John S
Okay.
00:35:45
johngrimsmo
So we have the tank drain which kind of just spits it just spits some some liquid like and it's not that loud it's nothing but it's the in in the airline on the wall like by the compressor there's the Moisture trap thingy and that has an auto drain on it and that's the one that you know like if the shop is relatively quiet that'll make me jump or like
00:35:51
John S
Yeah.
00:36:00
John S
Yep.
00:36:04
John S
There you go.
00:36:08
John S
Where does it drain into then?
00:36:09
johngrimsmo
I think into a bucket. it Through quarter inch push to connect, um same story.
00:36:10
John S
Okay. yep yep
00:36:15
John S
and And this is kind of like my like pride of joy punchline of this project. My my float valve is working.
00:36:15
johngrimsmo
And it's, yeah.
00:36:21
John S
It's a fishing bobber with williams one of William's drinking straws and it when the water level in the bucket floats up, the flag lifts up. um But shouldn't be an issue because there's already a built-in drain valve and it's just a regular routine maintenance to just walk up to it and open the valve.
00:36:21
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah.
00:36:30
johngrimsmo
Love it.
00:36:37
John S
I also need to share, because some folks were kind enough to so to email in or DM, there are, what are called I should pull them up here videos here where was that there are what are called no air loss compressed air drain valves that are able to
00:36:52
johngrimsmo
whoa
00:36:55
John S
drain the moisture without any PSI. um they They sound like 100% the way to go with the caveat that they are 500 to 1,500 bucks. um And we i'm i'm kind of on the I could see us justifying that soon, but this is also like way near.
00:37:11
John S
This is pretty simple, fine. I'm almost done. We're good.
00:37:12
johngrimsmo
whoa yeah and that is a lot of money too i find myself getting hyped up on these things it's only 500 bucks and they're like
00:37:16
John S
Yeah.
00:37:21
johngrimsmo
Is it gonna make you money? Is it really important? Could that $500 be spent somewhere else? Like, sometimes yes, sometimes no.
00:37:26
John S
Yeah.
00:37:29
John S
But I can ah think knowing that that's an option is a great skill set.
00:37:34
John S
And I'm certainly better off on my journey because of how many folks have helped us. And so I feel an obligation to pay it forward to at least, hey, there's a lot of people out there that will much rather just spend the money and buy it and go for it.
00:37:34
johngrimsmo
Absolutely.
00:37:40
johngrimsmo
Totally.
00:37:45
John S
I still got too much of that bootstrapper in me.
00:37:47
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah, 100%.
00:37:52
John S
Yeah.
00:37:53
johngrimsmo
Mm-hmm. So our files have been going together steadily all the APs are done They all feel amazing and then as we're getting into the production ones, they're starting to feel weird
00:38:05
John S
What do you mean?
00:38:06
johngrimsmo
I don't have my finger on it yet. I need to spend a bit more time with the guys and a bit more time with the knives, but the way the the action the action of our knives is so important to us, the way it flips out, the way it
Challenges in Knife Production
00:38:18
johngrimsmo
drops, the way it sounds, the way it feels, the smoothness of everything as it moves, it's super important. And there's something fixable, but I haven't found it yet.
00:38:27
John S
Okay.
00:38:28
johngrimsmo
That is different, whether it's the exact diameter of the pivot of the blade that can affect the rolling resistance.
00:38:35
johngrimsmo
I got a couple of things I'm playing with, but they need to feel good. Otherwise, I'm not going to send them out. And they will.
00:38:40
John S
Okay. Interesting.
00:38:42
John S
Yeah. But they, all the hundred APs did work good.
00:38:42
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:38:45
johngrimsmo
um Eight APs.
00:38:47
John S
Hmm.
00:38:48
johngrimsmo
That's the artist proof.
00:38:48
John S
Forgive me.
00:38:49
johngrimsmo
Yep. And then there'll be 100 as we're calling them the first 100.
00:38:49
John S
Okay.
00:38:52
John S
Okay.
00:38:54
John S
Hmm.
00:38:54
johngrimsmo
And yeah, those are the ones that are starting to feel weird.
00:38:56
johngrimsmo
Some of the later ones, you know, 10, 20 kind of thing feel great. And I think we probably have, I think 10 done-ish. And then we've played with a couple later ones just to like see if the problem goes away or if it's a handle problem, a blade problem, we're trying to isolate it.
00:39:14
johngrimsmo
And i I got some ideas. I'll get it for sure.
00:39:17
John S
Is it something that like, if I, as a mediocre at best knife connoisseur, like not even that, what I notice or, or is it really you?
00:39:24
johngrimsmo
If you, if you side side to side, like a good one versus one of these weird ones, you'd, you'd notice, and I don't want our customers to notice cause a lot of our connoisseurs are super picky as am I.
00:39:30
John S
Yeah. Yeah, that's right.
00:39:36
John S
Yeah.
00:39:36
johngrimsmo
And, uh, you know, I want to release a good product.
00:39:38
John S
Mm-hmm.
00:39:39
johngrimsmo
However, the caveat is certainly throughout the APs and then even through this first hundred, I have to pull back and realize it's okay to evolve.
00:39:50
johngrimsmo
And some of our customers want the early, you know, quote unquote crappy one because they want to see the evolution. They want to have part part of this history. The perfectionist inside me just goes, no, no, I'd rather throw them all in the garbage and keep making until I get it right.
00:40:05
johngrimsmo
But that's not a financially viable like option.
00:40:07
John S
Yeah, yeah, right, right Well, it's not like the lock bars collapsing or I think in the gun world It's not like it's fail to feed like if it's fun if it's functioning it's different than man I just want that that frame to slide fit perfect or whatever.
00:40:08
johngrimsmo
like
00:40:14
johngrimsmo
Sure. Yeah.
00:40:19
johngrimsmo
Exactly. and And firearms industry is, you know, you got that perfect Geisley trigger.
00:40:22
John S
I
00:40:23
johngrimsmo
That's just like, oh, so nice.
00:40:24
John S
Yeah.
00:40:25
johngrimsmo
Versus imagine the crappiest trigger like out there. Yeah. I don't know. You got to yank on it. Um, it's obviously not that bad, but you notice the difference.
00:40:31
John S
Yeah.
00:40:35
johngrimsmo
You become a connoisseur and you like, this is a fine item, a luxury good, you know, it needs to be like, needs to be good. well And it will, it will.
00:40:43
John S
Yeah.
00:40:45
johngrimsmo
Yeah. I know what to do.
00:40:49
John S
I had a bummer experience this morning. i There are seven or eight Johnny Five parts that are 3D printed that are too large for a bamboo.
00:41:01
John S
and and some of them you could split into two and then glue together, but some of them would have to be split into thirds and it just gets to be a lot of work. And so I outsourced them on Kraft Cloud, which I've had, I've done some other work through them and has been, farm they farm it out to domestic stick or foreign, this is actually domestic. like And um they the parts show up this morning, they were not cheap, I would say. I mean, these are, these are Some of them are just too so too big to fit on a bamboo and they would have probably been eight hour prints and those were 30 to 50 bucks.
00:41:35
John S
So maybe I'm being stingy, but like it was a six, five or $600 for all the eight parts. And the part showed up total junk, like total junk, like, like looks like delamination between lines and holes that have major filaments going across the middle of them.
00:41:52
John S
It's just like junk. um And what's funny is that I told myself, just spend the money and get out to craft cloud, because in five days or two weeks, you're they're just going to show up and you're done. Versus the other thought was, hey, we really could use another printer at this point. And um I started looking, I'm like, what are the bigger format printers? and half of me is like, oh, there's tons out there.
00:41:53
johngrimsmo
Mmm.
00:42:15
John S
They're super, you know, it's never been better and easier. And then the flip side is like, none of these are bamboos.
00:42:20
John S
Like, it's all this like, well, leveling and enclosures and bed features and and all that. And I didn't want a project. And I don't think there is another, again, assuming I don't want to spend 20 grand, like if there's another $2,000 style or cheaper bamboo quality printer.
00:42:20
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:42:36
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:42:38
John S
um
00:42:38
johngrimsmo
Yeah, there's all the, you know, Creality ones that make some but some big printers.
00:42:40
John S
Right.
00:42:42
johngrimsmo
If you just kind of need a thousand dollar printer, $800 printer that can make a big print, um it might suffice. But I think Elgu makes big.
00:42:53
johngrimsmo
I saw some really big printers a couple of weeks ago, like a two foot by two foot cubed or three foot by three foot cubed, I think is huge.
00:43:03
John S
Yeah.
00:43:05
John S
I mean, it's, and I don't want to, sure. I'd love to hear some magic brand. I wasn't thinking of, but like, there's the information is out there readily available. Elgou any cubic, like they're out there, but even I just googled another Reddit thread and it's like, what you're after does not exist.
00:43:20
John S
Every single brand has issue. There's no perfect problem for your printer, which I would argue that bamboos are as close to that.
00:43:22
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:43:24
John S
Um, and I just wish I want a bigger one.
00:43:26
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:43:28
John S
So I will.
00:43:29
johngrimsmo
Is bamboo working on it?
00:43:32
John S
I doubt they are, to be honest.
00:43:33
johngrimsmo
I thought I heard that.
00:43:35
John S
There's something that is leaked, but the consensus seems to be that it's just more professional.
00:43:38
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:43:42
John S
I don't even know what that means. Print farm, you can buy it. I didn't get the sense that it was going to be a larger printer, but I don't know.
00:43:53
johngrimsmo
um I had a weird question from your shop tour video.
00:43:53
John S
Yeah.
00:43:56
John S
Yeah, sure.
00:43:56
johngrimsmo
You glossed over a arbor press, two arbor presses side by side next to one of your machines.
00:44:03
John S
Yeah, okay Yep The green one the green one near the vf2 Yeah that it Okay, sorry not that you should know that but yeah, that is what's called a toggle press and I should do I'll go do an Instagram story on it Will do they are readily available on?
00:44:05
johngrimsmo
One of them looked old and fancy. What's the story with that? Because I like me a good arbor press. Yeah, I don't know, probably.
00:44:16
johngrimsmo
Okay. Yeah, just a little shorty.
00:44:26
John S
um
Johnny Five Project and Final Reflections
00:44:27
John S
There seems to be two major German brands, um unclear if they're owned by American Concomerates yet, but ah they, I can't remember the name of the two brands, but once I figured out the brands that I wanted, then that helped me for find the eBay search.
00:44:41
John S
And I think I actually spent like 700 bucks for it.
00:44:42
johngrimsmo
Sure. Yeah, that's still not thousands, like a lot of the German ones look like.
00:44:48
John S
Yeah, I knew they are like two or three grand.
00:44:48
johngrimsmo
Like, yes, is isn't there the one brand, I forget who keeps talking about it, but it's like Schmidt press or something, but they're like many thousands of dollars, and they're the best.
00:44:50
John S
And what's...
00:44:54
John S
Yes. but
00:44:58
John S
But it's great because you get a mechanical advantage. You can get and incredibly repeatable stroke. So, um, stroke length to it.
00:45:07
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah.
00:45:07
John S
It's high quality. It's not janky, like an arbor press that you're just trying to like lean over on.
00:45:10
johngrimsmo
Right.
00:45:12
John S
Um, okay.
00:45:12
johngrimsmo
Because we use arbor presses probably, we probably have four installed that gets used daily, probably five that get used daily.
00:45:19
johngrimsmo
And it's fine for most things, but sometimes you have a precision application where the wobbliness of a cheap arbor press like ruins your day.
00:45:25
John S
Yep.
00:45:28
John S
Yep.
00:45:28
johngrimsmo
um but I'm not gonna spend many thousands of dollars on something like this. So I'm really curious to see what you got.
00:45:32
John S
Yeah.
00:45:34
johngrimsmo
I saw that in the corner. I was like, oh, why did he not talk about that?
00:45:38
John S
I totally forgot that we had it.
00:45:39
John S
Um, it works great for most of the time with the mod vices, except sometimes when the interference fit is on the tighter range of tolerance, the guys prefer to use something stronger to be totally candid, but that's also a half inch pin.
00:45:40
johngrimsmo
I know, right?
00:45:40
johngrimsmo
but
00:45:53
John S
I think you're pressing smaller stuff, which this thing will crush like no problem.
00:45:54
johngrimsmo
Totally. Yeah. yeah Interesting.
00:45:59
John S
Yeah. Was there another one?
00:46:01
johngrimsmo
Were there two side by side? Like different. There's that and there's something beside it.
00:46:03
John S
I think the other one's just a, I think the other one's just a cheapo Harbor.
00:46:06
johngrimsmo
Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah.
00:46:06
John S
Okay.
00:46:07
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:46:09
John S
Yeah.
00:46:10
johngrimsmo
Sweet.
00:46:15
John S
My other question, also Johnny five is. The, our build has this thing called the toe tip tube. It's a three inch diameter aluminum tube that serves as kind of the axle that his whole track base and his torso, it's like his waist basically a weird way.
00:46:25
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:46:30
johngrimsmo
time
00:46:31
John S
So it's an important part. Ours was built with um turkite and bra, I assume it's like an oil light bronze turned bushings, which is actually totally fine. There's nothing wrong with it. But for other reasons, we're gonna update our design to the current CAD design from the inputting team, which is these three inch roller bearings, bear ball bearings, traditional ball bearings.
00:46:50
johngrimsmo
you
00:46:52
John S
And um so I ordered them. The problem is that those are three inch bearings and our toe tip was designed where the aluminum was turned down to 2.95. So I'm 50 thou under.
00:47:03
John S
But I have, you know you know what turquoise is, right?
00:47:06
johngrimsmo
plastic
00:47:08
John S
Yeah, you can like scrape in and it's a wear service for them.
00:47:10
John S
Like Tormox used it when they were the older ones that are scraped in.
00:47:10
johngrimsmo
yeah I think we've made our knife bearings out of it sometimes just for fun.
00:47:17
John S
Yeah, so I think what I'm gonna do is, because I have that Turquoise on there and it's 3.07 inches or something like that, like I could just put it on our lathe and turn the Turquoise down to three inches and we're done.
00:47:28
John S
I can slide the bearings over the Turquoise. This is a pivot joint that gets used sometimes but not a ton. There's never a full rotation. like This is not really a demanding application.
00:47:39
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:47:39
John S
Because to remake that part is you know a couple yeah is yeah hundred know? 150 bucks of material and a but fair amount of time on a fourth axis part any thoughts basically basically I need to add material back and Turkey might be that yeah I took it on it Now it's a structural major structural part Yeah Yeah, yeah
00:47:45
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:47:51
johngrimsmo
Yeah. 3D printed? I don't know. Yeah. I have somebody do it. I don't know. The three inch part is pretty big for me.
00:48:08
John S
I think this will work. I don't want to like and allow aluminum at all.
00:48:12
John S
I could press, I could press i could turn an oversized sleeve, press it on, or glue it on, and then turn that down.
00:48:12
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:48:17
johngrimsmo
True.
00:48:20
John S
But I think that would give me an aluminum surface. I think the Turquoise would be fine for what this varying application is.
00:48:24
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:48:28
johngrimsmo
But I would suggest um do it right enough. You know, you don't have to go full Grimm's Maw on it, but do it in a way that you're not gonna have to redo it, like, again.
00:48:33
John S
Yeah.
00:48:38
John S
So that's why I'm doing the Baron upgrade to begin with.
00:48:40
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:48:41
John S
Like, it's like, no, it's worth it. And that's why I also don't wanna, I don't know about Turkite to know. I don't think, I think it will be fine, but it's like, you don't know what you don't know um and in this sort of situation.
00:48:56
johngrimsmo
If you're putting bearings, what is the turquoise rubbing on?
00:49:01
John S
So, with the part's out in the shop right now. um The turquoise would be, the the bearing would effectively, the inner race would be kind of, quote unquote, pressed over the turquoise.
00:49:14
John S
So the turquoise would no longer be a rotational slip sliding surface, if you will.
00:49:14
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:49:16
johngrimsmo
No.
00:49:18
johngrimsmo
Therefore it doesn't have to be made from anything important.
00:49:21
John S
Or turquoise at all, yeah.
00:49:22
John S
I could can take the turquoise off, press an aluminum sleeve over it, and then I would turn the aluminum down to the precision fit after I pressed it on there. Same same idea, if that makes sense.
00:49:22
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:49:31
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Could do.
00:49:32
John S
ah nice I guess I could just do that.
00:49:34
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:49:34
John S
but
00:49:36
johngrimsmo
Do it right, but don't waste too much time on it.
00:49:36
John S
Hmm. Well, that's where that's when brains brainstorming.
00:49:39
johngrimsmo
Yeah. I would need to see it to actually offer any and valuable advice, but.
00:49:43
John S
Okay, well, I'll do that. I'll put up an instance story on the toggle press and I'll put up the, I wouldn't mind giving people's thoughts on that at J five part anyways because I think it's.
00:49:50
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:49:51
John S
um I don't want to go over here, but it's the same, I had the same kind of question for Robin Renzetti on my, my DIY test indicator improvements.
00:50:01
johngrimsmo
Oh, no way. Look at that.
00:50:03
John S
And I'm actually super happy with how it's coming.
00:50:06
johngrimsmo
Got a huge, like three inch diameter knob on that test indicator or the indicator stand.
00:50:07
John S
Um, yep.
00:50:11
John S
So actually let's, I'll tell you next week.
00:50:12
johngrimsmo
What did Robin have to say?
00:50:14
johngrimsmo
Okay. Okay.
00:50:14
John S
How about that?
00:50:16
johngrimsmo
Make notes here.
00:50:17
John S
Uh, cause I want to hear if you've gotten your gorilla fab one yet too.
00:50:20
johngrimsmo
I checked tracking today and it's the DHL tracking for sea voyages. Has like a circle with five segments around the outside of the circle and three of them are filled.
00:50:25
John S
Oh, that's right.
00:50:30
John S
OK.
00:50:31
johngrimsmo
Is it three-fifths of the way across the ocean?
00:50:33
johngrimsmo
I don't know, but that hasn't changed since last week.
00:50:36
John S
OK. You know you're in a love when you guys get USPS. It'll be much better for you guys.
00:50:44
johngrimsmo
I'm hanging up now.
00:50:47
John S
Uh, what's what's up?
00:50:48
johngrimsmo
Arvin.
00:50:50
John S
What do you do today? Or what's your goal?
00:50:51
John S
Like what's for next?
00:50:51
johngrimsmo
Uh, today and most of this week is, uh, employee performance reviews.
00:50:55
John S
Oh, okay.
00:50:55
johngrimsmo
So I had one just before the podcast and I have another one in two minutes.
00:50:59
johngrimsmo
So, um, that's what we're doing.
00:50:59
John S
Ah, perfect.
00:51:01
johngrimsmo
It's been going really well.
00:51:03
John S
Great bossy next week.
00:51:05
johngrimsmo
All right, man.
00:51:05
John S
Then take care.
00:51:06
johngrimsmo
Take care. Bye.
00:51:07
John S
Bye.