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Business of Machining - Episode 83
177 Plays7 years ago
Buying Machines for your Business
Grimsmo and Saunders talk about the importance of Customer Service when it comes to buying a machine.
“Just sell me machines and give me service” - Grimsmo
Service is important because....
“Fun Fact: Everything mechanical in the world ceases to work at some point” - Saunders
When it comes down to it, the quality of the machine is going to affect your relationship with that company. Don’t forget to consider a warranty!
CALLING ALL LISTENERS! Saunders has a query.
The shop in Ohio is getting HOT, and NYC CNC is thinking about getting a climate control system sooner than expected.
Specifications for the project:
- Our shop is 50 x 80 ft. with 15 ft. ceilings
- NYC CNC doesn't think more insulation is necessary
- What are our listeners thoughts on using a mini-split? Link to the definition of a mini-split here. How about on an “Energy Recovery Ventilator”? We don’t want to “cool the country with our AC” (as Saunders’ mom would say)
ALSO, Saunders would like to know if anyone has a CMX 1100, and what YOUR thoughts are on it. What is it comparable to?
Contact Saunders here or at info@saundersmachineworks.com
Lapping up time
Grimsmo can’t wait for the new lapping machine to come in, it’s going to make processes A LOT faster.
Pro tip: Using UpWork to solve your problems also helps you get work done faster.
Choose the right machine for YOU!
The Johns discuss how to choose the right machine for your needs, even when there’s so many solid options out there. The two of them also talk about how to make processes on Grimsmo’s mill more efficient and reliable.
IMTS is NEXT WEEK! And the Johns will be there running around, asking questions, and learning new things.
They talk about what they want to see at IMTS. Here's a little teaser on Grimsmo’s IMTS list:
- He wants to learn more about machine tracking software
And how about Saunders?
- Thinking more long term about good coolant management
- Looking at CMX and DMU 50 machines
Don’t forget to SIGN UP for the Manufacturing Entrepreneurship Summit 2018 in Chicago, Illinois.
Sunday, September 9th, 2018 (ONE DAY BEFORE IMTS!) and...it's FREE!
Workshop Topics:
- Product Development
- Bootstrap Entrepreneurship
- Growing & Operating a Job Shop
- Optimizing Surface Finishes with CAM & Tooling
- Fixturing Tips & Tricks
- Lean Shop Operations
Guest speakers: John Grimsmo, Jay Pierson, Tim Paul, Bill Fienup, John Saunders, and Zach Kaplan!
PLUS, AN AFTER-PARTY!
INFO FOR THE MID-EAST OHIO MODEL ENGINEERING EXPO
The Expo is on Sept 29, 2018. AND Saunders is having an open house on the DAY BEFORE THE EXPO! Check out the links below for more information.
Mid-East Ohio Model Engineering ExpoInfo on Saunders’ Shop Tour on Sept 28, 2018
Recommended
Transcript
Excitement for IMTS and DMG Mori Relationship
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode number 83. My name is John Grimsmo. My name is John Sodders. Good morning, buddy. How are you? I'm really good today. Good? Yeah, things are good. I'm excited for IMTS next week. Things are going good here. You have a DMG Morey shirt on, it looks like. I do, yeah. And finally, after three years of ownership, the sales rep finally dropped by some t-shirts.
00:00:25
Speaker
I was actually going to laugh. I'm not sure that I should know your wardrobe. But I'm like, I don't think I've ever seen John wear a DMG Maury shirt. No, we got this a couple of weeks ago. Sweet. That's awesome. It's all right. It's nice. It's quality. I know if you're a really, really good customer, they'll give you a toolbox. And that has bothered Amish to this day.
DMG Mori's Vertical Integration and Service Impact
00:00:45
Speaker
That was funny.
00:00:47
Speaker
It's awesome. So do you have a, I thought you had less of a working relationship. Just, I just thought you weren't as, you know, Elliot was like, kind of like this example of a great relationship between a customer and a, um, and a company and a distributor, a machine tool. But like, you know, you love them, the nerds, the facilities, the AEs, the relationship, the culture, like all that was just spot on, right?
00:01:08
Speaker
Yep. Yep. And less so with DMG Moria. I think they're busier and more corporate. And it feels like they're kind of above my pay grade for a lot of things. Interesting. But the sales rep still comes by and still thinks about us every now and then, which is nice. And it was kind of nice to come by and bring some t-shirts. Yeah, that's great. And I was actually just thinking about your verticals. It was a showroom demo machine at the Toronto area DMG showroom. Yes.
00:01:37
Speaker
I think they had it for maybe a year or so. I probably saw it at a trade show before buying it, before even knowing.
Distributors, Service Challenges, and Shop Dynamics
00:01:45
Speaker
So weird. Right. That's so weird. Oh my God. Imagine if you could find video footage of that somewhere. That's the thing. So I was at their open house the year before I bought it, actually like three, four months before I bought it. And I rewatched all my footage. And I literally, I panned too fast past the machine to actually see it. And I just kept walking.
00:02:02
Speaker
And I was like, what? Fail. Yeah, that's funny. Were they affected in the same way DMG was in the US with this whole going direct and then not using Ellison? Yes, I think. And that happened almost immediately after when I purchased my machine. OK. So what was it, DMG Mori? Well, DMG Mori had just joined.
00:02:28
Speaker
a couple of years prior as German and Japanese tag team, like partnership. And then Ellison, I guess, dropped them or like removed themselves from the picture. So now it's just DMG Mori.
00:02:43
Speaker
I think it was lots of noise on this conversation, but I think it was the other way around. I think DMG Mori decided it wanted to try to vertically integrate and offer the full spectrum of services within its own brand, which is basically saying we're not using distributors, which is funny because part of me wholeheartedly commends that because so often I think you and I
00:03:08
Speaker
have more poor examples of distributorship, mostly when it comes to the smaller things, I think. We did our IMTS bingo, and that was one of the sore spots that I'm not looking forward to next week is all these conversations about like, oh, we have this great product, and we offer them. And they're in stock, but there is absolutely no way that I could ever exchange money for giving you this product. You'll need to find your distributor. Good luck.
00:03:39
Speaker
So, yeah, fine. That's going to be fun. Yeah. Um, what was I going to say? Does the DMG guy try to sell you? Like, is he really, you know, although he was, he was surprised to walk into the shop and see a Nakamura, he wasn't very happy about that. Oh, well it was tough, but it was just funny because I knew it would happen one day and he'd walk in and I never told him it doesn't matter. Um,
00:04:00
Speaker
an open account and have conversations and then all this stuff.
00:04:03
Speaker
But I think with the Ellison thing in the states where they're Ellison buildings, like the building is Ellison because here in Canada it was a DMG Maury building. Oh, is that right? Right. So I don't think it affected them as much. Dude, I just bought my first BMC like 20 months ago. So this is way this is I was not in the know then I will say like at that Matt Sura event that I went to it was a stand up event. The
00:04:32
Speaker
Yamazin hosted it and it was a Yamazin joint venture Yamazin Matsura Tech Center. So Matsura had the name on the building, but it wasn't, it's a Yamazin, it's Yamazin's name. And Ellison is now Doosan, I think. Right. Yeah. Well, just, just sell me machines and give me service. That's all I care about. Yeah. Yeah. Service is even bigger. I know we've said that a lot, but even, even bigger, bigger than I've,
Machine Maintenance, Costs, and Replacement Strategy
00:05:00
Speaker
um,
00:05:00
Speaker
coming to realize. I think it's probably just because you and I, as we remain friends and as we
00:05:08
Speaker
go proceed throughout this, we're going to start hitting points where, fun fact, everything mechanical in the world ceases to work at some point. It just does. And that's OK. But when you start having to do something as silly as a little sheet metal bracket or part, or when you bumped your sheet metal on the backside, that could have caused an operational problem that required actual service, or a spindle, or a controller card, or who knows what.
00:05:34
Speaker
I think that I'd be surprised if it doesn't shape and influence our beliefs on machine tool relationships and vendors and how you get stuff and service time and lead time and cost and all that. That's a very good point. And warranties and things like that too. Yeah. Did you end up going with that warranty? The FANUC one? Yeah, I can't remember. It was for the NOC.
00:05:55
Speaker
Yeah, I forget if we talked about this on the podcast, but I got a FANUC letter a couple weeks ago that said for $2,000 annually, you can continue your warranty and replace anything as it breaks. I'm thinking about it, but I have no idea what I'm going to do yet. Oh, okay. I thought it was a finite period to decide. I don't actually know. Yeah, yeah.
00:06:17
Speaker
But it's not Nakamura. It's just the controller in the motor. Right. Yeah. But like everything on the lathe that's FANUC. So all the controllers, the panel, the servo motors, the drives, the spindle motors. But think about the one thing that you've done is bump spindles and turrets. Sure. So everything electric is probably FANUC and everything mechanical is Nakamura. Right. Right.
00:06:43
Speaker
But the cynic in me is always, I don't like when people get preyed on, because I don't think anybody likes getting taken advantage of. It's so embarrassing to think, hey, I thought I bought this. And it ends up you're telling me now when I actually need the insurance policy or whatever warranty that I got played. And there's this whole question of, is it service? Is it parts? Is it labor and installation? What's the deductible?
00:07:09
Speaker
And, you know, is FANUC going to say, well, your servo motors or something is down, but that's, you need to have Elliott come in because they've got to pull the ball screw off or retramp it in or retile it in or remap it. And you're like, good grief. I thought I was buying an insurance policy. It ends up, I still have a $6,000 bill. Yep. Just this, I mean, that's why I would, I would like talking to people that have actually used, um, absolutely used the policy, which isn't fun, but, um,
00:07:37
Speaker
I think actually, you know what's funny? I should talk to him at IMTS Alfred from AB Tools. They just have a regular cycle or regular-ish cycle every year or two because they grind daily, like 24-7 daily in their Haas vertical milling machines. They cut a lot of their tools that way. They just regularly replace linear rails and or ball screws. I forget which or both.
00:08:02
Speaker
And I'm guessing that they do it. I don't know if they do it themselves at this point, but they're probably less of a good example on warranty, but rather just like hands on service
Acquiring New Machines and Capital Expenditure
00:08:12
Speaker
type stuff. Yeah. I mean, on both my machines, I haven't had.
00:08:20
Speaker
Aside from a bigger coolant tank on the Nakamura, I don't think I've had any issues, broken parts, warranty, any reason for them to come in. Yeah, because they're new, but the Mort is three years old now and I'm now running it hard. It took a while. Right.
00:08:39
Speaker
That's tough because the more I feel like your machine is one of the exceptions to where I would say, and you're kind of writing your dream plan to say, no, we can keep this machine. This is a 10, 20 year type machine. But I am conscious of the value of some sort of a recycling program on our end. So after.
00:09:00
Speaker
I mean, it's so weird to say this because I want to, our machine still, still feels brand new. We take care of it. The worst thing I see now is the paint on the bottom underside of the chip augers has kind of worn off, but otherwise freaking to me, it's brand new, but there's something to be said for every five, six, seven years to cycle a machine out and replace it. Or else, you know, you end up like some of the factors we've been through, which have.
00:09:28
Speaker
It's not that they have old machines and that's a problem. It's that what was a relatively small problem is now a two or $20 million, excuse me, type problem. Oh, because they have so many new machines, but they obviously kept their money instead of investing in new machines and put it elsewhere or whatever. Right.
00:09:49
Speaker
Yeah, capital expenditures, CapEx is a recurring thing, not a non-recurring thing is the way to put it. Not an initial investment kind of thing. If you want to stay on top of it, you could easily buy a bunch of machines and keep them for 20 years and just have this factory that never changes. But what's the fun in that?
00:10:08
Speaker
Well, I think the problem is you look at exponential service costs. I mean, it's absolutely not unreasonable to look at $7
HVAC Solutions and Shop Environment Optimization
00:10:16
Speaker
,000 to $10,000 a year in maintenance for really old type machines where they're now, you know, what's even worse.
00:10:24
Speaker
The absolute worst is when something finally goes that deems it a total loss. You know, you just can't justify the money to put into it. And now you have to pay to take it to the scrapyard. That's like the ultimate, the ultimate frustration. Anyway. Yeah. Service. Big deal.
00:10:46
Speaker
Yeah, definitely something to keep in mind. And like you said last week or the week before about warranties, if you buy several machines, then those warranties really add up to being a lot of extra money. But you have more machines, more risk, more, you know? Yeah. I would actually ask, too, if I have a warranty, does that give me different service response time? Because I'd kind of like to think, hey, I'm prepaying you. I want to make sure I get priority.
00:11:16
Speaker
Yeah. Speaking of quality of life type stuff, I have a request to our viewers, which is that we are now considering accelerating our plan to put in some sort of an airflow or climate control in our shop. It's been really hot the last few days. And I want to think about it maybe this fall instead of next spring. But regardless of timing, there's two different things.
00:11:43
Speaker
It's pretty simple. It's a basically 50 by 80 foot machine shop with 15 foot ceilings. There is some insulation between the roof and the deck. So we shouldn't have to, I don't believe, add any insulation sort of there. It's a block wall that has that vermiculite stuff in between the blocks. So what I'd like to do is just put a mini split in on the back wall that's an outside wall, the only outside wall really.
00:12:10
Speaker
And just so I guess number question number one, if anyone out there is like kind of an HVAC guy or guru or technician, can we do it with a mini split for 4000 square feet that's got 15 foot? What's a mini split? Mini split is basically, you know, your home air conditioner, if you have central air has a coil inside the house, like next to the furnace usually that has it's like a heat exchanger coil, I think, or not a heat exchanger. It's a coil. It's like a copper pipes that loop back and forth. It's the thing that freezes up.
00:12:38
Speaker
And then there's a couple of lines that run all the way outside to your condenser, which is what I would call a radiator, but it's not a radiator, but that big thing that has the fan. And then he split, I'm paraphrasing because I don't really, I'm not an expert, basically puts those all together.
00:12:55
Speaker
in a wall, so sir, on a wall. So the, the coil side and air conditioning side that you see cold air come out of is this like strip on the wall inside the house or inside the room. And then the other side is either on the outside of the wall, literally in the same spot. Or sometimes you do run short pipes or copper pipes, whatever, down to the ground and you put the mini split side. But the idea is you don't have a note. There's no ducting and it's,
Production Demands and Machinery Upgrades
00:13:20
Speaker
and it's all kind of right there.
00:13:23
Speaker
So the AC unit is in the corner of your shop and it's meant to feed the whole shop just from there. No ducting. Yeah, it could be in the back. It could be in the back of the shop center, for sure. But correct, there wouldn't be ducting. So.
00:13:38
Speaker
And many splits that what is it what's attractive to me and maybe I'm making a mistake is that Some many splits like the smaller ones are plug-and-play like they come pre-charged. They're they're like plug-in so like you can install them out without having to have those like free on or you know Refrigerant gauges and doing stuff you shouldn't do as a layman And then the cost I think they're
00:14:02
Speaker
more price reasonable. Anyway, I need to learn more about that and see if there are other good fit. The second thing, which I think could actually tie in, is you ever heard of an energy recovery ventilator? No. This is so freaking cool, but I want to know. I like the sound of it. Yeah. I want to hear from somebody if they're not a gimmick, because I'm not convinced that they're as good as the sales people say that they are. But one of the problems we have is our shop is a sealed box. There's no actual airflow in or out of it, because there's no ventilation, period.
00:14:33
Speaker
So the problem is in the summer, you don't want to pull in even hotter air. And in the winter, you don't want to pull in cold air. So this thing is a giant disk, like 20-some-inch disk, depending on the model. And it has those silica gel beads that you get in the dehumidification packets. Those things are like an energy storage device. In the video walkthrough, you can Google this on YouTube. But basically, it has the perfect effect of,
00:14:59
Speaker
So in the summer, when you're pulling in really hot air, as it expels the cold air, the cold air charges those silica pellets as they're rotating around. And so when the hot air gets pulled in, it gets pulled through those cooled down and it does it through moisture content, not through actual temperature. So it actually has the effect of recycling most, not all of your energy in the form of the air temperature. So basically you can pull in ambient air and not have to re-air condition it or cool it or heat it.
00:15:29
Speaker
Okay, I think I get it. And that does sound very promising. Okay. Yeah, because I'm discharging, let's say we air condition the shop, I don't want to discharge, you know, 72 degree, or you know, whatever temperature Celsius air, air conditioning the country is my mom used to say is a kid. Right? Yep. So I'd like but that could help. I think it could help because
00:15:53
Speaker
First of all, it could help with more airflow and higher CFMs. And even if we do also get an air conditioner, but also maybe that could tie in with the air conditioner to pull the current or the cold air through. Here's the thing. Our shop's 80 degrees.
00:16:09
Speaker
right now with the big-ass fan, it's totally fine. It does not bother me. The stale air is the worst part, to be honest. But I do think we want air conditioning to pull the humidity down. It will help on those worst days. But I think we only need air conditioning down to 76, 75. I mean, that's a lot cooler than it is now, and it's really not bad now.
00:16:31
Speaker
Yeah, we keep ours, and I believe it stays at 70 to 72, depending on how hot it is outside. And it's cool. It's chilly sometimes. Yeah, your shop was cold when I was in it, like cold. Yeah, exactly. And obviously, we don't have as good circulation, so it gets hotter upstairs. Sure. Right, so we're kind of averaging. Yeah, temperature gradients are for sure the real deal. I know that because our home air conditioning went out last week, and we slept in the basement.
00:17:02
Speaker
Nice. Anyways, if anybody has any advice or is in the know on this, I would appreciate reaching out. Very curious. What has been going on this week? Production as usual. I guess I haven't updated on our lapping machine in quite a while.
00:17:25
Speaker
The demo unit that we're borrowing until our big one is done is not big enough. Like we are having a horrible time trying to make enough parts, lap enough parts to keep up with production.
00:17:40
Speaker
which will be good when the big machine comes because it's, you can fit three times as many parts on it. Got it. Wow. It's crazy. So that'll be cool. So they delayed shipment by another month. So we're looking to like early October. Wow. Before we get it. Where is it? It's coming out of the US, right? Yeah, it's coming out of Chicago.
00:18:03
Speaker
Are you going to see them at IMTS? Yeah, I'll see their booth. And they offered to take me to their factory, which is 20 minutes away from IMTS. But I'm like, I don't know if I really need to go. For time, I feel so precious. Although I would like your opinion on it. I feel like I need to sit down alone for a few minutes today and just think about what I want to get out of IMTS. There's been so much noise and buzz and other events. But it's like, hey, what do I want to do?
Evaluating Machinery Upgrades and Automation
00:18:32
Speaker
Yeah, exactly right. I started making a Trello board with the notes that I want to take like the the boost I want to go to and questions I want to ask for sure. Yeah. Whether it be generally or very specifically. Like last time I met the designer of the original Dura vertical. That's cool. The Japanese guy who didn't speak very good English but
00:18:54
Speaker
But yeah, so maybe I'll meet him again and I've got a couple questions here and there and you know, you never know who you're going to run into. That's really cool. Yeah, that's funny. I was talking to Seth Medor about that exact question because we're kind of sort of thinking if we got another, if we got another, this is a long conversation, but
00:19:11
Speaker
If we end up going with a vertical as our third machine, there's a lot of reasons that could make sense, especially with a fourth axis. And DMG has kind of their own turnkey fourth axis. It's like the DDR 200 or something. It looks pretty nice. I've heard good things. And that would be with their CMX 1100. And I've heard
00:19:32
Speaker
What I've heard about the CMX 1100 tends to be negative. And I think a lot of that negativity stems out of its predecessor, which was kind of the sandwiched eco-line model between your machine and this one. So trying to figure out, instead of listening to opinions, trying to talk to facts of who actually owns another question. Anyone out there owns a CMX 1100 would love to hear from you. Someone we know, I think just bought one, although I'm not sure it's public yet. So that's exciting.
00:20:02
Speaker
And then the question is, is it comparable to a dirt vertical? Is it comparable to a Makino 105? Is it comparable to the Genos M560V? I don't know. All solid, solid machines. I know my water jet guy in Michigan just got a CMX. Oh, yeah?
00:20:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good one. I haven't really heard. He's upgrading from an Amazak that he bought new in like 2000 or something. Okay, that's good to know. Thank you. Yeah, he's really looking forward to that. He got a few months ago, but I haven't really heard an update. It is different than the Mori, than my DUR vertical. You know, it's got a lot of similar architecture, but
00:20:45
Speaker
It's got a lot of DMG built into it too. Like where the, what is it? The table only moves in X and the spindle moves in Z and Y. Yep. So the spindle, the whole spindle has a column that's laying down on the ground that comes out toward you, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's only a 12,000 pound machine. So like 1186 is DMF does that, but it's a 70,000 pound machine.
00:21:15
Speaker
Yeah. And it's the exact opposite of the Genos, the Okuma Genos, which the table moves in Y and the X and Z are in a double-columned pillar system. Right, which seems phenomenal. Right. Seems better.
00:21:32
Speaker
Yeah, I would think so. Yeah. Right. But then it's like, well, wait. When your DMG is DMG, they don't make bad machines or I think some of the eco line was probably a bad branding combined with maybe there were a couple of sour apples or bad machine. I don't know. Maybe it was an eco line made in China or wherever else they made them for less money when people were expecting DMG. Sure. That's a good point. For less money, right? Sure. So I think there's a lot of that.
00:22:01
Speaker
but noisy noisy But or you just get yourself a used or vertical Yeah, I don't think I do that at this point Because mostly because no one who knows no one who has a dirt vertical and knows what it is is selling one selling seriously Yeah, or you skip the vertical all together and and go for five axis which I'm still
00:22:29
Speaker
Well, I say I want to learn about that IMTS, but I don't know what I actually want to learn, John. I've seen a bunch of UMCs. I know more what to ask now that we spent so much time with our Trunn unit for sure. But I don't know.
00:22:45
Speaker
I don't know what to do. You just got to figure out what you need to do. Right. And that's a you decision. You take in as much information as humanly possible, of course, as you're doing. But it comes down to, I don't know, where do you want to allocate your resources? What kind of parts do you want to make? Is a single pallet five axis going to benefit you in the way that you want it to? I think that's one of my other questions is like on the DMU 50, they have the pH
00:23:14
Speaker
10, pH 15, pH 150 something. It's like the 10 palette pool automation that turned. I think it's actually made by maybe somebody else or somebody, but it's branded BMG. I'm pretty sure you can add that on later without significant
00:23:33
Speaker
I think you're able to buy a machine and know that you can add that on later. I don't know that about the Haas. They're coming out with that 10-palette pool for the UMC 1000, which I don't know this one. I'm certain that they'll be doing that also for the smaller UMC. I feel like with the Matsura MX330, you can't upgrade to the PC10 later. No, you can as long as
00:23:57
Speaker
you buy the right table config. It has to be like the PC1 and not the regular old T-slotted table. OK. That doesn't make sense. The MX520, that is true. You can't do the PC4 and the MX520 unless you buy it that way.
00:24:11
Speaker
Right. Because it's like a totally different sheet metal enclosure and all that. Got it. But yeah, I mean, taking it in bite sized chunks by the machine first, play with it, get used to it, make parts. And then at some point to be like, this is awesome. I want to run it 24 seven. I can afford or I can justify the the pallet pool another 60 grand or whatever it's going to cost 30. I have no idea. Try again.
00:24:36
Speaker
Hire. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Try again. Okay. Sorry. I had, I had three axis mills in my mind. Try again. Hire. Really? So like can't be 200. Buck 50. I think, I think 150 for automation, maybe a hundred, but it's a, it's a growth. I mean, it's, it's, there's no reason to cry about it because it's all it, you should not buy it unless it is 100% tied to growth and profit and a conversation. Right.
00:25:01
Speaker
It's one of those you should be proud and excited to get this thing in here and be like, let's get that thing to work. No brainer. Yes. Well said. Yeah, it's fine. It reminds me of the medical implant company that paid whatever to have their machines, their German machines put on 747s to get them over tomorrow instead of by boat because they're like, these things need to be making parts now. The money is, we'll recoup that in hours or maybe a day or two.
00:25:31
Speaker
That's awesome. Yeah. I've heard that one. Yeah. Maybe that story probably has gotten exaggerated a bit, but I think the mentality holds true. If you have insane parts, you could be making thousands, maybe even five figures a day in some of these, not our world, but like the medical world for sure.
00:25:52
Speaker
Yep. Well, like, like Miltara making, you know, the stuff that they make nonstop all the time. If they're down like they were when I froze up their machine because I asked them to film something. Yeah. What's his error? Anyway, that, that cost them money. I don't think they're sore about it, thankfully, but, um, you know, it's that mentality, like,
00:26:11
Speaker
The boards were green when we left. I think we're OK. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I think that's one of the other misconceptions is that just because you have all this automation doesn't mean you don't all have a significant number of hiccups in downtime. It's just that when you look at a year, a week, or a month of intervals, it's significantly more productive. And that's all I mean.
00:26:33
Speaker
The more uptime, the better, obviously. One of my, it might actually be one of my favorite quotes overheard in my life was, I have no idea where we were at this point, but somebody, maybe it was at AU, because Lawrence was doing that talk on robots and automation in a shop. And somebody made the point about the sort of cliche comment about like, well, robots don't complain.
Lean Manufacturing and Efficiency Gains
00:26:52
Speaker
And Rob Lockwood is like, trust me, robots complain. Nice. Which is so true. Yeah.
00:27:02
Speaker
There's always hiccups and glitches and tweaks and that's okay. But just like the other thing I've kind of been sinking in and talking to Jay Pearson last night about his presentation at the M Hub event this Sunday, that's this Sunday, that's crazy. And the one misconception is that lean, which I think socially you hear the word lean and you think trimming the fat or not
00:27:22
Speaker
you know, gorging yourself. So you think there's an intrinsic tie to the word frugality in the word lean, and it I think couldn't be further from the truth. Lean is usually expensive or cost money or as an investment. Right. You don't necessarily bootstrap lean. I mean, you can obviously, but to do it hard and to do it well and to make a, you know, have it make a big difference. Yeah, it can certainly cost a lot of money. Yeah.
00:27:50
Speaker
And that's where I'm at too, investing in ideas and technologies and theories to help us grow our company. Now that we've been tracking our tool life with the custom macros that I made,
00:28:06
Speaker
We have a really solid, reliable tool life to make our knives, which is great. But it's like every time you hit cycle start, it says, oh, this tool is worn out. You replace it. Oh, this tool is worn out. Oh, you replace it. I want to be able to look ahead. I want to be able to see, you know, two or three pallets ahead, what tools need to be pre-staged and ready, because that's going to save us a significant time.
00:28:27
Speaker
Is that the macro that you were trying to figure out how to dump the info out of and work on? Yeah, exactly. I'm still working on that. I hired a programmer in Upwork to help me with a couple little things. Awesome. Yep. Making big strides on that. What's the programmer's scope of work even?
00:28:42
Speaker
He's going to be reading the dprint file from the machine, which has all the macro variables, and auto-populating my Google Sheets spreadsheet with those values. So it's just an updating them. Parsing a text file into text to columns. OK, that's awesome. I know. It's not hard. I don't want to figure that out when I know I could pay somebody less than $100 to get this done. Most of the stuff that we do on Upwork, it's not appropriate to share for other reasons. But the IMTS bingo, it was totally like a
00:29:12
Speaker
I just have a need to vent, really. And so I made that list shockingly quickly. And then I looked down at my daily focus, and I was like, this is not something I need to be doing. It doesn't make me happy. It makes me laugh, but it doesn't make me happy. It doesn't make me funny.
00:29:29
Speaker
But I'm like, no, this is funny. So I dumped it onto Upwork. And if you go to IMTSBingo.com, you can see this thing. The total charge to go from my list in Excel to that thing, I did one revision. So it took me some time getting his feedback. Hilarious. $23. $23. To what? To make the website, basically? The graphics.
00:29:55
Speaker
The whole PDF JPEG, like the thing that you can print out. Right. Oh my goodness. Okay. I'm printing that right now. IMTS bingo. I didn't even, did I miss that post or something? Yeah. It was, we were joking about on WhatsApp. I think I put it on Instagram too. All right. That's hilarious. This is my, this is my, what are you going to call it? John number two side or, you know, my, I'm a saucy side.
00:30:23
Speaker
Exactly. Right. Yeah. And for $23 totally. Right. That's something I realized because this weekend I hired for two Upwork jobs.
00:30:36
Speaker
And I also wrote kind of an instruction manual for Sky to be able to integrate one of these things. So it's like teaching three people how to do what needs to
3D Printing for Shop Layout and Floor Management
00:30:46
Speaker
be done. And I'm like, I kind of realized I'm really good at coming up with the crazy idea and like doing a bunch of research to basically wrap my head around it.
00:30:54
Speaker
Yes. But then physically doing the work, whether I have the skill or not, it's like, I don't, I don't need to be doing that work. I need to come up with the idea. I need to organize it and then pass it on. That's so this, this passing it on is kind of new to me and I'm learning how to do it better and better. And it's, it's getting quite liberating, you know, to be able to like hand it off to somebody else, pay them a little bit of money or good money. And, uh, it's done. Um, I had a meeting last week, which I will share more about later.
00:31:22
Speaker
It was with a group of investors for the new company thing were starting up. And that guy had, he's the guy, they brought along one of their kind of like, what they call it, like executive partners. So a guy who was in industry, who represents their behalf on looking at the strategic side of things, the industry specific side of things. And he had this term, which I wrote down somewhere, but it's like data retention systems or something. And he's like, you're creating the recipe to create the recipe.
00:31:49
Speaker
Yeah, like here's the method for how you create methods. Yes.
00:31:57
Speaker
Which is, which is meta, like, you know, within, within grandson eyes, this is the way in which you create things within the, you know, when you create things within and it ties in your culture and the processes and the resources and the physical tools. And, um, I was kind of like, yes, that's, and it was cool because I was doing it, but didn't realize, I knew I was doing it, but I think it was good. Cause they were like, okay, you're doing what we want to see, which is this. Um, so.
00:32:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's like a little bit of indication. But it's also like a realization that wow, what I've kind of been doing naturally, like, I'm on the right track, you know, when somebody else kind of tells you, right? That's a good right. And then I immediately shifted the conversation because I want to focus on the things I don't know that I'm not doing. Sure. Yep, exactly. Yep. Speaking of lean, we did one of the coolest things I've ever done, which is simple, we 3d printed our shop.
00:32:52
Speaker
Yeah, I saw pictures of that on Instagram. Not hard. I mean, not hard. We used our laser to do the floor and we etched out the concrete joint lines so we can look at not spanning machines across expansion joints, which is a big deal. You could do that whole part with cardboard and a ruler though. And then we just, when we had spare time on the Markforged, I don't even think Ed likes using the other printer anymore because the Markforged just works.
00:33:21
Speaker
And you can reduce the density fill, so the parts end up being cheap. A machine is like, I don't even know, like five bucks. And it's like playing God. Seriously, it looks exactly like our Edwin, a little overboard, like we've got the banners up and all that.
00:33:38
Speaker
But no, and so like, not on camera, we have some other machines that we don't own yet that I don't want to show. I was just gonna ask you that. Because then it's like, I get ahead of myself here. But uh, yeah, it's freaking amazing. Dude.
00:33:52
Speaker
Nice. That's actually a good idea because if like I have our shop designed in CAD, I haven't drawn up the new shop, the new edition on the side yet, but I've kind of started and I sort of have at least footprint outlines of our Maury and our Nakamura and some of the other stuff in the shop. And if we 3D printed those models, they obviously translate to the next shop. Oh, yeah. Like the machine models will, you know, just the framework would change.
00:34:18
Speaker
So yeah, yeah when we first did this I thought it would be okay and
Quality Control and Precision Machining Challenges
00:34:22
Speaker
helpful and disposable I guess for some reason I just thought we would be use it and be done and I'm realizing now it's super super cool and We're gonna keep this thing forever. I mean this will continue to be both fun and entertaining but also a real tool Mm-hmm
00:34:38
Speaker
Have you reorganized big things since printing it? Well, so that's the thing. The Tormox, we can move around with pallet checks, which is phenomenal. And we do need to, we care about the layout of those for our use for filming, for training, but, um, the Haas, excuse me, the Haas machines and the big machines, you've got to usually call in the riggers. And, um, I give Jay Pearson a lot of credit, you know, he's willing to say, Hey,
00:35:02
Speaker
allocate five hours of your time, come in and we're just going to move machines around a bunch. But I think this could really help accelerate that. And for sure there's there's more to it in terms of the concrete pads and the electricity law. Maybe I'm overthinking it, but certainly it's expensive to run drops and distance and so forth. So it's just it's super cool.
00:35:32
Speaker
Do you worry as much about leveling a tormach now as you maybe did on the first day you got it? What do you mean? Like, you know, if you moved it, would you? Oh, level it and like be super anal about it or just move it and call it good. They're actually pretty good in that the level on a tormach is more between the base of the machine and the top of the stand.
00:36:00
Speaker
Okay. It's, it's, think of it kind of like the, and this is not a good analogy, but the polymer granite machines, which are kind of like, you can drop them anywhere, you know, a, a, a, a really screwed up wood floor. They don't care. Cause they're so it's not that they're, they're, they're stiff. Okay. The tormach you tram it, or you level it as between shimming the four feet that bolt down the base to the, to the stand.
00:36:24
Speaker
Red, red. And I guess your floors are relatively flat and even. And do you have a lot of cracks in your floors or? Like concrete cracks? Zero. Lucky. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Going from my old garage and now even this shop, the floors are quite cracked and quite unlevel in various places. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. It's tough though. I think. Go ahead.
00:36:47
Speaker
Maury is sitting on the only solid piece of concrete. Has it changed or cracked since you moved? Do you know? Not that I know of. Nothing obvious at least. That's good.
00:37:01
Speaker
Yeah, we only have five inch floors. So that's one of the tough things because if we buy a bigger, better type of machine, even actually the hoses are supposed to be on six inch. And it's a classic dilemma of do you spend the money and bust up and re-pour and wait and maybe you try to match the, what do you call it that we did to our floors, epoxy?
00:37:26
Speaker
Or do you just leave it as seal or unseal concrete? Not cheap, but you don't want to buy a better machine or a really good machine and have it walking all around.
00:37:38
Speaker
because of that. Yeah, I know. When Amish got his DMG, he cut a pad, poured it thicker, deeper, waited like a month for it to set. And I remember he was texting me. It was painful to wait for that to set. It's like the machine is, I think it was just sitting there waiting in a warehouse close by, waiting for the pad to set. And it was painful. But I would assume that if we asked him now, if he regrets any of it, he
Optimizing Production and Tool Change Efficiency
00:38:03
Speaker
would say no. Now he's got to dig that whole thing up and move it.
00:38:07
Speaker
That's true. Yeah, the whole pad. Just keep it attached to the machine. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's your pick point. It is crazy to me to see a guy that I kind of got to know through the DMG Maury Innovation Days runs a pretty cool shop with a bunch of Maury horizontals out in Utah. And on Instagram, he had pictures. He just swapped out a really old, shoot, SH40 or something, one of their 1990s horizontals with a,
00:38:35
Speaker
a more yeah with a newer used more horizontal and there's the pictures of these cranes like a road crane you know crane that has you can travel down the road you know with boom up who knows 70 80 feet picking up a 15,000 pound machine like it's candy like it's just crazy for me to see that power and stability yeah yeah it's fun nice hmm
00:39:05
Speaker
What's been going on on the mill and the lathe? I'm just trying to keep up, which is good. I'm putting a lot of time into this macro, mostly weekend time, because I want to get, I've got two vices on the mill right now. I think I want to buy two more vices and have four on the table.
00:39:26
Speaker
and then put the Pearson pallet and the VAC magic on top of those vices. And I think it'll just basically, I think I want to be able to run four pallets every night. And then we can basically use the entire day to prepare for that.
00:39:44
Speaker
And then take our time. Okay. And then set up the, set up the night runs to be totally reliable with this tool life tracking and all that, because we know what it'll take to make so many pallets. How long would four pallet runs take? Four times three and a half hours. Okay. So like 16 hours too long to do a day run and a night run. Yeah. You could still do day run as well, but, uh, not, not, not enough hours. Oh, you could do two in the, during the day. And then. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:40:14
Speaker
Yeah. And that's the thing with having four pallets is you can run any combination. You can run just one or three or four or whatever. And I've got the probe coming in to like check if there's a pallet there, run that one, trim it or probe it in. And also we do all these different patterns on the knives like honeycomb, plain, reverse honeycomb, things like that. So I'm going to do a threaded section on the fixture where if you thread in a screw here, the probe will say, oh, you want to do honeycomb.
00:40:41
Speaker
So there'll be macros in the code that will choose honeycomb and nothing else. Cool. Okay. Super cool. So I'm excited to get that going.
00:40:49
Speaker
I'm trying to think, do you? It just bothers me. It's funny, too. You can't put tools in the machine while it's running. All of a sudden, now, I'm seeing why. The new CMX account, by the way. That's what I'm laughing about when I was at IMTS, or when we were at IMTS two years ago. I saw that, and I was kind of like, I don't know who cares about that. And now, I'm like, wait a minute here. Yep, that's actually pretty cool. Yep.
00:41:17
Speaker
So yeah, that's kind of what's on my mind right now. I'm not 100% convinced it's going to be the greatest thing in the world, but it's also very exciting. Because I think it's batch work, but it's also unattended, night run, reliable. I think it'll work great. I've got a year and a half of tool life tracking experience. I know them really, really well. Like right now, we run one palette every night when we go home. We come back in the morning almost never as they're a broken tool.
00:41:47
Speaker
So I just need to scale that up. Why don't you run two pallets at night? Because I don't have two pallets right now. Got it. I only have one pallet. Did you pull the trigger on getting another one made?
00:42:00
Speaker
Amish is making okay, he is running with that sweet right after I empty it. Yeah, okay.
Surface Finish Challenges and Machine Accuracy
00:42:05
Speaker
That's gonna be epic. Oh, yeah, that's great. Yeah, so we're he's making the big pallets. We're making all the clamps and little center palette and all this stuff. So yesterday, Angelo and I sat down and we planned material we need for that and the code and everything like that. Good. Awesome. How's the knock?
00:42:27
Speaker
It's all good. We're making pivots, um, still not getting, like, you know, when you face apart on a lady, get a good surface finish on the lady unfamiliar. You've done that once maybe anyway. Um, so we're facing the head of these pivots, which is like a three eighths around.
00:42:47
Speaker
45 Rockwell stainless steel and not too hard to cut but the face is a little wavy and then when Eric gets the pivots and he goes to polish them or hopefully leave them you know leave them alone as is but they've got this wave to them and it's driving him nuts which then drives us nuts and I'm like
00:43:04
Speaker
I'm doing all these different cutting recipes trying to get this finish as flat and as smooth as possible. So I'm like, is the sub spindle clamping too hard and like deforming apart slightly? And then, I don't know, there's lots of little things where constantly fine tuning like that. Is it both sides or just one side? Just the one side. Hmm. Well, if it's both sides, it would be, it should be, if it's clamping too hard, you should see it in both sides. But if it's one side, that would imply
00:43:32
Speaker
that it's a machine motion problem, which would be quite odd. I mean, that's a great machine. It's a simple straight. Can you measure it with an indicator? That's a good question. I haven't yet, but yeah, I think we could sweep it. We're actually making our first permanent fixture to measure one of our QC processes. It's a little bit tricky to measure
00:43:57
Speaker
freehand. So we're going to spend a little go no go type gauge for it. If it goes well, we'll make a video. And if it doesn't go well, we'll make a video. But I want to have something where you just pull it off. You pull a pin back, drop it in here. When you release a pin, indicators come down on the critical surfaces. They're all preset off of a master. So you have this instant kind of like
00:44:20
Speaker
just like boom it's I keep I just said that sorry but you have this instant visual that can't be subjected you because we could do some of these by just putting it on a surface plate and sweeping it but that requires setup and motion and hand motions and and could be I just want something that kind of comes in
00:44:41
Speaker
and tells you right away. So that measures the surface flatness or holes and stuff too. This is only this is for our mod vice, the fixed side because so when we get a four or five axis machine, the variable side tolerancing issues, sorry, we don't have issues, but
00:45:01
Speaker
Because it will be then mostly all done in one machining setup, it's unlikely to have the same sort of things we have to check for now. But the fixed side, there's two diamond pins underneath it and we will not likely change the way we make those. Basically what it means is that the
00:45:20
Speaker
geometry that creates the pins will have the machining that creates the pins will happen in a different setup than the than the machining that creates faces and datums. So there's a tolerance between making sure that those pins are parallel to or normal to or perpendicular to whatever you want to call it the faces.
00:45:38
Speaker
And it's never been a problem, but we had one customer that's like, Hey, this is like six thou out. And there's, they, we just replaced it and they're actually, they setting it back.
IMTS Preparation and New Technology Exploration
00:45:48
Speaker
And I'm pretty sure that's what we did because it's the only thing that would make sense. Um, yeah. So we'll have a fixture that drops it into a fake fixture. Play has indicators that measure the alignment of those things and we're done. Okay. I like that.
00:46:03
Speaker
I like the idea, it may be a mistake because everyone would like this, but I like the idea of 100% inspection. So we're thinking about a CMM, which I did my kind of, you know, what would you think about with your shop? And it's like, Hey, microscope, air conditioning, CMM, five axis. That's, that's what I want. That's how you get there.
00:46:32
Speaker
Exactly. Right. And if that's what you justify in your head and in your vision and plan and everything to what you need, then you work your way there. Yeah. Um, yeah. Yeah. Some of the parts coming off the knock. Um, not every tolerance needs to be a hundred percent, but some things I'm like every part coming off needs to be measured here, here and here. Everything else. Just check it once in a while. Yeah, exactly. Um, so we'll see.
00:47:00
Speaker
What's going on today? Business as usual. Are you willing to share any or some of your Trello IMTS list?
00:47:17
Speaker
Yeah. And we'll wrap up with that. Let's just bring it up right now. I'll pull mine up. My list, I'll just read it right now. Cog's Dill, Cog's Dill of burnishing tool. That's spelled poorly for the saga button shaft price. So have you seen those roller burnishing tools that looks like a round rolling thing for the outside OD burnishers?
00:47:43
Speaker
Yeah, an OD burnisher. Yeah, I have an ID burnisher for our knives, for the pivot. I use it. I love it. It's the greatest thing ever. 800 bucks, but it's, I don't regret it whatsoever. Anyway, they have OD burnishers, but I think they're a lot more expensive. And the clicky button on the saga pen has a, you know, when you turn something, there's a cusp height of all the marks. You don't turn them out making hand gestures at me right now.
00:48:13
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Anyway, the cusp heights of the surface finish and I'm going pretty slowly, I can actually feel it when I'm clicking the pen and I want that either polished or burnished. So I just want to talk to them about that. Citizen has a low frequency vibration.
00:48:28
Speaker
machining new technology. I don't know if you've heard about this, where they have the slow motion video where it actually interrupts the cut every rotation. Yeah, yeah. And like goes in and out. Yeah, it dwells. So it creates a chip for revolution. And apparently it's amazing. I just want to talk to them more about that.
00:48:49
Speaker
still having a bit of issue getting the macros out of the mori onto a USB stick and things like that. It should be easy, but I'm struggling with it. So see if I can talk to some people about that. And I want to know more about machine tracking software, like
00:49:04
Speaker
Spindle utilization, uptime, downtime, plan downtime, you know, things like that. I want to see what people have on the market just to educate myself more on that because the little bit of tracking I've done is like, whoa, this is really, really helpful and interesting. Gives you perspective.
00:49:20
Speaker
Awesome. That's what I got so far. CMM talking to Haas about five-axis probing to push them to make that better, hopefully. I want to talk to Jay Pearson. He bought a coolant filter system, and I want to learn more. But I want to think more long-term about good coolant management, because I think it's expensive, and it needs to be done well. And it's not fun to have bad coolant. We haven't really had a problem, per se.
00:49:47
Speaker
I'm aware of it. I want to look at the CMX and the DMU 50 from DMG. I want to look at CMMs again, but that's kind of early, but I don't know.
Episode Wrap-up and Upcoming Events
00:49:59
Speaker
I want to talk to the folks at Helical and Harvey to really try to push them to offer a web option to buy, even if it has to go through
00:50:09
Speaker
a distributor somehow gets credit or assigned to you, I don't care. I just want an actionable link to buy a tool. I think they know that, but I still want to pound on them for that. Then I actually need to just spend some time today thinking, I can't believe it's this week that we're leaving for it. That's all on my list for now though.
00:50:30
Speaker
Good. I'm super pumped for the show for your M hub event. Yeah. Awesome. Yes. Oh, real quick. Um, for anyone in the Ohio or Midwest area, there's a model it's called the model engine show. It's pretty like well-known within that community. Um, a guy named Paul Diebold, um, who is a Zainville machinist that has a well-known model engine company, the mid East Ohio modeling model X engineering expo, excuse me, is at the end of this month, Saturday, September 29th. And.
00:50:59
Speaker
I highly encourage it. Super cool with, um, you know, model engines, cars, tanks, toys, all that kind of stuff. Great for kids. And, um, a bunch of the fans of our channel are also fans of what Paul does. So we're going to do a, just a shop tours at our shop the night before. So Friday, the 28th, if you go to NYC,
00:51:21
Speaker
CNC.com and click contact us. We've got a link on there for upcoming events and you can see more information on it there. But if anyone wants to come see the shop, we're doing that Friday the 28th. Sweet. Cool. I'll see you Saturday, bud. I will see you at IMTS. Oh yeah. I'll see you at the airport, right? Yeah, yeah. I should. I think we land at the same time. And you're flying into O'Hare? O'Hare. O'Hare. OK. Perfect. I'll get your flight info from you, but then I'll just text you when we land. All right. See you, bud. Bye.
00:51:51
Speaker
All right, see you there. Have a great day. Bye.