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#300 I love lathes
277 Plays2 years ago
Topics:
- I love lathes
- Planning workflow on automated CNC machines
- Saunders updating fixtures
- Grimsmo's router and custom foam
- custom oil bottles for nano oil
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Episode 300
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining. This is episode 300. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo.
Entrepreneurship Challenges and Insights
00:00:11
Speaker
And look, life is a journey. I've got a big smile on my face. Honestly, the last 48 hours have been a two out of 10 for me, just like stress and too much on my plate. If I'm being honest, I'm not looking for sympathy, but if I'm being honest, it's funny because this is the journey and it's all great. And even just having the chance to just
00:00:33
Speaker
Sit down and catch up with you is what it's all about. Yeah, it's a nice marker for the week for us to get together and I agree with you there. My past 48 hours has been about a 2 out of 10 as well. Oh, really? I'm sure both of us don't need to talk about it on the podcast but yeah, today is much better. Today's a good day.
00:00:54
Speaker
Yeah. For me, honestly, I don't know if you feel this way and that's totally fine. But for me, a big part of why I've done what I've done with the podcast and with YouTube and other things is trying to be candid and show
Sales Stress and Perspective
00:01:10
Speaker
that there's elements of leadership entrepreneurship that can be lonely and that can be stressful. And I'm proud of so many things that we built. But honestly, some of the some of the low, and this is like playing the world's smallest violin, we had such a good sales track that, you know, like I actually told myself, it'll be okay. Tuesday's gonna stink. Don't worry about it. And yeah,
00:01:34
Speaker
So it's so many sales that it's a problem kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. So it's so funny. Right? Keep in perspective.
Listener Gifts and Inspiration
00:01:42
Speaker
How about you? You okay? Yeah, the personal stuff. Okay. But I will put a smile on your face. So we're, we've got video screen on right now. And tell me what you see. I hate to say this, but the baud rate. Wow. I just aged myself. Oh my God.
00:02:01
Speaker
Somebody made this and sent this to me. It says, I love lathes, but it looks like a Datron Neo. It's a Tornos GT 13.
00:02:10
Speaker
It is? Yeah. Interesting. Oh, I see the control looks like the window to me. I got it. Okay, I'm with you. Yeah, so this listener of the podcast, this fan, Dan Zill, I met him at IMTS this past year. He's been a fan of ours for a long time and he got into manufacturing because of us and he works at a machine shop. He
00:02:32
Speaker
Made this shirt and just sent it to me cuz you heard us talk about I love layouts on the podcast and I got it and I was like what on earth is this is the coolest thing I have like ever seen and I'm so happy with it. It's awesome because on the top it just says it's like this blue shirt.
00:02:52
Speaker
It says I love lathes and it's got a picture of a Tornos GT13 and you sort of put this like art filter on it so it's kind of a line drawing sketch and it's like really well done and I'm just super happy to wear it. Yeah, it looks awesome. Yeah.
00:03:07
Speaker
Although I'm like, I don't I don't like it. You don't like leads. I'm just
Machinery Acquisition and Evolution
00:03:13
Speaker
kidding. I'm just kidding. We've turned you to the to the good side now. I do like lays. I have no problem man. I think about that.
00:03:23
Speaker
in my head probably more than anyone else realizes, not that anybody else is spending any time thinking about what I'm thinking about in my head. But like, man, to have a personal shop, retirement shop with like an awesome little CNC lathe and a little five axis or something. Oh, it'd be so cool. Like I love that part of lays. Yep, exactly.
00:03:45
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, we've thought many times of buying like a hard hinge manual lathe or something just to have in the shop to kick around because we don't have a manual lathe right now. There's several times where it'd be like, man, yeah, we could manually do that in the CNC or we could just grind it with a grinder or something. But if we had a manual lathe, take a bolt head diameter shorter or clearance a holder or something, something like. It'd be quite handy. That's an easy one to pick up, John, though. It is. Yeah, for sure. It's money. Yeah.
00:04:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of been on the waiting list for a while. Ours gets used regularly, I mean, multiple times per week. Yeah. And conversely, oh, geez, pre-COVID, we sold our bridge port. We've had more than one bridge port, but we sold the last bridge port that we had because it wasn't getting used. It was only getting used as a storage place or maybe a bad, like a drill press, but not really.
00:04:41
Speaker
Anyway, sold it to a local guy, car guy and so he's using it and we have literally not once in a thousand days said, oh man, I wish we still had that bridge port. Yeah. So take that for what it's worth. For sure. Although like last week, there was a moment when Pierre was working on a project and we were both like, you know, if we had a manual mill right now, this would be a lot easier. Oh, really? Yeah. Interesting.
00:05:09
Speaker
You could get like a smithy three in one to go. There you go. What's the opposite of full-grims-mo?
Influential Figures and Learning Platforms
00:05:16
Speaker
Yeah. Man, there was a day when the Grizzly combo mill lathe mini mill combo thing was like $1,000. There was a day probably 2005 when I was like, that would be so cool to have one of those.
00:05:30
Speaker
John Wright. Yeah. Well, I came back to Ohio from when I was in New York and a guy that ran the gun club had a little machine shop in the back and he had a big water and Swayze turret lathe, which I didn't even know how to like think about that thing. And then next to it, he had the like Chinese, what is it? Nine by 22. It's like a big step up from like a seven by 14 or seven by 20 that you see at Harbor Freight. This is like the size that you couldn't get at Harbor Freight. And oh, John, I mean, I thought that thing,
00:06:00
Speaker
might as well been the end of a journey. Oh my God. And to look back like that's probably, you know, probably could get one used within 60 miles for like 400 bucks right now. Yeah, exactly. It's all relative. Yep. And when I was building one of my car engines, one of the Volvo engines back in mid 2000s, the local engine machine shop who would like
00:06:21
Speaker
you know, bore the cylinder holes and deck the face and all that stuff, had one of those three in one lathes. And I'd spent hours in there just watching him build my engine and like, really? Yeah. And he actually turned these little bushings that I needed for a shifter upgrade on the car on that lathe. And that's like the first kind of turning thing that I'd ever seen.
00:06:46
Speaker
And I was like, yeah, I need this thing with a step in it so I can put the spherical bearing in these cups. And it's like, yeah, I could probably pull that off for you. Crazy. And that kind of, you know, sparked the capacity. Yeah. Cool. I saw the
00:07:02
Speaker
Oh, shoot. Who's the is like these Israeli guy, but he lives in specific Northwest. Oh, no. What's his name? The YouTube channel that the guy that you can barely understand as the insane prototyping shop. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
00:07:19
Speaker
Oh, the older guy, right? Yes. I believe. Oh, it's at the tip of my tongue. Yes. He retired. Dan Gilbert. Dan Gilbert. Yeah. Retired from the optics industry and he's like micro precision master.
00:07:36
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, he Googles well. Yes. And he has some great shop tour videos. Anybody who's into that kind of stuff, thinking about a eventual long-term retirement shop at home kind of thing, Dan Gelbert on YouTube, there's at least two really good shop tour videos. Well, he has a new one. I think this is a little bit beyond a normal home shop. I mean, he's got a, I think it's a larger proto-track than I recall ever seeing.
00:08:06
Speaker
When you think of Dan Gilbert, that's a guy up
Planning for Machine Downtime
00:08:08
Speaker
there with the Renzetti's of the worlds, and you think this guy has got it going on, and money is not a limit for him. And the machines aren't necessarily, I think, what did you think of as the end of the road, money is no object, buy whatever, German, Japan, whatever.
00:08:23
Speaker
He shows in this most recent one how he went through the specs and evaluations. Maybe this is a title and he's casting, but it has these components and here's the full force and the runout and what I'm able to do with it and how. It's very impressive stuff. Yep. This is the guy that the first video I saw from him was when he built the air-bearing lathe.
00:08:45
Speaker
Yes. He built this air-bearing lathe that holds microns like himself. Yes. He's very professor-ish about it, almost condescending, just like explaining from an exhaustive state of knowledge as to why this is just the way it's going to be done. It's not off-putting at all. Not at all. It's really intriguing.
00:09:11
Speaker
Yeah. And that's a cool guy. Adam Dean had a really good video almost an hour long and I didn't turn away for a second on machining a shallow depth gauge. Really a great job and an enjoyable video. I love it. Yeah.
00:09:28
Speaker
So many smart people out there. I love that YouTube's given them a platform to share knowledge and freely and let guys like us just absorb as much as we can possibly handle. Some of the videos out there are pure enjoyment and some are pure education and some are boring and dry two hours of programming, but still it's what you need when you need it kind of thing. It's really cool. Yes, for sure.
00:09:55
Speaker
Well, so what do you what do you went up to everything? Okay. Yeah, recent shop shop shops. Awesome.
00:10:02
Speaker
Let's see. How's the Wilhelmin? How's the star? Or not star. Tornos. Sorry. Tornos is doing real. So our late machinist Pierre, like I haven't touched the Tornos in two years since he's worked here pretty much. It's been awesome. He's absolutely crushing it. He is going on vacation for a month in December back to France. And we're like, you better come back because I know how nice it is there.
00:10:32
Speaker
But yes, he's going away for a month so we're planning for the six months now, him and Angela have been planning like production so that ideally the tornos doesn't have to turn on for that month. Like I don't have to stress about it like we have enough parts. And I need to get an update from them to see if that's reality but I think for the most part they're hitting it well.
00:10:52
Speaker
and they plan their batch sizes so that every part they ran over the past six months, we will have enough of so they can go away for a month and not stress.
Efficiency in Machining Setups
00:11:01
Speaker
That's going to be great. Any concerns of not running the machine for a month? Mechanically? I don't think so. I'm talking out loud here. You should run a warm-up routine every week on it or something. Yeah, I'll probably. I don't know. I might still run it. I know I can.
00:11:22
Speaker
But I don't even have to. I don't mean to make parts. I just mean. Yeah. Just keep it kind of loosey goosey. Yeah. When we've been looking at some of these crazy used machines, I think Jerome was the one that generated the most responses. They were like, look, insane, incredible machines, but they want to be run like them are running when they sit and
00:11:46
Speaker
get cold and stuff sticks or for gels or whatever. I'm making this up like they need to be. And I don't know if the tortoise is that way, but it's such a new machine. But yeah, consider I'll talk to the guys about it. And there might be like one part that I'll have to run while he's gone. So figure that out.
00:12:05
Speaker
leave it set up for that? Or do you have to do setups and change overs on that machine? Oh, Pierre does, yes. OK. It can't stay set up for different parts without? I mean, the cool thing about the Tournos is it has quite a lot of tooling spots. So most of the tools are used for most of the parts. But there are definitely the odd drill or thread mill or engraving tool or boring bar or something that is unique for each setup.
00:12:32
Speaker
and some setups are way more complicated than others. Some jobs, it's like, okay, replace the inserts and we can switch materials from tie to stainless. Other jobs, it's like, okay, just put an engraving tool in the speeder and that's it. But for some, it's like
00:12:47
Speaker
It's like a good day to do a setup and dial in and get the parts to tolerance. There's a lot of cross holes and deburs and threads and ID chamfers and things like that that takes just time under the microscope making parts, not only physically setting up the machine but then dialing in.
00:13:07
Speaker
Yeah, that getting going. Yeah. First article inspection. Exactly. Exactly. So some of those more complicated parts, I'm quite tempted to put on the Willamond and like all the toolings always there, always set up. And then all you're doing is like changing vice jaws and a call it and hitting go and then tweaking fine tune tolerances, your wear comps and things like that. You took the words out of my mouth. I was going to say, is it possible to take the most complicated pain in the butt part and move it over? Yeah, I'm planning on it.
00:13:36
Speaker
We're chewing on a similar thought around that with the horizontal. We'd scrapped some shape logo plates because I actually don't even know what happened in op one. And it was only like four plates, not a huge deal. But it irks me from a like, hey, why did that happen? Like, how do we stop that? Nobody wanted that to happen. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that the DT, the Haas DT2 still gets switched over for a lot of different jobs.
00:14:08
Speaker
And so one thought was, wait a minute here, let's isolate that risk. We've got 24 different tables faces on the horizontal and half of them are free right now, although asterisk that's changing immediately. But that's the beauty of the horizontal is it can take over that with no set up of tooling, no set up of offsets, no set up of fixturing.
00:14:32
Speaker
But it's actually a more different workflow than I appreciated even when someone told it to me. So when we run the DT2, you can sit down and in the morning or an hour or whatever, you can bang out 10 plates or 20 plates or a day or whatever.
00:14:47
Speaker
Whereas on the horizontal, it's kind of like, hey, might just run one of those a night on one per face. You want to allocate to it. So it's different because to make 20 in a day is different than what would be a work month on the horizontal. But it can make one a night every night forever. And it could make more during the day, of course, so forth.
00:15:09
Speaker
what we're doing is building up more of an inventory and a buffer with some kind of hustle using the machines and spindles we have both verticals and the horizontal. And then once we have that hustle buffer built up, then switching over to the steady run rate one a night, every night of all these products, then in theory, you have total, you've like collared control of your inventory. So you could,
00:15:37
Speaker
you could stop making them. It can always just not run one of the pallets at one night if you got too much. If you got too low, you can either run more during the day on the horizontal or we could go through the effort of setting up a vertical for them if that makes sense. When I said all that, it sounded simple, but
00:15:56
Speaker
Getting there was totally. Some chewing. Yeah, we have similar challenges on the current because it's steady, but it is slower. It's not like on a vertical. We just bang them out row in a row, one after the other kind of thing. Although on the current, we totally can, especially during the day when it's not always full scheduled to be running constantly.
00:16:19
Speaker
We've certainly like, okay, we're running blades. Let's just put a blade on machine it, put, put a blade on the second palette, machine that and just keep hot swapping them and keep it running all day. Um, but yeah, it is a programming, a palletized machine can be a different thought process, especially when you have a lot of steady work for it already. It's not like a free spindle all the time. Um, so do you guys ever make the exact same product on two different machines?
00:16:48
Speaker
That's a good question, yes. So right now the Haas VF2YT and the horizontal are both able to make mod vice parts, but that will get transitioned only to the horizontal. And then we actually have four machines, the VF6A and V, identical Haas VF6s, the Okuma Genos and the VF3YT that are all able to make
00:17:18
Speaker
fixture plates of varying sizes, and they tend to be more set up and isolated, but as an example, a kind of medium-sized plate like a Tormach 770 or 1100, it has been and could be made with any four of those machines. Because your tooling is standardized, your fixturing is standardized.
00:17:35
Speaker
Yes-ish. For the most part, all plates require drilled hole, threaded hole, faced, all cutting 41, 40, et cetera, et cetera. But each have their own programming nuances, I would assume.
00:17:51
Speaker
Obviously, the Akuma is different, but that's not a huge issue at the post. And look, to be clear, it's never been the case that we've run all four machines on the same product at
Machinery Reliability and Upgrades
00:18:01
Speaker
once. It's not like that, but those are all plate machines, if you will.
00:18:06
Speaker
No, it's neat to hear because we've typically dedicated one machine per part. Sorry, this part always runs on that machine. It never runs on the other machine. Sometimes we'll make a switch, but that's a conscious choice. It's like, okay, now we're going to set up this machine to make that part.
00:18:26
Speaker
It's like cutting our foam. You know, we used to do it on the Maury and then we did it on the UMAX and now we're doing it on the speedio and then it'll be on the router once it's finished up. And it's the same exact end result, same product, same cutting tools, but slightly different programming, slightly different, you know, tool paths, speeds and feeds. The UMAX had a, we were running it at 24,000 RPM and the speedio goes up to 16,000. So tweak things here and there, but
00:18:54
Speaker
How is speedio and router? Speedio is absolutely crushing it. It's fantastic. I've certainly thought about at some point like selling the Moria and replacing it with two speedios. But just thinking, I'm not rushing into that decision at all. But yeah, this video has been awesome.
00:19:21
Speaker
Can we have fun with this conversation? Let's pretend we're not recording and the public's not listening here. In the $10 million in the bank scenario, whatever, would you sell the Knox, sell the Maury, buy another Kern, buy another Swiss? Do you want to go play that rabbit hole game? I mean, that's part of it.
00:19:44
Speaker
You could sell the Maury for whatever I'd get for it, somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000. I don't even know. No. I'll buy that machine if you sell it for under $100,000. I didn't pay that much more than $100,000 for it.
00:19:58
Speaker
Really? Yeah, 130, something like that. I don't know. OK. But my speedio decked out was 150 for one. That's crazy. Like all the through coolant, everything. So I mean, it's a lot of money. But I'm saying footprint-wise, I could fit two speedios exactly where the Mori sits right now, which is crazy, like twice the spindle load. If you wanted, you could put in a row between them, just like Dennis has. And then you start to get real creative.
00:20:28
Speaker
I will say both for the Mori and the Nakamura, they've been the most reliable machines ever. Yes. It's like all of our other machines have had little niggly issues, nothing major, but little things happen. Whereas the Mori and the Nak just are the most tanks that we have in the shop and that's what they're designed for.
00:20:52
Speaker
No, that's not to be discounted. It is. Yeah, exactly. But what's the right, you know, if you're starting over, or if I always like this idea that Claire or life comes in and takes over the shop, and they're not burdened with your, you know, emotions of love, which I am as well. But like, absolutely. What do we need to run with this stuff? Yep. Well, I mean, every
00:21:14
Speaker
machine in the shop is different. Everyone pretty much has a different control. I've got all of the controls that exist, pretty much. But part of the fun of it is figuring out which machine I would duplicate. Would I get another Tournos? Absolutely. Would I get another Kern if the need arise? Absolutely. Willamond, absolutely. Would I get another Maury? I mean, they do make the newer version
00:21:43
Speaker
CVX, whatever it's called, 1100. Same thing, different design, things like that. But it's got 60 tools that you can change a tool while it's running, which is like a huge improvement. That's probably one of my bigger gripes about my more 30 tools can't change it while it's running. So that kind of makes that machine, you know, quite attractive at that point. But do I like the speedio better for what we do? Kind of.
00:22:11
Speaker
Yeah, you're not like a big hog in a shop. No, exactly. So BT 30 is fine. I like RPM. I like fine details, small tools, like a quarter inch tool is medium to big for me. Yeah, you know, three eights is the biggest we run normally. So
00:22:30
Speaker
Did you use a face mill on any of your products? Nothing production. Yeah, just for fixtures or whatever? Yeah, I didn't even buy one for this video because I'm like, I don't need to spend $400 on a whole tool holder assembly with a shell mill and everything. But that takes me like half an hour to face something with a quarter inch end mill or a 3.8 inch end mill. I don't care at this point.
00:22:53
Speaker
But yeah, we're we made a actually this is kind of fun. Right before Thanksgiving, I made kind of a breakthrough. Like it just I felt like a million bucks switching around a fixture and it is just absolutely perfect dial. It makes me so happy. And I, again, took me on to get here because the fixture we had nothing wrong
Innovation in Fixture Design
00:23:12
Speaker
with it. You wouldn't look at it and think it's a poorly designed fixture or anything. But the clamping forces of the fix of the part were also clamping forces that
00:23:21
Speaker
affected the fixture itself. And so trying to isolate those vectors, if that's the right way of saying that, I'm not trying to sound fancy, but basically, if and when you clamped the part, even if you're using a torque wrench, I want that clamping action to not also move the fixture. And I got a new way of doing it. And we were fighting these parts. And now the tolerances that we're holding, I'm already proud of, but it was
00:23:47
Speaker
But I'm also kind of lying to myself. Like if I were to, if someone were to come in and ask, not John Saunders, but ask somebody else about that fixture, would they say the first answer, oh, it's dialed, it's perfect, it's a genius, it works great, it never gives us bad parts. Or would they say, it's pain in the butt, it works a lot of times and then it doesn't work and then we're not sure and we have to deck it or don't understand why or re-probe it.
00:24:08
Speaker
Um, it would have been more of the, it's not, it's fussy and acts up and I don't want that. And we got it to the first answer where it's like, Oh no, this thing just works. And I brought all that up to say, I don't know. Oh, so it, there's a chance it will be even better to keep that design without too much clamping force. Like you could increase it, but it, the screw size becomes a little frustration in a weird way. And, uh, long-winded way of saying.
00:24:38
Speaker
But all we're probably gonna do is switch to a single decking pass with a two and a half inch face melt to two or three passes with a one inch face melt. For sure it'll take longer but here totally worth the gain of not having that additional tool pressure. We could probably use a two and a half inch with more axial depth passes as well but bigger tools
00:24:59
Speaker
are just more tool pressure period. There's just one chance of ripping that part out. So just having the clarity and open-mindedness to make that change was a great improvement. That's good. Yeah, I felt good.
00:25:16
Speaker
Yeah, that was the other thing we had was four of us sat down and I have been putting post-it notes up on a white, what do you call those, like meeting room, triangle boards, like art canvas boards.
00:25:34
Speaker
to try to get stuff out of my head of like, hey, either new accessories, new R&D developments, new products. And, you know, you don't want to let those things go. So I put them on the board and they've been sitting there for quite a few months. And then we said we had a sit down meeting and it really came together quite nicely with where we are on. And it's everything. It's who's doing what, which the R&D is the machine allocation, the shop layout priority.
00:26:02
Speaker
And we looked at these products that we want to improve on, you know, like modify accessories and so forth. And I, we triaged it because this kind of now goes back to that, whatever that book was, or it's like, look, screw goals, set of plans. And so basically everything got moved to the bottom half. And we'll talk about that in February or March. We're just not going to talk about it today because today is November 30th or December 2nd or whatever.
00:26:27
Speaker
here's what we're going to do in the next six weeks. Here's who's going to do it. What in what order? And that's going to get us to, you know, second base and then we'll get to third base and then we'll get to home. You know what I mean? And that felt really good. A big part of this that we have shared publicly is introducing metric fixture plates, which were actually, again, we're already doing it. We just don't have them on our website because we want to build up some inventory of certain ones before we
00:26:53
Speaker
Kind of, quote unquote, open the floodgates.
Metric Conversion and Product Design
00:26:56
Speaker
That ties into better international shipping because some of those will be more international and then we need to have some metric accessories. So it's coming together, but yeah. Yeah. It's a big thing. Like, why don't you just make your standard product and metric? Well, that changes a lot of things, I would assume. Oh, packaging, adding less SKUs.
00:27:19
Speaker
Yeah, it changes a lot. Now, the obsessive side of me is asking, are the dimensions of your plate actually in metric now? It's not 24 inches wide. It's millimeters wide. The OD's will not change now. Yeah, fair. Which is obviously smart. But what happens now is you have, say, you make a print of that part. Most of the print is an inch, but your threads are in metric or your whatever. It's mixed material, like mixed units.
00:27:48
Speaker
The OD of our plate, like the outside profile, we have a tolerance of the outside relative to the whole pattern itself, but it's not otherwise what we would consider what's the most actively used in terms of the nominal value. And for what it's worth,
00:28:11
Speaker
Most American machine tools that are 40 inches are really based on 1,000 millimeter anywhere. Yeah, 39.39 or whatever. Yeah, exactly. 37, I think. Yeah, I was thinking that too. I only say that because I have Google pull it up, not because I actually knew. But yeah, the standard half-inch plates will move to M12 on 30.
Machine Maintenance Updates
00:28:36
Speaker
So your spacing is also going to change as well as the whole? Absolutely. Of course. Other than you calling me out for technically having an inch. And look, we could actually move it to an inch outside profile. That wouldn't even be necessarily that hard. But otherwise, it will be a completely acceptable metric use product. And the big thing that is harder here is getting the mod vices to accommodate that.
00:29:05
Speaker
because we need a new mod vice interface with that setup. And then going forward, say mod vices, are you going to label them or engrave them or color code them in a way that's like big M for metric, something so you can visually like look?
00:29:22
Speaker
I will share that later. We've got plans. Right now, we already have Metric and have had for probably a year Metric hobby products. So like the shape of those and the tags and we sell Metric hobby mod vices that are
00:29:38
Speaker
the M6 version of a quarter inch. Those for the actual physical products, we engraved M6 underneath it. So we and the user can see that and it doesn't affect its use whatsoever. And then for certain products like turned pins, like our fixturing pins and plug jacks, we have a double relief groove.
00:30:05
Speaker
So the inch versions have a single relief groove where, uh, where two faces meet, it just makes sense to have a little edge break. And there's kind of our, our, our version of full grim smell on the product. And so what we do for the metric version, because I'm, I'm decent with, well, it doesn't matter if I'm good or not. It matters whether everybody else would be, but like, I can usually see sizes decently. Like if you help me something and ask if it's an inch, I'm good. I feel like I could tell you, but boy telling the M six versus
00:30:33
Speaker
or six millimeter is for the birds. It's like, what is it? 13,000 difference? Yeah. So the metric versions have two of those little groups. So I can look at any product and say, oh, no, that's a metric. Yeah. Good. Yeah. You need those visual cues, even just for your own internal use cases. Yeah. We had thought about, for the fixture plates, we had considered doing fillets versus chamfers on the corners, or
00:31:01
Speaker
We currently do a nice little edge break. It's actually the full-gram show as well. From a CAD side, it's chamfered, but then each of the chamfers' edges are also filleted a little. The customer wouldn't see that, but you feel it if you make sense. Do you just 3D them? No, it's swarf cut on a three-axis. Okay. So instead of cutting the corner off with a pair of scissors, the corners cut off, and then those two corners are then rounded.
00:31:29
Speaker
with different taper end mills, like Jamford Mills or? No, we're, you're sorry, we're over-confused. So this is, I'm holding up a piece of paper. This is a fixture plate. If I...
00:31:38
Speaker
If I. Oh, those corners. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. If I cut off the corner, you end up with two 45 degrees. Well, the 45 degree edges are then. Tell us 15, 30 thou or something like that. You had like the top and bottom. Sorry. Yeah. So what we thought about doing was a compound or double chamfer to show the metric. But we have a different way of handling it.
Exploring Packaging Solutions
00:32:01
Speaker
What? How is router? Willeman router?
00:32:07
Speaker
So, router is doing great. Pierre's been picking away at it. The enclosure we're having made, it should be done probably not this week, but early next week, I think. By that time, I think the router should be ready to put on it and make stuff. I think the goal was to cut something by the end of this week.
00:32:27
Speaker
today being Wednesday, so not bad. Sweet. Pierre got the automatic tool changer rack mounted with some forks put onto it. So he's going to teach the positions of each tool, do some automatic tool changes. And then after that, it's like we have this old mighty bite vacuum fixture that we were using to cut foam on, on the U-Mac machine. We're just going to slap that on the router for now.
00:32:51
Speaker
And then we should be able to cut something like quickly like without an enclosure anyway just to keep everything out. We got a tool setter for it. We got a little tiny touch probe, a wireless touch probe made by this guy in Belarus or something for like $200.
00:33:09
Speaker
Whoa. And it's like a hobby grade wireless touch probe with a kinematic three points inside. And it's pretty awesome. That's cool. It's so cool. And it seems to work. So we're going to test that and try it out. I don't know how much I'm going to use probing on the machine, but I'm like, for $200, yeah, I'll add it. Yeah. For sure. So that's cool. But yeah, everything seems to come together. Everything seems to work.
00:33:36
Speaker
Yeah, like I said, left is just finishing the ATC and then getting the enclosure on and then loading tools and starting to run programs. It's great. Awesome. Yeah.
00:33:49
Speaker
foam guy in Canada ever responded with a quote? I have a quote waiting in my email from last night, so I'm going to look at it today. OK. Compare prices and things like that. So yeah, I'm very, very excited about that. Like I'm kind of on the fence. It's like, is it going to be like crazy expensive or is it going to be cheaper? I don't know. I feel like it's going to be cheaper, but I don't know. Isn't it? It's fun in a masochistic way, but also like bad to like get worked up about. Yeah. It's like the numbers you don't know. Yeah.
00:34:19
Speaker
We've been trying to tackle this as well, the phone packaging. Alex got a quote from an industrial company. I was totally fine with the quote, at least to get going. I am 90% certain these would be machined and they put in a tooling, like a
00:34:42
Speaker
When I see tooling costs for packaging, usually that means building a die or something. It was four figures and I was like, what? You could die cut foam for sure. This would be machined. The design that we set was two and a half axis style. Unless they're doing
00:35:03
Speaker
I cut layers that they're somehow adhering together, but I wouldn't think so. Or if their tooling cost is like programming and... Exactly. Tooling and fixturing and things like that. NRE. What's NRE? Non-recurring engineering, I think.
00:35:19
Speaker
No, I don't say core engineering or expenses, non-occurring expenses. That's probably what it is. Yeah. So then we, then we had a guy reach out a listener and a fan saying, Hey, I've got a router. We'd be happy to quote it. Um, I don't want to do it. I want a solution that we don't do it, but darn it. If it's not interesting to follow your progress to see how you get along doing it. Yep.
00:35:44
Speaker
And it's funny, we've got two kinds of foam that we use. The typical green stuff is a certain density. And then we have this one other sheet we got from a different vendor that's like, it's the same kind of foam, but the bubble size in the actual bubbles of the foam is so much smaller that it's way denser. You squish one, you squish the other, it's way denser. And it looks really cool, but is it too dense? Is it too hard? I don't know.
In-house Nano Oil Project
00:36:10
Speaker
So it'll be really cool to go deeper with the local foam company, Norshman Foam, just to see what's possible. I mean, it sounds like they want to make a run of foam, like specifically for us. So we get to pick exactly what we want. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. And I'm like, what's a run? Is this easy? Is this hard? Do I have to buy 10,000 pieces? Like, yeah, I don't know. What are we looking at here? Um, so I kind of threw out some numbers. I was like, okay, if you make them 24 by 24 inch, then they'll fit on the router. Great. And then I'll get this many pieces and like, well, let's see.
00:36:40
Speaker
We did that a year or two ago with one of the Google just foam companies and we bought probably five different sheets, maybe 30 or 40 bucks per piece or whatever. Because I don't know, if you tell me to have a certain poundage density, that doesn't mean anything to me. And it was crazy. Some of them was like,
00:37:00
Speaker
You know, you would drop an Oreo on it. It would deform, whereas some of it was stiff. Yeah, it would break the Oreo kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. That's my scientific answer for that. I'm going to use that. Good. I would get double stuffed just in case it doesn't go well and you have to eat them. Yes, unfortunately. Do you like Oreos? Are you a chocolate guy? Yeah, I'm a big chocolate guy. Are you a salt guy? Somewhat.
00:37:28
Speaker
I do not like pretzels, but mostly chocolate is ice cream. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. I could, I'm with you on the ice cream, but like plate of potato chips or Snickers bar. Oh, I like them both. Yeah. I hear you. Okay.
00:37:47
Speaker
What do you see today? So this morning it was funny because like huge rainstorm here and there's this bolt of lightning and crash of thunder like immediately above our house that woke both me and my wife up at 3 a.m. like we both sat up and I was like whoa oh that was cool I love thunderstorms but
00:38:07
Speaker
it was loud enough and bright enough to wake us up. So anyway, after falling asleep from that, I had a dream about you and your son and my son and we were all in North Carolina. Like going to the beach or something is so weird. We shall we go? I don't know. And then I woke up like thinking about it. I'm like, what? What was the goal we're doing there? I don't even know. I want more information. Like, it's funny.
00:38:35
Speaker
Yeah, I am. We are doing that fusion thing next week with DSI in North Carolina. But that's I find it hard to think that that made its way into your dreams. Yeah, unless I thought like, because I'm not going, maybe I felt like guilty about not going or something. So my dreams kind of like, like this is, you know, you'd have fun if you went like the worst form of FOMO. Yeah. Nobody dreams are telling you. Somebody did did play it well with
00:39:04
Speaker
IMTS, they posted that picture of Pablo Escobar sitting on the swing set with his head down. He's like, I didn't go to IMT. That's all good. Awesome. Sweet. The other cool little project we're working on is right now we have those tubes of nano oil that we ship with every knife.
00:39:27
Speaker
So the lubricant that you use on your knife, it's like three lifetimes worth supply. It's like too much. They're kind of expensive for us to get. I love the product, but the bottle is mediocre quality kind of thing. And I've always just wished it was smaller and different and things like that. So I finally found a bottle supplier. I've even looked into having custom injection molds made like for our own bottle and it's,
00:39:54
Speaker
not feasible cost-benefit ratio wise, so far that I can find. But anyway, so I found an off-the-shelf bottle from a medical supplier. I bought a free sample, sent it in. I'm like, this thing's pretty sweet, and they're pretty affordable, and they have the needle built in and everything. And I can buy the nano oil in gallon jugs.
00:40:15
Speaker
And like, there are simple dosing pumps that like auto fill, you know, a certain amount like I want five cc's perfect done. You hit a button and five cc's comes out. So for $200, I bought a dosing pump on Amazon should be here tomorrow. And a gallon of nano oils coming in the mail and cool.
00:40:36
Speaker
1,000 of these little bottles, they should be here today, tomorrow, something like that. And then also there's the local company that does, do you know much about pad printing? Yeah. Have you seen those? Oh yeah. I've seen about it, like they use it in watchmaking to do all the numbers on the dial and all kinds of industries use pad printing.
00:40:57
Speaker
Of course, I looked at how much is a pad printing machine, but then there's a local company that does pad printing. I'm like, for now, obviously, let's just farm it out to talk with them about getting our logo printed on these little custom bottles. That whole plan is coming together quite nicely. Awesome. I'm having fun with that. I figure with the dosing pump, maybe I'll make a little manifold out of push-to-connect fittings to do five at a time or something.
00:41:23
Speaker
Ooh, that's a good idea, John. Or 10. And then just 3D print a little rack. You slide in place, hit the button, it doses out 10 bottles worth. And it should be accurate enough, especially if you slow down the flow so that it increases the time. The pump is more accurate for timing. Most of the time, they try to fill it as quickly as possible, and it's hard to get an exact amount.
00:41:48
Speaker
But it doesn't really matter if somebody gets a CC more than- It doesn't, but for consistency, you know? Yeah. It's not like that's the product you're selling where somebody can just change about a drop of oil. Yeah. Well, and that's, you know, talking with the supplier of nano oil, he's like, you guys give it away anyway. So like, yes, I'll work with you to do whatever you need. You're not reselling it. You're not like, you know, so he's been awesome.
00:42:13
Speaker
We're going to hit that point. Frankly, we already
Labor Needs for Efficiency
00:42:16
Speaker
have. This is one of the reasons I feel like I'm on a 2 out of 10 was like, okay, I need to put on my business hat here and realize we need to have more help around
00:42:29
Speaker
dedicated non-machining relatively unskilled labor. I have no problem, especially around holiday sales when things spike, I have no problem helping box plates and assemble products. There's a point of pride that I will always have, but
00:42:45
Speaker
That's not a prize on a plan. Or a hustle is not a plan. And so, assembling products, smagging up screws and kits and all that. You know, in your case, the oil thing. That's just like you got to find ways to do that. And that's going to be, I don't say it's gonna be hard, but we got to do it. Yep, yep. Yeah, we need more effort, more time in our shipping department and uploading products.
00:43:11
Speaker
a little bit more in customer service and things like that. These are not the most fun, exciting aspects of running a business. It's like, let's buy a new machine. Let's hire a machinist. Exactly. Let's do all this high-level stuff.
00:43:27
Speaker
Um, actually on that note though, I've got to run because our service guys here trying to fix a cool setting on our Kuma and I told him I would have to help him out. So I got to run. Perfect. Um, I know the reason why I'm like that horizontal is not down, but it's not available to use right now. It's a soft down. I want, I want to get fixed. Yep. Awesome. I'll see you next week. Sounds good man. Thanks. Bye. Okay. Bye.