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It Is Easy To Get Overwhelmed, But It doesn't Do You Any Good.
228 Plays6 years ago
John & John are still adjusting to working or in some cases, not working during COVID-19. Grimsmo is slowly integrating back into work but with very strict safety measures. While Saunders' continues to make PPE for the front line workers. The boys talk all about the different government loans in both Canada & USA and how to apply for them. John Grimsmo has been taking it way back in the old days of YouTube making daily vlogs. Saunders' CRASHED HIS LATHE :(
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Transcript
Introduction and Impact of Current Events
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 165. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmough. And this is a business for two...
00:00:11
Speaker
crazy guys talk about machining and life and business and all this stuff that's happening in this day and age.
COVID-19 Challenges for Small Businesses
00:00:19
Speaker
It's April 8 2020 right now. And things be crazy. Just strange times. I love you know, I always often will bounce things off, you know, Yvonne or others like, Hey, I think with the podcast, I want to keep it off the COVID corona topic because folks need another piece of news. But I can't
00:00:40
Speaker
and good conscious do that because too much of it is at least affecting as a small business, the decisions we're making on a frankly daily basis. Thousand percent. And yeah, it would be nice to keep it lighthearted and be like, oh, let's talk about, you know, five axis for toolpaths. Um, and maybe we'll get into a little bit of that, but it's, yeah, like you said, it's affecting everything we do right now. It's a big decisions, huge decisions that we've never had to make before. And, uh,
00:01:10
Speaker
ones that a lot of people aren't coming back from or even a decision you make might be long, long, long lasting. So it has to be very well thought out or just accepted.
00:01:23
Speaker
Yeah. I was talking to actually my quality chem coolant rep who was a former Marine. I think he was kind of a lifer Marine, quite the time he served. He was just reminding me of something that I actually appreciated hearing again, which is
00:01:40
Speaker
It is easy to get overwhelmed, but it doesn't do you any good. That's very hard to hear. It's kind of like when you're stressed and somebody tells you, don't be stressed. You're like, do you want to punch them? We've had a little bit of a
00:01:56
Speaker
I hectic week it's been I've been pretty exhausted at the end of the days and I'm happy to share more about it, but I it's it was good to the takeaway with one of them was that and the other takeaway I had actually just this morning was we've been basically fall hands on deck building these face shields, which is great, but
00:02:18
Speaker
What I realized this morning was I actually still owe it to myself as the leader of the company and just as a person to keep enough sanity in the form of I need to set about an hour aside in the morning at work, not here at home when I'm with my family, but just...
00:02:35
Speaker
set aside some time at work. While others are assembling face shields, that's okay. And keep this to keep the ship afloat, be able to kind of switch from the technician doer person and I like I very much like being on the front line, helping assemble these things just with everybody else. It's the most boring monotonous work and it's fine. But
00:02:56
Speaker
it's what we do. But I still it's okay to in the fact I need to do that to be thinking about other stuff in the business and decisions and so forth.
00:03:07
Speaker
Absolutely.
Business Shutdown and Reopening Strategies
00:03:08
Speaker
On that note, I find myself falling very far behind on things like email and the day-to-day running of everything because it's just easy to fall into other avenues. What's going on? We talked last Wednesday. What's the status of Grimsma?
00:03:31
Speaker
put a lot of thought into this. We took the entire last week off as a voluntary shutdown because since we could still qualify because manufacturing is very broad in Ontario and tons of businesses are still working right now as safely as possible with policies put into place. So we took a week off and I thought long about it. I'm like, are we all going back to work? That sounds really stupid right now. It's not a choice we should be making.
00:04:02
Speaker
And there was some contention among the ranks, specifically between me and Barry about what the plan is for us next week. And he's like, well, either.
00:04:14
Speaker
He's like, everybody's coming back to work on Monday, right? And I'm like, I need to think about it. I need like another day to actually put some thought into this. Because I didn't really throughout the week. And yeah, he thought it was just clear cut where I'll come back to work. And I'm like, do you know how to understand how serious like how preemptive we have to be here? This is so anyway, I didn't want everybody to go back to work.
00:04:41
Speaker
yet for whether it be financial cash flow reasons or for all kinds of other stuff. The sake of the business, this is a critical point where decisions have to be made, and it could affect the future outcome of the business. So I talked with Meg, talked with Eric. We are the three owners of the company. And we basically came to the conclusion that if we could just get a tiny bit of work done,
00:05:09
Speaker
if we do these specific things, we'd be okay. So we came to the conclusion, since we have two buildings now, we can have one person per building instead of like three or four people per building that we normally do, keep people apart, keep them separate, clean everything. And I tried to fight for two people per building just because we'd get so much more done that Meg was like, no, if you have two people in a building, they're going to chit chat, they're going to
00:05:33
Speaker
They're going to, you know, it's way too easy to kind of break protocol. But if you sequester people and just write up a huge long, you know, all the safety procedures, which Angelo did and did an awesome job at.
00:05:48
Speaker
We can still get some work done in a solo manner and make progress towards the cause and look out for the company and still get some stuff done and we can still be as clean and safe as possible that way. So as of this week or as of yesterday, that's basically what we're doing.
00:06:07
Speaker
Yes, we're all taking shifts, you know. Can I chime in on that? Sure, yeah. So I think what's what I've been trying to remind myself now is we're, you know, maybe gosh, the day's blur together. Seven, 10 days ago, you know, Ohio started getting the kind of stay at home orders, quarantine
00:06:24
Speaker
whatever you want to call it. And we were kind of in this uncertainty stage. We don't really know a lot. And frankly, we still don't about the actual virus. There's certainly a lot of people who claim to know a lot, but we're still not sure. But what we do know is we're
00:06:42
Speaker
Simply with the passage of time, we know some things that it isn't. For example, in Central Ohio, it hasn't been nearly as prolific as unfortunately some areas of the coastal side. We've figured out what this temporary new normal is like. For us, it's the morning routines, it's the distancing, face shields, masks,
00:07:03
Speaker
propping doors open so you're not touching door handles. Because we are backed, at least doing these face shields and some other work. So some thoughts that what occurred to me though, again, is that it isn't necessarily this binary, okay, it's over, you know, the hurricane has passed where we will start rebuilding for sure thing.
00:07:23
Speaker
When you start thinking about a company like yours, it's not the case that in April 8th, it's not like on April 20th, they're all going to say, okay, back to work. It's going to be this way until we get a virus or the antibodies can be distributed from survivors or people that have been infected. I think what you're doing is spot on. First of all, I think what you did with
00:07:51
Speaker
with getting Meg, you and Eric together and deciding as a group, as the leaders and owners, and then disseminating that is awesome. But I also would push back a little and say at some point you should consider two people per building if it's safe, if you can maintain those distances. There's ways to do staggered shifts. So maybe it's two people, but they only overlap for four hours. That way they can do enough discussion and hand off or two hours. You know what I mean?
00:08:20
Speaker
And because here's the thing, John, I don't know when this ends. Nobody knows, of course. But like you said, I think everybody, a lot of people are sitting on their butts, like waiting for the government to say, okay, business is back on go nuts. And even I was like that for a little bit, because you're like, well, let's let's listen to the government and let's, you know, sit back. But then you realize, as you said, like, it's going to be a progression, it's going to be like,
00:08:45
Speaker
like right now in Ontario, they reduced the list from 74 industries down to 44 industries. So they're cracking down even more. And I think manufacturing is probably the safest of any of them almost. But they're going to like slowly release them back into the workflow. So
00:09:02
Speaker
It's not just going to be an, okay, everybody back to work. It's going to like the fact that we're going to have to progress back into a normal life is good. So we want it to start super conservative so that we could work up from there instead of, you know, instead of, I'll go back to work for a week and then I'll go off for a week and then I'll go back to work for a week and I'll go off for a week. Like that doesn't help.
Government Assistance and Financial Planning
00:09:22
Speaker
Yeah, so I figured especially for the mentality of our guys Let's let's be over cautious about this, but let's also Make sure that we still have a company to come back to you know What is the bare minimum that we can do looking at our finances? I spent the entire weekend going over all of our numbers myself from my perspective and figuring out you know looking at all our
00:09:46
Speaker
all our payables and all the machine payments that we've gotten deferred and all the possible government programs that we're applying for and all the variables and put it into you know what if we can finish this project and this project in April then
00:10:01
Speaker
we'll be fine. So what do we need to do bare minimum to do that? So I wrote down the entire list of every task. And then I put a person to those tasks. And then I spread it all out over the week. And I was like, you know what, if like, if each person put in a solid 10 hour day once a week, we'd be fine. That's awesome. So then so that's what we're doing.
00:10:21
Speaker
I've always loved... I don't believe in... Well, this is a comment that could get taken out of context. I don't believe in budgets. Yes, you have to budget and the budgets have to exist, especially as you grow. But budgets are like all financial models. The only truth about them is that they're false. They're wrong. They're just budgets. And so what I love is this kind of...
00:10:44
Speaker
assigning cost and minimum budgets that you build up from. Meaning, what do I need to do at a minimum level to cover things I can't control that are absolutely mandatory? Obviously, things like payroll, things like financing expenses, things like utilities, those have to get hit. You've built up this reverse waterfall. It's like, I can skip paying myself or I can skip
00:11:09
Speaker
even not ideal, but you could skip, say, putting some money aside for a machine maintenance fund that you slush fund that you might keep up or something like that. And I think it's a really good thing to do in this time, day and age, because boy, I still think we've got really tough times ahead. Yeah, of course. I saw a thing from the folks that run IMTS, I think it's AMT, and they were like,
00:11:37
Speaker
The post was basically like the typical disclaimer about we care about everyone's health and safety, but we're still planning and looking forward to IMTS. Of course, they are wanting to. Look, I would love to be walking the halls of IMTS. I absolutely would. Especially after this period of time, it'd be so nice to go back to normal and just do that again.
00:11:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's something I've always disliked about people when they try to spin things or marketing messages. It's not that I'm a pessimistic person.
00:12:12
Speaker
I have no tolerance for this BS optimism of what is the ... Look, I could be wrong. I'm not saying there needs to be a decision made today on this, but again, what's going to change between now and when people have to start paying them for their trade booths or shipping $100,000 displays or machines there?
00:12:33
Speaker
You think we're going to get 100,000 people together in a facility that's currently a hospital and flying into O'Hare and getting to dinners in downtown Chicago? It's sad. I don't like it, but I think that's what scares me in trying my best to look beyond one week, which is difficult to do. I don't see how that's a safe legal... First, I don't know if that's going to be permitted, and if it is legally permitted, I don't know how that's the right move now.
00:13:02
Speaker
like it is five months away and nobody can see that far into the future, but it's still dicey. Whereas we have Blade Show in
00:13:12
Speaker
two months and they haven't officially canceled it yet. I got an email from them saying, we're thinking about pushing it back a couple of weeks or whatever. We know this is a huge thing for you guys. And I'm like, there's no way that show is going on because the nature of the show, as you said, everybody flies in, everybody's crammed into, I mean, they're huge convention halls, but still the aisles are tight on a normal basis. You know, everybody's hugging and high five and touching the same knife. Like that's the thing about
00:13:42
Speaker
Blade show is like we're all passing knives from one person to the next and like showing off and doing all this cool stuff And that is like the absolute worst breeding ground possible for a situation like this It's just not happening right just because you don't just because you don't like the outcome doesn't make it the most probable outcome exactly
00:14:03
Speaker
Doesn't mean you can kind of bend your will and make it happen just because you tell yourself you want it to happen. You need to be able to detach and look at things from an outsider perspective, remove your own emotions and your own biases and just look at it. Just see it for what it is. And I think so many people in so many ways can't do that right now.
00:14:26
Speaker
And it makes it very frustrating for those of us trying to do our best and look out for the safety of everybody that we're in contact with, including the listeners of the bomb and everything. It's a heavy burden to bear, but one that I'm thankful I get to.
00:14:46
Speaker
The other thing I would mention, this unfortunately will only apply to US folks. Hopefully in other countries there are similar programs. I know I've heard about, I think John, you can chime in on Canada. I heard about something in Germany as well on the radio, but we at Saunders have applied for the Paycheck Protection Program.
00:15:04
Speaker
The details are relevant and I'm going to skip over them because it's a bit lengthy, but basically the essence of it is it's a period of approximately eight weeks where the government will effectively cover most of your payroll and potentially some of your other overhead like rent and utilities in the form of a 1% loan.
00:15:24
Speaker
crazy is that that loan will be effectively forgiven if you rehire or maintain a payroll. Again, the details do matter, and I'm not going to get into all of them right now. But in the event that you meet that criteria, which isn't that hard to meet, it's not a
00:15:43
Speaker
crazy hurdle, then the eight week amount is forgiven. It turns into a grant. And what's crazy is that it is a non-taxable event. So normally when debt's forgiven, you effectively treat that like ordinary income. So it's taxed at your tax bracket. This is not. So this is the government handing you a potential check that is significant relative to your, it's between one and two months of operating costs.
00:16:12
Speaker
If you are a listener out there, it may even work for microshops, one or two man shops, independent contractors could potentially qualify. What you do need to do is get with your banker. They're pushing this out through almost every single bank, even if that bank previously wasn't an affiliate with the SBA in the US.
00:16:34
Speaker
and if you don't have a banking relationship, time to form one. You've got to politely get hungry and get in front of a banker and have that conversation and recognize that you're going to have to give them something in the form of establishing a relationship. They may want your deposit accounts, your checking account or your credit card account or you've got to put a nugget in with them because there are going to be people clamoring for this money and it is a finite amount and I expect it will be gone quickly.
00:17:04
Speaker
Same thing in Canada, slightly different rules. We've got a couple different programs. I think every business is entitled to a $40,000 loan. I forget the exact details, so don't quote me on this. But I think it's interest free for a year or something. And if paid back within a year, then $10,000 of that is completely forgiven. So if you borrow $40,000 and you pay back $30,000 within a year, then you get the $10,000 forgiven for free.
00:17:33
Speaker
So that's one option, and I think that's fairly easy to apply for. There's another one called Canadian Wage Subsidy, where they will pay up to 75% of a person's salary, up to $58,000 a year, for a period of up to three months, on a month-by-month basis, if you qualify, if your sales from this month are 30% lower than your sales from last year this month.
00:18:02
Speaker
So I think those are the broad strokes of it, which we will qualify for for various months. So that's good. So we're applying for that as well. And then there's also the Business Development Bank of Canada, I think we talked about a couple weeks ago, was given, I think it was $100 million, I'm not sure, maybe more, to loan out to businesses based on projected lost revenues over the next six months.
00:18:31
Speaker
So you put your numbers together and you say, well, if this keeps up, I'm going to be down this much per month. So six months of that is a loan of X amount. So we're deeply looking into that and just about to file for all of them, I think. And yeah, so it's awesome to see that the government stepping up and there are options in place.
00:18:52
Speaker
obviously with pretty solid and understandable rules and stipulations. But a lot of it is a finite amount that obviously the big smart companies have already jumped on. And if we sit around for too long and don't get it done, it's going to be missed.
00:19:11
Speaker
You agree. I would say don't panic if you've never talked to a bank that doesn't mean you're out, but you've got to hustle here a little. I would remind everyone not to treat all money the same. For sure. Money that has the potential to be forgiven, especially in a non-taxable form, you should hustle, assuming that the amounts make sense relative to each other. That's really a lot more valuable than a dollar that is
00:19:39
Speaker
say interest free or a dollar that has to get repaid but is a lower rate. Just think about the opportunity there, but then also think about what you need in terms of making sure you get through a certain amount of time. Because on a macro scale, the governments all realize that governments only exist because of the tax base that lets them drive economies, and that's us.
00:20:00
Speaker
That's companies that generate taxable income and so forth. We do have to all get through this together, but boy, if you've been a bomb listener, hopefully you've got some decent accounting software that can help you generate these reports that the bank's going to want to see.
Leadership Challenges and Opportunities
00:20:20
Speaker
We've got videos on NYCCNC on basics for accounting. If you're not using software, I think, John, you use QuickBooks Online. We at Saunders use Xero, X-E-R-O.
00:20:30
Speaker
Um, you, uh, this is the time to step in action on that. Yeah, exactly. And, uh, ask people if you need help and advice, like, you know, reach out to your, I dunno, your uncle, who's a bookkeeper, you know, whatever, just get the information. Um, now's the time to step up and act and, and.
00:20:53
Speaker
take charge and do what you got to do to ensure the safety of your business because in these uncertain times, step up. And on PPPE, hopefully this information is out of date when this podcast airs in two days, today's again Wednesday the 8th, but we applied our bank sent in, we sent in our application to our bank.
00:21:17
Speaker
We ended up doing four different versions of it because that's how ten you had things were just changing. It was obviously a little bit frustrating, but you realize there's going to be plenty of things to get stressed about. This is not one of them. When my banker sends the fourth application, it says, sorry, they changed again. Can you fill it out again? You just smile and do it. I'm not saying it's easy, but you just do it.
00:21:40
Speaker
So our application got submitted and apparently approved on Monday, but it has not funded and that is because they're still apparently closing docs or some additional process from the SBA that our bank then will
00:21:55
Speaker
comply with and then I believe it will be our bank or your bank, whomever, will actually write you the check. They quote unquote fund the loan, but then it's later the process will happen in May or June where you'll then say, okay, I've met these criteria, I'd like to now apply for the forgiveness. I've been trying to talk around, I've had a couple of other friends who have been in a similar position, no one has yet been funded.
00:22:24
Speaker
So I don't know how I'll share this again other than next week's podcast. We've been talking about it on the NYC CNC Pro members. We have this Discord chat. I've never used Discord until recently. It's freaking great for what we're doing. So we've been talking back and forth and happy to keep folks up to date there on when that gets funded. I would not be surprised. I'd be pleasantly surprised if we get funded today. I mean, they are not trying to delay whatsoever on this stuff. Good.
00:22:54
Speaker
that's good to hear. I have a I actually do have some machining topics if you want to switch over or Yeah, almost there. So you said the
00:23:08
Speaker
Was it the rules that kept changing that you had to file so many different times? Or was it like your projections and numbers on your end? No, actually, it was mostly just the paperwork form of the application. A couple of different questions change. You've got to check some boxes that stay. You aren't a felon, or you haven't applied for an SBA. Actually, that may not be a question, but things like that. I haven't applied for another SBA loan. I haven't filed bankruptcy.
00:23:37
Speaker
The meat of it wasn't that different. It was, for a loan, incredibly easy. In fact, the first version I submitted to my bank was the bank's normal internal process, which is a freaking proctology exam. It's like every single thing you could ever want to know about your business finances and personal finances.
00:24:01
Speaker
I guess my question is for somebody who's never really applied for things like this before, you're well-versed at it. You've applied for many loans. You own a building, et cetera, et cetera. You're old hat at this stuff. For somebody who's relatively new at it, should they be afraid of it, or should they just barrel down and get it done?
00:24:19
Speaker
The latter, this is not intimidating. The most complicated thing is the way they size these loans is two and a half times your payroll costs. You need to know what your average payroll is and you need to be able to demonstrate that through your own income statement as well, like a trailing 12 or last year's income statement, as well as having copies of your payroll records.
00:24:43
Speaker
which sounds fairly straightforward. That's correct. Yes. I mean, the math on this was like one number times 2.5 equals another number and here's a PDF to back it up. There's nothing crazy there. That's my problem is Barry has been an accountant for 40 years. He's almost so smart that he's stupid. Yeah.
00:25:04
Speaker
he's over complicating this. And he's like, Oh, my projections keep changing. And, you know, when this machine gets deferred, then it changes the projections. And if we do this, and I'm like, dude, just file it, file it with the present information at the moment. And if we have to reevaluate when they come back to us and ask more questions or whatever than we do, but like, get it done. So I don't suffice to say,
00:25:30
Speaker
You're both right though, John. Barry has a point because he was trained like that. You can't untrain Barry from that. You're right. You're right. The thing to keep in mind is what's the money for? Meaning, what's the consequence if we err on the high or low side? Because ultimately, you're right. I think the most important thing is to get in line, get the money process started. Just recognize that.
00:25:55
Speaker
Yeah, so you're right. So I do. It's that fine line where I do see his point, but it's not that I need to be right. It's that I do think like you said, getting in line is more important than maximizing every cent and penny possible here. I'd rather undershoot it and be in line than, you know, try to maximize and miss it or something. So suffice to say, for that reason, and about 40,000 others, him and I have been butting heads pretty hard lately. And
00:26:22
Speaker
Sorry, it's not fun. I know. It's not fun. Look, there's going to be a lot of leadership books written about this in the next few years, but there's a fine line. Look, John, I know you pretty well. You're not a dictator. You're not an autocrat, but darn it, you're whatever your title is, president, CEO. You are the decision maker.
00:26:47
Speaker
that that form of being a good leader where you absolutely listen to input you weigh things you don't get so bullheaded that you're unwilling to change your mind or consider the fact that every day there's new criteria coming to light but ultimately there's also a lot to be said for this is the decision we're making it I will explain it to the extent that it's appropriate and
00:27:06
Speaker
and I have time to explain it, but otherwise, this is the decision and this is what's going to be followed, period, and I expect that. If there's something you need to talk about later or on the side, as time permits, we can discuss that. I'm going to guess that your days have been like mine where it's pretty busy right now and I don't necessarily want to spend 30 minutes defending a decision that I feel comfortable with. Yeah, exactly.
00:27:36
Speaker
So, yes. I'll also share that it's not fun. I mean, we're doing fine. We're happy. Everything's going fine both on the home front and work front, but I'd be lying if I didn't say there's been some stress and there's been some cabin fever and uncertainty and I don't want everyone to think it's all peaches and cream.
00:27:59
Speaker
No, I would second that perfectly. We are healthy. We are safe. Families are good. Even extended families are good.
00:28:08
Speaker
And, and we're going to be okay. Like we're going to get through this, but it's also been a very interesting time. And, and as I think I was telling you before the podcast, like it's in a way, I'm glad because it's, it's allowed me to step up and take more responsibility and more ownership and put my foot down when I need to and stand up for myself and my beliefs and, and get together with, you know, the owners of the company, me, myself, and Eric and my wife, and actually likes to down and strategize and
00:28:38
Speaker
equally come up with a plan that this is the plant, this is what we're doing. And if somebody doesn't like that, then tough beans. But yeah, so I'm appreciative for the opportunities this has provided from a personal mental standpoint, as difficult as it is, I wouldn't have gone through these exercises without it. And I'm gonna come out the other side a lot stronger than I went into it. And that's good.
00:29:05
Speaker
The verbalizing as a leader of why you're doing what you're doing, because I know there's a fine line here as we've been discussing, but when it came to how we're handling the processes and the shop safety, we've never done morning meetings before, John. I think you guys have had a daily meeting and talking about the updates, talking about the safety stuff, how we're handling it, taking the temperatures together.
00:29:32
Speaker
I mean, I can't speak for my employees, but I tell you as the leader, I am glad we're doing that. And I think it's important that when I think of something in my head about whatever, we bought new soap dispensers or we prop the doors open, some of the stuff seems kind of silly because it's not that big a deal. But hey, showing that not only shows what we did, but it shows that you're thinking about it and you're doing it and you're acting as reacting as you can. And that's a good thing.
00:29:56
Speaker
Yeah, the other thing is because you tend to take it for granted or if you put in new soap dispensers, you know, you think that's great, but if nobody else even really notices, they just kind of accept it as normal. But the fact that you're announcing it in the morning meeting shows everybody equally that you're thinking about them and that you're taking initiative and taking action. And I think you and I probably do so many different things that go unnoticed. And it's not that you have to toot your own horn but
00:30:23
Speaker
To have everybody understand what you're doing for them and understand that you're looking out for them and in charge and taking care of things and taking care of businesses is always a good thing. And it also opens up the floor to suggestions and opportunities from other people in the staff too for better ways to do things. And we found a lot of camaraderie and trust and faith in doing that together. If I'm stuck on something, I'll ask them at a meeting, be like, man, I don't really know how we should tackle this.
00:30:53
Speaker
By the time you get two or three people around the room, you got a perfect plan going. You're like, okay, this is awesome. Everybody got to be a part of that. Good. Well done. In the end, like you said, we're going to do one person per building for now. We're going to take it week by week.
00:31:13
Speaker
Obviously, we'll be ramping it up eventually, you know, might do this for a couple of weeks, might go to two people, might go to three people, and then before you know it, we're back to normal. Yeah, whatever normal is. Yeah, new normal. And that's fine. I'm okay with a new normal. Yeah. So it's okay. I'll just get through.
00:31:42
Speaker
Shall we squeeze in a few minutes of actual machining talk? Yes. Who wants to go first?
Machining Projects and Challenges
00:31:52
Speaker
I've had my head stuck in a Swiss lathe for the past seven days. Figuratively or literally? Literally. And I've been having fun. I've been filming a quarantine vlog, throwing it up on YouTube. So I film an episode every day.
00:32:06
Speaker
and just the projects I've been working on in the shop by myself. And it's been fun, but it's...
00:32:15
Speaker
Some of it's allowed myself to fall down the rabbit hole of like working on this stupid little, you know, side thing. But it's also kept my sanity throughout these times. And it's been really fun to document the journey. And and I've been running the lathe a lot the past two days, did a night run, came back and there were 220 parts done. And they were all within like the whole batch was within three tenths. Nice. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Success. You said side project. I mean, is this stuff that's going to help grips my knives bottom line, though?
00:32:47
Speaker
Yes and no, a side project meaning like, oh, I should really reroute the coolant lines on the Swiss. So I did, because it would have been a problem otherwise, you know, so on task, but not necessarily like the outcome, more like a means to an end. Okay.
00:33:04
Speaker
Look, I don't... Backseat driver, forgive me, but just like your budgeting has changed, your work needs to make sure it's focused on... Okay, I am aware, yeah. But I look at the goal. The goal was to make this part for the saga pens so that we can make some saga pens this month because it's the last part that we need. And in order to do that, this, this, this, and this has to happen. Okay.
00:33:28
Speaker
So it's relatively on point, just obviously a lot more time consuming than you think it is looking at it at first. Well, I can share on the need to create a lathe part that results in unintended downtime story. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I crashed it. Ah, ouch burn.
00:33:53
Speaker
Yeah. So it was last Thursday, so almost a week ago. So I'm at the point now in the kind of grieving, grief and grieving stage where I can talk about it. Yeah, you can talk about it, you're okay now. Yeah, no, but I mean, I was, I was, I was, it was probably, you know, it was funny, it was probably the low point, really honestly, the low point in my machining career. And what was tough was,
00:34:19
Speaker
That was last Thursday. This was the day that we finally got kind of the quote unquote approval from the local hospital that the face shield design that we were using, that badger shield worked and we'd gotten the material, which was just like cold calling and hitting the phones and getting resourceful to finding it.
00:34:37
Speaker
We'd gotten it in and we had made the first one. It was just like, oh my gosh, we're actually getting to do something good and healthy. It's gonna work and it's gonna go to the local hospital and they want it and like everything was that was kind of like a personal high and then So here's what happened Diamond pins are made with a sub spindle transfer parts in the sub spindle I was just nailing down that process like very much sort of like
00:35:04
Speaker
a process that's influenced by you, John. Take your time, tolerating, think it through, get it planned, build up on it. I was there and we were making them and they were working, but they were going one at a time. Basically, when it was done after a three-minute cycle or so, I would walk over, inspect the part one at a time, and then I would release it out of the sub-spindle myself. I wrote a loop to just do 10 at a time, but to do that, I needed the sub-spindle to move forward to drop it into the part-sketcher.
00:35:32
Speaker
So I stood at the machine and I looked at what was happening and I was like, okay, this is simple. I need to move. It's actually still really difficult for me to share this because as I share it, I realize my stupidity, but I guess it's just what I have to do and hopefully others will benefit. I looked at the turret and I looked at the sub spindle and I said, okay, I jog the spindle for us and okay, B comes to 18 inches, activate the M code for the parts catcher, release the chuck, move back and we're good.
00:36:00
Speaker
You're mentally preparing this by looking at it. You mean exactly. Yeah, so I'll walk back to my computer do the manual NC and subconsciously this actually or semi-consciously I made the decision not to do any turret moves because the turret was already in a safe position and what I found in the past when I go look through code I've written like this or things I've done like this being overly safe and adding unnecessary
00:36:28
Speaker
stuff can actually bite you because you're trying to be too safe. I'm just sharing. You can blame me if you want for this, but sometimes it's just like you're doing too much and it can hurt you the other way. What I didn't think about is the fact that I was staring at that machine after the post processor had
00:36:46
Speaker
done its sort of finished home moves at the end of a program. And so my manual NC was the last operation, but that operation got pasted in before the X axis of the turret had moved out of the way. Oh, okay. I know exactly what you mean now.
00:37:04
Speaker
Just to share my mindset, I'm pretty conservative on machines, especially like the lathe and the five axis. Really, I am. Over on 25% rapids, if I have any concern and hover over the feet hold, that doesn't bother me at all. I didn't even think about backing the rapids off.
00:37:24
Speaker
This was such a simple sherbet move forward. I wasn't being arrogant. I didn't think I was or cocky. I just didn't even occur to me. I'm sitting there watching it and before I knew it, the threading cycle finished and then the bee just slammed into the turret. It was 100%. Luckily, it was only about a half an inch of movement because the stick tool is still right there, but it was pretty bad from a sound standpoint and how hard it hit.
00:37:55
Speaker
So, long story short, Haas came yesterday, I mean, crazy times, right? I called them Friday. This was, I think, after hours on Thursday. They couldn't get somewhere Monday, but they got some of their Tuesday yesterday. And luckily, knock on wood, he's not done, but the way those, I've heard that the, quote unquote, weakness of the Haas design is this kind of like, man, you bump those things at all and the turret moves. Well, look, I'm not a machine designer, but there's the kind of,
00:38:21
Speaker
awesome box way rigid approach, which is these stout machines that can take a bump. And then there's the, I think the Haas approach, which is, look, look, I think, don't quote me on this, the way they assemble these is they'll use alignment pins and then pull the pins out after it's aligned and ship it with no pins, basically to give it a point of... Yeah, well, you're going to knock the turn out of place, but better to do that and realign it than blow a rail.
00:38:47
Speaker
I've seen pictures of an entire turret casting cracked in half and the turret laying in the chip tray. Good grief. So the service tech was like, dude, you're not that bad. He's like, I think it was like total sixth out on the turret, but that looks like a mile. Like I tried to touch a tool off and the tool was about a quarter inch below the touch probe. So I was like, yeah, crud. Yeah.
00:39:09
Speaker
So, what's funny, John, is it is actually a very similar crash to the bump, the crash I had on the UMC. The UMC one, I posted individual operations, thought that proved out the program, they posted the whole program together, and it was the linking move between two swarfs that nailed me. So, if there's some PSA I can make out there, folks, it's try to have that, remember, there's some
00:39:33
Speaker
even for folks that may be trying to be careful, like there's that gotcha, the lathe one was my fault for sure. The swarf one was a little bit, I think, something you could push some blame onto the software for. But hey, my fault still. So yeah, I think.
00:39:49
Speaker
The thing is, if you rely on your post, because it's known to work, especially a host lay the post is fairly standard, yet you dick around with it by putting a manual NC anywhere. It leads to unpredictable behavior. And basically, you're saying, even though in the order of operations, you have threading up and then manual NC, it didn't home the X yet. So it kept it down in the meat of the work zone, right?
00:40:13
Speaker
And then it puts the manual NC right there. And then afterwards, it was going to home the x-axis and get it out of the way. So that's a post thing where it's putting the manual NC. And I've noticed that behavior as well when I do it too. And I'm like, huh, why is it throwing it there before, like on the mill, before the Z retracts to home? Like, oh, I got to watch out for that. So in that sense, that's why I'm kind of thankful that I really, really
00:40:40
Speaker
read and hand edit my codes because I completely understand. If I post something, I will look at the code and I'll be like, okay, that makes sense. No, that doesn't make sense. Why does that make sense? Because I hand edit so much, I'll paste blocks of code, especially for lathe code. I'll write it from scratch. My default for lathe code is I have my template in Visual Studio Code and then I post operations from Fusion.
00:41:10
Speaker
And then I paste them into my template code. Yeah, I mean, look John man, and I make I feel like I owe you an apology because I've given you a hard time on hand editing code before and Here I'm the one that crashed on it, you know Gosh like looking at the code because I can read that code single blocking it. What would have been harm with that John 25% rapids, you know gosh Anyway
00:41:37
Speaker
And I wonder if that's one of the benefits of hand editing is because you trust it, but you don't trust it. So like, if I had written that line by hand, I'd be sitting there, you know, with feed rates down at 1% and just eyeballing it the whole time. Because it's... What I did hand write it, I mean, I hand wrote it in manual and see, you know what I mean?
00:41:59
Speaker
Yeah, same thing. Oh, here's the other irony. This is funny. ChipRag, April edition, I covered the Haas safe mode, which is basically a way of soft. It'll see a crash and stop and generally minimize damage. And I think that's available on our machine now. And that would have also saved me. Well, I'm sorry for your loss, but it sounds like the Haas tech fixed it up. Is it done?
00:42:27
Speaker
It's not done, but I'm actually at home right now because I've got to hop in like six minutes, by the way, to handle something. But he, gosh, I hope he's done today.
00:42:39
Speaker
It's just money and frankly, it could have been worse and I've learned a lot, but boy, it really upset me. Partly because we're so excited. I'm so pleased with how this is running and how we've gotten some tolerating things tweaked and fixed.
00:42:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's just a big slap in the face, like right after some success. I have absolutely been there. I don't think I've crashed anything so bad that a service stack has to come in, but I've certainly had to replace, I had to replace an $8,000 spindle, like air spindle on my Swiss due to a stupid code mistake where it rapided the wrong way and just tore that air tool, live tool.
00:43:21
Speaker
a new one. And so I'm like, crap, $8,000. That's a huge mistake that happened in the blink of an eye.
00:43:30
Speaker
But yeah, but it's par for the course, man. We're buying big, expensive, strong machines, and we're controlling them with code. And we're in control. The machine will do what we tell them to do. And it's par for the course. These things happen. At some point, one of your guys is going to make a big crash. One of my guys is going to make a big crash.
00:43:55
Speaker
I'm not trying to foresee it, but I'm trying to mentally prepare for the possibility and to be able to logically go through it and be like, well, you know, it not an instant you're fired unless it was complete negligence. But like this, this could happen to me, this could happen to you kind of thing.
00:44:13
Speaker
We, we share that story, or sort of mindset in the in our five axis class I sort of say look, almost everybody I know, including some pretty talented machinists who have five axis machines, almost everybody I know has had at least a bump.
00:44:28
Speaker
I don't want to name names right now because I don't feel like that's cool to do, but literally, all the guys that we've mentioned on this podcast and talked about, most of them have had a bump at least. It's not really a question of if you're going to. It's a thinking of, and of course, it depends on how bad it is, but what is your first move and what's the relationship with your service? How serviceable is the machine?
00:44:49
Speaker
You know, sometimes a crash can get realigned and you're as good, if not even better off than before because it got the chance to kind of realign it after the machine has sat there and stabilized. Sometimes the machines never the same, right? Your spindle's just never quite as good or... Yeah, yeah. Anyway. On the Swiss lathe, it's really interesting because the X-axis, you know how there's the ball screw and there's the motor and there's like a coupler that connects the two?
00:45:13
Speaker
The X-axis coupler purposely slips. Oh, that's awesome. So the X-axis crash will just slip that thing and then you'll be out a couple inches in X. And I've had to realign that several times because I think the tension of that slip is too loose for what I need.
00:45:29
Speaker
Because I've had to realign it probably three or four times. And I'm getting good at it now. But it's pretty quick. You just move to home and then move your offness. If it's off by an inch, then you move an inch. And then you hit a parameter, turn off the machine, turn it back on, and it's back to zero again. So I like the safety feature of it. I wish it were like 12% tighter. And that's the service tech coming in to do that. Crazy question. There isn't a way in G-code to activate single block. Is there?
00:46:00
Speaker
single block. No, but you can put M0s everywhere. Yeah, that's a pain in the butt. I'm a big believer in total ownership. When I hear these sorts of stories and guys are blaming their posts or blaming the software, it's like, usually there's some rare instances where truly the software had a bad code, but a lot of times it's something that has
00:46:22
Speaker
a user catchable sort of thing on it. But boy, I'd love the ability to have like a G999, which activates single block mode, and then at the end deactivates it. I have to look into that. I'm sure there's a practical machinist post. In fact, I feel like I've looked it up before.
00:46:43
Speaker
That's why I told Haas, I was like, guys, can you make this safe mode? Can you make that an M code? Because, boy, I'd love to be able to turn it on and off in my post or in my code. I don't think they did, but that's something I now, I wanted to play with it before this, and now I really do. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, at times like this,
00:47:06
Speaker
Safety is better. I like to build safe programs and then fine tune them and make them more aggressive as I go. Because the first run, I just want to succeed. I just want to see it done. I don't care if it takes 12 minutes to make a layered part. And then I can pair it down to two minutes by the end.
00:47:25
Speaker
you know, success is the first barrier. And then, and then as you know, now with lathe code, you're always trying to like, well, that retract doesn't really have to be there. It doesn't really have to go out that far to be able to do that. Let me shrink it down a little bit. Right. Because you can watch the process so closely and the cycles are so fast. I find that it's really easy to just dive in and be like, well, yeah, I don't need a home call there. I can just, you know,
00:47:50
Speaker
But that's, I guess what I'm trying to emphasize is I had that mindset and I succeeded in making this whole part. It took me a week to make this part just hopping in and out of it. So the analogy is kind of like I finished building the house and I crashed when I was putting my hammer back in the toolbox. Like it wasn't, that's what I think the
00:48:08
Speaker
the arrogance on my side was is that I just thought that this was so easy because it was at the very end and I'd been so successful that somehow my past conservatism was going to fall. I'm making this just be talking now, but it still bit me.
00:48:24
Speaker
Well, the part eject is not a machining operation. So it's easy to not put a lot of weight into it. Right, yeah, yeah. And I just saw that turret sitting up there in the home position. I thought, oof, we're just going to slide that bead right over here, and we are going to be making parts. And I get it. I get it, because it was already at home. So you thought that that was the position it was going to be in when you added your manual. And see, I totally done it. I might have done the same thing. So don't feel too bad, but it hurts anyway.
00:48:53
Speaker
Yeah. I need to apologize because I really want to hear about current and five access, but I got to run. Yeah, I've got no updates really. But as of today, the Swiss stuff is done just on maintenance mode. So from this week, from this day forward, it's current stuff. Perfect. I look forward to hearing about it next week. Take care, bud. Sounds good. Have a good night. Bye.