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Business of Machining - Episode 52
197 Plays7 years ago
**HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BUSINESS OF MACHINING!**
Machine for 10 years, clean your coolant once. Grimsmo is reunited with his lost chips in this recent Coolant Cleaning video.
Saunders proves his love for combining machining with IoT in the Air Compressor Text Alert video.
In a weekend long conversation on WhatsApp about 5-Axis with pallet pool, what used to seem like a trip to the moon is now a tombstone's throw away.
Grimsmo depends on his routine for stress relief but when he falls off the wagon, he finds himself in a pensive mood.
It's MY CAD model and I want it now! Saunders wants global CAM variables instead of having to master model.
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Transcript
Celebrating One Year of Podcasting
00:00:02
Speaker
Good morning, and welcome to the Business of Machining, episode 52. My name is John Grimsmo. My name is John Saunders. How you doing, buddy? We made it. I actually don't even know why it's that significant, but we did. Oh, yeah, 52's a year. Wow. Nice.
Small Business Perseverance
00:00:19
Speaker
It feels like when you're at episode 20 or 30, 52 seems like it's forever into the abyss. And actually, what an awesome analogy for,
00:00:31
Speaker
small business life and entrepreneurship and goals and hurdles, which is that every so often, you've got to step back and count your cards, but by and large, keep your nose down, keep working, stay focused, stay hungry.
00:00:46
Speaker
let those things happen as a pipeline. You know what
Machining Industry Insights
00:00:49
Speaker
I mean? Yeah, totally. Like in the beginning, you can't see that far ahead and you don't know if you're going to still exist in a year, two years, 10 years, whatever. And then, I mean, you and I have been machining for 10 years now. Yeah. It's like, what? Right.
00:01:06
Speaker
We only cleaned our cool tanks once, but machined for 10 years. Exactly. I was losing it last night and I was like, oh my God, John found all his chips. You know, all of his chips. If
Coolant Cleaning Adventures
00:01:20
Speaker
you haven't watched it, folks, Grimsmo put up a YouTube video, which is solely consists of him largely on the floor, scraping out years of I mean, there must be like 172 Norseman's worth of chips inside of that.
00:01:36
Speaker
Nook and cranny and hilarious. Yep. It was good. And a funny story with that is I, you know, I just kind of held the GoPro camera and I just filmed a bunch of random stuff and I gave all the footage to Erin and I'm like, hopefully you can do something with it. And she created magic. Like I loved how the video turned out and yeah, it was fun. It's funny. Do you still have your gimbal? I do. Yeah, we used a lot.
00:01:59
Speaker
In that video? Not in that video, I don't think. I think I handheld in that video. Yeah, it makes a difference. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't, especially because I like to watch a video like that. I watch on 2X. If you don't know
Coolant Maintenance and Disposal Costs
00:02:11
Speaker
this, folks, YouTube bottom right, the little gear, you can watch videos at double the speed. Because like a video like that, I'm like, I'm not worried I'm going to lose some awesome fixture nugget of information from Grimsville. I just want to watch it for fun. But that was hilarious. And it's good. It feels good to have good clean coolant, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the whole machine's clean.
00:02:29
Speaker
There's these covers in the front of the machine that cover the, there's chip straters, like main ones that catch the chips first before they get into the sump. And so we left the covers off, so now we can actually see these metal filters often.
00:02:47
Speaker
Now we can vision, like it's right in front of the machine. So as we're standing there, every day we can look down and see how full they are. And then after two weeks, they were filled up. So I'm like, huh, I never really clean those much at all. So when they, when they overflow, all the chips just go right into the tank. But you didn't, you just didn't realize, right? It wasn't negligence. It was ignorance.
00:03:05
Speaker
Yeah, a bit of both for sure. I knew I was supposed to clean them out more often, but they're hidden behind these covers and you don't see them. And now I can see them every day. And it's obvious when they're overflowing with chips. So it's good. Hey, can I ask you, so we have not, I have not used in the US or for us, it would probably be safety clean. They're a pretty big company. So I got a sort of a weird soft quote verbally from a sales rep that if we provided our own barrel, because we can get
00:03:35
Speaker
We can get like they have to be road worthy barrels or something so they can't be that to be sealed but we provide our own barrel i think i hope i'm right that they'll take away a fifty five gallon drum of old. Cool enter plasma of water or stuff like that for like i think it was under hundred bucks like sixty or eighty bucks is that in the right ballpark what what it was.
00:03:59
Speaker
At my place, which is just a couple miles down the street from us, they provided the barrels. Yeah. And they actually have their own cleaning facility. So they do the cleaning there. And he said there was a minimum charge of $250, which he was a little flexible. We actually haven't gotten the bill yet. But I think it's going to be like $200 for the two barrels. And we probably could have gotten more like three or four barrels for that price. We just didn't
Shop Rearrangement and Workflow Efficiency
00:04:25
Speaker
need it. So we used two barrels full to the top.
00:04:29
Speaker
And it was great, like 200 bucks, done. That's super comparable then, because I think safety clean was, I think the woman sales rep was like, I have to charge you like 90 bucks for a barrel. She's like, go get your own. And then 60 or so or 80 bucks per barrel would match that pretty well. So that's nice to know. So do you get the barrel back if you own it then?
00:04:51
Speaker
I don't think so, but there's a guy down the road who sells golf balls and used barrels. And he has a sign in his yard. And so Jared went down there a couple of weeks ago, actually a couple of months ago. And we bought like three of those old like vinegar, 55 gallon drums that are empty and they've got a seal cap. So that should do the trick. Sweet. Yeah. And this place even offered. He's like, do you want to keep some barrels here and you could just keep dumping stuff into them and pick them up. And I'm like,
00:05:20
Speaker
Maybe, but you're right down the street, so if I ever need them, I'll just get more. No, I'm not going to store your barrels for you in my otherwise... It was really interesting to see your shop. Isn't it funny how moving a table two feet just completely rocks your world?
00:05:36
Speaker
Yep, absolutely. Things are different now. My toolbox is in a different place. The main table is in a different place. It totally rocks the world. Whoa, this can be different and I like it. I'm doing a great job. As usual, I'm beating myself up. I'm doing a really good job of a lot of the things that we've been talking about when it comes to successful. I hate the word. We need a better word because it's not delegation and it's not like
00:06:04
Speaker
It's the right kind of business growth where people are doing really good jobs at their stuff. And it's allowing me to do what I want, which is to kind of quit my job. It'll be less critical to the hourly or daily stuff here. It's going great. I'm finding that I'm backfilling my time with videos, which makes me happy. It's what I like doing. But I need to, and this on my list of like, I'm going to try
00:06:29
Speaker
assigning myself time. So like maybe two hours or three hour chunks over the next couple of days and just test it to say, hey, you need to spend two hours on this project or on this video, or you need to spend two hours, leave your phone in your office. You need to spend two hours back in the inventory racks or two hours moving
00:06:47
Speaker
Jay Pearson said that once. He's like, yeah, we just paid the rigors to come in for six hours. It was 500 bucks and they brought their skates and we just moved machines around with no specific goal or no, like he didn't know what he wanted. And I was like, that was crazy because of the bootstrapper of me was like losing my losing it inside. I'm like, oh my gosh, you just spent five hours for like that. But I was like, whoa, maybe that is maybe he's right.
00:07:16
Speaker
Yeah, especially, you know,
IoT and Machining Innovations
00:07:17
Speaker
workflow can be different, can be optimized, can be, just because it is how it is, doesn't mean it's the best way. Right. Yep. Yep. Good stuff though.
00:07:28
Speaker
our video today was one I really enjoyed. I've already seen a couple of passionate comments, but Internet of Things, it's technically not an Arduino. It's not an Arduino, but it's called a particle photon. It's a $20 Wi-Fi equipped
00:07:47
Speaker
device that you program like an Arduino, meaning that you can program it in the Arduino IDE with basically Arduino code, and it stems very much from the Arduino momentum. So that's why I use the word Arduino. But it's Wi-Fi equipped, and it handles digital I.O. stuff. I think it handles analog. It has an A to D as well, because we have a photocell on it. But it interacts super well with if this, then that.
00:08:16
Speaker
Oh yeah, you were saying that last week a little bit. Yeah. So it worked. So the problem that we had, I'll keep it short because you can go watch the video, but basically those auto drains on air compressors in my experience over 10 years of machining don't always work. They usually will turn on, but for some reason, sometimes the pneumatic valve gets sticky or there's too much back pressure or fluid that keeps it from actually draining. So you'll go over sometimes and I'll have to hit it two or three or five times and then all of a sudden it will open and you'll just see this like,
00:08:46
Speaker
I don't know, quite a few ounces of water come out, which tells you it wasn't draining like it was supposed to.
00:08:52
Speaker
So we put a $10 Adafruit flow meter on the output. We wide out the output. And so every hour it turns the drain on. We program that schedule through if this, then that. So it's a smart device like that. And it then looks to make sure it got flow out. And if it didn't get flow out, it sends me a text message.
00:09:17
Speaker
That's awesome. I can't wait to watch the video. Easy and not easy in the sense that you just plug it in and type your email and it's got some more tweaks, but it's really everything was there, the framework, the code. Well, that's the thing with invention is it's easy if you have the idea and the initiative and the skills to get it done.
00:09:40
Speaker
the effort of doing
Invention, Creativity, and Cinema
00:09:41
Speaker
it, just making a part. It's not hard to make a part, but if it's a new part that's never been made before, it's an invention. You could look at it and be like, oh, that's just a 2D adaptive and a facing and a chamfer. That's easy, but it could be a product. Just like your thing, it's just putting things together into a new package. That's awesome.
00:10:01
Speaker
That's a really good movie. Have you ever seen The Witcher Wiper one? Yeah. Oh my God. Because his name is Robert Kern. Yes. You guys got to go watch this movie. It's called Gene Gene.
00:10:19
Speaker
Who's the actor? Gary Kinnear. One of those guys. I'm typing. Sorry, Julian Aaron. I am typing on my keyboard. Flash of Genius, 2008. Greg Kinnear. Greg Kinnear, okay. Folks, go watch this movie. We won't spoil it except there's this beautiful situation in the courtroom where he
00:10:40
Speaker
exploit. They're trying to lambast him for the simplicity of a design. And he puts up a Shakespeare four letter phrase from Shakespeare and is kind of like, well, I don't want to stop. It's a really good movie. And it talks about really good. Yeah.
Exploring Five-Axis Machining
00:10:55
Speaker
entrepreneurship and invention and demoralizing behavior, and frankly, some good takeaways about not letting things consume you, like what do you want out of this in the end? Oh, that's funny. I can't believe it. That's 10 years ago, man. I still remember it that vividly. That's awesome. Yeah, it's funny.
00:11:14
Speaker
Okay, well we can't go any further into this conversation without talking about our weekend text messaging. So John and I and some other guys basically spent the entire weekend text messaging back and forth on WhatsApp talking about 5axis.
00:11:34
Speaker
And no, no, no, five axis with pallet pool. Yes, absolutely. And just the implications and the costs and the videos and the research and the, you know, usability and all this stuff. And it certainly opened my eyes a lot to possibilities, not just to create like a skull or a basketball net or something like as a five axis part and not to make molds or anything like that, like you would typically use it for.
00:12:04
Speaker
But applicable things, instead of getting a horizontal with a tombstone, I could basically put a small tombstone on a fifth axis machine. And instead of spending 400,000 Canadian on a horizontal machine, I'd spend 500,000 Canadian on a five axis with a pallet pool. And now I'd have full five axis capability for any products in the future that I would need that capability for, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
00:12:34
Speaker
And so clear caveat, we recognize it gives us something to look forward to and to think about. And that's OK. That's OK. None of us want anything crazy. But yeah, neither one of us are buying one tomorrow as much as it would be fun to do so. But you and I are dreamers. We're hungry. This keeps us driven. It really does. It does. It reframes everything. Well, you know what I mean.
00:13:00
Speaker
Yeah, no, I mean, it was like a my Sunday high of that conversation. And that that funness, I know that's not a word, was was was severely mitigated by a very crummy Monday morning that consisted of lots of broken things in the shop. And but that's why I do what I do. Like, and it's kind of sad because I don't
00:13:25
Speaker
I want a product simply to justify that machine, which is like my product is the happiness of being able to hack that machine and make that machine work to success of being able to get there.
00:13:41
Speaker
We were talking about a bunch of different machines and kind of what's changed in that industry. But it's pretty crazy that they have these machines now that, frankly, aren't that much bigger of a footprint than your mill or even mine mill. They're really not. And they have a smaller work envelope, but they have like the one in particular was 10 pallets. So you have access to I guess you have access to three at a time or nine of them. But I think the door opens to get you to three.
00:14:11
Speaker
So you can be loading and tweaking and changing, and it could be all identical parts, or it can be individual parts, and each palette could have one vise, it could have four or five spider vise sort of like alignments, or you could put mini tombstones on each one.
00:14:31
Speaker
So John was going bananas. I mean, literally within, I don't know, within an hour and a half, he sends back a screenshot text message picture over like of a new fixture for one of his products that had like tombstones inside the work envelope of the what do you call it? Like the.
00:14:50
Speaker
the pallet work area. They give you this giant cylindrical shape that's got taper that gives you an idea where you can put parts for clearance and all that. I spend multiple hours past that for the refining that. It's to the point now where it's almost done. You just put some cam on it and we're rocking. Oh my gosh.
00:15:13
Speaker
I was going to say, I can't remember. I mentioned not stealing credit here, but I don't know. Two months or three months ago, I was like, I would want my next machine. I was thinking a drill mill with some automation, which is speaking to the same idea of, hey, load up.
00:15:33
Speaker
10 and have it run during the day and load up 10 and have it run during the night. Not exactly rocket science, not exactly the first person to think of that, but the difference with 5-axis, like you said, has very little to do with crazy swarf simultaneous gnarly looking moves, but more so, hey, one and done or
00:15:53
Speaker
or getting all the important stuff done. And your second op is more like a 1B op where you're just removing a little flange or holding or something. Well, it's something you told me months ago that I'm pretty sure Rob Lockwood said originally was like his 5-axis at work, he sets up subsequent jobs. There are multiple 5-axis at work. Let's not discredit the Lockwood. But what he said was,
00:16:23
Speaker
not only can you schedule jobs, but he'll be like machining one part. And then the next palette is the fixture for the next job, which is another thing. And then he pulls the fixture around while the other thing's making and then he applies parts to the fixture. And then it's like this nonstop continuous flow. And over the weekend that really kind of tied into my head.
00:16:44
Speaker
the potential and the possibility of a palette pool, whether it's a horizontal or a five axis or even a three axis with palette changing capability. Like I just like the idea of 10 palettes. It's pretty awesome. It's not necessarily just to make 10 palettes of the exact same thing over and over and over again.
00:17:00
Speaker
You know, right. Yep. Yeah, that was crazy because I asked Rob, Rob, I'm like, why would you when you're making one or two of something, why would you need 30 pallets or some crazy number? And that was kind of his answer was, you know, there's all these fixtures and parts and then you literally have a clamp on a pallet. And it's certainly a luxury that that not everyone could justify or afford. But you're
Balancing Business Operations and Innovation
00:17:25
Speaker
the battle you're solving there is not just a
00:17:29
Speaker
financial return in terms of your end goal with a product, but also time. You're fighting time and the ability to have... Think about that. That's a pretty lofty world to live in, but the ability to have a pal that just had secondary Norseman clamps that had custom appearance. That's really cool.
00:17:47
Speaker
Like right now on the Maury, we are struggling to make six knives a day, which is great. It's awesome. But I have zero time to make fixtures. I have zero time to make clamps, things like that. And I have a backlog of things that I wish I could run right now. And with a system like this, you just schedule it. One part would finish, and it would do the next one. And basically, in that downtime that we normally have, switching palettes and moving things around,
00:18:18
Speaker
It's really cool. It's really cool. It's what makes me do what I do. I would never, I guess if I knew that the machining world, at least for me or maybe in the world, was only going
Personal Productivity and Routine
00:18:31
Speaker
to ever be three axis, I'd probably move on. You know what I mean? Why would you? Yeah, just no.
00:18:39
Speaker
No, you start flying helicopters or something. When you come back to reality and you realize, oh, my gosh, you could easily spend three to four thousand, actually more dollars per pallet in work holding. And then, you know, these tools, you don't buy a
00:18:58
Speaker
10 pallet machine unless you've got something like 50 to 150 or maybe 100 tools. So now you've got to buy tool. Exactly. You're not going to go buy used tool holders on eBay to bootstrap into your brand new almost us. But yeah, no, don't ever. That's like one of my absolute don't do rules is don't put somebody else's tool in your spindle. Oh,
00:19:25
Speaker
Anyway, it's not it. It's it's a lofty endeavor, but it's really cool. Yeah, really cool. Yeah. So it's been fun, which ties into so just this morning, I broke a week long pattern of laziness is the wrong word, but certainly a bit off my game.
00:19:45
Speaker
How so? So I have past five years or so, I've been relatively disciplined about waking up early, exercising, doing some sort of morning ritual, whether it's meditation or priming, Tony Robbins priming, things like that. And past week, maybe even more,
00:20:02
Speaker
I haven't been I just sort of
Master Modeling in Fusion 360
00:20:04
Speaker
I fell off the wagon, you know, I'd stay up to super late working, sleep in cereal for breakfast, not not a real like egg breakfast. I haven't worked out haven't shaved, you know, it's things just kind of, it's interesting to see them fall off quickly. And I know, you know, I'm more irritable and things like that. I'm still productive. But it's not my best self.
00:20:26
Speaker
Your definition of the wheels falling off is like regressing to 7 a.m. Wakeups in cereal for breakfast. That's that's hardly a sympathetic in terms of the spectrum of falling off the wagon. Absolutely. No. OK, sorry. I'm just joking. But no, I get it.
00:20:42
Speaker
But I'm more irritable. Things get to me. There seems to be more problems that develop just because I'm in a worse mood kind of thing. And it's interesting. So this morning, I was like, enough of that. I'm getting up early. I did my workout. And I feel on fire. You know what I mean? And I haven't felt this way. I've been excited about five axes and work and things like that. But I haven't felt the deep confidence
00:21:10
Speaker
that I get from my routine, basically. And it's really interesting. So you find what makes you your best self, what routine, what discipline does it, then go all in on that.
00:21:23
Speaker
It's funny because I have almost the exact opposite experience, which is that I find and I'm a I think I am. I know I am a pretty disciplined person and capable of instilling regiments and so forth. But I find.
00:21:41
Speaker
if I don't let myself feel like it's okay to say, yeah, you know what the heck with it, I'm going to do my own thing or Saturday, my wife and I slept until 7 45 with the kids, which is like, I don't even know what I wouldn't know. I mean, I almost need to go like, I can't believe that happened.
00:22:01
Speaker
or to just be like, yeah, you know, don't worry, don't worry about getting this much like just basically kind of saying to heck with it. And it's funny because that almost the freedom to know you don't have to do it makes me then want to go do it. But the to me saying you like, for instance, I've been thinking about
00:22:20
Speaker
going to like the coffee shop like three or four days a week now for the first 45 minutes and working on stuff that I tend to not get to when I get to the shop. And I like that idea, except if I turn that into a chore, or I have to do it, and I have to meet a hurdle, and I have to get quantity work done, and I have to have this threshold where, you know, I get there at 615 by seven, I need to have this done every day, then all of a sudden, I just am like, that sounds miserable. Like,
00:22:48
Speaker
It's
Overcoming Machining Challenges
00:22:49
Speaker
just how it's weird. It's almost like I have to trick myself. Yeah. So your coffee shop time, let's call it. It works best when it allows you to be you, when it inspires you, when it lets you like come up with big ideas. When it's a chore, then it's no fun.
00:23:06
Speaker
Exactly. No, exactly. It's as simple as that. I think it's just the same expectation of when you go into something in an event or a thing or a movie and you want it to be awesome and great, then it's always tough. Yep, yep.
00:23:22
Speaker
Yep. Yeah. So I usually give myself Saturdays. I'll sleep in on kind of Saturdays, my recharge day on a normal week when I'm on it. But, you know, to you can't recharge for a week straight every morning, at least not the way I do it. Right.
00:23:37
Speaker
Yeah, so I just felt weird yesterday. And even Eric came up to me. He's like, you doing OK? You seem kind of pissed off about something. I'm like, yeah, yes and no. I got a lot going on. But I'm not feeling too bad. But when other people notice, it's funny. Right. But you almost have to do that. You almost have to pinch yourself every now and then to make sure. Yeah. It's kind of like even, oh, man, we got our butt kicked yesterday.
00:24:07
Speaker
we're doing our first metric fixture plate. We knew it would be different. I don't even want to. It was frustrating. And it's but it's so it's predictable because when one thing goes wrong, the cascade effect after it is horrendous, which inflicted that around.
00:24:25
Speaker
tells you
Business Growth and Future Prospects
00:24:26
Speaker
what a good job we've done on nailing down the processes and process reliability and workflows of the stuff that we make. So I guess it's a backhanded compliment to our own, to what we do. But man, it really increases the hurdle behind what you have to do in the mindset behind something new. But sorry, take a step back away. And that's when you're like, no, I still love what I do. Wouldn't? Yeah.
00:24:56
Speaker
Absolutely. That's like when four years ago now, we made a left-handed Norseman. Whoa. And we made about 25 of them. And people are still asking for them often. But it's not just you put the pocket
Industry Events and Networking Opportunities
00:25:11
Speaker
clip on the other side and call it good. Every single feature, every single thing is reversed, is backwards. It's proper left-handed knife. So you had the CAD model for it?
00:25:22
Speaker
Yeah. Although it'd be all different now. Right. See, that's the thing, man. I'm starting to get cynically frustrated because same thing there. Like we have good grief. We have aluminum and steel versions of three different size fixture plates where we now have a potential other variable of metric, which means these start becoming exponentials at the correct mathematical rate. And yeah, it's like you can get a 16
00:25:51
Speaker
Different ways to get your Big Mac means there's like, you know, 16 million combinations. Anyway, when we tweak a feed and speed, which there was a way, I guess I want. Tell me you're not doing the feeds and speeds and metric to. Absolutely not. Now we we do what we do. We do do have a whole Excel sheet that candles because I think in tolerancing in inches. So you have to I have to do it. Right.
00:26:19
Speaker
But I want global cam variables.
Reflecting on Business Growth and Lessons Learned
00:26:25
Speaker
Does that make sense? Define it. Well, OK, so I want a way to set a feed rate or a radial stock to leave as a variable that I can share between models.
00:26:41
Speaker
Okay. Didn't we briefly talk about that on the WhatsApp chat over the weekend? We did, and there's no way. Fusion CAD expressions don't translate over to CAM, which I think is a fair criticism because that's kind of low hanging fruit and you kind of
00:26:56
Speaker
you know, presenting fusion as fusion being a fusation fusion. That's not a word. Yeah, integrated using Yeah, you have this sort of major break, like it manifests itself on something simple, like where you have a custom pattern in CAD, and then you want to pattern the cam, you can't reference the pattern spacing, parametrically, which is a real workflow that could Yeah.
00:27:21
Speaker
It's a real, I think it's fair to be critical of that. Now, what I'm asking for is really something new, which is to say, hey, we know there's tool deflection on this particular operation, so I want to use 3.2 thou of radial stock to leave because that's what I figured out gives me what I want. But I want to share that across multiple files.
00:27:42
Speaker
That's what I'm asking for. So not even file specific, but more global. Yeah. Because the other alternative is to have all of your products in one file, which might sort of go back to that idea of master modeling, which is a frustrating topic for me, this idea that basically we're all using Fusion wrong.
00:28:06
Speaker
Rob Lockwood did a video on it, as did the Kevin Schneider, who was basically the father of Fusion at Autodesk. You want to explain that? I don't even know if I can explain it well. OK, I think I get it. So I watched Kevin Schneider's video. It was like a webinar presentation kind of thing. I didn't quite get it based on his presentation. And then when Rob did it, I watched his video over the weekend. It made a lot more sense because Rob actually like went through it with one of his models.
00:28:32
Speaker
So basically, you create one model with just sketches. And it looked like a mess of sketches, because it has this and that and that and that and that and that. But every single one of your tolerances is in that model. And then you open up a new file, you drag the sketch in, and then you revolve the surfaces, you extrude them, you make your thing. And you make one thing and then you
00:28:52
Speaker
drag the sketch into another new document and you make the other thing. If you're making this assembly, now you have this one master model with all your dimensions in it and every subsequent file is its own thing that looks back on the first sketches. You just have to change the sketches and everything else is interrelated.
00:29:08
Speaker
So if he was making a pen in the document, if you make one thing bigger, then everything else becomes bigger, which is kind of cool for a complicated design. But you got to really like step back from day one and think about it. Like I'm designing my flashlight right now. So Saturday was five axis day. Sunday was flashlight day for me.
00:29:25
Speaker
And it was great. I got a ton of progress done, but my flashlight documented fusion is an absolute torrential mess. It's just gross garbage because I'm playing, right? The intention is to go back and redesign it properly once I have it figured out. But I don't know if that'll actually happen or if I'll just stick with this mess, but it's fun. So the Lockwood example was a good one.
00:29:53
Speaker
important nuance though is the first master file is just 2D sketches. So in his pen example, I don't remember the specifics, but there was like the tip needs to be this sort of sketch shape, the body needs to be this sketch shape and the clip needs to be this sketch shape. And then you import the sketch and just use the pen tip for the pen tip CAD model where you actually make the solid body. And then you later
00:30:21
Speaker
Do you assemble it in a third and yet again a new? I think it does. Yeah, probably. It frustrates me because it kind of goes back on what I was taught as a layman about Fusion 360, which is this idea that you're moving away from the solid works model where
00:30:37
Speaker
And SolidWorks is the industry leader for lack of a better description where you have individual part files and then you put them together in an assembly. Now there's a nuance difference that you're kind of starting with an assembly, breaking it out into parts and then reassembling an assembly. And the idea is distributed design and you're letting different people work on different components and you're setting one file with all your master tolerances and sizing and it can flow through. And it seems cool, but I'm just like, man, it's so awkward.
00:31:06
Speaker
Yeah. Well, one of the benefits that I found with my Rask fixture, which is that version nine hundred and thirty at the moment. But that.
00:31:16
Speaker
I designed like every individual knife handle in part was designed separately but the fixture itself and all the tweaks and all the assembly and all this stuff was in this one major file and it kind of got out of control and it would take many minutes just to open up, many minutes just to save and it would hang and it would freeze and cam was slow and all this stuff. So Rob suggested the master modeling technique which speeds it up which for my new Norseman palette I've been doing more of.
00:31:43
Speaker
So I actually have one file that's just called cam Norseman and the whole assembly gets dragged into that and that's my cam file. So if I want to make any changes, I go into the assembly file or back again. And then the only sucky thing is you have to like use the get latest function every step of the way, which isn't right, but when yeah, but it's
00:32:07
Speaker
That's my problem. I can't put every solid model of every product or plate in one file because it would become unwieldy. There's a workflow problem of if you do that, I can't be in the same file with one or two other people at the same time. It's funny. I still love Fusion. I love what it's done for us. I love its opportunity, its price point, and so forth. I also
00:32:34
Speaker
get a little frustrated with something. I want to keep the tone overall positive. One hack I've heard now a couple of times, I've never tried it, but I want to put it out there if any other folks are having problems, is that if you're trying to load one of those crazy large files or having problems, go into the top right and force yourself to manually go into offline mode.
00:32:56
Speaker
and apparently it can work a lot better. So I hesitate to espouse that as a good workflow because it's kind of a little hacky thing and it maybe isn't a good long-term solution, but nevertheless, that could be an interesting way to get something to maybe just open or work and then you can switch back into online mode to let it sync later. Yeah, I think Rob mentioned that in his master modeling video and it's something I've never tried, but yeah, it sounds like a sweet idea.
00:33:23
Speaker
Yeah, because I had the same problem. I'm doing this key fob mold right now, and it's not that big. It's like 14 megs, but it is not opening and closing and posting at the pace I would like it to. I've got that HP CAD computer that's not a bad computer at all.
00:33:41
Speaker
Right, right. But we want it now. I do. I do. The world is instant. I do. No, that's a reasonable, I don't. It is. That's not a millennial, like, silly demand. No, I mean, I want to, I got to have something that's more responsive. You make better, you make better decisions because you will literally, like, right now, actually, I wanted to ask you about this. I'm fighting
00:34:04
Speaker
We broke a tool, no big deal because the tool had been a champ for one 16th end mill had just done a ton of work. So I've got seven car key fobs around a circular pattern. I only need to rerun the last three.
00:34:24
Speaker
So I could just create three different in the in the the all the cam is on the one it called nine o'clock and the the ones I need to do are over on the right hand side at like one two and three so I Could create three different patterns not a big deal because I'm just I just need to get this done the cams done It wouldn't it would be an inefficient workflow
00:34:43
Speaker
I think that's what I would do, yeah. But there's this thing called duplication pattern, which I'd heard about but never used where the way they describe it is, creates patterns using tool pass as the source and sketch points as the targets, which is genius. Because it's like, OK, let's say you've got a random
00:35:07
Speaker
for some no rational reason let's say you've got random mold cavities that are identical throughout a part just splotched all around what you can do is say here's my here's a cam for the original one and here's a reference location now pattern that over here 7.2 inches away it happens to be clocked 15 degrees but transpose it over there you think about it from a software standpoint that shouldn't be that big of a deal and that appears to be what it does but i can't get the
00:35:35
Speaker
I can't get the duplicated toolpath to be aligned or oriented even close to correct. I'm using sketch lines. I've created joint origins. I've created construction geometry. I should just move on with the three patterns. You want to get it done. You want to do it the way that you think you can do it. I've never used the duplicate pattern feature. Are you saying it patterns off of the pattern already?
00:36:02
Speaker
No. That's not what I'm understanding. No, no, no. It's just if you think about a clock, if you think about it as a clock, all my CAM is on the number, is on the nine o'clock one. And I need to create that. And you're doing six. I need to have that tool by the current one, two, and three o'clock identically.
00:36:21
Speaker
So I'll just force a pattern with one instance at the right angle. Yeah, I think that's the easy way to do it. Yeah, I don't know if there's a better way. Yeah. A different way. OK. Yeah. That's part of the journey. I would. Yeah, of course. So you've got your routine back. You're feeling good again. What's on schedule for today?
00:36:48
Speaker
Well, I'm at the shop right now. And I'm actually going home just after this because it is Clara's eighth birthday today. So quick little school party, which is always fun. And then I'll come back to the shop. And we are crushing it with production another week in a row. Last week closed out as not our biggest week ever, but it was solid. That's a good thing. Yeah. Right. You shouldn't be trying to one up
00:37:17
Speaker
Well, and today's January 31st and we are 20, 20% bigger than our biggest month ever already. Great. And we still have today. So it's, it's awesome. Like today's by far our biggest month ever, January. Love it. Good for you, dude.
00:37:35
Speaker
Somebody, I don't know, emailed me maybe, message somehow and it was like, and again, we live in the day-to-day, but what a difference. I don't know. Have you ever listened to one of our podcasts? I haven't. Not recently. In the beginning, the first dozen or two, I listen to everyone to make sure they're good, but no, not since. I guess that's not fair. I edited the first few.
00:37:59
Speaker
the tone of where you are in particular. And that's what this has got to be. It's got to be that balance of... It doesn't have to be anything other than a representation of what it's like, which is I want to be and will always be an optimist. I want to see... I'm like that. I'm like that.
00:38:20
Speaker
I don't know. I've always felt like I was in that I focus on the execution side of thing. I'm not the big dreamer, the big thinker, the creative guy. I'm the more it's going to be hard to get this done. So let's figure it out. But in an optimistic way, not in a bad way. So anyway, still, it's fun to it's fun to see the progress and see where it's going to go and to think that you would be lying if on Sunday you didn't think there was a reasonable way for you to justify it.
00:38:47
Speaker
I know I was thinking that. Oh, absolutely. Holy. Yeah. Like you even said, you're like, be right back. I'm going to sell some stuff on eBay. Yeah. No, right. But that's what makes you, it goes back to like triage and it's like, Oh man, you know, we all like to have stuff to some extent, but when you want something else more, you're like, Oh man, I would totally sell XYZ or whatever. Or work harder or whatever. Yeah. Right. So that's fun.
00:39:13
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. And that it kind of ties in with my mindset for, for now, you know, we're doing really well with production. Um, interest for the Norseman and the Rask is like through the roof. It grows, it grows more every day than what we can possibly produce.
00:39:29
Speaker
and it's a phenomenal problem to be in. I think big picture, what is the year going to look like? What's next year going to look like? Angelo starts working tomorrow as our machinists. I'm super excited. It's crazy. It's like everything's growing and
00:39:45
Speaker
We start talking about five access. I'm like, well, what is the business going to look like over the course of this year? And there's a lot of really, really big things happening. And we've got flashlights coming out in the next few months. And this could really, really expand. And I have to try to wrap my head around where it's going, what we're doing, how to do it smart, how to not go broke trying to grow too fast, all this stuff.
00:40:08
Speaker
Yeah, awesome stuff, just awesome. I cannot wait for IMTS. I refuse to accept that it's like seven months old. Although this year is, I mean, I still feel like I'm still doing my year end, some of my year end bookkeeping stuff, a little stuff. And I'm like, man, but now we're a full month in.
00:40:31
Speaker
Exactly. Kicks you in the pants when you think about, it's why I hate year-long goals because it's like a year-long goal. We don't do anything in the concept of a time of a year. You do stuff in the concept of, to me, really in a day or a week at most period. Tony Robbins likes to say that people overestimate what they can do in a year and they underestimate what they can do in 10 years.
00:40:55
Speaker
I think that's, people overestimate what they can do in a year, but they underestimate what they can do in 10 years because we don't think in long term, like really.
00:41:06
Speaker
We're certainly, certainly terrible about one year goals and most people I talked to or hear from because most people just set up a year long goal as a day one outlook and then that fades away with the past time. And I am wholeheartedly convinced through every conversation and thing I've ever dealt with and learned in my life that what you accomplish is a sum of the parts. It's just like you don't set out and say, we need to do 52,
00:41:36
Speaker
40 minute long episodes where we talk about business or machining or life or whatever. No, it's just some of the parts, right? Yeah. And we don't, you know, I don't log in and check the stats. I don't, it's not that I don't care. It's not the goal. It's a, you know, the success of this podcast is for me a byproduct of, of
00:41:55
Speaker
With the conversation that we have, like the day to day. Now there becomes a point where you've got to play in the real world and decide, hey, do you want to try to ask your fans to share the message? Do you want it to come at critical mass? Are we putting more resources and effort into it that
00:42:11
Speaker
should justify demand more, to make it grow for the sake of growing. Looking at it as a business itself, not just as a little fun little thing that it started out as. But yeah, and that changes things slightly, but still keeps the same like it's always just going to be like you and I chatting around. Yep. Awesome. Sweet. So what are you up to today?
00:42:36
Speaker
Oh my gosh, I've got a couple of really cool projects. We're getting ahead. In full disclosure, the IoT project, we didn't rush, but we hustled because the other project is... Actually, it was a good thing to make. We weren't ready to release the other one. So I was like, okay, let's shift things around.
00:42:53
Speaker
but I don't enjoy that working mode. So we're getting ahead on some other videos and then got to make and finish that metric fixture plate. And my sort of goal is to test this idea of allocating my time to see if it works. And that's what's funny. It's like, you didn't just decide this is what you're going to need to do. You're just going to try it out. Like it's okay. Just see how it goes.
00:43:20
Speaker
Oh, and then this was awesome. This is why it's nice. This may sound silly, but this is why I love what I do. I had to go get an MRI yesterday and the woman there knew she had heard that I make things and she was like, our headphone jacks. And, you know, you know, MRIs have to have all this special stuff because they can't have magnetic materials like steel in there. So it's this weak headphone jack that keeps breaking and they charge outrageous pricing to replace the whole set just because it's one little end. And
00:43:53
Speaker
And there's absolutely no business-justifiable job shop outcome to this. It's fun. I like it. I like being the answer. I like the challenge. And for me, I can justify partly because it's like, hey, we'll do a video on this. We'll take this little part. We'll model it up. Yes. They're checking to make sure we can make it out of brass, which should be fine. But obviously, you want to make sure, because it's near an MRI, that that's OK. Otherwise, we'll make it out of Delrin or something. You can't 3D print something?
00:44:13
Speaker
I looked at it and...
00:44:21
Speaker
I don't think 3D printing, you could, yes, but I'm going to machine it because I'm a machinist. I think there'll be a couple cool little lessons out of machining. I just enjoy it. That's all that needs to happen. It was really fun to think, hey, I'm going to do this again. The correct answer is because why not?
00:44:40
Speaker
Yes. And it's difficult to tie that into success in machining because it's not a one to one direct comparison. But that is how I got started. It took a long time and it was slow. But you do that and then that same place calls you back for a real job or something that's more economic. To make this part would really probably I would probably want to charge three to five hundred dollars based on what I know I'm going to spend on it, which is not doesn't work. I'll do it probably for free because I will. But like
00:45:10
Speaker
That could lead to real work. It leads to reputation. It's the way you grow. Experience. The right way. Yeah. That's awesome. That's what I'm about to do today. Sweet. I love it. Yes. Good. I will talk to you next week. Yeah. Sounds great. Say hi. Happy birthday to Claire for me. Will do. Take care. All right. Take care. Bye.