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Business of Machining - Episode 74
188 Plays7 years ago
Do you have a parallel version of you? Maybe it's time to give them a shout and review the first half of the year with them, you may be surprised.
John and John have more than just their names in common; they also are in about the same place business wise, and have about the same number of employees. Now all Grimsmo needs is that new shop!
Saunders and Grimsmo discuss the balancing act that is being both a technician and a manager. It comes down to hierarchies, and making employees feel respected and listened to.
Coming soon to a podcast near you: Torque Wrenches, the continuing battle!
Saunders struggles with his Haas and tries to make 5 axis machining simple
“The beauty of 5-axis is that you should have the ability to just do that” - Grimsmo
Locking down the lock bar insert!
We all know Grimsmo strives to make his knives perfect, and now it’s time to improve the reliability of the process. So far everything is going swimmingly, the insert just needs to pass the “spine whacking” test. Which is exactly what it sounds like.
Lathes, lathes, lathes!!! ...Saunders? Are you still there?
The smallest part that Grimsmo has ever made is going to come out of his lathe, and be put into the lock bar insert.
Check out Geissele Triggers: https://geissele.com/
FOMO does not apply to Grimsmo...he wants things to happen without him! AND THEY ARE! The team tried out the new Arbor press the other day, video to come out soon on Grimsmo’s channel.
Saunders dream job? High level R&D! Dream vacation? Coming to see the Grimsmo shop! And dreams are coming true next week for both Saunders and Grimsmo, as he'll come by the shop and hang out with the whole crew. Keep an eye out for that video! Who knows what’s going to happen when the two John’s are in the same room!
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Transcript
Introductions and Morning Routines
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the Business of Machining, Episode 74. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. Morning, buddy. Morning. How are you? I'm doing fantastic today. Awesome. How are you doing?
00:00:14
Speaker
Good. So we were, uh, we always have our like morning, not, I don't call it a huddle, but like we get our microphone set up and check batteries. And we were just talking and shooting the breeze. And, uh, I had to laugh because the parallels, you know, Grimsby and I are so different as well. We have a lot of similarities, but we're different as people. We're different in our businesses, but there's the similarities continue to be just,
Business Performance and Growth Reflection
00:00:40
Speaker
hilarious. And so we were kind of talking in sort of general numbers about our, our first six months, our first half of the year to date. And it is insane that we're within like a few percentage points of each other. And it's not, it's not a competition. It's just literally not. It's just the thought of like, Hey, he has, he has two, um, big boy machines. I have two big boy machines, right? Like you got, have the same number of employees about as I've got. And like, it's shut. How weird is that?
00:01:09
Speaker
You know, we're the same age. Right. Wife, two kids. Right. Yeah. It's awesome. Yeah. I'm really glad to be alive at this point in time. And I'm glad to be a friend. I appreciate it too. But I was it is something I think when you get you get it's not that you get lost in the journey. But when somebody again, if somebody told me three years ago or 10 years ago, you could be running
00:01:37
Speaker
a 10,000 square foot shop with two Haas machines, nine Tormach machines, a staff of people, making some of the best YouTube videos out there, running a training program, selling product. Well, I mean, I would just look at you funny and be like, where do I sign? That's an unbelievable dream come true. And it doesn't always feel like a dream when you're living in it. You know what I mean? And it seemed to you, dude, you're gonna crush it this year.
00:02:04
Speaker
Absolutely. Here's a question. At what point put yourself back three to five years and look forward. Did you ever think you'd be this big?
00:02:18
Speaker
No, I mean, I thought we would have bought a use. I got pretty close when I was at my family farm shop to buying like a really old morey, like one of those, uh, and the forties or something. So I figured we'd bootstrap into a really, really old machining center. Um,
00:02:39
Speaker
And I look, if I'm being honest, a lot of it is the building we got just purely just I cold cold call cold knocked on this building. And again, for the first few months when I was looking at it, I really thought we would lease half of it out. But
00:02:54
Speaker
I think that got complicated because how do you share bathrooms and security of locked doors and, and then I was like, well, and it wouldn't be that much brand and somebody would need a, probably a one or two or three year lease. And I don't like the idea of a two or three year lease because what if, what if we grew into it? And, um, I was like, I think I can earn my way into that space. So it's like, you make it, you make a big decision and you move into it, into the decision itself. Yeah.
Transitioning to Strategic Leadership
00:03:22
Speaker
There was, but it's like, I would parallel it to you buying things like the, like Nakamura lathe, like you were ready for it. You know, it seemed like a crazy decision for me at the time, but the reality was we were, you know, we spent, people see this shop sometimes. They're like, Oh my God, you know, overnight success or some term of that sort. And I'm like, I don't know, man, we, we spent seven, six, seven years in a thousand square feet hustling. Like I don't, uh, success seven years in the making. Right.
00:03:50
Speaker
Anyway, I'm excited for you. Our thing this year, for sure we've had growth, but we've also done a good job of culling a lot of things off Saunders' list and off my personal list. In some respects, there's an element of flatness to what we're doing, but it has come at the expense or benefit of
00:04:12
Speaker
of me being, whatever you want to call it, stepping out of some of those roles. To take it to the extreme, to have flat growth, but have me no longer have to be involved on some of the day-to-day stuff. For me, that's a real win and I think actually will set us up for better long-term growth and positioning and so forth. That's exactly where I'm transitioning as well because it allows you and I to
00:04:38
Speaker
step back a little bit from the day to day and let everybody be experts at their job and go out and execute the plan properly and then you and I can plan for future growth. We can do everything that needs to get done that we don't have time to do when we're bogged in the day to day.
00:04:57
Speaker
So everyone sort of, everyone has been quick to warn me about the entrepreneurial changes as you go and as you grow, where, you know, the sort of you hear about like you stuck in the office or pushing paperwork or blah, blah, blah. And I've always kind of thought, okay, you know,
00:05:15
Speaker
That's never been, so what, you want me to not do this? That's never been a changer. What no one ever told me that I will admit I, I don't know what the word is. It's not that I struggle with it, but it's just challenging is the
00:05:31
Speaker
minute by minute or hour by hour ping pong effect of balancing or switching between, if you want to use the e-myth revisited terminology, kind of balancing between technician and what do they call it, manager? Manager.
00:05:48
Speaker
Because the best of me, the best of you comes out when you can pour yourself for 40 minutes into a single tool path, right? Like every little detail of points and stock to leave and settings and like, how do I get the tool set up and all this? And it's very difficult to do that if six times in that 40 minutes, you're hit up with the decision-making manager. I mean, it sounds weird to say manager because I feel like, I don't really like the word manager, but you know what I mean?
00:06:16
Speaker
Yep, yep. So that's tough. Yeah, you need to pull yourself out of that zone, answer the question with a decision, and then try to get yourself back into the zone. And that switching takes a lot of energy for sure.
00:06:29
Speaker
Well, so you think about, okay, I'm not always a fan of Tim Ferriss in the four hour work week, but okay, you know, take a bite out of that apple and this whole idea of like, well, enable the employees to make those decisions on their own. And that's respectable. And I would argue that we probably have done that, but nevertheless, all that means is that when someone still comes to you, it's all the more important because it's broken that threshold,
Empowering Teams and Enhancing Efficiency
00:06:53
Speaker
right? Like I don't love the idea of saying,
00:06:56
Speaker
Hey, my time playing with this setup is more important than you getting delayed. Because I value, I mean, if somebody, you try to create a culture where somebody asks you a question, I'm going to stop everything I'm doing because that's important. Your time is important. We need to help you do what you do, do it well, which has a trade-off of saying, don't ask me dumb questions. Like, you know, figure this out on your own. Or we need to put the systems in place so that you don't have to ask that question. Yep, yep, absolutely.
00:07:23
Speaker
something that I I don't I don't do it but I think in my head would be funny is to like put my earmuffs on and be like I'm not here right now right so I might start implementing that if I start getting deep into projects or something like that but yeah you know obviously I am if you need me but yeah
00:07:41
Speaker
No, it's actually a little barrier of it's like locking your door kind of thing. Yeah. Didn't we talk about it last week about how Jay Pearson was talking about how he tries to honor to the extent that there are
00:07:56
Speaker
hierarchical tiers of people or work level. You don't want to jump between levels because you want to make an example with known people. Let's say, Crimson Mode manages Angelo and Angelo manages Skye. That means you need to let Angelo manage Skye. Don't break that.
00:08:18
Speaker
don't break that level. Don't use SERP Angelo by going directly to Sky. Work with it through Angelo. It's an important skill, not so much for today, maybe, as it is for tomorrow. Right. Yeah. And planning for the future, growth of the company, if it ever gets to 10, 20 people kind of thing, that sort of level needs to be kept in mind for sure. Sweet. What else you got going on?
00:08:48
Speaker
pork wrenches. Okay, so. All right, the continuing battle. Yeah, so some interesting feedback, lots of messages, and I will say a ton of people who are like, and I say this politely, but like, no, I definitely have already been told that, or I worked at an aerospace shop, or I worked at a shop that made really good parts, so I know this. And I'm like, no, no, no, I just want data.
00:09:14
Speaker
And I've heard the few folks that have come out back to us with real data and not just here say or not just snap on said or this company said people have actually done tests. The tests are indicating.
00:09:30
Speaker
that the leaving them set doesn't seem to materially impact the performance of the torque wrench relative to its initial quality. So a torque wrench, I think, has quite a wide range of plus or minus torque spec to begin with. And that doesn't materially degrade or change over some shorter period of time. So the biggest problem with the test and the data that we've seen so far
00:09:56
Speaker
is that it's way too short. It's like, hey, we left them stored from grave. Well, no, I'm leaving them stored for really, I think I probably need to know one or two years because honestly, I'm still not even going to throw a torque wrench out. That's perfectly good after two years and we're going to leave them, you know, we're going to leave them stored. And this is a longer term thing.
00:10:15
Speaker
I wonder if a test would have different results if you have two torque wrenches, same quality, set them all to 50 foot pounds and you leave one alone and then you use the other one throughout the two years.
Technical Challenges and Innovations
00:10:26
Speaker
No, it's a good question. If the usage would be different than the static test of leaving it alone, you know what I mean? But at the end of the day, does it really matter if you're torquing your vice to 50 foot pounds today and it's 47 foot pounds in two years? Do you really care?
00:10:41
Speaker
I don't, I think you're better off. There's a, there's a trade off to everything. And so, you know, right now we have six torque wrenches. I think I really honestly like to have like 10. I'm not going to have any employee spend the mornings and evenings putting them up and taking them back down.
00:10:58
Speaker
Um, that's an expense of time and labor. And so if the trade-off to that is the level of, you know, what do we need to do that's super, the biggest thing I can think of is if you had a really detailed setup, um, and you replace the torque wrench, then 50 foot pounds may be a lot different on the new torque wrench, but that's not a real issue for us. Um, and I still think you're better off having a usable workflow with the right tools and wrenches that are set up versus, um, winging it with, with hand.
00:11:28
Speaker
Hand tools per se though the but now on the other flip side I've learning they make This little guy. I need to find out where to buy these a guy sent it to us. It is called a perf a torque model 38a from the x4 corporation and it is a little
00:11:47
Speaker
adapter that goes between your normal breaker bar, torque, torque, not torque bar, but wrench and the socket. And it's just preset to 30. This one happens to be 35 inch pounds, which is perfect. It looks like a round cylinder, like a big 30 millimeter socket with a square drive to a square drive. And there's some gear stuff inside.
00:12:09
Speaker
Which is only funny because we already own these in the form of those sloppy mini ones for like our Torx drivers that we use on inserts. And I don't. I need to get some of those, by the way. Yeah, they're they they are like scream. Yeah, they scream. They look really good. They work really well and they're really expensive. Got it. Yes. OK, I'm getting some of those or some other brand. But yeah, I need that. So.
00:12:39
Speaker
That makes a perfect compromise because now you could adjust the wrench lengths if you wanted to, you don't have to worry about clutching out, they're all labeled. Like I really, that may be another good answer. But the lesson for me, maybe I'm being a nitpick, nitpicky is like, this is a perpetuated, most people who believe this aren't believing it rooted in fact, like it is effectively, and technologies have changed. I don't know how much spring technology has changed, but don't believe everything just because everybody says it,
00:13:10
Speaker
Yep. Yeah. Yeah, and come coming from someone who only has one ancient torque wrench that he never uses. I need to get some. Yeah, you guys should be torquing down your like lathe stuff and yeah, turrets. Yeah, tool holders for sure. Yes, you are not for sure. I hope I got to email Mari to and ask if they came up with those. They were going to sell some
00:13:40
Speaker
which was perfect because nobody kind of has easy. I think there's one of the, was it Lindex or somebody sells the, it's like 350 bucks for the torque wrench and then a hundred bucks. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of. Anyway, I spent, I spent most, it's been a weird week because of, we've got some people on vacation and today is July 4th for us here in the States. But I spent most of my week running five axis parts.
00:14:09
Speaker
Nice. I've been seeing your Instagram stuff. Oh, man. And to paraphrase how influential it is, I was looking at a UMC 750 travels, which are 30 by 20 by 20. And I'm thinking, my God, I should have just bought that instead of the VF2.
00:14:31
Speaker
I know it's obvious. I mean, how many five axis machines have we seen run at trade shows and other shops? I mean, hundreds, if not maybe thousands. Yeah. And I'll tell you, there's no feeling like watching one run when it's your own tool path.
00:14:48
Speaker
Right. And I've never done that. Amazing. That's cool. I'll hold up the part I made this guy. And this was easy. What? Most of this is three plus two, except there were some simultaneous chamfers on it. And I'm learning like everybody, you know, most five axis machine is just positional. Yeah.
00:15:13
Speaker
The one thing that I'm super bummed about is OK, so take a look at this part. This is a wrist joint for Johnny five, the robot.
00:15:24
Speaker
So you can see it kind of looks like a wrist where there's a bottom section that connects to your forearm and the top section fans out to where you'd have kind of your five knuckles or three knuckles. So the way I made this part is I held it from the bottom and was able to get to do all the positional work on five sides that left the equivalent of a hat top on the bottom. So I flipped the part over and I've got to machine that hat top off and finish some of the bottom detail work.
00:15:55
Speaker
The way I was going to do that was rotate the part on its side where I can get to very good machined geometry to probe that in. Makes sense? Because if I had the part just flipped over, the hat top or mushroom cap of material gets in the way and that's not geometry I trust because I didn't machine it. The Haas control won't support probing at anything other than B0, C0.
00:16:26
Speaker
Wow. So the B0Z0 is making the part point straight up in the air. You want to rock the part 90 degrees sideways so you can access it. Exactly.
00:16:39
Speaker
Sucks. So this is the kind of stuff that you learn. And so I, of course, asked the guys on the WhatsApp thread who all run five axis machines. And basically this is a no brainer. It should do it. Fannock does it. Heidenhine does it. I have to think Siemens does it. It's not, frankly, compared to some of the other things that go on in five axis machining. I don't even think this is all that complicated. And so what if you just
00:17:04
Speaker
What if you just turn the probe on and manually jog until you hear it beep and all that? No, I can run probing routines in the Haas control, and I can even program it out of Fusion, but it just doesn't work. It doesn't recognize it's a controller limitation of Haas. So I emailed Haas and I asked him about it. And they understand. But I'm like, guys, this is a big deal. I'm a five-axis customer. This is the first time I've been like, wait a minute here.
00:17:33
Speaker
I was willing to defend something like a UMC for not having maybe these absolute equivalent motion profile as a master or a hermelet. But this is a big deal because the way to solve it is to have another extra half inch or inch of stock. That way you can do a lot more work on the bottom to tab it out.
00:17:53
Speaker
But that's not a good workflow. This is a workflow that I care about when it comes to setting up the processes. Fusion supports probing with tool orientation. This is just something that needs to happen, period. Well, and you're like super new into five axis and you're already wanting to do this feature. Imagine some expert coming in wanting to do it too. It'd be like no brainer. No, but not running a probing routine, but actually just
00:18:19
Speaker
Activating the probe, jogging it until it beeps, and then resetting the zero of the machine at that point. Do it totally manually. So I did this. The problem is that what would happen is that the part would be held 90 degrees. It would be rotated like it's, instead of it pointing at either 6 o'clock or 12 o'clock, it would be either pointed at 3 o'clock or 9 o'clock.
00:18:45
Speaker
The problem is that is B90 because the B axis has rotated up 90 degrees to put it there. You can't start a fusion five axis program on a Haas controller with your work coordinate system at B90.
00:19:03
Speaker
Basically, it has to be pointed upright, which is BS. It's actually run the machining program. Yeah, exactly. Well, what if it runs, point it up, and then it moves to the coordinates you set, which is starts it. I can film the would-be crash.
00:19:23
Speaker
I mean, there's ways, other ways around it. That's what's frustrating. The math is actually quite simple. Like, guys, I'm moving the partner this way. My coordinate system is right here. Like you can do dynamic work offsets. You don't, like, this isn't an issue or tilted work plane or whatever it's called. Um, so I'm hoping to lean on Haas and get that. I don't, I have no idea if that's like, uh, we need a couple of guys to spend a week or two on this, but, um, I'm like, how, how am I, how is this not something that people are doing more? Good grief.
00:19:54
Speaker
Have you asked other 5-axis Haas customers? I know Eric from Avant Manufacturing just got a UMC. So I was going to ask him, I know 1186 used to have a couple and he ran those machines like he owned those machines. Yeah, totally. So I'll reach out to him.
00:20:13
Speaker
Yeah, so I want to, I'm like still nervous that I'm misunderstanding something, but I don't think so. I've gotten to know Mark Terryberry. And so I was talking to him yesterday about it. And he's like, look, it's good that this is coming from a customer. Maybe that can help us push this through. But I'm like, come on.
00:20:30
Speaker
Cause it's just so cool. Like you flip the park, it rotated to the side, it finds machined features that it can access probes them in and rock and roll man. Like I don't need to worry about where I put the part in the vice to speak up. I don't have to do soft jaws. I don't have to buy extra material. It's kind of the beauty of five accesses. You want the capability to just do that. Right. Yeah. Good. I guess good, good problems to have, right? Yeah. What are you up to? What are you up to?
00:20:59
Speaker
So the past, I guess I finished it on Friday after our podcast last, when we recorded last Wednesday, I was working on my lock bar insert for the Norseman.
Product Improvements and Technical Balance
00:21:09
Speaker
And totally nailed it. The first one worked fairly well, except it fails. And what I mean by that is when the knife opens up and locks into place.
00:21:22
Speaker
we do something we call spine whacking. So we take the open knife and we slam it spine first against block of wood to see if the lock will fail and also to kind of set it in and make it work really well. And the blade will close on maybe one out of five. Ooh. Thwacks, which is obviously not good. That fails. So there's some little geometry issues that are that I'm trying to nail down. It shouldn't be too hard to nail it in. And it's rubbing in a weird spot that I didn't foresee. So I got to tweak that.
00:21:52
Speaker
And then, yeah, this tiny little flat object, which I made on the mill for the first one, I'm looking at it and I'm going, that's a lathe part. Isn't it amazing that we can still be friends? Yeah. No, I'm joking. I think how everybody else makes it.
00:22:11
Speaker
Go ahead. Go. They'll make it from a square of metal, and you can nest 20 of them. Yeah. And then you heat treat it, but then you have to deal with all these tabs, or you have to fixture it for a second op, and all that stuff. And I'm like, no, I want a one and done solution. So if I make it from round bar on the lathe,
00:22:30
Speaker
then I can mill it and I can grab it with a soft jaw like an emergency call it and I can part it off and face it and chamfer the other side and it's done and then it spits into my pill bottle and it makes the next one and I can make it from hardened steel already and golden. So that's this week's project. It's already Wednesday. Hopefully I have time to do it this week. Yeah, that's what I'm working on.
00:22:53
Speaker
Maybe obvious comment, but that's like the lowest hanging fruit in the world of automation and in lights out machine and productivity is freaking bar features on lays. Yeah, I mean, I would, you know, completely agree on that front. And you won't even need the sub spindle, right? This will just all happen on the main spindle. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'll do it. It needs both because it has to grab the part, part it off, face the other side. How is it going to grab a part that small?
00:23:22
Speaker
I'll make it happen. Are you serious? Isn't it like a millimeter thick? It's a 16th of an inch. So it's 2.2 thou. Okay. Wow. Dude. Easy peasy. Well, I mean, we'll see. Like I'm hoping right now. And actually I, since I don't want to change the setups on my lathe right now, I have most of my live tools facing the sub spindle.
00:23:48
Speaker
So I might actually revert, reverse this whole operation and start sub spindle and transfer to the main just while you're learning or playing. I think, I think it'll save me from having to swap like three tools to the other direction, but you wouldn't do it long-term because you can't bar feed out of the, you can't feed a long stick out of the sub. Yes. Yeah.
00:24:12
Speaker
But I get a lot of pieces out of a short bar. That's true. Who cares? These are tiny parts. That's hilarious. Exactly. I wonder if anyone has ever done that, have reversed. I think I've heard of it. And I mean, the lathe is almost identical left to right, except it's super easy to access the regular side. And while I could put a spindle liner in the sub-spindle side, there's like a chip conveyor in the way. Got it.
00:24:39
Speaker
When I remember, I remember reading when I was sort of more serious about lays like a year ago, or actually maybe an after IMTS last 2016, um, sub spindles often have higher RPM because usually the part is a little bit smaller by the time it makes it to the stuff. So you want the higher service footages. At least I never thought about why. Yeah. Cause yeah, mine's 4,500 and 6,000 on the sub. Got it. Although it sounds really weird at 6,000. Like.
00:25:08
Speaker
I'm just not used to running it. Even the main at 45 is like a lot. Yeah. I was watching your video. I don't remember which it was, but when you put up recently and you showed the, uh, you showed the, oh, he's going to kill me for saying this, but the lock would crash. Oh man. But that was, that's, I mean, not an inexpensive part, but that's technically not part of the late it's not part of your late spindle. It's just a five seat bolt on.
00:25:36
Speaker
Yes. I mean, it's thousands of dollars, but yeah, it's not part of the lathe itself and it works fine. So yeah, yeah, right. Gnarly. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's what I'm working on. Um, absolute. Can I ask you a question? Go for it. So when you, what did you, did you call it spline testing? Spine whacking. Spine whacking.
00:25:58
Speaker
On the blade, you've got the cutting edge and the spine is the not sharp part. So we whack it against a piece of wood. No, totally makes sense. Obviously important for a blade, a folder to be fixed open like that. But I wonder, is it like oscillations or vibrations or the angle of a lock up or what would make it fail? It's the way the two surfaces contact. And there's a lot of minor geometry, like
00:26:26
Speaker
within degrees of the way that it has to work the certain contact points, you want one corner to contact, not a whole face. Oh, and when the lock bar bends, your square face is now angled, right? So it's got a clear blade, it's actually a radius on the blade. So where that square tilts to the radius and how it kind of hooks in place.
00:26:50
Speaker
Interesting. How they all work out. So I mean, when we we've used titanium lock phases that we carpetize forever and we know how to make it work, but it's like I've said, it takes Eric between five and 50 minutes to get it done. And that variability is just ridiculous. So the lock insert should turn it down to five every time.
00:27:13
Speaker
just got to nail down these finer final little tolerances. It's one of the reasons I always loved shooting. I mean, I enjoy shooting and grew up doing it so much, but like the appreciation for the intricacies and designs of mass produced firearms. I'm not talking about the hand shop, custom one offs. I'm talking about kind of the parallel to what you're doing. I mean, you guys are hand finishing knives, but you're not, you're not devoting a month to one folding knife, right? Like your parts are
00:27:41
Speaker
Actually, how would you describe that? Your parts are not interchangeable per se, but because there is some fit. Yeah, they're getting there, which is good. Like our whole game is consistency.
00:27:52
Speaker
You know, I want your knife, which is probably two years old, to feel very similar to a new knife, although the new knives feel better because we're getting better. Sure, sure. The lockup on, I mean, I'm not, I'm not really a knife guy, but given how low friction, the whole knife is, the lockup is tremendous. I mean, there's just no, it goes to total seize. There's no, I don't have a way to do a test here on like, I'm sure it locks up though. Well, like it's really nice. And don't do it with your hand in the way. Obviously we keep our fingers out of the way while we spine lock the knife. Yeah.
00:28:22
Speaker
You brought up firearms. Have you heard of, I think it's Geisley Triggers or something like that? Yeah, sure. I've got a bunch of them. Yeah, I don't know anything about them. But I remember when I was at your house, you showed me this one, and you're like, this is the Grimsmough of Triggers. And okay, so Angelo is a big...
00:28:41
Speaker
That would have been a probably a kid trigger on a 10 22, which has a like a four thou seer engagement lockup. It's insane. Nice. So I grew up shooting as well because I was in the States and it was easy in Canada. It's not as easy and I'm kind of not. I enjoy it, but I'm not really into it. Angelo is into it. And so we were at blade show and this guy comes up and Angelo reads his name tag and it's like.
00:29:06
Speaker
I forgot the first name, but like William Geisley or whatever. And it was the guy, it was the guy. And Angela saw his name tag and he's like, are you, are you Mr. Geisley? Like from, like from Geisley triggers? And the guy's like, yeah, totally. And they had this like hour long conversation. They're best friends now. Yeah. It was so cool. So yeah.
00:29:24
Speaker
Yeah, they figured at least came out of nowhere. I'm sure they've been around a long time, but it was really five or 10 years ago that they came to market with this SSA2 or something and they now make quad rails numbers. But I was at a, I shouldn't have seen this, but I was somewhere where I saw a bunch of machines getting ready to go out with their name on it. Nice. And it was cool because that's a company or that industry where they're just like,
00:29:50
Speaker
growing like hot wild cakes. And that's his wife started a company called ALG. They make like a much more modest value line of triggers that are honestly really nice for just, that's a go-to drop in for an AR. If you don't even just, you just want a normal gun. Anyways, you would get the precision on that. That's awesome. They got to talk. Yep, absolutely. So I got to see one. Angelo got his hands on one and I got to see it. And I'm like, wow, this is really nicely made. Yeah. Yeah. It was awesome.
00:30:20
Speaker
It's cool. Hey, what, uh, what'd you learn about heat treating? Uh, so we got, we did get that Arbor press. Uh, I was very quick to order it. Um, Eric and I had the idea and like that day, basically I called my supplier and I'm like ordering this. It's there two days later. Um, I came in later. So it came in Thursday. We put it on the bench and we're like, I told the guys, I'm like, yeah, this is my theory. This is what we're going to do. And.
00:30:49
Speaker
And then I come back later on Friday.
00:30:52
Speaker
And they had already done a heat treat batch with it, quick and dirty, trying it out. And I'm like, I thought we were like a week. I've got to make fixtures for it and all that. And they're like, no, we just tried it out. You were supposed to call me. Things are just happening without you, dude. Things are happening without you. It was so awesome. And they measured. They did six blades. They did two the normal way, and then four with the new quench blades. And the setup's not ideal or anything, but they knew this. And they're like, yeah, we measured between one to 3,000 warp with the old way, and one
00:31:21
Speaker
out with the new way. Okay. Consistently. And we're like, all right, and your fixtures are extruded aluminum, so they're not flat. So maybe next time, let's face them. Let's make them thicker. Let's do a little bit better, a little bit faster. But holy cow, like this is a win already. I love it. And I actually got a really, a lot of really good feedback from mentioning it on the podcast and people like DMing me. Yeah, yeah. With with ideas and one that I really liked a couple people brought it up that
00:31:47
Speaker
As you place the blade on the lower aluminum fixture, it takes a second or two before like you put the next one on and the metal might move towards that fixture, the lower one, because it's starting to suck heat from one side of the blade before the next one goes on. And I'm like, huh? So in a perfect world, you suspend it and then it gets, it gets hit. Like my friend Brad was telling me that in a, in an absolute perfect world, the blade is like,
00:32:13
Speaker
magnetically levitated in the oven, it never gets touched by anything. And then it gets quenched instantly within a second to like room temperature, and then you know, all this stuff. But so you try to apply that to what's physically possible and realistic within
00:32:29
Speaker
you know, what we can do. So physics and gravity have never stopped you in the past. Yeah, what if I like Lockwood's comment of a t shirt press because that is the kind of quintessential perfect mechanism and you don't necessarily I think again, plain backyard metallurgist, I think you need good surface area contact and even this not necessarily tonnage of force.
00:32:52
Speaker
true i agree so what if you either use your arbor press or if maybe it's a t-shirt press but could you instead of doing it um like a instead of doing it on the flat ground can you rotate it 90 degrees
00:33:07
Speaker
That was our first idea. That was actually Eric's idea. He's like, I just got this crazy idea as we're standing upstairs at the old Arbor Press. He's like, what if we go like this? And I'm like, I'm listening. I'm listening. I still very much like that idea, but it introduced a lot of
00:33:22
Speaker
weirdness like first of all mounting a 300 pound object or whatever it is or 100 pound I guess at 90 degrees but and then there's the way the handle works doesn't really work at 90 degrees the way it works vertically. You got the wrong tool then.
00:33:38
Speaker
But like, you could make, but yeah, I see what you mean. You can buy trying to think like a carbon sheet or something like something that doesn't care about the temperature of the blades somehow carbon sheet like, oh, just like a graphite barrier graphite or something that could be like a because the issue if you go vertical is you don't have the benefit of gravity. You can't lay the knife down on the lower platen, right?
00:34:00
Speaker
unless you just need a base just something anything to like it could be a piece of steel just to set the foil because they're in a foil baggie to set the foil on what you do this when they're in the foil. Yeah. Oh, that's weird. Hmm. Because they're in the oven, atmospherically protected with the foil and they have to come out immediately and then get shoved between little plates. So so what about this? Why it does like we don't need tonnage
00:34:30
Speaker
What would be sweet is a horizontal pneumatic air cylinder. Sure. That's, that's a vice basically. Exactly. That's a pneumatic vice with a foot pedal or a knee switch or something. You don't want to bump it accidentally, but where you open the door and it comes out and goes right down and then a pressure switch as you touch the blade down, makes it go in or something. I don't know.
00:34:52
Speaker
I think it should be Arduino voice controlled only by Eric's voice. Clam. That's easy. Does the foil have wrinkles? It does. No, sorry. Wrinkles that will double over, flap over on themselves? Not going to flap over, but I've noticed, I actually filmed Barry do a bunch of blade removals from the oven, which was super handy. Guys, film everything that happens quickly so that you can watch it slowly. Yeah.
00:35:23
Speaker
Because you think, yeah, I do it within three seconds, but it actually takes six seconds. And so I was filming that, and I noticed that as you put the foil on the plate, the foil is crinkled so much that the blade is not actually sitting flat. The blade is kind of cocked up a little bit. I don't like that. Yeah, exactly. It's not perfect.
00:35:44
Speaker
Yeah, I know you're going to tell me you have no idea how to. How we would do this, and I agree, I have no clue, but I hate the foil here. In what regards?
00:35:56
Speaker
that's not, so I've read a few heat treat books and they talk about the speed with which you move from the oven to quench and the speed at which you get it into the quenching solution and then agitate it so that you don't have ox, so you don't have like, when you quench an oil, you'll create air gaps around the part because of the heat and how you gotta agitate and then how you gotta go in certain angles or ways. We had this issue with our steel fixture plates too, we have a very specific way in which they're heat treated.
00:36:25
Speaker
because we're relative to the grain of the steel and relative to how they're held and how they're presented into the quench material all changes everything so for you air quenching with aluminum plates the fact that you've got a wrinkly metal barrier alone let alone the fact that that's potentially canteen the knife inside of it I hate
00:36:48
Speaker
So if you can't get rid of the so in a perfect world, if you could somehow remove the knife from the foil, still have a way to hold on. No, I know. I know. But I have a way to hold on to it and quench the raw metal between the aluminum plates. That's perfect. Right. That's better.
00:37:09
Speaker
You can't remove the foil when the blade is still hot, not even physically, but like it'll atmospherically rust the blade or whatever it's called. Okay. So all the like carbon in the blade will disappear or something like that. Can you change the way the knife is inserted into the foil when it's still cold pre pre temp preheat treat be much more deliberate there so that it doesn't wrinkle as much or what?
00:37:37
Speaker
over but it does just kind of wrinkle up a little bit. Well that's what I'm wondering is can you almost you know when you see those vacuum packed like like sides of beef that are vacuum packed or you know your grandma's sweaters for winter storage can you can you do something with the aluminum foil that creates a much much tighter fit around the blade still keeps the deals with the gassing issues that you need to keep that's the only reason you have the foil right is for
00:38:06
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Until you build a whole dedicated purge, argon-filled purge room. Right. And that's how industry does. It is a vacuum furnace. And then they purge it with nitrogen or whatever to quench. And it basically all happens immediately. But that's very, very expensive. And we just don't need to. No, I know. It's like we're 98% there with this method. Well, I would say think about ways to improve. Because here's what I'm thinking. You can improve the way the
00:38:33
Speaker
a foil is fitted and potentially build in a hook or hole system that lets you move the... Because that's the beauty of it. That serves as your fixture for the quenching process. If you had a couple holes in it, pull it off, put it on those hooks, and then have the air thing come in and close it right there. Perfect. Well, the packets are all the same size.
00:39:01
Speaker
They're all consistent. We only have to fold one side because they're laser welded on the other three sides. So the holes... How do you hold them when you... We just pull them out with long needle nose pliers. So you grab one little corner. And right now you're just laying it down. Yeah. And if we have that vertical, horizontal, whatever situation where the blade stays up and down,
00:39:26
Speaker
Like you just have to visually align this rectangle into a rectangle fixture and then hit the foot pedal and it would, I guess you don't want it to be violent, but you want it to be quick. You could irregularly it down to slow, but.
00:39:42
Speaker
Yeah, you have a move pretty quick, but not slam it. Yeah. Yeah. I just like this idea. You know, there's restaurant ticker tape, like restaurant receipt holders that we have almost something like that where like if you have a way to pull it out, the foil bag out, put it right
Balancing Management and Technical Roles
00:39:57
Speaker
there. That could be centered over the center line of your press of your horizontal press, I guess it would be called. And then done like a super elegant smooth that the foil has enough rigidity to kind of keep the blade. The blades twisting inside the foil. Is that it?
00:40:12
Speaker
The edges of the foil are curling up. The blade is not really doing anything. Can you stop that? Can you can you arrest the foil in fixture the foil in the oven, even with a couple little ceramic bricks? I wonder if it's curling when it cools like immediately after you open the door and pull it out. If that's when it's curling. I don't know. I don't think it's a problem though, because it's it's fourth out stainless steel foil. Put a GoPro in the oven.
00:40:41
Speaker
Yeah, let's just do that. That would be interesting. 1930 degrees. Will it blend? Yeah, exactly. But yeah, it was really sweet to come back and have a test with results already done. It's really cool. Awesome. But man, like some days, like yesterday, I was just in meetings all day, like really just conversations with everybody. And I feel like I didn't get anything done, but I got a ton of high level stuff done.
00:41:11
Speaker
You know, I didn't get to actually be on my computer or make something or work. It's just all planning and organizing and reviewing. It's like, this is great, but I like to make stuff too. So it's that transition between being the technician and the manager and the entrepreneur and kind of wanting to do it all, but realizing you can't.
00:41:32
Speaker
It may not be a terrible idea to preach or to do what we preach. Like I could probably do for re redoing the sort of Saunders org chart. Hey, what are all the roles that get filled and get done here, which are probably 20 or 25 things.
00:41:52
Speaker
done by five people, right? Which is okay. But if you think about what would the next hire be or the responsibility or, you know, in a freaking perfect, perfect, perfect world.
00:42:06
Speaker
reasonable though, you know, not getting crazy. I would totally, I would love to have a, you know, very, very skilled, capable, seasoned, experienced five axis machinists to come in here and help help make all of us better. And to take, I'm still ultimately, for better or worse, I'm the best machinist in the shop. So like when it comes to set up questions or tooling questions or fixturing questions or troubleshooting, it ends up coming to me. That's,
00:42:33
Speaker
The guys here are doing a better job of figuring that stuff out. Nevertheless, it would be awesome to have. Honestly, I assume Angelo is that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so very much. Good for you, dude. And then potentially a shop foreman person that would let me almost step out of the operation management and only focus on long-term business management. And also, I still want to be a technician. I still love. It was fun this week to run the machine.
00:43:02
Speaker
Absolutely. You want to be in high-level R&D. Yeah. At least that's where I want to be. Yeah. Not so much a technician. You don't want to make widgets every day the same one over and over. That's what a technician does. Yeah. You want to be the brains behind the operation and get to have fun and do what you want every day. It is fun. We got to remember that, John. There's a- Oh, yeah. You should be proud of what you built, but it's also is freaking cool. Yes. We get to do
00:43:30
Speaker
exactly what we love to do. And as difficult as it is sometimes, I'm not complaining. Yeah. The emails I've gotten this past week on bomb have been caveatted by, sorry, I have to split up the bomb sometimes because my boss won't let me drive around the parking lot to finish up the episodes. And I'm like, oh my God, God bless Dr. Phil for turning that into a thing. What do you have to do today?
00:43:57
Speaker
Today, I'm going to jump on the lathe. I'm going to make my emergency call it for the lock bar insert, and then see if I can make a lock bar insert. We got a piece of 17-4 stainless that we heat treated the other day. We're going to Rockwell test it today. It should be about 45 Rockwell. Can't you buy that stuff pretty hard? It comes 35 Rockwell, which is the pH, well, precipitation hardened, but then you can heat treat it further to be 45.
00:44:22
Speaker
Got it. Yeah, I really I don't know why I was super busy. Oh, my air conditioner at home broke this week, which was fun, fun, quick fix or not quick fix. But there was a.
00:44:38
Speaker
You and Lockwood and maybe Lawrence were talking on WhatsApp about material characteristics and why you said, I think 17, four, like, Hey, it's easy to get. It can be pretty hard. It can be further hardened. It doesn't rust or corrode and it machines beautifully in the finishes. And I was like, gosh, that's the kind of info where I love hearing smarter people who are more experienced say, Hey, this material is really a good go-to, um, or here's the trade-off that, you know, you're not going to get if you just pick up a industry book on it.
00:45:08
Speaker
Yep, the experience. Yeah, absolutely. You use 17.4 for screws now or something else? No, our screws are titanium, but for the pivot and the stop pins in the knives, it's all 17.4. OK, got it. It's amazing. We machine it at 45 Rockwell, and it's cake, and the tools last fairly well, and it's beautiful. Yeah. Awesome. Sweet. I will see you next Wednesday for the bomb, but then that night, I actually start to drive up to you.
00:45:39
Speaker
Yeah. That flew by, huh? Holy cow. It's only a week away. Wow. Yeah. That's awesome. Can't wait. Awesome. Do some cool stuff together. Sweet. I'll see you soon, bud. Okay. Have an awesome day. Take care. Bye. Bye.