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Leadership, Low Inventory & Long Lead Time, and CNC Lathes
217 Plays6 years ago
The guys muse about their leadership role and how seriously they take it. In order to be a better leader, you have to be willing to admit when things aren't going well--and that's not easy.
Tasks and Tiffs! Grimsmo shares current sticking points in the shop: sharing responsibility and co-worker conflicts. Incrementally, he's delegating more tasks. When it comes to conflict, he finds it easy to understand and validate both sides...which sounds good on paper BUT it's NOT! Grimsmo and Saunders talk about the importance of a superordinate goal - the goal that has to be more important than the personal issues that present themselves.
24 Hour Airport Test SMW is still searching for the right person to be part of the team. It helps to ask yourself, "Could I stand being stuck in an airport for 24 hours with this person?"
Perplexing Why is inventory at Sandvik kept SO low? No minimum quantities + long lead times don't make sense!
Haas ST-20Y in Action An aluminum chess pawn is the first part made on the lathe! With the probe arm calibrated, tool offsets dialed in, and spot on tolerances, it's time to move on to the next part.
PARTS CATCHER, YOU HAD ONE JOB. The upside down Cybertruck sends the part into the chip conveyor. Saunders and Grimsmo discuss different types of parts catchers and their preferences.
If you're thinking you should make your own spindle liners, think again. Don't pull a Grimsmo. Go to Trusty-Cook and buy them instead!
Grimsmo's going to be waiting at the door of his new shop on January 1st--come hell or high water. With the layout determined, he plans to meet with some epoxy vendors. The electrician and plumber are booked but have you thought about running air, though?
Saunders shares some great lessons he's learned the hard way when it comes to moving into a new shop.
First 5-Axis CNC machining class was a success! 6 students each ran their own code and ended up with an awesome engine block!
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Transcript
Introduction: Podcast and Hosts
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 148. My name is Jon Grimsmough. And my name is Jon Saunders. This is the podcast with two individuals who about 10 years ago bought garage CNC machines and have grown them into businesses where we both succeed, but also struggle regularly with how to make machining and business decisions. And let's have that. Let's air our thoughts on what is otherwise a private conversation with all the folks listening.
Entrepreneurship Challenges and Growth
00:00:29
Speaker
Absolutely. And let me just say how much of a joy it is to talk to you every week, like for what, two or three years now, I've been looking forward to it every day, every week. It's awesome. I, uh, I make my list. I think about things. And if you don't have, um, we talked about this before, but entrepreneurship can be lonely and you know, there's an element of leadership that I don't know that I understood until, um, and it's not that I claim to be a leader in the sense of.
00:00:59
Speaker
How would you say that? Like an appointed leader, but I'm a de facto leader because you run a company where you have decisions about products and public facing things and employees and so forth. And so that makes you a leader like it or not. And while I recognize that and I do that, and I think I do a good job at it or certainly an acceptable job at it.
00:01:21
Speaker
It's not necessarily something that I think is my strongest suit. I very much like, it's funny, I was getting back to doing some video stuff and tweaking it. I was like, I love, I'm working on this lathe, I'm working on 5X, I'm like, I love nerding out in cam and succeeding with that and thinking about smart hacks or workflows there.
00:01:42
Speaker
Yeah, I agree 100%. I think you and I have have grown into leadership positions on not on purpose. You know what I mean? And I mean, we have employees that we have to lead we have
00:01:56
Speaker
you know, a team, a company that we have to lead and make good decisions on a lot of responsibility rides on our shoulders. And not only that, but I mean, like you said, we're a public facing entity, not only just the podcast, but each of our YouTube channels. And like, believe it or not, we, you know, people listen to some of the stuff that we say. So, uh, no, sure. I take that seriously. Right.
00:02:17
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. We have to take that very seriously. And that in itself is a leadership position. And it's definitely not one of my strong suits. It's something I work on very hard and still have long ways to go. But it's like you kind of see where you want to be. You compare yourself to others and you're like, man, there's such a good leader or whatever.
00:02:40
Speaker
And it's tough to imagine yourself getting there, but then you look backwards in time. Like you always remind me to do and be like, think of where you were five years ago or two years ago or 10 years ago. And I did that just this morning and I was like, holy cow. Yeah. I am miles ahead of where I was then. So I'm doing okay. Don't beat yourself up, but you know, still be hungry and strive for more.
Honesty in Business Success and Struggles
00:03:01
Speaker
Yeah, and there's a bunch of ... I'm just going to call it a bunch of BS out there with ... Of course. ... when you see how the sausage is actually made inside of other companies. I had an interesting anecdote with a major
00:03:17
Speaker
media player in our industry where on the outside, everything looks chipper and phenomenal. And on the inside, you know, total train wreck, like really legit train wreck. And I don't, I don't wish ill will on them, but that's not the point of this. The point is I've always at the risk of, I don't know, probably not being the smartest tactful or strategy, strategy standpoint. I'd rather
00:03:42
Speaker
be a little bit more candid and honest about, Hey, here's where we're doing well. Here's what we know how to do. Here's what we like. Here's what we know we're successful. And here's where we're, you know, just a little bit struggling or seeing a little bit cooling off or, you know, I've just, um, just who I am. Yeah. It's, I mean, as we know from this podcast and private conversations, it's very difficult to talk about what's not going well. And it's not something I don't want to talk about, but I've learned that
00:04:09
Speaker
It's so utterly helpful. Like you said, entrepreneurship is lonely. If you don't get it out of your head, then you're stuck and you're just boiling in your own face. Not quite sure what's going on, but to be able to have somebody to talk to is amazing.
Team Dynamics and Conflict Management
00:04:25
Speaker
That goes back to Dale Carnegie. When you find somebody to talk to,
00:04:33
Speaker
Ask them how their business is doing too. It's a two-way street. Don't just dump your concerns or problems or position onto them. Very true. Very true. So what's not going well at Grimso Knives? Oh, dang. You're going to make me do that. That's okay. Let's see.
00:04:56
Speaker
I'm making incremental improvements on the things that bug me with regards to sharing responsibilities and tasks, which is probably something that bugs me most or high up there. I have a lot on my plate and because that's how I roll and I like to be responsible for a lot of stuff, but you can't juggle 15 balls at once or 300 in my case.
00:05:24
Speaker
So incrementally, I'm sharing responsibilities and I'm starting to do something and I realized anybody can do this. I can get anybody else in the team to do this. So I'm sharing more and I want to do better at that. But as far as what's going not well,
00:05:41
Speaker
I don't know. Some days I'm just like, man, we are crushing it. Things are good right now. That's awesome. That's not a trick question. I'm not, I don't want to make something up. I'm actually trying to like think of something to complain about. I don't know. I mean, when you have eight people now, eight guys in a room, there's
00:06:01
Speaker
little tips and spats that pop up every now and then and as a leader, that's annoying and difficult. And I tend to be a listener. I'm a big listener and I don't really give opinions because I like to see both points and I still don't like to make a firm decision. I'm struggling with that because I listen to both sides and I'm like, yeah, you're right. And then the other side, yeah, you're right. And then I'm like, wait a minute. I just enabled both sides. This is not helping. Right.
00:06:30
Speaker
So stuff like that is heavy on my mind right now.
00:06:34
Speaker
Yeah.
Work Culture and Hiring Philosophy
00:06:35
Speaker
There's always a good framework that I've fallen back on, which I think stems from the fact that I worked back in the New York finance days. That was a big boy. There wasn't a lot of sympathy. Right. So look, everyone's hurt people, and you got to get along. You may be stressed and overworked, but that doesn't mean you're actually miserable. That sounds weird. But there's a big boy role, which is kind of a, OK, look.
00:07:00
Speaker
you know, suck it up. There's a job that has to get done. That's what's most important. We need to communicate or we need to respect each other or you just got to figure it out. And it's not to be cold to, to anyone. And you're right. Like hearing the sides and opinions is awesome, but then ultimately it's kind of like, what are we, what are we, a lot of times it's like, what are we trying to accomplish? Like let's jump ahead one step or above one step and think, okay, what's the end result here that it is a win. And then let's think about how that kind of gets tackled.
00:07:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's so easy to get sucked into the moment, into the problem or the emotion behind it or whatever. But yeah, when you do step back and you're like, why are we here? We're here to make an amazing product for the customer and help the company grow and succeed or whatever it ends up being. And it's like, oh, okay.
00:07:49
Speaker
We're not here to be best friends, all of us, and that's okay. We're here to do a good job. We're here to get along, be friendly and funny and have a great time, but work, get it done. It's hard for me, I'm not an outgoing person by nature, so it's hard for me to just stand up and make that point, but I'm working on it.
00:08:13
Speaker
Well, it's, it's a culture thing. And I almost want to find a different word because I think when you hear the word culture, I just think like PowerPoint presentations from people who don't, who don't, who just talk about it. They'll actually implement it. Right. But, um, the, you know, what we've had to do over the past year, kind of starting to think back and look back, or even over the past two or three years in our businesses, we've had some, um, some folks that aren't here anymore. And then whether that was temporary, uh, internships or trial periods or, um,
00:08:43
Speaker
We've had some folks, we're right now still looking to fill a full-time position for testing tools as a machinist, improvement cut. We've had some conversations with folks and we are going to make sure that we hire the right person. It's not some unobtainable hurdle. There's no rush. Yeah. Well, there actually is a rush. I'd really like to get it filled.
00:09:06
Speaker
We've got to find, I would trade if you could split up the criteria into buckets. I'd much more focus on the bucket of somebody who's got the right attitude, the right hunger, the right kind of disposition, like conversation, questions, balance, comfort, like they don't have to be experienced so much that they have to be willing to think and listen, but also recognize, okay, I need to learn more, here's what I do. I'm much less worried about someone who has
00:09:34
Speaker
Um, strong, strong technical background, although there's elements where that could be really helpful. Um, but it's kind of the, uh, if they have that, but they don't have the hunger and the drive and the self initiative, especially with that role. Um, it just doesn't make sense. This doesn't
Education and Expectations: Post-Graduation Concerns
00:09:51
Speaker
work. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And it's kind of the, um, it's kind of the whole, like, are you also willing to, um, sweep up with us or, or just it's, um,
00:10:04
Speaker
the all hands on deck kind of no one's we just all we all got to get it done. I do. Yeah, I see entitlement is probably the word that I dislike the most from what I've seen and hey I've got to I've got to learn as well and make sure we're
00:10:23
Speaker
doing a good job of communicating what we want out of folks. But I have heard and have now seen a little bit more of folks that are more interested in what a job can do for them and not the two-way street, which is vice versa. It's two ways. What can the job do for them in terms of the whole picture, but also what can they do for the job? For sure.
00:10:51
Speaker
I wonder if that has to be taught and trained and reminded versus just assumed that everybody's on that page.
00:11:00
Speaker
It's not a page that everybody's on naturally, you know? Well, it's interesting. I had some conversations with folks that are involved in the local or the area, um, technical schools, both, both high school and college level. And there is some concern that there's, and these are gross generalizations, which come with huge caveats, but there's a concern that the school system or the professors themselves are sort of saying you, um, you know, that kind of, you're going to graduate and,
00:11:29
Speaker
either earn X or be in this, you know, decision-making role or at the, you know, the- Oh, they're fluffing it up. Yeah, kind of like setting, mismanaging expectations, right? Right. And maybe it goes back to the fact that when I graduated, I got my butt kicked my first year, you know, you were low man on the totem pole, you worked your butt off, you didn't come in with any sort of arrogance or sense of entitlement, you came in to prove yourself. Yep.
00:12:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's tough. And as you as you grow the company, and you know, someone has vastness, vastness difference of roles, you know, new guys that don't know anything and experienced guys that have lots of experience, you do have to be careful of that sense of entitlement, right? I mean, experience. I don't know, do experience and entitlement go hand in hand.
Balancing Experience and Avoiding Entitlement
00:12:27
Speaker
It's like you earned it.
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah. It's like the practical machinist syndrome, right? There's guys and practical machinists who are very, very skilled and talented, but when they are condescending and rude and berate you for not understanding inverse time in a five-axis machine, it's kind of like, well, I'm sorry, were you also born with that? Oh, you weren't, so you learned it on your own? No, someone else taught it to you, so let's calm down, bud.
00:12:53
Speaker
Everyone goes through a journey. And I'd much rather be interested in the guy who's trying to figure that stuff out and wants to listen and ask questions than be stuck in an airport with you, Mr. Keyboard Hero. Oh, the keyboard heroes. Anyway. I love it. I enjoy staying a little bit of an outsider because the more you surround yourself with people and get so deep into the weeds, you kind of forget about what's important sometimes.
00:13:23
Speaker
Of course. Yep. That was a good conversation. Sorry, yeah. No, that was wonderful. Here's something that perplexes me is how low Sandvik keeps their inventory levels. Interesting. They mentioned this when we did that factory tour there whatever a year ago.
00:13:49
Speaker
I didn't necessarily like it. It felt a little bit like a decision that was made by an NBA and finance department and not the strategy and customer facing world. I just don't like it. I remember Starrett talked about how their catalog was making this up off memory, but let's say they have 2000 items in their catalog.
00:14:15
Speaker
600 of those items, they sell less than five a year of. And so by the books, they should just discontinue all of those items, but they don't because they're steroid and they need to offer these products to people. They need them and it's the whole offering, the whole picture. I like that. It's interesting because we've been looking at more tooling options for our lathe. And so we just hop on and look at the Sandvik website and
00:14:41
Speaker
They're a global company, so it's pretty cool that if they only have three and they happen to be in Europe or Asia, you can actually get it still for $9. I can get it shipped to me usually within four days. That's really cool. But it still blows me away that on a company that generally doesn't seem to be faced with internal rev that would make a product
00:15:04
Speaker
out of date or out of useless because you've overproduced. It doesn't seem like they're anywhere near that and you do see issues where it's like, oh, there's a four-week or six-week or a 12-week lead time on something, which it just doesn't work. Yeah. I hate when that happens because you need it now. Right.
00:15:25
Speaker
Anyway, it just fascinates me. What is the mindset that goes into the conscious decision to say we are not going to maintain any minimum inventories on certain products? They know the sales. They are very profitable companies. It's not a cash flow or financial limitation. It may be a choice to boost it, but I don't get it.
00:15:45
Speaker
I almost expected, I mean, yeah, you're right with the four to six week lead time, but if they could do that, but still have like a quick turnaround time due to, you know, just in time inventory and make it on demand and things like that, then, then that's kind of okay. But not if there's a six week lead time. Yeah. Right. And I'm not talking about customs. Um, I'm talking to like, they do custom drills or holders or custom inserts. That's a little bit different. I'm talking about like a catalog product.
00:16:13
Speaker
Basically, yeah, like a certain size drill or like a soft body for the drill. So an inserted drill or the holders for the lathe.
00:16:23
Speaker
In fact, shout out to Lawrence, we learned, we realized that they sell a right in the left-handed version and the left-handed version was in stock and all you have to do is pull the Capito part out and rotate it and it becomes a right-hand one. So we bought the wrong one because it was in stock and totally fine. Not in any way a compromise and you're allowed to replace or maintain those Capito units on your own. So it wasn't even like I was doing something beyond what a person should be doing. That worked great.
00:16:53
Speaker
That's awesome.
Machining Projects and Equipment Excitement
00:16:55
Speaker
So how is the lathe going? I freaking love it.
00:16:58
Speaker
Oh, wait, wait, wait. Can you say that again? I absolutely, absolutely love it. I made the aluminum chest pond first the other day, just to like break the seal, um, turn something. And now I'm actually working on a part and it's a steel part. And finally I calibrated our probe arm so that that got my tool offsets dialed in. So after I did that on one tool knock on wood, it should be good for a long time. And so I touched off my other tools and the tolerances were just like spot.
00:17:30
Speaker
And I'm tweaking my toolpaths for my master template. We'll do a video on all this, but the finishes are great. The power is awesome. The set sounds, all I see here in that CNMG turned through that. This was a piece of 4140 and break the chips and it's just awesome. The finishes, the parting worked great. Parts catcher, I got to tweak a little bit. I'm not, I think the Haas parts catcher is not,
00:17:56
Speaker
the best design, but it'll work. How does the parts get to work? The hot and the hot? No, this is going to be hard to describe. It's basically like an upside down Cybertruck.
00:18:09
Speaker
So it has a kind of like a roof of a cyber truck, like it has a, this is now going to become an object that we use for the rest of our lives to describe things. And so it pivots under, it has a pivot point in the middle or sort of, so basically it's, it's straight up and down. Like it's standing up inside your, uh, inside the lathe. And then when it, like if there was water in it, it would be empty now.
00:18:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's just straight up and down. And then it pivots 90 degrees, which are a little bit more. So that makes it a angled ramp out to the door. And when it pivots to open, one side goes underneath the part, the other side actually pushes the door open. But the way the code is written, the parts catcher
00:18:56
Speaker
goes underneath the part before the parting operation occurs. That parting operation could be 20, 30 seconds. That whole time, the parts catcher door is open and it's spraying high pressure cooling and it's all coming out. There's a ton of it collecting in the bin as well.
00:19:15
Speaker
It actually failed to do its only job, which is the part clunked off into the parts catcher. And then instead of rolling out to me, it rolled the other way into the chip conveyor. So I just got to adjust the angles on it, I think.
00:19:31
Speaker
Hilarious. Yeah. Welcome to Laids. Yeah, so mine has like a basket that moves out on a pivoting arm and then presents itself like cupping underneath the part area and the sub spindle just kind of coughs it out, spits it into the thing and then it bangs it into the door and there's a bin in the door where you open the flappy and then get your parts.
00:19:51
Speaker
not my favorite system, like the Doosan layers, like what Jay Pearson has, and a lot of people have, they have a conveyor belt that presents your parts at the end, like my Swiss layer has. And that is a dream. Oh, I love it so much. How does the Doosan's though, get it from the spindle to the conveyor?
00:20:11
Speaker
There's either, I think there's a basket like mine. So it moves this forward and then it dumps it into the conveyor track. Whereas on the Swiss, it's basically like a shoot with a hole and the sub spindle moves in front of the hole and just spits it out. And then it goes down the shoot and then onto the belt.
00:20:28
Speaker
It's some of the parts that I make the little lock bar stabilizer. It's a fat, skinny, like, like big diameter, very thin, very light titanium part. And I've got like eight of them stuck to the walls of my conveyor right now.
00:20:46
Speaker
And so we're making a different part now and every now and then there'll be one of these LBSs that pops in because they just get knocked off for whatever reason. I mean, I could, yeah, the lock bar stabilizer, the thing that I was making. Um, yeah, it's funny cause I know they'll come out eventually. I could reach in there with a little wire or something and pick them off, but it's kind of fun to have a little surprise every now and then.
00:21:08
Speaker
I can't wait for you. We just sent the first draft of the Metal Quest tour. That was the Nebraska robot shop. That's the coolest shop I've ever been in, period. Oh, I can't wait. How long is the video? Only about an hour, which is surprising. I was going to say 50 minutes. 50 minutes. Yeah. OK, good. It almost deserved more. Heck, maybe we'll go back. But it's awesome. Yeah.
00:21:35
Speaker
Well, so the thing I did last night was I'm turning a two inch piece of steel and I just cut a slug off for this test part. But next I want to try to use a sort of three or four foot bar. So we have the bar feeder. I don't necessarily think I'm going to use the bar feeder as a true automation solution today or like this week, next week, because I don't have
00:21:59
Speaker
it's set up with a sub to pull it and I just baby steps here. But what occurred to me is the obvious point, which is that I can still use a four foot stick and just finish apart and then pull it out. And obviously then I don't have to have a slug drop on each individual part, right? Like if I ordered my material saw cut. So, but I've heard the Haas spindle liners are not as good as the
00:22:24
Speaker
Who makes those? I'm curious if you know this brand. Oh, Trusty Cook. Are they the silicone ones? Silicone line ones or something? Mine are just extruded, kind of look like PTFE or UHMW.
00:22:37
Speaker
put the sub-sort of plastic or something. Yeah. So I slid in the two inch spindle liner and I guess I'm just concerned to see is it going to work? What's going to be the problem? Am I going to have tolerancing issues if you have a, because I'm sure if you have a bad spindle liner or no spindle liner, your part wobbling on the other side of the chuck will absolutely affect tolerances on the cutting side of the chuck.
00:23:02
Speaker
Especially with, I mean, I run like quarter inch material, so it doesn't really matter. But yeah, if you have two inch steel, it's wobbling around a lot. So all the bar, bar liners that I have are a sloppy fit for sure. Um, that's good to know. And I think that's normal, but I mean, the tighter, the better. If you're, if your bar is two inch, you probably don't want much more than two Oh one or something like that. Cause I mean, it needs to slip. I've had bars stick. Um, and it's just annoying because they don't get pulled properly. Yeah.
00:23:30
Speaker
but if they're too sloppy and a big heavy thing, it's going to vibrate and that's not good. I'm going to go put a piece of electric tape around my slug and just see how that does because maybe I just basically bushing the end of it like that and maybe that could help stabilize the very- I'm still going to bow in the middle on it. Sure, but not nearly as much because you have the- Sure, yeah. Whatever the engineering term would be for that.
00:23:58
Speaker
Um, well, I'll see how it goes. I'm not too worried about it. And I'm excited about the thought that like, Ooh, this is awesome. Cause I got to run a batch of parts and I don't want to, you know, your part yield is way better if you don't have to cut each slug, right? Right. So you mean you're not going to, uh, make your own bar liners? Oh my God. I can't believe unsubscribe. You've stopped doing that. They weren't doing that, right? Yeah. I made the one batch and that's all I needed. Yeah.
00:24:26
Speaker
Um, surprisingly hard to find tubing with an ID diameter, exactly what you want, because they're all typically made for OD diameters. Um, that was one of the annoying parts of it. Like when you buy, when you buy one inch tubing, it's got a somewhat weird size ID, like one inch tubing with an eighth inch wall doesn't necessarily have whatever three quarter inch ID it's like bigger or smaller. And I'm like, but that doesn't fit a three quarter inch bar. Like, Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah.
00:24:56
Speaker
Right. So that was one of the hard parts. So yes, buy your spindle liners, people. It's not really worth the cost savings or time involved in making your own.
00:25:07
Speaker
It worked, whatever. That's a good segue to my one note for today, which was I've had a really good past week or two in terms of thinking about the business and also thinking about wrapping up this year. I haven't reached what I think I want to be the stable run rate of this, but I have done a better job of
00:25:31
Speaker
giving myself time to think and plan and the role that I think I should be playing and want to play in terms of absolutely being involved, but also letting other people run with things. That's sort of all that kind of like the
00:25:47
Speaker
the business is working. And I think about how many times this year did I get overly stressed or overly worked, or there's lots of different words, anxiety, so forth. And it was absolutely better. I think I could do a little bit better next year, but at the risk of sounding complacent, I'm pretty happy with that, with how this year went. That's fantastic. Good. Yeah, it's been a big year.
00:26:07
Speaker
Yeah, I can't say that I've thought about it from an annual standpoint yet, looking back on the year. I certainly reflect a lot and I think a lot more of the future than I do of the past, but yeah, I think we did an excellent job this year. There's certainly a lot of things we need more improvement on, but that's the hungry nature of what you and I do. It's not that it's never good enough, it's that it can always be better.
00:26:31
Speaker
But this was enjoyable, but I want that sustainability of the path that we're on and not the, when you hear about entrepreneurs or business folks that shut their business down, that lost their business, that moved on to something else. One of the things I've heard is them say, it was just a, what do you call it, treading water, or I never felt like I could
00:26:55
Speaker
you know, I was always worried about making it work. It was just such a struggle. And even though they loved it and they weren't necessarily failing, but it's just they, it didn't work. And that's not the case for us at all. But I also think because I
00:27:09
Speaker
want to learn and because I want to keep, I love doing this. There is that sense of like, Hey, what's the next thing? And I like, I like saying, Nope, we're not necessarily looking to say yes to all new ideas or new things. This is what we do. What we do right now is we make fixture plates. We do a very good job at that. We have this, we have a product line. We have a way of marketing them. We have the way that we make them and order that material. And we've got that process down. And that process is what
00:27:35
Speaker
runs our business basically and then we also have fun doing YouTube stuff and we do a little podcast thing. But it's all sustainable and it's not a, oh boy, we've all got to, everything's got to be working perfectly and everyone's got to be a bit frantic just to make it all. Yeah, just to break it in. Yeah, right. What's going on today? Today, I am choosing between two epoxy coding vendors.
00:28:03
Speaker
So I'm reviewing both the quotes and figuring out which one I want to go with. Very excited about that. And then lots of thinking about the new shop.
Preparing the New Shop
00:28:12
Speaker
Electrician is booked. Plumber is booked, trying to figure out where everything goes. Are you going to be able to get them? Having a lot of fun. Are the contractors are able to do work before January 1st? No. Okay. Yeah. We get keys January 1st. Got it.
00:28:30
Speaker
The current tenants are like, yeah, we can be out here in a week. And I'm like, okay, but I'm going to be there on January 1st. I don't care if it's a stat holiday and if it's New Year's day, like somebody give me the keys. I'm booking the epoxy guy for January 2nd. So just saying. Well, that's frustrating because it makes a mess and smells. So you basically can't use the shop right for like four days or something.
00:28:56
Speaker
Right, exactly. Which is fine, that's planned. And then basically, I talked to the electrician about, do we have you come in and run everything when the shop is empty? And then we kind of choose where everything's going, because we're already laying it out with the 3D printed models. So we know where everything's going to go.
00:29:17
Speaker
But is it easier for you to lay all the groundwork with an empty shop? And he goes, yes. And then we'll just come back when the machines are in and we'll hook everything up. And I was like, OK, fine. Let's do that. So that's the plan. Because the shop's got a lot of power, but it doesn't have power going anywhere. And we've got transformers for every machine. So they got to run lines everywhere. Even things like airlines, I was like, oh, man, we're going to have to pipe the whole shop for air. Both shops.
00:29:41
Speaker
Right. Good deal. So the lessons or mistakes we learned there, number one, if you can just run an extra piece of conduit like empty, and it could be for, I don't know what code is in terms of mixing cables, but like whether you need to run an extra ethernet cable or some new thing or an extra power thing, just having an extra piece of conduit is cheap and having a size big enough to make sure it facilitates things. We love having sub panels that way.
00:30:08
Speaker
You've got extra power at certain areas, if you will, if you need to throw in an extra ... We just got some new mist collectors. They're three-phase. I think I can put them through the machine power, but if not, it's less big a deal to get an extra three-phase from a subpanel than it is to do a home run all the way back for something that's kind of silly, like a mist collector.
00:30:27
Speaker
Um, right. Yeah. I would recommend running ethernet everywhere, piss on wifi, um, ethernet, you know, there's nothing more satisfying than plugging in an RJ 45 and knowing I have reliable, solid connections to our network for machines and posting and all that. Yeah. Yeah. We've been on wifi and generally don't think about it too much. Yeah. And then, uh, Oh, the airlines, we, we ran ours too small lesson learned.
00:30:55
Speaker
What size we, oh, I should triple check this because I'd feel terrible if I told you incorrectly. I believe we ran three quarter inch rapid air. Yeah. That's what I thought. And one inch is like almost 50% bigger or something from it. I know. And it's not much more expensive. I was looking at it. Um, did you do the coil where you have to unroll it and straighten it out or did you do the straight length pipes?
00:31:17
Speaker
Oh, no, we brought, I think it was 600 feet of straight pipe or something for our shop. Yeah. Because at our current shop, we did the coil, we have to unroll it and it's fine because we could snake around stuff and there's a lot of pillars and stuff in our shop that we had to move around. But I'm looking at the straight pipes with the fittings, the 90 degrees and all that stuff and it's comparable costs. But I was pricing it out.
00:31:41
Speaker
I think for everything I need is about $2,300 and three eighths inch, and then $2,900 for one inch. You mean that much work. You said three eighths. You mean three quarter. Three quarter. Well, if anything, at least, and gosh, I don't know the layout of your shop, John, and where your compressor is going to be, but if I had to do it over, I would consider doing something like a one and a quarter inch line from the compressor over to like the middle of the area or the far
00:32:10
Speaker
something that gives you a heavier flow, because we don't have a compressor issue, we have a flow issue. Interesting. So, I think just fixing that one main run, it buys you a lot of options.
00:32:30
Speaker
And do you have a full loop where it goes all the way around? You want to, because otherwise you'll end up getting stale air. Yeah. Yeah. You do, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And we did put in a $800, 220-gallon storage tank. We put it in at the far end of the shop, kind of act as a battery. Yeah. Yeah. And if we need to, what we may end up doing is running a, I think we solved the UMC issue I brought up before by getting rid of the QDs that choke down the flow diameter.
00:32:58
Speaker
QD. Quick disconnect. Yeah. Got it. Okay. Yeah. Anyway, my humble advice is it's not going even to a one and a quarter inch just for the run from the compressor to like the middle of the... Like if you have the knock and Kern and lay all that, like kind of all near each other and the compressor is 60 feet away,
00:33:21
Speaker
I would run an inch and a quarter over to that area, just that one line, and then everything else can be one inch off that. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, I'll consider that.
00:33:32
Speaker
Yeah, the shops a giant rectangle, and the compressor is going to go in one of the corners, and all the machines are going to go down each of the long arms, the long sides of the of the rectangle. And yeah, so I'm just going to run air all the way around. And maybe as you said, I'll do a heavy line, one and a quarter to kind of the machine main area, and then smaller around. Because like, what the car, I think the current is gonna need a lot of air. Oh, really? And I do not want to underpower. Sure. So
00:34:01
Speaker
Maybe that's got the big one. Yeah, or maybe, I'm not an air expert, but maybe you do a one and a quarter inch as your ceiling loop all the way around and then everything off of that is one.
00:34:14
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Maybe I'll price that out too. Because the difference, like I said, was 2300 to 2900 for three quarter to one inch. So I haven't tried one inch to one and a quarter. Maybe it'll be another $300 or something, not that much. But yeah, but boy, do shops do costs add up as a
00:34:34
Speaker
as you're building a new shop and just renovating one. And I mean, we're not doing anything other than epoxy. We're not doing anything like structural or fancy. It needs a bit more lighting, but that's not going to be hard. Awesome. I can't wait to see more pictures of it.
00:34:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's, it's legit stunning. I actually dreamed about it last night. I dreamt about our old shop and then the new shop and neither one of which are reality. This was like fictional brain dreamland, um, different places, but they felt like my current shop and my next shop. And, uh, and it was cool. It was amazing. That's awesome. Are you, do you have like GPS awareness of where your Kern is on a boat? I do not, but it is on a boat. Awesome.
00:35:23
Speaker
super exciting and has been for, geez, a week or two now. So it can't be, it's landing in Montreal port and then driving over. Oh, okay. That was okay. Cool. So to get to Montreal port, it does have to go down the St. Lawrence Seaway, right? Yes. Awesome. That's really cool. Port Kern, lonely on a container ship next to, you know, a billion Nike seekers or something. Yeah. That's awesome. Anything else going on? Nope. Nothing big. You?
Automation and Technical Training Success
00:35:50
Speaker
I am working on a, um,
00:35:53
Speaker
Like just learning dovetail. So everything we've done by and large for the fifth axis has been on a vice so far, but I want to figure out, it's kind of in this question of do dovetails make sense? And so I made a pretty cool parametric fusion file that will adjust your dovetail for your stock and
00:36:13
Speaker
and then automatically generates all the toolpath to make the dovetail. But that's kind of the question is you've got to zero it to get the dovetail to work. But there are some cool benefits about how it mechanically locks in, how it locates. There's that polka-yoke nature of the way you put the dovetail in with the pin, you can't put the stock in the wrong way. So like for the current sort of thing with automation and higher volume and
00:36:37
Speaker
Sit in areas where pullout consequences are catastrophic. Um, you know, breaking tools, spindles, holders, uh, damaging the machine probes. Um, it's cool. And then there's the kind of other point, which is that dovetails are cheap. Um, you know, self-centering vice is pretty expensive and, um, you can get dovetails, uh, inexpensive. And I think what we're going to be able to do, this is what I'm kind of working on is if you use a dovetail.
00:37:03
Speaker
It could be a bit smaller than your stock size, which means you can actually get more access to the underside, that sixth side of a prismatic part. Yeah. And that's cool because my interest in 5-axis is one and done. Yeah. Oh, by the way, we ran our class last week. It went
00:37:23
Speaker
was super well. We had six students, so we kept it small. Everyone made a small, like a fist size V8 engine block. We went through a ton of CAD and CAM workflows. We talked about holding. Everyone ran the machine. They probed stuff in. They did multiple setups. We ran through spindle core and drills. We ran relieved shank tools. We were swatting, and that V8 was done in, I should say, one op. My tabbing recipe was not as good as I would have liked, so we ended up
00:37:53
Speaker
I'm super flying the back of the tab off on the Tormach, but I'll get that fixed next time so that it's a better finish. What was the cycle time?
00:38:01
Speaker
Uh, they did it in two ops. So the big thing we do with our training classes is we want people out on the machines relatively quickly so that they kind of see the full workflow and they kind of get the, get the jitters out of them. They get to go push the button. So we have the program, some simple tool orientation stuff. And so that's a two day class before lunch on the first day, they've all put their part in the machine, programmed it, probed it in hit cycle start and just ran the first roughing ops.
00:38:31
Speaker
So that was probably three minutes on the machine. And then the rest of the cycle time for that VA block was, I think it was probably 20 minutes. And the people are actually, the students are actually in control of the machine while it's doing that.
00:38:44
Speaker
Every student ran their own code, correct? That's amazing because like, I'm so used to it now. I don't even think about it. But when I have somebody else jump on a machine or even when I jump on, you know, somebody else's machine and they're like, okay, you're in control. You have this immediate feeling of like nervousness of like, whoa, this.
00:39:01
Speaker
I am fully aware of what's going on right now or not. And yeah, I tend to get kind of jaded about that because I'm so used to it, but man, it's a big deal. And it's cool that you're doing that for students, that you're getting them right on there. But the same way that I want to isolate risk in a class to avoid bad things happening is the same, showing the students how I protect our machine is exactly what they need to see because I'm thinking about, okay,
00:39:25
Speaker
Where are we using fusion simulation? Where are we using complete? What are we thinking about the coordinate system? Where are we probing? What are we looking for in terms of the big the big gotchas, which are basically just linking moves, coordinate systems and tool links. And that's that's the real world. Do any of your of the students have five axis machines?
00:39:43
Speaker
Yes, actually, yes, for sure. One of them has a Haas trunnion. One of them has the DMU65, the same machine that Amish has. One of them, I think, was looking into, I forget, so it was a mix. Excellent. Well, with Pearson getting his UMC500, it's getting everybody excited. Cool, right? Yeah.
00:40:06
Speaker
Awesome. Well, I got to run. I will see you next Wednesday, next Friday. Sounds awesome. We recorded it on Wednesdays. Exactly. So I talked to you on Wednesdays. Have a good Friday, bud. All right. You too.
00:40:20
Speaker
Bye. Hey guys, Grimzmo here. We'd like to ask viewers to send in a short audio clip of how this podcast has positively impacted their lives and businesses. Here is this week's clip. Hey guys, my name is Tim Hale at Fiber Artists Supply Co. on Instagram. We design and manufacture mostly wooden tools for textile artists here in Cincinnati, Ohio. Basically, I spend my days thinking up ways to help artists move yarn more efficiently.
00:40:46
Speaker
This show has been at the very top of my podcast list since I found it about a year and a half ago. What I most enjoy is that genuine feel that you convey when discussing the challenges of being an entrepreneur. I'm sure a lot of other listeners have had the experience of popping on the BOM and hearing you flesh out an idea that they're struggling with as well. That is pure gold when it happens and it seems to happen a lot with you too.
00:41:12
Speaker
Keep up the good work and know that the ROI on the BOM is EPIC.