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#342 Carbon Fiber tips and tricks
358 Plays1 year ago
TOPICS:
- Maintaining CNC machines
- Process bins!
- Carbon Fiber tips and tricks
- Sandvik drills
- ERP systems managing lead times
- Freshdesk for customer service
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Transcript
Introduction and Equipment Maintenance
00:00:01
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the Business of Machining episode number 342. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. John and I talk about how we're not brand new machinists anymore. And some of our equipment is going to require more TLC, which is my theme of the topic today. We're placing and fixing stuff. Go for it. Jump right in.
Troubleshooting the Willeman Machine
00:00:24
Speaker
I'll let you do player's choice so we can talk about the Okuma. We can talk about the air compressor or we can talk about the Willeman. Let's obviously start with Willeman first. Okay, Willeman, I know I overanalyze stuff and so I'll readily admit that.
00:00:46
Speaker
going into it, I spent a lot of time trying to troubleshoot the U axis. It's a two inch travel axis that moves the second vice left to right as you're staring at the machine. Obviously, John, I know you're more than familiar with it. And using dial test indicators on both extremes of the stroke, the left and the right, we confirmed that it was consistently
00:01:10
Speaker
I don't have to write terms here. Losing steps, losing position. It was consistently shifting the travel range to the right. So if you ran it, we did a 50 loop, a 50 loop and a 100 loop under like full test mode. We've done stuff prior to this to build this thesis and then we tested it. And after 50 it moved. Oh, don't quote me on this. Was it?
00:01:32
Speaker
1,000 or something, or 2,000, I remember. And then another 50 moved exactly another 2,000. And it's even each time. And then after another 100, it moved 4,000. So it's totally repeatable. We don't think it's mechanical.
Encoder Issues and Repair Options
00:01:47
Speaker
And the thing that bothered me, learning from Chris Welch, Chris Welch over at Swissimation, who's actually- Let's look at an old one.
00:01:57
Speaker
Well, yes, but even better, he has a boatload of Swiss machete.
00:02:04
Speaker
has done a lot of repair on them, has bought used ones for great deals and fixed them up. A lot of those machines have similar FANUC drive systems as this U-axis. It's the only axis on a Wilhelmin that is not a true closed loop servo system that actually has a, what do you call it, John? Encoder a linear rail or scale or something? A scale, thank you. It has an encoder, of course, but it doesn't have one. So basically, you tell it to go,
00:02:33
Speaker
existence, it goes that distance and it doesn't know if it got there based on a third party or secondary validation technique of a linear scale on the axis. That's how the citizens are. It's an absolute encoder is the term I was thinking of. The good news is it in theory always knows where it is. The bad news is that it always thinks it knows where it is, whether that's true or not.
00:02:55
Speaker
quadratic encoders are super cool. I'm not sure I ever really knew this. It certainly had been a long time since I played with Arduino quadratic encoders where you have alternating AB signals that allow it to do validation beyond just pulsing. It knows it should pulse in a particular, like think of it like DNA or something where like, hey, if I see A now, I should see B next. And if I go back where I should see this one, which helps
00:03:25
Speaker
in theory minimize the risk that it behaves errantly or rather if it does behave errantly is able to throw an alarm. The sort of response I got the reason we're not seeing an alarm is it may be too small
00:03:40
Speaker
of a error, which I'm not sure part of me then thought, well, can we adjust that settings? Basically, what I wanted to do, being a wimp, I wanted to make sure I knew we were fixing the right thing before we spent. It'll be about three grand if we do it ourselves.
00:03:58
Speaker
No problem paying for that on that machine. I do have a problem paying for that on that machine if number one, it doesn't fix it or number two, this becomes a monthly or quarterly, got another X thousand dollar repair. That will not be a long-term win.
00:04:16
Speaker
And the biggest bummer is there's no repair on this size motor. You can't just replace the encoder. You can't send it in for repair. And the second bummer is they won't accept a return. So if I do get it and install it and it doesn't fix it, there's no option. Well, I think you've done a lot of your research. You've done a lot of testing, asked a lot of people. And it sounds like the motor is the next on the hit list to replace.
00:04:46
Speaker
Yeah, that's it. They don't think it would be the drive itself and the- Or like the electrical control box, like the drive. Yeah. Yeah. The thing like the DIN rail thing. They sort of said, hey, you should have us come out, FANUC, or will them in your OEM come
Motor Replacement Decision
00:05:03
Speaker
out? And I was kind of like, yeah, look, I don't love spending the money if it's-
00:05:08
Speaker
I'm not going to spend a thousand bucks to confirm that's the problem when three grand gets me the parts we need. And look, if it's truly not the motor problem, I'll sell figure out ways. We'll be fine. And so yeah, just bought it this morning. So when you buy a panic motor from like
00:05:25
Speaker
We actually have a fan corporate account because of our robo drill that we used to have. It was a little bit of a process to get it set up. So that account was still actually activated.
00:05:38
Speaker
Nice. Direct basically. Yeah, he has like Amazon just bought a logo website, the credit card. Well, you can step back and you think about how prolific FANUC is like they're everywhere. They're in everything. They're in every machine. They're like, they must have a good parts network in the US, right?
00:05:56
Speaker
Yes, but it's also, uh, boy, it's one thing to talk about it. It's something to live it. Like it wouldn't be crazy to think in five or 10 years, a fan is like, bro, we discontinued that one. Like you're on your own. I don't know like how much of an export deck there's, I don't know how esoteric or nichey these little motors are. The motor itself was $2,514 for, I believe $1,800. You could have gotten the exact same motor that was not
00:06:27
Speaker
some liquid proof, I don't know, it's waterproof or oil proof. I don't care about the money so much that I'm like, well, if you really got in a pinch, could you use the non-waterproof version or even do so and put some coating around it or something? Yeah. Sounds like progress. Yeah, I think so.
00:06:51
Speaker
Okay, second Wilhelmin thing. Grant just wants to know if you have single point threading working. Yeah, he texted me about it and I will have to look and confer with my notes because I remember playing with it. I can't remember how far I got. I think I got it to work. G31 or G41 or something. Yeah, Jim from Wilhelmin answered the question and I'll forward the email now that I think about it.
00:07:19
Speaker
It's like not obvious, but it's obvious when he says it like he does. Okay. I forget the details, but. Sounds like it's just a post tweak. Yep, yep. Pretty sure I got it working. Yeah, because it's super handy. I would have thought you did too, but then. Yeah, whatever, we'll figure it out. Yeah, sweet, sweet. Okay, air compressor next.
Compressor Troubleshooting and Replacement
00:07:47
Speaker
Air compressor one is another two for but both are
00:07:51
Speaker
I'd say wind. First one is our new-ish compressor. Just blew a one amp fuse that's kind of a like little electronics fuse that also controls the whole thing. And it's an awesome example of process bins. I walked in late yesterday. I put the kids on the bus. I walked in. Garrett was like, hey, compressor's down. We have our backup, of course. But like, compressor's down. Not totally dead. Breaker's okay. And I was like, what? Let's check the fuses.
00:08:21
Speaker
Check the fuses, sure enough. F2 was blown. I don't know why it was blown. I'm not going to get too worried about that right now. And I walked over to the process bin. We had already kept those. This happened once before. I think on a different one. But regardless, I had the fuses in the process bin. Put a fuse in and like low stress, confidence, like it just felt good. Yeah. I like that a lot.
00:08:48
Speaker
Second thing is we bought our second compressor during the COVID shortages when things were difficult to get. Do you have two identical compressors now? No, the second one is a 10 horsepower
00:09:07
Speaker
New to us, it was a showroom demo. So it's actually, I meant to look it up, I think it's a 2012. So it's 10 years old. I had like very few hours and it was the manufacturer's showroom demo. So obviously that took care of it.
00:09:23
Speaker
but it's bigger than we need. And it's, I'm not interested anymore in having a 10 year old compressor be our backup. Like it's not, there's nothing wrong with it. It's been great, but, um, I just want a seven and a half horsepower smaller one that's matches the one we have. So we are, we bought that today and we're going to be selling our 10 horsepower, 10 year old screw compressor, Fiat. If anybody's interested, let me know. I don't have a price yet, but we will be pragmatic on
00:09:50
Speaker
on what it's worth. Because I just feel like if we did have a problem with it, I'm just not willing to have a 10 year old item be our what we're relying on as our backup. We were actually not really a backup because we really do need two compressors. But the second one is only needed if we happen to be simultaneously doing like blow offs. We do a lot of gloves in the machine and so forth. So you're running the whole shop on the seven and a half horsepower.
00:10:20
Speaker
No problem. No, if you, if you take the 10, I think if you take either one offline, we'll get low air alarms, but certainly the 10 offline. So we need, we need to, you actually run to like to keep, uh,
00:10:35
Speaker
They have different PSI points. So in theory, one should be the lead, the other should be the lag. But if one does go down, we have a little huddle and we need to know that we don't run the air blow offs. And that will usually keep us out of low measurement alarms. Do you have a big accumulator tank or just the tanks that come with it?
00:10:59
Speaker
We each compressor has an approximately 80 gallon tank and then we have a large tank that is plumbed in, but ball valve off because in my, we actually have some debate on this in the shop. I love the opinion that you don't want that tank there because it increases the volume, but it also makes the recovery time longer and low air alarms are tripped by pressure and it's easier to build pressure back up with a,
00:11:26
Speaker
Um, smaller system. So I built back up faster. Yeah. Interesting. So it's there, but ball, that was close.
Okuma Machine Door Issues
00:11:41
Speaker
And the Yokuma.
00:11:44
Speaker
You get the door chips figured out? No, I don't. I threw it up on Instagram. I tried to be explicit in explaining that we have checked for chips, but that's what everybody was saying. And look, in fairness, I'm missing something. It is still being operated safely, but we did print a, I don't know, two, three millimeter spacer that pushes the key out further. The door is still totally shut.
00:12:09
Speaker
It's there's some where there's chips that we can't find, even though we removed all the gaskets, blew them out. So I ordered a air compressor nozzle that appears to take a little flexible tip. I'm going to try to bend a tip around. It looks like there's almost like a zigzag Z baffle where those sheet metal doors interlock. So there is a chance that there's chips
00:12:35
Speaker
that are on a whole nother baffle layer that I'm not seeing. It also feels, it feels a little spongy right where it's pushing back so you can push it about, well, this distance of that washer, maybe 0.2 inches, three millimeters, something, you can kind of push it and then it comes back. It feels more like a rubber, piece of rubber gut.
00:12:57
Speaker
stuck somewhere that it does chips, but I can also see how chips have that. Yeah. That's sponginess. Yep. Like a big hair, hair ball of chips kind of thing. Yeah. So we're running it fine, except I don't. Interesting. What I had done after we, so we printed a shorter spacer, put it in the, put the key on the spacer, then the door. So the door was shutting.
00:13:25
Speaker
successfully shutting and hooking into the interlock, but obviously not being close as far. I measured the gap and then I 3D printed a little mini Thor's hammer that was the gap of the door currently was. I like the simplicity of holding that gauge up and then sure enough, at the end of the next day, so probably like...
00:13:44
Speaker
12 to 18 hours of runtime later that gap had moved by another hundred now. Now it hasn't I don't think since moved from there but that was kind of like where something's growing right. Have you tried like bending a coat hanger or a piece of wire and fishing around?
00:14:03
Speaker
already had it. In fact, it's a labeled tool made out of old steel banding that's bent into a curly QC that you can hook in there. Everything seems fine.
00:14:16
Speaker
weird fiasco Kuma for like a cat drawing of the door. So you can see. So we had a couple people shout reach out that have had either this machine, other Kuma horizontal or just other horizontals or five axis machines that have had similar issues. And one person seemed to know more, they're like, I can't decipher exactly what they mean. But they're like, it actually sometimes can actually require you to remove the door, which requires a forklift.
00:14:43
Speaker
I don't even have a problem doing that. I just want to understand where it is. I should have brought a borescope in too. I'm not sure that's going to help because it's too tight to get a borescope in. Yeah, it has happened to our curtain before and it's pretty obvious because it's just got these two screw in rubber bumpers.
00:14:59
Speaker
You open the door, you see the bumpers, and the upper one swelled from oil, from coolant just getting worse. Coincidentally, between the bumper or it screws in, it comes with two washers. Some say just unscrew it by hand, take out a washer, screw it back in. I'm like, oh, they thought of this. This is great. Yeah. Without having to replace the bumper at this time, I'm sure it's a $12 part, but back and running. Yeah.
00:15:28
Speaker
Yeah. But those problems are so annoying. If it doesn't get worse, I guess we're fine as is, but I'm happy to build it. I know it just sounds silly, but I'm happy to build a process around how to clean out the chips. I have a note from last week about process bins. You brought it up. I think you mentioned to talk about it this week. Do you have any other
00:15:57
Speaker
things to mention about it? Just really happy. The Fuse example, for whatever reason, was an example that's always been top of mind when we started process bins a year or two ago, and then it was ironic that this week, that's what did the trick. Those worked great. And look, we keep the hex key and a quarter inch
00:16:18
Speaker
a drill adapter key for the air compressor is magneted to the enclosure. So if you have to pull the enclosure off, the tools are already right there. They were in the bin.
00:16:28
Speaker
Yeah, they're not in the bin. They're just on a magnet on the enclosure, which I like.
Shop Efficiency with Process Bins
00:16:32
Speaker
I have a question for you. I've seen these process bins. I bought a bunch as well. They're bigger than a sheet of printer paper, but not a ton bigger and like three inches tall or whatever. With an air compressor that's just a floor mounted in the corner kind of thing, you might not have shelving nearby. You might not. Where do you keep the process bin? You just slide it underneath or?
00:16:53
Speaker
Yeah, so they can sit on top of the air compressor, which I'm fine with, or they can sit next to it for anyone listening. Uline S is in SAM 1949 5R.
00:17:09
Speaker
are for red. So it's S1949.5 is the part number. It's a 15 by 9 by 3 bin. You don't have to use these. We put a piece of green duct tape around it. So that way if you have other cardboard boxes or 3D printed boxes, a green bin around it tells you it's a process bin. We have a brother label, the same labels that Lex uses for all of our barcodes that print out what it is. So like most of the process bins are around the product line. So
00:17:39
Speaker
tooling, gauges, go-no-goes, laminated sheets, dimensional drawings, that stuff. I like it. Yeah, I have been using them a little bit for our fixturing specifically, like when we have to make more palettes for the current clamps, inserts, things like that. So I've probably got over a dozen with a process sheet that I created a template in Google Docs.
00:18:06
Speaker
And same template for all of them with file location of infusion, file location in our Google Drive, cycle time, file location on the current, set up notes, things like that. And it's been hugely helpful for the team and for myself, even like, oh, we've got to make more clamps. Boom.
00:18:25
Speaker
You don't have to open up a computer to even make these clamps. The files are right on the control already. Shows how to load the material. I want to get into them more for even a regular production and QC and inspection and things like the air compressor. Great, great ideas. Yes, I'll be doing that. Yeah, they've been great. Awesome. What you got?
00:18:54
Speaker
Well, I'm heading out tomorrow to go to Kern in Chicago. That's awesome.
Road Trip to Kern: Plans and Excitement
00:18:59
Speaker
Super excited about that. I'm going to drive.
00:19:03
Speaker
So it's about an eight hour drive straight through, a bit more for stopping for charging for the car, but super looking forward to that. Is that the furthest drive you've done? I think it is in this car. Just the past few years, I haven't really road tripped that much, but like Leif and I came down and saw you, that was five hours, so I have no problem taking the road trip.
00:19:28
Speaker
and I'm super looking forward to it, so it's going to be awesome. I think Laney Machine Tech is going to be there. I think P3D guy is going to be there and a bunch of other people too, so it's going to be very enjoyable. Yeah, that's awesome. That's fun. Good for you.
00:19:46
Speaker
Today, I'm going to be cutting some more carbon fiber. The more I cut carbon fiber, the more I learn about carbon fiber. It's been kind of my hyper-fixation lately, is learning all the ins and outs about carbon fiber.
00:20:01
Speaker
Just when I think the internet has no more information, I find the new set of keywords that unlock the next level of information. I'm like, oh, that's what industry calls it. That's what the aerospace industry phrases it as.
00:20:18
Speaker
to give me the answers I need, whether it comes with CVD diamond coatings or whether it comes with speeds and feeds for various end mills and carbon fiber. And Sandvik even had one video. When I saw it, I was like, what? As Meg was walking by, she's like, what is it? I'm like, did you know you're supposed to climb or conventional milk carbon fiber, not climb mill it?
00:20:42
Speaker
Oh, interesting. Except I think that is only to get a certain finish in a certain application, in a certain whatever. So you don't have chips ripping upwards, something like that. But that's the only mention I found of conventional milling carbon fiber. So I'm not going to call it gospel, more just another tool in the tool belt kind of thing. Yeah, sure. Because I'm not having any delamination problems. I'm really just having tool wear problems is my only concern.
00:21:12
Speaker
I'm using these fancy CVD diamond end mills and then I wore out the first one significantly like it's rounded on the corners. What I've learned is that I reached out to the company. I showed them a bunch of pictures under the microscope and I gave them all my speeds and feeds and all my cut parameters and everything and he's like, wow, that's a lot of information. Excellent. Let me think about this.
00:21:36
Speaker
And he said, because the coating is literally diamonds on the outside, it's not that the diamonds are abrasive by themselves, but they protect the carbide. They keep it strong, basically. They create a little boundary layer. He said, because the diamonds are there, you don't have to
00:21:56
Speaker
worry about heat on the end mill, but you still have to worry about linear feet cut and abrasion of the carbon fiber against the diamond. It's only going to last so long. The way I was doing this finishing pass was I was going down 5,000
00:22:12
Speaker
zip around the outside of the inlay, down another 5,000, zip around, down another 5,000 because I'm doing the tape method so that inlays are taped. I don't want to create too much side load, right? So I just want to kiss it, kiss it, kiss it, kiss it so that when I do finally break through into the tape, I'm not throwing the part off the tape. So today I'm going to try more aggressive cut. And he said I was going like five tenths per tooth.
00:22:37
Speaker
chip load, which is usually pretty light. He said, crank it up. The end mill can totally handle it. As long as your surface finish still looks okay, your feed forward lines of the profile. I'm like, nobody's going to see it. It's not a tiny aluminum. It's black carbon fiber. I'm going to try that. The side is also hidden once it's installed. Yeah, I think two-thirds of it is hidden in the handle and then a third of it sticks up.
00:23:06
Speaker
Oh, okay. Yeah, sure. But there's a corner radius on the top. Oh. So the whole sidewall is hidden anyway. So I'm just going to let it rip. And that's turning my cycle time from 19 minutes down to three.
Machining Carbon Fiber: Challenges and Techniques
00:23:20
Speaker
Whoa. So I'm planning to go a 1.5 inch per tooth. And then instead of multiple four steps down, I'm just going to send it one step and see what it does.
00:23:35
Speaker
Yeah, these inlays are how to say it, the size of smaller than a pinky finger or something like surface area wise. They're a bit bigger, probably like two fingers side by side, not quite. Okay.
00:23:49
Speaker
Are you leaving and you're doing multiple out of a sheet? Yeah. Okay. And you're leaving them tabbed. So I'm using one roughing end mill to plunge down and profile around leaving 20 thou on the floor. Yeah. That way I can remove the bulk of the profile with one end mill. And then I come in with the finishing tool and I plunged down that last 20 thou. And up until now I was stepping down five thou at a time, which works, but it's killing end mills, even the fancy end mills.
00:24:16
Speaker
So that last 20 thou, I'm just going to plunge through zip around. And I don't think there will be too much deflection of the part doing that 20 thou cut, because that's not a ton of material. And sure.
00:24:30
Speaker
Like you said, with tabbing, you don't want the final bit that's still holding onto the part to throw the part off the tape. Yeah. But the way we're doing the tape now, we put the tape on the fixture, we squidge glue on, and then we actually use a metal business card to smooth the tape or the glue all around. And I never really thought about that. But now it's totally adhering way better than we've ever had before. This is super glue? Yeah. Yeah.
00:24:56
Speaker
The other way to try it is to take your roughing tool, so let's just assume it's kind of a rectangle if you were an oval, stretch it out.
00:25:11
Speaker
Go aggressively full depth through the material into the tape all the way around, but then leave two or three tabs. Three is probably better for now. Three full tabs that are, it ought to be very big. They could be 80 thou wide and obviously full depth.
00:25:30
Speaker
Once you're done, let's say you get 15 parts on a sheet. Well, all 15 parts are still connected to each other via those three tabs. So you've got the benefit of the Super Glue across a huge area that's still a solid setup. Then use your finishing tool to just zip those tabs down to nothing. And when you do that, leave one bow
00:25:52
Speaker
radial, um, stock, which hashtag full grim. So then also like no one's going to feel or see one thou. Okay. Now it's not as a critical there if it has full height, but, um, but that way you're not recutting the sidewall. Uh, now here, sorry. Yep. Yep. I hear you. Or even in your method right now, when you do that last 20 thou say one pal off. Right. Interesting. Well,
00:26:19
Speaker
Yeah I'll play and I guess I was trying to avoid actual tabs but I don't know why. Maybe I should think about that too. Because it's all about.
00:26:32
Speaker
even and consistent tool load and wear across the flutes of the end mill. So like the way I was using the finishing end mill only stepping down five thou, no wonder why the corners got toast because I'm going too slow and too fine. I'm not utilizing the sidewalls of the tool. So yes, it just wore out.
00:26:51
Speaker
Also, run-out plays an immense role in this coating in carbon fiber because imagine if you have nine tenths of run-out but your chip load is five tenths. You have one flute doing all the work, one flute doing nothing and then the other two flutes kind of getting in between. Why don't you buy a used Wazer for five grand? To cut these? Water jet. It's not good enough.
00:27:21
Speaker
I want to mail them and they've got a corner radius on the top and I want to put patterns into them and stuff. Yeah. Okay. That's fair. But like button, you can buy a ways are pretty quick if you're going to your $50 end mills. Yeah, I know fair. That's a good point. Um, didn't you have one you had for sale? We sold it. Yeah, good. Great tool. We didn't need it. Yeah, exactly.
00:27:43
Speaker
And it's more like, like scratching this itch. I'm like, I got it. It's like people machine carbon fiber every day. What am I doing wrong? Like what am I missing? What am I not knowing? So it's been a really fun.
00:27:54
Speaker
I actually want to buy those. Mary tool came out with hydraulic holders for eighth inch end mills. Oh, really? Which is like, I don't even know you could do that that small. Yeah, that's sweet. So I switched to a quarter inch hydraulic holder that I had. And I reduced my run out significantly. And just super easy, quick, consistent tool change over with consistent run out every tool change. Not like the ER call it. It's like, OK, try it again. Rotate a little bit. Try it again. Clean it. Rotate a little bit.
00:28:23
Speaker
to get the zero run out, right? What's the shank? What hydraulic? What shank does the 180 hydraulics come in? Cat 40? Everything, I think. Really? I don't know if they make HSK, but BT30 is what this video is. They do. Oh, it's $250 tool, so it's not cheap, but that's sweet. Yeah.
00:28:47
Speaker
Part of these, if you have a quick change system like hydraulic, part of me is go for the $8 end mill John and just replace it every time. Well, I'd have to make the inlays one at a time, not a full sheet at a time. Oh, really? Because regular inmills won't last for a full sheet in my so far limited experience. Okay, fair enough.
00:29:11
Speaker
Well, on that note, I got to give Sandek a shout out because we're doing good right now. It's really awesome. One of those areas where you can focus on some stuff about tool life and Caleb had noticed that he wasn't happy with the inconsistency or just generally lower drill life.
00:29:30
Speaker
I actually don't know if we just goofed because we used to buy grade A and when he said what grade we were using, it was not the grade I was expecting, but water to the bridge, we just emailed with our rep and they're like, no, you should switch to this grade. It happened to be the grade that I thought. Maybe I'm just getting them confused because it's a grade that we use on some of our milling inserts. Anyway, we switched grades and it's...
00:29:56
Speaker
triple in our drill life. Measurably so. We drill thousands of holes a week. It's the one thing where it's easy for us to see a difference. Part of me wants to mention this because I never know how much codings and edge geometry is marketing
00:30:16
Speaker
you know, hoopla versus, versus like legitimate changes. And for your application of carbon fiber, it's like, no, it is a coding. Are you just trying to use the word diamond or are you actually telling me that this could double or have a material, immediate material change in my speeds and fees or drill or dueling? And it did it for us. Wow. So same, same brand, obviously same Sandvik same line of end or drilled it. Same card number, just changing the last four digits to a different coding.
00:30:45
Speaker
Coding or grade of carbide? Well, great question. I believe both, John. OK. I'll look that up here while we're talking. Yeah, that's really curious. Because I know coatings, like when you buy from the big boys, the Sandvik's, the Iskar's, things like that. Like Iskar, I know, has i908 and some other different grades of coating.
00:31:14
Speaker
And yeah, at this level of business, those details make a big difference, like application-specific choices.
00:31:25
Speaker
Back in the day, five, 10 years ago, get whatever you can and just run it. It doesn't matter. Make it cheap. But now, yeah, I'm absolutely finding that application-specific codings and tools and edge geometries and things and keeping it application-specific, not using it as a general all-rounder, make a huge difference.
00:31:45
Speaker
Yes, it really did. It's given us a very predictable tool life doing that too, where I know that after 500 minutes, this tool is time to replace. Still fine, but definitely on its way out. Yeah, and we're not doing as much time stuff as I wish we could. Yeah, I do believe that this is a different grade job, which is more than just a coding and fairness. But I don't think it's a different price.
00:32:16
Speaker
Yeah. The trick here is knowing what to do, um, leading on your tool distributor, leading on the vendor and, uh, and being able to assimilate that information and use it to your advantage because, you know, we've all talked to salesmen that are like, oh yeah, this is the greatest. And it's like, well, everybody says that, but like, tell me why. And then I will pull from my knowledge and memory to see if I believe you or not. Yeah.
00:32:44
Speaker
Well, this got attention because we spent so much money on inserts. There's probably examples of this on stuff that I don't care as much about because the cost is we just don't do as much of
ERP Systems for Production Management
00:32:55
Speaker
it. I'm glad that we realized this. Nice.
00:33:04
Speaker
I also got to give the team a shout out. So Lex is intimately hooked in with Shopify. So our ERP system is Shopify talk to each other. Lex has for probably most of this year had the ability to create a printout of every outstanding order
00:33:27
Speaker
over a certain dollar figure. And that basically means it's going to only show fixture plates. Somebody ordered a bunch of something else. But most of the other stuff we keep in stock anyway, so that order would get flushed out anyways. And then it adds in the do by date based on what our current lead time is. And that's something that we change internally based on we have the ability to edit that Shopify. It's really cool.
00:33:53
Speaker
we have a, I don't know, HTML snippet insert onto our product pages that could be changed in one place so that all of our product line can change from a two to three week to a three to four week lead time. Really? If we get booked up and we just want to make sure we manage expectations. Side note, the one downside of that is we've got to make sure to memorialize what the customer would have been quoted when they bought the plate because we might change it and then that doesn't show anyway.
00:34:19
Speaker
It was awesome because I knew we had a lot on our plate about 10 days ago when I last printed this out. And then, but we had a plan, everything was going to be good. We were going to meet all the ship by dates, but it was kind of a, it's that classic example of like, well, do you add, do you do one more plate in the same size, even though it's not due till later in, in balancing those decisions on setup and. And then I looked through it yesterday morning and like, you can just see all the red that's crossed out, like,
00:34:48
Speaker
Just crushed it. It felt really good. Done, done, done.
00:34:54
Speaker
So now it's good because we reduce our lead times. Alex is more kind of responsive on the custom quotes because those are the things that we will throttle back for slam. And then we tag certain inquiries in fresh desks as sales follow-ups where somebody asked for a quote or inquiry, but didn't buy yet. We are obviously more hands-on following up when we've got a less in the pipeline.
Streamlining Customer Support with Freshdesk
00:35:21
Speaker
On that note, can you sell me again on fresh desks?
00:35:27
Speaker
Yeah. Because right now, we're using Gmail for everything. And we used a service called Gorgeous, which is like a somewhat automated customer service reply, like quick answers to simple questions, including what's my tracking number. So people could do that through the website without any intervention. And that answered quite a lot of basic, easy questions. But our team is still noticing some confusion and some weird back and forth
00:35:56
Speaker
with multiple people managing the customer support email. Just not knowing if they should reply, if they haven't replied yet, what the chain is, all that stuff. Why would customers not get tracking automatically when their order ships though? They do, but still people ask. Okay. Yeah, fair enough.
00:36:16
Speaker
On that note, one of the negatives of Freshdesks is that for whatever reason, and I'm not an IT expert, more Freshdesks messages go into spam than... Interesting. We use the Google Suite, so you don't see it in your email, but it's the Google platform backend. I'm wondering if there's something we could do on our DNS or verification on the backend. If anybody wants to tell me about it, I'd love to hear it.
00:36:42
Speaker
more often than not, unlike invoices or certain customer inquiries will ask the person to check their spam and it'll be in there. Yeah. Interesting. So Freshdesk serves a couple of different roles, but to keep it short and sweet, we try not to use email anymore because email is specific to one person. So when MSC orders come in, the confirmation, they go to
00:37:06
Speaker
That way anybody in our team can use a fresh test account first to search for current order and find that exact for ironically to find that tracking or to look up hey i know we bought this oversize tap for a customer. Yeah just search it without having to go to the nsc cart if you will interesting.
00:37:26
Speaker
When we do that, say I place the order, the confirmation goes to my email, nobody else in the team has access to my email. They can't look up an order from McMaster unless they go to the McMaster website and look at the card and all that stuff.
00:37:41
Speaker
And I don't think, to be honest, I don't think we use that a ton to be, but it's still the idea that they should not be to scale and also where they shouldn't be in my inbox. Funny you mentioned that McMaster's own internal order history search is far better than MSC or even Freshness. So in that case, any of us could just go to our, we share a McMaster login, we share with MSC login.
00:38:03
Speaker
But the same thing with raw materials. The quotes go to Freshdesk. The org operations go to Freshdesk that anybody can process it. Then it's like we buy aluminum, yard sends us back a quote. Clinton sends us back a quote. We pick one of them. We use Lex to process the PO. So Lex has an RFQ to PO page where you convert an RFQ into a PO. Nice.
00:38:27
Speaker
But then the order confirmation comes into fresh desks. That usually will have a more explicit delivery date. If you want to update Lex, then you can update manually with a delivery date field. But a lot of times we don't because it's only a couple of days out. But then the more important thing is all of our quotes, all of our tech support, customer support, anything like that goes into fresh desks. We have an RMA now.
00:38:52
Speaker
that goes into fresh desks for the simple purpose that anybody distributed work. Anybody should be able to handle that. It should be in somebody's inbox. And look, some of these roles.
00:39:03
Speaker
For example, we've had a couple of different shooting people over the last two or three years. The way Gmail works, if you shut down a Gmail account, there's not a good way to migrate their actual inbox. Yeah, unless somebody else takes over that inbox. We did that once. The same Google account, I switched the email name, pretty much. Oh, interesting. So then that new person still has all access to the old person's everything. But it is kind of weird.
00:39:31
Speaker
Yeah. Um, so fresh text basically consolidates all messages into a kind of central platform for multiple emails. Um, yeah, I can give you like a screen share video of it, but, um, I'm sure there's plenty online. We just got to look into it. There's, um, so the big thing was we probably have 30 or 40 rules that we've set up now. So that automatically close like every freight thing goes there. Um,
00:40:02
Speaker
Those are all, so like if I'm looking at our all tickets right now, one to 15 of the 20 most recent tickets were automatically closed to tickets. So like it's, hey PayPal, you got a payment. You know, items in the org queue from Lex, something like that that just gets automatically closed, but it's good to be there for historical surgery. Sure, sure. That's interesting. Yeah, I wonder if that's what we need.
00:40:31
Speaker
It's at our tier, it's actually free, which is kind of crazy. It makes it easy to add people on. Cool. Yeah, look into it. We would never go back. I don't know how it's different from the Zendesk or there's other customer service platforms. You're saying we'd never go back. It's pretty high praise.
00:40:55
Speaker
So ironically, it also fails in the same way you mentioned of sharing an inbox. So like, let's say I hang up and I happen to look at this podcast, I happen to look at a fresh text and we have a quote request from, you know,
00:41:11
Speaker
you know, Gotham Enterprises for 10 VF2 fixture plates, we're ready to buy today like, oh, I'm going to get back this guy right away. I can assign myself the ticket, but that doesn't really, that doesn't notify anybody else that I just did that. So
Technology Platforms: Challenges and Changes
00:41:26
Speaker
there's a chance that me and Alex or me and Yvonne are like, two people could be responding at the same time. Sure. And that has happened a couple of times, not the end of the world. But again, it's not like a PLM, right, or a vault, or a desk vault, where as soon as somebody hops into the ticket, it kind of like locks other people out. Yeah, engaging. Yep.
00:41:49
Speaker
Or it's sort of like in the beautiful simplicity of WhatsApp, like you see, oh, Saunders is typing. Like, okay, I don't need to answer the Saunders is typing. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. And there's a lot of ways that I admire WhatsApp and the whole texting system where email fails and vice versa for that matter. But it kind of shows that technology has splintered into different ways.
00:42:16
Speaker
And like email is still clinging on to itself. And it's like email kind of sucks and like threaded replies. And it's like, Oh, look, I'm a Luddite at this point, because both work life and then personal life, like all of our kids baseball or sports teams are everything's handled over text message. I'm like, I don't want to be a group text on all these soccer parents being like, you know, whatever this that and similarly, like the number of
00:42:44
Speaker
valued questions, support, whatever we get over social media platforms like Instagram, where I really sometimes it's me sometimes it's not me and you want to be like, this is not the platform to be asking for a question on a torque spec. But but that's also I'm wrong. That's the way the world's moving. Yes. I'm just gonna be left behind. Yep. Yep. Sweet, sweet. Well, what's on your you excited nervous about being out of the shop?
00:43:12
Speaker
A little both. Not too worried. Yesterday was a holiday. And so today is my only day in the shop for the whole week, which is fine. I'm not too worried about the next three days of production. Everything's going to go fine. Everything's running good. Yeah. Yeah, looking forward to it. What else? What are you up to today?
00:43:40
Speaker
I am installing our Senn Grinder project. The sheet metal or sheet acrylic cooling guards, right? Yep. I was actually doing a video on it. I've definitely slowed down on videos, but this is worth one. It's going well. I'll fill you in next week. Cool. That's going well. Design a couple of new fixtures.
00:44:02
Speaker
today like it was paperwork of sales of some urine, believe it or not, starting to get urine stuff going.
00:44:11
Speaker
I'm goofing on a work offset off two of a valve cover, Porsche valve cover. I made one wrong. I knew my goof. I made the second one expecting to be correct. It was wrong this morning. I've got to go eat some humble pie, figure out how am I missing this? Yep. Take a deep breath, take some time, be the surgeon, get it right. It's like something Angela says. He's like, there's no reason we can't nail this first try. I'm like, that's always the intention, but that's not always the reality.
00:44:39
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know. I'm stumped. Well, I'm stumped, but I will figure it out. Good. Yeah. Well, safe travels. Have a good time. Thank you very much. And I will talk to you next week. See you next week. Bye. All right. Take care. Bye.