Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Manufacturing Business Operation Management, Quality Control, ERP Tracking, Shop Organization, Actionable Steps to Success, Zero Point Fixturing, Probing Controls on Datron, Heidenhain, and Fanuc
345 Plays5 years ago
TOPICS:
- Shop Operations
- Shop Organization
- Quality Control & AQL (Acceptable Quantity Limit)
- ALEX ERP
- Rask Progress
- Zero-Point Fixturing
- Machine Probing (Eumachs, Fanuc Robodrill, DATRON Neo)
Refining Shop Operations & Organization No longer is the conversation about product and process respectively. The Johns are now at a point where both are inextricably linked. Saunders talks shop revamp, QC, SMW custom ERP (ALEX), and DOITS (Days Off In The Shop). It's not enough to just make parts. Having refined and dialed in processes that are simple and effective are key to long-term success.
Also, SCREW GOALS. Go for bite-size, actionable steps instead! Saunders outlines 3 phases full of small actionable tasks that will benefit the business and products. Both of these hosts have discussed lots of ideas and theories, but something's changed. The podcast may be all talk but outside of this hour confine, there's less talk, more doing.
Boiling Point
Both hosts find themselves boiling for different reasons. One has to do with QC and another has to do with A/C. Saunders provides the best analogy for part quality during production runs: the frog in boiling water. With a shout out to Jake Yates from Yates Precision, Saunders is now combining AQL (Acceptable Quantity Limit) and an acrylic stroke of genius from Alex (the person, not the ERP system). In these sweltering temperatures, Monday can't come soon enough for the GK team!
Deadlines Come and Go Grimsmo may not have made the July 1st deadline for having a completed Rask but the gains made weren't in vain. The deadline simulated an external driving force to keep him focused and driven. He delights in his newfound comfort with running the KERN. Not only are the pallet changers something that make him smile, he's also demanding that zero-point fixturing be used on EVERY machine.
Cut Bait? Eumachs sat in storage for 6 months and have been in the shop for another 6 months. Grimsmo knows it's time to get service techs to inspect and repair. If push comes to shove, he may end up having to cut his losses and move forward but he remains hopeful that these will soon be dedicated foam cutting machines.
NOTHING COMPARES TO U... This isn't about getting into someone's personal business....or is it? Eumachs lack of probing summons Saunders' experience with the Fanuc Robodrill, which has neither a spindle or tool probe (video coming soon). The workflow incorporates a Speroni Tool Presetter and Haimer, which works well but nothing---and I mean nothing compares to DATRON's VacuCard and camera-assisted probing. NOTHING.
The Future of Hand Coding Saunders and Grimsmo ponder about the future of manufacturing. With the advents between CAM and high speed machining, it's difficult to envision a world where hand coding remains ubiquitous.
Grimsmo Holmes GK is perusing and investigating processes to determine the lowest hanging, high yield fruit to increase production and he's sitting on a smoking gun solution that he can do immediately!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Shop Operations and Strategies
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machining episode 178. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. And this is the podcast where two machinists and entrepreneurs talk about all things business. Business it is.
Shop Revamp and Work-Life Balance
00:00:15
Speaker
Well, a shop operations is the theme on our end this week. I like it. In what sense?
00:00:22
Speaker
We are implementing a combination of the kind of shop revamp process, which I'll go into as well as what I'm calling, oh, the days off in the shop. Yeah.
00:00:37
Speaker
I'll tell you, it's been great timing to think about how we machine stuff, how we QC stuff, and how we develop our own ERP system and embracing all of this in the context of leadership.
Leadership Insights from Jocko's Book
00:00:49
Speaker
It's funny, I've only been making it through five or six pages of that Jocko book per morning because
00:00:58
Speaker
And it's funny, I don't, just being totally honest, I find myself thinking, oh, this guy was a, you know, he was a warrior. He was a soldier. He's not a smooth, sophisticated business leader, but darn it, the stuff, you know, I think that's part of, in itself, the story is looking at the fact that he's got some really good points. And again, also just taking those examples as you see them fit. So for me,
00:01:26
Speaker
looking at that form of leadership by enabling the team to do stuff. So we've been breaking it up. And everyone's got different, I'll go in more of this, but the progress that we have made in four days would blow your mind. Nice.
00:01:42
Speaker
Yeah. When I, and I said this so many times on the podcast that I'm self-conscious about it, but truly purged, you know, stuff that, um, the example that comes to mind as a power code oven or, um, stuff like that, that's just not part of our business anymore. Um, is, has been cleaned or sold or donated,
Organizing Tools and Racking Setup
00:02:00
Speaker
et cetera. Uh, the far side of the shop, every nook and cranny has been cleaned out and.
00:02:05
Speaker
Part of our phase one is so purging all that old stuff I purchased our stacker forklift yesterday, which will be the kind of that forklift that you walk behind I've been going through every single toolbox and removing the contents organizing them combining them We've started we bought some Amazon labels So every toolbox has at least a one through say 20 sticker for the drawers that might
00:02:33
Speaker
I recognize that may not get used fully, but it's so inexpensive and easy to do. It's kind of been a methodical part of the process. So in the future, again, this idea that if we want to search in either an Alex or just a Google Sheet for 5C collets or files or deburring tools, it'll quickly tell you the toolbox number and drawer. That's the most inexpensive form of tool organization out there.
00:02:54
Speaker
That was phase one with the final part of phase one being assembling the racking, which we're doing today. In fact, I paused on that to come catch up with you.
Implementing ERP Systems and Material Tracking
00:03:04
Speaker
Phase two is commissioning our new machines. We're in the process of finishing up the fixtures for those, but getting them online. Then all of the rest of this merges together under the umbrella of Alex. When material gets put on the racking, it'll get its own unique part number or Alex number.
00:03:25
Speaker
that'll tell us the quantity where it is, that'll tie into the bar scan or QR scannable Kanban card, that'll trigger notes about the item, whether it's raw material, how to reorder it, the price history, the minimum trigger quantities, where we store it, if it's raw material for a specific product, that could tell us the setup sheet location or the setup sheet itself, as well as the fusion file, the rev, all that stuff, which is just,
00:03:52
Speaker
This is Oxygen for manufacturing entrepreneur.
Developing QC Processes with Practical Training
00:03:57
Speaker
And then Jeffrey, who previously worked at a Fortune 500 manufacturing company, is really doing a great job taking the lead on some of our formal QC process.
00:04:10
Speaker
We're coming up with dedicated fixtures. The dedicated tools will have a basically when you go to manufacture a part. In that part, we'll have a formalized and laminated print. We'll have some comments on the thing, a setup sheet, one example of a really good one. And then we're also going to be including some examples of things that we want to be careful of that we know are bad. So we're actually going to take
00:04:33
Speaker
some products that we're not happy with like if there's a little witness line on an interior bore or We think this is an example of when the insert should have been Should have been replaced earlier. So we're gonna keep we're gonna actually machine those parts
00:04:49
Speaker
down so that they don't look like a normal part but rather just focus on the defective part of that part and we'll include those in there and that's going to help enable somebody who's new to the team or isn't intimately part of that product or process to do a better job of that confirmation of stuff that's not always easy to encapsulate on a print.
00:05:08
Speaker
I love that you guys are doing that because I've thought of doing that a couple times where you actually have like the physical version of the bad example or the good example in the setup sheet or like next to the, you know, in the binder or whatever so that somebody can see it and feel it and it just makes it that much faster to get somebody up to speed.
00:05:27
Speaker
Yeah.
Continuous Improvement and Shop Communication
00:05:28
Speaker
Well, and like our, our mod vices are 41 40 and we really have figured out a great recipe to give an absolutely great finish to them. That's not part of the, uh, requisite feature of the product, but it's a selling point from a, just a pride of in our products and the quality. And so.
00:05:45
Speaker
When those inserts start to fade, it's a frog boiling in water. You don't necessarily jump out at you as you're pulling them off. We're not going to put them under a prophylometer. It's not that sort of a thing. In a photograph, I wasn't sure it would do the trick. And then Alex nailed it.
00:06:02
Speaker
We use these red square stackable bins that are about the size of two shoeboxes. When we pull the parts off, we've been putting them into there. They're a good size because they're large enough to hold a decent quantity, but not so large that you end up with a container that's too heavy to man lift or even just shift around.
00:06:23
Speaker
And our mod vices are, um, you know, so call it two inches by six inches, um, kind of like a big stick of gum scaled up. Alex laser cut a piece of acrylic or poly carb so that we stack them in, they slide into slots in those red bins that holds them vertically. And then we have QC slots. Marked in that so that it's a trigger reminder as we're going through our, when I got to look up, I forgot, I learned that term that I was trying to think of last week.
00:06:52
Speaker
Shout out to Jake Yates for it was not statistical process control. That's a key thing, but it's called AQL, which stands for acceptable. I'm not sure why it's AQL, but acceptable number sampling plan sort of thing. But that shows you if you're doing a batch size, what the statistical checking process should be.
00:07:16
Speaker
That's all coming together as phase two. Phase three is a little bit more TBD, but it's things like implementing the Grimsmo paper log for each machine, reevaluating the machines that we have in our shop. We've got a water and coolant delivery system that just arrived that we need to install. And then it's sort of a Kaizen constant improvement process having, we think every other Friday, sitting down for half an hour as a team and kind of talking about what we've been up to, what's going well, what needs work to really bring us together on that front.
00:07:46
Speaker
That's quite the offload. Holy cow. That's amazing.
Balancing Production and Shop Improvements
00:07:50
Speaker
But John, it's what you and I have talked about. I know. It's just all happening. Well, the goal was never discussed there. I'm trying to implement that. That's why I broke it down into three phases, to make it bite-sizeable, to make it actionable, less talk, more doing.
00:08:09
Speaker
So how much is this taking away from production time, just from a practical standpoint? Or is production still happening and you're squeezing it in? Or are you OK with a little bit of down production in order to do this? Because you know it's going to pay off. What's your thinking? That's a great question. Jared is very much still focused on production. Honestly, we're at the point where we should start figuring out, finding another team member here, probably a machinist.
00:08:37
Speaker
I haven't, that may be part of phase three or something we just need to start thinking about because we could use it. Alex has focused a lot on this. Julie's actually helping out a ton, which is really helpful. And we're gonna have Julie take the lead on implementing Alex from a quarterback standpoint. So Alex is a team effort, but I'll be the one handling
00:09:02
Speaker
some decisions. Ed will be handling some. Alex will be handling some of the technical side. Jared will be handling some of the, hey, this is how I want it to work. But we want to have Julie be the person that kind of oversees it, keeps us on schedule, keeps us on track.
00:09:15
Speaker
At least that's the thought. We're not quite there yet. So for the phase one, two, three, you mean? Mostly phase two. So when we actually go, so we're going to start with one of our Modvite's top jaws as the kind of pushing it through the full alloc system. So what's the PO that orders the material? Then what's the unique part number for the raw material? What do we do when the material comes in? In other words,
00:09:39
Speaker
Again, sustainable and scalable. How do we know or what do we need to know if for some reason we need to reject that material or it doesn't show up correctly or even as simple as the fact that if you order it, let's say you're ordering 20 different part numbers a day of material. You need a system that confirms receipt of it.
00:09:59
Speaker
I don't think we're going to get to that point, but that's not the point. The point is we're using technology to build a scalable and sustainable system, which it's quite easy to say, okay, we have an outstanding PO for 2x4, 4140. When that's received, it needs to get processed in and confirmed that it's received. It needs to get put into the racking in its correct location. The Kanban card would go back, all that kind of stuff.
00:10:24
Speaker
Yeah. And then you have a list of all outstanding orders so that anytime you're wondering, Hey, did those things ever come in from McMaster or whatever? Then you know, it's like right there versus now when it's Ed, Jared, me and Alex all chasing each other around the shop asking, did you order this or where is this? Yep, exactly. Yep. That's fantastic.
00:10:45
Speaker
Yeah, we need to prove it. I'm sure there's going to be some hiccups. Yeah, of course. Even like I was thinking you were hesitant about putting the labels on the toolboxes. You're like, I don't know if we're going to use this long term. You will. It's so easy that you don't give it a lot of weight, but I don't think you'll go back from that. I think it'll just become part of the normal workflow and you'll always know
00:11:07
Speaker
that if you need to look for something, you just search through Alex and be like, Oh, the five C college are in, you know, toolbox to draw seven.
Technology Use for Inventory Tracking
00:11:13
Speaker
Easy. Yeah. And I don't have to remember that. Why do I need to remember that? What I got to think of with that is a way that anybody quickly has access to like, almost like we need a central computer that's only dedicated to Alex, which we probably do. This will come to me, I guessing, but just some, some basic little like internet only computers.
00:11:34
Speaker
Honestly, what about Alexa? They have a pretty good API. I think you can. Alexa, where are the 5C College? That would be insane. I don't think that's impossible. No. I have built systems in the past that didn't work. I use this for file folders, filing cabinets where I thought, because I got a filing cabinet at the shop and at home, and one's in my home, upstairs and downstairs.
00:11:59
Speaker
I turned it into a sheet thing to say, hey, my car insurance is in this one or the extra keys are in this one. I don't use it. It's kind of one of those sounds great, but the honest answer is it didn't get in. Maybe that's for other reasons because it wasn't used enough, but I'm very sensitive to creating something that truly is used and works.
00:12:19
Speaker
Right. Although, as you've said before, many times, text to speech or speech to text for manufacturing terms doesn't always work. Yeah, that's a good question. Can you customize? I'm gonna look into that.
00:12:35
Speaker
It's like a quality cam. It's not an English word. I don't know how they translate that. I can only imagine what the conversion is to that. I'm going to look this up after our podcast. Sorry. Awesome. How are you doing? Excellent. Things are going really good. We're boiling in here. We absolutely need air conditioning and it's in the process. The guys will be here on Monday, which is good.
00:13:04
Speaker
Oh, wow. To install, to start the install. It's actually hotter in this shop, 4,000 square feet than it was in the 1,000 square feet at the old shop. Even though it's bigger and there's fans on the ceiling and there's airflow and it's ridiculous. But your old one was air conditioned. Yeah,
Challenges with Shop Air Conditioning
00:13:23
Speaker
but it broke for several weeks last summer. Interesting. Right, so it was wonderful most of the time, except when it broke and then it got just stupid. Yeah, now here.
00:13:33
Speaker
Yeah, anyway, so the guys have been in and out we've been talking with them for almost a month trying to nail down the process and everything. And yeah, they'll be here installing on Monday. So we had a concrete pad poured out back for the air conditioner to sit on. And yeah, making progress, we're gonna
00:13:50
Speaker
We were going to go through a wall, but then the landlord was getting kind of sticky about, um, building permits and cutting holes in a wall and all that stuff. So I'm like, let's just go in through one of the windows. We have quite a lot of windows here and that's non-invasive and easy and AC guy liked it and all simple. Straightforward. Yeah. Great. I may be too late, but my humble advice is by one, um,
00:14:14
Speaker
The tonnage is not that expensive on the actual condenser unit or the unit and buy one that's bigger than needed.
00:14:22
Speaker
Yeah, I was thinking about that. The guy suggested a 10 ton, which he thought would be enough. And then, um, I mentioned it in the YouTube comment and a couple of people got back to me, including Mike from military. And he's like, we had four 12 tons at our old shop, which I remember being cold during that too. Yeah, exactly. Um,
00:14:46
Speaker
So we stepped up to one 12 and a half ton. And hopefully that will be, I mean, at worst, it'll, it'll make it manageable, but hopefully it should be able to keep us like 72 degrees, whatever temperature we choose. Steady. So awesome. Should be awesome. Should be good.
00:15:04
Speaker
Yeah, our issue, which I don't think you'll have, is that we opened up that cavity, the wall between the two bays and the other doors before. Yeah. And the unit was really only sized for the second bay. So we almost doubled the time and a half.
00:15:24
Speaker
the area, it's cooling, which is, uh, I regret not buying a slightly bigger unit. We actually did buy the bigger unit, but I almost regret not going a little bit bigger. And one of the reasons I didn't was that I was worried about how expensive it would be to operate. It's not that expensive. Yeah. No, I want to say I haven't done the, um, breakout, but I on average in the summer, our, uh, electric bill has been about $150 higher than what I remember prior to air conditioning. Okay.
00:15:55
Speaker
I mean, you also have more machines and more production and things like that too, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay. That's not bad. Do you remember what tonnage you got? I can look it up while you're talking. I'm pretty sure 15. Yeah. And our main shop was 4,000. Yeah. So that's not, so 12 and a half for us might be fine.
00:16:20
Speaker
Is it too late? Have you already? Yeah. Okay. Got it. What else is going on?
Tool and Work Holding Solutions
00:16:25
Speaker
Yeah, that's good. Things on the current have been going great. I've been having so much fun. I'm finally like getting comfortable where I can just like make parts and not, you know, be scared. So that's good. I've been taking, you know, I was pushing for that July 1st deadline to finish the Rask.
00:16:43
Speaker
Pushed really hard, didn't make it, that's fine. But I've sort of been taking a break the past few days and do other things, do other tasks and projects in the shop that I've been putting off. But yeah, today I'll be able to finish some rask handles. It's fun dialing in the tolerances on the current and just getting it basically bang onto a few tents, if not better, with amazing surface finishes and just
00:17:10
Speaker
It's fun. It's good. And the Palette Changer is mind blowing. I can like halfway finish the job and be like, oh, I want to do something else right now. And then, you know, change a vice in and, you know, similar to the rock lock system that you have just automated. Yes. This whole concept of zero point fixturing, I didn't fully understand until just the past few years. I remember thinking about it, you know, five years ago and I was like, oh, it's all
00:17:34
Speaker
That's all fancy stuff, but I would put it on a tormack. You know what I mean? Absolutely. Zero point fixturing in any sense, whether it's Pearson or the orange vice bases or fifth axis rock lock or Lang. There's all kinds of options, but it needs to go on every machine because
00:17:56
Speaker
It just makes jobs so easy. We're planning on fixing up the UMAX in the next few weeks and getting them rocking. I'm just going to have a service guy come in and say, fix it. And I'm trying to think through the work holding that I want to put on there, whether I want to put orange vices or Pearson. I haven't decided yet.
00:18:18
Speaker
But yeah, I'm going through that thought process of definitely one zero point. The machine doesn't have probes at all. Do I want to put probes on it? My immediate brain says, of course, probes on everything. But then my rational brain says, do I need it? I don't know. They're not going to be a heavy tool user, like changing end mills every day kind of machine. So if we have to shim touch every tool or get a little table tool setter or something, it's not the end of the world. I don't know yet.
00:18:46
Speaker
And then as far as a work probe, like Willa Heimer, I've never owned a Heimer, but is that all we need if we do really good fixture offsets and stuff? Yeah, we use a Robo drill has neither tool nor spindle probe and we use our Spironi, which works great for tool heights. And then we use a Heimer in the spindle as needed. It will force you to
00:19:10
Speaker
Also think like, for instance, if you're going to do, I would shamelessly put out a plug for our fixture plates. If you're going to do something like foam cases, having a fixture plate there means you can have a saved offset that won't move. And then our top plates would be a great example of how you can build a fixture that would hold the foam. And if that's whatever, G59, every time you want to run them, you just drop that fixture back on and hit go.
00:19:36
Speaker
Exactly. And that's a much better work footprint versus vices or smaller single clamping things when you're trying to do like a larger work envelope of parts. Well, I know you know this, but
Machine Maintenance Strategies
00:19:51
Speaker
I know Haas machines can basically kiss the table, but some machines can't. You know what I mean? So having super low profile, a one inch fixture on the table, sometimes it can't be reached by, except for like super long tools. Oh yeah. Many machines have a minimum spindle to table. Sure. And that's more of an issue for the mill drills.
00:20:11
Speaker
Yeah, but once you get a fixture plus a well, I'm not don't mean to be defensive, but if you put a one inch fixture plate on air plus a one and a half inch fixture on top of that, which is what we normally do. And then your tool is anything more than a couple of inches of gauge length, which is quite common. It's generally not an issue. Nice.
00:20:31
Speaker
Yeah, on the UMAX, I don't know, I haven't moved them yet. I don't know what the spindle-to-table is. It's not publicly printed information, because they're older machines, maybe it is. The only ones I've seen huge issues, I think you can get the robo-drills or the speedios with an actual Z-spacer, and then it's like a six-inch or eight-inch minimum, and that's difficult, but also not as common.
00:20:59
Speaker
Yep. Anyway, who does the service on that? So I've got a buddy in town, that firefighter accessory guy, Modus, that has two or three older robot drills. And he found a freelance service guy that's been doing all the work on those. So I called him up and he said, I'm actually busy, but the company I work for can absolutely hook you up. So I'm waiting for a phone call back from them. I'll have to reach out today. Awesome.
00:21:27
Speaker
But they said, yeah, they'll come in, they'll assess, they're excellent at Heidenhein, which this is. And he said, yeah, we have a standard old machine practice of 100 point service inspection. I was like, yes, that's what I need. It's that mindset of we could do this ourselves, but they've been sitting here for six months, and we've owned them for six months before that in storage, and nothing's happened yet.
00:21:50
Speaker
please come in and just do it for me. I would rather exchange money and have it done now for time, for my time. So yeah, that's happening in the next week or two, as soon as they can come here.
00:22:04
Speaker
I'm looking forward to that. I would love to eat crow and see those machines work and run and make you money and be profitable and awesome. And I hope that's the answer.
Exploring Machining Technologies
00:22:14
Speaker
I would encourage you to find in your own inner self the sort of cut your losses, or it's OK if they don't work out. You're doing very well. You can go buy another machine. I don't think you made a mistake, because heck, they could be awesome. But if they're not, cut bait.
00:22:33
Speaker
That's a good point. I'll have to wait and see what they come back at for service. But I've had the kind of loose number in my head. If I have to put 10,000 into both of them to get them working, I'm fine with that. But yeah, you're right. There has to be this number. It's like, oh, no, no, no, no. That's not going to work.
00:22:50
Speaker
They're now paperweights. Yeah. Okay. Just keep in mind, I know you're not a Haas guy, but they're having pretty aggressive sales and you can get a machine delivered with warranty and spindle probes for, I don't know, 50, 60 grand or something. Yeah, that has a good residual. I'll keep that in mind.
00:23:16
Speaker
It's funny because we've had a good experience having the Robo drill. We actually just finished our video on kind of our, hey, this is what a Robo drill is, which was fun to show. They are quite capable of machining tool steels and they're not just drill tap machines. But it's been good to see the workflow without a probe. On the complete flip side is how much I appreciate
00:23:42
Speaker
the integration of technology on the Datron. I can see a production machine, zero points, just rock and roll, but man, I'll tell you, dropping a part onto that Datron, the VacuCard is like the biggest secret that I didn't understand until we got the machine, like directional vacuum work holding, or even now using
00:24:10
Speaker
We'll use our own fixture plates or like mini fixtures plus mod vices. We don't even, we just vacuum them down. It's phenomenal. So like we'll have them on a little one inch plate. We'll just drop the plate onto the machine, hit the turn of the vacuum on and it's good to go. How big is the base plate? Smallest one's probably something like six by 10. Yeah, that's a lot of surface area. That's great.
00:24:37
Speaker
And then you switch jobs, no problem. You wanna probe it. The camera just, you just drive three points. It handles the sort of things like the G68 better than anything else, yeah.
00:24:48
Speaker
So you literally don't worry about squaring it up. You just kind of put it on. Never have like literally like does, does your OCD try to make it eyeball square or do you just not care at all and then just probe it in? No, no, I wouldn't put it in. You know, you take, it's kind of that like take pride in your work. Like we will put it on and lay it on there, but no, we're not using, uh, metrology. Exactly. Yep.
00:25:14
Speaker
That's awesome. Yeah. Now in fairness, sorry, in total fairness, most of the machine that we're doing on it is we're making all the surfaces. So you're starting with net material around all the sides. If you were trying to say do secondary op work on a part, you might be better off.
00:25:34
Speaker
Dialing it. I don't know though. Yeah, I don't know. As long as you're probing your reference surfaces, a wall or a hole or something, and getting the rotation accurate to your datums, I don't know. Yeah. I hear you.
Advancements in Automation and Integration
00:25:49
Speaker
That's cool. Anyway, it's a good workflow.
00:25:52
Speaker
But as far as an integration for, like you said, probing three points or probing anything or just aligning it with the camera and all that, you think it's better than the Robo drill or the Haas as far as typing in probe settings. You know what I mean? It is the difference between an iPhone and a Sony Walkman cassette player.
00:26:16
Speaker
I'm not even kidding you. Like, yeah, absolutely. That's how I feel with, with hide and hide probing versus a FANUC probing. Which one's better? Hide nine. Oh, really? Do tell. So it's, you know, on FANUC, you got to go G68, GP, 589, whatever it is. I forget. Um, you got to type in the variables and you got to, you know, do it. Uh, on the host, there's a graphical interface, right? Like you can pick and choose stuff. Mm-hmm.
00:26:44
Speaker
Um, yeah, we don't have that on, on the FANUC, but it's, it's, you gotta know your codes. You gotta know your, um, you gotta have a list printed off on the screen. Whereas on high nine, there's like, it's touchscreen, but it doesn't have to be, um, just button pushes. It's like, Oh, I want to do this. I want to do this. Yeah. Easy. Um, it's just, it's cakewalk. You don't even, I don't know what to explain because it's so easy, you know?
00:27:08
Speaker
It's not that it's right, it's that once you do it, everything else is just wrong. Exactly. Yeah, totally agree. And you get so used to, I mean, I've had FANUC for five years now. You get so used to it. I'm like, yeah, it's fine. I know how to do it. It's easy. Yeah. But then you find something easier and you're like, why is everything suck? Yeah, I hear you.
00:27:29
Speaker
It's an interesting scale to take a step back and look at manufacturing or specifically machining and the fact that maybe, I'm just speculating for fun here, but in the next five, 10, 15 years, you'll probably have phased out
00:27:44
Speaker
most of the shops that were still doing hand coding. I have to think that just all of the advents between cam and higher speed machining and just the market forces that make a shop competitive. And of course, there'll be quirks. I understand for sure, high volume,
00:28:02
Speaker
lathe and turning work will may always want to be hand coded rock and roll good to go but like the job shops are the it's hard to think of why you wouldn't use cam and that curve is getting accelerated like you know you're using probing in ways that are still coming to the bigger companies that we're hearing about like they're not everyone's doing that which is mind-blowing right it's so easy to have it it's so capable there's so many things you can do with it
00:28:30
Speaker
but it takes the aggressive operator, the programmer, like the guy to read the manual, you know, RTFM, and understand it and be like, actually, I could use that here and make this better. And that takes, you know, a good half day sometimes to really wrap your head around, or sometimes it's five minutes, but to integrate it into a steady workflow, like we're doing here, take some caution and some carefulness. But then when you do it, you'd never, ever, ever think about it again, because it just works.
Proactive Maintenance and Team Approaches
00:29:00
Speaker
And we actually have some problems with our Renishock probe. We have an OMP 60, and it sticks sometimes. So when we run unattended production, we'll come back in the morning, and the machine's beeping at us, and it says probe alarm or something, because it tried to probe, and the probe stuck open just microscopically, and it stopped. So I think we just need to take it apart and clean it really good, because it's been in an oily environment for a long time.
00:29:27
Speaker
I think that's all there is to it, or maybe replace some rubber baffle or something. It's maintenance, right? It's telling us it's past due. Do you proactively calibrate it and or change the batteries in it? Not proactively, no. We do it retroactively, which maybe we should change to. That becomes one of those things for days off in the shop to
00:29:52
Speaker
to schedule that kind of stuff. And Angelo's a boss at this kind of stuff. He just hasn't had time to apply himself to those projects yet. And I want to get him to the point where he can really start digging into those kind of things soon. But that's my challenge is that time will never come. As a leader, that has to be, and I'm talking out loud because we're living this as well right now, which is, and that's one of the things we're excited about with Alex. Right now, the batteries are
00:30:22
Speaker
in my calendar, my personal calendar every six months, and that's fine, but... Yeah, it's a system. Exactly. It's a system, but it's not a team-centric system where other people could check on it or it's not always being handled correctly. So I think that you're awesome in an awesome spot because you've got a guy who's good at it. Just build the system that he responds to then. Yeah, exactly.
00:30:50
Speaker
Yeah, I would love a system that flagged a little, you know, service flag or something that everybody sees and anybody can handle. And then when they sign off on it, we know that, you know, Angela handled this one. Um, I don't know if that's important, but at least it's record keeping. And then, um, and then everybody sees the messages. Anybody can tackle it in one, instead of just showing up in my calendar and me telling everybody, and then nobody knows who's doing what or whatever. Um,
00:31:20
Speaker
Yeah, that could be cool. That's interesting. I don't know I'd love to hear what other shops do because i'm inclined to say you're better off Not putting stuff into an open maintenance list that anybody can tackle because inherently
00:31:34
Speaker
many people will often say they're busy. In fact, that's probably part of our culture is that you guys aren't, Grims and I's isn't going to grow to the point where you have a maintenance department that has busy days and slow days where they on the slow days, they pick up the stuff that they haven't
Increasing Efficiency without New Machines
00:31:47
Speaker
gotten to yet. You're always going to be hustling. And so I almost think it's better. Well, I do think it's better, uh, to create a system where, no, it's there, it's assigned to this person and there's a due date and there's an obligation, um, to do it. Yeah. I like that.
00:32:05
Speaker
How's the rest of the shop coming in terms of what you've been in now for six months? Yes, six months. I don't even think about the old shop. This new place is amazing. We're filling it out nicely. There's room to breathe between everything, which is fantastic.
00:32:22
Speaker
it's good. Once we get air conditioning, we'll just be happy and rocking. We're currently investing and looking into ways to increase our production without buying new machines and things like that. But just finding the little downtime between why can't we do more than so many a day? What exactly is the hurdle? When is the downtime? When
00:32:46
Speaker
What do we need in order to do it? Do we just need more tool holders for Mari tool? And that'll make tool changes easier? Or do we need to put four vices on the table finally, instead of just two? And that's got other things involved as well making. Like right now we have two vices and we have the vacuum palette, the mighty by one and then we have the Pearson palette in the back on the more vertical on the more on the more Yeah, I mean, the mores are bread and butter machine that makes every knife currently.
00:33:14
Speaker
We use the Pearson palette maybe three or four times a week, maybe three times a week, three days a week, periodically to do the engraving on our blades. And we use the vacuum palette every two months or whatever to make foam. And foam is going to go on the UMAX once we get them running anyway. So we need to put four vices on the mori. And we have the vices. It just involves moving those pallets either to a different machine or up onto the vices and reprogramming things to work properly.
00:33:43
Speaker
Oh yeah. That's a, that was to be the awesome answer, John. Yep.
00:33:48
Speaker
I would flip it around and sort of say, we're putting four vices on the more today. What do we need to do to make it work with the other deal? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yep. The Pearson is for the engraving. Yes. And you don't want to move that to the current. No, because it's very heavy macro auto countdown. Right.
00:34:13
Speaker
I need to figure that out for the current anyway because I want to auto count up on the Rask engravings, but I'm not there yet.
00:34:20
Speaker
Moving them on to an orange top thing should be easy, right? Yeah, I have blank top palettes. I just need to be able to mount the Pearson palette on top of an orange blank top and then change my one fixture offset. As long as I don't rotate it, then it's good to go. Not hard, right? Not hard, but it's one of those things like, oh, it's going to take a little bit of thought, a little bit of programming, a little bit of changes downtime from regular production.
00:34:47
Speaker
It needs to happen though. Angela and I were talking about it the other day. That's where you shine as you look at the opportunities in front of you and you realize, wait a minute here, this one is by far the most high yield, rich, low hanging fruit, make your money, rock and roll. What you mean to say is that's where I need to shine because I'm a
00:35:12
Speaker
distracted by shiny object kind of guy, where I don't, even if I know the benefits, I don't always choose the right one. And I'm always trying to increase my, my ability to, to choose either the best ROI or the best, you know, for the team or the business or whatever. But sometimes I'm just like, you know, darn it. I want to play on the 3d printer today. Yeah. Yep. But that's what you got to do. I mean, that's that the execution risk there is minimal. Frankly, you could do it right now and deal with the
00:35:41
Speaker
Well, the engraving needs to happen. You could run some foam now and that helps kick that one down the road.
00:35:52
Speaker
Okay. So if you go from two to four oranges to make more Norseman, so what if three months down the road, you've created some stress because you now need to hustle to make foam. Big deal. Helen, you max may not be ready by then. Yeah, exactly. And we did hustle about a month ago. We made a butt load of foam. So we're still good for another month, probably a month and a half. Um, and that vacuum paper table is literally taking up space. It's doing absolutely nothing. And you could mount the vacuum table on another orange top.
00:36:23
Speaker
And again, not hard, just a little bit of time and set up. Um, so the, the productivity gains for having, being able to machine four vices worth of, of knives instead of just two is insane. And that that's like, uh, it's a hurdle right now for us is with the current workflow, we can only average six knives a day.
00:36:46
Speaker
without staying late or coming in super early or having swing shifts or something like that. So there's something wrong with the current workflow, right? And that's what we're working on. And since we've been tracking tool life for the past two years, we know exactly like if I'm going to run four pallets tonight, I know exactly how long.
00:37:03
Speaker
What tools need to be in the machine to be able to last and have them not break, not be worn out, not hit an alarm, et cetera. We can plan and look ahead for that. It's a no-brainer. It just has to happen. Do you have enough sister tools to make it through a four-palette night run? There's no sister tools in that machine.
00:37:23
Speaker
Do you have a tool life to make it through a six-hour run? Yeah, exactly. And that's what I mean. We can look ahead. It'd be more like a 15-hour run. Or sorry, I meant a four-palette run. Yeah, exactly. Yes, we can look ahead. And with our spreadsheet tool life tracker thing, we can just say, OK, I'm running four palettes tonight. Here's the updated dprint.
00:37:47
Speaker
I have to preemptively replace these four tools, but then it'll work. Well, hold on. You said a 15 hour run. Yeah. So maybe that's bad. That seems like an awkward time. What if you solved this problem a different way? Just add one orange vice. Leave the Pearson on it because you need that. Ditch the foam. A better runtime because you could do a full cycle during the day and a full cycle overnight.
00:38:14
Speaker
The Pearson palette is sideways. So it's in the way of putting even one more vice on unless I put it 90 degrees, which I'm not going to. Um, but I see what you're saying, but I've been at the shop late, um, lately. And when the Maury turns off at 11 PM, because it's done for the night, I'm like, no, no, no, that needs to run. That could, that could easily run for another eight hours till seven in the morning. Um, and that's the extra two pallets right there. Okay.
00:38:43
Speaker
Don't, don't overthink it. You, you just, you have, you have this phenomenal answer in your hand.
Conclusion on Shop Improvements
00:38:50
Speaker
Go do it. Yeah. And the sooner it happens, the better, the better for everything. Yep. Love it. Holy cow. That's 40 minutes. That's the quickest podcast. What are you up to today? Today I'm going to be on the current. I got to make those handles. Um,
00:39:10
Speaker
So I machined the fixture pins into the handle fixture that the rest top handles will click in place, like aligned and everything.
00:39:20
Speaker
Except they're not fitting, and it's annoying me. Oh. And I've got to figure out why. I think it's some clearance issues. It's not the hole sizes themselves. It's like this overhang material that's leftover from the first op, from the roughing op. So I just need to dig into that. Yeah. Cool. And everybody's on vacation this week.
00:39:43
Speaker
Steven's canoeing for a week up and way up north with his buddies. So that's awesome. And Angelo took today off and he'll be back in tomorrow. But yeah, it's interesting how much quieter it gets with just one or two people gone. You're like, where is everybody? Even though there's still a bunch of people here. How often do you go over to the other shop?
00:40:06
Speaker
Me, personally. Not often. Once a day would be a lot. Interesting. Is that working out okay? It's working out really, really well. They're close enough that it's easy to zip back and forth as necessary. We have clear separation between the finishing side, whether it's tumbling, heat treat, anodizing, assembly, sharpening, et cetera.
00:40:32
Speaker
And then we have the machining side over here and offices and it works if i were to start from scratch and build new i don't think i would do it that way but it absolutely works for us right now yeah sure you know i mean like it's a little separated that we have you know team one and team two and i
00:40:50
Speaker
I don't know if I love that or not. Sometimes that's just the roles, and all these roles are over there, and all these roles over here. But if they were a little bit closer or more integrated, I think that would be a good thing for a team and all that. But this is what we have, and it's amazing. And let's do everything we can to make it work. Awesome.
00:41:12
Speaker
Well, I'm going to go back to, uh, we, we have, uh, I'm, I'm debating if I'm making the right decision, which I'm not going to debate because I'm just going to go do it. Um, we had, we bought new racking, but I realized and I had planned on just selling or.
00:41:27
Speaker
moving the one piece of racking that we already had because it's a little bit a little bit worse for wear just like needs painted and I realized that that one is actually a smaller size which will be perfect to have it in the machine shop side of Bay so
00:41:44
Speaker
I want to keep it, but, um, all I need to do is try just giving it a quick sand and like a etching primer coat. Cause you know, it's in perfectly good structural condition, but I refuse, I will not put a sort of crummy looking piece of racking in an otherwise pristine shop where we take pride in everything we're doing. So that I'm going to, um, could be a quick sand spray. It's make sure it looks good. It does. We're good to go. If not, I'll get rid of it and buy some new racking. Yeah.
00:42:13
Speaker
Nice. Yeah. Cool. See you next week. All right, man. Sounds good, buddy. Take care. Okay, bye.