Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Filtering Advice, and Measuring Tools
236 Plays6 years ago
Taking it to the NEXT LEVEL
Should The Business of Machining be more than a conversation between machinist/entrepreneur buddies?
Saunders and Grimsmo discuss what makes BOM stand out among podcasts, and how to be more clear in their intentions for the podcast.
Who can you trust?? To answer to your question
“Be careful in this day and age because anybody will answer your question” - Quote Saunders liked
In a world of opinions, decide in advance whose opinion you trust. Target your questions to those who can best answer them.
Saunders’ Baby, ProvenCut, PARTNERS with Xometry
Some Xometry products will go up on the ProvenCut website.
Lights OFF, camera, action!
Grimsmo does his first night of “lights off machining” on the Swiss Lathe, and realizes how much help a camera surveillance system would be to allow him to keep an eye on the machines when he’s not there.
“I feel like I’m making the machines feel lonely when I turn all the lights off” - Saunders
The Power of a $10 End Mill
Grimsmo and Saunders talk about spindles, tool life, and setting up a system to better understand when their tools are wearing out.
“My one [$10 - $20] end mill can do up to 500 parts!” - Grimsmo
Some measuring equipment is better than others...
“Woah, that’s an optical comparator on steroids!” - Grimsmo
When to Customize your Website
Saunders and Grimsmo talk about different features that web hosts provide, and the pros and cons to getting a custom website.
Other Topics in this Episode:
- Balancing machine time to crank out parts for everything
- Saunders is going to check out the UMC 500 at a tool show this week
Thanks for listening!
Saunders and Grimsmo discussed having more specific topics on BOM episodes, such as what to look for in a new hire. If you liked this episode, give us a review on your podcast app! We’d love to hear what you think.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Nature
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 139. My name is John Saunders. My name is John Grimsmull. Morning, buddy. Good morning. How are you? Good.
00:00:11
Speaker
Before we get too far, I've had some road time recently and have been listening to some other podcasts and I realized perhaps we've done ourselves a bit of a disservice by not having the short but nevertheless descriptive explanation of what this podcast is. Now, great that the name I think does a great job of summarizing it.
00:00:35
Speaker
You know, the journey of two entrepreneurs as they navigate the machine tool world, machine shop world, and journeys as product-based manufacturing entrepreneurs. That sounds really cheesy, but something like that, right? Right. Yeah. Or do we reference the fact that this is supposed to be a very private, intimate conversation?
00:00:54
Speaker
Yeah, maybe we should every now and then. Because I do think about us every now and then in comparison to other podcasts or people who have guests on or people who just talk about stuff solo. And I think we do have a slightly unique podcast, because it literally is a private conversation between you and I, that in the back of our minds, we know is being listened to by a few people. But it almost doesn't affect what we're talking about.
00:01:22
Speaker
other than the odd time that we may talk to the audience. It's
Marketing Challenges and Consumer Behavior
00:01:28
Speaker
interesting. The beauty is it's a great anecdotal example of the success and failure of marketing something and being an entrepreneur because you and I have this idea, shout out as always due to Rob Lockwood for encouraging us to go to hit the record button.
00:01:49
Speaker
Flip it around. I'm John Saunders. I'm in my truck. I'm driving somewhere. I have four different podcasts that look interesting. I download one episode from all of them. I start to listen. That's real world. That's real life. I don't want this podcast to be limited to folks that may have just only known you or me through other social media examples or whatever. You want to be able to reach out to new people, hopefully, and you want to put your best foot forward.
00:02:17
Speaker
If you just start with the business of machine, that's a different level of engagement or hook than saying something like what we just said or what this really is, which no joke to me, you would be like, wait a minute here. This is really interesting.
00:02:34
Speaker
Yep. As opposed to us just opening by telling us about yesterday or something. If somebody jumps in to the whole series at this episode or any of the episodes, yeah, they should know what they're getting into. You never know if you're different than other people, but you often wonder, at least I find that I want. I guess that's a meta, that statement itself is iterative.
00:02:59
Speaker
when you do something like put out a product announcement or a flyer or an email.
00:03:05
Speaker
you know, when you're the creator of it, it's that like level of I think entrepreneur bias or narcissism where you're like, well, this is my product or this is my thing and this is absolutely awesome. So everybody's
Bias and Consumer Perception
00:03:16
Speaker
going to want to read this. And the reality is no, it's actually pretty much there's a statistical rates of how many folks now will open that and engage in it. Now you can influence those by, by doing a better job. But, um,
00:03:32
Speaker
It's a tough word out there. You've got to differentiate your product and your offering and show that to folks. Yeah, it's so tough because you as the creator think that everybody sees it like you do, but you really have to step back and say, I guess two points, like how are they interpreting the marketing and then just how are they
00:03:56
Speaker
They don't have the same thoughts and feelings and, you know, ideas about it as you do, but it's, you know, whenever I create something, I'm like, Oh, everybody's going to love this, but everybody's not me. And that's great. Um, and sometimes I'll not explain it well enough because I know so much background information that I'm not, I just don't need to give the whole story to me, but I need to like simplify it for everybody else or to over explain things so that it all makes sense.
00:04:24
Speaker
It goes back to a piece of advice I read, I think earlier this year that was solid, which was this kind of idea of be careful. When you ask for advice, don't talk to family and friends because they're shaded by love. I was even reading, oh, this PDF
Market Testing and Ethics
00:04:41
Speaker
somebody sent me that was really cool about this guy. I'm kind of moving away from the fail fast fail cheat mentality a little bit.
00:04:50
Speaker
It's not totally bad, but there's a, the opposite of fail, fast, fail, cheap is kind of plan and have conviction and see it through it to it. Um, but this idea of putting up, uh, many projects, um, and doing some SEO, doing some engagement and seeing what the response is to get real blind data.
00:05:11
Speaker
Here's an unethical example of this, which is not something you should do, but I read about a while back was people would look at buying a rental property. Let's say you live in Minnesota or Minneapolis and you're thinking about buying an apartment as a rental property, you would literally take the brokerage listing pictures of the apartment for sale, put it up for rent on Craigslist and see if people were interested in renting it before you even owned it or had the right to rent it. Not ethical, don't do that. But the idea of what that is,
00:05:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's testing the market before you actually are committing. Instead of fail fast, fail cheap, in that scenario, buying the cheapest rental property you could and being prepared to lose some, you're doing your due diligence. You're testing the market.
00:05:57
Speaker
It was actually a quote that I was excited to share because it hit me, it hit me like a ton of bricks in the simplicity of it, which was be careful in this day and age because anybody will answer your question. So the question is not what to ask, but of whom to ask it. That is very true. Right. Ooh.
00:06:28
Speaker
Then I'm guilty of that. I like to talk. I like to share my opinions. I like to think, I enjoy having, I'd love to be around smarter people too. I'd like to think I'm not blinded by that need to be the loudest voice, but I like to talk. And the reality is more people should say, I don't know, or I'll get back to you or ask somebody else, but nope, most people just want to answer. Or comment. If you're not even asking a question, they'll just give their opinion anyway. Right.
00:06:58
Speaker
That goes back to a mantra I have lived by, which is your job as an entrepreneur isn't just to seek advice. It's to find out whose advice you want to embrace, but ultimately still form your own opinions. That is not easy.
Peer Pressure and Tool Choices
00:07:14
Speaker
No. I had a situation last week where some folks were bad-mouthing somebody.
00:07:19
Speaker
And it made it so easy because I am friendly with these people or I respect them generally It wasn't that bad at making I'm making it sound worse than it is But you know you all of a sudden form this opinion on a person or a product because you just heard it from overheard it from somebody else and I remind myself don't do that like you can let that be a factor or criteria in it but form your own opinions and
00:07:45
Speaker
You know, look at what this product or solution is for you, or did this person treat you well? Man, to me, it's that hard.
00:07:54
Speaker
For sure, because then you're going away from your friends, your peer groups, the information that you are bringing in, even if it's not credible. And it's, I don't know, it's extra work to go out there and do your own research and make your own opinion. But when it matters, of course, that's like the only way to do it. But that said, like,
00:08:18
Speaker
I'm totally guilty of this that I think even in our industry, peer pressure is a thing because somebody starts buying orange vices and they're like, these are the greatest. And then everybody starts buying orange vices and they are great. But you know what I mean? It's this kind of shared product marketing mentality where if Locke would get something and he loves it, then it's good.
00:08:40
Speaker
you know, like, like, there's this instant trust connection. And I in that scenario, I don't need to necessarily go through and do all my due diligence and test out 40 different products because I trust in his opinion. Yes. Yet it is sort of peer pressure. And, you know, he might have a different use for it than I do.
00:08:58
Speaker
Right. It's actually funny you say that because I remember hearing Rob even say something once about one of the CAM toolpaths, I think Infusion. I made a note of that. It kind of singed into my brain. I thought, I don't remember the specifics, but I remember thinking, oh man, I'm never going to use that then because Rob said it's not good for this or something.
00:09:18
Speaker
And then I was thought, man, I really think I need that tool path a long time later. I was like, I was struggling with it or something and I asked him and ends up that his comment was mostly my misunderstanding of like in the context of this part or this workflow or the alternatives, that's a terrible tool path, but totally. So it's kind of like, hold on.
Exciting Partnership with Xometry
00:09:37
Speaker
It's a good lesson in life of like form your own opinions, be educated, do some work on your own. Don't just be a truth. I'm with you. If somebody says they love a product to me, that's enough to say, okay,
00:09:47
Speaker
If I need it, I'll pick one up and so forth. Or at least look into it. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, that's so funny. Your interpretation of that comment. To him, it might have just been some offhand little thing like, oh, that toolpath sucks. Air brackets in this situation. Right. Right. Oh, that's so funny. Rob, we're going to need to talk about this later. No kidding. I actually have some exciting news to share.
00:10:15
Speaker
And this to me just, it makes me, I'm excited for the future, which is we have gotten into the folks at Xometry just as industry folks for a while. And then- Can you explain Xometry to me for a second? Well, so the Xometry that I think more people know is the partner network where you can upload a solid model, Xometry sources the parts for you, either 3D printed, or they have a network of machine shops where you can sign up as a machine shop to be a Xometry partner and they will
00:10:45
Speaker
use their algorithms in AI and so forth to basically match. If you have a lathe part, they know who's good at lathe parts, five axis, five axis.
00:10:54
Speaker
It's an interesting model. There's certainly seem to be a lot of competitors in this space. I understand why that business model exists. I think it hones in on a really interesting fact that a lot of machine shops are good at operating CNC machines, not necessarily at prospecting or finding new customers. There's a lot of value
00:11:20
Speaker
like it or not, there's a lot of value in being partnered up with who can find you the work.
00:11:27
Speaker
But what I'm excited about is they launched Xometry supplies and they kind of did so quietly or rather I think you're gonna hear a lot more about it in the future. For starters, what they're doing on raw materials, it's just aluminum right now, but they're doing saw cut aluminum free shipping at prices that are across the board awesome. And that's probably a way for them to be disruptive and that's okay
00:11:55
Speaker
But even more exciting is tooling. They are recognizing the fact that folks want solutions for tooling that doesn't necessarily involve the legacy distributor model of paperwork, finding people who's in your network, waiting for email call back, meetings, phone calls, accounts, et cetera.
00:12:14
Speaker
And so I showed them what Provencut was and they just said, oh my gosh, yep, we get it. And so long story short, we are working with them now to make sure that some of the stuff that they're selling for cutting tools is stuff that we're going to include on Provencut. So Mitsubishi HTC are two of the ones that come to mind right now that we've already bought some tools to bring them in on Provencut.
00:12:37
Speaker
And we need it. Provencut needs it. You know, the geometry does have a pretty big audience, so it helps us to show that we're working with people beyond just, you know, my current network of folks. And so that made me, that was a proud moment. It was the first time we've ever really had a formal press release go out across the wire. Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, it was cool.
00:12:56
Speaker
That's awesome. Yeah. It adds, I guess it adds validity to both of your brands. Um, you know, sharing, not necessarily partnering together, but, um, you know, sharing this, uh, I guess it is kind of a partnership. You're vetting each other, you know?
00:13:14
Speaker
It's a good, it's a legitimate win-win. We want folks like them and they are going to benefit from folks like us. We have to run a 12 millimeter through spindle coolant drill for a job. We just bought one, it's $140 Mitsubishi drill, which is expensive, but honestly, there's more expensive drills out there in that world. So we're gonna go through the time and effort to see how hard we can push it, what it looks like, how it works. And if you, GrimFo, need to run apart and you come across that, now,
00:13:44
Speaker
you want, you or Angelo or Skye wants that drill, you literally just click and it's in your cart. So the CAM toolpath is there. Yeah, so you find the proven cart recipe, you click once, it'll push the CAM into Fusion 360, or you click somewhere else and it just goes to the Xometry site where you add to cart checkout done.
00:14:04
Speaker
See, that'll be really good for the bigger name tools. If it's a Lakeshore tool or a Maritool tool, you just go there and buy it. But if it's any big name, Sandvik, Isgar, Mitsubishi, Kyocera, whatever, that's all a distributor model. I've got a close relationship with my local tool distributor, so I just send them an email and I get the part in a couple days.
00:14:30
Speaker
But it's still not like add to cart and pay for my own shipping and get it here. Yeah. And I don't have, first of all, I want to mention we, we include
00:14:39
Speaker
links for the Lakeshore tools that we're using. We include links for Mari tool, especially on the holders side. We've got some Mari tool cutting tools as well there. We're not in any way limiting it to Xometry, but I have no problem with the distributor model in terms of them being a force multiplier for sales and tooling companies. I get that role, but I want distributors to also let me buy online. That make sense?
00:15:05
Speaker
So for example, Sandvik, I don't necessarily have a problem with our distributor getting their cut and being a service and support and so forth. But I, when I want a pack of these inserts, just let me go to your website and buy them. Right. So I'm, I'm excited.
00:15:21
Speaker
Yeah, it was funny because we actually, I want to buy a Sandvik parting tool through coolant for the lathe. And I want to buy a wiper insert and a wiper holder, like a 10 pack of inserts. And I basically have to call my Sandvik guy. And I've been avoiding that for two days just because it's like that one extra step where it's like, you know, call him. He probably wants to come in. We'll talk about it. We'll choose the right insert grade and all that. And, uh, yeah.
00:15:51
Speaker
There's value in that. I get it. There is. There is for sure. But you go back to that orange of ice, Rob Lockwood thing, and it's kind of like, oh, if Provencut had a party recipe, it's 1130 grade. Here's the insert. Here's the chip breaker. Here's the bar.
00:16:04
Speaker
just if anything, you can at least just send that to your Sandvik guy and be like, by the way, I want this unless you're telling me I should change the carbide grade because I'm also doing titanium. Great. You're so much further along than the, remind me what turret style do you have or starting from scratch sometimes. Yep. Yep. Cool. Yeah. What have you been up to?
00:16:31
Speaker
I did my first night run of Swiss machining last night unattended. Oh, how'd that go? Great. Well, I don't know. I haven't been to the shop yet. Have there been any fire
Machining Innovations and Challenges
00:16:43
Speaker
alerts in Stony Creek?
00:16:45
Speaker
Not that I know of. I realized I don't have any sort of external monitoring, whether it be a simple video camera or the machine's connected online or something like that. So as I'm driving away, I'm like, I really should put just a Nest video camera on this or something so that I can look in, I can check in every now and then to make sure the shop's not glowing red. Whatnot. Wyze, W-Y-Z-E. Amish had them when we were up at his shop and they're like... I thought he had the Nest ones.
00:17:16
Speaker
Or maybe that was a couple of years ago when I went. Okay. You're not wrong. W-I-C-E. Yeah. On Amazon, they're like 40 bucks or maybe 80 bucks for the Pan Tilt Zoom. There's no cloud monthly fees. I just got a couple. They're phenomenal. Love it. Cool. That's all. Okay. Yeah. I'll just get some of those. It's literally stick one in front of the... If you stuck one in front of the Swiss, you could see it and the probably all the Maury and the NOC, which it at least let you know. Yeah. If you angled it, interesting.
00:17:45
Speaker
Yeah. Do you leave the lights on? No, it's lights off machining, man. I love that. To this day, to this day, I feel like I am making the machines feel lonely and I feel like I'm compromising the machine's ability to do their work when I turn the lights on them. Right? Never occurs to me. So what was the part on the Swiss?
00:18:15
Speaker
So I'm making 440 screws for our knives, the little Torx head ones. Yeah. I've been running it for probably three, four, five days of machine time. And it's going great, going super smooth. Man, once that machine is warmed up in like the first hour, it's literally holding a 10th for an hour or two or three. It's awesome. And then I'll check it and I'll tweak it and I'll be like, oh, it's a 10th over. Yeah, let me calm it down. Or it's a half a 10th too long. Let me let me calm it down.
00:18:44
Speaker
And it just holds it just freakin holds. Like if it makes 200 parts, and I measure the next one coming off, and it's good or a 10th off or whatever. I know the previous 200 are good. Yeah, I don't have to check them. You know, I'll do my due diligence and check a whole bunch of them. But through experience now, like
00:19:02
Speaker
I know they're good. So it's epic. And the biggest wear item on this part is the Torx head, the 20 thou end mill that goes in and mills the Torx head. The Torx gets slightly tighter and tighter as that end mill gets duller and wears down. So I'm seeing about, I think I'm getting 550 parts per tool before it starts to get a little tight.
00:19:24
Speaker
Yeah, but that's like a $10 tool, right? Or a $20 tool? Yeah, a $20 tool. Yeah, for sure. Oh, that's great. But it's... I mean, I can bang out that many parts in probably seven hours. It would be nice to keep it running 24-7. You don't have enough capacity to do a sister tool, a rougher finisher? I'm not with that one because it's in a many, many, many, many, many thousands of dollar high-speed spindle. Oh, that's right.
00:19:55
Speaker
That said, the machine can run two of those high-speed spindles. When I was at CMTS the other week, I talked to the NSK spindle guys. Japanese brand, well-known. It's like the other brand, probably the more popular brand than the Mayrat spindle that I got. They're half the price of the Swiss brand high-speed spindle.
00:20:22
Speaker
And I'm like, are you serious? Like, okay, I'm buying these ones next time. Like, yeah. So I was really impressed with that. So I mean, theoretically I could get another one of those added to the machine. Um, I don't know if there's a spot to add it actually. I don't know. 500 parts is probably a pretty, pretty good result. I'm not sure that justifies a sister tool. If you wanted to run it more than seven hours unattended, you'd need it.
00:20:49
Speaker
Well, but that's a weekend. I mean, seven hours overnight is good. Sure. In my opinion. Yeah. Sorry. I'm not, I'm not saying you should be pushing harder. I'm thinking it through. Okay. Um, that's all. It's interesting. I had a, okay. I was just going to say, especially this part, we need, we need seven of them per knife. So whereas all the other parts, we only need like one per knife. Um, so we need quite at least the amount of volume of these. Okay. Um, Hmm. That's fair.
00:21:18
Speaker
I'm just trying to make as many as I can. I even thought about trying to shave down the cycle time because I'm like, with so many parts, if I shave 10 seconds off the time, that really adds up over 1,000 parts. Or go the other way. This is titanium, right? There should be a direct correlation between surface footage and tool life. I'm not an expert on this. I was going to ask you about that actually. Micro machining. Titanium isn't
00:21:44
Speaker
You need that sharp edge, right? Or else it won't shear as well. So I'm not sure what I'm about to say will hold true, but it may be worth testing where if you reduce the surface footage, had it cycle time run longer, if you got 10 or 20% more time, that could be worth it. More tool life. Excuse me. Yeah.
00:22:00
Speaker
Yeah it's it's a little vague as far as to a life because one run I got 700 but the last bunch were like I had to check tons of them and the torques was too tight so I threw away like a couple hundred screws. I could change it early at 400 and just know that I'm good but I
00:22:19
Speaker
last round I got to about 600 and the last few were bad. So I was like, yeah, I call it 550. I don't know if that's consistent, repeatable. Maybe it is. I'm not sure yet. Interesting. But I'm just I'm looking at my surface footage now. That one.
00:22:38
Speaker
It's an on-topic point because I went up to Zeiss last week, which I'll tell you about in a second, and I stopped by the folks at Area 419. Really cool entrepreneurial story. They make precision rifle products. I don't know if you were with me. I met them at the IMTS Autodesk booth a couple of years ago or something.
00:23:02
Speaker
Anyway, they have two DS30Y's, so awesome to see them in person and like talk tooling and inserts and all that. And they were talking about process reliability on lights out turning and how it's just so difficult because, and they're doing some larger parts where you've got a quarter inch or larger boring bar that's going into,
00:23:28
Speaker
ID work. And it's just, especially on the finishing pass, almost impossible to avoid a bird's nest. Even if it's not every part, if you're running 200 parts, because it's barfed stock, at some point you're going to get a bird's nest. And even if you can minimize it, they're still going to potentially mar up the surface finishes, if not worse. There's just good food for thought. One of the answers that they were
00:23:55
Speaker
you know, pushing is the idea that the higher pressure and well-aimed coolant really does help either break the chip or just get it off. And that's, that's real. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I noticed that on the Tornos and I've been using, um, the active chip breaker function where it's like oscillating the axis to break the chip. And it works pretty good. That's in the controller infusion.
00:24:19
Speaker
It's a line of code that you add to the cutting line. So what does it do? So imagine in part off, instead of just a zip, it retracts and it goes forward and it retracts and it goes forward. I mean, Fusion has kind of codes to do that sometimes, but I think this lets you do it during turning as well. I don't think Fusion can chip break a turning. It has a PEC turning option now.
00:24:52
Speaker
But it's, I don't know, it's built into the macro code structure of the machine, which is, it's kind of neat. So I'm doing part off and I probably have my settings a lot slower than necessary, but you can hear it go like, eh, pause, eh, pause, eh, pause. So it, uh, you hear it cut and then you hear it break the chip and then it dwells probably, I think I have equal cutting and non-cutting time right now. So it sort of sounds like that, you know, horror movie, stabby sound. It's like, eh, eh, eh, eh.
00:25:10
Speaker
Does it? Okay. So it's probably similar to that.
00:25:22
Speaker
It's fun. Right. But going back to that 20,000 mill, I'm looking at my speeds and feeds right now and realizing I'm spinning it at 18,000 RPM, which is giving me only 90 surface feet. Okay. Well, that's already on the low end, so I don't know that you'll have better tool life out of further reducing that. You're machining that whole pocket with that end mill.
00:25:43
Speaker
Yeah. So actually I'm drilling it first. I'm making it a 68 thou hole first. And then I'm plow the end mill in and just do the outsides. Yeah. That's the other, that would be the other thing is anything you can do to reduce the time in the cut. So drilling it or drilling it as big as possible, but for sure.
00:26:01
Speaker
It's too small of a tool to open up that much work. So yeah, I drill it. But 90 sounds low. I usually do 150 or 200 for most of my titanium. I was limited on the Nakamura because I couldn't go more than 18,000 RPM. So I was stuck at 90 surface feet. But on this, I got up to 60,000 RPM. So I could jack that higher SFMP. Oh, I would totally try. It took me an experiment for sure.
00:26:26
Speaker
Yeah, so it's at 18,000 now because I know that's what worked on the Nakamura. Great. Oh, the other thing is in order to keep the chip load, I know the machine can only move so fast. Right. So if I can't get up to 60,000 RPM, it's going to try to move it twice as fast or three times as fast or something to keep that chip load. And it just can't move in that tiny little space that fast.
00:26:53
Speaker
So this is an example of where I would totally take a keep four or five of those used end mills and label them with, if you know how many parts they each made. And then I would either do this yourself, or maybe if you're up at Zadaro, you could take them to them and put them under the microscope and try to understand how and why they're wearing.
00:27:13
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I look at them under my microscope and they don't look that bad. Like it looks maybe evenly worn, but not even dull, not chipped, um, you know, slight glazing on the corner of the, the coating. So I wonder myself why they're wearing so much. You could, um,
00:27:33
Speaker
John Grimsoff could totally do this. You could build in a macro variable in that program that for every increment of a hundred parts, it comps the tool wear out by two tenths. I already did. Shop. Oh my God, we need to hang out more. But does that not make up for it?
00:27:54
Speaker
It does. Um, and it's not automatic, like you said, but I can change a variable variable to be like one thou bigger, two thou bigger, three thou bigger, all the way up to six. Okay. And it works okay. Um, but I'm still not fully happy with it. Are you still in a spring pass? Yes. Okay. That could help or hurt. I mean, it could be adaptive as you're aware out the quarters and then, uh, and then a finish pass and then a spring pass as well. Mm-hmm.
00:28:22
Speaker
Is it true what everyone says on titanium where you just can't go faster than whatever, 200 service feet? I haven't. I'd probably do some 250. Yeah.
00:28:34
Speaker
But I used to think that steel was like 250 to 400 and you see a lot of solid carbide and insert carbide tooling on steel now that's a thousand feet surface feet per minute or 900, which is crazy. So I'm like, okay, so have they changed the ability to cut titanium faster than 250? It's possible. I feel like I have talked to tooling reps that said we could push it a lot harder. Interesting. If you hear more about that, let me know. I'm curious. For sure, yeah.
Advanced Manufacturing Systems
00:29:03
Speaker
It's just, is it something about the property of that material that really just limits you? Yeah, I don't know. It's a tough material. I don't know. Fair enough. So after Area 419, I went up to Zeiss's, their showroom in Brighton, Michigan to look at CMMs and so forth. We're like, we don't.
00:29:29
Speaker
This was for fun. I'll put it that way. We're learning. It's not that I don't want to get one, but we'll see where it goes.
00:29:36
Speaker
What they had that really made me say, Holy cow, this is legit. And you actually would be a better candidate for this is are these, um, they almost look like overhead projectors back in grade school. If you had those things, um, yeah. Oh my God, John, you just dropped one of your parts on there and it, um, can recognize from a pre-programmed part library. It's like, Oh, that's a Norseman pivot or, Oh, that's a Ras candle.
00:30:03
Speaker
And then it pulls up all of the critical dimensions you care about and gives you red, green on them right away. Whoa. Pointing. So it's like, if you put a pivot up on there, it can do thread pitch. It could do the torques diameter, whatever you care about, almost regardless of where you put it on the screen, it happens within, I mean, a second or two. And you just get this dummy proof, like, Oh, what, what banded range did you need it to be in? And it points to things. It's amazing.
00:30:32
Speaker
So it's like an optical comparator on steroids. Yes, steroids is an understatement. Like multi-use steroid abuser, drug abuser. Do you use your optical comparator? We do not. Can I buy it from you? Yeah, you can. Because Angela wants one bad. That's fine. Can I cross the border with it? If I come up at some point? Of course, it's tools. Or if I come down, either way.
00:31:01
Speaker
There's something about us Americans where it's like crossing the, to me, crossing the border with like a large, when I visited you last time and I smuggled all the microscopes under the back of the truck seat, it was fine. Despite being completely shaken down by Canadian customs for no apparent reason. Right. Right. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. And we'll be really happy about that. But I totally agree with you that a vision system is the, um, steroid abusing older brother of the, uh,
00:31:29
Speaker
of, of that. It's not even a comparison. No, but the price difference is huge. Like the vision systems. When I was at CMTS, um, we talked to the mid to Toyo guys and they were showing us around the vision systems and they're, they're amazing. They're sweet. And they start at 20 grand or whatever. And they easily go up from there. Yeah. This one was like 50 grand. But, but John, I mean, I know I hear you, but like putting a mod vice on them as they come off the machine and just have it immediately tell you if something was wrong.
00:32:00
Speaker
is so much better than hand tools or gauges or skilled labor. You're not making bad parts. I totally get it.
00:32:08
Speaker
Especially something like a mod vice where it's flat, it's square, it's got a bunch of holes in it. It would know the squareness, it would know length width, it would know whole pattern, it would know any whole size, it would know crookedness. It could tell you every dimension in a second versus taking you a couple minutes to measure everything. Okay, I'm starting to see it.
00:32:32
Speaker
I mean, I see it. I get it for sure, but I'm trying to justify the cost, the abhorrent cost of measuring equipment and realizing how important it is, obviously. Right. Yeah, it really comes into scaling. We've talked about this a lot with you, but scaling beyond you and not making bad parts and checking stuff.
00:32:50
Speaker
Well, and I don't know if they honestly, I don't know if the vision systems are good enough for you because of how tight your tolerances are. They may be, I just don't know. Well, I know that my friend Danny Rudolph has at least one. Okay.
ERP Systems and Future Plans
00:33:03
Speaker
And he's got his own shop, Swiss Lathe Machinist, that has a bunch of Swiss Lathes and makes probably tighter tolerance parts than I do. Yeah, the guy in Massachusetts with the UR, right?
00:33:16
Speaker
No, Massachusetts. I think it's in Pennsylvania, but yes. He's got a couple of UR robots, Robo drill. And I think he's got, his intention was to, UR robot, the vision system, drop the card in, measure it, you know, print out a spec sheet or whatever he does.
00:33:34
Speaker
I forget where he's at with that project, but I know he has one. I wonder something like if you put a screw on there and the screw tips down because the head and the thread tip are now touching and now everything's tilted and crooked. I wonder what it can actually measure. Yeah, I think it does need to be presented normal to the lens. So you would need to have it oriented how you want it to measure.
00:34:01
Speaker
Like you'd need it on its own little V block or something. Yeah, that's not a huge deal, I don't think. Yeah. Interesting. Well, we should wrap up. I think to keep, I think, I feel like this podcast is better when it's 35 minutes and not going on 50.
00:34:18
Speaker
for the sake of parking lots. But we did an Odoo demo last week with a friend who has it. Shout out to the folks at Modus up in your neck of the woods. And I have a call scheduled with Odoo for like a sales demo this week, but it just completely got me reinvigorated within the ERP system. What came to mind right here is this idea that if you had a CMM or a vision system,
00:34:44
Speaker
and you had serialized products, you could then just click a button and push that report into that serial number in the ERP, which means, you know, years later, you can find out what customer bought with what lot number and what, like, it just totally is the right framework for, you know, the right way to manufacture and being intelligent. And the question for me is almost single-handedly, can Odo's new version, they've revved up,
00:35:10
Speaker
Can it support the website and host the website like we want? We want to redo Saunders machine works to be a better workflow so you kind of get there. We have some marketing points as to why and what the fixture plates and
00:35:26
Speaker
a modified system is, and then from there, you pick your machine, and then if you pick your machine, like Haas VF2 or whatever, Tormach, and then it'll say, here are the plate options, here's the PDF drawing, here's a solid model that you can download, here's photos of it in use, and it's kind of this workflow of showing you through accessories, kits, all that stuff. So if Odoo can host that as a website, that will let us roll website, accounting, shipping, everything into the ERP, which is how I think it should be done.
00:35:57
Speaker
Right. So we would did Shopify, ShipStation, Zero, all that. Interesting. Yeah. I'm really curious if it can do all of that stuff. I don't know. Yeah. I think they're going to tell me it can because they're no, seriously. I mean, I'm not, I don't mean to be rude, but I think they're I'm going to be, I've got to be very specific with my questions. I may even spend some money to build out a test.
00:36:25
Speaker
dual track, like not use it, but just build it, you know, and, and see, and be willing to kill it. Um, recognizing, I just, I need to know it's going to work. Uh, and there's no, not any gotchas. Well, I'm sure Paul from modus already told you this, but the setup time can be quite intense. Um, he was telling me this just, just a lot to like learn and input and before you have anything useful. Yes. Agreed. Um, and that's just how ERP is.
00:36:56
Speaker
But that's fine. I'm going to ignore that because I actually just care about, show me that you can build the website from the front end standpoint, from the user standpoint. Then we can go add in the products and the kits and the accounting and the sales process. That I know Odoo does well. And there's the gotchas, like I heard a rumor. I don't want to spread it in case it's wrong.
00:37:18
Speaker
If you implement custom code that they have some sort of an upcharge to maintain custom code each month, which is kind of a, that sort of stuff irks me, right? Like one of the reasons I'd like to get away from Shopify is I have fatigue of every time I want to add a little minor functionality, it's another 20 to 50 bucks a month for a kit plugin. Yeah. Or a custom code solution.
00:37:45
Speaker
Right. Well, I'm fine with the custom code, but then I own the code. I run it. I paid for custom code and I have to pay. It's like a corkage fee. I have to pay every month just to let me run this. I hope I'm wrong on that. Okay. Very cool. What are you up to today? Let's see if the Swiss caught fire. No, I'm sure it's fine.
00:38:13
Speaker
And then once these parts are done, we're going to the last pen part that we need right now, which is the button of the pen. And then we have 100 ish pens ready to assemble. Awesome. And then from here on out, I really, really am working hard to keep this a steady flow of production along with our other parts. Now that we have our two layouts going very nicely. It's just a balance of what gets run when so we're doing a lot of scheduling planning.
00:38:40
Speaker
with how many of the 14 turn components we make gets made when and how many and move on and stuff and on which machine too, which is cool. Good for you. That's all kinds of little stuff. I am going to look at the UMC 500. Very, very cool.
00:38:59
Speaker
It's the- Like in person or just- Yeah, it's the Oktoberfest event. So I'm going to both enjoy it. And it actually is legit good because they have the 500, which I want to see. They have the auto parts loader, which I'm curious to learn more about. I want to see some lay stuff in person and talk tooling. And I'm guessing there'll be some folks there to meet or share, talk, all that. So it's just kind of a good half work, half kind of gets a nerd out like a mini trade show thing. I'm excited.
00:39:28
Speaker
Yep. Yep. Love it. Yeah. The last thing, we can talk about it next week, but we're thinking about...
00:39:36
Speaker
picking up another intern or a helper person, potential employee. And I think it'd probably be good and certainly a good business or podcast topic to talk about like, kind of what do you look for? How do you hire? How do you bring things on board? How do you talk about culture? How do you evaluate folks? We've certainly learned some stuff recently and I've always enjoyed listening when folks have something to say about that. So perhaps what we have gone through can help others too.
00:40:06
Speaker
That could be an excellent episode for next week because that is heavy on my mind as well. Oh, okay. Good. Well, I'll talk to you next week then. Sounds great. Take care. Take care. Bye.