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Business of Machining - Episode 112
244 Plays7 years ago
EUROTRIP 2019: A Dream Come True
First off, apologies for the missing podcast last week but it wasn't because they didn't try! With Laurens Wijnschenk-Mauritsz in tow, it was the prime opportunity to record. The problem? A sleepy cell phone!
Although Grimsmo's returned to Canada, Saunders is adamant, "There are more factories and I'm not leaving until I see them ALL!"
"Screw it, let's do it!" - Grimsmo With only 6 days notice, a gentle nudge from Saunders, and help from Marv Gro, Grimsmo is able to arrange his flight and score incredible tours of TORNOS and KERN.
BUT FIRST... Before embarking on his trip, Grimsmo makes a pit-stop at Elliot-Matsurra to sign Swiss paperwork for the Tornos GT13! For now, he's prepping for its arrival with coolant, tooling, and the 6' LNS bar feeder. He's also plans to use TISIS, a software that will aid in the programming process.
Oddly enough, when Saunders crosses the border from Austria to Switzerland, the appearance of a Mercedes station-wagon is almost prophetic. To Grimsmo's surprise, his hunks of metal for machining Norseman parts at Kern Microtechnik make it through security!
Factories and Machine Shops, BIG AND SMALL. This trip isn't only about visiting the biggest names in the industry, it's also about seeing what's cookin' in the impressive home shops of Stefan Gotteswinter and TACrafted with Theo Assfalg.
After visiting 3DTechDraw in Amsterdam with Laurens, Saunders heads to Hermle in Stuttgart, Germany. Meanwhile, in Moutier, Switzerland, the birthplace of Swiss lathes, Marv and Grimsmo meet with Michael Hauser, CEO for an insiders view of Tornos; a company that holds customer support in high regard. They still make replacement parts for lathes that are over 100 years old! Now THAT's customer service!
MIND BLOWN Heidenhain: More than a great control for your machine. We take for granted that we live in a world where measurements are standardized. Back then, these guys were the ones making copies of THE meter. In addition to manufacturing every single linear scale, Heidenhain might just be the definition of climate control.
Grimsmo and Marv machine a Norseman handle AND do some blade surfacing at Kern Microtechnik. 14+ hours later, it's time for the Johns to finally meet up. A late night with burgers, beers, and friends still reeling from the days' excitement turns into slap happy machinists making CAM jokes before getting some shut-eye.
KERN - The Best in the Land The guys share their experiences at the uncontested BEST micro precision machine tool company in the world. Hitting sub-micron tolerances ADED means special care must be taken to thermally stabilize the machine tool. When cutting tools MUST be hand loaded because the resistance from the ATC motion could break the flutes...holy moly.
Finally, for Marv and Grimsmo, their trip ends with scenic views and gnarly ski slopes. On the last run, Marv challenges Grimsmo to a race.
Saunders moves onto the NTMA leg of his trip with Big Kaiser America, where he will soon visit Big Kaiser, Blaser, and Speroni.
Trips abroad certainly broaden the mind and bring a fresh new perspective and energy that is sometimes lost in the day-to-day minutiae. The more you know, the better 'cause the times they are A-changin'.
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Transcript
Introduction and Apology
00:00:01
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 112. My name is John Grimsmo. My name is John Saunders. Good morning, my friend. Good evening. So first things first, I want to apologize to all of our listeners because there were a lot of posts and messages and comments saying, where was last week's episode? It was a worthy excuse.
00:00:31
Speaker
Yes. Well, aside from the short notice poor planning.
Failed Podcast Attempt
00:00:36
Speaker
So I mean, the rare occurrence you and I are in the car together with a friend driving to a factory. And we're like, Hey, let's do the podcast right now. I don't have my audio equipment. Let me just record it on my phone.
00:00:49
Speaker
And it sort of worked. But then my phone kept falling asleep and not recording sections. And then we got to the end and we're like, Oh, that was a good episode. Actually, but the audio is just terrible. It is sad because it was we were with Lawrence and talking about like job shop, decision making and tooling and process reliability and just it was actually really good. And then yeah, sorry.
00:01:13
Speaker
Yeah, so I apologize, everybody. But I also realized throughout that trip, I mean, that was just one of 100 unrecorded conversations that we all had. You know, like we had such an amazing trip that, oh, well.
00:01:27
Speaker
Well, no, not all well. I mean, let's recap it, right?
European Trip Recap
00:01:30
Speaker
I mean, we weren't just going to a shop. We were going to Kern. That's insane. Right. Yeah, so I'm back now, and you're still in Europe. I am cruising around. There are more factories. I have not yet toured. I'm not leaving until I have toured them all.
00:01:51
Speaker
You fill up all your SD cards, yeah? I've been exporting every night. It's actually incredibly, this is going to sound like a very good problem to have, but it's actually incredibly tiring at the end of the day to actually have to take the time to export all the SD cards off to the laptop and then I make a backup copy onto a hard drive just because I feel like if you lose one of these video footage, you're devastated.
00:02:15
Speaker
Yeah, you're not going back. So, um, this is being, I mean, I'm at the tail end of this trip, but it's been, it's been in the best way possible. It has been a lot. So let's recap. Um, I think on the last podcast, we didn't like, you weren't going, you, you haven't gone yet. So what are you doing? Where are you going? How long are you there for? Oh, so I, okay. Here's the short version of the whole trip. Went to Amsterdam, visited Lauren shop, flew to Stuttgart, saw Hermla.
00:02:42
Speaker
Met up with a fella named Theo. Theo has an amazing small side business shop, younger kid, also working for a machine tool builder as an apprentice, going full time. Then went back to Munich, or went to Munich, picked up Lawrence, who then flew, had flown to Munich, drove down with him to Kern, met up with you and Marv. Had an awesome night. We stayed up way too late.
00:03:10
Speaker
to the point where we were literally laughing about cam jokes, at which point we realized we need to go to bed, spend the next day with everyone at Kern, then dropped Lauren's off. I think you went skiing.
00:03:27
Speaker
Yes, I want to hear about that. And then I went back to back to Munich and met up with this group from NTMA with this, like the big sponsor of it is this company called Big Kaiser. But it's NTMA trip. And we visited already Heidenhein and Grob.
00:03:48
Speaker
today and then tomorrow we visit Big Kaiser. We're now in Switzerland and we also will finish up with Blauser and Spironi. Yeah. Is Spironi in Italy? We fly out of Milan. So you're hidden down there too. What? I'm excited. Don't get me wrong.
Heidenhein: Precision and History
00:04:06
Speaker
But of this section of the trip, Heidenhein was by far the craziest. I mean, I could talk for an hour about Heidenhein alone. It was incredible.
00:04:18
Speaker
Give me the recap because my first experience with Hydenine was a few days ago at Kern. We got to play on the Kern Micro and it's an impressive control. I really like it. It's so funny because you can just take for granted everything that you think that they do because it's like, oh, it's just the control.
00:04:42
Speaker
a way to make the parts, you know, whatever. But no, I mean, they have Yeah, it's like a Windows computer, right? It's not right. No, I mean, they so so no, yeah, they make basically, I'm going to generalize, but every single digital scale or linear scale is from that period. Like even the lower quality generic brands effectively comes from hide, hide and hide.
00:05:14
Speaker
They are so good at what they do. They are such nerds about metrology, about manufacturing, about how they use both either lithography to etch the glass for the scales or now I believe electron beams or some new technology to etch
00:05:34
Speaker
the precision in the glass, and they all got started because the patriarch of Heidenhain was a fellow who was working at this Swiss company back in the day, like your earliest 20th century. He was helping make copies of the meter, like the meter.
00:05:54
Speaker
Okay. We take for granted that we live in a world where the meter is a meter or a thousand hours, a micron is a micron, but that wasn't the case then. The Swiss company had figured out how to take what was being deemed a measuring distance and they were figuring out how to make copies.
00:06:14
Speaker
I think the master copy is actually in Paris, and I could be, I don't know this, I think that's the case, but Heidenhine has the second copy. They have the next level of it, and they built this room that was 15 meters, so it's at 45 feet below ground with a whole sub-foundation. It's a building within a building. All of the compressors in HVAC are maintained outside of the building.
00:06:42
Speaker
and push through and like non-vibration conducive ducting and tunneling and they maintain the temperature of that room.
00:06:52
Speaker
to I think it was 0.01 Celsius per foot per 24 hours. All for the sake of just like absolute incredible precision when it comes to all that they do, which is manufacturing. They have, I mean, one of the most amazing machine shops I've ever seen in my life with everything from index trials to harmless to full blown automation cells to these giant like 150 inch X axis machines to make
00:07:21
Speaker
like the enclosures for the linear scales, to the actual class etching, to the scales, to the software, to the electronics, to the servo drive. Sorry, I could go on forever. It was incredible. That's so cool. How much of that did you know beforehand about them? I knew Heidenhein as the control that is sort of the
00:07:41
Speaker
I mean look my layman's understanding was hide and hide is the best for five axis especially when you kind of just want it to work like you can feed it tool past it may have a really high point density it just does a really good job at a really good tool path really good look ahead really powerful control versus Siemens which is more
00:08:01
Speaker
Siemens is what you would use when you have a strange machine, a machine with a whole bunch of extra axes or a machine that does something weird. Not that Siemens is a bad control, but when we toured the 3D printing company that's merging additive and subtractive, Siemens is the machine you would use because it's that control that has that ability to have
00:08:22
Speaker
17 extra axes randomly or Just different but I thought they were I mean, I honestly thought it might be a giant office building and it was literally a Probably 15 building campus with 3,500 employees with again a machine shop that was second to none and
00:08:47
Speaker
It was incredible. That's insane. I can't wait to see that first. Heidenhein has a Kern in their Chicago facility just because. So it was cool. Oh, man. Okay, so let's rewind. So we left off with, you should come to Europe and then... Yeah.
00:09:10
Speaker
Yeah, you like proposed the question and I seriously thought about it for a little bit. And then we hung up and then I thought about it and I looked at flights and I was like, you know what? Screw it, let's do it. So with six days of planning, I reached out to my contacts at Tornos, contacts at Kern, got some flights, got a rental car,
Preparation and Purchase
00:09:34
Speaker
and I organized a full shop tour
00:09:37
Speaker
a full factory tour at Tornos and also two full days at Kern. And Marv was telling me that normally applications, engineering projects take like two plus months to prepare and all that. And here I am giving him like four days notice. So yeah, I was like, let's do it. Let's go.
00:10:01
Speaker
I figured out what I wanted to make. And he basically offered me a day to play on a current micro, which was utter heaven. So I got all my stuff ready and I brought it all and I brought some fixtures and some aluminum to make more fixtures and brought a bunch of knife handles and blades. And, um, and then I jumped on a plane literally just put these in your checked bag.
00:10:24
Speaker
Yeah, I wrapped them all up in spare t-shirts and stuff. And I was worried that it would get x-rayed and pulled to the side and one of these big aluminum blocks of metal for. But I'm going to tour factories. We're going to make some parts. It's all legit. So anyway, on the way to the airport, we did a little pop-in at Elliott Matsura. And I signed a little document that said I just bought a Swiss lathe. I saw on Instagram. So you bought the
00:10:51
Speaker
or tornos. Actually, it's about the tornos. The GT 13. Amazing. I saw very excited. So I saw totally random, but I saw
00:11:07
Speaker
Literally was like prophetic as soon as we crossed over the border today from Austria to Switzerland I saw I think it was a Mercedes Station wagon and I was like, why do I know that logo and it was a tornos like service vehicle So you bought the lathe yeah, they're everywhere
00:11:31
Speaker
So I bought the lathe, it's super excited. Been working on it for a few months now, finally nailed down all the options and all the price and all the deals and terms and banking financing and down payment and all that stuff. And it is arriving here in about five weeks. Five weeks? Oh, okay. So I'm super pumped about that. Yep, not too long at all. I mean, I'm impatient. I want it tomorrow, but whatever. Five weeks will be fine. We're going to shoehorn it into our shop here.
00:12:02
Speaker
You gonna put it right in front of the roll up door? Yes. Okay. I'll be honest, I saw the pictures. I think you showed it to me in when we were Kern. I don't think they've been on social, but it's a bigger machine than I thought.
00:12:19
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's probably six feet tall, but the footprint's not big. I don't know. I laid it out based on the brochure drawing, and I laid it out with my shop layout, and it'll fit.
00:12:35
Speaker
We have to get the six foot bar feeder Just because it makes a lot more sense than the 12 foot bar feeder. Yeah For a lot of reasons, but we just I mean 12 feet's a lot. It's a long bar You know hassle for shipping hassle for ordering They should be centerless ground. They don't necessarily have to be but they should Six features makes so much sense for so many reasons and we can fit it in this shop and
00:13:03
Speaker
We just don't need the insane levels of production that 12 feet provides like six feet. Well, it's still going to run for like five days straight. Yeah. It makes sense. So, okay. Yeah. So I signed that paperwork and then jumped on a plane and went to Europe. Can I ask though? So, cause I want to talk about Europe, but so it's whatever April 2nd, the Swiss laid comes in, you know, five weeks, a month.
00:13:29
Speaker
Do you now need to then go write hand code or fusion programs to, like what happens when it shows up? I'm preparing as much as humanly possible. I want to have the drums of coolant here. I want to have all my tools here. I want the LNS bar feeder to show up before the lathe comes in. I want to be ready to hit the ground running. Yeah. And then what happens is Tournos has this software called Tysis.
00:13:58
Speaker
that allows you to basically take bits of code operations, drag it into Tysys, and it'll do all your beginning codes, your tool changes, your after codes, everything. So it kind of allows you to stitch it all together. It's like complete for Swiss Leys.
00:14:16
Speaker
Yeah, sort of. I mean, more manual. But it makes sure you have all your codes in there, which is good. So once I get that software, apparently I can download a demo from the website. I need to do that. And then I'll be able to take my Nakamura codes, because both machines run on FANUC, so the toolpaths should work-ish. Oh. So you don't know. Yeah, so you don't really have to. Well, you don't have to do tool numbers, though, and offsets and. Yeah.
00:14:45
Speaker
little things like that, for sure. But I think the tool path itself might just work, assuming my tool positions and directions and left to right and clockwise, counterclockwise. I don't know. I'm going to have to dig through that. Programming is not going to be easy, but I'm not afraid of getting it done. Yeah, right. I think typhus is going to help a lot.
00:15:07
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting. But yeah, after that, I mean, comes in, they're going to install a bunch of stuff. They got to get it wired up and then a couple days of training that they're providing and make some parts. What diameter bushing are you going to have them leave it with you on? Oh, I don't know. I still got to figure out what call it's I need to buy. Um,
00:15:33
Speaker
But I can fit anything up to half inch bar, 13 millimeter. 13 millimeter is actually four, right? That's 12 or five. What do I do? Because 12, 11, nine is, I can't think of it off the top of my head actually. 12.7 is half inch. Right. Yeah. So you can fit it over half inch. That's great.
00:16:03
Speaker
This reminds me of your joke a couple of days ago. I'm not getting a tattoo. We were all like trying to convert microns to inch to nanometers and so I'm just like, I'm just going to get a tattoo on my arm that has all the conversions on it.
00:16:19
Speaker
We get spoiled because everyone speaks English to the point to where we're just spoiled because everyone speaks English. The CEO of Kern speaks perfect English. But nobody speaks inches. A thousandth of an inch might as well be... It doesn't even matter. Gobbledygook, gibberish.
00:16:44
Speaker
Well, and then Marv kept talking in microns and we're like, I'm really struggling to visualize what 50 microns looks like. So we did a lot of calculations, but it was good. Yeah. For the record, 50 microns is 2,000. I've since learned that. Okay. Because 5 microns is 2 tenths. Sure. Yes.
00:17:09
Speaker
What was the run out on the CMM? I'm jumping way ahead here. Yeah, it was nothing. Like a micron wasn't 1.6. Was it 1.6 micron or 0.16 micron? Let's be 1.6. It was 1.6 micron, which is less than a 10th, like far less than the 10th. Yeah. And that was on a three axis interpolated hole. And that was the circularity of that hole along a taper.
00:17:37
Speaker
in Z. Right, like nuts, just insane. All right, let me fly through. So I flew into Zurich, rented a car. I had such an image of my head of getting a European stick shift car, maybe a turbocharger kind of thing. I got a Jeep Compass. It's just like, oh, man. It was not the European vacation that I had planned on, but whatever. Was it at least stick shift?
00:18:07
Speaker
No, it was automatic, and it was gross automatic, too. It wouldn't shift with a hoot. That's hilarious. But whatever.
Tornos Factory Insights
00:18:15
Speaker
I was there to see factories, not drive a cool car. So I drove an hour and a half to Tornos, got there a good time, basically an all-night flight. And then I land first thing in the morning, and I'm just, OK, I'm in local time now.
00:18:32
Speaker
and had an amazing tour at Tornos. The CEO, Michael Hauser of Tornos, took me around for a few hours. And he was like a kid in a candy store showing me around, just excited to gush with somebody. And they normally don't let random people in to take tours, yet alone to film anything. So it was a really magical experience. I filmed a lot.
00:18:54
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the Swiss lathe was built, was invented in that town by three separate guys that all made their own version. And then eventually they came together and kind of formed Tournos in the late 1800s. Yeah. And their secondary building was built in like 1850s and that's where Tournos was started.
00:19:15
Speaker
So what before- Now they- These used to be like cam driven because obviously before the area of controller, oh, that's another Haydnheim fun fact, but before the era of CNC, what the heck was a Swiss lathe?
00:19:30
Speaker
Yeah, it was cam driven so like a camshaft in a car would bump up rods and rollers and stuff and move the tool in a certain direction. And it was like super mechanical and super amazing and they'd have multiple tools hitting the part based on the cam.
00:19:48
Speaker
is incredible. Yeah. And they'd make watch parts basically, like insane. And they had several old ancient lads that on display in their museum, they were just glorious. And he's like, some people still use these lads to make watches. So we have to make or keep stock of parts for some of these old things. And we'll make them brand new. Seriously?
00:20:13
Speaker
Seriously, they support a hundred-year-old Swiss lady. Yeah, that's a new level of we guarantee stock.
00:20:24
Speaker
Yep. Yep. And one of the other little facts was they have kind of a little division, decent sized division where they'll buy back or refurbish older lays that are like 20, 30 years old. They'll put a new control on it. They'll rewire and replumb the whole thing and kind of make it brand new and like, but old brand new. It was really neat to see them doing that. And I asked them if there's any,
00:20:49
Speaker
you know, value or money in doing that because well, there's no money in doing it, but there's value because it shows that, you know, we're taking care of our customers that like their old machinery, etc. It's really cool. But amazing factory, they have 800 employees. It was sweet to see their assembly area because they they'd move a machine like
00:21:11
Speaker
you know, from one station to the next every day or every other day or something. And then next guy would work on it. Then it would just kind of get built kind of like a car moving through the assembly plant. They machine a lot of their own spindle components in house. They had these huge horizontal machining centers with like wood palette sized palette changers.
00:21:34
Speaker
racks and racks of them on the wall, like dozens and dozens and dozens of pallets that all go into this giant pool and the machines just run typically throughout the night, not during the day. They kind of plan that they're like, we do setups during the day and then we run it at night and everybody goes home at five or six and come back to finished parts, hopefully. Because he was saying, you know, labor in Switzerland can be very expensive. So let's maximize our people and our machinery to to make, you know, good parts.
00:22:02
Speaker
What I like about that is that people who like lathes often tell me that the lathe is the only machine that can self-replicate, but it sounds like they're actually using mills to make their lathes. So I'll take that as a wool. Yeah, and some of the lathes that they make are multi-spindle lathes. So there's like, I don't know, eight spindles. Looks like a Gatlin. Yeah, yeah, multi-spindles. Yeah, so I got to see the, I don't even know what you call it,
00:22:33
Speaker
the main plate that holds all the eight spindles and it's just this giant chunk of steel with holes bored and all precision machined and that was cool to see because it was so big. And then they have their Swiss Nano that's like so tiny that they make the spindles for that too. And they said they torture test everyone and they spin it up to full speed and vibration tested and all that in a clean room. Yeah, it was really fun. That's cool. That's really cool.
00:23:01
Speaker
And then after that, you had to play with a GT 13 though too, right? Yes, I did. I'd never really seen one up close. So I got to see a GT 13, similar to the one that I'm getting and really stick my head inside and get a feel for what I'm getting myself into and poke through the control a little bit, not too much, and ask the guy a bunch of technical questions that I'm going to need answered real soon.
00:23:25
Speaker
So that was good. And most importantly, I have to make really good contacts with people at the factory so that when I get stuck or have troubles or want to do something weird, then I know who to ask, which is sweet. Yep. That's going to be awesome. Yeah. Cool. And then right from there, I drove to, uh, drove five and a half hours to, to Kern in Garmisch, Germany, or Eschenlob. Was that Thursday then? And it was.
00:23:54
Speaker
That was Wednesday night. And I was tired. I had to pull over, go for a run one time, go for a sleep another time. But I made it. And then on Thursday, Marv and I played on the Kern Micro
Kern's Precision Philosophy
00:24:07
Speaker
all day. And he gave me a quick little tour around their assembly plant. And it was sweet, playing on the Kern and making. We spent most of the day just getting our bearings together and knowing what we want to do. And I still had a bunch of cam to do and fusion.
00:24:23
Speaker
You got it. So we did that. You got to explain to people what Kern is though. Okay. Kern. Now that I've been there and I get a real sense, they make an amazing five axis machining center and their philosophy is, I don't know. They just want to, they want to make the best machine ever for their purpose. It's the end of the road.
00:24:53
Speaker
It's interesting because there are different machines for different purposes. There's machines that are meant to run automotive production and just bang parts out, bam, bam, bam, make good parts all the time. And they're currently a very productive machine, too. But it's not their primary goal. Their primary goal is to hit submicron tolerances every day, always, and forever.
00:25:14
Speaker
And they're doing it. And they're looking at it from a totally different perspective and going, huh, the x axis motor produces heat, and that heat translates into the ball screw and that grows. So let's thermally cool the x axis motor mount.
00:25:30
Speaker
and compare the temperature against the y-axis motor mount. And if one gets hotter than the other, then the coolant gets plumbed to that more and everything on the machine is thermally stable to within 0.1 degrees Celsius, including the casting and the spindle and everything. And it's just this mentality that they go through to ensure that nothing changes ever. So you get this super consistent machine that just never moves and
00:25:58
Speaker
they've even optimized their tool touching and tool measuring routines so that they can verify that the tools always stay exactly what they're supposed to be. And you can hit microns of tolerance on every single part, the first part, the 9000th part. And they were saying, Simon, the CEO was telling us that
00:26:19
Speaker
Most of our customers don't actually require this much precision. And I'm thinking to myself, I don't need that much precision either. I mean, it's great. But he said, what you get is that repeatability. Like every part is just the same. Like people used to quality check every single part because they had to, but now they only do like one in a hundred or one in a few hundred just because it works, right? You're wasting time quality checking good parts if you know they're going to be good.
00:26:44
Speaker
Yeah, so they make the three machines, they make the pyramid nano, which is their wicked hydrostatic, typically watchmaking machine, but it can do other stuff. They make the, what's the other one? Evo? The micro obviously. Yeah, and then the Evo. The Evo was interesting too, kind of a, I don't want to call it a lightweight machine, but it is a lightweight machine.
00:27:11
Speaker
super high precision for light duty work. And then the micro which has a freaking 20 horsepower spindle and a B axis table that's like huge. You saw it.
00:27:27
Speaker
It's just overall very, very impressive. What I thought was cool was I spent a day at Hermla, which is really one of the top machine tool builders in the world or certainly in Europe. Hermlas are just absolutely superb machines and talking with them
00:27:49
Speaker
What i liked was that they are proud of what they do the product they offer good machining options good automation options but i mentioned you how do you guys think about current and they're like oh that's like it's really a totally different league and they're right because a hermit can you know say rough
00:28:07
Speaker
Inconel parts with the large tool. Hermos are more very smaller nimble machines. And I was laughing because I'm thinking through these anecdotes that we heard of like some of the tools, like cutting tools on a Kern. You have to hand load them because if you put the tool in the ATC, the air resistance from the ATC motion could break the flutes.
00:28:40
Speaker
Can you back me up on that so that people don't think I'm making this up? That's crazy. That's exactly what Marv was telling us. That's not to say... Go ahead.
00:28:52
Speaker
That's not to say the current can't take a half inch end mill because it absolutely can, but the point is it also does micro, micro precision machining. They have a photo in their lobby of them. I don't remember whether it was drilling or interpolating a hole through a human hair.
00:29:15
Speaker
Yeah, and it's like an electron microscope kind of picture of a human hair. And it's legit has a hole through it and then a copper wire going through that hole. And they didn't do that demo for us because that's quote unquote, boring for them at this point. Yeah, yeah. We yeah, that's it. It's not exciting anymore. We saw like literally Grims when I saw through a microscope, a
00:29:42
Speaker
turbine impeller pump that is fully CNC five axis machined, a functional impeller pump. And I don't remember the diameter. I think I have it on my video footage. I'll have to pull it up. But I think the diameter of that pump
00:29:58
Speaker
When you see it under a microscope, you see the features of it being a turbine. You see a relieved shank. You see a taper. You see the impeller blades. The diameter of that thing, pump, I believe was like 20,000. Yeah, it can't be more than 20,000.
00:30:18
Speaker
Like, cause I use 20,000 mils, so I kind of have an eye for that. And it looked that big at most, probably like 10 to 20 thou. Yeah. Like insane and fully machined. And yeah, so that's it spins at 1.1 million RPMs. Yep. Yep. So that's at K one. Let's get to K one in a minute. Um, so.
00:30:45
Speaker
You know, as you guys know, I've been talking about, John and I have both been talking about five access machines for the longest time. And you got your UMC 750 recently, which is super awesome, amazing, super happy for you. And then I'm thinking for myself, like, what's, what's in the future, you know, like, I want a five access machine too, but what would I get? And then I started to come across current and I'm like,
00:31:07
Speaker
We've been talking about them for years, but I started seriously thinking about it a couple of weeks ago. And it's just like this. I mean, it's expensive, but man, it makes a lot of sense. It's like the full Grimsmo of machines. So to be able to go there and play on one and make Norseman parts for an entire day was just bliss for me. It was so much fun. Yeah. We got to talk more about that. Again, keeping it kind of candid, but I don't think
00:31:39
Speaker
What I struggle with is it doesn't actually seem to be expensive at all relative to other five axis machine tools with the ability to produce long term, again, we don't care about, you don't care about the actual dimensional accuracy, but rather the fact that the Norseman number X and Norseman number X plus 937 are going to be the same.
00:32:06
Speaker
When you look at this fact that there's a machine tool that can provide high ATC as well as integrated pallet pool and is so accurate, the price that they're saying relative to some of the other machines that we've talked about on this podcast even, it's actually the same price.
00:32:29
Speaker
Yeah, give or take, I don't know, 10% or something. But yeah, it is a competitive price. And it's amazing that they can put that much effort and dedication technology into a similar-ish price point. I guess my point is that it is a insane load of money.
00:32:48
Speaker
in general. That said, still super duper intriguing. Going there really put it into perspective what this machine could do for us in the coming years. I was asking one of the sales reps about potential buyback if
00:33:17
Speaker
company goes belly up and I need to get rid of the machine or bank wants to come repo it or just thinking out all possibilities. And he said, in the 14 years I've worked here, I don't think we've had to buy one back. I don't think customers ever got rid of one.
00:33:32
Speaker
Yeah. Well, that's what blew me away too. When we were touring through the building where they build their machine tools and they said, look, I don't know if this is spoken or unspoken. I don't want to certainly misrepresent Kern. But basically, they're willing to buy back most of their machines they ever make because they have a list of people that are more than happy to buy
00:33:56
Speaker
Use current that has been through their facility to get kind of checked on and what they only build like 60 machines a year so it's literally a fraction of what other high-end builders are putting out.
00:34:11
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know what DMG makes, like how many five access machine they make, but I bet you'd be thousands a year. Actually, you know what? Heidenheim just told us that. I wrote it down. I think they estimate that there are about 13,000 proper, I mean, it's so difficult, but to
00:34:33
Speaker
to define this market for reasons I'll mention in a second, but 13,000 five-axis machines a year. What is a five-axis? That's weird because there's a mill-turn of five-axis. Is a sub-spinner lay the six-axis? Does that count as a five-axis? Blah, blah, blah. But what we think of as a five-axis where you have the idea of a
00:34:53
Speaker
Table table or head table, whatever they think is about 13,000 and you know between places like Haas and DMG and do saw like the pie volume builders Those are those are you know, maybe total maybe four or five players are half that market
00:35:11
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And then current is like the super bespoke, you know, like custom, um, hand built option. That's only make 60 a year. It's, it's glorious. Literally they spent, what was it? Two or three weeks, uh, assembling a machine and then more equal or more time just
00:35:35
Speaker
like confirming everything and signing off on it and reviewing it and thermally checking it. It was cool. Yeah, and doing test cuts and test measurements and run out of everything.
00:35:51
Speaker
they were saying that the inspection process has the head of every department and the CEO and the COO present and they all discuss every single machine and they look at the results and they just discuss everything and everybody in the company. Well, all the high ups have to sign off on each machine. It's not just like bang another one out the door and call it good. They care. They care so much. Yeah, it was cool.
00:36:17
Speaker
It was amazing to see. So yeah, so my Thursday was amazing. And then you guys came in Thursday night. We hung out and made bad cam jokes and ate some good burgers at Marv's house. And then Friday, we all went up to Kern, did a failed podcast, and then got a full factory tour of the assembly plant. And then of their K1,
00:36:42
Speaker
job shop manufacturing plant, which is they've never let cameras there either. And we're probably gonna have to scrub a lot of footage just for confidentiality sake. But what was your impression of k1? See, it's cool, because that's how they started. They didn't start
00:36:56
Speaker
with the intent to build machines. They started as a job shop and they had customer demands that they couldn't figure out how to meet. And I feel like you hear that as a cliche saying like, oh, we had to do this because our customers couldn't find other solutions. This is a little different. This is the real deal. This resulted in some of the most high-end machines ever built in the history of modern machine tools. And it was pretty cool to walk through that facility.
00:37:25
Speaker
Well, when did they first started making machines? Like the 80s, right? I think so. Because the way I got it was, you know, they developed a precision machine shop in the south of Germany. And they're like, essentially, we can't find machines to make precise enough parts. So let's build our own.
00:37:44
Speaker
And then over the next few years and decades, they've perfected that. And now they've got kind of the two streams, K1 and K2 still doing job shop. I believe the quote is they're the biggest precision machine shop in all of Germany, maybe Europe. I'm not sure. And then they've got K2 doing assembly of these amazing current machines. It was cool.
00:38:06
Speaker
What John said about Thursday night was not actually accurate though because we were supposed to go to Marv's for dinner and dinner is normally something that occurs at like six maybe seven o
Reflections on Machining Experiences
00:38:18
Speaker
'clock and I think Lauren's I was a little bit late picking up Lawrence in the airport or his flight was maybe oh he couldn't find his way through the Munich Airport fun fact disaster to get through that and
00:38:30
Speaker
So, we didn't get to Kern, which is in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, like an hour and some south of Munich. We didn't get there till like 9.30. So, Lawrence and I are calling Grimsmo at whatever, 8.30 on our way down being like, what's the plan? Did you guys already eat? What, should we meet you? And they're like, no, we're still at Kern doing test cuts. We're still machining.
00:38:56
Speaker
You can just come here or maybe we'll meet you at like his apartment and I'm just laughing like One of the things I think in life is always to keep to stay humble and look I'm having the time of my life This is super fun on the flip side like try to stay humble and it was kind of a pinch yourself moment when here I am and
00:39:13
Speaker
10 years ago, I didn't know what an end mill was. And here, I'm asking Lauren, do we go to the highest end machine fuel builder after hours with Grimzo who's making test cuts? Or do we go to his apartment? And it was kind of worldless moments where you just have to say, you know what, life has been good to me. I'm very grateful. I love what I do.
00:39:33
Speaker
Yeah, Marv and I were doing, yeah, I think I was there for 14 hours on Thursday, whatever it was. And we just had a blast. And even Marv was saying, that was one of the most fun days of machining I've ever had. That's what he said, too. He said it was his most enjoyable day of machining at Kirk. And you did a Norseman handle and surfaced the edges. And it was insane to look at that.
00:39:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it was so much fun. And fun fact, I learned a valuable lesson there is that even the best machine in the world can make bad parts if you give it bad information. Oh, what was that? So like,
00:40:10
Speaker
Well, normally, I would use a corner rounder for this one feature. But they didn't have a corner rounder. So we just took a ball mill and surfaced the whole thing. And we were trying to go super fast. And we went too fast and had the tolerance wrong and had a bunch of tiny little settings wrong. And the surface looked like garbage.
00:40:27
Speaker
But that takes tweaking, that takes time, that takes practice to get all those things dialed in. And a bunch of little things like that, or keeping the machine on the high speed setting, not the finishing setting, leads to some ever so slight surface imperfections. And those are all tweakable, all get rid of bull.
00:40:49
Speaker
But it was humbling to see that, okay, there's obviously skill in everything required and you need the attention to detail to be able to crush it all the time. But man, was it fun. That machine is a beast. I want one so bad.
00:41:05
Speaker
I think that's what we got to talk about next podcast because you need a Kern. I mean, just like to cut to the chase, you need a Kern. I don't need a Kern, but the one takeaway, I remember telling you this when I was in Sweden for the Sandvik thing and trying to tell you like,
00:41:23
Speaker
the feeling you get about what we're doing with our businesses and the idea of pushing yourself and embracing technology and so forth. I remember as a bootstrapper, and this sounds cliche, but that feeling is even stronger this trip to where... I mean, you saw it like two hours ago on WhatsApp. I'm like, how do I figure out how to put an Aroa system on my Haas UMC 750?
00:41:48
Speaker
Automation is such an overused word that you become kind of numb to it. But take a step back and say, wait a minute here. Our modify systems should be done in the next three months. We should be moving those to an automated system.
00:42:04
Speaker
And we're getting there. We're going to start making them on the UMC when I get back. We'll understand the 5X's toolpath. That'll be a necessary step. Do we do palletized handling? Do we do material handling? How does that work? But I was telling my wife on the bus ride this afternoon, I called her to say hi. I'm like, I'm over this. I've been very, very, very good. Like tiptoeing. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
00:42:35
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm getting there too. I mean, I just bought the tornos. One of our buddies was joking. He's like, guy just buys a super expensive lane and then goes on vacation. And I'm like, well, this is a work vacation. But I'm in the same boat. Like you and I both have businesses that are doing very well and have huge upside and future potential. And I've got so much more to go. And I know what it takes to get from here to there. So what am I waiting for?
00:43:05
Speaker
Yeah. And look, it's also the balance of staying humble and managing the cash. And then you and I are talking, what's the downside risk? I mean, the downside risk on a current is arguably less than the downside risk on a ROA system. Because a current has a used buyer pool that's quite deep, whereas a used ROA system, I don't know. You could spend 150 grand on it and be out.
00:43:34
Speaker
way more than you could on a potentially on a Kern. And I thought about that. I thought about, hey, I've adored Hermlas and I had a good time at Hermla. Do I just go figure out how to buy the Hermla with automation? I'm not there yet, but I'm chewing on it.
00:43:50
Speaker
Yeah, right. It's interesting to play out all the scenarios and the upsides, the downsides, and even to look at it from a frank, emotionless perspective, which is hard to do sometimes, but you have to be able to do it. You're like, okay, what if the economy collapses and we have no money or what, you know, what if, what if, what if, what if, what if? And it's, it's hard sometimes, but it's super eyeopening. And this trip I got to spend so much time, you know, driving and thinking and, uh,
00:44:21
Speaker
When I was busy, I was very busy, but when I was kind of by myself, I could think, I could crunch, and I could pull over on the side of the road and just sit down on a rock and like, oh man, I got a lot of stuff on my head right now. How was skiing? Yeah, and then Marv took me skiing on Saturday morning, which was just phenomenal. Oh my gosh, we went to this place called Lermus in Austria.
00:44:51
Speaker
And you drive up and you see the first little hill. And I'm like, oh, that's a cute little ski hill with a giant mountain in the background. No, no, it's three lifts all the way to the top. It's gigantic. So one of the funny takeaways from that was I haven't skied in probably 12 years. But before that, I used to go a decent amount. I used to do it many times a year. So I was solidly OK, like a medium skier.
00:45:21
Speaker
And I haven't been in a while, but I've been exercising, so I wasn't too worried about the burn. But it's weird going back to something after technology, like cell phones and everything, that I used to do pre-real technology.
Skiing and Reflections
00:45:38
Speaker
Like our ski passes were RFID tags. So you just walk up to the gate.
00:45:44
Speaker
to get on the chairlift and you kind of put in your left pocket and the RFID goes and then the gate opens up and you go on the lift. They didn't have that before back in the day. But it was just stunning, like beautiful blue day, almost last weekend of the year, not too many people there, the snow was great, the view was stunning. And I just kept pinching myself going, is this real? This is so much fun.
00:46:09
Speaker
And then, uh, on the last run, going down to the car, Marv kind of looks at me and he goes, last one down, buying a current. And then he takes off. He goes, what? He said, last one, last one down is buying a current. Oh, that's hilarious.
00:46:29
Speaker
Yeah. And he's a very good skier. I think this was his 40th time skiing this year. Oh my God. So he beat me to the bottom. That's funny. But I mean, jeez, what an epic trip. And then I drove back the long way through Austria and just mountains and valleys and tunnels and gorgeousness and then took off from Zurich again. And I mean, that was like a five, six day trip and it was,
00:46:56
Speaker
literally the best trip I've ever had in my life. I got so much stuff done. I got so much reflecting done and learning and hanging out with you and Marv and meeting the CEOs of these two amazing companies and just everything was amazing except for the Jeep.
00:47:12
Speaker
Except, yeah, well said, the Jeep sucked. I'm just going to say it. I looked at him and I looked over and I'm like, what do you have a Jeep Compass? What are you kidding me? Even I had a... I don't even know. Yeah, it was like a Volvo V50. Stick shift though. I actually chose it because my wife wants one. I was like, yeah, we test driving it. Great.
00:47:34
Speaker
Yeah, that sucked. We should wrap up. The Kern CEO, fun fact, under 40 years old and all department heads at Kern are under 40. I can't think of a better example of a way of embracing the fact that times are changing. This is weird to say, but
00:47:55
Speaker
you and I aren't young anymore. In that sense, we are young in the grand scheme of life. We're not young in the sense of understanding technology and innovation and what's happening. We're 35 and the CEO was 39 or whatever and all the department heads. That's basically the same age. They've got a couple of years on us, but holy cow, it was amazing. What a good culture, just a vibe. Most importantly to me, the CEO is a big fan of short circuit.
00:48:23
Speaker
They are very interested in Johnny Five, which is all I need to be here. That was hilarious. Yeah. We were walking through their museum, their archive of old 1980s machines. And I was like, hey, Johnny Five was probably made on this. And he just looks at me and he goes, I love Johnny Five. And then you're like, we're building one. And he's like, yeah, right. It is like here. I'd like to go to bed. OK.
00:48:50
Speaker
I will talk to you next week back in the States. How about that? Sounds good. Have an amazing rest of your trip. Enjoy it. Learn everything. Film everything. Yes. And we'll see you soon. Thanks, bud. I'll see you. Bye. All right. Take care. Bye.