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00:00:00
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#404 Life as a small business owner
3k Plays7 days ago
TOPICS:
- Making ultra flat precision washers
- Fjell knives are starting to selling
- Custom ultra precision indicator stands
- Tarrifs
- Post heat treat hard turning
- Hardmilling success
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Episode 404 Humor
00:00:01
John S
Good morning. Welcome to the Business of Machining episode 404. My name is John Saunders.
00:00:06
johngrimsmo
And my name is John Grimsmo.
00:00:08
John S
I believe there's some funny story that Facebook or Meta named their shop 404 because something about like Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg won't find it. Cause that means you're lost or you're in the wrong place.
00:00:23
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:00:24
John S
This was like on a social bed, like the TV show or something that wasn't like anything insider, but ah I am just chuckling about that idea that like these weird meta manifestations of like,
00:00:36
John S
you know, whatever. Like the guy that did control delete, he died like two years ago and it was like, yeah, I just ran him. Like it's just what made sense to me. And then it's like, becomes this like major part of many of our upbringings.
00:00:47
johngrimsmo
he
00:00:48
John S
Yeah.
00:00:49
johngrimsmo
So how are you?
00:00:49
John S
Yeah. Uh, good.
Managing Machine Shop Stress
00:00:52
John S
I was definitely, um, I w we were, I definitely was more under the gun Monday, but, um,
00:01:03
John S
Good now, for sure. Which I think is probably ah too much of a common theme, I guess, now that we kind of listen to ourselves talk.
00:01:04
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:01:09
John S
But whatever, whatever yeah.
00:01:09
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah. Like like the highs and lows kind of thing of like stress or calm.
00:01:15
John S
I, again, underestimated the burden of like all the little stuff that was going on. And then look, the the candid answer is as a job ah shop owner, you you end up, lots of stuff comes your way. And um the Some of it you just can't control.
00:01:33
John S
And that's just, you you know, you roll with the punches. oh So here's what you can control. When that's happening, the the John that wants to go spend two hours on the Tormach robot or two hours um being a surgeon, like the the whatever, you just have to totally nuke that.
00:01:43
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:01:50
John S
And then all you do is you become like like Santa Claus at the mall.
00:01:50
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:01:54
John S
All I'm going to do is just... sit here and then in it in a good way, i don't mean it in like a cheeky way.
00:01:59
johngrimsmo
Not totally.
00:01:59
John S
um I think the stress comes from the denial of like, no, I'm going to sit here and think. It's like, no, you're not.
00:02:06
johngrimsmo
Yeah, sometimes you have that luxury and sometimes you don't know. Sometimes you have to just, you know, look at your list and be like, it's go time right now. These important things have to get done. I wish I could do all these other things.
00:02:17
John S
Right.
00:02:17
johngrimsmo
Sometimes you can't. um I, on Monday, had a, on Sunday Monday, I can't remember, um stressful day. Things were going on that just kind of had my mind all twisted up. And I went to work late and
Creating Specialized Washers
00:02:30
johngrimsmo
i was like,
00:02:31
johngrimsmo
I just ah just want to like have fun on something productive. I need to shove my brain off and I need to be that technician and make a really cool thing that I need to make. I think we talked about it last week, the flat washers with a thread in the middle.
00:02:46
John S
No.
00:02:47
johngrimsmo
I think we did, to inspect the bearing pocket on the fjell handle, right?
00:02:50
John S
Oh, sorry. you Sorry. you You were going to take the parallel. I didn't realize I a thread in I'm sorry.
00:02:55
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it has a thread so that they can be installed and and held in place in the handle, and then we can CMM that surface.
00:02:58
John S
Okay. Yeah.
00:03:02
johngrimsmo
So it's basically like a half-inch diameter washer with, instead of a hole through the middle, it's got a thread, and it's about a sixteenth of an inch.
00:03:10
John S
Yes. The... the See, it's 60,000 thickness, but it's the thread is what? An 80-pitch thread? le There's no...
00:03:17
johngrimsmo
It's a, yeah, 64-pitch thread.
00:03:19
John S
Yeah, that's crazy.
00:03:20
johngrimsmo
Yeah, so it's ah with a chamfer on both sides, so there's a few threads in there, plenty to... plenty to grab and it's not like a load holding thing. It just needs to hold itself in place. um So I came in, I made those.
00:03:32
johngrimsmo
it was super wonderful. it was just like, be the surgeon, just have fun, de-stress, um made them on the Willowman.
00:03:37
John S
Yeah, right, right.
00:03:39
johngrimsmo
You know, I didn't bother grabbing the part and parting it off. So I just kind of, I kissed it on all four sides with the high feet end mill.
00:03:45
John S
Yeah.
00:03:47
johngrimsmo
So I left and there's a hole through it. So it basically left these four little tabs,
00:03:50
John S
That's funny. Yeah.
00:03:52
johngrimsmo
And then I could literally just go in there and crack it off, like, and just pry it off the end. And then, so I was left with a beautiful part that's literally finished on both sides, but with a little nub on top two.
00:04:02
John S
Yeah.
00:04:04
johngrimsmo
And I was going to have the guy surface grind it, but then I'm like, I think I can grind it down to almost nothing just with, like, by hand against a sandpaper, um a disc sander.
00:04:13
John S
Mm-hmm.
00:04:15
johngrimsmo
And then I think I can lap it into spec on my cast iron lapping plates. And i was I was in that mode. I was like, I don't want to worry about or think about anything. I'm just going lap this part as flat as possible.
00:04:26
johngrimsmo
And boy, did I ever. And I made two of them. And, you know, maybe not as perfect as I would have wanted. One came in at 0625. One is 0624.
00:04:37
johngrimsmo
um I could bring the second one that tenth down to match.
00:04:37
John S
Okay. Yes.
00:04:40
johngrimsmo
don't really care right now. They are each plane, each side is flat to within 11 millionths of an inch, like half a light band. um And then parallelism is ah about a tenth of sweeping it under the indicator.
00:04:56
John S
This is an ask. I mean, it probably probably.
00:04:57
johngrimsmo
Yeah, like, and and I was actually playing with the hand lapping. I can lap out that out of parallelism just by putting more pressure on one side and lap it into place.
00:05:06
John S
Yeah, that's cool. That's really cool.
00:05:07
johngrimsmo
so that was really cool. And i it was like one o'clock by the time I like wrapped up. And I was like, I could keep doing this for another two hours, but I'm going to go to bed. um And at the end of the day, like the application is looking for thousands of an inch, not tenths.
00:05:23
John S
Mm-hmm.
00:05:23
johngrimsmo
So like if these are out by a tenth, not an issue whatsoever. Basically, I want to know, these are now fake bearings that can be CMM scanned um with an ultra smooth la lap surface and telling what the two walls of this integral handle are doing after machining. If they're twisting, if they're expanding, if they're tilting.
00:05:44
johngrimsmo
So that ideally, if we see a trend, we can then put it, like when we're making them, instead of tilting it to 90 degrees, we can tilt it to 90.021 degrees.
00:05:52
John S
Yeah. Right.
00:05:53
johngrimsmo
Right and like preempt this and then do some before and afters and be like, oh yeah, we we got this. So I've now made the parts and we haven't see them numbed yet, but that's the next step.
00:06:03
John S
What reminds me of, um, when years ago when we were touring the, oh my God, the shop that makes the bearings and complete, um, thank you.
00:06:12
johngrimsmo
Miltera.
00:06:13
John S
And how there's some eccentric turning nature to preload a shaft of a, of a, uh, turbo or here, like in your handle like situation, it's a, it's a slotted
00:06:23
johngrimsmo
Hmm.
Precision in Machining
00:06:28
John S
sandwich or whatever.
00:06:29
John S
So the idea that maybe you put a spacer in there, that's three thou under, and then you actually clamp it together to preload it in, then do that machining work and then let it out.
00:06:29
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:06:35
johngrimsmo
Hmm. That's a good point.
00:06:38
John S
And it's like, you built it. it Like that's, it's really cool.
00:06:41
johngrimsmo
Yep. Yep. And then actually material stresses is another thing I was thinking, like, do we stress relief the material beforehand, which we're not currently doing?
00:06:50
John S
This is Thai.
00:06:51
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:06:52
John S
I don't know much about Is it stress-y material?
00:06:54
johngrimsmo
it It's not bad, but it is possible to de-stress it, which could take some warp or some movement out of it. um So it's it's a consideration for sure. um
00:07:04
John S
You'd be able to do that in-house on your...
00:07:04
johngrimsmo
but we We could, but it takes hours and hours and hours and hours. So it's probably something we'd send out. I don't know.
00:07:11
John S
Got it.
00:07:11
johngrimsmo
ah I haven't gotten that far yet. We could certainly do it to test, but yeah, I mean, with this procedure of CMMing, we could validate any results, really.
00:07:22
John S
Yeah, sure.
00:07:23
johngrimsmo
which is super cool. um And one of the coolest things is, so I made these two flat flat parts, slapped them to three micron, really shiny. um Do they ring together?
00:07:33
johngrimsmo
They ring together.
00:07:34
John S
either That's cool.
00:07:35
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah.
00:07:36
John S
the Why couldn't you just CMM the surface that the barrier is up against? Or is it?
00:07:43
johngrimsmo
I can't reach it.
00:07:44
John S
You can't. Okay.
00:07:45
johngrimsmo
Yeah, even with ah even if you made a custom probe tip with a you know big ball and a very skinny shaft, it would be awkward. um But nothing off the shelf reaches that particular geometry. So that's kind of where I'm at.
00:07:58
John S
And you don't want to hard gauge it where you feel with like a Deltronics style.
00:08:01
johngrimsmo
That's what we're doing right now.
00:08:03
John S
Okay.
00:08:03
johngrimsmo
We're were're using gauge blocks in 1,000 increments.
00:08:03
John S
Yeah,
00:08:06
johngrimsmo
um But that doesn't tell you taper, warp, positional direction of change, things like that.
00:08:12
John S
yeah, yeah. No, just talking that loud. I would think though, if you took a Deltronics pin, which are cheap, you know, 10 bucks each or something, those are round pins, but you could relieve it.
00:08:18
johngrimsmo
Yep,
00:08:26
John S
um with a grinder or even a hard turning lathe. So you could turn it into a lollipop. Now the services you turn will be, are just relief services. They're no longer qualified, but now you have this um thing that lets lollipop that you could intense increments for cheap that you could start to feel where, where different parts are are tight.
00:08:33
johngrimsmo
yeah.
00:08:43
johngrimsmo
True.
00:08:45
John S
Right?
00:08:46
johngrimsmo
You'd need kind of the whole range of multiple tenths to get, yeah.
00:08:48
John S
Yeah. Right. Pain in butt. Yeah. Yeah.
00:08:50
johngrimsmo
Whereas we have the CMM and it works anyway. And the way we've been doing with the gauge blocks is we install the actual ball bearings, bearing cages, which have these 10 points of contact, like 10 balls.
00:08:53
John S
Yeah.
00:09:02
johngrimsmo
So they a flat gauge block slides in between, but you don't have this point contact, you know, this ah this fine feel.
00:09:09
John S
Right.
00:09:12
johngrimsmo
And we only have one-hour increments of gauge blocks, so...
00:09:13
John S
Oh.
00:09:16
John S
Sorry, the way easier to way to do it that I'd be a doofus on would be just to take McMaster ball bearings, which are probably sold in 10th increments, and then just, really?
00:09:24
johngrimsmo
They're not. Yeah.
00:09:26
John S
okay. So you get super, super gloomed piece of plastic.
00:09:27
johngrimsmo
Because that was my.
00:09:31
John S
and then use that as your, yeah exactly.
00:09:31
johngrimsmo
Sure. A toothpick or something. And and yeah, exactly. um No, because one of the fears was the first some of the first handles we made this gap where the bearings go was too wide by a thou or two causing some problems.
00:09:44
John S
who Right.
00:09:45
johngrimsmo
I'm like, OK, let's just find some ceramic bearings that are. you know, tenths or a thou bigger. And I can't. Maybe in steel bearings it's more common, but in ceramic I can't.
00:09:52
John S
Interesting.
00:09:57
johngrimsmo
And our supplier will sell bearings in plus one micron range, plus one micron, two micron, three micron, four micron, but that's not enough to catch the difference.
00:10:06
John S
Yeah,
00:10:07
johngrimsmo
Which is basically them just making a big batch and sorting them by like, these are nominal and these ones are out, tell me what you want.
00:10:10
John S
yeah. Yeah, right.
00:10:14
John S
Right, right, right.
00:10:15
johngrimsmo
So. But yeah, always fun making ultra-flat, ultra-precision parts. that's That's my zen.
00:10:22
John S
So you have done all that, but you haven't seen him end it? We don't know the punchline yet?
00:10:25
johngrimsmo
Correct. Correct, yeah.
00:10:25
John S
Okay, got it. God, well, hopefully before 45 minutes is up today, we'll know more or else or or else Justin from PDX is gonna have to talk about Phil from DSI driving around the parking lot, which Justin, tip of the hat, we were all having a good laugh about that.
00:10:31
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:10:43
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:10:47
johngrimsmo
So what are you up to?
00:10:49
John S
Uh, so going back to that kind of, and I bring this stuff up, not cause I want to make excuses, complain, or certainly not sympathy, but I think it's kind of like life as a small business owner, what I've, what I need to do a better job of in this, like this conversation with you in these conversations are what help this kind of stuff for sure. Like, thank you.
00:11:06
John S
Um, it's just kind of like, okay, then go just do a tasky project where it doesn't matter if you get interrupted because you're just doing like whatever. And so, um, we got a humidifier cause we've realized that humidity levels go up when multiple machines are doing through spittle points.
00:11:18
johngrimsmo
You got a dehumidifier.
00:11:20
John S
Did I say humidifier?
00:11:21
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:11:22
John S
Sorry. Thank you. Um, humidity in the shops, great. 30% when we're normal stuff. But then when those plate machines start running, it will jump up to 50, 55%.
00:11:32
johngrimsmo
OK.
00:11:32
John S
And you've, that's a big difference.
00:11:34
johngrimsmo
Like you feel the environment.
00:11:35
John S
Oh yeah. Yeah. So bought dehumidifier, put it, um, right.
00:11:41
johngrimsmo
Big?
00:11:42
John S
No, I just, well, so I did that kind of like for three grand on global industrial, I could go crazy. and I was like, you know what? The Amazon one for, they're not cheap, uh, three, 400 bucks claims.
00:11:53
John S
It does a, I don't know what it was for 5,000 square foot house, which is probably total BS, but
00:11:59
johngrimsmo
Mm-hmm.
00:12:00
John S
Um, our machine shop bay itself is 4,000 square feet. And really i only, the humidity goes up, um, really in the front half, which is quote unquote 2000 square feet. And I just want to see how much does this pull it down by, um,
00:12:17
John S
And so I actually say all that. i don't really have a good answer for you yet. We just put it on the ground where we had a sink drain, but it seems to be working well enough that I'm going to move it.
00:12:27
John S
um You're going to laugh. I'm actually going to put it on top of the VF6 because that kind of gets it to where I think it's, there's more airflow in the, in the middle of think of things.
00:12:32
johngrimsmo
Interesting.
00:12:36
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:12:37
John S
And then I'm just going to run the PEX drain down to a drain that we have of
00:12:41
johngrimsmo
Just drain it back into the VF-6 top up any lost coolant.
00:12:44
John S
So I thought ah i actually, i really might do that.
00:12:49
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, maybe.
00:12:51
John S
I don't think it's a bad idea.
00:12:52
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:12:54
John S
um
00:12:54
johngrimsmo
It's probably not the cleanest water quality, but it's, I don't know.
00:12:59
John S
i don't know if it's not, but it's, How is it any different than like the coolant that hits the ceiling of the enclosure and then condensates back?
00:13:07
johngrimsmo
Sorry, it drops back and yeah.
00:13:08
John S
Yeah. Like, I don't think it's like when you pour the, um, before I hook up the hose, I wanted to see how long it took to fill up the hopper in it.
00:13:09
johngrimsmo
who
00:13:15
John S
Um, and that water is totally clean. Like you did. Well, I should test it, but, um, it's a really good point.
00:13:18
johngrimsmo
yeah test Yeah. Test the hardness, test everything. it Just curiosity. um um Like I know the dehumidifier in our basement, just a little tiny household one.
00:13:30
johngrimsmo
It'll fill whatever it is, a gallon or two gallons in hours sometimes.
00:13:34
John S
Yeah, yeah.
00:13:36
johngrimsmo
So you don't want to...
00:13:36
John S
But it's also not going to flood the tank-ish.
00:13:38
johngrimsmo
Well, it could flood as VF6 if you just said and forget it, right?
00:13:44
John S
Those are, I got to look if those are 95 gallons. I don't know. That's a good question.
00:13:51
John S
Be like the slowest flood ever. um It's not a big deal to run it dough out to a drain either, but I like what you're thinking.
00:13:57
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Yeah.
00:13:58
John S
um And then adding a little, you know, those bottle LK that you see like airports over the bottle filling stations. Got one of those because ah right, like just, yes, that's what we want.
00:14:07
johngrimsmo
Yes. Oh, cool.
00:14:11
John S
um
00:14:11
johngrimsmo
So it's like a Brita, but bit automatic.
00:14:14
John S
Yeah, think filtered.
00:14:14
johngrimsmo
Like, like what you put your bottle in front of it, and it just knows you're there, and it knows when it's full. and
00:14:19
John S
Tells you how many plastic bottles you've saved.
00:14:21
johngrimsmo
How much is one of those?
00:14:23
John S
Thousand bucks.
00:14:24
johngrimsmo
It's good money.
00:14:25
John S
Yeah, it's a lot, but yes.
00:14:26
johngrimsmo
But, you know, quality of life, spoil yourself kind of thing.
00:14:27
John S
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Put a shot.
00:14:32
johngrimsmo
And it's filtered, i assume.
00:14:34
John S
Excuse me?
00:14:35
johngrimsmo
Filtered water?
00:14:35
John S
Yeah.
00:14:36
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Okay.
00:14:38
John S
And then put some... Actually, I think I'm going to do a video on this, although it feels... Kind of, well, no, I am proud of it is that the honest answer. It feels like off topic to our channel, but um we were finally finishing up the front half of the shop overhaul. So we put, we bought two, actually my wife took care of this, Yvonne, two glass display cases. So we took down these old shelves that we had that's like swag wall.
00:15:01
John S
And we had these nice glass display cases um that show off, all these different parts and the parts themselves I've kind of arranged as a way of telling our story, which I really like.
00:15:07
johngrimsmo
Cool.
00:15:10
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:15:11
John S
Um, and then we had a, like a Porsche of working plastic Porsche engine model that we, my son and I built and then a Saturn five Lego that I love both these things.
00:15:22
John S
And so they were in our conference room, but kind of just bouncing around and I know Porsche engine is, um, bigger than a shoe box, but barely in the Saturn five Legos three feet tall or something.
00:15:26
johngrimsmo
Like big.
00:15:31
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:15:34
John S
Um,
00:15:34
johngrimsmo
Decently big, yeah.
00:15:35
John S
Yeah. So I went Send Cut Send Infusion sheet metal, custom made two brackets, Send Cut Send powder coated. um Full disclosure, a hundred bucks for both of them. Probably way cheaper if you order multiple multiple of them or didn't powder coat them, but like they look great. I don't have to sit there rattle can. I'm to mess with them. they look super nice. They're exactly sized for what I want.
00:15:55
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:15:56
John S
um And then, good.
00:15:59
johngrimsmo
You can't send parts out of fusion to SendCutsend, can you?
00:16:02
John S
You know, I don't know if there is a plugin. Um, I, but well, it actually is not into, it was not intuitive to me at first for sheet metal because you flat pack it and then you export a DXF that has the bend line in it.
00:16:06
johngrimsmo
It's not hard, but...
00:16:16
johngrimsmo
Interesting.
00:16:17
John S
And then send cut send makes it great. they They are
Shop Upgrades and Appearance
00:16:20
John S
very, make it very easy to do what you need to do.
00:16:23
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:16:24
John S
Like where to put bends, where to, uh, Powder coat, like, deeper options. Yeah, it's – I like how they work.
00:16:32
johngrimsmo
Sweet.
00:16:33
John S
And then got a wireless HDMI for the TV in the conference room because there's times where we've wanted to present in a meeting and just put something up on the screen. And we have a cord at HDMI, but it looked janky. And there's just something about, like, I want to put the plug the cord in. So now, we're wireless HDMI, remounted the TV, hit all the cords, so it's so the TV's floating on the wall.
00:16:52
John S
And anybody just plugs the wireless HDMI into their laptop, and they're up on the screen, which is –
00:16:56
johngrimsmo
So it's like a little module you plug into your laptop and I've never seen one.
00:16:59
John S
to Just a dongle.
00:17:01
johngrimsmo
i' Interesting.
00:17:02
John S
Uh-huh. So that's starting to wrap up kind of like what I want that shop to look like, you know?
00:17:07
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah.
00:17:08
John S
Um, it's, there's a, I think this is well-intentioned idea that like, if you came to the shop or when you come next time, it's like, oh man, like that's, I want to shut all these things down and that's what I like, you know, it's like, Hey, love you.
00:17:14
johngrimsmo
Yeah, exactly. Yep, yep. Yeah, makes you feel proud of what you're doing and and like you're, you know, one of those shops that you go and see or see YouTube videos of and you're like, that's cool.
00:17:20
John S
This, the,
00:17:27
John S
right
00:17:29
John S
you
00:17:30
johngrimsmo
they gotta They got to figure it out, you know.
00:17:32
John S
Yeah. And if somebody's listening to this, but didn't listen to prior episodes, a lot of the backstory here was two, three months ago, we sat down with everybody in the shop. Everyone's basically like, come up with your wishlist. Don't worry about what costs. We'll, we'll triage it or discuss it later, but let's just, what do we all want? And then you kind of put together an informal budget and then you look at, um,
00:17:50
John S
Like, yeah, the water fountain was $1,000, but we didn't go spend 16 grand painting the ceilings of the shop because, wait a minute, I can have a water fountain plus 15,000 left over to do for other stuff.
00:17:56
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:18:01
John S
Like that's the way to go.
00:18:01
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:18:02
John S
um Still need to get new rolling wood cabinets. We know which ones we'd like, but frankly, I was hoping to have some more help here to put them together. So there's like more work to do, but it's coming coming along for sure.
00:18:14
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:18:17
johngrimsmo
So was it really nice to kind of amass that list of 5 to 20 things and then start picking away, like, important, not important? Yes, no, yes. Was that helpful?
00:18:25
John S
It was, yes.
00:18:26
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I could see that.
00:18:27
John S
It feels great to um feel great to get the team involved and what do they want. i like I want to make them feel like they get what they ask for. We've been talking a lot about, I think I mentioned this last week, but that whole,
00:18:44
John S
ah make decisions as long as you're aware of the consequence. And like, even we were even laughing about it yesterday because we have a, like a cloth zipper enclosure for our fi fiber laser.
00:18:47
johngrimsmo
ah
00:18:54
John S
And Alex, well, he sort of asked, but was also just like, I'm buying the better one because it's better for $400. I'm like, yeah, like the consequence there is you do it without asking me and I get mad at you.
00:19:03
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:19:07
John S
Like that's not happening. Like do, do what you need to do, you know?
00:19:09
johngrimsmo
yeah As long as you can justify it, you know, and and and be willing to defend your position.
00:19:12
John S
Right. Right.
00:19:14
John S
Exactly. So yeah, it feels good.
00:19:15
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:19:19
johngrimsmo
Awesome. And the last question was, of all the list of things that you actually did, how many were your idea and how many were the team's idea?
00:19:26
John S
Oh, that's a great question. I probably, I think, I was just say i could pull it up real quick, but I think we, as we did stuff, we started, yeah we started striking it off because I'm very picky now about,
00:19:46
John S
If you, the only reason to keep things on the todo to do list there like that had that had been done is to like pat yourself on the back. And it's just like, no, if it's done, delete it.
00:19:54
johngrimsmo
Yep. Yeah.
00:19:55
John S
So, um, see here, Grant was the sink. Yvonne was the paint. Oh, she did that. That needs to be deleted. Painting and cleaning the three print room. Um,
00:20:08
John S
Alex was the enclosure. i had the idea to replace all of our homemade and sort of janky carts with wood, new wood tables from that Amazon brand or whatever.
00:20:17
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:20:18
John S
That's, that looks great. Yeah. yeah And I think the only thing that we like really deep six was, you know, five figures to paint the ceiling. um
00:20:30
johngrimsmo
in that expensive roll-up door.
00:20:30
John S
And then,
00:20:33
John S
Yes.
00:20:33
johngrimsmo
Maybe that wasn't on the list, but...
00:20:33
John S
Sorry. That was for sure. Although I actually do. ah So I'm slowing down some of the outstanding items because I need to like, I need to, I should have done one thing at a time because what happened was then all of a sudden you've got a plumber, electrician, a gutter person, um other things happening and you're getting too many phone calls and juggling stuff.
00:20:45
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:20:52
johngrimsmo
Totally.
00:20:52
John S
So it's, I need to get a few things done. Then I'm going to call the, then just get a regular garage door put in. oh We were going to do a sign on our building. We have a sign out front, but I wanted to one up on the building facade or whatever the front, but then the way you drive down the street, you won't really see it.
00:21:08
John S
So i was like, eh, skip that. And then we probably should replace some of our asphalt with concrete for both forklift.
00:21:11
johngrimsmo
Yep,
00:21:16
John S
And, um, we got to figure out how we're goingnna deal with chip storage. We need to get roll offs. And that's just, I'm kind of just like delaying dealing with that.
00:21:25
johngrimsmo
yep that's allowed. That
00:21:27
John S
Yeah. Yeah, sorry, that's a lot I know, but that's my we're last thing.
00:21:30
johngrimsmo
was good.
00:21:33
John S
Durham steel storage boxes. Do you know these things?
00:21:35
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I've got some.
00:21:36
John S
Love them
00:21:38
johngrimsmo
Yeah, like them?
00:21:39
John S
I bought those cheapo plastic boxes from Amazon for Johnny five screws, but we have holistic cabinet of screws.
00:21:44
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:21:46
John S
It needs to overhaul. This is how we're doing it. I bought two of them. These are great. Then I just sucked it up, bought 10 more Durham boxes.
00:21:52
johngrimsmo
Whoa.
00:21:53
John S
And then I found, downloaded their catalog, found that they make the drawer slides that you put the box in.
00:21:58
johngrimsmo
Mm-hmm.
00:21:59
John S
So I bought that whole system and now I'll put that on wheels and then you'll have this super dialed labeled box. Um, you know, each, most of them have 30 bins in them. So it's like 632 screws are all now organized.
00:22:09
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:22:11
John S
Um,
00:22:12
johngrimsmo
And they're all like, um what's it called? The round bottom ones where you can like pull parts up scoop bins.
00:22:15
John S
yes. Scoop them, scoop bins.
00:22:17
johngrimsmo
Yeah. um The rigid, like the the whole tray of 30 pack comes out, but individual bins don't come out.
00:22:23
John S
Correct.
00:22:23
johngrimsmo
Right.
00:22:24
John S
I don't want the bins to come out because then the screws will cross contaminate.
00:22:26
johngrimsmo
Yeah. That's good point. Yeah, we use it for our small parts hardware. Like we'll make, um we we make a lot of small parts on the lathe and we'll put them in little Ziploc baggies of 50 parts, Sharpie a big 50 on the front, and then store the baggies in these bins.
00:22:32
John S
Hmm.
00:22:43
John S
Yeah.
00:22:45
johngrimsmo
Because we used to just stack them up, but then you're picking and pulling and and the guy who's cleaning and inspecting them can easily sort them into a bag of 50. And now we just, you know, the finishing guys just need another bag of 50. And then, so we're basically holding the majority of the inventory in the machine shop where they're made.
00:23:01
johngrimsmo
And then the finishing guys only have like a as needed basis.
00:23:04
John S
Yeah, right, right. That's nice.
00:23:05
johngrimsmo
That way we don't have two big inventories sitting around. And that way machine shop guys control the bulk of the inventory so they they know when to make more.
00:23:09
John S
Yes.
00:23:15
John S
What I think is funny is the 10 or 12 bins was probably 300 The stand,
00:23:21
johngrimsmo
It's cheaper than i thought.
00:23:23
John S
Yeah, the one crazy, the stand, so a six six plus four stand plus a base, that was probably 350 bucks. And then there's probably $500 or more screws already that we've just bought recently for J5.
00:23:35
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:23:36
John S
So if you had told me for $1,300, you can have that whole setup delivered, would have like, I'm not paying $1,300 for some bins and screws.
00:23:36
johngrimsmo
Wow.
00:23:44
John S
And like, here I am death by a thousand cuts, but it's great.
00:23:45
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:23:47
John S
I love it. It makes me happy. um
00:23:49
johngrimsmo
Death by a thousand threads.
00:23:51
John S
Yeah, right, right. um That's good.
00:23:55
johngrimsmo
Fantastic.
00:24:01
johngrimsmo
Let's see what's going on here. So my Gorilla indicator stand came in ki in yesterday.
00:24:07
John S
Yay!
00:24:08
johngrimsmo
I haven't opened it yet.
00:24:08
John S
Okay.
00:24:09
johngrimsmo
I kind of want to turn a camera on and do a little unboxing. And I haven't had time so I haven't opened it yet. But it's here.
00:24:14
John S
it' sorry
00:24:14
johngrimsmo
It's finally here.
00:24:15
John S
That's fine. Good.
00:24:15
johngrimsmo
The boat has finally arrived.
00:24:17
John S
Good. That's great.
00:24:18
johngrimsmo
um So yeah, I'm really looking forward to that. um
00:24:21
John S
I'm going to make a note to ask you about that next week.
00:24:23
johngrimsmo
Yeah, please. If I haven't opened it by next week, I'll open it on the bomb.
00:24:25
John S
Well, perfect.
00:24:26
johngrimsmo
like Yeah, that's cool.
00:24:28
John S
Okay. I like that. um
00:24:31
johngrimsmo
ah Yeah.
00:24:31
John S
Good. No good.
00:24:33
johngrimsmo
and Fjells are selling.
00:24:37
John S
Good.
00:24:38
johngrimsmo
Yeah, just just starting now. A couple of the APs have sold. And then the first hundred, we've got several videos we're going to be releasing later this week and into next week that we're trying to come up with a staged plan of like,
00:24:52
johngrimsmo
you know, when to release what and what expectations to set and things like that. So it's really good. Yeah, we've we've got dozens of fields finished, ready to go.
00:24:58
John S
Good.
00:25:03
johngrimsmo
We're just doing the final clean final inspection. And it's great.
00:25:07
John S
That's awesome.
00:25:07
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it's pretty awesome.
00:25:09
John S
Are you, haven't asked for so long, are you still making rasks, Norsemen, sagas?
00:25:14
johngrimsmo
Yes, 100%. Yep.
00:25:16
John S
Okay. Got
00:25:19
johngrimsmo
Yeah, so going forward, like we made the first 100 fjälls plus the APs, we stopped making parts um while we kind of catch up and catch our breath and tweak any final tolerances.
00:25:30
johngrimsmo
Like the beauty is we use the first 100 to finalize the tolerances and like measuring the handle gap with these little flat washers.
00:25:35
John S
Yeah.
00:25:40
johngrimsmo
um so that once we make one-on-one, I want them to be even better, like just tighter, less less finicky.
00:25:44
John S
Yeah, sure.
00:25:47
johngrimsmo
Assembly's kind of weird in some ways. And we've learned a lot. Even, so the the button that we're using, I posted a picture on Instagram and got tons and tons of comments on the porosity or inclusions or carbide grains getting ripped out and polishing, so many options for for why this surface looks gross.
00:26:09
johngrimsmo
um It's probably inclusions in the material, like a lower grade of 440C stainless. So I got a lot of great suggestions there. I'm gonna try buying from a different supplier. We're gonna try,
00:26:20
johngrimsmo
to get the bars heat treated so we can machine not 18 Rockwell or whatever it is, which machines like disgusting bubble gum.
00:26:25
John S
Got it. Right, we're ready.
00:26:28
johngrimsmo
We're going to make them like 35 or 40 or something and machine them semi hard and then heat treat the parts ourselves to full 5860.
00:26:33
John S
Yeah.
00:26:37
johngrimsmo
Because turning 30 to 45 Rockwell stainless, it just turns like absolute butter.
00:26:43
John S
Yeah.
00:26:43
johngrimsmo
It just leaves amazing surface finishes and amazing features and everything. So That's kind of the plan there. um Even one of our guys was polishing the heads of these buttons and I asked him yesterday, I was like, so how many have these holes or spots?
00:26:57
johngrimsmo
And he's like, most.
Addressing Material Inclusions
00:27:01
John S
Interesting.
00:27:01
johngrimsmo
Yeah. And sometimes he can polish it out until, and get it to a point where it like looks fine. And sometimes he just keeps going deeper and deeper and deeper and the hole just keeps, keeps going. And what is the cutoff point where I've wasted my time and I just need to throw it away.
00:27:16
John S
That crazy.
00:27:17
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it is kind of crazy.
00:27:17
John S
Although the, were the, was it on WhatsApp? I've been kind of like MIA on that chat, but a couple of things, but ah the, were they suggesting other grades of stainless? I'd never heard of those.
00:27:30
johngrimsmo
I don't think the WhatsApp was suggesting that.
00:27:30
John S
My,
00:27:33
John S
maybe I was dream dreaming, dreaming it.
00:27:33
johngrimsmo
It's mostly ah Dennis talking about machines that I don't understand yet.
00:27:37
John S
Yeah, right. The guy who's, the guy who disowns Quasars and then buys another one.
00:27:42
johngrimsmo
Yep, exactly. um
00:27:44
John S
don't know.
00:27:45
johngrimsmo
But yeah.
00:27:47
John S
When you mentioned the Gorilla Fab, I wanted to say a very public thank you again to Robin Renzetti, who a number of times has messaged me. First off, I think it's humbling that he listens to the bomb.
00:27:58
John S
like
00:27:59
johngrimsmo
Totally.
00:27:59
John S
yeah And then he was like, hey, call me. i have two things for you. And I was like, great. Called him. And such an obvious, logical answer to the... um Problem I was mentioning with my China Shars test indicator or surface gauge overhaul.
00:28:13
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:28:15
John S
um I did the Thor Labs stuff that works great, but there was still a little bit of tip over slop where the pivot meant mounts to the larger base.
00:28:17
johngrimsmo
Hmm.
00:28:26
John S
And I had been thinking about shimming it to get just a shimmed, like full full friction shim fit, which is of course a great example of why I'm John and he's Robin.
00:28:36
John S
He was like, dude, what you, he basically kindly was like, no, if anything, open the gap up more and and stick a Belleville washer in there or a disc.
00:28:44
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:28:44
John S
i think he He called it a disc washer, which I asked, do you mean wave washer? And a wave washer has up and down undulations, like a sine wave.
00:28:54
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:28:54
John S
Those are, significantly less force than a Belleville or disk washer, which is like huge amounts of force, but it's fine.
00:28:59
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:29:02
John S
You shove that washer in there, preload it against one side.
00:29:05
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:29:06
John S
um actually might still put a piece of, don't know, like Teflon or even powder coat tape, but just kind of be a, a lubricant on the, a low coefficient friction material on the far side. Um, but that'll solve that.
00:29:16
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:29:17
John S
And then he also, Gave me everything I needed to know, but I haven't acted on it yet to cut carbide with our D-bit grinder, um a four inch or hundred millimeter Shars wheel.
00:29:28
johngrimsmo
you
00:29:29
John S
And then he talked, the most interesting thing was he talked about There is some tribal skill to how you feed in the carbide. You want to have it be, oh, hear his notes.
00:29:37
johngrimsmo
okay
00:29:41
John S
You want to push it in. um You want to fast and feed straight about 30 thou. So you're piercing, you're pushing the end mill into the rotating cutoff wheel, if you will, diamond wheel.
00:29:55
John S
Then once you're about 30 thou and you start to rotate the end mill in a, it's in the top five C, you know, a jg rotational jig thing.
00:30:01
johngrimsmo
Okay, so it's a controlled manner.
00:30:03
John S
Yeah, and that's when you start rotating around. And he said he cuts through ah completely through a half-inch end mill in two to three minutes, which is actually still, if you actually think about counting to 200, it's long time, but um it's not something we have to a ton.
00:30:10
johngrimsmo
Yeah,
00:30:14
johngrimsmo
yeah it's time. Yep.
00:30:18
John S
And actually the drills that we need to connect down our are a quarter inch, so so a third of the volume or something to cut through.
00:30:27
johngrimsmo
Yep, yep.
00:30:28
John S
so I need to order that stuff and get that good.
00:30:30
johngrimsmo
Are they through ghoul entrails?
00:30:30
John S
Yeah. The drills we would need to cut through, i don't think so because they're the Willemann. We don't have TSC on the Willemann.
00:30:37
johngrimsmo
Oh, gotcha.
00:30:40
John S
But he also sort of said, no um don't gird it and snap it off. It could work, but it can also cause microfracturing that you don't even notice or see.
00:30:46
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:30:47
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:30:47
John S
so
00:30:48
John S
Oh, and also somebody else, I'll keep them anonymous to not, in case they didn't want me to say this, did mention that the the device that I mentioned last week, they own one and they were kind of like, yeah, it's not like a no-brainer.
00:31:00
John S
Yes, they're the kind of...
00:31:01
johngrimsmo
Device what? Oh, the end mill grinding.
00:31:02
John S
The, yeah, yeah. It wasn't a resounding endorsement.
00:31:06
johngrimsmo
I forget what you call it. Sure.
00:31:08
John S
Yeah.
00:31:09
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:31:09
John S
I'll leave it at that.
00:31:10
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:31:11
John S
Which is kind of like what I wanted to hear. Cause if, if seven people were like, um, this thing's amazing, just shut up and buy it. It's like, okay, by great.
00:31:17
johngrimsmo
Sure. Yep.
00:31:24
John S
Um, I had three last, Oh, four last topics. I'll let you pick, uh, shop insurance tough stuff. First cuts on the 1500 grant, making an ID holder for, um, the Willowman and tariffs.
00:31:43
johngrimsmo
Let's start with tariffs. I'll take tariffs for 25%. Yeah. Steel and
00:31:47
John S
tariff for Yeah. Uh, I'll, I'll kindly reject that and say, see tariffs for 10% please.
00:31:53
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:31:53
John S
Um, so we're conscious of this. Um, I don't know what's going to happen. We have not seen prices change yet. March 12th is this alleged drop date for, understand.
00:32:06
johngrimsmo
steal aluminum products, right?
00:32:07
John S
Well, I think there's probably a lot of people who are talking without fact. And I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to be another one of those. Um, Yes, I do believe it would be non-domestic or foreign or certain, maybe not all form, a certain foreign aluminum.
00:32:22
johngrimsmo
yep yeah i saw a list today of maybe 10 15 countries argentina canada um ukraine things like that
00:32:31
John S
Yeah. We could solve, actually my wife told me I gotta stop joking about Canada, but we could solve this for the 53rd.
00:32:36
johngrimsmo
yeah you could stop yeah you should stop talking about that yeah
00:32:39
John S
Okay. Okay. I liked it. I kind of liked it. It hits a nerve though. It's like just close to being real enough that it's kind of funny.
00:32:46
johngrimsmo
But total pipe dream.
00:32:50
johngrimsmo
um
00:32:51
John S
Okay.
00:32:52
johngrimsmo
So, yeah, like our suppliers are emailing us saying we don't really know what's going to happen.
00:32:55
John S
Yeah. Right.
00:32:57
johngrimsmo
But like our American suppliers who a lot of use a lot of domestic materials, but sometimes will import you know raw materials from Canada or whoever and then make their bars or their metal and then ship it.
00:32:57
John S
Yes.
00:33:07
John S
right
00:33:11
johngrimsmo
to us or this is weird back and forth.
00:33:13
John S
Yes.
00:33:14
johngrimsmo
um But they're basically saying, like one of our suppliers said, we have tons of inventory, so nothing's going to change yet. But once we start buying more expensive material, then it'll pass forward like
00:33:26
John S
Yeah. And that's why I brought it up. i i I think we'll know more and I do kind of want to start a conversation. um I'd certainly able hear from anybody who has other opinions. I was a little bit disappointed. We coincidentally had two vendor lunches, one last week and one this week, where one was our steel vendor, one was an aluminum vendor that came in and I kind of just asked them and they were they were very comfortable being like, nobody knows.
00:33:50
John S
and I'm like, ah, that's your job. Like your job is to look at, like there are metals markets, there's future markets, there's volatility indexes. like this the I was a little bit like, as a little BS, essay you're just saying, ah, who knows?
00:33:57
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:34:02
John S
um Now, on the flip side, wild speculation and overreaction, especially when the administration you know seems to vacillate. Yo, let's do this. Let's not do this.
00:34:12
John S
you know Let's take over Canada. Let's take over Greenland. Let's not do any of it. like it's ah It's kind of ridiculous.
00:34:16
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:34:17
John S
um
00:34:17
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:34:20
John S
We also don't buy foreign material by and large, but my assumption is um um a little bit of a cynical person. I mean, if if if there's 25% more charge on foreign material that will drive up domestic prices either by, you know, ah oligopoly, yeah exactly.
00:34:31
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:34:34
johngrimsmo
Volume requirement or what is that? Oligopoly?
00:34:39
John S
Like a few players that are effectively illegally or legally colluding, like
00:34:40
johngrimsmo
Got it.
00:34:43
johngrimsmo
It's like oligarchy but monopoly put together. Is that what that means?
00:34:47
John S
ah ah Somebody can probably look this up and correct me. I believe an oligopoly is a monopoly with multiple players.
00:34:50
johngrimsmo
Just never heard of
00:34:54
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:34:56
John S
Oligopoly.
00:34:57
johngrimsmo
Like pop.
00:34:57
John S
A state of limited competition in which a market is shared by a small number of producers shall or sellers. Yeah.
00:35:02
johngrimsmo
not a monopoly but the next one like interesting okay yeah yeah
00:35:04
John S
For all with practical purposes, the same thing. Yeah.
00:35:09
John S
So we will see. I know you were talking about tariffs as well.
00:35:10
johngrimsmo
yeah well the the fear for us so there's the steel aluminum tariff and then there's the uh threat of everything coming from canada is going to be charged 25 tariff into the u.s now yeah
00:35:13
John S
Ugh.
00:35:23
John S
So if I buy a saga, yeah, I get hit with ah of a customs bill or something.
00:35:28
johngrimsmo
yeah And I'm unclear if you are paying that bill or if I am paying that bill as the seller.
00:35:32
John S
Interesting. Okay.
00:35:33
johngrimsmo
um Either way, I'm not losing 25% on a sale because can't afford that.
00:35:39
John S
Yeah, of course.
00:35:39
johngrimsmo
like
00:35:39
John S
Yeah, sure.
00:35:40
johngrimsmo
um So at the end of the day, the customer will have to pay that. And the the fear for us is our customers going to get cold feet and just not buy as many products, which is going to be really bad for us.
00:35:51
John S
Sure. That's not a thing. Is it anymore? I've not heard of this.
00:35:55
johngrimsmo
I don't know.
00:35:56
John S
Yeah.
00:35:56
johngrimsmo
but last
00:35:56
John S
Right.
00:35:57
johngrimsmo
Like you said, it's so fluctuating. um It was going to be a thing in February, and then they're like, yeah we'll give it a month, we'll see what happens.
00:35:59
John S
Right.
00:36:04
John S
I think you guys stopped driving so much fentanyl across our border and then that helps help things.
00:36:07
johngrimsmo
but Sure, because it was it was such a wild amount.
00:36:10
John S
I know it's like you put it in the maple syrup and it's like, I don't know what it's coming across the border.
00:36:14
johngrimsmo
You know what, that's a good idea.
00:36:15
John S
Right. We probably shouldn't be saying this.
00:36:17
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:36:18
John S
Um,
00:36:18
johngrimsmo
no but yeah, so um I don't know. and and Literally, I don't know.
00:36:22
John S
ah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Is Insurance Worth It?
00:36:28
John S
Okay. The other business topic I want to talk about, which I also don't really have answers for yet, but also wanted to publicly broach it was um insurance.
00:36:37
John S
We, it's has always been such a fascinating topic for me. And I'm going to speak very candidly and perhaps a bit unsophisticatedly so. um But one of the biggest reasons I still don't,
00:36:51
John S
of course I mean, you have to kind quote, quote, have to have insurance, blah, blah, blah. But like, really, one of the things I think the most about is like the shop could burn down or we're next to an airport. I mean, a plane could tragically crash nearby and cause like blah, blah, blah.
00:37:03
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:37:03
John S
I don't otherwise um value insurance. Like I've never made a claim. I don't, there's just not, whatever. I think there's probably ah folks out there listening that can relate to that. Like I've not made a claim for car, auto, home, but blah, blah, blah.
00:37:16
John S
So it does feel frustrating because our premiums are not insignificant. um
00:37:21
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:37:22
John S
And you're paying for something that you just don't use. Well, screw that. That's dumb. um
00:37:26
johngrimsmo
It's the what if, you know?
00:37:28
John S
Well, so where this came up more specifically was what do we ensure the shop contents for?
00:37:34
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:37:34
John S
And again, I don't really have an answer, but I have, some opinions already, which is, um, I'm going to make up numbers here, but let's say, let's assume it's a million dollars.
00:37:46
John S
Like, do I want to ensure like Or let's say a machine shop has purchased equipment, totally million dollars.
00:37:53
johngrimsmo
chair
00:37:53
John S
Do you want to insure it for a million dollars? Do you want to insure it for less because it's appreciated? You want to insure it for more because frankly, it probably costs more to buy or replace that equipment. Um, And also, this is where cynicism dials up a notch.
00:38:07
John S
Insurance companies ah will always win. like yeah So there's this whole replacement value versus they call it ACV, actual cash value.
00:38:18
johngrimsmo
okay not specifically but I kind of know what you're talking about
00:38:19
John S
Have you seen this at all? or do you
00:38:23
John S
um I've heard about it more with buildings. um And I was not, had not thought about it with the equipment. And I genuinely, I mean, it's kind of hard to, it's kind of hard or maybe even almost inappropriate to talk about. But like if truly like our shop evaporated, like for whatever sin scenario it is, first off, God forbid everyone's like gone, like on the weekend.
00:38:48
John S
Let's just assume like it just evaporated.
00:38:49
johngrimsmo
Yeah, a meteor hits your shop and...
00:38:51
John S
Yeah. I don't like, don't know I, I don't know if I would start over, John. Like, I don't know what, you know what i mean? Or sorry, I don't know if I would immediately be like, great, let's get all the vendors to get us POs to buy all the equipment again and rebuild this thing.
00:39:06
John S
Like, don't get wrong. I'm a fighter. I care. I love it. I love what I do, but it's hard to, but that's kind of what that insurance is. So it's like, do I, um, want us?
00:39:15
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it's an interesting thought process.
00:39:19
John S
Yeah.
00:39:19
johngrimsmo
You know, what what is to you and your business, what is the value of ah fully insuring every dollar, you know, replacement value? Or do you kind of push that boundary? It's like, well, I'm legally required to have a certain amount of insurance.
00:39:32
John S
Right.
00:39:33
johngrimsmo
what What is that bare minimum? And where am I paying now? And what's the middle ground? Like, let's have that conversation.
00:39:39
John S
And there's ah there's a middle ground there as well that, and I don't in any way and mean to imply that any form of insurance fraud is is acceptable from my point of view, but let's say,
00:39:52
John S
let's say you have 10 machines and they're 100,000 each and that's a million dollars. So, but let's say, you know I'm gonna carry $700,000 of there. value there I don't think right now I have to give them a serialized list of what machines I actually have.
00:40:08
John S
So if any one of, if seven of them went down, you could sort of say, well, those were the seven that insured. Like I don't necessarily have to insure every single one because it's unlikely that every single one, now I guess in the catastrophic fire or the shop has evaporated.
00:40:21
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:40:21
John S
But um
00:40:23
johngrimsmo
Don't they want an itemized list? I can't remember.
00:40:26
John S
I don't think they, I did not.
00:40:27
johngrimsmo
I'm sure it depends locationally or...
00:40:28
John S
Yeah, exactly. Right.
00:40:30
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:40:30
John S
And again, I'm not trying to, I would be very upfront. I'm not trying to be defraud them. It's more just a question of like, look, I'm not, I tell it straight to my agent, like, I'm not going to insure every single thing.
00:40:37
johngrimsmo
Yep. Trying to find your value.
00:40:45
John S
um
00:40:45
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I know my guys reach out at least once a year and just be like, hey, just checking in. Is there anything new? Like you get any new equipment that you want insured?
00:40:52
John S
Yeah.
00:40:53
johngrimsmo
Obviously, they're trying to push for for more.
00:40:53
John S
Right.
00:40:55
John S
Yeah.
00:40:55
johngrimsmo
And sometimes we're like, yeah actually, we did get this new equipment. Oh, yeah. And a lot of times loan requires proof of insurance, if I'm not mistaken, um in order to finance.
00:41:07
John S
Absolutely. And you, my humble advice to anybody would be to absolutely always make sure at least the principal balance is ensured.
00:41:14
johngrimsmo
Yep. Yep.
00:41:15
John S
Um, that's a bad day. Otherwise be, um, yeah.
00:41:18
johngrimsmo
Exactly.
00:41:20
johngrimsmo
nice Okay, tell me about Grand Sling.
00:41:23
John S
Okay. We want to do post heat treat hard turning on our pull studs, which have a call it, uh, 12 millimeter, not probably 10 millimeter through bore straight wall through bore.
00:41:36
John S
And it's gonna be easier if we could hold them from the ID, that 10 millimeter through bore, rather than try to hold on any OD feature.
00:41:43
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:41:44
John S
And so Grant um came in this morning and was like, hey, you Willman spindle collets are kind of funny looking collets compared to, they're not 5C or anything else.
00:41:53
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:41:54
John S
They're just different. i don't know to explain it.
00:41:55
johngrimsmo
Yep, yep.
00:41:56
John S
And they're... the inside of the collet had a taper and Grant was like, Hey, when the collet closes, that taper contracts enough that I think I can actuate it against a part return inside there.
00:42:08
johngrimsmo
Nice.
00:42:09
John S
And i was like, I was like, I could see it not being enough, but you also might be onto something and go print one. And so we printed one. I actually shout out to, Andrew Henry over Henry Holsters for turning us on to the bamboo PLACF.
00:42:26
johngrimsmo
OK.
00:42:26
John S
It's like 32 bucks a roll, way stronger, super nice when you want some more oomph to a printed part and seems to print really well.
00:42:28
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:42:33
johngrimsmo
OK.
00:42:36
John S
And he printed one and it seems to work enough to be like, okay, yeah, I like this. let's He's going to turn one out of some metal and I'll keep you close to see if it works.
00:42:45
johngrimsmo
So it's an ID expanding clamp, but that is actuated by the clamping of your collet in the spindle.
00:42:53
John S
Bingo. So if we needed a hard turn, 300 pull studs, it's not grabbing a wrench each time to tighten and loosen anything.
00:42:54
johngrimsmo
it
00:42:58
johngrimsmo
it's using the UR robot to install.
00:43:02
John S
Bingo.
00:43:03
johngrimsmo
Yeah. does
00:43:04
John S
Yep.
00:43:05
johngrimsmo
Does it stay installed in the machine?
00:43:09
John S
We would, I can't answer that yet, but no, I mean, think we were goingnna run, if we were going to run 300 of these, we would take the call it out, put this device in, run 300, then take it back out for sure.
00:43:09
johngrimsmo
It doesn't like fall out?
00:43:12
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:43:18
John S
But that's,
00:43:19
johngrimsmo
Is he making an entire collet?
00:43:20
John S
and Ooh, huh. We probably could now that you say that.
00:43:24
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:43:25
John S
ah
00:43:26
johngrimsmo
Maybe not on the Willimon size-wise, but...
00:43:29
John S
No, we'd have to make it on a mill.
00:43:29
johngrimsmo
Maybe.
00:43:30
John S
Of course, that's the better way to make any round object.
00:43:31
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Round, of course, yeah.
00:43:33
John S
um That's a good idea. No, this is an insert.
00:43:35
johngrimsmo
right.
00:43:37
John S
Actually, funny enough, i um you know the you the YouTube algorithm sometimes is such a bummer. I have not had not seen a Stefan Gottesbinter video on my in my feed a long time.
00:43:48
John S
I looked him up and i was like, oh yeah, he's got plenty of content. And then the one was making a six millimeter auto, like a valve grinding machine. machine um replacement collet.
00:43:59
johngrimsmo
Okay.
00:44:00
John S
It's like a little collet the size of your thumb. And it was like a 40 minute video that was like super well done. I really enjoyed ah watching that video. And this stuff's always good.
00:44:07
johngrimsmo
Yeah, those nerdy deep dives are right up our alley.
00:44:10
John S
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
00:44:12
johngrimsmo
Love it.
00:44:16
johngrimsmo
Love it. um Yeah, last thing I'll talk about is continually impressed by hard milling.
00:44:24
John S
Mm-hmm.
00:44:24
johngrimsmo
With the right end mills.
00:44:26
John S
OK. OK.
00:44:27
johngrimsmo
My Moldino endmills, they just came up on 200 minutes where we had another warning set and today I just looked at them under the microscope and they are starting to show signs of wear.
00:44:36
John S
never
00:44:37
johngrimsmo
The high feed tool has one of one or two of the corners are chipped slightly. We're still going to keep running it because it's fine. um And the um the two millimeter corner radius tool that's doing the finish critical features is showing signs of wear, but it's we comped it one 10th and it's still making size.
00:44:55
John S
Isn't that crazy?
00:44:56
johngrimsmo
And now we're CMMing, we have this feedback loop of CMMing the hole to know how what the trend is. We're tracking it in a spreadsheet to make sure this hole is being made accurately and consistently at every time.
00:45:08
johngrimsmo
And then it tells us when to comp it. Yeah, and like I said, we've comped one 10th so far and it's still holding great.
00:45:14
John S
Awesome.
00:45:14
johngrimsmo
So it's like, the guys are like, do I replace the tools?
00:45:15
John S
That's really cool.
00:45:17
johngrimsmo
And i was like, well, we're at 200 now. Let's take them to 250 or 300. And then probably time to just try the new ones. They don't owe us anything at that point. um
00:45:26
John S
Yeah.
00:45:27
johngrimsmo
We've made you know near to 100 blades on on these tools. So I'm like, I'm good to go. this This is fantastic. Yeah.
00:45:36
John S
The only, the, when we've been at the end of, toward the end of the life on our side, the only reason I even know it's not awesome is I saw what it was like when the tool was brand new and that was like unbelievable, like mirrorish type stuff, but it's still correct.
00:45:45
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:45:48
johngrimsmo
In your part. in your part
00:45:50
John S
Yeah.
00:45:50
johngrimsmo
yeah In our part,
00:45:51
John S
Yeah.
Benefits of Hard Milling
00:45:52
johngrimsmo
that shininess wouldn't show.
00:45:54
johngrimsmo
It's like internal features that and don't need to look pretty.
00:45:55
John S
Got it.
00:45:57
johngrimsmo
um
00:45:58
John S
oh
00:45:58
johngrimsmo
I know. but
00:45:59
John S
John, I have never heard you say that.
00:46:00
johngrimsmo
yeah
00:46:02
johngrimsmo
red Redact that.
00:46:03
John S
internal Internal parts don't need to look pretty.
00:46:04
johngrimsmo
Go back. go back
00:46:08
John S
oh man.
00:46:09
johngrimsmo
Yeah, there's actually one feature of the Fjall that I'm not happy with and I'm just totally allowing. Like if you looked at it, even with eye, but certainly under a microscope, you'd be like, what's going on here?
00:46:19
johngrimsmo
And I'm just passing it for now because it's fine. I don't care.
00:46:23
John S
funny. yeah
00:46:25
johngrimsmo
There's a line.
00:46:26
John S
Yeah, good.
00:46:26
johngrimsmo
There's always a line.
00:46:29
John S
What you to do today?
00:46:31
johngrimsmo
Today, I've got the Williman running these little titanium covers. I think talked about the last week for our DLC coding. So it covers over the D10 ball during coding.
00:46:40
John S
Oh. Masking.
00:46:43
johngrimsmo
Yep.
00:46:44
John S
Yeah, yeah.
00:46:44
johngrimsmo
So I've got some mask basically, but it's titanium and cool. So I've made 31 of those. I want to take it up to 50 and then that's done like forever pretty much. And
00:46:57
johngrimsmo
I want to... finalize a probing operation for hard milling these field blades, just like measure the surface every time.
00:47:05
John S
Oh.
00:47:06
johngrimsmo
I tried that a week or two ago and I ended up ruining the probe calibration values somehow. I don't know what I did wrong, but the only solve was to recalibrate everything.
00:47:15
John S
Okay.
00:47:18
johngrimsmo
So I'm a little hesitant, but...
00:47:22
John S
Yeah, interesting.
00:47:23
johngrimsmo
That's pretty much it. It's already 3 o'clock.
00:47:24
John S
Good.
00:47:25
johngrimsmo
I got a meeting with Eric and Angelo in four minutes.
00:47:28
John S
Good.
00:47:28
johngrimsmo
And then, yeah, production meeting. That's my day.
00:47:30
John S
Cool.
00:47:31
johngrimsmo
Thank
00:47:33
John S
oh I have a part on the Tormach 1500.
00:47:38
johngrimsmo
you.
00:47:38
John S
um were i've this i thought this was like dripping with irony. We haven't really commissioned the machine yet because we don't have a fixture plate for it. That material was supposed to come. The ones we had were sold. And so customers come first. And then we... So, but I just, I needed to cut a keyway on a shaft and every one of our Haas machines was busy, including the UMC 350, which was making breather valves for Porsches.
00:48:05
John S
So was like, I can't, it's like, this is why we have this machine was to not deal with this. And so i Strat clamped a 5C collet block directly to the table, which is like, ugh, but it works fine. Swept it in, put a 316th end mill and, you know spindle. Oh, used, this is like so crazy. I just threw this up on Insta before we hopped on this podcast, but Tormach, the fifteen hundred s have a, what's that option? But like basically Renishaw's type wireless probe.
00:48:33
johngrimsmo
No way.
00:48:34
John S
So, you know, you and i I, don't know how much you remember your Tormach days, but it is almost, like two different worlds to be like, Oh, I'm on Tormach path pilot digitally, wireless, you're probing this part in.
00:48:41
johngrimsmo
No way.
00:48:45
John S
It's like super nice.
00:48:46
johngrimsmo
Yeah, I remember plugging in my probe every time.
00:48:49
John S
Oh, I just used timers. I never even had the, Oh, I think we might've owned one, but never used the, yeah.
00:48:51
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Oh yeah, I used it all the time, but you'd have to stop, plug it in, hit go again.
00:48:54
John S
Right. Yeah.
00:48:58
johngrimsmo
That's fantastic.
00:48:59
John S
So cut this QA shaft and, um, me not surprisingly did cut beautifully.
00:49:04
johngrimsmo
Yeah, it's BT30, right?
00:49:04
John S
Um, I need to, it is. Yeah.
00:49:06
johngrimsmo
Yeah.
00:49:07
John S
Yeah.
00:49:07
johngrimsmo
Yeah, big change from the TTS.
00:49:09
John S
Oh yeah, no, totally. The, the change is the, um, poxy granite frame and, um, linear guideways and all that.
00:49:14
johngrimsmo
Sure.
00:49:17
johngrimsmo
Yeah, yeah. It's awesome.
00:49:19
John S
Yeah. Finish that up. Householding stuff. Sync like some basic plumbing type stuff. Um, yeah.
00:49:24
johngrimsmo
Yeah. Excellent. All right, man.
00:49:26
John S
Cool. See you next week. Take care.
00:49:28
johngrimsmo
Have good day.