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#224 This SUCKS - Coolant Cleaners, Broken A/C, Endmills, 3D Printing, and Communication.
181 Plays4 years ago
TOPICS: - Chip Trapper VS. Freddy - Machine Shops & Climate Control - Regularly Scheduling Maintenance - DIY Washdown system for the Haas? - 3D Printing a Detent Dropper Mechanism Creality LD002H - Information and Operations Overhaul at SMW - Communicating Important Information for Team
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, Episode 224. My name is John Grimsmough. And my name is John Saunders. This is a podcast where every week we chat about business and manufacturing and tools and chip vacuum cleaners and 5-axis tool baths. My list is far more mundane, which is stuff that's breaking. All important parts of business.
00:00:27
Speaker
Yeah. Well, your list is much more exciting. Let's hear it.
Freddie Chip Vacuum Experience
00:00:31
Speaker
Yeah. So we bought a Freddie chip vacuum, been looking at them for quite a while, decided to just jump in and take the plunge. I highly consider the one that you have the Exair chip trapper, and I just wanted the orange one.
00:00:46
Speaker
I like the size. Well, ours we wanted to be able to hold the full amount of our largest cool tech. So it's kind of large. It's not really a problem and it wheels around great, but the fretting one looks nice. Yeah. Yours is a hundred gallons, 110 or something.
00:01:01
Speaker
Ours is the Freddy's 55 gallon and it's not big enough to fill a whole machine. But it's got two pumps on it, one for suction and one to pump out. And you can actually run them both at the same time. So you can suck in and be pumping out at the same time. So we've got a trash can next to it that we're overflowing into the trash can. And between the two, it's enough to empty the mill. And we'll probably get like a plastic barrel, 55 gallon barrel to live with the Freddy kind of thing for an interim transfer sort of thing.
00:01:31
Speaker
Um, but yeah, we just got it last week. Uh, the guys used it for the first time yesterday and they seem, he said, there's a learning curve. You know, it's the hoses pop off and weird things happen. But, uh, once you understand how it works and how to use it and stuff, Angela said, it's fantastic. Um, what is, how is it powered? Uh, one 10 plug. Okay. So that's actually nice as well. Um, ours is air, which well,
00:01:58
Speaker
not sure which is easier. 110 is probably easier to be honest. Yeah, as long as it comes to pretty long cord, but you know, in a bigger shop, you can't always reach the, you know, nearest plug to the machine kind of thing. And you can't go through too many breakers because it's probably pulls 15 amps. Yeah.
00:02:17
Speaker
But the first one we plugged it into, it tripped the breaker. And we realized we have a little portable air conditioner in the same breaker feeding the lapping machine to keep it cool. And we're like, oh, no wonder why. We've got two big motors sucking from the same thing. It's funny. Yeah. Those will pull off some amps. It's like a mini split inside the lapping machine?
00:02:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's just a portable wheeled air conditioner like we have one at home as well. Yeah, just kind of blows into the bottom cabinet helps keep it nice and cool. Is that for the electronics or for the parts? For the parts. Got it. Yeah, there's a big gear train. I think it's a planetary gear underneath. And that gets pretty warm. Yeah.
00:03:00
Speaker
Your shop is climate controlled though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So shouldn't be, that's nice. But when we got that last summer, we didn't have the air conditioning in yet. Uh, so it was getting hot and the laughing machine was getting even more hot. Did you run the vent all the way to an outside wall? No. Okay. Got it. Yep. That's always the trade-off, right? Those things are great, except
00:03:25
Speaker
It puts off heat. Yeah.
Lapping Machine Challenges
00:03:29
Speaker
To finish with the lapping machine, we actually learned something really awesome a couple of weeks ago. Our guys have been struggling with it for the past year, with heat being one of them, but also the parts just getting too hot and generating too much heat and friction and grinding. It should theoretically be a cool process because you've got these super sharp diamonds that are just scribing away material.
00:03:52
Speaker
we were generating super hot and it would actually overload the torque alarm in like five minutes, 10 minutes. And we've been beating our heads against it for a long time until we eventually found a bunch of different changes, a recipe basically to include more diamonds and more lubrication into the cutting area. And now it cuts like so cold. Stephen's like, the parts are cold coming off. I don't know what's happening.
00:04:18
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. So yeah, they found the magic recipe there. So the air conditioner is less important nowadays, but still. Yeah, so now it's used to have to stand there and every five minutes it would torque out and the cylinders would lift up and you'd have to like let it cool off for a few minutes and you just stand there all day and do that. That's gross. And now it's the process where it should be, I think. That's great. Yeah. Speeds and feeds for a laughing machine, huh? That's real. Yeah.
00:04:49
Speaker
I've never even seen your lapping machine, but I just feel like it would have almost that satisfaction of when you walk in fresh, crunchy snow, and it gives that sound, and maybe I'm completely making this up, but that idea of this
00:05:04
Speaker
Does it seems like I have this idea that sound just wonderfully, like a nice slow grind, like just dragging across? Not at all. No, it's like a surface grinder. You can hear it, right? Like this is like, yeah, cut lapping machine. Not at all. It sounds more like sings almost. Yeah, we should do like a video on lapping machine. I guess I've never been fully happy with it until now. I think it's pretty good.
00:05:33
Speaker
So like when you're unsure, you don't want to do like a full breakdown video. But we should because as you said, you don't understand what we're doing. And this is a tool we've had with us for two or three years now that's integral part to what we do. Yeah, be nice to break it down.
00:05:49
Speaker
The, everything's rotating relatively slowly, right? Yeah. I think the plate spins at 30 RPM or something. I just love that idea. There's so many things that are like 10,000, 20,000 RPM, you know, a grindy wheels, 3000 or something. And that idea that's just this slow, I just, yeah. I can't tell if that makes it more dangerous or not.
00:06:14
Speaker
Oh, it's got a full enclosure around it, um, with safety interlocks on the doors, but you can bypass the lock if you have to get in there and spray some lube or, or something. Um, I don't know. It's a lot of torque because that's what I'm saying. Ah, got it. Fair enough.
00:06:32
Speaker
Well, speaking of
Office Air Conditioner Breakdown
00:06:33
Speaker
air conditioners, that's what broke on our end. Not our shop AC, luckily, but the rooftop unit that does the office portion just stopped working yesterday. We had an unusually hot couple of days, not the end of the world.
00:06:50
Speaker
I think it's just a bad capacitor, which is one of those weird things that you like just can't easily buy same day. Like the hardware stores don't sell those big honking caps. So I called our HPC company. They're coming out here, but there were like two of the little things that kind of broke or it was, it was just one of those like weeks where every time you turned around, I felt like you were getting something, you know, coming at you for maintenance and so forth. Yeah. Those totally unexpected things that are like, okay, everything's great, right?
00:07:20
Speaker
And then just bam. What made you buy the Freddie or a cool and clear? The dread and hassle of cleaning out, mostly just the mori and the knack. We want to clean the mud a lot more often. And we put it off for months and months and months. And it's just like a day job to be able to get in there fully. And then we lose production and blah, blah, blah. And we just think about it. And we're like, if we can be in and out in an hour,
00:07:47
Speaker
it'll pay for itself like in production time back. And then we can keep the machine cleaner and cooler. And the amount of chips that they pulled out of the Maury was probably a third the volume of the cooling tank. Holy cow. Yeah, they're getting that many are getting in there. Yep, getting past the chip conveyor. And, and I mean, they cleaned it out. I don't know how many months ago, but not that long ago.
00:08:12
Speaker
Yeah, darn. Yeah, it's crazy. So I mean, it's already been great.
Machine Maintenance and New Employee
00:08:17
Speaker
You know, I cannot emphasize enough the value of
00:08:23
Speaker
scheduled maintenance like this and I give ourselves a C right now and that falls on me now. What's the plan instead of talking about the past? Literally as of Monday we have a new full-time employee who actually worked out great came through our internship program and
00:08:42
Speaker
Uh, one of his jobs is going to be to take over a lot of that maintenance type stuff. So, uh, in the morning and around lunchtime, he's going around to the, uh, Haas, I call him the fish fry baskets, the little like, uh, fish net netting that, uh, is the main chip barrier, like strange filters, the chips, all the coolant waterfalls into that.
00:09:04
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah. So cleaning those out on a regular basis. But we have this list that has been more of a list than it has been in action of things like, hey, daily, weekly, monthly. And we have that excerpt. We use it, but not we use it when we think we need it, not on a plan. So now it's going to be, hey, once a week, we just rotate through the machines and we just run the coolant in and out.
00:09:29
Speaker
And the awesome thing is those sock filters are super inexpensive. So it's a really no, you don't even get messy. I guess you'll get messy cleaning the sock or take changing the sock filter, but it's not bad. Yeah. Are they like four inch diameter socks or bigger? Maybe sounds right. Yeah. They're pretty big. If you put your fingers together in a circle. Yeah. What's unusual is I think they're 24 inches long. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty big.
00:09:58
Speaker
Cool. Yeah. Yeah. The ones in the Freddie are more like a giant salad bowl size.
00:10:05
Speaker
Okay. It's like a big mesh with a metal plastic ring around the outside kind of in a big pull handle. Um, and Angelo said, one of the first things I learned was we filled, we filled the mesh basket up with chips so much that it couldn't be pulled out of the machine because there's a metal bar inside the machine that, so it's now like a figure eight kind of thing. Um, so I had to like hand bomb a whole bunch of chips out to be able to pull the basket out. So it's funny. Oh, that's the other thing we're experimenting on is we bought a,
00:10:36
Speaker
I bought basically a pond pump and I spent a few minutes trying to research because there's a bunch of cheap options which I know will fail far too quickly.
00:10:47
Speaker
But I also didn't want yet to spend the kind of $1,000 plus for a proper coolant pump, the kind that you have on your machines that have the motor up top and then they have a sort of a spindle with an impeller type of thing. So I bought one that you have to prime it once and it holds prime. And we just fired it up yesterday to get an idea for the flow rate. Because again, this one was I think $200. The GPM is decent, but
00:11:14
Speaker
for reasons I can't explain. They either kind of fib to you on the GPM, the flow rate, or the PSI, or the duty cycle, and so forth. But we're going to experiment with this first. We can always upgrade the pump if this all works. But the plan is to add wash downs on one of our house machines, and then almost soon, as soon as we get confidence in the system, the rest of them.
00:11:40
Speaker
It's something we value a lot and we're spending a lot of time each day every day trying to wash down machines And I think if you have a continuous or intermittent wash down system that prevents a lot of build-up It's actually a lot simpler than trying to hose down a bunch of built-up chips at the end of the day Yeah, yeah, you know a year a year's worth of grime as opposed to every few days
00:12:03
Speaker
Yeah. So you tested the pump. Is it like enough pressure? Are you happy enough with it? It seems great. And we don't have a lot of what they call head pressure.
Developing Wash Down System
00:12:15
Speaker
We're not going up a lot of vertical, so that shouldn't compromise it. And I found some of these 1.5 inch, what do you call them?
00:12:26
Speaker
can't remember the name but uh when we do if this all works we'll put out like a list of all the stuff and parts but uh they're there we're going to drill two holes in the bottom of our Haas enclosures and then there are these grommets or gaskets that go through that give you a half inch nbt it's like a bulk cattle adapter thank you exactly what it's called
00:12:43
Speaker
So we're going to have one on the right side, one on the left side. That way we can minimize trying to go across the saddle in the machine itself. And then we're debating on what combination of things like PEX or PVC and then most of the ends will be lock line. And it's interesting, the lock line really only adapts to
00:13:05
Speaker
NPT, which is fine. But you would think, and there's some saltwater aquarium world, there are some 3D printed lock line to PEX direct adapters, but I don't trust that at all for this system. I feel like PVC is going to work fine. PEX I'm not sure is quite rigid enough, depending on the diameter. Anyways. Yeah. So are you going to have the cooling gun live inside the machine?
00:13:34
Speaker
Not a cool gun. It's a wash down. Sorry. Wash down system. Oh, not. They already have hoses or guns. This is going to be a M code triggered thing that has like.
00:13:49
Speaker
Some machines have this built in like you can buy a brother with wash down curtains or whatever. Yes. Shower curtains. I remember seeing, I think it was a Maury NHX horizontal somewhere and it had the wash down system on. It was like a wall of coolant on every face of the machine. Like you couldn't possibly get a chip anywhere. Okay. That's interesting.
00:14:19
Speaker
So they already have coolant guns and you use that, but you want a more direct, constant automated solution.
00:14:27
Speaker
Yeah, and anybody who's run a Haas knows there's a couple of nooks and crannies. Every machine does that. Right. And again, I'm not necessarily trying to keep them 100% chip free. And none of the chips actually, well, sometimes you can get problem if they really build up when the Y moves all the way back toward the column. We tend to not have that problem. But again, the thought is with some PVC
00:14:50
Speaker
or lock line and then the little nozzles pointed at a couple of corners and a couple areas that should create enough of a continuous flow that it'll help ships or most of the ships wash down to the augers and then you'll be okay.
00:15:06
Speaker
Yeah, I guess you could aim at the problem spots. That's a good idea. Because even on the current, it's such a simple enclosure. The bottom is totally tapered and goes down to the chip conveyor. But there's still some corners behind little sheet metal where the chips tend to stick. And it's not a big deal. But yeah, I bet you every machine has this problem with maybe one exception out there in the world.
00:15:33
Speaker
The, uh, the groves do well. Good job. Uh, John and area four and nine was showing, they had made, I don't know, like 75 of their, uh, zero base bodies, press bodies, which is a lot of material. It's like 20 minutes of almost legit hogging.
00:15:50
Speaker
on a shoeboxized chunk of aluminum. They had never washed the machine out in the first week and a half of owning it. It has just a combination of pretty good sheet metal design and a good wash down system. You see some of the videos of theirs. They even have wash down coming through the spindle column and
3D Printing Prototypes
00:16:11
Speaker
just everywhere. It makes you smile when you see that kind of stuff. Through the tunnel.
00:16:18
Speaker
Yeah, so again, I think if we do this, I think it could be a pretty popular thing for a lot of Haas folks to do because the pump won't be super expensive and boy, having that flow go, I mean, if the gun works, the gun works, it's just a pain in the butt and it takes a lot more effort because you've let the chips build up. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. That's the project. Yeah.
00:16:46
Speaker
What are you been up to? Um, okay. So last week we talked about, um, I'm trying to make my detent dropper little mechanism.
00:16:56
Speaker
And I tried to machine it out of acrylic, kept breaking the acrylic, ended up sending the files to a 3D printing company to have them print super locally. I didn't hear back after a couple of days, and then it was a couple more days of playing phone tag. And after four days, I was like, screw this, I'm just going to buy my own printer. So on Saturday, I went to the same store that was going to print them. And I bought just a little $200 or $300 Creality resin printer.
00:17:25
Speaker
and the UV curing station and the setup and stuff. And I had a fun weekend resin printing parts. How'd it go? Good ish. There's definitely a learning curve. And I'm glad I had a long weekend, a three day weekend to be able to kind of dig in and play with it.
00:17:43
Speaker
I think if you just got the whole setup and you just spent two hours and you're like, you'd be pretty quickly go screw this, I don't like this. But it's messy, it's smelly. I had it in my basement at first and it stung out the basement. So it's currently on my front porch, screened in porch at the house. Right. And Meg's like, are you going to move this soon? Are you going to bring it to the shelf soon? I'm like, yeah, yeah, soon too.
00:18:06
Speaker
But I had some pretty good results. Once I figured out how to orient the parts and how to, you know, the rules of the trade,
00:18:17
Speaker
I'm getting some good results. The problems I'm having now are just drips, curing weirdly inside little corners and pocket holes and stuff. And also the parts I'm trying to make are pretty tight tolerance, like really fine details. And resin prints work good on the side facing the resin, but on the side facing the build plate, you lose a lot of features and tolerances and stuff.
00:18:42
Speaker
I have a model now that I'm currently sitting under the microscope with the Dremel fine tuning. Okay. And it's working well. I think I'll have a functional prototype today, but I'm just going to have to machine it eventually. Yeah. So what is the part kind of look like or functionality?
00:19:02
Speaker
like a big fat syringe, I guess, a one inch diameter syringe, as far as the shape kind of goes. So it's a little hopper with all the balls will sit in there. And then inside where the tip of the syringe would be, where the ball would fall out, there's a little slider mechanism that goes, one part goes left to right, another part goes up and down. And there's two springs inside and a dowel pin and a lot of really fine details. And like one 16th inch holes all over the place.
00:19:30
Speaker
So I can print them and they're visible, but they're not accurate. So I had to put like clearance areas to get a 16th inch reamer in there and ream everything out. And like I said, I can have a functional prototype, but I probably just got to machine this thing.
00:19:48
Speaker
Fair enough. The long term play was always a machine. This was just proof of concept? I was hoping this would just work. Got it. But in retrospect, if I had the company print it, it would have been wrong anyway, because my design was made to be machined and my tolerances were like one thou. Whereas with print, you got to have like 10 thou tolerances.
00:20:09
Speaker
I think you, I mean, my SLA experience is limited, but I went through, I think was probably a pretty typical curve, which is super exciting. Actually got along pretty well at first. I leveled it correctly, got the first couple of good prints and then the kind of gotchas of like, okay, didn't have the supports, right? No big deal. Forgot to hollow out a model, no big deal. But then I got to sell against it pretty hard. Like it's the toxicity and
00:20:36
Speaker
Expiration nature of the resin and the fact that it's just not gonna Get you it's not a tool. It's more of a You know, it would work great if your full-time job was focused on getting become an expert So I would still even for you. I wouldn't throw 50 bucks or 80 bucks at having a professional like a real company for not for labs and
00:21:00
Speaker
who does it, Xometry, 3D Hubs, Shapeways do a real print for you. Like a really nice one? Yeah, not the mom and pop that ghosts you. Maybe. But still, I have to design for the realistic tolerances of, I don't know, whatever's possible.
00:21:22
Speaker
A few thou should be possible on a high end SLA, or have them do it out of one of the sintering machines, John. Yeah. Cool. Maybe. Yeah. Otherwise, I want the part so bad, the device, that it's going to happen, even if I do have to machine it. And I think if I machine it, if I choose the right plastic, not acrylic, Rob suggested
00:21:52
Speaker
Um, I just lost it. What's Lexan? Um, poly, polycarbonate, polycarbonate. Yeah. Um, he suggested that and I was like, okay, let's just buy some of that. It doesn't have to be clear, but I want to be able to see what's going on inside. I was just going to say, why can't it be, um, aluminum or something? It could be actually. Um, and I do have some, uh,
00:22:14
Speaker
white Delrin rod that I could make it out of too. I have that here. I could make it now. But yeah, I'm at the end of the day, I'm glad I went through the process because it was kind of fun. And I learned a lot. And now I have an SLA printer that I can like make cool stuff with. It is a lot finer detail than a filament printer. So it has an application. I just think maybe my application is too not perfect for this, you know? Yeah.
00:22:43
Speaker
So yeah, I had fun. That's fine. No, it is super cool. I mean, I get you fired up for what, what, what don't we know yet? Like what's coming with a couple of things that we had so I printed that I really wanted to work worked and then, you know, they broke.
00:22:57
Speaker
Like it doesn't have the strength and I'm not sure how that would hold up. I don't know much about the ball dropper, but I don't worry about it. Yeah. Right. Right. And I also realized that because they don't have really any good infill options, like on a 3d printer, you can do your all kinds of five different, 10 different kinds of infill from 10% to a hundred percent and make it strong and rigid and like this solid assembly with resin printer. It's either solid or hollow.
00:23:25
Speaker
Yeah, why they must have a, you know, like the supports look like the honeycomb history. They must have that for the internals. I haven't seen it at least not in the cheat to box classic slicer that everybody's using.
00:23:38
Speaker
I will give him credit. I was nervous about going from unboxing that printer to hitting print. We did the same thing. We found the, my son and I found the Cheeto box, whatever you call it. It was actually super easy to work with. Crazy simple. I had Clara help me. We unboxed it together. We pulled all the tape off the outside of the glass.
00:24:01
Speaker
She helped me pour the resin and all that stuff. It is easy to get
Overhauling Operations and Fulfillment
00:24:06
Speaker
started. It depends on what your expectations are, your goals. For the guys that are trying to print 3D models of little figurines and stuff, it's fantastic, the detail you can get. It's really, really cool technology. You just have to apply it to the right place.
00:24:25
Speaker
Cool. But that's what you want. I mean, you want a printer that can give you functional prototypes that won't last forever, but give you the conviction before you go machine something crazy. But within reason too, because if it prints and it, like I had some features droop because they're a thin, you know, too. And even though the support is there, it still droops. You can visibly see it. So if you print it and you're like, Oh, this isn't going to machine well. Well, that's not the true because machining is going to attack it differently.
00:24:55
Speaker
Well, that's what I love about the centering, like SLS type machines, is that because it's doing it inside, effectively, a box of sand, of solid powder, there's no real support structure needed because it's all of the uncensored powder. And so that approximately $30,000 new form lab machine, it's beyond what we need. I got kind of excited for a second.
00:25:19
Speaker
Not yet. But you could have somebody make it on a machine like that, John, and way more accurate self-supporting, detail, like rock and roll. Oh, yeah. Interesting. I haven't looked into that at all, that tier of product. Yeah. I would be curious to take your part and upload it and see what an SLS print would cost. I don't know that it'll be clear. It might be. Or it'll be cloudy, I think, at best.
00:25:49
Speaker
And I don't know how I need that material, machines. Like Delrin is great because Delrin will take a reamer pretty well, right? But I don't think Lexan reams that well. You mean? I don't know, actually. I don't know. If the hole is a few thou under, I would have no hesitation about reaming Delrin. I don't know how well it would work in a krill under Lexan or something. Yeah, I did find a really cool, the resin print under the microscope with a Dremel.
00:26:17
Speaker
was really great to pick away at. It was amazing. It just turns to powder. And it was great. The worst part was it's a gray resin. And it just turns to white powder under the microscope. So your view is obstructed completely until you blow it off and then bring it back. And I'm like, Whoa, it's super soft. It's like, it's like trying to Dremel
00:26:41
Speaker
I don't even know. It's just super soft. It's not like a stringy plastic at all. It just turns to dust. So the bit can walk away from you pretty quickly. So we are doing, and I would say struggling, but it's kicking our butt on a operations and order fulfillment overhaul. And I know what I want, but I don't know how to get there.
00:27:08
Speaker
And so we're sort of trying to take down, it's so easy to overthink it, but take the main product like fixture plates and then the mod vices. And then there's a bunch of other stuff, but we've kind of pushed the other stuff to the side because we want to solve
00:27:23
Speaker
the either the highest volume parts the most important parts the biggest parts first and so we kind of looked at what we did with the fixture plate when you bring it off the machine and all the things we need to stop doing like lowering it more raising it back up flipping it on its side moving on one cart moving to another cart QC it packaging it
00:27:44
Speaker
And so you think about, okay, the machines are here. The door that they get shipped out of is about 30 feet to the right. Really, we cleared out that whole area now. And the goal is they should come off the machine. They should go on for steel plates, a dedicated cart. That way we're not having to mix and match and try to stack them and then have to unstack them. And by the way, they shouldn't be stacked because we should be processing them, not batching them up and creating
00:28:12
Speaker
Queues where you don't know what to do. I mean, there's all these kind of like solve the problem Not the symptom that makes sense. Yeah so they will get off the machine QC'd and
00:28:28
Speaker
final prep package shipped out, or we do have, we are stocking inventory, which is important, so that's kind of a separate thing. The harder one is like a mod vice, and what we're trying to do is create inventory racks
00:28:49
Speaker
near the shipping area that only have shippable goods. So like a pick list is just, Hey, you want this order comes in, you grab, grab, grab. And we actually kind of have that already, except that we have mixed in with that, um, sub assemblies, other parts, machine parts, screws, et cetera. So now that I'm talking about it, it doesn't sound like it's that complicated, but it's kicking our butt. Um,
00:29:11
Speaker
So separating out all the subassemblies onto different racks and then creating a little mod vice, we have a mod vice table, so where does that table go? It's very much a real estate issue of what's the flow.
00:29:26
Speaker
This is making sense. It does. It sounds like you want a mod vice assembly station and then the finished assembly gets packaged and put into the pick and place shelf, your inventory shelf, so that the person standing in front of that shelf is literally filling orders. They don't assemble. They're putting finished goods in the box and sending it off.
00:29:48
Speaker
I saw somebody reposted one of your, your mod vice, you know, um, delivery pictures, they open it up and they're like, this is awesome. All the screws are laid out and foam backer and everything. Um, but yeah, you need the, the shipper, the assembly, um, picker, just put finished goods in that box, tape it up, go. Right. Yeah. I'm just thinking about the movie, the founder where the McDonald's brothers did the, the,
00:30:16
Speaker
chalk on the tennis court from a ladder. What I do know is, first off, we do need to just tricep. We can't just play thinking and overthinking forever. But we have a shipping area over near the shipping door. And I want to make sure we focus on the flow, so we're not moving stuff back and forth, right?
00:30:39
Speaker
And so if parts come off a couple of different machines, I'm kind of OK with the subassembly area being over in the machine shop side, because right now we actually we don't have more space there, but we have space that is more willing to be used for anything, because then we can put a bunch of those on a little cart or table and then wheel them over and replenish the sock room.
00:31:02
Speaker
That makes sense? Yep. Because it's two different things. You have your inventory in order to make a sub-assembly or a final assembly, and then you have shippable goods. Yeah. And this one area should only be shippable goods. Yeah. That's the next step. Let's break it down. Yeah.
The Role of Communication in Operations
00:31:20
Speaker
Okay. It was a good, just going through old content and notes,
00:31:27
Speaker
One of the things that really resonated with me was this idea of how much of a failure a hub and spoke business model can be, where you've got a boss acting as the hub and lots of spokes. And you can almost pitch this as something that totally makes sense, where the boss is the orchestrator, and he's talking to everybody else. But the problem is that everybody needs to come back to the hub. And really, what you want is an independent process, which
00:31:55
Speaker
We're well on our way to doing a good job with that, because people can make decisions on their own. And we've got Lex now working with POs, so it can issue even internal things like, hey, we finished, or excuse me, we're out of mod vices, shippable mod vices. So it creates a work order for somebody to create more subassemblies. And that's perfect. You don't need the hub there. Lex effectively is the hub. That's how you leverage scale.
00:32:24
Speaker
Yeah, we all work for Lex. Yeah, you, John, cannot scale the hub, being the hub, being the person that answers every question, orders everything, talks to every vendor, and issues every internal work order. Too much work. Yeah, I know. And we don't, which is awesome.
00:32:44
Speaker
I think, I hope it comes through, the folks listening are looking for inspiration out of entrepreneurial journeys, but I will say, I try to say humble, but the one thing John and I have done a pretty darn good job of independently is building these systems over the last year where we're not answering emails and we're not doing, like we've got systems in place and that's awesome. And it's only because of very, very conscious effort, because the default nature as you grow is to keep doing what you've always done, what you're good at,
00:33:13
Speaker
It's like, yeah, I talked to every customer. Yeah. I order everything. Yeah. I tell people what to make and you program every machine. And I'm, I'm, I have to work very hard to step away from those roles. You know, it's like conscious, conscious decision. Um, but I'm super glad that I've done it because I barely check email anymore. I get personal emails, you know, business personal emails, but as far as customer relations stuff, Fraser takes care of everything. Um,
00:33:40
Speaker
I don't need to tell the guys what parts to machine, they just, they know. And everybody communicates fairly well. And, you know, there's always hiccups and things like that. But yeah, now I'm just constantly trying to figure out what is next for me to get off my plate so I can do more of what I do best.
00:33:56
Speaker
What could you give some examples of whether it's Norseman handles or blades or pivots, especially maybe when it doesn't go well? Or how do these things get communicated between somebody who's building knives or finishing knives?
00:34:11
Speaker
What's that look like? Yeah, what really helps is our daily meeting, 12 o'clock. We usually get together for 10, 20 minutes, go over things like that, because we have, since we have two buildings, we have the finishing department in one and the manufacturing in the other, and also like sales and marketing and admin in our manufacturing business here. And it's nice to all get together and kind of hash this out as,
00:34:35
Speaker
You know, I can be like, I was checking knives the other day and they're kind of three in a row. We're doing this weird thing. They were gritty or something. I can tell Eric right there in front of everybody. And then we can all kind of theorize as to why that might be. Or he could be like, yeah, I noticed that too. I don't know what's going on. Um, or a bunch of pivots didn't fit in the handles because the, the end mill that does that feature chipped out. Oh, interesting. That happens.
00:34:59
Speaker
like more often than I'd like to admit, although we're reducing it, happens on the current, happens on the Maury, we just, we got to watch it. So it's a matter of the person taking parts off the mill has to do certain inspections to make sure that they don't pass to the next person, to the next person, to the next person, and then they find the error like five days later, you know.
00:35:22
Speaker
So yeah, the daily communication helps us to eliminate things like that. And problems that used to be a problem a year ago don't happen anymore.
00:35:30
Speaker
because we talk about it. And as you said, I probably give myself a solid C on communication, because I just know we could do so much better. But we do, we work at it. And I know we can do better. Yeah, we started doing kind of informal, but like a Tuesday huddle, and then a Friday huddle. We just don't, we've never done it every day. And I don't, I'm starting with this way. And
00:35:58
Speaker
It's mostly been just that like kind of, Hey, what's going on? What's causing stress? Where are we at? Anything. But like Lex otherwise handles all of that, which is phenomenal. Um, so we haven't, it's been a lot more talking about the exceptions, not the, Hey, this is what needs to happen or this is what's wrong. Um,
00:36:15
Speaker
But I had to laugh on the corner chipping because we had almost a QC issue where we had a slight corner chip that caused a sharp edge, which meant a part didn't sit flat where it needed to. And it was so easy to miss it because it's only lifted up maybe a thou or two.
00:36:33
Speaker
and it kind of made me laugh back to like 12 years ago when I started all this and you know engineers and design folks and experts you know had their approach to it and I was kind of like but it doesn't make sense as a layman because I was trying to design that you know rifle target and same thing with QC drawings you know I don't need a QC drawing that has 75 dimensions yeah on our mod vice there's like four critical dimensions if those are in place everything else kind of flows behind it or
00:37:01
Speaker
things that I care more about, like surface finish will tell us what we need to know. But then it's the same thing on the corner chipping that caught us where the kind of test you need to do isn't what I think of as seeing a normal QC test, but that's super important. Yeah. So we built a jig for it and, um, and it's all sold, solved, solved. Nice. Yeah. And that's what it takes sometimes. It's a, what is it like identify the problem, come up with a solution and implement the solution and then never think about it again. Yeah.
00:37:31
Speaker
Right. But you're totally right that having everybody, the hub thing was effectively in place in the sense that like somebody would come to me and say, Hey, this happened. And it, I might've spoke it out to one other person, but we need to bring that stuff up in a group meeting. That way there was never a hub spoke. It was rather, Hey, everybody knows about this. So we can kind of all be on the same page.
00:37:55
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, something that happens with us and probably with most teams, we can all talk about it and talk. It's great, but who's going to fix it? And when's it going to get fixed? And, you know, people will bring things up to me and be like, yeah, this, you know,
00:38:10
Speaker
This finish could be better, or maybe we should try a different end mill, or maybe we should do a big change on something. And we're like, yeah, that's a great idea. And then nothing happens. So I have to schedule it for me, anything that I have to take care of. I write it down, and I make sure to get it done. And then you test and see if it works. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. What do you have to say today?
00:38:38
Speaker
keeping that current running. It ran all night. It came in, it was still running, 14 hours straight. And then there was Angelo now we're chatting and it started to get a little loud. So we walked over and one of the square end mill looked like a chamfer tool. So I don't know what caused it to break, but
00:39:00
Speaker
It's a double ended tool and I pulled it out and the other end looks exactly the same, like the same brake pattern. And I'm like, I think we have a pattern here. That's actually super useful. Otherwise you could have done that for a long time and not realize it's breaking the same way. Exactly. So maybe it's ramp angle or something. It's breaking when ramping down around the outside of the small lock bar inserts. So it's a stainless steel part.
00:39:27
Speaker
Yeah, maybe I got to tweak that. Maybe instead of ramping around mill pocket and then like contour properly. Is it a blind, like why are you ramping if it's an exterior feature? Because it's a plate of material. Got it. So you're cutting a part out of a window kind of thing. Do you have the ability to drill a hole first? Yeah. Yeah, you could drill or mill an entry hole and then
00:39:53
Speaker
profile around at a steady Z level. That might be better. Yeah, I find that annuals just aren't the same when you're asking them to do Z plunges or even ramps in Z versus just letting them cut them aside. Yeah, I agree. I don't know why I keep doing it though. Same thing with a boring operation. It's great in theory, but tools don't seem to last sometimes. Just doing steady production, doing a circular bore to remove material.
00:40:24
Speaker
when you've to open it up like on an existing whole or from totally blind. Even from blind, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, agree. Yeah. Well, I'm off to keep moving shelves around. I'm excited. I want this, you know, I kind of laugh because we've all toured the shops where they have signs hanging from the ceilings. And I always thought they were kind of cheesy, like. Like what kind of sign? Like grinding department? Exactly. Yeah. But I like this idea that it memorializes and treats sacred like, hey, you're in a spot right now where a plate comes.
00:40:52
Speaker
after it's machine, it goes to QC, it goes into packaging. I don't have this vision yet, but we'll get there. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, I've got to clean up my current area of all of my projects and unfinished things.
00:41:13
Speaker
start sharing that zone because Angelo and more of the guys are gonna start running the current more. So I have to start moving out of it. Because it's literally my office is everything around the current right now. And that's okay. Yeah, the current is finally to a point where I can start sharing the production of that and do less of it myself, which is great. And just keep that thing running. My current record is a 19 hour cycle time. I am going to smash that.
00:41:42
Speaker
I love it. I feel like don't get too obsessed on, I'm not obsessed, but it's like great when everything works for such a long period of time. Totally, totally, totally. But like, I guess, oh, the way of thinking about it is I find it's so easy to get focused on wins that matter to you at a personal level. But like, hold on, take us back. Is this the best thing we could be doing? Like, even on how we reorganize the shop, I was, um,
00:42:07
Speaker
I was stressing about how do we figure this out? We've got so many products and shelves and inventory, and I was like, wait a minute, I care about fixture plates. Let's fix fixture plates first. Let's fix that workflow. And if everything else is a little inefficient, well, it already is, but let's get those down and then we'll backfill it into there. And happens to be that fixture plates need to get sold first is because they're also the awkward, big, heavy things. So we care more about that flow. My advice is you can put 50 on a dolly and wheel around shop, not the end of the world.
00:42:34
Speaker
Yeah. You look at what's the big wins. What's the, you know, you have this whole concept of shop reorganization. What's the win that's going to be, it might be hard work, but it's one module of hard work. And then you can prove that it works. Like finish that, get value from that, as opposed to trying to pick away at, you know, cleaning the whole shop. Yeah, exactly. Cool. I'll see you next week. All right, man. Have a good day. Bye bye.