Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Business of Machining - Episode 39
202 Plays7 years ago
What do speaking French, VENN DIAGRAMS and SUPERPOWERS have in common? This episode of Business of Machining, of course. THE STRUGGLE IS REAL: As an entrepreneur, staying true to yourself and your VISION is tough. Not only do you have to have a passion for what you do; it also has to coincide with what people want. The launch of the new NYCCNC Website has Saunders close to making a phone call. Perfectionism could be overkill but that's what makes it a Grimsmo. Knife Spacer Instagram POST Dowel pins. Do you buy or make your own? Orange Pallet VIDEO Dowel Pin Instagram POST What is your SUPERPOWER? We're not talking about flying or telekinesis here. Find out the big surprise Saunders has for his son and how Grimsmo makes Erik's life better with a pneumatic cylinder. Check it out HERE. Grimsmo's putting the force multipliers to work. Click HERE for a video on UPWORK and FIVER. Although he's excited about his new product, he's made some decisions about documenting the flashlight process. My First Light Misunderstanding
Recommended
Transcript
New Tech Transitions
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning everybody and welcome to the business of machining episode number 39. My name is John Grimsmoth. My name is John Saunders and I'm on my new laptop now. Exciting. Yeah and so I got a little bit faster internet and a new laptop so hopefully we can actually keep video going throughout this thing. How painful was it to get migrated over to the new computer?
00:00:24
Speaker
Fast at first, but all those little tiny things at the end, like little programs that you forget about, then you need like last minute. But pretty good. I installed Fusion and I was using it the first day, right? Yeah, that's nice. It's like instantly. So yeah, it was really good. It's working really well so far.
00:00:41
Speaker
It's nice. I remember in college or 10 years ago, it was such a nightmare with licenses and more just stuff that was a pain. But now it's so much being internet and fusion, and I don't have the same. It's not as bad as it seems anymore. Yeah. And since you can download everything from the internet, you don't need all these install CDs and license deactivations and all this stuff.
00:01:05
Speaker
That was funny. So it's pure coincidence. I got a new desktop and laptop this week. They were long overdue. And neither have DVD drives. Not uncommon for a laptop, not you. But the new desktop doesn't either. And I wanted to install an old SolidWorks.
Balancing Work and Family
00:01:23
Speaker
Well, not old, but 2017 version of SolidWorks, only to make some videos comparing some SolidWorks stuff into Fusion.
00:01:29
Speaker
So I had to figure out how to, it wasn't that hard, go to another computer in the shop, put the DVD in there and then share that drive and then mount that as a network drive to the new computer that doesn't have a DVD drive. It worked. Perfect. So how's your week been? My week's been real good.
00:01:49
Speaker
Yeah, yesterday was a bit all over the place. The kids had all kinds of field trip in the morning with Lave, French performance in the afternoon with Clara, so I got like two or three hours in the shop just to work as hard and fast as I could. But no, it's been really good. French performance? Yeah, they do a French class in their school. And she has a class. She's super young. That's insane. She's seven.
00:02:15
Speaker
Yeah, so they gave a French song performance. They sang it to all the parents, which was awesome. But she parlouz that stuff? Close enough.
00:02:26
Speaker
Wow, is that, do you think that's across all of, like I know Montreal's super French Canadian, but Toronto's not really right? Yeah, not as religious as like the Quebec side of things, but one of their teachers speak fluent French, so they have a French class within their school. That's
Launching a New Site
00:02:44
Speaker
really cool. Yeah. What have you been up to this week?
00:02:48
Speaker
This has been I actually thought about calling you on like Wednesday and being like we need to talk awesome week, but The the highs and I'll say lows of of an entrepreneur of and so here here's the best way to describe So we launched the site
00:03:08
Speaker
We launched the site Saturday night, and it was literally a year, actually 11 months in the making. So a lot of pent up excitement, enthusiasm, and I'm super proud of what it is, but it's a great example of, it doesn't matter what you think, it matters what other people think.
00:03:27
Speaker
So the way I thought about, and I want to do like a video or something on this, but I kind of think of it as, you know those Venn diagrams where you've got the two circles and you figure out kind of where they overlap. You know, as an entrepreneur, you have to do, I wholeheartedly believe this is, it's a choice. You do what you love, that you believe in, that what you're passionate about, that what you're good at. You have to have that as the core to it.
00:03:51
Speaker
And so that's kind of one Venn diagram circle. The other circle is what do other people want? And not just what do they want, but what are they willing to pay for, pay a reasonable amount of money for? And it's only
00:04:07
Speaker
when those two overlap that you've got something that's worth pursuing.
Improving Machining Precision
00:04:14
Speaker
I think Warren Buffett said it best in one of his, there's a book called Snowball about his biography. He's like, look, I'm well aware that I'm the richest person in the world. It really has nothing to do with that. It just happens to be that this is what I freaking love. I absolutely love this. I loved it from a young age. He was the kid in high school and college who was pouring through financial statements. That stuff is, you couldn't pay me.
00:04:37
Speaker
You just just know so Yeah, I remember he went to the library as like a young kid like under 10 years old and read every single Financial book and they had to bring in other financial books to that library. Yeah, right And it's not he had no ambition beyond that It's kind of like when you think about what what motivated Steve Jobs or Dave Thomas with Wendy's or other people like it's not it's not the outcome It's not the their success is usually a byproduct of that passion. So for me right now
00:05:06
Speaker
I was super excited, but when I took a step back on Sunday and Monday and I looked at the site now that it was live and took off my John Saunders, I made this hat and put on my, I'm a customer, does this site give me what I need? I was like, ah, we got some more work to do. So that's okay, that's exciting. What it made me do is kind of focus on what is the value we're offering. So when it comes to like learning CNC, learning fusion, and for me the value is two things. One,
00:05:36
Speaker
Maybe three, but it's the idea of using video as a medium. So that's obvious for fusion. That's obvious for the fact that we've made these CNC videos for a long time. But where it's not so obvious is like trying to use video as a way to teach speeds and feeds for specific tools and specific materials. I think that's exciting.
00:05:54
Speaker
But the other thing is just the organization of the content. Somebody's like, well, look, there's a lot of free fusion stuff out there, and most of our site's free. Some of it we're doing as pro membership. Why would somebody pay for it? And I was just like, go to that other site, go to this other site, and look for this. You can't find it, or it's not there, or it's hard to find. So that's what I'm making a gamble on, is that we'll be able to show it's worth the value by that. But it was an up and down week. Absolutely. I mean, you're always going to have the people that
00:06:24
Speaker
that want everything and they want it for free and they want it yesterday. And that's okay. It just is what it is, right? And then you want to create curated content and a comfortable place to be to learn it. You go ahead, just do what you need to do.
00:06:43
Speaker
Oh yeah. No, I don't, the people that are, the people that will troll you on, you should be giving this out for free, you know, that doesn't bother me at all. But the people, what I care about is that if the people that, when the people that do pay and they sign up, I want them to say, this is the place. I want,
00:06:58
Speaker
I want you to like this, not because you're my friend, but because you say, no, no, like, I can't, I can't, like, when I get that new computer, I got to bookmark that site or whatever, because I want to go there to look up that thing. And that's what gets me fired up. Like, I remember on my own freaking YouTube channel being like, I can't find my own video last year when I did something to modify the fourth axis. I can't find it. Now I can find it. That's what gets me.
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah, perfect Anyways, and it's gonna constantly grow and evolve and you know what people are signing up for today is not the end of the story like Yeah, there will be a lot more coming Yes, that is true. Yeah So it was it was good
00:07:42
Speaker
Yeah, I'm still. The response has been good, and generally? Response has been awesome there. Got it. Yeah. And it gets me so excited. When we do a video, now we can give people a place to go to. Most of that will be open and free. Like, hey, here's the details behind that. Here is the bill of material. We're going to do an Arduino video next week. And it's like, hey, go here. Here's where you get the code. Here's the bill of materials that's laid out well.
00:08:10
Speaker
Nobody reads the YouTube descriptions and there hasn't been another good page for that. And at the end of the day, it reminds me of
00:08:20
Speaker
This is gonna sound kinda weird, but when I lived in New York City, I actually enjoyed kinda learning about contemporary art, or art in general. And a lot of people would see artists and say things like, I could do that, or that's so easy. And the difference is, but you didn't. This person spent their life focusing on that because it's what they wanted to do and believe in. Now, most of those people, success meant,
00:08:45
Speaker
something different than what it means to a business person or entrepreneur. We need to be successful from a financial standpoint of view or an audience that's larger. Artists tend to, I can't, would be inappropriate for me to define what an artist thinks of as success, but usually it means sort of a success or change within their culture community. And the artists that we hear of as household names are usually people that have Picasso who has gone beyond just the artist community, obviously. But nevertheless,
00:09:09
Speaker
It's that stamina and that desire to know that I don't care what anybody else thinks. This is all I want to do. This is all I'm going to do. I know we could change our YouTube channel to have it go bigger by machining silly, like the pumpkin video that has 800,000 views. That's funny, but it's me in the sense that I'll do it once a year.
00:09:28
Speaker
something is a funny thing, but that's not what I'm doing. I wanna do something that's me. I'm not that funny of a person. Anyway, you stick to what you do in the long run, and it takes longer time, and you're not gonna be a fit for everybody, but I love it. Yeah, no, you wanna do what's you and meaningful and impactful, not just clickbait to get clicks from people who don't care. You know, that's fun to do every now and then, exactly like you said, but yeah, you don't build your success on that.
00:09:54
Speaker
But it's like, I would have told you, if I had the rights to make decisions in your company, I would have told you numerous times to quit being such a perfectionist. And I consider myself somebody that's super aligned with you, and I would still have made that judgment. But that's why you're you. That's what makes you, the picture you posted of the lathe parts, and you're like 600 of them, what was that?
00:10:22
Speaker
These little knife spacers that I make, titanium, holding like one tenth of tolerance or two tenths of tolerance and, you know, the lathe has thermal growth issues and all this stuff and it's just a battle to make that many. So I love every aspect of that process. But it's a spacer. Its sole job is just to hold the knife handles apart on each side, right? Like it's not a... But that's what makes it a grim smell.
00:10:48
Speaker
It was interesting. So how do you, well actually, tell the story, like I said, because you used the words that caught my eye and that were hot, hot, hot. Right. So the longer you run a Laid, the more heat is generated both from the just the spindle turning, the bearings and all that, probably a little bit of heat coming off in the chips and stuff. But just general heat in, you know, the coolant circulating around. So the machine goes from like 20 degrees Celsius to about 32 degrees Celsius, whatever that is in Fahrenheit. And
00:11:18
Speaker
It feels like a hot, swampy jungle when you put your head inside the lathe after it runs for a few hours. And that's when the stability of everything just starts to level out. And part to part to part to part is like one or two tenths apart. But that whole first few hours of growth of thermal expansion in all the metal parts of the machine as they're generating all this heat, tolerances are kind of all over the place. I mean, it's a linear growth, but
00:11:47
Speaker
Well, so it's repeatable, predictable, but then it does stabilize. Yeah, exactly. It does level out. So what do you do now? Do you literally run like a two hour warm up cycle? No, I have the probe now to kind of combat this to offset it. Interesting. It's still not foolproof, not stupid easy to have it do exactly what I want. But now with the probe, it's really close. So I don't care if it's a stone cold machine.
00:12:12
Speaker
I can make pretty good parts through the entire range. But if I wasn't probing or if I turn the probe off or something, then yeah, the first two hours I'm messing with it every two parts to change the size. And then it stabilizes. Okay, so what's your
00:12:32
Speaker
I feel like you are accepting a rare compromise. What is the long-term home run? Could you, don't laugh, could you actually keep this machine hot for a year straight? Literally? It's theoretically possible. I physically, John Grimsmill can't do it, but if I hired a machinist or somebody to be here and do it, then sure.
00:12:55
Speaker
I mean, heat, in some respect, if you're creating heat in your consuming electricity period, that's just a fact of life. So I guess you don't want to run it empty for six hours just to keep it high. Exactly. And the coolant evaporates quickly at that rate into the air that we're breathing.
00:13:14
Speaker
Right, right, right. By the way, if you're in a car listing, 32 degrees Celsius is 90 Fahrenheit. Not actually as hot as I thought. I've got to think that your casting could get up beyond 90. I'm sure it can, but the operations that I'm doing generating the heat that I'm generating, right? Like I said, there's probably no heat coming off in the chips, because I'm making like quarter inch titanium parts. So it's just the machine. It's just the coolant, the everything.
00:13:42
Speaker
Yeah, that's one of the things that I did consider when we bought the Haas is it, like most 3-axis milling machines, at least of that size, is a C-frame machine. So it's just like a tormach. It's easier to picture a tormach because you can see there's a bed, a column, and then the spindle comes out. So it's kind of a C if you look at it from the side.
00:14:03
Speaker
And so generally as that machine gets hot, the head, I think it nods forward or down. So yeah, I mean, it can be actually at the hour or two across a couple hours of normal use in the winter as it gets warmer. And I think that's one of the reasons why like Okuma toused the Genos is that it's a effectively a bridge style machine. So you don't have that C to bend over. I'm sure there's some other thermal element to it as well.
00:14:29
Speaker
Do you think there's more of a problem bending forward or up? I always just figured it as a Z thing, up and down, but you're right. Do you think it grows? Yeah. I don't know. I mean, way outside of my... Right.
00:14:44
Speaker
I should actually just spend a day measuring it. We don't do work. We are always able to deal with it as a short answer. I don't have to do what you do. I don't have to set up a run of 500 parts where they have to hold sub-val across and we probe and all that.
00:15:04
Speaker
Yeah, basically on my mill, I don't care about thermal growth. If there is or there isn't, I don't care because it doesn't matter. It makes no impact to what I'm doing. Because it's not like I make a part, I start a part at 8 o'clock in the morning and that part is still running at 10 o'clock at night and there's thermal growth within that part. The growth is within its own part.
00:15:28
Speaker
You know what I mean? Like each part only takes 20 minutes to make or whatever. So any growth is negligible. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. Jared just walked in before we started the podcast because we changed a workflow yesterday. I actually want to tell you about Super Say. And he was like, hey, we've got 12 tenths across 20 inches of kind of run out. And a lot of times we like to have that at zero, but 12 tenths. And I'm like, we're chewing on it. We're thinking about it. And I'm like, you still got to remember that that's
00:15:58
Speaker
Basically, a quarter of the thickness of a piece of paper across 20 inches. We talk about thousands as if they're this huge unit of measurement because it's the currency of machinists, talking about that.
00:16:15
Speaker
I wrote, I guess I'm gonna call my first Renishaw Custom Pro Macro. I've written a couple little things before, but this one I actually got the Inspection Plus book out and wrote it, and it's awesome. It's freaking awesome. Good. So what does it do? It goes into...
00:16:35
Speaker
It goes into a bore, probes that bore, finds the center, goes up, moves over, finds the location, finds the center of the other bore, and then gives us, in Haas, it's G68, which is macro variable 189, angular offset. So basically, when we go to do a second or third op on a part,
00:16:54
Speaker
I don't care if it's located perfectly. I'm able to pick those two geometry points that I made so I trust them and then update my XY coordinate system in the code. Fusion, it's good to go basically and make better parts. This exact thing is something that concerned you like six months ago.
00:17:16
Speaker
Yeah, well, we had to change our whole workflow of fixturing to actually let us use this. We basically do more. We have to trust it more. And what we were trying to do was partially machine the outsides and use that to find our G68 stuff. And I didn't like it. And doing it this way is better. But I will tell you, one thing I don't like, and it really bothers me, is we set up a sign bar on the machine.
00:17:46
Speaker
And we just went into fusion and created some angles and said, okay, if you have 0.1 inches across 10 inches, it's 1.7 degrees. I'm making that up. And so I was like, I should be able to set up a probing routine and it's going to give me that angle and it should be 1.7 degrees. And it wasn't, it's a different number. And last time I checked, there's no difference between metric and imperial angles. So I'm like, what?
00:18:08
Speaker
That's something I wanna follow up with either Haas or Renishaw because that is, it's working, but I want the data, I want the integrity of the angle. Right, right. So is this for a second op thing, like where you flip the part over and you're probing the two holes to find any difference? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, okay.
00:18:27
Speaker
Right. Got it. Right. It's basically don't, um, anytime you, uh, clamp something or hold it down, whether it's vice or mighty vice, a lot of times it's not perfect. Things flex. Uh, we're using, we're using torque wrenches to be smarter on our vices. So we're not over clamping stuff or we're being consistent, but nevertheless, it's like, okay, if it's eight tenths out, um, who can,
00:18:49
Speaker
Who cares in the sense that it's not that bad? Like I'm not going to sit there and fight it to tram it in, but I don't want to start my machine already being eight tenths out because if you have some other thing that's a little bit out, you can all of a sudden build off of that. It's just, to me, it's all about good. It's like what you've done in the lathe.
00:19:08
Speaker
Well, on the mill, if you have 2,000 or 1.2,000 Y angular deviation over 20 inches, that could be a big problem from one end of the fixture to the other.
00:19:22
Speaker
You know what I mean? Yeah. Oh yeah. No, for sure. It's just this sustainable workflow. Like it makes Jared happy. It's like, I'm using this how I should be using it now. You know, the, don't get me wrong. The probes are great to find XY zero on a part, but I mean, I could do that with a $10 edge finder.
00:19:39
Speaker
To me, it's like probing in Fusion Midstream, or doing
Machining Standards and Tools
00:19:43
Speaker
cool update stuff, or Tim Paul from Autodesk just sent me the code, not the code, he sent me his notes on the workflow of the code to do an automated bore to size test, where just take a quarter inch end mill, take a stab at making a bore, go measure it, and then finish it off based on what you measured. Update the warehouse, that's basically it.
00:20:07
Speaker
Right. Sounds super simple, but I've never done it. Yeah. No, I've done that. Have I done that? I mean, that's basically what I do on the lathe sometimes. So I'll do a roughing pass, probe it, and then do a finished pass to exact size. I've done it on the mill. You know the little, we have a little ceramic detent ball that goes in the lock side of the knife? Yep. That keeps the blade closed basically. So on the mill, Rob Lockwood helped me come up with this like a year ago.
00:20:33
Speaker
I, on the mill, I press in that ball halfway, and then I probe it, and then I probe the surface of the handle, and I measure the difference, and then I probe it, all right, I press it all the way, and then I measure it again afterwards, and confirm that it's within, and it's always within a tenth or two of the height that I want. You're still doing that, right? Oh yeah, and it takes three minutes, but I don't care, because it just works, and then it's like, it's so perfect, so every time.
00:20:58
Speaker
Yeah, we had a tooling vendor come the other day from Guard Tool, nice guy talking about something. Oh no, he came by, it was actually a pH horn guy that came by, and he was talking to me and he's like, well we can, something about tool life or quality, and I'm like, it's funny, that's actually, neither one of those is my first priority anymore, it's process reliability. You flipped the drill over, right, to do that?
00:21:27
Speaker
What do you mean? When you push that ceramic ball in, you use the... I use the backside of a drill bit, yep. It's just held in an ER column? Yeah. I love it. It works perfect, like, yeah. I think I machined a little dimple into it or something so that it supported the ball and didn't just crack it. Yep. But yeah, it works awesome. And that's one of the things I'd love to do a video on one day, you know? Right. You and Lockwood were talking on WhatsApp about the, what is it, the rego holders?
00:21:57
Speaker
Yeah. And I'm like, I got to figure out a way to maybe I'll just travel around the places and stitch it together into a video. But I want to do a like 20 minute video covering all the frickin work holding tool holding like cat 40 because it's like shrink. It's hydraulic. It's rego fix. It's shunk. It's college. It's SK. It's custom college. Like, I mean, at the next tool show would be your best opportunity for that. Probably.
00:22:24
Speaker
No, that's true. That'd be interesting at like IMTS to do... It's only 11 months away. I know. But to do a tool holding video by itself. You know, you film it specifically.
00:22:36
Speaker
Right, I'd rather, that's a great idea, and I probably should do that. I feel like what I'd also rather do though is do it at factories, because that's like the whole value. It's great to, tool shows are great, but I'd rather go talk to Lockwood and have him show, hey, here's what we like this one, and then go to the factory across the street and say, hey, here's where we use heat shrink, here's where we use Rego. Okay, yeah, that does make sense.
00:23:02
Speaker
Do it. Get the real world. That was the other thing. Somebody was like, what's the difference between your videos on Fusion and some of the other stuff out there? And I'm like, well, my goal with our videos is to not give you these perfectly staged examples where you go into the patch environment. And because it's been a pre-practice, pre-perfected part, what they do, it just works perfectly to try to give a more real world dosage of how things actually work. And then when they don't work, what do you do?
00:23:31
Speaker
Yeah, and it seems like a lot of those videos, you know, the ones floating around the internet are, you know, guys who are, what would you call it, keyboard experts at the software and have maybe never actually used it for something real. You know, like, you just play with it for 100 hours and you get good at it, but it, you know, you haven't made a finished part. Right. That is funny.
00:23:55
Speaker
Go ahead. Well, I'm in the process now of finalizing the design for my new Norseman fixtures. Yeah. And super excited. I made the first cuts in the fixture yesterday, which is exciting. Sheer hog running hot and heavy. I had some of Barry's friends over. So you tripled your chip output of the more yesterday? Oh, yeah. I made more chips yesterday than I made in six months.
00:24:24
Speaker
But yeah, so we had some friends over and I was like, perfect timing, let's run this year hog. And in like two minutes, it removes, you know, a solid quarter inch of metal from the big fixture, right? It was just, it's just so much fun. Yeah, go ahead.
00:24:39
Speaker
We last night coincidentally posted our orange palette video, which is relevant because it's kind of like the Norseman fixture thing, but also we were, I'm going to say wailing with the Sheerhawk. I'm not sure, I think there's definitely room left on the table, but Julie, when she edited the video, she's like, by the way, we've quieted the audio. We're going to increase the audio to normal level. If you're wearing headphones, please take your headphones off right now.
00:25:09
Speaker
Good, I can't wait to see that. That's awesome. Yeah. So where are you on the pallets? Well, you know how normally in an orange pallet you make dowel holes and use a dowel pin to check this out on the video. Can you see that clear enough? OK, I see threads and I see a dowel. Yeah, so I made my own dowel pins. This is out of 17.4 PH stainless. And I made threads on one end. So half the thing is threaded. So it will thread into the bottom of the pallet.
00:25:38
Speaker
so they stay stuck, and they only stick out a quarter of an inch. So that, because every time I pull a pallet out, I have to lift it up like straight up like half an inch, and the pins always stick in either the pallet or the table, and they're annoying, so. It's actually impossible, it's like impossible to lift them. Go watch our video, because we did the, what we did for now is just machined diamonds into the aluminum, and we only made it one eighth of an inch tall. You don't need
00:26:05
Speaker
anything more than that, and it's so much easier to use. It's a locating thing. The palette doesn't move, you know? Right. It's just to keep it still. Yeah, that's awesome. You obviously made those on the nock? I did, yeah. And I made a stack of them. I made like 50 or 60 of them or something. And they're all within about two or three tenths, which was good.
00:26:30
Speaker
You have, do you have an end mill set up for, like a quarter inch end mill set up for axial live tooling?
00:26:38
Speaker
The lathe Yeah, I don't but I could like for what okay. Oh for doing a diamond pin. Yeah. Yeah, I could definitely just curious. Yep No, actually that's a good point. I made all of mine round And we'll see how they go. I could easily make I could easily modify them to be a diamond Mm-hmm if needed you don't yeah, yeah speaking speaking of shear hogs
00:27:05
Speaker
That looks like a four inch? Three inch? I think it's a three inch shear hug. Three inch four insert shear hug. Oh my goodness. Yeah. That's going to max your horsepower. That was the sole purpose, the sole idea.
00:27:22
Speaker
We've had some people be like, why haven't you put out more Haas videos? Well, first of all, we published the orange one last night. We've got another one on the VF2 coming out soon. But part of what I wanted to do selfishly was wait for the NYC site to be out so that we can add that info there. This isn't about the membership side of it. It's just literally like, it's such a good way to compliment that info. So one of the things I want to do is just say, where does this thing stop? How can we rock and roll with this thing? So I'm excited.
Identifying Personal Strengths
00:27:51
Speaker
So, something I wanted to talk to you about was superpowers. Meghan and I were talking about this the other night, my wife.
00:28:03
Speaker
We're starting to realize that everybody has, we call it superpowers, but everybody has their skill set that they're naturally good at, and you might not even know what it is, but we realized one of Meg's was her writing, her creative skill, she can write a story, a script, she can remember song lyrics and stories and things like that, and I have zero skill for any of that.
00:28:25
Speaker
I can't I can't remember a song I can't remember a script I can't just come up with a story out of the blue but she has this natural ability to do that like she's organizing a ghost tour at at the manner the historic manner that she's working at and she she wrote the entire script she cast it like she found 15 actors she wrote the script for all 15 parts and she choreographed this entire thing
00:28:47
Speaker
for free as a volunteer. And she's like, yeah, it's no big deal. It's a lot of work, but it's not difficult. And I'm like, are you kidding me? This is your superpower. I'm not saying you should go do this professionally for the rest of your life, but this is your natural skill. So it got me thinking about you and me and all of our friends and audience and things. What is your
00:29:10
Speaker
What is your thing that you think is easy? But to other people is actually impossible. You know what I mean? So yeah, I was hanging out with some guys the other night. They're friends. And some of my friends actually watch our YouTube videos. I don't know why. I think maybe just because I think it's kind of funny. But they were talking about a really basic video that we did. To me, it's basic. And they're like, oh, yeah. I have no idea what's going on there.
00:29:39
Speaker
That's, like, I don't, what? It's so, this is just so easy to me. Right, so one of yours is describing what you do on video. Among all of our friends, people that are much better machinists than us, but you can explain it, you know what I mean? Yeah, I think that's because I always, I mean, like a lot of people, I enjoy learning a lot as a kid.
00:30:08
Speaker
I think it's because I felt like, it's going to sound weird, but my parents sent us to a place called Culver Military Camp as kids in summer. It was awesome. It sounded like a military camp. I feel like I have to defend it, but it was incredible. It was in Indiana. Like a summer camp kind of thing? Yeah, yeah. It's like normal summer camp.
00:30:31
Speaker
There were a lot of people from different cultures at that and then I actually went away for high school and then went away for college and then I lived in London for a summer and then New York. So I felt like I've lived in like five or six different places where I've had to really acclimate and I think I've always felt like that ability to kind of wear different hats or see things through different people's eyes, which is funny because I don't think of myself as like this like great like
00:30:56
Speaker
I don't know, like multicultural type person. That's not who I think of as myself, but like being able to try to relate to other people and explain it in that way. I think that's part of it. I don't know. I don't know. I enjoy it. Right. No, it's funny you said something a minute ago. I enjoy learning like most people, but maybe most people don't enjoy learning like you and I do. You know, we take that for granted. Like you and I will go on a YouTube or Wikipedia binge all night long. And that's normal for us.
00:31:26
Speaker
Who doesn't like learning? I know, I don't know. I don't think, like, I know a lot of people that don't binge on knowledge like you and I do. Like when I need to learn something, I want to learn all of it. And I want to learn it all in one night. And then when I get to the end...
00:31:42
Speaker
You are special. Yeah, well, when I get to the end, of course, I know I've just tipped the iceberg of the knowledge out there. But I have the base that I need to move forward. And that's how I do it. Even I was showing Clara, we were researching something.
00:31:57
Speaker
And I was like, yeah, I like to check a couple sources. I like to check. I want to click on a couple links and read what they say just to corroborate the thing. And here I'm teaching my seven-year-old daughter this trick, this skill. Don't just trust the first thing you read. And she goes, yeah, because everything is true on the internet. She said that? That's a joke, yeah. Oh, that's hilarious. Yeah.
00:32:17
Speaker
We were, I feel like I wanted to keep this a surprise, but I don't know, whatever. It's not worth, it's more fun to tell the story. So we're building our planning on building William, a tree house. But instead of it being a tree house, we are building a replica. I don't want to say replica because it's definitely not going to be perfectly accurate, but it should be, it'll look like it of the Apollo lunar module.
00:32:43
Speaker
So we've got it designed up in Fusion. I've been working with Jared and Ed. We're going to do like, it's going to be awesome, because it's like plasma and machining and structural stuff. And then we're going to do like a solar panel and Arduino stuff on it. I'm like super excited. So we were talking, they called it the LEM, because it was originally the Lunar Excursion Module. Then they renamed it to just the Lunar Module, because they thought excursion would be, the public was, I think, losing appetite for the amount of costs that the Apollo program costs. So they didn't want the word excursion to make it sound like it was a fun joyride.
00:33:12
Speaker
Anyway, I was talking about how when Grumman was designing it they had to figure out to Take the chairs out and the windows out because the glass way too much and they figure they could fly it standing up and look through these angled windows that just look down and I love this stuff and I'm like, I'm not an expert. I'm like scratching the surface of Fascination with the Apollo program with the guys in the shop. Well, I think we're like How do you know this?
00:33:38
Speaker
Like, I'm not a space person, I'm not employed by any of this puppet. It's like so cool, I love it. I know, you found a rabbit hole and you dove down as far as you could, right? Yes, yes. Actually, in fairness, Ed did then find PDFs of the original prints later of things. And I'm like, okay, that is even taking a step further. Yeah, I love it.
00:34:02
Speaker
That's perfect. And that's a great example of a superpower, of a variation. That's something that you do that everybody else goes, huh? But you're like, it's normal, right? Everybody does that.
00:34:14
Speaker
Yeah, but yours is the ability to get where you are with the determination of skill. Like, go look back at your old YouTube videos, John. Like, do you think you would be running the machines you run, writing that code? Like, when Renishaw Canada comes over and is like, holy cow, you wrote this? Who wrote this? You didn't like this. But it's not a big deal to you. You're not.
00:34:39
Speaker
You just break it down and do it. But that's the funny thing with these quote unquote superpowers is you don't realize you have them. Yeah, it's just second nature. Right, right. So you and I as entrepreneurs, we need to hire out, like freelance, these people who have no confidence in their own superpower. But we're like, oh my god, you can program this in like two minutes and I could never accomplish that in my life. I'm happy to give you $200. You know what I mean?
00:35:09
Speaker
Yes, no, you just said the single biggest success of any entrepreneur is figuring out what you're good at and what you're not good at and finding people that are good at the things you're not good at and getting them on your team and letting them do great stuff. Exactly.
00:35:24
Speaker
And I'm learning that now as we're growing our team and we're thinking about growing it more and more and I'm starting to use Upwork more and more and things like that. I'm taking it out of my head and putting it out there. Cool. Well, it was going to change base.
00:35:41
Speaker
cool little project that I did. I thought about it on Sunday and by Wednesday it was done. I had already ordered parts from Amazon and bought parts locally and they came by Wednesday and I was finished. What is it? For Eric's, I'll post a thing on Instagram later. Okay.
00:35:56
Speaker
I added a pneumatic cylinder to tension the grinding belt on Eric's 2x72 belt grinder. So before it was this cam action lever clamp thing that was kind of annoying and had a very small adjustment range. So I'm like, let's put an air cylinder on there and it can just lever up to activate.
00:36:15
Speaker
That's brilliant. Yeah. And you know, I designed it. Leif and I came into the shop on Sunday, spent a couple hours making brackets. And then in the course of like three or four days, I go from concept to finished product. And Eric was kind of on the fence. He's like, are you spending a lot of time on this? And I'm like, trust me, this is something you touch 50 times a day. You're going to love it. Right. Invest in that. And I get a text from him after the first night. And he's like, oh my goodness, this thing is amazing.
00:36:45
Speaker
Yes. And that's one of my superpowers is the ability to conceptualize it, make it, do it, implement it, put the whole package together, and know that it's going to work. Yeah. So I think what you've got to do on your superpower is recognize that you're good at that, but you've got to stop some of the doing. You've got to
Sharing Projects on Social Media
00:37:03
Speaker
be the quarterback. And I agree with you. Yeah, I agree with you. Because that is what you're so good at. And it's fun. No, no, I know. But you're the one that taught me, as an entrepreneur, I want to be able to do anything, but that doesn't mean I should do everything. Right, right.
00:37:16
Speaker
because I can't do that all day long and manufacture products all day long. You know what I mean? But you don't have to. You can conceptualize it and then pass it off and then wait. Here's the funny thing. Your superpower actually gets better because you're going to be better off
00:37:32
Speaker
explaining it to somebody, having them go do it. They may do it well, they may do it a little differently, but then that lets them bring it back to you and then you get to react. You lose that ability to react when you have been the craftsman of it. Right. When you come up with it and you execute it, then you don't see other variables, other ways of doing it. It's just like what happened to me Sunday when I spent a year with a whole team building the site. I was never able to really react to it because I was too close. Right.
00:38:04
Speaker
We had three Upwork projects going simultaneously this week. That was a record for you. Nice. It's been awesome. A shameless plug, and this one is open on the site for everybody, but we have a short video talking about how to get started with Upwork and some good examples of what you can do on Upwork. Good. So nyccnc.com. Go to the library or search for Upwork, and you'll find that video. We talked about Upwork and Fiber. Nice.
00:38:31
Speaker
Hey, speaking of Instagram, what's up with the flashlight picture you posted? So I think I posted a flashlight picture a couple days ago. I think it was misinterpreted by a few people because you mentioned it and somebody else mentioned it. So I think I worded it very poorly.
00:38:46
Speaker
I called it my first light, but I meant my first, like I bought a custom flashlight, the first one I've ever bought from somebody else. So Jason is a guy who's been making flashlights for like 10 years now and I've always looked up to him and we've been talking a lot and I was happy to buy my first light from him. So I showed a picture on Instagram and I think a lot of people thought I made it. So once it comes in today or tomorrow or something, I'll take another picture of it obviously and I'll...
00:39:15
Speaker
I'm gonna clear that up a little bit, but. Oh, so it was your light, but it was him taking a picture of. Of himself. Your light. Of the maker. With your light. Yeah. Right, before it shipped out. As I do with my knives when I do a selfie with me. Right, right, right, right. So, okay, maybe that was a little clear, unclear, but point being. Well, I'm just like, thanks bud. I don't even get a heads up that you're now in production and sending out betas. Right, right.
00:39:42
Speaker
No, point being, you know, now I'm spending money on flashlights. Along with this flashlight, he's sending like a few LEDs, a few circuit boards, a few like prototyping parts. So he's basically made a component kit for me to make a few lights using the parts that he typically uses, which is super helpful.
00:40:03
Speaker
Yeah, so even though you're going to be a competitor, it's just not like that. No, he's been super helpful, super friendly. That's really cool. Yeah, really awesome. So I'm happy to give him a lot of money for all these parts and support him buying one of his custom lights. I'm super happy to do that. Have you thought more? I think somebody asked you, or we talked about it, this idea of how much do you want to share the journey of the lights. Right.
00:40:33
Speaker
I think the best solution somebody suggested was film it all, but release it when you're comfortable. Okay. Film the journey. You can slice it together. Is that from a, you don't have time to edit it or is it from a, we don't want to, we don't kind of want to control what happens and not sure how much we want to share. Both for sure. Got it. Yeah. I mean, as we talked about before, I just, if I start putting out flashlight Friday videos every Friday,
00:40:58
Speaker
There'll be a lot of input, which will be really good. But it'll also be a lot more pressure on my end, which I can't exactly afford right now. I really got to focus on making knives. Just when we're over the rasp hurdle, over the pre-order hurdle, things are going really fantastic right now. I cannot change gears and just make flashlights all day long. That will kill all forward progress.
00:41:19
Speaker
Oh, yeah, sure, sure, sure. That's fair. As much as I want to, because my mind just goes from thing
New Product Excitement
00:41:24
Speaker
to thing. I'm already on to the next thing. I really got to focus on busting out as many knives as possible. And these new fixtures are going to do that.
00:41:34
Speaker
Right. That's good. I think you're still probably rightfully conscious of what, you know, the time that you don't want to create a rasp situation lights where people, people either place pre-orders or people are so freaking excited that you have to like, you end up creating
00:41:49
Speaker
a negative feeling because you're not even letting the place pre-orders. You don't want to do that. It's like that stinks. Yeah, so that's part of the hiding it, keeping it to myself. Let me take the time that I need to take, whether it's two months or six months or a year. It doesn't matter because nobody knows about it. Now I'm kind of starting to let people know about it. And there's thankfully a lot of interest, which is great. But I'm still going to take the time and do what I need to do while running. It's like I'm running two businesses now. It's a division. But it's going to be cool.
00:42:17
Speaker
I am super excited about them. That is super cool. I want to have one in my hand by Christmas, even if it's just a rough prototype. I think I can do that. It's turning some bar down and using the components that Jason's sending me now. It's not crazy difficult.
00:42:39
Speaker
We're launching a silly product here in a few weeks, which we'll share. We're going to share it all, because it's fun. But it's a machine part, and it's Arduino, and it's making a custom circuit board, and it's getting them anodized. And it's actually going to be a super fun, because I don't really care about it. It's more of a fun project than a serious one. It'll be super fun to document it all.
00:43:00
Speaker
Hey, here's where we 3D printed. Here's where we use the Torbok. Here's where we now said, OK, then we need to run on the Haas. And here's where we have mistakes. And do we do threaded inserts or do we tap? Like, it's all that fun stuff. Have you been documenting throughout the process? Sort of. I mean, you can always go back and pretend.
00:43:15
Speaker
Yeah, not with that intent. I'll put it that way. No, but we've got enough. We've got enough laying around where we can make it growth out interesting and folks like do it like it's not hard like it's just not hard. You know, we're using the local makerspaces laser to cut the acrylic for the backs and we got circuit boards made for a couple hundred bucks for a hundred of them. So, you know, $2 a circuit board like circuit boards aren't something that you have to be General Electric to have made like it's so cool. Yeah. What do you do today?
00:43:44
Speaker
Today, I got to finish these fixtures. That is kind of the only thing on my task. So we are.
00:43:52
Speaker
I'd almost teasingly say classic example, so we're out of parts. But new material came in two days ago to make another almost 200 knives. But they require the new fixture. Yeah, right. So you're at that point where you've got to actually double down on the fixture. Yeah, that's the only thing I can touch today, basically, is finish this fixture. At least make it serviceable to make blades, and then we can move forward. Right. But yeah, things are great.
00:44:20
Speaker
Awesome awesome we have a jib crane vendor coming because we need a jib crane and I just we just do so he's coming at 9 and then I'm getting some content going on the site and And making parts just got a bunch of parts to make good is which is fun I was laughing with somebody I was like I
00:44:44
Speaker
If you could insert any awesome scenario here, win the lottery or whatever, like blah, blah, blah. Well, what I wanted, you know, you'd party and smile and have fun. And then the next day I'd be like, I just want to go make parts again. Yep. Which is, which is what I already get to do. Yep. Exactly. Awesome. Uh, crush it, bud. Yeah, you too. Have a great day. Have a good one. Yeah. I'll see you next Friday. All right. Take care. Bye.