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#315 Interviewing and hiring people
278 Plays2 years ago
TOPICS:
- Interviewing and hiring people
- Lasers!
- Bambu 3D printer
- Shipping processes and job turnover
- Willemin and oil
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Episode 315
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, episode 315. My name is John Rimsmo. My name is John Tutters. And this is the weekly manufacturing podcast where two friends have been growing their businesses for the past many, many years, decade, dozen years, and go over it. Yeah, I agree. It's like a daily check in, a weekly check in progress. Yeah.
John's Norovirus Experience
00:00:25
Speaker
I tell you, it feels good to be back. If anyone else out there has had norovirus, that put me down. Was it hard and fast? Yeah, and I won't get into details that folks don't even care to hear, but I ended up taking basically three and a half days off working last week. Whoa, that means a lot.
00:00:51
Speaker
Yeah, everyone knows what it's like. It's like, you think, oh, I'm sick. It'll be great. I could be at home. I can cam up parts. I can catch up on some TV shows you want to watch or whatever. And you're just like, nope, I want to do nothing. Yeah, that's when you know you're sick.
00:01:07
Speaker
Yeah. Started Monday night and honestly it wasn't until the next Monday morning that I felt like I could actually eat a meal and get some energy back. So it's Wednesday now. I am back. I wouldn't say I'm playing catch up because it wasn't the good thing about it. It's not like we were behind, but
Business Involvement and Team Expansion
00:01:27
Speaker
Everybody knows this that's listening or that's also running small companies, but I don't want to do idle. I don't like in a weird way, even though we're both striving to get our businesses into these commonly shared attributes of, hey, you don't need me, or there's no key man, or there's processes. The reality is I like having some amount of pressure to get stuff done, so it feels good to be back. Nice.
00:01:55
Speaker
got on without you for those four days. Oh, yeah. That's perfect. That says a lot, you know? Yeah. Look, the weak spot right now in... Well.
00:02:07
Speaker
a weak spot, probably the biggest weak spot would be we need that that shipping role. That's not the right term. And then operations, but somebody who can receive material who can help pack up orders, ship orders, logistics coordinator, bingo, that's a good way to put it. Right. And we've actually already had two in person interviews and had quite a few candidates apply. So how'd you do the thing you make a post?
00:02:36
Speaker
Yeah, I actually did indeed again. Yes. I'm having better luck with it this time. Good. Yeah. Yeah, we've had three interviews and one no show the past few days. And yeah, I just had one an hour ago.
00:02:51
Speaker
And so we've had three, and the first one was great, the first guy. And you're like, sweet, this is done. But we still have six more lined up. So let's do them all. And it adds perspective. Because when you just have one data set, you're like, this is great. Let's go. Move forward. After seeing a couple better, worse candidates, you're like, oh, OK. Now I really know what we're looking for. You find the same thing. You've had a couple interviews so far. No, for sure. And I'll tell you a bit.
00:03:20
Speaker
One thing that I don't have a firm stance on is the idea of, hey, pull a bunch of candidates, could be three, it could be 15, meet with them, interview them, and then you'll decide who's the best. I think that's, to me, that's always been such a great way to think about it and get a decision. The other viewpoint is focus to figure out what you need, the attributes, and that's technical skill sets and background and what they're looking for.
00:03:47
Speaker
fit. And if the first person that walks in meets it, you're done. Kinda. Yeah. I don't that's hard. It's, it's a balance. Like, I don't know. Yeah, I'm kind of glad like Spencer's running point on this, and he scheduled the interviews and he's contacting everybody. So I'm just showing up and, you know, helping interview. He's still leading the interview, which is great. Yeah, I'm glad he scheduled a bunch of them so that we can see this, this pool is data set.
00:04:17
Speaker
But at the end of the day, if that first guy was that good, and I just said, sure, you have a job, it would have worked out. Who is Spencer?
Hiring Challenges and Strategies
00:04:26
Speaker
Our accountant. Oh, OK. Got it. Is he also HR or he's just helping out with that? Yeah, he is currently the role of HR as well. And how many people will meet with these candidates first or either the first round or maybe that's the only round? Just me and Spencer. OK.
00:04:48
Speaker
And are you do so what is your process indeed and then if you want them they come in or do you phone call first or what? We've been emailing and then they're come in because we have local people for the most part who had some a lot of people apply from India and Like all around the world and they're like, yeah, I'll move to Canada. Can you sign my visa or something? Wow Did you not get any of that?
00:05:11
Speaker
I'm guessing that we have some Indeed filter set up because I don't want that. Interesting. No. Yeah, either do I. But yeah, we have 30 plus applicants. And Spencer sorted it down to eight shortlist. And so I looked deeply through the eight and then a little bit through the others. And it's like, oh, these people are all over the place. And some people have master's degrees in computer science.
00:05:38
Speaker
And I'm like, you want to work in our office shipping room for like not a lot of money.
00:05:45
Speaker
Yeah, so I think what happened is I think there are just window shoppers on any or any job platform. Yeah. Because I'm thinking somewhat naively like, okay, we'll post this pretty narrow logistics role or machinist role. And you would think people would go on there and think, is that a job I'm interested in? I think some people just apply to every job. Yeah. Just whack a mole. Well, some people certainly just need work.
00:06:12
Speaker
You know and will compromise or settle or whatever but yeah, I mean building the culture of the company that's our job to keep it in line to make sure that the people that we do hire want to be here and you know want to do a good job and fit and it's good for them as well, you know, yeah, so we have to filter through that.
00:06:33
Speaker
Yeah, the thing that's not fun, but it's part of the process is we did. We did interview and we did determine that one of the candidates was great, like without overthinking it, like met all the criteria capability and that combined with
00:06:52
Speaker
Don't overthink it and look if it's the kind of whole job interviewing is like a politician what they say on the campaign trail is not what they like in office. So it's kind of like hey, yeah, if it doesn't if it doesn't work out after two or three months puts the onus on the company to correct that or move on which isn't fun either, but
00:07:11
Speaker
You can't necessarily isolate that risk by going through exhaustive interviews that are somehow breakthrough barriers. They reveal the true sell. It's entry level. It's just a shipping job. So it's kind of like, don't overthink it. So basically, we huddled up, agreed this person would certainly fit the role well. They seemed, they interviewed great. They emailed well and then went to call them and emailed them to extend the offer and they ghosted.
00:07:37
Speaker
which is not the first, like that happened once in the past. So yeah, I'm not really more into it, but it's also just like, Oh man. Yeah. It's kind of one of those lessons that like people, people are different. Like, like, like I would not, I don't know. It's just weird. Ah, that's too bad. That's good. I'm not sure how to look for siblings more. Just like, Hey, this is kind of what it's like perspective. I mean, I, I know, I mean us five, six years ago had not hired anybody. Um,
00:08:07
Speaker
and we have some experience now. We've had 12 employees currently and we've had some come and go. Do you really? We have some experience hiring people. But I know there's a lot of people listening who are one-man shops who are like, should I hire my first person? So this little banter back and forth perspective I think is hugely helpful. Yeah. Because we've been there. We've just got a tiny bit more experience than we did. Oh, I think a lot more. I mean, a lot more. Yeah, I know.
00:08:37
Speaker
especially when you add in the interns. Oh, yeah, you guys for sure. And it's kind of one of those like, look, let's just be honest, there's people who have fired people and there's people who will fire people like it's it is not enjoyable, but you have to be if you're not willing to do it, then you can be a great machinist. But I don't know that I double down on the skills of the business. They're like, it's just part of it's not fun, but yeah.
00:09:05
Speaker
Okay, so you had good candidate that goes to do you have another lined up? Do you have more interviews? What's the plan?
00:09:11
Speaker
Yep. We have another guy, another individual who also seemed pretty good. But the question is, I mean, it's pretty obvious. He wasn't the first pick. And if so, but if candidate number one is no longer interested, do we send it to the second guy or do we reach out, reopen? Frankly, I got so many indeed responses. I shut it off pretty quickly because I didn't have, I was like, hold on, this doesn't do me any good to just... Yeah, have too many. Yeah.
00:09:40
Speaker
I don't know. I need to join that some this morning. Yeah. Yeah. We noticed we got the majority of them, like 80, 90% of them on the first day. And then I don't know if indeed kind of filters out and it's just, we're not as important anymore. It's been a week probably. We got one this morning, but it's definitely slowed down.
00:09:59
Speaker
So that kind of builds the theory that I think there's a lot of people, I look, to be clear, there are bad people out there. There are people who just, you know, are looking out for themselves in a selfishly bad way that you don't want on your team. And those are the kind of people I think that might be on indeed. And as soon as any job post, you know, healthcare IT administration, sign me up, you know, factory warehouse workers, sign me up, like, let's just go interview everywhere. Yeah, yeah.
00:10:27
Speaker
Which on one hand is perspective. I mean, that's how you find jobs you never would have found before in careers and paths. But on the other hand, it's like as the leader, the company owner trying to hire good people for the role that fit the company, the culture and will be able to do the job. Two expectations are better. Like I'd be a little picky here. Yeah. Oh, I agree. Uh, this just not the right fit. So.
00:10:58
Speaker
Yeah, how are you then? What are you getting up to?
00:11:00
Speaker
Yeah, so that has been a decent part of my days the past little bit. We switched the foam we're using for the cases and everything to a denser foam.
Material and Equipment Upgrades
00:11:15
Speaker
We were using a 2-pound density black, and now we got a 6-pound density black, which is insanely denser and heavier. Sure. Even like the shipping box when it came in, a box of this foam.
00:11:29
Speaker
The first batch, which is two pound black, four pound gray, two pound black, was like light. You could pick up the whole box. The second batch, which was six pounds black, four pounds gray, six pound black, was like too heavy for one person to lift. Really? The box. It's not just three times heavier. I guess that could be a lot. I guess it is, right? It was, yeah. The difference between 50 pounds and 150 pounds is like a lot. That's real. Right? Yes. That is real.
00:11:58
Speaker
The soft stuff, if you touch it, you could scratch it, you could scar the soft foam. The six pounds has been so much better for that. It cuts cleaner, it engraves cleaner. It lasers a little bit harder. We lasered a bunch yesterday and they're not perfect because we got to crank up the laser
00:12:17
Speaker
wattage the percentage a little bit. Interesting. Because we're doing the word saga, let's say. So I fill in each bold letter with lasering, and then I outline the outside. And the outline works fine, but the fill-in missed a couple pieces. If they're thicker or thinner than others, the laser goes just out of focus, and it didn't matter on the thinner foam, like the lighter weight foam, but it matters on this foam.
00:12:44
Speaker
Just got to crank up the wattage a little bit. You know what you need to do? I'm absolutely feeding you a pointless DIY project that I insist that you do. 3D print and oversized saga body and snap it over the laser.
00:13:02
Speaker
Meaning so it looks like it looks like the laser looks like a big saga pen. Oh, I like that and that way it's like meta It's like in using a saga laser to engrave saga in the saga case We have thought about printing a shark head to go over it. So it's like sharks with lasers No, yeah, just I am very cool
00:13:24
Speaker
Okay, so finally, after years of doing this podcast, and our stories having so many parallels of growing the company and will amends and machines and all that stuff, I have finally found a concrete point where you and I are diverging. Okay, we are going away from our laser. Really your your boss CO2 laser.
00:13:44
Speaker
So what happened is it appears to be weakened to the point of not functioning. And I don't know the details. I don't use the machine. We've been hard on it. We may or may not have set it on fire at one point. I have no complaints about it. And frankly, it may be repairable. I don't know. But it's not the tool it needs to be today, period. And for the cost of what it would be to replace it, I'm not going to spend a ton of time
00:14:15
Speaker
And we would, we don't need one quite that big anymore. Um, but the other thing is we're not, gosh, I'm I'm torn here because.
00:14:23
Speaker
I love having a CO2 laser and I think we'll probably still end up getting a replacement one of some size, but smaller. The primary thing that we use the laser for these days is laser cutting chip board. It's about the thickness of a business card. It's halfway between printer paper and cardboard.
00:14:46
Speaker
We laser out alignment and template jigs for our product line. So it tells us in Fusion we have these templates set up and it shows us where to put all the different things on our fixture plates for different metric plates or inch plates or different size plates the way we have all these posts and jacks and set up things. It makes it really easy when we want to make a VF2 plate. We just lay that chipboard down and it shows us exactly what screw holds to use on our fixture plates.
00:15:14
Speaker
for the manufacturing process. Bingo. Interesting. Why is there not a video about this? That sounds brilliant. Secret saucey, not really. Yeah, sure. Sounds cool. If we didn't have so many variants, we would just use the colored fixture plate plugs that we sell. But we have 70 of these laser cut templates in there. If they wear out, they just make a new one because it will last forever. Interesting.
00:15:39
Speaker
That's what we use it for most of the time. And frankly, the laser is not great for that. By the time you go through the workflow of exporting DXF, thumb sticking it over the machine, the CAD, putting the chipboard down, closing the lid, you know that process. It's great compared to not having it. But I kind of thought, wait a minute, is there a better way to do this? And then the light bulb went off. I bought a vinyl cutter yesterday. Oh.
00:16:08
Speaker
Okay, we will see there wasn't there wasn't an obvious amount of information on the interwebs about how good they are just cutting paper because there's so much content on them to cut vinyl stickers. Yeah, vinyl sticker material is probably more expensive than I want to long term spend. But the vinyl cutter was I bought the
00:16:31
Speaker
probably the common hobby level one that prints 28 inches wide as long as you can feed it. So plenty of its size and it was 300 bucks. Dude. A little drag knife and that would be sick because then we can have that right next to the machines. And when you want to print a new one, you just go. That's so slick. So we'll see how it works. Interesting. And you could do paper or I mean, whatever's cheap, really.
00:16:56
Speaker
So like Hobby Lobby sells 50 or 100 foot rolls of paper, which should be fine. Yeah. Just got to make sure they work okay in that vinyl cutter. Yeah. We're going to 3D print a little endorsement and put it over the drag knife blade. Yes. Or rask. I'd rather that's a better rask job. Yeah. Yeah.
00:17:20
Speaker
That's cool. Yeah. So we'll see. Are you going to use it to cut stickers or not? No desire to. Yeah. I guess we could. I mean, I thought about it. I mean, it looks like it's so easy to cut decals. Like we could put one on our front door. Yeah. They're really not about it. But no, the point is it would be such a better tool to have it next to the machine. And when you want one, it's not as simple as hitting print. I mean, you do have to export a SVG or DXF into the software. But you don't have all the other
00:17:49
Speaker
hassles and complications with setting up cut stock on a laser that we don't need that. Does it? It's got its own little control panel or do you need a laptop with it? Just plug in USB into any of our computers. It's a printer. It's a printer. We'll probably hook up to Grant's computer. Interesting. It's
Exploring New 3D Printing Capabilities
00:18:13
Speaker
cool. Yeah. Our bamboo also arrives today. Cool.
00:18:18
Speaker
Yeah. So I am excited to see what it's like and how it prints. They've done such a brilliant job with not only marketing, but allowing the customers to market for them because they put the camera inside and have this super easy time-lapse feature that automatically like snaps the time-lapse of your prints. So everybody I know who's got one is posting these little clips on Instagram and it's like, and you're just watching a five hour print in like 10 seconds.
00:18:48
Speaker
I did that. You didn't? Sorry. Oh, you're all following the right people. Sorry, it makes sense now that you say it because I've seen these people post those. I just never thought about it being, I knew the printer had vision to help with its spaghetti detection or whatever. Yep, yep, yep. Yeah, that's genius. Yeah. I mean, you can log in from your phone or whatever. I'm sure they have a web portal to
00:19:12
Speaker
monitor the print. It must be a setting to do, but it records your whole print and gives you a time lapse speed of it. This one guy was printing traffic cones just for fun. Big ones and little ones. One that was the full size of the bamboo enclosure.
00:19:33
Speaker
and just, you just see the whole time lapse. I'm like, that's cool. Yeah. I remember watching a video on how they do that on YouTube with the beautiful time lapses and people had written software or had a physical switch set up so that it only took the picture when the XY gantry was at the far extreme. So that way it looks like the print head is never in the middle of it. Exactly.
00:19:53
Speaker
And that's like a post-mod basically. Yeah, right. OctoPrint does that and basically changes your code so that every layer before going up, it just goes home, takes a picture, then continues. So it must take seconds longer, but who cares because you get the cool video from it.
00:20:10
Speaker
Yeah, no, I mean, I bought it because it was so fast. We needed another printer. I think I've said this and we'll end up kind of, it's weird how I feel sympathetically bad, but we'll end up canceling our Prusa XL order, which just kind of goes to show the cutthroat world of like, Hey, look, they're a great company, but they thought we, they were going to ship those four or five months ago. And this thing has a ton of features that, that printer just doesn't have. Yep.
00:20:36
Speaker
I also didn't know until Rob mentioned it how much they had the former ties or the team ties to DJI. Yeah, I didn't really know that either. And I'm sure there's more to look into if you care. But that means a lot. DJI has absolutely killed it in their field. Yeah, these aren't just the Kickstarter garage team. This is a pretty strongly-backed, experienced team to bringing that world of consumer-ish products
00:21:05
Speaker
With like Lawrence was saying, if you buy their filament, you can run at their crazy speeds. If you use somebody else's filament, it's unknown. So you just run it slower. So are you like tied to using their filament? It sounds like a lot of people just buy their filament just because.
00:21:26
Speaker
we bought some of their rolls that were 25 bucks. Look, we could buy Amazon filament for I think, between 20 and 22 bucks with free shipping, which is kind of nice. I don't know if that's free shipping or not. But yeah, for what we're doing as a tool, I just buy five or 10 rolls and we've got, you know, three months. Cool. Well, yeah, looking forward to hearing how it goes. So who's gonna touch it?
00:21:51
Speaker
So it'll come in this afternoon. I'm actually hitting the road. So Alex is going to kind of unbox it and get it set up. And then I don't know where it's going to live, but I definitely will want everyone to get some training. Actually, it's kind of the weird way. It's like the first thing where I actually might have everybody stop for a couple of hours and have Alex or
00:22:10
Speaker
somebody do a like training session for all of us because I want it really good. It should have the ability to web print, which right now we had octopi at one point, but then just it broke and we didn't fix it. It's kind of like the classic, you know, when we 3d printers, we need, we need internet 4.0 for 3d printing, John. Um, but if everybody can have that slicer on their computer, um, that I, I love. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
00:22:38
Speaker
Um, yeah, one of our guys, Gabe has been, uh, he downloaded fusion himself a few weeks ago and he's like, I just want to learn how to make some parts and print some parts. So he's been designing little things just totally on his own at night, which is super awesome. Uh, texting me questions at nine, 10 PM, like, how do I do this? Happy to help. And, uh, he'd send me a, uh,
00:23:00
Speaker
STL file and I'll print it and it'll be ready for him in the morning and then one of our pruses were upgrading the extruder and the hotend and all that stuff and that whole upgrade process kind of got stalled a few months ago. So I was like, I've got a printer to put together if you just want to take it home and like finish putting it together and he's like done. Yeah. So super fun. So he did that a couple of nights ago and he saw. Which printer is it?
00:23:23
Speaker
I've got two pruses, one of the pruses. He's got no experience doing anything like this, but he's very happy to just jump in and do it. I was like, go nuts. That'll be good. Then that'll give them a printer in our front shop, the finishing shop where Eric and Sky and Gabe and Larry work.
00:23:47
Speaker
And then they can like design and print their own stuff, which is kind of new for us. I've been, I don't want to say hoarding that knowledge and technology, but I'm kind of the only guy that does it. And I want everybody to be able to do it. Do you know? Yes. Yes. Yvonne and I have been working on that with the shipping area.
00:24:04
Speaker
both just improving it period, but then also thinking about the new shipping role and how to do all the things that mean that job is done well. So how little training, even explanation of processes do you have to handhold through and how just self-evident are they? Yes. And that's because it's just the way it should be. It's also because I'm thinking about that role as not necessarily a role that will have longevity. I'd love it if it did, but I want us to be in a place where that role turns over with
00:24:34
Speaker
more oftenness than the rest of the team. We're okay for that. Even little things like our dauphin and stud kits, we had an old tray. We're not using it these days to be totally not to be just candid, but we could be, and it has 3D printed silhouettes of the parts that go into that kit.
00:24:53
Speaker
to make one of those kits, you just grab the bins there right in front of it. You fill each silhouette slot, like partially trough, does that make sense? And then that confirms you've got the right quantities at the right sizes at the right parts. And then the front right corner of that tray has a little, like a pill slot hole, like when you see the dump medicine in bulk. So you just tip it up and it tips right into the polyseal bag.
00:25:20
Speaker
So you created those a while ago and then stopped using them, I guess? Yes. That's okay, I guess, because that's a great learning tool, but maybe the operator gets so good they don't need it anymore. But you still keep it as a learning tool? I don't know. Yeah, we should. There's no reason not to use it because they actually are pretty – like even if I
00:25:42
Speaker
you know, really know how to make those kits. It's just easier to do it that way because it's kind of what should be brainless about filling it. But the nice thing about the bamboo will be if you want to iterate on that, or you want to make one, you could it will actually be legitimately nice to say have that sort of a thing in an hour versus, you know, oh, basically, we can make one during the day and that might be it. Yeah. But that's the thing with 3d printing is you kind of get used to just like, I'll have that part tomorrow.
00:26:09
Speaker
I guess the bamboo turns that around. No, I'll have it in an hour, not four hours. Mm-hmm. Cool. That'll be cool to see. Yeah. Okay.
Machining Efficiency and Innovations
00:26:25
Speaker
I want to talk to you about oil. You guys have been running the Wilhelmin. That's your first oil machine, right? The Wilhelmin is cranking, John. Yeah. It is cranking.
00:26:39
Speaker
Okay, give me the Willman update. 10 out of 10. I cannot. I am so proud and happy of how that process is going and how Grant's doing with it. And I thank you to you and thank you to CJ. But thank you to Willman folks. I mean, this has been a rising tide where he says all ships thing.
00:27:01
Speaker
and especially CJ with the post and the work that he's done on his machines, but it is completely automatically making half-inch fixturing pins right now. So you guys are making production parts with transfer? Transfer, like you could run 10 right now. Yeah. You put in a short bar and it pulls it.
00:27:26
Speaker
Yeah. Now, kind of funny, we actually don't really want to make that part on the machine right now. It's going to stay on the SD20. It's a good test part. Yeah. Exactly. It was a great test part. You need that. You need an easy, pretty straightforward couple tools, tool changes. You need to prove out the process on a not super critical aerospace part or whatever.
00:27:47
Speaker
And it did that and it's funny because oh my God, the chamfers on it are like perfect and we have a little engraving on it that we didn't have before. It's just putting smiles on my face. That's amazing. So sorry, you were asking though. With oil, you guys got MotorX like 10 weight oil or something? Yeah, I'll pull the name up while you're talking.
00:28:11
Speaker
Yeah, I was asking CJ about it too and his is also 10. He wasn't sure if it was 10 weight or whatever but it's labeled 10. We've got blazer oil in our Swiss and now in the Willimand. We're actually using old Swiss oil in our Willimand because we've had it and it's fine. It doesn't like high pressure but it's fine for low pressure.
00:28:30
Speaker
But anyway, we used 35 weight oil for years, for the past four years on our Swiss, and then we toned it down to 22 weight oil for the Swiss. But now our Willeman has this 35 weight oil. And I kind of realized this week that my entire knowledge of oil is based on this super thick 35 weight oil. And it sounds like everybody else is using 10 weight.
00:28:54
Speaker
Yeah, that jumped out at me last week. I mean, I got to tell you, my knowledge of oil is limited as well, but that seemed way too thick. But that's what was recommended to us when we got the machine based on whatever, whatever. You know, the oil guys on the Swiss necessarily. Yeah, different machine. Right. But I wasn't going to buy oil for the Wilhelmin because I have oil. I don't remember that statement.
00:29:22
Speaker
What oil did you put in the old 240 or whatever? Would you have an 840? 240, 850, and a lot of Volvos. What oil did you put in? Mobile and synthetic.
00:29:35
Speaker
Oh, really? 5.30 or something. Sure. I don't remember. Pick a 10W40. Yeah, exactly. I'm not like a car. I love cars. I love learning about cars. I'm not confident enough or experienced enough to have like strong opinions about most car that's related. But let me tell you, if my truck says 10W40 oil and somebody wanted to put 20 or 30 weight oil, I would disarm. You're not touching that. Are you kidding me? So I feel like you're being too cavalier about the difference here.
00:30:04
Speaker
Well, I'm saying it was recommended to us by the oil supplier and maybe by Tournos. I can't remember it to use the 35 weight oil. For the Tournos. For the Tournos, sure. And I guess I haven't thought enough about it for the Wilhelmin. But even for the Tournos, I think Danny Rudolph's using 10 weight oil now. He switched to it. Yeah. And he's on all of his Swisses, or some of them. And he's like, I like it way better. It's better for high pressure because you get more flow through a tiny drill bit.
00:30:33
Speaker
With a lighter weight oil, you get more actually juice through it, more volume, maybe less pressure, I don't know. My point is, since I'm using 35 weight, I was on the Swiss and now I am on the Wilhelmin and that's all I know. It's a thick oil. It's hard to clean off parts. It doesn't wash off. It doesn't dry off. It doesn't whatever. Maybe it's a much different experience with 10 weight oil.
00:31:00
Speaker
It's not. I have an email from this guy, Peter Feller, who is the...
00:31:08
Speaker
decision maker around Euroline, which sells the MotorX stuff, which I do think is a pretty common partner with Willimon. Yep. And current, too. We've got some MotorX fluids in our current. Got it. It seems like they're the premium oil supplier, MotorX. Oh, OK. Seems like they're right up there. Got it. Yeah, they could be like a household name in that world. I just don't know it.
00:31:36
Speaker
So they had recommended this DECO cut AP10, which is what we ended up buying. But then I had, somebody else, aka I think CJ had said, and I'll just read what I'd asked Peter in his brief version of his response. I said, somebody had mentioned looking at HPX15 or HPX20 as an excellent, but less expensive version of HPX10. These are slightly different than the Swiss cut DECO AP or whatever. He wrote back,
00:32:03
Speaker
Only the oil viscosities vary. There's a different mix of gas to liquid synthetic base oils and then the class III mixtures ratio changes. With higher viscosity comes with a higher flash point, but heat dissipation goes down. Generally speaking, we try to stay as thin as possible, especially when you're cooling through the tool, especially when drilling small holes, thinner oil is better at penetrating the cutting edge of evacuated ships. A 10 viscosity pumps better than 15 or 22, so you get better floats. So what I'm reading from this is the range is
00:32:32
Speaker
10 to 22. Right, which is certainly a range. But man, you're you're even above that. I know. And I remember our blazer guy telling us he was trying to say that oil viscosity is based on part diameter. Okay, we're sure because bigger part is going to fling more oil. I guess your surface foot on the outsides a lot more. But what's he saying for like small diameters you want a higher
00:33:02
Speaker
Thinner oil. Thickness? I don't know. Thinner oil. Yeah, it would make sense, but I think it's not necessary. I think we need to go thinner than we were. Yeah, I mean, the punch line is kind of like thinner is better, but it also catches up higher more quickly. Yeah, it has its downsides, and it doesn't carry heat away as quickly, or what did he say?
00:33:23
Speaker
Correct. Actually, Grant was asking me yesterday, he's like, hey, should I back down our speeds and feeds with oil compared to your average speeds and feeds like the insert guide, the starting recommended range on a pack of inserts, which I always assumed meant with a semi-synthetic cutting fluid. I don't know why I assume that, but your average normal insert isn't used in a oil machine, I think. Maybe I'm wrong. I'd be curious to know, at the global machine tool level, how much
00:33:53
Speaker
is what mixture? I mean, inserts go on Swiss machines too and they're almost always oil. No, you're right. I may be just living in my own world here. Yeah, for sure. But I told Grant, I was like, look, I don't have any experience with oil, but it's a great cutting fluid. I don't see any reason to back anything down. Yeah. Yeah, I'd say so. Yeah. It's a weird trade off because it's more slippery, but it takes heat away slower than coolant than water.
00:34:20
Speaker
Yeah, but it also, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, it's just weird. The lubricity is like bueno though, so it's supposed to give great finishes and all that, but Grant was laughing. This is what made me say it's not any different to you a minute ago is Grant has his gloves on. He's like, Grimms was right. It's just everywhere. You put your head inside, your arms inside, it drips on you. You're like, oh, man.
00:34:45
Speaker
I'm impressed you can get your head in. Actually, the Wilma door is great access. Yeah, totally. You're not poking underneath that machine or anything. Yeah. Yeah. How's yours going? Good. I haven't had a chance to touch it in the past week, but I did have that super successful run where I ran it for just over an hour untouched. I tweaked the tool offset twice. Yeah.
00:35:09
Speaker
Yeah, I saw the thermal grow by about just over a thou or shrink. I can't remember which way it went. But basically the first hour, you know, watch it. But after that, it's going to hold real good. Was it that was from cold? Yeah. Yeah. Good. I actually did a test where I
00:35:30
Speaker
wrote a quick program to turn a diameter cold, measure it, do a 15 minute warmup, turn that same diameter, like five thou under and measure it again. And that told me that a 15 minute warmup did like a thou of warmup, like of comp.
00:35:45
Speaker
So the machine moved by a foul just by warming it up for 15 minutes. So like a 50 minute warmup is most of your thermal wear. Right. Right. Right. Well, Grant ran those 10, I believe he ran 10 parts and it was already warm, which I don't mean it'd be intellectually curious to see the difference cold to warm, but like, I don't really care if we're going to warm it up in the morning and that it's just going to run. Um, and those 10 parts, I want to say when he miked them, cause we care, we care about 10 times and they were just all.
00:36:15
Speaker
the exact same like 5002 or 5003. I forget which one. There will be where on the insert there will be some changes, but it's not walking all over the place. It's awesome. Yes. What are you up to today? What else? What else? Updating the laser files for the router.
00:36:45
Speaker
We're making a few new fixtures for the Kern to make rasp blades, which are testing out real good. Different than the big tall tombstones that I've been using. It's more of a low profile rectangular fixture that goes on the small pallets. It's a three inch, 72 millimeter pallets.
00:37:05
Speaker
So it gets everything much down closer to the chalk not hanging up so much more. And I think we're getting better surface finishes from it than the big tombstones tilted 90 degrees. That's cool. Yeah, good results so far. We'll keep testing that. And if that works, we'll just make like six more of those pallets and use that instead of the tombstones for grinding the blades.
00:37:27
Speaker
Just because you have a bunch of those little... Yeah, we probably got 40 we're not using. It's funny. Yeah. But the cool thing is that whole fixture that I'm designing is also going to fit on the speedio and allow us to grind the blades on the speedio. That's the goal. So I'm testing it on the current right now.
00:37:45
Speaker
That's why I couldn't remember. What was the goal with the whole speedio aroa mix? Pretty much that grind blades on the speedio, which will take 10 hours a day off the current, you know? Yeah, that's awesome. And it might take longer on the speedio because it's got less RPM, but it's better. Yes, sure. But you're still waiting on those jackals and aroa to get your thing installed?
00:38:11
Speaker
Just do the thing. Do the thing you promised a year ago when we started this conversation. Yeah, I got to bump them again. That was a good, I don't want to betray any confidential sharing here within the WhatsApp group, but there was a good back and forth of basically like, should I pay for the machine? It could be used on my floor, but it's not. There's some things that are outstanding and they sent the invoice and
00:38:37
Speaker
It's like there isn't a right answer because if you pay for it, then all of a sudden you forfeited that hammer when there's a relatively small but nevertheless quality of life significant thing that they haven't finished yet on it. Some outstanding thing, yeah. If you don't pay, then you're the jerk that's holding back. You have the thing, but it's not done yet.
00:39:01
Speaker
It's a balance. I think you just got to have that open line of communication, maybe threaten it. I don't even think it's a jerk thing. Frankly, the IMCA folks, the bar feeder folks sent us the invoice the day it hit our floor. I talked to the guys like, look, I'm not going to create a problem here. If you need me to pay this, I'll pay it. But normally, we don't pay it until it's turned over. And they were waiting on a part from Europe. And it's probably going to happen next week.
00:39:29
Speaker
And I was preferring to not pay it because I do want to make sure that gets finished. And it's funny, the sales guy was just like, look, no one's going to, you're fine. If you're talking weeks, that's one thing. If you're talking three to six months, that's another thing, especially if you're waiting for a part to finish the thing. Why can't you use it until it's complete? Why would I pay for it yet? Yeah.
00:39:57
Speaker
Funny thing is I haven't even gotten a guess as to what the Aroa cost will be for me to integrate this video from Aroa, but they haven't given me a quote or a price. I don't even know exactly what it's going to cost. Wait, I thought they were just not finished with it. They haven't even started. I told them what I need and I just haven't gotten very much information, but apparently they're building it and they know what they need. They know what cable they need.
00:40:27
Speaker
Oh, I would be, I would be all over that man. Yeah. Yeah. I got to push a bit harder. It's yeah, just annoying. I think it's more of the sales guy than everything else. I don't know. I don't want to blame, but could be better experience is what I'm saying. Sure.
00:40:44
Speaker
But it's like everything in business. Like I don't, there's not somebody at a row or a reseller or somebody who's thinking like every week of every morning, it has a pool of cereal. I was like, I can't wait to make creams. We'll get matter every day. It's just like, they got a thousand things going on in the squeaky door gets the grease. Yeah, exactly. Right. And it's not my strongest suit as being the squeaky door, but I can, uh, I can turn it up a bit. Yeah.
00:41:10
Speaker
Yeah, that came up. I don't know if this works in this context, but because you kind of need a row but we've had some problems over the years with
00:41:19
Speaker
communicating with folks where sometimes they go, not ghost you, but like don't respond. So one of the ways that I think it works really well is to write an email. Again, I don't know if it works here with a row, but to write an email and be like, hey, we're assuming that you're either unable or unwilling to complete this project. We're going to actually engage with FASTMS to get this taken care of. But if for some reason we're not understanding that correctly, please let me know by the end of the day. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. Yeah.
00:41:48
Speaker
What are you up to today? Kind of catching up, like just because I felt like I was out last week and had a bunch of stuff I want to get doing, which is great. We put a new I put a new test fixture on the horizontal. We follow our own advice. We had programmed or we had catted up a full size fixture.
00:42:14
Speaker
And then I was like, Hey, Alex, let's make one that's five inches tall that only does four parts instead of the whole big one, because I've never once made a fixture on the first go and been like, I nailed it. That was perfect. There's nothing I would change or improve on it.
00:42:30
Speaker
And so I actually, it's funny, it reminded me, I really do just love programming parts and making words. And they turned out really, I mean, there's a couple of things I want to speak on, but like they turned out great. We're using a new Sandvik tool that eliminates an operation, which makes me really happy. And so been working on that a little, tweaking the CAM. What else? Oh, that's about it. You?
00:42:58
Speaker
Yeah, I got a short day here at the shop, but I don't know, everybody's crushing it. Good. I'm just here to support. Good. Need anything? I'm your guy, but otherwise, go nuts. You guys know what you need to do. Yeah. So. Good. All right, we'll see you next week. Sounds good, bud. Take care. All right, later. Bye. Bye.