Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
#206 - Systems for Success, Marketing, Accounting, & Lathe Insert Tool Life
249 Plays5 years ago
- Saunders on feeling overwhelmed and a defining moment at Pierson Workholding.
- Can daily tasks actually KILL your business?
- "You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems." - James Clear
- Marketing
- Business accounting
- Tool life for lathe parting inserts
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining. My name is John Grimsmo. And my name is John Saunders. This podcast is a conversation we have every Friday about entrepreneurship, struggle, happiness, CNC machines, money, and more. And like every good toolpath, you want a smooth lead in. So how are you doing to this morning, John?
Overwhelmed Yet Improving
00:00:19
Speaker
Well played. That's awesome. I'm good. I'm good.
00:00:27
Speaker
Well, for the sake of being candid, um, I was not doing as well Sunday and Monday. I felt a little bit overwhelmed and oh, there's so many ways to unpack this because our business is so much better than it was a year ago or two years ago.
Stress and Emotional Processing
00:00:41
Speaker
And I don't know that I could remember that if it weren't for one of those defining moments in my life standing in Southern California.
00:00:49
Speaker
in Pearson workholding in front of his dishwasher that he uses in his shop to clean his pallets and talking. I think he was in front of his Pearson boards and he mentioned, I'm usually pretty stressed about three days a year. And that was the moment that kind of blew my mind.
00:01:06
Speaker
And luckily, whatever you want to call it, Sunday or Monday wasn't that bad of a day in that sense. But nobody wants a pity party. But I went through some of what we've been through in the last two months. And we're not alone here between the coronavirus, business ups and downs, the holiday schedules. We've had some hires here. We've had some opposite of hires here.
Growth and Quality Management
00:01:29
Speaker
And I realized, oh,
00:01:31
Speaker
It's okay. There's been a lot going on. Yeah, it can be overwhelming. There's stress and there's unhappiness and then there's just like, holy cow, there's so much going on right now. Not all of it's great. It's okay to have weird feelings about stuff because it's just busy. There's just so much happening, especially you the past few months.
00:01:54
Speaker
your brain can always wrap around all of that. So you get days where you're like on top of it, and then you get days where it's just like kind of crushes you a little bit. Yeah, no, but it's, but so I admire people that also have the ability to, you know, you got to acknowledge that I don't think sweeping out of the rug makes you a better person. And, but a flip side, you know, there's that one of the many great quotes, you know, the windshield is bigger than the rear view mirror. So okay,
00:02:18
Speaker
You deserve a pat on the back because it's been maybe some ups and downs and so forth, but let's go. What does that mean today? What does it mean? What you're going to do now going forward? What's happening? Yeah, it's like you have to ask yourself, am I stopping? Am I changing?
00:02:38
Speaker
Nothing's different.
Hiring Challenges and Strategic Time
00:02:40
Speaker
I'm going to look back and I'm going to see, OK, I need to do this a little bit differently. Or I look ahead and I'll be like, OK, what's next? That's the biggest question. It's like, what can I do right now to be productive, to feel better, to get something done? And then at the end of that, usually rocking and back on track. It might take a couple days, a week, two weeks, whatever. But that's always worth it because
00:03:03
Speaker
that mind when you're like hopping around and hustling and busy and just kind of this pleasant sense of urgency that I think you and I both have when we're in a good mood. That's where I want to be. And I'm not always there, but I like being there.
00:03:19
Speaker
but that's what it's all about. Like that's what I, we were interviewing somebody and, and in a weird way, it just kind of came about. I was like, we love what we do here. Like I'll just say this right now. If you're not interested in this, don't come work here. Like I don't, it's like, just, you know, this isn't for you. Like you gotta love it. We love what we do. And that doesn't mean we're chipper every day. And I think I'm probably a little bit quieter in the shop than maybe I, again, I don't think I have like a separate personality, but maybe I do. Like I'm kind of like I'm a quiet person in the shop, but yeah,
00:03:47
Speaker
Darn it. We love what we do. Holy cow. Yes. Like, Oh man. Um,
Teamwork and Business Processes
00:03:53
Speaker
that doesn't mean it's not hard and blah, blah, blah. But, um, the, I think where I've felt a level of struggle and disappointment at on a personal level beyond, um, just the normal ebbs and flows has been.
00:04:07
Speaker
We really have wanted to succeed in the two roles that we're trying to fill on the operations and maintenance person as well as the marketing person. We've had some pretty big struggles on both of those roles. Again, you can make some excuses about holidays and COVID and other extenuating circumstances.
00:04:26
Speaker
we, where I'm struggling is like little things like, Hey, the Royal filter mists that we need to put on the machines that have been sitting here since December. And, um, I actually just unpack them myself yesterday and, and put them on, I'm just gonna start putting them on the machines. It's really not a big deal. I kind of had wanted the new person to do that. Um, and it's absolutely appropriate. And I actually am pretty hesitant to let myself start diving into these
00:04:50
Speaker
task projects because I've had a couple of moments where I've gone down some good rabbit holes of business thinking and strategy. I've said it before in this podcast, but I will continue to say it because it's so counterintuitive. If you don't carve out time to be that top level person and think, if you just let yourself succumb to to-do lists and tasks, it is detrimental to long-term growth in ways you cannot imagine.
Marketing and Customer Engagement
00:05:16
Speaker
and personal fulfillment and thinking and being. That's why I like the setup we have right now. Sorry, Brian Bradley, but with the way we're running our shop, we've got a great crew, we've got great people, and Ed has really been able to spend time not only helping make stuff but think, but in R&D and plan and improve, and that is so key. Wonderful. Yeah, the more of that you can have in your company, maybe not from everybody always, but certainly if
00:05:41
Speaker
The more that gets distributed through the company, the more the company naturally grows on its own and being a perfect example of that.
00:05:51
Speaker
It's not just about growth. It's also just about a level of happy powerment. Yeah, because growth will always have some similarities to, not greed, but desire to consume more and increase and power. And it's not like I would rather, and we actually are, we're kind of continuing to pull in what we do, but darn it, I want to do it well.
00:06:20
Speaker
I really want to do it well. I want to grow and I want to reach for the future but not at the expense of quality or happiness or throughput. I want everybody to be busy and hustling and have a good time but also work hard but I don't want to cut corners.
00:06:42
Speaker
I don't want to make a worse product because we're rushing. If we make mistakes, there's a reason and I want to pull back. And I want to like, okay, last week was a little slow because we dealt with these things. We actually focused on time. So our output was less than normal. But you know, here's why. And hopefully that won't be a problem again. So I like that we can pull back and take the time to do those things. And
00:07:03
Speaker
As you're talking about, give that responsibility to some of the guys on the team. Let's figure this out. You don't just have to put your head down and work all the time because this needs to happen. This needs to get figured out. Yeah.
00:07:16
Speaker
Well, it's just like how many times if you need to make a part differently, would you get two or three of your own machinists and then maybe Instagram or maybe machinists outside your organization and brainstorm 15 different fixturing ideas. This is almost too good to be true. I don't know how you actually do this, but too often it's just like, well, I think I know how to do that. And you think of two or three things, you start modeling it and then you just go and it's like, no.
00:07:44
Speaker
We've totally changed up how we do some things here, and I love it because it's the team here. I'm involved, Ed's involved, Austin's involved, Grant's involved, and we're just like, hey, this could be this, well, hold on, let me do this. And then, oh, it's just, it's absolutely the power of a team and more than one mindset and different approaches, and it expedites the way you process and think through stuff. I love it.
00:08:09
Speaker
For my projects and the things that I want to design and make, I still struggle with that. And I have to remind myself to, like, how would you show it to Angelo, show it to the guys, and just get their opinion on it? And say, this is how I'm thinking of doing it. What do you think? And I can't figure out this. How should I do that? And let them in on the process, too. But my nature is just to be like, nope, I just want to focus on this. I just want to bang through it over days, weeks, whatever. Let my brain crunch on it.
00:08:38
Speaker
figure it out myself. There's value in both for sure, but I like that I'm starting to include the guys more and more. I'm conscious of it. All right, I got a good one. I think there's probably been a handful of times on this podcast where we've thrown out quotes that were
00:08:59
Speaker
quote, noteworthy quote, where they write down. And you might know this quote, because I believe it's from the book, is it called atomic thinking? What's it? Principles? Atomic. I haven't read it. Okay. I think I've heard of the book.
00:09:16
Speaker
I was thinking that you had mentioned it. Atomic Habits. You're right. I have heard of it. Haven't read it. Okay. I have not read it. I've ordered it. But it came up with
Systems vs. Goals
00:09:26
Speaker
a call with Ryan Wenner from Seneca, who I've very much enjoyed talking with. And it was actually, in a weird way, a kind of a call about this podcast. And I'll come back to how that is relevant in a second. But the quote is, you don't rise to the level of your goals, but rather you fall to the level of your systems.
00:09:47
Speaker
Ooh. Letting that percolate. You don't rise to the level of your goals, but you fall to the level of your systems. Right. I like it. Because you and I are passionate. We're hungry. We're energetic. We love thinking stuff, playing stuff, and doing stuff. But that exists in our head. It doesn't always manifest itself into reality of what actually happens in the shop, or it gets shipped out in boxes to customers, or on the website.
00:10:15
Speaker
I think it really emphasizes the stage our businesses are in of like, hey, we've been putting into processes, how do you ship stuff? How do you QC stuff? How do you handle inventory or ERP systems or procurement? Because that's what you have to have in place. Yes. That is the beauty of a good system is when things are consistent and things work and anybody can jump in and do them.
00:10:40
Speaker
as we're growing the company, as we're spreading roles around, I'm seeing the need for that more and more. We've got two new guys in the past few months come in, and you start to realize there's some things that there is no standardized way. He does it one way, and he does it another way, and I do it a different way. It's like, okay, how are we going to teach the newer guy how to do that?
00:11:03
Speaker
Let's figure this out. Yeah, but that came up because, and I love this, and pardon semi-tinge of narcissism here, but Ryan was talking about maybe four or five podcasts ago, and I had kind of mentioned this, like, I don't know if I have a whole other business in me. I mean, I like what I'm doing with Saunders and Provencut, and like I said, we're trying to kind of focus things in right now, not grow more. And in some respects, I am a little tired, it's not the right word, but yeah, I don't think like,
00:11:32
Speaker
I want to launch a whole new unrelated business product line, et cetera. And four years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, I was kind of all over the place. I love, I liked that. But his response was funny. He was like, I call total BS on that.
00:11:48
Speaker
And I was like, whoa, OK. And and we started to unpack it. And I think some of it was not so much that I won't. But rather, oh, I think your response to that was like, dude, no, you were like, you're going to go build a rocket or something. But two things. Number one, yeah, there's a part of me that could take could use for a little break. I'm OK saying that. But more importantly is I don't think we're doing
00:12:14
Speaker
well enough right now and I want to do it well. This is my chance. We've done better than ever with basically the fixture plates and the mod vice. It's a good product and it has value and we're really good at doing it. And the biggest area that I think we're lacking, we know how we're improving with the manufacturing side and the operation side and the fulfillment side and QC. We're on track there. We've got some room to grow, but we're on track pretty good. Where we have the most room to grow is that marketing element.
00:12:45
Speaker
I want somebody to walk in our shop and us to talk about who our customer profiles are, why they're buying it, what they were doing. Because right now we're just relying on the Goodwill and YouTube videos and content marketing and word of mouth. We're not doing nearly what we could be doing like any business should to build basic marketing profiles and efforts and funnels and avatars and basic organic SEO tracking, analytics tracking. That stuff is so important to long-term
00:13:14
Speaker
business. It is a major part of business, and I'm excited, but I can't do it alone. That kind of ties full circle back to trying to get a marketing person on board. For sure. Okay, I'm going to come back to that in a second, but I'm going to go back a few minutes where I think with your business, you have a lot, not necessarily growth, but you have a lot more to give to this business, to Saunders. You've got such a good thing going on. You love it. You're not going to pivot and do something, start a
00:13:41
Speaker
farm or something, you know.
00:13:46
Speaker
you've got a lot more in this business. So of course the mindset is like, yeah, I don't want to, I wouldn't start something else. I wouldn't change. And same here with Grimsmo. It's like, I'm really happy
Marketing Strategy Challenges
00:13:56
Speaker
doing what we're doing and I want to grow within this company. Um, and I want to make more product lines within this company, even if they're not fully related, but still like under the umbrella of, you know, still makes sense for us. And that could last me for years and years and years. Like it might not be the only thing I do in my life, but for the very foreseeable future,
00:14:16
Speaker
I'm going to give it everything I got because there's no point doing anything else. Absolutely. Yeah, and then going back to marketing.
00:14:26
Speaker
It's funny, I had a guy reach out last night, and he's a marketing graduate. And he's just like, yeah, I watched videos a bunch of years ago, and then I didn't. And then I caught up the other night now that I've graduated. And I was like, I think I can help you out. And I was like, we're good right now, but appreciate it. But it was interesting where he was going with it with regards to creating ads and market profiles. And I'm like, we've never run ads, and I don't see us running ads.
00:14:54
Speaker
And I was trying to analyze why I turned it away so, not abruptly, but like, you know, we're good. I think we're in such a weird, thankful position, grateful where our customers are vast and ravenous, and we don't have problem selling product.
00:15:16
Speaker
the challenge becomes in making the product. But obviously, not all businesses have that luxury of having oodles of customers ready to eat up product. So I almost felt bad for a while. Should I be thinking about more customer profiles and proper marketing? I think one thing we struggle with is getting information out there, like clear, concise,
00:15:38
Speaker
This is what the product is. This is how you order it. This is who we are. I think that kind of marketing would go really far for us and just kind of educating the customer base and the potential customer base more so we can put some effort and focus into that.
00:15:55
Speaker
It's a – I mean, everything you said is right. You don't necessarily want to grow sales and that's what you think of as that marketing role. Where I would say at some point in the next year is go drive up to a lake and sit down with a notebook and think about the future of your company and then think about – write a case study
00:16:17
Speaker
that could be a mediocre or even downside outcome. And again, you're in a great place. I actually do, I guess, I think to the extent my opinion matters, what you said is correct. But the problem I think with not entertaining some portion of the stuff we're talking about is that when the music stops, you don't know where the boombox is to turn it back on. In your world, I don't think Instagram is going to shut off knives. They certainly have done so with
00:16:45
Speaker
firearms. There are businesses who grow, who do great, and then all of a sudden, for whatever reason, the music stops. I don't like that. We actually want to grow. I want to specifically reach out to Haas customers, Tormach customers, and probably ShapeOca. We've done really well with the ShapeOca place. They're new, and we've got some quirks to continue to improve how we market it. ShapeOcas are trickier because to get technical, the machine doesn't have any
00:17:15
Speaker
actual rigidity to it. So we have to deliver a fixture plate that's unbelievably flat in an unconstrained state, or rather that's the ideal situation. And that's an interesting way to reconcile that with a low cost sheet or stamped frame type machine. So that you don't pull a machine out of flat, is what you mean? Well, it's actually more of an issue with some of the larger shape OCOs that have multiple plates. In fact, even I think the basic one has two plates.
Financial Strategies and Equipment Purchases
00:17:43
Speaker
And we have a stiffener bar that kind of helps pull them together and it's a good thing and it helps the machine, but we're working on, we're okay, but I think we're gonna continue to kind of improve that. So when you say reach out to customers, you mean you're existing people have purchased from you?
00:18:01
Speaker
No, I just mean, so you got to take yourself out of your, the grim zone Saunders bubble. Like I, you know, just like, you know, your business, I know my business, but the reality is, uh, and this kind of stems back to my conversation with Ryan yesterday and trying to, trying to think more about marketing stuff, you know, customers need to, what's it called? Have an impression or contact with her word of mouth or something. They need to experience a brand or thing more than once. Um,
00:18:30
Speaker
Somebody doesn't just find out about a grams of a knife, never have heard about it and then within 10 minutes purchase something. They may do that with a really cool hat or some random swaggy thing, but probably not with a multi-hundred dollar knife. Luckily for you, they probably have heard of you or they are within that community or they see the social proof because other people are there.
00:18:52
Speaker
We don't have that. There's by far the majority of say Haas owners have no clue who Saunders is. Tormach may be a little bit different, but actually I love it. I love it when Tormach owners are like, who the heck's John Saunders? Great. I love that. That shows you there's market opportunity, but I've got to show what our product is, how it can help you run your machine, why it's a great value, why it's worth it, the role we can play in that.
00:19:18
Speaker
It's not going to be something where they probably go make a purchase on the first time they see us, whether they see us on a paid ad or on organic, our Instagram or somebody else's Instagram, that kind of stuff. Yeah, and the more in your face is the wrong, it's a bit too much, but the more in your face you can be to your customers, the more they see you, the more they ... It just adds a little plus one to their internal inventory of who this guy is. Yeah, absolutely.
00:19:46
Speaker
Think about like if I'm, I don't know, even go on your site really very often, but grimsmaneyes.com. Think about if there was a way not of showing your Instagram, but showing the hashtag. It probably is. Yeah. I think we're doing that actually. Good. The grimsmaneyes hashtag, which is cool. Let's check that out. Because that's like, okay, that's such a powerful tool. I don't actually know the answer to this. Isn't that funny?
00:20:09
Speaker
So there's a homepage of the images, which is cool YouTube. And then, and then there was at some point about YouTube podcasts, Instagram.
00:20:22
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, look, you're crushing it. I think you're better at this stuff than I am. But it's kind of like, hey, if somebody's thinking about a saga or that new flashlight, like seeing all these people use it is like so, you know, every time I see you post about like a Ben Benz or who's the Jason guy in California, darkness sucks. Oh, yeah. What's his name? Jason Prometheus. Prometheus, thank you.
00:20:50
Speaker
That's one of those, oh, okay. I'm not going to not buy a flashlight unless those people come to mind. Maybe I can buy theirs, but they're certainly going to be front and center in my brain. It's just wired that way now. Yeah, and me as a customer of theirs, and I've got Jason's flashlight I've had in my pocket for three years, and it's going to be hard to kick that flashlight out of my pocket. I'm telling myself I have to make one before.
00:21:16
Speaker
It's not that I love it that much. I appreciate it. I appreciate him. And I want something so specific that is that but different. That's OK. You apologize. No, exactly. I like shouting those guys out and taking pictures of their great products. Or when a customer puts a picture of our knife, I like to repost it and be like, he's a happy customer.
00:21:41
Speaker
You're very much in a, it's weird because it's red, what's that red ocean, like it's competitive, but not like, like it's, I think of, I'm certainly more involved in the firearms world than the knife world. Like just because I have a makeup, you know, a Bushmaster doesn't mean I don't want a, a Colt or just cause I have a Nighthawk doesn't mean I don't want a Wilson or something like it's like, you know, it's yeah.
00:22:04
Speaker
Yes, please. Yeah, the knife community, the knife customers, even the guys here in the shop, once you have one, you want more. Once I have one CNC machine, I still want more. Yeah, that's good. Although speaking of which, I don't know if we're transitioning now, but it's like I've been telling Fraser over the year that he's worked here,
00:22:29
Speaker
our media coordinator. He was like, as we're getting equipment, we're finding what we like the best. And then as we grow, we'll just get more of that. Like when I need another Swiss lathe, I'm just going to get another tornos because I really like it. Like it's the one. If I need another five axes, I'm just going to get another Kern probably. You know, it's like, once you find it, just go, you know, it's like you and Haas. Like, yes.
00:22:53
Speaker
copy and paste, you know? Yes, it works. It works. I love it. It works. I know how to use it. It does exactly what we want. And I've even got evil thoughts about buying another Durr vertical.
00:23:04
Speaker
Yes. I don't know why this... You can get them though. You can get it used. If we had more space in our old shop, I probably would have... I probably would have gotten the speedio instead, but I don't know. Just to have two machines and spread, say, blades on one and handles on the other, and now all of a sudden you have so much more tool capacity. Instead of trying to do both parts, you can just focus on the one.
00:23:32
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, John. Yes. To walk me through, go into your office this morning with the figurative investor who's like, hey, I need you to put $3 million to work, make up a number. But they need you to show me how it's going to help you. Holy cow, John. You don't need another Kern right now, right? That's crushing it, but it's
00:23:55
Speaker
It's got automation, it's got tooling, it's not at capacity by any means. But separating out a vertical which solves your tool problems, it solves production capacity problems, it solves fixturing changeovers. And it's a low cost machine with minimal downside because if you buy a used or a vertical and you have to fire sale it, at most you're going to lose a couple of days of your revenue. John, yes. Yeah, you can pick up a used one for, I don't know, somewhere between $50,000 to $100,000, probably on the higher end of that.
00:24:26
Speaker
And mine as of last Friday is fully paid off. Good for you. Five years of payments, all mine. Good for you. That's got to feel great. It doesn't, it doesn't. I knew it's been coming for a long time, because we're like, yeah, next. It's almost done. And then it happens, and you're like, OK, what's next? It's no big deal. But I have to remind myself that it's cool, that it's like, OK, that payment's not going out anymore, and that's mine now.
00:24:56
Speaker
We can put that payment money towards something else or just sit on it or whatever, but I look at it a little bit differently now because I'm like, I think your rank is not on that sucker.
Manufacturing and Business Strategy
00:25:08
Speaker
That is mine and it's still in amazing condition. Literally, I'm going to do a whole video about this, break it down, how we bought it, why we bought it, what we put into it and everything. The only maintenance that's gone wrong on it is the door interlock switch broke.
00:25:22
Speaker
and have to buy one for $300 or something. That's it. It's been so, so rock solid. Awesome. Such a good purchase. Yeah. So what I think you should do now is figure out a way mechanically within your bank accounts or however you handle that and keep paying that payment.
00:25:42
Speaker
but pay it to a slush fund account, a capital account or something. Because if you just leave it in your general account, I don't know how you do your books, but the money will just evaporate. It'll just disappear. I understand. And that is the key. Because fast forward two months, six months, one year, people don't believe they can save money. They don't believe they can achieve things. Well, partly because you got to set up those systems and structures.
00:26:06
Speaker
If you pay yourself first on this sense, you'll never miss the money because it's never there. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh, I got that money. I can buy that next Swiss with 50% down and pay it off in a year or two. Yep. Yep. So conversely, we bought a surface grinder instead. No. But can I ask, do you finance? I assume you finance it.
00:26:31
Speaker
We have, is that a line of credit? No, I forget. It's either a loan or a line of credit that we're not using, like we got it through COVID and all that, like a decent amount. And we were going to finance the grinder out of that, but I think we just paid cash for it. Good for you. Yeah. Which is great. And like the money's there if we need it for something else. But yeah, Barry's been playing with these numbers. That's what he does.
00:26:57
Speaker
You should, you need to be involved in that though. Yeah, I am. I just, we've talked about so many scenarios. I forget exactly. Okay, fair enough. But yes. But it's an awkward situation because he's a relative, but he's not a business owner. He's not going to be at that business as long as you are, and darn it, it's your business. I'm not trying to teach you a lesson. I'm just saying, you make those decisions. You take his advice, but you should take others advice. You should listen to other advice as well.
00:27:25
Speaker
and make sure that what gets talked about got done.
00:27:29
Speaker
That's true as well. Yes. Yes. We have a line of credit. And I can't imagine folks are unfamiliar with my feelings on debt, which have changed. And they've changed as I've grown. They've changed as our business has grown. But the key to a line of credit is you want to negotiate it or get it when you don't need it. So kept that intuitive about it. Why would you get it when you don't need it? Obviously, you should. But I know. It's such a weird thing. Yeah.
00:27:56
Speaker
Yep. But that's my plan is I don't want to, you know, cash is precious to the extent you have it. And I don't necessarily want to just fork it all over at one point in time. And so you, but you also don't necessarily want to enter into a three, five, seven type of your obligations. So a line of credit can be a great form of flexibility to say, even if in a case you have all or most of the money to pay for a machine, well, don't blow your wad. Um, take, make up a number of $10,000 machine, make up a, um,
00:28:25
Speaker
Borrow, pay some down, and then every month put $1,000 or $2,000 toward that line. Even if you already have the money. That sounds weird, but something like that. Yep. A lot of these are concepts that I didn't even know about five years ago. When I started getting my first machine financing loans, it was like, wow, they'll let me do that. Right.
00:28:46
Speaker
I'm learning as I go. Barry's been working here for four years now, so he's taught me an insane amount about bookkeeping and finance and accounting and how to structure loans and line of credits and what the difference is and how each benefits certain situations and so many variables that maybe the average business owner doesn't know, especially a technical machinist kind of guy that just wants to make parts.
00:29:12
Speaker
It's been extremely valuable for me to now have that on staff to learn and to understand and to have him run that kind of stuff. It's been wonderful. It's allowed me to do what I do best. Yeah. It's been a big part of our story and I want it to be a bigger part of going back to what we're doing and growing versus shrinking. We bounce around a little with our YouTube. It's shop tours, it's our story, it's cam and cab and it's parts and widgets.
00:29:41
Speaker
Number one, I love it. Number two, I don't want to just do one thing, but if there's one thing in that whole world that I think, we're good at the shop tours by luck. We have a big enough YouTube where we can get into the shop. That's like, okay, it is what it is.
Parting Inserts Troubleshooting
00:29:55
Speaker
Awesome. Run with it. The one thing I think I'm uniquely-ish qualified for is to talk a little bit more about the balance of manufacturing and business.
00:30:03
Speaker
I'm not the world's best businessman, but darn it, I will do anything I can to help folks get better at the stuff about accounting or HR or even marketing. Come learn as we're learning. It's so important to how you succeed and enjoy what you do.
00:30:18
Speaker
Yep. I find that higher level stuff difficult to talk about because I don't feel like an expert. I'm not an expert and I don't want to give bad advice, but there's a difference between advice and perspective. It's like, this is how I see it. This is my experience. I'm sharing that as opposed to, I think I'm afraid of being the guy who's like, this is how you should do it. I believe that.
00:30:41
Speaker
Yep. It's like the marketing role. It's not that I'm not willing to tackle some of it myself. I don't necessarily have the time, but it's also, I want somebody who looks at a Google analytic number or a conversion thing or a cloud or a funnel metric and is like, Oh, you could do way better than that. Or that's great. I don't have opinions on marketing. I have opinions on business. They're not always right. But I at least can say, Hey, this is not usual. Or, you know, just cause the lender's telling you they'll do this doesn't mean it's actually like, they're not the one you should be listening to right now.
00:31:11
Speaker
Yeah, but you need someone who can analyze the information. It's like how you can listen to a CNC machine and hear the chatter and be like, okay, we need to slow down the speeds and feeds. You need the marketing guy that could do that. Speaking of that though, can we switch topics? I don't know why I'm having partying insert life issues. I'll tell you right now, partying inserts last forever for me. I don't even think about partying inserts. I can't remember the last time we've replaced either one.
00:31:38
Speaker
So we have the kind of normal Sandvik blade, QD, insert. It's neutral cutting, 1130 grade. This is like all the plain vanilla. And they actually often will last so long that it becomes a problem because you may forget about it. But then about two months ago, they started not lasting long at all. And then yesterday, I was getting
00:31:59
Speaker
you know under 10 minutes and under maybe sorry 10 minutes in the cut parting is a lot of time or a lot of actual parts because it part even takes you a few seconds but maybe you know somewhere between 10 and 30 part offs of a sub one inch 4140 um
00:32:17
Speaker
It's for our diamond pins. And so part of me, I don't remember a couple of months ago, whether it was the same material that was causing the issue. It's hot rolled so it has a scale, but I'm pretty sure I don't have the part writing this morning. I want to make sure we're turning through the scale with the CNMG roughing inserts that when you're part of it, you're coming into a machine thing. Talk to me though, what am I not thinking of here?
00:32:41
Speaker
If it's new, it sounds like something changed, like you're parting a blade is bent or loose or something. I always try to go back to the basics. Something's stupid. I'm not seeing it. The coolant hole is blocked or it's loose or crooked or the holder is cracked where it wedges in place or something. Right.
00:33:05
Speaker
I mean, I've got this on one of my electric spindles on the Tornos, 60,000 RPM spindle. It comes with this little nine millimeter wrench and it cracks in the V of the wrench of the nine millimeter slot. Like in the corner, it cracks and it's the second one I've cracked.
00:33:28
Speaker
Why? This is dumb. The wrench though, not the wrench. Yeah, yeah, the wrench. But you're tightening it. You're like, why does this still feel, it should come to a dead stop. Why does it feel soft? It might be at the end. And I had to look under the microscope and there's a hairline crack. Hilarious. And it's dumb little things like that. You just don't. I love you, by the way. I was looking at my wrench under a microscope. Dude.
00:33:50
Speaker
If I could wear that microscope all day, I would because I use it so much. I'm so tempted to buy another microscope because now that Pierre is running the Swiss and the microscope is at the Swiss, I have to bump him out of the way every time I want to use it.
00:34:06
Speaker
Between hanging up on this podcast and going to the bathroom, I'd like you to purchase a second microscope, Josh, for $100. Come on. No, no. It's like a $1,000 microscope. Buy that one. Oh my God. Yeah. I've had those in my shopping cart for a while, and I'm going to pull the trigger on two of those. We just leave it on. Sorry for not being green. It just stays on all time, and it's amazing.
00:34:29
Speaker
We also, actually I use the loops a ton. Those are at every cart and I like using the loops because of the microscope. But every now and then I need to like lean into the machine and use it.
00:34:40
Speaker
You're totally right. I wasn't thinking at all about the holder, like downstream problem. I was looking at the insert, which is the symptom, not the problem, right? Like something else must be. What's the shape of this insert? Is it the little, like it's not a rectangle, but it's like a little tapered thing. Or is it the kind of what looks like a P with it? No, it looks more like a parallelogram.
00:35:04
Speaker
Yeah, okay. It just wedges in place. Yeah. Straight in, straight out. Yeah, the holder could be worn out.
Parting Blades Techniques
00:35:12
Speaker
I've replaced the blade. Yeah. Yeah, it's their Corocut QD. You're right. I got to think it's something wrong. The parting, the coolant was slightly not well aimed, but I fixed that. I wanted to look
00:35:31
Speaker
at, there's a chance, I'll go troubleshoot this this afternoon, but there's a chance what I was doing was when I roughed, I was roughing back halfway through where it would part. Yeah. That makes sense. So when the, what's that three millimeter parting blade 0.118 inches, when it was coming into part, half the blade was contacting more material and half wasn't, that could be. Is that a new change?
00:35:57
Speaker
I don't remember, John. Yeah, because as you said, ideally, you want to turn past that so that the parting blade has beautiful, fresh material. And that's how I try to program for that. And then, I mean, Sandfic has that slow motion video of parting through a hammer, eccentrically or whatever. Really?
00:36:16
Speaker
Oh yeah, it's beautiful. It's their Y-axis parting video. Oh, OK. And it's like totally interrupted cut through a square off-center square of hardened hammer material. And they're pretty confident in their part off blades. But it shouldn't have a problem cutting through the scale. But if you said it's cutting through half scale, half cut, that's not ideal. Then half the insert's going to wear.
00:36:46
Speaker
This scale has not been a problem for the CNMGs. It takes them like a boss. They never wear out so good grief. Frankly, those parting inserts are
00:36:57
Speaker
way more expensive and you only get one edge. The CMMG, I got four. It's rough with the CMMG. I was running a ballpark 350 or 400 SFM at 3,000 per rev and it's sub-spindle. It's supported on both sides, which is great usually for parting to a life.
00:37:20
Speaker
And I used to have slow down at center, but I took that off. It's a fusion setting where it changes your feed rate when it gets toward the SFM issues, toward the center line. I took that off because it's not an issue on other parts. I don't have it on. I think this was the first part I programmed on the dual spindle, and so it was kind of a relic. And then I always think back to
00:37:40
Speaker
Sometimes slower is not better, not to give any credit to Lauren's joking aside. But rather, if you're actually using a coating, then you want to let that coating work, and that requires some heat. So I try, and the box says, geez, 400 to 600, I think, SFM. And it's usually like 3,000 to 9,000 per rev or something silly on the box. Right. What's your go-to party for like 17.4 feet per rev?
00:38:09
Speaker
I don't, I'm going to look it up real quick or, or just any, I guess titanium is probably different. It's not much one thou. Yeah. Oh, interesting. Let me look up. I'll look up on the tornos.
00:38:22
Speaker
I'm thinking about, I could sweep the blade into an indicator. That's also really, I could check all the fasteners and screws, check the blade, which is easy to pull out. It has a long stick out on the blade, a long extension, which is unfortunate, but needed because of the sub spindle coming in to grab the part. Now I could use the groove tool to part off some of it before the sub comes in, but I don't love that idea.
00:38:48
Speaker
You shouldn't need to. You're just wearing the groove tool now. Yeah, the groove tool has been solid. I'm already using the groove tool on this part to create the hard relief grooves. Like yesterday, it was bad. Yesterday, I blew through three inserts, and then the fourth one, I ran it, went away, five parts came back, and the insert fell out, which means there's some catastrophic problem, and then it ruined that side of the blade. So that's not a good outcome.
00:39:13
Speaker
Yeah, I've certainly been there doing everything you're doing. You're like, why did I just go through four inserts today? Oftentimes, hopefully, it ends up being an obvious thing that you don't see. So to answer your question on the Swiss, my part of feed rate is one thou. Interesting. Yeah, one thou per rev, which I know is slow, but it just works. It works and works. Oh, yeah. Speed. I mean, on the Swiss, we get 10,000 parts. We get 20,000 parts out of an insert, like more. I don't even know.
Operational Challenges and Team Workflows
00:39:42
Speaker
Well, you're answering my question, which is clearly you're not rubbing then or yeah wearing it out from too light of a cut Yeah, and then on the Nakamura, I think we're doing the same Do you do any like why adjustment on the parting blade? I get it on center. How do you do that? I usually do a skim cut and then just look I
00:40:03
Speaker
Oh, like you're facing it with it? Yep. Interesting. It's not the most rigid thing. It'll bend out of the way a little bit. But it lets you see why pretty clearly. But I don't really get any tit on right now. Oh, actually, no. I shouldn't say that because I am facing on the sub. I should check it before the sub gets faced to make sure that I don't have a tit. Because if I have a tit, that means I'm probably low. Well, actually, it could be high as well.
00:40:30
Speaker
Yeah, I was going to suggest center height for sure. I don't know if you haven't checked it much. Even after changing insert, it depends on the insert, but I try to check it as a thing. Well, and I think the holder from Sandvik actually allows you to adjust the center line on the holder. Now, I can do it with Y as well. But yeah, you're totally right. These are like basic things I should have thought of before asking. No, that's good.
00:40:58
Speaker
Okay. Thank you. On the, on the sweat on the Nakamura, I'm parting off at one and a half though cooking. And I just do that for every material. I don't change it ever. What brand? Uh, I'm using an Iskar, but same shape as what you're talking about. They call it a F or something. I forget. Um, but yeah, cool. Okay. I'll go play with that.
00:41:22
Speaker
What are you up to today? Today, we're having some issues with Norseman consistency. We had two blades when we're cutting the bevels, a huge chunk just chipped out. What? On the machine, on two damn steel blades. Oh, material. Yeah.
00:41:37
Speaker
Oh. It's happened before, but it's not been a problem. But now that it happened on two damastile blades, it sucks. That's a dumb question. That's potentially delamination of the Damascus or whatever they call it. Yeah. But it happens in the same location on regular blades as well.
00:42:00
Speaker
So it's more of a tooling, toolpath, fixture vibration, something. I'm not totally sure yet. How big a crater are we talking? I've seen the size of, I don't know, a dime. The chunk comes out. What? At the cutting edge, at the choil, at the handle side of the cutting edge, just a chunk will break off where it's thin.
00:42:29
Speaker
And the tool is Burland as well? The cutting tool? No. What? No, that's usually fine. What are you doing up there? I don't know. In Canada land. I've literally never heard of this. Yeah. I mean, the blade is thin at that point. Okay. Huh. It's like the cutting edge.
00:42:50
Speaker
So I'm going to look into that. We also pre-machined the cutting, like the sharpened edge on the mill. So when it comes off, it looks like a sharpened knife, even though it's very much not. But we've always done that, except there's some inconsistency in that, that when Eric sharpens, he's usually too slow to remind me, like, yeah, I've actually been struggling with that for a long, long, long, long, long time. I just never brought it up.
00:43:15
Speaker
okay, I can handle that. So I'm going to dig into that. I looked yesterday and I saw some weird toolpath stuff that I was like, it's been a while since I've looked at that. Let me see it with fresh eyes and try to improve that.
00:43:30
Speaker
Little things like that. It's like I've realized my job now, other than make rasks, but is try to improve everybody else's process, like career, and make it easier for them to crush and do their jobs well, and remove all of these little variables. We're ordering a filtration system for our tumblers. Oh. So it's a paper band filter for tumblers, $4,000 or $5,000 from Gray Mills.
00:44:00
Speaker
The more I think about it, the more it's an absolute no brainer because clean media will cut better and the parts will be so much cleaner coming out of the tumbler. Like right now, especially with the pens, we're spending so much time cleaning parts that it's like slowing down flow and production and everything. And I'm like, well, it's time to get that filter.
00:44:21
Speaker
Microscopes and fill coolant maintenance are two of the things that are maybe the less sexy, but I absolutely love. Holy cow. I fully hear you on that. Yeah. Cool. What about you?
00:44:36
Speaker
We've got a recruiter coming in to meet them and see if they can help us on that maintenance job. Then I am going to work on those royals. I just want to get them installed, period. There's nothing wrong with you rolling up your sleeves and getting some work done. Just don't make a habit of it.
00:44:53
Speaker
Yeah, I totally hear you. And we're still cranking through. We've had a couple of minor setbacks on our order queue, which I don't regret. Just, hey, we said, hey, I wasn't happy with a minor feature on a plate, so let's put it back on and fix it. And it's oddly hard to make that call, even when you know it's right. But when you're done and you fix it, you're like, OK.
00:45:16
Speaker
That was the right call. Right now, we're under, I feel, pressure to continue to crank. We had a little bit of a slowdown in sales, and I'm part of these wondering because we put a little disclaimer up on our website that we're a little behind right now. I think it's the right thing to do as part of our communication, but now I'm like, oh man. Yeah, but hey, on us, let's get to the next week. Let's get caught up as much as we can, and then I can take that down.
00:45:39
Speaker
Yeah, and it's good for you to have that customer perspective of like, okay, I'm a new guy show up to the website. Oh, they're delayed by a bunch of weeks. Yeah, maybe I'm not interested anymore, which is which is silly because it's still a solution that you need that you wanted there for a reason. But I do that too. I go to other websites and I'm like six weeks delivery. Do I really want that anymore? Yes, I should have ordered it three weeks ago, but
00:46:02
Speaker
Yeah, I want to be a McMaster car. They don't make excuses, the great customer service, they've never run out of inventory period and they make it right and they don't pester you with excuses of why they're not excellent because they're excellent. Yeah. It's like that classic thing. You never have to tell people that you're the best, it should be obvious. And the people that do tell others that they're the best are usually not.
00:46:28
Speaker
Yeah, right. You just don't have to love it. Awesome. Well, hey, have a good day. You too, bud. I'll see you. Bye. Bye.