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Business of Machining - Episode 120
237 Plays7 years ago
BE AWESOME: BE BETA! For over a year and a half, Saunders and his team have been pouring themselves into a new business venture! John considers this "the biggest thing he's ever done" and rightfully so. The goal: redefining the way the machining world consumes and learns speeds & feeds.
Click HERE to be notified when the beta launches!
Pearly Whites Using the tried, true, cheap, and beloved superglue workholding technique, Grimsmo was finally able to machine those mother-of-pearl inlays for knife #1000! After that, it's off to BladeShow with the other knives, pens, and coins....wait, did you say coins!? This year, Grimsmo's chipping in a little extra awesome token of appreciation.
Click Image Below to Watch NORSEMAN 1000! - Shop Life 013
Tornos - Yeah, I got time for that. Grimsmo's comfortable with the pace of the Tornos setup. With fire surpression installed, next on the list is the 60,000 RPM electric spindle, 2000 psi chip blaster, routing the lines for coolant, and tooling. You know what they say; slow is smooth, smooth is fast!
Activating Tool Coatings with Temperature When a manufacturer gives S&F recommendations, the variance can be pretty wide. Saunders wants to figure out how to improve tool life on an OSG A tap. Is running it at 35-40 SFM fast enough to make use of the tool coating?
Hard Wired Hustler If your ultimate goal isn't sipping a fruity drink on Cabo beach, that's okay! Many entrepreneurs seek to find a path to freedom in terms of time and money but to others, that's pure boredom.
Hustle Good, Hustle Bad? What's your definition of hustle and grind? This phrase carries conflicting ideas. On one hand, society idealizes those who push themselves to the brink and on the other, it means if you're NOT frantic and exhausted, you're inadequate and lazy. These concepts cause an internal struggle between expectations and reality so, it's not about whether or not you should hustle...it's about HUSTLING THE RIGHT WAY.
Speaking of the right way to hustle, what would Jay Pierson Say? When you're trying to find a solution or advice, it's helpful to think about how those you admire most would respond.
HOW TO BEAT THE COMPETITION
If you want to get ahead of your competition, click HERE to watch Jay Pierson's IG video where he stresses the importance of doing things others won't do AND how freeing up time for himself and his employees has allowed his business to improve!
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Transcript
Introduction and Humor
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machining episode 120. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. How's it going? It's going great today.
00:00:10
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Excited. A little bit of a late start, but the things are good. Yeah. I just slept in a little bit. I woke up to Leif hugging me. Oh, that's hilarious. He's like an early riser. So he's often the first one up, but yeah, no, it was good. It's late already. You do use an alarm, right?
00:00:32
Speaker
Yeah, but I had a 530 alarm today and I looked at it and I turned it off and then six o'clock I get this hug and I'm like, oh, that's nice. Thank you. That's hardly a late, well, yeah, I guess you got to adjust expectations. Yeah, no, I just did a lot of stuff this morning. So I'm like,
00:00:48
Speaker
we're a little bit late getting started on the podcast, but yeah, things are good. Happy happy. Isn't that the best thing though? Like when you have that energy and, and, and focus, and then you look at the clock and it's like eight 17 and you're like, Oh my gosh, I, like I've done, I've done a lot today in a good way. Yup. I do love that.
00:01:08
Speaker
It's a theme I keep coming
Work Ethic: Hustle vs. Smart Work
00:01:10
Speaker
back to. I think I brought it up. I've been thinking about it so much that it's hard for me to now think about where I have and haven't talked about it, but it has to do with my own work ethic, sustainability as a business owner and technician to use the eMyth, and then the culture here, working with the team here, and then also the aspirational stuff. Most of the people that I look up to,
00:01:35
Speaker
And the Venn diagram of people I look up to and have succeeded in something in life, which is almost 100% overlap Venn diagram. But most of those people hustle. Most of them work hard. I guess some of them have transitioned to sort of enjoying the fruits of their labor at an older age or whatnot. But when I think about that balance of hustle versus
00:02:01
Speaker
what's the quote unquote work smart, not hard, Tim Ferriss, you shouldn't be doing too much sustainably. I still come back to the hustle. I really do. Well, it depends. I think everybody's wired differently. I think you and I are wired for hustle. A lot of our friends are too. We'd almost rather be working most of the time. There's family time, of course.
00:02:30
Speaker
I don't need to be on a beach in Cabo, you know, like doing nothing for four weeks. I would be bored out of my mind. But I think there's just an activity in us that needs to go, go, go, which is fun. And I see that in a lot of other entrepreneurs too.
Success Factors: Charisma and Systems
00:02:50
Speaker
But I try to, you know, you get better by really taking yourself outside of your comfort zone or sort of playing debate with yourself. So it's like, what if we're wrong? And of course, we're not wrong.
00:03:04
Speaker
Argument like that. But what do other people so so one of the thing that does bother me is I have had some friends or peers that have been quite successful and Seemingly never worked hard and it's kind of okay. Well, what's the magic there? You know those people? The few that come to mind they had and this is just being blatantly honest. They have a lot more charisma than I do like they're the They're just different and I no problem being who I am but they're they're different like that and I think to some extent they have
00:03:32
Speaker
have probably had a different risk profile, meaning they've risked more or taken bigger chances. But then I think the biggest thing that I do wish I embraced more is by having their sort of disposition of let it figure itself out. I'm not the one who's going to hustle and fill that orders or stay late or get up early to start the machine. I think they do a better job. In fact, I'm sure they do a better job of letting systems come into place or form.
00:03:59
Speaker
letting the team handle the workload. I mean, you hire people to work and those types of people are really good about implementing those systems maybe. Whereas you and I would probably be a lot quicker to just go do it. Right. Yeah, that's a big difference. So I got to think more about that. Yeah, that's good. I'm going to think about that too.
00:04:20
Speaker
It came up too because I was talking to Jay Pearson about this stuff briefly because I had a specific question. I thought, I'd like to know, I have that list of people where I tried to think about what they would say because you can't always impose on somebody to have these impromptu heart to hearts.
00:04:39
Speaker
It does help because it's like, what would this Joe say? What would Jason say? What would Pete say? Paul say? You can usually help push yourself to think about it from their perspective to some extent. I thought about what would Jason say? I was actually totally wrong.
00:04:55
Speaker
And it's interesting because I would say at the risk of speaking on Jay's behalf that he at the present time has a very much balanced work-life balance, has a very good culture that emphasizes productivity
Work-Life Balance: Jay Pearson vs. Saunders
00:05:10
Speaker
and not stress, not hustle in the bad sense, hustle in the smart sense while we're here. But I don't think it's the same grind that even I subject myself to. And I will say I'm not stressed out as a general rule anymore, but I still grind.
00:05:24
Speaker
What's interesting is when I was talking to Jay, that's kind of the present, but he did very much... Actually, no, it was his Instagram post that made me chuckle. He had a live story and he was like, yep, holiday weekend, normally in my business park, you know who we see in the business park? The business owners. Yeah, I saw that one too. Right, and I was kind of like, and that's present. So I was like, okay, it's interesting because there is still that balance of the two.
00:05:54
Speaker
Anyway, I got up early to get in to get the machine running this morning because I wanted it to be making chips while we were on our podcast. Normally, I don't worry about getting started so afterwards. That feels good, eh? It does feel good. Yeah. What are you making? I feel guilty saying this. We do job shop work for one customer still. I'll accept that if it's one.
00:06:18
Speaker
Yeah, and they're a good customer and they're fun parts and they're going, it's good. It completely reinvigorates or completely re-establishes my passion for being on this five axis
Machining Complex Parts with Efficiency and Creativity
00:06:35
Speaker
now.
00:06:36
Speaker
our video. We have two videos. I wanted to kind of release them together. I think we'll get them out today. Worst case tomorrow, just putting some finishing touches on them. But, um, John, it's like you, you have this thing and you want to make it. And now I don't need to think about, Oh, do I want that size vice like six inch vice? Am I going to use soft jaws? What's the parallel height of this? And how many can I, do I need to really do? I need to do seven setups for this gosh. So in like, do I make all those in one set of soft jaws or a couple of sets or do I spare them out? And then how am I going to
00:07:06
Speaker
It's just, it is, I keep saying it because it's just amazing. I look at these parts now and I think, oh, this is great. So much fun. It lets me do what I think I'm good at, which is like the puzzle game of taking this part and then programming it from all these different angles and positions and tools and stages. And I think that's probably, you know, I've seen you run Fusion. I've seen you program parts in CAM. You're the same way. You have that, like, it's cool.
00:07:34
Speaker
Well, I do so little weird stuff like one off things where we're pretty much repeat production trying to streamline making the Norseman. So it's not that I'm, I very rarely have to do these multiple setups. And I don't, I can't remember the last time I've touched a soft job, but when I'm making new fixtures and I have to make new clamps for those fixtures, clamps often take at least two setups.
00:08:00
Speaker
But yeah, I can imagine a part that had like six or seven setups, but, but doing it often, you know, that would be like in your scenario, making all those Johnny five parts or whatever, where it's just like crazy parts from every dimension, every, every angle, right? I can, I can totally see that.
00:08:17
Speaker
It's like when you have the right tool cart set up next to your machine, I've got the right hex wrenches, you know, the good weird ones, or I've got the right, the dust pan with the foxtail brush to sweep up. And I've got my torque wrenches right there. You're going to make better decisions because that tool is right there to pick up and do it like you're going to make better parts for one less to make. Yeah, I love it. I also coincidentally just saw Jay Pearson's. Did you see his you are robot video?
00:08:46
Speaker
No, but I was going to watch it. I definitely want to watch it. So he got another you are robot. So again, right? Because he had one like, like five years ago, and he was like, not the right choice. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm exaggerating here a little bit. So I was like, good riddance, not the right thing. Don't like these robots. No, no, no. Here's all these like lean terms. And then, and then I'm like, wait, you bought you bought a you are robot. That's what I'm thinking.
00:09:09
Speaker
Yeah, he was actually, hold on, I took some notes. This actually coincidentally came up on the same call when we were talking about that entrepreneurial work-life culture balance. He was saying there's a lot more commercially available end effectors and better support. Then he's like the new software, the new version of the UR10E. He's like it really just solved a
00:09:34
Speaker
a list of four or five things, which all of a sudden made me realize, oh my God, that's what you have to do. It's one thing to be disappointed in something or not like it, but do yourself a favor of writing down the failure points, stuffing them in a file somewhere so that if you want to revisit it later, you can quickly and efficiently say, hey, these are the three or four things it wouldn't do for me. Does it do those things now?
00:09:57
Speaker
Yep. Yep. And being able to reevaluate and not just like hard line in the sand, like those are not for us. Um, it's, it's really, um, inspiring to see him come back to it, you know, a few years late. Or it's like, when you hear about somebody who you respect, say like, Oh, XYZ five access machine is a deal breaker because the spindle at B 90 won't meet C zero. Well, that doesn't mean a lot right now, but those are the kinds of notes there. It's like really helpful to think about because you're like, Hey, I get that now that makes sense.
00:10:27
Speaker
Yeah, or for that matter, you feed that back to the factory and you're like, I'm not buying it because of this. And then three years later, the new model has that and you're like, okay, let's talk, you know? Right, right. Yeah.
Swiss Lathe Installation: Patience and Planning
00:10:40
Speaker
So it's been fun. Yeah. What do you been up to?
00:10:46
Speaker
Yeah, because I laid my head down in bed last night and I was literally thinking, do I watch Jay's video right now or do I just go to sleep? And I just went to sleep, but I will catch it today for sure. Looking forward to that.
00:11:01
Speaker
It's interesting because progress on the Tornos Swiss Lathe install is going slow, but I'm like completely at peace with it because I'm so busy and I'm doing so many things that I'm not like
00:11:17
Speaker
I'm not really chomping at the bit to get it going. I want it to happen, obviously, but I'll go through an entire day and be like, yeah, that's okay. I know what it'll be done soon. Yeah, exactly. I'm running a marathon. I'm not running a sprint here. I know that even for weeks now, I've been telling myself it's probably going to be about a month before I'm actually making a part, and I'm okay with that. From here forward, it's probably going to be two weeks.
00:11:46
Speaker
I'm surprisingly okay with that. You get your first few machines and you're like, I want to make chips today. This is because the techs are still here or is it because you're waiting on tools?
00:11:58
Speaker
Both. The tech still need to come back and install all of the accessories, install the 60,000 RPM electric live spindle. Very excited for that. It's one of the, what do you call them on Swiss, like just tool positions? They have these kind of left, up and down, left and right rows of toolers, right? Yep. Yep, pretty much. Is it the size of a baseball? It's got to be big.
00:12:25
Speaker
It's the size of a Dremel. That's it? Maybe even smaller. It's air powered, you said? I think it's electric. There are air powered ones. Got it. But yeah, I think it's 22 millimeter cylinder, and then it's got wiring coming out the back. Maybe an airline for something? I'm not sure. Cooling? I haven't actually looked in the box yet.
00:12:47
Speaker
But yeah, that's going to be exciting. Apparently, it's really complicated to install. So a tech from Tornos is coming and a tech from Elliott is coming. I thought they were going to be here yesterday, but I think I was mistaken because nobody showed up. And then I looked at my calendar and I'm like, oh yeah, there's nothing. Where did I get Tuesday from? I don't know.
00:13:08
Speaker
Anyway, it doesn't matter. But yeah, what else, what else? And then the Chip Blaster 2000 PSI of coolant oil, that still has to be fully installed. And routing, routing the coolant lines is kind of bending my mind a little bit right now. Because I want like, you know, like a laid tool that has through coolant directly aimed at the tip. I want everything like that.
00:13:36
Speaker
So I'm going through the catalog and I'm trying to order which tooling and then I'm like, okay, how do I get, how do I physically plumb coolant lines cleanly and out of the way so they don't pinch, they don't move, they don't get in trouble to each tool position. So are you talking about coolant lines that would feed into the back of the tool block? Or are you talking about from the, from the tip of the block to the tip of the tool, like the kind of what you see sticking out of a turret that's aimed at the VNMG?
00:14:04
Speaker
I mean, directly in the back of the stick itself, through the tool, through the stick, and then up a little channel, and then aim directly at the insert. But some of the soft bodies, whatever you call the mild steel holders, they have the coolant stuff there, so you just have to get the line to the back of it. Exactly. And it's the line that's kind of confused me a little bit, because for one,
00:14:30
Speaker
due to our small shop, we have to mount the chip blaster five, 10 feet away. And even though it comes with really long lines, they still don't reach. Each one is a home run back to the chip blaster too? Yeah. Oh no. Okay. Wow. There are up to eight ports on the chip blaster, eight individually solenoid controlled outlets. Yep.
00:14:51
Speaker
So each tool can get its own 2000 PSI at a time. And yes, it's not hard. It's just a plumbing and routing issue. Is it like doing brake lines on a car? Kind of. Yeah, like same fittings pretty much. You have to bend copper tubing or something.
00:15:16
Speaker
A lot of people do, but I'm going to try to go with braided stainless steel lines in the machine. Oh, interesting. But maybe I should do Coq. That's not a bad idea, actually. Can it stand 2,000 PSI? Yeah, yeah, 3,000. That's what they're rated for. And does your chip blaster have variable output or is it just 2K?
00:15:37
Speaker
I'm pretty sure it does. You can go from like 1K to 2K, I think. That's a cool feature I've heard about that we certainly don't have is variable through spindle coolant. Because that would be... I don't need 300 or 1,000 PSI when I'm just using a big face mill. I just want to push some coolant through it. Yeah, just flush. Have you talked to any other Swiss owners about oil chillers?
00:16:04
Speaker
Uh, no, but what's his name? I think Dennis brought it up the other day and I was like, Oh, I never really thought about that. Surprisingly. I suspect that's going to be a huge, big issue. Yeah. So we will monitor, um, maybe I'll monitor cool and temp, you know? Yeah. And then part size as well. Obviously. You're right. Right. But we, I mean, we've seen this like, like, like thermal has been such a huge issue on my Nakamura.
00:16:33
Speaker
The mist collector helped that because it just brings in fresh air all the time. But I will go into this Swiss project fully aware of the possibility of thermal. So if I start seeing parts grow, then I might blame that first.
00:16:55
Speaker
Right. I'm just laughing because of the current, it's like thermal, thermal, thermal, thermal. So I'm like... And then I never thought about it on the Swiss. Yeah. I just feel like you might be better off talking to Elliot now because you're going to get started and then just... I think it's just going to have to happen, right? Yeah.
00:17:20
Speaker
On one hand, I'd like to argue that the design of a Swiss is much less susceptible to thermal growth than, say, like a C-frame mill or my turret blade. On the Swiss, there's just less to move. There's less distance between everything. Right. Talk to Chris or some of the other Swiss guys, because that's why I was like, you know, Elliot's a sales rep. They may not be the best. Sure.
00:17:50
Speaker
Arcan tornos for that matter. Yeah, I feel like owners are sometimes just more real world about what it's like. Because you're right, maybe it's not. I mean, your shop's air conditioned, and you're right, you're just a smaller frame. And I've got the miscollector on it now, so it's going to draw clean air in it all the time. Yeah. Your shop's going to be like a vacuum. If you throw up a tissue in the air, it just gets sucked toward a machine.
00:18:21
Speaker
I love it. Did you buy the tools? I talked to Jen Swiss yesterday for like half an hour, which is really good. Is that a supplier for that stuff?
00:18:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's one of the good suppliers. There's lots, but they seem like they'll have everything I want. Oh, awesome. That's cool. As I'm on the phone, I emailed him my tooling list, my wish list, and I said, get back to me as soon as you can with inventory levels and stuff. Because if something's four weeks away, I'll choose something else. I'm not that rigid, but
00:18:57
Speaker
But yeah, so he said everything should be good. Sweet. That's exciting. So excited about that.
Fire Suppression for Safe Machining
00:19:02
Speaker
I had fire suppression installed yesterday. Whoa. Monday, which was really interesting because the oil and the fact that I'm cutting titanium and stainless and it could equal fire in worst case scenario.
00:19:17
Speaker
Swisses do catch fire, which is a very scary thing. Yeah, lathe. And oil, and so it's not fun. But yeah, so apparently there's this red line. It looks like quarter inch airline, like the red or blue airline.
00:19:35
Speaker
that's kind of strung all up inside the machining enclosure, the cavity. And then that melts at 400 degrees and it's pressurized 200 psi. So when that pressure is lost, it immediately evacuates the whatever gases in the fire extinguisher. Cool. Yeah, I've seen some videos of Swiss lathes
00:19:59
Speaker
basically blow up. Just you're not you're not helping the anti lathe right now. Yep. So and then I was reading some people do install do use coolant on their Swiss as a
00:20:15
Speaker
un-recommended alternative. The manual says don't do it, but guys on practical machinists are like, whatever, I've been doing it. I mean, if it was on PM, obviously, it's got to be- Why? Exactly. No, but several people did say that they've been doing it and the little hacks involved. There's pluses and minuses, of course. Lack of fire is a big plus. If not burning, I'm burning down my shop. Yeah.
00:20:43
Speaker
Anyway, apparently the fire extinguisher should put out any fire within a second or two and cause minimal to no damage. Switch. So that's cool. The joking aside, when I think about things like dual spindle turret lays with live tooling and so forth, you do think about crashes and certainly the work you do with part picks and tight tolerances and different diameter ranges, you think about lathe crashes. Is that a thing with Swiss lays?
00:21:11
Speaker
I feel like I don't hear about it, but maybe that's because they are more niche machines. Yeah, I think people just don't talk about it. I'm sure I'm going to crash it. Don't say that. Don't say that. Don't say that. What are the... Do you know what the rapids are in inches? Oh, I'm assuming it's 787. Oh, okay. But it's so small. It only moves like three inches. Got it. Right, right. There's no point for 3,000 inch rapids or whatever.
00:21:39
Speaker
No, there's zero point. Got it. Yeah, I can't remember, but it's not as fast as a five-axis machine or something like that. 700 inches, especially if you... Yeah, it's fine. I guess that's the difference is that if you're crashing a Swiss, it may be more likely that you're hitting a rigid metal on rigid metal, and so perhaps it's not a good outcome.
00:22:02
Speaker
Well, I assume they're significantly less powerful than, say, my Nakamura. The motors are just smaller. But I still wouldn't want to crash it. But I figure, I mean, there's a lot going on and a lot of access is in play and just a lot of moving parts. So you've got to really, really watch it there. Luckily, it's production. So I mean, it's not the same risk of reinventing the wheel with job shop work.
00:22:32
Speaker
But tons of people run Swisses as job shop work and they're hand coding it at the machine every day. So thankfully I've got 14 components I want to make and just program it. One component you want to make, just start with one. Don't even think about 13 more. Yeah. One at a time.
00:22:54
Speaker
I was talking to the Haas guys and I think the new version of the Next Gen Control that's out has that functionality for my MTS. I hope it does at least where you can turn it on to that safe mode and you can basically do a jog mode or
00:23:13
Speaker
it would be a G0 only if you're running it at reduced rapids. And what I told them I really wish they could do is please let me call that mode via an M code or some parameter because I basically want to prove out programs even if I'm unattended by going in and out of that mode. I don't care about the reduced rapids. So that is really exciting to think about that idea of just
00:23:37
Speaker
What I feel like when we look back in five or 10 years, what should have always been the case, which is the level of intelligence. But it was funny because when I was talking to them about it at IMTS, they were like, you got to think about when you're roughing or doing not hard milling, but difficult milling or more higher removal rate billing, it is effectively a crash the whole time from a motor profile standpoint. It's not, I guess, not that easy to understand the difference between the two. Yeah.
00:24:07
Speaker
That's what I'm thinking about with your Swiss. In that sort of a machine, almost things like you should be able to define... You're not moving holders around, right? Right. You would think to find a boundary zone. Yeah. Like a solid model that would then put in soft limits of where it can go and not go.
00:24:26
Speaker
Like Kern was telling us that they have that defined on their machine. Aside from your vice and your material and your tool length, although the tool length should be active, there are soft limits that will not let the head crash into the table no matter what. If I'm up at B90, I just can't wrap it into the side of the trunnion. That makes sense. Kerns run on oil too, right? Is that what we were saying?
00:24:53
Speaker
I can't. Oh, yeah. They got it. Got it. Yeah. Although I think for a mill, coolant is the way to go for me. I'm not looking forward to the oil. Just after being a current and making some parts on the thing, and the oil is just different. It's gross. It never evaporates. It's hard to get off. The parts just stay slimy. It never evaporates. Excellent.
00:25:20
Speaker
What was the other one? It was off the part, even. You take a part off the mill. With coolant, you put it on the table, and by morning, it's dry. A little sticky, maybe. But with oil, it's just the same amount of oil as it was last night. That's interesting. What do you do then? What do they do? You can't just blow oil off a part. You can't coolant.
00:25:42
Speaker
You have to wash it all the time. Interesting. Just a little bit. But with the Swiss, it won't be so bad because the parts are so tiny that a yogurt tub full of some soap and water is all I need to wash everything. Yes. That's nice. There's no surface area left for it to retain onto, huh? Did you buy the oil yet? Yes. What brand? I got the Glazer Swiss Lube.
00:26:10
Speaker
Do you know what model or number? I think it was the GT12, I think. Got it. Yeah, they were saying. There were alternatives. Blaser has like 237 SKUs or something of different types of oil and cutting fluids. One of the guys on the tour in Switzerland was like, yeah, we have way too many options. Yeah. Interesting.
00:26:38
Speaker
What was I going to mention? I had a question I'm curious if you're opinion on, which is when we tap on our fixture plates, we have a pretty decent process down in terms of tool life management and so forth. We use an OSG, I forget the model, but it's one of their newer ATAPS. Good reviews. It's been great for us. Good price point.
00:26:59
Speaker
But normally we get, I mean, making this up, I forget the exact numbers, but normally we get like 3000 holes, but then every once in a while we'll get half that number of holes. Well, we'll get an alarm or a noise or there's different things that will trip us up and it's just not worth the cost of the tap relative to the material and the frustration of the bad outcomes. It's just not something that we then risk. It gets changed. Yeah. I assume you don't want to break a tap in a fixture.
00:27:28
Speaker
Even if you had a way to burn it out, we have a way of getting them out, but it's not fun. And sometimes it scraps the part and it takes time. But what I'm wondering is on the steel ones, we normally run our taps at a relatively low RPM.
00:27:45
Speaker
And it ends up being like 40, 35 or 40 surface feet. And we can tap faster. You hit some limitation of your machine's ability, even if you're programming faster, it's just not going to. But I'm wondering,
00:28:00
Speaker
if we're just not going fast enough to make use of the coding. And I grabbed the speeds and sheets, yeah, exotap, ATAP. And for 4140, the recommended conditions were 35 to 100 surface feet. So it's kind of like, I don't know, at 100, are you really even activating the coding there? Or is it friction that's
00:28:22
Speaker
tap is a much higher friction than a cutting. So maybe that's already active. I just was like, I want to learn more about what that could be. But I've heard of... Yeah, I don't know enough about activating coatings with temperature other than the buzzwords of having heard it. Right. Yeah, I've heard a couple anecdotes over the years that it's like, yeah, going higher surface feed actually got better to life, which is totally otherwise contrary because
00:28:53
Speaker
That's what let that coding perform. Well, I'd say on a tap, you're generating more heat by going faster, right? I would certainly think so. Yes. I would assume so. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. I don't know.
00:29:12
Speaker
Well, that's a good segue to... I'll give a soft announcement, which is the past year and a half, I have been working on our new project slash new company.
Innovative Project: Redefining Machinists' Learning
00:29:24
Speaker
We're not ready to launch it yet. We're doing some minor debugging. I have a call this afternoon. We were hoping for this week, so when I say that, it's a matter of a few weeks of just... We recognize it won't be perfect.
00:29:39
Speaker
I wanted to give a shout out to the folks listening to the Business of Machining. We'll throw up a webpage, nyccnc.com forward slash beta, which will be an email subscription form or email sign up form. So when we do have our beta launch, if you guys are interested in the beta, we'll throw in some sort of an incentive to do so. What we're doing, and I'll give a full details and we got to get a video going, but
00:30:03
Speaker
Basically, we're trying to redefine the way the machine world consumes and learns speeds and feeds. And we're doing that with what we think is the right way to do it, which is a combination of a lot of data points, things like video, photos, photos, what's going on, more information about all the cutting conditions.
00:30:20
Speaker
And most of what we've done to date has been building the infrastructure for this site. So we've got a whole database, the back end, the front end, how you access this data, the filter system to find what you're looking for. And we have now a lot of work to do on creating those recipes. We've got a few hundred right now that needs to grow significantly because that's the way we're doing this is we're not being theoretical, we're not guessing, we're showing you, we're proving it out. So a lot more to come.
00:30:49
Speaker
It is by far the biggest thing I'd ever done and worked on and invested in, so we're very excited for it. I very much want it to be best foot forward, but I think you can relate to this, Sean, as an entrepreneur. You want it to be perfect, but you recognize there's going to be tweaks and learning, so you have to... At some point, you've got to get it out there and we're close to that.
00:31:08
Speaker
You get a launch. Yep. That's awesome. What's that quote? If the product is perfect, you launch too late or something like that. But we'll put that link in the description or you just go to nyccnc.com forward slash beta. There'll be an email sign up form and look for something soon from us.
00:31:26
Speaker
That's so exciting. Good. Yeah, I know you've been talking about this for a year plus. It is exciting. It's a little nerve wracking. We had a step backward this past week. It's incredibly challenging to build this filter system because the way we want it to work is, we're a full Grimsville on it. It has to be this intelligence of building these cash scenarios before and after you apply these filters so that it's
00:31:52
Speaker
Yeah. I've used filters on other sites and they stink. A lot of the distributor sites, it's just frustrating. By filter, you mean you go to McMaster and you want to search for a thing and you go through the menu and you filter, filter, filter, filter, and there's your stock and head cap screw. McMaster does it well. That's a great data point. Most others, in my opinion, don't. We're trying to do it right. In your scenario,
00:32:20
Speaker
uh, at the risk of sharing too much, but, um, you want to say like, I want to machine 41 40. I want to use a coded end mill. I want to blah, blah, blah. Here's my type of machine, my class category, whatever. And you want to filter and find the recipe for that, that, that you guys have already.
00:32:38
Speaker
That's exactly right. Where it gets difficult is let's say you do that. Let's say you say, okay, I have 4140. I want to do an adaptive operation and I want to use a seven flute. And what if that only brings up one result? Well, you might want more than one result. So what you need to do is then go back and add other flute counts to the search.
00:32:57
Speaker
but we are only going to show you the flute counts that have valid search results. So let's say for whatever reason, let's say we have not done any five flute recipes in 4140 Adaptive. Well, I don't want to show you five in the filter because clicking on five would not
00:33:16
Speaker
give you a value added experience. So you have to build out the database and the filter system has to be written or coded such that it understands and anticipates what you might want to see such that you're always doing filtering that actually gives you results. That's cool. Well, with flute count specifically, it doesn't
00:33:40
Speaker
It just changes your feed rate, chipper two, like chipper tooth is chipper two. That doesn't change your food count. Many manufacturers will differentiate their grind on food counts.
00:33:55
Speaker
Lakeshore 4 versus 5 has a different grind. The Helical 6 versus 7 has a different grind. I'm fascinated by all this and I love it. I absolutely love it. This is going to be my life. I love experimenting. I also think it's a bit overwhelming as a layman or regular machinist. That's part of our value offering is
00:34:16
Speaker
just let us solve that problem for you. One of our taglines, we have three pillars of value, which is number one, we're giving you this data. If you want to nerd out, we track all the cutting conditions, trying to track the torque load, the coolant type, all that, the holder style, the gauge length, so you can see all of that much more than you get in a book or a theoretical calculator. The second is
00:34:39
Speaker
is the fact that you've got this filter system that lets you quickly find what you want to find. And the third is we break tools so you don't have to. We have been pushing tools to the limit, finding out what works, finding out what doesn't work so that, again, just you can stop doing that yourself. Yeah, it's exciting. I love it. That's fun.
00:35:04
Speaker
So the filter system was, it's been a roller coaster the past few weeks because coding can be, sometimes you're just staring into the abyss and you're like, why? I'm not doing it myself, but obviously having a lot of calls with the folks doing it to gain this out, to figure this out. So we'll get there. So, okay, let me ask you this. We were chatting about this briefly the other day.
00:35:29
Speaker
with regards to building out your website of this new thing. So you've used Shopify for Saunders machine works, use WordPress for NYC CNC. And then what is this new one? Like what framework are you using? Is it full custom? Like Upwork programmers? 100% custom. The backend is a database software called Drupal. And the
00:35:52
Speaker
Okay, so there's relatively off the shelf. For the programmer, there's some off the shelf stuff that they start with. Completely scratch. That must be a language. That's just the database style of... I'm not... This is outside of my wheels over. You could use MySQL or you could use other things. This is a Drupal style backend. And then the front end, I actually forget now. But every single thing was written, but either...
00:36:17
Speaker
Yeah. Really? It's funny. We have a NYC CNC forum chat going on this right now. People debating like e-commerce and big commerce and WooCommerce and Shopify. Everyone seems to talk about the fees, and that's for sure real. But I think sometimes, I think you're probably in a right spot, a point of recognizing, wait a minute here, these fees are something we should think about changing. I don't understand how you're paying that much, John, to be honest with you.
00:36:47
Speaker
Yeah, it seems crazy. Yeah, because my fees are exorbitant. I don't know if it's a Canada thing. Because the highest Shopify plan, which is only three figures a month, hundreds of dollars a month at most, I thought it wiped away most of the transactional fees outside of the payment processor fee.
00:37:06
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. So there's two fee structures. There's payment process or fee like PayPal takes 1.9% or something like that, plus a little bit. And then Shopify to create a transaction to sell your thing, they're also a few percent. Wow. And it really, really, really adds up. And I'm starting to, like I was saying to you, I'm starting to wonder,
00:37:28
Speaker
how much of that transactional fee could go towards a custom build website, and what's the ROI difference of that? So I'm thinking about it. Well, I think the thing about your site that's compelling is you have so few SKUs. You don't have 50 products with different kits and assortments and tracking. Am I misunderstanding that, right? It's not that many?
00:37:52
Speaker
Yeah, well, unless we move to a system, which I'm tempted to, where it's like a somewhat custom order system where people can choose the options that they actually want, which would complicate things. But it's not like we have 10,000 products, like some stores do.
00:38:10
Speaker
Well, look, I don't know exactly what it would cost, but I would think a relatively simple, quote unquote, custom, it's probably still not going to be custom, because there's no point in writing that from scratch nowadays, but I would think
00:38:26
Speaker
you know, definitely four figures, maybe high four figures, but it's not. Yeah, it shouldn't be tens of thousands of dollars to do that. Yeah. That would literally save us money. And I assume the complication of it would be significantly less than what you're doing with the new project. Oh, yeah. Or you're writing it from scratch. The work there was the whole database architecture. That is legit complicated.
00:38:55
Speaker
Sure, yeah. Did you hire Upwork programmers like you would anything else? No, this wasn't through Upwork. What's that? Do you have a firm that's doing this for you? How did you find them? The honest answer is I used to shoot USPSA matches with the owner back when I lived in New York.
00:39:18
Speaker
Connections. Yeah, I got a you know, I thought I was gonna go with them I'd worked with them on the past on some smaller stuff, but I still kind of got a quote-unquote competitive thing, but it's a good example of You know, there's always this is think of this like building a building with a contract like there's always gonna be the change orders There's always gonna be the frustrations or the delays I mean to you're gonna laugh I thought about trying to debut this IMTS last year John it is it is May is May 30th right now Yeah
00:39:48
Speaker
months later. It just takes a while, but we talk about with vendor relations, you got to make it a win-win, you got to understand the framework and the team. I had a call with somebody or unsolicited advice with somebody who was really frustrated about not getting what they wanted and they knew that they had
00:40:11
Speaker
I'm paraphrasing, but they knew they had bought a service for too cheap. And then the company that was providing the service was then frustrated and complaining it was going south. And I'm like, in those situations, I think you actually got to get in front of it and just say, hey, I know you guys bid too low. This is quickly becoming a lose-lose. What do you need to adjust the bill to, the invoice to, to make sure this is fair and you get paid well enough and I get my work done?
00:40:42
Speaker
That's a tough pill to swallow, but I think it's better than the downward spiral that can otherwise ensue. What do you have to do today other than swishish? Swishish. I finally machined my pearl inlays last night very successfully using your heat treat tape. Oh, good. The powder coat tape.
00:41:11
Speaker
powder coat tape. So like our neighbor is a powder coating house, like they do powder coating, right? So I was at home one morning and texted you about this and you're like, yeah, I get the powder coating tape. So I texted the shop and I was like, Hey, Barry, can you walk over to the powder coating shop and see if they have this green tape? And he did and they had like stacks of it. It was awesome.
00:41:32
Speaker
like in stock next door. So I tried it, I scuffed it up with some 150 grit sandpaper, glued everything together, changed my machining recipe a lot so that it left a floor on the part so that the whole material is held in place until the very, very, very, very, very end. And then I just like ever so slightly ramped down and finished that profile. And they worked flawlessly. I had three pieces of material, I had to make three inlays and I had zero problems.
00:42:01
Speaker
So it was like so good. And they look freaking. This is for the Norseman 1000. This is for number 1000. Now we're at like number 2400 normally. So this is kind of old, but that's okay. We're going to bring it to blade show next week. And it's going to be like exciting and hype and people are going to love it. And it's cool. Awesome. So is it done with blade shows next week? Wow. When do you head down Thursday morning? Sweet.
Diversifying Products with Challenge Coins
00:42:32
Speaker
So Eric and Yo are going to drive down. Wow. They've got some cool stuff they want to do. And that's cool. All the rest of us were flying and super excited for that. So yeah, that'll work. What else am I doing today?
00:42:54
Speaker
I've been toying with this idea for a long time now. I love that we make such an expensive product, a high-end product, but I've always wanted a really sweet sub-$100 product. That's not just a t-shirt. It's something we make, that we can ideally make in higher volumes. And it's that thing where we can just give to somebody as like, here you go. You're a good customer. You're a good friend, whatever. Even the pen is too expensive to just hand out for fun, like candy.
00:43:23
Speaker
So I designed up this kind of challenge coin, you know, this, this like company logo challenge coin with her logo on it and some engraver around the outside. And if I have time today, which I think I will, uh, I'm going to start making some of those. I've got a couple of bars of one inch brass, and I just got a bar of one inch titanium yesterday. And I think they'll be pretty epic. So I want to, I want to walk around blade show with a pocket full of these coins and like hand them out to our best customers and coolest fans and stuff.
00:43:53
Speaker
I'm excited for that. I love it. I'm wondering, make sure somebody's raining you in. Are you spreading yourself too thin? Sure.
00:44:06
Speaker
Yeah, maybe. No, maybe not. I think I'm okay at the moment. I don't mean that critically. I really don't. But the more I'm thinking about my 2019 or my next five years, I think about doing less, what was that stupid auto? Sorry. Really, I did not like this phrase at Autodesk AU of one year. It was like more or less better or something or less, less better or smarter or something. But like,
00:44:35
Speaker
doing fewer things. You do the knives and pens exceptionally well, but keep focused. I think I can convince myself that this works well into our branding, into our culture and market for sure.
00:44:56
Speaker
I think it'll be really good. I'm sure that it's not a giant thing to suck for me, but the thing I love about it is there is zero tolerance. I've always wanted a zero tolerance part. That's where I'm wrong. That's where you're absolutely right. You've got the lathe. You've got the way to hold bars in it. You've got the tool. Make sure it uses tools you already have set up. Absolutely, John. That's freaking awesome. It should just run forever.
00:45:24
Speaker
If it thermal grows, I don't care. That's what's been amazing again about the five axis is literally we were waiting on a tool to show up or something. I had a job on there and it was on the rock lock like the vice. I just was like, well, I can't run this for like four hours while I'm waiting for something. I literally just took it off, put a different part on there and started working.
00:45:47
Speaker
It would literally, it was amazing. It would be like if you were like, oh, well, let's make sure the anodize works out on these new screws. And that's going to take Eric two hours. So I'm just going to switch over to challenge coins for the next 90 minutes by literally just like three screws, no setups, no risks, no hassle, no tools. Amazing.
00:46:06
Speaker
That's killer. Have you tested the repeatability of the rock lock? Uh, I have not because everything we've done is basically one set up where we're machine all faces. So I don't, the time I did put that part back in, I did re probe because why not? It's easy. Um, but I will, I'm sure it was some point I'll check that. Yeah. Yeah. Just curious. Yeah. Cool. All right. I got to run. I got cool parts to make.
00:46:36
Speaker
Good. Have a good last week here. I'm excited to see what happens between now and, do you have any goals between now and plate show?
00:46:45
Speaker
The coins are kind of my thing. We finished 1776 knife, which is insanely sick. Look at my pictures on Instagram if you haven't seen them. I've got a video I'm going to post. We did a whole video of that process, including like massive failures. And I filmed all the failures and everything. And I was like, I'm never going to release this footage. It's garbage. We're just going to scrap the whole project. And then I overcame and it's good. So it should be a good video.
00:47:11
Speaker
Um, and then I finished a thousand Eric's finishing on the knife today and then the coins and then we're good. We've got tons of knives and pens ready to ship. We'll be shipping today, tomorrow to blade show. Awesome. Awesome. So I'm good. Like now it's just regular production, which we're handling quite easily now. Sweet things are good. I'll see you next week. Anyway, okay. Take care.