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Business of Machining - Episode 62
185 Plays7 years ago
Even amidst the morning grogg, the Johns still manage to talk big picture.
Today, is a Matsuura day and MAM-OH-MAM it's going to be awesome. While Saunders is in Connecticut to learn about values that drive Matsuura, Grimsmo heads to the Elliot Matsuura Joint Open House with his team to check out the BROTHER SPEEDIO S700X1.
everybody's workin' for the weekend...but the MAM72 works ON the weekend.
HOW DO WE LEVEL UP? Well, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Serious discussion ensues about debt and why it MIGHT be a necessary evil. One thing is certain: Something's Gotta Give.
Beginner's Guide to Accounting for Machinists and Manufacturing Entrepreneurs
FROM THE OUTSIDE IN Grimsmo to put himself in a new role for a different perspective. What would you do if you were an outside investor looking at your own company?
Finally, Grimsmo gives an update about knife #1000
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Episode 62
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business and Machine episode number 62. My name is John Grimsmo. My name is John Saunders. Good morning, buddy. Good morning.
Exploring Open House Events
00:00:10
Speaker
How are you? I'm super pumped up. It is the joint open house at Elliott Mazzura and DMG Morrie and all the cool places today. So just after this call, I'm going to go bring Angelo and Aaron and we're going to go drool and
00:00:25
Speaker
Pretend to spend all kinds of money. I remember you telling me about it's the one where they actually like to have shuttle, it was a shuttle buses. If you don't have a car for some reason, like drive you around to the different limos actually. Oh my God. Yeah. So basically DMZ Mori, Elia Matsura and they sell brotherhood and everything. There's a Doosan place, an Okuma place, a Bikido place.
00:00:51
Speaker
And I think that's it. That's awesome. And if I go to all five places and get my little card stamped, then I get eight hours of free service valid for the next year to any one of my machines at those dealers. Are you serious? Yeah. So I used that last year. And I had the guys come in and look at my DMG Maury Mill.
00:01:08
Speaker
And basically, he checked it all out. And he's like, do you even use this thing? Because there's hardly any wear on it. I can't believe eight hours of service. That's, I don't know, three or four grand in value, right? Am I wrong? It could be. Are you going to tackle all five?
00:01:26
Speaker
Yeah, I always do, even if it's just a token. How's it going? They have little vendors like Renishaw and all these little vendors that have booths at every location anyway, so it's fun no matter where you go. Are you going with a list and specifics to any specific one or are you browsing for fun?
00:01:47
Speaker
I'm mostly browsing for the fun. I'm definitely, I want to look closer at the 5-axis Matsuras, and I really want to look closer at a Brother Speedio. I'm kind of pretty tempted by one of those right now as a second mill. How much would the 700 or 1000? The 700 I think would be fine. Yeah. Are those six figures? Barely.
00:02:13
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, it's right around 100 US depending on options and all that stuff. Yeah, we couldn't even go kind of late on options because it'll be a it'll be a second machine like a second off machine not
00:02:25
Speaker
run it hard everyday production kind of thing because that's what the Maury is for. But to have a second spindle that can do all the foam, all the engravings, all the inlays, all the etching plugs that I did yesterday, because every time I take down the Maury to around with it and do something small, it's like four hours of idle time waiting for me to figure it out and do it. So we lose quite a lot of production just to have that.
Building a Sustainable Company
00:02:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's so I've really been I've really been trying to do some thinking about about this business or your business my business just in general and I think I mean I like I probably I know I I sound like I repeat myself when I talk about like oh I don't like debt or slow growth and all that stuff is is is true to who I am but
00:03:17
Speaker
But ironically, what I'm also trying to do with my business is make sure it's not just about me. It's a business that has its own sustainability. It goes back to that idea that I don't have any, legitimately, I have no aspirations to sell my company. But it's kind of like that should be, I think, part of the thinking of goal structure or structure of how I want this company to grow and become is something that's not just me.
00:03:44
Speaker
All the stuff we talk about, the systems, the processes. What's interesting is that, and I really need to find, I really want some outside opinions on this. I really want to try to find some job shops or other entrepreneurs who have taken a company that's from whatever, call it sub-million or million dollar type revenues to 5 million or 10 million.
Challenges in Scaling a Business
00:04:02
Speaker
That's a huge difference. No one can wing that themselves, right? Exactly.
00:04:10
Speaker
But I think part of that equation is some compromise. And that can be taking on outside capital, which means you sell off a portion of your company, which I think is also incredibly foolish. I would rather take on some very specific or controlled situation debt or financing than sell part of the company. Totally agree.
00:04:33
Speaker
It's like you got to get off your high horse about no debt unless you want this to just be a lifestyle business that suits the levels that we're currently at. There's nobody that can make that decision other than you and your wife and your immediate influence circle. It's you basically and me for this business and my immediate circle.
00:04:55
Speaker
But yeah, I totally agree. And I think you and I have clung to this kind of grassroots start in your basement or your apartment kind of garage sort of attitude and
00:05:08
Speaker
It's hard to get out of that, man. So like you said, we got to give up something, whether it's, you know, maybe it's debt for you, maybe it's the direct involvement in every aspect for me. And I'm starting to give that up, which is kind of liberating, actually. Yeah, awesome.
00:05:27
Speaker
Yeah, it's actually yesterday or a couple days ago, we had one of our lenders come in, like for our machine leases. He came in and just, you know, we've got new financial statements. We've got, we're up to date and all that stuff just to kind of catch them up on where we are. And, you know, he's blown away at our growth and our progress and all that. That's great. It is great. And
Effective Delegation in Business
00:05:50
Speaker
Uh, it was, it was really cool. Cause we had, we hung out for like an hour or two, just up in the office, um, chatting about business life, everything. And I'm like, I turned around and I'm like, you know, business is still happening. Like Angelo's running the mill and you know, Eric's making parts and Aaron's editing videos and the business. I'm not, you know, I'm not doing anything, but I totally am. I'm running the business, you know? Right.
00:06:16
Speaker
There's so much fun stuff here. I want to ask you some questions about that, but let me, if you don't mind, let's come back to that because I wanted to say on machine financing, so they actually are, you just have to send them financial reports or are they more
00:06:33
Speaker
in direct contact, basically trying to understand whether they're going to get their next payment or not. No, no. I think for the most part, they don't check in ever, really. But the last statements that they have, this is for the Nakamura when we got the financing for that, because we have two different lenders, one for each machine, just happenstance. But in the future, I think I'll be going with the Nakamura type of financing, just because it's much better terms and everything like that. Yeah.
00:07:02
Speaker
But yeah, I'm just thinking future growth, like if I want to invest in some other equipment, what's available to me?
Future Growth and Investment Strategies
00:07:10
Speaker
What does our current financial status give us? And where do we stand with that? And so I brought them in, kind of showed them where we're at.
00:07:36
Speaker
stepped out on a bridge for us and made it happen. Right. That's awesome. Yeah. So now we bring back financials that are many, many times better than that. And he's like, whatever you want, basically. Right. That's almost scary because now there's a kind of funny joke about banks and lenders. It's kind of like, you know, they don't want you and then all of a sudden they're literally like,
00:07:46
Speaker
I'm blown away that he gave us the ability to get the Nakamura with 2015 financials.
00:08:01
Speaker
I remember going to one of those open houses, and this woman was basically like, she didn't know me from Adam, and maybe she was full of it. But you get the sense that she was sent there to put out money, to lend money. And it was like, she profiled me. I think she was just like, you want a machine here, we'll make it happen right now. 200 grand, it's not an issue. And oh my god, I was like, this is crazy. And so I think that was when I lost my train. I thought that's what I was trying to say is,
00:08:30
Speaker
I'm so turned off by the few stories I've seen of people in real time like that's happening right now people that have gotten They've kind of grown out of control like either they admit this or it's clear that this is the case and they don't want to admit it where they can't as long as though as long as It's kind of like a date paycheck day-to-day at this giant
00:08:54
Speaker
level of literally tens of thousands of dollars of revenue coming in every day and tens of thousands of dollars of machine payments going out. I don't make up an example. A blizzard, literally a blizzard, if that shut them down or they lost power for seven days, it is a big problem.
Risks of Rapid Business Growth
00:09:15
Speaker
And so you hear that growing for the sake of growing or getting too big or, quote unquote, losing control. And I think some of that stuff is such a turnoff to me. But that doesn't mean moving from where we are now to this next step doesn't just automatically jump you to there either, right? Of course, of course. And I mean, you have to analyze your buffer zone, whether you keep three months of payments in the bank kind of thing, whatever your minimum is.
00:09:44
Speaker
to weather all those storms and then to be able to basically, I don't wanna say buy your way out of any issue, but to weather, yeah, exactly.
00:09:52
Speaker
I found this new podcast called How I Built This. It's a PBS type podcast. And if you're looking for a new podcast, I would recommend checking it out and you can definitely cherry pick. But it's this guy who interviews generally household named entrepreneurs, so the founder of Chipotle or the founder of Ben and Jerry from Ben and Jerry's.
00:10:19
Speaker
And I was listening to one of them. It was Ben and Jerry's. And they got in this pickle or they got this bind. They had taken on some money. And they couldn't make payments. It was Ben and Jerry's because they couldn't make their payments through the winter because people weren't buying ice cream in the winter in the same quantity that they had been in the summer. And they had some mentor. And the mentor was like, oh, just go to the bank and tell them you're only going to make interest payments through the winter. And it's kind of funny because I think people think about
00:10:47
Speaker
The borrower versus the bank is being this very cold, distant relationship that is very structured and so forth. But the reality is banks want their money back. And a lot of times, an honest conversation will result in a better outcome than, in this case, them trying to borrow money from friends and family just to pay the bank and stressing out or maybe struggling with the business.
Recommended Podcasts for Entrepreneurs
00:11:08
Speaker
It just kind of made me laugh. It's like sometimes there's better resolutions that don't always seem obvious. Yeah. And it's communication is key. My machine guy was saying that payment history is the first thing they look at when you're getting a second machine or something like that. And we have stellar payment history. I think I was late by one day one time and I called him up and I'm like, I feel bad because money transfer issues, it's coming in and all that. And he's like,
00:11:32
Speaker
You're not the problem. Exactly. You're not the problem. A month behind is when they start to get nervous. And then after that, they do further actions. But yeah, communication is key, right? Yeah. Because that's what I think, I mean, I don't know your business that well, but I feel like if
00:11:53
Speaker
somebody came in to Grimsmo Knives, force yourself into that mentality of getting out of John Grimsmo, the husband, wife, and entrepreneur, and into the John Grimsmo, the CEO of this company role.
00:12:08
Speaker
I feel like if outside money wanted to get involved and grow some knives, I feel like what I would do is I would say we need to get you guys into a proper shop. We need to get you a second three-axis spindle tomorrow. And then we need to look at what's the right workflow to tool up the talent and engineering behind everything from the processing stages, just all that stuff. That's a really, really interesting perspective that I don't think I've taken yet.
00:12:38
Speaker
step outside and pretend that I'm an outside investor that can come in and restructure and reorganize, well, within
Investment Moves for Growth
00:12:44
Speaker
reason. Yeah, exactly. I should really think on that because- But that's not that crazy, John. No, you're right.
00:12:53
Speaker
And you look at the Silicon Valley model or whatever and it's a little bit crazy too which again makes it kind of like this joke of a world but like it's basically like we have unlimited capital so we're gonna make sure that these incredibly talented people aren't held back by stupid things like we need to debate which software to buy or machine to buy like just get the freaking machine in here. Exactly.
00:13:14
Speaker
Yeah, don't hold back. And I keep telling Eric, like, whatever you need, just don't hesitate to let me know. And then at random times out of the blue, he's like, well, it'd be nice if I had this little $100 thing. And I'm like, just get it. Why did you wait to tell me that? Like, we are past the point of pinching $100 bills without getting extravagant. But if it'll make a difference, I don't even hesitate anymore.
00:13:40
Speaker
Yeah. And actually, good grief. Jay Pearson was kind of like one of the guys. He was like, when one of our guys, even if it's somebody newer or somebody a little bit more junior, if they need a new computer because it's not working, Jay's like, I don't go check how much RAM it has, or I go analyze it. Or he's like, we buy them a computer, and we buy them a good computer. And that situation is put behind them. And generally speaking, I found that most people
00:14:10
Speaker
Don't all of a sudden think, I'm going to abuse this, you know what I mean? Which is kind of your concern as an entrepreneur, like, oh, I'm just going to open up the floodgates to people to be frivolous. Yeah, because you back it up with respect and conscience, you know? You want everybody to make good decisions and you allow them to and you kind of reward them with really good stuff and then they appreciate it.
00:14:30
Speaker
That same podcast, how I built this, there's a company called Jenny's Ice Cream, which coincidentally is out of Columbus, Ohio, and they brought in a longtime friend to be the CEO. Actually,
Financial Strategies in a Growing Company
00:14:42
Speaker
they're bigger than you or my companies are, but not that much bigger, and they need it outside.
00:14:46
Speaker
management to deal with the issues you and I are dealing with. Hey, we need somebody else who's more seasoned, more skilled, can be outside. We're going to do what we do. And the first thing they did when they hired this guy was who was only a paid CEO. He was not an equity stakeholder. And they were like, your first job is to decide your own salary.
00:15:09
Speaker
Which, of course, most people are like, oh, that's awesome. But I'll tell you, man, that's a really tough thing to do, because based on all the financial input that you have from the company, you obviously can't rip them off. It's probably a tech company. Well, you can ask for a lot of money, but then you're either writing your own exit plan if you don't. It's not that much fun to do that. Well, I will check that podcast out. That sounds really cool. It's like insight into big companies that you've heard of. And you're like, how did they pull through? How did they do it?
00:15:38
Speaker
Right. You're talking to these founders, so it's a much more intimate view of the story. It's not just Chipotle that you see on the side of the street as a brick and mortar fast, casual restaurant. It's like this guy, Steve, and what his plan was. Yeah, from the beginning. Right. Right. Love it.
00:15:58
Speaker
So what else you got going on? So this was kind of funny. I've gotten to know a couple of the guys at Matsura over the last two years. And they are having a new tech center opening in Connecticut next month. And they were asking if I wanted to come up and I wanted to film it.
00:16:21
Speaker
And for sure, they're interesting and fun, but I've always tried to make sure the stuff that we film is interesting to me. And I like going to open houses, but I also think they're not as interesting as going into somebody's shop or seeing the behind the scenes or how the machines are built or getting to know them. And so I was like, you know, I'll come up, but it's really something I'd rather do would be to see more again, you know, how are these machines built? What's what goes into
00:16:49
Speaker
installing them and not just film kind of a sales event, per se. And so on a bit of a short notice, they said, well, look, we got the machines coming in next week. Why don't you just come up for a day and let's show, film them rigging and getting this set up and so forth. And I was kind of like, you know, that's actually pretty cool. I've learned a lot in the past when you've been able to spend a day with like the service techs, a day with the applications engineers, totally behind the scenes on all that.
00:17:18
Speaker
And so, we did that all yesterday, and I'm going to do a little bit more this morning and then head back to Columbus or Zanesville.
Insights into Matsura's Ethos
00:17:24
Speaker
But I've already gotten exactly what I wanted out of it, which is I really wanted to understand what, who, it sounds so silly, but who Matsura is.
00:17:38
Speaker
When you get into these more bespoke machines or high-level machines, it's really less about the PDF spec sheet capabilities and more about what fits the overall need in the application, but then also why is that machine built the way it is and what does that company stand for. I've got to do some more thinking, but I've been taking some notes about it.
00:18:03
Speaker
The things that stand out, and it's funny, I think one of the ways I'm trying to make sure I think about all this is not comparing in a, this is this, you know, Matsura wins here and Hermle wins here and DMG wins here, it's not like
00:18:20
Speaker
winning at the expense of the other machines. It's just, hey, everyone gets a choice on what they put as a priority. So for example, DMG is this larger company that has this sort of feel of being a conglomerate. It's got major infrastructure. They sell a huge number of machines. They sell really good lays, really good five-axis gantry mills. They do sintering now.
00:18:42
Speaker
and so forth. And that all has a lot of benefits for sure. Matsura is incredibly niche and focused. It's owned by this guy Katsu Matsura, who's the third generation family owner. They produce. Oh, really? Oh, that Elliot.
00:18:59
Speaker
Yeah. Well, at the open house or at the, um, the dinner cruise at IMTS. I mean him and his son and, uh, that's awesome. And he always gets up and sings karaoke. It's hilarious. Did you have a chance to talk to him? A little bit. I talked to his son a little bit more, but not, not super much. Okay.
00:19:18
Speaker
But it's like, it's a small company. And I always have respected companies, I would suspect Mature would have had the chance to play at a bigger scale if they wanted to. This is my own opinion or guess, but they've kind of stayed relatively focused and they do, you know, they don't make any lathes, they don't, they make some three axis machines. But really, there are a lot of these five axis machines and horizontal machines and
00:19:44
Speaker
Really a small footprint. They it's interesting. One of the things I really liked was Tyler's the guy I'm hanging out with here the most and he's like, you know We aren't always going to be the latest and greatest we aren't always gonna play that game And a lot of times we'll kind of march to the to the beat of a different drummer We may not have the fanciest new glass control panel cover thing here but what you're gonna see is you're gonna see that certain machines that really last for 20 25 years and that is
00:20:14
Speaker
totally true. I've seen a lot of shops that have those old Tiger machines or just older Matsura's that are still cranking out parts well.
00:20:24
Speaker
I remember on Instagram, there was like a pseudo challenge to find the oldest Matsura still running. And one of my buddies in Colorado, I think, had one from like 1978 or something like that. I think you won the challenge. And he's like, how about a new five axes? But ultimately, the best thing by far, what the most impressive is, is their ability to do integrated
00:20:52
Speaker
automation at a an incredibly small footprint with with just phenomenal capabilities and I saw that first ma'am machine and it's funny I didn't really know what a ma'am was until like last week when I I'd seen them before but I hadn't really paid attention like I have now and so the ma'am is effectively the original version of what like Phil bought and what like after this week this is really bad but I'm like Crimson needs of this machine like this is so you
00:21:22
Speaker
in every, and that's part of what I'm struggling with is you want to be a role model and you want to be responsible, right?
Role Model Responsibilities in Business
00:21:31
Speaker
You don't want to ever lose a company because you went out too far, but I'm like, Grimms, you're going to, this is what you were born to do. No, I'm serious.
00:21:45
Speaker
It's just that you would dive so deep. It's like, well, sorry, let me back up. So they came out with a ma'am and it's, do you know why it's called the ma'am 72? I don't. All I know about the ma'am 72 is it's gargantuan. No, it's not. Well, maybe I'm thinking of the bigger one then because you need like a platform to stand upon. And you're thinking of the big one. Okay.
00:22:07
Speaker
So they have three different, I think, three different MAM sizes, at least right now, 35, 70 or 60 or something, and then 100. So those are centimeter. So the MAM 35 is basically the exact same footprint work size as the MX 330 that Phil bought or you're looking at.
00:22:33
Speaker
But the man is just much bigger in that it can hold up to 520 tools, depending on which size ATC you buy and up to, I think 32 or maybe even 40 pallets in that machine.
00:22:46
Speaker
is, yes, it's bigger than an MX 330. It's bigger than your Nakamura or your DMG, but it's not that big, John. You could fit a MAM72 in your shop if you took out everything else. Well, honestly, if you just took out that your three axis mill, I bet you a MAM would fit front to back in that garage. I mean, it wouldn't you would never do this, you know, but it's not that big of a machine. And so MAM stands for Matsura Advanced Manufacturing, which is kind of OK, whatever.
00:23:15
Speaker
72 stands for the idea behind building this machine was it can run 72 hours unattended over the weekend. And they were doing this, the mams have been out for, I don't know, 15 years. So they were doing this before like automation became cool or, you know, behind, like right now I'm trying to find other tool builders that are building truly integrated machines, not just bolt on like partnerships.
00:23:42
Speaker
Yeah. And just like that, sir, was like, this is who we are as a company. We are doing this. We're doing it really well and a tight footprint with solid integration and control processes and all that. You know, that's who we are. And so the MX 330 and the MX 520, all these are really just trying to break down the barriers to entry by a little bit less scalability.
ROI on High-End Machinery
00:24:02
Speaker
So they're not as big as MAMs, but also the lower price point. Right.
00:24:09
Speaker
Nice. Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah, it's giving me more to dive into later today when I go to Elliot and try to figure this stuff all out. Yeah. Still not cheap. I mean, it's not just the machine. Here's the thing. It's a lot of capital, but from an ROI perspective, if you've got... I love this stuff, but I don't have a product for it. You do, I think.
00:24:39
Speaker
I don't know. You have to do the numbers on volume and whether that can tie into future Grimsmo stuff. But as long as you have actual profitable product to move, the numbers are scary and frighteningly amazing. Right. Yeah. In US dollars, I think an MX330 with a palette changer is roughly $400,000.
00:25:03
Speaker
I think it's a little, I think it's a little bit less than five. Okay. I thought it was 500 Canadian. I don't know. I've been trying to ask the kind of courteous, give me round numbers. And they were kind of like MX 330 with the 10 palette thing is 475 ish. Yeah. Just call it a half million dollars in either currency and you'd be close enough. Yeah.
00:25:26
Speaker
which works out to a payment of, I don't know, 6,000 US a month or something like that. But the fact is you can almost make that much product in a day, depending on the kind of product. And if you have the volume, if you have the demand, if you have the type of product that suits that type of machine that can run unattended, and if you're good enough to run it and have enough backup tools and safety so you're not just crashing everything,
00:25:54
Speaker
then yeah, it's something to consider for sure. Have you sat down and actually like thought about, like big boy, like really, here's what I would put in for my tool holders, tool holder investment tooling, actual cutting tools, work hold. I mean, that's the thing, like 10 pallets, you've got to spend what, between 10 and 35 grand just for work holding.
00:26:20
Speaker
on 10 pallets, right? Yeah, I mean the Lang pallets are not that expensive. I think they're only a couple hundred bucks each.
00:26:26
Speaker
But the Lang Vice is like two or three grand for that little vice, isn't it? Right. I guess I was just thinking of a quick change to change this. You're going to do, and you just roll your own tombstones? Exactly, right. I wouldn't need vices for every op. I'd need a couple. But yeah, you're right. If you wanted 10 vices, that would add a lot. But yeah, so it definitely all adds up. And a lot of times, those ancillary expenses, tool holders, and things like that are your own
00:26:52
Speaker
you know, they're up to you to buy, sometimes you can get a tooling credit to kind of roll it all into the machine. But right. Well, I think you could roll it into the purchase price in terms of financing, I think that'd probably be possible. And sometimes you can depends on where you get it from, if you get it from their, their authorized suppliers, sometimes they'll give you a tooling certificate. But you can't always just get a check and give it to Mary tool and be like, here you go. But maybe you can't. I don't know.
00:27:19
Speaker
It's actually very on topic. We just published this video on a beginner's guide to accounting for machinists and manufacturing entrepreneurs. And one of the things we talked about is the benefits of the US tax code in terms of bonus depreciation in what's called section 179.
00:27:39
Speaker
The there's some really good feedback I've gotten from folks about making sure you structure your machine purchases in a ways that can make this is all totally legal and even frankly, not even gray zone stuff. But like if you do a maintenance contract, you want to separately invoice that so that you can expense that and not have to depreciate a annual maintenance thing over the same longer terms. And then likewise, I don't know
00:28:07
Speaker
I don't know in the US, at least, if you're supposed to capitalize tool holders and vices, but I'm pretty darn certain that you can expense that stuff, which means you can take the full amount in one year. And that's really important for tax reasons. So if you go buy $70,000 in tool holders, you don't want to depreciate that stuff if you don't have to. Right.
Communicating with Lenders
00:28:31
Speaker
Absolutely, yeah.
00:28:34
Speaker
Do you have prepayment penalties on either of your financing machines? I forget on the mill. On the lathe, I think there is no penalty. Okay, you could pay more. I don't think you can pay like I'm going to pay double this month. I think you can only pay it off.
00:28:53
Speaker
completely. Oh, wow. I think. Really? I know we talked about for future small purchases and they're like, yeah, we don't really like, you know, bigger payments more often, but, but you can pay it off all the way. And this is what you talk to your lender about upfront, like don't be afraid of this kind of thing. Um, and they can structure all these little details probably differently for every case, depending on how, how much you ask, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, and so a friend of, um,
00:29:20
Speaker
friend of mine got in a pinch and his old machine went down and it was not the right solution to invest more money into a really old machine. And so long story short, he's looking at picking up a new machine and he would finance it. And he actually got, I don't know how much it was a negotiation, but he got them to kind of waive any form of prepayment penalties. And so obviously, I think that's really
00:29:47
Speaker
powerful. If you happen to be wonderfully successful, you obviously should pay the thing off. And even if you're just trucking along, this I won't change. I'm a big fan of even making time and a half payments or double payments when you can just to take that stuff seriously and not get comfortable and cozy. And then when the situation comes about where you need to do something
00:30:13
Speaker
bigger, I think it makes it easier to justify you've got the right attitude about that. I like that. I'll keep that in mind for the future as well, because it's absolutely a good thing to be able to buy your way out of it whenever you want. What's your goal with Metzur today?
00:30:36
Speaker
I mean, I feel like I know enough about this video. I don't really need to know more, but I'd like to spend some time in front
Exploring New Machinery Options
00:30:42
Speaker
of it. Like if they're running a demo, I want to stop the demo and push buttons on the control and actually like pretend it's mine just for five minutes just to see what it feels like. I taped out a spot on the floor yesterday and I'm like, oh, I'd be kind of tight in here. Oh, yeah, they're not tiny, huh? I mean, they are small, but yeah, we don't have a ton of space. We have some open space, but it kind of eats it up.
00:31:06
Speaker
Yeah. But that's all right. Yeah. There's a potential option to get the units, both units, on either side of us as well. Oh, really? So that's one possibility for expansion. There's one 600 square foot beside us. You couldn't fit a machine into, but we can put all the grinding stuff in the tumbler and all that into it, which could be nice. Yeah. And then on the other side, there's a unit our size, maybe slightly bigger, that we could also get.
00:31:35
Speaker
I'm concerned slightly that they're not connected. You'd have to walk outside, walk around. I don't want to segregate the business. I don't want some people over there and some people over here and they never talk to each other. It's just so much nicer when everybody's connected. Maybe that's just a hesitation that I have, but I certainly don't want three machines over here and one machine over there and I'm running back and forth.
00:32:02
Speaker
You could, we certainly have seen this before, you could go to your landlord and say, I need the 600 square foot space, but I want to sign a six month or month month lease on or something and I'm going to leave and go find a real proper space unless you can basically move my whole shop into something you own that's even bigger.
00:32:27
Speaker
Because I think there's other units in that whole complex, or does he own other real estate in general, or whoever the real estate company is? I'm actually going to sit down with him early next week and just kind of chat about this, because our lease is up in two months. And I brought it up to him the other day, and he's like, oh, I didn't even notice. I didn't even think about it. So it's not like he's itching to kick us out or anything like that, or signing another big lease. But yeah, I would certainly love to be in a,
00:32:56
Speaker
more contained unit as opposed to three separate units. But sometimes you just take what you can get.
Expanding Workspace and Overcoming Challenges
00:33:02
Speaker
Yeah. If it's for six months or something, whatever, not the end of the world, right? With the small one, there is already a door connecting the two units. We just have a piece of steel welded in front of it right now. Oh, that's not bad then. Yeah. So for the 600 bucks a month, it's going to cost for that place. It's not even an issue. Yeah.
00:33:26
Speaker
That's awesome. Remember, remember, was it IMTS when we were talking about we were looking at the speedios so much? Yep. And it was so funny how it was on paper, it was so comparable to like the Okuma in the Haas, but then I think the real thing that tipped me off that this is a totally different machine is it like the casting is half the weight.
00:33:47
Speaker
Yeah. Which isn't a bad thing. It's just a different machine. 5,000 pounds, I think. Whereas Marmoria is 15,000. Same for VM3. Right. Hilarious. Yeah. Do you know what the VF2 weighs? 7,000? Yeah. It's like 6,000 to 7,000 pounds. Right, right. Yeah. So it's certainly not a heavy duty machine, but what it does, it does very well. Yeah. But that's awesome. Yeah. Sweet.
00:34:15
Speaker
Um, I should actually go in cause we're going to head out, um, or head up to that tech center thing. But, um, are you gonna post, are you going to film today? Definitely. I'm bringing Aaron. So we're going to film everything. We're going to try to get, uh, people, not just machines, you know, which will be really nice. And, uh, yeah, bringing Angelo so we can all geek out on all the cool stuff and learn what we need to learn. Cool. Well, have fun. Yeah, you too. Um,
00:34:42
Speaker
I would ask you what else is going on, but that's obviously it. Yeah, that's today. We had our, financially last week was our biggest week ever. Yes. Good for you. That was awesome. That's awesome. We're just trucking along, man. They're still bottlenecks that we're trying to buy the right equipment to get over. That's going to make a noticeable difference.
00:35:06
Speaker
Are you reviewing? Do you sit down with Barry every week or every month on your numbers? Yeah, often. Not scheduled, but just often. Yeah, it's really nice. You should schedule that. Just for the sake of saying this is the routine. Yeah, that's a really good idea.
00:35:22
Speaker
I like it. How's knife 1000? I haven't worked on it. What really? I'm like, it better be done before knife 1100, which is coming up not too soon, or fairly soon. Yeah. Did you
00:35:38
Speaker
I haven't finished the pearl inlays yet, but I did try your blue tape and superglue trick yesterday. Yeah, it worked awesome. So I'm going to use that on the pearl inlays. And then that's the last thing I need to make is just the inlays and then give it to Eric and then it'll be done. I, since I don't know if we mentioned it last week or not, but since the blue tape, we found this 3M, I think it's 2060
00:36:02
Speaker
tape which happens to be green and they call it, 3M calls it like a high bond or difficult to adhere materials and it's meaningfully better tape. Not really, we didn't find the tape was a limiting factor on things like clean aluminum but on steels or other materials or we need less surface area and the tape is cheap. So I think we're basically
00:36:25
Speaker
moving completely to that new 3M stuff because I'm always going to look for the best option there to maximize your chances of success. You said 2060? Yeah. If you Google NYC CNC Super Glue, we did the updated link there for it. I think that's the number. I have 3M Scotch Brite pages tape. For multi-surfaces, 2090. Oh. Just a variation of that, I guess. Yeah, interesting.
00:36:52
Speaker
Okay, well, if it's if it works, it works. But this stuff is definitely if you can just tell it's it's it hears better than just regular painters tape. And it seems knock on wood seems to hold up better to coolant and oils and stuff. All right. Cool. Have fun at Metzer. I'm curious to talk and see and hear what you learn. Yeah, absolutely. All right. See you next week. Okay, bye. Bye.