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#208 - Creative Workholding & Fixturing, 3D Printers, Must Have Tools from McMaster, & More!
247 Plays5 years ago
TOPICS:
- Trusting Instincts
- Social proof for marketing and branding
- Creative Fixturing and Workholding
- Grimsmo and Saunders Approved Tools!
- Good reasons to outsource things beyond the scope of your business
- Xometry Pay - Solving Collection of past due accounts for businesses?
- Prusas, 3D printed 1/4" Royal Collet for sub spindle & Gauge Housings
UP NEXT:
FEBRUARY 2021 GOALS FOR GK
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Transcript
Introduction to Business and Machining Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Bonjour, Je m'appelle John Grimsmough. Welcome. I'm not going to say welcome in French. Anyway, welcome to the Business and Machining. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. And this podcast is a conversation we have every Friday about entrepreneurship, struggle, happiness, CNC machines, money, and more. Just before we started recording, we were joking about languages and stuff. And I was like, French is kind of my pseudo, not very good at it, but it's the one I've chosen to do. And for you, it's German, I guess, right?
00:00:28
Speaker
Yeah, you can do ambition do it second. Oh, I don't know what that means But it means I can speak a little yeah, I heard German in their toys.
Balancing Authenticity and Audience Attraction
00:00:36
Speaker
Yeah, let's um, let's you know, I Trust your instinct is I feel like so often when you are uncertain about something really you you are certain You just aren't willing to make that decision. I don't feel like I love the whole new intro thing Yeah, I think there's merit to it in the consistency and advertising to what this is to capture an audience but like we but
00:00:58
Speaker
No, I just feel like this podcast was, is, and always will be. It's you and me talking about what we're up to. I see what you're saying. Yeah. As I read it, it feels good. We're making it shorter and shorter every week. It's crisp and pretty short now, but it does feel very TV broadcaster.
00:01:19
Speaker
Yeah. I think about this as me turning the camera on if I were to write in a journal at the end of the day, except it's the talk with you. I'm sure the description or any five minutes of listening probably will capture the essence of what this is.
Podcast Growth and Promotion Strategies
00:01:38
Speaker
funny enough that our goal is not to grow this into this huge massive thing that catches people's attention in the first two seconds and hooks them. It's like if you want in on this 45-minute conversation every week, it's here for you. Right. I mean, there's word of mouth from listeners. I think you and I probably should because
00:01:59
Speaker
No, we're not trying to grow it on the flip side. The reason we record it is for it to be a tool to help people and just to get an insight into what's happening. I think we probably should both make a more deliberate effort to do things like, hey, on Instagram, we talked about it this week, or I mentioned it in our chip rags every once in a while.
00:02:18
Speaker
Because I think it is, that's I think one of the characteristics of leadership is you've got to own it. You've got to be proud of what you're doing. Be willing to promote it and share it for the reason you do it. We don't record this conversation for ulterior motives. I mean, yes, it helps both of our brands, I guess. Well, not I guess. It does. I will say that. But not the point, right? It's also become a huge, gigantic part of our
Audience Engagement and Feedback Methods
00:02:40
Speaker
story. I mean, four years we've been doing this now. Crazy, right? It's what we do. Right.
00:02:46
Speaker
Yeah. And we continue to get nice, you know, even as a leader, you've got to believe in it. And I do believe in it. I think, and I think you believe in it, but it's always still nice to hear unprovoked external words of affirmation. And we do get some really nice comments in for folks that kind of confirm what we're doing. And that puts a smile on your face. Yeah. And it's nice to see the little Instagram stories of people who are listening to it and they're like,
00:03:09
Speaker
this one or speak to me. Yes. I appreciate that. That's actually what we should do. Let's work on our audience. Let's encourage folks to do that because then that gives you and me a vehicle to repost that, which also checks the box of us pushing out through our audiences. We have a decent, each of us had decent followings and that helps entice people, which is a good thing.
00:03:33
Speaker
And then it's like genuine actual feedback from listeners, not just us being like, you know, making up an ad for it.
Marketing Strategies and Social Proof
00:03:42
Speaker
Right. Which is a great
00:03:44
Speaker
lead in to a toolpath, just kidding, a great lead into the what we're trying to do right now, which is to triage kind of how we want to think about improving our marketing. That was a big part of our goal for this year. And I think one of the best things that we can do is bottle up and capture some of the social proof
00:04:04
Speaker
Uh, largely through Instagram, some YouTube as well, or Facebook of folks that are using our stuff because it's that example of, you know, if, if nobody has ever heard of a Harley Davidson before, they don't go from zero to spending 20 grand on a bike. You, you, you.
00:04:20
Speaker
you may be willing to do it because you've heard about Harley-David's random example or your friends have heard of it or you had multiple brand impressions over a period of time, whether it's before you were researching it involved or now that you're actively involved in looking for a motorcycle.
00:04:37
Speaker
Again, as we wanna think about our audience, whether it's the Shapeoko plates, the Tormach plates, or the Haas plates, and we're targeting those three brands, but we're also, there's corollaries at each level, obviously, a Fidal plate at the top, or a Kuma plate, or Shapeoko in Bantam, or whatever, but we wanna make sure that people that haven't heard of this, which is hopefully the majority, start to see, oh, okay, these people are the real deal, they have quality, they have users, they are proud of what they, you know what I mean?
00:05:05
Speaker
Yeah, and conveying that message, that information, and in a way that gets it out there. It's like you have to reach the eyeballs and then you have to catch them and tell them what you need to tell them. Well, what I'm thinking, the first thing to do is the easiest thing, which is if we already have somebody's attention, meaning they're already, say, on our website, then we should make it easy for them to see
00:05:29
Speaker
the stuff other people have done. So it's as simple as putting together an aggregation of like hashtags or other posts and showing that to somebody. That way if you're, you know, cause if you're on the website, there's a chance that we're able to help influence your purchasing decision. And if you're all of a sudden seeing, oh my gosh, six different people use these and oh, two of those are applications that I'm thinking of like pallets on top of big parts. Then all of a sudden, I think you, Matt, I mean, this is all like, feels very contrived, but it's also,
00:05:57
Speaker
exactly what we should do is help people understand how our tools can help them. As an example, um, I think over the past eight years, um, mighty bite, the company has done an okay job at that because they have a lot of customer examples on their website for every product. You want to learn about talent grips? Like here's 15 examples. And I'm like, it helps. It really helps open your mindset, you know? Right.
00:06:23
Speaker
Totally agree. And same for you. I mean, your plates are so modular and the mod vice especially, and you just want to feed people more examples and more examples and open your mindset. And then eventually people will come up with new uses for it. Right. That nobody's thought of, but you need the data to crunch that in your head so that you'd be like, actually, if I did that and that and that, then I can solve my problem.
00:06:49
Speaker
Yes, and the second level of that is to have good information, especially because fixturing is such an awesome topic. Let's say Rob Lockwood hires a new intern and they're talking about how to hold something. I want him to think, oh, actually, let me log on to Saunders and show that example.
00:07:08
Speaker
I don't care if it uses our products or, or whatever. It's more just like, Hey, there's a bunch of photos. Go look through how they did soft jobs here, how they did a fixture here, how they did a periphery part here, how they did super
Creative Content and Tool Discussions
00:07:19
Speaker
glue here. Like it's, it's like just, it just becomes this tool that is. Yes.
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah. And then if you become the resource that everybody goes to, then, oh man, you get a few more sales because people are just heading to your website, sending people there too. Right. For the right reasons. Of course, of course. Because you're providing value. That's the thing. And a fixturing is, I mean, I love fixturing and it's something I've been obsessed about for, since I started, um, you know, 10 years ago and I'm constantly learning, I'm learning new things now. And it's, it takes a long time to gain that information.
00:07:51
Speaker
And, you know, to wrap your head around it, whether it's tolerance of locating boards, or whether it's, you know, like all the different options, soft jaws, or pitbull clamps, or superglue, or whatever, it's like, you don't know until you know, until somebody tells you, or you see it, or you happen to try it. And to have some sort of repository is a great idea. It's fantastic.
00:08:15
Speaker
That's actually a great idea. You just struck in my head beauty cap. Fixturing. I've never done this because it almost feels cheating, but like we should do a YouTube video saying, Hey, here are the best 10 YouTube videos that we've done over the years showing creative fixturing. Yeah.
00:08:33
Speaker
Because that's the problem. I was talking to a guy last night who was a friend who was looking for some fusion help. And I was like, oh, check out this video we did on that exact topic. Well, he wasn't going to find that video really, even if he went to look for it. So it's like, wait a minute here. We have all these fixturing things that we've done as sub-benefits within another video or another project or another widget. We should literally do a not clickbait video where it's like, hey, here's 15 awesome fixturing things we've done. And then, by the way, go down the rabbit hole
00:09:01
Speaker
of whichever one you want to, but here's a single resource to maybe get you started or get the creative juices flowing. Love it. And if you want to add more value to that video, the new one, you can narrate, you can comment on, man, I can't believe those 17 years ago that we did the first thing, but it was actually really effective.
00:09:20
Speaker
It's actually one of my first friend memories of you is watching you, what did you do? You flipped the dowel pin part over on the grizzly mill and you had the dowel pin on the wrong, like you forgot that it was mirrored when it flips or you had the size wrong or something. And it's awesome.
00:09:39
Speaker
We've all been there. For sure. Yeah. There's a lot to wrap your head around with fixturing and that's why I find it so interesting. And then precision and location and accuracy and repeatability and even clamping deflection is a big thing. Huge. Hearts bow and you don't know when you start out. Yeah. I'm still learning. Tool pressure deflection and pre-loading it and yeah, I hear you.
00:10:07
Speaker
I started using these little round gripper pads. It's like, say, half inch diameter, and it's got a bunch of spikies at the top. And you install it into your fixture, and you put your material on top of that and clamp down. And it bites those little gripper pads bite into the bottom of your part so it doesn't move. Who makes them? I get them from McMaster. I'm not sure who makes them. But they're cheap. They're like a couple of bucks each or something.
00:10:32
Speaker
So you bore a hole and is that expanding mandrel? Nope. It's just, it goes in. There's a set screw on the side that locks it in place. Huh. And it's just got teeth on top. That's it. But yeah, I did it on the Kern. Angelo has been pushing these for a couple of years now and I'm like, yeah, it's not necessary. It's fine. We don't need it. Blah, blah, blah. I
Operational Decisions and Team Expansion
00:10:52
Speaker
tried it. It's amazing. I'm going to put it everywhere now.
00:10:55
Speaker
And I did it on the on the current when I'm making lock bar inserts, it's from a two inch by two inch square of stainless steel. And I'm like, you know what, just for kicks, these things are cheap, it's easy to do, I'm going to put two pads underneath, lock it in place, not going to move at all. And I did and I love it. And it's
00:11:14
Speaker
It's just, it's so much peace of mind to know that when you have a flat piece of material on a flat fixture and top clamps, you're like, is it sliding? I don't know. Will I ever know? You know, you make bad parts, but like, yeah, just eliminate that variable completely. So yeah, I'm going to put them probably everywhere from now on. As long as the, the, the dents are in a spot where it doesn't matter.
00:11:39
Speaker
Got it. The clamping pressure dense? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it. Well, great application then for a torque wrench. And even like we've done things where we'll add powder coat tape or electrical tape because you're dissipating some of that acute metal on metal. And a lot of times in situations like this, you're looking for a clamp like that not as a primary work holding, but as kind of a force multiplier. Like super glue is a great example. Super gluing a six by six inch
00:12:07
Speaker
uh, surface or 36 square inches down is unbelievably rock solid. But if you're really concerned and you're not doing something like facing where you need access to the full top profile, um, you can add a single strap clamp, not even that tight in that additional force is unbelievably helpful.
00:12:28
Speaker
It's just kind of, it's peace of mind too. Yeah. And I guess Superglue is kind of a go no go work holding device. Either it works or let go. Well, lots of other things are as well. You just don't know if it let go until it's bad tolerance when it's done, right? Yeah.
00:12:46
Speaker
Yeah so we solved three problems this week that I think are just are just absolute awesome little like manufacturing entrepreneurship bangouts awesome things.
00:13:01
Speaker
First one is, you know, we're in the business of making and selling a product fixture place. We're not always in the business of things like building the crates for them. We've been building the crates for them. Honestly, pain in the butt. We got to buy two by threes. We got to store them or we've got to cut them. We've got sometimes custom sizes. We've got to have wood screws of different lengths. We've got to have the top and bottom pieces. Can we do it? Yes. Could we improve on it? Yes. But ultimately, it's just not something I really want to do. And we are starting to look at
00:13:31
Speaker
Um, you know, being out of space, like I don't want to necessarily spend money and racking and real estate in the shop to store finished crates or to store all the raw material, going to Home Depot as a pain in the butt, scheduling deliveries of wood is time consuming. And it's just all these things that are not ideal.
00:13:49
Speaker
But the bootstrapper in me hates the idea of losing margin to outsource it. But what I remembered is just because you outsource some doesn't mean you have to outsource it forever. It's like a great lesson that I think people early on should embrace more freely is like, hey,
00:14:07
Speaker
If you make a widget and you sell it or a product, you may lose most of your margin if you outsource it. But if that lets you grow your business, gain confidence in what you're doing while you're doing something else, day job, et cetera, it's okay. You can bring it back in-house later.
00:14:22
Speaker
I found a guy. He's building some sample crates on our common sizes. He's dropping them off today. I wish the price were a smidge better, but I'm probably not being totally honest with myself because if I add up all of the wood raw materials,
00:14:38
Speaker
and then I add up the labor and then I add up the like just stress like the whole like well someone's got to build them someone's got to get them you know um and you know they're not pallets or excuse me uh crates are not the same level of marketing as like a saga case but they kind of are like we've had a couple people receive fixture plates and they're like holy cow thank you guys for packaging it so well and I still kept I probably should have thrown it out but like I kept not only the saga wood box I'd keep that but also the
00:15:07
Speaker
custom ink box, you guys, like the white, what do you call it? The shipping box with all the print on it. Yeah. My default go-to would just be to get a Uline brown box. You've got this beautifully custom ink printed marketing case that gets me excited for this product.
00:15:26
Speaker
Imagine if our crates had fixturing pictures all over them. That's happening. I don't know how. Dude, I love this conversation. Even just a piece of paper placed inside on top of your fixture. Here's some ideas to get you started. Go to the website for more.
00:15:50
Speaker
Christmas is coming early. We are getting fixture samples wrapping paper. Sorry to my wife. My goodness. That's happening. Why is that not, this is freaking awesome. Of course, yeah. That's just brilliant. It's also kind of funny. Exactly. And I love adding some humor to this. Yes.
00:16:09
Speaker
Yes, okay, that was number one. Number two, Vince is here. Vince Ramirez, absolutely awesome at what he does in the hobby machine world.
Manufacturing Innovations and Challenges
00:16:20
Speaker
And he has basically now relocated up here and he's crushing it. It's awesome to have him on the team.
00:16:28
Speaker
And he's kind of focused on Provencut recipes, hobby machines, showing what they can do. And we're really starting to get, I think, a solid team. We've got Ed, Grant, and Austin just running the shop. We've got some interns. We've got Julia handling the media side. We're looking at a marketing person as well. And then Vince is focused on Provencut. And really, I think one of my favorite topics, which is helping folks that are going from nothing to something. How do you get started? How do you get the most out of these machines?
00:16:58
Speaker
Um, and yeah, this makes me, it makes, it was a piece of the puzzle I was really trying to solve and I think we've got to solve. That's fantastic. Yeah. Vince has been with you guys kind of remotely for what, six months? Exactly. Yeah.
00:17:10
Speaker
The last thing, and this is hilarious, but it was like the icing on the cake of a good week, is we had that conversation last week about accounting and payables. Tons of user submissions, so much so that I'm gonna do a video because I think it deserves a topic of strategies, some good, some great, some just normal, but that's okay. Still like educating and raising the bar and folks, you know, sometimes,
00:17:39
Speaker
Sometimes even if it's a normal strategy, just having confidence to know you're not asking for something unreasonable is actually incredibly helpful when it's not your world, right? If you grew up in a machine shop, you may not be familiar with what our industry standard accounting practice is when you're dealing with schools or Fortune 500 companies, et cetera. But the thing that came out of left field is I've gotten to know a guy at Xometry who called me after hearing the podcast and basically they just released a product for this called Xometry Pay.
00:18:08
Speaker
So it's super new. I haven't really dove in deep to see how it's going to work, but if it does what it says it'll do, there's a one significant reason I think that could excel. So first off, basically, if you want to send out an invoice for something, so let's say you hire a job shop to build fixtures for your
00:18:27
Speaker
Yeah, whatever Instead of the credit card up front or instead of the hey net 30 or credit reference or credit checks You can now basically use zometry pay or they would use zometry pay to invoice you
00:18:40
Speaker
Xometry takes over all of the accounting, the administration, the actual merchant account or paying process. So Grimms and Knives wants to pay by check. You can pay by check if you want to pay by credit card. You can pay by credit card. Xometry handles that and Xometry handles and takes on the risk of making sure you do pay.
00:18:58
Speaker
The vendor, the person who has the account receivable, the job shop, they can choose how they want paid by Xometry. It's kind of like separating the risk and the timing, so they can choose to get paid immediately. I think there's obviously a value or haircut to that.
00:19:15
Speaker
or they can ... I'm going to use this thing called the advanced card. I think you have to be with them already, but you can get 30% upfront. It's just a form of working capital to pay for materials and run the job. But the ringer that I think is what makes this interesting is that they do charge a fee for this, but the fee is basically the same as what it costs us to run a credit card. Okay.
00:19:37
Speaker
So even if you, Crimson knives, use a credit card, the customer doesn't like, you know, you and I have dealt with, you have dealt with people like PayPal and Shopify, which charge you a fee. And then on top of that, charge you the credit card fee. I don't think Xometry is doing that. So they said we could use it even for Saunders. Like when we do, I don't think of this as a job shop anymore, but if we do a custom plate for somebody and you know, schools are one of the worst offenders because I think schools sometimes think that they're just
00:20:02
Speaker
special and thus don't need to pay. No, seriously, it's offensive. Part of it's like, hey, wait, just run it through Xometry and Xometry has a whole infrastructure and team that can chase it down, pay it, and I can get paid on net 30 and just don't have to worry about it anymore. Interesting. It sounds like an accounting nightmare for them, but if they're willing to have a staff and a team and all the red tape to go through that, then it makes it easier for a lot of people, job shops and stuff.
00:20:32
Speaker
Right. So I was pleasantly surprised. And I've always been intrigued because Xometry does the whole job shop network and the 3D printing, which is interesting, but not something I think about every day. But their supply stuff is actually decent and interesting. And then we'll see if they pull it off. But it's kind of like offering a variety. I think there's, I'll put it this way, I think there's ripe,
00:20:57
Speaker
opportunity for disruption in certain elements of the manufacturing industry, things like supplies, things like, you know, geometry supplies was interesting because they basically said, we don't really care about regional distribution obligations. We're just doing an online sales platform for companies that used to usually have to say, well, we don't have an online store because unfortunately our distributor is mom and pop XYZ and they don't do, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's brilliant. Yeah.
00:21:23
Speaker
The other one was we 3D printed a royal collet for our sub spindle. Did I tell you this? What? No. Yeah. So I didn't own a quarter inch collet and we wanted to do a sub spindle transfer on a part that had quarter 20 threads. And I've actually done this a fair amount where you're holding onto a thread cut surface and it seems to work okay. Have you done this?
00:21:50
Speaker
You don't want to because you're going to crush the threads, but it does work. Yeah, this is an internal part, so we actually could cut down a major smidge to create slight flat top on the thread, so we're not rolling over a sharp crest. For sure. We're just, like so often on the Substantin, we're just doing a light phase, so you don't have to wail on it.
00:22:13
Speaker
but didn't own a quarter inch collet. And that's one of the things I don't love about the Royals is the small diameter collets are really hard to get in and out because I think there's just a lot less room for the collet to open and close with the gripper gun. So I was like, I really don't want to spend money to buy a quarter inch collet that's going to be a pain in the butt anyway. So I 3D printed this flangey looking thing, super glued the flanges,
00:22:37
Speaker
to the, so it's three shapes that are connected together. So it stays together, super glued them to the caught face. That way they didn't come out and honestly worked great. I wouldn't run it unattended at least for too long, but, um, yeah, we're, we're totally fine. That's super cool.
00:22:56
Speaker
Yeah, speaking of blades, the other day I was posting it on my Instagram stories, but I ran the Nakamura and I haven't touched that machine in like, I don't know, over a year. Sweet. It was weird at first. It was like, okay, how do I do this again? And all these weird things, like, why doesn't the screen rotate out? Like it does on the current, but within, you know, half an hour or so I got comfortable again. I was like, oh yeah, I got this. This is my baby. I remember this.
00:23:22
Speaker
Were you troubleshooting or running a part? Making a one-off part. Basically a modified screw or cap for the grinding wheel that I use on the Kern. I need more clearance than the one that I use right now, so I need a low profile screw. I just made an M6 half-inch diameter head.
00:23:41
Speaker
We're great and I realized as I was like going through the code and posting it and my post is pretty dialed for that machine But I do so little like new job shop stuff we run three parts on that machine and they haven't been reprogrammed in ever hilarious and But I was thinking about what you said a couple weeks ago and what you know CJ talks about too and Just like how post should be dialed and if you're a job shop posted new stuff every day absolutely
00:24:11
Speaker
But we just kind of run repeat production here. So I don't mind hand massaging some code every now and then. But if I had more volume, more throughput of new stuff, it would be totally beneficial.
00:24:23
Speaker
I guess I didn't realize it was that static for your machine. It really is. Yeah. It's weird. I don't think there's any room for criticism. If it's just like, you have three programs, that's all that's ever gone there. Like you're good. Yeah. Right. I feel like it's sad. Like I remember seeing a machine that was being sold at a Smith and Wesson and it had just one program loaded on it.
00:24:42
Speaker
And like CNC machines don't have feelings. At least that's what they say. But like to think that it's a beautiful machine tool and all it ever gets to do is one run program. Like, man, boy, you could have done so many more things with your life. Yep. You see that with mills too. Like this, this only ran this one part number like for 10 years and a great, I'm sure it made lots of money, you know? Yeah. How the part went fine.
00:25:07
Speaker
Yeah, the first one, I just made a mistake on the first one. The second one was bang on. And then I wanted to make more. And then I broke the threading tool. So it's like, I guess one is fine. One is all that I need. So again, continuing this sort of joke about how our stories align. Want to guess what I did yesterday?
00:25:28
Speaker
Broke a threading tool? No, even better. Needed a custom low profile screw. No. I would hold it up on my DSLR shut off. I'm trying to do camera. Hold on. I actually got to turn this thing on because this is too good. What's funny is it worked great.
00:25:48
Speaker
I needed a wrench to access it because it's in a really, really tight spot. And so I went on McMaster thinking, oh, I wonder if McMaster would have a low profile wrench for, this is for a five sixteenths head screw. Look, you see it?
00:26:06
Speaker
It's a 60 thousandths of an inch thick wrench. Whoa. And I'm like eight bucks. I'm like done. Get it. Cause I was like thinking I'm going to like, you know, 3d print one or make one. Right. Right. I'll put this link in the podcast description as well, because I'm like, I love you. McMaster car. Yeah. They have once you go looking, they have what you need. Like they do have a lot of low profile head screws. Um, just nothing for exactly what I wanted. Yeah.
00:26:31
Speaker
And I was like, I, I could outsource this. I could have a buddy make it for sure. Or I could just spend like an hour or two and do it on my equipment. You know, that's already mid changeover and jobs anyway. So it's like, yeah, it made sense. And it was fun. It was good.
00:26:48
Speaker
I wish 3D printing was at a point where you could metal 3D print stuff that worked like that. I don't think it is. No, but one day maybe. Somebody was asking this about can you reliably build a workflow that metal 3D prints something to a net plus like 5% and then put it into a CNC machine and machine it.
00:27:08
Speaker
It seems like the answer they were asking about this with the desktop metal systems and the consensus and it seemed like the folks that chimed in were pretty in the know is you can't, it doesn't work yet. Like it's too rough. The metal has too much stress in it. It's too inconsistent. And depending on features thicknesses, it just isn't there yet. Um, but it would be really cool when we get there. Cool. But like at some point, if you're putting finish cuts on everything, like it's not roughings easy on machines. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know.
00:27:38
Speaker
Yeah. Do you use your 3D printer a lot at the shop? It's at home right now. I have two pruses now. Really? Yeah. Both have problems at the moment. I was going to run it last night for like a nighttime run at home, but it clogged. And I was like, it's 1.30 in the morning. I'm like, I'm not screwing with this anymore.
00:27:59
Speaker
But yeah, I was going to print, we've got pressure gauges on our coolant filters on the Moria, and I'm putting a new one on the current right now. And I was going to print a gauge housing that can hold two or three gauges. So I can magnet it to the side of the machine and display the gauges really nice. So I designed it real quick and I was going to print it and I was so excited. And it's just like, why isn't the filament coming out? I'm done.
00:28:24
Speaker
Ours has been, we had a thermistor issue that's fixed. And then what Ed said, the table got tipped up. And so it wasn't sitting flat, which is weird. Cause I'm not good at troubleshooting it, which I wish I was, but otherwise I view it as a tool that I love because I just, it just works. Like I just want something. I go print it. I come back in two hours. It's there. Cause you got a new one. Both of mine are beat into the ground. Oh,
00:28:51
Speaker
Dude, donate them to a school or somebody and go buy a new one. I'm almost there, but it's such a great tool. I love having it when it works.
00:29:03
Speaker
You know, I talked to a lot of people that are like, yeah, it prints basically every day. I'm always making crazy stuff. And the design freedom to be able to just make anything that there's very little constraints in overhangs and things like that.
Precision, Consistency, and Production Goals
00:29:16
Speaker
Oh, it's just the one thing I really want just from a cool perspective is either two nozzles or two filaments. So you can have dissolvable support material, and then you can support anything and just have it dissolve and do
00:29:28
Speaker
That sounds cool. Go buy one. Go buy one. I saw that Instagram post yesterday that the sagas were for sale and then five minutes later the sagas were sold out. Don't slow play me, Grimsmo. Well, it's funny because I like spending money, but I still am very conscious of, you know,
00:29:48
Speaker
What I'm spending money on so no good for you. Yeah Slicing it with support structures, especially if it's just a something like you don't really care a coolant pressure gauge display It's okay. If it's not like pristine cherry everywhere feature, but uh, I forgot I was gonna say yeah I love it though. If you haven't used 3d printing and you're listening to this as a machine shop, uh, you know pruses are a thousand bucks If that's too much for you, you there's a bunch of cheaper ones out there But I will tell you we use it. Oh, that's what I was gonna say we
00:30:17
Speaker
are installing this mist fit or the royal filter mists and we we change how we hook them in so that they are tied to the machine power versus having their separate power on off which is really nice. So we have to put a disconnect switch and we 3d print a cover that replaces the factory cover so that fits the stop switch which is great and so I put those 3d printing those and Vince is like oh man I was hoping to use the printer right now and I'm like I love it we have a we have a waiting line for our printer
00:30:43
Speaker
to logjam in the printer department. Yes. But that is honestly an easy problem to fix, like having two printers, if you wanted to.
00:30:54
Speaker
I got to get better at just logging on to one of the sites and just for 15 bucks, they just show up three days later because like those covers, I didn't need them. I could have them a week later. True, but that's the thing with these things. It's like, but I want it now. I want it done. I can. What do you have to do today?
00:31:14
Speaker
I spent a lot of time yesterday diving into some Norseman inconsistencies. I think I mentioned it last week. Just little things. That's the stupid thing with precision is the deeper you look, the more everything's wrong. I love precision. They don't look that deep. I know. I know. But it's like no one else's. You're blissfully ignorant until you see it and then you can't unsee it. And I've noticed that with cleaning things or
00:31:40
Speaker
tolerances or anything. It's like, well, you can't. It's there now. I know it's there. I was happy before. No, but we're having issues with consistency with repeatability and knives going together the same way. And Eric is spending, you know, sometimes hours diagnosing a problem when he's trying to finish knives. And it slows him down a lot. It's something I got to nail. I figure this out. Yeah, so I'm going to keep doing that today.
00:32:10
Speaker
Otherwise, I got some fixturing stuff I'm making on the Kern. We're shooting for another high record on the Swiss runtime. Oh, that's awesome. Kern record's 49 hours unattended. I think we'll beat it this week. That's incredible, John. Yep. Oh, my. Oh, it's amazing. I mean, that's why I got it. And it's like I've had it for a year and a half and it's like, yeah, okay, let's go.
00:32:36
Speaker
Yeah. That's awesome. That's amazing. Have you broken tools on it? Like other than like a quick test, like when you were like, okay, that was my fault. Um, yeah, I mean, stuff happens every now and then, but you start to dial it down and.
00:32:49
Speaker
Especially the little engraving tools are 20,000 Torx milling end mills. They have a life. They break eventually, and then you make a whole bunch of bad parts. Why not run tool break detection? Because who cares if it slows you down when it's unattended? I don't have tool break detection installed. I do have those little
00:33:09
Speaker
flappy. Oh, the wires wires. Yeah, but I've actually never tried them. I bought two of them with the machine and because I'm like, Yeah, this is gonna be awesome. But they get in the way and chips would wrap up and be a problem. And I haven't tried them yet. You have a laser a bloom. Not on the tape or no. Oh, I thought about the Kern. No, tornos. Sorry, my bad.
00:33:31
Speaker
Okay, so have I broken tools on the Kern? I'm only interested in talking about your mills, just for the record. Hashtag I love lathes. I actually really do. I've been loving lathes lately. Yeah, they're amazing. Another one on the Kern, I've broken a couple tiny tools, but it's been extremely reliable and I've got my speeds and feeds and my recipes dialed. So it's just like parts just kind of work.
00:33:57
Speaker
Now, I've made rasks every day for three weeks, very consistently. And I'm, you know, there's little bugs and there's little fine tunings here and there that I just need to tighten up the hinges and then, and then I can scale up and make, you know, more pallets and run actually more volume through. But I'm, I'm kind of worried about making more volume if the parts are not consistently good. So I'm taking my time, I'm dialing that in. And then,
00:34:28
Speaker
Certainly, within February, I'm making more pallets and I'm going to run instead of one palette every night, like two or three or more or something. Cool. Yeah, it's just going to run. I haven't turned the machine off in three weeks, and I used to turn it off every night.
00:34:42
Speaker
What I love with that palette system and the tool holder size is like you could put in a separate set of tools just for palette creation, whether it's because they're different tools or different sizes or different for cutting different materials, and then you can leave them in, you don't even have to take them out. Like, oh, John, that's awesome. The tool changers probably, I forget what the number is, 40 or 50% full already. Maybe not even that much.
00:35:06
Speaker
And I have dedicated tools for fixturing, I have dedicated tools for titanium, for stainless, for hard. I don't have any aluminum tools in there because I haven't touched any, but I could. And it's just so nice. I have like super dedicated tools. This tool only finishes the pivot bore on a rask knife. And I can predict tool life, especially separating materials, titanium to stainless. I'm finding some, I mean, they're simply cut similar, but
00:35:35
Speaker
stainless being more abrasive, I guess is what I've noticed. It just kind of trashes tools quicker. And especially going for surface finishes and tool life, separating them lets you really, really, really dial it down.
00:35:50
Speaker
Think about like, if you're knock or my ST20Y, think about it. If it had the ability to swap out parting blade inserts real time. So like you could have one for aluminum, one for steel, one for, so you're not mixing metals because there is built up edge. You're also able to do different coatings. Obviously can, we could do different feeds and speeds. Like that would be. Well, like the, the mill turn machines, whether you're talking about a fancy Willimon or a, um, uh,
00:36:16
Speaker
or whatever. They have tool changers. Yeah. Cat40 or Capito or whatever. And I guess you could do similar in those. Oh yeah, totally. For sure. But yeah. That's be sick. It's cool. And I'm thinking, I love the Maury. It's all paid off. It's mine now. 30 Tools. 30 Tools is a limitation for what I'm doing for it. But I actually went on a
00:36:42
Speaker
deep thinking process this morning about taking half of the Norseman work off of the current the precision stuff that I'm having problems with or off of the Maury and putting it on the current so that I can precision machine making the precision features and then the Maury can do the heavy lifting that's just time.
Goal Setting and Podcast Wrap-up
00:36:59
Speaker
Yes, I might actually do that this month.
00:37:02
Speaker
When we talked about it a week or two ago, I mean, if you split up the Maury to a different machine that ATC solves a bunch of problems, you're going to increase your capacity. I have a mental block because I've fallen such in love with One Piece Flow. Like right now our Norseman fixtures make every single part of a Norseman handle blade clip, everything in one cycle. Three and a half hours to Norseman are fully machined.
00:37:32
Speaker
Yeah, and that keeps us in a flow. It means every day every cycle, assuming we don't have broken tools, like knives are coming off. And if you're piecing things, if you're making just blades or just handle backsides, then you have a scheduling issue, which is overcomeable. But it's like you got to
00:37:49
Speaker
No, that's not true what you just said. You may have a scheduling issue, but you may solve other problems and you're a smart guy. Exactly. You can figure this out and it's just like me buying crates pre-built. Just because you try it doesn't mean it's the way you have to do it forever.
00:38:05
Speaker
Yep. Yep. So don't I think you and I both needed like chill out online. Okay. No, no, no. Let's just try it. Right? Like it's okay. Yes. Yes. I mean, good grief. You could take that to the point of we've had, uh, we've had two machine tool builders be like, and I think this is a sales gimmick to be clear. I don't think this is actually like.
00:38:23
Speaker
Anything more than a sales tactic, but they're like we will put a vertical on your floor for six months And if you like it by it at the end like John you can go get another vertical tomorrow I guarantee you're gonna like I guarantee you're gonna keep it you guarantee you're gonna use it again You're gonna make money with it Now the question is well then just buy it don't do a sales gimmicky of like testers. You could literally just try it and
00:38:44
Speaker
Yeah, but I think, I mean, I can use the Kern as this test to split the Norseman in half now. Half on the Maury, half on the Kern. I don't need to buy another machine because I have time on the Kern. And, you know, palletized it for night runs. And I've thought about it in the past, but I haven't thought about it in the past few weeks with everything I know now.
00:39:07
Speaker
and the issues I'm facing now and things like that. It's just making sense. It's like, why aren't you doing this yesterday kind of thing? Good. By the end of February, if not sooner, I think I'm going to have half of the Norsemen being made on the current.
00:39:25
Speaker
It's a plan. Yeah. Love it. Actually, speaking of plan, on February 1st, the other day, Monday, I wrote down goals for February. I pasted them on a piece of paper, printed it, and put it on the wall, and I told everybody in our meeting. I was like, guys, these are our goals for the month. I think we can hit them. It gives us direction. There's some of it's steady production, but higher, and some of it's new things that we haven't done yet.
00:39:51
Speaker
Can we talk about those next week? Sure. Good. I actually got to run. Okay. Have a good week, bud. Yeah. You too, man. Okay. Bye.