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Business of Machining - Episode 101
257 Plays7 years ago
This episode is a good mix of strategic philosophy and technical discussions. Stay tuned for talks about how to stay motivated AND motivate your team at the same time! Such is the life of an entrepreneur. The Johns will also talk troubleshooting, and favorite tools.
Pass it on
Grimsmo fixed the pass link on the Maker’s Choice “Congrats” e-mail, and now people can pass the purchase link along quickly if they don’t want it. Without that link working, it takes 24 hours for turnover!
What do you want in a knife?
Grimsmo adds a short survey to the Maker’s Choice system so people on the list can answer a few questions and help the Grimsmo team tailor knives to the market.
But this raises the question “how do you differentiate between valuable and non-valuable feedback?”
Grimsmo’s systems may be improved, but he’s not finished yet! Saunders and Grimsmo discuss how to integrate knife customization back into the Grimsmo business model.
“Don’t paint the future with the past. You have a lot more maturity now when it comes to your ability to run product through the shop” - Saunders
The Saga Continues…
The Grimsmo pen is still in the works, and getting prettier by the day. But at 32 rockwell, is the new material for the button and slider too soft? Skye gets assigned the task of clicking the pen all day to find out.
What’s your favorite tool?
Saunders: ¼ inch end mills FTW! There are so many reasons why they’re great!
A well versed fellow from Helical Solutions visits the SMW shop and breaks down just how unique end mills really are. Saunders also toured Helical Solutions’ shop! Check it out on Youtube!
Grimsmo’s favorite tool? The Leica Microscope. It’s used all day every day at the Grimsmo Shop, and knives just couldn’t be made the same without it.
For those of you who are going to ask about Grimsmo’s Lathe Insert Tool that he mentioned:
VBMT 110302PSF AH725
Slow and steady does not always win the race (if you’re a machinist)
“That’s a classic example of how you think you’re gonna be safer and smarter by going slower and easier, but it doesn’t always mean that” - Saunders
How much is too much lifestyle creep?
“I know there’s life style creep, but I just don’t feel bad about it” - Saunders’ friend
There’s a difference between treating yourself, and spoiling yourself.
Crush it!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Addressing Mistakes
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machining episode 101. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. Good morning. Good morning, buddy. How are you?
00:00:12
Speaker
I'm doing good. Good. Good. I'm pretty good. I'm having one of those. We've had just 17 little, each one is a relatively minor mistake or goof or thing, hiccup, none of which matter on their own. But when they add up, it can be taxing. And what's funny is what bothers me isn't even
00:00:35
Speaker
The 17 things or the summation of the 17 things, but it's that I know I should just power through and ignore it. Like, you know, be positive, say like, it's, it's fine. Like get over it. But, um, that takes willpower. It sure does. But that's what I'm going to do. So while there you go. Um,
00:00:57
Speaker
Yeah, we had a mini version of that yesterday as well. Like I just saw that Eric was getting tenser and you know, shorter with conversation and little things here and there and finally called him on it. I'm like, you seem tense. Is everything okay? And he just goes, you know, just a couple little things like the tumblr wasn't working and then this happened and that happened. He's like, and they just kind of all bugged me and I didn't really realize why.
00:01:24
Speaker
and just getting him to talk about it kind of made him all better. The thing that kind of set me off yesterday, and then I was kind of like, okay, this is when you know you're being irrational or you're out of touch, was I needed a screwdriver to tighten a fogbuster connection and
00:01:45
Speaker
We have our wonderful tool carts with Kaizen foam tops with all the tools on it. And we do a pretty good job of keeping the tools on carts. I'd say we're A- at that. And the first two screwdrivers I went to, we use these, I think they're either Home Depot or Amazon, but the screwdrivers that have the six bits in the ring around the handle and every single bit
00:02:14
Speaker
And both the screwdrivers was a square drive bit, which should be immediately thrown out or put in the once a year bin back in the storage room. And there wasn't a single slotted or Phillips head between two screwdrivers. And obviously, this is the result of people stealing the other ones for other screwdrivers. And it's just like, the answer is to stay calm, go on Amazon or McMaster, buy replacements, which are cheap as could be, and get them in, swap them out.
00:02:43
Speaker
But it's at that one point in time, you're like, the system is failing me. Yep. Yep. It's that moment where you're just like, ah, so that's funny. Yeah. But that's life. That's that's problems issues. Um, it's like, we, we talk here, like,
00:03:02
Speaker
you know, we, we dream pie in the sky. Like when everything's running smoothly and everything's magical. And I'm like, there's always going to be little issues, hopefully not the same ones over and over again, but there's always going to be stuff that comes up that we just have to be resilient and, uh, uh, quick in how we, you know, fix things and deal with things and hopefully not let them bug us too much. Then just get over it, move on. That is the normal, right? Or that is the norm. Yeah. It's okay.
00:03:31
Speaker
It's fine, but it's, I know exactly what you mean. Luckily I'm in a good place past few days, weeks. So I haven't really had those summation of problems, but man, have I been there. Oh yeah. Yeah, right. It's, it's, I dunno, whatever. No, um, I shouldn't complain, so I won't complain and we will move forward.
Automation & Customer Feedback
00:03:50
Speaker
Um, how was your week? What'd you been up to? It's been an awesome week. Um, super duper busy.
00:03:58
Speaker
Stayed up way too late. I'm working on the Norse makers choice list. Oh yeah. That I would last week.
00:04:06
Speaker
finally got to do everything that I wanted to do, except for one tiny little error. So I asked my programmer like, what's, why is this happening? I have no idea how to fix this. And he just got back to me now. So I haven't looked at it yet, but, um, yeah, it's going to allow us to, cause it's a random choice. So say you got picked randomly to buy this knife and there's a link in there where you can say no. And if you say no, then it goes to the next person right away. Mm-hmm.
00:04:35
Speaker
That feature has been broken for about a month and a half. So it has to time out the 24 hour timer. You can't skip ahead quicker. So it's been slowing down our sales or our turnover noticeably. So I got that fixed. I'm super happy about that. And then also.
00:04:52
Speaker
If you say no, that's the end of it. But Barry's been pressuring me for months. He's like, I want to know why they said no. I want to know what the reason is. Do they not like the color? Not like the pattern? Do they not have money? Would they prefer it was a rask? Prefer it was a lefty, etc, etc. So I created this form where if they want, when they say no, they can fill out the form in like three seconds and give us some data. So
00:05:15
Speaker
I'm really, really happy about that because that'll be cool. I already had like three, four submissions since yesterday and I'm like, Oh, it's working. Good, good, good. I'm happy. This is great. Yeah, that'll be interesting. I, um,
00:05:28
Speaker
It seems like there could be a lot of really good valuable input on the flip side. I think I respect you and admire your ability to lead grips or knives down a path and it can be pretty chafing and tiring to hear potentially, you know what I mean? Somebody who
00:05:50
Speaker
There could be some valuable feedback, but that's going to be difficult to necessarily differentiate from non-valuable feedback. Someone who hasn't bought your product doesn't necessarily, how do I say this the right way? It's a different level. Someone who's bought your product and is a fan may have great feedback, but somebody who hasn't may just be kind of, they just sign up for a list that gives them the right to influence your thinking. I don't know. You know what I mean? Okay.
00:06:17
Speaker
I think with with enough options, I don't know. It's not. I'm not asking what would you prefer? Okay. Although we've definitely talked about that. It's more like the the answer is I didn't like the color. You know what I mean? It's not like I would I want a blue one to influence. Okay. Fair enough.
00:06:38
Speaker
But I personally feel that most of the people who say no, like the majority will say, I don't have the money right now, but this proof will tell. Okay, that's a really good point. I see, and forgive me, I'm not challenging you at all here. Yeah, I'm willing to.
00:06:55
Speaker
Um, saying it was, you know, saying, holy cow, I got the money ready to go, but that knife just doesn't, doesn't kind of tickle my fancy. That's really good feedback. But yeah, I guess I worry that, um, so I don't care if you don't like the color, like it's makers, like it's kind of like, so how's, how, how does a seven,
00:07:15
Speaker
The real question is if it's random, so you might only get picked once a year or once a never. And if you get picked for the ugliest one ever to you, to your personal taste, then you're not going to buy it and you're going to feel like you were kind of cheated out of, like I would totally buy it. I'm just not going to buy that one. So my chance is gone. I lost my chance. And then we lost the sale because of that.
00:07:40
Speaker
Will you have, does that data then, so let's say fast forward 12 months and you had, I'm gonna make up numbers. Let's say there were 200 nos and 150 were money and 50 were color. Do you have the ability to go look at the 50 color nos and see what the color was?
00:08:03
Speaker
That was Eric's first question when I brought it up in our meeting yesterday. Currently, no. But he's like, you got to put the knife number in there so we know which knife people said no for. So I'm like, OK, fine. I didn't think about that. I'll add that. Especially because the way your system is written could be the case that if you guys made a super ugly knife, like five people said no in a row, is that possible? Oh, yeah. OK. Very much. So yeah, I see Eric. I like that.
00:08:30
Speaker
Yep. Yep. But that's all this, sorry, all good stuff. I have another spreadsheet that's tracking how many, how many people it went through before somebody bought it. Okay. And also, also how many days it was on the site before it was sold, which is super valuable information. And for the most part, they average out to, you know, a knife will sell in three days or something like that.
00:08:54
Speaker
averaged among all of them. But then there's these outliers that are like 20 days or 20 plus people. And I'm like, OK, what's going on here with these, you know, three or four outliers? Fun fact, they're all the same color, same pattern, same screw color. Stop. And I'm like, really? No way. Like, you know, happens once, happens twice. It'll be like totally random. Not true. But it happened three or four times. And I'm like, interesting. And it's not a, you know, I think it's a beautiful color combination. Yeah.
00:09:24
Speaker
Apparently, data tells me that it's not our most popular one. Is it a polarizing? Oh, really? I don't want to say it now, just to not put it out there. Yeah, of course. But yeah, it was really cool to have that data. And then that kind of fueled the need for a little bit more data. Not too much, but it helps. It helps. Because otherwise, we're just making whatever we want. Yes, totally. Which we've been doing for a year, and it's been working well. But how do you do it better?
00:09:53
Speaker
It's really in some respects kind of I think of like a red ocean blue ocean or like one of the most fundamental Existentialism kind of like why are we here on earth? Like as an entrepreneur? Are you creating products that are reacting to what people want in demand in life? Or are you creating a product and then also along with that creating
00:10:17
Speaker
the demand and telling them, you know, again, like the iPad, no one knew they needed an iPad before it came out. No one knew they needed Tony Robbins before Tony Robbins in that sort of came out. And obviously no one quote unquote needs the
00:10:32
Speaker
functionality of a sharp cutting object in the form of a Grimsman knife. There's a lot more to it. But what you're playing with here has a lots of really fun, I think, philosophical questions of along that line of how you market and just what you do.
Product Customization Strategies
00:10:49
Speaker
I think we created the Norseman, we built it up, we marketed it and advertised it for our reasons. Like I wanted to produce this knife.
00:10:59
Speaker
that the design and the functionality and the tolerance is everything is not based on what everybody else wants. It's based on what I want. Yeah, exactly. But then the final tweak, the color, the pattern, that could be market based. I'm fine with that. Yeah. When sometimes you learn beauties in the eye of the beholder, right? You see things differently. Because I'm not buying my own product. So I can't fully judge
00:11:23
Speaker
what it should be. You know what I mean? Like you have to, you have to pander to your market to an extent. Uh, when you know, it's interesting, I've, oh, sorry, go ahead. Yeah. Um, I've carried my Norseman for some time now and what's funny to me, and I say this sincerely, not, not because I'm your friend. When I see other Norseman's every once in a while, I'll see one in person, like if a friend has one, but most of the time it's on social media or somewhere and I'll see like the, uh, what's the diamond, what do you call your sort of like diamond pattern? Yeah. The diamond one.
00:11:52
Speaker
Okay, or the sunburst or a timascus. And I mean, it's the same knife, right? It doesn't do anything different. It's the same blade shape and Norseman blade and edge and all that. And I see those different ones. And I'm just, I'm literally mesmerized. And I kind of feel like I shouldn't be because it's just the same thing, but it's not at all.
00:12:15
Speaker
Yeah, it has such a different, different character to it when it's when things change. And that's why people collect more than one. Right? Like, I just got an email last night, a guy's like, I've got three Norsemen, four rasks, two saga pens, and a bar spinner. Wait, someone has two saga pens? Yeah, they bought them used, I guess. I am not happy about that.
00:12:38
Speaker
Yeah. Of the 30 that are out there in the world right now. That guy owns 6% of the saga global supply right now.
00:12:49
Speaker
Um, not to put you on the spot, but will you ever stop? Will you ever go back to making Norseman's, uh, not make us shorter? Yeah. Yeah. Custom ordered. It's a conversation we have a lot. I think, um, we all have different feelings. Like I want to, because I want to give the customer what they want.
00:13:10
Speaker
And it's, it's like when you're custom ordering anything, you're like, eh, not that, not that, not that. But if it was like that, I would totally be all in. So I want to, like, I want to make the customer happy while at the same time I want to structure our business that we can handle that sort of variability with ease and speed and quickness and all that. So we've thought about integrating it very slowly. Like, like from our maker's choice list, we randomly pick someone for our custom order.
00:13:41
Speaker
Oh, interesting. So that it's not like this huge custom order list where we have 300 people sign up and pay money and all that. It's just like we can choose how many people we pick randomly. And do you want a custom order? Yes, no. Move on. Here's your order. Here's your choices and then move on. And then, you know, from a business point of view, from a manufacturing point, we just have an order sheet and it flows through the system. Oh, you got to make, you know, five diamonds this week and Eric's got to make them all Eric and yo, they got to make them all blue, purple, green and gold.
00:14:12
Speaker
and then they ship, and they get paid, and then they're done. I see that working very well. So we might slowly integrate that back in, and we'll see. It seems like I get, it's funny, you're thinking about it for internal operations, about like, hey, it's got to work on our production side, the batch, the flow, and so forth, which I get. But I don't think your customers necessarily care about that. I agree. And so what if you,
00:14:41
Speaker
So first of all, I think it's totally fair to charge a bit more for customization. And you could also reduce, I think in the past, you had some pretty insane amount of customization. Potentially, you could produce that down. Or again, just charge incrementally, literally.
00:14:56
Speaker
let's say there's eight options to customize and they get like X, not exponentially more, but each time you add a non-standard option, it gets even more expensive because there may be some people who don't necessarily mind spending a quite high number. That's very true.
00:15:11
Speaker
And then you could take a, I don't know, some low, like 10, 20% non-refundable deposit. So that way you're not feeling like you pre-sold it per se. They know it's a three to six month lead time. You balance due prior to ship and you could potentially even then batch up some of the custom stuff together.
00:15:40
Speaker
You could. I hesitate just due to past experience taking any money down.
00:15:46
Speaker
And also I love the quick turnaround. Like we make a knife turnaround in two days, three days from production side. I would love to be able to do custom orders in a similar timeframe, one to two weeks maybe. And everybody's like, imagine placing custom order and you get it three weeks later. But that's why we would have to funnel the inflow of custom orders. We'd be like, this week we're taking four.
00:16:16
Speaker
And then add that to regular production. And then we can easily ease our way into that, you know, do one a week and just see how it goes.
00:16:26
Speaker
Maybe, um, and again, I'm in no way trying to tell you how to run your business. I'm just thinking out loud, create a separate, I guess I, I don't, it seems if I'm really, if I'm somebody who really wants to be on your custom order list, I would be a bit annoyed if you mixed to be in with the maker's choice. And then I like randomly had a one in 300 chance of getting drawn on the maker's list times one, 200 chance of getting the custom list out of the maker's list.
Sales Methods & Customer Experience
00:16:51
Speaker
So maybe you start a second list.
00:16:54
Speaker
Maybe the only downside is then everybody who's already signed up now has to re-sign up. You know what I mean? Because let's say a percentage that's already on the list would do it, but don't follow us religiously, but they still want one. So that's a great example of where you've got to have the conviction of just saying nothing is perfect, but this is by far the best way. It lets us get into the custom
00:17:20
Speaker
game again, we're going to announce it on the podcast on social, etc. YouTube and, and, you know, maybe it's good grief, john, even if it's one customer month. That's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, very cool.
00:17:36
Speaker
And as you said, if we charge a slight premium for it, because it is a choice, you get your choice. Most people don't. You charge an extra 5% or 10%, I don't know, whatever, a little bit. Could be even more than that, honestly. I mean, it depends on
00:17:59
Speaker
I guess I'm not, well, cause there's a lot of options that have intrinsic costs like time. Of course. And those, those are all charged individually. Like time ask us is whatever $400 plus per handle or whatever we do. Yeah. Um, that could be a good, um, you know, get a cup of coffee with Eric or by yourself outside the shop and game out. What does that look like? What does the website look like? What does the, how does the attainability of that thing look like?
00:18:27
Speaker
Well, the thing that I love about doing it maker's choice style, but call it customer's choice is the customer doesn't have to do anything. We just do some programming tweaks and then people get picked for the customer's choice. And if they say no, then goes to the next, goes to the next. And then we don't have to market it. We don't have to talk about it. It's just somebody gets an email.
00:18:50
Speaker
and says, do you want a custom order knife? And then there's no work for them to follow us and to sign up for a new list and to stay on top of things. Maybe you just leave it like that then. Yeah. Yeah, I'm liking that. So yeah, I've got three or four rabbit holes like this to go down, customer's choice. I thought about doing a 24-hour maker's choice. We pick some random cool looking green one.
00:19:20
Speaker
And we put it up on the website live, but not live to purchase live to sign up for in a 24 hour period and say, we get seven people that signed up. And then one of those seven will, we'll get to buy it. What do you mean? What do you mean? Seven people sign up? What are you, what? You have to be, did you miss it on Tuesday? Do you know what I mean? Wouldn't seven, you have to 70 or 700 people sign up. I don't know. I have no idea. Interesting. I know how many people sign up for the regular maker's choice list every day, but,
00:19:51
Speaker
that, uh, I don't know. It just, it reduces the pool and it lets a very specific knife. Like if you're looking for a green diamond pattern and all of a sudden it shows up with a one in low amount chance to get it, then you'll get the one you want or better chance. You know what I mean? So yeah, I've got a bunch of choices, but
00:20:14
Speaker
I don't know this, I get the sense that you don't want to like turn it into sort of every knife gets auctioned per se, like kind of a highest bidder. No, I don't want that thing. And I, I feel like I can understand why that doesn't always necessarily feel super fun. Like it's kind of not I don't use the word scummy at all. But like, you know, I get it just doesn't feel right. But man, you wish there was some way of
00:20:39
Speaker
to do, like, I mean, I would love to, well, the saga is a different question. You just aren't making them, but like, I would want to do if saga was maker's choice or custom and custom cost me a few bucks more, but I could get it. I'd probably just do custom. Yeah. If you, if you wanted it DLC with a gold, then like, you're like, Oh my God, that'd be so amazing. I would pay an extra little bit for that.
00:21:04
Speaker
and then you'd have it. So all of these theories relate to the saga as well. So I'm gonna try to nail down like how to get the customer what they want, basically.
00:21:14
Speaker
you know, we've had a year now of maker's choice success and it's allowed us to have full freedom here, um, to make whatever we want and to, to speed up our production flow. And it's worked like it's been amazing. Now I just want to give the customers with the two and look, don't paint the future with the past. I mean, when you last took pre-orders or when you last, um, had,
00:21:39
Speaker
Your production has changed a lot. You've got more machines, you have more equipment, more processes. You have a lot more maturity when it comes to your ability to run product through the shop. And it will get better if you're able to get another spindle or space or shop. You know what I mean?
00:21:57
Speaker
Yep. It's so fun to resist this, but whether you look at the knife industry or other industries, many times as companies mature, they end up going into some version of a consumer grade, like a lower grade option. They just do. I'm not saying you will, but I'm saying the statistics and numbers speak for themselves.
00:22:18
Speaker
Like in the guitar industry, this company, Paul Reed Smith, you know, at first it was kind of the Grimso knives. And then eventually they, uh, introduced the private stock, which was like John Grimso will personally make your knife type of thing. And then they introduced, I think it was called like the SC, which is the like Mexico bolt together thing. Um, and you know, Jaguar cars has done this. Spyderco has probably done it. Like there's a whole bajillion examples of this kind of thing. Yeah. So many things to do in this life. Right.
00:22:49
Speaker
I love it.
Material Exploration & Product Testing
00:22:50
Speaker
Yeah. People ask us for a cheaper knife all the time. And in a weird way, that's kind of what we're doing with the saga. It's a cheaper product. Right. A third the cost of a Norseman. There's nothing cheap about the saga. No, exactly. In terms of the feel or like the quality. True. I'm purely talking about dollar value. It is one third the cost. So for people to save up and shell that out, it's just less money coming out of their pocket for a Grimsmo product.
00:23:19
Speaker
But yeah, there's nothing cheap about the saga at all. It's a $300 pen. No, I solely meant I. And I bet it's probably because fundamentally I'm not really a knife guy, but like the pen is to me. Oh, it is cool. How's that going? Any work on it this week? Yeah, early was it mid mid last week we were making buttons. We tried this new material nickel aluminum bronze. OK.
00:23:46
Speaker
Previously we were making the slider out of titanium and the button out of hardened 17-4 pH stainless. And in the past, Angelo's worked with this nickel aluminum bronze material, which is like a, it's an excellent bearing surface. They use it in, I don't know, submarine propeller shafts and rotating sliding.
00:24:05
Speaker
yada, yada, yada joints. Um, so he's like, we got to try this for a pen. So we bought 500 bucks worth a few months ago and finally got to play with it. It turns beautifully and it looks freaking amazing. It's like gold colored and I saw the video really shiny. Yeah, really shiny surface finish. Um, but it is kind of soft. Oh really? Like it measures the Rockwell of 32.
00:24:30
Speaker
Um, West High is about 34 ish and the stainless is 45. Yeah. So that's kind of a big difference, but the three little ball bearings in the pen are denting the nickel and it's messing with the geometries a little bit. So, um, I think tomorrow or the next day, we're going to dig back into pens and, uh, figure out some, some geometries here. Hmm.
00:24:56
Speaker
maybe not use that material, we'll see. It sure looks good though. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. 30, it's funny, 30 Rockwell is not soft at all, but 45 is a lot more. It's hard. Yeah. And even at 45, that button does dent as well and it scratches a little bit, but it kind of, it's kind of happy, you know? Are the, hmm, is the, what do you call the piece that the balls go into the groove that has the groove on it?
00:25:25
Speaker
What's the name of that piece? The part that's getting scratched or soft or dented. The button is the, obviously the button that you slide up and down. The button. Okay. So does the button stay clocked? In other words, the three balls, are they always? No, it rotates. Okay. Hmm. Interesting. And surprisingly it, it evenly scratches and dents kind of all the way around. Like it, it randomly rotates always.
00:25:52
Speaker
Yeah. Just distributes it. Interesting. Yeah. Cause that's what I'm trying to think about is over time, does it wear in or do you get? Yeah. If it were clocked, um, you'd have worse wear, I think. Or maybe you account for that. Yeah.
00:26:08
Speaker
But it's really fun digging through this process control of like test it out. Like I had Skye click it, you know, click it as many times as you can today while you're doing other stuff. And he's just fidgeting away all day long. And after a day we saw where? Really?
00:26:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's cool. I was literally thinking about you. Uh, I don't know. I sometimes thinking back to the strike bar days and how we built a testing device. I'm like, man, grimace could totally build like a little Arduino thing that just clicks and releases the
Social Media & Community Building
00:26:36
Speaker
saga. You know, it would probably do it 25,000 times a day.
00:26:41
Speaker
I'm not sure you need to, but yeah. I had a lot of DMs on that after I put up that Instagram story. Which one? And they're like, oh, you got it. Just about sky clicking it so much. A couple days ago. And people were like, oh, you got to make this device. And I'm like, that's what I have sky for. It's funny. But then one guy was like, either you pay sky to click the pen or you pay sky to build the device that clicks the pen. Yeah, it's funny. It's awesome. Yeah, it's cool.
00:27:10
Speaker
the, uh, that's getting me frustrated about social media. And I don't, I just, it makes me not enjoy it as much anymore to where I don't always feel like I'm seeing some of my friends or some of the stuff. And Instagram not having a chronological timeline is just, it's like,
00:27:27
Speaker
It's not that it's absurd. It is absurd. It just makes it very easy in this world where we're all kind of, I mean, I love social, don't get me wrong. I love the community around it and having some quote unquote internet friends through it. But like when they, you know, Facebook, I'm tired of it. Like if every time I post something, it's like you really need to boost this post for five bucks or for 30 bucks. And it's kind of like, it's just not what I'm going to do ever. Like it's not,
00:27:53
Speaker
I'm not in this to goose the numbers by paying you to access to the people that have already gone out of their way to choose like, and you're making money off advertising anyway. This has already been a fair trade or something of the sorts. Makes me just kind of, yeah, not so into it. Yeah, I feel like there's probably, I mean, there's probably lots, but I feel like there's five things that Instagram could do to just be a so much better platform. Say again?
00:28:24
Speaker
I feel like there's like five things Instagram could do to be such a better platform, just little things. Did you see Venom Defenses thing on his posts? No. He makes the carbon fiber accessories for AR-15s and other stuff. He has a lot of followers and he used to get over a thousand likes easily.
00:28:46
Speaker
He posted something about how some of his posts recently are getting like 50 or 60 likes. So they're basically throttle it without telling him they're throttling his distribution down, which just seems very slippery slope type stuff of, of what is this? Yep. Yep. Weird. Anyways, I have a question for you, which was, uh, sorry, my throat fog on my throat here.
00:29:13
Speaker
Somebody had posted it in, I think in the Instagram post, ironically, about the 100th episode. And they were like, basically, you talk too much about financial stuff, which fair point.
Machining Tools & Financial Insights
00:29:25
Speaker
What about machining stuff? And I think the question that stood out to me or the statement was, do you have a favorite tool?
00:29:32
Speaker
Hmm. To the first point, I don't think we talk enough about financial stuff as, as a society. Fair enough. As I'm, as I'm learning now, like, like accounting used to be plug my ears, kind of, I don't want to know about it. But now having Barry on board, like I want to know, I want to know more, I want to understand it better. Anyway, favorite tool. It might be my top secret invention that I haven't told anybody except for you about.
00:30:02
Speaker
Oh, hilarious. Why meant cutting tool? Oh, cutting tool. Well, tool is tool. Sorry, sorry. That's a good point. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Just other than like an end mill. Yeah. I use almost all Lakeshore stuff. Do you?
00:30:24
Speaker
No, I mean, to answer the question lately, no, there's not a single tool that I'm like, that's my favorite tool. But I, there's something satisfying about a lot of different tools, like, like, uh, it just is like some work really, in really interesting ways, like the cog still tool that I have, you know, like flares material and makes it mirror polished on the inside and makes a hole to a 10th. And I'm like, that's pretty darn cool. Right.
00:30:52
Speaker
except when you crash it and it's another thousand dollars. Don't stop crashing it. You seem to, okay, so that's a good question. You seem to handle that stuff better than I do. Is that a fair statement? Maybe. Maybe I do it more. But I, yeah, I just have to let it wash off and be like, oh man, don't do that again. Sometimes it definitely,
00:31:20
Speaker
makes me depressed. Like when I explode a Linda wheel and I'm like, you know, almost crying for a day, things like that. But yeah.
00:31:29
Speaker
And I don't think you're what I like. You're not, it's not like this reckless like, ah, who cares? We, you know, we're, we got so much money coming in and just, we can break tools all day long. It's not like that at all, but it's also. And I, I never want the guys here to, to assume that that's how I think, even if I kind of let it wash off real easy. Um, I don't want them to feel the same way if they crash something, you know, it's like, yeah, it's, it's a weird balance now. Right.
00:31:55
Speaker
Um, man, there's a lot to be said for the mentality of it happened. You can't undo it. So don't let it rob you the rest of your day. Um, yeah. Well, going back to the tool thing for me.
00:32:07
Speaker
I've always had a soft spot for quarter-inch end mills. And it's kind of silly, but they're so much cheaper than bigger diameter carbide. You can get stubbies. And I like them because on the Tormach, it's, in my opinion, the sweet spot. Tormachs are harder to get good
00:32:25
Speaker
it's easier to have a bad recipe with the larger tool diameter because there's more chatter or more tool pressure. And so to watch a quarter inch end mill, either an aluminum or they, you know, on a steel 4140, you can actually, it's like, and especially in steel, it's almost silent and it's making this awesome, nice chip and it's cooking along an adaptive tool path.
00:32:45
Speaker
They're coming off the materials coming off. It's safe. It's reliable. The tool is just happy to me. That's cool And then I like it because you can do the same thing in a Haas and of course you can do or you know, there's much easier ways to use bigger diameter tools, but also as a it's just fun to use a quarter inch tool because you can still run the piss out of it and so they wear out in a big deal and It's just fun to me. I like it
00:33:13
Speaker
Yeah, and I agree. Probably like the Lakeshore quarter inch stub five flute variable. Yes. I buy those 30 at a time. I literally have three in my machine at all times. A rougher, a blade finisher, and a handle finisher. Hilarious.
00:33:31
Speaker
And I'm, for the finishers, I'm experimenting with much more expensive end mills, emoogie, helical, things like that. Cause we're trying to get that best finish. Um, and I'm, I'm still not satisfied with anything I've tried. Interesting. Yeah. Um, go ahead.
00:33:47
Speaker
They, they microchip and they just create this streak or they build up edge. I'm not exactly sure what, what is happening, but so funny you say that, um, because the, I don't know, sales rep guy before who works for helical came down to our shop this week and brought some tools to test and have fun with. And I've gotten to know those guys a little. We did the factory tour there.
00:34:08
Speaker
And I would throw it out, many of the helical tools aren't that much more. I used to kind of think like, okay, they're that big step up, but there are, I mean, like the Amoogies or probably the Canstelle or for the Amoogie.
00:34:23
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Whereas like a lakeshore that's 20 bucks, the helical might be 25, 30, maybe. Exactly. Anyways. So we had this really, we had a super, super fun time because it was just straight into like details. And so one of the things we got into, and I don't, I want to share this because I want to get the conversation going, but I certainly don't know enough to profess knowledge yet.
Tool Geometry & Machining Performance
00:34:45
Speaker
But when it comes to a cutting edge of the end mill, you have a,
00:34:53
Speaker
You have two angles that meet together that form the quote unquote sharp cutting edge. That's what's actually creating the sheer fracture. But then on the outside of the tool, as you move away from the cutting edge, you usually have two ground relief edges at different angles. And you can usually see them if you rotate the tool. Are you with me? Have you ever looked for that on a drill?
00:35:21
Speaker
Yeah, the Angelo keeps talking about this, the margin and the double margin and the the grind of the not the gullet relief angle. Yeah, yeah. So what he was saying was you don't see the two angles on drills because drills have
00:35:39
Speaker
I don't remember the exact terms. Instead of a double cut angle, they have a cylindrical land, meaning it's a fact, it's rubbing, but it's almost like it's rounded. And the idea there, especially because the drill's not cutting up at that point, it's cutting on the face, is to stabilize the tool and the cut. Okay. So you're actually guiding it. Yeah.
00:36:05
Speaker
I also heard just yesterday that a drill is, should be designed with a very, so slightly taper from the tip back to the shank. Reducing itself. Reducing. Ever so slightly. Um, cause one of our tool reps that came by yesterday, he is now a tool rep, but he used to, um, he used to stand in front of an anchor grinder and grind that mills like for years. Yeah. So he kind of really knows what he's talking about. Um,
00:36:33
Speaker
And it's cool to have him over and have him explain like, you know, these relief angles and these edge sharpness. And he can look at an end mill and tell if it was ground on an anchor or a Walter just by how things are reached. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Cause you can do angles on one that you can't do on the other. Huh.
00:36:51
Speaker
Well, the takeaway on this for me was the fact that the cylindrical land has the benefit of stabilizing the end mill when you're in a cut. So when you're actually taking that adaptive 20, 30% step over and you're really
00:37:14
Speaker
And you're really cutting quote-unquote per se. The cylindrical land can be an attribute or a benefit, but when you're doing a finishing pass that's really light, the cylindrical land can cause the tool to slightly bounce.
00:37:30
Speaker
So in those cases, you'd be better off with a, like an up cut or a sharp, I guess he cut up, cut was the word that I hadn't jotted down, but just basically having that super sharp ground relief. So it's just literally sharing in there. Maybe, maybe a little bit stiffer. And you could think that itself could bounce because there's potentially space after the relief, but I don't think that's true. So maybe think like, okay, that's the kind of stuff you want to explain. Like when your situation, as you're trying to get a combination of
00:38:00
Speaker
tool-like, but also finish quality and so forth. That's important. Absolutely. And like you see it when you look at a shiny aluminum end mill versus a end mill for steel, like, like the aluminums are way sharper and way, they're shinier in the gullets and, uh, there are clear differences, you know, kind of makes you question why or understand why just kind of by looking at it and knowing the material properties a little bit better.
00:38:28
Speaker
Yeah. Well, that's what we did. The first thing he did was go grab a high speed steel end mill. So I had to go find a high speed steel end mill. I don't even think I have one here. And then, you know, those you can easily see that kind of double relief grind. And then we started looking at carbide and comparing it under the microscope and you're like, okay, this is fun. Yep. Yeah. I was going to say, going back to your original question, favorite tool,
00:38:54
Speaker
microscope, my, like a microscope is probably one of my favorite tools in the shop. I use it 10 times a day. Yeah. That's, I totally get it. In fact, we have a, someone sent us a really old, um, stereo microscope, like you're like it, but not as high quality. And I prefer that viewing experience, like the stereo, but it's, I don't know whether it's because it's older or lower quality or, or what, but it's a bit difficult.
00:39:23
Speaker
It's kind of like a six-year-old trying to look through a rifle scope. It's very difficult to get that high relief correct. So Jared actually took me back up for four or five days to really get my eyes attuned to it.
00:39:37
Speaker
Yeah. But even yours, I walked up to yours and it's much, it was much easier to get a rich viewing experience on yours than it was on mine. Um, but then we hooked up our old, that insize, um, digital one again, and it doesn't give you the three dimensional view, but man, but it actually made me appreciate it. And frankly, I could see why you'd want to have both now, which is funny because went from having no microscopes to the liking of two.
00:40:07
Speaker
Yes, anyway anyway Yeah, like you were gonna say for the lathe I've got these Tungaloy inserts. Let me just grab them
00:40:22
Speaker
The guy's asking for details. VBMT 110302 PSF AH725. VBMT? VBMT. B is like the tolerance range. There's B, there's G, there's other stuff. Anyway, they're a V style insert, 35 degree, quarter inch IC, coded for steel, titanium, stainless.
00:40:47
Speaker
And I've been using these for probably three or four years. I finished doing everything with this tool. I actually created a spreadsheet that says, these are all my 16 components that I make on the Laid. And these are all the tools that I use for everything. Where do they cross reference? And that tool is used like 91% of the time. No kidding. There's only one part I make that doesn't use that tool.
00:41:12
Speaker
So yeah, that's cool. That's, that's my favorite late tool late insert. Is that the insert you come back over threads to like clean up post? Yep. Okay. Basically everything that's profile turned or faced uses that tool.
00:41:27
Speaker
And it's held in a right hand orientation on your leg. Yes. Or new upside down holder. Okay. Yeah. Right hand. Got it. So I can face and turn with it. Right. And it's pointy. So I can get into little nooks and crannies and thread reliefs and things like that. Yeah. Like what about, Oh, what happened? Did you play with your surface footage testing on the tie last week?
00:41:48
Speaker
Yep. Um, trying 40 surface foot took nine minutes to make a part, not three, but, uh, it looks amazing. And the inserts lasting and like, no, duh, totally solves the problem completely. I'm sure I could go up to a hundred and still be fine, which would shave a lot of cycle time still. But, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm glad we got that figured out. We made a lot of good parts and now it just works.
00:42:18
Speaker
I would really look at different either codings or insert grades or manufacturers there.
00:42:25
Speaker
Okay. And apparently it is a common size like Ryan that was here yesterday had a Sumitomo catalog. They have the same insert. They have a CERMET grade. They have a bunch of different stuff. Kyocera has probably five or six different grades. We're using the one for stainless steel in titanium. So maybe we want to use a different grade. Yeah, so there are definitely choices.
00:42:49
Speaker
OK, yeah, it's been it's been fascinating to learn more about like as you can switch just insert coatings or grades to go the difference between toughness and hardness and how they can take a beating or we actually just change one of our recipes. We increase the surface footage by.
00:43:10
Speaker
30% and we're getting more life out of it, which is very much normally not the opposite of what happens. And it's just because it's meant to run a coding that gets kind of activated or used in a range and under, underrunning it is actually gives you chatter and shorter tool life and where and so forth. So, um, it's fun. I enjoy that.
00:43:33
Speaker
Yeah, you hear that said a lot is running it too soft, too slow, actually is detrimental for the tool life, but for a novice machinist or even somebody who's just not super confident in that process, you're like, Oh, let me just slow it down. Let me just ratchet. You know, I do it too. Baby it. Yeah. Yeah. And taking the cut, like on lathes of keeping a sharp, being conscious of your rad of your insert and then being able to get underneath the material or otherwise just you're burnishing. Mm-hmm.
00:44:04
Speaker
Yeah. Sweet. What's going on today and this week? We have been having a lot of, um, like we're still in catch up mode from holidays and from some issues that we had over the holidays for the weirdest reason.
Production Challenges & Solutions
00:44:20
Speaker
Our clips locate into our knives with a little boss and a hole in a pocket. The boss on the clips was 10 thou too big, just randomly. Huh?
00:44:31
Speaker
And then it was breaking the support that we made on the fixture. So then those are broken now, so we have to make more of those. Oh no. Because it turned out too big, so we're shoving it in. And then it's not fitting on the knives, and we made, I don't know, probably almost 20 clips before really realizing what the problem is. And I still don't know what happened, but at least now we're able to make good clips.
00:44:53
Speaker
So my only thought is it didn't do the finishing pass for whatever reason. Um, Oh, just didn't get posted maybe or I don't know. Or the cutter comp pass didn't work properly. So today I'm going to compare the two codes before and after and just see what the heck went wrong. But anyway, so we're in catch up mode trying to fix that. Can you fix the clips? No, unfortunately not. Oh, John. So there are already clips that have been lapped.
00:45:23
Speaker
you know, water jet, obviously, and almost fully machined and whatever. This is one of those things like, oops, move on. Do you use cutter comp or wear comp? I use cutter comp in the control, like in the fusion. Yeah, so you put the full diameter in. Yep. So then the machine we do diameter measurement, and then we'll ever so slightly tweak with wear.
00:45:50
Speaker
Yeah, sure. OK, well, the way our control handles is the diameter is just is just the controller's diameter column plus the where column. So it doesn't matter what you put in what you put in which one. Yes.
00:46:05
Speaker
So we, I was the second thing, excuse me, that kind of got me upset and frustrated and just kind of down about this was we goofed on a part which we just, oh, we don't do normally. And it was an expensive, very expensive piece of material. And we just decided to go, it's a classic example of like,
00:46:27
Speaker
going thinking you're going to be safer and smarter by going slower and easier. It doesn't always mean that because we were getting some, it's a deeper bore. We're getting some chips recut. So I thought, look, instead of doing progressive 2D contours down, even though we're tracking through hold, blah, blah, blah, let's just bore it out with an end bill interpolated it. Cause we'll get better.
00:46:46
Speaker
you're cutting with the leading corner of the end mill, which I don't love doing, but tends to prevent end mills from getting recut. And that operation that we used, we used a different tool, same operation, and it had cutter comp on infusion, but there was no value in the control. Yeah.
00:47:10
Speaker
Yeah, I worry about that that lit me up and I wasn't it was no one's I don't blame anybody Because good grief. How do you catch that? But you catch that or that happens because of a systemic way you handle That in the shop and I just it's actually still really kind of upsetting me or irritating me I get that. I mean I could see having
00:47:34
Speaker
intricate setup sheets with like these tools have to be measured on diameter. You have to confirm it before you run the job kind of thing, but at what point? I don't know. Well, so the thought is just switch to, I'm trying to think through, it's like the five stages of grief. What is the downside of just switching to wear comp? Because that lets us bump in
00:47:57
Speaker
toolpaths as we need to, especially for things like regrinds. I want to keep it. Well, that's the thing is it has to be as you need it. Whereas cutter comp should just work based on the measured tool diameter. Well, so no.
00:48:15
Speaker
So the issue is you don't want to use, so what you don't want to do, especially on regrinds, which we have to regrind, we do regrind, is let's say a half inch end mill becomes 497. Well, I can't model that infusion as a 497 tool because too many different programs
00:48:32
Speaker
Pull on that tool and it's not the way the tool table architecture is designed in fusion where you had some sort of a central library So that 497 has to be in the control so that you can either do a 497 tool diameter or I think what makes more sense is
00:48:48
Speaker
No tool diameter in fusion in the control but negative three thou on your wear that way worst case Your worst case you're in this case being off. I think it was a roughing up Anyways being off by three thou wouldn't matter now fairness. We may not have caught it either. But like that's Seems safer to me I gotta think through this. Mm-hmm Okay, I
00:49:15
Speaker
It wasn't the operation, by the way, that got it. It was the linking move of it.
00:49:19
Speaker
Really? Yeah, I don't have enough experience with this with CutterComp frankly in general, but the way Fusion handles CutterComp linking moves to me, it's not that it's strange because I recognize it doesn't know how to control the toolpath because it doesn't have the diameter of the tool. It does, but it's very different. I think CutterComp makes a toolpath on center line and then the control offsets it. Correct.
00:49:47
Speaker
the radius. So if your tool diameter in the control is zero, you would make a gigantic hole. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, it happens. Yeah. Sorry about your pocket clips, dude. That's a kick in the
00:50:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's more. I'm more sad. I'm not sad about the scrap. I'm sad about the downtime from it and the time we've spent fixing it. I'm not sad about that, but it sucks because Eric and Yo are like waiting for parts. Sure. And that's a problem. Yeah. Isn't that funny? So that and a couple other things were just in little catch up mode, but I think by by noon today we should be caught up and then making
Optimizing Production & Lifestyle Reflections
00:50:30
Speaker
making pallets again. We're running two pallets at a time. Awesome. Rent two pallets last night. Great. And soon to be three or four. You have the orange vice? Yep. Okay. So do you have two or four? I have four total, two on the machine. So you, will you eventually step up to three or four?
00:50:50
Speaker
Yep. The only thing I have to do is figure out how to jack up the VAC magic and the Pearson palette on top of two orange vices. I just have to make a fixture and mount those. And that's, I haven't even designed it yet, but that's one of my next steps. And then we can mount the four vices on the table and then equals profit. Design that up, send the file to Amish and keep making knives. Yeah.
00:51:10
Speaker
Um, I got to bring up a funny one. I was talking to a friend about lifestyle creep and he had a good year. And, uh, I love this. It just makes me smile. And he was like, yeah, I really just don't feel like I know there's lifestyle creep. And he's like, I don't feel bad about it. And I was like, what do you know, what do you mean? He's like, well, look,
00:51:28
Speaker
We had a good year. I needed a new pair of boots and I didn't wait for them to go on sale. And when we go to the grocery store now, we don't buy the generic everything. We buy some brand name stuff. And I'm like, God bless you. Because that's the little psychological wins and you treat yourself. We're in the same place. But it's also like,
00:51:53
Speaker
like no creep is to me also more like you're, you're really stepping up big time and like, well, sure, more, more, I don't bigger stuff. But then it also reminds me of the people I always looked up to as a kid and still do, which is kind of the, uh, the millionaire next door mentality of the people like,
00:52:13
Speaker
I have no guy who probably pulls in 30 grand a month in actual legit passive income. He doesn't have to lift a finger and he's an immigrant born in another country, salt of the earth, super nice guy, super nice guy, worked his butt off and he will still
00:52:34
Speaker
reasonably do frugal things like he's not and I love that like it just makes me smile you know yeah he still flies coach you know good griefs you could buy you know yeah
00:52:46
Speaker
Yeah, the extreme of lifestyle creep is, I don't know, you fly first class just because you can barely afford it every time and you know, you buy just fancy everything. It's just not realistic. But no, just like your friend there, Meg and I are kind of the same way because she's just she's happy now that she can go and get a coffee and not feel bad about it.
00:53:07
Speaker
Whereas, you know, five years ago, we couldn't afford that. And we just never did. And little things like that, they're just little psychological wins. She's like, I just feel so much more comfortable now that I don't have to worry about paying for groceries, and all these things, you know, the rent is there and things like that.
00:53:25
Speaker
But it starts to makes, it starts to explain why there's that kind of like diminishing, goes back to that like idea of what makes you happy and how much, um, not getting, it's wonderful to not get caught up in the, other than having a four year old at Christmas time where I will not lie, opening presents with it are in the form of consumer driven toys is wonderfully fun. Yeah. It's fun to not get caught up in that stuff. Awesome. Yeah.
00:53:55
Speaker
All right. Should we call it? Let's wrap up. I will see you next week. Sounds good. Looking forward to it. Take care. Have a great week. Bye.