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Entrepreneurial Methods, Delegating Tasks, ProvenCut, & CNC Lathes
137 Plays5 years ago
Less than a week into 2020, Grimsmo's new shop is ready to be outfitted with epoxied floors, water, electric, and air in the coming days and weeks. The floors have been shot blasted and the repairman is on his way to fix the heater. With the new shop being a 1-minute walk from the current one, it couldn't be more convenient. Excuse me, did you say, "Shot Blasted?"
Now I know why it's called The E-Myth REVISITED... This book repeatedly floats to the top as one of the most valuable resources for entrepreneurs. If it's not enough to hear it from both Johns, Curt Richardson, Founder, Chairman, and Chief Visionary Officer of Otter Products, LLC, mentions it in this "How I Built This with Guy Raz" podcast episode.
Get A Copy of The E-Myth Revisited
A JaRrINg Entrepreneurial Perspective When grinding and bootstrapping from the bottom to the top is all you've known, learning about a different approach can be difficult to grasp. How we view risk VS reward and whether or not we're motivated intrinsically or extrinsically greatly determines the shape of the business.
PERMABEARS. Don't Be One. Against the backdrop of the economy, entrepreneurs who acquire large loans and hire out the positions take on more risk; thus, they generally reap more reward. That being said, while it's good not to be a "permabear," ignoring the possibility of economic decline isn't exactly smart either.
GRIMSMO GRINS During a supply issue, Grimsmo realizes he's fallen back to an old trusty behavior pattern. He's going to push himself to give more responsibility to the awesome team behind him!
Inventory | A Balancing Act In the process of re-configuring inventory racks for raw material, Saunders is reminded of two things: 1) Jay Pierson's lean approach and 2) The Glock Factory that stores up to two years worth of raw material. While discussing the supply of material, the conversation takes a dark but realistic turn towards history.
Humdinger Tool Life Report & Patience A company hires ProvenCut to test tool life and when the detailed report is sent back to them, there is no response. When you don't hear back right away, that can make you question everything....
Grimsmo highlights that ProvenCut isn't just about finding an exact recipe. It helps identify ideal speeds and feeds ranges! When it comes to Swiss machines and using oil instead of coolant, Grimsmo's concern with tool life/babying tools has increased greatly--especially after @eoscases Citizen machine caught fire.
Click the image below for video.
Haas ST-20Y Saunders discusses reasons for the Haas lathe purchase. When it comes to the product, is it really turning out?
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction & Feedback Discussion
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode one fifty two my name is john rims mo and my name is john saunar's this is the comfort conversation between two gentlemen about our businesses in manufacturing and machine worlds. I hesitated there because we somebody sent in the feedback they don't like that clarification intro and i struggle because you want to first off can't please everybody but yeah.
00:00:27
Speaker
we want to, uh, I enjoy finding new people. And, um, at case in point, I was listening to some podcasts on the Christmas travelers around the holidays. And it's awesome to find new podcasts, but people, you know, people are fickle. People will switch to a different one if they don't think it's what they want or on tune. And I think what makes our podcast a little bit more difficult is it's not a structured podcast. It's just you and me talking about quote unquote, you know, private stuff.
00:00:57
Speaker
Mm hmm. But I like the intro because it I mean, for the people that listen every week, it probably gets old and boring. But it's short. It's not like we have a three minute ad build intro like a lot of people do. It's good.
Shop Maintenance & Preparation Techniques
00:01:10
Speaker
And it adds that small level of consistency that we otherwise don't really have. So yeah, I like it. On that note, how are you? I am doing splendid. Really good. Solid start to 2020.
00:01:26
Speaker
It's eight days in to the year, how's the shop? It's good. I think I went back and forth four times yesterday, checking on things, meeting people. There's a heater that doesn't work, so I had the landlord come in and we looked at it, we poked around and tried to make it work, and he's like, okay, I'll have a gas guy here in the morning to fix this for you. There's a back section room, and they're like, actually, we never turn this heater on, ever.
00:01:54
Speaker
I'm like, okay, well, we need it. Let's get this fixed. Especially the epoxy guy needs it to cure the epoxy. It's got to be warm enough in there. Oh, sure. You get pretty cold weather too, if I remember correctly. Yeah, it's been around freezing, not so bad lately, which feels warm, really.
00:02:18
Speaker
Yeah, no, right. It was 37 here and I walked outside and I thought, Oh, this is, this is nice. This is great. I don't even get a coat. Yeah, exactly. You can go outside in a t-shirt for like 10 minutes. You're fine. And yeah, it's funny. Yeah. Um, so where, where are you?
00:02:34
Speaker
Floors are shot blasted. All the cracks are almost filled. And then they should be laying down epoxy like today, tomorrow, certainly Friday. And they're planning to be done by Friday, which is like three days away. So yeah, epic. It's interesting. I've never seen a floor shot blasted. I've heard about people etching it or grinding it, but not blasting.
00:03:02
Speaker
Exactly. And when Eric and I did our current floors like four and a half years ago, we etched it with myriatic acid and it's gross and messy and stinky and
00:03:15
Speaker
And then you got to dilute it with baking soda. It's, it's a mess. And then grinding it is like with a big floor grinding polishing machine, you know, like 36 inch diameter. Um, and that works okay. Like they're doing that now, but in order to get through pits, you have to grind through everything. Um, so you might have to grind down quite a bit, like, you know, half an inch off your floor or something stupid like that. Whereas shot blasting literally takes, um, steel shot, like, uh, babies.
00:03:44
Speaker
tiny ones, and it's got this like Bosch router thingy attached to the end of it, but it blasts these steel beads down into the ground really hard, recirculates them back up, and then they just go in this like two foot loop, down up, down up, down up, and there's a vacuum on it with the filter that all the dust from the concrete
00:04:06
Speaker
goes through the filter but the beads are too big until they break down small enough and then the beads evacuate as well. So it's actually a beautiful process and does it ever tear up that concrete and it's self-propelled and it moves forward and the epoxy guy's like this is basically the greatest thing ever and it gives you a clean surface for epoxy. Like you can literally go from shot blasted to lay down epoxy immediately.
00:04:32
Speaker
Yeah. Sounds awesome. It is. I'm guessing there's still a few BBs that escape the system and are rolling around the floor. Yeah, they've got this magnetic thing on wheels, like three feet wide magnet, basically, that you roll around and it sucks up all the beads afterwards. But for the most part, it captures all of them. Yeah.
00:04:56
Speaker
There was a show on one of the Discovery type channels or how it's made showing
Technological Innovations & Business Insights
00:05:00
Speaker
how they refurbish, believe it was an Abrams tank, and they dismantle and disassemble the whole tank until you're left with what looks like the tank shell or frame.
00:05:13
Speaker
And I think this actually happens in Northern Ohio. And they then pulled the tank into this building and lift it upright. So it's a pretty tall building, actually. It kind of looks like the Kennedy Space Center. I'm sure it's not that tall. But then the tank
00:05:29
Speaker
shell gets shot blasted like that, and it comes back perfectly clean. Somehow, that process by, I guess, stress relieving the material, quote unquote, strengthens or improves or reconditions it. That's so cool to think that that works that way.
00:05:48
Speaker
Yeah, you're shot peening it, basically. They do it a lot for engine parts, like crankshafts and connecting rods and stuff. And it micro-dense the surface a billion times over. Even aerospace does it a lot. And its stress relieves the surface to kind of even everything out. I'm not a metallurgist, but I've heard a little bit about this stuff. And yeah, it seems really cool. Have you ever thought about it for any of your knives?
00:06:15
Speaker
No, it's interesting with the blades because we do get pretty metallurgically nerdy, especially Sky and Angelo, which is nice to have them kind of take that on. Like we want the cleanest, you know, most homogenous grain structure, even heat treat throughout. I think if you shot blast it, you'd make it hard on the outside. Maybe not so much throughout on the inside. So is that bad for a knife? Does a knife need to be through hardened?
00:06:45
Speaker
Yeah, ideally. A lot aren't, but I don't know. Interesting. Probably. Yeah. Let's see. So this week's epoxy and the next week is electrician. I'm trying to nail down a plumber. Maybe put that off a little bit too long because the first guy that I was planning on going with, he's like, oh, I'm a month behind. I can't help you for a month. So I'm like, okay. Yeah.
00:07:08
Speaker
if you have any suggestions. So he suggested some other guys. And then I'll try to nail that down for next week, just to put us a few sinks in some plumbing around the shop, some hot and cold water.
00:07:21
Speaker
And then airlines, airlines moving machines though. No, the plumbing won't stop us from moving machines, but there's no water in the, uh, in that building in the machine shop at all right now. So it'll just be annoying. Oh wow. But yeah, airlines should be delivered. I'm buying the fast pipe. One inch fast pipe, uh, system should be delivered today. And then we'll get them installed later this weekend.
00:07:46
Speaker
I knew you had mentioned it was close to each other, but I didn't realize you could basically see the other shop. That's super nice to keep things running and then hop over there when you need a delivery or service guy or something. Yeah. It's literally like less than a minute walk.
00:08:04
Speaker
Yeah, if I'm meeting somebody or, you know, the landlord or getting a delivery, now I can start getting deliveries over there. And I'll just be like, call me when you get in if nobody's there. And any one of us can walk over like the gas guy is going to be there at like 815 this morning. I'm not going to be around, but Barry will. So I'll just call me and I'll text Barry. There's some really good technology things that that any person can take advantage like
00:08:30
Speaker
either getting a simple WISE camera, the W-I-Z-E, or even a ring camera, and help deal with modern business entrepreneurship stuff. Because if somebody rings you, have you seen those ring cameras?
Inspirational Stories & Business Growth
00:08:45
Speaker
The door cameras? Then all of a sudden, your vendor doesn't realize that you're not in the room, and you could be over there one minute, no big deal. Problem solved. That's awesome. Yeah. Things are going really good. What's up with you?
00:08:58
Speaker
One of the podcasts I was listening to on the drive was the Otterbox episode from the How I Built This with Guy Raz. It was pretty cool because Otterbox, I think iPhone case, which sure, sort of cool, but not really something I would hone in on as being, oh, this is a podcast I definitely want to listen to and a story I definitely want to hear.
00:09:23
Speaker
I clicked on it and started listening to it. It starts off, the guy was a machinist. I'm like, oh, wait a minute. This totally makes sense. He was working at a shop that made injection molded parts. They made a lot of their tooling. He bought the business out. He really struggled trying to job shop injection mold low quantity type stuff and walks through this whole process of how he ended up falling into
00:09:48
Speaker
this idea of a phone case, and it's just so awesome to hear anecdotes like Steve Jobs hated the idea of a case because he thought the phone was perfect as it was. Obviously, I think if you go walk around and look in people's pockets, I'd hate to think what percentage have cases, but it's pretty high, I think.
00:10:08
Speaker
Yeah. Anyway, he really struggled with this business to the point of having some pretty low moments and failures. And then he's talking through this story on the podcast. He's like, and then I found this book. And as soon as he said that, I looked at Yvonne and I said, he's going to say the E-Myth. And you know, it's kind of one of those things where you want the pride of being right. But like, I didn't know if he was really going to say it. It would have made sense. And sure enough, he's like, this book called the E-Myth Revisited or the E-Myth or whatever.
00:10:36
Speaker
And then he goes on to talk about, yes, Ysera is starting a bakery, a pie shop. And it was awesome to hear how the Emeth helped a business that's now a multi-billion dollar business.
00:10:52
Speaker
And then to fast forward a week or so and to hear Phil on our WhatsApp be like, you know, I think he's having some solid growing pains. Talk about, you know, I've heard of this book. I finally picked it up. I finally reading it. So to everyone out there who's heard of it or thinking about it, but hasn't picked it up, just pick it up and read a chapter. Yeah, I totally agree. Once you start reading, if you're a business type person, if you own a business or are heavily involved in a business,
00:11:21
Speaker
Yeah, you won't be able to, you'll be so curious just starting reading it. And it's a fantastic book. And it's great to hear that it's helped grow billion dollar companies. Crazy, right? But that's a good
00:11:34
Speaker
That's a good segue with Dr. Phil because his, by the way, not a doctor so far as I know, but that's okay. His AU class talked about machining complicated five axis parts and his theory was we'll break it down instead of looking at it as this complicated
00:11:52
Speaker
overall part just pick an area or pick up one or just pick on the work like just just take steps. And I know that helps me a lot reminding myself kind of like the way that memorization experts use mnemonics like they use visuals to remember patterns and numbers and stuff. I don't always remember to force myself to slow down or force myself to take things you know, break them down. So now I picture Dr. Phil like I picture Phil and it works like that's what I now
00:12:20
Speaker
use as my mnemonic, my mental device or remember, you don't have to read the whole book when somebody tells you it's a good book. Just pick up a chapter. Just skim the back cover. See if it's going to click with you because you don't regret it once you're in it. It's more that decision or anxiety behind whether you want to obligate yourself to do it.
00:12:37
Speaker
That's a really good observation. Thank you. I like that. That applies to a lot of things, actually. You don't regret it once you're in it, but it's that indecision beforehand that, well, we got a lot of book choices right now. I don't know. I could do this one. I could do this one. I could spend my time with my family watching a movie, blah, blah, blah. But once you actually commit to it, life changes. I like that. Once I'm two pages in, I never think, ah, I'm going to close this and pop open YouTube or Netflix. No, I'm good. Once I'm a page in.
00:13:08
Speaker
Here's a question. When you read, I guess I typically read at night, but historically reading puts me to sleep. I struggle to keep my eyes open, even if it's like eight o'clock in the evening. Does it wake you up? Does it engage you?
00:13:23
Speaker
You got to change sometimes the timing for sure, but also don't read and don't read your head then Yeah, even if I don't read at the table or even just reading my kids to sleep like it puts me to do like Yeah, no, I've not was like when Meg reads, you know, Meg read All kinds of stuff like I like to watch movies. She likes to read. That's the thing. It keeps her awake for hours Yeah, you know, like it does not put her to sleep. Oh if I read something
00:13:52
Speaker
like some mystery thriller, which I don't really read that often. That will for sure get me going. But no, it's pretty easy to read anything technical or business. I can't stay up till 11.30 for two hours, fired up, wired on. Right. No. Yeah. As interesting as it is, but it's still like, it's dry material relatively. That's fine.
00:14:17
Speaker
Yep. Um, speaking of the email though, I recently, uh, had a conversation with a business person and it, and it really, uh, it really jarred me or just
00:14:30
Speaker
It's a great example of needing to get outside in different perspectives, whether they are who you are or they're different or right or wrong, whatever. Just blow me away. Your and my stories are like the e-myth. We had a bakery, we had a desire, we had a technical thing, we wanted to apply our trade, we wanted to grow.
00:14:52
Speaker
And this is completely different. It's kind of the like, Hey, we just got a bunch of funding and we're now growing. So, and it just, I don't know what the takeaway is, but it, it upset is the wrong word, but it was
00:15:09
Speaker
It was just weird. Basically, the analogy here would be you thought there was a need for a service or product. I don't know the details of this business per se, but I'm pretty sure I'm on the right track here. Meaning there wasn't equity funding or venture capital type money, but rather just loans. Really went to the bank and got
00:15:36
Speaker
It's mid seven figures, like multi-million dollars worth of loans. You are a skilled machinist. You have an empirical ability to figure stuff out, do stuff, so forth. The analogy here would be, you're like, I know that's important. This isn't wrong. It's very foreign to me, but it doesn't make it bad or wrong.
00:16:03
Speaker
they just went out and you went out. So let's say you went out and you just basically hired a very good machinist and then you hired a very good marketing person and you hired a very good accountant and an HR person and a front office person and a media person. And you were very much involved in the business, but not necessarily. Yeah, kind of. And like, you sort of, you basically like the Emeth would not be relevant to you in that situation at all. Yeah.
00:16:32
Speaker
Interesting, because our business is at a point now where it's not difficult to get specifically loans for machines, but it takes work. They're not just throwing money at us, the banks. It takes effort and convincing and business, not so much business plan a little bit, but in that scenario, you really have to have this business plan and go in and be like,
00:16:57
Speaker
Here's my plan. Here's what I'm going to do. It's insulting in a way because it's like it just cut 10 years off of what you and I did. It's an interesting way to put it. It's not personally insulting. Big boy rules here. Exactly. It makes you think a lot about what we want out of life, what we want out of this business.
00:17:19
Speaker
and what's your goals? And boy, it's just not me, but it makes me think that even on my most aggressive, confident cash spending days, I'm still a huge bootstrapper compared to that sort of a business model.
00:17:42
Speaker
It's just so foreign. Look, you can't be, my friend has a phrase, perma bear, like a permanent bear, bear like a person who's always concerned that the economy is going to soften or go south or things are going to get bad. You can't live and it's life too short to live as a perma bear, but darn it, we're now going on 10, 12 years of a really good run. Like you said about lending, you're right, lending right now is
00:18:11
Speaker
pretty loose and pretty... Lenders are trying to put money out there and you're right. Of course, you've got to show what you're doing with it and a plan and your ability to make the payment sort, but rates are super low and there's a lot of money out there.
00:18:30
Speaker
I'm pretty, it's hard to see, it's not hard, but it's interesting to see other folks take different trajectories, but makes me think, no, we're okay. I'm okay doing it the way I'm doing it.
00:18:42
Speaker
No, exactly. See, our businesses were both grown from a passion, which was almost a hobby.
Delegation & Inventory Management
00:18:50
Speaker
Like, especially on my end, it was a hobby that turned into a business, and they kind of went hand in hand. I think, in your case, it was more of a product first, and you're like, I want to make this, so I'm going to figure out how to do it. I guess I was like that, too, with car stuff. But either way, it was passion. Like, we both fell in love with it.
00:19:09
Speaker
you know, put in whatever hours it took to make that happen. And consciously or not, we're willing to put in the time. I mean, I didn't think of this as a decade long process at the time, but you know, I had, this was it. I had nothing else going on. Like this was where I was headed. So I just put my head down and worked for 10 years. And
00:19:37
Speaker
Yeah, but it's always been a passion for us. Think if, especially with your knowledge and experience now, I keep using Spyderco on this podcast because it's like the only knife company I know. But think if Spyderco came to you and was like, okay, John, we need to grow our premium luxury brand, but it's not something that we do well ourselves.
00:19:55
Speaker
would you be willing to buy six horizontals and five access machines, hire 10 machinists and create a sub brand that we fund or whatever? And you just basically had $10 million dumped on your lap to tool up and build a whole framework and business and operation on this and potentially kill it, potentially make
00:20:18
Speaker
tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars a month or whatever. Numbers that are crazy compared to this idea of like, hey, every day we're going to try to sell a couple of knives or whatever and that makes our budget work and that helps us grow at a certain pace. You know what I mean?
00:20:34
Speaker
That would be odd. That's next level. At that point, you have to architect it, but you can't really have control of anything. There's not enough time for you to really control things. You're not programming. You're not dealing with every customer. Right. It's a whole different level of business where think about if somebody that you have hired, think about if they are making machine purchase decisions and you're not even in the process of that decision. That's weird, right?
00:21:01
Speaker
I could definitely see me telling the guys, okay, we're going to need this machine. Here's the budget. Tell me the options. For the next many years, I'm still making the final decision, but I don't know. As we evolve, things are going to change for sure. That's fair. We're probably going to get closer to that
00:21:19
Speaker
that crazy image than I can think of right now. You're right. It's probably not like I said it. It's probably more like you said, which is where you have other people go do the legwork, go to the trade shows, go do the research, come back with a couple of answers, and hopefully they have the right answer, but you're still going to kind of
00:21:36
Speaker
weigh in or think about it, and then that just slowly either moves away or it happens with the smaller machines. If someone needs a small, you don't care. It's not a huge mistake. Yeah.
00:21:52
Speaker
Yeah, I'm noticing that now with the shop because I'm really trying to delegate more tasks, especially on the research side, like what lights are we going to get? Or what are we going to do for this or that? And I'm getting people to help me with that, and they're doing some research, and they're giving me the information. But I still find myself deep diving after that anyway, because I find that for me to make a big decision, I need to feel confident. I need to know about it. So I need to amass the information to be able to make a good decision.
00:22:21
Speaker
And as I grow in life and in business, I just want to make that decision-making process quicker while still having a good result. Yeah, but I also feel like that ticks this little box of wanting to push you to recognize you've got a great team and you can't micromanage and you need to stay, not stay out of these things, but you've got to grow and processes exist. Yeah, I struggle with that for sure.
00:22:51
Speaker
but it's fun to be aware as it's happening. It's actually like, you know, you kind of sit back and you grin a little bit and you're like, yeah, I'm doing that again. Like I'm okay. Just step back, let them take care of this. It's not a big deal. It's a, you know, freaking magnets. I don't need to do my own research to buy magnets. What do you use magnets for?
00:23:10
Speaker
in the saga pen box, the wooden box. There's magnets inside and our supplier totally ran out. So now we're scrambling for another supplier. But anyway, guys are on it and they got some good leads. Sweet. That's funny. I was thinking about that yesterday.
00:23:29
Speaker
We're trying to redo our inventory racks for raw material. How do we store it? Where do we store it? Does everything get a Kanban card? We're guilty of having little pallets or boxes around the shop of different things, some labeled, some not.
00:23:46
Speaker
I think about Jay Pearson. I think about how he's to joke a little extreme. He's like, I refuse to have any inventory. I basically have one piece and then if I run out, the automatic system delivers it, prices it, compares it, and it shows up the next day. It's not that extreme. I give him a lot of credit for his system. Then I remember back to 2003 touring the Glock factory
00:24:11
Speaker
And the tour was in like half English, half German. So I missed all, didn't all sink in, unfortunately, but the plant manager showed their like raw material section and the kind of back of a factory that was, I mean, huge. And he kind of looked at us and joked and he's like, these MBA students tell us to keep, you know, no inventory on hand and screw you. I keep two years of inventory on hand.
00:24:40
Speaker
It's an interesting point because I love this Jay Pearson certainly leaning is in vogue, but we take for granted that we get material so quickly and so easily. The prices change, but not problematically. Well, Terrace may have actually done a little bit to that. His view is I'm here to manufacture a product, not play the whims of
00:25:03
Speaker
running out of magnets or extrusions of material or whatever. So I will keep two years of material on hand.
00:25:11
Speaker
Yeah. And we balance that too because some of our material is harder to get, takes weeks or months to actually get it in stock. And I mean, if there's any hiccup down the line or up the line, and that's a week behind schedule or a month behind schedule, like we're screwed if we're too tight. So we have to stock enough and we have to overlap the orders enough.
00:25:35
Speaker
We have a very expensive business now and if we can't make knives because we're out of parts for a week, that's bleeding money and that just can't be. There is a balance of inventory to hold while not being too much. We don't need two years, but certainly three months, six months even.
00:25:55
Speaker
It should be kept. Can you imagine if we or our kids ever go through an era where, God forbid, we go back to war or something, and there's no more titanium? It wasn't that long ago that we had gas rations in the US, or it wasn't that long ago that, well, titanium wasn't even as prolific of
Machining Processes & Safety Concerns
00:26:13
Speaker
material. But the government takes it all. They need it for planes and warships and stuff. So you're not getting any for your knives. It would be weird. It just seems, that seems foreign, but we are
00:26:24
Speaker
We are hubristic to think that those things will never happen again in some form. Sorry, I didn't mean to get all dark on you there. No, it's fascinating. It's weird to think that this happened not that long ago. Right. I mean, my dad remembers getting gas or having the gas ration lines and you just couldn't get gas, period.
00:26:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's crazy. On a positive note, we had a company reach out to us on Provencut and hired us to help do some testing for them, which will actually really help some of the content on Provencut, but this was kind of a rifle shot, you know, private work. And we did the work and we
00:27:09
Speaker
did some testing, and it's exactly the stuff that I love that we're continuing to do with Provencut, which is, hey, let's compare or work on specific flute counts and tool brands and gauge links and holder styles and machine capabilities. And what are you looking for? Are you looking for removal rates? Are you looking for just process reliability, unattended machining, all that kind of stuff?
00:27:30
Speaker
And we did the work, we distilled it down into a report, gave them the information, the videos that they would want to see of the evidence and so that they can, you know, it's like they were there with us, you know, in the form of that video. And they never heard anything back.
00:27:45
Speaker
And that's kind of one of those classic like, okay, well, if we really sucked, then following up isn't going to change that. But I was like, no, darn it, John, we did good work. There's always a chance you misunderstood or just totally
00:28:04
Speaker
Well, there's always that chance, but I didn't think we did. And then sure enough, about a week or maybe two weeks later, we got an email back and it was a glowing phrase.
00:28:18
Speaker
And it felt, I mean, you ask why we do all this, what makes you incredibly excited, and you think about why we're here, what we do, and that's the kind of stuff that makes me smile. Right. I realized recently that people value what they spend
00:28:37
Speaker
money or effort on. So you guys spent effort doing those results. And then you're validated when the customer's happy. So you should be very proud of what you did, because you put in the actual work, the actual effort, and did a great job. And I'd like to give a plug for Provencut, too, because I haven't used it much. But I used it the other day, like we were talking on WhatsApp about drilling with throughput. And so I started going through all the menus. And I'm like, OK.
00:29:06
Speaker
through coolant drill quarter inch.
00:29:09
Speaker
Oh, they didn't have exactly quarter inch. So I made that a little wider. Because you had some some off sizes from there. And then through coolant. And what kind of materials do you have? Okay, I don't want to see aluminum, don't see brass, show me like steel stainless. You had a little bit for titanium. But just to get a benchmark for like, like, okay, what have you tested basically for an inch per rev, right? Or feed per tooth or whichever one? Like, what should I be?
00:29:36
Speaker
What should I be shooting for here? Because I don't do much drilling. So I'm drilling at like one thou per flute. Per rev. And you're at like, per rev, sorry. And you're at like seven. And I'm like, oh, dang, maybe I really am babying this thing. It's just so cool to see. And then you see the video, and you see the chips in your hand, and I'm holding my own chips in my hand. And I'm like, oh, OK. Yeah, I got to break this chip more. Yeah. And, huh, OK. Like, it just all made sense right there. It was very cool. Awesome.
00:30:04
Speaker
I feel proud of it, where I will feel incredibly proud and even more publicly proud will be, I don't know, maybe three or six months when we've been able to finish what we've started, which is we have a Jeffrey now here full-time. He is siloed. All he is doing right now every day is working up recipes. We're building out libraries, so we're starting with
00:30:30
Speaker
going to have a 40 taper aluminum library, 40 taper titanium library, 40 taper stainless library, a Tormach, you know, Delrin library, that sort of things. And then it'll have a sample part, all your normal operations, all your stuff that's good to go, pushes right into fusion. And then once that's done, first of all, that'll give a much more comprehensive baseline beyond the sort of four or 500 recipes we already have. Then
00:30:55
Speaker
we'll start doing, hey, here's aggressive drilling in certain material, or hey, here's surfacing in stainless. And again, I think we've got a lot of work to do, but we're doing it. We've got the plan, the system, the processes, and that gets me fired up. Yes.
00:31:10
Speaker
Working on the Swiss Lathe has given me a different appreciation for tool life and pushing tools or babying tools. Because as a lot of us saw on Instagram, my buddy EOS cases and his citizen caught fire.
00:31:26
Speaker
Uh, like a baby explosion in there and the fire suppression put it out and, and like no damage really. A couple hoses melted. So he's, he's fine. Everything's fine. But like Swiss machining with oil is can be scary. So sorry, John, just to be like, he's not fine. He definitely needs a new pair of underwear. Yeah, exactly. If you guys haven't seen that Instagram video, we'll, uh, we'll figure out a way to put it in the description because, Oh my God, I'll add it.
00:31:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's awesome that he got it on film, like security camera footage, because it's just great to share, but it's scary. I showed it to everybody on my team, and I'm like, this is why I take so long on the Swiss. Please don't rush me. I can't make a mistake here. But what I was trying to get at is, on a mill, if you crunch a drill or snap an end mill, it sucks, but it's no big deal. You might break a collet, blah, blah, blah. But on the Swiss, if you throw a spark,
00:32:22
Speaker
You're screwed. So you have to be extra conscious. That's what it is. If you friction, if you friction well tool, which we've all done. Yeah. In coolant, like who cares? It's all, but on the Swiss, it's I've seen sparks on my machine on tornos already. And I'm like, Oh crap. And it's you, you have the fire suppression system, right? Okay.
00:32:47
Speaker
I do. It seems like it works great. I haven't used it, but I've seen other people and have heard. I don't ever want to activate it though. Well, it's like the SawStop table saw. I mean, you don't want to activate it, but that's actually what it's there for, John. I mean, it's a tool.
00:33:07
Speaker
It's kind of like when we were doing our first five axis training class, I was talking to everybody and I was going through the list of everybody I know that has five axis machines. And every person I know who has one has had some bump. I'm not saying that they crashed it hard or reckless or anything, but like just literally almost everybody has had some minor at least bumper hiccup. And so it's kind of like, don't be in denial about it. Think about
00:33:31
Speaker
what's going to happen if you do bump it or you need to realign or you got to run kinematics because it's a tool and you got to use it. Although we can... Go ahead. I was going to change subject. Oh, I was going to say ending on a high note, not that we have to end now, but I bought the ST20Y for a bunch of reasons, including proven cut and including just having a general purpose larger lathe, but I also bought it for a specific product that we're going to make and that was my hurdle. That was my reach
00:34:01
Speaker
And I remember thinking about it, how are we going to do it? It's got a tapered, it's a mill part, but it's going to have a tapered face. We could do it with live tooling and chamfering and backside chamfering and parting and maybe sub spindle. And this was like, this was complicated. This was hard. I was nervous. I did not, I would not have sold you on my ability to get this done and have it work as well. And they're already done. Like, like we're just, we're just cranking them out.
00:34:24
Speaker
and it's freaking awesome. That's fantastic. So are you using the sub spindle? Right now we don't need it. I for sure would like to. What's really complicated is that this part has a tapered face. So we're using a radial live tool to strafe the face at an angle, which is what makes this part otherwise difficult to do on a... Well, it's not difficult to do on a mill,
00:34:48
Speaker
You could, but it becomes an issue of how you're presenting the workpiece to the mill. Like, are you saw cutting it in little quarter-sized pieces? Or there's no natural automation like there is on a bar-fed lathe. But because of that angle, it's not... We would just have to do an emergency call and we were ready to do one, but we were able to part it off without a burr, basically.
00:35:11
Speaker
or a burr that we take two seconds to knock off. And I'm actually got some tricks I'm gonna try. I just ordered a Harvey, different Harvey tool to let me change how I'm doing the backside chamfering. I think what we've got them already off coming off with is there's no parting material, but it's still a sharp edge and I'm gonna pre, I'll let you know if it works out, but it's exciting. That's awesome.
00:35:38
Speaker
Isn't it, it's so rewarding when, like everything we do is theory until it's proven, until it's done. Like, you're like, I think if I get this lathe, I'll be able to make this product and we'll have, you know, the recipe's proven cut and we'll have a good lathe and blah, blah, blah. But until you actually see it and feel it and taste it, like until I've got, you know, an 18 hour run on my Swiss lathe, like it's not done yet, you know? It's like the theory has not been proven.
00:36:07
Speaker
And I looked at my run history on the Swiss and it says like 384 hours since I got it.
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00:36:14
Speaker
And I'm like, Oh, that sounds like a lot. And then I go, okay, divide it by 24 because 24 hours, you know, in a day, that's 16 days straight of running in the six months that I've had it. And I'm like, I could have done better because these lathes are kind of six months.
00:36:29
Speaker
I think I got it in May, so yeah. God, time flies. But I still don't like, like we talked about before with fires and everything, I still don't fully trust it to leave this thing alone because I'm running titanium, which is a catch fireable material. But look, you're you're gonna crush it. I mean, put a note in your calendar right now for January 10 of 2021 and go do that same math. And I bet you it'll be a pretty solid number.
00:36:55
Speaker
Exactly. It's just time and experience and comfort level, and I'm working on it every day. I get better. Sweet. What's going on today? Fraser and I are going up to Milterra for a visit. Oh, what's going on up there?
00:37:09
Speaker
very excited. So they moved into their new building. And Mike from military has been texting me a lot. And he's like, Dude, you got to come up and see the new building and see how we moved in. See how we laid everything out. I see you going through with a new shop. I think we can cut some for you. Comes in. I'm like, great. Yeah, let's do it. I've been meaning to come up anyway. Yes, we're gonna go up for a couple hours and see the layout and do a film and
00:37:33
Speaker
and hang out with them for a little bit, which I'm super excited for. Share what you will, if you don't mind, on layout and notes and all that. Because I would love to hear that. And I think everybody here on the podcast would benefit from what they are learning through on growing pains or moving into a new shop. Exactly. Yeah. So we're going to film the whole thing. And hopefully, they'll let us post most of it. It should be really valuable stuff. Sweet. We'll see you next week.
00:37:59
Speaker
Sounds great. Yeah. I'll be leaving right away. Fun. Say hi to those guys for me. Can't wait. Take care, bud. Will do. Bye. All right. Take care.