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Business of Machining - Episode 2
632 Plays9 years ago
Welcome to the John Grimsmo & John Saunders Business of Machining Podcast! We (John and John) have talked every Friday morning for the past year and we realized how helpful it has been to share our successes, struggles and stories with each other! So helpful that we have decided to record our conversations and share as this podcast!
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Transcript
Balancing Productivity and Downtime
00:00:00
Speaker
good morning how's it going it's going awesome I like your shirt and how it yeah I got my John Saunders Saunders machine works shirt on I love this thing sweet how how was your week my week was very very awesome had one of those
00:00:20
Speaker
Midweek I had one of those down days where you're just not like super excited about things but then the other three days were just amazing. Super productive and just kind of those days where you feel like you're really on it and things are accomplishing. Awesome. What was the down day machine stuff or business stuff or what?
00:00:40
Speaker
No, I woke up with this headache and I just couldn't get in the groove that entire day. You know, usually I can pull myself out of it. I was just kind of in a down day. I don't know why. Yeah. No, it's fine. I still got a lot done. Do you, it's funny. I, uh, sometimes when I have those, I'll just kind of switch into go mode where I just bang through somewhat like mindless stuff. Cause I'm lacking that inspiration. I'm lacking that hustle and drive. And I'm like, well, I might as well.
00:01:07
Speaker
I still have this like insatiable need to accomplish stuff and this is actually funny because I wanted to ask you about goals and for me I think one of my goals is to actually start kind of like tone it down a little I I think I push myself too hard on a regular basis because I for some reason just have this desire to keep not growing because I don't necessarily aspire to grow but to keep doing great things and I think that
00:01:32
Speaker
Having more balanced downtime and my comment was like slow is fast. I talked about this in that chip break So still being productive but also recognizing. Hey, it's okay. No like go watch a movie going out with the kids Yeah, yeah, it's you know hate to use the word work-life balance, but there is absolutely You have to manage everything that's important to you Otherwise, you're just gonna go crazy or lose something lose something that's important to you
Prioritizing Tasks and Goals
00:02:02
Speaker
I heard this really great quote that said, if you don't have time for something, like for me right now, my YouTube focus, my video editing is sort of taking a big back burner and I keep saying, I don't have time to do that. You have to change that phrase. Instead of I don't have time to do that, it's not a priority for me right now.
00:02:25
Speaker
Yeah, and you have to be completely okay with the fact that it's not a priority because you're choosing to make it not a priority. Like, I'm choosing to do other stuff instead of edit videos and get them up on YouTube.
00:02:39
Speaker
But the second half of that sentence is just as important because I have a really hard time saying no to stuff to job shop work that I probably shouldn't take on because I've got other irons in the fire. But the second half at the moment, like right now, I can't do it. It's not a forever decision. Maybe next month, maybe next week, like, right.
00:02:57
Speaker
And so that was my priority. Right. I think you mentioned this to me. I can't remember it was either the you mentioned to me was like a culmination of that and then that like idea of writing your own obituary that we talked about in a book you read. It was a vlog.
00:03:18
Speaker
vlog. Okay. But it's totally how I've been thinking about my goals recently. And, you know, big year goals, like stuff like that, which I'm not always a huge fan of, but even at the day, because as an entrepreneur, and in my to do lists, and there's john the machinist, there's john the shop guy, there's john the
00:03:39
Speaker
entrepreneur it's Unbelievable how much I could feel like I have to get done But what I have to do now is tell myself hey today's Friday I would really smile and be happy and proud of myself if at the end of the day I've done three things, you know, I've dialed in this reamer on the machine. I've gotten this fixture offset Repeatedly working. I need to edit one video and kind of it to for me the big difference is it lets me Put a cap
00:04:08
Speaker
on how much i think is reasonable and and really fulfilling to get done versus if i say today i want to get this done i can have a list of 27 things and i don't get them done yeah i totally understand that's
00:04:20
Speaker
It's actually very common among high achievers and people that just strive to do so much. I could easily write down 30 things on my to-do list today that I would want to do. But at the end, you just have to put on three to five things. And with those three to five things, if you can actually accomplish them, and they're like super important progress making things, you have to be totally okay with the fact that you did that and not the other things.
00:04:48
Speaker
There's this great other podcast. It's called the MF CEO podcast. Have you ever heard that? Oh, uh, somebody refer me to him. Uh, he, I quickly learned what MF stands for. Yes. It's a really, really good business podcast. I listened to it a lot and he's got this one called called win the day and he's for the past 16 years, he's made a power list every day of five things that have to get done today. And they're like super priority things and they all stack on top of each other and you get this domino effect. Um,
00:05:18
Speaker
So yeah, I did the same thing yesterday. I went into the shop.
Mindset and Personal Happiness
00:05:23
Speaker
I said, I want to cut up these time ask his handles. I want to get back to these emails. I forget there was one other thing and then I want to leave early so that I can go take my daughter ice skating. Yes, right.
00:05:37
Speaker
I actually want to come back to the time ask is because I saw that picture on Instagram. But I've made that decision to like, you make your own happiness, I can get in my truck at the end of the day and drive home to see my wife, which is kind of like the highlight of the day. It's like how was it's funny, because I actually get home, I see her, I had we have dinner, and then I go back to work, go back to work or work from home. But um, but like, you choose what mood you want to be in. And like, yeah, sure, every once in a while, you'll have a day that legitimately stunk like you, you're really goofed, you screwed something up or, you know,
00:06:05
Speaker
It's okay to have bad days, but you know 80% I mean I love what I do and it's not okay to go home stressed and unsatisfied and unfulfilled because I didn't get enough done like we're human recognize that totally totally and We do love what we do and we get to do amazing things like every day
Learning from Failures
00:06:25
Speaker
And you feel guilty coming home feeling sad and depressed and stressed when you think back and you're like, look at all that we've accomplished and look at all that we get to do every day. Things are amazing. Yeah. We have this training class this week at the shop. And we had a guy who took a business. He lost a bunch of money, like multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars in a franchise 10, 15 years ago. And I was like, oh my god. I'm so sorry. That's devastating. He's like, no. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.
00:06:54
Speaker
because I learned relatively cheaply, which I was thinking that's not cheap to me, but okay. I learned a lesson. And so he's like, I took $8,000 and turned it into a multimillion dollar consulting company in the, I think it's a healthcare industry. And he's got 19 employees and they're internationally known for doing some specific thing in the healthcare industry. And he's like, I named my brother the CEO because I knew I didn't want to do
00:07:20
Speaker
certain things which to me i'm like this guy i love this guy i want to hug this guy because he to me about being entrepreneurs like being okay with putting the ego aside knowing what you're good at not good at but what still struck me was he just flew up from from georgia for a two-day advanced cam class and he was sort of talking about how it was really hard to get away and i'm like
00:07:42
Speaker
That's tough because if you really want to do something like that and you are the number two in a multi-million dollar company that you own, and you can't get away for two days to go take a fun class, then what is success? Right. You don't want to be buried by success. Right. Hey, speaking of success, tell me about this photo on Instagram with all of these time masks.
00:08:07
Speaker
So, Damascus is this very awesome, expensive, titanium Damascus basically. And it comes in these flat bars, like 5.16 thick by 2 inch by 11 inches usually.
Machining Techniques and Precision
00:08:23
Speaker
Sometimes I'll send them out to get water jet cut to make the handles, and sometimes I'll cut them up myself. That's why I made those big carve-smart jaws. Yeah, they're like 18 inch wide. They span two vices? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Got it. And they're working phenomenally well to hold. They were worth the effort to make. So yeah, it holds the parts, and then I'm able to cut out handles and clips from it, leaving about eight thou on the floor.
00:08:47
Speaker
So you pull your, on your orange vices, you pull off your fixture body things and just throw the jaws or the movables back on, and that's that easy? Yep. Yeah, that's awesome. And it's super repeatable. I don't, I use the same offset every time and... Oh, so you don't even have to probe it in? No. That's so cool. Oh my God. That's awesome. Because the Carbsmarts have those pins in them, so they're totally repeatable. Right, and you do it off the center fixed jaw then?
00:09:17
Speaker
Yeah, basically, that's amazing. I was thinking about that. Actually, as I wasn't joking 10 minutes ago, when I said dialing in some fixture repeatable stuff, it's like, you know, g54, g55, it's like not nothing new, even to me, but this idea of having like permanent lifetime locations of those. And actually, we're doing a February one of these February webinars for the fusion
00:09:41
Speaker
They're like Friday at 1 PM East Coast time and they're just free webinars and they wanted they wanted us to do one on something like getting started with a house like kind of like what's how do you do that and I thought I don't know it's kind of weird topic and then I realized wait here no let's show so we modeled up our table and
00:10:00
Speaker
and all of our orange vices and they're all mounted in a specific location and so it's definitely not machine simulation but it's going to become like my new sort of template file for how I start. I probably wouldn't pull it up for a little job shop job but for something where I'm going to roll out a new product or something like that because in that file you can have your tool library, your templates,
00:10:24
Speaker
I'm for operations and you've got all of your vice layouts, which is really going to help me think about. I'm not a good visual. I'm not a good. I love thinking in my head, but it really helps me to have something in front of me on the screen. Yeah. Once you design it, then you can actually wrap your head around it. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good idea. Are you still going to stick with kind of one offset and base it off of your model or?
00:10:48
Speaker
So no, sorry. No, I still like the idea of having at least There's four vices at least two maybe four because you know if you pull one or two vices off you want to someone was arguing with me about that the other day of if you know where Everything is relative to each other. You should only need one offset and I'm like, yeah Exactly, right and I'm like it doesn't take much time at all to add that in and it gives you if it gives you a
00:11:15
Speaker
What I'm never going to do is come back into fusion and say oh this vise is actually 7,000 you know further in action move it over no way No, what you could do is you could have each vise has its own Offset g54 five six seven yeah And then do it off the center. I guess I have 22 offsets that I currently use seriously I
00:11:39
Speaker
Yeah, each one's got like each set of soft jaws is its own offset and they're all labeled. I can label them in my machine. So ones like Maury fixture, Rask top or whatever it's called.
00:11:52
Speaker
So with the Haas, I love it, but everything is just so much more high strung. Like I'm realizing I've got to feed it reverse osmosis water and you've got to do more cleaning. And it's what I was thinking of here is I was trying to dial in, you know, tents on, on my work holding and fixturing. And I'm learning that using a torque wrench for everything is incredibly important. Torquing bolts down to the correct torque for hold down stuff. And then.
00:12:19
Speaker
So sort of maximizing hold down but then also just repeat ability even for your lower Pressure stuff just like how you close a vice on something and I was talking my Sandvik guy And he was talking about even how insert pockets torque is so much more important than people appreciate
00:12:36
Speaker
Yeah, I can't say I really torque anything but except for the the arm torque, you know of tightening a vise the same way every time But I get it I was getting the jaw lift on the center fixed jaw on those orange vices not much but enough that I was very Alarmed and concerned and sure enough tightening those half 13s down to 65 foot-pounds Which is way more than you'll get with a little standard Allen key Right fixed it that kept him flat
00:13:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:10
Speaker
about the repeatability thing, and like, yeah, some people say you can just model up all your vices, and you only need one G54, but when we're measuring in tenths here, like now that we can measure every tenth, you kind of want it to be perfect, because you have the ability to make it perfect, and I don't want to make bad parts, so everything gets its own offset, and everything gets probed often, and my probe gets indicated at least once a month, so that it spins on
Machining Setup and Accuracy
00:13:38
Speaker
true.
00:13:38
Speaker
Oh, I should do that again then. I actually heard, I think I heard Tim Paul say that comment somewhere on Instagram that it was routine to measure it every week or something like that. I used to keep my tense indicator in the toolbox and I would take it out when needed and now it just lives like on the Hodge because I'm grabbing it like every three hours now. Yeah, mine is attached to my Noga base and attached to the top of the chip conveyor. Yes. I pull it out all the time.
00:14:05
Speaker
It was weird when we went to Kentucky last week to pick up that, uh, Okamoto surface grinder. I walked into their shop and they had twin Dura vertical 5,100 next to each other. And I was like, it's Grim's most machine. That's awesome. That was cool. It's the kind of machine you never really hear about. It's not super popular, but then the deeper you go, the more you see, like I'm starting to see more and more pop up on Instagram and these bigger shops just kind of have them and don't say anything. Right.
00:14:31
Speaker
But it's like Liberty Machine up in Maine. Seth, right? I don't know his name, but I don't know who you're talking about. The people that own Dura verticals, 5100s, love them. It's like the secret. And they're great machines. So anyways.
00:14:45
Speaker
Yeah, he's got one in his garage at home. He said he had to cut the side of the wall out to get the thing in. No, no, he poured the pad, delivered the machine and then built the thing around it, I think. Okay. Like crazy. I should go in like 10 minutes, but what's on tap for today?
00:15:05
Speaker
Today, now that I have those Damascus pieces cut out into blanks, I have to disc sand them so that they're totally flat on one side because they warped a little bit. The way they make it is crazy with heat and pressure and hammers.
00:15:20
Speaker
All kinds of stuff, so it's got all kinds of stress built up inside. Right. So I'm just going to disk sand the top side so that they're flat on one side, and then I could put them in my big rask fixture and make handles out of them. Got it. I got a bunch of customers super duper, duper excited to see these things finished up into knives. And yeah, hopefully I can machine those today, and then Eric can get to finishing them as a knife. Tweet. So that's my big goal for today, and then a bunch of shop stuff otherwise.
00:15:49
Speaker
It just it's it's banging away on the raspy orders Yeah, awesome. Awesome. Are you doing that? You were talking about doing that thing where you like stacked up the week's orders that are shipping out and then sent them on Friday
00:16:02
Speaker
Right. Sweet. Yeah, and we've been doing that this week, making okay progress. I want to see us make a lot more progress every week, but it's one of those domino games that, as long as you put in a system now so that you have a trackable metric, not just like, oh yeah, we shipped a bunch of knives last week, but you don't know how many, we're starting to actually track that kind of metric stuff so that we can improve and we can know what we're doing well and what we
Efficiency in Production and Workforce Challenges
00:16:26
Speaker
suck at. Right.
00:16:28
Speaker
and they get better. I was just going to say we have a lot of obligation to fulfill with these rasp knives and we're doing a good job but we need to speed it up.
00:16:40
Speaker
Right. But be realistic. I mean, don't speed it up because you think you want it sped up. Speed it up because you think you've got the equipment process. You know what I mean? Like, it is what it is. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And we obviously can't suffer an ounce of quality. I told somebody yesterday that was watching me work on the Haas. I'm like, I'm going full Grimsmo on this part. Nice.
00:17:06
Speaker
No, but like that's that's like my thing for 17 is trying to balance and figure out that love and passion for being both a machinist and being an entrepreneur. And they're like completely separate roles. They're completely separate people, mindsets, characters, levels of attention to detail, like focused and short term concentrations versus big time thinking. And it's really hard to bounce like it really hard to bounce in between
00:17:28
Speaker
The John Grinzer that needs to focus on a rask that gets dialed in perfectly versus the John Grinzer that thinks about the process of delivering this phenomenal knife to his customer and building this company around it. Yep, yep. You're right. There are different roles. And in a way, that's how you could almost hire a machinist to do that kind of work if you can train them and trust them and all that. But it'd be a lot tougher to hire a big picture entrepreneur, CEO to run your company.
00:17:57
Speaker
Right, but even the hiring stuff like that's my I've no regrets. I like what we're doing where it's going I like the people that work for me, but I probably get in you know, it's like this week we had Kevin in helping teach the classes Jared is normal Noah and Carly. So that's four other people and I bet you every Every 15 minutes I bet there's a inbound question that I have to weigh in on and
00:18:24
Speaker
So that introduces what I sort of call the third John, which is the John that's like the shop foreman or like guru problem solver, because it's one thing to get a guy who's a good machinist. It's another thing to get somebody who needs help troubleshooting. I guess it makes me appreciate how much I've learned over 10 years about machine operations and maintenance and functionality and fixed and measuring and how to think. It's tough.
00:18:53
Speaker
You can't just, you just get to hire people and just, you know, they need help in interaction and so forth. Yeah. Well, it's funny cause you and I, we've learned organically as we've needed and we know a lot of stuff.
00:19:08
Speaker
You almost don't appreciate how much we've learned over the years because we've had to and because we taught ourselves and because we're so hungry and like interested in this kind of stuff. Stay up till 4am reading Practical Machinist just because. You've been there. I know you have.
Exploration of Machining Equipment and Techniques
00:19:25
Speaker
Literally was trying to think about somebody who's talking about a Blanchard grinder, which I continue to be fascinated with and know I'm not buying one but uh, right I was like I need to go to bed last night and I was like looking at the what's that like knife matic or kinetic company there on Instagram They have some old videos running like an 84 inch Blanchard in their shop and I'm like way up to late watching YouTube videos on like the magnetic pole density on Blanchard Chucks
00:19:52
Speaker
But I love it, right? Of course. It's the beauty of what we get to do. It's like, it's awesome. You fall down the rabbit hole. It's a dangerous rabbit hole, but. Yeah. Um, lathe parts are running good. Mill's running good. So it's just business as usual. Awesome. Yeah.
00:20:10
Speaker
Yeah, I'm trying to fit. What's that? No, you go ahead. No, I'm just I'm struggling with this part we're working on or product that we're working on and I I'm fine with it being three operations, but trying to figure out whether I Create all my outside profiling early on and then reference off of that as it gets flipped and moved around or whether I basically poke holes through it use those to fixture and
00:20:36
Speaker
And then in the final op, create all my outside, like sort of do as little as I can to get it in its final fixture position and do all the work there. Normally my mentality is I like to remove all as much material as I can early on and create my reference geometry early on, but it's really, I've been really struggling with it.
00:20:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's normally what I would do too, especially the finished profile. And then you can probe the X and Y right off of the finished wall. Right. But that means I have to what the problem that I'm finding is that because I'm just using I don't have locating pins, I just have through screws to clamp it down is that I then
00:21:13
Speaker
have to create a little bit of slop in those holes. And then I will have to either tram it in or push it up against a fence. Because when you flip it, you can probe it. But probing it does nothing to do with confirming that the part is held in tram or square. You can. You can. You can probe. I know. You can probe for G80. I don't know what it is. But you can. And it sounds super easy.
00:21:41
Speaker
Yeah, but I'm not there yet. And it also just bothers me because I don't if that worked, it'd be great. But the reality is if it didn't work, I would immediately need to fix that or get it trained in because I don't I just I just don't trust it yet. Keep it simple. There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to get this thing done.
00:22:02
Speaker
If you need to, I think it should be a very reliable way to do it. My only fear with doing it is not turning it off at the end of the cycle. So if you tramp it in 45 degrees, and yeah, it runs fine. Everything's 45 degrees, but you stop the code right before the end or something, and then it's still off 45 degrees, and you forget, and you switch.
00:22:24
Speaker
For folks that are listening, the idea is like if you put a single vice down on the mill table, but instead of having it trammed in, let's say it was 2.244 degrees angled to the right. If you used your Renishaw probe and picked two points along your jaw, it will actually update all of your code as it runs to compensate. So you could in theory, not in theory, in practice, machine a perfect part, even though your vice isn't trammed in. Is that right, John?
00:22:52
Speaker
Right? Yep. And I don't think I've ever done it, but I've read enough about it to trust it if I had to do it. But yeah, I'd say either do that, push it up against a fence would be a great idea, like a fixed, trimmed in thing, or put in fixture pins.
00:23:10
Speaker
Yeah, one of those I'll do I just I don't like the philosophy of using a new technology help neither one of us have used it to solve a problem that really is just fundamental to basic work holding and like my Crime yesterday was I made an assumption I assume that when I flipped it and held it with screws I assumed that it was up against a fence and sure enough It wasn't quite perfectly up against the fence and I didn't sweep it with an indicator and sure enough, you know, it was out for
00:23:35
Speaker
4,000 over 20 inches, which is not much, but it was enough that it caused a problem that I didn't think about. And you know, that's, that's, that's when you again, don't I don't let myself get in my truck at the end of the day in a bad mood, I try to smile and say, this is awesome. Like, yes, that's frustrating. Yes, I should have caught it. But you know what, there's no reason to let that drag you down. You know, that's, that's just learning.
00:24:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's the kind of difference that drives you nuts at the end of the day. Fourth out. Right. But yeah, as I've learned, I mean, I've spent a lot of time researching and testing, fixturing techniques. You know, I'd say it's one of my big things that I'm really focused and passionate about is just learning as much as I can.
00:24:21
Speaker
I'm not afraid to try new methods and new technology, even if it doesn't work, because I've learned then and I could maybe apply it to the next one. But if it works, it's magical. That's true. So I tend to quote unquote waste even entire days falling down these rabbit holes of learning new techniques, new technologies, new, oh, look, I can do a G233 P1 or whatever it is. Yeah. And it helps with this.
Experimentation and Innovation in Machining
00:24:49
Speaker
Let's do that.
00:24:51
Speaker
Yeah, I guess I missed that. Maybe I've become unfun. I missed that freedom of time to experiment. Maybe too focused on. Hey, do you think one of the things would make it easier if I could remove the fixture? Let's say they were outside profile fixture pins. Do you think it would work to have a couple of dowel pins, push the part up against it, clamp it down, and then pull the dowel pins? That should work, right? Maybe.
00:25:21
Speaker
There should be a little bit of pressure on the dowel pins. I mean, if you want tenths of accuracy here. I don't need tenths. You just want less than 4,000. Yeah. Well, right. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's my goal for today.
00:25:40
Speaker
Yeah. I would spend, put the timer on for 15 minutes, 10 minutes and, and Google this, uh, work organization and angle offset thing and just see if it's easier or hard because it sounds really easy. Yeah, you are right. That would solve this whole thing, huh? It's also good because it would be in, it would be a form of, it's almost like checking tool wear. If I happen to have a problem with my fixture, it's just going to detect it.
00:26:07
Speaker
Yeah. What's the harm? Awesome. Yeah. You know how much do you trust it, but just trust everything. Trust, but verify. Trust nothing. Trust nothing. Trust, but verify is good. No, like that kind of funny, but going back, like keeping that indicator right there next to the machine, just like sweep everything, like check it all the time.
Conclusion and Positive Outlook
00:26:29
Speaker
Yeah. Also, I got to run the kids do a daycare before work. All right. Sounds good. I'll see you bud. Crush it. Have a great day. Take care.