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E-Myth Mastery & Expanding The Team?
186 Plays4 years ago
Have you ever had such a premium custom table experience that ruined every other table in the world for you? Well Saunders has! He is loving the MakerPipe table systems to make some custom solutions for his shop. You can find Makerpipe here.
Both Grimsmo and Saunders are falling more in love with the idea of full ERP integration in their respective shops. Grimsmo especially are looking to get very creative with "GERP".
Saunders needs a new air compressor while John reminisces about the old shops compressor that would constantly be yelling in the background.
Both shops are looking at expanding the team! Saunders is considering hiring a marketing strategist while Grimsmo had two working interviews with some great potential team members! Things are looking great but we are going to need a bigger boat!
Grimsmo has a new book he has been reading called "E-Myth Mastery: The Seven Essential Disciplines for Building a World-Class Company".
The book is a must read for any business owner big or small to teach some essential habits and disciplines.
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 195. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. John and I talk every week, every Friday, everything from upgrading air compressors to building custom tables and organization for our probably five to 10 person machine shop slash manufacturing company and all the happiness that we get from it, but stresses along the way.
Custom Shop Solutions with MakerPipe
00:00:25
Speaker
How's your table project coming along?
00:00:28
Speaker
Well, very well. Oh, I like that. As a quick rewind, we found a Uline table, threw it up on Instagram because we were frankly so excited about it. And then the folks from MakerPipe as well as some others made us aware of the many modular solutions. We went through that debate of, well, no, we're past the point of building. We should just be buying this stuff turnkey. And the Uline was a little overpriced, especially when you customize it, but not offensively. Well, borderline offensive.
00:00:57
Speaker
Right. But it worked. Long story short, we found out about the maker pipe stuff. Really cool story. They were Kickstarter. They bought a machine stuck in their garage and figured out how to machine stamping dyes. What? After their original stamping dye quote was over six figures and they're like, well, that doesn't work.
00:01:17
Speaker
and like literally made it happen. And so they offered to hook us up and I was like, look, how about this? We'll buy the stuff, but we'd love your expertise and frankly, the labor and the help right now. And they're just, you know, North Carolina, it's actually not a far drive. They drove up here, spent the last two days and they built us
00:01:39
Speaker
two different mod vice assembly tables. So one for steel, one for aluminum. They built us a hot off the machine, kind of like a drying storage rack for fixture plates. So kind of after they're off the machine, but before they've been QC'd or quote unquote value add process, just getting them off. And then the big one was a shipping table. And they finished it. And actually, they just left about a half an hour ago.
Shop Organization Strategies
00:02:05
Speaker
but really appreciate their help and work and they left us, we've got a bunch of conduit. So we bought the three quarter inch conduit from our local electric supply house, which has it in red. I got a little bit, a little bit bummed because I went down to look at it.
00:02:24
Speaker
in person before we bought 1500 feet of it or 12. Yeah. And they have a piece laying out and it was a little bit scuffed up. And I subconsciously was like, well, it's a little scuffed up because it's just the piece they've got laying out that, you know, whatever, it's just been laying around where they delivered it all. And it's all like that. So I'm a little bit bummed that it's not that like glossy, perfect, but, um,
00:02:46
Speaker
It's actually fine. I mean, that's half me rationalizing it and half me realizing, no, it really is fine. And it still looks way better than, what is conduit, galvanized or zinc plated or something? Yeah, the silver flaky stuff, galvanized. Kind of, yeah. I'm not sure it is. Anyway.
00:03:04
Speaker
Good news is awesome. It's more rigid than I thought, and it certainly is customizable, modular. The downside is it definitely takes work. Cutting all the pipe, putting it together, it's a lot of work. But boy, I mean, the shipping table, it's got a recessed lower panel for our gummy tape. It's got the boxes where we want it. It's got the tape dispenser where we got it. I bought the monitor, so the computer and the label makers right there, and that part of it is primo.
Implementing Barcode Scanners
00:03:33
Speaker
That's so cool. Yeah, the customization. Like if you wanted to, you could even put like rolling wheels on the top, you know, to like roll packages down. Oh, yeah. Like I'm just saying there's, there's customization options as opposed to just buying an off the shelf table where it's a table.
00:03:50
Speaker
We did the drying rack and then we did a fixture plate packaging table that has a bunch of the larger boxes stored vertically and then like two riser posts because when we put the heavy large plate down, we want to have access around the full plate. You know when you try to rack it up.
00:04:09
Speaker
Well, putting tape all the way around it, like just classic like, you know, think of a fixture plate as an oversized piece of chewing gum, you want to be able to put tape all the way around it. And so now it's held up and we can do that, like no stress, no muss. And then little things like
00:04:24
Speaker
We now have a Sam's Club, one of those wire racks. Everything's on wheels, including these wire racks that we buy off the shelf. And that's one of them is going to become our outbound parcel and the other's inbound. So each carrier will have a shelf. And now it's much easier for us to know what's going out, what's going in. It's more organized.
00:04:45
Speaker
With the departure of the Maker Beam guys this morning, we moved the bandsaw so we now have this open forklift area. Literally, I'm about to go start labeling, racking, and moving boxes over to one area, inventory to one. It's all coming together. Love it. I want to ask you about putting stuff on wheels. A lot of
00:05:06
Speaker
you know, shop experts talk about wheels, wheels are great, being able to move everything. Do you find more value from being able to easily rearrange the structure of things? Or do you actually move them out of the way like every day to sweep or whatever?
00:05:20
Speaker
Not the latter. I do think it's helpful to move them to clean monthly or weekly or monthly. I also think over the last five years in this building and 10 years of doing this, there is no constant. You're always growing or changing or downsizing. We've gotten rid of stuff. And I love that our shipping table, when we got rid of the old one this morning, I moved it over into place with my index finger.
00:05:48
Speaker
Like, I love that. So we can shift it one way or the other. And the assembly tables that they built right now are just the assembly tables. I do think we are going to look into adding that breadcrumbs storage on the backside. So when you need it, you just pull it out and then you have access to that otherwise kind of occluded backside. And then it makes so much sense because the extra peanuts that we need are not often some breadcrumbs location somewhere else. They're right there.
Raspberry Pi Challenges
00:06:17
Speaker
Yep. I guess as long as long-term you keep the breadcrumbs stocked as well. Well, so the breadcrumbs are generally a two-bin system that avoids the need for a Kanban card that gets shoved in a certain location. So like a T-nuts, we keep 100 in the breadcrumbs bin. And as soon as you run out of the main bin, that triggers the breadcrumbs bin. There's a barcode there on the front. You just scan it and they're ordered.
00:06:41
Speaker
And those are, you know, we know there's some things that have potentially longer lead times. So we're more sensitive to that. And so you just either hold more breadcrumbs or sometimes we over inventory a little. Yeah. So you're using the USB scanners quite a lot now.
00:06:58
Speaker
We are about to be, well, yes, we are absolutely using them. Alex got Lex working on location tagging. And so now all of our barcodes have two barcodes. Every item has two barcodes. So it has a Lex number. So like S would be a finished product. So S1182.
00:07:17
Speaker
And that's printed out along with the description on the barcode. Right below that is a separate barcode that is a relocate. So that's like, I think it's R and then S1182. And so we have location tags on our racking now. And so anytime you want to relocate something, you scan the relocation tag and the location tag on the racking and it assigns at that location. OK. Yeah, it lets you modularly kind of move things around.
00:07:48
Speaker
The test will be, how well does everybody here use it? I'm not at the point where we're kind of, quote, unquote, training. I mean, Julie and I are talking about it, but I've only printed two location tags. I got the magnets. We're doing a lot of windows so that we actually aren't sticking barcodes adhesively on stuff. We're just shoving them in a little window so we can kind of figure out. We're staking those windows onto pallets so that they're secured but protected from moisture. You know what I mean?
00:08:11
Speaker
That's really cool, I like that.
00:08:17
Speaker
Just like us, you're at the point where things are changing. Our barcode naming structure is changing. So I'm printing off 80 barcodes for all the end mills because I just renamed them all.
00:08:28
Speaker
So yeah, that's not a bad idea. Do you find your scanner is easy? I've got two different scanners, both the same brand, but ones, they're different versions of the same thing. One scans instantly, and the other has the laser beam, and you've got to aim it right, and you've got to fiddle with it for an extra half second. So the fix for that one is, do you guys have a trash can? Yeah.
00:08:54
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I didn't know that. The first one I got, I was like, oh, you just really got to aim it right to get the scan right. And then I got the second one. And I'm like, oh man, this is so much better. Because it's a QR and a barcode scanner. So it doesn't just have the red laser beam. It actually has like a fatter faded laser beam. So it seems to scan anything very easily, very quickly.
00:09:15
Speaker
I believe ours, don't quote me on this, is only barcode, but it scans what I would consider adequate. Having two barcodes is probably, someone's going to tell me it's probably a downside. In other words, you don't want to accidentally half relocate something when you meant to order it. I do need to think
Air Compressor Debate
00:09:35
Speaker
about, I think you've got the portable computers, hand scanners, or I don't know what the answer is there.
00:09:44
Speaker
I don't know, but we'll figure it out. Yeah. Yeah, just keep it light. And I've found here the process has to be easy and foolproof and error proof. Otherwise, even I don't want to use it. So if I pull up to a GURP gun and it's out of battery, I'm like, oh, man. Even just plugging in the little USB cable every night is sometimes too annoying. So I'm figuring out magnet things or docking stations or something.
00:10:13
Speaker
You can't have any hesitation, otherwise you're just not going to use it every time. It's fun to go through and figure out all these little variables to make it so easy that you don't want to not use it. You just answered my question and you didn't even realize it. We need a Lex activity log.
00:10:34
Speaker
Okay, so like, almost like an RSS feed of everything that's happening to Lex across the shop. So that way, if Ed goes to scan my advice material, and he's not 100% sure what he does, everyone needs to have Lex kind of open in their browser, you could
00:10:49
Speaker
you could just check and make sure you ordered it and didn't relocate it. So it would just say, this is what just happened. Or I could even look in through and say that pallet material was relocated from the rack over to the VF2. The VF2s will be locations or the machines will be locations as well because sometimes we want the material pallet jacked right over there to do work. And again, that activity log actually could solve a lot of problems or questions of what's happening.
00:11:15
Speaker
Yeah, my dad, when he created the ERP system for a big company in the States, like a $50 million company, he said now that they scan millions of barcodes a month. Wow. So they have an activity log that counts this. I mean, that's too many to look through on a daily basis, but you probably have maybe dozens of scans a day at best now. But to be able to look through that and see not only how it's being used, but
00:11:43
Speaker
by who you know where or whatever whatever information you can get out of it but that's a great idea we should do that too. Just more for implementation you know like.
00:11:56
Speaker
Yeah, you got to know what just happened, because it's kind of blind. If you just scan something, you hear the beep is positive. But because the beep will happen, I think even if the ERP system wasn't ready for the scan, because folks listening don't know, a barcode scanner is literally just a keyboard shortcut. It scans barcodes. Barcodes are actually a font. It's just not a human readable. Well, I guess if you're really a savant, you can learn how to read barcodes.
00:12:23
Speaker
It just literally, like if you scan a barcode and you have notepad open, it just types it into the notepad. So if your ERP system is ready for the scan, like ours is a browser base, so we got closed by accident, then you could be scanning stuff and not realizing it. I think we're going to need to do something where we've got portable scanners with computers on them or something. I know. It's amazing. Yeah. Did you see the new Raspberry Pi keyboard computer?
00:12:50
Speaker
I saw one guy post about it, but that's all I saw. It came out this week, I think in 70 bucks for the base unit, a hundred bucks for like the kit that includes some cables and mice, but it's a small keyboard
00:13:04
Speaker
And the keyboard is the computer. It's like the old trash 80 days of, and the keyboard has like HDMI and USB outs and wifi. So, and I think the kit comes more user-friendly preloaded, so you don't have to download whatever it is, Debbie internet. And I almost bought one that thought, no, hold on, slow down. Let's figure out what the solution is, but either using cube computers, what are you using, two pies?
00:13:30
Speaker
Yeah, I'm using Pis. I've got like 10 of them now. Okay. Yeah, you got that down then, huh? Yeah, but it took a while to learn. How do you flash the image, the software? How do you tweak for this touchscreen display? How do you auto load Chromium to be able to auto boot this website and even auto log in? I had a programmer help me figure that out.
00:13:54
Speaker
Oh, cool. There's a lot of tweaks to it. And I'm glad I've put the investment in, because now I can go nuts and just scale and make more. And they're working great. But
Managing Shop Noise
00:14:04
Speaker
even battery management on the Pi is a tricky solution. I had a phone portable charger, like a battery pack, like everybody uses to plug in their phones and recharge them. I had that, except every time you plug that in, it flickers and the Pi turns off.
00:14:23
Speaker
No good. No good, right? So that's a hesitation. If that happens to Angelo, he's like, well, I guess I'll just do it the old way for a second when changing a tool or something. Not acceptable. So there's this add-on pack to the pie called a pie juice that's got a little 1,800 milliamp hour battery that clicks right onto the PCB.
00:14:42
Speaker
with the GPIO pins and it's like an uninterruptible power supply, it's a battery, it safely shuts down the pie if it dies, things like that so you don't corrupt the SD card. They're not cheap, they're like $70 or $80 just for the battery itself, but it's the solution. It's like the right way to do it. How do those get charged?
00:15:06
Speaker
You can plug a USB right into it. Right now, I have that plugged into my 10,000 milliamp battery pack. But even that dies.
00:15:17
Speaker
Somebody created me. My battery packed your battery prac. Exactly. So can you not use, is it NFC? Or what's the wireless phone charging these days? I think it's called a QI charger. But yeah, I've got some of those. I just have to wire it together. But what I think the better solution is, I bought three or four of those as a kit. They don't plug and play. I have to solder USB cables onto it.
00:15:45
Speaker
The better solution I think is called MagSafe or MagCharger or something. It's like what the Apple laptops have with the magnetic clippy. You can actually buy those for USB-C and USB-B. So they just click on and then you have this magnetic quick connect. So I'm going to build that into a 3D printed base with some slop so that it always self centers. And then you just always put it down here.
00:16:09
Speaker
And you can pull it out to use it for a couple hours, whatever, but put it back. It'll charge automatically. That will be brainless and super awesome. And it'll be like the wireless charging, but slightly easier, I think, and just as effective.
00:16:21
Speaker
What pops into my mind is when I'm dropping packages off at FedEx, and they have their, I think, dispatch radios, and there's a cradle. And I assume every night when the drivers come back, they put their radio back in the cradle, and the next morning it's good to go. So it's like, OK, there's a company that's probably spent a lot of money building out what looks like a simple solution, but reality took some thinking of what's the process. And you can see that everyone's have to be back because they're all right there. And then every morning you can grab them, and they're charged up
00:16:50
Speaker
And this was funny about thinking you're smarter than industry and trying to reinvent the system and then running it to the same problems that everybody else has already figured out. And then sometimes I go down these rabbit holes and I'm like, I should have just, oh, there's the solution. I should have just paid $300 for that or whatever. But I learned a lot and it was fun. But yeah, charging, it's one of those
00:17:12
Speaker
You can't foresee every problem going into it. I'm like, oh, I'm going to have a huge battery pack, charge it every couple of days. It'll be fine. But you learn, right? You learn what works and you learn what doesn't and you stay flexible. You almost want a battery pack that won't last more than 18 hours. That way nobody thinks, oh, I could just go. I'll do it Wednesday.
00:17:30
Speaker
Exactly. Yep. So the docking station will solve that. And then you have your working area. And then just as long as when you leave, like walk away, put it back in the docking station, you'll always be fine. Can you make them blink or beep when their batteries low?
00:17:45
Speaker
I don't know. I think with the Pie Juice, it can actually monitor itself and there's apps and stuff that you can do because it has a lot of control. All the power flows through the Pie Juice PCB into the Raspberry, so it sees everything. I haven't dug into that yet because I plugged it in and it works, so I'm like, move on. Yeah, cool.
00:18:07
Speaker
But yeah, I wanted that on the screen. Like when your cell phone goes low on battery and it's like, Oh, you're at 15%. Um, I wanted that on the pie, but I'm sure it's possible. I just, is it worth it? You know? Well, but even like the medical hospital carts that I've seen with computers now, granted that's a much more critical environment. Um, they just have four LEDs and the nurses were very low stress when I was watching them unplug them or plug them in. And, um, it's kind of interesting that there's a conscious assume a conscious decision to have that those four lights be separate than the main.
00:18:37
Speaker
Medical chart thing because it's like battery life's like we need to know it But it don't put it in my face when I'm doing my grim smell work.
Considering Compressor Backup
00:18:44
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah Cool So we got to get a new compressor
00:18:53
Speaker
Yeah. What did you get last time in Atlas-Kofko? Yeah. And it's a GX5, which is five is the metric equivalent. So in our unit, it's 7.5 horsepower. And actually, another competitor, Kaser, is coming by today to look at the system.
00:19:12
Speaker
My understanding, it's been a while since I nerded out on this, is that screw compressors can and actually are designed to run continuous. And so if ours ran continuous, it would probably be fine for a while. But I don't feel like I love it just running all the time. And I don't know how on ours to adjust. Basically, I was thinking about the compressor, once it hit the low PSI, it turns on. And then it runs until it hits a high PSI, that collared range.
00:19:40
Speaker
somehow could adjust the low PSI, which I assume you can then then it may actually turn itself into a continuously on sort of compressor. But regardless, we're looking I mean, we bought that when we had one machine and we have many now. And so either a larger horsepower one or what I don't know that much about, but I'm kind of curious to learn more is if we do one that's larger, but also the one of the variable
00:20:09
Speaker
the variable power ones or variable speed that are able to basically control how much horsepower it's using. Going back to what you just said, the average person thinks they're not. Every shop I've talked to that's bigger is like, no, we have electricity costs. Those are real costs. Running machines or running compressors costs money. I feel like, oh, it's a pretty small amount of money compared to what we're doing.
Hiring New Staff
00:20:33
Speaker
I'm not going to stress about it well.
00:20:34
Speaker
Hold on now, if your compressor costs you make up a number $100 a month or $200 a month to run, that may be something where you say, no, let's make sure we get the right size compressor. Exactly. Yeah, I can actually weigh in decently on this. So yours is a 7.5 horsepower now?
00:20:51
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So that's what we had at the old shop. And now we have here in the front building a Kazer 7.5C. It worked great in the old shop. It powered the Maury and the NAC and everything we needed. But it ran a lot. And it was the kind, like yours, where it turns on and then it runs and then it turns off. It's a screw compressor. But when it's not being needed, it's off. Whereas here in the machine shop, we got a Kazer
00:21:21
Speaker
SX10, or something, SM10, I think it is, 10 horsepower. And it is the variable drive, so it idles. You can hear it ramp up, but then it idles for five minutes until there's a need again. Interesting. And then if there's a need, you can hear it gets a little bit louder when it's actually pumping versus when it's idling.
00:21:43
Speaker
And then it'll, and with, especially with the current on, because there's so many like air orifices that are always cleaning spindles and stuff, it just bleeds air. Same with the tornos.
00:21:55
Speaker
it just, when either of those two machines are on, the compressor is always idling. It never shuts off. But if, you know, say I come in the morning and the more he's either running or not running or whatever, and the other two machines are off, then the compressor like turns off and I'm like, it's so quiet in here. Yeah, that's awesome. So it's good, but it's
00:22:17
Speaker
It's not a loud noise, but it's an annoying noise, the idle. It's just always a white noise. And I was just telling Eric yesterday, I'm like, I wish this were outside somehow. But they told me, I'm sure there's ways you build an insulated, heated, cooled room or whatever, but
00:22:34
Speaker
With it being, you know, Canadian winters here, there's a lot to consider putting it outside. We could absolutely build a sound enclosure for it inside. I thought a lot about that, but don't know if that's ever going to happen, maybe.
00:22:49
Speaker
I wonder if you built a false wall, like a welding curtain wall with some acoustic tiles. I wonder if that soaks up part of the noise. That might help a lot. Even if you get really thick acoustic tiles, the really pokey ones.
00:23:05
Speaker
I don't know. It's one of those thoughts I have every now and then. And then I just kind of move on and don't think about anymore. I just accept it. However, the compressor works great. It feeds the, I mean, we have six machines now, but really only like four of them run at a time. And it works great. But especially with your shop, I don't know how much bigger you're planning on getting with more machines and stuff, but consider the size requirement, you know, like if you need bigger than 10 horsepower.
00:23:34
Speaker
Well, that's what I don't know. And I'm excited to learn more, but I've always... There's sales folks that'll be totally straightforward, and there's folks that'll tell you what you think you want to hear. If I go from a 10 to a 15, it's obviously going to cost more. But if it's truly variable, is it a similar-ish cost to run it at the 10 level? Yeah. Or is it like, no, no, it's more expensive. And regardless of how it's being run, it's going to cost more because it's a bigger unit.
00:24:02
Speaker
Yeah, to an extent. You wouldn't get a 30 horsepower unit just because it's on sale or something, because it would be inefficient to run. But our air compressor people, they came by and they assessed. I mean, the shop was empty at the time. But I'm like, look, we're moving in. We're growing. We're going to have this much equipment, this much draw is what we had before.
00:24:23
Speaker
and they suggested the 10 horsepower and it seems fine for now. And the other thing to consider is if, I mean, if you're going to keep your other one plugged in as a backup. I'm going to sell it. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I mean, there's that dreaded scenario of where our compressor has a complete foobar moment, like completely goes down. Even if a relay breaks on it, which has happened in our old compressor, like you're screwed. You can't do anything for a day or two until it's fixed.
00:24:52
Speaker
I know a lot of bigger shops will like having their backups, especially when every minute of machine time is money. Our service guys are really quick. They can usually be here same day.
00:25:08
Speaker
I have a plan. I'm not saying it's the best plan, but what we're talking about is insurance against downtime. But the reality is downtime is way more than just a compressor. It could be a power outage. It could be a tree through the roof. I mean, there's lots of things that can happen. And a second compressor has to be maintained. You need to use it every once in a while. It costs a lot of money. I think about that. Make up a number, 10%, 20%. If a compressor is five, six grand,
00:25:34
Speaker
In 20%, you need to be earning $100 a month of use off of that. Otherwise, you're better off with the option B, which in our plan,
00:25:44
Speaker
is to run to Home Depot and buy a old piston style, which will get us air for at least one machine, if not probably three or four machines. You have that up and running in probably two hours. And that's like the nuclear bat option. Otherwise, it's just a call and wait. And trying to run our, I don't mean to sound like we've got it all dialed in here, but trying to run our business where, hey, if we have a day or two down because of something, it's not the end of the world. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
00:26:10
Speaker
You know, that's not an if it's a when right if you're not forbid the shop gets flooded or again, whatever else happens.
00:26:17
Speaker
Yep. But it's risk mitigation, too. I could absolutely see the scenario where some shops are like, you know what? I'm just going to buy two identical air compressors. They're going to rotate every week. Left one, right one. And then they're both running. And then so they both get maintained on the same schedule. I'm sure that's a solution that people do. And then you have your backup, always. Right. And it's an expensive solution, but it's not a bad one.
00:26:42
Speaker
Metal, I don't remember if we included this in a Metal Quest tour video, but they had a really, I mean, I asked for typical Metal Quest, like having thought it out. They have two or three compressors and they're all kind of electronically hooked together from a controller standpoint. And they actually like,
00:26:59
Speaker
I don't remember the details. The most expensive one that's the most powerful runs throughout the day. And then the other ones come in to help as needed with additional air. But then they're scheduled to, the other one gets, the big one gets a break during the night and the other ones come on. And it's kind of like it makes sure that they never don't run over a two-day period and it gives them load balancing. Or maybe it's the other way around because you get cheaper.
00:27:21
Speaker
Commercial users can negotiate cheaper electricity at night and they run night shifts or overnight runs automated robots. So maybe I don't remember how it was inverted, but I was like, that's cool. So I could see, I don't think this is what Kaiser is going to say, but you know, keep this one and just buy another identical size one. And you've got two
00:27:38
Speaker
That's not the, actually it's not a terrible solution because I'm hoping to sell mine and pay. I have a number of mine that I'm hoping gets me the difference to a new one, but maybe you just, do you remember offhand, obviously going from a seven and a half to attend was more expensive, but do you remember how much more expensive the 10 variable was? No. Okay.
00:28:01
Speaker
I think it was 13,000 or 15,000 Canadian for the 10 horsepower. It was new off the shelf. I think I got an end of year discount or something, but got it.
00:28:15
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And we got the seven and a half for like, it was, it was used, it was used at the Hamilton airport to fill tires for like two years. Hilarious. And I got it for like half price, like $4,000 or something back in 2015. And I was like coming out of the garage, you know, from the piston compressor to this, and that was a lot of money at the time. But, you know, looking back, I'm like, that was a great deal because that thing ran nonstop for five years. And then now it's still running in Eric's shop.
00:28:41
Speaker
Oh, so you kept got it. That's awesome. Okay, great. Yeah, our copco has been solid. I have no complaints. And I personally like the pitch or tone of ours better than the cases. The cases are just that they've got like that screechy wine tone to them.
00:28:58
Speaker
Yeah, the 7.5 that I have and a lot of buddies have it. I know Keybar has one. Tyson Lamb has the same one. A lot of guys have that same compressor. I hear it in their Instagram videos and it's like when it turns on, it's like, but the SM-10 sounds different. It's just like a constant whoosh. I don't know. It's got a different noise to it. Your machine shop is a rectangular building? Yeah.
00:29:24
Speaker
I generally know the Kern is up near the office mezzanine, is that right? Where's the compressor? In the back, back corner. Okay, and you still hear it? Oh yeah, it's the loudest thing in the shop. I'd rather hear metal cutting. You're darn right, you would. Yeah, exactly.
00:29:44
Speaker
The shop is white noisy. Yours is probably two, but you try to have a conversation 12 feet away from each other and you can't. It's like, what? If there's ways to eliminate that, either in this shop or in the next dream shop or something, I want to consider that because- The next dream shop.
Marketing Strategy Insights
00:30:02
Speaker
No, you're good, dude. You have no idea.
00:30:04
Speaker
I hope I don't. No, look, I want to be smart about this too. So we're going to move ours to the back. Right now, it's right next to the door that we use to go in and out, which fine, but we're ready to move it. But also, we're going to do a ducting vent, which we can close in the winter. So the heat, because presses are pretty good at putting out some heat, like the heat will stay in the shop in the winter, but then in the summer, we can just pull a louver and it'll push that heat outside.
00:30:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's still sucking in inside air, I guess. Yeah, air intake's still inside. That's not going to change. Yeah. Yep. Does your Kaser have a tank on it or is it tankless? It does have a tank on it. Got it. I haven't really looked into ... I mean, they certainly tried to sell me an extra tank. I chose not to at the time, but that would change the run times. I'm sure it would idle. It would pass the five-minute window of idling if there was a big tank.
00:31:00
Speaker
Okay. Then it would run for 20 minutes and fill up the tank and then turn off for 20 minutes or something. That might be worth considering for sure. Got it. Because right now, when more than one machine are on, it's just always on, always idling, always pulling. It never meets that five-minute window. Wait. I'm sorry. Idols and then ramps up for knee, but does it ever stop idling and just stop turning? If so you've got to your pressure range, call it 90 to 125 or whatever.
00:31:29
Speaker
If it's within that range and five minutes has passed, it will stop idling until it hits 90. Got it. Okay. Yeah. And you really got to tweak that 90 because the Maury yells at you if it's like 85.
00:31:43
Speaker
Well, that's what's happened for us is we've been using a lot more air blast on the machines to blow any residual coordinate chips off, which we're going to try chip fans again. It's like my love-hate relationship with those things. And then we use a Dyna braid palm sander to scotch brace some of our fixture plates.
00:32:01
Speaker
And that's air. So I bought a Makita electric one because like it or not, air is actually kind of expensive. So switching like that orbital standard electric is of no consequence to the end result. And that'll be a less of an air hog. Cool. Cool.
00:32:20
Speaker
What's going on in your world? So on Friday and yesterday we had two different working interviews with people. So all the applicants we went through and looked at hiring. Yeah, so Friday we had a machinist come in and had an amazing day. Guy really knows his stuff. We had a lot of fun together. Clear no-brainer. Let's see how this happened. And then yesterday we had
00:32:49
Speaker
finishing guy come in for Eric's front shop. So he worked with Eric all day and he hung out with all of us and absolute no brainer like happening. Another question is timing. It can't happen tomorrow, but I don't want it to be two months from now either. So we're trying to figure out the window.
00:33:05
Speaker
Basically, I told both of them I have to sell a rask first before I can commit to the next stage, but I'm that close. It's good. They both would have to move here. It's a consideration as well.
00:33:19
Speaker
Oh, wow. So they traveled in for the interview. Yeah, one's two hours away, and one's seven hours away. Holy cow. So yeah, it's a commitment for everybody. So it was nice having them here and being like, I want to make sure this is right for us, and I want to make sure this is right for you. Yeah. You know? Absolutely. This is a big change, so. That's great. But yeah, so that's good progress.
00:33:38
Speaker
Yeah, congrats. When you first said that, I was thinking two people for the same position. But you had one person come for, say, the machinist job, but you had spoken to or gotten resumes from more than that. Yeah. Okay. So what was the process? Did you have more Zoom interviews? Yeah, we Zoom interviewed a bunch of people, and then that was super helpful because we could nail down
00:34:06
Speaker
you can get a sense of who they are and what they know and what they're capable of both providing. Um, and then from there we chose these two guys and we're like, okay, let's take it to the next step. Let's do a working interview. You know, I'm pretty certain, but let's, let's all, let's all be on the exact same page here. It's worth the investment for everybody. And, uh, yeah, they're both over the moon for the opportunity. And so are we. So that's great. Yeah. We're, um,
00:34:32
Speaker
I was looking through, are you ready for this? Our 2021 plan, I didn't even think about it this way, but ends up that our 2020 plan was overhauling the shop. And you know what, darn it, we've got 60 days left and we're going to finish it. ERP system, the racking, the inventory, the fixtures, the work holding, the machines we've got here, all that stuff is just click, click, click. Next year, let's do a better job on the entrepreneurial selling side and marketing side.
00:34:59
Speaker
We've got all these nuggets from the social media stuff to abandoned carts or test drive users on Provencut where they do a free trial but they don't convert. The general broad answer is I'm not doing anything for any of those people. I'm not following up with them. I'm not engaging them. I'm not tracking why and where they came from.
00:35:20
Speaker
or rather there's so much more that we could do. And this is marketing 101 slash 201 for somebody that lives and breathes this. So what I, I think I'm ready to kind of go out and hire this position is what I'm calling a marketing strategist, somebody that can be.
00:35:36
Speaker
be here in our shop, like kind of live and become part of the team and look at, hey, if we're going to do a video on something, well, let's remember how to cross-promote an old video we did in a good way, or we've got some resources on our website, or cross-selling, upselling, how are we looking at metrics?
00:35:54
Speaker
And again, it goes back to every business I look up to. And I think entrepreneur that's at the next level, that's something that they do. And I'm absolutely going to admit, I'm not going to do it. I'm fascinated. And I would love to soak up some of
Reflecting on Business Processes
00:36:08
Speaker
it. But like a friend was like, oh, I'll send you this resource on it. I'm like, no, don't send it to me because it's just going to sit in my fake to-do list. And so we want to hire somebody
00:36:20
Speaker
who wants to live and breathe that balance of manufacturing marketing strategy stuff to just run with it. You know, our products don't, I say this, I don't think they sell themselves like yours do. Like people are infatuated with sagas and the knives. I need to show somebody what fixture plates can do for them, what the mod files can do for them. And that's a different answer for a Shapeoko user than for a VF2 user.
00:36:46
Speaker
Absolutely. And you see that even in our industry, the companies that are really good at educating their customer base on the products. Pearson does a great job of this. Let's talk about fixture plates and fixturing techniques and things like that. And you do too, but I know there's always more to be done, especially from a... You do it for the industry, but you could do it deeper for your product base. Yeah, right. Right.
00:37:13
Speaker
So that's what I'm thinking about. And I've never done like an Indeed, like, do you guys have Indeed in Canada? Yeah, we do, yeah. OK. Didn't know if that was a country-specific service. But yeah, I threw up an ad on, I think, Craigslist for now, just as like, just do something, John. Soft sell, like try. Yeah, and started talking to people. But it's not the machining world where I can start trying to call friends or people I know of or word of mouth. So I got to think about, again, that classic example of how do you find
00:37:43
Speaker
the person in the right fit, I don't know. But what I do know is you definitely aren't going to find them if you don't start putting yourself out there. So whether it's paying a few bucks for an Indeed ad or a Craigslist ad, or obviously, I don't mean to be disingenuous. But obviously, I mention it here because I want to see if there's somebody in our audience who's thinking, hey, holy cow, this is what I do. This is what I want to do. And I've got that hustle. So we'll see. I'm still amazed that people like that pop up.
00:38:09
Speaker
I shouldn't be surprised, but it's like people that happen to be listening to you and you're like, that's my thing. That's how... Absolutely. Some of the guys that we interviewed were like that and guys I've never talked to, never heard from before, but they've been following us for so long and they're like, that's right up my alley. That's exactly what I've been working towards for the past six years.
00:38:32
Speaker
Yeah. Right. And that's, that's what it's about. Come, come, come be part of our team. You've got a lot of runway and opportunity. Like it's, it's, it's cool. Um, yeah. Well, good for you, man. That's awesome on the people. Yep. Yeah. So then the next few months is going to be amazingly, um, hectic is not the right word, just active. We got a lot to do. Yeah. And I'm really looking forward to it. How are rasks going?
00:39:02
Speaker
Excellent. Due to some fusion cam slash derive issues over the past few months, all the operations are there, but the associations have totally disappeared. So I'm having to reprogram the wrong word, but certainly reselect every feature and every tool orientation for every op that I made four months ago. So I'm almost done with that. I'm sorry.
00:39:30
Speaker
So that's almost done. And then it's like the package is almost coming together. I'm just about to the point now of being able to run an entire knife, and it just works. I'm like days away from it. Awesome. Yeah, so that's exciting. The blades are turning out epic. Yeah, the finish coming off is like rainbow shiny.
00:39:51
Speaker
It's amazing. Oh, the grinding. Yeah, the grinding. It's working so well. And wheel wear is consistent. I thought they would taper or something as it wears, but it's not. It's getting smaller because I've got the probe coming in and automatically offsetting tool wear. But it's perfect. Heidenhein tells me where the bevel is after every
00:40:14
Speaker
op, and I can tell how far it is from where it's supposed to be. And I look at it and I'm like, Oh, the last one was two tenths off from where it should have been. Oh, that one's zero. That bevel is exactly where it's supposed to be. That's awesome. So that's super cool. So yeah, Eric assembled a knife and sharpened it on Friday, and then he didn't give it back to me till Monday. So he carried it all weekend. The first rask? Yeah, that's cool. That's really cool. Yeah, so things things are good.
00:40:43
Speaker
We have a, I don't know if I've mentioned it formally here or not, but we have a new machinist here and he's been doing great. I forgot him kind of running with the lathe now and we ran, we switched lathe jobs and that was one of my
00:40:59
Speaker
impetus is to finish off what I had started. That's another big theme of mine as a self-improvement process is don't just think stuff in your head like let's do it. One of the things I had an NC comment to do was finish off the M130s so that there's the photo support on this setup job.
00:41:17
Speaker
I was inclined to just say, okay, well that's a good thing. I was totally right to add that comment and I should do that in the future. No, stop. Spend the two hours it takes. Let's be honest, it's going to take a while. You'd think it'd be five minutes, but it takes longer.
00:41:32
Speaker
Snap the picture, open it up in, it doesn't even matter, PowerPoint or free editor, labeled the two things that really matter, uploaded it to the Haas control, found the file name and file folder structure, and then went back to Fusion, wrote the code, and we use, it's actually pretty cool. M109 is a user prompt.
00:41:51
Speaker
I'm assuming other controls have this, but I can ask the operator a question. So what I do is I do an M130, which pulls a picture up that shows the correct orientation and the correct ejector pin, which is critical for this part. And then it says, M109 is the, are the ejector pin and sub-spindle call it in the correct location or match everyone it says. And you've got this picture right here, and then you've got the command. And then if you hit no, it just M30s it, and it doesn't do anything. And if you hit yes, it just runs the program.
00:42:22
Speaker
That's fantastic. Yeah, you could do video as well, but what photo was sufficient and it's great. I mean, he's running those parts. So, you know, gosh, for you, John, like that whole process of set up sheets or handing off stuff, you gotta.
00:42:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be things like that are going to be super helpful once machinists comes in and starts working because he's, he's capable and he's hungry and he's, uh, he's going to pick everything up, everything. Yep. So I'm super pumped for that. Awesome. So here's one for you. Um, a few months ago, six, 12 months ago or whatever, I was at value village with the family looking through the book section and I saw where were you value village, never heard of a salvation army. Oh,
Conclusion and Future Plans
00:43:09
Speaker
You know, thrift store, basically. Sorry, I forgot that they don't have those down there. But yeah, thrift store, looking through the book section, used books, they're like a dollar each or whatever. I saw the e-myth, but it's e-myth mastery. So it's the subsequent 10 year later updated version. This thing's a chonker. It's like two inches thick. It's a big one. So I bought it for cheap and sat on it for a while and I started reading it a few nights ago. And it's really good.
00:43:38
Speaker
It's so good. And I was reading the section, the section I wanted to tell you that I read last night was
00:43:44
Speaker
He's going through, in the first book, he talks with Sarah from All About Pies. Yes. And so he meets up with her 10 years later. And she tells him where she's at and stuff and how she's still struggling with all this stuff. And he reluctantly agrees to consult with her again. And they get deep into it. And he's like, well, I'm not going to do it normal this time. We're both going to learn and we're both going to grow something different. So he's like, one of the tasks I want you to do is
00:44:12
Speaker
as he starts writing it out, I'm reading it and I'm like, No, you're not going to say that. Don't say that. No, you're all you do, jerk, you're gonna say it. And he goes, I want you to write down every single task that you do throughout the day. And I want you to apply an E, an M or a T value to those tasks for entrepreneur, manager or technician, so that you can clearly see what the heck you're doing all day every day. And that most of the work you're doing is technician work.
00:44:38
Speaker
You know what I mean? And I was looking through my mental to-do list. And I'm like, yeah, most of the things I did today were probably technician work. And I could outgrow from those positions over time. And what would life look like if I were doing more entrepreneur work throughout the day, more high-level stuff, more systems, process planning, vision for the future, helping make everybody else's lives easier, basically, here at the company. And yeah, that was a cool.
00:45:25
Speaker
you know, the kind of the theory or thesis of goals don't matter. It's about the steps you take to get there. Like it's, you know, that thinking I want to add an M 130 into the lathe. Well, good job, John, pat yourself in the back. You thought of an idea that took no effort and we're no better off for it because you haven't implemented it, go back to a minute or create a pro like train grant or the people to implement it. That way they can do this stuff like the feet of man. If it like it's all, it's super easy to talk about. It's, it's hard to do.
00:45:32
Speaker
cool way to think about it.
00:45:53
Speaker
Yeah, but I mean, the ideas are great, but implementing them whether you implement it or you you delegate your team to have them implemented. Because I mean, everybody's good at coming up with ideas, but it's our job to drive those forward and make them happen and check in and make sure that people are doing it great. So yeah, yeah. Yeah. What's going on today?
00:46:16
Speaker
Um, Wednesdays are short. Cause I gotta like take the kids to school and pick them up early. But, uh, on the current today, sweet. Yeah. Cool. Finish, finish reprogramming the handles, make set of handles, test fit. Um, and like get that much closer to final awesomeness. Okay. Awesome. Well, good luck. Yeah. I'm excited to hear about it next week. Yeah. Sounds good. Cool. Take care. I'll see you. Bye.