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#245 - How To Stay On Track
238 Plays4 years ago
TOPICS:
- Student internships & explaining machining to a 16 year old.
- Willemin updates!
- Grimsmo purchased an optical comparator and it is incredible.
- Horizontal milling machines.
- Saunders' Okuma is getting isntalled.
- Daily to do lists is huge!
Preview attachment Saunders regional map_v2.pdf
Saunders regional map_v2.pdf 6.7 MB
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Motivation and Entrepreneurship
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machining episode number 245. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmough. John and I talk every week as entrepreneurs to try to push us outside of our comfort zone, give us other kind of a reality check and ask those questions that you always want to know. Yeah, perspective from somebody else. Yeah.
Promoting and Attracting Students to Machining
00:00:23
Speaker
So I want your opinion on this. The local high school vocational machining program, it's always in this perpetual state of how do we spread the word on manufacturing, on machining, recognizing about half the students that come into that program have some awareness of machining through usually a family member. Many don't, sometimes they just pick it because they drew names
00:00:50
Speaker
on a like circle page on a sheet. It's not necessarily ideal. And so what are the best things that we can do both to raise awareness of machining as a whole, but then also to hopefully within this area of Southeast Ohio recruit students, good students to come in that want to find a passion. And so the thing we're working on now, there's some events that happened soon where students
00:01:18
Speaker
that haven't yet decided to move into the vocational track, have the chance to come through and see welding and nursing and different programs. So what we made, I'm holding up is a map of about a 30 mile radius and it lists 24 companies that are either explicit machine shops, manufacturing companies with heavy amounts of machining and all of whom have some form of a pretty active relationship
00:01:45
Speaker
You know right now happens to be a great time if you're interested in pursuing this because right now I think almost any one of these companies would be Happy to welcome new candidates in for internships or paid jobs, etc That makes sense Yeah, is there a question? It's very cool. Sorry. The question is
Engaging and Inspiring Youth in Machining
00:02:07
Speaker
What's the point of the map? The point of the map was to show students, I guess the question is, what's it like to be a 16-year-old, sophomore in high school, whether it's you or oftentimes the parents are still involved in a good way showing. So the thought was, if we show them how many opportunities, because most of these aren't household name companies. For sure. You're going to see these driving down Main Street. So is that a good way
00:02:36
Speaker
to whether it's changing or tweaking this math that I'm holding up or other ways to show how many opportunities there will be if you go into this trade.
00:02:49
Speaker
Yeah, because it's good to give that perspective to the kids. I mean, you've had plenty of interns come through the shop. I've never had any, so I have very little experience with high school kids who are interested in this trade, just like two that I can think of. I wish I had more because it's really fascinating to see that kind of curiosity and spark at such a young age, and I know you're doing a good job of nurturing that.
00:03:15
Speaker
and encouraging it both through your videos, but also the interns and just your local relationships and stuff. So yeah, I mean, anything you can do to bolster that is a win for us, for everybody, for the industry, right? Yeah. We'll throw up, see if we can get a copy of this in the job description. I just want to know, if there's one thing I've been thinking about a lot this week, which is unrelated, it's making sure you remember we all live in a vacuum and it's good to push yourselves outside of your own.
00:03:44
Speaker
I want to say I push outside your comfort zone. It's also just like life happens in different ways than you perceive it. And there's one thing I know. Dixon, I had any ability. I've lost the ability to think about what the world looks like to a current 16-year-old who may not understand machining or careers or jobs. Even post-school life is... I can't relate to it anymore, which I was disappointing. But okay, so let's figure out how to relate to it.
00:04:14
Speaker
Absolutely. And the
Explaining Machining Simply and Effectively
00:04:15
Speaker
world is different than it was in the late 90s when we were 16. Even in the late 2000s when I was starting to get into manufacturing, I did not realize how big of an industry it was. You Google machine shop and like two come up and then you're like, okay, this
00:04:37
Speaker
I still tell people, if you can get a tour of a machine shop anywhere, just go do it. Ask. Don't be afraid to ask. They might say no, but ask's in the next guy, right?
00:04:49
Speaker
The fact that it's called machine shops is wonderful because machines are cool. It has nothing to do with C and C machines or metal cutting machines or machine tools. It's just like, oh, machines. I love machines. So if somebody, if you're at Thanksgiving and your second cousin's brother asks you, what is machining? How do you explain it? Oh, man. I mean, making things, typically cutting metal, that doesn't have to be metal, but that's how I think of it. That's how I use it.
00:05:17
Speaker
to make parts. I don't know. I don't have a great explanation. I kind of laugh. Oh, what do you do? And I don't know how to answer that still. I've never been good at doing that. So a lot of times I'm like, I don't know. I make stuff or I guess I haven't been asked that in quite a long time from a random stranger. Right.
00:05:38
Speaker
I always try to think about items that maybe they'll relate to, so firearms, knives, car axle, gears, but now it's almost like, hey, throw. I always mention the shoes that you're wearing, the mold. The soles were made on a mold. That mold was made on a CNC machine. I feel like maybe they could be like, oh yeah, I guess that has to get. But now it's almost like, hey, explain it as like, hey, it's the opposite of a 3D printer. Oh, wow. Yeah.
00:06:05
Speaker
I just think it's worth noting as you and I start to not be 22 year olds anymore. You know, the trades have been good to me and totally, totally random change of theme here. But I was listening to the jewel, the singer, her guest episode on Joe Rogan. And she said some wonderful things about being selfless and paying it forward and opportunities. And it made me kind of remind myself that when I do
00:06:31
Speaker
when I do whatever retire or move on, I want to make sure I didn't miss too many opportunities to pay. I mean, I always say that YouTube pays it for it and it does, but let's make sure you're really putting in ways to pay it forward, which means, hey, making sure we're doing what we need to do to encourage and build that next generation.
00:06:54
Speaker
eliminating that kind of tribal knowledge, like all the knowledge and experience you've gained over the past 10, 20 years and future, you don't want that to die with you, you know? Yes, yeah.
Changing Perceptions of Machining
00:07:08
Speaker
Got it. Well, if anybody else is listening, I would welcome with open arms ways to try to connect. It's a typical quintessential small trade school program. There's not a huge budget. They can't start trying. Yeah, it sounds great. If you could be on TikTok and Facebook and Instagram with great content all the time, that's not realistic. Fliers and
00:07:33
Speaker
getting in touch with career counselors is very difficult in the schools. So we've tried to just do word of mouth and showing off the lab and doing our best when these students do visit to show them parts that hopefully can open their eyes to the stuff that you and I have talked about, like, hey, it's not a dirty factory with manual labor so much as it is post processors and, you know, state of the art technology and
00:07:59
Speaker
can be mapped and set up and built like Lego type stuff if that sets a building so well as as you said like what is the mindset of a seat of a 16 year old and how do they like everybody knows that things are made I would hope but how many people go the next step and like how was that made what is that material and I try that with my kids you know they're
Machining's Role in Electric Vehicles
00:08:24
Speaker
8 and 11 right now and they get it. They know like titanium is a cool strong metal and aluminum is light and they know plastics and things like that. It's kind of cool to see but how do you get, how do we make sure that the next generation kind of looks at things and realizes that effort went into them and they were made and there's molds involved and there's design elements, things like that. We got to figure out how to just say that quickly and get them thinking.
00:08:54
Speaker
So that was actually one of the cool takeaways from emo was seeing more
00:09:02
Speaker
focus on electric vehicles, which is nothing new. But what I hadn't realized is there's a big focus on light weighting of other vehicle parts that previously hadn't been because the battery is so heavy and weight is everything to the range that they're putting more R&D and part cost into other elements of the vehicle to get the weight down.
00:09:28
Speaker
Which that's awesome. Like I think, I mean, we saw five axis machining doing that, but then you think about like, Hey, is generative going to trickle into there? Cause that is literally the perfect use case of high volume, real waste savings, real impact on the environment, uh, quality of life capability. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I know Tesla's, I think the sheet metal is mostly aluminum. Uh, whereas a lot of cars, they're steel or they always have been steel.
00:09:55
Speaker
Um, and then the super cars, they're like carbon fiber composite, you know, body panels and stuff. Cause they're like, look, the batteries, they weigh something. And at this technology, we can't get rid of that. And if we want, you know, tons of range and lots of power, it's, it's a given. So let's save weight everywhere else. I like it. Does the range limits ever get you? Not really. Yeah. No, I mean the farthest road trip I've ever done in my Tesla is to your, your house, like three years ago.
00:10:25
Speaker
when we did the supercharger a couple of times, and it was great. Yeah. I think you could do it with one supercharge, right? If it were halfway-ish? Yeah, maybe a top up. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was close. And you don't want to push it. If it's 50 miles between each supercharger, you take the earlier one. Yeah. But I mean, three years ago, there's got to be way more EV plugs by this point.
00:10:53
Speaker
Got it.
Wilhelmin Machine Update
00:10:54
Speaker
Okay. Well, thank you for hearing me out on that. Yeah. What's going on? Um, Wilhelmin is seeing steady progress. Uh, we took, uh, when I had it running last week or turned on, uh, there were a couple of air leaks inside the mechanical cabinet, I guess, like where all the accesses are. And that's where all the air system is. And one of the, um,
00:11:19
Speaker
cups on the filter regulator things had big cracks in it. So it was just, I could feel it leaking air. It's just old. Uh, so Pierre took them all apart. There's like five or six cups. So one of them was cracked. Got to replace that one of them, the filter part on the inside. There's a plastic thing that broke. Um, so we can't really throw it back together. So from Wilhelmin, we just, just yesterday I ordered.
00:11:41
Speaker
all new, everything we need there. So the machine's kind of waiting until we get that air system back in stock so we can replace it. I bought a new LED light for the machine enclosure, which happens to be almost the exact same one that's in the current. It's a Waldman machining light meant for coolant and everything.
00:12:03
Speaker
And it was, I think it was 400 US and it should fit in the existing mounting brackets and plug right into the machine and be like super high quality, 5,000 Kelvin. Yes. Perfect LED lights. And I'm like, I wonder if it's in the current because it's so bright and beautiful and it happens to be the exact same light, just a little bit shorter. So that's me.
00:12:25
Speaker
I love 5K, like white, white, white light. My wife does not. She likes like 3,200. She's nervous, but she just likes the softer yellows. And I'm like, no. Well, it's funny in the shop, we have 5,000 here, but at home, I mean, our house is yellow on the outside, a lot of yellow on the inside. We have 3,000 K lights on the inside. It works. I like that. Yeah. That's funny. Awesome. Yeah. What else? That's pretty much it.
00:12:54
Speaker
Have you figured out, we're talking about the workflow of the theoretical, like, hey, get the minor things, fix air leaks, but then throwing material in, even brass and posting, is that going to, you good to go there? I think so. I ordered a part off tool holder, like an HSK holder that'll hold a part off blade.
00:13:13
Speaker
So when that comes in, I can set that up. Otherwise, I should have all the tool holders I need. And then I haven't spent hardly any time in Fusion, like programming. And I haven't tried to post a single thing yet. So I don't know what that process is like. But sometimes I'm not good at doing that too far in advance, because I feel like I'm not ready for it. I'm the kind of guy that's like, OK, I'm ready to go. OK, now I'll program, now I'll tweak, now I'm ready to test and tune. Yeah.
00:13:42
Speaker
That's coming soon. I look at some of the parts that we would make on ours and I'm like, I could program this infusion in four minutes. Notwithstanding the, I guess, be at 90, making sure you've got, actually, that's the great thing. You don't have that chuck in the advice in the way because it's out of the way. Anyway, yeah. Who makes the holder that holds the HSK part off blade? It's a square hole broached.
00:14:07
Speaker
like holder. So an HSK holder with a square hold in the bottom. So I just take a 12 millimeter stick tool and kind of clamp it in, which I have from the tornos. We have one that we're not using. Yeah. So it was like, sweet. Who makes the holder? Utilis. It's a Swiss company and we have a lot of their tooling on the Swiss on our tornos right now. So. That's who makes the HSK 40. Yeah. And they make it specifically with the two drive dogs that keep it aligned rotationally. Got it. Interesting.
00:14:37
Speaker
It's right out of the Wilhelmin catalog. I mean, I'm buying it from Wilhelmin. Oh, perfect. Okay. It looks like most of the YouTube videos and folks I've seen run Wilhelmin's use slitting saws, but some of the parts that we're going to do, I think I really want to stick with the parting blade. Yeah.
00:14:55
Speaker
Your traditional lathe cut off too. I mean, I'll have both in the machine if we end up with one. Yeah. I talked to CJ. I said, what part of, um, slitting saw do you have? And he says, I bought one. I haven't used it yet. Oh, really? I'm like, whoa. Okay. So he uses the, uh, I guess part off blade to part almost all the way through and then clamps it with the vice and then, I don't know, mills it off. I'm not sure. Yeah. Interesting. That's awesome. Yeah.
Optical Comparator Precision and Usage
00:15:26
Speaker
How's that compare progress? How's, how's that comparator? The optical comparator is nuts. It's so good.
00:15:36
Speaker
Yeah. So guys got it plugged in Monday. Angelo spent like five minutes teaching me how to use it. And I'm like, okay, I got it. This is cool. And then I was already measuring tapers and distances and things like that. Um, it's got hide and hide glass scales on it. And the digital readout reads the 10 millionth of an inch. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is so cool. It's fantastic. Um, I'm almost in like, I got to play with it quite a lot yesterday for like an hour or two and I cleaned it up. I stoned the table.
00:16:05
Speaker
Um, just kind of got comfortable with it. And I think I'm out of the like, uh, excitement phase. And there's only so much like playing you can do right now. I'm just waiting for the practical example of like, uh, okay, give me a real part that I just made that this will benefit from me from, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like I've already, you know, played with it a bunch. I showed Eric, Eric played with it a bunch.
00:16:32
Speaker
and we're showing the guys and stuff. And I'm like, okay, I'm onto the next. But now that we have it, we know how to use it. I think it'll get used almost every day, at least once by somebody. Really? Yeah, maybe every week. I don't know yet. We'll see. But I know Pierre's gonna use it a lot for lathe parts.
00:16:50
Speaker
Okay, awesome. I'll be curious anecdotally just to see, we have absolutely deemed ours quote unquote essential, even though we recognize we use it maybe every four months. Yeah. But we're not willing to sell it. Yeah.
00:17:04
Speaker
You said yours has digital calipers bolted to the sides? It does not sound like a hide-and-hide DRO level machine at all. Exactly. Now that I have this one, I'm like, how could you live with anything else? Yeah. Here's a fair point. Even with the glass scales, I put an end mill in there, one-sixteenth inch end mill, rotated so I could see the flutes. I was just for fun trying to measure from one flute to the next to get my maximum diameter. I was getting
00:17:34
Speaker
It's, it does get to be operator skill to like, do you count the line? Where do you, do you go from line to line on the inside outside kind of, um, so seeing like a five 10th variance in the scale readout, just because of that. Unsurredness, you know, like I'm sure there's operator skill and experience that, that will get that nailed. You could probably, um, test yourself on a gauge bin and like calibrate yourself. Right. Would you try that if you have a check-in this week?
00:18:04
Speaker
I bought a set of Mitutoyo gauge blocks from a Craigslist option, an ad that I was doing because he had a bunch of other stuff. I saw the gauge blocks and I was like, done, I want those too. It turns out they're metric, all of them. Whatever. I have a metric set of gauge blocks. The biggest one is 100 millimeters and I put it on three and a half inches or whatever it is, almost four inches. I put it on the table and I measure it from side to side.
00:18:28
Speaker
Yeah. And I put the machine into metric, the optical, and I measured exactly 100 millimeters to the micron. Well, that's actually good. It works. I was going to say, that's the fun, quote unquote, drinking game is put a piece of tape over the readout and then be like, OK, who's up first? Sure, sure.
00:18:46
Speaker
Yeah, because you don't want to cheat yourself with the readout. You mean like, oh, yeah, a little bit more. Yep. That's right. That's what we call a human PID loop, where you just keep moving the handle until you get the value you want. Until it looks right. Yep. Well, that's what I remember from using ours. It's a light projection. So the deeper your object is,
00:19:06
Speaker
the more potential there is for shadow casting, which can make the line less cursor. You can focus in if I remember, but... Ours has, you can actually tilt the light bulb left to right and cast a shadow more on one side or the other. And it's sick. That's snazzy. Even if the part is bang on straight, but it's super long, you're actually tilting the light to the left and causing the shadow to be exactly where you want. And I was like, okay, I got it. This is really cool. That's solid.
00:19:34
Speaker
So let me ask you a metrology question. Look at a guy asking this. I had an answer. I'm curious to see what yours would be. Picture a part that looks like a deck of playing cards box. Except instead of the sides being straight up and down, the sides are dovetailed in. So the top is a smaller plane than the bottom. Just like a pyramid. Flat top pyramid. Yeah. A normal 45 degree dovetail. But there's a tight tolerance, say under a thousandths of an inch
00:20:03
Speaker
of the dovetail distance, which obviously the distance changes, but nevertheless. And you need to be able to prove that, not just assume the machine did it correctly, and you don't want to use your probe to prove it, because the feedback loop of measuring on the machine you made it on. How would you measure that? On the optical, it would be cake. Yeah, I know. But if you only had hand tools. Oh, I don't know how to answer that. Now that I've seen, I've done that on the optical. I measured two tapers to a flat, and it was like cake, like holy cow.
00:20:34
Speaker
Yeah. Within the first five minutes of touching the machine, that's when I try it. And I'm like, yep, they're both 45 degrees and it's exactly 0.15 to this distance. And holy cow. How would you measure that with hand tools? I don't know. I can't think of anything right now. I'm sure there's five different ways to do it. So the way I said would be the pin, you need two known diameter gauge pins. They don't actually have to be the same diameter, but they have to be known diameter.
00:21:03
Speaker
and they're probably going to be larger than the height of the part. So you might need to lift the part up off of a surface plate with a known thickness of a gauge block, but you can easily mic that with accurate hand tools. You can mic the thickness of your part. You can mic and double check the gauge pin. So what you do
00:21:19
Speaker
is put the two, it's just like measuring three wires of threads. You put the gauge pins up against the taper on each side and mic across everything and you can do the math, I would just do model it out in fusion and that will tell you the distance. Like if you put a flat top, like a ruler on the top and then the gauge blocks on the two tapers,
00:21:46
Speaker
Yeah, well, actually forget about the, I mean, the ruler or the spacer is more just to kind of secure everything. But basically if you, you could just, instead of miking across the dovetail, which is not possible because the dovetail is angled, you just use a daupin on each side to establish a correction. And you're constraining the ceiling. You're putting a...
00:22:04
Speaker
That's what you have to do. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. That would work well, actually. Yeah. If you can mic the dovetails without getting in the way of the ceiling or something. Yeah. That's a great idea. I'm just curious. You mentioned air leaks.
Improving Shop Efficiency
00:22:21
Speaker
We're thinking about more lights out stuff and we have- Good. Yes. I think it might be the one time, it's kind of fun, the one time our paths could diverge.
00:22:32
Speaker
I feel like two years ago when we looked at horizontals and then we were like, oh man, I'd rather have an automated five axis because it's kind of the best of both. And we're not like a true horizontal, like thousands upon thousands of the same part, but I think we're back to the horizontal exploring it. What we need to do is find any air leak in our shop because right now, if we don't close the bulb out at the end of the day or when the last machine is done, it'll drain a tank
00:23:00
Speaker
halfway or all the way overnight, so it's really minor. Any suggestions on how to find air leaks? I mean, everything's got to be off, like come in on a Sunday or something and listen. I don't know. Maybe you could isolate by turning off various ball valves at each thing.
00:23:22
Speaker
But then you're just waiting for the air to leak. You watch the tank or whatever. That's actually a good idea. Any clever ways to do it. But you can isolate one section a night across a week and then figure out which drink the tank. Right. Yeah. And track 50 PSI that night, 10 PSI this night. So it's not that. Maybe. Oh, actually, the other thing we should do is just go undo all of our quick disconnect.
00:23:48
Speaker
air guns one night, because honestly, I've seen those leak before, and that's an easy fix. I know a lot of the machines have solenoids, like when you power on the machine, it opens air to the machine. The machine connections should not be leaking, like on the machine side. Yeah, I'm not worried about that. Yeah. Disconnect air guns.
00:24:11
Speaker
I'm sure it's something ... I'm not worried about our rapid pipe fitting connections. I think it's probably just one or two manifolds or air hoses that has a minor leak, but I'd like to fix it. But in the shop, you must have dozens of air connections that are potential leaks, right? There are a lot. It's worth finding though.
00:24:30
Speaker
And it's worth noting, there's a service that we got a quote on a year or two ago to come in with, I believe it's like a special type of microphone, but it was, I think it was almost like $2,000. I want to say I found what they use for like $600. And honestly, I should think about, it's like one of those tools where you want to buy it and then rent it out so your buddy's for 50 bucks or nothing, whatever. We could all use it, or I'd love to rent it, because then you're able to, I think, acoustically hone in on areas. Really?
00:25:00
Speaker
I should look at that again. Yeah, our compressor is always on because almost every night there's always a machine running. I was looking at the hours on the compressor and it's got 11,000 hours on it. Holy cow. In the almost two years we've had it. Wow. Yeah. Oh, but yours, because yours idols, right? Yeah. So I guess that's part of it.
00:25:22
Speaker
Yeah. If it doesn't need air, it idles for five minutes and then it turns off. But if it does need air in that five minutes, it spools up again. When it's idling though, that counts the same as running. I'm sure there's two counters, but that's the one that's like yelling at you on the screen. Yeah, we got our
00:25:42
Speaker
It's kind of funny. We post it, I think just on Instagram, but a lot of inquiries about how we get along with the FIAC. It's been a good week. Actually, yesterday, we found the spot for the second compressor that's going to work well for convenience of where it's located and hookup. I'll probably wire that in today. The good news is we don't need it needed. It's truly a secondary support, but effectively redundant compressor.
Okuma Machine Installation and Maintenance
00:26:10
Speaker
I haven't done more on it yet because yesterday the Gossager showed up to start our Kuma install. So it's been fun. It's such a different process that we've been through before. That's cool. So what happened so far?
00:26:26
Speaker
Normal stuff, power, transformer, disconnect, or take all the packaging brackets. The only thing I'm not super psyched about is it came with the transformer. I thought the machine was 480, we have 208, but it ends up that apparently the transformer is just in and out at the same voltage, which the transformer is this large cabinet thing.
00:26:48
Speaker
There is a spot for it in the machine, but it does put off some heat. And what we're wanting to do with that machine and what I've heard, it's an option for some folks to keep it outside the machine. And again, there's one thing I know about thermal stuff. It's like, yep, that's not going in the machine up near the casting. And then they're working on the MP. Hold on. Let's talk about that for a minute.
00:27:12
Speaker
I'm confused. First of all, transformer in the machine sounds dumb, as you said. None of my machines have that. Also, it doesn't change voltage. What's the point of the transformer? I agree. I thought that's what a transformer does, is that there's different windings and it changes from 208 to 400 or whatever. Right. Right.
00:27:35
Speaker
It's very strange because the 208 gets wired into a machine disconnect, which I call her because you have to hook that up before they come to do the install. And I called them because I'm like, Hey guys, I'll do this. But the machine panel says, well, actually it says 240 slash four.
00:27:52
Speaker
80 or something. I was like, do you really want me to hook 208 into the machine disk? They're like, yep, because then it goes through that disconnect out to the transformer, then back into the machine. And then the service guy, um, was like, it ends up that we're just going to wire it in and out at the same or something. Uh, it was going to sound like it takes it from 208 to 240 or something. Well, that was my other thing was like, I wanted to make sure we're not, cause you can run.
00:28:19
Speaker
240 machines. You can run them with 208, but I believe sacrifice a lot of your high-end torque or spindle horsepower. He said, no, you're okay. The machine is ready or wired for 208. I'll ask what's up with that. Interesting. Do you have a breaker box on the wall or is the machine disconnect your disconnect?
00:28:44
Speaker
There's a breaker, there's a sub panel across, like it happens to be four feet away from the machine that gets wired into the machine disconnect. And then the wires come out of the disconnect, go in somewhere through the machine, out to the transformer. Transformer comes back into the machine. And I don't fault them at all. I think there was space to put it in the machine. And so some folks that may be fine. But yeah. I mean, the other side of this conversation is Okuma knows what they're doing.
00:29:13
Speaker
You know? Yeah. One of the best brands out there. So yeah. Doing the MP systems today. What's that? That is our through spindle coolant and our miss collector. Okay. Is that a brand? MP systems? It is, yeah. Okay.
00:29:33
Speaker
It's all kind of one unit, if you will, that mis collectors right on top of the TSC pump. But I mean, it is, it is huge. It's huge. And does it get parked outside the machine? Like it's its own floor space. Yeah. Yep.
00:29:49
Speaker
Um, and then they did, they got it rough leveled, but like rough leveled really good. But we talked about that because I was like, that's one of the big things for us is, is getting this machine, um, really stable and dialed in, which it's only been in the shop for four or five days. So I don't think it's fully acclimated to the temperature on the floor, but, um, pretty getting pretty close. Cool. So yeah. Training training starts next week. That's so exciting.
00:30:16
Speaker
Are they your installed dealer? Are they close by or is the guy like in a hotel room? That's probably one of the biggest things that's a drain on our business is being in Zanesville. We really don't have that level of industry here. It tends to be over near Dayton or up near Cleveland for everything from
00:30:37
Speaker
you know, plating guys to machine dealers. So every dealer that we worked with is a two hour drive away, which is definitely not awesome. And they charge you for that travel times. Yeah. I mean, it's not an issue under a new install or a warranty, but yes, when a post warranty service call, you end up with a fair amount of travel expense. Yeah. I mean, a lot of our vendors and dealers are 30 to 60 minutes away in Toronto area.
00:31:05
Speaker
And most of the time it's fine. It's just kind of worked into the cost of the machine purchase. They're like, yeah, we'll install it. But we had some service guys come in and fix the UMAX last year. And it was, you know, an hour travel cost two and an hour travel cost home for two guys. And that adds up surprisingly fast day after day. It's like, holy moly. Yeah.
00:31:29
Speaker
The OSP appears to have, well, we knew this has a much more robust built-in maintenance alarms. You know, I've seen this, I'm pretty sure the current has it, Amish has it on the DMG. So the install guy was already talking about these.
00:31:44
Speaker
I don't know if they're carbide, it would make sense if they were, but they're pretty expensive, like $400 pins that go, they're the last part of the drawbar system. So the bottom of this pin would interface with the top of the pool stud and they are a consumable. They only last for so many, either time or number of tool changes. And of course it's kind of like, okay, that's fine, but it's like, I never had that before.
00:32:07
Speaker
It's easy to say no big deal, except it's like, Oh man, I got to think about like, I was going to ask my buddy at metal quest. I'm like, you have like 25 Okumas. Are you spending five grand a year on, you know, replaceable, consumable inserts there? Yeah. Ask him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:32:29
Speaker
Very cool. Yeah, it's exciting. Yeah. So once the key is handed over and the guy doesn't come back and it's yours, what's the first kind of plan? I guess that's a week or two away. I mean, yes, by all means, we love soaking up new knowledge. I welcome the training. There's going to be questions that we have. But on the flip side, when Ed and I went down to Charlotte,
00:32:54
Speaker
We had an apps guy and another guy there kind of helping us, but we basically were like, we brought our own fixturing and we brought fusion and we just posted code and started going like it wasn't, it's kind of like, I mean, give me a, make sure I understand how to set tool heights and coordinate systems and let's run the role. So cool. And it's cat 40, right? Cat 40 big plus. Okay. So are you buying all new holders for it or are you using your inventory?
00:33:20
Speaker
Every single holder is brand new. We got them all from Big Kaiser. Oh, yeah. The good news is it's the only Akuma. The full studs are different because none of the old holders are allowed to go in this machine and there's no cross-contamination. Good. That's best. Everything will be big plus. I don't want to risk that gap issue with a chip. Yeah. I've had that on the Maury. I've never had an issue with that gap
00:33:49
Speaker
Okay. So I run like I've got three or four big plus holders which have the taper face contact and then 30 regular holders that have the eighth inch gap. Never had a chip in there cause a problem that I know of in the six years I've had the machine. But I can see how it's a concern and you're buying such a great machine. You might as well put great holders on it too. That's what I did on the Kern. I just put RegoFix.
00:34:14
Speaker
you know, PG holders for everything. And I'm like, yeah, these don't go in the Yumak and Yumak holders don't go in the kern. Just period. Yeah. Oh, I mean, think about that. You have two 40 machine. I have three 40 taper machines. I'll get the Wilhelmin. Yeah. Oh my God. It's crazy. That's funny. Look at you. That's awesome. That was awesome.
00:34:36
Speaker
Why I counted it in your, your little Instagram video the other day, you have eight milling machines. We did. I'm like, okay, I have one, two, three, four milling machines. If you count the two U max, which barely count at the moment. Um, nonsense. I use them. I use one to cut foam and that's it. Yeah. The other one doesn't turn on yet, but, uh, but to be clear without debate, the Wilhelmin is a million machine.
00:35:03
Speaker
Yeah. It's Swedish. No, you have to add the turning option on that. That's the way it's stacked. That's true. I accept your apology. Oh yeah. That's awesome.
Managing Tasks and Inventory Improvements
00:35:17
Speaker
What are you up to today? I'm trying to decide. I think that LED light for the wheel limits coming in today and decide if I'm going to install it or if I have Pierre or Angela install it, I'll probably have them install it.
00:35:33
Speaker
My dad's coming by in 20 minutes for a shop tour with his neighbor. Cool. That's cool. He hasn't been here for quite a while, so there's a lot of new stuff. Picking away. Yeah, stuff. This is one of those nosy questions. How does what you just said reconcile with the John Grimson, who's like, I have a list of eight things I get it done every day without fail, without exception. There's absolutely- Absolutely.
00:35:58
Speaker
That's a great question because whenever you ask me that in the podcast, I'm like, I don't know how to answer what I'm up to today because I haven't thought of it. My list today, I got to order Damasteel and send a pen to somebody and that's all that's on my list so far. So I have like six spots empty to find things to do. So a lot of it is
00:36:19
Speaker
tweaks that I need to make to code or things I'm developing or designing for the future, things I need to order, things I need to have the guys do. A lot of my work is now not my work anymore. It's pushed onto the guys like all the production work. It's fantastic. So a lot of my stuff is kind of higher level thinking, fixing.
00:36:41
Speaker
My favorite quote from Pearson is, my job is to do things that are new or broken. That's it. I love it. That's who I am now. It's great.
00:36:52
Speaker
A lot of time is spent in meetings or chatting with the team, chatting with Fraser about future marketing things. Working on GURP, we're making some great progress on that. We've got two developers on it at the same time right now. Our inventory management system is what we're actively working on. That's going to be sick. Awesome. So yeah, that should be making visible progress within the next two weeks.
00:37:18
Speaker
Awesome. Yeah. So I can't always plan my day ahead of time. Like I have things that need to get done, but a lot of it I need to wait for it to come up and then I'm like, okay, I got to do that today.
00:37:31
Speaker
Yes and no. Sometimes, yeah. To use a cliched quote, the future is kind to me for I intend to invent it. I mean, pay yourself first, decide what you need to be doing, and recognize in your role, in your job, you have to be a fireman. You have to put out fires. You have to be able to handle the gotchas, the questions, the pop-ups. But it's a little bit dangerous to bless that long term because it ends up
00:37:58
Speaker
allowing that stuff to happen in a weird way. Yeah, no, you're right. And I do have kind of a running list since I use Visual Studio Code so much to
00:38:11
Speaker
tweak code and do things on the current and all the other things. I have a desktop notes.txt file that I just keep open in Visual Studio on this laptop, on my shop floor laptop. So I have it at home and at work and I just add to it. I just, you know, October 31st, note, note, note, note order round brass, tweak that NPT thread. T67 is destroyed after 30 minutes out of 40, you know, fix that.
00:38:37
Speaker
Things like that. So those are my more long-term, like if I need a task, I look there, it's got to be done. And that's where I'll pay myself first. So many of the things that need to get done come out of that list. It's just kind of a running, don't forget this. And I don't use Trello very much at all. Trello is like my long-term storage notes right now. I don't use it daily.
00:39:02
Speaker
Yeah, I still have it and I use it, but I use this desktop like notepad file quite a lot.
00:39:11
Speaker
Yeah, I've found a system that's worked out for well over a year. So which for me is completely sustainable versus things I tried in the past that work and I have a daily list and that is absolutely stuff that either I want to or needs to happen today and it it is not permitted to allocate further thought to whether it will be done today or not like it's simply like do that stuff and then I have a longer term list which is Anything I'd like to do but isn't there and it's interesting because that ends up becoming stale very quick and I either
00:39:41
Speaker
When I look at it, I try to limit allowing stuff to just percolate and just sit on there forever. It's awkward, but sometimes I just start deleting stuff often. Because you realize if it hasn't been done yet, it doesn't have to be done or there's so many things that I put down that are great ideas, but I'm like, yeah, but I'm never going to do that.
00:40:00
Speaker
But the difference is I would delete stuff in the past and it would weigh on me that I was deleting it. I would judge myself. And kind of the relentless idea of stop thinking was kind of like, dude, get over it, delete it, move on. Do not think about it anymore. I wanted to change a product price, which requires a couple different places for us now. And I haven't done it. And it's like, OK, move on. I'll figure it out again in the future. I'm sure you want to care more about it. Just done.
00:40:29
Speaker
I'm learning that about decision making is that, I mean, it comes from the Latin word to cut off from.
Embracing New Methods and Open-Mindedness
00:40:35
Speaker
That's what decision means, is to cut off from. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I heard that. I'm assuming that's true. But I've learned a lot more about decision making because my whole life, I've always been kind of wishy-washy, never super clear or hard on decisions. I'm like, yeah, whatever. But as a business owner, you really got to put your foot down sometimes for yourself or for other people. Yeah.
00:40:58
Speaker
the more I'm making clear decisions, the better it is. And so many times, even if it's a dumb personal thing, like what movie am I going to watch tonight? Like at the end of the day, I realized I don't care. I'm going to enjoy it either way. Like don't, don't go back and forth for five minutes between two choices. If they really don't matter, if the end result is going to be great either way. And, um,
00:41:23
Speaker
Yeah, if both outcomes are going to be similar, it doesn't matter which you choose. Just make a choice and move forward. Yeah. I have to run, but that's a great segue to a topic I want to go into next week, which is on our group chat, a comment got brought up about the process in which you interview and hire and so forth. I made a statement that
00:41:46
Speaker
I'm doing some self preservation here. It wasn't until it came off, not necessarily as I wanted to, but nevertheless, it really changed my thinking about what's important, the way to do a process in a great way. And I want to kind of talk through that. I think we're all better off for it. And it's kind of what I
00:42:05
Speaker
think back to why I value this podcast and the relationship with you is like, we can't keep doing this stuff in a room by ourselves. You've got to be willing to get outside your comfort zone or what's that balance between having conviction but also recognizing there may be better ways to do stuff. Yeah. And so many times you aren't even aware of other ways to do it until your eyes are open to it.
00:42:26
Speaker
Yeah. And like you have to be willing to see other options and you have to open yourself up to have people tell you other options too. So, so many times I struggle with a thing. And then when I tell one of the guys, they say something that I never would have thought of. And I'm like crap. Now I gotta leave and think about this again. Yeah. Or don't, or are you done? Like, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Totally. Awesome. I will see you next week. Have a great day. Bye.