Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Ep. 6: Turning dreams into deadlines.
58 Plays1 month ago
Curt and Jamie Plan to hold each other accountable for their plans because "Winging It" is for the birds. A chaotic discussion of their one-year plans.
Jamie:
http://instagram.com/jspec_engineering
Curt:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Weekly Updates
00:00:48
jamie peacock
Good morning Kurt, how are you doing today?
00:00:50
Curt
Good morning, Jamie. I'm doing fantastic. How are you doing, man?
00:00:53
jamie peacock
Yeah, carrying on, it's evening this side.
00:00:57
jamie peacock
But yeah, that could yeah monday Monday evening for me so I had a whole day of work and then came inside, was busy working on a video and it's now recording time so we're gonna record episode six.
00:00:57
Curt
Right.
00:01:09
Curt
Yeah. Oh, it works perfectly because you got a, you got a day full of stories and I'm just starting my day full of stories. So.
00:01:16
jamie peacock
Exactly. So yeah, what did you get up to last week?
00:01:21
Curt
Last week for me was just shipping Penzo. That's basically all I spent all week doing. I was kind of sick midweek. And then after that, I just launched a pens, do it all sales, and then I started boxing up orders. And that's all I've been doing. I'm just doing the last of it today. And and that's ah it's going to be nice to get that out of my way so I can get back to machining things again. That's kind of more fun.
00:01:44
jamie peacock
Yeah, your sail went really well by the looks of it.
00:01:47
Curt
Yeah, thanks. Yeah. I went really well. I was super happy with the lottery system. I had like probably 80% of the spots claimed, which is kind of what I planned on. Um, it was a little bit close. I, cause I kind of had to estimate how many people would would claim the lottery spots.
00:01:59
Curt
Um, and how many people would just ghost.
00:01:59
jamie peacock
yeah yeah i find it amazing that you you put stuff up and it just instantly sells that is literally the dream well
00:02:00
Curt
Cause if I get it wrong, I, then I kind of oversell and then and I get myself in hot water. So I got really close to the limit, but I was pretty, pretty, pretty pleased how it worked out. So, and then everything else just dropped into first come first serve.
00:02:11
Curt
And that went like instantaneously. So that's always confidence inspiring.
00:02:19
Curt
Oh, yeah. Like you get a little bit of like a cult following and then it just, yeah, it worked out, worked out well.
00:02:25
jamie peacock
in your case in your case it's a curt following
00:02:28
Curt
So it's occurred following.
00:02:29
jamie peacock
yeah
00:02:29
Curt
and Yeah. I'm pleased with that.
00:02:31
jamie peacock
but yeah i
00:02:33
jamie peacock
yeah so
00:02:33
Curt
So what's new here?
Production Challenges and R&D
00:02:35
Curt
Okay.
00:02:35
jamie peacock
yeah My material arrived on Monday afternoon late and then ended up machining parts till about 11 o'clock at night to get that stuff that I needed out on Monday so I went to deliver that on Tuesday morning And then Ambrose struck again and didn't deliver my other material order towards the end of the week, so I didn't get to run production all weekend. I actually haven't even delivered today. I'm going to light a fire under them tomorrow and be like, what the hell's going on yet? This stuff has now been paid for for a week. Where's my material?
00:03:08
jamie peacock
I'm in the fortunate position that that customer, I said to them, listen, should be getting material that I know they'll push payments through. ah They know where I live. So but they'll push. It's not a huge amount of money either. But this is a bit of a problem that material isn't being delivered when it's supposed to be. And I was up the road there last week Thursday. I literally drove past the supplier.
00:03:29
jamie peacock
And I was like, no, I'm sure it'll be delivered. I don't really want to put these three meter lengths on my bucky. It's just going to stuff it up. I'd rather have them deliver, expecting it the following day.
00:03:40
jamie peacock
And yeah, now I'm sitting unable to run my two lathes because I have no bar stock. But yeah, other than that, been having fun in the workshop.
00:03:47
Curt
Hmm.
00:03:49
jamie peacock
ah Been working on the anchor point.
00:03:52
Curt
Yeah, I've been seeing that progress on how it's looking fantastic.
00:03:55
jamie peacock
Yeah, no, they really like like it's been it's been five months that I've been working on those, the five product or five beta units. And I've been doing the R and&D when there's been cashflow available and when there's been time available. And I'm trying to build out my processes. So if we get in a situation where we release it and all of a sudden we've got a hundred orders, we're not then scrambling to figure out how to do this.
00:04:21
jamie peacock
Like I've built all the processes over the last five months and have them all documented and have a surface grinder now so that I can grind all the stuff in-house.
00:04:21
Curt
Sure.
00:04:30
jamie peacock
The only issue is if we have to anodize 100 things, it's gonna be a bit of a horrible experience.
00:04:36
Curt
Yeah, that sounds like less fun. What would be your, like, I mean, you don't have to, you don't have to say exact numbers, but like, what's your, what's your quantity you could produce about now of those.
00:04:44
jamie peacock
um
00:04:46
Curt
Like per month or something or okay.
00:04:46
jamie peacock
Cash flow is the limit, well, cash flow is the limiting factor, yeah. I could produce 100 of them in a month, no problem.
00:04:53
Curt
Oh, okay. Okay. That's pretty, that's pretty.
00:04:53
jamie peacock
In theory, that's 10 days worth of anodizing to do 100 units. I can do 10 parts per day through my current anode setup.
00:05:01
Curt
Okay.
00:05:02
jamie peacock
Yeah, um and that that would not be the limiting factor. The limiting factor would be getting the tool steel in, getting that through to heat trees and back, that's a week.
Scaling Production and Efficiency
00:05:12
jamie peacock
And then other material would come in, ah Hitting 100 is not a difficult feat. Like we'd have to wait for pull studs to come in and that would be the biggest delay, I think. That would be two to three weeks to bring the cheap Chinese pull studs in.
00:05:26
Curt
The, uh, the heat treat, is that for the pads I sit on or the pins or okay.
00:05:29
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:05:30
jamie peacock
Now that's the pants. I'll buy the pins hard already. They harden steel items. I should just look up what steel they are. But they hardened and ground the locating pins.
00:05:30
Curt
And you're, are you
00:05:40
Curt
okay okay.
00:05:41
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:05:43
Curt
That's pretty slick. Yeah. That'd be a.
00:05:44
jamie peacock
Yeah, and then that' it's just the pad that I manufacture that then, so it's a lathe up, then a mill up, then it goes off to heat treat, comes back, gets sandblasted or soda blasted, and then it gets ground and then assembled.
00:05:59
jamie peacock
And I need to get that process, I require a little bit more equipment to just dial in. Obviously I want the the units to be as close in Z as possible, but on on my website there's a bunch of technical data available now that we got done over the weekend.
00:06:08
Curt
Right.
00:06:14
jamie peacock
um The callout is plus minus comma one of a millimeter so 39 thousandths for the for the Z like they not yeah on there is a disclaimer.
00:06:20
Curt
Yeah.
00:06:25
jamie peacock
They are not meant to be spammed There is some stuff coming.
00:06:27
Curt
Yeah. say
00:06:29
jamie peacock
Yeah, there's some stuff coming Mostly well, so the the one is called the anchor point then I plan on doing a two and a four module called the the mooring point and the Harbor and
00:06:35
Curt
Mm-hmm.
00:06:40
Curt
Oh, nice. Nice. I like this.
00:06:41
jamie peacock
because that's not as fun with the names but yeah those are those are still a little bit way a little bit of a way out like it's basically manufacturing four units and just putting them all on one base pad which has its own set of challenges regarding assembly and things like that yeah
00:06:58
Curt
Yeah. Well, I think, I mean, uh, I think just even the single pads, I think those would be immensely useful for most people. And like, like, if you want to run two of them, like that's what I would do is run two and then I'll just deck them and then just keep the, you know, keep the plates for each side.
00:07:11
jamie peacock
Yes, so so my plan for the ones that are joined, the unit's gonna be, ah the whole base of it is 300 millimeters, designed for a 300 millimeter pallet.
00:07:12
Curt
And then you have match Z if you want them.
00:07:22
jamie peacock
So it'll be 100 millimeters, a span of about 100 mils and then another unit so so that you can span the two and get a bit longer in one axis.
00:07:31
jamie peacock
And then what I'll do is I'll assemble those, I'll make a fixture that goes in the LK that I put the thing upside down on. And then, so when I machine the the base, that's machined in one setting.
00:07:32
Curt
Mm-hmm.
00:07:41
Curt
Ah, right, right, right.
00:07:43
jamie peacock
So as long as my stack up is the same, I put that upside down and then I machine the back off of the riser. And then you know, those are coplanar.
00:07:52
Curt
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
00:07:52
jamie peacock
So yeah, I've been planning how to do this in a repeatable, reliable manner. And yeah, not a super easy thing to to just whip up.
00:08:05
Curt
Well, yeah. And they're also locating.
00:08:06
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:08:07
Curt
So it's not like it's not, you're just not making two towers.
00:08:07
jamie peacock
yeah
00:08:10
Curt
You're making two towers that are like also, you know, tolerance to each other.
00:08:10
jamie peacock
Yo. exactly the right place, yeah.
00:08:14
Curt
Yeah. Yeah.
00:08:15
jamie peacock
So no, I've got to make a fixture probably tomorrow or the next. I've got a job in the middle at the moment. So as soon as that's done, I think I'll find a piece of material to make a fixture that's got two hardened bushes in it and a pull stud and then a linear guard rail that I can put my indicator on.
00:08:30
jamie peacock
So the assembly process is I've got to push the piston down, compress the springs, grip a pull stud on a, I've got a little like 40 diamonds, a piece of aluminum.
00:08:41
jamie peacock
I grab that, then I can bolt that the the unit, because now it's all compressed. I can bolt that to the base, but there's no way of indicating that. So you bolt the base on, compressed air, release the pull stud, and then that'll go on to this fixture that I'm going to make. And then I'll loosen the base again, and I can indicate it to be parallel to the two pins so that when you put it in your machine you can rely on the dowel pins in the bottom on the Sonders compatible bases or the Lang base it's cope it is all aligned and the pins are parallel to the reference surfaces you know there's a there's a lot that goes into bringing a product to market but i mean you know that you make very very fancy pens yeah
00:09:25
Curt
Oh yeah, thanks. but I mean, anything with kind of complications like that, it's just like, it's it's a little bit different than just making a, you know, a one piece widget. Like there's a lot of, a lot of moving parts.
00:09:34
jamie peacock
Well, making one of something's easy.
00:09:36
Curt
Yeah.
00:09:36
jamie peacock
Going into production is not.
00:09:36
Curt
Yeah.
00:09:38
jamie peacock
I mean, I made version one of this. ah um um so I must actually go back and look when I made it. I did version one of this for myself. Then I did version two. And then after IMTS, I started with version three, fixing all the little things that I wanted to just tweak and the annoyances from using it for almost a year.
00:09:56
jamie peacock
And now version three, I found a whole bunch of issues when I went through production. Now I had to make little brass spacers because I counterbored some of the holes on the gripper a millimeter too deep or deeper than they needed to be. So now the M3x6 bolts are too long.
Balancing Work and Personal Life
00:10:12
jamie peacock
It's like stupid little things. Found that. I fixed the... So on the piston there's pockets that the springs located.
00:10:24
jamie peacock
And a while back, I was like, I think I can get more spring, like more gripping force out of this thing. Let me open it up. I shimmed the springs, figured out how much I could shim them to get them to compress more, found exactly where the limit was, adjusted the V2 model. And then when I spun off for the version three, I adjusted it again.
00:10:42
Curt
Right. Yeah.
00:10:42
jamie peacock
So instead of a millimeter and a half less material, there's not three millimeters less material. So I had to put all the pistons back into the mill and open probe each hole, open it but down by a mill and off, probe the next one down by a mill and a half. Like all these little things that won't be an issue when we go into production because we've built five of the units now. But i'm sure I'm sure new and exciting things will pop up when we do go into production.
00:11:08
Curt
Yeah. That's what my people always ask me. Like all all the people that approached me that with their little pen project or whatever they're working on. And they're like, Oh, do you think this is good? Like I should, should I make a button? Like, what do you think about this? I'm like, okay, make one and now make five more.
00:11:20
Curt
Cause like you will learn so much just making more of the exact same thing. And you'd be like, Oh, this sucks to do this. Or be like, this doesn't work when I try to make 10. Like you don't know anything until you make a few of something.
00:11:32
jamie peacock
Yeah, making one you can, making one you can get away with murder.
00:11:32
Curt
Actually it seems like every quantity I hit. Yeah.
00:11:36
jamie peacock
Like you can literally hit it with a file, but when you go where you are when you go into production, it's a different situation.
00:11:37
Curt
Oh. Yeah.
00:11:44
Curt
Well, in every quantity I hit now of like making more on, like now I'm like, Oh, I don't know anything until I made 10 or something. I'm like, no, now I know nothing until I made a hundred or something. It's like, you know what? I don't even know what you're talking about until you make a thousand or something. It's just like, it's a forever increasing thing where you're like, Oh yeah, there's, there's always stuff that you're like, Oh yeah, this is, this is tedious.
00:11:59
jamie peacock
Yeah. No, that's it. and I mean, we kind of specialize on higher quantity stuff. Like I'm trying to turn away low quantity work at this point. But all these things come with their own set of challenges.
00:12:13
jamie peacock
I just looked it up. I was developing the pallets in March last year. It's when I started the developments.
00:12:19
Curt
Wow.
00:12:20
jamie peacock
So we're going to probably be damn close to a full year of R and&D before the beta tester units arrive.
00:12:27
Curt
Wow. well I mean, that's that's what some of these things take, right?
00:12:30
jamie peacock
Yeah, well
Business Growth and Financial Stability
00:12:31
jamie peacock
we're on the third like clean revision on this and then we'll go into production which will be basically version three.
00:12:39
Curt
Nice one. I guess that's kind of like a nice, a nice segue into the kind of main topic of today of like where, where we see our, or where our businesses are right now, what we're doing right now, um, in regards to much of anything and then where we want to be in a year's time, whether that's, you know, with product or just processes or whatever.
00:12:39
jamie peacock
like Yeah.
00:12:44
jamie peacock
Yes.
00:12:56
jamie peacock
Well, I think
00:12:56
Curt
So for these, these, these pallets, do you want to?
00:12:58
jamie peacock
i'm very curious to hear but I'm very curious to hear what your plans are for the next year and then after that we can dive into the the planets and the growth of JSPEC.
00:13:03
Curt
Hmm.
00:13:07
Curt
Cool. Okay. Well, I think my main, um, my main goal for this year is to say, I say this most years, but this is the first year that I'm more in line for it is to basically have pens to a position where I have them either stocked or with processes dialed down to the point where that I can produce a fixed amount per month and then put some of my other focus on other products or refining designs to like, I have a new.
00:13:31
Curt
two or three like skunk work projects that I want to bring into like the world but like there's no time you're just constantly just fighting production and then Thankfully, these are all good problems I'm having, but like um then and then I get a bunch of growth, and then more people want my products, and then I increase batches, and then I increase my production, and then I get more growth. and then it's like it's just I'm just constantly chasing my tail. so My goal for this year is to ... I think when we talked in private, I don't really want to produce hundreds of of you know this style of pen per month. I'm happy with ah a fixed quantity per month, but I would like to get that dialed down so that it's not you know consuming 100% of my time.
00:14:10
Curt
And I think I can do it with the equipment I have here without adding you know a bunch of equipment, maybe some smaller equipment, but I don't see myself buying a machine in this next year. I think I can i think i can grow and make a lot of efficiency gains with what I have right now.
00:14:24
jamie peacock
Yeah, efficiency is where it's at. like If you can get your production really dialed in, you can run for two weeks in the month and make your fixed number of pens, and then you've got the rest of the month to do R and&D. like that is That's the situation I'm in with one of my customers, where if they place their proposed orders for this year, I need to run machines for eight days.
00:14:46
jamie peacock
and that my bills are paid. like If they can consistently do that eight days, I can do what I want for the rest of the them month.
00:14:50
Curt
That's awesome.
00:14:53
jamie peacock
and Unfortunately, I have customers who like buying things, so I have to do their work in the balance of the month. But yeah, we try not to get into a position where we beholden to one one customer.
00:15:06
Curt
No, that's a great idea. And I think like, I think it's a problem with like, even like Instagram and like all these social media things where it's like, everyone just like embrace the grind and just like grind yourself to dust and build these like monster come like, I don't want to do that. Like I don't want to, I don't want to go the other way either and have like a lifestyle business, but I also want to just like, I want to be able to produce what I can produce.
00:15:26
Curt
without running around like my hair's on fire. And then if I want to go to the park with my girls in the afternoon, I can do that and like not feel stressed about like, I don't know. We talked about like, as soon as you make enough money to like live comfortably, like do you need to just like, I have no desire just to grind my body into dust to create this like empire.
00:15:44
Curt
Like I just want to, I just want to, uh, I just want to produce what I produce efficiently and then just kind of enjoy life. So I don't know.
00:15:51
jamie peacock
Yeah, no, 100%. As Adam Demuth put it though, you can't rely on the residual value of your machines as a retirement. So as long as you're planning for that, then yeah, there's no, like obviously lifestyle business is a different ah different category altogether.
00:15:59
Curt
Exactly.
00:16:08
jamie peacock
But if you're doing enough, this' there's a certain point where you need to make the decision. Do you want to grow into an empire or do you want to stop growing and refine what you're doing at the scale you're at. like Not everything has to be a billion dollar company.
00:16:23
Curt
Oh yeah, no,
Investing in Machinery and Equipment
00:16:24
Curt
one absolutely. And I learned that even from this, this last batch was one of my larger pen batches to do. It's like, I don't want to do this every single month in the efficient, like in the way I'm doing it right now, because it's just a slog.
00:16:35
Curt
Like the machining is the small part of the whole, like doing the assembly, doing all the packaging, like there's just little things you don't consider when you have to do, you know, uh, one operational hundreds of times, it's like, okay, this is, this is tedious.
00:16:48
Curt
This is boring. I either want to automate this or make it efficient. And like, that's, that's the stuff that really charges me up. It's not like, it's not like trying to, you know, squeak the maximum amount of, well, I guess it is trying to squeak the maximum amount of production out of it, but just like take away the, take away the boring, take away the suck, just make him do all the things I want to do.
00:17:03
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:17:05
jamie peacock
Take away the stuff you don't enjoy doing or make someone else do it and focus on the things you really enjoy doing. So it's one of those things where you're going to you're going to upfront all the effort now to make it super efficient to do the things you don't like doing because in the long run it means you get more time to do the things you do like doing.
00:17:13
Curt
Yeah. When I.
00:17:23
Curt
Yeah. And I mean, that's the main reason I bought the, the mill, um, the silos. It was like, there's so many, like just finishing operations coming off the little mill that just, cause the finishes weren't fantastic. So it's like, Oh, this is tedious.
00:17:34
Curt
And it's like, you know what? I would rather just have a nice machine take that. And like, it's been so nice. His last batch would have been impossible on my other machine. boom And to have it on that one, it is the parts come out and I'm like, Oh, Oh, these parts could go like directly into tumble if I wanted, and they would be fine.
00:17:48
Curt
Like there's, there's no machining marks. Like they're nice and clean. So yeah. I'm.
00:17:52
jamie peacock
Yep.
00:17:52
Curt
That was that was a lovely change.
00:17:55
jamie peacock
Yeah, it's amazing what happens when you throw money at a machine.
00:17:58
Curt
Absolutely, absolutely.
00:17:59
jamie peacock
Yeah. That's something I learned over the last years. The system slowly, I barely gets used now because it's not worth running it on there and having to deal with chasing tolerances, whereas the LK, it just, it does the thing.
00:18:16
jamie peacock
Now I made pallets, because now obviously I need to send the pallet systems out of the pallets. So I had a bunch of material, was waiting for delivery, so I'm like, okay, cool, let me quickly run these pallets off.
00:18:26
jamie peacock
They were taking six minutes each. I was hitting,
00:18:30
Curt
Nice.
00:18:31
jamie peacock
i I left my tolerance is what they were or my structure leaves what they were last time. And the locating features are exactly in the middle of the tolerance, which is what I expected. Now we holding a the balls are like 20 microns. So just under, just under a foul is the positive deviation on the balls and negative zero. So it's 10 plus 25 mark or 20 microns.
00:18:57
jamie peacock
and that drops on and off easily, repeats. I actually did the maths on this. If you put the palette on and twist it to the side, the bottom corner will be 13 microns off of where it should be.
00:19:11
Curt
That's awesome.
00:19:12
jamie peacock
So worst case, you've got a range of po plus minus 13 microns and on a 100 millimeter square pallet, which is insanely accurate.
00:19:12
Curt
That's so cool.
00:19:21
jamie peacock
Obviously, as the balls wear and things like that happen, it's gonna get worse, but then you just put a drill bush in. Problem solved.
00:19:28
Curt
Right. Yeah, no, exactly.
00:19:29
jamie peacock
Yeah, no, it's not an overcomable.
00:19:30
Curt
and I mean, for
00:19:35
Curt
Well, and for the price of your palettes, like, I mean, I think the most, the biggest barrier to a palette once it's machined is going to be the fixturing that a person puts into it. Like the actual palette that you, like the design that you've made for the palette is super simple.
00:19:44
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:19:48
jamie peacock
Oh, no.
00:19:48
Curt
Like if it starts to wear out and your fixture was simple, just bend the whole palette, recycle it, and then just start anew.
00:19:50
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:19:54
Curt
Cause it's not complicated.
00:19:54
jamie peacock
Well, that.
00:19:55
Curt
It doesn't look complicated anyways.
00:19:56
jamie peacock
That's exactly it. I don't know what the price. So we're going to sell the pallet base and it'll come with a pallet. And then we'll have an option to buy packs of three additional pallets. I found packaging for that today. I'm going to start getting that all dialed in. And then it's either your auto material itself and buy some BT-30 pull studs, or you buy the pallets from us pre-machined. And the like if I look at material cost on my side,
00:20:22
jamie peacock
I'm paying $5 for the piece of material, give or take a little bit, so um and I'm paying $2.50 for a pull stud. I can literally use it once and throw it in the bin.
00:20:33
jamie peacock
It's cheaper than a set of soft jaws.
00:20:34
Curt
Right, yeah.
00:20:35
jamie peacock
And I put on, um it's a bit sketchy sharing it, the Corlan tiny vase clamps.
00:20:35
Curt
Yeah.
00:20:43
jamie peacock
Kind of basically what the Saunders MachineWorks module of vases used to be and what they're based on where it's a a countersunk screw. those little clamps are patented by Carlisle. I have a model.
00:20:57
Curt
Hmm.
00:20:57
jamie peacock
I modeled them. I machine my own. I can't sell them because patents, but I've got M4, M6, M8.
00:21:02
Curt
right
00:21:06
jamie peacock
I've got a whole bunch that I make a bunch every time I need. And next time I'm just going to salami slice them off. So machine the thing, salami slice, next one, next one, next one, and just make a whole lot of, a whole lot of stock.
00:21:16
jamie peacock
And then I use them in my fixtures. And if they're they're made out of aluminum, they don't maw my alley pots. Like super, super easy instead of buying Mardi Barts because those are brutally expensive.
00:21:25
Curt
Right. Mhm.
00:21:27
jamie peacock
They have their plays, like they much, you get much more gripping strength out of a uni force than you do out of one of these carline clamps. Because the carline clamp is, you're putting all the force against the threads in the hole, which less than ideal, but for second ops and like a light work holding, they work perfectly.
00:21:41
Curt
Right.
00:21:46
jamie peacock
They don't hold round things very well if you go at them with a half-eat mil though. I learned this the hard way, multiple times. But in that case, I just use the MightyBite Uniforces and it works. They're just a bit expensive. Like, by far the most expensive thing is gonna be your your work holding on these pallets.
00:22:03
Curt
Yeah. When I think that's, I mean, your pallets, uh, I mean, I was looking at other pallet systems and then we started talking and I was like, Oh, your pallet system sounds about perfect. And that's honestly one of my keys for this year too. Cause I have some products and some, uh, items that I'm making that are going to be a absolute nightmare to load and unload with huge run times.
00:22:22
Curt
So it's like, well, yeah, if I can have something where I can just quick swap it in and out of the machine, like that's going to make a massive difference of being able to run, you know, two, three hours. And then the load up might take me half an hour, but.
00:22:32
jamie peacock
yeah but the spindle is running yeah no that that's exactly it that i've got uh i've got sets of pallets for one of the recurring jobs that we do where the cycle time is only three and a half minutes but the reload is two minutes so while one's running i'm reloading as soon as it stops 15 seconds we're running again like the 15 seconds is just blowing the thing off so that i don't put coolants everywhere and
00:22:32
Curt
Who cares if the machine is running? Exactly.
00:22:56
jamie peacock
15 seconds machines running again and i'm unloading and loading and i'll run through it's nine parts at a time and i can run through 500 parts in not even an afternoon i can put a podcast on and i'll just grind through it quickly and like that That's where I see the value because I was doing those in a fixture that just went in a vase But then it's three parts at a time and the machine stands while you change it even today the the video that I'm busy editing of the ah the little clamp ah the little Latches that I had to machine a pocket into previously I did it in a soft jaw But by the time I'd machine to soft jaw I might as well have made a pallet and then the pallets I run eight at a time and it takes 36 seconds to machine eight parts and
00:23:40
jamie peacock
i get in that yeah In that case, I didn't make a second palette, so I just made one, because I only have to do 100 pots.
00:23:40
Curt
Right.
00:23:45
jamie peacock
So even if it takes me two minutes to reload, it's fine. I can still burn through the pots really, really quickly.
00:23:52
Curt
Yeah. Well, and then you also have like, when you're, when you're offline loading and the machine is running, it's like, it's so much less stressful. Like you're just like, Oh, I could take my time.
00:23:58
jamie peacock
um Yes.
00:23:58
Curt
I can make sure I don't make mistakes. You're not sitting there and be like, I should be going. I gotta to make more parts. I gotta look faster.
00:24:02
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:24:03
Curt
Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. It's just like, ah, dada da that da like I said, you can listen to your podcast. You can just take your time.
00:24:09
jamie peacock
Well, I took a whole bunch of pictures. They're going on the website probably tomorrow. I put up my tripod, put the camera, used my phone as a remote trigger so that the photos are exactly aligned with all my different palettes that I have.
00:24:23
Curt
Oh, pretty.
00:24:24
jamie peacock
So that I can make a GIF of it. So it just swaps palettes.
00:24:27
jamie peacock
I'm going to GIF.
00:24:27
Curt
Oh, that's cool.
00:24:30
jamie peacock
More effort than was needed got put into that. um But with that, i've got one I've only got one palette for doing the mag bases I do, for the CZ-P07 and P09, for the Glock 19, for the STR base. I've only got one of each palette, but I run up one in my two self-centering vases.
00:24:50
jamie peacock
stack all those parts, throw the pallets in, drop them in and hit go and that's it. i machine It's just quickly I can put it in and I know that it's already set up, it's already programmed with the same work offset and I can just quickly load in that work holding instead of I used a machine soft jaws or I'd machine a ledge on soft jaws and then put a stopper and then probe and then I'll deck it, probe it again because now I can reach around the top hat like it just makes life easy when the pallets are as cheap as they as they're going to be.
00:25:19
Curt
No, totally. I love that idea.
00:25:20
jamie peacock
No.
00:25:21
Curt
I think it'll do well.
00:25:22
jamie peacock
Yeah, I hope so. Mark, I was chatting to Justin today from Toolpath. He's like, these things are gonna sell like hotcakes. I'm like, I hope so. Because now the the logistics problems begin with that.
00:25:29
Curt
yeah
00:25:32
Curt
Yeah. Well, I think, I mean, that might, I mean, that dovetails perfectly into where, what you're doing now and what you want, what you want to be doing next.
00:25:33
jamie peacock
That's the problem.
00:25:39
Curt
But I think, I mean, if that, if that takes off, I think it will.
00:25:40
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:25:42
Curt
Like, I think you're just knowing what you're shooting for a price point. I think that's going to, I think it's going to take a large portion of the.
00:25:47
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:25:50
Curt
market because I think a lot of people are in that same like the boat you're shooting for is like they have a hobby ish machine or a small light industrial and they're just looking for like a decent zero point system repeats well and you know, doesn't have just stupid complicated or expensive pallets.
00:25:53
jamie peacock
well Well... Yes.
00:26:05
jamie peacock
Well that's the expensive pallets things is what is where it's at, I mean... looking at some of the competitors on the market, looking at their hardware cost per pallet, excluding the pallet, just the hardware. So the the guard bushes and the retaining units and it's like $60. I'm like, sorry, what now? I need $60 per pallet. Like, no, not going to fly. Like this is designed to be an like on the wave website, it's actually called on as ultra low cost, ultra low pallet cost.
00:26:36
jamie peacock
And that's what it's meant to be, is you can afford to have 10 or 20 or 30 pallets on the shelf and you're not tying up thousands of dollars in that. Well, maybe you are if you put fancy Mardi Barts, but you're not tying up hundreds and hundreds of dollars on pallets.
00:26:45
Curt
Yeah, well, not
00:26:53
Curt
Well, and that's what you'll, like, I think that's where you'll get a lot of footing with like the job shop guys, like, cause for production, like honestly, if I set up a system and I do production and my pallet costs me a hundred bucks, that's fine. Cause I'm going to run that palette a billion times.
00:27:02
jamie peacock
Doesn't matter, yeah.
00:27:04
Curt
But if you have like a small, like 20 part, you know, run of, you know, job shop work, like you're not going to want to justify or sink, you know, maybe I mean, maybe you will, but like a hundred bucks or whatever, you know, for a pal, it's like, ah like to just use once and then, you know, potentially have no other use for it.
00:27:11
jamie peacock
no yeah yeah now that's exactly that's exactly it or even in like in your case the the palettes are small but the parts you make are small as well you could have a palette that runs your entire month's production
00:27:21
Curt
It's like. Nah, I'll pass like I'll just make soft jaws and onesie twosie it.
00:27:36
jamie peacock
of the screws, like one pallet, you just slap it in and hit go and it's got a repeatable reference that when you need to make them, you throw it in, you hit go and it's done.
00:27:36
Curt
Right. Exactly.
00:27:47
Curt
Yeah, absolutely.
00:27:48
jamie peacock
ah But yeah, enough selling the pallet system. Let me get into what what my goals are for for the coming year. So I think for us, the first thing on the on the books is gonna be a new lathe. I love Big Bertha, but Big Bertha's getting, it's becoming the limiting factor. So I don't i don't take on big tool and die work anymore, like I'm not actually interested. I've got a guy who's interested in buying Bertha from me when I eventually decide to sell Bertha. And then I wanna put in a lathe, the lathe I was looking at is a Sarno gang lathe with the C-axis and live tooling.
00:28:29
Curt
Nice, nice.
00:28:30
jamie peacock
and that the C-axis live tooling may actually be a major factor. Like I was gonna option it without that so to be a little bit cheaper. But if I put C-axis in live tooling, I need two tools.
00:28:45
jamie peacock
what I could probably do the one tool if I was really clever. The pad for the pallet system can then be done in one machine and one op.
00:28:53
Curt
Oh, nice.
00:28:53
jamie peacock
Because everything can get hit from one side. So then I can do it in a single op and
00:28:56
Curt
right
00:28:59
jamie peacock
It heats out the machine and as it goes to heat treat, it comes back and gets ground.
Managing Customer Relationships and Workflow Automation
00:29:03
jamie peacock
So yeah, that is that is the goal for this year is to definitely look at putting another lathe in because right now Danica has to sit and pull a bar forward every three minutes or four minutes.
00:29:16
jamie peacock
And I would like that to be a little bit faster and a little bit not her involved. um But my lathe takes so long to stop. And I'm actually out of X travel to put a bar puller. And on top of that, shavings become a problem. So like the lathe is the next thing. And then I also have dumb plans afoot to, if need be, put down another mill, namely an X5.
00:29:38
Curt
Oh, okay. Okay.
00:29:39
jamie peacock
Yeah, because it'll still fit in the current workshop. There's also my architect friend is drawing up the plans for my new workshop in our front yard.
00:29:47
jamie peacock
But that key points it out. That's potentially risky because if your neighbor gets the knock with you and decides to report you, I'm like, nope, not a problem. I have a residential zoning with consent to run a business.
00:29:47
Curt
Right.
00:30:00
jamie peacock
Don't know how I got it, but they can't take it away.
00:30:01
Curt
Oh, um nice. Oh, that's sick.
00:30:03
jamie peacock
So yeah, we got lucky with that one.
00:30:04
Curt
Yeah.
00:30:04
jamie peacock
Well, we got unlucky and lucky. We ended up with a huge rates bill because apparently we're running a business from the property and that means no more um discounted rates for my mother-in-law being nearly flipping 80.
00:30:17
jamie peacock
ah because the house is still in in her name, so we were getting 100% rebate. And then they just hit us with three years back rates. So that's yeah building building a sports car garage in the front yard is the is also on the books, but we'll see when that happens.
00:30:32
jamie peacock
That that is a cash deal. I need cash in the bank account before I start that.
00:30:35
Curt
Hmm.
00:30:37
jamie peacock
I need enough in the bank account that I can finish the project without worrying at all.
00:30:37
Curt
Right.
00:30:42
jamie peacock
like Just build a cash, get it done as fast as possible. and then that'll be big enough to overlaid with a bar feeder and a couple mills in it.
00:30:52
Curt
he like yeah it sounds
00:30:52
jamie peacock
But yeah, that's, yeah. Well, I mean, I was doing ah was doing the maths today on the pallet systems and the quantities that, if we move the quantities we're hoping, the tax is gonna be exciting because, yeah, they're gonna want money from me.
00:31:09
Curt
Yeah, that's how it tends to work.
00:31:10
jamie peacock
No.
00:31:11
jamie peacock
Well, it's, a Well, it's compared to all the other stuff we do. Like we move a good couple thousand parts a month. Most of those parts are not even a dollar. So a lot of the stuff we do, we do a lot of stuff through the workshop, but nothing that's single, a single high value items.
00:31:12
Curt
It's nice when you're not making money.
00:31:22
Curt
Right.
00:31:31
jamie peacock
Whereas the palette system is going to be single high value items. Someone orders one. Yeah, it's going to add up very quickly. Not that that's a bad thing. It just means we have to be better at bean counting.
00:31:44
Curt
Yeah, yeah, no doubt.
00:31:45
jamie peacock
No, and deal with, yeah.
00:31:46
Curt
Oh, that's, I mean, especially if you're making money, that's a nice time to buy machines then to help offset that.
00:31:51
jamie peacock
Yes, no, no, then machines start, yeah, 100%. Then machines start coming in, projects start happening that the government doesn't want as much money from me. Because as it is, we've got a, we're registered as a small to medium enterprise, which means any profits
00:32:00
Curt
Yeah.
00:32:08
jamie peacock
And so I think of the matter, I think it's the first, the first about $3,000 of profit doesn't get taxed for the year.
00:32:17
Curt
Hm.
00:32:18
jamie peacock
Then only above that gets taxed. So like, I'll make sure my profits are low. It's an ongoing challenge.
00:32:23
Curt
Right, yeah, no, that makes sense. That's kind of what I... wrong Yeah, that's that's it.
00:32:25
jamie peacock
Yeah. Like don't want to give the government to anything.
00:32:29
Curt
No, and that's the world I'm slowly flowing into. Like it was nice at the start because like I would just expense, like my expenses were insane and my profit was nothing.
00:32:35
jamie peacock
yeah
00:32:37
Curt
So it'd be like end of the year, be like, all right, I've, I've, you know, I've made a bunch of improvements, but I've essentially made nothing, which I mean, I had planned on at work, but it makes your taxes really simple.
00:32:43
jamie peacock
yeah Yeah.
00:32:47
Curt
And now when it's like, okay, now I'm actually generating some income. So it's like, okay, uh, time to, uh, you know, it makes, makes looking at machines a little bit easier to help offset some of that.
00:32:55
jamie peacock
Yeah, no, definitely. Yeah, no, definitely. like ah You've got to take advantage of all the yeah all the systems that are in place. They're there for a reason, to incentivize you to buy equipment and grow.
00:33:13
jamie peacock
But as we're saying, neither of us really want to grow too much more. ah god yeah It was pointed out to me, why don't I take the money I'm going to spend on building ma my new workshop and just put a deposit or pay for a industrial premises because I can probably buy industrial premises for maybe 50% more than what I'm going to spend on my workshop.
00:33:17
Curt
No, yeah, exactly.
00:33:34
jamie peacock
but then I've got to get in my vehicle and drive there every day. I've got to pay for security, I've got to pay rates, I've got to pay water, I've got to pay lots. It's all these extra things that you don't think of straight away that start adding up, that make it, okay, cool.
00:33:48
jamie peacock
What I'm paying for rent here is effectively free compared to industrial space.
00:33:53
Curt
Yeah. Or I mean, or positive because you could probably write portions of it off.
00:33:54
jamie peacock
i ahra So, off all of my rent here.
00:33:56
Curt
Right. So yeah. So you're, yeah, your money, you're far more money ahead.
00:34:01
jamie peacock
My rent, Yeah, my rental agreement is that the business rents the garage from my mother-in-law. I just happen to live in the house for free.
00:34:09
Curt
Yeah. Yeah.
00:34:12
jamie peacock
That that is our literal, our our actual rental agreement is that we rent the garage from her.
00:34:18
Curt
No, that makes sense.
00:34:18
jamie peacock
JSpec engineering rents the garage, what happens in the house has fuck all to do with that.
00:34:23
jamie peacock
Although, that's now gonna become the packing area in the house, which my wife's gonna love.
00:34:23
Curt
Yeah. I mean, this is,
00:34:27
Curt
that
00:34:30
Curt
I know i'm we're in the same boat here is like, I actually, i'm I'm lucky enough that I have a lot of industrial space around me. I mean, I can get an industrial space fairly easily, but same thing.
00:34:36
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:34:38
Curt
I like being able to walk down three steps and be in the shop. And like, I, it's just, it's super convenient.
00:34:43
jamie peacock
yeah
00:34:46
Curt
I can run machines. If I have a great idea in the middle of the night, like I soundproof this entire place. I can machine at two in the morning and nobody knows what I'm doing. Like sometimes that's, that's a nice thing to be able to do.
00:34:54
jamie peacock
Yeah. Or even my new shop, I was chatting to my mother-in-law about this whole thing, and I'm friends with every neighbor except the one closest to where the new workshop would be.
00:35:06
jamie peacock
And quite frankly, I'll just insulate that wall. I'll spend the extra money and insulate it that I'm not going to cause a problem there. And then I can run all night. Like my goal is to have a lathe with a bar feeder and let it run all night. Why must I stand there? Run stuff at night. That is the goal. that's yeah So this year I'm trying to lean in towards automation of small components because If all goes to plan this year, Mark, one customer who's currently taking up about, I think on average it's about, well, through the year on average, it's about 40% of our business, of our capacity goes to them. And I'm very wary of letting them get above like 50, 60% of our capacity. They are talking about doubling their orders from last year.
00:35:52
jamie peacock
And I said to my wife, if that's the case, yeah, we can do we can double their quantity, we can do it in eight days. It's really and it's a non-issue to hit those numbers with our current equipment, but then I wanna get more equipment so that they they for now go to 60%, but in three months time, their back down's 40% and we're just doing an extra 20% worth of work that we're getting from someone else.
00:36:13
Curt
Oh.
00:36:15
jamie peacock
We just have extra capacity that we're not having all our eggs in one basket, because the all-in-one basket thing is,
00:36:17
Curt
Uh huh.
00:36:22
jamie peacock
a quick way to go out of business.
00:36:24
Curt
Absolutely. Absolutely.
00:36:25
jamie peacock
Yeah, so like my thought on that is, oh cool, these guys want more things, we'll just have more capacity. Because it's like now but they want to double what they did last year with their current things, and then we've got another three two or three um things we're developing with them that are going to go into production later in the year.
00:36:45
jamie peacock
And then all of a sudden that's a large portion of my capacity all on one customer. And I've got other customers that are still going to want stuff done. So then, yeah, more machines.
00:36:56
jamie peacock
I like machines. My wife claims that i'm ah my workshop is Mary Poppins workshop.
00:36:59
Curt
As for the way, that's the way.
00:37:02
jamie peacock
Every time she thinks it's full, ah fits another machine.
00:37:07
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:37:08
Curt
So I was out of that. What about machine or like finishing? Do you have any like bottlenecks and finishing that you would, you would run into with, you know, let's say you, let's say you brought on a ah new lathe and, uh, popped another mill in.
00:37:20
Curt
What about finishing?
00:37:21
jamie peacock
You can see my face right now, I'll guide you. So, my tumbler has been a huge bottleneck for me. um I've got a little Lyman, I don't even know, 3000 or whatever.
00:37:32
jamie peacock
It's a little reloading tumbler. And it's it's worked.
00:37:35
Curt
Like a little vibratory. yeah
00:37:36
jamie peacock
Yeah, it's done thousands of parts. But now, next, well, this month, I'm expecting a PO o from customer that want 100 samples. That means I need to tumble 500 parts.
00:37:47
Curt
Hmm.
00:37:50
jamie peacock
on 100 assemblies, I have to tumble 500 parts. Last batch I could do 20 pieces every hour.
00:37:58
Curt
Okay.
00:37:58
jamie peacock
So I'm like, no, not happening.
00:38:00
Curt
Yeah.
00:38:00
jamie peacock
I got an email today that my laser cutting is ready. I designed a new tumbler like a Mr Debo. and all the stainless steel for the for the actual tub and all the laser cut steel bits. My friend who does my fabrication has organized the steel tubing for me and then I'm going to go through there and weld it together. I bought a big concrete vibrator motor which says 300 watts but is definitely not. It blew up a 400 watt VFD on Saturday evening.
00:38:26
jamie peacock
I wired it up, plugged it in, was running production.
00:38:26
Curt
Okay.
00:38:29
jamie peacock
Plug it in, turned it on, VFD blows, because I turned it on. It started hopping around the floor, the motor. So I turned, I hit the off button, and then obviously the back EMF just popped this VFD.
00:38:41
jamie peacock
So I've got a 750 watt, but I don't want to sacrifice it to this motor. So I'm gonna go pick up, well, I'm gonna, I've got a customer I sold my old manual lathe to. and that had a VFD on it, and they've got three phases, like just come put a panel please, they'll pay for the panel, two contactors, a transformer, and just put it back to three phase. So I'm like, yeah, I'll come do that, I want my VFD back. So I'm gonna go sort that out for them later in the week, and then I've got a one and a half kilowatt VFD for that. So I've been building out replacement, like I was chatting to my wife about this, because she's giving me a bit of trouble, because our cashflow going into the end of last year was really bad, because I kept upgrading things.
00:39:21
jamie peacock
Like just constantly buying tools, buying equipment and a little bit over the top, to be honest.
00:39:21
Curt
Yeah.
00:39:27
jamie peacock
Like I shouldn't have done some of the things I did, but you live and you learn. So now i like the tumbler this month, I bought new tumbling media, found a supplier for that locally. I was paying $12 a kilogram.
00:39:38
jamie peacock
So let's add $6 a pound. I found another supplier.
00:39:43
Curt
roughly. yeah
00:39:44
jamie peacock
and they do 25 kg bag for 1,200 bucks. So it was 44 rand a kilogram. So $2.20 per kilogram.
00:39:54
Curt
No, that's very inexpensive.
00:39:55
jamie peacock
So like a like super cheap.
00:39:56
Curt
Yeah.
00:39:57
jamie peacock
but So I bought a 25 kg, I've used it now.
00:39:58
Curt
Hmm.
00:40:00
jamie peacock
ah Put it in the tumbler. Had a bit of funny stuff going where the tumbling media just went gray. Like I tumbled a few pots, it was fine. Ran a whole bunch of little pots and the tumbling media just got full of the of the dust.
00:40:12
jamie peacock
So I took my pots out, threw in some bits of tool steel with sharp edges, put some soap and just let it tumble till it was fresh again. And then I've been running soap since and it's been running actually really really well in my little tumblr but yeah big tumblr is going to come online in the next week or two and then i have capacity because that that is the thing finishing becomes the the limiting factor and these ports
00:40:34
Curt
Yeah.
00:40:35
jamie peacock
I was tumbling them, sending them out tumbled. Now they're I'm going to tumble them, get them powder coated, and then laser off some of the powder coating to let their branding be silver on the black powder coat because they want the the black and silver aesthetic, but they don't have the budget to anodize the pots.
00:40:54
jamie peacock
because the guys wanna charge us a dollar racking fee. And this, in that case, there were five components I wanted to anodize and the whole assembly is $5.
00:41:03
jamie peacock
Like I'm literally competing against China.
00:41:03
Curt
Yeah, get spendy.
00:41:06
Curt
Yeah.
00:41:06
jamie peacock
I asked the guys, what are you paying from China? Oh, cool, I'll match that. That's how I got the work. And I can easily match it and make more than my average shop rate because I have LK and it's really fast.
00:41:20
Curt
Yeah, not exactly. No, I only bring that up.
00:41:22
jamie peacock
but job that is That is one of the things that I want to automate is running those parts because they've got a 30 something second cycle time.
00:41:23
Curt
as um
00:41:31
jamie peacock
And right now my pallets, I can fit 30 pieces on the machine, but that still gives me only 15 minutes of walk away. So I want to automate, put a parts loader in the machine that I can load 150 or 200 parts and go to bed.
00:41:45
Curt
That makes sense. Yeah.
00:41:46
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:41:47
Curt
No, I brought that up because I know like that's, that's one of my bottlenecks too is finishing. And that's probably if I'm going to buy any machines, like I looked at a, I have a quote for a vapor home. So I will probably probably pick up a vapor home in the next, I don't know, six months or so.
00:42:01
Curt
Um, just seems like, I don't know.
00:42:02
jamie peacock
okay and some
00:42:03
Curt
I do. Go ahead.
00:42:06
jamie peacock
Do you still tumble a lot of stuff?
00:42:08
Curt
I do make basically everything now, like, uh, bead blast, like really fine glass bead. Uh, I'd like to do zerk blasting, but I was like, you know what? If I'm going to do blasting, I'm going to go try vapor home because vapor hone is super delicate.
00:42:22
Curt
Like you can make it very soft. You can get incredible finishes and there's no dust. So I can bring, like I keep everything downstairs in like a big sealed room.
00:42:29
jamie peacock
So, vapor, what is that using as the media?
00:42:30
Curt
Go ahead.
00:42:33
jamie peacock
Does that draw us as the media?
00:42:36
Curt
No, it's actually just like glass bead or like you can use whatever kind of ah media you want, but it's with water. So they have water and, and it blasts your part with water.
00:42:42
jamie peacock
Ooh.
00:42:44
Curt
So everything is done underwater in like a big, essentially like a sandblasting cabinet ah style unit.
00:42:48
jamie peacock
Okay, so effectively a water jet.
00:42:50
Curt
Yeah. So then you can filter all your, all your, your water coming off.
00:42:53
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:42:54
Curt
So that's how you get, you know, keep from, I just, I hate abrasive dust. Um, I have, I have my blasting cabinets downstairs and like a sealed room that's vented. Just keep the dust out of, out of the shop up here. Um, but yeah, I would really like to try vapor honing cause it's just a little more, uh, a little more friendly to the work I do.
00:43:10
Curt
Um, and then tumbler exactly. Cause like I've, I've used my little, I built a little rotary tumbler like, I don't know, years ago.
00:43:16
jamie peacock
I have a YouTube video of the one I built.
00:43:18
Curt
ah Yeah.
00:43:19
jamie peacock
It's very yeah aptly named. i That thing ran.
00:43:22
Curt
Yeah.
00:43:23
jamie peacock
It ran this week. It's full of literal rocks. I went to the garden center and bought gravel and I use it for taking stainless steel pots from laser cutting. Throw them in there with the gravel.
00:43:33
jamie peacock
Let it tumble for two hours and they come out perfectly slag removed, nicely rounded corners. it stood worked well mine now doesn't have a wiper motor anymore it's now i've got a stepper motor going through a seven to one gearbox just because i had it laying around
00:43:48
Curt
Yeah. Like I put, I've definitely put hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of hours on my little Tumblr.
00:43:49
jamie peacock
but
00:43:53
Curt
So I think I'm either going to, I'm going to go two ways. I'm going to get like a nice big, um, I think they're called like not, not centrifugal. Cause I think that's a different style, but the big tub ones where you see, they look like a tornado and you can dump all your parts in there.
00:44:03
jamie peacock
Oh yeah, those are centrifugals. Yeah, they're centrifugals.
00:44:04
Curt
Are those centrifugals? I thought.
00:44:06
jamie peacock
Centrifugal disk, hang on, I'll look it up now. um Because...
00:44:09
Curt
Cause there's another one they have like little, little pods that kind of go into like a three stage thing that spins it and then rotates the parts as well. Those are super cool. High, high energy. Those are high energy ones. Yeah.
00:44:19
jamie peacock
Yeah, those are the high energy ones, yeah.
00:44:19
Curt
That's, that's my mistake. I'd love to get one of those, but those are not cheap.
00:44:23
jamie peacock
No, they are very much not cheap. ah These are called, oh no, go away. So the African website, strike again. things moving.
00:44:34
jamie peacock
Yeah, centrifugal disk is the top of Tumblr, I believe.
00:44:37
Curt
Yeah.
00:44:38
jamie peacock
Wow, this website's amazing. I clicked on it and I have a background picture from their landing page.
00:44:45
Curt
Nice.
00:44:46
jamie peacock
The epitome of South African web websites. Yeah, I have a...
00:44:49
Curt
So yeah, I'm either going to I'm either going to go with one of those or I'm going to go with a gang of um just a bunch of like a little ah rotary tumblers just like by like six of them.
00:45:00
Curt
And I don't know which I don't know which way I want to go yet.
00:45:00
jamie peacock
I've got
00:45:03
jamie peacock
I've got a Lineman tumbler. So I have way too many tumblers. I've got the Lineman Vibration Tumbler for reloading. I've then got a Lineman Tornado roach drum tumbler that it's got quite a big drum. I put brass parts in there with stainless steel pins and they come out burnished like shiny as hell. It's amazing. Like you throw a tarnished parts and they come out shiny. Then I've got my one that I built out of a sorry, out of ah chlorine buckets and rocks, and now I'm building a Mr. Debo style one. But that's mostly so I can have half throughput. like that's That's the main reason for the new one.
00:45:41
Curt
Yeah, when I actually a few months ago, I built a, like I took two vibratory tumblers and I bought like some really nice ceramic media in different grits. So I could try doing some nice cause I'm like, you know what? Vibratory is supposed to be the most efficient method of tumbling compared to compared to everything else.
00:45:54
Curt
And like actual rotary tumbling is nice, but some of my parts, like they have too many parts in there. They start whacking into each other and you get all kinds of weird problems and corners rounding over.
00:46:01
jamie peacock
Yeah, so, yeah, I learnt you cannot put aluminium in a rotary tumbler.
00:46:02
Curt
And like, I want a nice, I want a gentle method of tumbling without, you know, dropping
00:46:11
jamie peacock
It doesn't work.
00:46:12
Curt
That makes sense. Yeah.
00:46:13
jamie peacock
The parts fall into each other and they just stuff each other up like ridiculously fast.
00:46:13
Curt
Yeah.
00:46:18
Curt
That makes sense. I know this thing with titanium is like titanium, like unless you're hitting it with ceramic media, it just like, it laughs at everything. Like you can tumble it for days and like something else and just like, oh yeah, it's just, it's a very, very, uh, uh, resistant to abrasion.
00:46:24
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:46:32
Curt
So anyways, that's probably one of my worlds.
00:46:32
jamie peacock
Yeah, I remember running mine through through my green media and it did nothing. After like a day, it did nothing.
00:46:38
Curt
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had a goof.
00:46:42
jamie peacock
but
00:46:42
Curt
I was going to try. I was like, you know what? I want to see what just walnut shell does. Like if I blast apart and then put it in walnut, I wanted to see what we're doing. It just like, it's like, Oh, all it did is just like mixed up the walnut for, you know, eight hours.
00:46:52
Curt
It was like, yeah, of course that's going to do nothing.
00:46:53
jamie peacock
yeah Yeah, it's going to do absolutely nothing.
00:46:55
Curt
so
00:46:57
jamie peacock
But yeah, no, that's the thing. like it's It's easy to make pots, but getting them from coming off the machine to ready to go out the door, that is the the time-consuming part.
00:47:06
Curt
Absolutely. Especially when you start getting machines that are a little bit quicker.
00:47:07
jamie peacock
Well, yeah.
00:47:08
Curt
It's just like, okay, now yeah, I can make way more than I can finish. so
00:47:12
jamie peacock
Yeah, so you planning on investing in your finishing side of things.
00:47:16
Curt
Absolutely. Yeah. I just don't know which way I want to go.
00:47:17
jamie peacock
and Enjoy.
00:47:18
Curt
I mean, vapor home is nice and there are ways to slightly automate it, but for the most part, it's still a fairly manual process. So all
00:47:25
jamie peacock
Have you seen Danny Rudolph on Instagram with his, with his, you are robots putting the parts in the thing.
00:47:30
Curt
the time. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I love this stuff. Mm-hmm.
00:47:35
jamie peacock
I'm like, yes, like that wouldn't be incredibly hard to build a machine that just does that.
00:47:36
Curt
Mm hmm.
00:47:40
Curt
No, no, not at all.
00:47:41
jamie peacock
No, simple, simple robots.
00:47:42
Curt
No. And like he's I know he has a, he has a nice arm and he has made a little like, little holes in the blasting cabinets to do blasting and like, yeah, I love that stuff.
00:47:48
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:47:50
Curt
I would definitely like to get into that. Um, but I mean, honestly, for most, most of my work, like I could put it in a, uh, I could put it in like a rotating bucket inside of a, a vapor home and that would, that would work pretty well.
00:47:54
jamie peacock
It's one of, yeah.
00:48:02
jamie peacock
that would yeah do the trick.
00:48:02
Curt
So.
00:48:04
jamie peacock
I'm now looking to... Yeah, automating stuff. I had a look at the Haas APL systems. They're hilarious.
00:48:11
Curt
Mm-hmm.
00:48:11
jamie peacock
um But it also enlightened me into a different method.
00:48:12
Curt
Yeah.
00:48:16
jamie peacock
So this has evolved a lot from building a full-on robot arm to then building a gantry with a scar on to now just building a full-on bloody gantry that moves in.
00:48:19
Curt
Hmm.
00:48:30
jamie peacock
So if you're looking at the machine, it would move an X by say, 300, 400 millimeters. It would move in Z. and I would actually have a bed that moved in wire.
00:48:43
jamie peacock
So I could put, a I could stack material basically like your normal part loading setup where you got a grid with your material. The arm would come over, grab the part, go to the spot, drop through the bottom of the floor, because this now would obviously be raised above the table to the one side.
00:48:59
jamie peacock
Drop, put the parts in the vase, come up and machine and load parts like that. And then I could also just have a rack with a cylinder that pushes the part to the same place. But I just haven't been,
00:49:08
Curt
Hmm.
00:49:09
jamie peacock
commits it enough to this idea to actually model it up yet.
00:49:15
jamie peacock
But yeah, I mean, ah did I did the categories.
00:49:16
Curt
Hmm.
00:49:18
jamie peacock
I could probably automate this with six M codes. I could make it work.
00:49:23
Curt
Right.
00:49:24
jamie peacock
I'm obviously gonna go and build a full gantry, but yeah, could do it with six M codes.
00:49:29
Curt
Now, and then it's that's also the balance of like. Do you want to do it because you want to do it or like, do you want to do it because it'll be beneficial to production going forward? Like that's the struggle I always hit.
00:49:38
jamie peacock
That's it.
00:49:39
Curt
I know that much.
00:49:40
jamie peacock
Yes. No, that that's exactly it. Like I can stand at the machine and I can run the parts I need to run at the moment. To run a hundred parts is going to take me an hour and a half. But when that becomes, I need to run a thousand parts, it's a different conversation.
00:49:54
jamie peacock
I don't want to stand at the machine for multiple days that I could do that while I'm asleep.
00:49:59
Curt
Right.
00:50:00
jamie peacock
But yeah, then it becomes, it's also a situation of you've now got to have automatic workholding.
00:50:01
Curt
I know those.
00:50:06
jamie peacock
Automatic workholding is not, is not easy.
00:50:06
Curt
Yeah.
00:50:09
jamie peacock
Well,
00:50:09
Curt
Yeah.
Packaging, Shipping, and Organization
00:50:10
Curt
Well, no, that's my, yeah.
00:50:10
jamie peacock
it is easy if you have money.
00:50:12
jamie peacock
If you want to do it cheaply, it's not easy.
00:50:13
Curt
Well, a lot of things in the world get easier with money.
00:50:18
jamie peacock
Yes. Yeah, that's right.
00:50:19
Curt
I know that was a.
00:50:23
Curt
I'll say the one the one thing I was struggling with or like trying to put too much thought into is ah fourth. like I do so much fourth axis work um that I was like i need to find like, I want to find a way where I can automate fourth axis loading.
00:50:29
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:50:32
Curt
Because it's like if you're doing fourth axis work, you're doing it on a rotary center. So like you can't you can't gang up parts. If you want if you need to spin a part on its axis, you can't have like unless you want to stack them in line, but that presents other problems.
00:50:44
Curt
But like you can't you can't have 10 parts on a rotary and spin them 360 and access all sides.
00:50:46
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:50:49
Curt
So I was like, okay, well, what's a fast way for me, it's pen bodies. What's a fast way to load pen body.
00:50:53
jamie peacock
yeah
00:50:53
Curt
And I have a pretty good system. It's a mandrel system, but it's still like, I have to load the part. And if like, if I get the machining down, like to a point, you know, where it's let's say 10 minutes per part, it's like, I still have to interact with it every 10 minutes.
00:51:04
jamie peacock
yeah
00:51:06
Curt
Like though that kind of part loading for me has been difficult to try to solve. And then I realized I'm like, that's not the nut to crack right now. Cause like, yeah, maybe I'll burn an entire day doing all my fourth axis work, but it's like,
00:51:17
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:51:17
Curt
It's going to take me weeks to figure out an automated system.
00:51:20
Curt
And like, I will, by the time I make the benefits up in time, like it's just, there's other fruit, there's, there's lower hanging fruit.
00:51:26
jamie peacock
Yeah, there's lower hanging fruit. But when you wanna do that, I know a guy. I assume your rotary has a through ball.
00:51:31
Curt
Okay.
00:51:34
Curt
Absolutely. yeah
00:51:36
jamie peacock
I know a guy. You can pneumatically grip that thing. Then you just need to load and unload. I also know a company called Gimbal Automation that do spindle grippers.
00:51:45
Curt
Hmm.
00:51:47
jamie peacock
So you could literally pneumatically grip. So you make yourself, you don't have to make a custom chuck mandrel type story with a bar going right through your so your fourth and a cylinder on the back with the rotary union, or you or you just have to be good about unwinding.
00:52:00
jamie peacock
If you're good about unwinding, you don't even need a rotary union. And then basically you have the gripper, put the thing on, pneumatically clamp it, do your milling, grab it, unclamp, pull it off, put it in a rack, take the next one.
00:52:03
Curt
Right.
00:52:12
Curt
Hmm.
00:52:13
jamie peacock
Obviously you're going to spend a bunch of time doing this, but you're going to spend it once and you're going to reap the benefits on an ongoing basis.
00:52:16
Curt
Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah, no, it's...
00:52:22
Curt
Yeah, until I change my design, I no longer need it. but' So it's like always my concern.
00:52:26
jamie peacock
Yes.
00:52:26
Curt
Just like design myself out of the nice fixture.
00:52:27
jamie peacock
But then when you want to do it the next time, you know you've already got a base to work from.
00:52:35
Curt
That's a nice enabler.
00:52:35
jamie peacock
But yeah, I do. Yes, I'm very good at enabling stupid ideas. Well, I mean, I made something similar for doing the electrical connectors I do, where it's ah machined, ah effectively ah pull back ER collets. So it's an ER16 body or extension shaft. I machined the rear taper of that, threaded the end, slits it with a hacksaw, and then it's got a hole in the front side, screw my part in, and then pneumatically pull it back.
00:53:02
jamie peacock
that my parts is gripped. I do my slitting, it releases, I unscrew the parts, screw the next one in and go. And that works shockingly well. I need to still build a dedicated machine for that that operation. But it's also like, it's going to take me two days to build a dedicated machine. Right now, if I need to do 500 parts, I do them in an afternoon.
00:53:23
Curt
Yeah, yeah, not exactly.
00:53:24
jamie peacock
And they only want 500 at a time. So I mean, I'm sitting, I actually need to do stock take tomorrow. I'm sitting with well over a month. So this customer, if they don't place it, so they wanted a 30 day account. If they don't place an order with me, I deliver a hundred of everything, whether they want it or not. That was the agreement to having an account.
00:53:42
jamie peacock
So I've got a month's supply of stock on my shelf, short of all the small components. The big stuff I still make to order, but all the small stuff you don't place order, I deliver you a hundred of everything. So I'm trying to get get through like the material cost is next to nothing. So if the machine's standing, I may as well run parts.
00:54:01
jamie peacock
um But I'm sitting now like we wanted to do a design revision on one of the components. I'm like, cool. In 300 pots, you can have your design revision. Because I have 300 pots that I've made. And when they are done, you will get your new version.
00:54:15
Curt
right yeah
00:54:17
jamie peacock
knock Because, yeah, they don't have drawings. It's my favorite. I have drawings. I'm willing to sell them said drawings, but they don't have drawings.
00:54:30
Curt
Yeah. Well, and that's, I mean, that's actually the, just this week, I noticed with January and the year changing is a like batch production versus like kind of just some time production. Right, yeah
00:54:38
Curt
So for a lot of my packaging, I'd be like, you know what?
00:54:39
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:54:40
Curt
It's, I know this is good. I'm going to use this all year. So I was like, I would batch just huge. Cause I do a lot of laser cutting and just like sticker printing and just stuff where it's just like.
00:54:45
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:54:48
Curt
um but That's one thing I'm going to outsource is some sticker printing upside's point.
00:54:50
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:54:52
Curt
I do a lot of package batch work, and then I just, on this last batch, I'm like, oh, I still have a ton of these stickers now. I'm like, oh yeah, they all say 2024 on them. So I'm like, OK, well, those are all just in the garb. I mean, I could use them.
00:55:02
Curt
like I definitely did use a few for like friends and family kind of stuff. But I'm like, like it's just stickers are dirt cheap.
00:55:05
jamie peacock
yeah
00:55:09
Curt
I'll just throw them out and just print them out. So it's kind of one of those things where it's like, I'm sure glad I don't have 1,000 of them to go through, because I've had to bin a few of them.
00:55:14
jamie peacock
yeah so when we went to IMTS my lovely wife made a whole bunch of South African related stickers which were quite entertaining um but she's got a lady who does stickers they're not the cheapest but they
00:55:15
Curt
buts like That's always the balance between huge batch and one piece.
00:55:35
jamie peacock
Hang on, let me, this is gonna be complicated to calculate. Then roughly 90 cents, South African cents um per sticker.
00:55:46
jamie peacock
So I'm gonna go 0.9 divide by, call it 19. Okay, cool, so they're like five US cents per sticker.
00:55:55
Curt
Wow. Wow. Wow.
00:55:58
jamie peacock
And that's like, oh cool, I want 10 of these please. Like not not have to order 1,000, I want 10. So like now that that's going to be the next the next thing I've got to deal with is all the stickers and packaging for the pallet system.
00:56:13
Curt
Right. Yeah.
00:56:14
jamie peacock
And I'm trying to find out what foam is called. like I want about 10 millimeter thick foam.
00:56:18
Curt
Hmm.
00:56:21
jamie peacock
The white stuff that comes in like monitor packaging and stuff like that.
00:56:24
Curt
Hmm.
00:56:25
jamie peacock
Cannot find what it's called. Cannot find a supplier locally. I mean obviously try a bit harder. um But I found boxes that will fit the pallet system nicely. I'm either gonna design cardboard inserts or I'm gonna design ah laser cut foam inserts.
00:56:40
jamie peacock
Obviously foam inserts not as eco-friendly.
00:56:40
Curt
Yeah.
00:56:42
jamie peacock
I don't really care about the environment. I live in Africa. but Now cardboard is probably a better option and I have a laser cutter so I can just laser cut the the stuff as I want.
00:56:54
Curt
Yeah. Well, that's why I moved away.
00:56:54
jamie peacock
It's just, yeah.
00:56:56
Curt
Like I did, I did a ton of laser cut foam as well.
00:56:56
jamie peacock
Yeah, yeah I remember.
00:56:58
Curt
And I, yeah, I moved away from it for two reasons. One was because like, yeah, why do I want to just add a bunch of trash to the world? But the second one was storing foam is like way harder than just storing.
00:57:08
Curt
Like if I can laser cut card, like I use a lot of cardstock, so I laser cut the cardstock and then origami fold it to like a 3d shape where it's like, I can store four, 5,000 sheets of cardstock in, you know, one cubic foot.
00:57:11
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:57:20
Curt
If I want to store the equivalent in foam, it's like a room.
00:57:21
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:57:24
jamie peacock
Well, I mean, I did my my belt back in the day and that went with foam inserts. I still have sheets of foam that are holding my printer up right now. My printer's on a piece of ground art on the foam to dampen vibration.
00:57:36
jamie peacock
I mean, but the problem is that my my issue with that is it discolors and breaks down over time.
00:57:36
Curt
Yeah,
00:57:42
Curt
yeah yeah.
00:57:42
jamie peacock
So one of the one of the logistic things I'm thinking of pulling with the pallet system is I've got a friend in the UK who does my distribution for the framework utility knives. So I'm thinking of sending over like 10 pallets to him. 10 pallet systems and like 20 pallets. And then marking that as that's how much stock I have on my website. And then he can ship with the Royal Mail from there.
00:58:06
Curt
Mm hmm.
00:58:06
jamie peacock
So it brings the shipping costs down because shipping out of South Africa, I got a quote today to ship a single pallet system to Australia and it was $350 shipping.
00:58:18
Curt
Whoa. Yeah, it's up there.
00:58:20
jamie peacock
i'm sure I'm sure I can get it cheaper, but it was ridiculous. So I'm looking at potentially going that route of just either getting on a plane and flying to England to deliver the stuff or sending a ah big box, cost to arm and leg, but I send over 10 systems at a time and have them distributed there to the rest of the world.
00:58:39
jamie peacock
And then AJ and I have had a chat about him distributing in the US and Canada for me.
00:58:40
Curt
Mm hmm.
00:58:45
Curt
That's nice. Yeah, that's awesome.
00:58:46
jamie peacock
Yeah, obviously he's gonna make a buck on it, which is like expected. He's gonna do a bunch of legwork on it. So yeah, like nothing's for free.
00:58:54
Curt
Sure, yeah.
00:58:56
jamie peacock
and i I don't mind. Like if I sell it from the UK, it's going it's going to be sold at the same price from both of us.
00:59:03
jamie peacock
So if it goes from the UK, I'll just make a bit of extra bucks on it.
00:59:03
Curt
Mm hmm.
00:59:06
Curt
Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's kind of the one extra complication that you have that not a lot of, not a lot of people have to really deal with.
00:59:08
jamie peacock
Yeah, but we'll...
00:59:12
jamie peacock
Yeah.
00:59:13
Curt
so
00:59:14
jamie peacock
No, it's insane to ship out of South Africa. I mean, I used to send parcels to, I used to send knives via a company called Korea, and that was $60 to send, little box when I sent my belt my belts over um for the kicks to fulfill the Kickstarter I sent a box that was maybe a foot and a half cubed and that cost me like $400
00:59:26
Curt
Wow.
00:59:39
Curt
wow
00:59:39
jamie peacock
Yeah, I know it was brutal, absolutely brutal. So like yeah, if I can avoid shipping packaging materials, I'm gonna avoid it, but the things have to get there in good shape as well.
00:59:50
jamie peacock
So I found nice boxes that are just bigger than the thing. So I can make cardboard inserts that fold around it and origami it together, because the powder system will come with the base, the pipes to hook up the base and the valve and all that stuff.
01:00:01
Curt
Wow.
01:00:06
Curt
Yeah.
01:00:07
jamie peacock
So it'll be a complete set when you get it. so So I've got a plan to be able to ship that. ah jar Logistics is not for the faint of heart.
01:00:16
Curt
No, no, not at all.
01:00:18
jamie peacock
not Yeah.
01:00:19
Curt
It's important.
01:00:22
jamie peacock
Yeah. I mean, you you must have a ah field day shipping stuff all over the world. At least your postal service works.
01:00:28
Curt
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's the that's advantage. like yeah Our postal service going out of here is a little bit more expensive than if I were to ship out of the States. But at the same time, I have access to like every single carrier.
01:00:37
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:00:40
Curt
It's dependable. like I've knocked on wood. I don't think I've lost a single package, and I've shipped like thousands of packages.
01:00:46
jamie peacock
No, that's impressive, yeah.
01:00:46
Curt
So yeah it's it's a good system. I'm happy with it.
01:00:49
jamie peacock
I must say the Royal Mail works well, it's just the only annoying thing now. I can't ship a tracked parcel via a post box. My mate has to go to the post office, which is a bit inconvenient.
01:01:03
jamie peacock
He used to literally just give it to the lady at work as she came past to the post.
01:01:06
Curt
right
01:01:07
jamie peacock
ah But now he's got to go to the post office. But that's fine. I mean, he ships my orders. I pay him a percentage to ship my orders. And it means I can reach the rest of the world without having to ship directly out of South Africa.
01:01:21
Curt
Right Yeah, no, it seems that seems like a smart way to go I
01:01:22
jamie peacock
no Yeah, like i'll I'll have a chat terminus missus about that because I think it might be an option for servicing Europe and servicing Australia and things like that.
01:01:35
jamie peacock
Like shipping from the US to to Europe is gonna potentially be problematic.
01:01:41
Curt
Yeah, now it's going to be all kinds of problem, problematics there right now, but that's a story for a different day.
01:01:42
jamie peacock
No, so try and try and cut that out.
01:01:47
jamie peacock
Yeah, know I know. I was told to leave that topic alone today.
01:01:52
Curt
Uh, yeah, we we don't need to, we don't need to be a political podcast.
01:01:54
jamie peacock
yeah Yeah, no, it's just about to get interesting.
01:02:01
jamie peacock
Yeah, cool. So let's, so I think that that basically covers both of our plans for the show, what we're planning on investing in and putting our effort towards.
01:02:11
Curt
I think so. yeah Yeah.
01:02:11
jamie peacock
So I think in a nutshell, I want more machines and you want more finishing things.
01:02:17
Curt
I think we just both want more efficiencies and yeah, more opportunity to play with things we like to do.
01:02:18
jamie peacock
Yeah,
01:02:20
jamie peacock
yeah those are the,
01:02:24
jamie peacock
Yeah, I think those are, for both of us, are the easiest place to find those efficiencies.
01:02:30
jamie peacock
and now yeah but Constant
01:02:30
Curt
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's the name of the game, right?
01:02:36
jamie peacock
Yeah, I actually had someone reach out and say that, I said the words they never thought I would utter. I said lean. I'm like, yeah. Lean generally, like when you think of a lean shop, you think of a clean, well-organized shop, not the explosion that is my workshop.
01:02:55
jamie peacock
but ah I'm trying to move towards being organized. It's a slow and steady march. Like it's just every day, improve some, like two second lean. Every day make a small improvements.
01:03:06
jamie peacock
I went to try and try and buy tubs to organize. I want to make process bins for all the recurring jobs. So their pallets go in there. ah Any tools like Allen keys, T handles for that job go in that box that I don't have to look for them when I want to run the job.
01:03:06
Curt
Yep.
01:03:21
jamie peacock
And, I went to go buy them and they had no stock. They're getting stock this week. So I'm going to go buy like another 30 of those things and move all my stuff into specific process bins that it's not laying around there.
01:03:33
jamie peacock
If it means I must have 15T handles, then I'll have 15T handles. I've got a 3D printed version.
01:03:37
Curt
Yeah.
01:03:39
jamie peacock
I print them out. I buy actually a cheap Allen key, but made in Germany. They're really good Allen keys. Screw it together and it's dedicated to that job. It goes in and out of the box when I run the job because And my one fixture requires a square ended allen key.
01:03:53
jamie peacock
If you use one of the ball ones, it just strips the screws. So I want to have the correct thing that I'm not going around for 10 minutes looking for the correct thing every time.
01:04:03
Curt
Yeah, no, that makes, that makes huge differences.
01:04:04
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:04:06
Curt
ah no I know I wish, I wish I could share it like so.
01:04:06
jamie peacock
yeah
01:04:07
Curt
I have an air table that tracks like all my inventory and everything, and I wish I could share it, but like I have to share it. I have to strip out all the data and by like by the time I strip out all the data, then that is useless to look at.
01:04:14
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:04:17
Curt
So when I have to repopulate it with data, I'm just like, oh, tedious. But it's so nice because I just I click like I'm making let's like for the next batch I'll make whatever 30 40 pens So I say I make 30 pens and it just like auto calculates all my like you have this much stock like you're gonna have you know This much remnant these are all the springs, you know You'll need to order more like this is the first thing you're gonna run out of after you run out of that You're gonna run out of this after you run out of that you're gonna run out of this and like I just it was ah it was annoying to set up and now it's like
01:04:20
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:04:27
jamie peacock
Oh, NOS.
01:04:34
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:04:37
jamie peacock
NOS.
01:04:41
Curt
When I get something in, I'm just like, this is what I got in. It's whatever Springs and I got a hundred of them or I got, you know, 500 of them or whatever it is.
01:04:45
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:04:47
Curt
And it's just like, Oh, it's so convenient to be like, I think I have enough, you know, titanium to do this and check it out. And it's like, Oh yeah, no, I definitely do. And this is like, that's been game changer.
01:04:54
jamie peacock
Well, I've got a spreadsheet for the one one big recurring job where I type in the quantity of things they've ordered and it auto calculates how many, so I know that on ah on a three meter length of bar, I will throw, that'll cut in two, but that's as hard, six pieces, I will throw away 500 millimeters of that bar.
01:05:16
Curt
Right. Yeah.
01:05:16
jamie peacock
because throwing that away as a remnant is more reliable than trying to get pieces out of it. So I've calculated that all into into my spreadsheet. I know how many parts I get per meter. And I'll type in, it tells me how many meters I need to order, and then it takes that and times it by 1.2, and then that's what I order for the job. And usually I'll order a little bit extra just to be on the same site, like if it's not expensive material. But I've got a spreadsheet that does that, and now I'm starting to look at how I'm gonna inventory manage the pallet system. I wanted to buy some Lindbins on the weekend, and I wasn't sure it was the right fit. It's the right fit. Because going through packets of O-rings today was infuriating.
01:05:56
jamie peacock
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna buy a little, I'm gonna buy appropriately sized lint bins, mount them to the rack that I've got, and then make covers for them so that stuff doesn't get dusty.
01:06:04
jamie peacock
Because where I live it's a problem. um And then I was actually watching one of Pearson's videos where he was saying, no, they've got these 3D printed things. They put all the screws, all the parts, they fill the thing and then they go assemble.
01:06:04
Curt
Yeah.
01:06:16
jamie peacock
That if there's a part left, you know you've missed something. So I'm gonna build out a tray like that for the pallet pack as well, or for the the anchor point.
01:06:23
jamie peacock
um Yeah.
01:06:23
Curt
Yeah. Yeah.
01:06:23
Curt
That's exactly what I did with my pens. I built a little tray that goes in a little like a clear thing. And it's same thing.
01:06:28
jamie peacock
yeah yeah
01:06:28
Curt
It holds a pen, it holds the end caps, holds a spring holds over it like, and if I look in there and like, Oh, that's all right. I forgot to put that in. It's like so much less brain work.
01:06:37
jamie peacock
So like my thought is have the lindbins with all the O-rings, all the screws, everything there and then I just grab what I need, pack out the thing and then start the assembly. Assemble, test, package or laser engraving package.
01:06:51
jamie peacock
So yeah, there's some fun things engraved. No super secret messages on these ones. I was considering like engraving on the inside of the beta units because I'm not sure if anyone's going to take them apart.
01:06:59
Curt
and
01:07:02
jamie peacock
So I was thinking of putting a secret message like, what are you doing in here?
01:07:03
Curt
thats
01:07:06
jamie peacock
But yeah, I didn't get around to it. Because like if someone does take it apart, there are some tricks to put it back together, like some required hardware to actually be able to get it together.
01:07:14
Curt
Yeah exactly.
Financial Management and Inventory Tracking
01:07:17
jamie peacock
But building out, ah yeah I need to get on the inventory side of things. um But that is also, it's a lot of upfront effort for something you can't quite see the return on.
01:07:30
jamie peacock
Yeah, once it's there you'll miss it if it's not but it's not something that like big and shiny and ooh this is an improvement it's Yeah, it's a back end improvements Yeah
01:07:34
Curt
Yeah.
01:07:42
Curt
Yeah, mine, mine was tedious and annoying to set up, but now like year end when tax time comes, I'm like, Oh, all my expenses are tracked. All my profits are tracked. Like everything. I can just like, I can just look at it and be like, yep, I know everything.
01:07:49
jamie peacock
yeah
01:07:52
Curt
Like if I have to send that to my accountant, which I'm just like, just send it. Like I just, I don't have to do any more work now.
01:07:56
jamie peacock
yeah
01:07:57
Curt
It's not like tax time where you're like, Oh no, I have to figure everything out now.
01:08:00
jamie peacock
No, that, yeah, my bean counter stay on that for me because that's why I pay them.
01:08:01
Curt
It's like so nice.
01:08:06
jamie peacock
I don't, yeah, I don't do well with accounting.
01:08:06
Curt
That's smart.
01:08:09
jamie peacock
So I pay a bean counter, I pay him, it's not even a lot of money. It's like, I think $120 a month for him to basically keep me from going to jail.
01:08:15
Curt
okay
01:08:19
jamie peacock
And and he handles all the, so our, our value added tax system,
01:08:19
Curt
yeah
01:08:25
jamie peacock
This chair just didn't break. um I hate this chair, I'm gonna set it on fire. Yeah, I think this chair just broke. um So our value added tax here, so as a VAT registered company, that's due every two months.
01:08:40
Curt
Okay.
01:08:41
jamie peacock
So if I invoice, I have to add 15% value added tax, and that works on a two-monthly cycle.
01:08:42
Curt
Yeah.
01:08:46
jamie peacock
So for instance, we had ah October, November was payable at the end of December, and then December, January will be payable end of February.
01:08:57
jamie peacock
So they keep on that every two months, like I get a nice big bill, say, hey, you need to pay the government this much money. getting my my head around, like okay, I invoiced X amount. X amount minus 15% is actually what I've invoiced. The 15% was never mine. And getting my head around that has been a challenge because growing for six years as a one-man band, there's money in the businesses. I have money. And now it's a case of separating myself from that. It's not an easy task to do. It's taking it's taken six months and i'm still not done separating myself but we're working towards it at least like ah we've started with profit first we've got a spreadsheet that everything gets loaded into it auto calculates all the what all the accounts should look like so that we can okay cool i haven't actually transferred the money out yet okay we've got money and settle up everything that everything is now balanced and we'll get to the point where that happens on a daily or weekly basis but for now it's just keeping head above water
01:09:58
Curt
Yeah. Yeah.
01:09:58
jamie peacock
like It is a challenge, especially in the beginning with those kind of changes.
01:10:06
Curt
All right. So I think a good point to roll into now is, uh, what, uh, what is your, uh, was it in your Google search history?
01:10:07
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:10:14
Curt
I love that. Uh, I love that prompt. So I want to know what, I don't know want to know what you've been digging into.
01:10:16
jamie peacock
yeah
01:10:19
jamie peacock
Um, yeah, this week's been interesting.
Exploring New Tools and Materials
01:10:22
jamie peacock
I've actually been all over the show. I was researching tumbling media and then, uh, actually got hold of local guys who sell it. Um, kind of been researching automatic parts loading leading into, uh, yeah, some of the, some of the shenanigans I'm getting up to. And yeah, I think it's actually been pretty tame this week. It's mostly been that like nothing, nothing extra fancy. What have you been, uh, what have you been searching this week?
01:10:50
Curt
I've been searching for four inch wide water activated white tape. Super, super specific, but like a water activated packing tape.
01:10:57
jamie peacock
Full inch. Yeah, yeah.
01:10:59
Curt
Um, it's, it's usually like 2.7 or 2.5 or like a 78 millimeters. Oh my God.
01:11:04
jamie peacock
Okay, that's quite wide.
01:11:04
Curt
Um, three inch ish. Yeah.
01:11:06
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:11:06
Curt
Um, and that's a standard look.
01:11:06
jamie peacock
and Hang on, hang on. You say three inches. That would be 76.2 millimeters.
01:11:12
Curt
and Yeah, I think it's actually 78 and I think they just round to three to just keep everybody on this side of the world happy.
01:11:18
jamie peacock
78.
01:11:18
Curt
Not my side, but you know what I mean.
01:11:19
jamie peacock
Yes, that would be 3.0709.
01:11:21
Curt
Yeah, it's some odd ball, but they just round anyways.
01:11:23
jamie peacock
I know you can't wait for your imperialism.
01:11:26
Curt
Oh, fantastic. It's going to be great. Um, so anyways, you can get three inch everywhere.
01:11:28
jamie peacock
the
01:11:30
Curt
Like, um, all the companies that do like branded tape, I bought a big roll of branded tape.
01:11:31
jamie peacock
yeah yeah yeah
01:11:34
Curt
I stopped using it because a lot of people said they want subdue packaging just for mail theft and whatnot. So I just have a little like silk screened, uh, not silk screened. It's a stamped logo on the bottom of my box. It doesn't mean anything, but if you knew what it was, you you knew what it was.
01:11:46
Curt
Um, so I want white. tape to cover my boxes because it would just make things so much faster. And I'm packaging enough things now that if I could get four, three inch wide, isn't wide enough.
01:11:56
Curt
Cause I like to seal all the corners so that when inevitably gets left out in the rain or something like that, there's not like, I've had some boxes just get a workout and they show up like with no damage.
01:11:58
jamie peacock
yeah
01:12:05
jamie peacock
yeah
01:12:06
Curt
So I'm like, I don't want to change the way I'm taping them up, but I don't want it to be so tedious. So anyways, I was been looking up for four inch tape. I can find it in craft, like just that kind of like cardboard colored, but I can't find it in white.
01:12:16
jamie peacock
yeah interesting can you find a machine to to wet it yeah you've got a bunch of boxes i assume
01:12:17
Curt
So yeah, that's my, I don't, I don't know why. Uh, I don't know if I'll be able to find a machine to wet four inch, three inch. Yeah. All day long. Um, but four inch, probably not. But I mean, even if I had to make like a little pole system where there's like, Oh, like the the actual systems they make are not horribly complicated. Even just having four inch, I could go with the smaller box. That would help too. I just, yeah, just like,
01:12:42
Curt
I've got, I've got boxes that I can easily get. and They're convenient. I have so much laser stuff that goes into them. Like I don't want to change that whole world. So I'm just like, maybe I can just find the tape and it's like proving to be difficult.
01:12:49
jamie peacock
yeah but so i bought i bought a roll of two inch wide eco tape which i don't know if it is actually the water activated one the labeling on the south african website is uh hot garbage is a compliment so it's coming in i want to use that on the on the palette systems packaging but yeah i didn't think about it getting wet
01:12:51
Curt
So I might just end up going with the craft colored tape and see what it looks like. Cause. Yeah.
01:13:06
Curt
Yeah.
01:13:13
Curt
yeah
01:13:13
jamie peacock
So what I'm, yeah, I might get some other plans of what to sort that out.
01:13:16
Curt
Yeah.
01:13:18
jamie peacock
Cause I found a, I was today, this afternoon, looking on the one box website, scrolling through all their dark cut boxes to find one that would be an appropriate size. And I think I have one, but we will, we'll have to see.
01:13:28
Curt
Yeah.
01:13:30
Curt
Anyway, that's been it.
01:13:33
jamie peacock
But yeah, so you can't, you're battling to find four inch flat tape.
01:13:36
Curt
Orange, why I just, I should just downside my box is what I should do.
01:13:37
jamie peacock
Let's yeah.
01:13:38
Curt
And that's probably the way I'm going to, because there's a bunch of wasted airspace in my box anyways. It just, it doesn't cost me anything more to ship that size box, which is why I sized it like that.
01:13:42
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:13:47
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:13:47
Curt
Um, I can downsize the box and still doesn't really cost any different. So, um, gives me the opportunity or the option to sell um or put more pens per box. Um, I dunno, that's, that's, uh, I've been googling.
01:13:55
jamie peacock
yeah Yeah, the boxes, the boxes are found today. I've got one for the base and the pneumatics. And then I've got one for the, you can either put one pallet, two pallets or three pallets in it with their pull studs.
01:14:07
jamie peacock
Okay. That was my planned kind of packaging arrangement. I need to seriously look into shipping options, but that's, next week's problem oh yeah i realize we're doing audio only so the the listeners can't see me waving my hand like a dolphin but yeah i know that's an interesting uh interesting problem you're trying to solve there because that that is the thing when you when you're shipping stuff yeah it gets a courier transfer i don't know if you've seen that that meme where it's Fourier Fourier transit courier transit side kipton like yeah
01:14:07
Curt
nice
01:14:29
Curt
Yeah. Yeah.
01:14:35
Curt
yeah well and just even like
01:14:39
Curt
Oh, yeah. Yeah, 100%. It's like, and even just taping up a box like, yeah, it only takes you one minute. It's like, okay, well, or like, if you can shave a minute off, yeah, if you shave a minute off, like, all of a sudden, you're saving hours of just the most boring work you'll ever do just taping boxes closed.
01:14:48
jamie peacock
Do it a hundred times.
01:14:53
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:14:56
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:14:57
Curt
So
01:14:57
jamie peacock
No, that's, yeah, like doing one of something's easy, doing a hundred and something, simple tasks become tedious. Like my plan is the pallet system, I've got a small assembly area in the in the workshop that'll stay the assembly area, but then it's going to get taken through to the house and our dining room will become a packaging room because
01:15:14
Curt
Yep.
01:15:15
jamie peacock
yeah If we sell 100 of them, I can pay my wife to not ah complain about the dining room. Like straight up, just pay her, shut up money, um and not have to deal with that that whole story.
01:15:22
Curt
no
01:15:28
jamie peacock
But the other option for me is to send send out for anodizing, but that the thought of that just hurts me because I know it's going to i know it's not going to come back right.
01:15:29
Curt
Yeah. Yeah.
01:15:40
Curt
Oh, it's the thing. and Those are the like, anodizing is that one thing where it's like all the workers are to put into it and it's the maker break.
01:15:45
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:15:45
Curt
Like it makes your product. You'd be like, yeah.
01:15:46
jamie peacock
gonna Yeah. There's critical internal surfaces. They're going to rack on that. I know they're going to rack on it. And then that's it. I'll throw it in the bin. The air bar passes because it's a rack block. Like, it yeah.
01:15:57
Curt
Yeah.
01:15:58
jamie peacock
So I might have to get better at advertising. But anyway.
01:16:02
Curt
Well, it's even like packaging.
01:16:02
jamie peacock
So what?
01:16:03
Curt
People are like, you look at packaging, like you mess up your packaging.
01:16:05
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:16:06
Curt
It's like, it's the first thing people see. It's the first thing they interact with. Like if it looks like garbage, you're going to be like, Oh, this is kind of a letdown and they haven't even looked at the product yet.
01:16:09
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:16:13
Curt
Like it's a, it's up an important thing.
01:16:15
jamie peacock
Well, I was listening to the Lean Build podcast and ah Pearson was saying that they were packing hiring, packing people and they're like, you have one of the most critical jobs in the business because what you do is the first thing our customer is going to see.
01:16:16
Curt
Anyway.
01:16:31
jamie peacock
So you are, you are critical to the first impression that the customer is going to have. And you're saying they, they had a supplier, they wanted to get packaging made for the rotavas and
01:16:31
Curt
Yep.
01:16:36
Curt
Yep.
01:16:44
jamie peacock
the guys have please send one so we can do drop testing like we want to design packaging and then we'll send it back to you so you can see the quality of the packaging and the road of us arrived and the thing was half sticking out the packet out the box is like you guys are meant to have developed this thing and actually know what you're doing and yeah that's unfortunate like a lot of the time people just don't don't care they're there for the paycheck and that is
01:16:56
Curt
Yeah.
01:17:08
Curt
Yeah.
01:17:10
jamie peacock
Yeah, packaging is a, packaging is interesting because it is the first thing a customer sees.
01:17:10
Curt
Yeah.
01:17:13
Curt
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
01:17:18
jamie peacock
And that is, yeah, you need to like, I know, even Grimsmo, he used to sell his knives in just a little ah little bag, a little um cloth bag because you're buying the knife, you weren't buying the packaging.
01:17:18
Curt
No, exactly.
01:17:23
Curt
Yep.
01:17:30
jamie peacock
And then they moved on to doing the the little nook case, well, it wasn't a nook back then, but it's not a nook cases because you're buying an experience.
01:17:33
Curt
Yep.
01:17:38
Curt
Exactly. You nailed it.
01:17:39
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:17:40
Curt
That's the perfect word.
01:17:40
jamie peacock
you are buying an experience like even so the palette the palette system you're not buying an experience with you buying a palette system but you want the experience to be nice you don't want it to arrive in a like yeah an old box that's had its corners kicked in you want it to arrive nicely like now i can tell you now it's going to be what i'm going to be focusing on for the next like week or so there's packaging on those we're speaking of what are you up to today
01:17:52
Curt
Yeah.
01:18:00
Curt
absolutely
01:18:05
Curt
Yeah, no, you got one chance.
01:18:10
Curt
Today, I'm going to finish packing up the remaining pens that I have to do. I am going to basically finalize all this order, just a bunch of emails with customers and whatnot, get that all done and then have my brain and mind totally clear, uh, to start the next, uh, run of pens here.
01:18:26
Curt
So that's,
Project Updates and Workflow Strategies
01:18:27
Curt
that's what I'm, I'm jazzed about just to kind of fully close it off. So I can kind of just get the monkey off my back.
01:18:30
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:18:32
Curt
Um, so that's, that's all I'm doing today is just, uh,
01:18:35
jamie peacock
You're gonna do a slightly slightly smaller batch.
01:18:38
Curt
I think so. Yeah. Especially with the speed of the, uh, the new mill, like I can just crank parts. through Like there's no sense of me just making parts for them to sit on the shelf while they make more parts to just finish more part.
01:18:47
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:18:48
Curt
Like I just, it's I used to do bigger batches on the little one. Cause it's just, I had time to kill, but now it's so fast. It's like, I'm just, now I'm just sitting on parts that are made to make more parts.
01:18:57
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:18:57
Curt
It doesn't make any sense.
01:18:58
jamie peacock
Okay. Oh, I'm excited to see how the new batch goes.
01:19:01
Curt
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks man. How's, uh, so your day's are winding down. So what's your, what's your tomorrow look like?
01:19:06
jamie peacock
Yeah. Well, but tonight looks like editing a YouTube video.
01:19:10
Curt
or you're tonight yeah
01:19:10
jamie peacock
um Yeah. I don't know. I don't know how much effort I'm going to put into that right now. ah but yeah tomorrow we are finishing up an order that started on Saturday and then our local electricity provider decided to throw a tantrum because they didn't get the raise or the increase in tariff that they wanted so all of a sudden after 10 months of near flawless electricity supply everything is now shot and we have to go for four hours without power
01:19:36
Curt
Or you're tonight, yeah.
01:19:37
jamie peacock
Like, I didn't know. I got a new phone in the span since we've had good power. And I didn't install Escanspus, so I didn't actually get a notification. So I had my machine running, and three minutes past eight in the morning, boom, power off. So I was like, what the hell's going on? Message, we've got a group in our neighborhood, a WhatsApp group. Message them, say, what's happening with the power? Because normally one of them's on a on some other group, or on Twitter, or whatever, and they normally let us know what what the updates are. And then I go to node sharing. I'm like, oh.
01:20:07
jamie peacock
So I installed the Stupid app, sat and did paperwork for the palette system for two hours, like did all the technical drawings for the web websites and all those kinds of documents, like pull start drawings and basic palette drawings and things like that, it's all available now on the websites. So I sat and did that and then the power came on and I carried on machining, but I ended up losing like five or six hours of my day between switching on and off and just faffing around.
01:20:34
jamie peacock
um So that I was meant to be done with Op One on Saturday. And then Sunday I started running, then I needed to go to, I needed to buy a new chair because my office chair broke. So I shut down to the mall to go buy a chair and that took like three hours because my wife wanted to go for lunch.
01:20:49
Curt
the
01:20:50
jamie peacock
So eventually got back, only actually ran six hours of production yesterday, but I got all the Op Ones done. Then this morning I quickly made a pallet that, you know how it is with videos where filming takes three times as long.
01:21:03
jamie peacock
to get something done, yeah. So I filmed a video about making a palette so that I could machine 100 little parts. That all in all only took like two or three hours. And then I set up and I've been running up two and three on these parts and I managed to do 65 parts today.
01:21:20
jamie peacock
I've got another 35 to finish tomorrow and that should be done by lunchtime. And then I can ship the order out and be done with it for now. Till they place another order.
01:21:27
Curt
Nice.
01:21:28
jamie peacock
So yeah, been trying to grind through that.
01:21:28
Curt
Yeah.
01:21:30
jamie peacock
I've got some some very custom drone parts that I need to make.
01:21:34
Curt
No?
01:21:34
jamie peacock
um Later in the week, ma my mate Dave, who has designed this drone, he sent me all the files, the final files today. So I've got to go through and make the folding arm mechanisms for him.
01:21:47
jamie peacock
a Really fancy heatsink, some stupid little pins, a whole bunch of weird stuff. So tomorrow I'm going to set the EMCOs actually set up with all the tools I need to make some of the parts. So I'm gonna quickly knock them out for him before I break down and set up for another job.
01:22:03
Curt
Nice. Sounds like a solid day.
01:22:03
jamie peacock
And then hopefully, hopefully, AMBRO deliver. And then I can run the 1,000, what's it, it's now 1,150 parts that I'm behind on, like three days worth of production because these clients haven't delivered my material.
01:22:16
jamie peacock
So I'm going to light a fire under them tomorrow.
01:22:19
Curt
i have My fingers and toes crossed for you.
01:22:23
jamie peacock
So yeah, that's ah that's my plan for basically the week. Lot of fires under people.
01:22:29
Curt
Nice. Well, what do people, uh, where do people go? If they want no more information on this lovely palette system you're developing.
01:22:38
jamie peacock
Okay, so the more information on the pallet system is available on our website now, jspeceng.com. If you go to the online store tab, you click on it, there's a dropdown for the frame lock utility knife and for the anchor point pallet system. So you can go through there, it's got technical drawings outlining,
01:22:56
jamie peacock
The dimensions for the pallets, if you want to start making your own pallets before you get one. The specs for the pull stud, which is just a BT30 pull stud. And then dimensions for the standard base that's going out on the units, which is Saunders pallet compatible. um We are potentially going to look at doing other versions, but that is a pretty generic safe bet to make a Saunders compatible base plate. There's also a Lang version that's going out for testing.
01:23:21
jamie peacock
because some folks at toolpath are like can you make it lang compatible after i've machined all the other ones but yeah so they they're getting a lang one to play with because they have a lang system i'm like this seems kind of stupid but then it was pointed out to me that a lot of people have lang bases but the pull studs are expensive so do you have a cheap system you can put on there then bonus so yeah where can where can people find out more about your stuff kurt
01:23:26
Curt
yeah Nice.
01:23:45
Curt
uh, confoundedmachine dot.com. I have next batch. I'm shooting to have it ready in about three weeks time. So ideally when I'm, when I'm gunning for basically end of this, is it February now? Yeah, it's February now. So near the end of month, February.
01:23:55
jamie peacock
Yeah, this February.
01:23:58
Curt
Um, yeah, that's, it's probably the main main source of fun for that. I think we might do something kind of fun. I'm floating the idea of June, some kind of custom Canadian pens, some custom us weird.
01:24:13
Curt
Kind of weird saying ones. I don't know. I don't know. I got some ideas in the, in the work.
01:24:15
jamie peacock
Okay.
01:24:16
Curt
So we'll see what, see what happens with that.
01:24:17
jamie peacock
Well, I suppose engraving stuff's a bit easier now with the X5.
01:24:21
Curt
Oh, so easy. Yeah. So easy.
01:24:23
jamie peacock
Oh.
01:24:23
Curt
It gives me a lot more options to kind of do some fun stuff. So yeah, shoot.
01:24:26
jamie peacock
Yeah, speaking of the exfaf, I have two questions regarding it. Did you get probing on it?
01:24:32
Curt
I did not get probing because I heard not so good things about their probe. So I didn't go with her.
01:24:36
jamie peacock
Okay. Oh, do you have a hammer in the machine?
01:24:40
Curt
I do. Yes.
01:24:41
jamie peacock
Okay, that's what I can see. I can see it in the window, and I thought it might have been the probing the IR receiver that I could see, but okay.
01:24:43
Curt
Yeah. Oh, really? No, I just handled 3D, 3D touch program.
01:24:51
jamie peacock
Okay, and then what's happening with it in the fourth axis?
01:24:56
jamie peacock
Okay, you waiting for them to come back to you so you can clear the topology error Yeah Yeah Yeah Okay Yeah
01:24:57
Curt
I don't know.
01:24:58
Curt
I've actually, actually like. Yeah. My, my distributor to get back to me, he's like, I have the procedures. Like I'll get it to you tomorrow. I was like, tell you what, how about you just like take your time, do it, run it on your machines a bunch, then get back to me. I'm like, I'm not doing anything for like a week. Relax. Get it perfect. I don't want you to send me something that's half baked. So just make sure it's perfect. So he, I think I just took the pressure off and I think he was pretty concerned of me yelling. So I was like, no, man, just, just get it, get it right. So yeah. So hopefully that this week it'll be fixed.
01:25:27
jamie peacock
and Okay, speaking of Siemens, the Siemens guys haven't visited me yet. um That's fine.
01:25:30
Curt
Oh, okay.
01:25:32
jamie peacock
ah My machine tried to start itself while I was loading a port today. So I stopped and I put the relay in that so I've got mine now hooked up. Okay, my tool break length maulbra detect is a little box with an Arduino that I made.
01:25:47
jamie peacock
Then when I touch the tool, it beeps.
01:25:47
Curt
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
01:25:49
jamie peacock
And there's a toggle switch that switches enables a relay. When it beeps, I think it's two or three seconds later, the relay then closes for half a second and that effectively pushes my start button.
01:26:00
jamie peacock
What was happening is I was getting erroneous start button pushes.
01:26:04
jamie peacock
which is truly bloody terrifying.
01:26:04
Curt
Right.
01:26:04
Curt
I think you remember.
01:26:06
jamie peacock
Yeah, I have mentioned this in the past.
01:26:06
Curt
Yeah. I remember you saying that.
01:26:07
jamie peacock
Yeah.
01:26:08
Curt
Yeah.
01:26:08
jamie peacock
So I pulled the ethernet cable through the other day, because free twisted pairs, put a relay in, didn't hook it up, then was loading parts this morning and the machine trying to run because I'm running tool break detection.
01:26:19
jamie peacock
And I didn't feel like toggling the switch all day. So I stopped what I was doing, open the back of the machine, speaking of it's still open, open the back of the machine. Went in there, found the relay, had my wife stand at the relay I added while toggling the chip conveyor on and off to see which pin it needed to go to. Got that all hooked up. So now the only M code that I could easily access was my chip conveyor, but I don't have chip conveyor. So it just toggles the relay in the back of the machine. So what happens now is when I go to do the tool break the detect, I turn that relay on, it does the detect, triggers the cycle start, and then turns off the chip conveyor.
01:26:57
jamie peacock
so that can't be accidentally pushed anymore by the Arduino. And that seems to have resolved the problem.
01:27:01
Curt
Nice.
01:27:04
jamie peacock
It's only taken me like four months to do this.
01:27:06
jamie peacock
I've had all the bits. It's only taken me four months to actually implement it because normally I just use the little toggle switch and I i don't um i don't let it go through to the relay. So it won't... The tool break detect doesn't work, but now it works all the time and it's fixed.
01:27:06
Curt
Nice.
01:27:21
Curt
nice That's good fix.
01:27:22
jamie peacock
no And then, this podcast
Coolant Management and Support Services
01:27:25
jamie peacock
is going to get stretched out. ah On top of that, I have good things to say about FlexiLube.
01:27:30
Curt
Oh, nice. That's a new coolant you're running.
01:27:30
jamie peacock
So yeah, yeah.
01:27:31
Curt
Yeah.
01:27:32
jamie peacock
So I changed out mar my coolant last week Thursday. Took me an entire hour to suck out the LK and the EMCO. and put new coolants in.
01:27:44
jamie peacock
Within an hour, I was running again, because Monica, she really sucks.
01:27:46
Curt
Nice. Perfect.
01:27:48
jamie peacock
um but the yeah put then Put the new coolants in, and then over the weekend, I had some foaming issues. Not in the machine, but at the the chip return, at the back of the machine. So this morning at like half past seven, I messaged the rep.
01:27:58
Curt
Okay.
01:28:01
jamie peacock
I'm like, hey, Cade, I've got foaming. He's like, cool. what is your What is your tank level at? I'm like, no. He's like, is it above 70%? I'm like, no, the thing was full, it was still foaming.
01:28:13
jamie peacock
So he's like, okay can I'll see you in about an hour. Pictures up about an hour later with a thing of defoamer. Add some water to it, pause a little bit, foam gone. He's like, here's the bottle.
01:28:22
Curt
Oh, nice.
01:28:23
jamie peacock
If it's foaming again, just a little bit. Just slowly pour in a little bit because apparently of the defoamer gets carried out by the aluminum shavings like really easily.
01:28:32
Curt
Oh, okay, okay.
01:28:33
jamie peacock
Like when you're doing a lot of roughing, the de-foamer tends to cling to those those shavings. I was like, okay, cool, fair enough. He left me with the bottle. He's like, if you have the issue, this should last you till like the end of the year.
01:28:45
jamie peacock
Like you should just need a little, like you poured it in and it instantly stopped foaming. It was insane. But yeah, I've got nothing but good things to say for those folks. I actually asked them today for stickers for my machine because I'm happy with their service.
01:28:45
Curt
That was cool.
01:28:58
jamie peacock
I'm happy with their coolant. I'm happy to share that I use it.
01:29:03
Curt
Nice. That's good.
01:29:03
jamie peacock
So yeah, they're gonna, yeah, I'm gonna sell them a moniker as well.
01:29:03
Curt
I'm glad that works. for ha Cool.
01:29:08
jamie peacock
No, the Freddy's, by the time you get a Freddy to South Africa, it's absurdly expensive.
01:29:13
jamie peacock
It nearly doubles in price with the shipping.
01:29:13
Curt
Yeah.
01:29:13
Curt
No, that makes sense. Yeah.
01:29:17
jamie peacock
So I'm looking at making them locally and calling them monikers. And yeah, my one my one friend who does all the fabrication, he's gonna fabricate them for me. And then I've got a few ins in the industry that are already excited to buy them.
01:29:32
Curt
Nice.
01:29:32
jamie peacock
Yeah, FlexiLube actually offer, they call it the coolant doctor service, where they will come to SART, check your coolant tanks and actually maintain your coolant for you for a fee. Obviously not aimed at me and my garage, but aimed at guys who've got, or factories that have got 40 or 50 machines. And these guys literally come in, clean the sumps out, like just they handle your coolant management for you as a service.
01:29:58
jamie peacock
which is quite interesting because you're probably better equipped than they are.
01:29:58
Curt
nice
01:30:02
jamie peacock
I'm like, yep, I am. Like, I have to be. Like you're saying the coolant, if it's looked after will pretty much last forever. If it's actually looked after and never drops to low percentages or bad pHs and things like that.
01:30:15
jamie peacock
If you keep it well maintained, it will last indefinitely.
01:30:21
Curt
Nice Yeah, I think that's the main I think that's the key for a lot of these things just like maintain it I think a lot of people let that slide
01:30:22
jamie peacock
No, so. Yeah. It's like you keep an eye on the on the concentration because if your concentration drops, your pH drops and then bacteria.
01:30:34
jamie peacock
So as long as you keep an eye on that, you should be good, hopefully.
01:30:34
Curt
Absolutely.
01:30:39
Curt
Time will tell.
01:30:39
jamie peacock
But yeah, time will tell, yeah.
01:30:40
Curt
We'll find out.
01:30:42
jamie peacock
Oh cool, we're gonna call it there for the evening.
01:30:45
Curt
I think so. Yeah, I think that's a good good length.
01:30:46
jamie peacock
Okay, sweet. Thank you everybody for listening. I hope you guys enjoyed ah episode six, a little bit more on topic than usual. ah We try to keep it on topic, but it's not easy, but we are trying.
01:30:54
Curt
Yeah. No.
01:30:59
jamie peacock
ah yeah Please ah give us a like and subscribe on YouTube, five star review on Spotify, and feel free to share it with anyone you think might enjoy listening to us ramble about life in the machine shop.
01:31:15
Curt
Yeah. I appreciate you guys all very much for listening. And if anybody has show topics or things you want, uh, information on hit either one of us up, but love to hear from you.
01:31:24
jamie peacock
Yeah, I'd love to to get some feedback and some additional topics. no Sweet, have a good one guys.
01:31:27
Curt
yeah Exactly. Okay. Take care.