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Business of Machining - Episode 23
238 Plays8 years ago
Pierson MPS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEZeVbockyQ Link to Saunder's Video RE: ChipBreak about drawings: http://bit.ly/2sWGcoI As patriotic holidays arrive and fireworks are ignited, both Johns get fired up about PROCESS--the process of making processes, to be exact. What if you have no idea where to begin? The important thing is not WHERE you start but THAT you start. According to Grimsmo, "Sometimes you gotta make that first crappy one before you can find the better one!" Saunders finally takes the plunge (pun intended) and purchases a VF2. "I only need to buy one more tool, honey!" Saunders is convinced that a Mitutoyo Bore Gauge is the missing puzzle piece in his repertoire. At least for now. Not only do entrepreneurs have to be aware of thinking flaws, they have to be willing to admit and combat them. When it comes to improving processes, you are the captain of a ship searching through your business for hidden treasures. Even at the helm, you might realize you don't know everything and that's okay. In fact, that's a good thing!
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Transcript
Introduction and Greetings
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning everybody and welcome to the business of machining episode number 23. My name is John Grimsmo. My name is John Saunders. And good morning, buddy. You look chipper. Yeah.
Canada Day vs. Fourth of July
00:00:12
Speaker
It's the start of a good solid Friday coming up and a busy Canada Day weekend coming up soon.
00:00:19
Speaker
Well, that's funny. Is that like 4th of July-ish, except minus? Yeah, exactly. It's on the first, though. Minus defeat over the British. Seriously, what is Canada today? I'm no historian. Fair enough. Yeah. We
Improving Processes and Systems
00:00:38
Speaker
need to talk about process. Yeah. We want to talk about everything.
00:00:45
Speaker
It's actually a high and a low. I mean it was frustrating earlier this week but I'm glad I have the processes in place that I've got and I'm realizing that even those are deficient and I need like that's probably one of the best things I should be focused on. We've done a really good job on our tormach fixture plates of doing that process of
00:01:08
Speaker
going
Inventory Management Challenges
00:01:09
Speaker
through the workflow of raw material to machining to stages to QC and so forth and we're pretty proud of that. You have that all written down so that everybody can do it? Yeah by and large there's probably actually I shouldn't say there's definitely room for improvement but I'm happy with where it is it's got momentum but
00:01:29
Speaker
There's so many, we need Kanban cards for, you know, Noah or Zach or Jared, I've been coming up to you being like, oh, we're out of these little set screws, we're out of Loctite, we're out of this length of cap screw or whatever, and none of it's a big deal. But it's, I don't like, I've asked people a lot of times just to email it to me, because when they just mention it to me somewhere, it's not a good way for me to
00:01:53
Speaker
I don't remember it or what's the item number or how many do you need so It's like instead of getting frustrated that they don't remember to email me and they just try to tell me and of course That's devoid of the necessary information. It's like Jesus just to come on card.
Realization of Business Needs
00:02:10
Speaker
So Noah's working on those right now, which is good and
00:02:15
Speaker
I'm just sitting in front of a stack of bills, which is fine, but the process of going through and getting those paid, the process of ordering. I never understood, this is going to sound silly, but I never understood even two or three years ago why companies needed to have a purchasing department and an HR department. Those things both seemed kind of
00:02:36
Speaker
I hate to say silly because I don't mean to say that I don't mean them. I just didn't understand. I didn't really, couldn't sell you on why that's such a key part of a, of a well functioning business. And the number of like, I'm dealing with the state of Ohio on a tax thing that they, they screwed up because they don't have record of my payment, but they're disputing that. And it's funny because I have the clear check and it's like, that takes so much time and frankly, energy. Part of me is debating.
00:03:01
Speaker
The delta of, the paying it to make it go away is like $175, even though I believe I've already paid that or a portion of it, and I'm just tempted to pay it because it's not worth the energy and the time, but that really bothers me. Yeah, it's like admitting defeat, even though it's not. Yeah, right? Anyway, just having the organization, I'm starting to think about,
00:03:27
Speaker
It's that I'm stressing about in the present, and so roll it forward. And it's, I just need to spend more time creating processes. That sounds boring, but I do.
00:03:39
Speaker
Yeah, I've actually been starting the past few weeks. We've talked about it for months now, but I'm tracking every job, every operation, every process. I'm writing it down into a Google Doc spreadsheet. I'm taking pictures on my phone, uploading them to Google Drive to a special folder that says, time ask us or whatever, so that I can drag them into this Google Doc and just have this process workflow. And as simple as it starts, you have to start, and then you just constantly add to it. And it's been super helpful.
00:04:09
Speaker
What's that? It's been super duper helpful. Yeah. That's another good point. I'm a pretty terrible inventor, not in the
Fixture Processes and Learning Opportunities
00:04:20
Speaker
literal sense, but I'm not always good at going from nothing to something. I'm much better at seeing something and reacting to it. I think that's probably common for a lot of people.
00:04:30
Speaker
So for example, I was just out in California for this thing called the bar Z summer bash and Tom Zeldman was there and he has this really cool fixture that he's been working on on his tormach 440 to make these parts for lifting weights and he's got a pretty large quantity of them to run and he made this fixture I think it's eight positions. I gotta say it's pretty darn good and I would never criticize somebody for making fixtures because there's just something that's that's
00:04:58
Speaker
Until you've done it, until you consider yourself an expert, you don't criticize. However, it's also fun to go through and think, is there meat on the bone? Would I do it differently? Because Tom had been spent like a month dedicated on this tunnel vision. You kind of end up being married to what you got. And I sat there.
00:05:17
Speaker
I sat there for probably 15 minutes, and that's a long time, and it was so much fun. And then I said, hey Tom, can I pick your brain? Can I challenge you on why you did this this way this way? And we went through it all, and it was super fun. I think we came up with some good ideas, and it's being able to step back and react to it that I think is cool. So make a process and then react to it later.
00:05:39
Speaker
Well, the thing that I find is you want it to be perfect from the get-go, but you have to start. You have to make the first crappy one before you can find out the better one after that. But so many times, either myself or people that I observe or whatever, they don't even get started because they're afraid of all the failures along the road to reach excellence.
00:06:00
Speaker
Well, and it's like fail-fast, fail-cheap. Exactly. When we set up a second op on the Torvac fixture plates, we dial in, we check run-out and concentration and so forth on an interpolated operation. And it's something that we've been holding to a few tenths, which I'm really proud of. It feels very John Grimsville of me. And we do that on
00:06:22
Speaker
the first piece and then the problem is right now for us to measure that accurately the only way to do that is to pull it off and go use the fancy height gauge thing we've got which is the best way I have to measure a true hole diameter more so than telescoping gauges which are you know not really more accurate reliably at least than a thousandth of an inch.
00:06:46
Speaker
And so I was like, Jared, I just occurred to you, why are we doing this? It's fine, but why don't we make it better? Why don't we make a test plate that's sacrificial, that's fine, doesn't cost that much, it doesn't have to be full size, and that will be the thing that we use to walk in and check that tool, and then if we pull it off, the problem is when you pull it off, it's very difficult to put it back onto the exact same position, especially when you're holding those tolerances. So that's what we're gonna do, then the other thing we're gonna do, I was laughing, because I told you,
00:07:16
Speaker
why I can't justify buying a new laptop right now, even though I need one, is I also just bought a Mitsu Toyu BOR gauge. You probably know what these are. But what size BOR? Five half an inch, basically. Half an inch digital? No, analog. I much prefer analog dial indicators on those types of tools.
00:07:43
Speaker
Interesting. Go on. Well, so I've learned a ton about, I actually want to make a video out of it. I've learned a lot about checking holes. There's at least four different types of
00:07:56
Speaker
like indicator tools to measure holes that I, even the ones I bought, which are kind of, you know, you hold this shaft in your hand and it's got an end effector on it and then some sort of instrument above it. So I bought a board gauge. There's also trimikes. There's also dual lobes. Mine is worthless without a ring gauge or a setting ring. It's not an absolute tool. It's a relative tool. That makes sense?
00:08:20
Speaker
So I bought a ring gauge as well, but
Tool Measurement Difficulties
00:08:23
Speaker
there's also the Sun and makes these really cool I think what they're called now I wrote it down because I was I was looking up on eBay and they're used they're like 20 200 bucks So that was a pair of gauge the board gauge was only five five twenty five and then there's telescoping gauges which aren't as accurate there's I have a really hard time with gauge pins even if you buy tenths ones, I just find that it's hard to measure with them because I
00:08:51
Speaker
I should do more analysis on that, but the size pin that fits is not always the size, I guess that's my point is that a hole that's one ten thousandth of an inch bigger generally won't fit a gauge pin that's one, or even that's one ten thousandth smaller.
00:09:10
Speaker
Have you played around with that much? We use gauge pins a lot and sometimes I'll turn a custom gauge pin and then measure it and then use that as a reference. It's a feel thing. You feel if it just slips in or if it's got wiggle and then if the end mill that made the interpolated hole has any chips in it, you're going to not be able to go all the way down the hole.
00:09:36
Speaker
Well, I don't like that feel in this case. I don't, yeah. And like, you've got to be so freaking perpendicular. And if you get any binding, you start effecting. I mean, literally it's so easy to affect the material, whether it's aluminum or steel. In my experience, when you, you go to push something in and out.
00:09:56
Speaker
Well, these would be for locating pin holes on your fixture plates. Right. And the tolerance on those ground pins are usually pretty darn good, like within two tenths or so, but I mean, would you not just take one of those and use it as a feeler gauge often?
00:10:15
Speaker
I just don't like, maybe I need to get over it. Actually, maybe I'll talk to my sales guy on metrology stuff to see if they have an opinion on it or what's common practice. But to me, a board gauge is much better. It's a delicate tool that's able to tell you a lot more without, I just like it better. It's less sensitive to, well, first of all, yeah, it seems to me it's what I'm gonna try at least.
00:10:44
Speaker
And then they have those fancy air gauges that everybody Ken was talking about. None of those. I can't use those when the plates on the machine. That's what I don't like. Oh, because it goes through.
00:10:58
Speaker
Air gauges usually are something where you have to present the part to the air gauge. I need to present the tool to the part. Are you sure? They're not portable? I mean, it's a unit, right? Now that you say that, I just realized I'm such a good example of...
00:11:16
Speaker
I'm like, I was thinking about talking today. I'm like, I'm bridging this gap between some elements that are still bootstrapping and some elements that are definitely not in the business. And one of those little things is to quit thinking you know everything. Like I was just gonna tell you that air gauges aren't portable. Why would I say that? I don't know that. The one I've seen, you know what I mean?
00:11:35
Speaker
Yeah, like the one we saw on YouTube was, you know, a bench-mounted unit, but could you not just put that on a rolling cart and call it good? Well, I was thinking about the actual, I don't know, let me go look up on it, but air gauges are really cool, folks. The ones I've seen, though, usually you have to slide, it's like a hone where you take the little part and you put it over the air gauge, which is this big box.
00:11:58
Speaker
What I need is to move, I literally need to reach inside the machine and start probing boards, which is not something you could do with a shoe box size thing. I thought I saw a handheld one. What's that? I thought I saw a handheld unit in my five minutes of research once we learned about this a couple of weeks ago. But yeah, worth looking at. Absolutely. I'm going to look it up. But they're also not cheap. Like you're looking at thousands of dollars.
00:12:23
Speaker
Right. And again, don't over, well, explore, but don't overthink. I mean, I think the board gauge, which I don't think it's going to show up today, maybe Monday, should be very, very accurate, very repeatable. I can check it against a known setting ring. And I'm very excited for that. Now it checks diameter. It doesn't check concentricity. It doesn't check round. Well, that's the same thing as roundness.
00:12:48
Speaker
There's a couple different terms when it comes to what is a hole and what are you trying to check, which I thought are called taper. Taper along a wall, obviously. Roundness, concentricity, size, yeah. Is there a difference between roundness and concentricity? Yeah, maybe not.
00:13:07
Speaker
I'm asking. Maybe not. Yeah, I'm trying to think. It might just be two words for the same thing. Do you ship pins with your fixture plates, or do you assume that the customer will buy them? We have a pin kit, so it's optional.
00:13:24
Speaker
OK, I'm just curious. Different brands, different quality levels of pins might have different tolerance values. No, totally. A dowel pin is definitely not the same half inch diameter as a half inch gauge pin, which also have tolerances to them. But dowel pins are not. You can buy undersized and oversized dowel pins as well. Here's the thing. I'm not actually as worried about the
00:13:51
Speaker
a hypercritical slip fit of the pin into the plate once it's done. Here's the problem I had. We've been sending larger batches to anodize, which is, to me, scary. It goes back to having a process.
Anodizing Risks and Processes
00:14:06
Speaker
When I send 10 to anodize, it's not as big a deal. When you send 40 to anodize, there's a lot of material cost. There's a lot riding on that. There's a lot of potential
00:14:19
Speaker
bad thing. You get 40 parts back that are bad. I'll tell you, you can complain all you want. Your anodizer isn't going to cut you a check for the retail value of those plates they screwed up. They're probably not even going to cut you a check for the material cost, let alone material cost plus machining time. You know what I mean?
00:14:38
Speaker
Absolutely, I'm very aware because we just got our batch of DLC parts back on Monday. And 88% success rate. Is that within what you're hoping for? It's very high. That's good. But you know, they've had them for three weeks and the whole time we're nervous and they actually had to recoat them because they had this rainbow effect to them.
00:15:00
Speaker
So we're sending them stonewashed parts with our, you know, specific finish on them, our classic stonewashed look, and they coated them because I told them not to blast them. And they coated them and they said they sucked, so they had to bead blast every single part, which we're not happy about.
00:15:16
Speaker
Yeah, after the first coating, to remove the first coating and recoat them again. They didn't try to strip the coating then, did they? Yeah, they do have a chemical process, so I think they stripped it first, but then they wanted to blast them in order to provide a better adhesion surface and all this garbage.
00:15:33
Speaker
Yeah, because I'm sending them a process sheet, pictures of bad parts that they've given us before. And don't do this again. It's your job to figure out why these spots are happening and why these corners are not getting coated and why it's chipping off in this part. This is completely unacceptable.
00:15:50
Speaker
So they had to blast and recoat every part and luckily they're really really good at blasting. You know I'm worried about like heavy spots here or lighter over here and missing a spot and on the little pocket clips you can see a thumbprint where they're holding it on one end they blast it and then they flip it over and hold it again. So there's a couple clips that are garbage now or you know blemished.
00:16:12
Speaker
But yeah, if the whole batch was bad, it's just a sucky situation because they're not going to pay for it and wear out the material. And there's no contract beforehand stating this. Maybe there should be. No, but that's my point. I've worked with anodizers before when I ran Strikemark. And we made camera mounts. And we had those anodized in the thousands. And we had a deal with them where they were allowed, I think, 3 per 1,000 loss.
00:16:40
Speaker
I don't know what it was. These didn't matter. The material cost on these was $3. So it wasn't that big a deal. But then we had an agreement of a per lost piece fee that they basically, whatever they sent back, if we sent them $1,000 and they sent us back $977, then they paid us for the 23 parts that they lost at a fixed rate of $3 a part. It wasn't that much money.
00:17:07
Speaker
But what's funny is they actually lost a lot of parts. And they were like, you know, it's faster for us when we rack them to not worry about. Basically, they wanted to build that. And again, in that product, it was fine. And the fixture plates.
00:17:19
Speaker
We have sort of a process with our anodizer. And one of the things that we do is we sent them go no go gauges. And what's frustrating is we did have a couple of plates come back that were bad. And I sort of thought, I don't understand. If I give you a go gauge, I'm thinking to myself, why does when I get it, why does my go gauge not go? You have the same go gauge. Why did you not test that? Well, they were two things. One, they were relying more on the no go. So they were basically adding
00:17:50
Speaker
anodize to make sure the no-go wouldn't go. So the hole starts out too big. They add material until the no-go doesn't fit. Make sense? They can't check it mid-process, can they? Yeah, they pull them out of the tanks, check them, and then add more.
00:18:04
Speaker
Oh, I didn't know you could do that. But I was like, why aren't you like, are you serious? You're not in there. The go basically they were emphasizing the no go much more than the go. And yeah, that's not good as a process thing. Like, yeah, you're not using it. And I know it sounds crazy, but it's you know, you don't work live in a perfect world. I mean, they've got a
00:18:22
Speaker
In a great conversation about eyes like look the go is more important I'd rather if it's a sloppy fit I might be able to sell it as a blam But if it's a if it's under I'm like it's just no don't go under The other thing is they don't check every every single hole completely reasonable so if I have
00:18:45
Speaker
five tenths variation. So there's like 400 holes in a plate and they may run 10 plates at once. That's thousands of holes literally. If for some reason I have variation across plates of half a thou and they happen to be checking with the go no go a hole that is a lot different than the other hole like they happen to unfortunately check an anomaly type hole.
00:19:10
Speaker
then basically I've got this problem where they're going to be adding or they're going to be calling it done or adding more anodize based on
00:19:20
Speaker
a bad hole, so we've now realized we have to be hyper consistent. It's actually less important that we hit a nominal, it's more important that we're consistent in the batch, so that way when they do their anodizing, they dial it in. Basically, having the final part of your process be a third party thing is a lot of work and stress. Yeah, I can imagine, man.
00:19:42
Speaker
And you don't want that problem with them where they measure a bad hole and then stop the whole batch and you have this problem that's not really a problem, but they see it as a problem. They're putting a lot of responsibility in their hands.
00:19:57
Speaker
So you solve around that. It's not impossible. I was thinking about the Delivering Happiness book with Zappos. Did we talk about that last week? Yeah, we did, yeah. And how they never outsource your core competency. And we're really good at milling things. In some respects, I'm not outsourcing that, but I am putting it at the peril of a third party. So for now, until we have a better solution, what we need to do is check
00:20:24
Speaker
incredibly thorough check and process before anodizer and post anodizer. So I'd rather it hit my pocket book than a customer get a bad part.
Integrating New Tools
00:20:33
Speaker
Yeah. You're not going to start up your own anodizing business. No, no, no. Um, no, that wouldn't solve any problems at all. Um,
00:20:43
Speaker
I see what you mean about having a consistent hole size, because their process is timed and predictable growth of material, right? And actually pretty darn incredible. They're very, very good at that. You give them surface. And you did a hard coat? Yeah, type three. So it's what, one thou per side or something like that? Yeah, but a thou per side on the anodizer is basically half in the material, half additive. Right, but like actual real world size would be
00:21:13
Speaker
How much? To be honest, I forget right now. Okay, well, the point is it's predictable. Correct. Inconsistent and they know the formula and it's cool for sure. Right, totally. So if you had your own nominal size and you provided them with a spec sheet,
00:21:33
Speaker
You know saying you're allowed to grow the whole by half a thousand per side or something like that, right? And check it with your pins there Look the parts that we had that here's what I needed to be able to do if we have We had a very small number come back out of a batch of like 50 But it's I can't I was like I told I can't afford to eat That many on an ongoing basis. It's too much. There's too much work in the material and in the machining so
00:22:02
Speaker
I need to know with 100% confidence that the thing I sent you was basically perfect. And I need to have that confidence. So that's why now we've got serial numbers, we've got these QC sheets, we've got better measuring tools. We're checking to make sure we don't have a little hiccup or glitch on our end.
00:22:20
Speaker
Have you looked into a burnishing tool for these holes? I thought about that. The roller thing you've got? Yeah, because I use that on my pivot holes on the blades, and it's utterly fantastic. It is reliant on the pre-machined hole. So we'll interpolate the hole to whatever size, 1.871. And then the burnisher comes in and burnishes it to a beautiful mirror smooth 1.875.
00:22:46
Speaker
But basically a tenth difference from the machining will make a tenth difference on the burnishing. It makes a smooth hole.
00:22:56
Speaker
It like rolls out the, it's so cool. I've been reading more about grinding and when you see grinding wheels zoomed in 200 times and you see that it looks like the Rocky Mountains. It's like even when you machine a surface, you are shearing material. It is actually, you know, it is cavernous, it is peaks and valleys. So it's cool how those work. My gut reaction is that's overkill for what we're trying to solve.
00:23:21
Speaker
Everything this whole conversation so far has been about measuring a tenth and having other people do overkill for everything. Just keeping in mind that it's a business, that tool is probably slow to run, 400 some holes. I remember you saying you've got to dial that tool in every so often or check it, right? I do, but as do you with your interpolated holes. What's that?
00:23:47
Speaker
You're dialing in your interpolated holes, too, every single time. OK, fair enough. Every first run. Yeah. I don't think I have a machining problem. I think I have a workflow problem that I think I've already solved. I just need one more tool in my toolkit, which is this board gauge to confirm that. It's just one more tool, honey. I just need to buy one more tool. Yeah. Yeah.
00:24:15
Speaker
What have you been up to this week? Making Norseman knives. Nice. Whoa, that's it. Wait.
00:24:26
Speaker
No. We are nearing completion of the rask. Eric is buried in parts. But I want to make some Norseman knives. Awesome. So yeah, that's good. I'm using a new Kyocera to insert end mill torrid cutter to do the bevels.
00:24:47
Speaker
But they're 8 millimeter inserts, not 7 millimeter inserts. I don't understand why you would want to stop using the Tormach ball nose that's in a TTS call that's in a Cat40. Exactly. So in order to replace that, I'm moving completely different size inserts, end mill. I had to change my code. It caused all kinds of problems downstream. And it's taken me a long time to get it working again.
00:25:15
Speaker
just got it last night so nice that's been a fun process but how do you cut awesome because rask blades I know we've talked about the fixture there that has the side of the of the orange vice what is the how are the Norseman blades cut
00:25:30
Speaker
A Norseman blade is clamped flat to the table, to the fixture, with some clamps to hold it down. And then this torrid cutter, it looks like a donut, basically, comes in and starts making these grind lines, these machine pattern lines from the bottom to the top. And the thing with the Norseman is the grind lines on it are so iconic that I can't change them. I mean, I could, but it's perception. It's the knife. Yeah, I don't agree.
00:26:00
Speaker
So I'm trying to reinvent a new way to make those lines. Because before, I was using SolidWorks and HSMWorks. And now I'm trying to do the exact same toolpath in Fusion and have it fall. It's tricky to do exactly what I want, but I'm making it work.
00:26:16
Speaker
That's what I love about you. I watched your video when you were sort of reviewing the new Pearson MPS thing, the pallet that you got, and you immediately noticed his spiral toolpath pattern. And I don't remember whether I noticed or Jay pointed out to me, but I'm a
00:26:39
Speaker
I am much more of a... I hate to use the word engineer because I'm not an engineer, but much of that person. And you saw that and immediately just love of the beauty and the creative side and the ingenuity and the aesthetic. You got such a touch for that.
00:26:54
Speaker
And that's where I try to shine in the business. We're making these pieces of art. I was at the hardware store and I saw a lawnmower, a big riding lawnmower for $2,500. A lot of work to make this riding lawnmower. And I'm like, I've sold a knife for more than that. Isn't that crazy? How crazy is that? But it's artwork. It's precision crafted, not bulk manufactured kind of thing. And we're doing our absolute best here.
00:27:22
Speaker
Yeah, good for you. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, and getting better every day. So it's a new cutter with a new diameter, new inserts, and you're trying to mimic grind lines, huh? The exact same tool path and look and feel of before. And a couple of things I'm trying to apply that will help Eric down the road in the sharpening aspect, machining the sharpened bevel, the sharpened edge, which I've always done, but I can do a better job at it.
00:27:48
Speaker
And yeah, just trying to minimize chatter and make it look as beautiful off the machine as possible. So it's just another day. What made you go with the Kirisera?
00:28:01
Speaker
Admittedly, part of it is my local salesman that just keeps coming by talking about it, because I know it's a quality brand, obviously, but it's like a... I thought it would be a direct replacement for the Tormach one, but the Tormach one uses seven millimeter inserts, and apparently that's super duper rare. Everybody else uses eight millimeter. Oh, interesting.
00:28:22
Speaker
So anyway, also I wanted to mention real quick that I, you know you have a technical drawing with like the dimensions and the 2D aspect and different sides of all the parts and everything? Yeah. I used to do that back in the early, early, early days, like in the garage with the little manual machines and you had to turn the hand crank 14 times to get it to move this far over. I have no idea what you're talking about.
00:28:51
Speaker
But since then, I've never really used or felt the need to use technical drawings. I just look at the CAD file, and I know my measurements, and I make the part to that. But with this whole process workflow kind of track everything kind of thing, I printed off a drawing for my knife spacers, little lathe parts.
00:29:11
Speaker
with all my tolerance calls, my minimum and maximum size, any notes. And now I have this printed off, a magneted to my lathe. And it's like, why didn't I do this before? Like I'm trying to be smarter than the system when the classic way that everybody else in the world does it is like, makes so much sense. It is funny, right? Because it's like, well, how do you model the part? If you have a range, you model in the middle, you model at the mid or the max. And yeah, it's good to have dimensional drawings locked down.
00:29:42
Speaker
Well, and all these min and maxes were in my head before. And every time I'd make the part, you know, once a month or whatever, I'd have to like dig deep and be like, well, what was my max? Okay. So now, you know, if I want a nominal of 0.1560, I have this piece of paper that says my max is 1.564 and my min is 1.558. Yeah. That gives me a six-tenth range. That's a lot. In this diameter. Right.
00:30:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's a mile, right? But trust me, if I try to hold two tenths, I'm going to pull my hair out. So being realistic with yourself is another thing. Yeah, that's awesome. We went through the process of drawings lately, and I don't think I've announced this
00:30:26
Speaker
yet formally, we just posted some on Instagram, but we actually Clickspring reached out to us and asked if we would help, long story short, handle their US manufacturing and order fulfillment because they're in Australia. He's in Australia. So long story short, this was like six months ago. This was, by the way, that anodizing chip break where we had a problem and it was the having dimensional drawings like really, really, really nailed down.
00:30:54
Speaker
Just because those are the language. Those are the end all. It's the start and the beginning and the end of this process when you're working with anybody else. It's just the only way to be fair about it. So we went through six edits of, he thought they were done when he sent them to me. We went through six revisions of the drawings to get them dialed in. And we did have a problem and it's because we had good
00:31:20
Speaker
drawings that we were able to work it out in a much, much, much better way than how it would have went had it been ambiguous or open to interpretation. And sometimes with those min-max tolerance calls, like sometimes it's a guess, sometimes it's experience, like which needs to be over-toleranced and which needs to be under-toleranced and what doesn't matter.
00:31:45
Speaker
Yeah, that's scary too. Like if you stack the tolerances all the wrong way, right? Like if everything, if you happen to have five parts that interrelate and all of them are on the big end, is that too much?
00:31:58
Speaker
Yep. Yeah, and kind of what got me to finally make these drawings was, you know, the theory, the mental, you know, wrap your head around. If I had somebody else here that needed to run them, they need to know what I know. And it needs to be on a piece of paper so we all know the same thing. Yep.
00:32:17
Speaker
Right so and it the same thing with all the process sheets like we're joking to ourselves It needs to be so easy that my seven-year-old daughter Clara could come in and hypothetically follow this worksheet You know like like keep it simple keep it easy the process is the expert
00:32:36
Speaker
We like to think that we are the experts, that we're the only people in the world that can accomplish this. But if we can come up with the smoothest, easiest way to do it, we were the experts in coming up with that process. And there's huge value in that, of course.
00:32:52
Speaker
Yeah, I was reviewing the first edit of the Jay Pearson video that we shot last week and it's like it's so annoying It's so he's got some of some of his things so dialed down like when you go to when an order comes through how it prints the Whatever, you know when you need to pack something. There's a picture of how the box is is laid out and then there's a QR code and we actually
00:33:16
Speaker
Anybody can scan the QR code, so I'll be curious when we post the video, like literally, apparently, I haven't watched it yet.
Learning from Experts
00:33:22
Speaker
It leads to a private or unlisted YouTube video that shows how to do more, and then you walk over to the boxes, and the boxes are organized by product, so I could literally take over order fulfillment at Pearson with probably five minutes of training.
00:33:38
Speaker
Would you want, like I was thinking if I went and visited there, I'd want to work there for a day. What's that? Like do you think you'd want to do, I'd want to work there for a day. Just jump in and see what it's like, you know, follow these processes. Yeah, that would be, um, it's, I mean, that's kind of what I'm trying to capture in the videos. But yes, I think if there were a, if I could do anything
00:34:01
Speaker
If I could snap my fingers, do anything in the world, it would be, I would like to spend one or two days shadowing you, John. I'd like to spend one or two days shadowing like a really high-end aerospace machine shop guy, like even an operator at a shop like that. I'd like to shadow Pearson for a day because you learn so much when you just see the little things of how other people do stuff.
00:34:22
Speaker
And what you need is Julie or somebody else following you so that you're not holding the camera. No, but it's true, so that you can immerse yourself fully in the process. Yeah, I was thinking, right. Figure that out. That would be amazing. But, I mean, that's a good goal. I mean, think about that, because we're both trying to figure out how we want to grow this business and what we want to be doing in the next five years. Right.
00:34:48
Speaker
And for me, it's not production. I don't want to personally be responsible for production because I just suck at it. I want to come up with new stuff. I want to learn. I want to go to lean shops and I want to just be better, right? Yeah, if I have one piece of advice, it's for people that are
00:35:05
Speaker
Whatever stage of your business you're in, if you intend on growing, and it's okay if you don't, I respect people hugely that say, I'm making this much product or this much revenue and I'm okay with that and I'm not changing it, God bless you. But if you're gonna grow at all,
00:35:20
Speaker
Think about what your business is like at five times its current output. Not because your goal is five times, but because I think that's gonna force you to address the awkward questions. And for me, I had a really tough time Tuesday, and it was because this stupid Ohio tax thing came up, and then somebody's computer broke, and then other little things hickered up happened, and I realized if I don't have
00:35:44
Speaker
If I choose to accept these responsibilities and these capabilities within my business, which I do, then I need to have the people here, the resources here, the team here, the know-how here to handle them. And you can't just assume that the world works perfectly every day. So that's why you need fail-safe measuring tools. That's why you need to have a Windows restore disk or a wipe disk that you can just reimage a computer like that, which we now have. Stuff like that that's just smart.
00:36:16
Speaker
So do you think of your business five times from where it is right now? Oh, good grief. Don't ask me that.
00:36:22
Speaker
Well, I don't want, I don't want that. Um, yeah, I want, I want to, I'll be honest. I ain't, my goal is to double, um, where we're at and to do so, uh, we can, I don't know if we could double, but we could come. Well, actually, yes, I'm going to say we could double without any additional, um, hiring and only a couple more machines.
00:36:48
Speaker
Right, so you're talking about gross revenue like top end. Other people might think of doubling as more machines, more people, more staff, more inventory.
00:37:05
Speaker
We could, but I need to do a much better job of automating how we pay bills, how we track invoices, how we track, oh my gosh, I need these inventory racks done with Kanban cards so you can look and see. I probably need to start some sort of a process board like you and Jay have so that we make sure we're focusing on the right things. We've been playing catch up for the past month, so that's my excuse. It's not a good excuse. It is.
00:37:35
Speaker
Yeah, I've heard Tony Robbins say, think about your business like a treasure hunt. And there's money everywhere, hiding. You have to go find it. You have to lean out your processes. You have to be more efficient here and there. You have to make things easier so that it's not eating up your time. And that's profit right there, like savings everywhere. Because every distraction that comes to your desk removes your ability to bring in more money that minute.
00:38:04
Speaker
Right, but I want to make sure it's clear. I honestly could care less about the money in the sense that I'm happy doing what I do. Money to me is just a necessary thing that shows what you're doing is correct. I say that so emphatically because my wife and I got to where we are by living way below our means. That's my general observation is that most people adjust their
00:38:31
Speaker
Most people adjust their lifestyle based on what they're currently earning, and as they earn more, as they grow a little and so forth, they tend to raise that. We've been frugal, so I don't really care. I don't need more like that. I want the business success.
00:38:46
Speaker
What makes me happy is being able to do what I do. So when something breaks or something happens or something is a hiccup or we need to order a bunch of stuff, having an automated system that either I can do it quickly and stress free or I can hand it off to somebody or I have a system that can later be easily handed off to somebody, that means I can keep playing with our doing this. I can keep learning and fusion. I can keep doing the stuff I want to do because it's my, I'm steering a ship and there's a difference between delegating that out and absconding the duty.
00:39:17
Speaker
Yep. And then you get to do exactly what you're best at, which is what grew the business in the first place. Yeah. Which is, which makes me happy, happy, happy. And it's just like, it's like that, you know it, like, you know it. I'm sure, you know, John, when you're like, we're, we're doing a great job. We're making a great product. And you know, when you're like, God, we need to work on this and it just feels good. Yeah. I expect a lot out of myself when I know that something is nailed down, it makes me happy.
00:39:44
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. And then I get to that point, too. And then two weeks later, I'm like, oh, but actually I could I could make it better like this. But, you know, you're OK with the certain level of everything. And on the same coin, I'm always trying to get better at everything. But I have to focus my energy on what what is hurting us at the moment, not not something that's already 98 percent. And I know what the last two percent is, you know. Right. Right.
00:40:12
Speaker
When I grabbed Jared, I was like, hey, I gotta get your, you gotta brainstorm with me. And we rethought a whole workflow process for one of our products that we have spent six months dialing down and it's pretty darn good. And I thought, what if we completely do it a different way?
00:40:29
Speaker
And we sort of concluded that it's interesting, but it really isn't going to save any time and it really isn't going to change what's important on the product. So we said, okay, not worth it now, but if I can get one thing figured out, sorry, I'm speaking so broadly here, but I need to
00:40:44
Speaker
We've got 30 more fixture plates to run to fill an order. And then we have some breathing room. The VF2 comes. I want to start playing. I want to spend a couple days playing. Like I'm allocating that time to play and learn and figure out if I can do some things. Like trying to do either offline setup to align parts before they're in the machine. Does that make sense? Like putting a part onto a fixture and making sure it's in the exact right location or really revamping our probing routines.
00:41:13
Speaker
like going pretty crazy with probing. Yeah, you need to do that. In the next few months, you got to find the time to do that. Yeah, no, we will. We totally will. What else? What are you up to today?
00:41:27
Speaker
Today I'm going to finish up, I ran a batch of spinners last night and then it ran for five hours until the machine said low air pressure and then it was beeping all night. So I come in to a beeping machine and I'm like, but the air compressor is full. I don't understand why low air pressure. But yeah, so I'm going to finish that. I'm going to make 10 Norseman blades and then get these spacers running on the lathe and I should actually be able to do all that today.
00:41:51
Speaker
Do you, like on the Norseman's when you're doing experimentation with that new tool, do you use cheap scrap material? Like aluminum or steel or something? No, we use regular blades. Should you bootstrap and just when you're really...
00:42:09
Speaker
Well, I can test operation by operation. And I don't usually need too many revisions to understand what needs to be done. So I've worked on one blade. And due to one stupid tool path that I chose to go the wrong direction, that blade is now useless. But I get to continue experimenting on it with the bevels and other things like that. So I think my second blade here should be, I've only scrapped one.
00:42:35
Speaker
But different materials cut differently. If I cut aluminum, it's going to cut easy, not hard stainless steel like this. So I like to test on real stuff. And if I have to throw it away, I do. But it gets me faster to the point. Oh, yeah. No, I totally agree. Testing on the right material is huge. But when you're doing something like trying to mimic those toolpaths, it's like, jeez, just start. Because you may take a bunch of, you may be way off, I guess.
00:43:03
Speaker
Yeah, it could take a ton of effort, but luckily all the effort's been on the computer and in my head not so much on the blade itself. Yeah, that's true. And the simulation is very accurate, so it's working really well. Don't we live in an awesome world? It's nuts. It's so cool. So cool.
00:43:26
Speaker
Yeah. We should do, oh, this is dangerous. What? We should each challenge each other to do a YouTube video on what everything we think is awesome about what we do. Just a short video, but packed. Everything we think, oh, yeah. I actually, yeah, we should do that. Let's do that. Because you did one maybe within a year ago. I thought you did one. I don't remember. Because machining is awesome. I love, but you always say I love machining.
00:43:55
Speaker
but just little like five second clips or whatever of little aspects that you love. I'm gonna start writing those down. Make a three minute video and we should each do that. That'd be really good. Okay, I don't wanna do the video yet. I wanna start writing stuff down because I want it to be sincere. And if I start forcing myself to think about it, it's just gonna be forced. But I'm gonna start writing down a list of the awesome things. Yeah, I'll do that too. I think it'd be really good for each of us to share those. Yeah.
00:44:24
Speaker
Cool. And it's also, darn it, we live in a great world. We have access to these tools, equipment, machines, processes, resources. And history is always changing. It'll be hopefully better in the future. But darn it, I'm pretty grateful that I was born when I was born. We hit the lottery.
00:44:44
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I think each of us and every person out there finds different enjoyment in different things. And you and I probably have very particular, peculiar things that we love about what we do. You know, like this one little operation, like this brings me so much joy that this chamfer is too foul on this edge and it glints the light just perfectly, you know?
00:45:07
Speaker
I walked up to Jerry with QC plates and I walked up and we did a video on how we QC and I looked at the column and 34 inch plate and I looked up and the thickness tolerance across 34 inches by 12 inches was plus or minus two tenths.
00:45:27
Speaker
Oh my goodness. Good for you guys. Go to a vice manufacturer's website and look at their grind specs. The last one I pulled up was plus or minus five tenths.
00:45:39
Speaker
And that's surface ground, right? That's surface ground. Now look, this is aluminum. It's thickness. It's not flatness. No, I'm not sure. I wouldn't bank the future of my company that that measurement is being made perfectly. In other words, it could be a few tenths off, which is double. That could double your. But I'm just saying, regardless, using a midget to a quantum mic, picking 10 points across this plate, we got to dial it. That's so awesome. Yeah, makes me very happy, like very happy. Good stuff.
00:46:09
Speaker
All right, I think we've got a big ahead of us. Yeah, correction, but I'll see you next week. Sounds good. OK, bye.