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Business of Machining - Episode 31
222 Plays8 years ago
"I don't always find EXTRA KNIFE ORDERS but when I do, it's when I have T-minus 6 days until the deadline. "- Grimsmo If you haven't seen your reflection in a while, check out this Instagram post. Record players are scarce these days but there's something that might work in a pinch. A PROFILOMETER??? For Saunders, the benefits of a Cogsdill are becoming more evident but is it the answer for the steel fixture plates? Have we forgotten the Linda wheel? Grimsmo doesn't want to purchase the same wheel again but he may not have a choice. Production must be able to continue whether or not he has found a way to get better results. That moment when your business starts making the decisions. Breaking up is hard to do, especially when it's with WTF anodizing. There aren't many fish in the sea but that doesn't mean doing it yourself is sustainable. QC Video The guys discuss shifts in their primary roles as entrepreneurs and morning routines. Saunders must have some interesting S&F for those 11 minutes. After tuning in, head over to iTunes to leave a review for the co-hosts! From now until the end of September, your review = chance to shoot the breeze with co-hosts on the topic of your choice.
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Transcript
Introductions and Pleasantries
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, episode number 31. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. Good morning, bud. How are you? I'm doing awesome. Awesome. And yourself? Good. Really good, actually. I'll take really good.
Rasks Production and Order Update
00:00:19
Speaker
Yeah. How was, uh, what's the latest on your, so August 25th, we're coming out on stretch books, the latest on risks. So last week I told you there were 19 left and since then I found, um, five more orders to add to the count, which was less than fun to find. But, uh, so that, that brings last week from 19 to 24 and we're at 10 now.
00:00:45
Speaker
Oh, awesome. Okay. So there's a solid 14 week, which was amazing. And then only 10 left and it's only the 25th. We've got another six days of the month. Easy peasy.
00:00:57
Speaker
Yeah, and not to get too casual as you approach the end, but there's a difference between 60 and a month.
Surface Grinding Techniques and Tools
00:01:05
Speaker
I mean, at this point, so you go three days over, maybe you've missed a figurative deadline, but holy cow, you're there, dude.
00:01:15
Speaker
Yeah, well, and that makes it that makes it a 65 month, not a 60 month. Oh, my gosh. Exactly. John, that's insane. And I'm telling you, these are the hard ones. These are time consuming. They take a lot longer. The Instagram posts have been spectacular, though. What was that? What was that mirror polished one? Oh, the blade, just a surface ground Norseman blade. Someone had it that way. It looked like it was chrome plated.
00:01:45
Speaker
No, that's how we surface grind every single blade, and then often they get tumbled afterwards. But yeah, that's the surface finish we need from the blades, whether the damasteel gets etched or they get tumbled after that, but yeah. It's insane. Yeah, it's like Eric's standard for surface grinding. Which is that's on the Tormach? That's on just hand by hand with belts? No, that's on the Tormach surface grinder with a belt attachment.
00:02:12
Speaker
Right, right. That's insane. That's a mirror. It's an absolute mirror. Especially when you do it on hard steel. Right. Do you have a profilometer? I don't, but I really want to buy one once money becomes available. What type
Importance of Profilometers
00:02:28
Speaker
would you buy? I have no idea. I haven't, I briefly looked into it, but I haven't really seriously looked into it.
00:02:35
Speaker
Yeah, this is the blind leading the blind. My vague understanding is there's the gauge set type that a lot of people buy, which is, I guess, actually pretty acceptable, which is you just sort of compare a known RA sample set against what you've got, but not scientific.
00:02:55
Speaker
but I think to move up to a real profilometer that it's so weird to me because I think of surface finish as an aesthetic thing. I think of it as something that would need to be like a camera would need to take a picture, but it's really actual met peaks and valleys in the part that creates
00:03:11
Speaker
imperfect surfaces. I guess if you think about like glass or a mirror, you realize, okay, flatness correlates to
Benefits of Roller Burnishing Tools
00:03:17
Speaker
that shininess. So it literally drags that. At least my understanding is it drags a needle, like a record player across the top of it and measures the movement. Yep. Yep. And my understanding, it's a little diamond needle.
00:03:30
Speaker
And just like you said, it's a little device, you set it on, and it's got this needle that it, just like a record player, it moves, like the machine itself moves the needle, I don't know, half an inch or whatever it takes. And then measures the mean average, you know, vibration height. Yeah. Something like that. Actually, now that we say it, a record player really is a prophylometer. Yeah. Huh. Right? That's awesome.
00:03:58
Speaker
Now, unfortunately, you can't find record players anymore. So I don't know if it does this any good to try to test. I'm sure it would be much less resolution than you'd need. But that's kind of cool. But yeah, as we're getting more picky with surface finishes and things like that, I am always curious. Because I send parts out to get double disc ground and lapped. And I have to specify an 8RA finish or better. Whoa. That's insane, dude. Yeah, we get nice parts back.
00:04:29
Speaker
We do our Tormach surface plates, the steel ones, the fixture plates have 32RA. And I think they're grinding above that, or excuse me, better than that, but it's beautiful. That's the steel surface plates, or fixtures. Right, right. Yeah. And going back to last week, that Cogstil roller burnishing tool, can you refresh my memory? Why did you buy it?
00:04:57
Speaker
Why do you use it to say, do you know, could you tell a difference if you had machined a hole to the correct size without using the roller burnishing tool? Yeah, absolutely. So for many years, we made knives and we would drill the hole, maybe interpolate it, and then ream it. And the reamers wear out, and the reamers leave kind of a crappy finish.
00:05:23
Speaker
And this is in the pivot hole of the knife, and we want it to be a mirror inside. So we'd have to do it a couple tenths or a couple thou undersides. And we'd sit there for five to 20 minutes with a brass barrel lap and open up the blade of every single knife. Because we want a hole tolerance of a few tenths.
Heat Treatment and Precision
00:05:43
Speaker
Let's say 1-8-7-5-0 is our goal.
00:05:48
Speaker
I don't want to deviate too much bigger or too much smaller than that. And I want it to be a mirror. So we're sitting there manually with the barrel lab. Yeah. And again, it's hard. It's already been hardened. Yeah, it's already been hardened. And to the point where the blade. Right. So it'll polish really well. It polishes great. And the blades would get so hot you couldn't hold it. You'd have to like, we had this piece of aluminum. We'd quench the blade just for 5, 10 seconds on the aluminum and then keep going at it. And this just seemed like a stupid waste of time.
00:06:18
Speaker
So now, especially with the mori, that we can interpolate a hole to within a few tenths, and then hit it with the cog still, which expands all those peaks and valleys and rolls everything into a perfect cylindrical, shiny surface. On a soft blade, it's shiny. And it's getting us, like I found an end mill, which was one, eight, seven, four, five.
00:06:45
Speaker
or something like that. And if that.
00:06:51
Speaker
Yeah. I don't remember, but very close. And I slipped it through a hole on a soft blade that I just did after we talked about it. And it was a tight fit, but because the hole is so smooth and perfect and there's no deviations, it slips all the way through cleanly. It was perfect. So then from there, the blade goes through heat treat, and the heat treat develops a little bit of a
00:07:18
Speaker
just like a golden surface that has to be it's kind of a little bit of a sandy surface i'm not exactly sure why like a scaling like scaling i don't know if i'd call it scale it's more of a dusting of of golden something i don't know we do use um baby powder
00:07:39
Speaker
in the heat treat foiled bags, which prevents it from sticking to the bag. So maybe it's that, but anyway, so we still do have to barrel up the hole, but just really quickly, just to take that, I wouldn't even call it scale, just to take that color off and bring the shine back.
00:07:55
Speaker
But you're not like worrying about size, you're really just sticking in there to get that stuff out of the cleaning it out. Just to polish it up again, yeah. And depending on how well the coxidil is holding size, like I said, I don't even check it anymore.
Machining Strategies and Tool Performance
00:08:08
Speaker
Eric might have to touch it for like a minute instead of 10 seconds.
00:08:12
Speaker
I'm really surprised that your holes don't move on you more during a heat treat. Yeah. Never noticed. Wow. They just don't. No. So if you took a knife that had been interpolated only, and then you have a blade and you had a blade that had been the cogtail, you can just look at those two and immediately see which one was the cogtail. Yeah, clearly. Got it. And when you barrel lap, you have that in a hand drill? Yes.
00:08:40
Speaker
The lap itself is in a power tool. Yeah, it's in a hand drill and we use the diamond paste and bring it up. That's insane that you used to get it so hot that it would get, the blade would get hot and that seems bananas. Yeah, you know, a super fine diamond paste and you're generating heat and removing metal with it. Yeah, right.
00:09:04
Speaker
It's funny, I've been continuing to learn and read and my obsession, it's just so fascinating, the art of material removal, whether it's grinding or lapping or cutting. And one of the things I've been focusing more on is surface feet per minute and the chip that's being formed and tool deflection. And again, a lot of it's happening for us around this kind of process of getting consistent hole sizes. But what's interesting is that
00:09:33
Speaker
When you reduce your radial depth of cut, in this case for if you're on a lathe turning tool or if you're on a boring head and shout out to Rod Lockwood for making this what is now obvious point as you create a really really small chip
00:09:50
Speaker
you may think that's a good thing because you're reducing the tool deflection and the tool pressure. You're also not allowing, first of all, you may be more likely to rub because you're not allowing the shearing action of the leading edge of the insert or tool to be big enough or to be sharp enough, deep enough rather, to make a true shear. But also the chip you're creating is so small that it's not able to carry any heat away.
00:10:18
Speaker
And obviously heat destroys tools and it gives bad, I mean it just causes all kinds of problems. It's actually the heat itself, I would assume, can heat up the part enough to where that's changing tolerance. Your part swells while it's being cut and then it moves back down. That's what it causes. Right.
00:10:37
Speaker
And then the other thing I've been thinking about, we just actually just filmed a Wednesday widget on it. It'll be out probably soon to when this podcast comes out on chip thinning and speeds and feeds and this idea that when you take long story short, when we program, when you program your milk, do you think in inch per minute or inch per tooth? Inch per minute typically. On the lathe I'm starting to go more inch per tooth.
00:11:02
Speaker
Okay. We definitely have moved over to inch per tooth or triplet per tooth. And again, long story short, that number that you think about is only valid at a 50% width of cut, which nobody does. In fact, you're not really supposed to cut a 50%. You can cut a greater like 75, but most high speed machining strategies, most things that we do are much thinner width of cut, more depth of cut. And so you have this
00:11:29
Speaker
It's called chip thinning. Chip thinning doesn't really matter when you go to 10 or 20% width of cut. You'll be okay. We have a graph on it, but when you get down to spring passes and you're taking a really, really light width of cut, you end up
00:11:45
Speaker
Like if you have a programmed feed rate of 1,000 per tooth and then you come back around after taking a 10% width of cut and you take a spring pass that's only effectively doing a 1,000 width of cut, your chip thickness is actually pursuant to the formula is like
00:12:04
Speaker
one tenth of a thou. We filmed it in high speed with the camera and we'll let you guys see the results. There's some people out there who think chip thinning is kind of overrated. It's not as big a problem as some people say it is and I'm kind of on the fence trying to do more
00:12:23
Speaker
cutting and studies and data to kind of see what it is. We're doing it on aluminum right now, which is super easy, and you have sharper tools, so it's not a big deal, but this is a real issue, I think, when it comes into materials that work harder, materials that have, the harder the material you're cutting, the more likely the tool, if it's a tool that's designed for that grade, a material is gonna have a honed edge, which means there's less sharpness, which means it will be more prone to rubbing. That make sense?
00:12:51
Speaker
Yep. So it's super fun. Yeah. Fascinating. I can't wait to watch that chip break or that Wednesday widget. Yeah. So that's what's going on. Still trying to figure it out. Whatever happened with your, is there any, are we done talking about the Linda wheel and the potential of replacing that process with new machinery technology?
00:13:14
Speaker
So I'm still using the Lindo wheel, even though it is cracked from the glue joint of the bond to the shank is cracked. I can see the crack, but it still works. So I'm going to push it as long as I can. Eric thinks that I should order another one and to have it on shelf.
00:13:35
Speaker
Just in case, I probably should. But I'm going to investigate some new technology, which I don't think I've talked about on the podcast. But yeah, I mean, for now, for the next few months, we're scaling back on rasks and we're scaling up on Norsemen. So the grinding wheel will be less of a critical thing, which is nice.
00:13:58
Speaker
But do keep that in mind. I had a good week, partly because I'm starting to change, I guess it sounds weird, but change my role here to trying to spend, I enjoy spending more time trying to take a step back and look at what we're doing, how we do it, how we can do it well. Obviously, it's money to buy another wheel, I get that. But it also takes time to get one.
00:14:24
Speaker
Why wouldn't you? If that's a key tool, I mean anyone will look at a shop and say, if you have key tools, you need to have one on hand and that's true for tools that you may only take a day or two to get. This thing takes like three weeks, right?
00:14:40
Speaker
Hm. Yeah, I've just never been satisfied with the result from it. So to invest more money in the same thing just feels weird. Well, assume with that one you have, though, completely shattered. Yeah, then we can't make rasks anymore. Well, no, you just have to go back to the longer hand process, right? Right. So that's the trade-off. Exactly. Would you rather spend? The $400 or the extra time.
00:15:21
Speaker
let that run, even if it's an interior process, let that keep going. And that lets you run a parallel process when you can experiment with other methods and technologies without the pressure of saying, uh-oh, I don't know how I'm going to do this. That's true. Yeah, I'm definitely guilty of that, of being sick of a process and then just stopping it completely. Instead of continuing production, I will stop it until I figure out the new way. And that's not the best for workflow. Absolutely.
00:15:30
Speaker
to do with the hard way.
00:15:52
Speaker
All right, I should probably order one. You should order one. How much are they? Like hundreds of dollars? 250, 300, something like that. Not that bad, really. Yeah, it's funny. There's something about like if it were 400 or 500, I would kind of be on the side and holy cow. Like, that's a lot. Obviously, there's no resale value to it either, you know? Right, right.
00:16:13
Speaker
If it were $100, I would be mad at you. Yeah, exactly. No, I totally agree with you. It's funny that we both have this sort of mental like, well, $400 or $500 is something you think about. Anything less than that, you just jump on it. Right, right. I think I was going to ask, do you ever cut G10? I have, yeah. Any recommendations or advice?
00:16:35
Speaker
Yeah, so I've cut G10 carbon fiber and some similar materials. We used to do a lot of inlays for the Norseman, and we're probably going to bring that back and start doing a lot more. We use a diamond cut router bit, I think it's called.
00:16:54
Speaker
It's an eighth inch end mill that looks like it has a wicked crosshatch pattern grind to it. All the cuts are going different ways. It looks like a burr tool. Like a what?
00:17:06
Speaker
Like a grinding burr bit? Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, like a double cut grinding burr, I think they call it. Do you know where you get this from? I got them from eBay, like just cheap ones and they work great. It's carbide. If you go to the Harvey Tool catalog, you'll see their version of it, which is probably $80. Sorry, who was that? Harvey Tool.
00:17:28
Speaker
Okay, Harvey's got one. Yeah. So at least that'll give you like information and pictures. Is it something I can just look up on eBay or is it worth you sending me the link to that?
Cutting G10: Tools and Tips
00:17:40
Speaker
I bought them like six years ago. So just Google it. I'll go find them today.
00:17:46
Speaker
Because I heard you can use solid carbide end mills, but they basically immediately dull. Now, they may stay at a certain dullness and thus cut at that level for some period of time. Yep. Right. But it's also, we only have to do a couple of knife handles, actually, is a little video example. And it would be cool to maybe, if anything, show the difference, compare the solid carbide against buying a diamond coating.
00:18:15
Speaker
Yeah, I've never bought the DLC-coated end mills, although I've always thought if we do a lot more DLC-coating on the knives and blades and stuff, we should just throw a couple end mills in there too and they can coat the end mills for us instead of paying the huge up charge. Harvey, you totally should do that. That's hilarious. Yeah, but I think we've absolutely broken up with our current DLC supplier.
00:18:39
Speaker
Oh, really? Yeah. Not working? No, they're terrible. Just too many headaches, too many back and forths, too many problems, too many scrap parts. We just can't sustain that. That's frustrating. It's that and going back to how it was hilarious. Somebody posted something on Instagram a couple of weeks ago on anodizing in. Somebody else, I don't even know if I knew who it was, just posted like,
00:19:06
Speaker
What are you sending them to WTF anodizing? And then Jake Pearson saw the comment and responded back on something funny. And I was like, it's just funny because it did.
00:19:16
Speaker
The joke about from that Jay Pearson video, but also, Ben Bullis is doing this Freelux light, and he's crushing it, and they look great. But he's, I know, really struggling. I think he said he's tried four different ones, and the last guy, they looked great, but the deeper he got through the box, they don't look good. And, you know, again, I don't think any anodizers out there thinking, hey, let's do a
Supplier Challenges: Anodizing and DLC
00:19:38
Speaker
hose job on this batch. I just think it's...
00:19:43
Speaker
I don't know whether it's because the labor that you employ to actually run the anodizing line is just not super hyper attention to detail or what, but there seems like a huge opportunity to do, it's not gonna be cheap, but to do high end cosmetic anodizing. And I'm sure there are places that do that. Or DLC or whatever. Yeah.
00:20:03
Speaker
Yeah, and that's what the guy, the DLC guy was telling me. He's like, we don't do decorative coating. We do industrial coating. And I'm like, wouldn't you want an industrial coating to hold up and not have missing spots and not have big scratches in your $100,000 mold? You need attention to detail. It's the same story.
00:20:20
Speaker
Yeah, I get it. Is it expensive to bring up, not that you should do it, but I'm just curious for this idea of a new business, is it a lot of money to bring up a DLC line? You need, yeah it is. The machine itself is minimum half a million dollars.
00:20:37
Speaker
And then you need a seven tank ultrasonic cleaning system. And it's a serious investment. I've toured a couple facilities and it's like, whoa. Anodizing aluminum, however, is much less. I mean, I used to do it in my garage with rubber made tubs.
00:20:57
Speaker
and sulfuric acid from the car parts store. So I've been talking to Ben actually about him doing it in house if he wants to. And he's thinking about it because you get that control. Once you get over the learning curve of you stop making garbage parts because you're not good at it yet, once you do enough parts then
00:21:17
Speaker
then the quality control is purely in your hands and you know how to fix them, you know how to not scratch them, you know how to get the right color and all that. Right. I guess my question, not to be the party pooper, but is that realistic and sustainable doing so also in a way that's legal? If you're doing it as a business and you've got these chemicals on hand and you have it, like again,
00:21:40
Speaker
If it's never going to be anything big, and it's just you doing it, that's fine. But if you bring in employees, and now you've got to comply with requirements, and I need to go tour an anodizer. I've never done that. But I don't think it's anything like DLC in terms of the initial capital. But I do think there's a lot when it comes to the infrastructure and the safety regs and the processes to do it at scale. That's a good point. Yeah, that's a really good point. I never thought about that.
Entrepreneurship Challenges and Growth
00:22:05
Speaker
Interesting opportunity.
00:22:07
Speaker
interesting thing. I used to do a lot of anodizing in my garage both before the knife stuff and easing into the knife stuff a little bit and
00:22:20
Speaker
Yeah, and doing my research and everything, I found there were lots of guys doing both hobby anodizing for themselves, for other people, especially in the paintball world. A lot of guys want their paintball guns all crazy anodized. So there were guys doing these very small scale, very custom jobs. And even I did that for a little bit, and it doesn't pay anything you're making $5 to $10 an hour doing these custom jobs.
00:22:49
Speaker
There is a market for it. But with anodizing, if you send 100 parts out to a big shop, it might end up only costing you $4 a part, if that. Oh, yeah. No, it's super cheap. Our anodizers, $65 minimum. And then when we send, we have this one inch by four inch long round part that has some futures machine into it. When we send them out to anodize, I literally think it's $1 or $2 a part. Right.
00:23:18
Speaker
It's interesting too because I've been reading a couple of good books on some entrepreneurship stuff and one of them talks about kind of that balance of being inexperienced and naive enough to believe you can do it and how you and I in some respects, we still have that hunger and drive but we're also now too, we know too much to be innocent about.
00:23:41
Speaker
About like here I am being like you can't start your anodizing line blah blah blah safety regulations and growth and I'm thinking because that's the problem I face in my businesses. It's like hey, you've got to deal with with something at scale I can't be sitting there violating ocean in a corner trying to do something. It doesn't make sense It's not a good thing But you don't think about that stuff when you're a one-man band and you're just crushing right because you feel like you can do Absolutely anything and you want to
00:24:07
Speaker
Yeah, that's funny. I know you get that 45x loop. Do you use a microscope? I don't. And I think I would like to get one eventually.
00:24:20
Speaker
Yeah, I had no, again, it just kind of was like mind-blowing moments. I did pick up this little eBay or Amazon $80 USB. It goes up to 500X and it is awesome. But now what I'm learning and realizing and seeing is I want a stereo microscope. Right. I've heard of that too.
00:24:40
Speaker
It doesn't seem like there's any obvious answers on the $100 US because I'd like for it to be on a screen so that I can show other people in the shop or I can show a video. That's my kind of thing to look into. Because you can look at ships and you can look at tools and it's really...
00:24:59
Speaker
looking at an insert with that 45X loop that you and I, actually you showed to me, is great. But I couldn't see where spots with that. And in fact, it was worse. It looked perfect, which is almost a false read. Because when I put it under 250, you all of a sudden realize, oh, wow, the edge is gone there. Really? And you couldn't see it on the 45? Not only could you not see it, it looked perfect. That's what upsets me.
00:25:28
Speaker
Well, yeah, the problem with going too much magnification is you start to see everything, even if it doesn't matter. Well, but maybe it does matter. If it's the leading edge, then it could really matter when you're entering the hole. Yeah, I mean, it's something I noticed. I use my 45x loop.
00:25:51
Speaker
many times every single day, whether I'm looking at end mills or looking at parts or whatever. And the second I started using that a couple of years ago, my life all of a sudden became harder because now the parts aren't good enough. And now, oh, there's a scratch. And now, you know, this tool is not sharp enough. So I have to get a new one. And your game steps up. Yeah, but look at you. It's like you're now going. It's like you know too much, too. It's like, back it down a little.
00:26:20
Speaker
Interesting.
Business Growth and Financial Focus
00:26:23
Speaker
So what do you see today? Today I am just rasks. I did a night run of a couple parts and I broke an engraving end mill, but I see exactly why it kind of totally makes sense. And then... Why'd you break it?
00:26:36
Speaker
I'm doing an engraving pattern of our Grimsmo Viking head logo all over the scale of the knife and I mirrored it onto the lock side scale and there's this ramp where the pocket clip goes up where it gets thicker but since I mirrored the engraving pattern it doesn't know that that ramp exists so it broke at that point and that makes total sense. Other than that it looks great.
00:26:59
Speaker
Will it handle? No, it'll be under the clip so you won't be able to see it at all. Pretty awesome. So throw a new animal in, run it, make two more blades, and then that is the end of all the parts that I need to make for the rask.
00:27:14
Speaker
There's only 10 left. There's only 10 knives left. And I've made all the parts. And Eric has them all. And it's so good to see them and feel them and be like, oh, they're right here. This is it. This is the end. Right. Right. Oh my. I want to E5 you again. Yeah. Out of 300 customers, there's two guys I can't get a hold of, which is pissing me off. Because I have their knives finished, but I'm not going to ship it to an address that's like a year or more old without confirming with them that they still live there.
00:27:43
Speaker
Sure. Well, that's frustrating. Yeah. And they paid in full, huh? Exactly, right. So I'm just trying. Yeah, I actually sent them a letter in the mail like a week or two ago. So I'm like, well, I'll send them a letter and they can email me from there. Yeah, just to confirm. But anyway, yeah, super awesome. Awesome. Yeah.
00:28:08
Speaker
Dude, good for you. Good for you. Holy cow. So it's so funny because I've already moved on in my mind. My part of the rasks of production is not done. I mean, I'm still emailing customers and shipping knives and all this stuff. But in my head, I'm already four steps ahead. I'm like, OK, what's September, October, November, December going to look like?
00:28:32
Speaker
What's the next project? What's the next product? What are we going to focus on? How do we tweak up the Norseman? I've been spending a lot of time testing and redesigning the Norseman and making it better. And I got new fixtures to make because the old ones suck and all this stuff. And there's been a lot of tangent rabbit holes that I've been down in the past week, which has been really fun, but also kind of like that. Oh, I can do anything. Yeah, I should do that. Yeah, I can do that. Oh, wait a minute.
00:28:59
Speaker
Yeah well you should I mean look we've talked about this a lot you've been you're arguably your decision-making process has been clouded or incapacitated by the RAS pre-order but you still have to
00:29:17
Speaker
It's almost like now is the time for you to actually now build this business out. We talk so much about cash flow. We talk so much about processes, reporting, financial projections. Yeah, you've got a huge weight off your shoulders. I don't want to say you've got a new weight on your shoulders, but you don't get to go off in la la land. You've got it now.
00:29:37
Speaker
get this into a profit. I hate to say it. You do this because you love making knives and you love what you do, but I don't think it's a hobby. You want this to be a job that affords you the lifestyle that you think is commensurate with the skill and capabilities you've got because that means you need to make money. No, this is a legit business now and we've got to stop playing around and actually look at the profit loss and look at the cash flow and look at the forecasts and all that stuff.
00:30:06
Speaker
I'm super excited. Yeah, which is awesome. Yeah, thanks. What are you up to this week?
Keynote Speaker Excitement at Startup Weekend
00:30:13
Speaker
This Friday? I'm actually really excited. I'm the keynote speaker for this thing tonight called Startup Weekend. I love it because there's all this stuff lately on, come run this mud racer, this go rock challenge, and this rah, rah, rah, rah at sports. And don't get me wrong, sports I get are great. It's just not my thing.
00:30:35
Speaker
And this is that for entrepreneurship. It is a 54-hour, yeah, go look at it in your free time. Go Google Startup Weekend and watch one of the two-minute videos on it. But it's a kind of extended pitch weekend where you get together, pitch an idea, form a team, and go through the process of doing very sort of business plan or analysis or business model canvas things to put this idea together.
00:31:04
Speaker
Even if, what I love about it is that even if your idea is not necessarily the best or something you want to run with, it doesn't matter because it's not the output, it's the input. It's going through that critical thinking and process. So it's the first one that they're ever doing in this game county where we live and we're kicking it off tonight and it goes through Sunday afternoon. So I've got my speech ready and it's got me fired up kind of talking about entrepreneurship again. Yeah, it's awesome.
00:31:35
Speaker
would be should be cool. Otherwise, the Cogzo guys coming were, I've actually done a really good job of planning out and getting ahead on some Wednesday widgets. So my sort of goal is traveling a lot. God, that's crazy. It's almost September. I'm taking a week off and going up to Cape Cod with the family for vacation. That'll give me a lot of time.
00:31:57
Speaker
to work on, I think I've mentioned it, but we're redoing the whole NYC CNC website for all this learning content, learning Fusion 360 online training, speeds and feeds. So as much as I'll take some time off, it'll also be good to kind of just chill and do some thinking on that content. And then I'm going to Germany for emo. So between those two, I wanted to have some widgets pre-recorded, but also I'm really enjoying moving,
Strategic Thinking for Business Efficiency
00:32:26
Speaker
It's funny. I don't know why I feel guilty saying it. I guess I feel guilty because I've seen people criticize. I've seen people criticize the people that don't get their hands dirty anymore. I don't think I'll ever be that guy. But I don't like it's for me. My job is to steer the ship and and and think about how to run machines. Think about, you know, right now I'm looking at finding new tools I didn't even know existed that we can use to make processes better and and manage that.
00:32:54
Speaker
And I actually enjoy it. I don't want to feel guilty about that. So getting the nitty gritty tasks in the day-to-day off my plate, putting a passion into building the Wednesday widgets ahead of time versus kind of thinking, oh, but I got to film a video. What am I going to do on it? It makes me actually really excited. Makes me really happy.
00:33:13
Speaker
Yeah, and you can't do all that critical thinking when you're stuck behind a machine, you know, 10 hours a day making parts, which is something that I'm doing, you know? Like, I am the only machinist, I'm the only park maker in our business, and I want to be the big picture thinker guy, and I have to do that too, right?
00:33:33
Speaker
But I could definitely see myself transitioning, you know, if eventually I hire a machinist or two, and then they can just crush it all day, make it parts. Or, you know, grow a machinist, you know, teach one, train one. Yeah, that's where I want to head in the next, well, year, I guess, or less. And, absolutely.
00:33:53
Speaker
I've been rethinking, you know, my mornings used to be, um, I get to the shop at about six 10. I used to do our accounting reconciliation first thing in the morning that I used to do some other stuff. And I'm now kind of rethinking.
00:34:06
Speaker
It was actually something I did in high school. In high school, I didn't have every class every day. Does that make sense? Sometimes you didn't have a class until two days later. So I used to try to do the homework for the class further away first because that forced me to still do the homework for the next day's class. Basically it forces you to kind of get ahead.
00:34:29
Speaker
And so what I'm realizing now is that the mornings are generally more quiet, there's less interruptions, there's less emails, there's less, you know, hey, this happened, this problem, can you help me with this? Can you look at this? So it sounds silly, but take that time to do your fresh, critical thinking and know that, you know, I could still get the accounting done at the end of the day. That's kind of just mindless process.
00:34:48
Speaker
Well, it's that whole thing we've
Work-Life Balance and Productivity
00:34:50
Speaker
talked about. You only have 100 decisions in a day, you know, the theory. Right. So you use the critical thinking in the morning when you're freshest, and then as long as you don't ignore the accounting, which I know you won't. But yeah, that's end of day, or at least low critical thinking tasks.
00:35:10
Speaker
Some days, it's funny, this other book I'm reading on entrepreneurship right now talks about how if you wanna focus on work-life balance, good for you, but someone else is gonna beat you because if you're all in, you're gonna work your butt off. And that doesn't mean you can't see a family and all that, but it's just kinda like, hey, game on. And I can't stop, I don't know why, but I can't stop thinking about this quote from that guy, I think his name was Ferdinand Porsche, the guy that invented Porsche.
00:35:39
Speaker
And he was talking about how his ideal race car engine would basically give it all, and the engine would literally fall apart as soon as it crossed the finish line. And some days, as an entrepreneur, I feel like that. I'm just putting that last little thing I can do, and then I'm just totally zapped. Yesterday was like that for me, absolutely. And if you can be totally OK with that, I put in a good day today. I'm going to fall asleep easily.
00:36:08
Speaker
Yeah, when you wait I mean you have to wake up you have to look what you do for sure right right quick question How soon after you wake up are you out the door to the shop How
Morning Routines and Preparation
00:36:23
Speaker
much time yeah, I'm just curious
00:36:26
Speaker
I right now set my alarm for 6 a.m. I wake up, I immediately turn the shower on, it takes a second to warm up, brush my teeth, I take a pretty quick shower, and then my outfit is, I don't really care what I wear, I just like grab my shorts and shirt right there. And I'm usually in the truck by 6 o'clock. Wow, so you just get up and shower and go.
00:36:49
Speaker
Yeah, gone. That's awesome. My wife gets up to 6.15, so I usually actually don't see her because I'm going to miss her by like four minutes. And then usually the kids are still asleep, which is a trade-off, but I would rather see them at night. Basically, that's what I do by this trade-off. And you figure out whatever works best for you and your family and all that stuff. Do you get breakfast?
00:37:14
Speaker
No, I I do I'm so funny guilty of this used to for years for 10 years I made my own coffee for the last six nine months. I now buy Starbucks every morning. So I've become that guy But it's it's it's right there on the way to the shop. It's become this like it's a it's not just a coffee It's like a creature thing to me. It's a little treat to myself. I love it awesome So oh well, I feel feel whatever it's weird
00:37:45
Speaker
What time do you get up? You get up early. I usually get up five at five usually. It's nice when I wake up at 4.57 before my alarm and I'm like, oh, yeah. I can listen to my alarm go off. Not always. Sometimes I sleep until six or seven. But for the most part, when I'm on it, I try to get up at five as long as I'm asleep before midnight.
00:38:07
Speaker
And then for the past three years, I've been going through several different morning routine things, which could be an entire conversation in and of itself.
Balancing Home and Office Productivity
00:38:21
Speaker
Are you still doing the yoga? Yeah, I'm still. Oh, you're sorry. The meditating. Sorry. I haven't been doing it for a week or two. I'm trying a new Tony Robbins method, which is really empowering that I like a lot.
00:38:36
Speaker
And now we're in summer camp schedule, so I usually have to be around to take the kids to summer camp around 8.30. And in school time, I usually take them to school for around 8.32, so then I come into the shop, and it's 9 o'clock.
00:38:53
Speaker
You know, sometimes I would like to be able to get up and be at the shop at five, like today I was here pretty early because it's a podcast day. But now I still have to go home and take the kids to camp from here, which is fine. But yeah, so I don't usually get to the shop. An average day would be nine o'clock. An early day would be about seven. And then yeah, I get a lot of work done at home though.
00:39:19
Speaker
Yeah, if you go work at home, then that's a totally acceptable thing. I will say it's amazing. Like yesterday, I looked up, it was 907. And I mean, I got more work done by then than I think a lot of people do by 1 o'clock. Like it's insane what... I was like, good grief. Even I'm like, I could use a break. It's already gotten this much through.
00:39:40
Speaker
But it's awesome. We live in a great world. This morning I had a tumble running. I got a cart ready for powder coat. I got one of the hoses running when the other ones were troubleshooting a fixture that we're not happy with. I've got a Photoshop open to do a thumbnail for YouTube. And there were six other things I did before
00:39:59
Speaker
We got enough of them at 7 o'clock. Exactly. I usually take an hour to myself, 5 to 6, and then I have from 6 to 8.30 to do whatever I need until everybody else wakes up when we make breakfast and all that. I can usually get a lot of work done at home, whether it's CAD-CAM or research or email
Nearing Completion of Rask Production
00:40:17
Speaker
or planning, whatever.
00:40:21
Speaker
I'm really on the fence. I saw the WhatsApp group message with us and Amish and Ken about Amish's new computer. He bought one of those HP Z, was it two Z's or Z2's? And I really would like to splurge, it's not a splurge, it's a legitimate like reason, but 1500 bucks for like a Rockstar Fusion 360 computer. Because it matters and I've got to do some, I've actually got to do some heavy modeling to get some stuff cooking.
00:40:51
Speaker
I don't know. What are your thoughts on that? My computer's been freezing up and restarting out of nowhere. Every time that happens, I think of Amish's computer and I'm like, okay, give me a few months to make some money and then we'll think about it. I would literally rather spend money on
00:41:12
Speaker
Like in the end bills. Yeah, totally. Which is weird. Yeah. Anyways. Anyway, yeah, last thing, we're going camping this weekend with the family. Oh, awesome. Just local area? Yeah, local area. We're going to Lake Erie, get a nice little campground on the lake. And it's my birthday weekend, turning 34 this weekend, so. Happy birthday. Yeah. I was excited. We're having our daughter's first birthday tomorrow. Nice.
00:41:41
Speaker
So when you say camping, are you literally pitching a tent? Is her birthday tomorrow? No, 29th. Okay, yeah, mine's 26th. Close enough. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, so my wife bought a tent on Amazon which hasn't arrived yet and we're leaving tonight. So hopefully it comes today. That's hilarious.
00:42:00
Speaker
Have fun. Congrats on wrapping up the rest. In some respects, that all started when we started talking, right? Because I've been doing these for two years now, and it's become ridiculous, the time frame. We are not fast, but we're becoming fast. You're becoming known-paced. How about that? Yeah, exactly. We'll be all caught up by next week's podcast, so let's stay tuned for that. Awesome. I'll talk to you Friday. Sounds good. Take care. Sounds great. Have a good day. Bye.